Another Iraq Enquiry

Well! Yet another committee of enquiry into the matter of Iraq will start work today. Headed by Sir John Chilcot, the committee will allow itself to look at everything that has occurred in the last eight years. We are promised a report within one or two years - which by the standards of these type of things, is pretty quick. Sir John will have access to all British government documents and he can ask anyone to appear before the committee - but he cannot force them. Nor can he obtain documents from other countries. The enquiry will be held in public unless, for security reasons or because Sir John believes they will find out more, the committee goes into private session. Security reasons is a notorious catch-all for avoiding anything leaking into the public domain. And what will anyone say in private that they would not say in public? Where necessary, Sir John tells us, they will apportion blame.

Will we learn anything from this investigation? I doubt it. Already, I can feel that minions have been set to work out the back mixing the buckets of whitewash. Sir John is of the Establishment and I am sure that he is what Sir Humphrey Appleby would call "Sound!" A man who will know where his duty lies and may, for all I know, be already thinking in terms of added gongs.

If the report comes after the General Election I don't suppose that it will worry Gordon Brown much but if it contains any criticism whatsoever of the Blair project it may just stop the sainted Tony from being made President of Europe.

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The World of Opera

Good morning to all who read my whinging posts. I have posted nothing for two weeks as I have been suffering with something akin to flu. It may not be flu but in these times when a diagnosis is but a mouse click away, it seems we all have flu. I have sweated and ached but mostly, I have coughed and it's this last bit that is hanging on.

Anyway, I will put aside my concerns about our incompetent governance for a time and comment on a couple of stories I saw in The Guardian yesterday - both very operatic. Not operatic in the sense of overblown and unreal but just about opera. I have always loved opera because I like to hear great singers singing great tunes. But I have never been a great enthusiast for opera houses because they all too often have audiences made up of the pretentious, the sometimes ignorant and too many upper class twits. I suppose this makes me elitist and just as bad as the rest of them. Yesterday's stories were concerned too with elitism. First The Guardian had a report by Tim Ashley about a production in Holland Park Theatre of Janácek's opera Kát'a Kabanová. It was, said Mr Ashley, an opera that has always tended to bring out the best in British opera companies and this particular production was one of the best. Now The Guardian man may be quite accurate in what he says but instantly, I feel at a disadvantage. I know absolutely nothing about Kát'a Kabanová. I have never seen or heard a production and even though there is a recording [in English] from Welsh National Opera, I do not see this opera as a bread and butter offering for getting the best out of opera companies. Reading Mr Ashley I was getting the sort of feelings that I get when I read reviews of the later symphonies of Havergal Brian. I have not yet got to grips with the earlier symphonies of this enthusiastic symphonist and yet I should be well acquainted with the later ones as well. I read Mr Ashley on Janacek but it was all lost in the depths of my ignorance.

The other story on the operatic theme was an obituary on the English operatic bass, Eric Garrett. Perhaps surprisingly, I had heard of Eric Garrett. He spent most of his working life at Covent Garden taking on minor roles in many an operatic production. He sang the Sacristan in Zeffirelli's production of Tosca in 1964, which I saw on one of my few visits to the Royal Opera House. This was the production with Callas and Gobbi that has probably never been bettered. Eric Garrett was a fine bass but was rarely called upon to play leading roles. It was not his voice that was the problem; it was his name. How much better he would have done had he been Giovanni Pastadelore or some other similar obviously, non-English name. But Eric Garrett? He did sing leading roles in opera houses outside the UK. So why was he never good enough for us? In 1988 he had to take on the role of Mustafa in Rossini's Italian Girl in Algiers with no notice at all when first one singer was ill and then his replacement could not get to London because of fog. Desperate, the management had to call on Eric Garrett. He was driven from his home to London learning some of the words and music as he travelled and then, after getting stuck in traffic, he ran to Covent Garden and was huge success. There is many a sensitive international artist who could not have even contemplated a similar effort. Did this not tell the management something? They could even have tried to persuade him to change his name.

