Away To The Hills

Inshallah by this time tomorrow we'll be in the Lakes, and on Saturday in Strathspey, assuming the weather forecast (rain for Scotland on the weekend) is correct. But it'll have to rain a lot to wipe out all that wonderful snow.

Unless the climate changes of the last 25 years can be reversed, the long term outlook for Scottish skiing is bleak.

Alex Hill, the chief government adviser with the Met Office, told The Scotsman there was no future for skiing in Scotland because climate change would see winters become too warm for regular snowfall. However, although members of the ski industry agreed that climate change was having an impact, they said the industry could survive.

But Mr Hill said: "Put it this way: I won't be investing in the skiing industry. The amount of snow has been decreasing for the last 40 years, and there's no reason why it's going to stop now. Will there be a ski industry in Scotland in 50 years' time? Very unlikely."

Met Office climate predictions, seen by The Scotsman, suggest that, by 2080, the average winter night-time temperature in the Highlands will be 2C, compared with -2C at present.

He's right and all. In the 70s there was snow on the tops all through summer, and in the winter snow stayed for weeks in the Highlands and Borders. The skiing was reliable and a lot of people learned there. The Reo Stakis group developed Aviemore (admittedly with some pretty cruddy architecture) as a winter resort, just as winters disappeared - when we first visited as a family in the 90s the ice rink (now closed) had seen better days - as, one felt, had the whole place. We had one half-term week in around 2002 with no snow at all.

But there's an awful lot there as of now. The boots and skis are packed - I just can't wait.

Let's hope the sun's output diminishes a tad and/or we get another Maunder minimum. Living things can survive cold, but not too much heat.

Blogging will resume next weekend, God willing.

Quote of the Day

Ross, on the murderer who kicked a man to death for his cigarettes and is now invoking human rights legislation in an attempt to impregnate his new wife, despite being banged up :

"I think the best hope now is that the courts refuse to let him reproduce on the grounds that he's a smoker"

Frozen Washing on the Curate's Line

The Martyrdom of St Yazza :

"tell me you aren't ashamed at what our country has become when a middle aged muslim woman of Asian descent can be treated like this. She was questioned at length by plain clothes police officers who never once told her who they were or why she was being questioned."

I listened to the video, most of which was a moan about how "I love this country but ...", then we got to the facts. She was taking an internal flight, there was a mix-up and her tickets weren't kosher for the flight she was trying to board, so she was taken aside and asked a few questions. No abuse, no threats, no shouting.

I had a similar interview leaving Heathrow for NY on Pan-Am, a year after Lockerbie. I'm presuming the Libyan visa in my passport was the catalyst. They were perfectly polite, I answered their (reasonable) questions and away I went.

This really is a tsumami in some Earl Grey - and Iain Dale, what's all this about "we should be ashamed" ? Are you arguing that middle-aged, middle class Muslim women should be exempt from the (tedious but probably necessary) airline security checks the rest of us go through ?

I love Yazza like I love Melanie Phillips, but both can on occasions see "oppression" when it's not there.

There's enough of the real thing about without nonsense like this.

What a strange way to spin a story.

The UK’s official statistician weighed into the debate about foreign workers yesterday by highlighting the growing numbers of immigrants getting jobs while the British workforce declines.

On the day that figures showed the number of people unemployed at a 12-year high, the Office for National Statistics chose to reveal that the number of foreign workers increased by 175,000 to 2.4 million last year while the number of British workers fell by 234,000 to 27 million.

Karen Dunnell, the National Statistician, sought to focus public attention on the contrasting fortunes of foreign and British workers as the country slipped into recession. Her intervention came as construction workers took part in wildcat strikes at power stations in Nottinghamshire and Kent, angry about jobs going to foreigners.

I see. The figures aren't the important thing, it's that they were released. Que ? I think FWIW that it's 'deeply unhelpful' to characterise telling the truth as a move in some political game. Obviously that's the way Sam Coates, Richard Ford and David Brown see it.


There is no end to Labour sleaze.

LORD TRUSCOTT, one of four peers named in the “lords for hire” scandal, has taken at least £70,000 in allowances for overnight accommodation in London while staying at his home in the capital.

