A Surfeit of Tenors

Since my early teenage years I have always loved opera.  I have no great love for opera houses and their often uninterested, self-indulgent audiences who uncritically applaud famous names and often seem to be there only because they believe it to be the thing to do.  But I listened to opera for the most part on gramophone records and CDs.  My oldest memory is of playing old 78 rpm records on a small record player and then a radiogram.  My teenage years coincided with the introduction of the vinyl LP and then the stereophonic vinyl LP.  I recollect that I received a 45 rpm EP record that had excerpts for Puccini's La Boheme as a present on my 15th birthday.  I still have that disc, nearly sixty years later and still I enjoy the singing of Guiseppe di Stefano in Che gelida manina and in the duet at the start of Act 4 which he sings with Robert Merrill.  I got to know many operas at a time when we were blessed with some wonderful operatic performers — but especially, tenors.

Today there are few great tenors.  Pavarotti is dead and Placido Domingo — at the end of his career — although a great singer is a baritone/tenor, who cannot reach the highest notes.  But between 1950 and 1970 we had many great tenors and with the benefit of high quality recordings, we can still hear them today. 

The 1950s saw the end of the career of Benjamino Gigli — the finest Italian tenor of the 1930s — but his place was taken by a clutch of great singers.  The picture above shows five of them.  From the left : Richard Tucker, Jussi Bjoerling, Franco Corelli, Guiseppe di Stefano, and Mario del Monaco.  Jussi Bjoerling died in 1960, still not 50 years old and what a voice we lost then.  The aria Nessun Dorma has become a tenor test piece now but Jussi Bjoerling set the standard with his recording in 1944.  His finest performance on record is probably his La Boheme with Victoria de Los Angeles in the performance made in New York off the cuff with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting.  As a recording of this opera, it has never been bettered.

Mario del Monaco was one of the great voices of the 20th century.  An immense voice that could fill any concert venue; a huge voice that was never soft — the instruction pp had no place in his arsenal — but he had a vast range from the lowest of low notes to top "C" s that sounded as no more than the middle of his range.  No tenor had a voice that sounded so secure.  Guiseppe di Stefano, however, had a voce that ultimately proved fragile and only allowed him a short career,  But compare his Che gelida manina with that of Mario del Monaco.  Guiseppe di Stefano sings a love duet while the vast sound of del Monaco — every note audible in the back row of the gods — sounds as if it will blast Mimi off the stage — it is almost as though he were about to invade some neighbouring country or something equally dramatic.  But del Monaco as Othello is unequaled.

Franco Corelli at his best was incomparable but on occasions he could go so OTT that the song or aria was ruined.  But in Verdi and Puccini he was superb. Richard Tucker, the American tenor at the Metropolitan Opera for many years was a very Italian tenor capable of some splendid singing and a joy to listen to.

I have not mentioned others like Carlo Bergonzi, Nicolai Gedda, Fritz Wunderlich and a number of others.

One tenor of whom I have particular recollections is Luigi Infantino.  Like Guiseppe di Stefano, he was born in Sicily and exactly contemporaneously.  I had bought a ticket for a recital by Di Stefano in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester in 1957 or 1958 but the great tenor was indisposed and his place was taken by Luigi Infantino.  At the time, I had never heard of him.  But he was beautiful tenor with a voice like Gigli who gave a memorable concert with 8 or 10 encores.  He died in 1991 and has now been almost forgotten.  Few of his recordings are still available — perhaps because he was a good tenor that sang during a period when the world had many great tenors.  I have just been listening to Luigi Infantino again on You Tube as I type this — and still with great pleasure.

