Memories of Things Past

I will deviate again from my on-going complaints about the City and just record some memories that came to me from The Guardian's Birthdays column. Like many, my reaction to most names in the daily list is either "Who is he/she?" or " God, is he/she still alive?" On Friday I had a bit of this when I discovered that former BBC commentator and Panorama presenter Max Robertson was still going at 94. I can remember him from the early 1950s in the days of magnificently moustached Raymond Glendenning, when everyone from the BBC sounded as though they had been personally coached by Lord Reith. Max Robertson commentated on most sports on radio with his sometimes excitable upper-class voice. But, for the most part, he was very professional. Very definitely, in his own way, in the Richard Dimbleby tradition.

Another man who appeared in the Birthdays list on Friday was John Shirley-Quirk - now aged 78. He was [is?] a fine bass/baritone whom I had the pleasure of hearing when he was at the start of his career. This was in Gloucester Cathedral in 1962. The young baritone was in Elijah, that most tuneful of all oratorios. I have to say that until that day I knew little of this great work of Queen Victoria's favourite composer; I had lead a sheltered life. I enjoyed it immensely not least because of the superb rendition of Elijah by John Shirley-Quirk. Since then I have never again heard him in live performance but I do have a number of his records. One of the best is one of Vaughan Williams songs, which seem to be particularly suited to his voice. If my memory serves me correctly, the orchestra on that occasion in Gloucester was the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in pre-Simon Rattle days, and the conductor was the newly appointed organist from Worcester Cathedral, Christopher Robinson.

Another great privilege at that Three Choirs Festival was seeing Sir Adrian Boult rehearsing the orchestra with Elgar's 1st Symphony and then attending the concert for its performance the same evening. It was quite something to hear Sir Adrian giving advice to the orchestra on performance details that came from his own discussions with Elgar himself.

That was my last visit to the Three Choirs Festival having "done" Worcester and Hereford in preceding years. All my visits were with my old friend from Leeds University, Keith Mills, who lived in Cheltenham in those days, with his mother. I have always promised my self that i would return to the Three Choirs one day, because it is such a wonderful experience and is one of the most English of music festivals; so much associated with those two stalwarts of the early 20th century in English music, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar.

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Good Deal

I spend to much time these days chunterring to myself about ridiculous salaries being paid in banks, quangos and public services. Normally, I don't worry too much about footballers. As long as they can get Arab sheiks and Russian billionaires to finance their clubs, then I don't care how daft their salaries are. But occasionally there is something that stands out. The latest touch of madness is the deal done by Notts County with Sol Campbell. Mr Campbell - formerly of England, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Portsmouth has signed a contract with Notts County that will pay him £40,000 per week for the next five years. Considering that the player is already 34 years old, guaranteeing him pay of £40,000 per week until he is almost 40 years old seems very generous. But Sol Campbell sees this as "a challenge". Notts County play in League 2 - which is really the old 4th Division. Sol Campbell now becomes far away the highest paid player outside the Premier League. I can understand the management of Notts County - who are already paying Sven Goran Eriksson buckets of money as director of football - wanting to raise the club into higher divisions but will paying Sol Campbell one hundred times as much money as some of the other players in the same team really make that much difference? A football team is just that, a team. Having one extremely expensive player will not change that.

Sol Campbell gives us much quotable stuff about moving to coaching and management later in his career. But in the meantime, for the next 5 years, he will try to get by on his £2m per year.

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Fifty Years Ago

It was 50 years ago this week that I took time off from my holiday to go to my old school, Leigh Grammar School to collect my A Level GCE exam results. I did enough to be able to confirm my place in Leeds University to study Chemical Engineering. It does seem so long ago - it is a long time ago. I did OK with my exams but I remember that only about 50% of us passed in three or more subjects. I had the usual maths, physics and chemistry plus scholarship chemistry. My result in scholarship physics was abysmal - probably good enough for a pass today but abysmal nevertheless. Exam results these days are little more than a sad joke. The A levels for 2009 resulted in a pass rate of 97% plus and 40% got A grades - all down to brilliant students and teachers, of course. Some of this is due to exams being in daft subjects like media studies and film but it is also because the questions are often pathetic. Of course it is a condition of political correct examinations that not even a complete moron should be allowed to fail completely. The consequence is that we are filling up our universities with semi-literate students who ought not to be cluttering up places of serious learning. It is staggering to learn that 25% of entrants into one university [over a period of three years] admitted to never having read a book. But we don't do serious learning anymore; keeping down the unemployment figures is much more important.

