Change: is it gonna come?

23 January, 2012 (21:33) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

I’ve been banging on for some time now, as the bishop said to the actress, about change in the air. To the soundtrack of thousands of new age hippies all over the world chanting in whiny voices and pitching tents in unlikely places, I’ve suggested there is a climate for change in this climate-changed world, a growing awareness that an economic system with the primary purpose of enriching the few at the expense of the many, and of the world itself, is ripe for change.

Over the past months you and I have met some pretty unlikely bedfellows. For example, Charles Moore, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, wrote a celebrated piece saying “the left was right” about some aspects of capitalism; Andreas Whittam Smith, commentator and scion of the establishment, scented real revolution in the air; and most significant of all, Brother Numbers said maybe it had been wrong to privatise the utilities.

Now David Cameron, smelling coffee at last, says what we need is responsible capitalism. OK, he suggests we have to have this responsible capitalism in the context of an unrestrained free market, but nevertheless a Conservative Prime Minister admits the worst excesses of the free market are turning stomachs.

Of course he can have a go at the easy targets and claim a political victory: lift a few quid from out of Fred Goodwin’s pension and everybody will be happy.

What would be better is admitting that the market needs controls: the sort of controls that may prevent bankers’ unrestricted gambling with your and the nation’s resources, the sort of control that caps executive salaries, the sort of control that ensures corporations pay taxes, the sort of control that makes sure immensely wealthy corporations are subject to the same laws as the rest of us. All these are areas where the free market has completely failed to regulate – of course.

The hated Nick Clegg has been widely derided for his call for a “John Lewis economy”, where workers share in the fortunes of the business – but what’s so wrong with that ideal? It’s not done John Lewis any harm, has it? It’s the only model that lends any credence at all to Cameron’s baffling view that “open markets and free enterprise can actually promote morality”, especially in light of this week’s revelations about the poverty-line wages paid by the big four supermarkets.

But David Cameron at least has his fingertips on the zeitgeist: people want to see decency and fairness in the world around them. It gives us hope that even though he is at present robustly defending an unregulated free market as the vehicle for delivery of this fairness, he may be open to persuasion in the long term.

All at sea

Meanwhile, have any of the rest of you noticed that education secretary Michael Gove seems to be stark, staring mad?

For example, he’s helped set up academy schools, where teachers don’t actually have to be qualified teachers.

For example, when teachers went on strike, he blithely declared that anybody could wander in off the streets and take over a classroom to keep schools open, in defiance of any sense of safety for children.  

Now he’s suggesting the Queen needs a new yacht.

He wants the nation to give Her Majesty a new yacht to mark her Diamond Jubilee this year. He’s not so bonkers as to suggest the nation pays for it, suggesting instead that it be sponsored and used for all sorts of fluffy community thangs when the Royals aren’t frolicking aboard – but it’s pretty bonkers all the same to suggest that companies spend money sponsoring a royal yacht rather than paying employees fairly or uprating systems to improve their environmental record or reducing bills for customers.

Surely in these times of austerity the Royals can get by without a yacht? In fact, it would be great if they could get by without a Jubilee, and then we’d all be spared the sight of a million Daily Mail readers orgasming simultaneously on a heady cocktail of triteness, banality and anachronism. Grisly.

But if the Queen really does have to have a new boat, I know the perfect present. It’s lying on its side off an Italian island at the moment, but she should be able to pick it up cheap on eBay and there must be somebody, somewhere who’d do a decent cut’n’shut on it for a few hundred. But don’t tell Michael Gove. He’d probably want to use it as a classroom.

(Mind you, I expect Brother Bassett’s already put in a bid, just for the parts).

Hunted

I nearly called on the Great Byte Hunter on Saturday – you’ll remember the honorary Brother who shot his recalcitrant laptop with a 12-bore shotgun. I had need of his services in connection with a self-assembly chest of drawers management had informed me I had decided to put together for son number two.

In the end I rather pathetically caved in on the assassination front, instead limply throwing a cardboard box full of components into the garage with a stamp of the foot and a Fawltyesque “Right!”

Two days later, I cravenly crawled back, tail between legs, retrieved the box and decided to take emergency measures, reading the instructions slowly and carefully. We got there in the end, but it was the chest of drawers that won, sitting there smugly with an “I knew you’d be back” smirk on its crappy little surface.

I hate the way these things win. There have been little victories over the years – I’m thinking sheds, here, and you know who I mean, brothers – but not many.

I’m writing this with the laptop on an old wooden table  that belonged to my great-grandfather. It lived in the old family cottage in South Devon from the latter decades of the 19th century until it crossed the border to Cornwall a few years ago. It’s pitted, scarred and much-repaired, but beautiful. And sturdy. I think maybe great-grandad, and his children and his children’s children, had the right idea – rather than the right Ikea. Boom boom.

 

 

Comments

Comment from Hamster
Time January 24, 2012 at 11:05 pm

Who wants responsibility! not governments full of career politicians that’s for sure. Successive leaders of the various parties have all given the thumbs up to privatise the utilities and I agree with Numbers. We were sold the idea of competition between companies would reduce prices – don’t think that happened, each company naturally wants to make profit for itself and share holders. I have always thought that the utilities should each be looked upon as a service, keeping charges as low as poss whilst generating enough money to pay staff, the bills, pop into pension funds, modernise and put back for a rainy day or is that too simple. Royal Mails privatisation maybe on the back burner for a while but I wonder if it went would we get the same universal service, every house, every day, one price (for the same low price) takes your letter to Bathpool, Cornwall or Bathville
West Lothian?
Hey don’t bash Queenie and her gang, they’re alright – the royals, one of the world most famous families and one that this Country has got to promote itself with, speculate, go on give a her a yacht……… but on one condition, Captain Roy must be at the helm.
The joke is definitely on you Stuart didn’t you know that Ikea is Swedish for “how the chuffin hell do i put this together”
and this weeks hamster top tip – check your local sale rooms, they sometimes turn up some nice old furniture.

Comment from Iain
Time January 25, 2012 at 11:21 am

Sponsored yacht???? I can see it moored on the Thames now, The Loreal Royal Yacht HMS Heir Palace, “because you’re worth it”…….

Write a comment

You need to login to post comments!