I'm as mad as hell

It's just what Fred is used to

2009-02-28T02:30:00.000-08:00

No one should be suprised that Fred Goodwin isn't willing to give up his obscenely generous pension. To him it marks a considerable drop in income - the poor man is probably struggling to know how to make ends meet.

After all his multi-million pound pension pot is but a trifle compared to what he's used to. As well as several million a year in salary and bonuses, there were the perks, like the private jet.

He's been used to flying around in a £17.5m private jet that can carry 19 passengers between Edinburgh and Beijing non stop. In one report, the 32ft cabin was described as allowing 'passengers to walk about on the “soft, deep pile carpeting” or relax on the “supple leathers”, according to its sales blurb.'

And if we expect Fred to have a conscience about this, we are kidding ourselves - he bought this jet, which costs around £9,000 an hour to run, at the same time as he was making 18,000 people redundant.

Only intervention will stop greedy people like Fred (and he's not alone) running amok again as soon as the economy picks up. And the first thing should be a law that says that no one in a company can earn more than ten times (and I'm being generous) the salary of the lowest paid worker.

I'm sick of hearing about how we must reward these high flyers who create all our wealth. They don't do it alone. Without all the people down the chain, they are useless. The Sir Freds of this world can come up with all kinds of fancy schemes (hopefully some of which are not as dumb as his) but unless there are people to implement them, they are just hot air.

It is time the people who really make companies successful - the workforce - were given as much attention and consideration as the bosses and the shareholders.

'Pure Evil' or failed by the wrong priorities?

2008-12-05T05:38:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about Shannon Matthews' mother last night. Like everyone else I'm shocked that she could have inflicted that on her daughter but it can't be a coincidence that she is a) inadequate, b) uneducated and c) lives on a sink estate in Dewsbury surrounded by similar people.

I accept that she was a liar, manipulative and uncaring. But don't we need to ask what made her that way? Or do we believe that by some strange quirk of fate, many people raised in poverty, failures at school and with no belief that things can change, turn out to be the same people who play the system and screw everything they can out of the state?

It's not too hard to imagine that when she picked up the Sun and saw the money pouring into the McCann family - who may not have subjected their daughter to kidnapping, drugs etc, but were certainly negligent - Karen Matthews thought 'wouldn't mind a bit of that' hatched a plan and roped in the even more inadequate Michael Donovan

And once they had started it would have been impossible to go back. In fact they had to rack it up because, as was admitted on Today this morning, the disappearance of a girl from the underclasses as compared to Madeleine McCann, was largely ignored at first by the papers.

We can carry on wringing our hands and talking about people being 'pure evil' but that's not going to change anything. At one stage the mother was probably a bright eyed kid like her daughter and I notice that the police liason officer on the case said she felt sorry for the mother, even when she knew what she had done.

What struck me was that the police search for Shannon cost £3.5m. We are now going to pay for these two people to spend a considerable amount of time in jail and presumably the state is forking out to bring up at least some of the seven children she has by five different men. I can't help thinking that money, spent elsewhere would do a lot more good.

Perhaps if we had more, better trained social workers, they wouldn't be so stretched that they are happy to ignore families like the Matthews and fail to pick up on situations like Baby P. People don't go into social work to do harm, so it is about time we looked at the real problem, which is probably that there aren't enough of them to do the job properly.

And in order to stop kids like Shannon going on to replicate the mistakes of her mother, we need to do more with them in school. That means great teachers and more teachers;m fewer kids in a class so no one can hide at the back of the class and fail to learn to read and write. And specialist teachers, especially in area like Dewsbury Moor, who understand the problems and have time to give the less bright kids at least the basics. One on one if necessary. It can't be a coincidence that you don't find public school kids from comfortable homes involved in cases like this.

It's no good saying we can't afford it. We can afford the Iraq war, half a million a year on taxis for the foreign office, millions to repair a failed 'big bang' experiment that has already cost millions. We can afford the huge sums of money to keep thousands of people in jail.

It turns out the capitalists were right

2008-09-16T02:25:00.000-07:00

As someone who sees himself leaning towards Old Labour rather than any of the current parties, I have always been sceptical about the promises of capitalism.

However,the current financial meltdown has proved its advocates are right about one thing - the drip down effect.

The problem is that the effect seems to hardly work at all in the boom times - the capitalists manage to get their buckets out and catch most of it before it reaches the rest of us.

But in bust!

The buckets are turned upside down over their heads and the drip down becomes a torrent of misery for the ordinary people who played no part in the decisions that created it.

And when they've all got over their nerves and restored the system, the bankers will pick up the pieces and restore their large bonuses and pension provisions, the gamblers who make money out of any misery will count their profits, and the rest of us will start from a lower base hoping for a little bit of drip down once more.

