Carillion Ponzi Scheme

The collapse of one of the U.K.’s largest engineering firms, Carillion, has generated a lot of media coverage as well as featuring in today’s Prime Minister’s Question time (or PMQs as it is known).  At this event, the Tories evidently found Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn’s questions to the PM re this debacle humorous. More fools them! 

To me, the Carillion case looks like a Ponzi scheme. The company went for growth more or less regardless. But, the growth was essential to survival, for like any Ponzi scheme, it depended on new customers to provide cash and confidence in order to keep cash flowing to pay suppliers, and keep the banks, shareholders and, ultimately, the government, sweet.  This is also called ‘deception’. 

Unfortunately, continuous growth cannot be depended upon.  For one thing, the government’s austerity policy led to reduction in the number of contracts in the pubic sector, thus jeopardising continual growth. Underperforming or problematic contracts further jeopardised the slim margins upon which Carillion operated.  So, things started to unravel. 

Profit warnings were issued. The hedge funds started to short Carillion — always an indication that there are problems.  Meanwhile, the government, a major Carillion client, continued to dish out large contracts to Carillion, partly because the government didn’t want to be the stakeholder that brought the company down by not giving it more contracts. One side effect of this is that many of the various outsourced suppliers took this as an indication of confidence in continuing business with Carillion. 

As things unravelled, the banks (with Carillion loans of £900k) lobbied government to help out (cf. bank meltdown of 2007-8). The govt refused. Inevitably, things completely unravelled, with Carillion heavily in debt, and with only £29 million in the kitty (which means that it may have been trading illegally if i were cash flow insolvent).  

The CEO and executives have secured their own financial interest — their salaries and bonuses can’t be ‘clawed back’.  The pension fund is around £540 billion underfunded.  Thousands of suppliers — mostly SMEs — are in danger of going under. And hundreds of thousands of employees are in danger of being without an income. 

The government, which is complicit in this dreadful state of affairs, has already started denying/avoiding complicity — thus the Tory MPs laughter in today’s PMQs.  And like all Ponzi schemes, many will suffer.  But I’m not confident that this Tory government will do anything that will seriously change the neoliberal approach that has given rise to this appalling state of affairs.

Who am I?

Today I learned that I was adopted. I’m 79, so this came as something of a surprise. How did it come about that at this advanced stage of my life, I learned something about myself that at least some others knew, but which had been hidden from me for nearly 8 decades?

It started out with a recent DNA analysis, in which it was revealed that 23% of mine was Polynesian.  This was a surprise, as nothing in my known family history hinted at this, since my father was born in Sydney of English descent, and my mother was born in England, also of English descent. So, I contacted a cousin in New Zealand, where I was born, and asked her if she had any leads which might reveal where the Polynesian part of me came from. (As my son also had had his DNA analysed by a separate organisation, which produced a 10% ‘Oceanic’ component, there clearly was something Polynesian somewhere.)  Without really believing it possible, I suggested that maybe there was an adoption, possibly my own.

Today I received a letter and some documentation from my cousin. It arrived just as I was preparing lunch, and my wife opened the package, so while I was in the middle of cooking beef stroganoff, I heard my wife say “You’re adopted”.

This information raises as many questions as it answers.  Unfortunately, the generation which might have some answers are all dead, and few of my cousins will have any knowledge of my adoptive status, nor probably any interest. Quite simply, I imagine that in the past this was something that wasn’t discussed, and that after a while, people — including even my parent — forgot that I was adopted. Now, it’s only because oner or two cousins have been exploring family history that this has come up, and more significantly, only because of the questions raised by my DNA analysis, and subsequent contacting my cousin, that it has come to light.

Now I’m wondering whether I’ll go through a sort of revere equivalent of the five stages of  grief and loss : 1. Denial and isolation; 2. Anger; 3. Bargaining; 4. Depression; 5. Acceptance. At the moment, my feeling is one of regret — of not having known when my parents were alive. But thoughts on that, and a request for my pre-adoption birth certificate form the New Zealand Dept of Internal Affairs are matters for another day. Meanwhile, I end 2017 knowing a lot more about who I am but with a great deal more remaining to be discovered in 2018. 

Practice Makes Perfect....

I passed!  Yesterday, after some months of preparation and hundreds of miles of driving, I passed the Institute of Advanced Motorists Road Smart (IAM RoadSmart) advanced drivers test.  I even got a first!

Aside from being well chuffed at this, the whole experience has been quite enlightening from the viewpoint of training, trainers and being trained.

What is quite clear is that motivation is above all important.  I opted to do this, I wanted to do it, and I was prepared to put time and effort  into doing it. Although I may be able to get a discount on car insurance, this wasn't my reason for preparing and doing the test. My motivation was that after driving for over sixty years, it wasn't a bad idea to give some serious thought, time and activity to improving my driving, having reached an age when deterioration is, alas, inevitable.

Driving is a peculiarly personal activity, about which people (especially men) are very sensitive. I soon learned that I had a number of habits which needed to be abandoned or improved, starting with handling the steering wheel (two hands at all times) and going on to reading the road, anticipating by looking well ahead (Eyes on Main Beam to use the jargon) and generally pre-acting rather than reacting.  Much stress was put on driving lawfully (i.e. Not breaking speed limits) and safely, but 'with spirit' (i.e. If it's safe to do so, driving at the speed limit, but not beyond it).  Importantly, from the viewpoint of learning, I had to be prepared to take feedback and advice, and apply it. This, according to my Observer, is not what some trainees are prepare to do ("I always drive this way, so....")

There is a certain amount of jargon and acronyms: POWDERY and IPSGA, for instance. The latter relates to on the road behaviour: taking in, processing and giving out Information, Positioning the vehicle, Speed, Gears and Acceleration.  And so on. The idea is that all of this stuff will become an automatic part of one's driving.

And therein lies the rub: converting the explicit to the implicit. As this almost invariably involves some measure of changing ingrained habits, doing so is really challenging, and involves a lot of self awareness, self observation and analysis over quite a long time. There's a big lesson there for training: don't expect people to change habits overnight and encourage self criticism, but not to the extend of demoralizing the trainee.

The role of feedback is also very important. My Observer (they're not called trainers) is very good eliciting evaluation of performance from me before offering feedback.  She's also good at giving feedback while I'm driving; in other words, feedback during performance rather than afterwards.  This provides an opportunity to alter behaviour during a training session and receiving feedback (and encouragement) when it improves.

Practice is also very important.  I don't actually do much driving these days, so I made time to do some longish drives along a variety of road types in order to put lessons into practice.  This demonstrated very clearly that without practice, old habits and new skills won't quickly change or become habitual.  This is an obvious lesson which applies to virtually everything.

In my last session before the test, my observer did a demonstration drive (she'd done one or two at the start of my sessions) which proved very helpful.  So, there's a role for modeling target behaviour -- and commenting on and explaining it.

Lastly, an important part of the training is doing a commentary on driving while driving.  My Observer suggested that it's useful to think you're talking to a passenger who can't see, i.e you have a make believe interlocutor.  The test includes doing a commentary, and I think it helped me as it shows the tester not only what you're doing, but clarifies why you're doing it. It also demonstrates your powers of observation(the I part of IPSGA) and what you're making of what you observe as far as decisions re your driving are concerned.

I wish I'd done this test years ago, not only because of its effects on my driving, but because of the insights it has provided for training. My conclusion is that it's a good thing for anyone involved in training to become a trainee from time to time (it doesn't have to be driving!) so as to be reminded of what is involved in training from the trainee's viewpoint. It really is quite illuminating!

Destabilizing times

These are seriously destabilizing times.  Brexit alone is bad enough. But now we have civil war in the Labour Party -- a reprise of Cavaliers v. Round Heads.  Meanwhile, the Tories are undergoing their own civil war, with blonde headed cavalier BoJo being promoted as leader against opposition from Anyone But Boris. That anyone may prove to be the Home Secretary, sponsor of the Snoopers' Charter and removal from the European Court of Human Rights.