Truscott, 49, now receives £28,000-a-year tax free by telling House of Lords’ authorities that his main residence is a modest flat in Bath, Somerset.

He uses the allowance to maintain a £700,000 flat he owns in Mayfair, central London, with his Russian wife, Svetlana. He bought the property in Bath months after becoming eligible to claim the allowance.

Lord Paul of Marylebone, the billionaire steel magnate and Labour donor who is nondomiciled, is one of a number of other peers who take advantage of the perk.

The deafening silence on the issue at PMQs yesterday seems to be confirmation that they're all at it.

THE financier who has been appointed to protect taxpayers’ money in Britain’s bailed-out banks is a former trustee of a secretive Liechtenstein bank accused of facilitating massive tax evasion.

Glen Moreno, who chairs the powerful body that oversees the government’s £37 billion shareholding in the banks, was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds during a nine-year association with Liechtenstein Global Trust (LGT), a private bank based in the tax haven.

The disclosures are an embarrassment for Gordon Brown, who last week criticised offshore tax havens and called for international action to stamp out tax evasion.

What with James Crosby, Gordon seems to be an expert at hiring foxes as poultry management consultants. But it's this that really bothers me :

The SNP has demanded an inquiry after it emerged that a record of everyone who voted in last year's contest in Glenrothes has gone missing.

All of the major parties, including Labour on election night itself, had predicted that the Nationalists would win the seat, which borders Gordon's Brown's constituency.

Instead Lindsay Roy, Labour's candidate, swept to victory and dealt a stunning blow to Alex Salmond, the First Minister and SNP leader, who had confidently predicted victory.

The result was a huge fillip to the Prime Minister, who broke with convention and risked his political credibility by joining the campaign trail with his wife, Sarah.

Thus far UK electoral fraud has been confined to Ulster Republicans and other minority communities with a tradition of same, although I wouldn't put it past some well-meaning liberal types to lose a few boxes of BNP votes and think they were protecting democracy - after all, we've all been taught what happened in Germany. The worst the Labour leadership (as opposed to their local party machines) have done is to turn a blind eye. This would be different, and a very worrrying sign for our democracy. I hope and pray that Mr Cock-up is responsible here - but it's not good that we can even entertain the idea of Scottish Labour taking the Mugabe route to electoral success. Not so long ago it would have been unthinkable. It isn't now.


Oh, forgot to say. Remember the liberal myth of Superbowl violence, which inspired our PC police into campaigns against World Cup Domestic Violence ?

Meet the rugby equivalent - Six Nations Domestic Violence 2008. And Rugby World Cup 2007.

Police are launching patrols in the south Wales valleys during the Rugby World Cup to allow them to respond quickly to domestic violence.

Reality trumps satire yet again.

Have You Seen This Benefit Cheat ?

This woman, using the obvious alias 'J. Smith' is wanted for claiming over £116,000 of State benefits on false pretences while working as a Secretary in the Westminster area of London. If you see her, do not approach her - she never goes anywhere without her minders.

Instead, ring the number of the new Benefit Fraud Reporting Hotline - and do the taxpayer a good turn !

So Soon ...

Can it be Six Nations time already ? And can it really be four years since our Murrayfield trip ?

And more to the point, can it only be this time last year that Wales went in at half-time against England hanging onto the ropes at 16-6 after a first-half battering, with Boks coach Jake White predicting the opening of the floodgates in the second half, before ten disastrous, error-strewn minutes saw England hand the game over ?

Not that I'm sanguine about today's game - you just can't tell with the Scots, capable of anything on the day and with a pretty good recent record against Wales at Murrayfield.

We're not going this year - because next weekend we're off to what will hopefully be the best Scottish skiing for twenty years or more. Snow is coming down by the ton over the Highlands - even Glenshee, the most extensive Scottish area but with (I think) the worst snow record, is plastered with the stuff. I've just checked the sites - Cairngorm's had another two feet at car park level, while snowploughs are still clearing the roads to the Lecht. At this rate we'll be looking to hire cross-country skis.