MP's expenses and allowances

2008-07-16T07:38:00.000-07:00

While we are not blessed with a particularly impressive bunch of MPs in the current parliament, I tend to give most of them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their motivation and honesty.

But the debates they have held on their own expenses suggest that many of them are completely out of touch with how real people live.

Of course they need a home in both London and their constituency. No reasonable person would argue with those homes being adequately furnished. But the allowances they receive for this should not be used to make a capital gain and boost what is already an above average salary and a generous pension scheme.

My own solution would be to put all MPs into council accommodation, either flat or house according to their need. This would remove any chance of them being accused of having their noses in the trough, but would also have an added advantage.

I am willing to bet that it wouldn't be long before the standard of council housing improved, redecorating and repairs would be carried out more quickly, and anti-social behaviour on estates would be tackled.

Another aspect of the debate I find interesting is that MPs of all parties seem to be agreed that £24,000 free of tax is a suitable amount for someone living in London. If that is so, why is not the basic tax allowance £24,000 for the rest of people living in London, and a similar adjusted figure (say £19,000) for those of us outside the capital?

Until MPs start to live with the same forces and problems the bulk of us face, they will never be able to represent us properly, nor can they expect our trust and respect.

We want a nanny but she must be free

2008-07-02T07:34:00.000-07:00

The BBC ran a poll to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the national health service and a few of the statistics jumped out at me:

82 per cent of those questioned thought the government should do more to wean people off drugs

69 per cent wanted the government to do more to reduce alcohol consumption and to promote healthy eating

67 per cent wanted the government to do more to reduce smoking

65 per cent wanted the government to do more to help people lose weight.

I wonder what percentage of those people would also vote for the government increasing taxes to pay for these things?

It seems that society increasingly demands the government solves its problems but doesn't want to pay the bill and certainly doesn't want to take responsibility for things that are largely in their own hands.

Of those options listed, probably only drugs needs medical intervention in most cases. There is enough information out there to help those who want to eat more healthily, lose weight or quit smoking, but people don't seem ready to find it.

We are told every day in the newspapers that everyone is up in arms at the rising cost of petrol and wants the government to do something about it. That really means they want the tax to be cut so they can buy their petrol cheaper.

Yet part of the solution is in their own hands: don't take unnecessary journeys in the car and when you are driving, cut your speed.

I recently drove on a motorway, keeping my speed between 50-60mph. It increased my journey time by only a few minutes and cut my fuel consumption by a surprising amount. Yet I was being passed constantly by drivers, many going well over the speed limit, who were no doubt complaining about the increased cost of petrol.

Perhaps it is time to stop asking the government to pay out for things that we can do ourselves. Or if we are not willing to do that, at least stop moaning about having to pick up the tab in the form of taxes.

Burma and Zimbabwe need to find oil

2008-05-12T12:41:00.001-07:00

The endangered people of Burma and disenfranchised of Zimbabwe need to get digging and quick. It's the only hope they have that the major powers will do more than wring their hands and spout platitudes.

What's the difference between the repressive regimes in Iraq and Burma? - Oil

What's the difference between the vote rigging in Zimbabwe and Iraq? - Oil

But of course, I forgot, we went into Iraq to get rid of an evil dictator who was oppressing his people - and had oil

If we can't afford elderley care, how can we afford Iraq?

2008-05-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

Gordon Brown says he wants a debate about how to provide care for the elderly that doesn't put their savings and homes in jeopardy.

However the background noises from the government suggest the country can't afford what is going to be massively increasing bill as more and more of us live longer. So forget all the tax and national insurance we've paid, it's down to us again, is it?

What I don't understand is why it is always possible to find untold billions to fight unnecessary wars like Iraq, but not to look after our own elderly citizens.

Could it be that our politicians are still so wrapped up in memories of what used to be Britain's role in the world that their position at the world's top table is more important to them than the people they represent?

Side by side but miles apart

2008-04-19T05:49:00.000-07:00

The Yorkshire Post front page of 19 April carries what I'm willing to bet is a perfect snapshot of what is wrong with our society.

There's a large picture of a bright-eyed, smiling lad who has won a scholarship to Harvard from Ermysted Grammar School in Skipton. Next to it is a smaller picture of that pathetic creature Craig Meehan, step father of Shannon Matthews.

Even disregarding their relative brain power, if you looked into their family, social environment, housing and educational background, I'm sure you would get a lot of clues as to why one is going to Harvard and the other to gaol.

The capitalist system - that so brilliantly has wrecked the banking system, the environment and now even the price of staple foods - seems to create a scrap heap on which to throw those who don't fit into its plan beyond being factory fodder.

