Axis of Power

It is absolutely clear China with a developing independent space programme, including its own GPS system, having been highly proactive in buying up or obtaining primary access to most of the key materials and rare materials around the world and with most of the developed nations credit held by China, China has entered the World Stage in a major way. They are not bit players on the sidelines but has put itself in a position to dictate terms to the rest of the World. When the rest of the old Western former powers eventually pull themselves out of their stupor they are not going to relinquish their previous world dominance. We have the classic power struggle building up with China determining its allies to form its axis and the rest of the west developed nations lumbering into some coalition axis of opposition. The key questions are the buffer nations caught up inbetween these two axis, the Middle East and Australia/New Zealand, naturally a western alliance but too close to the China axis and too far for close support but perhaps most of all Russia sharing common borders.

We are not talking political arm wrestling, the west will not accept subservience to China without a fight. Can you really imagine the USofA meekly submitting to China's terms? I think not. We are talking about a walk towards WWIII. The only possible setback to China's progress to world dominance, planned or coincidental, is whether it can successfully continue to exercise total authoritarian rule and sit and contain the bubbling ferment of all their numerous minority racial groups. A resentment against the power and privilege the ruling Hans have surrounded themselves with.

Working with it

Maybe we just cannot remember far enough back or maybe unprecedented, which ever we will have to learn to live and cope with weather extremes we are now experiencing. Does not matter what you attribute the cause to, no point kidding ourselves, this past six weeks of continually showers and gale winds is not a one-off freak. This is our new weather pattern, but how do we live with it? Re-learning past forgotten lessons, for one. Farmers of old who lived, worked and spent their lives on the land, knew their land, knew where water collected, where ditches worked and where to create courses to take water off their land and away. Modern farmers take profit out of the land, hiring contractors to do the bulk work and from their tractor cabins surrounded by technological aids have lost that direct contact and feel for their land. So we have to rediscover that direct contact with our land again, watch and listen to what it tells us. Point one, clear out all your ditches making sure that their outfall is clear beyond your own borders. Next is to dredge your rivers to stop them getting choked up with all the sediment taken off the fields. But we know that is not sufficient, fast off the land means fast into water courses then fast down to the next settlement along the water course. We have to reinstate flood plains to absorb that initial fast run-off giving the now reinvigorated rivers a chance to do their work. Hopefully flood plains that just have to take flood waters for a week or two and not for the months the Somerset Levels are having to endure. Managed and controlled flood plains. Or natures random flood plains generated by Beavers cutting down trees that choke the streams and rivers. Either way, but slowing down the run off into the rivers. Lest we forget, we have covered vast areas of our land in hard impermeable surfaces, that too is adding to our problems of a lot of water wanting to flow downstream and all at once. 

The rain will come as it comes, we have to learn to live with it. One solution to softening the impact we should have done hundred years ago. But it still not too late to act now for our grandchildrens benefits. Plant lots and lots of trees. Trees take the sting out of the wind, calm down its energy and diffuse the rain, softening it impact, increasing the prospect of it being absorbed before it runs off. Trees can be our giant country wide blanket soaking up the wind and the rain. Not solving but helping to dissipate the wind and rain, giving our flood plains, ditches and rivers a chance to work. Trees can take a long time to achieve any stature but not all. Some trees, that people might know as hedgerows, such as Elder, Damson, Wild Cherry, Crab Apple, Hawthorn, Sloe or Blackthorn are fast growing. We just need  rethink how we go about growing our crops, perhaps between harvesting lines of 'trees' but what ever we do need to plant a huge number of trees and right now. We will of course also learn how to manage them better so we do not flail them to within four feet of life.We can get smart and learn how to live with our new weather or procrastinate, hold on to our old comfortable ways, hum and haw while Nature just carries on and determines our future. Better to act, anyone for Elderflower Presse, Damson Cheese,
Crab Apple or Hawthorn Jelly or maybe some Sloe Chutney?

Caring for Customers

The Media churn out another lazy rehash of the old familiar story, Mr Good trying to save money whilst Mr Bad wants to stop him firing all his workers, in this case all the London Underground Ticket Sales staff. If like me, you are an infrequent traveller to London, you always use the Underground as it is the only way to get about. As an aside, in fairness the Buses are getting better organised, (fantastic 'London Journey Planner' App)  but still the dilemma of  which Bus, where to get off and electronic display saying next due in 5 minutes whilst you wait for 25 minutes and still no Bus in sight. Back to my theme. A welter of overlapping tiers of travel options and an automatic ticket machine with an interface devised by the Devil himself, evil incarnate. I regard myself as reasonably technically competent, an average commuter, but my lack of routine familiarity with all the London travel options means I am defeated each and every time I attempt to use the automatic ticketing system. I need the human, even if scowling, face of the Ticket Sale Office to translate my simple travel plans into a sensible Ticket to Travel. Unless London has decided to commit suicide and turn its back on all those tourists that flood the Underground every day, what is it thinking.

