the brilliantly leaping gazelle

August 8, 2015

I’m on holiday, so for one week only, and in the best tradition of ‘Blue Peter’ – here’s one I made earlier – you get an easy to follow recipe for a warm bacon, prawn and feta cheese salad. With croutons…

Warm Tasty Salad

Quantities depend on how many you’re feeding. Obviously.

You will need for the salad:

Bags of mixed salad leaf
Cucumber
Assorted peppers (red, yellow or orange to add colour)
Cherry tomatoes
Capers
Prawns
Bacon
Feta Cheese
Garlic

And for the croutons

French Bread
Rosemary
Pumpkin seeds
Olive Oil

And for yourself, as you create this feast:

A bottle of agreeable Red Wine

Preparation:

So much more time efficient if you do this first, as everything is to hand and, much more importantly, ready at the critical juncture. Or you could always just fanny about. It’s up to you.

But make sure you’ve at least six receptacles to hand for this!

– First things first. Open the bottle of red wine and pour yourself a glass of it.
Check that you’ve got all the ingredients and the kitchen area where you’ll work is
clear of any unnecessary detritus. Drink some wine and congratulate yourself that
you’re going to create a tasty masterpiece. Finish the glass of wine.

– Cut the cherry tomatoes into quarters and decant into a receptacle.

– Cut the assorted peppers into then thin strips. Length-ways or not, it’s up to you!
Again, decant into a separate receptacle.

– Cut the cucumber lengthways into quarters, re-assemble and dice into quarters,
about half an inch or less thick and then decant into yet another receptacle.

– Pour yourself another generous glass of that very agreeable red wine. Have a sip or
two.

– Remove the fat from the bacon and cut the bacon into two-inch wide horizontal
strips. (A pair of kitchen scissors helps immeasurably with this bit.) Decant into
yet another receptacle.

– Roughly tear up the French stick into generous strips width ways. Tear the strips
open. Bung them in a large deep baking tray.

– Finely dice the garlic. How much to dice is up to you, obviously, but I tend to use
a whole clove. But that’s just me.

CLEAN UP THE MESS YOU MADE PREPPING. TRUST ME, THERE’S MORE MESS ON THE WAY.

Assembly:

– Open the bags of salad. Bung into salad bowls and bung in the cucumber.

– The strips of French bread. In the large deep baking tray? Bung in some rosemary,
pumpkin seeds and liberally douse in olive oil. Give it all a thorough stir. The
strips should be well saturated, but not sodden, by the oil, and generously
covered by the seeds and herbs. Bung in the oven at something like 180 degrees.
(Gas mark who the f*ck cares.)

– Heat a frying pan with a small amount of olive oil. On a lowish heat bung in the
chopped tomatoes and gently stir until they are softened but still have their
shape. Decant back into a small bowl.

– Using a thin baking tray, artfully place the pepper strips on it and season with
salt and pepper. Bung in oven, checking on the bread as you do so. If the bread
is drying to a crisp, add more olive oil. Actually, add some more anyway, then
stir and return.

– Using the same frying pan you used for the tomatoes, add a dash of olive oil and
a third of chopped garlic and under a low to medium heat, bung in half the bacon,
stirring as needed so it doesn’t stick to the pan, until it goes nice and crispy.
(This will take a while, so have another sip or three of that wine and don’t
worry if you need to pour the contents into a sieve over a sink at least once to
drain off fluid. This is wholly expected!). Decant crispy yumness into a bowl.

– Check on the French bread. If needed add olive oil and stir thoroughly. Don’t
scrimp. Also check the peppers. Don’t let them shrivel to a Quentin. When they’re
nicely blackened, yet still have colour, decant.

– Repeat the process you used to such great effect with the bacon with the other
half of the bacon and another third of the garlic. Decant into the same
receptacle where the other half of the bacon is, and while you’re at it, have
another sip or three of that very agreeable red wine with a small handful of the
bacon. You know you want to! After all, who is immune to the smell of fried
bacon?
A demented wrongcock, that’s who.

– Using the same pan, add a small amount of olive oil and some garlic. On a
moderate heat, warm – WARM – the prawns through (if you need to repeat the
drainage a la the bacon, do so- hey you knew it might happen). Decant into a….

– Check on the French bread again. The French bread should be golden and crispy.
If not, add more olive oil and give it a stir, and use the time to clear up

Because…..

NOW IT ALL HAPPENS AT ONCE, SO I WOULD SUGGEST YOU HAVING SOME
MORE WINE, BUT YOU NEED YOUR WITS ABOUT YOU. SO I WON’T.

– Get the salad bowls ready. Drain and add the capers and the peppers to the salad
bowls.

– Heat the largest frying pan you have and with a small amount of olive oil and the
rest of the garlic, On a moderate heat bung in all of the bacon until nice and
tasty. (You’re cooking, so you decide when its tasty)

– Then add the tomatoes to the bacon, warm them, stirring carefully to
keep their shape and then add the prawns.

– When the prawns are cooked, give the whole thing a gentle stir and a minute, then
add the whole lot into the salad bowls.

– Now things get messy. Crumble the feta cheese into the chaos that is the salad
bowls. the heat from the tomatoes, bacon and prawns will melt the feta and
negate any need for dressing. Give the salad a thorough stir to ensure equal
distribution of tasty yumness .

– Take out the French bread strips from the oven, which by dint of olive oil,
herbs, heat and your above all, your careful ministration, have become croutons.
Bung in a serving dish.

SERVE AT ONCE WITH THE CROUTONS

These instructions whilst comprehensive, are informed by my own experience of recipe instructions whereby they’d be vague to the first timer, who needs clear guidance. And also advising one to do something one should really have done earlier.

It really is quite simple, honestly, depending as it does on that well known martial art,ti ming.

By the way, this was all nicely formatted until the WordPress editor f*cked the whole thing up. I’ve tried twice to rectify it, but to no avail. And, as the sun is shining..

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August 1, 2015

A couple of weeks ago I visited Moorfields eye hospital, ostensibly to have my eye checked but in reality more to satisfy the concern of my housemate, Old Blue Eyes, who was concerned for my eye health. The cause for this concern was a faint red line that was either a burst blood vessel or something indicative of a more serious problem. Initially skeptical about the whole enterprise, looking back on the results I’m bloody glad I did so.

