Isleworth: Remembering our History, Defending our Future

Christine Diwell and ICG Chair Ian Speed lead a 
massive residents' campaign to save Isleworth Library

I spent an interesting few hours last week attending the Annual General Meeting of The Isleworth Society (TIS) at Isleworth Public Hall. Although I have been a member for many years it was the first AGM that I had been to for quite a while as it almost invariably seems to clash with something else in my chaotic life schedule.

AGMs in general are, as a rule of thumb, fairly mundane affairs in which the business of electing a Committee and of hearing last year's minutes is conducted to the exclusion of anything remotely interesting to any but the anoraks. TIS AGMs, however, do not follow this rule. Instead once the routine business is done there are tea and snacks, a raffle, and then a "Part Two" which is an integral feature of the meeting.

The elections to the Committee confirmed the current incumbents in situ, which now includes Paul Fisher who was co-opted a few months back and whose continued membership of the Committee was unanimously supported. Although he is not the first ICG member to take up office in TIS he is undoubtedly the most high profile, and his welcome elevation would appear to endorse the ever closer working relationship that the two groups enjoy. A relationship which one must say is something of a "no brainer" when one considers the convergence of interests that exists between us.

On this occasion "Part Two" comprised a fascinating talk by TIS Secretary Christine Diwell, whose great talent for holding an audience seems to grow with every presentation she makes. Even though I had heard much of the talk on a previous occasion my attention was as undivided as it had ever been.

I could not help but be struck by the sheer size of the meeting and the support that it drew from around the Isleworth community. Although the ICG is the larger of the two groups in terms of core membership we could only dream of bringing out half the number for one of our AGMs that TIS achieved last week. That TIS was also able to use the event to generate probably a three figure sum for its funds only served to underline the professionalism of the whole enterprise.

It would also be fair comment to say that the attendance was from the senior end of the age scale, and whilst both TIS and the ICG aspire to recruit more active young people I feel it would be wrong to underestimate the power of the grey activist base - retired, affluent by comparison and, in this day and age, still surprisingly capable when it comes to pushing out leaflets and participating in such things as community clean-ups as well as relentless lobbying.

It occurs to me that the ICG would appear to have morphed organically into an "action arm" of a wider movement, a movement that is given depth and meaning by the activities and the powerful presence of civic organisations such as TIS. It provides a potent combination, and in my view is a model that communities around the borough that find their independence and their unique character under threat from the soulless and unrelenting attentions of the planners and the politicians should seek with some urgency to replicate.

Are you a Luddite?

By Tom de Castella

They burned down mills in the name of a mythical character called Ludd. So 200 years after their most famous battle, why are we still peppering conversations with the word "Luddite"?

It's a popular retort to someone struggling to operate their new smartphone or refusing to buy the latest gizmo: "You're such a Luddite."

There is another word for it - technophobe - but it doesn't convey the same sense of irrational hostility to the modern world. So where did "Luddite" come from?

In the midst of the British industrial revolution, skilled textile workers feared for their jobs. An uprising began in 1811 when Nottinghamshire weavers attacked the new automated looms that were replacing them.

The workers took inspiration from a fabled General Ludd or King Ludd living in Sherwood Forest. His fanciful name may have come from a young Leicestershire weaver called Ned Lud, who in the late 18th Century was rumoured to have smashed two stocking frames.

The machine breaking spread to West Yorkshire wool workers and Lancashire cotton mills, in what the historian Eric Hobsbawm called "collective bargaining by riot". Machinery was wrecked, mills were burned down and the Luddites fought pitched battles with the British Army.

The response of the state was brutal. Machine breaking became a capital offence. At trials in York, 17 Luddites were hanged and another 25 transported to Australia, while in Lancaster eight were hanged and 38 sentenced to transportation.

One of the most serious incidents happened two hundred years ago this month. About 150 Luddites armed with hammers and axes attacked Cartwright's mill in Rawfolds, near Huddersfield. The authorities shot two of them dead and the attack was eventually repelled.

For Katrina Navickas, author of Loyalism & Radicalism in Lancashire 1798-1815, they were working class heroes. Trade unions had been banned in 1800 and here was another way for workers to defend their livelihoods.

There's no doubt that the Luddites have been romanticised, says Dr Emma Griffin, author of A Short History of the British Industrial Revolution. They are thought of as the first workers to destroy their machinery, yet this had been going on for years. What marks the Luddites out was that they were better organised than their predecessors, she says.

But both historians agree that today's use of "Luddite" is wrong. To use the term for someone who ignores Twitter or refuses to move from analogue to digital TV is a complete misrepresentation, says Griffin.

