Good Officers (Continued...)

One of the illusions that I was able to foster as I grew up, in the 1950s and 60s, was that (on the whole) our MPs knew what it meant to be a 'good officer'.

Many of them had been officers in the services, mostly during WWII - which produced the most politically educated officer class in British history. On the whole, they understood the obligations of their commissions in the forces, and brought that understanding with them into Parliament.

[This is not for a moment to say that everything was fine and dandy - you have only to remember Suez to know that that wasn't the case; but...]

And there was a sense of obligation towards the weakest and poorest in society. Not always sensitive. Not always competent. Often bureaucratic. Often patronising.  But it was there.

I knew that it was there then, and I know that it isn't now.

The question is, can I put a finger on it? I'll set aside the benefit cuts and the efforts to stop benefits altogether for so many people - I'm too deep in those issues to be objective.

And I'll set aside the increasingly shaky future offered by pensions, private and state - with the way they were set up, the way they were mangled by politicians (that means you in particular, Mr. Brown) and asset stripping management, and the way the economy is so fraught, the issue of pensions is just too complex for the thesis I'm trying to put right now.

But consider the following. At this time of increasing financial pressure on the poorest (say 10 million), which started before 2008, the government legalises loan sharks, so that the poorest are paying interest rates of 4,000% plus without meaningful legal protection. How does the endless promotion of loans which would have the lenders in jail in most countries show good officership? It doesn't.

Similarly, the government has not only legalised betting, but has has both directly and implicitly encouraged its spread - while at the same time MPs from Oxfordshire say it must be the fault of the feckless poor/northerners, because there are no betting shops in their constituencies. (I do hope I don't need to explain how unrestrained gambling opportunities will always hit the poorest communities, without any great sin on their part...) How does the endless promotion of gambling on our televisions show good officership? It doesn't.

Pay freezes... but not on those at the top of the pile...

Privatisation - schools, trains, NHS, energy, not because it leads to greater efficiency (there is no scientific evidence of that - efficiency is a matter of management, not of profit: state-owned British Airways and London Transport and privately owned aircraft builders were efficient; state owned coal and privately owned car makers were not, and in each case it was because of management) but for ideological reasons. Fine, except that the fares and fees paid by the poorest across a whole range of fundamental services are going not to the services involved but to the shareholders.

Privatisation hits the poor. Every time.

I may be utterly wrong here, but have you seen any assessment by government of the impact of privatisation on the poorer half of our population? I haven't.

Non jobs, under-employment, minimum wage, NEETS, etc., etc., but MPs are still seriously talking about increasing their own pay by £30,000 pa.

I'm beginning to make my point, but...

I'm doing it again - losing track of my own arguments. I'll come back to this.

Bah Humbug.

Once again, my apologies to those who already have a much deeper understanding than I have demonstrated.

Who's doing this to me?

I’m in the middle of a nightmare. I’m being treated not just negligently but derisively by a group of people (Cameron, McVey, etc.) who long ago gave us reason to hold them in contempt; and I don’t think I can be faulted if I admit that I don’t like it.

[Summary. In a blog I was trying to run five years ago, well before he became Prime Minister, I said that Cameron was not going to be (as still used to be said when I was in uniform) ‘a good hofficah’. (Go to www.plagueyear.com, dormant but still just about in existence.) If you’ve ever served, you will know that the other ranks can tell...  often instantly... ‘Not a good hofficah’ was one who didn’t understand the special relationship between a proper officer and those beneath him.]

It may help if explain that I’m nearly 64. My age gives me a particular perspective, which I realise is different from that of younger people around me; simply, I grew up in a different world.

There may be no point in looking for someone to blame for what’s happening to me; but it’s only human nature to do so. But, actually, I don’t blame Cameron or his motley crew: they are, if truth be told, only creatures, fronting something much deeper and rather nastier. I don’t even blame the Lib Dems – the economic liberals of whom, like Clegg, have long been closet tories - although Beveridge Liberals, if there are any left, should be hiding their heads in shame at their party’s collaboration

The ‘nastier’ is the Old Tory spirit which has plagued our Parliament for the best part of 300 years, which resisted inter alia the reform bills, and the abolition of slavery, and home rule for India and Ireland and so on. 

