Depression and Water Shortages

I have been a bit quiet in recent weeks because I have been feeling very depressed. Not in the personal and medical sense, you understand, but in my view of what is happening in the world. There are the monumental disasters that carry on day after day with little sign of intelligent resolution — things like the Euro crisis, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc. — but in addition there are the homegrown problems in the UK.

Last week, it was announced with some fanfare — after our PM had had a sort of love-in and renewal of marriage vows with French President, Nicholas Sarkozy — that Rolls-Royce would be working with French contractors in building two nuclear power stations in the UK. This was lauded as a triumph. It's not. This contract worth several billion pounds will be built 90% by French companies. We built the first nuclear power stations in the world just as we built the first railways in the world, yet now in the 21st century we have to buy these things from abroad. Further, the government is intent on building a high-speed railway system — albeit, very slowly — but we have had no indication that this will be built by UK companies. Can we expect more big orders handed to the Germans and the Japanese? I suspect he answer is, yes. Why aren't MPs kicking up a fuss now, not after it is all done and dusted? Does David Cameron and his collection of Old Etonian ministers have any idea how depressing it is to have government ministers not one of whom has any technical qualifications whatsoever? Can we feel confident that ministers who have progressed from wealthy families, via Eton, Harrow and Westminster schools to Oxford or Cambridge to obtain degrees in PPE will somehow be particularly well-suited to driving us forth into becoming a manufacturing nation again, making products that the world wants to buy? We have vast numbers of poorly educated, untrained, unemployed people — from all age groups — and we are trying to do something about the debts — both government and private — yet we have no plan to regenerate our economy to get people working. We are fiddling about re-organising the NHS — no doubt at great expense, with little likelihood that there will be any improvements and the bureaucracy will expand, as it always does — yet for stimulating growth, there is nothing. Michael Gove is a bright light in this government, trying to do something about improving education. He will be resisted at every step, of course, by the teaching unions who seems to have a strange obsession with anti-intellectualism. But I wish the minister luck in his endeavours.

Yesterday, there was a meeting with the prime minister and interested parties about the impending water shortages this summer. We have had two comparatively dry winters in the south east and all the storage facilities [reservoirs] are at low levels. Unless there is a seriously wet summer, we are in trouble. I would argue that we are in trouble because [a] we sold off the water companies to foreigners who have no interest in maintaining supplies; only in making profits. And [b] we have failed miserably to build sufficient new reservoirs to increase our storage capacity. It is ludicrous to blame global warming for water shortages in a country that is famed for wetness. The government should directly or indirectly instigate a programme of improving out water supplies by constructing a national grid and building more storage capacity. This should be done using UK contractors and creating thousands of new jobs. Will it happen? I doubt it. So, I am depressed.

Let me, nevertheless, end on a more optimistic note. I mentioned Rolls-Royce above. They are a very successful company and show Britain at its best. They are profitable and they have £60 billion worth of orders on their books. McLaren are building superb cars for the super-rich and good luck to them as well. More modestly, Jaguar-Land-Rover are prospering and look like they will continue to do so — even if they are Indian owned. Some of their success has to be down to Ford who invested quite heavily and then were forced to sell to bail out the parent company in the USA. There are other areas of manufacturing success and we should be doing everything possible to extend this into so many other fields. Why is it that almost all the F1 racing teams are based in the UK — at the side of the M40? It's because we are good at engineering. But various governments from Margaret Thatcher onwards have courted the City of London at the expense of our manufacturing. The financiers, the money dealers, the gamblers, they are the cynic's who really do know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

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Who Is Paid Too Much?

In a week when one England football manager has quit in a huff — he was very expensive but not very good — and a potential new one has ended his decade long struggle with HMR&C, I have observed a number of other pleasing signs of progress in our society. Ridiculously high salaries and bonuses in all walks of life are being increasingly questioned. Inevitably the bankers are at the top of the list of those subjected to public opprobrium but the leaders of Network Rail and directors of FTSE100 companies have also been made to give up their bonuses for failure. We are a long way from getting the right results overall but we seem to be moving down the right road at last. I use still the basic premise that if we think that the British Prime Minister is worth only £142,500 plus his MP's salary of £65,738 plus a few perks — like free cars, Chequers for the weekends, etc — say £250,000 all told, why does anyone feel that it is right to pay £1m or £2m or £10m [Bob Diamond at Barclay's] for various leaders of private companies that may not even be successful? It is suggested that if we object too much banks will up and move to more favourable climes. It seems that banks in Germany and the USA are saying similar things. We can only view with amazement the prospect of juggernaut lorries and air freighting companies shifting all the paperwork and the staff from one country to another in order to avoid a few percentage points on their operating costs. In some cases they will be queuing up at the airports as they pass each other in the departure and arrivals lounges.