"We use it for people who are hostile to technology, who don't want to get a mobile phone," she says. "But what concerned the Luddites about technology was that it was going to cut their wages."

An accurate modern example, according to Griffin, is the 1986 battle of Wapping when print unions picketed Rupert Murdoch's new hi-tech newspaper offices in protest at the computerisation they feared would make them obsolete.

So how did the word evolve so much?

The first recorded usage of Luddite in the Oxford English Dictionary is for 1811. But its catch-all anti-tech meaning appears to be a relatively recent phenomenon. According to the OED, it wasn't until 1970 that the term was used - by the New Scientist - to describe technology refuseniks.

But soon this meaning was everywhere. In 1984 the novelist Thomas Pynchon wrote an essay asking "Is it OK to be a Luddite?" for the New York Times Book Review.

The debate has never been quite resolved, for the desirability of being a Luddite is a matter of personal taste. A common boast in the 1980s was that one couldn't programme the video. But for others "Luddite" is a useful putdown for Neanderthal technophobes that can be laced with different quantities of humour or contempt.

"Will mainframes attract the same hostile attention as knitting frames once did?", Pynchon wondered in his essay. "I really doubt it. Writers of all descriptions are stampeding to buy word processors."

And yet a neo-Luddite movement sprang up. The most extreme expression of this philosophy was the bombing campaign of Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, who was sentenced to life imprisonment. His manifesto, which was eventually published by the New York Times, said that the "Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race".

Today with digital technology enlivening or intruding on - depending on your view - day-to-day experiences, the term is more popular than ever. People nostalgic for a time before mobile ringtones had colonised train carriages may class themselves as Luddites.

But whereas once it was cool for kids not to understand science, the tide now appears to be with the nerds and geeks. Luddite may sometimes be a fond term but its adherents are on the losing side.

The sheer variety of situations in which "Luddite" can be used would astonish the attackers of Cartwright's Mill were they to resurface today.

In recent years, the term has been used for opponents of planning reform, ID cards, Tesco and goalline technology. Prince Charles is a target, as is the novelist Jonathan Franzen - after an attack on e-books and Twitter - and Oasis were once described by fellow band Bloc Party as "repetitive Luddites".

Historians may bridle at such an inexact use of the word but it's too late, says Mark Forsyth, author of The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language.

"There's absolutely no point historians getting indignant about language. It's never going to stop changing - they're trying to hold back the tide like the Luddites."

And "Luddite" is not unique. Many historical terms are bandied about casually, losing their precise meaning. "People have a "cavalier" attitude," Forsyth points out. "There are 'puritans' all over the place. And 'bolshie' is a bit of a classic."

None of this means that contemporary Britain is awash with supporters of Charles I, hardline Calvinists or Bolshevik revolutionaries. But these colourful terms add to the richness of the English language, he says.

For lexicographer Susie Dent, the evolution or "transferred" meaning of "Luddite" reminds her of how "philistine" has changed. "The figurative sense to mean an uneducated or unenlightened person is from 1825. Before then, the first transferred sense was an often humorous reference to a group regarded as one's enemies."

These new allusions are quite common, she says. "But what always strikes me is their endurance, centuries beyond their original application."

Navickas makes a point of correcting people, albeit in a lighthearted way, when she overhears them misusing "Luddite". And yet she is thankful for the frequent sloppy usage, as it keeps these textile workers' memory alive.

The rural equivalent of the Luddites were farm workers who took part in the Swing Riots of the early 1830s. Ricks were burnt, threshing machines destroyed and tithe barns attacked. But no-one remembers this now for they never developed a recognisable brand, she says.

So however grating it is to hear an iPhone refusenik invoking the weavers of Nottinghamshire, Navickas is glad that "Luddite" remains a popular part of everyday speech.

The irony is that as the speed of technological change accelerates, the term "Luddite" has never been more necessary.


Reproduced with acknowledgements to BBC News Magazine

Don't Tell 'Em Pike

I've been getting some stick from the Conservatives over the past week or so on the Chiswick W4 community forum. They would appear to be becoming a little tetchy over the fact that I take the opportunity to post there from time to time to remind Chiswick people of the incidents that led to the deterioration of the erstwhile good relationship between their Group and ours during the last months of the 2006-2010 Conservative/ICG coalition that managed Hounslow Council - when it is relevant to a topic that is being discussed, naturally.

I say "managed" because, in spite of the ICG's best efforts, the authority was still led by chief officers when we handed the chains of office back to Labour in May 2010, and needless to say that is still very much the case today.

