Notes from Shetland: Part 3

An active third day on Shetland and a day without rain.  Briefly, here's what we did.

1.  A morning trip to the nearby archaeological site of Scantness. A mixture of ancient village (with wheel houses) and reconstructed broch. The builders were extremely skilled in the art of dry stone walling and put my feeble efforts to shame.
2. Thence to Scalloway for a late morning drink in what seemed to be the only hotel in town. A somewhat gruff landlord at the beginning gradually metamorphosed into a reasonable human being over the duration of our stay.
3.  We spent the afternoon on Mousa Island, travelling there by ferry from a pier at the hamlet of Cunningbury.  We walked around about two thirds of the island surrounded, as all small islands, by sea views. The clear weather meant that we could see for miles ... and miles ... and miles ... and miles (clever, eh, bringing in a reference to a Who song?). Apart from the Byrds (oops, another rock reference) the main reason for visiting the island is its 2000 year old broch, This is reputedly the most intact one on Shetland. It really is an impressive structure, circular with double skinned walls and a spiral staircase within the cavity. What were brochs used for? As with many ancient structures, the function is not really known but the smart money seems to be on something defensive or, if not that, a house for communal living. It would be nice to show a photograph of this but, unfortunately, my camera battery ran out as soon as we set foot on the island.
4. Back to Scalloway for a drink and into Lerwick for fish and chips at a cafe recommended by the ferryman.  And very good it was too. Fresh haddock and crisp batter - it doesn't get any better than that on a Saturday night in Lerwick - not that there was stiff competition.

Notes from Shetland. Part 2

An interesting mixture of archaeology, walking, birds and chance encounters with the natives today.

After a rather substantial breakfast, we visited the Jarlshof archaeological site near Sumburgh Head. The name sounds Norse but, rather more prosaically, was invented by Sir Walter Scott. Apparently it's a corruption of Earl's House. I'm glad to say that the site itself had more antiquity that its name. It covered around 4000 years of continual habitation, starting with the oldest round houses, through brochs and wheelhouses through to the 1400s. A fascinating site and one well worth visiting. We had our first encounter with a native there in the form of the site custodian, who hailed from Bradford and who enlightened us on some aspects of modern living on Shetland.

Off next to Sandwick to catch the ferry to Mousa, home of the most intact broch on Shetland. Unfortunately the ferry was not running but we did have tea and cake at a communal centre nearby. Another friendly native encountered and more information about living on Shetland.

Next it was off to walk around St Ninian's Island in the rain. And how it rained! But it was a great walk with panoramic views and lots of birds - Arctic Skuas, Great Skuas, long-tailed ducks, turnstones, Northern divers, ring plovers, oyster catchers and fulmars, to name just the main ones spotted. And St Ninian's Chapel at the end.

Next we drove to Quendale Mill for coffee and a visit to the mill itself.  It has to be said that we spent more time over our drinks and chatting to the custodian than we did going around the mill!  Another friendly informative native.

And the day finished with dinner at the Sumburgh Head Hotel with possibly the most peppery sauced dish that I'd ever encountered.

Lots of excellent photographs taken today but, because of an extremely slow wi-fi connection, I just can't upload them onto the blog. Maybe tomorrow?

Notes from Shetland: Part 1

A short break on Shetland for the next few days.  Three short flights (Exeter to Manchester, Manchester to Aberdeen, Aberdeen to Sumburgh) took us there in just six hours (ignoring the fact that we had to get up at 3.30am to take the first flight at 7am).

Sumburgh is at the very tip of the largest island, South Mainland, and we've got a decent B & B close to the shore of a loch. We got in a short trip to Lerwick before walking around the lighthouse on Sumburgh Head to look for puffins. And there they were in their hundreds.  Delightful little birds with big beaks and red feet. After a meal at the Sumburgh Head Hotel, it was eyes down for an early night.