Change of direction, just for a moment... National economic ‘success’ (never mind for a moment its pros and cons) comes in one of three ways –

            1) Solid growth, based on long term investment, planning, etc., etc.

                        Steady, but slow – decades or even centuries.

            2) Boom... oh so attractive, massive fortunes made, etc, etc,

And so often based on the parasitic devouring of the inherent structures and wealth that had been built up by previous solid growth (see 1 above). A few years, decades at most, but glorious while it lasts. For a few people. Or

3) Serendipity (Norway and North Sea gas, Brazil and resources) or inverted serendipity (Germany and Japan after WWII, or China and India, although this requires a disciplined and educated workforce.).

Sometimes you get more than one of these at a time: the British Industrial revolution (which was 1 and 2) built massive fortunes for a few by devouring the heart of our nations – so that the working population of 1900 ate less well, worked longer and harder, enjoyed less leisure and poorer health, died younger, and had a more miserable time generally than the English peasantry of 1500; but, at the same time, new structures were put in place that created the wealthier Britain that followed.

Return to the core issue. The Thatch-Blair boom. Glorious profits to be made, for a while... at the expense of the majority (and if you hold home ownership as the argument against my thesis, boy are you deluded). Manufacturing gone; skilled employment decimated; national assets sold at a loss; infrastructure owned not just by other nations but often by other governments; etc. The boom of the last 30 years has been parasitic, self-devouring, with nothing put in its place. (I think we’re following the route which Spain followed 400 years ago.)

And even our chance at serendipity (North Sea Oil) thrown away (like Spanish gold). So that the rich could enjoy some tax breaks. Which are already frittered away.

The trouble is that the parasitic boom seems to the dazzled to burn so much more brightly than the hard slog of steady growth... and there are always those who think the rest of us can go hang so long as they get a bit of it.

Worse.

It’s not usual for a government to connive at ripping the heart out of its own country.

And who’s paying? The poorest and weakest. While the richest are still, for a while, enjoying the boom. T’was ever thus.

Two different arguments going at once here, really. So be it.

So, another marginal comment; why not! People talk about Thatcher (criticism, for those who criticised her) as having the values of a grocer. But she didn’t: she had very little understanding of the values of a grocer. Grocers don’t sell off the goods on their shelves for pennies for a quick profit... (well, there are sales, of course...) BUT they certainly don’t then go and sell off the whole shop cheap. However, that’s exactly what Thatcherism did.

Thatcherism, but not Thatcher. She, too, was the creature – ambitious but still a creature – of that deep toryism. More of a Chernenko than an Andropov. So I don’t really blame Thatcher, either. (Although, in passing: Why was Thatcher too young to serve in WWII when my Mum, who was younger, could command an Ack-Ack battery in London? Just a thought.)

The one I do blame is Brown. That man, who could have stopped the rot, combined economic incompetence with personal arrogance to a quite awesome degree. ‘The end of boom and bust’!

Supremely ironic, really, that Brown, who plotted to help the poorest, is largely responsible for what’s happening to them (me!) now.

So what am I saying? It is that we have enjoyed (!) a boom for a few years that has burned up centuries of our future, that most of us were fooled by the appearance of a prosperity that didn’t really exist. Now the crunch has come (why, oh why, didn’t Brown read the Bible, 7 years of plenty followed by 7 years of famine and all that?) and we’re beginning to pay the price (only beginning – more and more people are going to be sucked into ‘austerity’ and it won’t end). I’m paying the price, as the state reneges on the agreement by which I paid taxes (without complaint, at a level which is now unacceptable to the richest) - in return for the promise that I would be looked after should the time come when I needed it. Foolish man that I was.

I think my point is made, somewhere in all that. I apologise for the lack of polish and finish – I really do suffer from depression and the exhaustion that goes with it, and I haven’t the mental resources to give you quite the organised arguments you deserve... though I will try to tidy this posting up, if better health permits, at some point in the future.

I really don’t know if I’ve written sense. Part of the problem with depression – my intellect’s shot... But I do know that the point of my argument is sound...

Something to think about, anyway; I hope. (Apologies to those who were there long ago – although I have to ask why you haven’t been kicking up a more of a fuss recently.)

Posted unedited and therefore with apologies. But please comment.