How Much Is The Rent?

I have been away in the North of England - you know, the wild country 200 miles beyond Potters Bar - for the last 2 weeks so I have had less time to comment on the day to day happenings of this tortured country of ours. Today, there is much hand wringing by the charity Shelter about potential homelessness in and around London. With the government's cap on housing benefit at £400 per week for a 4 bedroom house, Shelter tell us that no benefit claimant will be able to afford even a 2 bedroom house or flat any where near London. I doubt if this is true. At present - particularly in the London area - we, as tax-payers, have been shelling out vast sums of money to private landlords and encouraging them to charge high rents on their properties. If someone in the London area with a job and a family possibly and earning £30,000 per year cannot afford the high rents in Central London and has to commute, why, in the name of God, should we be paying those on benefits to live there? The Daily Mail and other newspapers regularly regale us with tails of benefit claimants with huge families living in massive houses in expensive parts of London and costing perhaps £2,000 per week in rent, which with other benefits equates to some massive sums - upwards of £150,000 per year, in some cases, being handed out. For someone in work to be earning enough to have £150,000 after tax they would need salary levels near £300,000 per year - that is banker remuneration. There was recent case of an unemployed bus conductor who moved from a £900 per week house in Brent to another in a better area that cost £1500 per week because Brent was a bit too downmarket. Now, we are in cloud-cuckoo-land. If there is going to be this vast exodus from Central London as benefits cuts take effect, it can only mean that rents will fall and by implication it suggests that high rents are being maintained because the state is paying the bills. High rents in London are one big problem but nationwide there is exploitation of the system through fraud and complacency. In many households with generational reliance on benefits there is often an aggressive belief in their entitlement. With arrogant disregard for the realities of financing the system they assume that they should be paid what ever they demand for ever.

It is right and proper that George Osborne has set limits on benefit payments at £400 per week for rent and a total of £26,000 per year on total handouts to a single family. That should concentrate the minds of the irresponsible - yet otherwise bone idle - claimants who knock-out kids with total abandon, secure in the knowledge that they will get yet more money from the state. Even £26,000 per year is generous since an employed person would need about £38,000 of gross income to have that £26,000 net. The benefits system is suppose to be a safety net not a carte blanche free for all.

Now, George, what about the bankers; the 75,000 people in the city of London who are paid over £100,000 per year via generous salaries and bonuses, using our money? And then how about people like Sir Philip Greene paying their real tax dues - after all the super rich can afford it.

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Mining In Chile

I suppose I should comment on the one event that has captured the attention of the whole world in the last week - the successful release of the Chilean miners from their underground tomb. These men were cut-off by two explosions in the San Jose mine in Chile 70 days ago and it was 17 days before we found out even that they were all alive and well in a safety shelter deep underground. Mining everywhere has always been a hazardous occupation and in most places it still is. Safety has been much improved in many western countries but accidents still occur. The numbers of deaths in mining disasters annually is still staggeringly high and the deaths from accidents does not include deaths from mining related diseases. In this situation it has been uplifting for the whole world to see all 33 of the Chilean miners - to be successfully rescued one by one in an escape pod that was drawn up through a narrow tube drilled through 700 metres of solid rock. And the rescue operation, shown live on TV around the world, went without a hitch. It is a tribute to all the engineers, the miners and medical people that worked tirelessly to get the job done. It may be that the safety in Chilean mines has not been shown in an attractive light but the escape has given Chile's international status quite a boost. The president has given his total backing to the escape project and there is no doubt that he has been wringing considerable political advantage from the success of the project. But he used his authority to bring in any experts that could help to maximize the chances of success. Correspondingly, had it all gone wrong he would have carried the can. Now he has promised to give H&S greater attention throughout all Chilean industries and ensure that miners lives are better protected than they were in the San Jose mine.

Well done all concerned with this successful mission impossible. It is being suggested that the joy and Roy of the Rovers romanticism of this astonishing rescue will raise the image of engineering and encourage more young people to look seriously at engineering again as a possible career move. It will be a big improvement on rushing off to "socially useless" tasks in investment banks or pinning everything on X Factor success.

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A Flood Of Beer

As I am approaching my 70th birthday, I did what many people do periodically, I looked to see what other momentous events occurred on the day of my birth, 17th October. The records on-line are always incomplete because the degree of detail depends on who put the list together - plus the amount of data increases as we get nearer to the present day.