Off their Northern Rockers

2008-04-01T01:59:00.000-07:00

So the executives whose genius brought Northern Rock to its knees are to be rewarded with huge pay-outs and generously topped up pensions.

Around 2000 of the people who worked for the company but paid no part in its downfall get the sack and probably a month's pay if they are lucky.

It's no wonder that those in charge think capitalism is such a wonderful system.

If they had a modicum of decency in them Mr Amplegirth and his cronies would hand over the money to the families whose livelihoods are threatened by their incompetence. But of course they won't. Instead they will lie low for a while until mates in other major companies find them a nice little non-exec directorship at a few grand a month to attend one meeting.

It;s easy to find people to 'condemn' the payouts on TV: "It's a shame and we must learn the lessons," they say, hardly able to hide their grins, knowing they are on the same gravy train, "But what can you do, these people had a legally binding contract."

Meanwhile the lawyers and consultants also walk away with a small fortune for failing to sort the problem out.

The only people who lose are ordinary tax payers (yes it is the state who bails out captilisms' failures) and the staff who have to find another job.

It stinks. And we can't expect it to change any time soon. The fat turkeys certainly won't vote for Christmas and what chance is there that our politicians, busy ordering their £16,000 kitchens and £300 mirrors from Libertys, will even realise there is a problem.

Corruption runs so deep at the top of our society, nothing, it seems, is able to cure it. Except when the Chinese take over the world and we all become Tibetans.

What we earn

2008-01-10T02:45:00.000-08:00

I've resisted blogging in the past few months, trying to calm my rants and accept the world as it is and not as I'd like it to be.

But last night I watched the BBC2 programme by Peter and Dan Snow on what people earn in this country and I've been incandescent ever since.

The smugness with which the super rich justify their obscene earnings is guaranteed to get my hackles up, especially the traders in the City. They are little more than gamblers in a spread betting casino that happens to concentrate on stock price fluctuations rather than a batsman's score. They make nothing, yet we are supposed to believe they contribute greatly to our economy.

And don't get me started on the woman who pays a company over £1000 a day to fold her jumpers because she's too busy to do it herself. Have these people lost all sense of reality?

Compare that to the guy that Dan Snow spent a day with cleaning the sewers under the streets of London. He takes home less than £20k a year. He works in foul conditions, made worse by the fact that people use the sewers to dispose of things that should never be put down there. His constant companions are rats. The smell is unbelievable.

If he didn't put up with these conditions, those fat cats in the City wouldn't be able to spend their day glued to a computer screen - the stench would drive them out if not the disease. Which is more valuable?

And compare the woman who charges £450 for herself and £350 for her staff to fold jumpers with the care workers who look after our sick and elderly for less than that per month.

We are told that the market sorts out what people are paid, that jobs are worth what someone will pay to have them done.

But those who advocate the market only like it when it suits them. When the market looks like bankrupting Northern Rock, they run to the state to bale them out.

Gordon Brown inflicts a below inflation pay rise on those who work for the state while allowing private industry wage rises to soar above inflation. Is it any wonder that public service finds it hard to hang on to its best people. Fortunately for the rest of us, there are still enough people with sense of duty or calling who are willing to do the important jobs for a low salary, but is it right that we continue to exploit them?

Capitalism has come close to destroying the planet and may still do so as China, India and the old Soviet Empire adopt more of our Western 'Greed is Good' philosophy.

Many of us are beginning to realise that we need to change the way we live if future generations are to have a planet. We also need to change our attitude to what is important in our society and who deserves to be rewarded for the work they do.

Double standards from old New Labour

2007-07-27T01:01:00.000-07:00

In last Sunday's Observer (22 July), Sarah Helm the wife of Blair aide Jonathan Powell, complained bitterly about the police's behaviour during the cash for peerages investigation.

She compared police to the Gestapo for waking Ruth Turner early and taking her off for questioning.

Tony Blair's allies were also quoted anonymously, accusing the police of heavy handed tactics and calling the chief investigator 'a shit'.

Is this the same labour party who wanted suspects to be locked up for 90 days without charge? And if they were all so convinced they were completely innocent, why so much relief that the investigation is over? Do they have no faith in British justice?

Now some of our law makers have experienced the law from the other side, perhaps we will get more balance in legislation.

Strange goings on at Leeds United

2007-06-02T06:23:00.000-07:00

The administration process of Leeds United football club thows up many questions. I use the term throws up advisedly because to me the whole thing is sickening.

It appears that Ken Bates has successfully taken back the club on terms of one penny in the pound for creditors, mainly on the votes of anonymous overseas companies. Even the administrators, the hapless KPMG, acknowledge they don't know who is behind these companies.