Our Society is being driven top down by Accountant Rules. Sure, absolutely, the Money In has to exceed the Money Out, no argument. But Accountants do not have any formula to tell when Customers have had an unsatisfactory experience that they choose not to repeat. In the real commercial world out there, struggling to get by in the ongoing recession, they are highly tuned to the customer experience. They go out of their way to ensure the customer's residual recollection is favourable to them. Not that mistakes do not happen, of course they do, but it is someone's job to proactively respond with more than a smiley face and 'Have a Nice Day' to ensure any problem is fixed and they are left satisfied. Not so our quasi-private companies running our essential services. They are only in it for profit, customer, or consumer, satisfaction is of no account. Sure a stone-walling complaints procedure that at most logs the complaint then dead files it away. Their remit is not to provide a good quality service that meets the needs of the users, just to return a profit. Not just London Underground but a plethora of quasi-private service provider have all been hitting the news for failing to address their 'customers' needs. Take the water utility boards, responsible to safe discharge of sewerage, brushing aside one of several householders that have repeated (five times), raw sewerage flooding into their homes; or Environment Agency with responsibility to manage our natural resources, failing in their duty of care by allowing the Somerset Levels to be inundated for weeks on end; or our treasured NHS failing to provided basic care robbing their elderly patients of dignity; or Local Authorities not allocating sufficient Care Hours to enable carers provide a decent quality of assistance and so on, rail failings, postal failings and on and on. Staffed by dedicate people who joined to serve the public but in the end are undermined by administrations that can only see the profit line and have no motive to meet the needs.

As I argue elsewhere, (All Change)(Time to Stand Up) quasi-'competitive' private companies have no place in running essential services. The 'competition model' is an entirely false fabrication, no real viable alternate options exist, the customer is stuck and stuffed. Nothing wrong, in fact overwhelming reasons why, essential services should be State organised. Just a new leaner model of how to go about organising and arranging them and making them accountable. There is hope that we can get back to providing all the customers, that is us, with services that aim to at least meet the needs of its customers. Now that would be a refreshing change.

Battle Lines

The rich elite, and their aspirant hoping to join them politicians, continue to enjoy the products of the financial squeeze on all the rest of us. A squeeze that is due to tighten even further, as our government, elected to promote and protect our interests, draws up plans to combat the anticipate civil unrest! Officials are actively looking into the purchase, the deployment and how best to utilise water cannon  to be used against their own citizens. This would seem to be a perfectly okay, matter-of-fact and reasonable step to consider. Obviously if your citizens are rioting, you need to be able to control them, perfectly logical and commendable, maintaining law and order is surely a prime purpose of government.

Pause for one moment and ask why the government anticipate their own citizens might rise up and riot? The government policy of squeezing ever harder the lower income groups, slashing essential benefit, castigating all those that fail to endure their imposed restrictions as cheats, fraudster, idle and lazy, is central to this growing unrest. The government with head in the sand pursues the 'proven' past practices of avoiding recession by encouraging consumer spending, by taking out more loans which inflate house prices even further. Their only other action is to frenetically cut their own spending on the easy targets, why of course, all  those wilful people who refuse to get jobs and look to the State for support. Cut back on all those wasteful and unnecessary social support measures. If only those people got off their backsides and worked they would get along just fine. Mean while the government must encourage consumer spending, what better way then ensuring those successful people with money to spend are shielded from the economic savings being made else where, so they can get on and spend even more.

People will put up with hardship and endure intolerable conditions providing it is fair and equitable, we are all in it together, each taking their own share of the burden. Clearly this is not happening. You only have to lift you head a fraction to see all the evidence that we are in an ever growing unequal society. Never has the gap between those that have and those who cannot survive been so large. The government, instead of rushing to halt this growing gap, is intent on ensuring its increase, because, in their view, that is the only route to economic recovery. Hence a growing ground swell of intense dissatisfaction with an unequal society on one hand and the government taking steps to contain civil disorder on the other. Use Water Cannon on your own citizens to prove you are right. So Vote to support or Revolt to find a better solution.

Takes Two to Tango, or not

There are two sides to a partnership, so it is really annoying me that the Scots seem to consider it is solely up to them whether they leave the Union or not. No, we too are part of the Union and we too have opinions on whether it is a good thing or not. Our future as England is going to be radically changed so we too should be asked, is this something we welcome? The weight of our views on keeping the Great Britain together is just as relevant as the Scots desire to split apart. Sure if a partnership is under stress, is tearing itself apart, separating might be the only possible outcome but before that, when you have hundreds of years invested in a Union, it might be worth both sides pausing and seeing if the differences can be reconciled. Not the one side walking off in a huff. Beside there is so much invested estate to disentangle, at the least both sides could think about how they might sunder that estate before stepping over the line.