I found that the Battle of Neville's Cross took place on 17th October of 1346 near Durham and the Scottish king, David II, was defeated by English forces that were smaller in number but better organised. The King was captured and taken to face King Edward III of England, who was, at that time, involved in resurrecting the Hundred Years War in France. They met at Calais and Edward instructed that David be taken back to England and imprisoned in Odiham Castle in Hampshire - where he stayed for 11 years.

Also on 17th October 1660, after the restoration of Charles II to the throne of England, the nine men who had signed the death warrant of King Charles I were arrested and ultimately taken away to be hung, drawn and quartered.

But I will put aside all stories of kings and prime ministers and concentrate on real stories. On 17th October 1814 in the Parish of St Giles in London, on the Tottenham Court Road there was a catastrophe of almost unimaginable horror. At the brewery of Meux & Co., a large vat containing beer ruptured and beer came gushing forth. The collapse of this huge tank caused damage to adjacent vessels which also ruptured and a total of 323,000 gallons of beer poured out into the streets. The area around St Giles was a notorious slum with masses of people crowded into tumbledown buildings and cellars. The beer washed away some of the buildings and poured down into the cellars where many were trapped. There were eight people drowned in this flood of beer and many others were injured as they tried to escape. One of the walls of the nearby Tavistock Arms was washed away and the collapsing pub trapped teenage employee Eleanor Cooper under the rubble. The brewery were taken to court over the incident but no one was found to be responsible for what, it was decided, was an Act of God; they obviously had no H&S executive in those days. The brewery's loss was considerable, of course, and what was the worst for them was that they had already paid duty on the beer. Ultimately, they managed to get their money back and this allowed them to recover from their losses. The brewery survived until the early years of the 20th century.

These catalogues of dates often give more clues about the compilers than they properly give a true picture of history. The one I have been looking at has American origins so once we pass the mid 17th century it becomes more and more Americo-centric. Why do we need to know that on 17th October 1831 Felix Mendelssohn's 1st Piano Concerto received its world premiere? It seems that nothing at all happened to Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven or Schubert on 17th October. There is no mention of the premiere of Schubert's 5th Symphony on 17th October 1841 - 13 years after the composer's death. A more important event, I would have thought, than a minor work of Mendelssohn.

I will examine some more happenings in the coming weeks - if anything interests me.

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Education For All?

There is something wrong with education in this country; something seriously wrong. This week we have heard that the ship-builders in Barrow in Furness have been unable to recruit welders and similar craftsmen locally and have been employing Poles. They have even gone to the length of putting up notices in Polish for the benefit of the workers. What in the name of God is going on? This is the country that created the Industrial Revolution; that provided engineering to the world; now we cannot find welders. Don't give me any guff about our young people working in high tech jobs. We have 2¾ million people out of work and unemployment is particularly high among 16 to 25 year olds.
The Tories have proposed a cap on immigrant numbers from outside the European Union. Business and the Business Secretary claim that this will be an unsupportable burden on commercial and industrial activities. We have a union of 500 million people and we still need expertise from other places. Why? Is the whole European educational system failing?
In spite of our being told year after year after year that exam results are getting better and better, more and more we hear of companies setting up training courses for new employees to teach them the basics of English spelling and grammar and teach them rudimentary mathematics. Again, I ask, what is going on? They cannot construct a sentence or spell simple words or read easily after 12 years of education?
Now the coalition government is considering allowing universities to raise the fees they charge for tuition up to £10,000 per year. Add to this the loans to undergraduates and it is possible to imagine a new graduate leaving university with a debt of £80,000. How is he or she going to pay that back, get married, buy a house and/or bring up a family. Are they all going to go working for investment banks?
The whole system costs a fortune and seems to be an unmitigated disaster. I went to primary school in the 1940s, was taught in classes of 50, with shortages of furniture, books and equipment, yet I can hardly remember not being able to read. Sixty years ago I passed the 11+ exam and I went to a grammar school. An opportunity afforded me by the 1944 Education Act. Eight years later I went to a university and did a degree course in chemical engineering. I paid no tuition fees and I received a grant of about £250 [say £6,000 at today's prices] every year for my food and lodgings, clothing, books,etc. I graduated with no debts. My digs in Leeds cost me less than £4 per week. In the straightened times after the Great Depression and WWII, the country could afford to pay for my education and provide for my free attendance at a grammar school and a proper university. Now, a grammar school education is all but unobtainable except for the rich and the same will soon be true of universities. The Labour government, for some strange reason, decided that we should send 50% of children to universities. They didn't achieve this nor did they provide the resources necessary to allow such vast numbers to be so educated. They massaged the results by allowing second rate establishment to call themselves universities and to hand out degrees in pointless subjects. It has been mainly a waste of money. Now we have hundreds of thousands [millions even] of new graduates, ill educated, unemployable and with vast debts. Even some of these so called graduates can hardly read or write.
Education needs to be completely re-assessed via a new education act that sets out proper objectives and pathways to producing an educated nation of well qualified, employable young people. Many should be trained in apprenticeships for craft skills - once they have received a proper basic education. It seems that local authorities are most concerned in having impressive buildings - exercises in civic pride again - and armies of staff yet they are less interested in what the vast structure achieves.
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Blackpool Tower Over The Opposition