Meanwhile, I'm trying for to understand what 'democracy'  means in the context of UK politics.  Example: around 250K grass roots Labour members helped get Corbyn elected as party leader, while around 9 million people voted the now former members of the Labour shadow cabinet to parliament.  Both claim democratic legitimacy.  For the time being, the party which should be HM loyal Opposition appears to have abdicated its role in favor of domestic civil war.

And now we have the slaughter at Istanbul airport.  Turkey has been much bad mouthed recently in the referendum campaign, and its president isn't exactly a leader who commends himself to democrats, but no country should suffer the outrages that have been committed last night, presumably in the name of a movement that has no time for democracy and employs destabilization as a means of achieving its own benighted aims.

UP THE CREEK

Have been watching the BBC news. As predicted, Game of Thrones is in full swing, the news being dominated first by the Labour version, then, more briefly, by the Tory one.

What is almost beyond belief is that the Labour shadow cabinet, instead of unitedly and repeatedly emphasizing the unsuitability of the favored Tory candidate, BoJo, as PM, they are telling everybody about the unsuitability of their own leader to lead their party!  This, remember, is the Opposition.

Finally, what some commentators are pointing out,but which many people seem to have overlooked, is that it is the government which is responsible for activating Clause 50 and the 'divorce' proceedings, and not leading members of the Leave campaign.  So far the government has remained silent. Quite possibly, the government, which promoted remain, have few plans on hand on how to deal with Brexit.  It's abundantly clear that the Brexit brigade have no plans. So, the country really does appear to be drifting up shit creek without a paddle!

Post Referendum Reflections

Reflections on the Referendum

Nothing has revealed the need for political reform more starkly than the outcome of this referendum, whose conduct by the 'winner' was based on an age old strategy perfected 80 years ago by Joseph Goebbels:

1) Have a simple, focused goal, e.g. Leaving the EU
2) Identify a grievance -- or preferably several.
3) Create a narrative in which 1) is presented as the means of fixing 2) despite lack of causality between them
4) Ensure that the media promulgate the narrative. Truthfulness is optional. Populist and nativist appeals are crucial.
5) Front the campaign with a 'personality' from the elite, masquerading as guardian of the interests of ordinary man, helping to feed the media with a constant stream of sound bites which play to populist and nativist prejudices and grievances
6) Repeat a few simple mantras at every opportunity together with statements of plausible deniability for extreme statements and acts of supporters
7) Prepare a range of convincing excuses for the inevitable chaos to follow a win and lack of competence to carry out withdrawal and realignment negotiations. (Just heard one from Daniel Hannan to the effect that "people aren't children and will understand that changes will take time". Another one: "we didn't promise that we would stop immigration". Yea, right.)

There is a disconcerting similarity between the strategy above and that employed by many mischievous and malign regimes, from Nazi Germany to North Korea to the Trump presidential campaign.  Meanwhile, the millions of voters who were duped will soon start to experience buyers' remorse -- too late.

Now there are two parallel Game of Thrones going on in the Conservative and Labour parties over their leaderships (both parties being well beyond their sell-by dates as revealed by the divisions and alignments in the referendum campaign).  These games will provide the media with much copy to divert attention from the problems that withdrawal from the EU is already showing up.  The less than helpful attitude of soon to be erstwhile EU partner nations in managing the withdrawal will be depicted as perfidious Europe attacking brave go-it-alone Blighty -- further 'evidence' to justify withdrawal from the EU.

Btw, do you remember that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end to the Cold War, and the Peace Dividend that this entailed, we were invited to rejoice in the end of history and entry to a sunny upland of continuing peace and prosperity?  So last century....

EU Referendum: Why I voted to remain

Trying to make sense of the referendum

 Note: I wrote this a couple of days before the referendum

Sovereignty: in all important respects (e.g. War) the UK is a sovereign state. The status of EU legislation has been established by Parliament, and cd be changed.  The majority of UK law is not simply a direct translation of EU legislation, and much of it appears to be concerned with regulations.

Red tape: the EU itself is concerned with reducing the amount of centrally created legislation and regulation, and moves are in hand (which will be greatly supported by the UK) to both reduce the amount of such legislation and to give more autonomy to national parliaments.

Democratic deficit: the EU law making process is not as undemocratic as alleged (key decisions and legislation are passed by the Council of Ministers and by the Parliament), but it could be more so.

EU Federation: the UK is already absolved from becoming involved, and there is some drawing back from this among EU members. Even if a confederation of Eurozone members takes place, the U.K. Is outside the Eurozone and will not be involved                                                                                                                      

EU Immobility: the difficulty of fixing such matters as the monthly removal to Strasbourg, though widely regarded as wasteful and inefficient, cannot easily be changed except by agreement of all member nations, a change to the treaty, and national referenda. Unless such impediments in governance can be changed, other reforms will likewise be stymied. This is a real cause of concern if much needed reforms to the EU are to be successful, but in itself is not a reason for withdrawal.

Trade treaties: these are less concerned with tariffs than with regulations and the EU provides the  Holy Grail as far as these are concerned.  Establishing trade treaties post Brexit wd involve both the EU and those countries with which the UK wished to trade.  These negotiations wd likely be tortuous. Also it is doubtful that the UK has the expertise to conduct such negotiations.  Furthermore, it is unlikely that any countries will enter into a treaty until the UK's post Brexit trade relations with the EU are clarified -- and this could take years. So, there is likely to be a trade treaty limbo which could be damaging to the UK economy. In any case, the U.K. will be negotiating from a position of weakness, and China and India, for instance,  are unlikely to be offering advantageous conditions to the UK.

Economy: everyone seems to agree that there will be a post Brexit dip.  Retrieving the income foregone will involve stimulating extra growth from a position of  weakness.   Furthermore, short term effects can have long term consequences, all of which are difficult to predict, adding to medium to long term uncertainty.

Meanwhile, the presence and position of international companies in the UK post Brexit are also uncertain, since their presence is largely determined by entry to the large European market. (80% of UK car production is exported).  Further complicating the situation are the supply chains which involve EU sources of components for UK made products. In addition, the status of the U.K. as a financial services centre will almost certainly be affected, particularly as Paris and Frankfurt are keen to benefit.

Immigration: this issue has been thoroughly contaminated by the Referendum.  Successive governments have failed to address it effectively.  Furthermore, domestic policies have exacerbated the situation, e.g. Inadequate ESL support, withdrawal of funds to local governments in areas receiving large numbers of immigrants, framing immigration and immigrants as a problem.  Future governments must do better.


It is clear that controlling immigration post Brexit will not be easy, and it is likely to be even more difficult given what wd probably be a porous border between Ireland and the U.K. Instead of receiving legal immigrants, the U.K. would be likely to suffer from increasing numbers of illegals who wouldn't be tax payers.

Employment: Successive governments have failed to predict manpower requirements, and provide effective education and training (e.g. Decent apprenticeships) to fill jobs, many of which are filled by immigrants.

The U.K.is lightly regulated as far as employment is concerned, and this appears to leave gaps for exploitation, such as the recruitment within the EU of workers to be employed at below the UK living wage.  This is a domestic issue which requires a domestic solution.

Identity politics: this has been exploited by UKIP in particular, and, like immigration, has not really been adequately addressed.  There is an irony in this in that both the French and Spanish are taking measures against the contamination of their languages by English, and there are EU requirements regarding TV and films regarding 'European' content and origin. Unfortunately, in the UK identity politics seem to be aligned to a peak Blighty view of British culture and way of life, which is inimical to an internationalist orientation.

Domestic politics post Brexit:  the austerity agenda will be given a boost (as already indicated by Osborne's emergency budget) and the review of UK laws, even though carried out by the civil service, will basically be the responsibility of the government.  If this government is more right wing than centrist, the opportunity will doubtless be taken to strip out as much EU inspired legislation concerning environment, employment, human rights. In any case, this process will be greatly complicated by the integration of EU and UK law, and UK case law derived from this.

