Last week the majority of the English electorate voted with their hearts to abandon Europe in favour of an imagined golden period of post-war Britain before the Common Market when we won the World Cup, then on Monday England’s footballers voted with their feet to follow their country out of Europe. As a country we now hate foreigners so much we can’t bear to be in the same game as them, at least that’s what it looked like.
Europe are laughing at us, the other nations of the UK are laughing at us and, although a good number are very angry about it, many of our own countrymen are laughing at us. The sheer incompetence, the wrong team, strange tactics, no plan, surprised when it all goes tits up despite it being an obvious risk of the adopted strategy. Still at least there are a few deluded Englishmen on the continent telling Europe how it really is, that they’re all lazy greasy foreigners who will ultimately succumb to English bombers.
Who or what is responsible for the the big issues fuelling the EU referendum debate?
Fishing decline: Since we joined the EU in 1972 our fishing industry has been decimated with thousands of jobs lost at sea and on shore. Over fishing of traditional North Sea and Atlantic locations during the 20th century caused fish stocks to fall precipitously leading to other countries unilaterally increasing the extent of territorial waters and banning foreigners from fishing them. The Cod wars with Iceland in the 60s and early 70s were lost (at great expense), and the British trawler fleet became unsustainable, concentrating efforts in waters closer to home using EU money to improve vessels and technology to find ever more scarce shoals and further depleting stocks. The UK industry was already dying by the time the EU stepped in with the Common Fisheries Policy in 1983 and many trawlermen had already left and retrained as offshore welders in the expanding North Sea oil industry. Very strict quotas to conserve stocks made fishing much less profitable than alternatives, and in some ports UK licenses were bought by Spanish and Portuguese crews who were willing to pay more for the meagre profits available. There were problems with the CFP rules which had to be changed over the years, but fish stocks are finally recovering and profitability of the remaining UK fleet should now improve.
Conclusion: The EU made mistakes but the UK fishing fleet was in decline long before we joined, and without the CFP the current situation would be far worse.
UK steel industry: If we weren’t members of the EU we would be able to directly support the steel industry through the current crises caused by falling demand and dumping of underpriced Chinese steel in Europe. However EU attempts to impose tariffs on underpriced Chinese steel, that would have protected all European manufacturers, were blocked by the UK as it chased massive Chinese investment in UK infrastructure projects.
Conclusion: The EU could have done more to protect steel but the UK government is willing to swap our steel industry for a white elephant nuclear power program funded by communist China.
NHS: Underfunded, reeling from badly structured and delivered total top-down ideological reorganisation to make privatisation easier, swingeing cuts to local authority social care provision have increased demands on far more expensive acute care hospitals, cuts to already deficient staff training programs require increased use of overseas trained doctors and nurses, ideological attacks on doctors in training have been catastrophic for skills retention.
Conclusion: Problems are nothing to do with the EU and very much down to a government ideologically opposed to the NHS. Brexit won’t fix any of the underlying problems and will probably make the funding shortfall worse if tax revenues drop.
Migration: Business needs migrant workers to control wage inflation for indigenous unskilled labour and to overcome serious skills shortages. This has resulted in huge increases in net migration since 2010 are putting housing, infrastructure and underfunded services under extra strain, but the additional taxes coming from this expanded workforce are not being used to supplement the under pressure services. Additionally a significant proportion of society are xenophobic or racist and are destabilising communities. The EU (aided by UK government) has made it easy for business to import unskilled labour, improve productivity and reduce costs, but the majority of immigrants are from outside the EU, drawn by the chronic skills shortages due to our dreadful failing education system and lack of investment by employers developing staff with the required skill set.
Conclusion: Leaving the EU won’t remove the skills shortages but the resulting reduced economic activity may reduce demands for unskilled labour from Eastern Europe. Investment in education by government, rather than the current push to privatise academies with a cheap test driven core rote knowledge, plus improved training by industry is required to deal with the skills shortage.
NB. Written on my phone under the influence of insomnia, hence the poor structure and failure to proof read before posting
Back in 1975 I was against staying in because the EEC was little more than a Ponzi scheme to guarantee farmers, particularly French farmers, money for overproduction; my farming relatives were very much in favour though.