Trouble with Scotland is that since climate change kicked in, you can have good skiing one week and it can be melting the next - especially on the lower slopes like the Lecht and Glenshee, or the westerly areas, Glencoe (my favourite) and Nevis, where south-westerlies can bring rain. Only Cairngorm is high enough to keep its snow - and there the trouble is often high winds. But surely this lot can't all have gone by next week - especially given the forecasts.

Nonetheless it's been terrific value over the years - although most of the landlords have now realised that they can raise the house prices by a good 30% over half term. Seven or eight years back they still hadn't cottoned on - I used to budget £200 for a house, £200 for ski hire, £200 for lift passes - not bad for six people. It's a fair bit more now - not least because our children are a lot older.

Let's just hope we can find somewhere decent to eat !

Hmmm ...

I did think about "THIS BUS WILL DETONATE IN FOUR MINUTES".

(via)

OK, What's Wrong With This Scenario ?

The Icelandic krone has stabilised against sterling - in fact it's appreciated by 20% in the last two months as the pound falls against just about every currency except Zimbabwe's.

Unlike the useless Bank of England, the Icelandic central bank has maintained interest rates - at 18%.

Laban's UK cash, squirreled away in the good years to provide against a rainy day, is earning no interest and being eaten away by an inflation rate which IMHO is way above the "official" 2% - and likely to rise more as the pound's decline makes imports (i.e. pretty much everything we buy) more expensive. Remember, on the inflation rate, these were the people who took out of the inflation figures the most expensive single purchase most of us will ever make. I simply don't trust them any more.

Why can't I open a krone-denominated account and take advantage of these cracking interest rates ? There must be a catch somewhere, but what is it - apart from exposure to adverse currency movements (which is IMHO more likely if you hold sterling, as it approaches basket-case status) ?

I'm Flattered ...

Peston, today, quoting Adair Turner on Jan 21 :

There's a double argument why über-bankers should not be paid even a farthing of performance-related remuneration - and this argument can be extrapolated from no less august a source than the recent magisterial speech by Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority.

It's that almost every senior banker trousered bonuses over the previous few years on the basis of profits that turn out to be a chimera, an illusion, unreal.

The point - which is implicit in Turner's analysis - is that banks' wholesale banking and treasury operations booked as profit both capital gain and income from assets that have subsequently turned out to be poisonous.

Much of this capital gain never crystallised, it was not converted into cash. Yet bonuses - in the form of hard cash and shares - were paid out on the basis of this nebulous capital gain.

Laban, January 19 :

"Given that most of the banks would be bust without taxpayer guarantees I don't know why they don't just wind them up in a controlled manner, transferring assets and liabilities to the state, before beginning the process of building a case against their boards, freezing their assets and attempting to claw back their bonuses, property and pension funds - on the basis of the effectively fraudulent accounts, based on flawed asset evaluations, which have showed such huge profits over the last ten years."

While the solutions proffered by Robert Peston and Adair Turner ("give the banks lots of taxpayer money") differ in some key respects from mine ("nationalise without compensation and arrest the executives"), I'm chuffed that we seem to agree on what the problem was - and that I said it first !

Great Depression

Everybody knows that it was protectionism which turned the Great Crash of 1929 into the Great Depression of the 1930s. All three main parties follow this line - how depressing it was to hear Cameron attacking Brown at PMQs yesterday by accusing him of encouraging (self-evidently bad) protectionism with his 'British Jobs For British Workers' speech.

Not so, according to BBC economics correspondent, promoter of bastardy (and daughter of a great man), Stephanie Flanders.

The depression certainly did see a collapse in global trade and capital flows, and a descent into protectionist tariffs and laws. But a fair reading of the evidence suggests these were more the result of the global downturn than the cause.

According to Peter Temin, a distinguished economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, exports were 7% of American GDP in 1929. They fell by 1.5 percentage points in the next two years.

Given the fall in world demand in those years, not all of that fall can be attributed to other countries' retaliation against the US tariffs. And even if it were - overall, GNP over the same period fell by 15%.

So, on any reasonable assumptions, Temin says "the fall in export demand can only be a small part of the story." And, as he points out, even that loss in foreign demand from the tariff would have been partly offset by the fact that the tariff diverted demand from foreign to home-made goods.

His conclusion? "Any net contractionary effect of the tariff was small."

