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Posts Tagged ‘A United Kingdom’

The starting point for debating the Honours System currently, comes from the decision to remove the Knighthood awarded to Fred Goodwin during his time at the helm of RBS. Of course, RBS as we all now know collapsed into a pile of dog’s turd that had to be rescued with a £42 billion bailout by the taxpayer because of poor management.

The then ‘Sir Fred’ fought tooth and nail to hold on to a ridiculously generous pension arrangement on leaving RBS which he very reluctantly agreed to hand back half of, eventually. It is easy to vilify all Bankers but there is a case to be answered in a ‘narrow sense’ when it seems that employees of these institutions have enriched themselves greatly whilst the people who own them, the shareholders, have seen their investments fall in value. Whatever one may think, that game is surely truly up.

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I was quite struck by a couple of pieces in The Telegraph by Benedict Brogan. In the first of which he was giving his “take” on the tactics being employed by David Cameron to remain in power after the 2015 General Election.http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100134556/why-wont-ministers-speak-up-for-david-cameron/

Whilst I found his article interesting and in a sense, “timely”, I am not too sure that I agree with it all in the sense that whilst for now, that may be an ‘intelligent guess’, reality means that as it is as all such things, a moving target or a “World in Motion…”, and how the game plays out over the next 3 years, may well be very different…

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With the UK currently having the rotating chair for the European Court of Human Rights and David Cameron visiting it to deliver a speech to all 47 members with the theme of reforming the way it operates, there is a fluttering in the Dove Cots of the “European Elite” ever prepared to defend their entrenched positions of privilege. As with many things, the actual “truth” behind the operation of the ECHR and our own, one suspects, very badly drafted Human Rights Act may well be fairly complex and difficult to unravel if left only to the Lawyers.

However, the political reality is all too apparent as the recent decision that the radical cleric Abu Qatada cannot be deported to Jordan where he comes from, is a case in point. David Cameron or even Ed Miliband if he were the current British Prime Minister, cannot ignore the political realities even when you warn that “Hard Cases make bad laws…”

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I suppose and in often strange ways, we sometimes discover “the fatal flaw” in most ideas. Having started my commercial life as a designer concerned with engineering and production, there was a very amusing story about a “new mousetrap”, I will not bore you with the tale but the ‘punch line’ was quite simple:

The basic concept behind the design was obviously flawed and when called upon to deal with this, the designer instead of having a total rethink, just “improved” upon or refined his own flawed original concept. To engineers, this was all very amusing because it was something that we had to deal with on a daily basis and knew that it was far too easy to be led astray. I have an awful feeling that Scottish independence is the same…

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The other day Ed Balls admitted that if Labour came to power they would not promise to reverse the cuts in public expenditure currently being made by the Coalition Government. Frankly, the only comment one can make to that is “About time !” The reality is if and when Labour next comes to power, the political weather and economic climate will have changed, inevitably.

Although right now both this and the World generally face some difficult financial issues, these are perhaps just symptoms of other problems rather than the core disease. For a country like the UK, we are probably looking at a long term decline that started during the First world War which coincides with the rise of the Labour Party. One could speculate that solving this decline could also coincide with its (Labour’s), decline just as Communism collapsed with the Berlin Wall.

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It is quite amusing to see the current furore in the Media over the SNP and a Referendum on “Scotland leaving the Union”. It is akin to the nonsense expressed by Germany and France over “preserving the Euro at any costs…”except apparently doing what is required immediately to do so. My question in both cases, keeping the Union with Scotland and keeping the Euro alive is WHY ?

If Scottish people are feeling so “inferior” to their English counterparts that the “only solution” in their minds is total Independence from the UK, then, so be it. If Germany is far too successful and therefore in effect impoverishes the “Southern Europeans”, why not split the Euro membership into two, it is only common sense after all. But politicians do get misled far too often for no doubt for well intentioned reasons but in the end mislead themselves…

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Oh Lord, here we go again, yet another numb nuts politician trying to make a name for themselves by “Reforming the House of Lords”, this time its Nick Clegg. One day it might occur to the inhabitants of the House of Commons that just as a Liberal Government tried and failed prior to the outbreak of WWI, so too has every attempt since and for good reasons, the Lords works as it is.

This doesn’t mean that the Lords hasn’t been changed over time, it has and in many ways as is right and proper, like all living things, institutions need to continually evolve to survive and adapt to changing circumstances. The problem with the brainless reformers from the Commons is they want “radical change” so that they can say; “I did this…I bent this to My will !” How idiotic can you get ?

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At the ‘turning of yet another Year’ there was a really interesting article in The Economist recently about the continuing phenomena of yet further increases in US productivity, it is well worth a read even if it raises more questions than answers : http://www.economist.com/node/21542211

Of course it led me to consider a personal “theme” I have been developing and that I feel will become ever more important from 2012 onwards, right across the “Old” Western industrialised economies and the World at large, “Productivity” in the old sense, is no longer any kind of solution, new thinking is needed.

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The “in between Christmas and the New Year” does produce some interesting if rather odd articles in the “Media” that are not current news and have been sitting on some Editor’s shelf, waiting to be trotted out for times such as this “holidays and no actual staff currently working…” The following article about building a Heathrow replacement in the Thames Estuary being a prime example: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/nicholas-faith-boris-island-must-never-be-able-to-get-off-the-ground-6281804.html

But all that said, it did provoke a mild stirring in the grey cells and some following thoughts…

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A couple of recent stories, which may seem rather disconnected at first glance set me thinking about the way politicians “manipulate the truth” and whilst it is easy for the electorate to condemn them as “Liars prepared to say anything to get elected…” The real question I suspect should be asked of ourselves: “Are we being realistic in our demands and expectations of them ? Do we even listen properly or is our hearing both selfish and highly selective ?

There were two ‘stories’ this week that highlighted this for me, the Unison strike over pension benefits and Angela Merkel’s speech to the German Parliament promising to save the Euro etc… To my mind behind both of these events sits a damn big lie or, a rather large Elephant sitting over there in the corner of the room…

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