It really wasn’t until the late 80s that it started to behave more rationally, and I reluctantly have to credit Thatcher for that because the UK rebate and the final Maastricht treaty were very much down to her team, it was no longer just about farmers. Throw in the Nordic and Germanic nations becoming environmentally aware (thanks to acid rain killing their forests) and voting a significant green block into the EP, finally the EU started doing good stuff; acting to control acid rain and water pollution, promoting protection of ecosystems, and latterly a level playing field of workers rights to ensure that members can’t compete within the single market by exploiting their own citizens. Mistakes were made, but no more significant than those made by the sovereign parliaments of the member nations. But as the 90s progressed the big mistake we in the UK made was dumbing down our representation to the point where they just turned up to claim the maximum money for the least effort and actually represented the caricature portrayed in our national media of pigs in the trough profiting from the EU gravy train. This ultimately handed power to the Brussels civil servants who would invent and promote ever more obtuse policies knowing that the parliament had become ineffective. This wasn’t helped by our own parliament’s perverse willingness to then over interpret and legislate for EU regulations.
So yes the EU has become undemocratic but it doesn’t have to be. The real target of the free marketeer libertarians behind Brexit is in fact some of the really good stuff that has come out of the EU, things that protect our environment, our everyday safety and our freedoms. The libertarian right want these freedoms for themselves but don’t think you deserve them. Thanks to the tide of support for Brexit they probably will achieve the low tax, zero regulation, Dickensian free market they desire, a “society” that exploits the vast majority and totally screws the environment and future generations. It’s your choice – use it wisely.
Written and posted from my phone in bed this morning. Apologies for the spelling, grammar and lack of proof reading, I hope it makes more sense than either side of the debate so far.
Totally unimpressed by the EU debate thus far I decided to attend a meeting arranged and chaired by my local MP (Luke Hall, Conservative, Thornbury and Yate), where the leave and remain arguments would be presented by experts from the two campaigns.
Our experts for the evening were:
For Leave, David Campbell Bannerman (DCB), Tory MEP for the East of England, a former deputy leader of UKIP who defected when he lost the leadership race to Farage. On the surface fairly affable but soon exposed the usual deeply patronising personality disorder typical of politicians who first decide what is right and then look for evidence to justify their position while ignoring or attempting to debunk mountains of evidence that undermines it.
And for Remain, Robert (dullness personified) Buckland QC, Conservative MP for Swindon South and the current Government’s Solicitor-General, who failed to say anything vaguely interesting or enlightening in the whole debate other than a few gentle put downs when Campbell Bannerman or his supporters enthusiasm for their case caused them to assert untrue facts as evidence.
What did I learn from this experience? Absolutely nothing, the debate replicated the national media coverage, albeit without much of Cameron’s doom and gloom nonsense scaremongering. Campbell Bannerman was able to salve the consciences of the committed leavers, and those who remain undecided will be so unenthused that they’ll probably not bother voting. I did want to intervene a couple of times when an unchallenged Campbell Bannerman condemned EU interference in our farmers sovereign right to poison the wider environment with fertiliser and pesticides, and forcing the UK to abandon coal fired electricity generation for spurious long term environment concerns, but these were not items for debate as it seemed everyone on the top table agreed with him.
So my pre-submitted questions about what a post Brexit England will look like remain unanswered. Clearly the Leavers won’t have the funds to do all the talked of budget redistribution – protect the steel industry, bail out the NHS, support farming, etc – and no clarification on the intrinsic conflict between lower prices promised by free marketeer leavers, and supporting British industry of the little England protectionist majority of their supporters.
In reality the NHS remains totally screwed by appalling dogmatic neoliberal policy decisions over the last decade, and neither side of the Conservative party have any intention to repair it. The steel industry was sacrificed by wider UK insistence on a free market, tariff free EU that again both sides of the Tory party agree with. Both sides also agree that clean beaches, rivers and other environmental improvements forced on us by EU targets were interference in UK sovereignty and we should have the right to mess up our children’s futures, and that coach and lorry drivers shouldn’t be forced to take breaks or only work for a maximum 48 hour week. The spurious border security arguments will continue to ignore the fact that we don’t have enough people in place to actually police vulnerable bits of our coastline, and the migration numbers won’t go down on a points based system while our education system continues to fail to produce individuals with the skills required by employers and indigenous workers don’t want low paid seasonal employment picking fruit and veg on our farms.