Are football players worth their enormous salaries? It is difficult to answer yes; certainly as far as English players are concerned after their abysmal performance in the World Cup. This afternoon, Blackpool defeated Liverpool 2 - 1 at Anfield. It was the first time that they had played at Anfield since 1971 and the first time that they had beaten Liverpool since 1967. Great result. Good luck to Blackpool. I hope they manage to stay up but they are showing a spirit and organisation in their play which gives us hope. Their players have been limited to a very modest - by Premier League standards - maximum wage of £10,000 per week. It is plenty of money for most people - £½ million per year. Live modestly for ten years [say] on £100,000 per year and invest about £250,000 per year and your average Blackpool player would have a nest egg of £4 million + which should allow him to live comfortably ever after without needing to get a job. The trouble is, of course, that footballers do not live modestly; they live to the limits of their earnings and need more once they retire. That is their problem. If most of us had a fortune of over £1 million we could live well without having to worry about money. We could not go out buying Bentleys and Ferraris.

Pay to Liverpool players allows them to buy the Ferraris but it does not seem to help them play football. Wayne Rooney is another player with buckets of pay but at present he is failing badly as a player. I hope he rights himself but I wonder if he has the mental strength to see what really matters and then to get on with the job. He should have a chat to Paul Scholes.

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Limerick Kills Man

I write this blog to help me keep sane and to allow me to keep a record of things that catch my eye from day-to-day. I try to write clearly and concisely and keep to the rules of the English language. When I was in an old-fashioned grammar school, I was taught about constructing sentences and avoiding ambiguity. We all remember the story of the chair that was being put up for sale by the old lady with Queen Ann legs. Today I spotted a tragic story in the Irish Times. It really was tragic and it should not be laughed at. But the headline said quite simply "Man dies after Limerick Attack" The immediate impression created in my simple mind was that here was a case of a man becoming so upset by a limerick that he either died spontaneously or had committed suicide. I started to make up the limerick in my own mind. "There was an old man on the Shannon, Who ............ But what? I had to look it up and, of course, the event they were trying to report was that a man had been attacked in a house in Limerick in the West of Ireland and had subsequently died in hospital. And if you think I am being insensitive, what of the Irish Times that produced a headline that was not just ambiguous but wrong. The man died as a result of an attack by another man. That was the important headline. The fact that it happened in Limerick was secondary. All to often we see sentences these days that are, technically, either misleading or completely wrong and they rely on the reader deciding what was meant. Surely this belongs with the chair and the lady with the Queen Ann legs.

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Stan Laurel Birthplace Moved!

I have been passed a copy of a report from a recording made in the artists' dressing rooms of the old Eden Theatre in Bishop Auckland. It relates a conversation between those stalwarts of the silver screen Laurel & Hardy.

"Now, Stanley, it's time to smarten yourself up because you have been chosen to help with promoting tourism in your old county of Durham."

"But why Durham, Olly?"

"Because, Stanley, as you should know, Durham is the place where you were born."

"I don't think so, Olly. In fact, I don't think I have ever been to Durham"

"Nonsense, Stanley! It's written here in the new Tourist Guide to Durham and they have printed 50,000 copies, so it can't be wrong. This Eden Theatre used to be managed by your dear old dad and we are here to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of your birth in 1890. We didn't cross the Atlantic in the middle of a war to come to commemorate your birth in a town that you never lived in."

" But, Olly I have still got the birth certificate given to me by my old mother and that definitely says that I was born in Ulverston, in Lancashire. I lived with Grandma Metcalfe and went to school in Ulverston."

"So, what do we do now? I thought you went to school in Bishop Auckland and Tynemouth. We are invited to a presentation in Bishop Auckland to tell the world about your life of poverty in the back streets of this fine English industrial town."

