Basic certificate in UK citizenship

Elementary Level

Paper 1: Numeracy, objectivity and healthy scepticism

Q1. (80% of marks) An article in the Times reported that a government survey of drinking had found that alcohol had become 69% more affordable between 1980 and 2008. Discuss.

A. Without further information not given in the question one cannot say whether this loose phraseology is the product of the government’s standard of analysis or the current standard of reporting at the Times.

The obvious first question is: 69% of what? It is a reasonable assumption from the data that an arbitrary definition of alcohol affordability has been postulated and given an initial value, based on data for 1980, of say 100. It would then appear that the corresponding value of the index, recalculated for 2008, is 169, which would indeed be a 69% increase - in the index.

Next, to make a proper objective assessment of the significance, if any, of such a finding we need to know how the affordability is defined. Again, one can only postulate and a reasonable assumption would be that researchers have investigated typical patterns of income and spending in 1980, taking into account the then prevalent wages and salaries for typical occupations, the level of taxes on those wages and salaries and the prices at the time for say a pint of bitter, a bottle of chardonnay or a litre of gin. A measure such as the price of a pint as a proportion of disposable income might then be devised. Or it might be the number of pints that could be bought with a week’s disposable income. And here we immediately hit a common confusion when results of such research are quoted in percentage increases. If alcohol has become cheaper relative to other ‘discretionary’ spending, which is presumably, in qualitative terms, what ‘more affordable’ means, then the first measure will show a reduction in the proportion of disposable income needed to buy a pint. However the second measure will show an increase in the number of pints that the disposable income will buy. Only one of the two will show a change of 69% and the second will be the larger. It is therefore likely, in its efforts to make a case for the restrictive actions that will follow, that the government has chosen the second measure.

To further test the official analysis we also need to know the definition of disposable income – assuming that this is indeed the basis of the ‘affordability’ conclusion. One hopes, though one hardly dares assume, that it starts from a basis of taxed income and that essential spending is then subtracted. What is considered essential? Has this changed between 1980 and 2008? Where does council tax figure in the calculation? What alcohol prices were used in the comparisons – a cheap six-pack of Belgian lager sold as a loss leader in a supermarket or a pint of real bitter in a pub struggling to make a living in the face of the smoking ban without degenerating into a pool hall and food outlet? What sort of typical income was used as the basis – a City banker, a man working as the only breadwinner with two children and a mortgage, a professional man trying to keep up with the increases in school fees and golf club subscriptions, or a pensioner whose council tax takes up an ever larger proportion of his meagre income?

The only conclusion consistent with rigorous analysis is that the government has commissioned a fudge, designed to make us feel guilty and to act as a basis for further taxes on alcohol and restrictions to individual freedom.

Q2. (20% of marks) On the basis of the content and conclusion of the report do you consider legislation to control alcohol affordability and consumption would be justified or workable in a democracy?

A. The history of similar efforts in other democracies and in other areas is not encouraging. The extreme measure of prohibition was enacted in the US and later abandoned after it had spawned a significant extension of criminal activities (as is happening with banned drugs in many countries now) and in the UK the attempt to restrict the flow of discretionary spending on foreign holidays in the 1960s merely accelerated it by giving encouragement to the package holiday industry as a means of reducing the impact of the regulations.

However, since it is a fundamental principle of New Labour that the innocent must be punished along with the guilty, legislation is to be expected. It has already happened with smoking, with the same effect. It is most likely to take the form of hefty tax increases (they need the money anyway), compulsory label information on units of alcohol and endless messages about the health risks as if, as with smoking, any drinker can still be unaware of them. It may also involve moves to control sales to minors or act against irresponsible retailers and publicans. These will merely have the effect of making life more difficult as well as expensive for the responsible drinker or the person who simply appreciates a good pint.

A good week for democracy

And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

He chortled in his joy.

Chortling was not enough. I yelled with joy and bounced up and down in my chair, probably wrecking the springs. It took me several minutes to calm down. I am still glowing with delight, as if I had just broken 80 (again, I might add).

The Jabberwock is an apt allegory for the EU, conveying the right degree of doom combined with something weird, unreal, incomprehensible and frightening. I was in Ireland all last week as the final stages of the referendum campaign unfolded, complete with the by then merciful moratorium on any comment about it for the final 24 hours before voting. There were various arguments from the No camp, supported only by Sinn Fein of the main political parties, some valid, some rather spurious but a recurring theme was that voters should not vote for something they don’t understand. The government, which spent far more taxpayers’ money on campaigning for a Yes vote than the privately funded No campaign needed to make its successful case, happily contributed to this by issuing every household a copy, or presumably a précis, of the treaty text. Gunshots and bleeding feet come to mind. The treaty is as impenetrable as a Salman Rushdie novel. It takes over 67,000 words to make its dubious points. The US Constitution, including amendments, needs only 8,000 and can be understood by just about anyone. The Irish on the whole use our priceless language better than we do and have rightly objected to this insult to their common sense and values, in effect saying that if there is a good case to be made why can it not be more clearly explained? In other words, what is the government trying to hide? They even promised under pressure to use the Irish veto at the World Trade Organisation to prevent any agricultural deal that would be ‘bad for the farmers’. The farmers’ leaders seemed happy with this fudge but I heard nobody ask whether they would ask the farmers each time whether they wanted the veto used or not. This ‘trust us, we know best’ attitude is typical of most governments and in spades of the EU itself but it seems not to have fooled the Irish farmers.

On the evening news the BBC treated it a bit like a surprise result in the Euro 2008 football: not in keeping with the form book, now what happens next? Channel 4 gave us an interview with a remarkable politician I have not come across before. Gisela Stuart is the German-born Labour MP for Edgbaston, a drafter of the EU constitution, wrote an article for the Daily Telegraph criticising Gordon Brown for denying us a referendum and understands democracy - a lot of contradictions there. She is also articulate and is willing to give a straight answer to a simple question. Asked whether the treaty is now dead she said yes. Asked whether the EU has a problem with the ballot box she said yes. She berated the EU president for saying everything will still go ahead even before the official result was announced and said he is in denial. Right every time Gisela. The way in which other countries like France and Germany have jumped in to belittle the problem they now have and by implication blame Ireland is disgraceful.

All this will perhaps give Gordon Brown something else to think about as he tries to stop us noticing that he only got his 42 day detention bill through the Commons with the help of nine DUP votes and Ann Widdecome and to kid us that no deals were done in exchange. The resignation of David Davis may have confused David Cameron a bit but he’ll work it out in the end. Brown’s efforts to belittle it are hypocrisy. He firstly knows that Davis will campaign not just on the 42 day issue but on all the areas in which this government has eroded our rights and freedoms and does not relish the embarrassment this will cause and secondly he simply does not understand anyone who could do out of principle something that could harm his career prospects and will have no idea how to conduct the debate. More fun to come there with any luck. I don’t think Labour in general or Brown in particular will be crowing about this for long. The only Labour politician to come out of the 42 day business with any credit is Jacqui Smith and this despite, not because of, being in charge of the department sponsoring it. Matthew d’Ancona, after interviewing her for the Spectator, wrote ‘English, female, articulate, a human being: suddenly Labour MPs are taking a very close look indeed at their Home Secretary’. I thought the order of his adjectives interesting and significant.