For all I know they may be legitimate - though why they would accept one per cent when bigger offers were on the table, I can't imagine. But they may also be covers for all kinds of criminal activities - drug running, prostitution, child slavery. Who can tell?

Even more strange, Mr Bates is willing to win on the back of these companies even though up to now his own conditions for talking to any would-be investor is that a) they prove they have sufficient funds and b) they don't hide behind a front man but reveal who they are.

The other aspect of the Leeds saga that I find obscene is that a Football League regulation ensures that football creditors i.e. clubs and already vastly overpaid footballers, get their debt paid in full. In this case it means that some already very wealthy players will receive thousands of pounds while a local hospice picks up pennies.

All this comes in the same week that we hear predictions that it won't be long before some players are paid £200,000 per week. How long would it take a nurse in that hospice to earn that kind of money - at a guess around 10 years.

Football has clearly lost its moral compass and we are partly to blame because we allow it to happen. I've always loved the game and defended it but right now I don't care if I never see another game.

Saltaire Sam

Cameron is being clever on education

2007-05-22T04:10:00.000-07:00

The old Etonian leader of the Conservative Party and his public school shadow cabinet colleagues are being very clever in standing up to party members over grammar schools.

Cameron is presenting himself as a man of the people, even using the same words as Tony Blair 'Better education for the many, not the few.' But don't be fooled. He is only looking to make things even better for the elite.

At the moment, we are told, the wealthier parts of our society can afford to groom their children so they pass the 11 plus and get a grammar school place and education that is among the best in the country. Of course, unlike Eton, even grammar schools can't guarantee five shadow cabinet posts.

Now Cameron is saying he doesn't want to promote grammar schools because they are socially divisive and populated mainly by kids from advantaged backgrounds (unlike public schools, presumably). He wants to extend city academies and technical schools so everyone can get a fair chance.

Sounds good. But he then goes on to say that he wants to extend choice to parents. If he succeeds it will certainly mean that rich parents of kids who are not even bright enough to coach through the 11plus will be able to get their offspring into the best schools. We already know that those who can afford to move near the better performing schools are doing so and you can rest assured that would be the least they would do to make sure their little Johnny or Jane didn't end up in a bog standard comprehensive with the kids from the council estate.

Improving every child's chances of a good education is an ideal no one could argue with but it will only be achieved by attracting inspirational teachers (so you'll have to pay them decent money), reducing the size of the classes, and persuading those parents in the disadvantaged areas of our country that education really is the best way out, so they get behind the kids and help them.

It was how it used to be. The working class's main ambition was for their children to have a good education. It seems that has been lost - probably because they now feel they don't have the chance of sharing in what the wealthy take for granted.

Saltaire Sam

administrators cash in at small business's expense

2007-05-22T03:58:00.000-07:00

There are many aspects of the administration order on Leeds United football club that are worth scrutiny but here I want to concentrate on the exorbitant fees charged by the companies who handle these affairs.

In this case it is KPMG but they are not alone in taking huge sums from the assets of failing companies, reducing the chances of small creditors to get anything for the work they have done.

At Leeds United, creditors are being offered a penny in the pound for the money they are owed. So if they have provided a service worth £500, they will get a fiver. For many small businesses this could be disastrous.

But KPMG are already guaranteed £93,038 for the 340.5 hours work their staff put in the week between 4-11 May. That is an average hourly rate of £279.

I wonder how many of the small companies who will lose out by the slight of hand that will see Leeds United cast off their debts but continue to run as before with the same people in charge, can get anywhere near charging £279 an hour.

It seems it's more profitable to be a vulture picking on the bones of a carcass than someone who honestly tries to help the living animal.

Ah capitalism - you are such a wonderful system.

Saltaire Sam

If we'd only listen to Sachs and not Bush

2007-04-29T03:57:00.000-07:00

I have found this year's Reith Lectures by Professor Jeffrey Sachs completely inspirational. His world view seems to be filled with such commonsense that it is difficult to think of a single argument, except perhaps mankind's greed and natural aggression, to oppose it. If you haven't heard them, I urge you to go to the BBC Radio 4 website and listen on-line.

Best of all they have sent me back to some of the speeches of JFK, a US President who did make a difference and inspired a generation through hope and idealism rather than fear and suspicion. In view of the present incumbent's record, the following two paragraphs from a speech on 10 June 1963, a speech which had a major effect in Moscow because it was reaching out, have a bitter irony:

"Our (US and Soviet Union) interests converge, however not only in defending the frontiers of freedom, but in pursuing the paths of peace. It is our hope - - and the purpose of Allied policies - - to convince the Soviet Union that she, too, should let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of others. The communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, then peace would be much more assured…(My italics)

"The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. (My italics) We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough - - more than enough - - of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we labor on - - not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace."