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They Are Laughing At Us

A couple of days ago I tried to estimate what Goldmann Sachs would pay its staff this year after hearing the announcement of just how much they intended to pay out for the last three months alone. Now more than one city analyst is suggesting that the investment bank will actual manage to pay each and every one of its staff an average of $1 million for the complete year. I have already said that the money is obscene and I cannot think of any words strong enough to express my disgust. There is a lot of nonsense being written and said about paying for success etc. but it is well ..... to put it bluntly - just bollocks. There are lots of people who work hard for their livings, are good at their jobs and are a vital part of our lives but remuneration at the level of Goldmann Sachs will, for them [as well as the rest of us] remain nothing more than a complete fantasy. No doubt these financial whizz-kids will tell us - as they stuff all the cash in their collective pockets - just how important it is that wage rates be kept low among the plebs and labouring classes to ensure a competitive economy. Similar things would have been said during the early days of laissez faire capitalism as rich merchants luxuriated in their rural mansions and the labouring classes worked 14 hour days to scratch enough reward to just feed themselves and their families - if they were lucky.

We have a rapidly rising unemployment rate, an economy flat on its back, huge government debts, people losing their houses, many enjoying negative equity and things still getting worse. All caused by Goldmann Sachs and their like - banks that had to be bailed out by taxpayers. Yet they now intend to pay themselves even more money than they have ever did before. They are laughing at us, the poor mugs who have bailed them out. And what are our governments doing? Nothing is the answer. What can I say? Our governments are useless. The only thing they understand is rioting in the streets. And these payments justify rioting in the streets. The rich who have always ruled this country fear that.

If we could take the money being paid to the Goldmann Sachs workers for their efforts in the last three months and give it to the 281,000 extra people who have been made unemployed in the last three months, we could give them nearly £15,000 each - which would tide them over for a while. The Goldmann Sachs staff could possibly just get by on the remaining $750,000 each for the rest of this year.

There are many things rotten in Western Capitalism.

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What Is An Investment Banker Worth?

What is to be done about the investment banks? Having been bailed out on a monster scale it now seems that they are intent on paying all their staff huge sums of money to prove that all is well. Today, we read that Goldmann Sachs has just collected, during the last 3months, record net revenues of $13,800,000,000 - ie $13.8 billion. Not only is this a record for any 3 month period in the company's history but it is 47% higher than the revenues generated in the previous 3 months. They have so much money sloshing around that their 29,000 employees will receive remuneration of $226,000 each for the LAST 3 MONTHS!!!! Apparently this will bring the total pay per employee to $384,000 for just the last 6 months. If things quieten down in the next few months and they don't do quite so well, each employee will end the year with average remuneration of only $700,000. If the next six months work out as well as the last 3 months then the average pay could be nearly $850,000 per employee. I thought that investment banks had paid obscene amounts of money in the past but this makes obscene seem just day-to-day normal.

Our government has chickened out of putting any controls on banks - at least that's the situation in their white paper. But it has got to stop. Here is an institution which was implicated in the financial crash and has had to have vast guarantees provided by the American government and now as people everywhere lose their houses and jobs and work for reduced pay these parasites gorge themselves on our guarantees and our money.

Think about it - soldiers - British and American - paid a pittance die in Afghanistan fighting for their country and investment bank speculators are paid ludicrous amounts of money like this.

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Why Are We In Afghanistan?