In other words this referendum probably won’t change many of the things people care about, but does risk making the British people poorer for generations to come – I’ve probably decided to vote Remain.
It’s been an educational week for casual racism in Frampton Cotterell, the semi-rural dormitory village just beyond the urban Bristol greenbelt where I live.
People are programmed to be suspicious of things that are different or alien to them until they become familiar and they recognise that there is in fact no threat. Whether it be race, religion, age, lifestyle or just a fear of the great unwashed, it is innate. BUT if you have been reasonably educated in the last 30 years you have a head start on distinguishing a genuine threat from a racist reaction. Our kids don’t generally look at a black person and think “I bet he’s up to no good” or see a Muslim woman in a headscarf and immediately assume she’s a terrorist, some of us need to learn from our kids rather than try to indoctrinate our own prejudices.
Over the last few weeks there has been a spate of opportunist burglaries, no real pattern to events and no description of the culprit(s), but people were on edge and communicating through the local facebook groups, being neighbourly.
We’re a local village for local people and we are not very ethnically diverse, so obviously if someone is being suspicious and they are black then it’s noticed, but it’s probably better if the reason for them being suspicious doesn’t appear to be that they are black. The above post was generally received positively and those who suggested it might be racist in tone were shouted down because the author is not a racist (just a bit clumsy with the wording). Some took the opportunity to point out that admin allowed far more blatant racist and Islamaphobic material to be reposted and it began to get heated and Admin threatened to remove “abusive posts and posters” while excusing racism.
One of those kids, a lad now in his early 20s who was at school with my eldest son, who took the criticism to another, rather sacastic level:
this post was popular with his mates and some of the wider audience, but many were angry that being suspicious of a black man in a white area should be regarded as small minded or even racist. The debate got fractious and personal, several younger posters were banned and this post and discussion were removed. The fractious debate moved to other posts, particularly the reposted Britain First material, where it again became personal and resulted in other threads being removed including the original suspicious black man post.
Then yesterday we had the following act of genius, which rapidly became one of the most read and liked posts to have appeared:
The thread continues to attract many “I’m not a racist but” type comments (especially from admin) along with personal attacks in response, but I think a fair few may actually have learned something. Well done Andre.
On Saturday 21 March Simon Dobbin, a 41 year old father and grandfather, was one of a thousand Cambridge United football fans who made the trip to watch his team in the local derby match with Southend. After the game Simon and a couple of mates went to a pub on the way back to the station to watch England France 6 nations finale before catching the train home. After 7pm, walking between the pub and the station, they were attacked because they were still wearing their Cambridge scarves.
Simon spent 3 weeks in a coma and is now making very slow progress with life changing injuries, it’s possible he may never be able to go home again. He wasn’t a thug or hooligan, just an ordinary sports fan on his way to the station. And this isn’t really about football, it’s mindless thuggery by animals who use football tribalism as an excuse.
The men arrested at the scene will probably be charged with assault causing GBH. They nearly murdered Simon and certainly took away the breadwinner, husband, father that his family and friends had known before.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Simon-Dobbin-s-daughter-Rebecca-talks-father-s/story-26554707-detail/story.html
http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/VictoriaForsythe
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I read yesterday’s reports from the Trussell trust about numbers using food banks exceeding 1 million in the last financial year. I wanted to know more about how it worked so I could write something on here about how I feel about it and what the numbers really mean, so I spoke to a few people who work with the needy and refer to food banks; charity worker, GP, social worker, health visitor; then Jack Monroe wrote this in the Guardian and it became a bit clearer.
“Those of us referred to food banks are the lucky ones with a good doctor or health visitor who knows us well enough to recognise that something has gone seriously wrong. Consider those who don’t have those relationships, or services in their communities; those who don’t get a referral or a voucher because nobody recognises that they need to eat.”
The numbers don’t matter, the fact that that they have to be there, that ordinary people need them at all, is abhorrent.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/22/crisis-what-crisis-politicians-ignore-food-banks
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14 May 2010: David Cameron pledges greenest government ever
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/uk-politics-video/7723996/David-Cameron-pledges-greenest-government-ever.html
Hardly a surprise the Tories are not choosing to big up their green credentials for this election but what did the coalition actually achieve?