Those incidents included the Mogden betrayal (made worse by a shameful officer-produced feature in the council's HM Magazine arguing the Conservative case for expansion against the ICG's contrary case), the effective non co-operation of chief officers with the ICG aspects of coalition policy and the discovery of a proposal discussed by the Conservative Group to try to split the ICG asunder following the May elections by offering coalition terms to some of our elected members and not to others should the distribution of seats have permitted.

I have rehearsed all of these incidents before and don't intend to go into them in detail again. None of them are denied by our former partners and they have if nothing else taught us an abject lesson about how political parties operate in general, and that this kind of low politicking is by no means confined to Labour.

But I would remind those who feel the need to taunt us over our election reverse (that these people can effectively celebrate their own defeat gives us some clue as to the limitations of their own ambitions), and make threats against us, that every action has a reaction.

Many Conservative members of our acquaintance are unhappy with the way things have turned out, and for obvious reasons. I am advised that this is the case in Chiswick as well as in Isleworth, and I would guess it applies elsewhere in the borough too. It may be that many of those people will reflect upon the prospect, brought about by their own local party officials, of what will effectively be permanent Labour domination of the local authority for the forseeable future and will be open to persuasion that there is a better way.

It may be also that the many channels of communication through which that conversation may be had will become increasingly open to us.

If there is one positive to emerge from the election defeat of 2010 it is that it has taught us to consider our whole long-term strategic approach and not just the two-dimensional business of delivering leaflets and winning votes. And there has never been more of an appetite for independent civic engagement than there is today.

Just thought I would mention it, Captain Mainwaring!

Bradford West - Aberration or Portent?

"You politicians. Conservative. Labour. Lib-Dems. Over my lifetime, and I am 65, you have sold the assets of this country to overseas masters, and you have sold the people of this country down the river. And still you play junior fart club between yourselves. Why don't you recognise that you are all finished. Come the next General Election, you will each get a share of the lowest turn-out ever. You will all be virtually wiped out. Surely George Galloway's triumph has shown that very few people are listening to you anymore. Your political parties and your posturing and political pimping no longer mean anything."

These comments were posted on the hugely popular ChiswickW4.com community forum by a regular poster just a moment ago.

I would dearly love that his sentiments were true. Party politics continues to give an increasingly bad account of itself (some of the political posters on that forum are a particularly shining example of everything that is sick about our political process today). George Galloway's astonishingly resounding victory at Bradford West should give anybody who values democracy and integrity in politics, whether they happen to like Galloway or not, a sense of hope that the voting public is finally beginning to shed its chains.

But my enthusiasm is tempered by a sense of deja vu from past events that are by no means dim and distant. Shortly before the most recent general election in May 2010 there was a general sense that people were getting fed up like never before with the party politicians. The expenses scandal, both locally and nationally, left a very foul taste in the mouths of those who ought to be able to look to their self-proclaimed political masters for inspiration and example. There was much talk from the pollsters of a Lib Dem bounce (okay the Lib Dems are establishment party politicians as well, but a move to them would be a move away at least from the Janus-faced beast that is the two-party duopoly).

So what happened? As always the two major parties were given the lion's share of the support. The Lib Dem lion roared scarcely at all. At local elections all over the country independents and small parties were buried under a tidal wave of general election ovinity. In Brentford and Isleworth the much discredited Labour MP lost her seat to her Conservative opponent, but with a percentage swing against her that was actually lower than the national average.

So was Galloway's extraordinary victory in Bradford an aberration, or a sign of things to come?

Was, indeed, the triumph once again in 2010 of the two-headed monster an assertion that it will always ultimately triumph no matter what, or was it the swansong of a dying political establishment?

The last throes of a dying animal - violent, dangerous, but ultimately futile?

The common determining factor throughout is the mass media. It was the national media that teased us and tickled or palate with its mock indignation when our politicians were discovered with their collective snouts embedded firmly in the trough before the same mass media, as the general election drew closer, overwhelmed us all with news and images from the big party campaigns and persuaded us all that there really was no alternative after all.

It was the national media that lured voters to vote nationally, even at the local elections.

It is worth noting that the same national media all but ignored the parliamentary by-election that took place in Bradford West.

So I sound a note of caution, but that does not mean there is no hope. For the national media too is fast taking on a different character, with the Internet inducing more interactivity, the explosive growth of social networking and the steady but constant growth of alternative news channels. Just as the power of the two-headed monster over our political life is waning, so too is the relative influence of those who have traditionally controlled our sources of news and information.

The important thing is that politics is heading in the right direction, with politicians of all shades finding it necessary to at least pay lip service to localism and public engagement. Many of us are impatient for this process to reach its logical conclusion, but reach it one day it most certainly will.

