It has become freezing cold and the pavements were icy and slippy this morning, Friday 11th December 2009 , two weeks before Christmas. By this evening my car will be as good as new although the expenditure this week has been monumental by my standards. I hope to get back the excess paid on the insurance via the legal services and more significantly the premium for the next few years will not escalate. I also had the front bumper paint scrape attended yesterday and to-day the car is being serviced. One of the ways which firms appear to be increasing their service at a cost is to offer addons such as fuel cleaning, windscreen surfacing to prevent icing up and other extras at price. I use the local AA approved service agents which used to be run by the AA direct but were sold out to Nationwide. As with the front bumper scrape I try and use local firms given the difficulties which the local economy face. So with having also paid out for the annual road tax the car has proved an expensive item. To celebrate the sort out I stopped at the supermarket on the way. Given the way things get worse when one reaches 75 with an active discouragement on the old generation not to use the car it is important to keep the mobility freedom the car provides as well as reducing to contribute to environmental action as well as preparing for when driving is not possible or ill advised. On the way back from taking the car for the service I consoled myself with a value breakfast with a cup of coffee for £3.05 at the supermarket cafe and which was an enjoyable treat. As the weight is holding at 16 and quarter I have am also enjoying a few walnuts every day although I had one purge in the week with a packet of chocolate covered peanuts. What wickedness.
I listened to Prime Minister’s Question Time on Wednesday when Mr Brown appears to have developed a new confident and politically aggressive manner toward the Leader of the Opposition and the Opposition Parties. At the same time the Opposition Leader is showing signs of having been affected by recent lowering of the margin between the two main parties in polls on voting intentions at the next General Election. However these polls are misleading unless they are restricted to the 100 most marginal seats where the election will be won or lost.
For the first time there is talk of the election being held in March rather than May and May6th in particular, which would be an excellent development for the local elections, and the position here in South Tyneside if the General is held separately and beforehand. The government were holding on in the hope that there would better economic indicators for recovery but this has to be balanced with new taxes coming into force in April and the narrowing of the gap.
The Prime Minister when Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced the pre Christmas budget statement of intention and review. This enables the same information to be given twice with best added on or taken off as circumstances change and underlining the control with treasuries exert at national and local level. This matches what has been happening in local government over the past three decades when the finances of the local authority are reviewed based on the closure of the accounts for the previous financial year, the review of spending over the first six months of the current financial year and the preparing of the budget for the forthcoming financial year. Most authorities adopted the zero budget approach which meant that because there had been expenditure on services it did not mean that any of the expenditure would be automatically carried forward without the ongoing review of performance, value for money, review of possible efficiencies and savings as well as taking account of changing national and local government priorities. This applied to both current revenue expenditure as well as to the capital programme. Against this there was also an attempt to provide three and five year financial and service planning frameworks and which became more important as services were placed out to tender and then to contract including with in house service providers who had to compete with non local authority bidders. In reality the margin for changes was not as great as zero budgeting might suggest. Even the threat of breaking up departmental managements, and creating new ones has timescales given the process involved in relation to staff and officer accommodations, including decentralization from London. Businesses remain more vulnerable in terms of closures, mothballing and transfers between countries as well as within them according to economic, political and social conditions.
On top of the annual review in the autumn and run up to Christmas, is a wish list had to be prepared for new projects and service extensions based on national and local political priorities offset by a schedule of reductions. As decisions were not usually taken until the New Year, Christmas was always a difficult time, with anxiety mounting about the implications for services and for staff once the matters was in the hands of the party political system. Although it is a couple of decades since I was directly involved I would be surprised of the situation has significantly changed and would expect the margins to have become tighter. The additional problem over the next couple of years is the likelihood of an effective cut in the wages of public sector workers as any freeze or holding down on salary increases the already low morale and increase discontent among front line workers faced with additional work, higher taxes and inflation. Meanwhile those engaged in investment speculations including the bankers will continue to draw gigantic incomes made up of contracted salaries, cash bonuses and other benefits so that even after taxation and any special control measures, accountants and tax lawyers will earn their keep by limiting the damage. It is the capitalist system folks!
Question Time was particular poignant last night as it came from the Wiltshire Town which marks, with a moving ceremony, the arrival of the body of each soldier killed in Afghanistan shortly after it arrives at RAF Lyneham I have travelled through to the Town and passed the RAF station on my travels to and from Wiltshire when visiting the town where my mother’s family originated for three years before her grandfather joined the British Army and was posted to Gibraltar where he married Spanish girl and then returned there and to Spain after premature discharge on health grounds, a decade later as an out payment Royal Hospital Chelsea pensioner.