Now I will admit that everyone has their own experience of the National Health Service but I have to say this experience was outstanding. From the initial check in assessment, cursory eye examination and then being seen by a doctor, took less than two hours. Which in anyone’s book is very good going and a worthwhile investment of one’s time, especially when eye health is concerned. The examination of my eye revealed that there was no major problem but what was really interesting and of use was what followed next.

In the course of outlining the procedure for taping up the eye at night – a lubricant applied to the eye, then taping it shut, then carefully affixing cotton pads to the closed eye to keep it closed before firmly fixing the whole thing in place with plasters – the doctor was mystified. Had I not considered using a moisture chamber? Given that this was the first time anyone had mentioned moisture chambers to me I was both ignorant of what they were and how they might be of use to me.

Given also that I’ve been to Moorfields numerous times since my Bells Palsy diagnosis and repeatedly explained this Heath-Robinson approach to taping the eye shut at night to them, I was astounded. Especially as on one occasion my secondary goal was to outline the whole rigmarole to a doctor, who would then send us a letter setting out the procedure as medically authorised so as we could present to a district nurse. Who as individuals – in their personal lives – may be bastions of common sense, but as a collective –in their working environment -they’re just bast*rds.

Anyway, a moisture chamber is a way of enclosing the eye, so that dry air doesn’t come into contact with the eyeball and thus the eye remains moist. In practice what this means is as I write this I’m now wearing a pair of swimming goggles. Not only do the suction cups on the goggles provide an airtight seal to trap the moisture in the goggles, they also have the benefit of having blue lenses that compliment perfectly any number of my outfits. I’ve also got a pair that not only have blue lenses, but a blue strap. And two with different shades of purple.

This point is of no little concern to me, as anyone who’s read any of my previous posts will no dobt be aware, I pride myself on my colour coordination. Therefore swimming goggles afford one a most excellent opportunity to do so. As with most things a little effort goes a long way. I was mindful of this when I was looking up moisture chambers on the interweb. A company in the U.K made moisture chambers in the form of ordinary blacked out glasses with suction cups on both eyes. Which were as ungainly as any pair of blacked out glasses would be. However the search also revealed that in the United States a manufacturer had made a moisture chamber eye patch that one could wear at night.

This neatly illustrates the difference between the respective healthcare systems in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the United States healthcare provision is patchy at best, based primarily on your ability to pay for care. Whereas in the United Kingdom access to healthcare is free, based solely on need. Granted these are generalizations to make a point, but really, ask yourself, ‘Where would I rather have emergency surgery?’ But it is when one is looking for aids and devices that might assist in the recovery process that it really hits home. In America there seems to be a plethora of inventive products that imaginative solutions to every assistance, whereas in the United Kingdom there is a dearth of them.

However, the fact that incompetent bureaucracy knows no boundaries, was bought home to me – quite literally – when I to found my discharge sheet from my initial visit to hospital where my Bells Palsy had been diagnosed. The diagnosis was made by a specialist from the stroke team. As such she would have been well versed in all aspects of neurological care by the hospital, so it was with no little amazement that I learnt that the hospital was in fact a center of excellence with a specialist neurological unit for the South East of England. That further more one of the consultants had a specific interest in Bells Palsy. My flabber was well and truly gasted! Seemingly no one had seen it worth their while to impart this information to me.

However back at Moorfields, the doctor moved on to discuss possible future options for my eye. Observing that my current treatment regime of lubricating the eye throughout the day was unsustainable for much longer, he suggested that if no significant improvement had been made in three months then an internal eyelid weight would be fitted. An internal eyelid weight is much like the filling in a kebab, if you imagine that the eyelid is the pitta bread and the surgeon cuts the eyelid in the same way that the ‘chef’ slits open a pitta bread. This creates a cavity into which the greasy meat and derisory salad will go. The eyelid weight is the kebab meat! Only its very slim – less than a millimeter thick – and gently curved to the eyelid. Of course naturally my worry is that at the moment when the surgeon applies a scalpel to my eyelid he will have a coughing fit!

Next week..As I’m on holiday, you’ll get my recipe for my Warm Tasty Salad, you lucky people…!

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July 26, 2015

Introducing a new political concept – ‘daisanaid’..

In this week’s post I’m going to introduce you to a new political concept. Well, new insofar as I’ve just given a name to a concept that has had many practical and devastating consequences, both personal and political, since time immemorial. It’s the daisanaid philosophy, better known as the ‘Do as I say and not as I do’ principle. Or lack of one, given as it’s as foolproof as it is self-serving.

A textbook example of diasanaid in the political sphere is evident in the brazen hypocrisy of this government who, if they’d been subject to the same legislation they propose for trade unions, would be illegal. The government’s own press release announcing these plans stated, that in addition to 50% of union members voting, “there had to be an additional threshold of 40% of support to take industrial action from all members eligible to vote…this will ensure strikes are the result of a clear and positive democratic mandate.” This ‘democratic mandate’ they are so keen on only applies to others it seems. This was, after all, a government elected in an election in which, yes, more than 50% eligible to vote did so, but only 36.9% of those who did vote, voted for them. But what’s the point of controlling the legislative branch of government if you can’t make laws to suit your own political agenda?

And whilst it appears that public support for the principle of strikes is high, when that principle is effected, public support for a strike seems to be directly related to the affect on them – the amount of personal inconvienience that they themselves experience. But here’s the rub. It never occurs to them as they are crossing a picket line or denouncing strikes that they themselves might one day be on a picket line and striking themselves in pursuit of a grievance. This selective myopia – whereby people are seemingly incapable of looking beyond their own immediate needs and are unable to see how curtailing liberty for one ultimately curtails it for all – seemingly affects large swathes of the population.

I was going to go further with this point and suggest that the planned clampdown on strikes is in any way related to the governments plans to drastically curtail the working conditions of public sector employees. And so by putting the legislation in place they can greatly reduce the legal manoeuvres open to workers in pursuit of a grievance, the government has not so much changed the rules of the game, but limited the amount of players the opposition can field whilst increasing their own. I was worried that suggesting it was a calculated move by a government, aware that changes to the working conditions of many public sector workers would provoke fury and that by limiting the scope available to workers to legitimately pursue an industrial grievance, would greatly benefit them. However, since it was announced last week that George Osborne has instructed all government departments to slash their budgets by 40%, this is a moot point because a large amount will be ex public sector employees.