How the Political Parties Exclude the General Public

By Peter Watt, former General Secretary of the Labour Party

George Galloway was right. I can hardly believe that I have typed that but on at least one thing he really is right. In his post-election interviews he said that:

“There are very large numbers of people completely disenchanted and alienated from the political process and from the mainstream political parties”.

And he is spot on. The problem is that the mainstream political parties can’t see it or choose not to. On the whole the big three UK Parties operate as a closed shop. They talk the language of reaching out to communities and engagement but they don’t really mean it. Instead they operate a series of cosy closed and highly secretive cabals that suit everyone involved and no one who isn’t. That may sound harsh but it is pretty accurate.

Let’s take selecting candidates for election which is absolutely a closed shop. Candidates are selected from a tiny group of activists who have to preform strange rituals to impress other activists in order to try and be selected. You have to stop having much of a life outside of politics in order to focus your efforts. You have to endure endless and often pointless meetings held in bizarre locations and appear to enjoy them. You have to learn how to access blocks of flats with entry phones in order to leaflets that no one reads. And you have to make sure that you learn the language of the political elite, the lexicon of the politically initiated within your chosen political tribe. And all of this just to be considered. The chances are that the whole thing will end up being stitched up in some way or other anyway and your best bet is that you are the beneficiary of said stitch-up.

"The problem is that the mainstream political parties can’t see it or choose not to. On the whole the big three UK Parties operate as a closed shop. They talk the language of reaching out to communities and engagement but they don’t really mean it. Instead they operate a series of cosy closed and highly secretive cabals that suit everyone involved and no one who isn’t. That may sound harsh but it is pretty accurate."

Or let’s take rational argument and debate which cannot happen within the cabal, in fact has to be stamped out. Put simply, if your side’s front bench says something then it must be true and has to be supported. If the other side’s front bench say it then it is a lie, worse a self-interested lie and must be opposed. So Labour opposes Free Schools because they are a Tory policy; even though for all intents and purposes they are academy schools which Labour introduced. Labour opposes the current welfare reform legislation because it is ‘Tory’ reform and therefore bad; even though Labour would have passed something very similar. The Tories accused Labour of cutting equipment from our troops and say it is typical of their attitude towards our armed forces; and then in Government scrap our aircraft carriers. They condemned Labour for blocking any referendum on EU treaties as evidence of their rampant Europhilia; and then in Government block a referendum on changes to an EU treaty.

Or take policy development within parties which is essentially a fix. Structures are created and the language of inclusion and openness is used to justify them. But in reality the process is exclusive, deliberately designed to make involvement more difficult. Certainly more difficult if you are not in the cabal, all but impossible if you are one of the 96% of the population who are not members of a political party.

In fact the party machines have a language and culture that justifies this exclusion. Member engagement is seen a more important than engaging the public. Allowing the public a glimpse of the inner workings of political life is fought tooth and nail by activists who want to preserve their privileges. So attempts to engage the public end up being barely that at all. They are grudging and desperately unattractive offers to the public to visit the Party rather than the Party going out to visit the public. The result are misnamed ‘open days’ at Conferences which you have to apply to in advance. Or handfuls of ‘real people’ being hand-picked to hear a speech after being carefully vetted for suitability. It’s not engagement at all and in fact just reinforces the sense of separation.

My favourite comment from party members is the one about ‘I did/I didn’t hear that on the doorstep’. As if the odd and snatched conversations between a party canvasser and a member of the public is a rational way to gauge opinion! But to hear activists talk you’d think that there is no purer and efficacious way to ascertain what is really going on out there than knocking on the doors of total strangers whilst wearing a rosette and carrying a clipboard!

So it all ends up in a closed and cosy world that benefits a tiny proportion of the 4% of electors who choose to join a political party. This tiny, exclusive and closed elite have developed a system that justifies its own existence to itself. That has a collective belief in its own sense of superiority. That creates jobs and elected positions from within its own ranks. And that is alienated from the vast majority of the public. But they can’t see it. And to be honest even if they could they wouldn’t want to change it because they like it just the way it is.

It’s why there attempts to look in touch look so desperately staid and inauthentic. Ed Miliband might think that buying sausage rolls makes him look in touch; most people suspect that he dumped them when he got round the corner. David Cameron might think that playing badminton makes him look like action man; most people thought he looked a prat.