300 Not Out!

This is the 300th posting I've made to my blog. There's nothing particularly significant about this other than the fact that it's a convenient marker. Blogs 1 - 150 were collated into a hard-covered book format and I'm going to do the same with Blogs 151 - 300. I know it's an exercise in vanity publishing but it is a useful way of keeping a record of what I've written. I haven't revisited my first compilation much since it was produced and, quite honestly, I can't remember who has seen it. It's not something that I flash in front of visitors or leave by their bedside as night time reading. Perhaps I should for those people I want to get rid of quickly! 
At the moment, I'm getting around 1000 'hits' a month and this encourages me to continue putting fingers to the keyboard. However I'm not writing for an audience: it's still my way of structuring my thoughts on various topics (plus a few diversions into fantasy and plain daftness!) and doing something from which I get immense pleasure.  Will I hit Blog 450?

Gadget freak? Techno geek? Moi?

It's a type of addiction I suppose. This desire to have something which bypasses rational thought. We all have our weaknesses: those personal comfort blankets that we crave when life is cloudy or the sun doesn't shine or we realise we are finally getting old. For some it might be alcohol or cigarettes, for others it might be status cars or fancy clothes: for me, it is gadgets.

Expose me to a new gadget and within days I am imagining what it would be like to own it, how it would change my life, make me the tidy, organised, confident, successful person I always should have been - and never became because of the absence of this particular calculator, laptop, notepad, tablet, smartphone or whatever. It's not that I want to show my new gadgets off, like all good addicts I tend to hide my habit, cocooning the shiny new electronic piece of kit in the pockets of my jacket, like the guilty secret that it is. But as addictions go, it is relatively mild. The need for a gadget fix is often separated by months of normality.  I have learnt to live with it, like my cute freckles, my rippling pecs or my scar from a childhood fall.

And what has brought this confession to the fore? My latest gadget purchase: a portable scanner. It will enable me to scan records directly onto a memory stick when I'm researching information for the book I am writing (more of that at another time). Or for when I want to add to my collection of cereal packet labels. Or for when I want to capture a memorable train ticket for posterity. There are 1001 reasons for owning one, none of which bear close examination but I've bought it anyway.

Gadget freak or techno geek? I'll accept neither epithet: 'Early adopter' sounds much more like it. You'll all have one soon, believe me.

Only one word to describe this place..................

Another good day for a walk on Dartmoor yesterday, on a part of the moor not that much visited by anyone outside of the warmer months. It was about 7 1/2 miles in reasonably good weather (some spots of rain but with intermittent sunshine and wind). A reasonably challenging route, off footpaths, an ascent of around 1000 feet and across lots of tussocky ground (how I dislike tussocks!). And I must mention the water: lots of water. In the form of rivers, rivulets, streams, puddles, bogs, mud...you name it, we came across it. So, where did we go?

We started at the small car park on the moor just at the back of the Dartmoor Inn in Lydford. We headed due west for a 1/2 mile or so and then onto the moor proper as we followed the Walla Brook around Brat Tor (that's the one with Widgery Cross on the top of it. The cross being placed there in the 1890s by the artist Widgery to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee). Across country to Rattlebrook and then east along this through the extensive mine and peatworks remnants to the appropriately named Bleak House. Was this the most isolated dwelling on Dartmoor? It dates from the mid-1800s and was originally the house of the manager of the surrounding Dartmoor Compressed Peat Company. This was in operation until the early 1950s in one form or another and produced peat in dried and compressed blocks. Apparently, some of it was also distilled to form a tar which was exported to Russia. The combination of tin mines and peat works lead to quite an extensive railway network in the area, the disused tracks of which are still clearly visible, as are the channels from which the peat was dug.

From Bleak House in a bleak place (a good example of nominative determinism?) we tussocked around Great Links Tor and Little Links Tor and dropped down into the Lyd Valley, just east of Great Nodden. For our last stretch we followed the River Lyd as it cascaded down more or less back to our starting point.  Another lucky day weatherwise and another good day out on the moor.