What else happened in 1959?

Fidel Castro became President of Cuba and after lots of blood letting, Archbishop Makarios became President of Cyprus.

Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash and Cliff Richard topped the UK charts with Living Doll.

The Manchester Guardian ceased to be and was replaced by the simpler appellation "The Guardian". For many years it remained to many as The Manchester Guardian and in many ways it was a better paper then - even with the misprints that gave us The Gruaniad. In 1964 The Guardian management reneged on their promise never to abandon their headquarters in Manchester and moved to London. Commenting on the changes in Britain over the last 50 years The Guardian said yesterday that we are now more tolerant, better educated, healthier, more cultured and richer. I would disagree with three of these propositions. We are indeed richer but I don't think we are happier and suggestions that we are more tolerant, better educated and more cultured depend on our being more superficial in our assessments. In the areas of education and culture we have dumbed down to the point that even a fleeting knowledge is considered evidence of exceptional achievement.

The summer of 1959 was long and hot and I remember it from June to October as I grew from being a schoolboy without any real cares to a student who would have to get down to the serious business of learning to be independent and to pass enough real exams to get a degree. But that last long hot summer was memorable for the long days of sunshine, minimal rain and long bike rides around the rural lanes of South Lancashire and Cheshire and lots of time spent lying in the shade of an English tree reading novels, short stories and English history. These days our highly educated students don't read much and have only a glancing knowledge of English grammar.

Happy Days!

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An Expert Rakes It In

When I was in school, I enjoyed chemistry and particularly, I enjoyed organic chemistry; that branch of the subject that concentrated on the element carbon and all the compounds associated with life. Another man who enjoyed chemistry was Andrew Hall, an Englishman, who went on to get a degree in the subject at Oxford University. He spent a short time post-university working for BP before he went to work for Philbro - described as a low profile trading unit - which is now owned by Citigroup. Mr Hall, a commodities trader, is said to be an expert on the oil market. His expertise is so good that last year the group raked in lots of money after "astute bets on the direction of oil prices." This is pretty important stuff, I have no doubt, but I have to ask: what did it contribute to the pool of human happiness; what value did it impart to the US economy? And if Philbro made so much money, presumably someone else lost an equal amount? Anyway, Mr Hall, who owns a castle in Germany and a mansion in Connecticut and quite a lot of artworks, was paid $100 million last year and looks set to get a similar amount this year. Citigroup say that they reward their staff who make contributions to the "long-term profitability of the company." I suppose that is an argument. The commodities trading arm of Citigroup did get lucky on the roulette wheel in 2008, when overall the group lost $12 billion. In reality, this is just an extreme example of ridiculous pay to the point of total obscenity. Barrack Obama is looking to see if anything can be done about this case - and, I am sure many another ridiculous remuneration package. When will it stop?

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Thamesmead: A model Of Our Times

While I was out in the car yesterday, I found myself listening to a programme on Radio 4 about the wondrous place of Thamesmead. I have never thought much about Thamesmead before. I have only vague recollections of it being somewhere that elects an MP at every election and that it was somewhere around London. Actually, the place is on the south bank of the River Thames near Greewich and the bit they were concentrating on seemed to be the designer bit - West Thamesmead. The place is subtly located under the flight path of City Airport so noise is a continuous problem. Otherwise access to transport is very limited. You have to have a car to live here. Some of the original development has already had the bulldozers in. Walkways, tunnels, underground car parks that no one would use because of dangers of assaults as well as some of the unwanted housing; all have been converted into hardcore so that they can have another go at it.

The R4 programme seemed to bring out details of all the factors that made this place a working model of our society and all that is wrong with it. The development seems all too typical of great estates put up in the last 50 years; designed in concrete by architects who live in converted barns in Berkshire. Thamesmead looks like Cumbernauld with water. The idea had attractions in its early days; a new development on the banks of the Thames with lakes and gardens and a safe environment. It has, of course, become almost the complete opposite. It has become a centre for fraud, corruption, problem families, illegal immigrants, and so on. Mortgage fraud has been rife; there is more credit card fraud here than any place in Europe. Apartment blocks were built more to sell to amateur landlords than to people who actually wanted to live there and now these apartments are sold for half what people paid for them. The place is run down, without shops, without community facilities, without heart, a depressed wasteland. It's chief claim to fame is that it was used as the setting for the film "A Clockwork Orange", that despairing film of gangs and urban violence set to the music of Beethoven.