There are some of us who wonder, as well, why some chief executives of local authorities are earning — or at least, getting paid — as much or more than the Prime Minister? These people used to be called town clerks but with the elevation of their titles their wages have spiralled into the stratosphere. Now the taxpayers of Bristol are demanding that their chief executive takes a £50,000 per annum pay cut to bring her into line with the pay level at neighbouring Bath. The bureaucrat in question is, of course, resisting this proposal on the grounds that she is good value for money. The good citizens of Bristol are being asked to sign a petition demanding that the councillors cut the salary of the said bureaucrat. I think she is unlikely to get much support in the city and councillors will have to address this demand. It will not do to suggest that there is a contract agreement. Everyone in the country is suffering from reduced income and job security, apparently except many in the public sector and among the bankers who caused all the problems in the first place. The government and the people in this country have massive debts and although the Governor of the Bank of England seems quite happy to carry on printing money in order to inflate away the debts, some efforts must be made to slash the public debts which are demanding that we borrow £42 billion of extra money every year in order to pay the interest on the debts we have already. This is simple madness. It has to be corrected and bringing salaries and bonuses into line is an essential part of the mechanism of correction.

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A Royal Jubilee

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the accession to the throne of Queen Elizabeth II. She is already the oldest monarch in history from William I to the present day and the second longest reigning monarch behind Queen Victoria. She is only the 6th monarch since 1837 and the 5th if we exclude the uncrowned and unsuitable Edward VIII. I am no ardent supporter of royalty but I do think this archaic system still has advantages over a presidential system. And with a head of state committed to performing her duties as the Queen has done provides a stability and continuity that is entirely absent from most democratic republics. For most presidents the most important event in their lives is winning the next election.

It has been common among people of my generation to be able to remember precisely where they were and what they were doing when they heard of the assassination of President Kennedy. For what it is worth, I was in a guest house in Eastbourne, staying the night before an interview for a job the next day — in Terminus Road, it was. But I can remember also where I was when I heard of the death of King George VI. I was in the school dining room at Leigh Grammar School. February 6th 1952. I had been at this school only since the autumn of 1951 and we were packed into that dining room for our collective lunch. It was about 12.30 pm and we were chattering away making the usual racket that ensued in this place. It was quieter upstairs but only older boys were allowed upstairs. Did they worry about us falling down the steps? Surely not in those politically very incorrect days. We sat at quite solid wooden tables with benches on each side that were regularly knocked over. In one corner of the dining hall, near the kitchen, was a separate table where a dozen or so teachers ate their lunches. On this particular day, one of those teachers was Mr. "Claude" Langley, the senior languages master. Why he had the nickname of "Claude" I am not quite sure but I always supposed it was because it was vaguely French. Claude was quite a big man with a large head and thick locks of grey hair with a centre parting. Without his glasses he looked a bit like Beethoven. Claude was my languages master in both my second and fifth years at Leigh Grammar School. Apart from his efforts to teach us languages — with only limited success in my case, it has to be said — he also organised productions of Gilbert& Sullivan operas with boys of the school; a procedure complicated somewhat by our lack of girls. Young boys whose voices had not broken had to take on all the female roles while tenors and basses were generally from the 5th and 6th forms. This did produce some odd pairings at times, when a 6ft 2in Frederic stood alongside a 4ft 10in Mabel. One year we were planning a production of Pirates of Penzance after a production some months earlier of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. That production had almost hit the rocks when, at the eleventh hour, the boy playing Mark Anthony had broken his leg playing rugby. The master in charge of the production, John Cassidy, had taken on the role himself with great aplomb. For the Pirates, following the auditions and selection of the best singers for the lead parts, Claude instructed that no-one was to play rugby until the production was finished, since, he told us, "I don't want to end up playing Mable!" I could never push from my mind the picture of Claude Langley as a drag artist playing Mable.

However, on the 6th February 1952, Claude was having lunch with other masters when they were given the news of the death of the King. Claude got up from his place walked into the middle of the hall and grabbing a desert spoon from one of the tables, hammered on the table with it to grab attention and suppress the noise. He then told us of the death of the king at Sandringham and that the new monarch would be Queen Elizabeth II. It is all as clear in my mind now as if it were yesterday. But why?

Nevertheless, I wish Her Majesty the very best on this anniversary and hope she will remain with us for many years to come.

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