Being governed by the witless management of the Blair/Brown gang is a dispiriting existence. This country has a built in Dunkirk spirit and will knuckle-down and get things done when the necessity is clear. Until then we will drift along and whinge. This awful government is so tied up in the bindings of its own spin - it believes its own propaganda - that rational decision making is impossible. No government statistics are believed - largely because claims are based on mathematics that involved dividing or multiplying by zero. But until the government faces up to reality on taxation and spending nothing is possible.
Government debt will continue to rise until Brown and Co [or their successors] draw up a credible plan to re-balance the books. This should be done sooner rather than later but one way or another it will be done. What is much more urgent is to resolve the matter of Afghanistan. Whatever Gordon Brown tells us, the fact remains that we are trying to do something in Afghanistan on the cheap and as a consequence our young men are being killed un-necessarily. I say "trying to do something in Afghanistan" because I have not the faintest idea what we are supposed to be doing in that country - if it is a country, even. Gordon Brown tells us that Afghanistan is the front line in the war against terrorists on the streets of Britain. This is nonsense. If we are concerned about turmoil in that region translating to bombs and killings in British towns and cities, then the front line is in Pakistan. But we can argue about this. What has to be made absolutely clear is exactly what our forces in Helman province and the Americans in the rest of Afghanistan are, specifically, trying to achieve. Then they must be given the men and resources to make achieving the objectives a realistic possibility. This will cost money. Either we find the money - NOW - or we get out - NOW. Inadequately resourced troops getting killed pointlessly is not an option.
The picture above is of Private Robbie Laws, 18 years old and killed last week on his first day of active duty in Afghanistan. In the last week there have been eight 18 year old soldiers killed. This cannot go on. If more men and machines are needed they must be provided. We stumped up almost limitless cash to support the banks - and allow them to carry on paying their staff obscene amounts of money but equipping our troops properly is, apparently, not possible. The scenario is made worse by the existence of grandiose plans to build a new nuclear deterrent system as well as two huge aircraft carriers, the purpose of which is, again obscure.
I would like to think that MPs would be insisting that these matters are sorted before they go off on holiday. But there seemed little evidence that this is likely when, yesterday, the defence secretary and his shadow carried on an exchange about Afghanistan with a largely empty Commons chamber. Perhaps they were all busy with their expenses?
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The Great Escape

Good God, somehow the England cricket team contrived a draw. Congratulations for doing that. But there are still some members of this team who need to seriously consider their attitude. There also seems to be a need to consider the backroom staff; what do they all do? Australia must be ruing today. I doubt that they will get many chances to win better than this. At one point this morning they had England on 70 for 5 and have still let them off the hook. Why did the Australian bowlers get so much more out of this pitch than did England?

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Is This going To Be One Of Those Summers?

As I write this the England cricket team are 79 for 5 playing Australia in the first Ashes test in Cardiff. This has all the makings of being one of the worst and most pathetic performances in English cricket history. Is anyone taking bets on the team being all out by lunch and losing by an innings and a lot of runs. The fifth wicket for the Australians fell at 474. Well, I wish Flintoff and Collingwood luck but, as a team, do they deserve it?

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The Killing Fields

Among the many reports that I have read about the late former US Defence Secretary, Robert McNamara, was one that told us that he was familiar figure walking to his office in Washington, even as an old man. He always had a vacant thousand yard stare in his eyes, which was thought to have been a result of his being haunted by the ghosts of the 58,000 Americans who died there. By 1967, Robert McNamara had realised that the Vietnam War was un-winnable and that American policy had been wrong. In retirement he questioned many aspects of America's defence policies and he suggested, in an attempt to persuade Americans to learn from history, that foreign interventions should be considered only when all else had failed. We have not yet reached in Afghanistan the Vietnam levels of slaughter but we should not carry on down the same pointless road with no sight of a termination. American and Canadian as well as British governments and citizens need to examine the objectives of the war and decide whether a successful outcome is a practical possibility. I will concentrate only on the British position.

The good citizens of Wootton Bassett are going to be lining their main street on an almost daily basis in the coming weeks as the British death toll in Afghanistan continues to rise and the killing rate accelerates. We have had 15 deaths in the last week - 8 in the last twenty four hours - and we get more platitudinous nonsense from the unimpressive foreign secretary. More men have now been killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq and our soldiers are dying at a rate not seen since the Korean War.

Yet the objectives remain obscure. Does the foreign secretary truly believe that the security of the British Isles in the matter of terrorism depends on our success in Afghanistan? There are many who will take the contrary view that the situation in the UK is made worse by our involvement in that country. The current alleged objective is, I think, to allow new presidential elections to take place; an exercise that will probably - by one means or another - result in the continuation of the government of President Karzai. A senior US Commander in the area around Kabul has told the Guardian newspaper about just how bad the situation is and four more years of a corrupt regime is not going to help. People will, as Colonel David Haight put it, believe that all they have to look forward to is "Four more years of this crap." Britain needs to take decisions and to have in place a Defence Secretary who has experience, competence and stature to ensure that a viable policy is pursued. The current incumbent, Bob Ainsworth, may be a decent enough man but he has been plucked from a minor role and placed in a position that is critical - probably because Gordon Brown does not think that Afghanistan is going to be a critical part of the British election campaign. With killing at the rate of fifteen every week, soon he will be much mistaken. I hope that not many more young men have to die before this war moves up the political agenda.
I have said before that far too many politicians these days have no knowledge of history and they plough along making the same old mistakes again and again. That should not be true of Gordon Brown and I hope he proves to be the exception.