The Question Time panel was made up with a former head of the armed services who has become an adviser to the Conservative Party, the Conservative Shadow Foreign Secretary and former Tory Leader William Hague, an Armed Forces Minister, Piers Morgan the former newspaper Editor and current TV personality including the British and USA Got Talent competitions and the female Muslim leader of the George Galloway Respect party together with the impressive former leader of the Liberal democrats and former profession soldier with a tour in Northern Ireland during the early period of the sectarian civil war -Paddy Ashdown, and who became an internationally recognised peace making negotiator during the horrific developments in the Balkans. In the audience was a woman in her forties who showed a picture of her young son killed in action and who was allowed to speak twice pushing her case for the service men and women to be given greater recognition especially when compared to the wages paid to others from policemen in the homeland to politicians and bankers. The outstanding speaker of the evening was Salma Yaqoob whose views represent not just the majority of the Muslim community in the UK, as well as a growing section of the community in general, although she and they are fundamentally wrong about the need for a European and USA continuing involvement in Afghanistan. It is understandable that as the body count of British soldiers killed and seriously injured mounts public feelings against the involvement continuing will increase, especially as there is publicity over the enquiry into the political conduct of the war in Iraq and the General Election approaches
Salma is something of an enigma because her involvement in political life would not be tolerated by the Taliban, the drug producing tribal war lords or the extreme right wing of the Muslim community who argue against any involved in British political life until the UK becomes a Muslim run state, She has become one of the ablest public speakers in the land and it is difficult to find fault with most of what she says. However in my judgement and experience there was always a far stronger case for the allies to be and remain in Afghanistan, drawing the line so speak, and forcing Pakistan to address its extremists. I used to believe that the biggest threat to world peace came from the historical conflicts between China and Russia, and which may still prove to eb the situation, however in relation stability in the UK, it is the India and Pakistan divide going back to partition and the two exodus created when independence was granted by the British and civil war followed. With such a large population of Indian Pakistan former citizens in the UK the implications of any conflict between these two nations for the UK is horrible to contemplate in addition to the ongoing threat that both sets of extremists will bring terror to the streets the UK once more. I have always considered that there potential conflagrations were on the same level as the situation in the middle east between Israel and Palestine and the Muslim Arab states and which because of the large populations of former and continuing Indian and Pakistani citizens in the UK the implications for Britain in general, of conflict between the two communities would be that much greater. Amazingly this very issue was the main subject of the latest episode of Spooks on Friday evening.
The other issue which aroused strong feelings among Question Time panel members was the decision of the Conservative Party to announce that the former head of the armed service was to be their adviser in the run up to the General Election before he had formally left the service although his retirement had been announced and he had been taking his remaining annual leave entitlement. The strongest criticism was made by Paddy Ashdown who felt it was an issue of timing and mishandled by the Tory Party undermining the neutrality position of serving officers. The Conservative argument is that less they be accused of being amateurs in their policy making and if they win the next election when in government for the first time in more than a decade, they needed to have the best and most up to date advice. The issue of politicians being amateurs and the conduct of war should be left to generals was raised by the audience and is a familiar cry of the military leading to coups and dictatorships across the earth world from the beginning of humans living in tribal groups. The politicians expenses scandal adds fuel to this fire.
I felt that the audience was a better representative public audience than those usually arranged by the BBC to reflect the Political Party interests. It is my belief that whatever the Opinion Polls state and whatever the two main political parties do over the next few months, there will be a significant abstention and voting for other candidates in order to deliver a rebuke to the politicians for their behaviour in relation to expenses and in general. I suspect there will major political surprises with Ms Jaqoob being one of many individualist candidates replacing those from the Labour and Conservative Political parties. Meanwhile there are no politicians or members of the public speaking up for the Bankers. They have been warned and should take the warning about future conduct seriously, No political party is going to be blackmailed. Everyone remembers the attempt by Arthur Scargill in the 1980‘s and looked what happened to the coal mining industry and the Mineworker‘s Union.
In the evening I had the good fortune to find that there was a showing of the Final Yes Minister double episode in which the Minister’s Departmental chief civil servant is appointed Chief Secretary to the Cabinet and head of the Civil Services. He gains the position by promising to arrange for the present incumbent to be appointed to a host of paid chairmanships and advisory positions, including Anglo Caribbean Friendship society, the Royal Opera House, Chancellorship of Oxford University and such like.
They then meet to discuss the situation where the Prime Minister decides to retire while in power because his number two had to resign because of a drink driving accident when in the post of Home Secretary and launching a don‘t and drive over the Xmas season. The Prime Minister had only continued because he did not want his number two to replace him. Sounds familiar?
There were then two candidates, one the Chancellor and the other the Foreign Secretary and both posed a threat to the Civil Service because they are men who would want things to be done their way an who would have divided their own party by advancing their supporters and getting rid of those behind their rival. The former and new Civil Service head consider indirectly supporting someone who will go with the Civil Service in general and the existing system, and the former chief tells Sir Humphrey Appleby his successor. that the ideal person would be his Minister- Jim Hacker. To facilitate this it will be necessary to eliminate the candidature of the two front runners and to achieve this it is decided to brief Jim with what in in their MI5 files, one is full of financial irregularities and the other sexual. After sounding out Jim they insist he has the task of persuading the two others to stand down in a briefing attended by the Chief Whip. Jim can be advised as the Party Chairman. Previously both candidates have offered Jim the post of their rival for his support and Jim has attempted to give support to both while explaining that his position means he will have to be neutral in public. Jim is also briefed not to give any indication of his interest in becoming Prime Minister himself although it is suggested that he respond to persistent questioning by emphasising his primary wish to serve his Party and his country and that he would need to take account of what his colleagues wished. In fact he enjoys the situation of advising the two rivals to withdraw. The two are forced to accept the advice and separately realise that Hacker is after the position himself.
The two senior civil servants then feel that Jim needs a major public and media support coup and bring attention to his opposition to the decision of the EEC to force the English sausage to be called something else because of its failure to meet Euro standards of meat content. While a meeting with the relevant Euro Commissioner reaches a solution by calling the UK Sausage the British Sausage this is withheld until it can be announced by the future Prime Minister, as his solution to a situation which has in fact already been resolved. The situation is therefore reached when within the Party process there are no other candidate for the position of Party Leader and as a consequence the next Prime Minister, other than one Jim Hacker.
This special Christmas edition occurred shortly after Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was forced out of office from within her own party and where the instigator was Michael Heseltine who had argued in words similar to those used in episode that he was not seeking the office himself but putting the interests of the Party and Country first. In fact he did not succeed and an unknown neutral man was elected as Party Leader and as Prime Minister, one John Major, who survived to win the next General Election, but not the following one. One wonders if the Civil Service had an involvement in Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister when Tony Blair resigned in a situation where the was no other Cabinet Member on the ballot paper!
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