Further starving public services of funds in the name of austerity will doubtless hasten privatisation in the name of efficiency and cost saving.

Though only mentioned in passing by most commentators, the effects on Brexit on the Northern Ireland peace process could be damaging. As to Scotland....

International status of UK: it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it will be diminished rather than enhanced by withdrawal from the EU.  Peak Blighty has no resonance with the world outside the UK except as content of TV drama.

Overall, I see no significant benefits in withdrawal from the EU, and many problems.  I am minded to vote REMAIN.

Cleaning for the Queen

Evidently, the government has declared 2016 the year in which we must 'Clean for the Queen'.  Raising the fine for littering to £150 is also proposed. Great.  Why HMQ should be invoked is beyond me (she's 90 this year, so that seems to be the reason/excuse).  Citizens of the U.K aren't alone in having a casual attitude to littering, and nor is HM Govt alone in trying to impose punishments for doing so.  The problem, it seems to me, is that of attitudes.  Public space, which includes the countryside and roadside verges, appears to be seen as being a free for all space for which no one is responsible.  From this attitude may follow the notion that the individual has a right to litter. It is clear from the verges around Henley that this right is well exercised.

The author, David Sedaris, took to heart cleaning the verges around his neighbourhood, and his rural rambles are or were an exercise in self motivated litter picking.  This is admirably public spirited, and for him may even have been cathartic. Doing a similar exercise around Henley has come to mind -- and, indeed, time time to time there are well publicised (at least in the Henley Standard)  individual and group litter picking activities.  Maybe the loyal citizens of Henley and the Chilterns will take the Clean for the Queen campaign to heart, but all such noble motives will be subverted so long as using public space as an extended public litter bin is viewed as acceptable.

Telling Stories

What's in a word?  Once upon a time, 'story' meant an account, either true or fictitious, of events. It could also mean a fabrication or an allegation. In this latter sense, a story was a bit dodgy.

In the past few years, 'narrative' has come to replace story, and in most cases, the dodgyness continues, but even dressed up in the posher term, the dubious nature of the claims being made by the narrator remain.

Politicians and political parties now have narratives which they spin with gusto, as do the media. Not to have a narrative puts a politician or a political party at a distinct disadvantage, and if they don't have a narrative, the media will soon invent one.

Ultimately, though, what they are all doing when presenting their narratives is simply telling stories.  And like most stories, there is an element of fantasy and fabrication.  We overlook this at our peril.  Whether story or narrative, what is going on is an attempt to trick, bamboozle or fool us.

Currently, the stories going around about Corbyn involve two diametric extremes:  a) he's a died in the wool Marxist and therefore both out of touch with reality and is a danger to our Way of Life, b) he's an authentic, principled, sincere man challenging the false pieties of conventional politics.

Frankly, neither story is convincing.  But then, I have to say, neither is the story of Corbyn as future Prime Minister.

Off the rails

I am puzzled.  The British railway system was founded and built by private enterprise.  Eventually, the system ran off the rails, and it was nationalised.  A generation of so later, the then Conservative govt led by John Major returned it to private ownership, setting up a complicated system of ownership (rail track and services separated) with the various services open to competitive bidding.

What has been largely hidden from public scrutiny is the level of subsidy offered to the privately owned rail franchisees.  The figures vary, but the latest I've seen is somewhere over £4 billion net.  In the overall scale of public finance, not a great deal, but nonetheless, it's public (or, to use the cliche, tax payers') money that is being put into private pockets.

In this part of the Home Counties, the rail services are rated in popularity along with 'welfare scroungers' and 'bogus asylum seekers.  The commuters to London, paying £4,000 p.a. for the privilege, probably don't realize that the rail company concerned is actually being publicly subsidised.  So, not only are they paying £4K out of taxed income for a less than brilliant service -- they are also through their taxes contributing to the shareholder's dividends.

The much maligned Corbyn has proposed renationalising the railways as various franchises expire. This has produced the usual knee jerk reactions from the right of centre press and politicians, and quite a few of the public. Rational debate is notably silent.  As is the fact that the current system, while not nationalised, is still publicly subsided. In other words, the tax payer still pays.

One argument advocates cutting subsidies entirely, freeing rail companies from govt micro management, and enabling them to run business-like and profitable enterprises.

http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/why-are-rail-subsidies-so-high

Unsprisingly, the TUC takes a different line, as it were:

https://www.tuc.org.uk/industrial-issues/transport-policy/train-operators-gained-%C2%A327bn-taxpayers-subsidy-last-year

Meanwhile, it seems that subsidies are actually down:

http://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2014/04/rail-subsidies-down-%C2%A34bn-regulator-reveals

Now, are you confused?  I certainly am.  But I do think that Corbyn's proposal merits serious consideration, and some well informed debate.  Unfortunately, the railways, like the NHS, are political totems. So, I'm not anticipating rational discussion, and the unhappy commuters of Henley will continue to pay for the privilege of travelling in privatised, overcrowded, subsidised trains to and from London, while Cross Rail, built at vast public expense, will have as yet to be experienced effects on rail travel in the Thames Valley.

A SOD Saga

Several years ago, the then Coalition government came up with the Localism Act, which led to the introduction of something called neighbourhood planning. The idea was that neighbourhoods, i.e. parish or town councils, could, with active community involvement, devise a neighbourhood plan (NP), which for the period concerned, define the ways in which the village or town wd develop. In particular, it wd enable the community to say where new housing developments could be located.  All fine and dandy. However, the NP wd be subject to national and district planning constraints, so it wasn't quite the community based planning opportunity that at first glance it seemed to be.

One of the constraints on community planning immediately became apparent when it was announced that, according to the county and district planning strategies for Oxfordshire and South Oxfordshire, Henley (pop. 11,000) wd be required to make room for 450 new houses up to 2027.  There was an immediate convulsion of Nimbyism among the citizens of Henley and neighbouring Harpsden. Henley town Council (HTC) set up a NP process.  This has dragged on for two years, has involved consultation with the community, and two versions of the NP have been put forward for comment.

HTC commissioned a consultancy to prepare the plan, with input from working groups made up of community members. Unfortunately, the result has been a series of documents which look as if they have come from the key board of Dave Brent (of 'The Office' fame, who worked in a fictitious enterprise in a business park somewhere in non fictitious Slough).

The Henley in Transition (HIT) group, of which I am a member, felt the need to make a submission on the latest version of the Henley and Harpsden NP to South Oxfordshire District Council  (SOD) Planning, and I took on the role of editing the copy which, at least in theory, wd be produced by my colleagues.  Fortunately, long experience of working on multi-writer documents had prepared me for this thankless task, and at more or less the 11th hour, and after much rewriting, the final text was ready. Unfortunately, SOD Planning Department had devised a scheme for making submissions which was not exactly citizen friendly, and we had to get our submission to their office by 16.30 on Friday.

Now, this wd have been easy had it not been for a dramatic incident last year.  An Oxfordshire citizen with a shoulder well loaded with chips devised a scheme to get even with the various individuals and organizations against which he had a grudge. Chief of these was SOD Planning.   So, one night, he drove a car loaded with containers of gas right into the foyer of the SOD building in Crowmash and lit the fuse.  Result: total destruction of the extensive SOD premises.  (The mad man concerned is now a guest of HMQ in a secure psychiatric establishment.)

So, the scene is set for yesterday's little saga when, confident that our satnavs wd lead us to SOD Planning at Milton, Malcolm (HIT chairman) and I climbed into the faithful Accord and I keyed the postal code into my vintage Garmin sat nav. No luck. We tried with Malcolm's newer TomTom sat nav. Still no luck.  We tried every permutation we could think of with both satnavs. Nada. OK, so I decided to go via the ruined SOD site at Crowmarsh on the assumption that some some locational information wd be posted there. Arrived. No luck. SOD haven't thought to post notices on the firmly closed gates to direct hapless visitors to their new locations.