Again, I won’t point out the rather striking – no pun intended – dichotomy that the creator of the very conditions that caused the dispute in the first place, is then allowed to define what kind of protest is legitimate in response. It’s a bit like a publican serving someone drinks all night only to then complain when the drunk spectacularly projectile vomits everywhere. Like this guy. Nor will I draw your attention to The European Convention on Human Rights, which repeatedly asserts that restrictions may be permitted if they are in ‘accordance with the law’ or ‘necessary in a democratic society’.

Speaking of funding brings me neatly on to my main point concerning political party funding. The Labour Party has, for some wholly inexplicable reason, sought to distance itself from any financial link between it and the trade unions. The Conservative Party has made much of this, leveling the charge that somehow the Labour Party is in some way beholden to the unions. Bizarrely, the Labour Party is frightened that this charge will resonate with the voters and therefore the more frightened they seem, the more the Conservative Party bang on about it. Whereas – it seems to me at any rate – that the Labour Party should be proud and unashamed of its historic links to the trade unions. It emerged, after all out of the trade union movement and the expansion of the franchise to give the working man a political voice that had been hitherto denied them. Under government proposals ironically, union members will have to choose to pay the union levy that the union then passes on to the Labour Party.

Ironic, inasmuch as no mention is made of Conservative Party funding. If a political party is set up in order to promote and pursue an ideological agenda, one would presume that all of its funding would come from individuals and interest groups who either agreed with it or stood to benefit financially from it. Therefore, it won’t be that great a shock to learn that a sizeable proportion of Conservative Party funding comes from hedge funds. But there is no suggestion that their funding is in anyway related to a tax break given to them in 2013. Not least because as it’s worth under a £150 million. And hedge funds made a meagre $21.9 billion profit last year. Equally ironic is the omission from the proposals that shareholders are consulted before any such donation is made.

Yet another textbook example of daisanaid politics.

Next week…How my eyelid might resemble a kebab…

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July 18, 2015

All about my brother…

My last two blog posts have been necessarily serious, what with their subject matter demanding a more serious approach and all. For this I apologise. So in order to compensate somewhat, what follows will, I hope, be as diverting as I hope it is entertaining. And I know to be a successful blogger one needs to mine the shaft of one’s own personal history. But never having been overly concerned with being seen as a biscuit it’ll be on my terms. Therefore most of what follows will not portray me in a sympathetic light. But then I did tell you in the first line of my first post ‘that I put the me into mean.’ Didn’t I?

My brother is eighteen months younger than me, and so as I’ve always told him, there has only been nine months where he hasn’t been bothering me. Despite us growing up in a three-bedroom house, my brother and I shared a bedroom until I left home at eighteen. It was only when I told my nemesis about this, and she was speechless, that I thought it a tad unusual. ‘Didn’t you find it, well, odd, that two adolescent boys, coping with puberty and all that that entails, shared a room when there was a spare bedroom?’ was the gist of her argument. But that’s the thing. When you’re in a situation, you don’t think to yourself ‘Hang on!’; you’re too busy getting on with it to notice. And besides, the spare bedroom was used, mainly to drive me spare.

We both went to the same primary school, which was only ten minutes walk away from our house. We’d arrive home from school half an hour before Mum got back from work. So naturally we’d have a bundle. (A bundle is like a fight except no major injury is sustained.) And then minutes before Mum was due back, we’d stop, tidy up the mess we’d made, neaten our clothes and present a façade of sibling harmony, which I suspect never fooled her.

My brother has asthma. What it meant to me, who had to share a room with him, was countless nights of interminable wheezing. So what if he couldn’t breathe? I couldn’t sleep! As a child consequences are the last thing on your mind. Had they been, I wouldn’t in the summer months when the pollen was high, have emptied his inhaler. Nor would I have deliberately engineered bundles whereby I’d drag him into the garden, hold him face down in the grass inducing an asthma attack, causing him to lurch indoors for his inhaler. And laugh like a drain when he found it empty, his difficulty breathing hampering his instant desire for violent revenge. As I write these words I know I should feel a sense of shame, but actually I feel only admiration for having had the foresight to think ahead and plan accordingly. The fact it worked so often gives a revealing insight into our characters.

If you’re feeling sorry for him, don’t. Whenever something deserving of a punishment for the guilty party was discovered, Mum would ask us both if we’d done it. He would always decry any knowledge of anything untoward whilst wearing a look of earnest honesty. Me, on the other hand, who knew full well he’d done it and had listened to his denials, would snigger throughout, enough evidence to convict me in the court of Mum. A bundle would then follow at the earliest opportunity. One of these stopped me partaking in the highlight of the whole primary school experience – the summer week away in Swanage.

Bear in mind that every year ALL of the fourth year at my primary school went away to Swanage. Even the children on free school meals went. (Hey – we were children!) It was a very big deal. For what seemed like all of the fourth year, all our lessons had a Swanage related theme. At the time I was also in the Scouts, and a few weeks before Swanage, Mum had bought me some steel toe-capped Doc Marten’s for camping. For some inexplicable reason, I was wearing these when we had a bundle. I kicked him, not very hard, but you’d think he’d been shot the way he screamed. Loud enough for Mum to hear, and loud enough for her to put the sand in my sandwiches (in other words, she said I couldn’t go. Which was after all, why he was screaming so loud in the first place!) She still claims to have no memory of doing so, he says I’ve got it all wrong and that it did hurt. All I know is that I’ve been to Swanage since – going again in a couple of weeks in fact – and as Old Harry’s Rock and Durdle Door are childhood memories I never had, they never can as an adult.

Every Saturday, Mum would do a weekly shop and as a treat for not wrecking the house, she’d make us crusty rolls filled with cheese, ham, tomatoes, etc.. We’d also get a large jam doughnut. Now I know this sounds sad, but this is how competitive we were with each other; we’d scoff the rolls and leave the doughnut. For ages. One of us would then crack and eat the doughnut whereupon the other would take the smallest possible bites out of their one, all the while making infuriatingly pleasurable noises as they did, interspersed with “Oh I’m too full, I can’t eat all of this, d’you want it?” Or else when one finally got to the jam groaning in a way that would be better suited to a more adult activity.