(taken from http://www.american.edu/media/speeches/Kennedy.htm)

Saltaire Sam

Spending a penny

2007-04-14T05:42:00.000-07:00

When I was a lad, public toilets were free except for using the cubicles which cost 1d - hence the phrase 'to spend a penny.' (For those of you too young to remember there were 240d in £1)

Yesterday I went into the gents at Charing Cross and was charged 20p for a pee. That is the equivalent of four shillings or 48d. In the days when I was a child, that would buy you a paperback book and still give you change, and at the same rate of inflation a paperback novel would now cost you over £15.

In other words, we are being ripped off for what is a basic need in life, something that should be available free as a service to citizens.

Saltaire Sam

Why Tony Blair has been a disaster

2007-03-21T08:03:00.000-07:00

I was wondering the other day if I was unfair on Tony Blair. After all, there have been some good things happen since he came to power and he is still preferable to Michael Howard.

But there is too much on the wrong side of the balance sheet, things like:

1) He doesn't seem to have any guiding principles. You may have disagreed with everything Margaret Thatcher stood for but you still knew what she stood for. Not so Blair, whose views will change at the sight of a focus group graph. How can you within a matter of weeks be Bill Clinton's best friend and pushing the third way and then George W Bush's best friend with a neo-con agenda?

2) While claiming to care about the underprivileged, he has allowed the gap between rich and poor to widen.

3) Rupert Murdoch thinks he's OK

4 He lied to justify the Iraq war, a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and achieved nothing. Are we willing to pay such a price in lives and instability to rid the world of a tryant? If it's such a good idea, would he advocate doing it again?

5) He justifies draconian reductions in civil liberties in the name of the war on terror, yet as he has shown in Ireland, terrorism is better tackled by addressing the causes. Military action didn't stop the killing in Ireland, diplomacy did. Eventually you have to talk to people.

6) Cash for peerages. The House of Lords has so little power, even less than the post 1977 House of Commons, so you might as well sell peerages but let the money go to the country not the labour party. Or, more seriously, let's have an independently appointed upper house whose members' qualifications we can all understand, and let them use their expertise to make better the legislation of professinal politicians, who are increasingly out of touch with real people.

7) He has left those of us who want a fairer society with no one to vote for

8) He never says 'I was wrong' or 'I'm sorry'

9) He never gives a straight answer to a straight question

10) He claims to care about Africa yet squanders on his unnecessary war £5bn that would make a massive difference if used for good in that continent. And what is he doing about Mugabe?

11) He has an almost 19th century view of Britain's position in the world.

12) He believes we need a nuclear deterrent but no one else should have one (except of course Dubya). Either that means we are at greater risk because of his policies or he just has delusions of power. If the world is so insecure that Britain needs a nuclear deterrent, then why not Spain or Holland or Germany or any of the other non nuclear European countries? Why not Iran, whose unfriendly near neighbour Israel has one? Why not Australia or Malaysia or Japan? Why not everyone?

13) I don't think he reads books

14) He's still here, not because he's doing anything worthwhile, but because he wants to reach ten years as PM. How pathetic is that?

15) In 1997 he led us to believe a better Britain was possible but he hasn't delivered.

Saltaire Sam

You must read this book

2007-03-21T07:33:00.000-07:00

If 'What Would Barbra Do' made me smile earlier this year, my most recent reading, Polly Toynbee's Hard Work, made me angry.

Guardian correspondent Toynbee is well known for her left of centre views but this book is in no way a rant. She went and tried to live on minimum wage and, while admitting the artificiality of her own position, her experience and the stories of the people she met, spell out just how hard it is for the poorest people in society to get out of poverty.

While the Daily Mail would have you believe that the underclass is mainly made up of skivers and benefit cheats, Toynbee came across a large number of hard-working people, many quite talented, who the system traps in poverty. Many of them have to run two or three jobs just to survive.

She shows how the system of contracting out services like hospital cleaning, not only means the cleaners are paid peanuts and have terrible working conditions while the companies make big profits, but it is also providing an inefficient service.

She explains how difficult it is for the low paid to change jobs even for something paying better, without running up debts that are almost insurmountable.

She graphically illustrates the problems of living on the meanest estates where a few crack heads and anti-social yobs can make life almost unbearable for the rest.

She demonstrates that the treatment of applicants - making them travel to apply, often during working hours, and then back again for interviews - trap people in unrewarding jobs. While the piling on of targets that mean working many unpaid hours, and the constant cost cutting that adds to the work load and reduces the equipment to do the job, make already grindingly awful jobs even worse.

