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!