Brown Begins To Slip

Well, I suppose expecting Brown and his gang to keep up the good news of decent policies for a whole month was a little much to expect. However, the announcement today of the construction of the two largest aircraft carriers Britain has ever owned and the extension of the right to detain people without charge from 28 days (which was iniquitous anyway) to 56 days, reveals that he is no different from his predecessors and cannot shake off the obsessions with war and authoritarian control of the state. If you cannot find sufficient evidence to charge someone within a week of holding them prisoner let alone a month or two months, what is the point in holding them. This policy smacks of the kind of 'protective custody' the Nazis use, i.e. putting people in concentration camps. I could tolerate arms expenditure on the grounds that it has created secure employment for a few thousand people in Portsmouth until 2016 but authoritarian detention policies which have no impact on crime or terrorism are simply unnecessary and show that, unfortunately, Brown shares much of Blair's perverse view of how we should be ruled.

Drop the Princess Obsession

While I can claim no credit as a child psychologist, I did train as a teacher in my youth and was a volunteer at a primary school in the 2000s (there were no male teachers and boys were seeing reading as something only girls and women did, so a number of men from my company were invited to come and read one lunchtime a week to show that men read) and now I sometimes take my housemate's son to primary school when it is raining, so I can claim some knowledge of schoolchildren. However, my posting today, though starting there spreads out into the adult world too. If you live in the UK you probably have noticed how pink everything is these days. When I was a boy, girls would sometimes wear pink, but also lots of other colours too, especially denim blue. These days they often turn out in pink shoes, dresses, tops, trousers and coats and quite often are dropped off by mothers driving pink cars (I must say shocking pink cars, a couple of which are in my neighbourhood and another passes me on the road each morning are slightly alarming). Okay, so pink is in. However, it is part of wider trend, one you can see emblazoned across the back windows of many cars not only these pink ones: 'little princess on board'. Some even have little tiaras fitted to their seats. The supermarkets are filled with stationery and lunch boxes and drinks holders all echoing this theme. I know parents are now afraid to let their children out of their sight and in the UK we are growing up with a generation who can do very little for themselves and are frightened of the real world, but this princess obsession goes further. By default it is saying that her parents are king and queen. I know people should be proud of themselves, but we also need to be grounded. There is nothing wrong with girls pretending to be princesses, but what we are seeing is overload. Why cannot she sometimes pretend to be an astronaut or a doctor or a warrior? The pricness overload also says to girls, that the only legitimate way for a woman to be is, as my housemate's son calls it 'a girly girl'. This is a very male chauvinist attitude towards women and is not a healthy one for boys to adopt. It is as if the whole feminist campaign going back to the 1900s and certainly since the 1970s has been overturned and the only role model for girls that is presented by the media and retail sectors and collaborated in by parents is as a pampered princess unable to act for herself, having her every whim fulfilled and only valued for her prettiness, no other attribute.

Now, you might say, it is just a phase and girls grow out of it. However, this is where the difficulties creep in. I have seen some of these 'little' princesses grow into women and yet their attitudes remain juvenile. They expected to get whatever they want just as they did when they were 5. They find it difficult to leave home and even when they do, the demand support, both financial and practical, from their families. They run up huge credit card bills and getting into vast debt is a common problem in the UK today. In 2006 over 90,000 people filed for personal bankruptcy and many more are in difficulty, partly because their parents never said 'no' or 'you have to wait until Christmas' or 'save up for it' or 'get a paper-round and earn the money for it'. Instead they say 'yes and do you want the rest of those in the series?' This pandering to every demand does not only have financial implications but physical ones too, 23% of UK women (and 25% of UK men) are now obese. Much of this is motivated by the consumer industry as women given this mindset make far better consumers than slim women who save and analyse what they really want rather than constantly being driven by fashions.