[the picture above was from The Sun newspaper]
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Bonuses Are Back

Have we survived the worst of the Credit Crunch? At this moment things do not look too good. Over the last couple of weeks we have seen the stock markets heading down again and it looks like the FTSE 100 index could re-explore the levels of last November. There is no doubt that there are still many serious problems; most of them with the banks. But it seems that the banks have decided not to be thrown off course by the present - or any - situation and are [a] continuing to pay ludicrous salaries and [b] gearing up for large bonus handouts. We the British tax payers are supporting UK banks with a potential sum of £1,300,000,000,000; we, the tax payers who are struggling to live in a time of declining incomes, falling wages and devaluing assets; we the tax payers who are struggling to pay mortgages on houses gathering negative equity; we, the tax payers, who are in this mess because of the banks; we the tax payers who expected the government to come up with real proposals to control the banks and have been offered nothing but a government white paper containing 175 blank pages. What are they going to actually do beyond setting up an extra quango to co-ordinate the activities of the treasury, the FSA and the Bank of England. It will give a lot of bureaucrats the opportunity of attending some more meetings but what it will do is buried in the long grass.

Even the bank friendly land of Switzerland has insisted that banks increase their reserves to 18% rather than the 5 - 7% that was common. All the British government has done is identify a need to increase the reserves. Without a crack-down on this at least the banks can carry on playing casinos with our money. It's business as usual. That's alright then.

Another Cortege in Wootton Bassett

Today, at the age of 93, Robert McNamara, the former American Defence Secretary, died. A former President of the Ford Motor Company, he was brought into the US administration in 1961 by John F Kennedy. His services were retained by Lyndon Johnson and he remained in office until 1969. Although he was not responsible for the decision to intervene in Vietnam, he was a powerful proponent of the war. He master-minded the tactics used by the USA in that country. His powerful analytical mind saw the route that he thought could lead to victory. Although he became much disliked in America, I always thought that McNamara was an honest and rational man. But later he publicly admitted that American involvement in Vietnam had been a mistake and that the USA needed to seriously reconsider its future attitude to involvement in foreign interventions. In that he was more open and honest than George W Bush and Tony Blair will ever be about Iraq or Afghanistan.

Yesterday, two more British servicemen were killed in Afghanistan. And today two more bodies arrived back at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire and were loaded into hearses for the journey to the mortuary of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. The people of Wootton Bassett were brought out onto the streets yet again to shed their tears and honour the dead from that war torn country. The returning soldiers who have paid the ultimate sacrifice, were Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe and Trooper Joshua Hammond both killed in the same incident by a roadside bomb. The crowds included shoppers and shop-keepers, servicemen - serving and retired - young and old. And on this occasion the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt stood with the crowds.

We continue this useless war in Afghanistan, a war which the army believes self generates its own momentum. The country fills with Taliban insurgents precisely because we [and the Americans] are there. Our troops remain ill equipped and denied any specific objectives. And our soldiers are killed. But no one should doubt that the British people fully support the efforts of our troops. Yet no government minister ever stands on the street of Wootton Bassett to honour our dead. They should be ashamed.

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A World Heritage Site

Most of the time that I write on this site I am whinging about something or other and in these days of the Credit Crunch there is precious little to be cheerful about. But today is different; we have something to celebrate. Finally, the achievements of two British engineers have been recognised for a wonderful construction in Wales that has proved its worth over many years. I write, of course, about the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct on the Llangollen Canal.

This magnificent structure designed and constructed by Thomas Telford and William Jessop took 10 years to build and was completed in 1805. The aqueduct - the longest and highest in Britain - is 1007 ft [305 m] long and carries the Llangollen Canal across the valley of the River Dee at a height of 126 ft [38.2 m]. The canal has been a success throughout its life, as an industrial waterway and later as a pleasure boat route and a water supply duct. On 27th June 2009 UNESCO officials meeting in Seville awarded the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and 11 miles of the LLangollen Canal the status of World Heritage Site.