A few years ago my brother and I were playing tennis. Or to be exact, he was playing tennis whilst I was flailing my limbs around in an increasingly uncoordinated manner the longer my humiliation continued. His frankly patronizing comments only added insults to indignity. One shot, which I had no hope of returning, sent me crashing to the ground with a combination of dust and grazed knees. We played on, another two sets I think. I’d like to say he’s a gracious winner and I suppose if he’d beaten anyone else, he would’ve been. But he’d beaten me. Not actually beaten. More like thrashed. So he ‘phoned me the next day to gloat. He’d tried me earlier, where had I been? To the hospital said I. For what, he said? To have my wrist seen to, I answered, giving the receiver a bash to prove that the plaster on my wrist wasn’t a sticking one. There was a long pause. He knew that I knew what he was thinking. That even though he’d won on points, because I’d played on with a fractured wrist, and not said anything – in other words styled it out – I’d won, because that’s the sort of thing he’d pull on me.

(To anyone without a sibling a couple of years older or younger, that kind of thinking will make no sense whatsoever.)

Basically, my brother can wind me up and irritate me in a way that no-one else can but this fact is more than offset by the fact that he can also make me laugh like no-one else can. When people who know me meet him they’re perplexed. We don’t look alike, sound alike, have in any way a similar outlook on things, our values and our aspirations are so divergent, that in short if we weren’t related to each other, I don’t think we’d know each other. (I imagine that he thinks the same about me.)

But here’s the rub – and anyone with siblings will recognize this – that whilst you can and do slag them off, cast aspersions as to their character, motivations and lifestyle and much besides, if anyone else interprets that as an invitation to do likewise they quickly and with swearing realise it isn’t. It’s an ‘I’ve paid my dues, I’ve put the hours in, you haven’t.’ kind of thing. It’s weird how it’s the things that at the time seemed the most awful thing in the history of ever that had happened to you, but now with the passing years, you look back on them fondly.

Except for Swanage.

Next time…Is Sajid Javid the political equivalent of The Mekon…

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July 13, 2015

Is George Osborne channelling the spirit of Josef Goebbels…

It’s not as outlandish a proposition as one might initially think, and by that I don’t mean that I’m accusing George Osborne of having any far right wing tendencies, just right wing tendencies. Because under the pretext of austerity, he’s pursuing the ideological agenda of the right, namely minimum state intervention, greater private sector involvement in what remains of what’s left, cutting taxes to enrich a few but to impoverish many.

Welfare cuts aren’t well, fair, which proves that George Osborne really does put the con into Conservative

It was Goebbels – Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda – who said
“The English follow the principle that when one lies, it should be a big lie, and one should stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous. “ Humpty Dumpty said pretty much the same thing, that words can be given whatever meaning one chooses. If people then misunderstand you because they didn’t bother to establish what you meant, then the fault lies with them. Lie of course, being the operative word. Which brings us neatly back to Goebbels.

Because George Osborne’s use of the word recovery does not equate with any traditional definition of the word, it might do in the world in which he lives, but given he’s on a salary of £134,000, owns a 15% stake in his family wallpaper firm and stands to inherit a baronetcy, his world is far, far removed from mine. And the vast majority of people the budget will adversely affect. Recovery means, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, ”A return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.” George Osborne must have his own meaning – one which he hasn’t felt the need to share with anyone else if he deludes himself that what he advocates is “A return to a normal state. “ If he does, he puts me in mind of the guy who goes to collect his car from a garage after a repair, only to discover that it’s now 4ft long.

Back however from the genius of Chris Morris to the brass neck of George Osborne. In his budget on Tuesday he announced, with a face that is straighter than he is, that “Because we seek a truly national recovery, today I also ask our banking sector to contribute more. But as our banking sector becomes more profitable again, I believe they can make a bigger contribution to the repair of our public finances.” That’s a monumental understatement. It deftly avoids apportioning any of the blame on the banks, who were, let us not forget, all in favour of the light touch of regulation that helped create the conditions for the state we’re all in. And while we’re on the subject, wasn’t it the very same banks and other financial services who were steadfastly against any government intervention in financial industry until they found that actually, they were in favour of the government – the taxpayer – bailing them out of the mess that they had helped to create. As Caroline Lucas MP said, addressing the crowd on a recent anti austerity march.” It wasn’t the poor who caused the economic crisis. It wasn’t people on Jobseeker’s Allowance who brought down the banks. It wasn’t people with disabilities who wasted billions speculating on risky financial markets. So that’s why we’re here to say: stop punishing the poor.”

Once again proving that George Osborne puts the con into Conservative he went on “I am today raising the rate of the bank levy to 0.21 per cent. This will raise an additional £900 million a year.” Sounds almost impressive. Until that is one realises that the Royal Bank of Scotland – of which the taxpayer owns a 79% stake in – paid bonuses amounting to £588 million last year. And that’s just one bank! Just take a moment to reflect upon that, as one considers the other cuts to public services George Osborne announced, and then think of how craven the government is to the whole banking sector. Adam Curtis made an excellent point in his short film for Charlie Brooker’s Wipe 2014, when he pointed out that hardly anybody had been charged, let alone jailed for financial scandals. Despite a steady stream of scandals, hardly anyone has had to chew a prison pillow. You can take your pick of banking scandals – there’s no shortage of them – from the Libor rate fixing scandal, the PPI mis-selling scandal, various money laundering scandals, interest rate hedging scandal, the foreign exchange rate scandal….

My point is that if any of the banks’ fined – essentially a slap on the wrist given their vast profits – were benefit claimants then they’d have faced a very different fate. Yes some high profile bank chief executives do make the press, but their humiliation is intense but short lived and they have a rather agreeable severance package and pension to console themselves with. Unlike the seemingly constant fly tipping of human nature that is the media’s obsession with benefit scroungers.

If the media was serious about exposing people sponging off the state, living it large, while the rest have to live it small, they could instead look at corporate welfare, which is estimated to cost £93 billion a year. Whereby the government decides to subsidise corporations and businesses, estimated because no one is sure. Are tax-credits a form of corporate welfare? Lets think shall we? Tax credits are only available to people who are in work and are a means by which the government tops up the wages employers pay. So in effect the taxpayer is subsidising employers who pay low wages, (and that’s only one of many examples of corporate welfare). For a more comprehensive and less contentious analysis of what it means in practice and the cost to the UK I’d urge you to have a read of Kevin Farnsworth’s – an academic who’s trawled through countless papers so I don’t have to – eye-opening article revealing the sheer scale of greed. http://www.renewal.org.uk/articles/the-british-corporate-welfare-state/

Speaking of greed – one that firmly imprints the boot-mark of the state upon the face of the taxpayer and pushes it right down into the mud – is there any more obscene contradiction of the ‘we all in this together’ nonsense than the fact that whilst elsewhere benefit claimants are facing swingeing cuts, one household is seeing its benefits increase? The Royal family prove that falling out of the right woman’s womb dramatically improve your life chances, because that’s all they’ve done.