I remember clearly one example of a woman who grew out of all this princess merchandise into being a spoilt adult, sitting in her flat with her family buzzing around her as she commanded them to move items to her new flat. In the hours this took, she contributed absolutely nothing to the effort. Her parents were on hand to praise how skilful she was in selecting which commands to throw out. I had been brought in as a friend of her fiance's and someone with removals experience and I remember abandoning the task after about three hours when she complained that we had not hefted all the expensive furniture fast enough (despite the difficulty of very narrow doorways) and I remembered I was not being paid for this job and insults cost in my book. Having married my friend she decided she also wanted a lover to live in the house and imported him from South America. You might say that my friend should have left but as you know from these posts, getting a house, getting out a mortgage is very difficult in the UK so he is locked into a house with his separated wife and her lover who lives rent free while my friend pays the mortgage. This is where the princess obsession ends up. You might say 'good on her', but I would say she is not a strong woman, she is a parasite.

So before you go out and buy another item of pink clothing or a sign saying 'princess on board' for your daughter, niece or grand-daughter, think twice. Think about doing something that will enable her to be an independent, strong woman of the future who can handle money and know the true value of things both financially and in human terms. Start now and buy her some dungarees or a football or a book on amphibians. Ultimately she might turn her nose at not having her princess-side pandered to still more, but she will lead a better life as a consequence.

'La Mer' by Charles Trenet (1946)

This evening I was thinking about some of my favourite music to comment about on this blog and came to 'La Mer' by Charles Trenet, written by him in 1943 (apparently on train toilet paper) and recorded in 1946. I heard it first in 1995 when watching the movie 'Funny Bones' and, like so many people, was incredibly captivated by it. It certainly seemed so nostalgic and stirred up my memories of driving along the coast road between Calais and Boulogne in northern France, especially with my parents.  Trenet wrote it, however, while travelling along the Mediterranean coast, and the word 'etang' a salty pool or lagoon is particularly applicable in that part of France rather than the North.

The Channel coastline the song reminds me of there is very clean and has views across to England. Some of the towns, such as Le Touquet, seem to be trapped in a 'golden' era of holidaying, perhaps of 1937 when French workers first got the chance to have paid holidays (something Trenet celebrated in song). Looking on Wikipedia, you can see that since 1971, 'La Mer' has featured in one form or another in 15 movies.

Globally, the English version, 'Beyond the Sea', has been more successful (in English-speaking countries anyway) since Bobby Darin's hit in 1960; apparently over 400 singers have recorded it. The two songs have precisely the same tune but tonight I have read that in fact they are very different songs (though both having a maritime theme).  My French has never been good enough to identify the differences (and similarities) between the two versions, but I have now found both sets of lyrics and a translation of the French; the English translation is next to the French. Below I provide both sets for comparison and the vast differences are immediately visible.  Having the French words written down means I can sing along properly next time I am looking out across the sea from Cap Griz Nez.

This blog posting is very much for my benefit.  The simplicity of the lyrics does not do justice to the wistful then triumphant tune they are set to, well worth a listen when going on holiday or when you need cheering up:

La Mer

La mer (The sea)
a des reflets d'argent. (has silver reflections.)
La mer (The sea)
des reflets changeants (has changing reflections)
sous la pluie. (under the rain.)
La mer (The sea)
au ciel d'été confond (to the summer sky confuses)
ses blancs moutons (her white sheep)
avec les anges si purs (with angels so pure.)
La mer, bergère d'azur infinie. (The sea, shepherdess of infinite blue.)
Voyez! (See!)
Près des étangs (next to the pools)
ces grands roseaux mouillés. (those tall wet reeds.)
Voyez! (See!)
ces oiseaux blancs (those white birds)
et ces maisons rouillées. (and those rusty houses.)
La mer (The sea)
les a bercés (has rocked them)
le long des golfes clairs (along the clear gulfs)
et d'une chanson d'amour (and, with a love song,)
la mer (the sea)
a bercé mon cœur pour la vie. (has rocked my heart for life.)