But it can’t go on. A healthy democracy needs healthy political parties and right about now we have sick and dying parties. And in order to become healthy they will need to open up. Selections need to be open to the public not closed as must policy development. In fact central control generally has to reduce so that innovation and creativity can thrive. And the emphasis should be on being in partnership with electors not being their master. It will certainly take a damn sight more than any of the so called reforms that the main parties have tried so far.

The big political parties are seen as irrelevant by most voters. For now however they tend to vote for them come election time, even if unenthusiastically. But as Bradford West shows you can’t take even that for granted forever.


Reproduced with acknowledgements to Dale & Co., the current affairs mega blog by Iain Dale & Friends

Peter Hain and Labour Could Not Be More Wrong

Apparently the former Welsh Secretary Peter Hain will attack independent councillors at today's Welsh Labour conference in Cardiff, saying they have "no manifesto, no plan and no clue - many of them (are) closet Tories".

Well, we can safely titter about the "closet Tories" reference from a spokesman for a party that introduced tuition fees, wanted to privatise the Royal Mail and recently all but backed the current government's austerity programme, but it is the "no clue" suggestion that intrigues me. It is, of course, a classic expression of the more or less universally held view amongst Labour Party apologists that politicians in general and Labour politicians in particular are "experts" in a field of activity that is too complex for "ordinary" people to grasp.

Let us consider one local example of how the "clueless" independents measure up to the Labour elite. The proposed closure of the St. John's Community Centre.

Now I'm not going to take a personal swipe at the Lead Member, who is also a ward member for Syon in which the Centre is situated, because I believe he genuinely worked hard on behalf of local people to achieve what would appear, at least for now, to be a more or less satisfactory outcome for the Centre and for the community that uses it. But maybe we should take a closer look at quite how this successful outcome was delivered.

First the impending closure is announced "subject to consultation". An economic case for closure, of sorts, is mooted. It is, apparently, losing money and the building is in need of repair. Fellow Labour councillors protest that the closure is necessary "to protect frontline services" (which in the view of the community the Centre is). Residents, organised by former independent councillors, march in protest. The Lead Member attends the march to find out what is going on and to meet and take questions from members of the public. The Lead Member then promises to go back to his officers and find out more information (during the course of all this activity it was brought to the Lead Member's attention by the community itself that former independent councillors had managed to set aside £250,000 precisely to fund the required repairs, a fact that not only officers but apparently also his own party colleagues had not bothered to share with him). Unable to get a response from his own officers, he is compelled to make a Freedom of Information Request to get an answer out of them. He gets an answer. There is, after all, no economic case for closure. The Centre will not be closed after all.

Compare this with the actions of independent ICG councillors during the previous administration.

Officers proposed the closure and sale of the property to the Conservative Lead Member, who presented it to his ICG colleagues for consideration. The ICG said no. Discussion over, proposal shelved.

The point of this post is not to suggest that the Labour Lead Member is in any way less talented, nor indeed less committed, than the ICG councillors who proceeded him. It is to demonstrate that councillors whose first allegiance is to a political party cannot, with the best will in the world, compete with decent independent councillors, because their hands are completely tied by the very system of which they, by their own choice, are locked into.

Peter Hain, in other words, is talking complete and utter tosh. But then what does he care? His concern begins and ends with achieving political power for his organisation. For him, as with them, that is the end as well as the means.

The people of Wales suffer as a consequence. But then what does it matter? They don't have a clue, after all.

Facing My Fear of Farewells

One thing that really saddens me more than anything else, and a thing I handle particularly badly, is farewells. Not only from people, but from places too. Some places just don’t do it for me but there are others where I seriously believe I pick up a spirit, and I feel a strange, almost “goosebumpy” sensation when I am there and that spirit is around me.

There is no rhyme or reason where some of these places are concerned. Abingdon in Oxfordshire is a pretty town in places, but there are prettier ones all along the Thames. Ham in Surrey is fairly nondescript. Cliftonville near Margate in Kent, once a cheerful seaside town, is but an empty shell. And yet for me they all have an inexplicable gravitational pull. Some people believe in ghosts in the form of human spirits, but for me there seems to be an energy generated by some past event or period of time that seems to linger, and which I reconnect with when I set foot in these places.

There is more logic to the affection I have for my little bolthole in Portugal. It is a very pleasant place, both aesthetically and in terms of the life I enjoy when I am here. I visit Portugal for a week every year. In fact this time around I was fortunate enough to have been able to enjoy two weeks in very quick succession, but that was sadly a one-off. I can’t afford two weeks every year, and timeshares are frankly a rip-off anyway.

For my last five visits my wife Caroline and my son Joe have not come over with me, for various good reasons, although my daughter Rosie has been with me for the last two. Of course I think the world of them both, but they can look after themselves and being away from them for a week doesn’t tug at the heartstrings all that much.