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Putting Books on Shelves

Putting books on shelves; seems simple enough but which shelf — aye, there's the rub.  I was reading Gaby Hinsliff's — former Political Editor of The Observer — occasional column in The Times on Friday.  In this she tells us of the problem of books.  One thing handed down by her father and father-in-law to she [her?] and her husband is a voracious love of reading, which, she says, "Is lovely."  but shelving the ever growing collection is becoming a nightmare.  I understand completely, although, I suspect that the couple have rather more books than I have.  What is a good sized collection of books in a domestic environment?  I have no idea.  I have about 3000/4000 books and I have filled a lot of shelves.  I have them housed in bedroom No2 , which serves as my primary library — with an over-spill into the lounge and bedroom No.4, serving as my office.  But, is my arrangement a library?  I see libraries as [a] public buildings housing thousands of books which are lent to local citizens and are collections that strive to navigate through the waters of popular fiction, classic fiction, contemporary literature as well as provide an extensive collection of non-fiction and reference books.  They are institutions regulated by public service within the limits of available cash.  Then there are [b] libraries that exist in stately homes and are filled with lots of leather bound books of considerable age that no-one actually reads.  I am not sure of the purpose of such rooms except as a means of preserving old books.  Some old books are valuable for all kinds of reasons but surely not just as investments.

Gaby Hinsliff tells us that "obviously, all our books are organised by genre in their new house."  But sub-dividing inside each genre — "aye, there's the rub."  Is it?  Again, I need to know how many books they are trying to store.  My limited book collection is set out on shelves with little in the way of order.  Some books by a single author have managed to be put together on the same shelf and most of my books on history — particularly social history — are together.  But for the most part the layout is random.  On one very short piece of shelf next to my desk and the computer on which I type this blog, are eleven books and they are as follows : The Wrong Kind of Snow — a day by day examination of the weather over the centuries; Misadventure in the Middle East by Henry Hemming — a lovely book about the author and artists discovering the Middle East; Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie —a tour of the North of England by a Wiganer; Death on a Galician Shore by Domingo Villar — crime novel set in NW Spain; Anthony Burgess by Roger Lewis — a fascinating biography of the famous novelist, who, I believe is best remembered for his use of language and his autobiography rather than his novels; The Devil's Acre by Matthew Plampin — a fictitious crime story linked to the short-lived factory [1853 - 1857] established by Samuel Colt to manufacture his guns in London; Nathaniel's Nutmeg by Giles Milton —a popular history of nutmeg and the spice trade; The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg — a history of the English language and a good read; We Danced All Night by Martin Pugh — a social history of Britain between two world wars; two volumes of Chris Mullin's Diaries — a diary that demonstrates the futility of MPs attempting to achieve anything at all as a minister.  

This set of books may not be a complete cross-section of my reading but it is a reasonable representation of what I like to read.  I read few modern novels — apart from crime fiction — but I do like to read. Get a book on the short list for the Booker Prize and, for me, it is the kiss of death.  I just know that it is highly likely that each will be a pseudo-intellectual road to boredom.  Books fascinate me and I can never resist buying more.  I have no great urge to read on-line but I do have access to a dozen or so books that I read occasionally  

Gaby Hinsliff finally admits that her filing of books is little better than random and that by the time that she has finished, no-one but her will be able to find anything.  That's my system.  I have to remember where I put every book.  It is a system that can work most of the time but — I have to admit — it's not foolproof.

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The Last Post

I love newspapers.  Their popularity has been falling for years and no newspaper can claim the giant circulations of yesteryear.  But still, I love 'em.  Most days I buy two national newspapers and I will probably continue to do so as long as newspapers are published.  All around the world, newspapers are slowly losing out to electronic publications, on-line news and so on.  But I like them.  As I have travelled the world; I have read newspapers in many countries and always they give an immediate flavour of the place — explaining in some depth the daily events of our planet.  Some that I have read have been very good some not so good.  But the loss of any newspaper is always sad.  Another one dies to day.  The Liverpool Post, one of the oldest newspapers in Britain will today print its last edition.