" But, Olly, I don't think Tynemouth is in Co Durham either. And I was only there for a short time,"

" No matter what I do, nothing changes . This looks like another fine mess you have got me into, Stanley!"

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How the city fathers of Durham have got themselves into this mess - without any help from the late Stan Laurel - no one can know. But they have actually printed 50,000 tourist brochures that claim that Stan Laurel was born inside the boundaries of Co Durham. It is easy to be confused. The local government re-organisation of 1972 shifted towns and villages into enormous and idiotic conglomerates that had little point to them then and still haven't. Some towns have escaped the bureaucratic nightmares but many are still swallowed up in these London sponsored tidy boxes - it can't matter much anyway because it's all just Up North! But Ulverston, the true birthplace of Stan Laurel has not, to my knowledge, ever been part of Co Durham. It used to be part of Lancashire but now is a parish in the Furness District of West Cumbria - and what that means, is a problem for the citizens of that noble town. It is true that Stan Laurel's father did manage the Eden Theatre in Bishop Auckland and Stan did go to the local grammar school but he certainly was not born there.

Durham has now admitted to the cock-up but due to government cuts, they cannot afford to have the brochures re-printed. So Stan Laurel remains a son of Durham. It's all very confusing.

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A New Leader

Over this last week-end the Labour Party at its conference in Manchester elected its new leader. They chose Ed Miliband over his elder and more experienced brother David by just 1.5% after the four rounds of voting. The elder Miliband always looked to me like Mr Bean. The younger one looks more like Wallace from the plasticine characters Wallace & Gromit. But they are an odd couple. Here are two brothers who express undying love for each other yet they have fought each other for leadership of the party. It's not that there is some great policy divide between them. They say the same things via vague, ambiguous platitudes and cliches. It was always obvious that if David had won it would not have been too catastrophic for Ed but the other way around, the more experienced Milliband was doomed. So why does any brother want to junk his elder sibling's career. Usually, it is because he doesn't like him much. "But I love my brother very much. He is something special to me." You can feel the hypocrisy and insincerity dripping off the words. Like his lack of marriage and name on his child's birth certificate, everything comes after his job. Does the Labour Party seriously think that this out-of-touch geek will ever be Prime Minister? If so, they are even more deeply lost in Space than I thought.

During this latest, incredible party conference I was struck by the fact that to many of the apparatchiks that sit on front benches nowadays politics is an end in itself, not a means to an end. But look at the three party leaders. They are all the same. They went to school - at least the Millibands went to state comprehensives - then they went to Oxford or Cambridge universities, went to Harvard for a bit, then became party officers, engineered into safe parliamentary seats.

The Labour Party now has to construct a shadow cabinet from the biggest pile of well-educated dead wood that I have ever seen. Roy Hattersley writes about the wealth of talent in the party and Neil Kinnock is over-excited. Why? Where? Who? I can see no Aneurin Bevan, no Ernie Bevin, no Clement Attlee, no Jim Callaghan, no Roy Jenkins, no Dennis Healey. And where are the great thinkers like Michael Foot, Anthony Crosland, Richard Crossman, Tony Benn. We may not have agreed with some of these but they stood for something and most [all?] of them had done proper jobs and/or fought in wars.
Perhaps the fundamental cause of the problems is the abolition of the grammar schools. David Cameron is an Old Etonian - the first to be Prime Minister since Sir Alec Douglas Home. All those in between went to grammar or secondary schools and came from ordinary families. I wanted Ken Clarke [also a grammar school boy] to have lead the Tory Party because above everyone in the party now, he had experience. It matters to know how the system works, who does what and how. I was unimpressed with David Cameron at the start but so far he has done well as Prime Minister. In spite of his background and my continuing doubts about the lack of experience, at least he comes across as human.
We will have to see what happens but in all parties much needs to be done to re-introduce real people and to connect themselves with the electorate.
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Francis Drake

It was exactly 330 years ago today that Francis Drake sailed into Plymouth harbour having completed the first circumnavigation of the World by an Englishman. He had crossed the Atlantic, sailed down the coast of South America, proceeded up the west coast of America as far as Alaska, then crossed the Pacific Ocean, rounded the Cape of God Hope and sailed back to Britain. He had been away for 3½ years and much upset Spain with his attacks on their colonies and wealth. A few years later he cause even more consternation when he took such an important part in repelling the Spanish Armada. Although as the captain of a ship, Drake was probably little better than a state authorised pirate and slave trader - he gained considerable wealth from the latter activity - there seems little doubt that he was a sailor of the highest ability. To have sailed around the world in his tiny vessel - the Golden Hind weighed in at a mere 300 tons - was an impressive achievement. Nevertheless, he suffered considerable losses of men and ships on his voyage. His Golden Hind was the only one of six ships that returned to England. He was ruthless in the command of his men but showed great qualities of leadership. However, it has to be said that he executed mutineers on the basis of a dubious authority.