Boris to the rescue

The most cheerful week in politics since David Cameron, at his first prime minister’s questions, wrongfooted Tony Blair by offering Tory help to get his education bill passed. It started with the miserable Gordon having to admit he had gone badly wrong in removing the 10p tax band, something he did out of over confidence and vanity and that was exposed within minutes as a fraud that his successor as chancellor would be unlikely to thank him for. It continued with the local elections offering up such delights as a Tory council in Kingston upon Hull. It was so bad for Labour that even their spin doctors could find no way of putting a gloss on it.

Then very late on Friday came the best bit. A properly contested mayoral election in London was overdue and a novelty. This was real American-style politics: two candidates, neither really a mainstream politician, outside the control of their parties though strongly backed by them, slugging it out for a high profile job that is very much what the holder makes of it. It was certainly Ken Livingstone’s true metier and I feel sure it will prove Johnson’s too. Long seen as a loose cannon in national politics and as something of a buffoon in public life in general he, like his predecessor, leaves few people neutral in their opinion of him. As a result we were treated to a campaign in which the characters of the candidates had as much influence on voters as their policies and certainly more than the party labels attached to them and this is as it should be. In such a contest Livingston was a loser from the start against a man quite unembarrassed, and largely unhurt, by various public gaffes and a very competent and entertaining TV performer. The turnout was a third higher than four years ago and it was probably this, if the extra voters consisted, as I expect, of Tories who had had no faith in previous candidates their party had endorsed, that swung it. Was it another case of the power of hope in politics, the appeal to the disillusioned and apathetic to help reverse a spiral of cronyism and mediocrity? Was that why the FTSE index suddenly went up 128 points after barely moving all week?

There is a sense that the cavalry has arrived and now Boris has to deliver. One good sign is that he has made a priority of cutting ‘so-called minor’ crime, particularly on public transport and has made his wishes clear to Sir Ian Blair, the chief of the Metropolitan Police. This is welcome both as an aim and because while he has no direct authority over Blair he is apparently prepared to make life difficult for the Home Secretary, who does, if Blair does not respond. Since Blair sometimes gives the impression of seeing himself more as a politician than a policeman this could be fun.

All in all a good week. London will be a more cheerful place from today and I think England will be too.

Must write to the Times about it

Don’t bother. It won’t get published unless a) you are an MP, bishop or one of the remaining peers with access to the House of Lords, b) you are exercising what amounts to a right of reply on behalf of an organisation that has been offended, whether justifiably or not, by an article or another letter or c) you have a singularly unoriginal contribution to make to some ‘educated classes’ discussion on unwelcome Americanisms or alternatives to the cuckoo as the first sign of spring and the bottom right hand corner is short of even these makeweights.

I suppose a hundred years ago writers of letters to the Times were mostly known to each other and were using its pages almost like groups of a like mind use blogs today. They would write from the Athenaeum or even the Albermarle in the knowledge that by the time the next day’s pre-luncheon whisky came round (the post was quick enough in those days not to need email) their views would be known to everyone that mattered. The letters editor needed only a copy of Debrett or Burke to decide who to leave out and could probably rely on the subject matter being confined to hunting, military strategy and the iniquity of any kind of social reform.

If I ran the paper I would instruct the letters editor that first of all he would see no letter until a minion had separated its text from its writer’s name and address, leaving only a reference number to enable the two halves to be reunited in the event of publication. He would then judge the texts on merit, topicality and originality alone. The trouble is the present incumbent (is that a tautology? – answer no when incumbent is used as a noun, I’ve just looked it up) either has little good material to work with or is in thrall to categories a, b and c above. I do my best to supply him (sorry, him/her) with appropriate topical, pithy missives but with no recognition to date. Meanwhile the most awful drivel continues to get published, particularly under heading c. I sometimes wonder if the letters go via the BBC first.

My most recent efforts were first to suggest that we should adopt a national oath of allegiance before one is foisted on us by the EU (too subversive I suppose) and then to point out that Roy Hattersley had misinterpreted Chesterton’s poem The Secret People by suggesting that the reason the English have not yet roused themselves and made themselves heard was because of their innate English reserve and modesty. I said that the real reason is that we are slow to come to the boil but the time might be coming near. Hattersley’s craven effort was in an article for which he was presumably paid, adding to my ire.

However one man hit the jackpot recently, a reverend whose letter about how certain Muslim countries prohibit the import of Christian material was printed on successive days. He deserved it. I expect him to make bishop any day.

The ten commandments of New Labour

And the Lord spake unto the children of Britain and said:

1. We are the God that is New Labour, which brought you out of the house of the Tories, out of the land of sleaze. You shall have no other God before New Labour.
2. You shall have no idols but the National Health Service and shall not worship at the altars of any other form of healing, for New Labour is a jealous God and will visit the sins of the unfaithful onto their children even unto the third and fourth generation of those who express self reliance, independence or initiative.
3. You shall not take the names of New Labour nor the National Health Service in vain, nor mock them nor criticise them nor hold them to be in any way less than perfect, for New Labour will not hold them guiltless that take the name of New Labour and its munificence in vain.
4. You shall keep holy the appointed day of May in honour and celebration of the heroes of the class struggle and comprehensive mixed ability education. You shall not propose nor observe any other festive days unless in like manner of honour and celebration and shall be damned with cardinal sin if you espouse any holiday or celebration that is or might be construed to be a triumphalist anniversary of any military excess such as the battles of Agincourt or Trafalgar or the commanders of the imperialist forces involved.
5. You shall honour the father and mother of New Labour, the blessed Tony and Gordon of sacred memory, that your days may long continue in receipt of the blessings of the National Health Service and the ten pound winter festive season bonus.
6. You shall not kill any fox nor other mammal unless by humane methods and without pursuit by dogs.
7. You shall not adulterate New Labour beliefs with visions of individual choice or liberty or freedom to mock or criticise those of unusual habits or behaviour. You must nevertheless accept with a pure heart and closed mind whatever indignities or injustice might be wrought against you by such bodies and tribes as have been given licence by equality, human rights or health and safety legislation.
8. You shall where beneficial to New Labour steal from dissenting parties such policies and initiatives as may be likely to win votes. You shall not take political donations from the faithful but shall disguise them as a loan.
9. You shall not bear witness against New Labour nor succour nor encourage those who seek to expose or criticise New Labour, lest you find yourself banished to the regions of outer darkness and the damnation of your employment prospects.
10. You shall not covet your neighbour’s disability allowance, nor his place in the queue for a hip replacement, nor his public service pension, nor his carbon footprint, nor his seat on the board of a quango, nor his grace and favour residence, nor his free holidays, nor his lecture tours, nor his second Jaguar nor anything that is his.

These are the commandments of New Labour said the Lord: observe ye them and avoid the sins of the Devil, being smoking, drinking, eating and the burning of fossil fuels, and New Labour will provide all your third-worldly needs through the miracles of wind power and colour coded food labelling.

It may be art but . . .

I am not a great reader. It stems from a very low boredom threshold. If my attention is not captured after a few pages, a chapter at most, the book is unlikely to be finished. This trait (the second t is pronounced in English) first came to light at school where I was required to take on Great Expectations, which some claim is the best of Dickens’s novels. Since I was under orders and it was a set text I struggled on for all of 125 pages before I dug in my heels and asked for a different task. To his eternal credit the head of English, who later appeared in advertisements for the teaching profession under the slogan ‘the last man to answer all Jeremy Paxman’s questions’, allowed me to work on a biography of Sir Isaac Newton instead. Newton is far more interesting than Dickens.