For me we have so much to gain if the Scots leave. Just think, at last we would no longer have to fund a 'National' postal services to all those remote sparsely populated regions, pretending the Outer Hebrides had anything to do with us! Not just Post, but Rail, Telephone, Broadband, suddenly the economics look so much better when you dont have to factor in a hostile terrain, distance and low population per square mile. I have no doubt that many other organisations from such as national chains like supermarkets to airlines would all benefit from not having to be seen to cater for a 'National' area and could just concentrate of the profitable densely populated south. Of course it is not all win, Scotland does have the upper hand in hydro-electric, deep sea harbours, with the off-shore oil fields still proving a useful stream and, no doubt many other things. But as we thrust pros and cons lists back an forth, all it serves to prove is that our United Kingdom is far greater than just the sum of each individual part.

 It would be great shame if some short-termism led to our Nations splitting up out an of egoistical pique. Our past proves our united strengths, each benefiting from the individualism of the other component nations. I hope we can continue to stand together, face up to the EU as a Great Britain and help it to move towards a better place.


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My House is my fortune

Once my house was my castle, the bastion of security and stability. The solid core binding the family together and the fortress to repel all invaders or those seeking to undermine our chosen way of life.
No longer.

My house is my fortune. Just an asset to be exploited, a transitory thing with no emotional ties to be dumped when the next opportunity presents itself. No point spending time or effort, investing in the properties future, unless it can be shown to produce an immediate return increase. So quick-fix, eye candy, on trend solutions, never mind getting to the bottom of the rot or decay. Several problems emerge out of this differing attitude. For a start house are not short-lived consumer goods to be re-cycled at the next fashion of technology change. They will outlive us by hundreds of years, we do need to keep them in good shape and relevant to the society of the time. That may require more than a quick immediate return, someone might have to invest in a longer term outcome.

A house is also a home, a home to a family. Family ties are not just those between each member of the family but with the wider community. If we are all doomed to be rootless, migrants, always on the move, never having the time or inclination for other than shallow superficial connections with our neighbours, what sort of sustainable society is that? We have to root ourselves and engage and care about the community that we live within. It is that community that shapes and defines us. It is what makes our family a family, the network of connections to those around us and the environment within which it is set.

So why this urgent need to move on, to move up the property ladder, to get to the next plateau of possibilities? It is fear, the fear of missing out of the ever remorseless spiralling upward of house prices. Fear of being left behind, fear of falling off and not being able to get back on. A fear generated and inflated by all the media, ever harping on about the latest price rises and easy sales to made. But houses are not consumer goods.Their price rise has nothing (or at least very little direct connection to) to do with the cost of land or the floor area or the actual cost of construction. Remember house prices are established by some bloke with a clipboard walking up and down a street, comparing this one to the others and to the prices similar houses have sold for. The price of a house is not its cost, but a reflective valuation of something deemed to be everlasting, someone's guess as to what it might sell for. So long as someone is prepared to pay that price then that is its worth. And why not when we are constantly reassured house prices can only go up. In this present very uncertain economic world where else can you put money that will grow? Houses are the only assured place because their value just goes on going up and up. The bubble just gets bigger and bigger, what is not to lose? Well for one thing, the bubble is so large it has cut off its renewal source. No new players can afford to come into the bottom of the market to sustain the chain. Second thing those player that do manage to join take on debts well beyond a sensible ratio to their income. Thirdly there is a rapidly diminishing pool of punters able to buy at the top end. Fourthly the only thing keeping the bubble growing is confidence, the expectation that the price will rise tomorrow and all the tomorrows.


I cannot think of any clearer indicators that the bubble is poised to burst. All such seemingly unstoppable bubbles have always burst in the past, there is no reason to believe this bubble is going to be any different. The fact that the world economies are dependant on the bubble continuing, their 'growth' coming from the increase in house loans, will not stop it happening despite various governments desperate attempts to shore it up. Their concern at the financial mess it will cause is not sufficient rationale to stop the burst, but just makes it louder and messier. When the inevitable burst comes and we somehow claw out of the ensuing mess perhaps we can once again get back to our house being our home and castle, a place of permanence and security.

A primer on how to alienate

11% pay rise for MP's! Tragegically and laughably out of touch but then see also my post on salaried MP's! 

A minus 5% decrease would be a start to bring them a whiff of reality. But only if it came with a fresh contract ultimatum. Resign, thereby losing all rights to insurance and benefits, or accept a new, (that so popular and well supported), zero hour contract. Each weeks continuation of employment subjected to renewal by their electorate. With their role open to anyone to claim it who speaks a form of English, will toe the Party Line and is prepared to work for less. Of course as they are now self-employed consultants there is no holiday pay, no pension plan and naturally any expenses come out of their own pocket.

With this new contract there is just a chance our MP's will emerge from their  protective bubble of privilege and get a taster of the conditions they are instrumental in setting up for us ordinary folks, that is everyone else that is not part of the super rich elite. When their feet are fully grounded in reality maybe our MP's might be trusted then to legislate for us again.