The most moving section is where she takes a job as a care worker in an nursing home for the elderly. Her description of the work is harrowing and the thought that the people who are doing these jobs, trying to give dignity and care to some of the most vulnerable people in our society, are among the lowest paid is simply a disgrace. And when a director of one of those homes spouts off about how it is important to the profits of his company to keep wages low, you just want to strangle him.

We live in a deeply unfair society in which the lowest earners pay an unfair proportion of tax, especially indirect taxes, and some of the most important but unpleasant jobs are so undervalued that we refuse to pay a living wage to the people doing them. Yet others - from city whiz kids to footballers - are paid obscene amounts of money. Banks, who make billions of pounds in profits, refuse to deal with the poorest, sending them into the arms of loan sharks and rip-off merchants.

Everyone, especially politicians, company directors and Daily Mail readers should be made to read this book. And afterwards they should ask themselves how much would they have to be paid per hour to wipe the backsides of several pensioners with dementia. It may not need a degree or the ability to pull off a city killing, but it is much more valuable than most jobs undertaken by the very rich.

Saltaire Sam

What did we get for our money

2007-03-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

My objections to the Iraq war are many, the greatest being that I don't believe getting rid of Saddam was worth what some estimates now put at one million Iraqi lives. Add to that the fact that it was probably an illegal invasion on a false pretext, and I'm well and truly in the anti-war camp.

Now there is an extra reason, possibly the least important, but nevertheless worth noticing.

According to estimates published today, the war has cost the British tax payer £5bn. Think for a moment what we could have achieved if we had invested that in education or in care homes for the elderly. Or how far would £5bn go towards stopping children in Africa dying from the lack of clean water?

Instead, what did we get for our money? We created a civil war without getting any nearer solving the problem of terrorism. We increased the number of people in the world who despise the very name of Britain. We gave a focus for terrorists that didn't exist before.

For a tiny island off the coast of Europe, that's a hell of a way to spend five billion quid.

Saltaire Sam

The stench from the banking hall

2007-03-05T03:55:00.000-08:00

In recent weeks we have heard a lot from overpaid bankers justifying their obscene profits. I've just experienced a small example of the mentality that allows them to produce such figures.

The small company I'm involved with switched to on-line banking with the Bank of Scotland because they offered an account with minimal charges as long as we mainly handled our transactions on line. It made sense from their point of view because they don't have to provide us with a branch and all that entails, and modern technology takes care of virtually all the work. (Even to the extent that they were powerless to stop their computer sending out three different statements in three different envelopes with three lots of postage!)

It was much better from our point of view because it slashed our charges compared to our former banker, Barclays, and even though it is still a mystery why it takes as long to clear a cheque electronically as it used to by post, we were happy.

But with only a few billion in profit, the Bank of Scotland needed to make a change. In our case it has resulted in our charges going up by 595% (yes that's five hundred and ninety five percent). And what have they offered in return? A big fat nothing.

The actual sums are not big but the arrogant way in which they have changed the rules in order just to boost already massive profits encapsulates for me what is wrong with so much of modern capitalism.

Saltaire Sam

School lottery

2007-02-28T00:37:00.000-08:00

Brighton council has decided that where schools are oversubscribed, places will be allocated by lottery.

This has naturally upset a lot of people who in the past have been able to manipulate the system to their advantage but to my mind a lottery is not only fairer it might also have a knock on effect of improving some of the poorer schools.

Currently wealthy parents tend to move into the area of better schools, pushing up house prices thus excluding many kids on the basis of their parents' earning power.

Under the lottery system, a number of kids from wealthy or especially interested parents will end up at the poor performing schools. Then watch them move into action. They will put pressure on teachers, education departments, MPs and government until the poor school performs better.

And isn't that what we need? Shouldn't the aim to be that wherever you live, there is a good school for your child?

Sometimes even I can see the benefit of market forces - if they are given a little nudge in the right direction and that's just what Brighton's lottery will do.

Saltaire Sam

Share price

2007-02-20T04:44:00.000-08:00

Barclays Bank today reported obscene profits - more than £7bn an increase of 35 per cent, or £200 each second. That's not much of a surprise when you see the many ways that banks rip us off. The puzzling thing is that the wizz-kids in the City marked the shares down.

What did they expect? What would it have taken for them to be satisfied?

Share price appears to bear no relationship to the success of a business but exists simply in the mind of a few people whose sole role in life is to make a profit out of trading shares. Is this a sound basis on which to base our economy?

I can see the point of issuing shares to fund the start of a business or the expansion of a business, and I understand that people who make that investment deserve to share in the success of the company they have backed. If there is a profit, they deserve a dividend.

I'm even willing to accept that investors might want to sell their shares.

What I don't find acceptable is that they should have two pay-outs - from the dividend and from speculation over the share price.