Widgery Cross on top of Brat Tor. Unlike most crosses on Dartmoor, this one is made of separate blocks rather than a single piece of carved granite.

 

Growing old disgracefully. All of us except the photographer, DC. No, not that DC, another far more important one.

 

Dartmoor mud and water.

 

More Dartmoor water - a feeder stream into Rattlebrook.

 

Another variety of Dartmoor water - crossing the River Lyd.

 

Some, just some, of the tussocks we negotiated. They are deceptively benign looking.

 

The name fits the location - Bleak House.

Great Links Tor from the southern side.

 

 

 

Connections, connections, connections.....

Sooner or later any discussion about 'She who is being buried today' will turn to coal mines and coal miners. I was born and brought up in a mining area in South Wales and can clearly remember a sign like the above along the road leading to our pit. "This colliery is now managed by the National Coal Board on behalf of the people" it said and it was put in place when the coal mines were taken into public ownership. Given that the current mantra is 'private = good and public = bad', I found it useful to remind myself why privately owned industries were nationalised in the first place.

Let's not forget that, before nationalisation, pits were grim.  Thousands of miners’ lives had been lost due to lung disease (one of whom was my grandfather, Norman Bowyer), gas explosions and cave-ins. The miners’ unions had been forced by recalcitrant owners to engage in some of the most prolonged and bitterly contested industrial conflicts in British history. But at last, after a century-and-a-half of constant struggle, "Vesting Day" – when the proprietary interest in Britain’s coal industry was prised from the fingers of its private owners and vested in public hands – had dawned (1st January 1947). I don't think that it's an exaggeration to say that ordinary people (yes, the working classes) had invested enormous hopes in the nationalisation programme of the Labour Party. But what for? What was nationalisation/socialisation supposed to achieve?

At the most basic level it was intended to lift the burden of private ownership from the shoulders of the men and women who laboured in its service. Returning a healthy dividend to their shareholders all-too-often obliged the owners to extract more effort from their employees for less reward. Health and safety considerations were similarly subordinated to the owners’ over-riding imperative to increase the rate of return on capital. Public ownership was – at the very least – intended to construct a solid platform for the workers’ wages and conditions. But that was just the beginning.

The workers in nationalised industries also hoped to play a central role in their management. To "socialise" production was to break down the boundaries separating those who made the decisions from those who carried them out. Socialisation was also intended to broaden radically the definition of who held a legitimate interest in the nation’s mines, factories, warehouses, shops and offices. "Stakeholders" in these enterprises were said to include not only the workers, their families, and the local community, but also those who worked in the wider community which sustained them. Nationalisation would allow democracy, hitherto reserved for the ballot-box, to flow into the workplace, where, the socialists insisted, it had always been needed most.

Sadly, and some would say inevitably, the historical experience of nationalisation fell well short of the high hopes of the 1940s. Only the most basic expectations of the process were fulfilled. Because, although the State generally proved to be a better employer than the private capitalist, it opted to run the nationalised industries in exactly the same fashion. The strict division between "the bosses" and "the workers" endured, and the latter’s vast store of knowledge about the enterprise’s operations remained as under-utilised in the state-owned industries as it did in the private sector.

The post-war wave of nationalisations was taken apart by the countervailing forces of the neoliberal revolution promoted by the Lady in Question and her ilk. In due course, all of our publicly-owned entities were privatised. The neoliberal justification for privatising state-owned industries has always been that the private sector, on balance, is more productive and more profitable. And who better to benefit from the profits than the capitalists? And perish the thought that the citizenry (ie those who provide the money in the first place) would have any say in the way these enterprises were run in the future. Nationalisation was not meant to turn out this way. Was its demise due to a failure of philosophy or politics? You pays your money and you takes your choice! I go with the latter but I would say that, wouldn't I? But that doesn't make me wrong! 