Light bulb moment: Google maps. Keyed in info. Site identified.  Near Didcot. Just off the A4130 & near A34. Thus informed, we headed off for nearby Didcot, guided by Google maps. When we reached the A4130/A34 interchange, took the wrong exit, and ended up on A34, Oxford bound. Miles later managed to retrieve that error, and eventually arrived at the Milton business park, which turns out to be exactly the kind of location in which Dave Brent would have been at home. Found helpful map at entrance. Identified target. Reached target. Delivered our submissions. Obtained proof of delivery. Then headed off home, helped by directions from one of the staff who told us how easily to escape from Dave Brent village without hazarding the A34 exchange.   Trip back took 30 mins.

Lessons learned: don't rely on sat navs. Put faith in Google maps. Continue to be sceptical about SOD's location information (and much else).  Oh, and ask a neighbour. "Yes,of course", said my neighbour when I returned, "it's just off the A34/A4130 interchange!"

Back home, I poured -- and consumed -- a generous G&T.   End of saga.

The Joy of Music

For a few years at secondary school I learned the violin. Unfortunately, I lacked the talent, and the application to become anything other than a beginner, but what I did learn was an immense respect for any instrumentalist who is really good, as well as an appreciation of classical, and, throughout life, of other forms of music.  Many years later, each summer, this enjoyment is given a boost through the availability of the Prom Concerts on Radio 3 and BBC TV.  These provide a substitute for actually attending the concerts, and provide an experience which is different from being a member of the audience, remote from the performers on a distant stage.

Recently there have been two contrasting concerts which, nonetheless, shared one thing in common: in both cases, the instrumentalist was a female violinist.  The first was Nicola Benedetti playing the lushly romantic Korngold violin concerto, a work which she clearly loves performing, an enjoyment which she shared with the orchestra and with her listeners and watchers.  What a TV performance like this provides is a view of the interaction between the solist, the conductor and the orchestra as together they make music.  There are moments of intimacy, flashes of humour, displays of team work.

The second event could not have been more different. Instead of a glamorous young woman fronting an orchestra, there was a solitary soloist on the Albert Hall stage.  Dressed in black, Alina Ibragimova  appeared to be a vulnerable figure, just her and her fiddle.  This was musical performance reduced to is essentials: a player and an instrument.  From the opening notes of the Bach sonata which was the first part of her performance, it was clear that Ibragimova was in complete control, and for ninety minutes, and from memory, she performed some of the greatest music ever composed: Bach's sonatas and patitas for solo violin.  It was a breathtaking performance.

This evening I've been 'attending' a performance of the Eastern Divan Orchestra, of which the highlight was the Beethoven Triple concerto.  Here was a chamber trio -- piano, violin and cello -- making music with an orchestra conducted by the pianist, Daniel Barenboim. What was so great was to see the interaction among the trio and their interaction with the orchestra.  A wonderful evening's music making.

And now, a complete change: the final part of a series of Frank Sinatra.  Such is the rich diversity of music and an enjoyment which had its start with my very, very modest attempts as a violinist.

It's a dog's life

When I was growing up on a sheep farm in New Zealand, there were dogs as part of the working life of the farm.  They lived in kennels, and we weren't encouraged to make pets of them. There was also another reason for treating dogs with a certain amount of distance. At that time, a particularly hasty parasitic diseas, hydatids, was a probem, and dogs had regularly to be dosed to purge them, as dogs are hosts in the life cycle of this parasite. http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/tapeworms_and_hydatid_disease

So, this meant that my contact with dogs was at a distance, and although we always had at least one cat as part of the family, we never had a pet dog.  Nor many years later, did we have either a cat or dog so our children grew up without the benefit of pets.  Possibly for this reason, a couple of years ago my son and daughtrer-in-law (who have two horses between them), acquired a terrier called Rosie.

Rosie is a mixture of terrier breeds, with Jack Russell predominating.  She quickly started to find her way into our affections, which prompted some thoughts on the long standing relationship between her species and mankind.  It's very clear that Rosie is very adept at reading the mood of the members of her human tribe, which includes not only her nuclear family (Patriarch, Matriarch & Juvenile) but of her extended family.  Surprisingly, my wife, also brought up in a pet free household, has quite taken to Rosie (fortunately, the feelings are reciprocated) and she is now a very welome guest in our household. In fact, when Rosie had been handed over to her other grandparental family, and our house was now dogless, my wife commented that it seemed to be funny without Rosie.

Rosie has come to associate me with long walks which take her into terrier heaven, a world full of woodland and rural scents -- and rabbits (lambs she's less certain of).  While scampering around, she quickly picks up rabbit trails, and then enters the totally focussed world of the hunter.  Instructions to return are ignored.  The hapless dog walker (me) has to wait until the thrill of the chase has worn off.

So, we now have a member of the family who, without fail, demonstrates delight in seeing me and manages to find a way of ensuring that I take her for a walk, come rain or shine.  Truly, it's a dog's life!

Seasonal transitions

The summer, not bad as English summers go, has ended. The Indian summer, about which there is been some disagreement (Is it really apt to apply to a burst of warm autumn weather in the UK? etc., etc.) has come and gone.  Autumn colours are tinting the landscape. And shortly we put the clocks back.

Given the state of affairs nationally and internationally, it's difficult to feel a glowing sense of optimism at this seasonal transition.  The Scots Referendum has come and gone, and, like the Arab Spring, raised all sorts of hopes for constitutional reform, which have been promptly scotched (forgive the pun) by the Westminster politicians who simply don't seem to 'get' the low esteem in which they and the system they support are held. So, no cause for optimism there, then.

On top of this, there is the way that the political agenda (to coin phrase!) seems to have been set by UKIP, who have strengthened the swine like rush to shut the gates to immigration as well as the move towards Brexit.  As an immigrant, I feel distinctly uncomfortable about the anti immigration rhetoric which now seems to have achieved the status of respectability, while, given the shift of the balance of economic power to Asia, the notion that little Britain could cut loose from the EU (flawed tho it is) and still cut a figure in the world is to lose touch with reality.

Meanwhile, we have the increasing inequality of income and opportunity that is so blatantly apparent in London and the Home Counties.  One doesn't have to be a Picketty to view this is unhealthy and unwholesome.  The UK seems to be regressing to a society of a few haves (the 1%) and a lot of have nots, with the Squeezed Middle, so beloved of some politicians, struggling somewhere in the middle.

As to the Middle East, what a source of despair.  Israel seems to represent colonialism at its worst, while the confusing and confused set of enmities and alliances and proxy wars is threatening, and is serves as a terrible reminder of the follies of Western nations meddling in a region so little understood, but so important as a source of energy to fuel the industrialised economies of North America and Europe.

And then there is Africa -- or rather West Africa, and Ebola.  Everything about this exemplifies the way in which Africa is perceived and projected as the Dark Continent by the media.  The failure to take seriously warnings from such agencies as MSF is now having terrible consequences, while the longer term consequences for already fragile states and economies is tragic.

So, seasonal transition is not a happy time, while today's grey and gloomy weather ends the weak on a depressing note.  Well, exercise is supposed to be a way of fending off depression, so it's time to tog up and get on my bike!

Shops on wheels

When I was in Vietnam last month, as on previous visits, I was impressed by the street life, in particular, the way a public space, like the footpath/sidewalk, is taken over not only for parking motorbikes and scooters (presenting a barrier to pedestrians), but for a whole range of mercantile activities and services.  While waiting outside a city centre hotel for some fellow travellers en route to Ha Long Bay, I snapped a few passing hawkers.  

What they all had in common was wheels, without which their little businesses wouldn't have been possible. Or at least, they would have been much curtailed.  As I watched the passing traders, I realized that the possession of a bike gave the owner an opportunity to set up and run a mobile business. In short, possessing a bike is a form of empowerment.   With a bike, the women concerned -- and these bike shops are mostly run by women -- can transport their merchandise (mostly foodstuffs) from a farm or market to a town centre location where there will be people wanting to purchase.  If one location doesn't prove worthwhile, the shop keeper can easily move on, and this kind of wheeled relocation is often to be observed. The kerbside shop also means that motorbike or scooter based shoppers don't have to stop and park, but can simply transact their purchase from the saddle. 