Shale gas extraction and fracking:
A continuation of Thatcher’s dash to gas policy which has now become over reliant on maintaining relations with Russia, and very vulnerable to petrodollar price fluctuations. It is true that burning gas is better for the environment than burning coal, but not burning carbon at all is much better still. So there are two very good green reasons to oppose fracking:
It will risk immediate and long term direct damage to your local environment through extraction associated pollution and frequent minor earth tremors, the health risks to people and wildlife of water table contamination are also very real no matter what safeguards the government insists will protect you.
The real reason to oppose shale gas extraction however is that it adds to the total pool of exploited carbon that will ultimately tip the earth over the edge into accelerated warming, extreme weather events, dramatic sea level rise and ultimately tectonic plate adjustment as the weight of the polar ice caps is redistributed to the equatorial oceans.
Eric Pickles and wind farms:
Despite being in a completely unrelated ministry, climate change denier Eric Pickles somehow managed to acquire a veto over onshore wind power schemes in England. Schemes that are intrinsic to the wider energy policy and have funding in place with the support of the hosting local authority and planning officers, are repeatedly bounced by Eric Pickles because he just doesn’t like wind power. And nobody in government has the bollocks to put him in place and defend their own energy policy.
Nuclear:
Billions have been committed, for generations to come, to contracts to build up to 8 new nuclear power plants. Personally I think nuclear is probably a better long term option than burning carbon, BUT:
We need better plans for managing waste before we start adding significantly to it.
We shouldn’t be contracting the construction and operation to a consortium of private French businesses and the Chinese government. If we want to manage the risks properly nuclear has to be the sole responsibility of HM government, not struggling construction companies and definitely not operated using software from an often hostile competitor nation.
Owen Paterson’s 18 months as environment minister:
The joker in the pack, Owen Paterson, a man whose lifelong distrust of science makes him one of the most bizarre appointments of a government that made a habit of counter intuitive appointments. Another climate change denier who fronted the new, extremely expensive and remarkably unsuccessful policy of sacrificing badgers to the rain gods. Now it has also emerged that, at the behest of the multinational agrochemical giants who market them, he oversaw the deliberate misrepresentation of government research showing bee colony numbers may be severely affected by neonicotinoid pesticides in a bid to prevent an EU ban. This latest accusation was reported by New Scientist this week and will receive no wider audience while most of the mainstream popular media concentrate on re-electing the Tories in May.
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“The scientific process appears to have been deliberately manipulated to agree with the environment secretary’s views”
I was out last night watching Dara O’Briain at the Bristol Hippodrome and he was very entertaining, but it did mean I missed the big television debate between the party leaders. No great loss I now realise having caught up with the recording but it’s angered me enough to make me commit this rant to my blog.
During 2007/8 the banks suddenly lost a lot of money, that mostly wasn’t theirs to lose, due to the failure of a series of schemes that sold excessive unsecured debts from over-inflated property prices in America. They subsequently had to be bailed out by governments with tax payers money.
Clearly someone had to pay and in the UK the 2010 general election result decided it would be ordinary British households, with the highest burden placed on the most vulnerable through a policy known as austerity. Meanwhile the banks were given billions of pounds of magic money, through quantitative easing, with the intention that they invest in enterprise to boost the economy. Real enterprises, actually making novel things and creating new markets, were however too risky and long term for the now risk averse banks and the credit agencies (more self appointed bankers), so the enterprises they invested in were mostly more of the financial gimmicks that directly caused the credit crunch as banks and financial big players shared all this magic money amongst themselves. This forced up commodity prices (oil, copper, energy etc), stock markets and the total wealth of the top 1%, which in turn contributed to a new UK property price bubble centred on under-taxed international mega-rich buying London.
George Osborne justified austerity on the basis that without it the credit agencies (the self appointed bankers and economists with a vested interest in maintaining current economic orthodoxy) would remove our AAA* rating that was essential to keep the economy on track – of course as we all know now there was no actual growth until after he lost it.
The only growth industry witnessed by the majority of UK households during this phase of George Osborne’s “recovery” was copper theft and the attendant disruption to public transport and utilities. We have also had a trickle down of London’s property price bubble by giving the slightly better off cheaper ways to borrow money for further property purchases they can then rent to the ever increasing numbers who will never be able to get a foothold in the property ladder.