Despite this the walls of our house, those not lined with M’s pictures of boats, are lined with books. Many I have had for forty years or more and have read more than once. They are a varied collection because I read for fun, entertainment and information. The literary editor of the Times, which last week published a list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945, and his team seem to read for erudition, social awareness, ethnic solidarity and as participation in an art form. Many readers will have measured their own erudition by going through the list to see how many were familiar to them. I did too and failed, scoring as follows: heard of (meaning I could as a minimum identify the person as a writer), 25; read some of (at least a few chapters and not counting S Rushdie, who comfortably failed the first page test), about 7 or 8; finished a book by, 6. As some consolation these, Roald Dahl (16), Ian Fleming (14), Kingsley Amis (9), George Orwell (2), C S Lewis (11) and Anthony Powell (20) were all in the top end of the list and I bet the last one surprised you. The only one I felt I should have read and have not was John le Carre.

My own list would be based on different criteria from those of the Times, which chose style, influence, longevity and sales, though I felt some had a fair way to go yet to qualify under longevity, several quoted novels having been published only in this century. I would choose a combination of quality of writing (different, I suspect, from what the Times meant by style) and entertainment value. Clearly Orwell got his second place for influence and longevity for his style is hardly racy. He earns his place in my view for his essays on ‘Politics and the English language’ and ‘The prevention of literature’ more than 1984 or Animal Farm. In the first essay he lays out his six rules for clear, unpretentious writing, ignored by or unknown to some of the fifty, who get praised for being genre-crossing or infused with transforming power, displaying consistent integrity and so on. Spare us. If you see the novel as an art form you suffer the same delusion as the French cinema industry.

Published authors displaying both quality of writing and entertainment value are fewer than the number of published, accepted and often praised authors. My list would contain several writers who would receive no consideration from the literary editor’s team because they trade in some lowly, despised genre. We can start, because he is fresh in my mind, with George Macdonald Fraser who died a few days ago with the chronicles of the entertainingly despicable Flashman sadly unfinished. Fraser’s narrative touch was sometimes reminiscent of P G Wodehouse, than which there is no higher praise. To combine this with serious military history was brilliant. To Fraser, without implying an order of merit, I would add: Leslie Thomas, for being able to bring true life pathos to a good bawdy tale; Tom Sharpe, for fiendishly wicked angles on the targets of his satire; Roger Woddis, for showing that poetry can still rhyme and scan; Frederick Forsyth (first three books only), Len Deighton, and Bernard Levin, if only for The Pendulum Years (well they said writers, not novelists). My shelves also house William Cooper, Nigel Balchin, E F Benson ( I’ve never read any but M loves them, keeping me awake at night with her cackling), John Wyndham, David Lodge, Nicholas Monsarrat (no, not The Cruel Sea, The Nylon Pirates) and Adrian Mole. Even Nevil Shute, whom the Thunderer would despise utterly but who could tell a good tale better than most and was one of few who even mentioned real flying, let alone understood it. Not an airport novel or bonkbuster in the list - is the Times saying I am not well read?

Browsing, I came across the appropriate summing up quite by accident in the words of the Master – of the entire twentieth century and since, never mind the puny post-1945 lot: ‘. . . she wrote this novel and it was well received by the intelligentsia, who notoriously enjoy the most frightful bilge’. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

The lights are going out, except in France

I remember a newspaper cartoon from the fifties or sixties. It showed a group of emaciated people huddled around a fire at the mouth of a cave, while in the background could be seen the crumbling remains of a city, its idle factories with smokeless chimneys and broken windows. The group is dressed in animal skins, primitive tools lie around and the oldest of them explains: ‘well, first they shut down all the nuclear power stations’.

The eternal and increasingly tedious energy debate comes down in the end to electricity. We need enough electricity, always available, at a reasonable price, to fuel our industry, commerce, health, hobbies and leisure. The debate should be about how to supply this now and in the short, medium and long term without unacceptable harm to the planet. In fact it is less a debate than a lecture from the pious, self-righteous evangelistic green lobby.

For the eco-fanatics look only at the second part of the problem: any harm to the planet is unacceptable. Yet their solutions will not keep the lights on in the short term, never mind in twenty years time. I submit that one of the fundamental duties of a government, after national security and a sound currency, is to keep the turbines running – enough turbines. Demand for electricity can only rise as the population and aspirations for a better standard of living increase. If generating capacity does not increase to match it we will have the same problems as have been seen recently in California and South Africa. China seems determined not to suffer, but at the cost of building a new coal fired power station every month or so – provide the power, forget the planet and lock up the yoghurt knitters. In Britain, we have a rapidly growing population, are running down the nuclear sector, which provides 19% of the power, and any new conventional power station, let alone a nuclear one, is vigorously resisted by the environment lobby. ‘Renewables’ – a silly name, we’re looking for inexhaustibles – are simply not being installed fast enough to cope and suffer from some existing problems, such as transmission losses between remote offshore wind or wave farms and population centres, and some new ones such as not knowing when the wind will blow. On top of that we already import electricity from France, nuclear generated of course. No doubt the French would be glad to cut off the supply next time we breach their diplomatic sensitivities or their farmers are offended by the import of some decent lamb. Or maybe just when they need it all themselves.

I resume, following a coincidental but timely boost to my argument in the shape of a power failure. On a mild, calm, dry day the voltage was abruptly reduced and anything sensitive to it stopped for an hour or so. This is common where we live, being as much as ten miles from a cathedral city and barely within spitting distance of a trunk road. We know exactly where to find a torch and my wife has an ample supply of candles and matches always on hand. A small generator, just enough for the central heating, sits in the garage (a false sense of security this one, being powered by the only Honda engine I know that absolutely will not start).

Yet the government, despite its announcement yesterday, has no clear plan. It is almost too late, even if the objectors were summarily overridden, to get enough new nuclear capacity going in time; wind and wave power comes in small increments and will not keep up; trying to blame the consumer with the tale that 8% of power goes on appliances on standby (a figure I simply do not believe) and urging him to change his habits is pointless. The price alone is enough to make us take all reasonable economies. The gas that fuels many of the power stations will one day have to come from Russia and if I joke about the French cutting us off I do not joke about the Russians – it has already happened. To fail to provide for self sufficiency in electricity is traitorously irresponsible. It cannot be left to committees, focus groups and blinkered special interests. It needs executive action, untainted by electoral considerations. Without it we shall before long find ourselves with an electricity supply that is as reliable and predictable as rainfall in the Australian bush.

Smoke and mirrors

As a regular visitor to Ireland I have been delighted with the no smoking laws that were introduced a few years ago. One can eat and drink in clean air and go home with clean clothes, with the further advantage (yes advantage) that my wife will now come with me to the pub, for she is happy to drive me home, having been put off in the past, and in England, by being even more sensitive to the smell than I am. There was the quaint quirk of being allowed to smoke on the boat only until it entered Irish territorial waters.