This shouldn't come as a surprise. Even the greatest fans of free trade would admit that the benefits of lower tariffs - or costs of higher ones - are fairly small beer when compared to the kind of collapse in incomes and employment we saw during the depression.

To repeat, I'm not endorsing protectionism, or a policy of "national self-sufficiency" (though intriguingly for his modern admirers, that's what Keynes supported in 1933).

The Keynes piece is fascinating - well worth a read.

Laban's reading a lot of economics blogs at the moment, City Unslicker, Alphaville, Peston. Laban thinks it'll get worse before it gets better - but then he thinks that about everything else !

Race Card - Increasingly Creased and Dog-Eared

When I heard Mandelson accusing John Humphrys (audio, BBC player) - of all people - of stoking 'xenophobia', my first thought was 'he's running out of debating options - he's desperate'. You expect an accusation of racism to be the first response of, say, a Liberal blogger who's losing an argument - but an old pro like that - you expect something more ... er ... nuanced ?

Martin Kelly's thinking something similar :

You know the end of the game is in sight when one of the major players feels they have to play what they believe to be their trump.

Peter Mandelson is a past master of the politics of xenophilia; his warning against 'the politics of xenophobia' taking hold in the spontaneous direct action now being taken by British workers is his bunker moment. He has nothing left to fall back on, no more aces to play, other than to repeat his government's casual slanders of his fellow British citizens.

A Few Chunks Of Rock Salt In The Curate's Lane

A hint of fear as Labour minister Stephen Timms gets religion :

Mr Timms referred to the problems in the world economy, the conflict in the Middle East and more immediate problems such as last weekend’s stabbing of Stephen Lewis when leaving a church hall party in his own constituency in East London.

Mr Timms said: “It would be easy to lapse in the face of challenges of that magnitude into cynicism or even despair – to conclude that nothing can be done by politicians effectively to resolve these enormous challenges.

“But it is the calling of politicians to figure out how to tackle them, to identify solutions and to work to implement them.”

He said the religious groups of Britain were crucial to this process and singled out the Muslim community for particular praise. “Muslims in Britain have helped faith gain a new voice and a new confidence,” he said.

Thyere's no doubt about the new voice and new confidence. What I'm not sure about is from whence cometh this voice's strength. Is it the cohesion which put so many hundreds of thousands on the streets, to denounce wars in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza, that has earned the respect of New Labour ? Or is it a series of riots, four suicide bombings and a large number of wannabes ? What think you ? What are our rulers more likely to take notice of ?

"How many divisions has the Pope ?" Stalin famously asked. Our rulers take a view on the likely number of Christian suicide bombers and act accordingly :

A Christian nurse from Weston-super-Mare has been suspended for offering to pray for a patient's recovery. Community nurse Caroline Petrie, 45, says she asked an elderly woman patient during a home visit if she wanted her to say a prayer for her.

The patient complained to the health trust about Mrs Petrie who follows the Baptist faith. She was suspended, without pay, on 17 December and will find out the outcome of her disciplinary meeting next week.

I digress. This report positively reeks of fear :

Twenty five per cent of the 430 population of Long Lartin top security jail in Worcestershire are now Muslim, according to an inspection report by Dame Anne Owers, the chief inspector of prisons.

Prisoners told Dame Anne during her inspection that offenders at the jail are converting to Islam because they want the protection of belonging to a big Muslim group. One inmate quoted in the report said:”Yes, there is a gang culture here which is becoming an issue. A lot of people are becoming Muslim just because it a bigger group."

Another inmate warned that all violence in the jail was gang related and that Long Lartin was in danger of turning into an American-style prison. He said: "If you are not in a gang, you’re in trouble. People are converting to Islam for protection.”

Not something you'd say about Christianity these days, is it ? There have been stories of gang culture in places like Belmarsh, Whitemoor and Frankland - wasn't someone killed in one of those jails ?

The number of Muslim prisoners in jails doubled in the eleven years to 2007 to reach 8,864 - 11 per cent of the total prison population. Muslim prisoners make up one third of the population of Whitemoor, 15 per cent of Full Sutton top security prison in Yorkshire and 20 per cent of Belmarsh jail.

