I got my haircut today. This is not a monumental undertaking, as there is now only marginally more covering than when my naked pate was first exposed to daylight sixty eight years ago. Nonetheless it does require a Number 4 every few months, to avoid looking like an eccentric peer or retired high court judge. Although on reflection I wouldn’t mind being either of those. Anyway I digress. The man charged with the undemanding task was a Turkish Bulgar. Or he might have been a Bulgarian Turk, I couldn’t quite work it out. Anyway he spent his first nineteen years in Bulgaria before moving here ten years ago. When I asked him if he would go back to Bulgaria (especially if Boris the Bountiful wins), he suggested that having spent half his life here, why would he? He spoke very good English, but clearly basic arithmetic isn’t high on the Bulgarian educational agenda. Upon further probing he told me that his homeland is about the size of Britain, with a population of eight million. Spacious! People tend to have more land, with big houses and suitably extravagant gardens. It has beautiful countryside and a lovely climate he said. So what the …… is he doing here?!! Apparently the economy isn’t great; and ours is? Wait till our Saviour and Redeemer JC gets his hands on it.
We learnt today that Labour, if given a majority, will take over running Broadband and make it free to all at the point of delivery. Yesterday the NHS was the most important thing in the world, now giving everyone free and unlimited access to superfast communications anywhere from Central London to the outer Hebrides is in fact the really crucial thing. Sorry, that’s a bad example. The Hebrides will be in an independent Scotland and therefore not our problem. Make that Penrith.
When I was a slip of a lad (I was once), we had things like the Gas Board, the Electricity Board, the Water Board, the Milk Marketing Board, the Coal Board, the GPO (General Post Office) that did everything from collecting/delivering your mail to running the whole telephone network and an outfit called British Railways who ran the entire rail network. All of them were publicly owned and “run”, with the tremendous help and cooperation of many powerful unions. The reason that they were all privatised over time is because they didn’t work. At least they did, but extremely inefficiently and at great cost to the Exchequer (i.e. us). Love Maggie or hate her, she completed the work, with a painfully traumatic battle against the unions, who’ve been lying dormant ever since, waiting for the Resurrection in the shape of JC. The trouble is that today’s young, idealistic generation have no knowledge or recollection of those times. History is such a great subject to study and know.
What on earth does the silver haired, silver tongued, smiling assassin that is John McDonnell know about running anything! (Have a look at his biography it makes interesting reading. (He went to a Roman Catholic boarding school with a view to becoming a Priest….until he discovered girls. That must be why he’s JC’s right hand man).
A forerunner to the Department of the Environment was the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works. If you look carefully you’ll still find the odd manhole cover with MPBW on it. Inevitably they became known as the Ministry of Public Blunders and Wonders, which was probably a generous description of their abilities. In those “good old days” we had a flourishing motor industry, with many such evocative names as MG, Austin, Morris, Rover, Jaguar, Hillman, not forgetting Ford and many more. The power of the unions made almost all of them totally unviable businesses and one by one they disappeared. The same with our huge shipbuilding industry with dockyards all around the Kingdom and a flourishing aircraft, mainly defence, industry, boasting such evocative names as Sopwith, Hawker, Avro, de Havilland, Gloster, and Handley Page. They’ve almost all gone, while German manufacturing flourishes. Where did we go wrong!
The moral of the story is that Government should govern and provide the environment for businesses to flourish, creating healthy growth in the economy and greater wealth to fund such essential state run activities as health, the police, the fire service and roads.
Well that’s what the inside of my bald pate tells me anyway.
P.S. A tech expert I read today says he rather hopes Corbyn will get his way, because he expects them to make such a horlicks of it that it will merely hasten the arrival of the new mobile network, 5G, which requires no cables, merely aerial masts, and will do all and more at even faster speeds. Watch this space.
ADayInTheStrifeOf 