Now, from a Sunday morning a few months ago (at 6am to avoid confusing Saturday night owls), the same rules apply in England, the last country in the Union to introduce them. And I find myself with mixed feelings. It comes down to the old problem of the English way of doing things. We seem constitutionally incapable of finding a middle ground, of agreeing to differ, and most of all of trusting anyone to use their common sense. So now every workplace and public building that is deemed an enclosed place must prohibit smoking and eject those who dare to. The definition of enclosed space has been tightly and comprehensively drawn, including company cars (unless a soft top with the roof down), private cars on company business (a workplace), bus shelters that have sides and even the vast expanse of King’s Cross station. I understand that the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff is also covered when the roof is closed, if you follow me. A further twist became apparent the other day when I attended a dinner at which the loyal toast was proposed but without the traditional addendum.

As an aside, the law has led to a new word, smokefree, entering the English language. It will not be going into my personal spell checker additions any more than will its cousin freefrom, that one now sees labelling the aisles of supermarkets.

One might have thought that a universal ban like this would need to be stated once, with a few reminders perhaps at its inception and would then become part of the public’s background knowledge, like driving on the left or not looking for gas leaks with a naked light. Children would learn about it at their mother’s knee (smoking allowed so long as the instruction took place in a private house) and be fully conversant with the rules by the age of five or so. But no, under New Labour you cannot tell people something only once – they would have been useless in occupied France – and every building, even churches, must now have a prominent notice at each entrance and more indoors. One result is a rash of ugly home made signs, run up on an inkjet printer and crudely laminated to protect them from the rain and fixed to doorposts with a drawing pin. Our pub has one such while inside there are no longer ashtrays in which to put one’s empty crisp or nut packets. This pub has few customers and a landlord who smokes heavily, giving me my only laugh in relation to the ban when I passed by and saw him standing outside having a quiet puff safe in the knowledge that he was unlikely to be keeping a customer from his pint.

The new rules are not there to discourage smokers, whatever the do-gooders may say. No smoker, except perhaps a deaf, blind, illiterate hermit, can possibly be in any doubt that smoking is likely to damage his health. Those who want to smoke will, if perhaps to a lesser extent by reason of reduced opportunity. This is easily demonstrated just outside the main entrance to our local hospital, where the in-patients gather in their dressing gowns, some still attached to their drips, for a restorative drag away from the haunt of the superbug. The authorities have had to move them on, like loitering hoodies in the towns, to enable visitors to get inside unpolluted.

The rules are ostensibly to reduce ‘passive’ smoking, a term coined as a handy shorthand for inhaling other people’s smoke, the risks of which have been much debated even if its unpleasantness is accepted. Since non-smokers cannot be in any less doubt than smokers of the dangers of the noxious weed it follows that, at least for adults in pubs, passive smoking is a largely voluntary activity endured as an accepted risk. Am I being inconsistent in being still firmly with those who would like to be able to visit a smoke free pub and fully supporting workers’ desire, now made a right, for a smoke free workplace while objecting to the draconian, clumsy and bossy way it has been implemented? If not, what is different in Ireland? I think the answer is in the bossiness. While waiting for a bus at Heathrow recently I noticed a no smoking sign (not just a reminder sign but an edict, with text) in the bus shelter. This structure had a roof and one side. The other side and both ends were open. Did it really need to be a non smoking area? In a much more sinister example a Virgin flight to the Caribbean recently was returned to Heathrow after an hour and a half in the air because someone had been detected smoking in a lavatory. Who paid for the wasted fuel and extra landing fee? Could the offender not have been left to the mercy of the local authorities on landing? Or simply locked in?

So once again we are being protected from ourselves, a true hallmark of New Labour. No decision too small that it can’t be taken for us and none of us with enough common sense or initiative that we can be spared the how as well as the what and the why.

Bisques to the fore!

Golf is often cited as a game that enables players of widely different abilities to compete realistically and with broadly equal chances of winning. With every player having a personal handicap rating, based on his form and record against the theoretically perfect scratch score, someone playing off 18 could have a meaningful game with the amateur champion, who might be off plus 4, with no adjustment to the rules (illegal in golf anyway), by being in receipt of 22 strokes. The outcome would not be a foregone conclusion. Such a match would be impossible at, for instance, tennis where the good player would win almost every point unless truly handicapped, such as by having to play left handed, or in diving boots.

In everyday club golf a match between two unequal players requires the better player to give the lesser one a number of strokes equal to the difference in handicaps. This is at least an improvement on the arrangement of a few years ago which gave the lesser player only three quarters of the difference. However the strokes have to be taken at the holes specified on the card. Which holes get which stroke index is decided by the committee, under recommendations from the national golf union. Anyone who has played under this system will have noticed that two things happen in most matches: you have a stroke at a certain hole but go out of bounds and lose the hole by two strokes; or your opponent goes out of bounds and you win the hole without needing the stroke. In either case the stroke is wasted and cannot be used elsewhere. The advantage is always with the better player. Why should the committee decide which holes you get your strokes at? There must be a better way.

There is. It is so simple that I cannot understand why it is not used. You simply take your strokes when you need them. They are called bisques. I believe this is originally a device used in croquet but its adaptation to golf has been long recognised, not least by Bernard Darwin who wrote on the tactics of bisques many years ago in Tee Shots and Others. Contrary to the practice at my club on the rare occasions bisques are used, you do not have to announce your intention to claim the stroke on the tee. This would be little different from the arbitrary allocation according to stroke index. The stroke is taken after the result of the hole is known and must be claimed before leaving the green and you can, if the match has reached a critical stage or you have been too mean or too proud in using your bisques thus far, claim more than one at a time.

Clearly a stroke when you need it is a more powerful weapon than one arbitrarily allocated according to where you are on the course, so it can be argued that the higher handicap player does not need so many of them. In medal play you have to finish each hole and may have to use up some of your handicap allowance on an eight or a nine. In match play you would not normally expend bisques on mitigating such disasters. So I would settle for three quarters of the difference in bisques and would happily offer an opponent the choice between that and the usual arrangement, whether I was giving or receiving the strokes.

A mischievous variation on the bisque is the half bisque (also used in croquet, where you may take the free hit but not use it to score a point). A half bisque may be used to claim a hole that has been halved but they may not be added together, so to use half bisques effectively the higher handicap player must be able to halve a good number of holes on level terms. Bernard Darwin enthused over the tactical possibilities of this one but had only vague ideas on how many half bisques to allow. It needs experiment and statistical data and I challenge enterprising golfers to try it and report the results.

What do we do to deserve these refs?

To the pub in the next village to watch the world cup final. Ours would probably have soccer on and about three people watching. I predicted about a year ago that South Africa would win, thinking then that England would be nowhere and not foreseeing how we would help them by eliminating Australia. That evening, with both Wallabies and All Blacks going out to less fancied sides, will remain one of the sporting godsends of my life.

I have no England shirt so wear a short sleeved red one above a long sleeved white one – the message should be clear. Can’t decide whether to sit in the posh bar with the hooray Henries or the public one with the real people but there is a seat in the posh one so that decides it. Everyone stands for a rousing rendition of the national anthem. I find myself next to a girl in an England shirt with a boyfriend in a South African one. He knows all the rules and evidently has remarkable eyesight – every England infringement instantly spotted and explained. In the interval I ask him where he is from. ‘Pritoria, South Ifrica’, he says. The South Africa part I had guessed.