In today’s report, Dame Anne said the jail’s security department was monitoriting the difficulties of gang activity, potential extremism and radicalisation of inmates in a balanced way. She said staff had been left to balance as best they could the need to engage with and ensure proper treatment for Muslim prisoners and the need to monitor and prevent radicalisation.

“There needs to be a national strategy to equip staff better to engage and support Muslim prisoners,” she said. There is no multi-faith room at the jail and this has resulted in Friday prayers being held in three separate locations.

A survey found that the proportion of prisoners who believed their faith was respected had fallen significantly and only 48 per cent of Muslim respondents said they were respected by staff, compared with a 67 per cent response from non Muslims.

“Given the sensitivities surrounding Muslim prisoners, including the perceived risk of radicalisation, staff required training and advice on how to engage Muslim prisoners better,” the inspection report said.

Our rulers are afraid that unless they are nice to Muslim inmates, when they come out some will set off bombs. But be fair. They're afraid of the other prisoners, too.

A growing number of prisoners serving long sentences who have “nothing to lose” is a threat to the control and stability of the jail system, the prisons watchdog warns.

Dame Anne Owers, the chief inspector of prisons, also said that there was a growing use of force to control the most pressurised jails in England and Wales. She highlighted a rise in the number of prison disturbances and increasingly fractious jails as warning signs of the strain being faced in the overcrowded prison system.

One in seven of the 82,000 prisoners in England and Wales is now serving an indefinite sentence for public protection or a life term, the inspector’s annual report reveals.

Dame Anne said that the disturbances in jails have been contained so far but she identified “real risks” of a loss of control in the future. She said that too many of the most volatile prisons, including top security jails holding an increasingly challenging mix of very serious offenders and those establishments holding young men, had not been judged safe in inspections.

Well, think about it. 900-odd homicides p.a. in England and Wales - even with some three-years-for-torturing-someone-to-death sentences you'll be adding maybe five hundred killers each year for ten years or so each, although they're also being released at the other end. Murder is still a crime with a relatively high clear-up rate. One in seven is about 12,000 bad boys of which maybe half will be killers and the other half rapists, failed killers and perhaps combinations of the two. Of course in the days of the death penalty you'd have a lower murder count and fewer murderers in the cells.

Dame Anne said that the prison system was having to cope with more prisoners serving longer sentences, more gang activities on the wings and concerns about drugs. “There have always been groups engaged in criminal endeavours both inside and outside prisons. There is some evidence of more organisation,” she said. She added: “The presence of drugs is also a key factor because that can create an economy in prison and create bullying.”

It was once pretty hard to get drugs into jail - in the days when you spoke to your beloved through a wire grille. Now you can sit her on your lap, put your tongue in her mouth and hand where you like - in a crowded visiting room with maybe half a dozen guards on high chairs watching over a room with forty or fifty people in it. I get the impression there's more stuff coming in via the staff, too. After all, a stoned jail is a quiescent jail - they hope. The balance of power in prisons has been shifting from jailer to inmate for forty years.

The number of Muslim prisoners may be rising, but so is the number of Muslims :

The Muslim population in Britain has grown by more than 500,000 to 2.4 million in just four years, according to official research collated for The Times.

The population multiplied 10 times faster than the rest of society, the research by the Office for National Statistics reveals. In the same period the number of Christians in the country fell by more than 2 million.

Experts said that the increase was attributable to immigration, a higher birthrate and conversions to Islam during the period of 2004-2008, when the data was gathered. They said that it also suggested a growing willingness among believers to describe themselves as Muslims because the western reaction to war and terrorism had strengthened their sense of identity.

Muslim leaders have welcomed the growing population of their communities ...

There are more than 42.6 million Christians in Britain, according to the Office for National Statistics, whose figures were obtained through the quarterly Labour Force Survey of around 53,000 homes. But while the biggest Christian population is among over-70s bracket, for Muslims it is the under-4s ...

Ceri Peach, Professor of Social Geography at Manchester University, said that the rapid growth of the Muslim population posed challenges for society. “The groups with the strongest belief in the family and cohesion are those such as the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. They have got extremely strong family values but it goes together with the sort of honour society and other kinds of attributes which people object to,” he said. “So you are dealing with a pretty complex situation.”