A final observation: the Guardian yesterday published details of a recent YouGov survey which showed that, on the whole, the British public supported the view that the state has sweeping societal responsibilities.  Wouldn't it be supremely ironic if one of the consequences of the publicity attracted by the Lady in Question is that people are reminded of her political philosophy? And in so doing decide that they actually don't agree with 'private = good and public = bad'. Perhaps we'll see signs like the following popping up all over the place. Maybe even Posh Dave will realise who he should be running the country for. 

 

 

 

 

 

Twelve months ago today.................................

..........my father-in-law, Harry Laws, died.  He is much missed. If he were still alive, there is no doubt that we would be talking about the recent run of form that has taken 'our' football team, Newport County, into the promotion zone of the Blue Square Bet Premier League. Will this be the season when they finally return to the higher echelons of the Football League after so many years of tootling around its lower reaches? Harry would be delighted if they did. As he always said 'Up the Port'!



 

My last words on Mrs T (hopefully)

The rather tedious adulation of Mrs Thatcher continues and will continue until after her funeral on Wednesday. I'm not sure what I'll be doing when it happens but I think it's safe to say that I won't be glued to the TV.  I'm not going to bang on anymore about her policies but, as a last hoorah, I will mention just one particular aspect of her personality that always rankled with me: her attitude to the people made redundant as a consequence of her policy to close coalmines  (and lots of other manufacturing industries for that matter).

You can agree or disagree with the justification given for the closures but I, for one, cannot forget or forgive her lack of compassion and sympathy for the hardships and suffering caused to the thousands of workers and their families thrown onto the “scrapheap” of unemployment. This was done with little thought or effort made by her government to the creation of alternative industries and training as a means of providing paid work (and I speak from my observations and knowledge of what happened in the coalfields of South Wales). She callously abandoned these people and then cynically went on a publicity-seeking solo “walkabout” in a derelict area (Crosby, site of a large steelworks)  talking about re-generation when she had no plans and little enthusiasm as to how to achieve it. It was this lack of compassion and sympathy that exposed the cynicism and hypocrisy of her quoting St Francis of Assisi on the steps of No 10 “Where there is discord may there be harmony” when she and her government thrived, encouraged and prospered on discord.

And finally a word about those celebrating her death. You do not have to eulogize her, admire her or even like her, but I do think the feelings of her family should be respected. Having said that, am I alone in thinking that the criticism of the celebrations by the likes of Posh Dave is somewhat devalued by the fact that he travelled to Libya to celebrate the overthrow and death of Colonel Ghadaffi? Do unto others.......?

(And the painting? It's by John Opie and is called 'Boadicea Haranguing the Britons'. In its fashion, it reminds me of the way Mrs T imperiously berated both foes and friends in the House of Commons).

On meeting an icon..............

At the moment the media are replete with the views of people who admire Mrs Thatcher. And it's their right to do so but I'm not one of them. Nevertheless, in the wee small hours of this morning, unable to sleep, I found myself pondering about who I do admire (and why).

I have always leant towards the iconoclastic and have never rated the rich and famous, sportspeople, celebrities, titles or position holders. Before Morpheus embraced me in her arms once more, I concluded that the criteria for inclusion on my list of people I admire are that the individual must have fulfilled one or more of the following. I have to:

• Respect work they’ve done
• Have learned something significant from them
• Respect the way they conduct themselves
• Respect the way they treat and care for others

I'm only going to mention one person who features on my list and that is Bruce Kent, senior statesman of the British CND movement. I've admired him from afar since I became interested in CND in the mid-60s. I'd never met him until I had the priviledge of spending a few hours with him last week reminding the good citizens of Tavistock of the perfidy that is Trident. I must admit that I was quite nervous about meeting him. What if he was not as I imagined? In the event, I was not disappointed. He was a gentle, pleasant man with an undiminished passion for the cause he has espoused so frevently for the last 50 years: 84 years old and as sharp as ever. To see him engage with and dispell hostility was a masterclass in action. He even got us a surprisingly sympathetic review in our local newspaper, the Tavistock Times (double click on the image to read it - should you wish. And the chap sitting down on the right? We've got no idea who he is - he just sat down when we were getting ready and he seemed so happy to have a chance to be in the shot that we didn't have the heart to tell him to push off. After all, we are the Tavistock Peace Action Group!)