The first half is close, England trailing because of a couple of silly penalties. At the start of the second we make a super break and score near the left hand corner, a good yard in from touch. A conversion would give us the lead 10-9 and anything could happen. Then the Franco-Irish ref, inappropriately English-French bilingual on this occasion, decides to refer it to the television official. This is an overworked option that should be resisted. It was clearly a try that should have been awarded without hesitation and would have been until the new technology came in. The television official now has the job of trying to find a reason not to award it because either a) he would be out of a job if he gave it or b) the endless replays that would follow and that might suggest he should have denied it would discredit him. There was nothing in the replays that proved Cueto was in touch before the ball was grounded. It was morally a try whatever the technicalities and should never have been referred. This is slavery to the technology. It happens because tacklers seem to have been trained to try to drag the try scorer’s feet into touch as an easier option than tackling him properly. If this goes on wingers will have to be trained to raise their feet as they dive for the line, and if they catch the tackler in the face, so much the better.

I find myself with a depressing sense of déjà vu. In 2003 we had to contend with a ref who kept finding reasons to drag a clearly winning side back with strange calls for scrum infringements against a scrum that were clearly on top. I have heard allegations that he was on a bonus, presumably from the television company, to extend the game into extra time and an even bigger one to take it to a penalty shoot-out. Now we have to contend with a man who had not the moral courage to take a big decision in a close game.

On then to the end and a 15-10 win for South Africa that will go down in the books as 15-6. I have no complaint with the result and am proud that England made it to the final and erased the memory of the 36-0 whitewash. We gave them a good game, lineouts apart, and made them work for it and should be able to go on from there. The team should get the same reception on coming home as they did in 2003, though they will presumably arrive on a French train instead of a BA jumbo. The whole tournament was a huge success, with a side beaten in the pool games reaching the final for the first time and Argentina for me the team of the tournament. The only bad taste is New Zealand apparently trying to renege on the deal to hold a 20 nation tournament in 2011 and reduce it to 16. If they persist with that it should be taken away from them and given to Japan.

So to the presentations and for some reason my evening was most spoiled by the sight of our prime minister in the lineup of dignitaries congratulating the teams. He probably thought it was Britain that had lost.

A quick no-hard-feelings chat with the South African supporter and then I spotted his girlfriend taking off her England shirt to reveal a Springbok one underneath. Ann Boleyn was beheaded for less.

Shower of Scotland

The Scotland vs. New Zealand match last Sunday, part of the rugby world cup, was an occasion to miss by all accounts.

The host nation for the competition is France, a major rugby playing country with ample good stadiums. So why was the match played at Murrayfield? Two pool match were also played in Cardiff, as will be one of the quarter finals. This deal was clearly arrived at as part of ‘negotiation’ to obtain host status for France. This is a disgrace and has been made worse by giving, or selling, the 2011 world cup to New Zealand when it should have gone to Japan. Playing matches outside the host country spoils the homogeneity of the competition and is an unreasonable inconvenience and expense to the teams and fans of the countries that have to go there and play what amounts to a home match for their opponents.

Having arrived at Murrayfield there was the problem of what each team should wear, the dark blue and black of the primary ‘strips’ (stupid word) being too similar. Normally in such cases it is a courtesy to the visiting team to allow them to use their own colours and for the home side to choose some other clearly different colour. This is often white, presumably because it is clearly distinguishable from most others and is readily available – I imagine most teams have a white strip in stock for training purposes. Here I speculate but I bet that the Scots would not wear white because it is England’s colour and did not want to observe the usual courtesies because it was not a home game, being played in ‘virtual France’. So the two sides turned out in outfits that were muddled variations on their standard colours and remarkably similar to each other. Whether this confusion contributed to an unusually large number of handling errors on the part of the less than All Blacks has been debated by several reporters. Maybe that dirge of an anthem got to them.

Finally Scotland put out their second team so as to rest the first team for the crucial match with Italy that was always going to decide the second place in the softest pool in the competition. At least that one is being played in France.

There are at last some signs that rugby is developing outside the tri-nations and the original five nations groups and with England clearly a basket case for the moment I am supporting anyone from outside those groups, with France as the only northern hemisphere country with a hope of winning, as the exception. So away with my natural support for England and Ireland and let’s see Argentina, Tonga, Fiji and Italy in the last eight. For the final, at least Australia and New Zealand can’t both get there, leaving a great opportunity open for South Africa.

The equation of life

I have long seen the only problem with retirement as being able to afford it. All that time to do what you want must not be constrained by lack of money to get on with it. Sadly, in Britain the state treats all retired people as incipient spongers itching to soak up what little tax revenue the NHS has left for other purposes. You are not allowed to cash in your pension pot except in miserable slices dictated by the prevailing annuity rates and when you reach 75 you are compelled to hand it all over to an insurance company in return for an annuity at a rate that in any half way robust economy will pay out little more than the annual return on the capital, thus leaving said insurance company with a handy lump sum for themselves when you die.

For those of modest means, that is excluding people with golden handshakes in seven figures and most public sector employees, this means that a reasonable standard of living can be maintained only by eating into one’s capital. Capital in this context is very much liquid assets and not one’s house, since you still need somewhere to live. First you have to warn your children that you are unlikely to leave them anything of value other than the house and second you have to work out how long you can survive, financially rather than biologically speaking. To quantify this I have drawn up the Equation of Life.

The equation is a simple one. It is

Y = (C + D)/ P

where C is current capital, cash in the bank, ISAs or funds you are free to liquidate (therefore not your pension pot), D is what could be added to C by ‘downsizing’ your house and P is the amount per year by which you overspend your pension and any other income. Y then gives the number of years you can afford to live at your present rate of extravagance. I call this the FLE or Financial Life Expectancy. Of course if your P is zero or trivial you can afford to live for ever and have no problem, to which I would say either get a life and take up some expensive hobby or think about who or what else could benefit from your surplus. The worst possible thing to do would be to leave it to be taxed at 40% and have the government fritter it away on health and safety police and new road signs.

I have just worked it out. I half expected the answer to be 42 but no such luck – a mere 28. Since this would allow me to carry on until I reach 96 it doesn’t sound too bad. But one must beware of the variables. P can change even if your spending doesn’t – either because of inflation (there should be a separate measure of inflation for the retired, reflecting their different necessities and priorities and used to revise the state pension; council tax would feature more heavily than in the standard calculation) or, if you have a drawdown pension, because of the performance of the stock market and changes in annuity rates. D depends on timing, the state of the housing market and how far you are prepared to reduce the amount and quality of space you live in. Then there is the effect of once off capital expenditure, like replacing your car. In this light the new kitchen SWMBO wants has its cost not in cash but in years off our lives.

Here perhaps we have the makings of a new victim class for those whose medical life expectancy exceeds their FLE. We need government recognition of the problem, followed by action - though sinister thoughts creep in when one contemplates which end of the problem action might be taken on.