The newspaper was the first penny newspaper in Britain and was launched in 1855 by Michael Whitty operating from a small printing shop in Lord Street, Liverpool and in its first addition reported on the conflict at Sebastopol in the Crimean War.  The Post was there to report the onslaught of the Blitz in Liverpool during the early years of WW II and the 'paper has had a proud record of defending the ordinary citizen against the forces of wealth, politics and bureaucracy.  The newspaper can no longer fight against the forces of neglect.  Young people rarely read newspapers.  For them news is obtained instantly via mobile phones and tablets; their's is a world of black and white of simplified news.  There is no interest in discovering the details of the what and why of daily events.  With declining sales local newspapers have relied increasingly on local advertising to cover the cost of production.  But that also is going on-line; it's cheaper.  The decline has seen the Liverpool Post shrink from a daily newspaper to a weekly in 2012 but that was only the prelude to closure.  The newspaper is no longer viable.

I have read the Liverpool Post only rarely but I still lament its demise.  Some of the journalists will carry on working but now for the on-line Liverpool Echo.  This publications is thriving and I can only wish everyone well for the future. 

Goodbye Liverpool Post

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Great Yarmouth

Peter O'Toole died at the weekend. The old boozer had managed to outlive all his drinking companions by a good few years.  At his best he was a great actor.  But often his performances were compromised by the booze.  He made his reputation in Lawrence of Arabia in 1962 But for me, his great performance was in Becket — the 1964 film based on Jean Anouilh's play.  In this he played King Henry II opposite Richard Burton's Becket.  The producers of this film hesitated in bringing two heroic drinkers together in one film while expecting to finish making it.  It seems that there were some spectacular drinking sessions in local pubs near the studios where the film was made, but it was made and on budget.  The film sticks in my mind because of when and where I saw it.  It was my "where were you when Kennedy died" moment.

It was February 1965 or 1966, in the days when I worked for The APV Company and I went up to Great Yarmouth with one of the sales guys to discuss a project with Birds Eye Foods.  Do they still have a factory there?  In those days, before the M25 getting up into East Anglia was quite a performance.  The first Dartford Tunnel had opened but getting to it was a struggle.  The normal journey took drivers via the Blackwall Tunnel — still a single bore with bends under the river that caused constant traffic jams as lorries struggled into the middle of the road to avoid hitting the tunnel walls.  Then it was onto the A13 into Essex and north to Great Yarmouth. It was a slow journey and we went up the day before our meeting to ensure we could arrive on-time.  The weather was terrible.  It was raining and a cold wind blasted the East Coast.  Have you ever been to Great Yarmouth in February?  It is a hellish, desolate, Godforsaken place.  We booked into a typical holiday hotel on the promenade, a place memorable for the quantity rather than the quality of its rooms.  How many people it would cater for in summer, I have no idea. In winter the number of guests was in single figures.  We had some tea and buns in the guest lounge — a large room sparsely decorated but full of a mixed collection of rather uncomfortable armchairs.  What shall we do this evening, we wondered?  The hotel bar was empty and depressing.  Nearby, a cinema was showing Becket with Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton.  So we decided we would have a meal — in a Chinese restaurant — and then go to watch the film.  It was a large cinema but on this mid-week night, there were few patrons.  We sat in the middle of the stalls in a sea of emptiness.  Did no one want to see this film?  Was the entrance fee — about 2/6d — too much?  Was the weather to awful for people to turn out to a cinema in mid-week?  I have no idea.  But the cinema audience was never a distraction; it was virtually invisible.  But it was a magnificent film and, in spite of the miserly heating and feeling chilly, I enjoyed every minute.  I still believe it to be one of the great films that I have seen.  

The film is not historically accurate — blame that on Anouilh — and the relationship between the two principals is theatre rather than history.  But the acting is generally superb and convincing.

The memories of this film do nothing in my mind for the image of Great Yarmouth.  I have never been there since and my memory is of a ghost town, one that epitomizes desolation, tragedy and a place never to be visited voluntarily.  I am sure this image is misleading — but, at times I am not completely sure.

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Now 4000 And Still Going

I have posted nothing on this site for months.  Am I experiencing writer's block?  Not really.  It's more a sense of despair that so much is wrong in this country and the world and nothing is being done about it.  Our governors and masters stick their collective heads in the sands and ignore the chaos around them.  Sure, they tell us that they are taking action but all too often, they are not.

