FraserWords

I really do think it’s time for a moratorium on the diktat that it’s rude to say “I told you so”. Well, at least for me.

Many, many years ago folk like me were derided for protesting at that crazy-mad Thatcher and her plans to sell off public service utilities to the private sector. “It’s lunacy to sell the water that drops from the sky,” we said. “In private hands the monopoly utilities will be a licence for rich people to print themselves more money. Control will pass from our hands. The watchdogs will be toothless. Bills will rise. People won’t be able to afford heat and water.”

And the world looked at us with the sort of tolerant smirk reserved for children who stamp their feet and scream “it’s not fair!”

And the public service utilities were sold off to the private sector.

In coming weeks, the biggest of them will be revealing profits totalling some £15 billion amid a growing popular movement calling for the money they’ve been permitted to monopolise from the public to be used for the public’s good.

Campaigners from Labour, the Green Party and even the odd Tory signed a letter in the national press last week calling for a windfall tax on the obscenity that is the profit of the Big Six monopolies, the money to be used to help more households become more fuel efficient.

Hear hear. We’ve been desperately trying to make our home as fuel efficient and environmentally clean as possible, but the costs of, for example, solar power remain prohibitive to all but the best-off. Certainly beyond our reach.

Why not make the big utilities cough up the money they’ve screwed out of a groaning public to enable that public to shake off their shackles? Really, in a modern country, the equation that permits big corporations to cash cheques for £15billion while 5.5 million households are in fuel poverty (spending more than 10% of income to maintain adequate warmth) is a damning piece of maths indeed.

Many of those corporations, of course, have recently spoken movingly of their great regret at having no alternative but to reluctantly increase costs to their customers. One of them was EDF, our electricity supplier here at Fraser Towers, where we can at least take comfort that our modest contribution has enabled these particular suffering executives to post expected profits of £3.8bn this Thursday.

Enough. Join the campaign to exact some sort of contribution to society from people gifted their vast, obscene wealth by a profoundly discredited piece of political dogma. Visit www.endthebigsixenergyfix.org.uk In times when it’s hard to find a coherent opposition to the status quo that’s created lunacies like the energy utilities, campaigns like this are important.

You can also start looking elsewhere for your energy, of course: Co-operative Energy and Ecotricity both offer alternatives to the major utilities.

In the meantime, the next time you stare in horror at your bill, or tut in disgust at the size of the profits to which you have contributed, think of me. Because…. I told you so.

Stand by your fans?

Of course, we’re never short of proof that people in positions of power are loonies.

On Saturday evening, the rugby union international between Ireland and France in Paris was called off at the last minute because of the freezing temperatures.

This brought us two more proofs of the opening statement:

Firstly, couldn’t people in positions of power have worked out from the number of layers they were wearing, and the weather forecast, that it was going to be cold a bit earlier than five minutes before kick off, thus saving 80,000 fans the time, trouble and expense of journeying to the ground?

And secondly, what do people in positions of power at the BBC consider to be an adequate substitute for 80 minutes of live rugby? What do they think the average rugby fan might enjoy instead?

They gave us a compilation tape of country music. Tammy Wynette. Kenny Rogers. Dolly Parton.

See? Loonies. Proves it.

I only wish they could have played the version of Stand by Your Man as sung by one or two rugby clubs I know.

Stand by your fans?, 2

What a joy it was to spend Friday evening in the company of Brother Hazzard at his gig at Sterts Studio, An Evening with Tony Hazzard.

Many brothers, sisters and occasional brothers and sisters were to be spotted in the audience, including Brother Kempthorne, who received one of the soundest pieces of stage-to-audience micky-taking it’s ever been my pleasure to witness.

“I’m pleased to say there’s a member of the clergy in the audience tonight,” announced Mr Hazzard from the stage, “but I have to say we also have a representative from the other side….”

This, he revealed, was our bearded brother, whose remarkable, some would say supernatural, abilities to lead others into alcoholic sin were nicely nailed. Hazzard even wrote a new verse to his old song Hangover Blues in Kempthorne’s honour.

As to the rest of the evening… here’s the review I did for the Western Morning News:

“From Campdown Races on the 60-year-old uke he was given as a boy, to a full-throated audience rompalong of the should-be-hit Michael’s Cookies from the 2011 comeback album Songs From the Lynher, here were 60s legend Tony Hazzard’s back, and front, pages.

A sold-out Sterts Studio saw Hazzard’s first live date for some 20 years and heard some of the warmly romantic songs from that Lynher album, his first for 30. Since retiring from his second career as a specialist counsellor, it’s been a fertile creative period in his original musical career for the author of superhits like Ha Ha Said the Clown and Fox on the Run, which got a well-received airing here.

Hazzard, who’s lived on the banks of the River Lynher in Cornwall since the 1970s, moved from anecdote to song and back again – and with opening lines like “After the second murder attempt….”, the stories went down as well as the music with an enthusiastic audience.

As a bonus, the songwriter was joined by actress Mary Woodvine for some songs; their voices mingled delicately to beautiful and moving effect on Journey’s End and The Lighthouse Keeper.

The pair closed the evening with Hazzard’s Hangover Blues, an appropriate warning of things to come as this warm, committed and entirely delightful welcome-back performance was going to require considerable celebration….”

Celebrate we all did with a great continuation of the gig in the bar.

Kneel by your pan

I’m pleased to say that vomiting seems to have ceased now at Fraser Towers, though it is taking place at many other houses, having swept through school like wildfire. It’s many years since last I called for the almighty down the great white telephone, and I have to say I have no desire to repeat the experience in a hurry.