Life is full of disappointments

I mentioned once before that the Irish have started to show signs of betraying their traditionally admirable attitude to life and its stuffier aspects. One such is the building of a golf course on the spit of land leading up to the Old Head of Kinsale. You used to be able to walk (or drive for that matter, but I preferred to walk) along the path to the lighthouse unhindered, admire the view and reflect on the events of May 1915 when the Cunard liner Luisitania was torpedoed off the head and sank within 18 minutes with the loss of nearly 1200 lives. In 1997 a golf course was built here and despite claims that the planning permission guaranteed continuing public access you can no longer enjoy the walk. A somewhat belligerent notice at the entrance points out that the claim has been tested in court and dismissed. Since the lighthouse is unmanned it seems that the only people to get past the gate now are the golfers, the club staff and the man who goes to change the bulb from time to time. As a golfer I mostly welcome the expansion of the game, but not the modern resort clubs at a thousand euro a group for players arriving by helicopter. And this in Ireland, where there are probably more good courses per head of population even than in Scotland.

Meanwhile in Kinsale itself, known without complete justification as the gourmet capital of the south coast, I have been having a long fantasy ‘relationship’, as they coyly say these days, with the tall, blonde, slender, charming, delightfully Irish patronne of the classiest coffee bar cum bistro in town. On my latest visit I noticed that she was wearing a t-shirt with the logo of the Old Head Golf Club on one sleeve and asked if she played there. No, she said, she walked there. To my surprise that she was able to she revealed the devastating news: ‘my boyfriend is the manager’.

We are the people of England and we have not spoken yet

I didn’t watch it and I’m glad I didn’t. The TV coverage of Tony Blair’s final Commons appearance and his handover to Gordon Brown was by all accounts nauseating. Boris Johnson’s amusing piece in the Telegraph summed it up, concentrating mainly on the scenes in the House, (full of de mortuis nil rubbishem or whatever it is) but it was the BBC’s report on its website that convinced me I was right to have been mending the phone line to the study instead. It had links like ‘Blair goes to Palace’, ‘Blair with the Queen’, ‘Blair off to Sedgefield’, ‘Brown goes to Palace’, ‘Brown meets Queen’ – you get the drift. A multi-episode sycophantic memorial edition to someone most people were glad to see gone, including many of his own party, as Boris pointed out.

But should we be so glad? Boris himself confessed to a dawning unease, born in his case out of fear that Brown will be dull and will regulate and curtail freedom and debate even more than Blair did. I agreed but was nevertheless left thinking that after ten years of having the answer to everything, of matey familiarity with the voters, of consorting with celebrities and of follies like the millennium dome and the olympics a little dullness in our prime minister might be welcome. It’s a fairly serious job after all.

I think the reason Blair jumped in first at that famous Granita meeting was that, like the boy who sticks his hand up before the teacher has finished the question, he was afraid that Brown knew the answer better than he did and he might never get his chance. He suspected that in the long run Brown would be the more acceptable to the Labour party, who could be relied on to pick Brown after the Blair years but not the other way around. If Brown went first and chose his own ministers and policies, then either Blair’s cover would be blown by the time his turn came or the electoral mood would have swung back to the Tories and it would be too late.

As for renewed new Labour under Brown, he has been upstaged so far by the terrorist plots and arrests of several immigrant doctors in connection with them – and he thought the NHS just needed more money. So far he has appointed a home secretary from England (good move) whose response to the failed bombs - in marked contrast to recent predecessors - has been an almost Thatcher-like message of business as usual (good move again). It seems he also proposes to remove the prime minister’s right to choose Church of England bishops (quite right, now remove them from the House of Lords), to move elections to weekends (fine, but unlikely to improve turnout I suspect), to hold hearings on big public appointments (what – adopt something the Americans do?), perhaps lower the voting age to 16 (why not 12 – or 10?), and to have parliamentary committees for each English region. And here I sense a Blair moment, the promise to make a change only to later enact a mess.

It is distinctly probable that a majority of English people are unaware of the existence of English regions. They were set up sneakily, at dead of night, without publicity and are unelected bodies. They are staffed by people appointed from the various councils of each region, a bit like a mini EU in our midst. Now they will get a formal link with central government, presumably to give them a pseudo legitimacy and as an attempt to answer the West Lothian question, for he has already rejected the idea of allowing only MPs with seats in England to vote on English matters. One can see why, of course, with his own seat (and those of three others in his cabinet) being in Scotland, but it is no answer. Indeed we should welcome this proposal for it will inevitably bring forward the day when the question has to be answered properly and the English have to be given their right to their own say in their own affairs.

Only the grin was left

So now we know: it’s to be June 27.

For certainly more than half of the last ten years I have wished Tony Blair were not prime minister. I cannot pinpoint the moment I turned, for though I voted for him in 1997, I certainly didn’t in 2001 so it must have been in the first half of his tenure. Was it the millennium dome? Was it his failure to stamp down on the fuel protesters? Was it the repayment of £1 million to Bernie Ecclestone? Was it the reinstatement of Peter Mandelson? Or was it that I just couldn’t take that disingenuous, smug, ‘I’ve got a huge majority and there’s nothing you can do to shift me’ grin any longer?

Blair is highly unusual, perhaps unique, among British prime ministers for being in office for over ten years and leaving it at a time (more or less) of his own choosing. On top of that he has (more or less) nominated his successor, though whether that is a considered decision, the keeping of a promise or simply faute de mieux we shall probably never know. Indeed, it is Brown’s accession and its implications that is a far more intriguing question than what immediate history will make of Blair.

For we know what immediate history will make of Blair. It will see him as a huge let-down, a leaking helium balloon that floated high and cheerfully at first, deflated until it could barely support its own weight and finally sagged limply as the elevating gas dispersed into the atmosphere of public disillusionment. A dot-com bubble of a premiership. Northern Ireland apart, his legacy is unfinished business, a vast extension of the nanny state and the surveillance society, and government that is further from being by the people and for the people than ever before. He gave us three different forms of devolution, with involvement of the peoples concerned, while imposing unelected regional assemblies on England without consultation (a referendum in the north-east after they had been set up was hardly democracy) and without answering the West Lothian question. He emasculated the House of Lords but we still don’t know what we will get instead. He ignored valid concerns over council tax while centralising control over local government. He allowed swathes of parliamentary time to be taken up over the harmful and sterile debate on foxhunting, basically as a Pontius Pilate like sop to his backbenchers. He was prepared to employ a director of communications with the qualities of Alastair Campbell and a deputy with the qualities of John Prescott. His relationship with George W Bush has led millions of Britons to a cynical, jaundiced view of our best friend and a country that still has a better grasp of democracy than ours. He wanted to join the euro and adopt the EU constitution (how about one of our own?), was saved from the first by Gordon Brown and from the humiliation of a certain referendum defeat over the second by the French and Dutch but now wants to sneak in a modified form of constitution that he will claim is not enough of a change to need to be put to the vote. He held off honouring the commitment to a Freedom of Information Act for as long as possible and has presided over attempts to emasculate it ever since. He seems prepared to let our electricity generating capacity fall behind demand by prevaricating and dissembling on the nuclear power debate while time runs out. He answers all criticism with a litany of how things have supposedly improved since 1997, delivered with that smug grin that says he knows he can’t be contradicted because he controls the rules under which the data is gathered.

But ten years of this has left the public more cynical and distrustful of politicians and government than for many years. They are coming to realise that there has been no achievement, there is no substance, just the grin.

As to what more distant history will say, that’s easy too. In twenty years time we will simply look back and wonder how we were ever seduced into taking him seriously. At least by then the grin will have gone.