Construction of the canal opened up mid-Wales and roads and tramways were built to bring products to the canal for shipping into the Midlands and London. The canal could have been constructed using locks to step down into the valley and then more locks to go back up the other side. Building an aqueduct was a much bolder solution and many predicted disaster with the whole structure collapsing under its own weight. The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct is made from sections of cast iron trough, bolted together and supported on 19 stone pillars. There is a towpath on one side with a safety railing but the other side is completely open. It is possible to fall over the side of a barge and drop straight down into the valley. The open trough side was provided with holes to allow safety railing to be added later if thought necessary. It has not been thought necessary for 200 years but the Health & Safety Executive is looking to get that changed. The Llangollen Canal is included in the citation because the system takes water from the River Dee via the man made weir that is the Horseshoe Falls. This water supply keeps the canal topped up with fresh water but now transports domestic water from the Dee to the Hurleston Reservoir 25 miles away.

The structure has required very little maintenance and the original seals between trough sections were still OK after 200 years in operation.

The whole Llangollen Canal construction of canal, tunnels and aqueduct was a triumph of its day and it is good that the beauty of the construction and the quality of the engineering are still recognised today. In those days Britain built things that we could be proud of. Now we construct nothing but financial instruments.

The Wonders of Education

I have been quiet for over a week feeling depressed about so many failings in this country. Yesterday, Andy Murray was defeated in the Wimbledon semi-finals by Andy Roddick and another year goes by without a British player winning here since old Fred Perry in 1934, 1935 and 1936. Andy Murray will win one day but which British player is going to give him a serious workout? Err.... nobody. All the other British players were eliminated from Wimbledon in Round One. Why is Britain so useless at tennis? Because here, unlike in many other countries, the participants are primarily selected from the right social classes. This is a far more important requirement than any inherent ability to play tennis.

But Andy Murray doesn't make me feel depressed. He has achieved much at a very young age and good luck to him. But tennis is not alone in being a national disgrace because we play by different rules to everybody else. Political correctness of one kind or another is all powerful.

It was revealed on Thursday by Professor Matthews of Cardiff University that he had become concerned about the lack of basic knowledge of British history among new students entering his department that he had decided to try to get some more quantitative knowledge. So, over a period of three years he set a simple test for first year students - 284 of them - by asking them to answer the following questions.

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1. Who was the general in charge of the British forces at the Battle of Waterloo?

2. Who was the reigning monarch when the Spanish Armada attacked Britain?

3. What was Isambard Kingdon Brunel's profession?

4. Name one British Prime Minister in the 19th century.

5. In which country was the Boer War of 1899 to 1902 fought?

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It must be counted as one of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's greatest achievements that 150 years after his death 40% of elite students still knew that he had been an engineer. Professor Matthews's students were less secure in answering the other questions. On all the other questions at least 2/3rds of the students got the answers wrong and, worst of all, only 11.5% were able to name a single one of the twenty men who were British Prime Ministers in the 19th century.

This is not difficult stuff to expect of a supposedly educated 18 year old. This result is enough to make anyone feel depressed. Here is a bunch of students considered good enough to enter a university and yet they have such a limited knowledge of pretty basic English history. Does it matter? Yes, I think it does. I have no doubt they would all have done far better if they had been questioned about our celebrity culture; a culture that assumes that the whole world should indulge in an orgy of collective grief and mourning on the death of a weird and possibly deranged pop singer.

Our education system is failing. The government comes out with new spin and presentation and massages exam results so that everyone passes, no matter how ignorant the children are in so many areas. But the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition think it necessary that they should comment on the death of Michael Jackson as well as the out come of celebrity TV shows.

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Last week David Davis, Tory MP, wrote about how his life was transformed by his going to a grammar school and why we should extend the grammar school system to again provide the opportunities for working class children to win a top quality education. The present leader of the Tory Party is an Old Etonian. The last Old Etonian to lead the Tory Party was Sir Alec Douglas-Home. All those in between from 1964 to 2005 were educated in grammar schools. But it is highly politically incorrect to suggest that we increase the number of grammar schools - so we put government back into the hands of the private schools and carry on fiddling with the education of the masses. Seems reasonable.