I am sure there are other Thamesmeads dotted around our countryside; and I am sure there will be more as planners decide on more crackpot models of where they think we ought to want to live.

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Comprehension

Citywire tells us that Alistair Darling is on the warpath on the matter of pay and bonuses in the City. He said that some of the problems facing the UK and other countries at present were caused by the fact that some traders were offered incentives to take risks which they themselves or their bosses did not fully comprehend. If we need to pay £1m per annum for the expertise of a trader who does not comprehend what he is doing, how much do we have to pay for a trader who does comprehend what he is doing?

Debate and discuss and only write on one side of the paper.

What is all this nonsense? We have to pay buckets of money to get these financial geniuses yet, apparently, they do not even understand what they are doing. Mr Darling is suggesting that they may decide on new legislation. I wait, with bated breath.

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Bank Bonuses for Good Performances?

Well, I am back to my chief gripe these days; payments to bankers. George Osborne, Tory Shadow Chancellor, has said that handing out large pay deals to employees in any bank that is backed by state funds is unacceptable. This has provoked the British Bankers Association to retaliate by telling us that bonuses are only paid for good performances. Risk and remuneration go closely together. This seems almost unbelievable. Ms Knight, the CEO, believes, of course, in the unique value of bankers and if we do not pay them the right money, they will up and go to New York or Frankfurt. But when everybody talks about bonuses they miss the primary issue. It is the basic level of total remuneration that is wrong. If a trader is promised a guaranteed bonus of £7m, it is not a bonus, it is a basic payment. I do not care what they call these pay cheques - basic pay or bonus - it is the total that matters. And for investment bankers, the totals are far too high. The FSA says that it has no authority to regulate pay in the banks and if we want this, then it is up to politicians to introduce legislation that sets out the rules. Mr Osborne said, quite rightly, that the state handouts were meant to stabilise the banks not to reward the bankers. And reward them for what? In 2008, they wrecked the world's financial system, not with their expertise but with their incompetence.

Lord Mandelson of Here, There and Everywhere weighed in with a few comments, just to attack the Tories, but had nothing of any consequence to offer. Does he think paying bankers buckets of money is right?

In The Guardian newspaper on Thursday, John Kampfner, CEO of Index on Censorship, complained about the ridiculous payments and a new banking code which was "symptomatic of our veneration of those paid far beyond their worth." Exactly. The failure is partly due to lobbying campaigns by the bankers but also the fawning attitude of government and FSA to these partakers of obscene wealth. Mr Kampfner observes that Britons have long displayed a curious deference to people who are paid far beyond their worth - and we do not riot in the streets or physically attack the bankers Of course bankers are near the top of the list of people paid beyond their worth, but we cannot ignore GPs and dentists earning up to £300,000 per annum, lawyers at £1,000 per hour or excessively paid town clerks and heads of quangos. It is sad to have to say it, but "the Britain of New Labour has become the world leader in indulging the super-rich and the very rich." When does a very rich person become super-rich? We should be told. Aneurin Bevan, thou shouldest be living at this hour.

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Grumpy Old Man

More and more I become the grumpy old man, finding fault with almost everything in my daily life. Is it just a pert of growing old - like rheumatism - or are things really getting worse? Most of us complain about political correctness, yet in spite of ridicule the plague continues. Sometimes I am not quite sure what started it.

Take the The Guardian newspaper's decision to abolish actresses. Now all stage performers, regardless of sex, are actors. Why? Do they have problems with the word actress? I can see no discrimination in having actors and actresses. Perhaps HM Queen should become King, so that we do not even hint of discrimination at the top. What about chairman? Of course, The Guardian will feel compelled to use chairperson, which sounds absurd. Then there is manhole and more specifically manhole cover. Billy Connelly refused to change to using personhole cover. "And I will continue to use manhole cover until women, generally, show a serious wish to start entering manholes to look after the nation's sewers."