Hmm. That's what I'd call the weak version of the theory. But he's right that Muslims have many admirable values which hold together and strengthen their society. The operative word being 'their'.

They're not destroying our society, though. We did that when we implemented the brave new vision of the Sixties, which has made modern Britain so different from the Britain of fifty years back. Islam is merely expanding into the moral vacuum left by the decline of Christianity, the cultural vacuum left by the decline of Britishness, and the demographic vacuum left by the Pill and feminism.

Here are the figures. Have a nice day.

The total number of Muslims in Great Britain:

2004: 1,870,000

2005: 2,017,000

2006: 2,142,000

2007: 2,327,000

2008: 2,422,000

Source: Labour Force Survey

Brother John Is Gone

A very nice John Martyn tribute by one Joe Taylor.

And Laban has uploaded Fly On Home (in lo-fi, naturlich) to Youtube.

"go and work in Europe, Mandelson tells strikers"

... thus far have the People's Party come.

It's the 'speaking from Davos' bit that gets me !

"we still have relatively high levels of pregnancies going to birth"

Former Green Party chair Jonathon Porritt laments the shortage of dead babies.

Couples who have more than two children are being “irresponsible” by creating an unbearable burden on the environment, the government’s green adviser has warned.

Jonathon Porritt, who chairs the government’s Sustainable Development Commission, says curbing population growth through contraception and abortion must be at the heart of policies to fight global warming.

Hmmm. We currently top about 200,000 babies pa. Just ain't enough, apparently.

At this point the ST Health Editor Sarah-Kate Templeton treads dangerous ground :

The British population, now 61m, will pass 70m by 2028, the Office for National Statistics says. The fertility rate for women born outside Britain is estimated to be 2.5, compared with 1.7 for those born here. The global population of 6.7 billion is expected to rise to 9.2 billion by 2050.

I wonder where she got the stats for mothers born outside the UK ? Anyone been through the last couple of years ONS Population Trends stats , the ones that come out in December ? I confess I haven't read through them, just noted the headline figures on births to foreign-born mothers. The ONS have already estimated fertility by ethnicity - and the figures chime neatly with the list of boroughs with the highest fertility rates. I look forward to Mr Porritt telling the good people of Bradford, Darwen and Newham why they really ought to be aborting more babies. Like his ideal baby, he'll be lucky to get out alive.


Tangentially, Times sportswriter Simon Barnes wonderful and heartwarming piece on his Down syndrome son. The strange thing is that the same government who'll fine you for not having disabled access to your business or parish hall is happy to kill the disabled the moment they discover their existence :

At the hospital, when they discovered on the scan that Down’s syndrome was a possibility, they very kindly offered to kill him for us.

Correction - of course we don't top 600,000 babies a year - 600,000 is the approximate number of live births. We only top about 200,000.

"Dog-whistle" Campaign Seems To Succeed

At the moment our leaders are terribly worried that political parties may gain votes by appealing to the worst instincts in voters - those of hatred for some "other", usually of a different ethnic group.

Sadly, these fears aren't completely groundless.

There was also a by election in Redbridge yesterday, which the Liberal Democrats won. Their literature concentrated on Redbridge Council’s foreign policy and used some pretty unpleasant pictures of Gaza. Interestingly they broke a cardinal rule by naming an opponent, just one - the Leader of the Council, Cllr Alan Weinberg.

I am also told from friends campaigning in the ward, that there were people knocking on doors, speaking of Gaza and mentioning what Conservative Cllr Weinberg and the Labour Foreign Secretary have in common - which was why their respective parties were not campaigning on the council’s foreign policy.

The Lib Dems have plenty of previous when it comes to this sort of thing - I remember they campaigned in those bits of Brum with large Muslim populations a few years back using pictures from Abu Ghraib. But to be fair to them, I don't think they're institutionally anti-semitic. They're just giving the voters what they want, as they always try to do.

And what's all this about Redbridge Council having a foreign policy ?

This is another one of those stories that make me think we may in a few years (given time for another million or so new young names on the electoral roll) be in a situation where one community has a veto on on our foreign policy - and particularly on our relationship with Israel.

