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Posts Tagged ‘A United Kingdom’

There were a number of interesting articles in The Economist on Scottish Independence and one was quite amusing: http://www.economist.com/node/21552572 “The economics of home rule: Scotland could probably go it alone now, but the economics of independence are steadily worsening”.

Quite hilariously I got involved in a “comments war” in the reader’s comments section but I must confess that whilst Scots Nats always have a chip on their shoulders, I really didn’t realise what had set them off until the next day. Because I read on line, I didn’t see the “tongue in cheek” map of Scotland the Economist had put on its cover which along with the headline “It will cost you…” also renamed it Skintland…

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Although I am sure that something will spark me off again, sooner rather than later, I find our current political scene amazingly flat, totally boring and not worth too much effort to write about. I even feel sorry for the Media struggling to create drama out of very little, Greg’s Pasties and so on, how boring, boring boring.

We have the Local Elections which should see a fairly big swing to Labour. This will not be due to the ‘charms’ of Ed Miliband but rather that the public normally likes to vote against the incumbent party in Government when it comes to the mid term Local Elections. Of course the “buggeration factor” will be what happens to the LibDem vote…

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My Father used to joke: “When I was 16, I thought that my Father was the most ignorant man on the planet. By the time I was 20, I found it amazing just how much he had learned in 4 years.” We all as teenagers think we know it all, that we have “discovered sex” and our parents could not possibly understand anything about it…

It is in this sense that the furore about “Gay Marriage” totally mirrors the idiocy of politicians ever keen “to do something” and blind to reality and a proper appreciation of the past. Miss Featherstone says the Government has a right to change the definition of marriage and pledges to challenge those who “want to leave tradition alone”, which amounts to one of the silliest things any politician could say because, “It is not in your gift either Madam, the definition belongs to our culture, not Parliament !”

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A journalist I like John Rentoul writes a regular piece for The Independent on Sunday and normally he is of a high standard but this week, whilst the execution was poor, some of the ideas and themes behind it were quite good and thought provoking. Read it for yourself here: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/john-rentoul/john-rentoul-the-jelly-pm-may-wobble-yet-7174366.html

The essence of what John Rentoul was writing about is trying to “define” David Cameron in terms of what he stands for and in this, describes him as a jelly that is yet to set which would go down quite well with the average ‘Lefty reader’ of the Independent but I suspect, rather misses the whole point concerning the current political scene where political dogma is not welcome. In this sense and like all good politicians, David Cameron is a man of his times.

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Whether Scotland chooses to stay in the Union or leave has fairly rapidly become one of those issues that to the average inhabitant of the UK, likely seems both self indulgent and parochial to the deluded wishes of the politicians of Scotland. Even if I were Scottish and given the current economic circumstances, would this seem the most pressing issue to be dealt with right now ? I rather suspect not.

From the perspective of the rest of the UK, Scotland holding a referendum on the issue tomorrow would be a good idea but, from the perspective of the SNP, they want to string it out as long as possible to ensure the best possible outcome for the SNP. I must say that if I were a Scot that believed in independent Scotland, I would want the vote right now not, later because I would see it as a national rather than a party political issue. Either we are ready to go or, we are not and if not, why not ?

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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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