Being away from here for 51 weeks is a different matter. All sorts of irrational fears invariably report present. Will I be healthy enough to travel, or for that matter alive, this time next year? Will they have knocked the place to the ground? Will all the friends I like to think I have made here have found better jobs and moved on?

Because, obviously, it is about people too. On most holidays we meet people casually and sometimes we become friends with them. Then we all go home and usually we never see nor hear from them again.

The worst example of this I can think of was a coach trip that Caroline and I took to Austria back in 1996. For ten long days the same coach party is together, long journeys from place to place, meals together at restaurants along the way, all in the same bar at the hotel in the evening, quiz nights and talent contests. Then the long, long journey home, a last evening as a group at a hotel in France, a few drinks on the ferry and then, at Medway service station, suddenly the realisation strikes that you will never have anything to do with any of these people again. For a soppy old romantic like me it can actually be quite a devastating experience.

This being a timeshare we do sometimes see the same faces from one year to the next year, and I take comfort from this. This year though the clientele was a little different, the week having a Country and Western theme and the usual karaoke folk and talent showers presumably having swapped their bookings for a different week or jetted off elsewhere. I hope they will be back next time.

I am reassured by the work that is going on around the pool, noisy though it is. They wouldn’t be doing all this, I guess, if they had plans to turn the site into a multi-storey car park or an international airport.

So for me it’s back to the grind tomorrow, hoping that I can raise the price of an “in-betweeny” for September or October, and hopefully also we can be here then as a family.

Even I Understand that the Euro Crisis is Cause for Concern

I’ve never had much of a grasp of economics. At school I passed my A-level but with a mediocre grade in spite of having been tutored by an excellent (and very patient) Economics teacher. The shambles that has always been my own financial affairs is ample testimony to my general confusion on the subject.

But having seen and studied the various news bulletins I do have a bit of a handle on the Eurozone crisis, and on the dilemmas that appear to be unfolding before us. If Greece were an individual with a personal account at Barclays or HSBC it would probably be refused a loan. It is, after all, a pretty routine consideration when deciding whether or not to lend somebody money that they should have some prospect of one day being able to pay it back. Lenders have sought assurances not only from the Greek government but also from every political party with a chance of being involved in running the country after April’s elections that they will squeeze the Greek people until the pips squeak for as long as it takes them to repay the debts which, like the British people, they played no part in incurring.

If the lenders appear to have the whip hand though, consider this. The refusal of a loan would probably result in Greece either leaving or being thrown out of the Eurozone. Devaluation of the national currency would result in hardship for millions, with those who are able to either leaving the country (as a member of the EU they have free movement after all) or at least ensuring that their savings do.

Here in Portugal, which is probably the EU member closest to Boot Hill after Greece itself, there would be a feeling amongst anybody with anything that they are next. Probably many would not wait for the eleventh hour to arrive. There would be a crisis of confidence following which collapse would probably become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Then Spain, then Italy, then Ireland…

I don’t know many people in Greece, but I do know a great many in Portugal. They are pleasant, hard-working, poorly paid but still cheerful people. They don’t deserve the misery that the bankers are in the process of visiting upon them.

I don’t know how this is all going to end but an awful lot of anger is being felt by usually level-headed, liberal and moderate people all over Europe towards the politicians and bankers who are asking them to suffer the consequences of their own failure whilst they generally exempt themselves from the misery they tell us we must all share in.

Bankers have historically taken risks whenever they have felt they might get away with it, because they are fundamentally greedy. Lending to Greece would probably be a bigger risk than most, but not lending to Greece would be infinitely more risky still.

Even I understand that.

Have I Got This Correct?

With all the publicity surrounding the Terry/Ferdinand and Suarez/Evra incidents in English football’s Premier League, exacerbated a tad further by soccer pundit Alan Hansen’s reference to black players as “coloured”, the racism issue has been well and truly in the news during recent weeks.

On top of the various happenings in the world of football we have also recently witnessed the conviction and imprisonment of two of Stephen Lawrence’s killers and a viral YouTube video apparently showing a white woman from South London, Emma West, gratuitously abusing black and minority ethnic passengers on a tram.

Odd as it may sound to some coming from a former officer of a racist political party I have never believed that society should tolerate racially motivated abuse. A person is what a person is and there are absolutely no circumstances in which it can be considered acceptable to insult another human being for something they are as opposed to something they have done.