The next step in the mercantile chain involves a motorbike.  While I was waiting, a motorcyclist and his passenger stopped by to make a delivery of what looked like some kind of prepared vegetable.  So, wheels also provide the basis of a delivery service.  

There is a whole mercantile ecology to be found on the streets of any Vietnamese town or city.  The push bike based shop occupies one of the lower ecological niches, and, hard work though it undoubtedly is, it provides a living -- probably a marginal one -- for the women shop keepers.  All this entrepreneurial street activity reveals the mercantile bent of Vietnamese, and, traffic ridden and polluted though these streets are, I couldn't help but feel that they also have a buzz which is lacking in the well ordered town centre of Henley-on-Thames!  

Getting It Wrong

As I am now an aged driver, at regular intervals I have to renew my driving licence.  A Driving licence renewal application Form D46P  is sent, and has to be completed and returned in order to receive an updated licence.  Item 3 is as follows:

Your eyesight   Please put X as appropriate

A.   Can you meet the legal eyesight standard

for driving using classes or corrective lenses if needed?        Yes   No

B.    Do you need to wear glasses or corrective lenses

to meet the standard?                                                                Yes   No

I don't need glasses or corrective lenses to meet the legal standard for driving. How, then, to answer item A?  For that matter, how to answer item B? 

Anyway, I got one of them wrong.  So, the document was returned to me with a request to correct the error. 

This set me thinking.  Or perhaps worrying.  Am I in the early (or even advanced) stages,  not of loss of vision, but loss of comprehension faculties? 

Surely only one question is required in order to confirm the state of one's vision, and that is question B.  If you have to wear glasses or corrective lenses to meet the standard, then presumably the reissued driving licence will include this requirement.  

It does seem to me that the DVLA has made a meal of this item. Or maybe it is me who is doing so!  

SO THAT WAS 2013, THEN

Years never end in quite the way that had been anticipated on 1^st January, and this was certainly the case with 2013, which began with a sunny 1^st January, continued with a late spring, and eventually provided a good summer, with a long, late autumn.  In between, I visited New Zealand, something completely unenvisaged on 1^st January, while in September, our grandson, Oli started school, and the year ended with an unexpected work assignment in Vietnam.  

That’s the personal stuff. Meanwhile, on the national scene, there has been an  increasing awareness that the government,  which reassured the electorate that the NHS would be save in their hands, is systematically dismantling and flogging off chunks of it to the private sector, EU competition legislation being conveniently deployed to aid and abet this process, while the sinister (and evidently deaf and deceitful) IDS (Ian Duncan Smith) is ‘rationalizing’ the social security system with maximum ill effect as the hugely complicated IT systems needed to implement it limp behind schedule. 

A new lexicon has entered the language: ‘bedroom tax’ has become the label for one of the government’s vicious little schemes, while ‘reform’ has become the deceitful label for anything that the government (sorry, ‘Coalition’) is doing in pursuit of ‘efficiency’ and ‘austerity’ and ‘fixing the mess left by the last government’.  Beware ‘reformers’. (See thoughtful article by ex MP Tony  Wright on ‘What is it about politicians’ in latest issue of The Political Quarterly at http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sunni-monarchs-back-youtube-hate-preachers-antishia-propaganda-threatens-a-sectarian-civil-war-which-will-engulf-the-entire-muslim-world-9028538.html )

On the international scene, the Syrian situation goes from bad to worse, with the Assad regime looking likely to stay in power as being the lesser of two evils, the greater being ANF, SIF, SILF and the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), forces associated in various ways with al-Qaeda. (See NYRB article by Sarah Birke http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/dec/27/how-al-qaeda-changed-syrian-war/ )

In fact, the Arab Spring – a term which surely invited disaster– has turned into Arab Winter in Egypt, while in non Arab Turkey, that some time darling of the Western world, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has proved to be a winner takes all politician with a self serving and distorted notion of democracy.  His current corruption problems are entirely in line with this set of attitudes. Meanwhile, that stalwart of the rule of law and human rights, Vladimir Putin, has been named not only Russian Man of the Year (by the Russians), but also International Person of the Year for 2013 by that erstwhile great journal of record, The Times.  Is this parody, I wonder, on the same level as Obama’s 2009 Nobel Peace Prize? 

Two notable and, one hopes, beneficial events in 2013 were the Snowden revelations, which have, worryingly though not surprisingly,  created few ripples among the political class in the UK (cf the USA ), and the election to the papacy of  the hitherto obscure Cardinal Bergoglio from Argentina.  See a very thoughtful review of the Pope’s first year by James Carroll in a recent New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/23/131223fa_fact_carroll

Tragically, but all too predictably, the conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan continue. Fortunately for her own good, Malala Yousafzai, didn't receive a prize in Oslo, but what can she and others like her do in the face of the corruption, veniality, incompetence and blindness that seems to characterize the situation in her ruined home country?  As to Iraq, it appears have joined Syria as the site of a proxy war between the Sunni world, pay-rolled by Saudi Arabia, and the Shia world, under the aegis of Iran.  The fragile détente reached between the ‘West’ (i.e.,  the USA ) and Iran could be, as they say, a game changer, but the influence of the Saudi regime can be, and is,  nothing  but malign and they will work to destablize any rapprochement. (See Patrick Cockburn in a recent Independent article:  http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sunni-monarchs-back-youtube-hate-preachers-antishia-propaganda-threatens-a-sectarian-civil-war-which-will-engulf-the-entire-muslim-world-9028538.html )

And so one could go on, and on and on.   What about climate change?  A climate change denier is now PM in Australia.  Yet, the scientific consensus appears to support man made climate change.  The kind of climate instability that is increasingly common, as in the hugely destructive typhoon in the Philippines,  is in line with predictions made years ago when climate change first became an issue.

As is the movement of populations in pursuit of land, water, security and that elusive goal, ‘freedom’.   The harrowing instances of foundering vessels and drowning passengers en masse in the Mediterranean is in line with the kind of population movements predicted in the past and which, thanks to climate change and political instability, are now so common.  The response of the world at large has been pretty paltry and mean spirited.  

I have written at length elsewhere on my visit to New Zealand, a country which itself is undergoing significant demographic changes, together with a realignment of identity as a Pacific and near SE Asian nation, rather than being an antipodean version of the Old Country.  This reorientation is entirely realistic as the hemisphere combining Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea and, above all, China, has become a major centre of the world economy and a significant market for Kiwi produce, as well as a source of new citizens.    

My year ended with a visit to this very region, albeit one country within it: Vietnam.  I first visited Hanoi in 1995, and more recently I’ve worked in Danang, as well as paying brief tourist visits to Hue (old imperial capital) and HCMC (formerly Saigon).  This visit took me via Bankok (change of flights) to Hanoi, which has, like VN itself, moved on from being a country emerging from a period of prolonged economic underdevelopment, to an almost frighteningly vigorous and booming nation. 

The road traffic symbolizes this transformation.  The motorbike and scooter remain the predominant means of transport, thanks, I was told, to the coming to market of cheap Chinese machines which have brought this means of transport within the means of large swathes of the population.  And I mean large swathes, as men and women of all ages use them, they are the usual form of family transport (2 parents + 2 children are a common sight) and from the viewpoint of mobility and economic emancipation, they have had a tremendous, beneficial effect.  Since 1995, with accelerating prosperity, motor cars (including luxury brands like Bentley) have also increased by huge numbers , so now there is a frightening mix of two, four and multiple wheels at large on the roads which, in the main cities are pretty good, if crowded, but are woefully inadequate inter-city.