So, today I am going to write about something completely different. Horse racing is not a sport in which I have much interest but an event occurred on Thursday which not even I could miss. It happened at Towcester — a town in Northamptonshire, noted mainly for its racecourse.  As its name suggest, Towcester has Roman origins.  Named by them Lactodurum, the area of Towcester and its surroundings were inhabited long before the Romans arrived.  The town lies on the A5 trunk road about 8 miles SW of Northampton and 10 miles NW of Milton Keynes.  The town has been mainly a quiet market town and grown only slowly.  Its racecourse was built in 1928 and has recently undergone considerable refurbishment.  It is used mainly in the winter for national hunt racing and in the meeting on November 7th 2013, jockey Tony McCoy got his 4,000th career win riding Mountain Tunes in the Weatherbys Novices' Hurdle.  This is an astonishing achievement for any jockey.  During his long career he has been champion jockey eighteen times and at some time or other he has broken almost every bone in his body.  But he still loves horse racing and has no intention of retiring.
Tony McCoy seems to epitomize everything good in a top level sportsman.  He is very modest about his achievements, which — he says — have been made possible by the horses he has riden and all the trainers with whom he has worked.  After a short celebration of his 4000th winner, he st off  home, pausing only to telephone his old friend, Sir Peter O'Sullevan, now 95 years old and one time the voice of horse racing.  He offered Sir peter the boots he had worn for his 4000th winner to be raffled off and the takings contributed to his race horse charities.
May Tony McCoy have a long career ahead of him and perhaps make it to 5000 winners.
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Abandon All Hope?

Although I tell you that I intend to post more often on this blog, the reality is that I do not.  So many things can become victims of the failure of good intentions.  I do suffer from depression; not in the clinical sense, you understand; but in the sense of a complete lack of faith in our government and institutions.  I do not mean government in the simple sense of David Cameron and Nick Clegg and their associates — although that is depressing enough — but in the sense of everyone who is supposed to be in charge of something — the government, of course, but also the banks, local government, the schools, the NHS, everything.  Nothing works as it should and/or it costs a fortune.

At the head of our country is an Establishment that protects itself, that protects its wealth, that seems oblivious to the mess that lies around them.  We now have a cabinet of rich public school boys who have been career politicians for almost the whole of their lives.  The input of experience is severely limited almost to the point where nothing is known of the world outside the social circle of Old Etonians.  For years politicians have invented policies based on nonsense and fallacies.  Investment bankers play with huge amounts of our money to make more for themselves without really understanding what they are doing.  If train drivers and airline pilots did their jobs with the levels of competence achieved by the bankers there would be dead bodies all over the planet.  The government of this country has over the last 30 years piled up vast debts to the point where there is little chance of them ever being repaid.  Some will argue that this does not matter because many of our debts are long-term and for the most part are internal debts.  But we need $45 billion per year to finance these debts.  It is an on-going investment in waste.  So they print money, wreck the currency, keep interest rates at virtually zero per cent in order, in the long term, to inflate away the debts.  It could possibly work — although it is a policy of despair — if we stopped piling up more debt.  Yet last year, we increased the accumulated debt by £120 billion; we will add another £120 billion this year; and yet another £120 billion next year.  If we retain our credit-worthiness, that extra borrowing over these three years alone will add £9 billion to our annual interest payments.  The amount that the government borrows is increased every year because it needs more and more just to pay off the annual interest charges.  It is absurd.  They need to cut spending by 25%.  Now!  They are not doing anything at all.  They shuffle the numbers about every year but overall the situation just gets worse and worse.

In its attempts to stem the floods, the government is attempting to cut expenditure and has made tens of thousands of public sector workers redundant.  But these displaced workers cease paying taxes and need unemployment benefits.  So the government balance sheet does not improve much.

What can be done?

First the government must collect all their taxes.  There are armies of people in all kinds of jobs working for cash in hand and no VAT or income tax — particularly this is a problem in the building trades.  These taxes must be collected.  All corporate taxes must be collected.  It is totally unacceptable to have senior managers in HMRC coming to cosy agreements over dinner in 5 star hotels and letting large international companies get away with not paying hundreds of millions in tax.  Nor should big multi-nationals get away with not paying taxes to anyone on this planet.  That corporate monster Apple was reported last week as having attained that Nirvana where it had a partner company that had no staff, no directors, turned over about $1.5 billion per year yet was domiciled in no country whatsoever and paid no tax to anyone.