Equally though I am instinctively averse to the absurdity that has become known to us all as “political correctness”. But what precisely is this absurdity which it is my default to reject, and is it not something of a contradiction to be repulsed both by racism and by the dogma that claims for itself the authority to identify and to condemn it?

A clue to this apparent dilemma may be found amid the various controversies that have dominated the sports columns. Let us look first of all at the incident involving Chelsea defender John Terry and Anton Ferdinand of Premier League newcomers Queen’s Park Rangers. It is not for me to prejudge the question of Terry’s guilt or innocence. That will be done by a court of law in the fullness of time. However the allegation is that Terry subjected Ferdinand to a torrent of what would clearly be considered racist abuse. If Terry is guilty it would be difficult to make any kind of case in defence of his actions or even in mitigation. It is surely not “political correctness” to insist that any such abuse be dealt with with the full force of the law.

The Luis Suarez case could be said to be a little different. He freely admits to having referred to Manchester United defender Patrice Evra as “negrita”, meaning “negro”, not once but several times, but insists that in his native Uruguay the use of the word is meant as a term of endearment and that there was no intention to insult.

Alan Hansen’s use of the word “coloured” was clearly wrong, as indeed he accepts. He has publicly apologised for doing so. Once again it was argued, and the consensus seems to be to accept, that no insult was intended. He could have pointed out in his defence that in the United States the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is widely supported by members of the African-American community who clearly do not consider the term to be derogatory. Hansen’s mistake was in not having moved with the times.

The need to respect our fellow human beings and not to abuse or insult them for what they are does of course extend beyond ethnicity. Words such as “spastic” are considered inappropriate and offensive when used in reference to somebody who is disabled. There was a time, certainly still in my lifetime, when it was used by sufferers of a condition to describe themselves.

So it is on the question of culture and ethnicity. Most people of my generation will remember a sitcom called Love Thy Neighbour, serialised on mainstream television, which was littered from start to finish with the most appalling racist abuse, not just as an occasional aside but as the central theme of the programme. Even the famously liberal writer and comedian John Cleese felt it acceptable to include the words “n****r” and “w*g”, referring respectively to West Indians and Indians, in his hilarious Fawlty Towers classic “The Germans”. I recall one of our history teachers at school, a progressive Labour-supporting type, playing a tape recording of the whole episode to us (Asian pupils included) during a break in one lesson as an example of what he considered to be fine comedy.

Today most of us would wince at this terminology. I still feel uncomfortable and self-conscious when watching this scene, and I doubt whether I could even watch Love Thy Neighbour, far less find it funny. So does this mean the “politically correct” have got it right?

The answer is probably yes, in terms of the need to engender respect and eradicate abuse. The problem with “political correctness” is that its adherents have elevated it to a cult and in so doing would appear to have entirely overlooked the essential truth that underpins it, viz. that it is not the words one uses that renders a comment inappropriate so much as the spirit in which they are used. A word is, after all, no more than a sequence of letters. It is not at all unreasonable for one to argue that the same word that causes so much offence today may have been less insulting a generation ago, or that a word that is used by a group of people to describe themselves in one society might be considered offensive in another.

The “politically correct”, in my view, have never been properly able to grasp this. As they preen themselves with their own self-bestowed moral superiority and presume the right to lecture lesser beings as to what is the precise, correct term to use in reference to which category of people they generally speaking miss the point. That point being that the need to treat others with respect as human beings is already obvious to all but the most bigoted, and that we do not require a self-appointed political elite to make that point to us, or to provide us with a list of which words we may or may not use in order to make ourselves acceptable to them (which they quite strangely assume to be our aspiration).

Our society needs to take a no-nonsense, zero tolerance approach to racism and to all other forms of discrimination, but to do this successfully it needs to do it whilst retaining a sense of humour, a sense of proportion, grace and a touch of humility.

Just possibly the “politically correct” could learn to take bigotry more seriously if they were take themselves a little less seriously.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

I am quite pleased that the Russians and Chinese have vetoed the West's resolution at the United Nations condemning the actions of the Syrian government in its clampdown against protesters seeking to overthrow the Assad regime.

It's not that I have any sympathy for President Assad in the way that he is handling the protests. It is just that I feel the West needs to reminded again and again of the consequences of gaining a reputation as a dishonest broker.

Russia and China saw the resolution as a first step towards Western military intervention in Syria. Western governments say it was no such thing, of course, but they also claimed their military action against Libya was about protecting civilians and nothing to do with regime change. Six months later French aircraft, under NATO jurisdiction, set up a legitimate head of state for a grotesque summary execution by a mob of Western-backed insurgents - all in the name of "democracy".