It seems to me that most transactions in the City are not in companies, they are in shares i.e. the investment is paid to the share owner not the company.

Wouldn't it be better for the economy if people who have money to invest, put it directly into new businesses or expanding businesses and not just moving pieces of paper around the City? Share price should remain fixed, their value coming from the dividend created by a successful business, not from speculation.

Saltaire Sam

Taxation is the way to fund higher education

2007-02-13T04:34:00.000-08:00

The government is said to be keen to enourage past students to donate to their universities in order to boost the drastic shortfall in higher education funding. Gordon Brown is even thought to be willing to donate £1 for every £2 pledged by the public.

Not a bad idea but it's still letting the majority of top earners off the hook.

The reason Tony Blair gave for charging today's students top up fees is that their degree will ensure they earn far more than people without such a qualification. That in itself is questionable, especially if he reaches his target of 50 per cent of school leavers going on to uni.

But it was true in the past and there are thousands of people who benefitted from FREE university education who are now earning big salaries. They should be contributing more towards the next generation's education and the only way to ensure they do is meaningful progressive taxation.

If it is important to Britain's economy and well-being that more and more people go to university, the state should pay and raise the money by increasing taxes, especially on the highest earners. That way each generation helps the next and the bill is picked up by those who benefit most.

Our current system is, in reality, an extra tax on young people as soon as they earn £15,000 a year and will come at just the time they are trying to make their way in the world and many will be looking to raise enough money to get their first step on the property ladder. Meanwhile, those whose free university education helped put them in the £100,000 pa bracket get away with no extra contribution.

Saltaire Sam

Homage to Barbra

2007-02-08T03:44:00.000-08:00

Radio 4's book of the week is Emma Brockes What Would Barbra Do? I always enjoy this slot but this is possibly the best ever.

Brockes uses the book to 'come out' as a fan of musicals, especially the unmatchable Ms Streisand. The book is magic - and so well read by Tracy-Ann Oberman. I constantly find myself nodding in agreement, laughing in all the right places and inwardly hugging myself with the sheer joy of her observations.

Having always been a sucker for musicals, it is without doubt my book of the year.

Saltaire Sam

Spending on plastic

2007-01-29T06:48:00.000-08:00

We hear on the news today that the market in plastic surgery in the UK has risen by a third in the last year. That in itself tells you a lot about our society but what concerns me more than our increasingly vain tendencies is the cost of training all these plastic surgeons who are getting fat on liposuction.

Presumably, like nearly all doctors in private practice, they trained in the NHS at taxpayers' expense. But now they contribute nothing to the general good.

If Gordon Brown needs more money for hip replacements and cataract operations, maybe he should impose an extra tax on those doctors we've paid to train who prefer to cater for vanity rather than illness.

Saltaire Sam

News of the World and prison

2007-01-27T04:06:00.000-08:00

The News of the World's royal editor got up to some despicable tricks in order to satisfy the prurient interests of his readers and it is right he should be brought to justice.

But at a time when our jails are so overcrowded that people are sleeping on the floor of police cells, is it really sensible to send him to prison?

It will cost the taxpayer money to feed and water him and I doubt if it will do him much good. Wouldn't it have been better to give him a community service order? Think of the good he could have done helping youngsters who struggle with reading and writing? According to one view I heard, illiteracy and drugs are the things most law breakers have in common.

Or let him decorate a pensioner's house, let him take some housebound soul out for trips at his own expense, let him wash Prince Harry's car.

There must be a thousand more useful things he could be doing rather than sitting in a cell feeling sorry for himself, probably to emerge feeling hard done by rather than reformed.

Saltaire Sam

Bleep help us

2007-01-26T04:08:00.000-08:00

Hilarious story in the paper today about a young man who was asked to remove all profanity and blasphemy from the film The Queen to make it suitable for showing in-flight (don't ask).

He is either extremely dim or used a film version of search and replace because passengers were left to ponder on seven bleeps where the word God should have been, including one 'bleep bless you, ma'am.'

I hope he also edited the news coverage of George W's 'what a state the nation's in' speech, which presumably now ends with a rousing 'And may bleep bless America.'

Saltaire Sam

Did God screw up?

2007-01-25T04:18:00.000-08:00

I tend to believe evolution is an imperfect system, which explains why so much is screwed up.

It makes much more sense to me than the belief of those fundamentalist religious communities who insist an ominipotent God made the world in six days before putting his feet up, or those who realise the universe is more than six thousand years old but still insist it was created by God's intelligent design.

If they are right, then he made a hash of it. If you are clever enough to design the intricacies of a brain, the beauty of a sunset, or the emotion of love, why would you make humans so greedy and quarrelsome that they always want to fight each other? Why would you invent Tsunamis? Why would you bother to put wasps on the earth?