Let us now praise famous men

When you get to my age you start taking an interest in the obituary pages that would have been pointless when you were 25. Politicians one vaguely remembers, probably more for their failures or misdeeds than any lasting achievements, sportsmen from the days when there were still genuine amateurs and footballers were actually underpaid, and lately a fascinating and humbling collection of war veterans who survived exploits that would these days have their commanders court-martialled for inadequate risk assessment. The other day the Times featured one from the near extinct category of British industrial giants who rose from apprentice to senior rank and made a significant contribution to our manufacturing industry.

Harry Webster was technical director of Standard Triumph when it produced its best cars, now nearly all classics. My son has one, a 1974 TR6 that I am sometimes allowed to drive, though the first time he let me go solo he had left the tank empty and it would only go downhill. The cars pioneered all-independent suspension and fuel injection, at least on reasonably priced cars, and are kept going in enthusiasts’ clubs all over the world. His CBE would be given for a lot less today.

Next day it transpired that Webster, whose wife and daughter predeceased him, had been found dead at the foot of the stairs in his own house, where, at the age of 89, he presumably lived alone. I was deeply saddened. I would not go so far as to liken him to an artist who died penniless and whose pictures now fetch millions but it did set me thinking on the modern nature of fame and its relation to worth.

It seems we don’t really have fame nowadays. We have infamy and we have celebrity. Infamy goes with things like murdering a hundred-plus elderly women and issuing false death certificates or being a politician caught once too often with your trousers down. Celebrity can go with almost anything, from running a vicious criminal empire to having large breasts to flaunting a minority sexual preference for public entertainment to mere exhibitionism or even simple rudeness to those not in a position to respond. Those famous for their industrial or commercial careers are respected more for what they have done for themselves or their shareholders than for their customers or posterity. Harry Webster, justly respected in the widespread and lasting affection for and appreciation of his cars, was one of the old sort, a spiritual descendant of Brunel and Telford.

The people will tell of their wisdom, and the congregation will show forth their praise.

Questionable votes

Could a football tournament change the British constitution? Or at least, since we do not have the Americans’ privilege of a written constitution, could it lead to a new interpretation?

The question has its roots in the late seventies, when Jim Callaghan was trying to shore up his crumbling government with a sop to Scottish nationalism by proposing a form of devolution for Scotland. Tam Dalyell, then MP for West Lothian and an opponent of devolution, wanted to know whether, in the event the Bill was passed, a Scottish MP at Westminster would still be able to vote on matters that post devolution would affect only England. This innocent time bomb, known then and since as the West Lothian question, was dodged, the bill failed (partly thanks to some dodgy work on the rules for counting the votes) and there the matter rested until New Labour had another go. The new Bill passed and the Scottish parliament was created, housed in a boondoggle new building, and given powers in Scotland over matters that include education, health and transport. Tam Daylell retired with his question unanswered.

It is one of the defining characteristics of Tony Blair’s government that it makes policy in apparently simple terms and then enacts a mess. He promised reform of the House of Lords but still has not decided how to finish the job. He offered Scottish devolution but failed to answer the West Lothian question, either before or since the deed was done. Initially this was not critical: the government had a majority even without its 41 Scottish MPs and although few failed to notice the number of Scots in high office they had not achieved the influence they have now.

With the suddenness that can take even the most astute politicians by surprise the situation has changed. Blair is out of favour with his backbenchers, most of all with old Labour. He is trying to push through legislation on health and education that is unpopular with sections of his own party and he now has a home secretary, and secretaries for defence, transport and trade and industry, as well as his long standing chancellor, whose seats are in Scotland. Five out of 41 Scottish Labour MPs have cabinet posts. The other 16 cabinet members from the Commons come from the 353 Labour MPs representing England and Wales. Clearly preferment lies North of the border. Last and crucially Mr Blair is being urged to bring forward the day Gordon Brown moves geographically sideways and hierarchically upwards into Number 10. A Scottish premier, from a Scottish seat, is a prospect an increasing number of English seem likely to resent.

At the same time a Commons committee, with strong Labour representation, has reported that the question must be resolved, offering four options but no recommendation: a reduction in the number of Scottish MPs at Westminster, an equivalent English assembly, Scottish MPs to be barred from voting in Westminster on matters that for Scotland are decided in Edinburgh, and full independence. The first is a fudge, a palliative that would only delay a proper solution and was done anyway when devolution came in. The second would require each part of the United Kingdom to have exactly the same powers for its own assembly or the central, federal, government would have four separate West Lothian questions hanging over its deliberations. This quite apart from having English affairs run by an even more second rate bunch of politicians than is the case now. The third is the correct answer, at least in the short term. It would also be simple to enact and has been used before, for Stormont. The last is the final solution, and tempting, with consequences and implications fascinating to speculate on. Would the immediate solution lead to the final one?

Now the World Cup is nearly over, England having qualified and Scotland not. Nothing is better calculated to bring out the traditional Scottish meanness of spirit towards a fellow member of the United Kingdom. Scottish but not British, they have been busily and ostentatiously supporting England’s opponents. Violence has been done to some who had the temerity to wear an England shirt and there is even a pub that offered a free round of drinks when England conceded a goal. For Mr Brown, recently anxious to stress his Britishness, since he cannot remotely claim to be in any way English, this poses a teasing variation of the question. Asked if he would be supporting England he gulped hard and said he would, doubtless alienating many Scots in the process. He even went to one of the matches. Nobody believed a word of it. The West Lothian question has achieved a new level of awareness to the man on the Clapham omnibus.

Now England are out and the respective fans either laughing or mourning. The Conservatives in England, increasing in numbers and confidence, will resent being held back by old Labour in Scotland and being defeated by them in the Commons on English affairs and are starting to push for an answer while Tony Blair talks illogically of second class MPs, hoping people won't notice that England already has them. In time, Scottish Labour will resent Prime Minister Brown continuing to pursue New Labour policies. It could be a defining moment.

Lies of the times

It’s time to update those well practised and well known mantras of officialdom and the untrustworthy: the cheque is in the post; a government spokesman said there was no cause for alarm; of course I’ll still respect you in the morning. The modern state and business practice have given us a rich new set to choose from.

Your call is important to us. Then why not answer the bloody phone and talk to me? This one is just an insult. Similarly,

Every little helps. Then how about opening another checkout?

For your own safety and security . . . Rubbish. It’s not you we care about, but if we put out inane announcements like this often enough we hope to have a defence when a negligence case comes to court.

Thank you for your co-operation. This is usually in company with a terse request to desist from some generally acceptable activity that mildly inconveniences the management. Often used in places where ‘we reserve the right to refuse admission’ and is thus really a threat not a thanks.

The prime minister said he had complete confidence in his minister. The prime minister might say this but the hapless minister hears the guillotine blade being hoisted. A token defence will be made, but only for as long as the embarrassment of the minister exceeds that of the premier. After that point, the chop, the pearl handled revolver or whatever New Labour uses instead – something messy for sure. The first to be subjected to this death by reassurance was Humphrey, number 10’s chief mouser, whom no-one could accuse of incompetence, but was retired, supposedly on health grounds, in 1997 and died at 18 the day before yesterday. Brought in as a stray during Margaret Thatcher’s tenure (I like to think it was she who named him), he did his job night and day right through John Major’s time only to be accused of causing an allergic reaction in the incoming chatelaine as New Labour took over our lives. A publicly posed photo of the two together tried to reassure the public but was the cuddle of dismissal for Humphrey.