In addition to collecting taxes the government must cut spending.  Inevitably this will put more public sector workers out of work.  New jobs need to be generated to get the economy moving again and to get people earning wages.  Top priority should be the construction industry.  Building houses and roads cannot be exported abroad no matter how much the financial speculators would like to do so.  And building houses generates jobs making the building materials, windows, door, kitchens, bathroom, etc.  We need to build in excess of 220,000 houses per year to meet demand and bring down the price of houses to the point where young people can afford them.  This means cutting house prices by at least 25%.  This will leave some owners with negative equity and the government needs to address this problem  Once anyone has bought their home, its price does not matter except to those who will inherit.  I read an article in The Times yesterday which pointed out that if the price of food had increased as the price of houses had in the last forty years, a chicken would now cost £50 and a loaf of bread nearly £5.  The price of houses is absurd.

I could go on about the youth unemployment rate; where the youngest and fittest members of our community are educated but unemployed, already lumbered with debts because their university education involved loans not grants and demanded payment of ever increasing tuition fees which in my day were paid by the government.  Government demands ever more payments in taxes but provides less services.  The roads are in a terrible state; broken and jammed up they are another millstone around the neck of our economy.

People around the world are becoming more disenchanted with their rulers.  Everywhere corruption in some form is rife.  Politicians become ever more obsessed with surveillance.  At the week-end, Max Hastings in the Daily Mail asked if democracy was dying.  It is certainly not in good health.  I was optimistic when we achieved a coalition government in 2010 but the reality has been a failure.  There is a lack of commitment to pulling together and a feeling in the two parties that they need to set out their display windows for the election in 2015.  

In the USA, Mr Obama may be the first black president but there will be little else for us to remember him by.  In operation he has been little better than George W Bush.

Is it surprising that people are rioting in the streets or voting for fringe political parties.  What will become of us?  Has Britain no Churchill or Attlee waiting in the wings?

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Cyprus — Things Get Worse

The saga of the Cyprus banks does not get any better.  Last night the President, Nicos Anastasiades told us that his country had come "a breath away from economic collapse."  He did not explain exactly how he is defining economic collapse?  But we are told that the banks will remain closed until Thursday — ie for two weeks — unless they extend this again to an even later date.  This should give the government plenty of time to make up their collective mind about how much bail out money they will need to steal from bond holders and those depositors with more than €100,000 sitting in a Cyprus bank.  What condition are a country's finances in when the government needs to close the banks for two weeks or so while plundering the accounts of depositors in order to grab as much money as they need to finance government debts.  Is this but "a breath away from economic collapse"?  They still have not fully detailed what restrictions they will impose to stop everybody moving their money to somewhere safer when the banks are finally allowed to re-open.  Many governments are incompetent, some are corrupt but few take these qualities to the point of a criminal confiscation of their citizens' money.  And it seems that the idiotic incompetents in Brussels seem to think that the Cyprus model is one to be followed in future bail outs — which will come along sooner or later, as sure as eggs are eggs.  

The euro is a currency in a total mess and exists now only to provide Germany — the Euro-Banker — with a cheap currency to subsidize its exports — by some 30% perhaps. 

What next for this sad soap opera?

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When Is A Nation Bankrupt?

What does the world really think about the euro?  This morning it is announced that Cyprus has come to an agreement with the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF in Brussels that will provide a bail out for that blighted country.  But what has actually happened?  The EU will provide a €10 billion bail out while the Cyprus government contributes €6 biilion by robbing the deposits in the island's banks.  The second largest bank — Laiki Bank — will be progressively shut down and bond holders and those deposit holders with more than €100,000 on deposit will suffer big losses — perhaps 40% or more of their money.  Under the agreement all deposits of less than €100,000  will be secured — which I suppose does at least abide by one fundamental principal of banking; that the deposits of ordinary people are protected.  There is little else of merit in this deal, which is fundamentally wrong.  It seems that the bankers and politicians are determined to destroy the Cyprus banking system and its dodgy off-shore status. Many of the larger deposits are linked to Russia and money laudering.  If this is true the EU, the ECB and the IMF should have instructed the Cyprus government ages ago to divest themselves of these crooked foreign investments.  Cyprus has been running an over-sized banking system — closely tied to Greece — for years and paid high interest rates that ultimately would become unsustainable.