In the last 18 months we have finally started to see some consumer lead growth in the UK allowing Osborne, Cameron and Clegg to declare the success of their policy. In reality this is almost entirely down to a US/Saudi policy to collapse oil prices and thereby destabilise the Russian economy. As a result many households saw some reduction in costs of essentials through deflationary pressures that allowed them to spend a bit more elsewhere. As subsequent oil price rises are absorbed back into the economy this temporary mini-boom will undoubtedly disappear after the next election. Real growth in the economy will only come when the majority of consumers have rising incomes and more money to spend, and this will only happen through investment in them and the companies that make the things they want or need, rather than the current policy of making the top 1% increasingly cash rich with unproductive money hidden in tax havens. Read more…
Jake died on Tuesday 6 May 2014, aged about 13 years.
Jake in 2010 age 9
I wrote this post a day or so after Jake’s death but never published it – I don’t know why. Perhaps it was too painful, too indulgent. It is rambling and poorly structured and I am unable to edit it, but having now rediscovered it I can’t just leave it.
I first met Jake in August 2002 when he was 15 months old on a sink council estate in Cheltenham. He was living with a family who said they had rescued him after his first owners found they couldn’t cope with such a large, energetic dog alongside a young family. Living conditions were somewhat cramped in a 2 bed 2nd floor flat occupied by a couple, their 2 children, German shepherd, cat with 4 kittens, assorted birds and reptiles, and Duke a skinny, horny, very handsome, adolescent liver spotted Dalmatian.
We had moved into our new home in a hurry 2 days earlier; we hadn’t had time to do any significant work or unpacking, or even make the place looked lived in let alone work out basic security. Needless to say we were broken into by an opportunist trying to escape police after an earlier burglary on the main road through the village. Nothing much was stolen other than loose change and Justine’s waterproof that he wanted as a disguise, but we decided that the planned puppy was now urgent and really needed to be a bit bigger than a puppy.
Duke was one of several possibilities identified from the dogs for sale ads in local papers, he wasn’t the first choice as Cheltenham was a 30 mile drive to check him out, and the only thing I knew about Dalmatians was they could be bonkers and very hard work. However, after talking to owners of several other advertised dogs we decided to go and see him the following evening. Justine had family in and around Cheltenham and I had visited on many occasions over the years but it had never occurred to me that such a middle class, gentile town would have such run down areas, large blocks of the estate were in the process of being demolished and what was left was graffiti strewn and vandalised with apparently owner-less untaxed vehicles dumped all over the place. Finding the address was problematic as several roads from my A-Z had disappeared and when we eventually reached the destination I was worried about leaving the car outside, but we found the flat and met Duke with his foster carers. They were a nice family who were clearly struggling with their responsibilities, Duke was very scared of and dominated by their German Shepherd but had nowhere to hide. Unfortunately and understandably the family couldn’t provide enough food or exercise and had reached the decision to sell Duke whether or not he was theirs to sell. We took him for a walk around the immediate vicinity of the block of flats and it was love at first site for me and Duke. Justine, although not convinced due to his horniness towards her, agreed that we should buy him there and then and take him home with us. At the time £150 seemed a lot for an adult dog with a very unclear history and possibly disputed ownership, but he was handsome, athletic, loved us and without a doubt needed a better home; and the sellers needed the cash. On the drive home to Frampton Cotterell Duke became Jake.
The following day we registered at the local vets for a basic health check and hopefully confirm we hadn’t bought someone else’s stolen pet. The vet confirmed that Jake was not chipped, did not match local reports for missing dogs and at below 25kg he was at least 5kg underweight for his size but otherwise healthy, he recommended castration sooner rather than later to significantly reduce the horniness. The children had been packaged off to grandparents for the move and didn’t know about Jake until they were returned the following weekend. Dalmatians were cool, they loved him and they knew other kids at their new schools would too. It also works for adults, you get to meet your neighbours while out walking and such a striking dog helps to get you recognised. Within the first 2 weeks it became clear that Jake’s horniness was a significant problem, especially with young girls who he would grab hold of and could sometimes scratch painfully with his dew claws. We had to keep him on a short lead for a lot of the time. We arranged for his castration within weeks and his horniness diminished significantly at first but he never fully lost the urge and he never trusted the vet again.