My worry of exhausting your patience prevents me from mentioning the taxpayer owned remaining stake – the 79% which cost us over £45 billion – that Osborne plans to sell off, will generate a projected loss of £7.2 billion. Or that by sneakily changing the way benefits are calculated Osborne saves £40 billion a year. This country has enough money, it’s what George Osborne chooses to spend it on that’s important. So when he says the budget is a ‘contract for Britain’, is he meaning a contract full of hidden nasty surprises, rather like a ‘phone contract someone else has taken out on your behalf, that because they’re not paying for it, they’ve only skimmed it. Or the fact that the budget deficit has increased by 50% under George’s stewardship of the economy.

Which brings us neatly back to Goebbels:

“The English follow the principle that when one lies, it should be a big lie, and one should stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous. “

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July 4, 2015

Iain Duncan Smith. Is there no start to his talent? Or his he the political equivalent of East 17?

Really? Is there no start to his talent? Or maybe it’s just me who thinks that Iain Duncan Smith puts the ‘me’ into mediocre? Actually, he does have talent, just not according to any accepted dictionary definition of the word, that is. Talent implies some degree of natural aptitude, skill or flair for a specific activity. Either that or being a highly attractive member of the opposite sex. He demonstrates none of the former, whilst I hope his wife considers him to be one of the latter.

To most of the rest of us who are not concerned by his personal attractiveness, it is his ideological attractiveness – or lack of – that is more pressing. IDS – or IBS as I sometimes refer to him as he gives me the sh*ts – is a Marmite politician. You either love him or hate him; your standpoint governed by whether or not you or anybody you know is a lucky beneficiary of his reform of the welfare system.

Now the first thing to point out about welfare reform is that it isn’t well, fair. (That topic is deserving of a post all its own, which it’ll get next week.). And that the second thing to point out about welfare reform is that it isn’t. Well not reform as defined by pretty much every English language dictionary. As defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, reform is to “make changes in (something, especially an institution or practice) in order to improve it.” (my italics).

One cannot help but think of George Orwell’s essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ especially the sentence “It (the English Language) becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are 
foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”, when one thinks of his definition of reform. Or, if one is feeling a lot more charitable than his welfare reform is, one might deduce that Iain Duncan Smith is taking as his precedent that well known social campaigner Lewis Caroll and his political tract ‘Alice through the Looking Glass ’, “ ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’”

How else might one explain the decision of Iain Duncan Smith to redefine what is meant by child poverty. Despite calls from all of the U.K’s children commissioners to protect children from welfare cuts, his decision to plough forward with this idea is a good case of changing the facts to suit his purpose. I can’t be the only one to notice the irony in cutting the welfare budget to benefit future generations so they are not saddled with debt if it means exacerbating the hardship suffered by this younger generation.

In many ways Iain Duncan Smith reminds me of an ex boyfriend who’s been invited by the groom to the wedding of his ex. (You may or may not remember that at one point Iain Duncan Smith was once leader of the Conservative Party.) So imagine this scenario; David Cameron in an act to show he’s the lucky guy who gets the girl, he cultivates and maintains a friendship with Iain Duncan Smith. This is in order to constantly highlight to Iain Duncan Smith that the fiancée – the Conservative Party – much prefers him. That’s why he invites him to the wedding, to maximize his humiliation but he’s not alone in his misfortune. – Cameron also pulled the same stunt with William Hague. He also asks Iain Duncan Smith to oversee the catering, which he does by treating the poorly paid workers abominably in the hope that it will endear him to the newlyweds.

Or I could point out that Iain Duncan Smith is the political equivalent of East 17. East 17 recently held a gig in Dublin where only thirty people turned up. Iain Duncan Smith held a speaking event in Liverpool that attracted 67 people. Or of course I could have chosen to mention the fact that he had his official credit card cancelled by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) for claiming expenses he wasn’t entitled to. I could have drawn a nice little comparison between the treatments his department routinely hands out to the treatment he received. However, IPSA released a statement a couple of days later saying that the error had been entirely theirs. Which is somewhat ironic given the amount of errors that are to be found in the overall benefits budget.

Speaking of benefits this brings me nicely on to ‘Betsygate’ the wholly unintentional oversight whereby Iain Duncan Smith employed his wife Betsy as his secretary at a cost of £18,000. Despite her not doing constituency work, fortunately, an investigation cleared him of any deliberate wrongdoing. So that’s all good then.

Actually I was wrong. Iain Duncan Smith does have talents. Most notably for landing on his feet, by a) having lied about his university qualifications and then b) marrying into money resulting in the happy coincidence that c) he lives in a £2million house set in three acres on his father-in laws estate where d) he is the father to four children despite telling benefit claimants they should only have two children or risk sanctions. Essentially he is exactly the sort of person he quite happily demonizes.

And also he unites people. Admittedly against him but I suspect he see’s this as a vindication, not a condemnation, of what he’s doing. A wide cross section of think tanks, countless charities, trade unions and no end of advocacy groups and many thousands of people who’ve benefitted from his reform, who are cross with his ideological goal of shredding society’s safety net.

I had a vague idea of using the quote attributed to Winston Churchill that he is reputed to have made about Clement Atlee, “He was a modest man who had much to be modest about.” in relation to Iain Duncan Smith. But them I came to my senses. After the general election in 1945 Labour were swept to victory with a promise they reform. Actual reform, that is.

In the space of six years and with a crippling national debt accrued during WW2 – we only stopped paying the Americans back for their loans in 2006 – they created the National Health Service, laid the foundations for the welfare state and bought into public ownership the railways, the steel, electricity, gas and coal industry. So much so, that by 1951 20% of the U.K. economy was in public hands.

And they enhanced rights for workers. And women. (This was in 1945 after all!) And children. They set up legal aid. They made free secondary education a right. In fact they doubled spending on Education. I could go on but the point is that the sheer scale of their ambition is matched only by how much of it they achieved.

Iain Duncan Smith is to Clement Atlee what fast food is to haute cuisine.

Next week…how welfare reform isn’t well, fair…

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June 27, 2015

“If you wear that you’ll look like a girl”….