The Laiki Bank will be split into "good" and "bad" banks — where have we seen this before?  The good assets eventually will be merged into Bank of Cyprus.  Presumably the bad bank bits will be written off — the bond holders and the large depositers?  Large depositers in the Bank of Cyprus - the island's biggest bank - will have to contribute a substantial sum — to be resolved in the near future.  

The Chairman of the Cyprus Parliament's Finance Committee, Nicholas Papadopolous, said the agreement made "no economic sense".  Speaking to the BBC, he said, "We are heading for a deep recession, high unemployment. They wanted to send a message that the Cypriot economy ought to be destroyed, and they've succeeded in a large part - they've destroyed our banking sector,"

We are travelling in uncharted waters now.  The politicians and bureaucrats responsible for inventing the euro are prepared to go to any lengths to protect their pet project.  But we have now gone beyond the limits.  No fundamental rule finance and banking is safe any more.  They believe they can do whatever they like to stay afloat.  Significantly, this "deal" will not be put before the Cyprus Parliament.  How can they get away with that?  The first bail out deal was totally rejected by Parliament and there is every reason to expect that the same would happen to this scheme.  How will the government continue?  Will they dismiss Parliament in the manner of a medieval monarch?  Sooner or later they will be removed from office.  The EU [Germany] cannot impose their selected bureaucrats and/or politicians as managers on any soveriegn nation — at least, not without riots in the streets.

Banks in Cyprus have been closed since last Monday and many businesses are only taking payment in cash.  On Sunday, Bank of Cyprus further limited cash machine withdrawals to 120 euros a day.  With queues growing outside cash machines, Laiki also lowered its daily limit to 100 euros.  The details of the reopening of Cyprus' banks has been discussed today and already it is clear that there will be severe limitations on the ability of deposit holders to withdraw their own cash.  If depositors are not allowed free access there will be trouble in some form or another.  Where in any bank's Terms & Conditions does it state that you may not always be allowed to withdraw your own funds?  The only answer to this is never to deposit funds in any such bank.

Cyprus is only a small country and it is absurd that they have been allowed to get into a mess like this.  I still believe that the euro is doomed and that becomes more certain with each ever more absurd bail out package.  This scheme destroys any credibility for a banking system.  And it must be remembered that it is the same people who got us into this mess who are demanding that Europe wide it will be Joe Public who bails them out.
The latest announcement that has spooked the markets is the suggestion from Holland that the Cyprus model could become the norm for future bail outs.  That large depositors and bond holders can be expected to hand over their money to pay for the sins of politicians and investment bankers.  It is wrong and absurd.  Get your money out and into the boxes under the bed as soon as possible.
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Michael Owen

It has been announced this morning that Michael Owen will retire from playing football at the end of this season.  Fundamentally, it is an acceptance of the inevitable.  Stoke City were unlikely to renew his contract for next season and no other Premier League club wants him any more.  He is only 33 years old and it all sounds like a sad end to his career.  But not so.  Judging by what he has written on his website, this is a considered decision and, I think, the right one.  But we should not forget that Michael Owen is one of the greatest footballers to play for England since the Second World War. 

Born in Chester, Michael Owen played for Liverpool for six years and in 2001 helped them to win the League Cup, FA Cup and Uefa Cup, ending a six-year trophy drought. In total, Owen scored 158 goals in 297 appearances for the Merseyside club before moving to Real Madrid for £8m in 2004, where he was part of the "Galacticos", including Zinedine Zidane, Luis Figo, Roberto Carlos and Raul.