As I've said before, if it's all a conspiracy, said conspirators are making a pretty poor fist of it. Mr Cock-up is no respecter of ethnic origins - or of intelligence either.


(comments off for the usual reasons)

Spontaneous Working Class Action ...

... and the unions sit on their hands ... not a peep from the guardians of the workers ...

Gordon Brown’s pledge to create “British jobs for British workers” came back to haunt him yesterday when a dispute over foreign labourers sparked a wave of industrial unrest.

Wildcat strikes flared at more than 19 sites across the country in response to claims that British tradesmen were being barred from construction jobs by contractors using cheaper foreign workers.

Mr Brown, in Davos for the World Economic Forum, was caught by surprise when a ten-day-old strike at an oil refinery in Lincolnshire sparked copy-cat action at other energy plants. Unions claim that British workers are being barred from jobs because of a European Union directive which allows companies to bring in foreign labour for less than they would have to pay to Britons.

As the Pub Philosopher puts it :

Most of those protesting against the use of foreign labour in British plants are not racists. They just hold the quaint old view that the nation state should put its citizens first and that companies licensed to operate in this country should be under an obligation to employ British people ...

But Steve, the terms of debate have been changed. The idea that Britain should put its citizens first is racist as far as the Labour Party and the unions are concerned. Lots of foreign workers = "we're not racist". And naturally the capitalist class (aka 'industry') wants to encourage a global labour market - it drives down their costs (aka 'wages').

(Another reason why the social-working classes don't mind globalisation is that their jobs won't be the ones being offshored. The manufacturing and the clerical work can go to China and India but you still have to have teachers, doctors, lawyers (though not legal secretaries), diversity consultants and anti-racist 5-a-day smoking cessation co-ordinators physically present on UK soil. 'Follow the money' as Marx so rightly said.)

Fly On Home ....

The news of John Martyn's death this afternoon left Laban staring blankly at his workstation for rather longer than the client would appreciate. I knew he'd not been well, but all the same ... how fleeting is the life of a man ! The clear-eyed youth among the chimney-pots on the cover of his first album, where is he ? And where's the clear-eyed youth who bought his music ? I grow old ...

It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Ever since hearing 'Dusty' on the Island sampler "You Can All Join In" a very long time ago I've loved his voice and guitar. Then he became the soundtrack to one strand of the alternative 70s lifestyle after 'Solid Air', playing accoustic through a range of effects boxes and developing a slurred, blurred, stretched way with lyrics which matched his slurred, blurred, splintered audience beautifully (can anyone remember his show around 1977 in the heart of Northern hippiedom, Hebden Bridge ?). By the time of 'One World' his accoustic didn't sound much like an accoustic any more.

When he split up with his wife Beverley he produced three beautiful, aching songs of loss on 'Grace and Danger' - Sweet Little Mystery, Hurt In Your Heart and Baby Please Come Home. Why none of these - especially Hurt In Your Heart - ever got covered and turned into a million-selling smash I'll never know. Some boy band really ought to take a crack at it - if the singer can sing he just can't lose with a song like that.



Beautiful people - John and Beverley Martyn in 1970. From Dutch fan site Big Muff.

I suppose I should be drawing morals about the lifestyle of my youth and the evils of drink and the other accoutrements thereof. But I haven't the heart. Fly on home, John.

Climbed on the train
The window rolled down
So did a tear
And seeing you cry
Was like the very first time, when we parted
In the dews and dusty streets.

There alone I felt the station on my feet
Fly on home
And away on down the line
You'll put your face into the wind
Let your tears fly home.

I trod on my way
Past the silly girlie who looked at my shoes
Climbing the street
The evening shuddered in my coat
And I looked where I had been.

The train, a snake,
A chain of people on the rails
Fly on home
Like a nothing breath of sunshine
The twinkle of the houses
Let your tears fly home
Put your face into the wind
Little girlie, let your tears fly home
Let your tears fly home.

(tributes at Shuggy, Mick Hartley, Tracey Thorn, The Croft, South London Soap Opera, Clive Crook)

Jelly-Bellied Flag-Flappers

Remember when Gordon Brown started wrapping himself in the Union Flag ?