Keeping the same touching and stirring tune, these are the lyrics of the English-language version, 'Beyond the Sea' which is much less about nature and more about romance:

Beyond the Sea

Somewhere beyond the sea,
somewhere, waiting for me,
my lover stands on golden sands
and watches the ships that go sailing.
Somewhere beyond the sea,
she's there watching for me.
If I could fly like birds on high,
then straight to her arms I'd go sailing.
it's far beyond a star,
it's near beyond the Moon,
I know beyond a doubt
my heart will lead me there soon.
We'll meet beyond the shore,
we'll kiss just as before.
Happy we'll be, beyond the sea,
and never again I'll go sailing!

Brown & Co: So Far So Good

Well, it is 23 days since Gordon Brown became prime minister of the UK. Maybe it is a little early to talk of reviewing his progress so far, but I am going to start the ball rolling. As readers of this blog will know, I disliked Tony Blair. I had had suspicions of him as soon as he became leader of the Labour Party in 1994 and must say my suspicions and other bad things I had not been wary of, were confirmed by his long time in office. I think that we had the Blair Party, a populist party with a mild personality cult in power. I was cautious that with the departure of Tony Blair with bitter irony to be an envoy to promote peace in the Middle East, that anything would change. However, I must say that I have been very pleasantly surprised by Gordon Brown. He is not the saviour and time will come when he slips up. However, people tend to forget that politicians are people, nothing more. The best we can hope for is that we do not suffer from their policies and if we are lucky will actually have a safer life and prosper. I know there was the emphasis on Brown having to prove himself in his 'hundred days' (which interestingly will take us to 5th November, the anniversary of the attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605), but I have to say he and importantly his ministers have leapt at the task. It really exposes how bankrupt the last days (years?) of the Blair regime had been. All of the policies the Brown government has introduced could have come in under Blair. There have not been great changes in the last few months; the only major change has been a round of heavy flooding in northern England. The flaring up of terrorism was just another burst of something which has been happening regularly in the UK for over 35 years.

What would I point to in terms of good plans from the Brown government (I think we can actually call it a Labour government again as it is embracing values Labour members of the 20th century would recognise)? The indications that the UK will not be blindly beholden to the USA was immediately refreshing. Brown has visited the Chancellor of Germany and the President of France before he has gone to see the President of the USA. In speeches though these have been wrapped around with caveats, it now appears that the relationship with the USA is no longer seen as the one to which all others must bend. As in all diplomacy it has to be give and take. The USA and UK on and off have been on close terms since 1917, but these terms became unhealthily close from the basing of US nuclear cruise missiles in the UK in 1981 and the bombing of Libya by US aircraft from bases in the UK in 1986. The UK being sucked into the war against Iraq in 2003 seemed to cap off a situation in which the UK had to comply with US wishes without question and face the consequences. I doubt there was much ground for such behaviour in the Cold War era, and there certainly is none now. This is not to say we should break with the USA, but recognise that it is both unhealthy for US politics and for the UK's welfare if we obey without question. Brown is signalling that the UK is looking for wider and more diverse connections in the world.

Another area, which to some might smack of Old Labour (and I ask what is the problem with that) as we have had Very Old Conservatism (i.e. pre-Disraeli, pre-1860s) in force since 1979, is the policy to provide more affordable housing in the UK. I am comfortably well-off and yet even I have difficulty affording somewhere to live, so the 80% of the population on the national average salary or below, are finding it harder. Everyone talks about the break up of families and by implication of society as stemming from simply human behaviour, the 'must have it all' culture, without ever considering how many families are jammed into poor housing or are financially crippled by the rent or mortgage they have to pay and live in such uncertainty because landlords/ladies and letting agencies are free to bind them to long contracts and snatch their money and then simply kick them out. Rights for tenants are improving, but there remains a long way to go until the bulk of UK people have accommodation stability and affordable housing. In 1980 the Thatcher government introduced the 'right to buy' scheme which allowed council tenants to buy the houses and flats they occupied at about 50% discount. The idea was to create a lower middle class body of property-owners who would support the Conservative Party. It is estimated that since 1980 1.5 million out of 3.1 million council properties have been sold. Councils have been barred from building any more despite the rise in the population, the increase of people living on their own (to over 6 million) and a 676% increase in the cost of houses (compared to 261% rise for commercial and industrial property). Households have been growing at 200,000 per year and house building has only been 140-160,000 per year; excess demand is estimated to have increased house prices by 60% over what they would otherwise be if it had been met. A lot of people have had an interest in pumping up house prices but now they are out of the reach of most and in turn this has had an impact on rents too. Council houses (which housed up to 60% of the population of towns in Scotland in the 1970s) were a baseline that kept down extortionate rents and house prices and importantly allowed people to get their first home when they left their parents' place. This sector is generally missing. Housing associations are supposed to fill the role but do not have the capacity or scope or money to make sufficient an impact. So, I believe Brown's decision to allow the return of council housing will benefit a large swathe of the British population and help with things such as social break-up and in turn crime reduction (people with a vested interest in their community are less likely to attack it). Blair feared that such a policy would appear to 'Old Labour', but his fear meant he did not move to policies that would actually have ameliorated the issues he professed to wish to tackle.