Despite scoring 14 goals in 40 games, it seems that he was less than happy here and returned to England one year later to play for Newcastle United — and by now he was worth £16 m. But it was at Newcastle that he became injury prone and he never again achieved the success of his days at Liverpool. Like many great operatic tenors, great football strikers can be very delicate performers and fabulous athleticism in youth can lead to damage in mi-career and a long decline.

During four years at Newcastle, he made only 79 appearances but still managed to score 30 goals.  Newcastle were relegated from the Premier Leagu in 2009 and Michael Owens left on a free transfer to play for Manchester United.  His appearances for his new club were infrequent but when he did play he often impressed.  Nevertheless his career was again blighted by injuries and he moved to Stoke City two years ago. 

But in all the glowing performances when he was at his best, few will compare with that marvelous day of September 1st 2001 when he scored a hat-trick in England's rout of Germany 5 - 1 in Munich.  A football match that we can still remember as thought it were yesterday.  See picture above of him scoring goal number 3

I don't know what he intends to do with the the rest of his life — perhaps he will go horse racing.  But, whatever, I wish him the very best

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Debts Must Be Paid

In these times, every day that passes seems to bring some new reasons to worry about the state of the British economy and particularly the scale of the debts.  Unfortunately, those in power in government and the banks don't seem to worry at all.  Is it because they feel there is no need to worry — like Mr Micawber, they expect something to turn up — or is it that they simply do not understand how serious things are?

The Coalition Government of David Cameron came into power committing itself to tackling the problem of government debt.  A reasonable and essential policy decision when they owed so much.  Cutting the debt is the foundation of their five year programme.  Yet, in spite of all the claims and public speaking and policy programmes, they are achieving nothing.  Just look at the figures.  When they came into office in May of 2010, the government debt was £700,000,000,000 — £700 billion.  If all goes well, when they leave in 2015 that debt will only have increased to £1,400 billion.  Some achievement for a government whose primary policy is to cut their debts.  Such a debt will require interest payments of nearly £100 billion per year — about 15% of total government expenditure.  They will have to cut back on spending on real services and projects in order just to pay the interest on the debts.  It is appalling.  And it is not even complete.  The figures do not take into account an every increasing burden of pay outs to subsidise public sector pensions — already costing £45 billion per year.

In order to eliminate the governments vast debts they must first of all stop spending more than they receive in income.  This is simple domestic economics — I refer to Mr Micawber again.  If expenditure exceeds income, the result is misery.  The government can no longer ring fence any part of the expenditure programme,  The NHS takes 20% of all government spending.  During the Labour years spending on the NHS doubled but 70% of that extra spending went on administration — plus interest payments on PFI deals that leave hospitals with 30 year debts while keeping the numbers hidden from government balance sheets.  Every hospital bed now has its own administrator.  Surely considerable savings could be made here and the service made both more efficient and more effective!  Further, the government via HMRC must try harder to collect all its taxes.  There is far too much avoidance and evasion.  From plumbers and builders to bankers and large corporations, they are all evading their taxes.  Only yesterday, it was revealed that many employees — including teachers and other public servants — are paid via off-shore companies to avoid NI deductions.  It has to be stopped. Osborne cannot continue protecting his mates in the City, allowing them to pay themslevs millions every year in pay, bonuses and perks and then shuffle it all off to the Cayman Isles.  Then in some areas the government needs to increase its tax rates.  They have to get the difference between income and expenditure to zero — and then set about tackling the rest of the debt.  They have to face up to the public sector pension plans.  I have no problem with public sector workers having gold -plated pensions — provided they pay for them.