Remember Keith Ajegbo's British Lessons For English Children ?

Looks like implementation time is upon us. A correspondent tells me that this is being rolled out to Year 7s - as part of English, would you believe.




Being British means not talking about it, oh foolish ones. Or, as Prospect Magazine's contributors put it in relation to "British values", when you've got them you don't need to list them, and if you need to list them then you no longer have them.

To quote a great Indian writer :

Their years forbade them even to shape their thoughts clearly to themselves. They felt savagely that they were being outraged by a fat man who considered marbles a game.

And so he worked towards his peroration--which, by the way, he used later with overwhelming success at a meeting of electors--while they sat, flushed and uneasy, in sour disgust. After many, many words, he reached for the cloth-wrapped stick and thrust one hand in his bosom. This--this was the concrete symbol of their land--worthy of all honour and reverence! Let no boy look on this flag who did not purpose to worthily add to its imperishable lustre. He shook it before them--a
large calico Union Jack, staring in all three colors, and waited for the thunder of applause that should crown his effort.

They looked in silence. They had certainly seen the thing before--down at the coastguard station, or through a telescope, half-mast high when a brig went ashore on Braunton Sands; above the roof of the Golf-club, and in Keyte's window, where a certain kind of striped sweetmeat bore it in paper on each box. But the College never displayed it; it was no part of the scheme of their lives; the Head had never alluded to it; their fathers had not declared it unto them. It was a matter shut up, sacred and apart. What, in the name of everything caddish, was he driving at, who waved that horror before their eyes? Happy thought! Perhaps he was drunk.

The Head saved the situation by rising swiftly to propose a vote of thanks, and at his first motion, the school clapped furiously, from a sense of relief ...

They discussed the speech in the dormitories. There was not one dissentient voice. Mr. Raymond Martin, beyond question, was born in a gutter, and bred in a board-school, where they played marbles. He was further (I give the barest handful from great store) a Flopshus Cad, an Outrageous Stinker, a Jelly-bellied Flag-flapper (this was Stalky's contribution), and several other things which it is not seemly to put down.

(from Stalky and Co)

Atkinson Grimshaw Paintings ...

here

He's At It Again ...

Dr (now apparently Professor) Steven 'Ludi' Simpson (see here and here) is at it again. There's an abstract here.

Race relations in Britain are under threat from a series of ill-informed myths, according to a new book by North West experts. Repeated “falsehoods” about immigration are promoting racial disharmony, the academics behind the research said. Professor Ludi Simpson and Dr Nissa Finney from the University of Manchester said there was “no evidence whatsoever” for the existence of race ghettos in the UK.

Well, as we've seen with the ludicrous one's earlier work, it's all down to the definitions. No one thinks there are ghettos in the original sense of the word - a section of town where one group is forced to live. But if you want statistical demolition of straw men, Simpson's your man. I'm not saying the figures he quotes are wrong - although you can never quite be sure of someone with such an obvious political agenda, I'm presuming he's not actually fiddling the stats. In fact you can pick up some quite useful stuff from his work - this presentation, for example (to a local authority conference) has got one or two interesting things sandwiched among the self-promotion. It's in the definition and interpretation that we'd disagree.

Professor Simpson, a population expert, said: “The truth is that Britain’s so-called ghettos are diverse areas both ethnically and socially where no one ethnic group dominates and that is true of East Lancashire. By propagating myths using bogus and alarmist interpretations of population change, individuals are inadvertently promoting racial segregation.”

Dr Finney added: “The only concentrations which resemble anything like ghettos are of white people. The average white person lives in an area which has more than 94 per cent white people in it. British Pakistanis, for example, live in areas which on average have 26 per cent Pakistani residents.”

Those with high blood pressure are advised to avoid the 'myths according to the study' at the end of the article.

I must say Dr Nissa looks rather a sweetie. I could forgive her any number of dodgy statistical interpretations. But of course where she works that kind of thing does your career no harm at all, in fact is pretty much compulsory, and nobody minds - as long as the "bogus interpretations of population change" serve the correct agenda. Who would you rather told you comforting lies about diversity, Dr Nissa :



or Steven Simpson ?