Another area which I think the Brown government is introducing sensible, sober (if not overly spectacular - this was a problem of Blair his whole regime was about charisma and grabbing headlines) is about changing the laws on young drivers. A third of all road deaths are of people aged under 25. If you think that the other two-thinds are made up of people from 26-100+, you can see the imbalance. The suggestions are that you cannot take your test until you are 18 (rather than 17 as at present), you would have to study to drive for a year, drivers under 25 should not be permitted to have any alcohol in their blood stream (a policy that has worked in Germany; under Blair there was almost an automatic rejection of any approach which had been adopted in another EU state on principle) and they would be banned from carrying passengers at night for the first year after passing. These policies are directed at the most hazardous form of driving which is young people (and the women are as bad as the men) showing off to their friends on the way to a night out. None of these policies are earth-shattering, but they seem to show that issues have been thought about, other examples examined and a range of policies put forward. What was stopping Blair doing any of this? How many lives could have been saved if, say, these policies had been introduced in 2001? Of course, going and killing lots of Arabs was far more important for Blair.

I trust that these three policy areas will just be some among many we can expect by November. I just hope for the sake of the UK that Brown and his team can keep it up. There is certainly a more sober tone about Brown, the show-business glamour approach of Blair and his obsession with 'spinning' any story to show him in best light, seems to have faded very, very quickly. What angers me even more than ever about the wasted years of 1997-2007 is how much could have been done, not with elaborate initiatives or with huge expense, but with measured and tested thought. I think the shine of the Blair years which remains will soon be fading. The 'what if?' of Brown preceding Blair to the premiership in 1997 (as he could have done if internal politics had played out differently) will be a bitter one for many commentators and much of the British population for years to come.

Property in the UK 5c: The Beginning of the End or Just the End of the Beginning?

Well, in my long-running saga of our landlord's representative things become more bizarre. On the plus side we have found a house we like and have found out we can borrow enough money to buy it. However, the other-worldly behaviour of the landlord's representative continues. Now he says that we cannot leave the house we are renting early (because obviously the landlord would lose the rental income and be liable for council tax on the empty property) but we can stay no longer than the day before he exchanges contracts to sell the house. He feels he has been generous in offering us a two-week warning of the sale of the house (I guess rather than being hard on us and just telling us the day before). However, there is no indication of when the house will be sold, so we cannot plan anything.

At least now we can probably move to the house we are buying rather than having to put all our stuff in storage and stay in bed-and-breakfast accommodation while we looked for a house. The fastest we have been able to move in the past is about six weeks. Having to go through all the hoops and checks by letting agents and the various utility companies makes it harder to move faster in the UK, not even factoring in the time it takes to look for a house and apply to live in it.

The landlord's representative has now said he will not speak to us. He has been by-passing our letting agent who is supposed to handle these things and now has cut off communication because he is angry with us. Following the meeting he had with my housemate, we thought he was going to put our proposal (for some payment in return for breaking our contract which runs to January 2008) to the landlord, but apparently he thinks he never said that and is angry as we were supposed to be considering his offer (read threat - obey all my demands or face legal action) and ring two days later to confirm our acceptance of that.