For a time he was a Member of Parliament, a Mayor of Plymouth and for 15 years lived at Buckland Abbey in Devon. He returned to the sea and on his final voyage in 1596 he contracted dysentery off the coast of Puerto Rica. He was buried at sea in a lead lined coffin.

A replica of his vessel [see above] is displayed at Southwark. This replica was launched in Devon in 1973 and has itself sailed around the world. It is now estimated to have sailed 140,000 miles - although I assume that the crew would have made use of modern sensible navigational aids which would remove a great deal of uncertainty from what they were doing.

Sir Francis Drake was one of those romantic heroes in English history whose life has, over the years, become a muddle of fact and fiction. He lived in a more robust age where little was decided by the niceties of international law or of political correctness. And, perhaps, that was its advantage.

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The Road To Happiness

The question of wealth has been in the news again recently - apropos of the pay in the public sector. We learn that over 6,500 people in the NHS are paid more than the Prime Minister. This ridiculous. Apart from over-paid bureaucrats there are many GPs - now working shorter hours - being paid buckets of money; one is even collecting £½ million per year. Staggering. Still, as long as the DG of the BBC thinks he is worth £835,000 per year we know that we are in cloud-cuckooland.
All of us always feel that we need more money but how much more? I see very unhappy footballers earning millions of pounds each year wondering what to do with their wealth. Wayne Rooney apparently handed over £200 to a boy doing room service who delivered him a packet of cigarettes. Sir Alec, why is Wayne Rooney smoking as well as being out and about in night clubs in the middle of the night? I see things in newspapers, magazines and on TV which show some of the vast mansions occupied by the rich and famous and am I jealous? No! I would like a few hundred thousand pounds extra so that I could buy the house of my dreams and enjoy my twilight years. But my house would have a maximum of four or five bedrooms, a double garage, two bathrooms and set in beautiful countryside in Lancashire not too far from a major town - Bolton. It would cost less than £500,000; it would have a well laid out garden with a small, sheltered outdoor area for relaxing, eating and entertaining. I don't need a swimming pool - indoors or out. I don't need a Bentley or a Rolls Royce. A good medium size luxury car Jaguar, Mercedes or some such. I don't need a games room; or a bar; or a wine cellar.
If I had a huge house I would use very little of it; I would need to employ staff to look after it and would I be happier sitting out alongside my swimming pool? No! I think that if I did have some such useless luxury item I would be wondering what next to spend my money on and what I needed next to become happy. In my house, I would have my own bedroom, a guest bedroom, a library, an office and, if I had a fifth bedroom, a hobbies room for my painting, drawing and making things - and, of course it could be overspill storage. I could, at a pinch combine the office with the library in a four bedroom house.
The house above is in Firs Road, Bolton, only about 2 miles from where I was born, in a nice area and it would suit me well. It's up for sale; a snip at £370,000. I have no interest in the celebrity life style. My life would be more one of the recluse; cut off from neighbours, other peoples kids, and noise.
I suppose that I should consider myself very lucky when I look at my family history and find just what earlier generations lived through. The horror of the Great Famine in Ireland and my great-great-grandmother making her way across the country on foot, with four starving children, through overcrowd squalor in Liverpool until finally she got a job as a domestic servant in Atherton - yet still she survived into her mid-eighties. Her life must be rated as very successful in what she achieved but much of it was surrounded by suffering. All of my Victorian ancestors suffered in some way during the Industrial Revolution when the working classes were all but invisible as individuals. I went to a grammar school - still the only one of my family to do so in 300 years - and then I enjoyed a university education, have always been employed, have managed to travel to many parts of the world and to meet some wonderful people. I did all of this without obscene wealth and I find it sad that so many young people now want nothing more than fame [or infamy], great wealth - in simple money terms - and have no appreciation of the value of a proper education. The children sent by ambitious parents to private schools do understand and that is one of many reasons why the rich will continue to run the country while a few footballers wonder how to spend their own suddenly acquired wealth. Five luxury cards will not be enough to find your way along the road to happiness.
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