Jake with Anna, winter 2002
He was also very difficult with food which he would steal whenever presented with the opportunity, even from high shelves. We lost several quiches, cakes and loaves before learning to take more care. On one of the first times I let him off the lead in the field beside the house he charged off through hedges and fences to empty the bins at the local bakery, by the time I found him he was severely bloated with his face covered in jam and uncooked doughnut mix. He was unwell for several days as a result, but for the rest of his life would always choose to be sick through overeating rather than risk being hungry. We made sure his routes to the bakery and availability of bins were restricted after the second time but there was always the risk he would steal food put out for horses in the fields around us and anything unsecured left in sheds and barns.
German shepherds, postmen, doorbells, telephones, black dogs and joggers: all could provoke aggression. The fear and distrust of German shepherds never left him, if they didn’t attack him first he was liable to get in his revenge noisily and early. I received a visit from the police after he confronted then bit the bottom of a postman who ran away, we tried to keep him away from postmen and it made his response even more extreme, much mail got shredded on its way through the letter box until we invested in a basket on the inside of the door. Of course it wasn’t just postmen, it was anyone who opened the gate, walked up the gravel drive and then rattled the letterbox, but he would make friends with those who knew his name and didn’t run away. Door bells and telephones regularly induced howling by the second ring. There were several occasions where he unpredictable lunged at or provoked black dogs that I never got to the bottom of, and there was a one off occasion when he turned and nipped the bottom of a jogger who ran past without acknowledging him, but there were also many more occasions where other dogs really didn’t like him and would go out of their way to attack him.
On one occasion when Jake was about 6 years old he was upset due to an abscess or possibly a bee sting near his anus, so I tried cuddling to distract him while Justine took the opportunity to take a closer look. Jake panicked and bit through then partially tore off my ear before being mortified by what he had done. Three hours and many stitches later at Frenchay Hospital my ear was sewn back together and I went home to a really remorseful Jake who never showed me any aggression ever again, the resulting scars are now barely visible.
Jake continued to walk, run and climb mountains with me, 5 or more miles out and about every day for the next 8 years, often including a walk around the village in the evening with a visit to The Live and Let Live or the Rising Sun. It was running that went first, if he came with me for a run that would be it for a couple of days, he’d barely want a walk. Sometimes he did still run while we were out walking but often he’d suddenly yelp, come to a halt with an stiff arched back and then limp slowly home. Special diets, anti inflamtories, steroids and more hated trips to the vets were tried but to no avail, he was mostly happy in himself so we would only go to the vets as a last resort. By the time he was ten walks were every other day and he mostly wouldn’t go with anyone other than me, then he would sometimes get a couple of hundred yards from the house and absolutely refuse to go any further. We also became aware of a few sub-cutaneous lumps, probably cysts down to his age according to the vet. These multiplied in number and size with several becoming clearly visible and it seemed then that he didn’t have long left.
Soon after Jakes 11th birthday we got Dylan as his replacement and Jake really perked up. He didn’t seem especially interested in Dylan but he wanted to come for walks again and he played with other dogs, even running around a bit. 18 months on the lumps were getting bigger but Jake remained quite active, he rarely yelped and limped and he was going out for a mile or so twice a day but not always with Dylan. This spring the deterioration set in again, odd days where he couldn’t walk, occasional overnight incontinence, painful yelps and ultimately days where he seemed indifferent to me. It was the indifferent days that upset me. Then there were several days where he barely ate and didn’t want to go out in early April and we spoke to the vets about arrangements to have him put down at the end of the week, he perked up a bit was happy to see me and wanted to come out with Dylan and there were only occasional relapses for the next month. The end fortunately came very quickly, there were a couple of days of vomiting and incontinence when he barely moved, and wouldn’t eat. We walked no more then a fifty yards into the centenary field but it was too much for him and me so I contacted the vet again and booked him in for euphenasia the following evening. I came home from work early expecting to have to carry him to the car but he was a bit better so we walked round the Centenary Field for the last time, I started to have second thoughts but it was now his time to go. I held him for five minutes while the injections took place, he fought and struggled and died. I cried but it was the right time.
@AlanLank 