Although there are some traffic lights in the major cities, much traffic is unregulated, and conventional adherence to rules of the road,  as normal in the UK, seems to be largely unknown and, if known,  unpractised.  Even so, the system does work, albeit  in a way which is both unnerving and baffling to a foreigner -- and despite everything, the traffic keeps moving.  One principle appears to be to ignore any traffic coming behind you, it being the responsibility of a driver who can see traffic ahead to take whatever evasive action is needed.  Performing U-turns in the face of on-coming traffic is common,  it being their job to avoid you,  as is changing direction with little concern for following vehicles.  The worst challenge, however, faces the hapless pedestrian, who, unless at a rare light controlled intersection, must try to identify a break in the traffic stream, and set off at a steady, confident pace across the highway, in the hope that on-coming traffic really will take evasive action.  Loosing the plot, and stopping half way across is to invite disaster. 

In Saigon, I was staying on an ‘island’ from which, fortunately, I didn't have to stray on my way to work, five heavily polluted minutes from my hotel, the colonial Continental Hotel Saigon.  However, obtaining sustenance other than at the hotel required an expedition ‘off shore’, and this certainly gave an edge to the appetite! The main concern was the number of life-threatening crossings to ‘spend’ en route to a targeted restaurant. 

The overt chaos and hidden system of traffic management did seem to sum up our experience as trainers.  Andy and I were contracted to run three two week leadership courses for university lecturers as part of major national curriculum reform (or ‘restoration’) in foreign language teaching (i.e.,  mostly ELT).   Promulgated in the form of a ‘Decision’ in 2008 (i.e.,  legislation), and now the subject of a cascade form of implementation, NFL2020-P as it is called, is already about two years behind schedule.  This is partly because of the unwieldy nature of the system itself, as well as a result of multi-agency machinations and lack of coordination within the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). 

It is a characteristic of a regime run by an autocratic party like the Vietnamese Communist Party (which is doggedly and determinedly clinging on to power and privilege, like its Chinese equivalent), that information is difficult to obtain, and is acquired in dribs and drabs from a variety of sources. Even then, it’s difficult to form a coherent picture of the system. Thus it proved to be for Andy and me, and even at the very end of our venture, we were still making discoveries. For instance, during my final week, I learned that the ETCF  (English Teachers Curriculum  Framework), largely the product of an American advisor, had not yet been signed off by MOET,  so it exists in a kind of administrative limbo as it isn't yet ‘official’. Until it is, the ETCF doesn't seem to be fully in the process of being implemented.  Of course, reluctance to implement decisions and guidelines that aren’t yet fully ratified isn't confined to members of the Vietnamese education system, but learning about this administrative glitch helped to explain why decisions take so much time to put into effect and why, despite the NFL2020-Pl egislation and the curriculum development that has already been achieved, the project is into penalty time already. 

Combined with a dearth of linkage across divisions and agencies within the education system, the slowness of decision taking and dissemination helped account for what we regarded as a woeful absence of coordination.  People attending our courses had been told with very little notice (like 24 hours) that they were to attend. In many cases, this meant arranging at short notice overnight train journeys and accommodation at the venue.  In virtually all cases, it meant rearranging their university and private classes, not to mention making considerable domestic rearrangements (a majority were married women with families).   The coup de grace came when the Danang group were told by the representative of the P2020 office that he wasn't sure when their promised expenses would materialize.  To say that this put quite a dampener on the rest of the afternoon is an understatement, the participants not being alone in feeling angry and upset by this state of insouciant mismanagement.

The apparently ramshackle and corrupt way things are run in VN makes visitors wonder how come it has an expanding economy?  Evidently, within private sector enterprises, things can and do run efficiently, as witness the overnight tour I did to scenic Ha Long Bay, near Hanoi, or the superb theatre troupe, AO,  performing original and imaginative acrobatics with a modern twist at the Saigon opera house.  Why, one wonders, can't these skills be scaled up to national level?  It’s very clear that Vietnamese are diligent, hard working and, given the right kind of leadership, as in the AO troupe, are able to perform wonders.  They are quite different from their near neighbours, the Thais (who are regarded as, to put it diplomatically, too easy going), and although much influenced by Chinese culture, they are in turn quite different from their mighty northern neighbours, with whom they maintain a very ambivalent relationship, there being a long history of Sino-Vietnamese border conflicts from 1979 to 1990, while the Spratley Islands (their Vietnamese name: Quần đảo Trường Sa) dispute is on-going.   We hope that ultimately it gets back on track.  

Apart from the well maintained and rather fruity architectural relics of French colonialism, such as the Saigon opera house opposite my hotel,  and the occasional food influences, such as the baguettes which are widely available as street food, in Vietnam there was another unexpected and ubiquitous influence from the West: Christmas.  Within days of arriving in Saigon, our hotel, the Japanese owned Nikko, sprouted a splendidly dressed two storey Xmas tree in the lobby, which is no surprise to anyone who has lived in Japan, while outside, other even more extravagant seasonal decorations appeared at the posh shopping malls.  The absolute climax of Christmas decorations and lighting was to be found in booming Saigon, where they were a major attraction for the Saigonese, who came on their motorbikes in droves to photograph and be photographed.   Taking selfies and family pics and artful shots of young women fetchingly posing became a virtually 24/7 activity in the centre of Saigon.  Few Vietnamese are Christian, but all recognize a retailing opportunity, which says much about their flair in making the best of an imported cultural and commercial influence. 

After a day trip to part of the Mekong Delta, a vast agricultural area which produces three rice crops a year, I started the long journey back to Blighty via Hong Kong (don’t ask: I didn't make the travel arrangements).  This provided time for a brief spell in another Asian phenomenon, including a visit to the Peak, where, since my last visit, a huge visitors’ centre has been constructed at the top of the cable car route.  Ignoring this crowded attraction, I walked along Lugard Road, overlooking Central and Kowloon and the harbour.  When we spent a month at the nearby HK University in 1992, this walk, in the company of many locals, was part of my morning routine, and I always try to retrace it whenever I visit the city.   On this occasion, I found that a luxury hotel wishes to situate itself above the route, and is seeking permission to close part of Lugard Road for its unique benefit.  A protest movement is in progress.  This intrusion of rude commerce on part of the island’s heritage (and on a much used and loved public walkway) left me with a sadly sour taste as I took a taxi down to Hong Kong station and travelled in the Airport Express to the splendid British designed terminal (Foster and Partners) to await my midnight flight back to LHR, and the country, parts of whose former empire are now at the heart of a significant new economic, cultural and political hemisphere. 

1^st January 2014

Delivering misrelated participles

In posting this comment on the crap grammar of public discourse, I join a large number of like-minded complainants.  This little rant was prompted by reports in this morning's news of 'golden handcuffs' payments of £300,000 each to three British Rail senior managers. Apart from the sense of grievance evoked by the size of this payment in order to retain their already well paid services, and to prevent their defection to the massively overpaid private sector, I was struck by the words of a BR spokesman as reported in the Telegraph.

“ Recognising the huge importance of what this company needs to deliver - better train punctuality, reduced cost and expanding the railway to relieve congestion - retention payments for three key people were made to see through the delivery of our plans."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/10195658/Rail-executives-to-pocket-900000-to-stay-in-jobs.html

This is a classic example of contemporary corporate language, in which agency is avoided, management jargon terms like 'deliver' and 'delivery' are liberally used, and readers are left as confused as they are outraged.

'Recognising' is the participle which has been delivered in this particular sentence.  Participles crave a subject.  But if we scan along the sentence, skipping over the desirable things that are to be 'delivered', we come to 'retention payments'. 'Payments', retention or otherwise, cannot logically be the subject of 'recognise', which requires a sentient subject, such as 'the Board' or even 'we'. (The extent to which either of these could be considered sentient in this context is another matter.)  

The avoidance of agency is augmented by the use of the passive voice: payments 'were made'.  The use of the passive is, of course, a classic way to avoid attributing agency -- and responsibility, with its twin, accountability.   So, the reader is left none the wiser as to who was responsible for a decision to pay these three 'key people' £300k 'retention payments' -- or as would be less politely termed, 'bungs'.