Then there is the BBC and kilometres. We measure distances in this country in miles, not in kilometres. Vehicle speeds are in mph not km/hour. Yet in all kinds of documentary programmes they insist on kilometres. Of course, old farts like me mentally convert into miles and mph. But why do they do it? Is there a hidden agenda from Downing Street to get the nation's broadcaster to soften us up for swallowing the Lisbon Treaty and more EU regulations? Since we now trust nobody, anything is possible.

What about the cops. As they spend more and more of their time filling in forms and rounding up the drunks, they have little time for anything else. Except, that is for exercises. Exercises in more political correctness. Cops shopping in burkas; black cops organisations [one for white cops would be racist]; an organisation for gay and lesbian cops; and now, God help us, an organisation for transgender cops. How many of these are there — we should be told? Some years ago, there was a programme on TV late one night, which I found myself watching as I drifted into sleep. This dealt with the problems of black, teenage lesbians in South London. This sounded to me like a very limited social group to justify a programme on national television. But perhaps there are hoards of such women in South London. On the whole, I doubt it.

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No Rewards for Failure

This week we learned that the proposals to curb pay in the City of London have been watered down and, at the same time, the FSA says that controlling pay in the financial sector is nothing to do with them, it is down to the government. So nothing happens and pay rates are rising back to the astronomical levels that have been enjoyed for years. Now we are told that RBS is splashing out £10m to hire two "senior bankers", one of whom will be a "star trader" with a "guaranteed bonus" in the first year of £7m. The Boss of RBS, Stephen Hester [himself in line for pay of £9m per year] says that the bank will be prepared to pay the market rate for banking talent. An RBS spokesperson said that there were no rewards for failure. Oh no! These people never will get it. No one is worth pay at this level. Their pay is absolutely ludicrous. I don't care if they do work long hours, what they are doing does not deserve pay levels beyond all reason. These people believe that [a] they are worth daft amounts of money for their expertise in gambling and [b] they have such an inflated idea of their own importance that they cannot conceive that their pay rates bear no connection with either their real importance or their level of expertise. We know how good they are from our experience of the financial melt down that is costing the rest of us income, jobs and increased taxes. It has got to stop. I don't care how any government does it but there has to be an agreement between all governments in the Western World to clamp down on this excess.

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Bags of Scum in Haringey

Some months ago the court case involving the dysfunctional family associated with "Baby P" in Haringey shocked the nation. The mother, Tracey Connelly, and her boyfriend, Steven Barker - who actually killed the baby - were sentenced to long - but possibly not long enough - prison sentences. Only today has the full story of what went on in that house in Haringey been finally revealed. Tracey Connelly was no more than a useless sex obsessed slob, often drunk, who smoked all the time, played games on line and did little or nothing in a house that was filthy, with dog mess on the floor, evil smelling and neglected. Steven Barker, the boyfriend had some of his children by other women living in the house, as well his 37 year old, elder brother plus a 15 year old "girlfriend" and more children. The two men have long records of criminality involving sexual assault, rape, arson, violence and racism. They even beat-up their own grandmother to try to force her to change her will in their favour.

Into this shambolic community came various Haringey social workers, doctors, nurses, police officers and others who, collectively did not spot injuries to the child nor did they consider that this was not a place for any child. Indeed, apparently, social services, even after 60 visits did not know that the brother and his girl-friend and children were living there. It is a catalogue of incompetence that suggests that we had here a group of people that would not have spotted rain falling in a hurricane. What were they looking for? Many of the professionals [professionals?] involved have been sacked - and quite rightly - but particularly Ms Shoesmith, who it now appears was paid £133,000 per annum for heading up the vast but incompetent social services department. Surely, her claims of wrongful dismissal cannot be sustained?

This collection of thugs, misfits and social scum have throughout their pathetic lives spread chaos, disorder and unhappiness for everyone with whom they have made contact. They have cost us, as tax payers, huge amounts of money and it is clear that throughout their lives they will continue to do so, while contributing nothing but disorder. Even in prison they will now get special treatment to protect them from other prisoners. If they are let out - hopefully never - they will be granted protection at yet more public expense. Why can't we just shut them up in gaol and let them rot?

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Our Future MPs

I was reading over the week-end that perhaps 200 MPs of all parties will not seek re-election at the next general election. Apparently many are sick to death of the universal denigration poured on them since the stories of expenses fiddling broke some months ago. Now, it seems that every MP, irrespective of whether they had been careful with their expenses or not are considered to be just in Parliament for the money. It was thought that when the summer recess came the expenses story would die away and things would get back to normal. It has not and MPs are finding themselves subject to continuous abuse, even when they go to carry out such mundane activities as opening the local bazaars.