If it is said that the thing about common sense is that it isn’t very common, then in my experience at least, fashion sense has been out of fashion for most people since birth. By fashion sense I don’t mean men who wear skirts as natty headwear, women who wear waistcoats as trousers or children who wear bras as earmuffs. Rather that most people do to some degree dress as if they’ve pulled something out of a clothing (un)lucky dip.

One that just gives one any old thing, again and again until one has the requisite amount of clothes that are a) appropriate for prevailing weather conditions and b) sufficient for one not to be arrested for public indecency. This can be the only possible explanation that solves the mystery of why people wear what they wear. It isn’t as if there is a shortage of people willing to give advice. The problem is more the lack of people willing to heed it.

I myself am not, as I’m often called,‘ a fashion whore.’ a charge levelled at me by people who’ve clearly been ‘fashion celibate’ for years. Admittedly, the only brand I’m loyal to is Adidas – their trainers only, not they’re other sportswear. (Am I alone in finding it ironic that sportswear manufacturers make sportswear in sizes that only people who are clearly no stranger to the light of the fridge at midnight could be poured into?) Anyway, I’ve always worn Adidas trainers, in fact as I write this I’ve got this pair on, not only because they look nice, but also, if you’re like me, you can match it to your outfit/s, or as I did once, base my entire outfit around a pair of trainers. I see nothing wrong in this.

What is wrong – and it’s only my opinion so I might be wrong but I very much doubt it – are people who don’t colour co-ordinate, as it makes things so much easier clothes wise. If you see an item of clothing but you couldn’t make at least two outfits out of it with what you’ve already got, you don’t buy it. If you can, you do. The most expensive item of clothing in a wardrobe is one that’s only been worn a few times and then languishes, unworn and overlooked. If an item costs say £250.000 but you wear it frequently, because you’ve bought wisely and it creates at least three items in your wardrobe, its initial cost falls with wear of it. It may well be a self-serving justification, but some clothes ultimately pay for themselves.

As with most behaviours, the root of this one lies in childhood. I have both my mother and father to thank for my innate sense of colour co-ordination. Every Spring, my mother would pack away her Autumn / Winter wardrobe – it sounds more glamorous than it was – and get her Spring / Summer one out. As she looked it over and put things together, I’d make suggestions, such as ‘What about combining this blouse, that skirt, those shoes…and perhaps this handbag and those earrings?’ My father by contrast, had he been caught by the fashion police, would’ve been given life. He was an accident that’d already happened. Like most men, he believed that as far as clothing was concerned there were only five colours. Black, white, blue, brown or gay (bright colours). There are, of course, exceptions. If an item of clothing is gay, but has a logo or brand name clearly emblazoned on it, then it isn’t gay.

Some years ago, I knew a girl who was interested in me but was perplexed by someone who had his own shirts and cufflinks made. So she asked me, ‘Are you gay?’ Now most of the gay men I’ve known have been well dressed, had a well developed sense of humour, opinions I liked and a way of expressing them in an articulate way. In short, good eggs. A proportion of them were simply carbon units using oxygen, but less so than heterosexual men I’ve met. So my reply was ‘No, but I think my boyfriend is.’ On other occasions it’s been either that or ‘No, just cheerful.’

All of the above might help explain my reaction the other day, when I tried on an item that I’d just bought from Etsy. I knew I was taking a gamble on it size wise when I bought it – it was a blouse – but it had a wonderful floral pattern. Little Miss Sunshine looked at me, and with all the considered wisdom of a four and a half year old said, ‘If you wear that you’ll look like a girl.’ And I thought of a swanky party some years ago, where I wore a pink fluffy cropped top, purple Adidas gazelle trainers with a full-length shiny silver skirt. Trust me, it worked. The amount of women who were nonplussed at my reply to their question ‘Why are you wearing a skirt?’ made giving it worthwhile. Pausing only to cast a slow withering look up and down at them, I’d respond, “Because I look better in my outfit than you do in yours.” Amazingly, I wore not a single drink that evening.

Little Miss Sunshine then asked, “Do you like looking nice?” At the time I had changed and was now wearing the aforementioned trainers, white linen shorts, and a red gingham checked short sleeve shirt. So I said, “Hazard a guess?”
Clothes are not the problem, people, the way they put them together and the gender identity they assign to them are. Her statement was a revealing insight into how, at such a young age identities are manufactured. All that matters to me is if something works. Saying that then, most people’s wardrobe should be unemployed.

Next time..Iain Duncan Smith and how ironic it is that the once ‘Quiet Man’ of British politics isn’t…

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June 21, 2015

Glastonbury 2015? It isn’t only the cows that are milked at Worthy Farm…

But at least the dairy cows have good reason to be milked. If they aren’t, they will eventually stop producing milk. Makes sense to me. What makes less sense to me is the cash cows that, much like the dairy cows, obligingly herd themselves into Worthy Farm, and for the duration of the festival delude themselves that they’re doing something that means something. Unfortunately, what it means is that in the famous phrase attributed to Lenin, they are being a ‘useful idiot.’

Some explanation might be useful at this juncture. In the political sense a ‘useful idiot’ is someone who acts a propagandist for a cause, but is not wholly aware of what the cause is or what it’s ramifications are, and therefore their lack of understanding is cynically exploited by the leaders of the cause for their own ends. In a cultural sense, this charge could be reasonably levelled at anyone who repeatedly goes to Glastonbury. Not however at someone who goes once or twice and thinks better of it. Youth is when you’re meant to make your mistakes and learn from them, not continually repeat them. For one thing, it’s an expensive mistake.

This year a ticket to the Glastonbury Festival costs £220. Then add to that the cost of getting there and back. Oh, and the camping gear. Essential that. Except that I’d wager that a significant proportion of people who go to Glastonbury have never been camping before (and won’t be in a hurry to repeat the experience!) More expense. And unless you go by car, you travel by train – a journey down which puts one in mind of soldiers going off to the First World War, all cheerful enthusiasm but the return journey is one of subdued silence, a sleep deprived, haunted by what they’ve seen and done, look. One that doesn’t invite questions. Or by bus, which I imagine is the same; only the agony is massively prolonged. And that’s before you get there!

Now getting there at the right time is crucial, and given that the festival site opens at 9 a.m. on the Wednesday, getting there early and pitching your tent on as high a ground as you can will pay off if – when – it rains on the Thursday. Even a light shower will, when over 100,00 people have trampled all over it, turn a lush green farm into a muddy nightmare. Heavy rain on the Thursday is even worse. Even if the sun shines for the rest of the festival the dye has been cast, or more accurately not cast. Because cast implies solidity, which the ground won’t be. Which brings me on to the mud.