This is about improving parent/patient/consumer choice. So just how many hospitals are there within a reasonable distance that I can visit, even by private transport, as an out-patient or be visited in if I have to stay there? On what basis other than government data or local gossip, a toss-up choice for reliability, would I choose between them? If the school I’m in the catchment area of is no good my child will certainly be low down the list in another area, whose school, if good, will inevitably be over subscribed. Can’t they see it’s not a matter of choice, but options. The only choice in many of these cases is whether to accept one’s fate or pay heavily to buy out of the state option – and thus acquire real choice.

The green, green grass of home

The Englishman has a strange relationship with his lawn and after years of studying it I have had to conclude I am not, in this respect at least, a typical Englishman.

You only have to look at the summer advertisements for lawn growth products, weed killer, and the rival types of mower (it’s a lot less bovver with a hover) to realise that we are dealing not with a chore but an obsession. My neighbour uses a cylinder mower and has cut little channels around the edges, between the lawn and his drive, so that the mower is not obstructed by any paving and can cut right up to the edge. The flower beds are sunk below the lawn for the same reason. My lawn merges seamlessly with the part of the garden in which things other than grass grow (actually, things other than grass grow freely on the lawn too) and the edge is defined by either how tough they are or how much of a bollocking I will get from SWMBO if I scythe too far off the main track. I use the word scythe figuratively here but there is a full size haymaker’s scythe in my garage that is brought out most years in the spring when a combination of wet weather, rapid growth and procrastination takes the grass to a height the mower can’t handle. From the scythed state I use the mower, blades set high, to reduce the grass to a level that on a golf course would count as light rough – short enough to find the ball but needing a solid stroke to get out of. My neighbour takes his down to a height that, as a putting green, would rate about twelve on the Stimp meter. My cuttings go in a pile in a corner and over time degenerate into first class compost and get recycled. His go into a black bag and are put out with the rest of the trash, adding to my council tax. This last is a habit of modern suburban man that I despise as much as car washing with chemicals in the street. The water and soap go into the storm drain, thence to the river and are pumped back onto the fields and thus into our cereals, vegetables and milk. And do Friends of the Earth care? Not that I have ever heard of. They are more interested in fatuous schemes for generating electricity by covering the landscape in 100 metre high rotating aerofoils that are a danger to low flying aircraft and likely to be unproductive when most needed. But I digress, as usual.

The obsession with neatness of lawn is undoubtedly a bourgeois thing. It seems to infect those who have not enough grass to justify a self-propelled, sit-on mower, a trapping that those who have one, whether justified by much lawn or not, are only too happy to boast about, and is part of a strange compulsion to keep the garden tidy, along with tidying up the leaves in autumn, should trees that shed leaves be allowed to grow. The aristocracy, if Nancy Mitford is to be believed, are free of such chores, as modern politicians are of so many of life’s little obligations and petty problems, such as paying council tax or where to park at work. In The Pursuit of Love she observes: ‘gardens . . . a topic which was unknown at Alconleigh. The gardener saw to the garden and that was that. It was quite half a mile from the house, and nobody went near it, except as a little walk sometimes in the summer’.

I fall between the two. I have no enthusiasm for gardening and don’t have enough lawn to justify a sit-on mower but I can’t stop a sneaking admiration for someone like the Manchester City FC groundsman and his crop circle-like patterns. He must be from another planet though. That sort of enthusiasm for mowing ain't natural.

Self-loading cargo
If you’re ashamed to care, go by air
Is there an industry that cares less about its customers than the airlines? Car clampers and back street loan sharks come to mind, perhaps because the three have features in common.
You don’t go to a loan shark unless you have no option. As a client towards the posh end of the business once said to me ‘only the rich are in a position to borrow money cheaply’. You borrow at exorbitant rates because you are desperate or greedy to spend and you travel cattle class because you can’t afford the holiday if you pay for a decent seat and are too greedy to go without a holiday you can’t really afford. Once in the clutches of the airline you are effectively a prisoner and do as you are told because they make the rules, car clamper style, and will make your life even more miserable if you try to stick up for your rights to civilised treatment.
Yet it’s our own fault. In much the same way that we let the processed food companies ruin our health for the sake of convenience and cheapness, so we let ourselves be bullied, crushed, herded around, deprived of sleep and exposed to a high risk of DVT for the sake of short transit times and cheap fares. It’s summed up in the airline term for economy class passengers: they call us self-loading cargo.
In other areas of the economy suppliers compete on price, quality and service. A ticket for a long haul flight is nearly indistinguishable between one carrier and another: they go at the same speed, on some routes at much the same time of day, and offer service that in economy class is uniformly minimal, leaving us to buy on the basis of price alone. In fact the airlines have devised a form of inverse competition. The least service means the lowest costs and the biggest profits so they reduce service to the lowest level the customer will tolerate and keep on reducing it, trying to find the point of rebellion. They have not found it yet and we who buy on price alone are their lawful prey. And if you think things could get no worse, think again.
Today I read that Flybe, a ‘budget’ airline (it’s their budget they worry about, not ours) are to introduce a charge for baggage. The disingenuous rationalisation for this is that those with baggage will pay the handling fee the airport charges Flybe, instead of it being ‘unfairly spread across all the people on the aircraft’. Has the Flybe board thought this one through? You bet they have. They will make a huge saving on airport charges and in return will reduce fares by just one pound. The fact that passengers will try to take their holiday luggage as cabin baggage, that there will be fights (literally, sooner or later) over the space in the overhead lockers, boarding and disembarking will take even longer, passengers will have to carry, or wheel, their luggage across miles of corridor and the imposition of discomfort and inconvenience on the paying customer will have been taken to a new low is of no concern to them. Cargo is not fully self-loading until it loads its own baggage or pays for the service. They can chalk up another first in the dehumanising race and move on to the next stage – a charge to use the lavatories perhaps, with a ‘complementary’ catheter if you agree to stay in your seat for the entire flight.
There is a deep malaise here. We put up with call centres whose operators are always fewer than the number of people trying to get through, banks that treat you as a mere number, innumerable firms that refuse to put their telephone numbers on their website lest you should call and try to speak to someone like in the bad old days, hospitals that buy their food pre-cooked from a hundred miles away and airlines that cannot be bothered to pre-book seats, try to kid you that they don’t know how many babies will be on board (families with babies turning up on the off chance of a few spare seats?), expect you to accept a 31 inch seat pitch for twelve hours and demand you turn up three hours before the flight because they won’t organise themselves to do the job any quicker. And we put up with it. We come close to asking for more because we always want the next improvement to be in price, not quality or service. It seems that at the same time as we expand our respect for others, become more tolerant of what was once unaccepted, so we lose our respect for ourselves. Has PC made us so concerned not to give offence that we no longer recognise when we are being insulted, belittled, scorned, used and humiliated?
The judge who recently said that there were circumstances in which women who were raped carried some of the responsibility themselves was much criticised, but he had a point. The whole trend is a variation on the law of the jungle that says that the animal that shows itself to be weak, sick or not looking out for itself is the first to attract the attentions of the predator. We have stopped caring and we have only ourselves to blame for the consequences.
The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.
Bring on the Ides of March!