We are actually now looking forward to getting a letter from his lawyers as we expect (maybe wrongly) that they will not be fantasists or work in a schizophrenic way and we can negotiate some deal with them, rather than simply being lectured by them the way the representative does (literally he will go on for 30-60 minutes about how his family is suffering [they own a £350,000 house, have an excellent job in Texas and so on], how his daughter-in-law is useless, how experienced he is, how he wants to treat us like family, but thinks we are behaving illegally and so on). The police say him sitting outside the house in his car and calling us repeatedly on the phone does not constitute harassment and cannot understand why everything is not covered by the contracts (well it is for us, but the representative feels he is not bound by them).

The worst situation for us is if we buy the house and still have to keep paying the rent on our house until January 2008, so we are seeking a deal now in which we can leave when we want and in return will let the representative put the house on the market, have people view it, etc. (even though in the contract we do not have to permit this until the end of December 2007). The representative keeps getting more and more estate agents to market the house so we get even more phonecalls coming in. We have had backing from estate agents and advisors on housing in the town that we are doing the right thing. However, one lawyers' firm we contacted said they never represent tenants only landlords.

The representative now wants to evict us but, of course, not so quickly that he will be liable for council tax. This mad system in which we are being compelled to stay in the house until the precise moment the landlord's representative decides we must leave, with no thought of how disruptive that is to our life, just re-emphasises how powerless we are even when we adhere to the law. In addition, he is going round estate agents and letting agents in the town literally lying that we have always been late with our rent, so making it harder for us to find a place anyway, and defaming us, knowing we lack the funds to challenge him in court (especially now that legal aid is only available for the poorest people). So, we are very much in limbo and with our reputation being hammered.

They wonder why the British labour force is so inflexible, well it is no suprise when you face such hassle and lose so much money just renting a house. My housemate and her son will have lived at 4 addresses in 2 years by the end of 2007 and we are not like Will Smith's character in 'The Pursuit of Happyness', I have a well-paid, established job and she runs her own successful business and yet we lack the power to stop ourselves being kicked from pillar to post as part of landlords' economic whims.

What If The USA Had Not Entered The First World War?

My views on this topic can be found in my e-book ‘In Other Trenches II: Further Alternate Outcomes of the First World War’ It is available for purchase on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Other-Trenches-II-Alternate-Outcomes-ebook/dp/B00ITZEWPM/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395342607&sr=1-3

UK readers might prefer to access it through:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/In-Other-Trenches-II-Alternate-ebook/dp/B00ITZEWPM/ref=pd_sim_kinc_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0YAMVEMSHYPZ9WQTCXZJ

Canadian readers can access it through: http://www.amazon.ca/Other-Trenches-II-Alternate-Outcomes-ebook/dp/B00ITZEWPM/ref=sr_1_24?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395342704&sr=1-24

Australian readers can access it through:

http://www.amazon.com.au/In-Other-Trenches-II-Alternate-ebook/dp/B00ITZEWPM/ref=pd_sim_kinc_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=12J27N47087R8GMBWFDC

What If, During The First World War, Mutinies In The French And British Armies Had Been More Extensive?

My views on this topic can be found in my e-book ‘In Other Trenches: Alternate Outcomes of the First World War’ It is available for purchase on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Other-Trenches-Alternate-Outcomes-First-ebook/dp/B00ILVJ4C0/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395342569&sr=1-2

UK readers might prefer to access it through:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/In-Other-Trenches-Alternate-Outcomes-ebook/dp/B00ILVJ4C0/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395342371&sr=1-2

Canadian readers can access it through: http://www.amazon.ca/Other-Trenches-Alternate-Outcomes-First-ebook/dp/B00ILVJ4C0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395342669&sr=1-1

Australian readers can access it through: http://www.amazon.com.au/In-Other-Trenches-Alternate-Outcomes-ebook/dp/B00ILVJ4C0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395342833&sr=1-1