The UN resolution on Libya imposed the condition that there would be no NATO "boots on the ground". Last month British authorities admitted that the SAS were involved in the thick of the insurgency. In all likelihood they were there before the UN resolution as agents provocateurs, stirring up the protests that provoked the conflict in the first place.

Western politicians seem uniquely incapable of comprehending the very simple truism that those who lie the first time are very much less likely to be believed the second time. I have found this in local politics every bit as much as it is evident on the national and international stage. They seem to expect to be trusted even when they have demonstrated in the past that they clearly cannot be, and assume a veneer of injured innocence when they are not. The moral of the fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf seems completely lost on the entire political class in the UK, as well as in other Western "democracies".

In Syria, as in Iran, the rest of the world distrusts the motives of the Western powers whether or not they happen to have honourable intentions this time around. We are told Iran is developing a nuclear military capability, but the same people told us Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction that could be unleashed upon our forces within forty minutes. It turn out to be a lie, but the war ostensibly fought to relieve Iraq of the weapons it didn't have continued as though nothing had happened, with barely a murmur from the British media or from the then government's so-called "opposition".

Even if Iran is developing a nuclear bomb it can hardly be blamed for so doing. North Korea has an atomic capability and has been left well alone. Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya didn't have and look what became of them.

The Iranian authorities will have figured, not without good reason, that the West has imperialistic intentions in the region and that having a nuclear arsenal will deter it from attacking them. Protestations that the West has no intention of attacking Iran will be meaningless, because the Western "democracies" have already demonstrated quite clearly that they lie with absolute impunity and cannot therefore be trusted.

All the apprehension and uncertainty over Iran's nuclear intentions is entirely the fault of Western leaders and their OCD-like compulsion to speak in forked tongues every time they open their mouths.

The Great Diabetes Mellitus Swindle?

As I mentioned in a previous post I was diagnosed back in August 2011 with diabetes, or diabetes mellitus to give it its full medical name.

The typical profile of a Type 2 diabetic is of a middle-aged person, obese, a heavy drinker and smoker with an unhealthy diet and an aversion to physical exercise.

There was a time when I would have ticked most of these boxes, but over the last couple of years I have reduced my alcohol intake by around 90%, lost weight to the point where my Body Mass Index (BMI) records me as being only marginally overweight, and adopted a low-fat and low-sugar vegetarian diet. I have never smoked. I have always been physically active, frequently walking ten miles or more at a time and thinking nothing of working on my feet for 15 or 16 hours in a day, sometimes without a break. Without wishing to be boastful delivering a thousand leaflets in one session is a task by which I am still undaunted as I enter my second half-century.

And yet, in spite of all these "improvements" to my lifestyle, my blood sugar has increased rapidly. As Forrest Gump might have put it, sh*t happens.

Fellow diabetics, of which I seem to know a surprising number, advise me that my doctor should have placed me on Metformin as soon as I was diagnosed. Instead, he decided to try to reduce my blood sugar level naturally, through diet, before committing me to medication. Only at my second check-up, some four months down the line, did the relief doctor prescribe me the required drugs, advising me as he did that by allowing me to suffer for four months (three between official check-ups followed by another month to fix an appointment through the almost pathologically unhelpful receptionist) before placing me on the necessary medication my own doctor had been "following government guidelines".

One needs to ponder the logic of this in order to fully understand what is going on here. The diet through which it was intended I would reduce my blood sugar level "naturally" was essentially the same one I had been following as I became diabetic. What possible reason could my doctor have had for thinking that by continuing with the same diet the increase in my blood sugar level would suddenly reverse?

There are currently around 2.8 million diagnosed diabetics in the UK, with anything up to 1 million others still unaware that they have the condition. Multiply that number by four months and the saving that the government is making by delaying treatment becomes very substantial indeed. Yes, I understand the argument that strokes, heart attacks, eye surgery and amputations would cost the health service considerably more than a few boxes of tablets, but bearing in mind the fact that diabetes is a long-term, degenerative disease there is every reason to believe the government sees its policy as a way of making a substantial saving.

People who are diagnosed with diabetes yet whose existing lifestyles are reasonably healthy should insist upon immediate treatment.

Moving On

I discovered today, after 50 years, that I have gypsy blood.

Not a lot, but one or two of my ancestors were apparently "travelling folk". My mother kind of mentioned it in passing.

Which led me to reflect upon the fact that, had I come to power in the late seventies or early eighties, when it would have been reasonable to have described my political outlook as something not far removed from undiluted Nazism, I may have finished up having to gas myself.

A chilling thought for a chilly night and perhaps a time to be thankful that, in true gypsy style, I made the decision to move on.