As anyone who’s been to Glastonbury when it’s rained a lot will attest, there isn’t only the one type of mud to be found there. One might almost think that the mud was one of nature’s revenges against having the festival at all. So nature’s opening gambit is to first add a drizzle of rain onto the grass in order to make it as slippery as possible.

With the addition of so many festival-goers trampling all over the site it soon resembles a nightmarish version of ‘It’s a knockout.’ The BBC, instead of providing live streams of the performances should instead provide coverage of the campers trying to set up their tents while trying not to sustain serious injury. They could put it to music. This music turns everything into comedy gold. Once the assembled hoards have found somewhere to pitch their tents and have nicely churned up the grass then it is time for it to rain again and for part two of nature’s plan to come into effect. This is the mud that when you tread on squashes out of the sides of your by now ruined footwear in the same way as cream will do if you squeeze on a chocolate éclair. If enough people trample on this, this will turn into porridge like mud. This is whereby the campers’ turn what was navigable mud into porridge like mud of indeterminate depth, which you’ll have seen on countless news reports. Normally featuring some drug addled loons swimming or sliding in it, not realizing that the showers are a long way away. And the final type of mud is the suction mud. This is mud that is nature’s ace in the hole. Helpfully, this type of mud, is normally found on steep inclines or near to toilets and payment for traversing this mud is normally in the form of footwear. The only good thing about mud at Glastonbury is that it means that there aren’t any jugglers! But it also means that one’s ability to prepare and consume drugs is severely limited.

Anyway, anyone who says “You don’t need drugs to enjoy a festival” has clearly never properly enjoyed a festival. I went to Glastonbury twice when it rained and it was sh*t. The one year that it didn’t rain and was all wonderful sunshine I got totally and gloriously sh*tfaced. All I’m saying is mushrooms. Anyway the point is that a festival without drugs isn’t half as much fun as a festival on drugs. However a festival isn’t the place to try drugs for the first time. There are far too many people about – the fear, the fear! – not to mention the worry that if you’re taking some drugs for the first time you might forget who or what you are.

Or indeed who ‘The Who’ are! Consider for a moment that the last time the trout lake owner and the researcher last bothered the Nation’s ears was in 2012 with yet another re-issue of ‘My Generation.’ Which is ironic really, as the generation going to Glastonbury will only know who they are by asking their parents. Or, if they’re really young, their grandparents. This year the Glastonbury Festival sold out in minutes, months before the line up was revealed. The useful idiots conclusively proving that there is indeed something magical about Glastonbury, not least in persuading 177,000 people to pay £220 for a ticket. Is it only me that finds a delicious irony in the fact that while the festival is held at Worthy Farm, when one buys the ticket one doesn’t know if it’ll be worth it?

The useful idiots really prove themselves useful again when buying things. Glastonbury has become a bazaar for those who imagine themselves to be bizarre, people so edgy that they’re practically wall huggers. But only for three days. Until then they are flogged remorselessly – captive consumers, sold everything – but overpriced for the smallest portion. Food and drink especially – but dishonourable mentions go to toiletries / cigarettes, especially king size Rizla papers and when it rains, any item of waterproof clothing. The age-old capitalist saying is reversed inasmuch as ‘you pay too much money and you have no choice. Glastonbury isn’t cheap – once you’ve added up the ticket cost, getting there and back, camping equipment, food and drink and drugs, it can easily top £400. This guy reckons that you can eat and drink at Glastonbury for £27 a day. I’d like to know what drugs he was on because they certainly work! Because this site offers holidays over Glastonbury weekend for less than the cost of the ticket, but sadly without the bad weather, overpriced food, dire accommodation, questionable sanitation.

Glastonbury offers privation without privacy. So it will come as no surprise to you to learn that I am hoping for rain in Somerset this Wednesday because I’m that kind of person. In my case the milk of human kindness has gone sour.

Next time….”If you wear that you’ll look like a girl.”

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June 12, 2015

The mystery that surrounds the exact colour of my therapists teeth…..

Twice in the last week I’ve demonstrated that I’m as deep as a puddle. The first occasion was when I met Simone, a potential care worker that my agency had sent to me in order for me to assess her suitability. When I was asked what my impression of her was, I remarked that her bingo wings were so big that if she were a bird she’d be flightless – there was simply too much weight to get her off the ground! (If you think that’s a bit bitchy might I remind you of the first line of my first blog when I said that I put the me into mean.)

The second occasion occurred yesterday. I have therapist from a nearby hospital who makes home visits. But that’s not important right now. What is is that yesterday she attempted to throw me a curveball by means of having her stomach making noisy and frequent protestations about her having skipped lunch. This I could have overlooked, were it not for the fact that she had patently cut her own hair. This is not me being bitchy – she freely admitted doing this when I asked if she had had a haircut. However these pail into insignificance when I come to the frankly mysterious colour of her teeth. Quite how one is expected to remain focused on one’s own problems when sitting opposite you is someone who has clearly some of their own. She has clearly not bothered a dentist in a good many years. She may be able to help with my mental health but it would seem she’s neglected her own dental health.

In point of fact, if one had teeth colour chart hers would be on the faint tobacco stain yellow / smeared dirt grey border. With thin vertical brown streaks as a finishing touch. When one is discussing matters that do not normally get aired this is one of the last things you should be thinking about. Namely, why do her teeth look like that, has someone told and she doesn’t care, and what colour ARE they. Her teeth are worryingly distracting and at times I have to consciously make an effort to avert my gaze from her mouth, lest an intently quizzical yet fascinated look spreads over my face. It’s interesting but irrelevant. What we were discussing was how I positively abound with dichotomies.

An example being the following: on the one hand I feel anger and frustration to various degrees quite a lot of the time. Yet on the other hand because of my innate sense of good manners I feel unable to express these. I’m aware that this puts me in conflict with myself and that expressing your feelings is a healthy thing to do. Except that as a child I saw my parents being healthy to an unhealthy degree. I learnt as a child that people said things in the heat of an argument that they soon regretted but as they were in the middle of an argument they couldn’t take it back – rather like an angry genie, released from lamp. As a child when you witness this happen again and again it necessarily has an effect. On one occasion my parents had had an argument in the morning and a friend of my brothers came around in the afternoon. Now at this time my brother would have been about 11 or so and me about 13. My father however, saw nothing wrong in referencing the argument he’d had with my mother that morning by asking my brother’s friend a direct and embarrassing question.
For this and many other reasons I’ve become rather selfish with my bad moods. By that I mean if I’m in a bad mood I remove myself from company until it has abated. I see no reason to rain on other people’s parade. Other people are selfless with their bad moods – they’re in a bad mood and they want every one else to share in it.