I am not one to defend MPs because I believe that at the present time they are not doing a good job in defending our democracy by insisting on the application of their powers in the House of Commons. But now I think that some of the attacks made on them by individuals and, more seriously, by the media, need to be justified. Frequently I read stories about how much this or that MP spent on travel or staying in hotels or on food, etc. In most cases these expenses are quite legitimate and reasonable. Why are we wasting time on trivialities. I think the media should be doing more to concentrate the minds of MPs on scrutinizing the executive. Far too often MPs are treated as rubber stampers and no more, while the government chucks our money around financing many a madcap scheme. This government has transferred more and more power to non-elected party hacks without the House of Commons objecting. We have a Prime Minister elected by no one who has appointed Lord Mandelson [of Everywhere] as Lord High Everything Else; Glenys Kinnock is shoved into the House of Lords so that she can become Minister for Europe; and various media personalities are employed to do jobs that ought to be done by the hoards of civil servants and existing ministers.

There are many independent minded experienced MPs who are going to disappear at the election and these are the men and women that we can least afford to lose. They will be replaced by mainly political nonentities who will toe the party line and that will be bad for all of us. There are many MPs who have been in the House of Commons for years and have never been given ministerial office because they were too independent and strong willed. Where are they to come from in the future? Am I being too pessimistic?

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More Money for Investment Bankers

How much longer will we ordinary folk have to watch investment bankers stuffing vast amounts of cash into their pockets, while we struggle along with low interest payments on our savings, lose our jobs and struggle to pay the bills? All the while, of course, being on hand to bail out the banks if they get things wrong. Today, we hear that Barclays made £3 billion profit in the first six months of the year, in spite of making an allowance for the doubling of bad debts to £4.56 billion. Most of the profit increase has come from the investment banking arm - which took over chunks of Lehmann Bros last year. Now this is not an American Bank; it is an old established British bank. One of those that cannot be allowed to fail. The 22,000 people who work in the investment banking division will have average pay packets for the first six months of this year of £100,000 each. Not quite on the level of some American investment banks but if things stay like this, they should top £200,000 [$335,000] for the year, which should be enough to keep the wolf from the door. It is still 8 x average UK wages and it must be stopped.

If these investment banks were completely independent and could go bust if they failed, then I would still say that the pay was obscene but if their gambling went wrong, at least they could disappear into the abyss without the rest us offering a penny in assistance or compensation. They could then be perhaps less reckless with other people's money. I don't suppose anything will happen. They will carry on as before. They have no shame. But is it that difficult to set them loose to sink alone?

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Bank Regulation

Many parliamentary committees have been critical of government policy - or perhaps non-policy would be a better description - on the matter of the financial collapse and controlling the banks. However, some of the criticisms of the way that the FSA has done its job seem incredible. The Scottish Affairs Select Committee complain that the FSA did nothing to inform the management of the recently demised Dunfermline Building Society that their business model had fundamental weaknesses. In addition, it was noted that the building society had been kept in the dark about the criteria that it had to meet to ensure its independence. I cannot believe this. It is essential that the FSA knows what is going on in the financial world and looks carefully at any institution that starts to do something novel. But the management of any bank or building society is down to its senior executives and if they do not understand what they are doing even when it is fundamentally crackers, we have to wonder how they got their jobs in the first place. But the board did not tell any of the society's members about its high risk commercial lending - outside its established business model - nor about a disastrous loss of £9.5m on a computer system. I agree that the FSA should have known about these matters and should have - in private - come down on them like a ton of bricks before things got out of hand but running the bank is the responsibility still of its executives. How many more institutions are heading for the rocks under the control of incompetent management and with toxic rubbish hidden behind the balance sheet?

On another front, the Treasury Select Committee has been equally scathing in their attack on the government's recent white paper on bank regulation. Apparently, the Governor of the Bank of England was not consulted during the preparation of this document. Now, I would consider that unbelievable although, in mitigation, since the document says absolutely nothing, it probably was not worth wasting the governor's time in reading 176 pages of waffle.

Give somebody a bonus; that should sort things out.

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