The present Bank of England programmes of printing money devalues the currency, stokes up inflation and leads us towards bankcruptcy.  Greece, Portugal and Ireland have been bailed out by the ECB — and hence the Germans.  But when we go bust there is no-one to help us.  We have to sort out our own debt problems.
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Oscar Pistorius

The story that has headed the front pages of many newspapers in recent weeks has been that of Oscar Pistorius killing his girl friend Reeva Steenkamp in his house on the night of the 14th February.  The story is well-known but we still do not know the detailed truth of how this terrible tragedy occurred.
Pistorius has claimed that he thought that the noises in the bathroom and toilet were made by a burglar breaking into the house.  Many ask why did he not make absolutely sure who it was before he discharged four bullets?  We can ask this question in the comparative security of a country in Western Europe; it is not so easy in South Africa.  The annual murder rate in the UK is 1.2 per 100,000 or a total in 2012 of 722 people.  In South Africa the rate is 31.8 per 100,000 or 15,940 in 2012.  South Africa is not the worst place on Earth for murders but it is not far off.  The highest rate is in the Ivory Coast with a rate of 56.9 per 100,000.
Crime in South Africa is bad and well-known, rich, white people — as well as black — like Pistorius, are particularly at risk.  His disability makes things marginally worse.  In spite of walled estates and permanent guards, break-ins are not uncommon.  In The Sunday Times last week, Margie Orford, the London born author who attended university in Cape Town and has spent the last ten years living in South Africa, explained the pervasive fear of violence there.  She set out as an investigative journalist to "ascertain the facts about violence in South Africa."   Violence is endemic and she wondered if she — like Pistorius — should sleep with a gun under her pillow.  The police colonel with whom she discussed this asked a simple question, "If you woke up at night and heard a noise or saw someone moving down the passage, what would you do?"  "I would ask who was there," she replied.  The colonel expressed the opinion that if an intruder had got into the house he would already have shot her — so having a gun would make no difference.  "Better not to have a gun and shoot your husband by mistake."
This remark is uncanny in the Pistorius context.  It is exactly what he suggests happened.  In spite of his protected home and life style, like most South Africans he was paranoid about the risks of violent crime.  And the event that happened in Pistorius's home was and is not unique.  Margie Orford reports that only a few months ago a little girl in Johannesburg got out of bed during the night to get some water.  Her father thought she was an intruder and shot her dead.
It seems that in that blighted country, if you are to keep a gun in the house for your own protection then you have to react on the basis of shoot first and ask questions afterwards.  Perhaps the Pestorius version of what happened really is true.  So far the police have admitted that they found nothing at the scene to contradict his story.  Whatever the truth, it is a tragedy for all involved.  Obviously for Reeva Steenkamp but also for a man who, in spite of his disability, achieved so much and raised the status of para-athletes around the world.  He will have to live with this for the rest of his life.  I hope that one day he will succeed.
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Good-bye Crawley

I have posted nothing on here for the last 4 months.  I have been totally pre-occupied with moving house.  This is an activity that I would not recommend to anyone.  It is stressful and expensive.  It is not my intention to move ever again except if I am carted away to a care home — not an enticing prospect.  I have lived in Crawley in West Sussex for 48 years and in the same house for 35 years.  When I first went to the town in 1964, it was an exciting place to be.  Many people were appreciative life in one of the new towns built to rehouse Londoners who had been bombed out in WWII or had lived through the Depression in ungodly slums.  Many mistakes were made in planning the new towns but there were still many things they got right.  The towns were run by the Commission for the New Towns — a benevolent dictatorship that generally did a good job until they were abolished by the Iron Lady.  I went to Crawley to work for what was then The APV Co Ltd. — a family business that had grown into a fair-sized international organisation as engineers for the Dairy, Brewing and Process Industries.  When I started working I had nowhere to live and for a few week I stayed in the staff club, Jordans, an 18th century converted barn and house that was Grade II listed and had very low ceilings - picture above.  Then I moved into lodgings in the box room of a 1950s semi.  Then I had a bed-sit in a large detached house near the gold club.  My landlady was a lovely woman who lived alone except for one or two lodgers who boosted her income a bit and provided some company .  She was in her mid-seventies then and must now have been long dead. 

The Commission for the New Towns had a policy of allowing "key" workers to jump the housing queue and after a year or two I was able to get a single bedroom maisonette and I lived there until I bought my house in 1977.  Now I have left there and moved back to my home county of Lancashire in a house about 2.5 miles from where I was born.  I will tell you about the move in my next blog.

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