I doubt that the spokesman would recognize a misrelated participle; indeed, there is evidence that he doesn't. Whether Mr Gove's determination to teach grammar will lead to a generation of correct participle use is to be doubted.  There is no evidence that being taught grammar actually improves the quality of writing.

Sixty years ago, George Orwell proposed six rules for writing, all of which have been flouted by this BR spokesman.  None of Orwell's rules mention correct grammar, nor is he concerned with literary use of language, because, as he says, what he is concerned with is 'merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing and preventing thought'.  Unfortunately, the use of language both to conceal and prevent thought is as widely practised today as it evidently was in Orwell's time, and his advice remains as pertinent today as it did then.

SATIS

Earlier this month, The Economist published an obituary of Marc Rich, who had died at the age of 78.  Who he?  He was aptly named: he was 'king of commodities' and had, during a life 'walking on the blade', at the very sharpest edge of trading in metals, mineral and oil, accumulating a fortune estimated at $2.5 billion, citizenships (Spanish, Swiss and Israeli) and criminal charges (racketeering and trading with the enemy).  He showered Israeli good causes with donations and help, and  somewhat controversially, was pardoned by outgoing President Clinton in 2001, thus regaining entree to the USA.   Clearly, a man of huge ability and 'feline charm', he accumulated much wealth and membership of a network of the very rich and very powerful (King of Spain, ex-head of Mossad).

This obituary set me pondering on the question, When is enough enough?   On a daily basis, the media carry reports of what to many people would be considered excesses. The Guardian of Tuesday 16 July reported the 'UK way ahead in EU's list of bankers paid €1m-plus' -- 2,436 City staff on seven figures, compared with the EU as a whole total of 739.   Meanwhile, from time to time the Euro Lottery reaches  unimaginable and grotesque jackpots in excess of £100 million, while that stylish catalogue of conspicuous consumption,  the FT's 'How to Spend It' magazine,  provides a window onto the life style possibilities of the 1%.  And now we learn that the heir to the throne's royal estate appears to be gaming the tax system in what looks like a similar way to that played by pilloried firms like Google, Amazon and Starbucks -- only unlike them, medieval precedents and royal privilege are invoked. Finally, the utilities firms are criticized for paying excessively generous dividends to their shareholders.

At the same time, the various charities to which we donate are constantly hectoring us with requests for additional contributions.  It's a sad reflection in the world's state of affairs that for charities, whether national or international, enough is never enough.

We seem to live in a world in which dissatisfaction seems to be the default state. For the kind of City staff for whom 7-figure pay is the norm,  or for the Marc Rich of this world, income is a success and status marker in a size matters ranking.  Shareholders in firms like the utilities, which are virtual monopolies, are being showered with largesse at the expense of investment.  It's difficult not to feel that the old slogan, 'Greed is Good' in the newly deregulated world of the late C20th has now become the guiding principle of early C21st society.

It could be -- and will be -- argued that it is  thanks to dissatisfaction that homo sapiens has moved from being a hunter gatherer to a city dweller in a hugely complex global culture, rich with possibilities.  And it was Marc Rich's dissatisfaction with the level of rewards as a trader at Phillip Brothers that led him to achieve such a massive fortune through a buccaneering career as king of commodities.  But he is now in a grave in Israel.  Homo sapiens' exploitation of the planet's resources entails a huge threat to sustainability.  How much damage and exploitation has to be done before we are truly satisfied? When is enough enough?

PART SEVEN: REFLECTIONS

 This visit ‘home’ had been undertaken almost spontaneously, and had been intended to be both a trip down memory lane as well as an opportunity to see some parts of my native country which I had never visited – thus the time spent in Marlborough.  It was also to be a voyage of discovery and rediscovery which might reveal things about NZ and about myself.  The visit to Te Papa introduced a significant theme: identity.  What I was exploring and discovering was, in part, New Zealand’s contemporary identity, and what, as an expatriate kiwi, is my own.  How has one contributed to the other?

I think the first thing that struck me was less the lansdcape, significant though that is, than the built environment because, of course, there are buildings everywhere, some dating back to the Victorian and Edwardian eras,  many from the interwar years, and some from recent times. Some have been cherished and preserved, others have been repurposed, some abandoned, some gussied up in a style which would have puzzled the original builders, others wrecked by natural forces like the Christchurch earthquake.   The built environment is layered, with a rich patina, and I came to realize that it provided a kind of visual metaphor for the country and the changes which have occurred over half a century, while the reflections of some provided a counterpart to the distortions and misunderstandings of my own view of my birthplace.  The buildings that I recognized from childhood provided an anchor, taking me back to a period when I simply took such structures for granted.  Some, which I had been unaware of, a lifetime later take on a new significance. Art deco has acquired meaning in adulthood, and it is part of a small area of knowledge and experience acquired since leaving NZ.  

Other parts of the built environment also took on new significance.  The settlement and history of NZ can't be separated from the construction of roads, railways and bridges, harbours and wharves, the country’s infrastructure.  My railway journeys took me through landscape which offered a huge challenge to the railway and civil engineers.  With imagination, grit and a hard working labour force, they pushed the railways through and helped to knit together parts of the young nation.  Today, those railways are not so much a means of transport as a vehicle for leisure, representing yet another change since my departure. 

Finally, there’s the landscape itself.  In its pristine state, as when Abel Tasman navigated its coast in the C17th, the landscape of NZ must have been quite spectacular, though alien, being largely covered in dense forest.  There was an exotic bird life.  There were no vermin or snakes.   Although Maori had made some impact on the landscape and its fauna – they had driven the huge moa to extinction, for instance – when the first European settlers arrived, vast areas of the country were more or less as nature had made them.  Within a couple of generations of European settlement, huge tracts of forest had been cleared and replaced by pasture, and with this clearance came a decline in the native bird population.   Today, much of the landscape, as in Canberbury and the Manwatu,  is completely man made, and even in such isolated places as the Marlborough Sounds, there are huge areas in which the native forest and its bird life have been obliterated to be replaced by pasture or pine forests.

Now NZ has woken up to the environmental effects of these man-made changes, and what was formerly a resource to be plundered is now a damaged landscape to be restored or unspoiled forest to be carefully maintained in its pristine state.   Restoration trumps exploitation. For instance, Kapiti Island, which gives its name to the Kapiti Coast, is a strictly managed wild life reserve, and there are other islands which are being used as refuges to encourage the breeding of indigenous bird life. 

Restoration has also been applied to the land and resources of the Maori.  The most conspicuous form of restoration applies to the language. Fifty years ago, the Maori language (Te Reo) was not widely spoken and was little known.  My school, FAHS, sported a Maori motto, "Kia Toa Kia Ngakaunui” ("Have Courage, Desire Greatly"), a local substitute for the usual Latin moto.  There was also a constant reminder of the language in the countless Maori place names. However, their pronunciation was heavily anglicized and little of the music of  Te Reo survived its encounter with the pakeha tongue.  A truly massive change has taken place.  Te Reo is now widely taught in schools, many more people speak it, it has a highly visible place in public life and literature – my NZ passport is in two languages, English and Maori – and there are two Maori TV channels.  Most significantly,  great care is now taken in pronouncing Maori accurately and authentically, so the TV weather forecast presenters for instance, who necessarily have a whole range of Maori place names to articulate, do so as to the manner born.

The changing status of the Maori language has for some time been accompanied by a growing Maori assertiveness and what some would consider to be the overdue restoration of long denied rights and benefits deriving from the misappropriation of Maori land. Since the 1990s, governments have worked at restoration of use and ownership rights, though the so-called Waitangi process (after the treaty of 1840) has not been without controversy, particularly among  some of the pakeha population.   Likewise, the acquisition of significant sums by tribes and tribal groups hasn't always led to intra or even intertribal harmony. Even so, the so-called Waitangi process has attended to long-standing Maori grievances and attempted to put right injustices.   This represents a truly huge and desirable change since the 1960s.