They can't have it both ways. If God is the designer, he should take the blame for the cock ups. To me, it makes much more sense to believe that things started to go wrong in the process of the early life forms crawling out of the mud.

Saltaire Sam

Catholic church and adoption by gay couples

2007-01-25T04:11:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me that the reason the Roman Catholic church is so opposed to gay couples adopting children is that they are too close to one aspect of the problem and can't see the bigger picture.

They should realise that people in same sex relationships are not like the few priests in their own midst who have abused children. Homosexual is not the same as paedophile.

Saltaire Sam

Makes you want reincarnation be true

2007-01-25T04:03:00.000-08:00

I heard a great story on the radio this week about William Beveridge, the man whose 1942 report on building a better Britain after the war recommended government should tackle the great evils of 'want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness.'

Apparently he kept working well into his eighties, always taking on new jobs. Right at the end he sat up, said 'I've a thousand things to do,' and died.

I hope I've still got a thousand things to do when my time comes.

Saltaire Sam

Portillo moment

2007-01-24T06:27:00.000-08:00

I was one of those who sat up until dawn on election night in 1997, persuaded that we would have a new society by the Millennium. Call me a naive, sentimental fool if you will, but I really believed that Tony Blair and new labour would create a fairer, more enlightened society. After all those years of sleaze and 'no such thing as society,' we could now look forward with optimism.

I was as wrong about that as TB was about weapons of mass destruction, but at least I didn't kill thousands of people with my mistake.

The highlight of that election night for many of us was seeing Michael Portillo lose his seat. God, how we laughed to see the pompous fall, the arrogant get his come uppance.

Now it turns out that Portillo is a thoroughly decent man. I still don't agree with some of his ideas but there's no doubt, he is intelligent articulate and civilised.

So what does that tell us? Perhaps, defeat changed Portillo and a little humility was good for his soul. In the same way, perhaps power corrupted Blair and made him arrogant and certain he was always right, despite all the evidence when he was wrong.

Perhaps I'm just a bad judge of character

Saltaire Sam

TB and the prison population

2007-01-24T06:07:00.000-08:00

I watched Tony Blair on PMQs today (24 Jan). There is no doubt he is a good performer and makes David Cameron look quite ordinary, but some of the things he says are scary. You long for the chance to sit down quietly with him and say, 'Yes, Prime Minister, but..'

For example, today he was boasting about the number of new prison places his government has created and the number of people who are in prison for the long term.

If this country is so far along the road to hell in a handcart that we really need all these extra places and prisoners, doesn't that say a lot about our society? If so, what is the government doing to improve things (apart from locking us up)?

Why aren't we pouring resources into tackling the problems of drugs, which are responsible for so much crime? Monty Don's recent TV series with heroin addicts, showed one way in which drug users can be helped but what has become of it? As far as I can tell, nothing. TB prefers to put people behind bars, despite all the evidence that incarceration hinders rather than helping addicts recover.

Saltaire Sam.

Introduction

2007-01-24T02:00:00.000-08:00

I guess I should start with an explanation of the title of this blog. It's a quote from the movie Network when the disillusioned TV newcaster, Howard Beale, says to his audience:

'You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,
'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'

At 61 years old, I find myself feeling more and more like Howard Beale. I've tried writing to the Prime Minister and the newspapers, but it achieves nothing. If Tony Blair can ignore three million people marching against the war in Iraq, he certainly has no problem ignoring my emails, if he ever gets to see them at all.

So blogging seems to be a possible answer. I don't expect this to change things but I hope that it will strike a chord with others who feel the same way or, indeed, have opposite views, and from the resulting dialogue, maybe we can find our own way to relieve the frustration of being a member of a democracy where our view only counts on polling day, and then only in a handful of constituencies.

I plan to make this as wide ranging as I can but inevitably it will have a political bias and in my case a leftish political bias.

Right now, I'm het up about the changing face of capitalism and whether it really is the only way to run the world; the way politicians and big business are using global warming to score points without actually doing something positive to arrest it; about the increasing gap between rich and poor, in Britain as well as the wider world; about the blatantly unfair tax system that takes a greater percentage of income in tax from the poorest rather than the rich; about the fact that thousands of children in the Third World are dying each day for the lack of something as basic as clean water when millions of pounds are squandered on unnecessary luxuries in the West.

And today, I'm angry that the Roman Catholic church, with its disgraceful record of committing and covering up child abuse, has the temerity to say that being gay should exclude you from adopting children.

So that's it, I'm as mad as hell and I hope this blog provides a lot of people with a window where they can yell, I'm not going to take it any more.

Saltaire Sam