A circumnavigation.................

...........not around the globe but around Kit Hill. We decided we'd deviate from our normal route and take a track following an approximation of the 900 foot contour line. A clockwise circumperambulation of about 3 miles - a very pleasant way to pass a couple of hours on a sunny (yes, sunny) afternoon. Lots to see, as ever, and after an unexpected detour (I got lost!) we came across a part of the Hill we had not visited before.  It just goes to show that no matter how well you think you know somewhere, there's always something new to discover. And we think we saw a blackcap flitting from bush to bush. Hard to tell as I'm not that good at identifying LBTs (little brown things - for the uninitiated that's an ornithological term).

Not a hole in the ground but an abandoned in-situ granite pit. The granite, in the centre, would be shaped as much as possible on site and then transported to where it was going to be used.  Dartmoor is in the far distance.

 

A wheel pit (the dark line in front of the tree) at South Kit Hill mine. Judging from the dimensions, this one would have been about 40 foot in diameter, originally water powered from a combination of reservoirs and leats. Not easy when it's located near the top of a 1000 foot hill.

 

If you can make out some circular depressions, you are looking at buddles. These were an end-stage of ore separation and were involved in grinding and washing the near final product. The origin of the word is German and indicates the legacy of technique transfer in the Middle Ages.

 

The view looking west-ish towards Windsor and Redmoor engine houses. Bodmin Moor is in the distance.

And what do you do with the granite you don't want? You stick it in a great big pile.

North Kit Hill mine - an adit going horizontally into the hill with a vertical shaft immediately in front of it. Both homes to many types of bats - at least 7 different species at the last count. Not by me, of course, but by someone adept at wielding his bat frequency detector.

 

And the view south-ish. A hazy day but Plymouth Sound was visible about 15 miles away.

 

Margaret Thatcher: RIP

Like her or loath her, no one can dispute that Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive and polarising political leader of the last century. I was never a fan and, while I feel sad, as I would for any other human being, at the way she declined in her latter years, I cannot be hypocritical and join in with her beatification. Neither can I join in with her vilification. Mrs Thatcher, if I may plagiarise the title of a song, These are the (no-so) foolish things that remind me of you:

1. She supported the retention of capital punishment
2. She destroyed the country's manufacturing industry
3. She voted against the relaxation of divorce laws
4. She abolished free milk for schoolchildren - Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher (I chanted this at a public meeting she spoke at in Plymouth in the early 1970s!)
5. She supported more freedom for business (and look how that turned out)
6. She gained support from the National Front in the 1979 election by pandering to the fears of immigration
7. She gerrymandered local authorities by forcing through council house sales, at the same time preventing councils from spending the money they got for selling houses on building new houses (spending on social housing dropped by 67% in her premiership)
8. She was responsible for 3.6 million unemployed - the highest figure and the highest proportion of the workforce in history and three times the previous government. Massaging of the figures means that the figure was closer to 5 million
9. She ignored intelligence about Argentinian preparations for the invasion of the Falkland Islands and scrapped the only Royal Navy presence in the islands
10. The poll tax
11. She presided over the closure of 150 coal mines; we are now crippled by the cost of energy, having to import expensive coal from abroad
12. She compared her "fight" against the miners to the Falklands War
13. She privatised state monopolies and created the corporate greed culture that we've been railing against for the last 5 years
14. She introduced the gradual privatisation of the NHS
15. She introduced financial deregulation in a way that turned city institutions into avaricious money pits
16. She pioneered the unfailing adoration and unquestioning support of the USA
17. She allowed the US to place nuclear missiles on UK soil, under US control
18. Section 28
19. She opposed anti-apartheid sanctions against South Africa and described Nelson Mandela as "that grubby little terrorist"
20. She support the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and sent the SAS to train their soldiers
21. She allowed the US to bomb Libya in 1986, against the wishes of more than 2/3 of the population
22. She opposed the reunification of Germany
23. She invented Quangos
24. She increased VAT from 8% to 17.5%
25. She had the lowest approval rating of any post-war Prime Minister
26. Her post-PM job? Consultant to Philip Morris tobacco at $250,000 a year, plus $50,000 per speech
27. The Al Yamamah contract
28. She opposed the indictment of Chile's General Pinochet
29. Social unrest under her leadership was higher than at any time since the General Strike
30. She presided over interest rates increasing to 15%
31. BSE
32. She presided over 2 million manufacturing job losses in the 79-81 recession
33. She opposed the inclusion of Eire in the Northern Ireland peace process
34. She supported sanctions-busting arms deals with South Africa
35. Cecil Parkinson, Alan Clark, David Mellor, Jeffrey Archer, Jonathan Aitkin
36. Crime rates doubled under Thatcher
37. Black Wednesday – Britain withdraws from the ERM and the pound is devalued. Cost to Britain - £3.5 billion; profit for George Soros - £1 billion
38. Poverty doubled while she opposed a minimum wage
39. She privatised public services, claiming at the time it would increase public ownership. Most are now owned either by foreign governments (EDF) or major investment houses. The profits don’t now accrue to the taxpayer, but to foreign or institutional shareholders.
40. She cut 75% of funding to museums, galleries and other sources of education
41. In the Thatcher years the top 10% of earners received almost 50% of the tax remissions
42. 21.9% inflation

Many thanks to Philip Cave, via Facebook, for this list.  I haven't checked it but it fits my recollections. And, I'll admit, my prejudices.

It's April 7th and that means.................

...................it's William Wordsworth's birthday.  Given the time of year, he would always have daffodils around when he cut his birthday cake.  Here is what must be his most famous work, followed by some daffodils we've come across on our walks recently.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
   That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
   A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
   And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
   Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
   Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A Poet could not but be gay,
   In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
   In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A walk from Luckett

A much more local walk today, starting and ending in the car park in Luckett, about 2 miles from home.  The route was elliptical, following the line of the river towards Horsebridge and then tracking around fields through the ancient hamlets of Pempwell, Lidwell and Broadgate.  Unusually for us, no moors and no coast but plenty of views across fields, hedges and Kit Hill.  And stiles of various shapes, sizes and heights!  About 5.5 miles in pleasant but rather chilly conditions.

Just a stream? Not really as this one has been used for centuries to power wheels at various mines and mills along its course and to provide tin via streaming in the 1200s. Ah yes, it's also the site of the world (?) famous Luckett Duck race held each summer. Imagine this scene with about 200 yellow blobs bobbing in the water.

 

I liked the contrast between the rich green of the holly and the pale green of the lichen. And there are plenty of buds just about to burst - when the weather gets a little warmer.

 

Daffodils starting to fade but the primroses are now coming into their own on banks.

 

A seat for someone with very short legs?

 

This whorl in the bark of a large oak tree caught my eye. As did the deeply embedded piece of stone.  I wonder how long that had been there?

 

With appropriate permissions, old engine houses can be converted into character dwellings.  This one at Broadgate is well under way and is looking good.

 

Without planning permission (and I know the saga relating to this one), some engine houses are just being allowed to decay.  It's sad, and unfathomable, that this is allowed to happen even when the owner has submitted reasonable plans for conversion/refurbishment. The arguments have been going on for years and has probably gone passed the point of no return as far as the fabric of the building is concerned.

 

Strangely appropriate street furniture in Luckett.  Abandon all hope, all ye who live here?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bob Dylan he isn't......