So, Maori are secure in their own homeland and can look forward to a prosperous future. Or can they?  Some things don't change, and the socio-economic status of Maori hasn't changed so drastically as to move the majority into the property owning,  fully employed middle class.  I heard a radio interview with an MP regarding a controversial development in his constituency, North Auckland, which could bring employment to a region much in need of it. He pointed out that there was very high unemployment among Maori youth, a situation repeated on the East Coast where there is also a high Maori population.  Both areas are predominantly rural, with limited economic opportunities other than farming. So, despite their higher status and their significant contribution to NZ identity, the plight of Maori still remains problematic.  Like some of those old buildings, this unfortunate aspect of  NZ life lingers on.

There is likely to be another issue which will arise, as far as Maori are concerned, deriving from the considerable increase in immigration, especially from Asia.  It is projected that 250,000 Asian immigrants will arrive between 2006 and 2026, while even today, 23% of  New Zealanders were born overseas. (Cf 13% in the UK where immigration has become a significant political issue, at its worst verging on xenophobia).) Evidently most of New Zealand's  23% live in the Auckland region.  Although Maori are by a large margin a minority in their own country, the arrival of new immigrants further dilutes their proportion of the population,  so it is not difficult to see that migration could be a source of contention not only among the majority pakeha population, but also among indigenous Maori.  

Such immigration can and will have an effect on NZ identity, but in ways that it is difficult to predict.  I've already commented on the orientation of NZ towards the Pacific and Asia apparent in the displays at Te Papa.  How meaningful and acceptable this orientation will be to newcomers from beyond Asia, such as the Turkish waiter in the Devonport restaurant, is open to conjecture.   What contributions to the cultural mix will such newcomers make?  How accepting will they be of the specifically Maori seats in parliament? And how in turn will immigrants’ aspirations, attitudes and values affect NZ identity?

As my visit and the many changes in population and material culture demonstrated, for all its isolation in the South Pacific, NZ is fully integrated into the globalization which links the rest of the world through flows of goods, information, ideas and people. The original European settlement of the country represents an earlier phase of globalization,  when colonialism by such powers as GB brought a form of globalization in which the flow of power and ideas was distinctly asymmetrical, and remained so for many generations. With the expansion of settlement and livestock farming, NZ became a pioneer in the shipping of chilled and frozen meat and dairy products to the Mother Country and thousands of young NZ men heeded the call for troops to defend its interests, beginning with the Boer War in 1900.  This truly significant involvement in global conflict is commemorated in the ubiquitous war memorials, such as those found in Feilding, Palmerston and Auckland, and, in an invisible form in the demographic impact brought about by the deaths and disablement of a significant percentage of the most economically active male age cohort during the 20^th century.

Attitudes to the Home Country (aka UK), though largely favourable and carefully maintained by regular royal visits, inevitably began to change in the latter part of the C20th. Especially significant in this change was the entry of Britain into the EU because, while NZ could still continue to export to what had been its prime market, new markets for its products would have to be found to compensate for the reduction in exports to the UK.  Happily for NZ, a vast and rising market was available in a region of the world which till then had provided a relatively limited outlet for NZ produce: Asia and the Middle East.  Where trade goes, people and ideas also go, and with the striking economic development of such countries as China, Malaysia, Singapore and India (not to forget the leader, Japan), NZ’s focus has been literally reoriented. 

The integration of NZ into the globalized world has also been strengthened by the Kiwi diaspora.  Nearly half a million NZ born people live abroad, of whom around 360,000 live in Australia, including children of my two cousins and my hosts in Paramata.  Such a diaspora involves travel and the flow of people and ideas across the globe.  This is augmented by the flow of British and American TV and films onto Kiwi screens, including, with the cinema career of Peter Jackson, an important burgeoning of production skills and a wave of tourism in and to NZ – or Middle Earth. 

His films are a global phenomenon, but represent a European, even English Home Counties fantasy world.  The real world of NZ seemed to me to be somewhat unrepresented on NZ TV, in which all channels are commercial, and in which so many programmes were imports.  For once I could begin to understand the French obsession with protecting their cinema industry. Even more striking was the fact that Sky TV as seen in NZ is actually based in Australia, so the majority of the news items appeared to be Australian, and the space devoted to actual NZ news seemed to be comparable to the ten minutes allocated to ‘the news where you are’ on the BBC news in the UK.  In the UK, however,  ‘where we are’ is just a county, so this portioning out of space on the national news is understandable. But NZ is a whole country!  I suppose with such a small population, Aotearoa simply doesn't generate enough news for Aussie Sky. 

Alone among the unrepresentative sample of TV programmes that I saw, only two were made in NZ. The first was a crime series set in Auckland, with New Zealander Sam Neale playing the role of a police inspector trying to protect his team from the dysfunctional ambitions of his superior,  who was more concerned with getting ‘headlines in tomorrow’s Herald’ than with the just resolution of a current case, which appeared to involve a Polynesian family and the building of trust between the police team and the family in an attempt to achieve a satisfactory outcome rather than headline news. 

The other programme was one which presented a really important part of NZ society and culture to the Kiwi audience: the ANZ Young Farmer of the Year Grand Final.  Even here, globalization wasn’t far from the scene as one of the finalists had worked for a time under Gordon Ramsey, so that in addition to his many skills as a livestock farmer, he was able to rustle up a gourmet dinner.   This bit of reality TV, while drawing on a format developed elsewhere, presented an authentic slice of NZ to the nation’s viewers, reinforcing a central part of the national identity, that of the down-to-earth, multi-skilled give-anything-a-go laconic male Kiwi (there not being, evidently, any female young farmer finalists this year).  The finalists also served to challenge the stereotype of the Kiwi farmer immortalized in Fred Dagg from Taihape (New Zealand’s self-styled Gumboot Capital), a comedy character created by satirist John Clarke in the mid 1970s.

What I have come to realize, reflecting on this visit, is that identity, whether national or individual, is a continual process, a work in progress,  and not a fixed product (politicians obsessed with nationality quizzes please note).  Like the country itself, identity is continually constructed and bits of the old are left behind or are repurposed, while the new is introduced and maybe with some discomfort or irritation and adaptation is integrated, and an altered configuration/identity emerges. As NZ has evolved as a country and as a nation, its identity has been influenced and subtly altered with each generation and each wave of immigration. Fortunately, some of the old attitudes and behaviours have, like many of the old buildings, been retained in up to date guise, and some less desirable ones become largely extinct, if not entirely, as the anti-Semitic comment of the Christchurch taxi driver revealed.   Even so, Kiwis remain open, friendly, helpful , hospitable, unpretentious,  and critical of anyone who pulls rank or uses their position to gain advantage – as the unwise Mr Gilmore discovered.  Aotearoa is still a homely, comfortable place, despite the overlay of globalized sophistication.

When I left NZ in 1963, quite obviously I didn't leave my NZ identity behind like a discarded garment.  I took it with me, and since then, as with the country I had left, that identity has been a work in progress, subject to many influences and incorporating quite a few changes. What this visit made me appreciate is the basis of that identity: like the Marlborough sauvignon blanc, made and bottled in New Zealand/Aotearoa, but matured elsewhere.

On my last evening in Wellington, I arrived back at the Paramata railway station and started heading towards the 200 steps up to Derek and Rosemary’s house overlooking an inlet. As I looked out over the familiar Porirua Harbour towards the Ngatitoa Domain, which during the day provides a pleasant though unremarkable vista, I realized that in the fading light the scene had taken on an unfamiliar,  almost magical quality.  I whipped out my mobile and snapped the clouds, the evening sunlight, the reflections and the water,  capturing images that mirror the impact and memories of my visit --  some vivid, some permanent, some distorted, some as fleeting as the quietly magical scene before me.

Haere ra Aotearoa!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/75004468@N08/sets/