Anyway, I was talking about dichotomies. Here’s another one: the fact that I don’t want to do things because they would not be as good as I would have done them before my brain injury. Yet I don’t persevere with any exercises that will help me improve any. My handwriting is a good case in point. Every time I sign a cheque I look at my signature and despair. This despair however doesn’t encourage me to do anything about it. I could of course by now have made significant improvements into my handwriting but no. The fact I’m aware of this dichotomy only makes it worse. But if one knowingly does something against ones own best interests then that’s madness, right?

Speaking of madness my therapist is keen to grade my progress thus far. One of the questions she asks is “How many times in the last week have you had feelings of suicide?” My reply is always as follows: “Yes I have suicidal thoughts at least once a week, and yes I have a viable plan but as it is a viable plan I tend not to dwell on it. So my thoughts are theoretical and not practical. Just because I don’t like living doesn’t therefore mean I want to stop living, it simply means I really can’t abide it.” She looks at me and then at the small box on the form and wonders how on earth she’ll squeeze it in. I leave that up to her.

Now, in case any of you reading this are under the misapprehension that I’m a nice person allow me to disabuse you.
Some years ago I was sitting on a park bench and on the other side of the park I could see a guy walking whilst eating his lunch. Now this guy was huge. I mean he was like a bin bag full of yoghurt and he was stuffing his face with a baguette. At any rate chomping down on the food was a single-minded determination of his, so much so that he fell over and people rushed to his aide to see if he was alright. For me however, it was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen! I couldn’t stop laughing and my laughter was so loud that I received some angry glances from the passers by who stopped to help but really…I mean come on, if someone is so busy eating they fall over its impossible not to laugh, well for me it is!

Next time…Glastonbury 2015 and how it isn’t only the cows that are getting milked at Worthy Farm..

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June 6, 2015

George Osborne puts the con into Conservative….

If George Osborne had any more gall he’d be called Asterix. And it wouldn’t be at all wise to remind readers of his past friendship with a dominatrix. (Although according to the Daily Mail’s perverse moral code calling her a prostitute was somehow less degrading than calling her a dominatrix.) When he claimed he hadn’t really known her, she tweeted a , a ‘photo of him in her flat. For this, she was arrested by the police and charged with ’abusive behaviour.’

A charge that could well be levelled at himself, playing fast and loose with the public finances as he does, and not being honest with people in a way that most everyday people would understand. People well versed in the very technical and nuanced language of economics might understand what national debt is. Everyone knows what debt is – after all, most of us have some. But it’s when one examines what they mean by national debt, then it all becomes confusing. The accepted and widely used figure is the net debt of the UK; simply put what we owe minus what we own. We’ll return to that later.

And the UK national debt has increased massively, doubling in the last five years. So much so that according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK’s stock of debt will keep on rising for years. Anyone saying otherwise is wearing flame retardant pants. Understanding how they arrive at this rather alarming conclusion makes me go a bit ‘Scanners’ because it waxed my woody when I was unable to make head nor tail of it. You might have more luck. Click here.
Anyway there is a surplus. Or a deficit. And we all know what they are. They’re basically Mr. Micawber’s recipe of happiness, as outlined in ‘David Copperfield, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

Sticking with ‘David Copperfield’ for a moment, this is when we get some Uriah Heep type accounting. Anyone familiar with the book will get the reference, but if not then I pity you, because it’s a work of brilliance. Oh, and Uriah Heep is exposed as crook at the end, using peoples ignorance of certain facts to embezzle money. This helps when you consider the notion that is the structural deficit. Now the structural deficit is the deficit, only it’s been adjusted to strip out the cyclical nature of the economy. I think that means it’s the underlying deficit that’s not affected by economic performance. I know, me neither! Okay, it’s like when you go out for a meal with work colleagues. When the bill arrives, so do raised voices. Someone had only water to drink, someone else only had a starter and a salad, and yet another had…you get the gist. Structural deficit is kind of like that inasmuch as everyone only wants to pay for what they themselves have consumed. Unless of course you’re Greece and you threaten to leave without paying in order to obtain a reduced bill. (For a more illuminating economic analysis, I commend you to check out Collaterlie Sisters).

Then there is borrowing and reason deserted me completely at this point. If I’m right – and it’s a big if! – the current budget is how much it costs the government to govern, the day-to-day housekeeping if you will – in order to keep the country running. If we are in a deficit situation then we need to borrow just to keep things going. There’s no money for anything else – infrastructure, like high-speed rail for example. Imagine a household just about keeping the wolf from the door. Every penny is accounted for, but it’s still not enough. So they get a loan to help tide them over. But their neighbours’ have bought a new car and their friends have been on exotic holidays and their relatives have…well you get the idea, so they get another loan to pay for that. And then they have to get another loan to service those ones. The UK is that house, a bit like Boo Radley’s house, in need of repair and forlorn looking, one that people just run by.

And the amount of our national debt is a staggering £1.541 trillion
A trillion is, if you’re British at any rate, a million billion. And a billion is a million million. Helpfully, the Americans have their own system of quantifying these things. To put it in graspable terms, a million seconds is 12 days, a billion seconds is 31 years, and a trillion seconds is 31,688 years. And as anyone with a debt will know only too well, it isn’t so much the original sum borrowed that’s crippling, as the interest that remorselessly keeps on adding. In the UK’s case the interest on our national debt is £5,170 a second. And it keeps growing – see here for the current total and watch it increase before your eyes! (And if you think that’s bad, check out the amount of interest paid on global debt here. And we think Wonga’s bad!)

Remember how earlier on I said how the net debt is what we owe minus what we own? Well George has had the idea of selling what we own to raise cash. The sell off of the remaining government stake in the Post Office is estimated to raise £1.5 billion. Sounds a lot, until one remembers that the interest on our national debt is over £1 billion a week. Imagine a bath of infinite size and a tiny plughole letting only a trickle of water out whilst the taps are full on.

So when George Osborne proclaims that the national debt is under control, that his long-term economic plan is working, one wonders what kind of plan involves it doubling in the last five years? Is George Osborne doing to the economy what his former friend let men do to her?

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