.........................but it's good to hear that the old fashioned protest song is still alive and kicking!  This is from Citizen Smart and it's a little ditty entitled 'You Cannae Have A Spare Room in a Pokey Cooncil Flat' about the Bedroom Tax introduced this week.  All power to his guitar strings. 

Whither or wither the Welfare State?

One problem (just one, you ask?) I have when politicians of all persuasions talk about welfare reform is that they never really tell us what they/we believe the welfare state is for. And it follows from that, what welfare reform is actually intended to achieve. Instead 'welfare reform' has become a default term for cutting the welfare budget. But budget reduction is definitely not reform. It changes the size but not the shape or the effect of welfare; it reforms absolutely nothing.  To pretend otherwise is downright dishonest and we are getting lots of that this week as more 'reforms' are rolled out by Posh Dave and his henchman Ian Duncan Smith.

But why should we be surprised at this?  It captures the kind of shallow thinking that pervades our government, our institutions and, let's face it, our times.  The kind of thinking that means our leaders see more sense in the short term fix rather than the longer term solution. The kind of thinking that says that the answer to binge drinking and alcohol fuelled anti-social behaviour is to increase the price of drink rather than tackling the underlying admittedly complex social issues. The kind of thinking that says that the answer to our financial crises is to give more money to the banks rather than the restructuring and regulation of the systems that brought us so low.  I could go on (and on and on and on.....) in this vein but I've strayed from the point at which I started: welfare reform.

I wonder how many people today remember from whence came the Welfare State?  Perhaps a quick refresher is in order, if only to remind ourselves of the original intent of the Welfare State? On 1st December 1942 the wartime coalition government published a report, written by Sir William Beveridge, entitled 'Social Insurance and Allied Services'. The Beveridge Report quickly became the blueprint for the modern British welfare state and it aimed to provide a comprehensive system of social insurance 'from cradle to grave'. It proposed that all working people should pay a weekly contribution to the state. In return, benefits would be paid to the unemployed, the sick, the retired and the widowed. Beveridge wanted to ensure that there was an acceptable minimum standard of living in Britain below which nobody fell.  Not a bad objective and is one that any civilised society should support.  Over the years there have been many changes in detail to what the Welfare State provides for its citizens (provided by our money remember) but no real debate about the fundamental question: what exactly do UK citizens expect from the Welfare State of the 21st Century? 

At the moment the debate around welfare remains firmly fixed on the overall cost of the welfare bill and there is a political battle about what is spent, for how long and on whom. There is a divide between those who say that all who need it should be comfortably supported for as long as is necessary, and those that believe such support in and of itself is debilitating and creates a dependency that is itself a cruelty. And because we have a Tory/Coalition government hell bent on imposing ideological change and breaking citizens’ ties to the state at any given opportunity, the cutters are winning.  Yet another chapter in the long and rather inglorious history of welfare reform.

Call me an Old Labour dinosaur (you are an Old Labour dinosaur, Parsons) but I am a firm believer in the Welfare State and, yes, I still subscribe to Beveridge's original tenet of ensuring that there is an acceptable minimum standard of living in this country below which nobody should fall.  And I want my taxes and my government to preserve it.  This is one position: the other is that being pursued by the cutters. Unfortunately it is not yet apparent to me what path Ed Milliband's Labour will take or even if 'they' recognise that a firm choice must be made. Both paths are set with danger and will face resistance. But it is crystal clear to me that if we (and by that I mean those of us on the left) continue to fudge between them, we will achieve nothing and remain as we are, with a creaking and unsatisfactory system that has neither the support of users nor of the wider public.  I just cannot believe that the people of this country really want to dismantle the Welfare State and let the free market and the pursuit of profit rule everything.   Don't be taken in by the rhetoric: the majority of those being screwed by the changes this week are those least likely to be able to cope.  Compassionate Conservatism?  My arse!