Christmas & New Year Greetings

We hope you have all had a great Christmas and send best wishes for the New Year from all of us at Tales from Under Blackhill. For the second Christmas running we got out in the snow and for the second time I have decided to build a bigger toboggan. That must be job 3021 on my list of things to do!

Things have been rather too quiet on the blog posting front but with a bit of luck there might be a bit more coming through in 2011. I think the General Election postings probably took up more energy than at first thought although they proved the most popular political articles in the collection. Many students made use of the series on 'Resolving a Hung Parliament' and I suspect there will be many issues which will spin off from the present political settlement. Should we really be moving towards 5 year fixed Parliaments etc? And, of course, we have a referendum on the voting system coming up as well as a Royal Wedding. We have already been invited back by our old neighbours in Worcester to join in their street party!

You will see that there will be more reports and reviews on folk music matters including a ‘Memories’ series looking back at musical trends in the past. The first of these can be seen on the Memories of the Troubadour posting. It is also clear that articles which recount earlier times are popular such as those on cycling in the 1950's, so we hope to bring you a few more of these as well as the occasional book review and reviews of events.

Mary Horesh is still an editor and occasional contributor and is currently in the middle of a re-location to London. She is still a keen environmental campaigner with special reference to farming and food. She is currently a member of the Friends of the Earth Advisory Committee on Food and Bio-diversity. Should you be moving to either Birmingham or London yourself and need some contacts @maryhoresh might be a useful source.

Sian & I continue to be members of Birmingham Friends of the Earth and try to help out from a distance and I try to get to Management Committee meetings, weather permitting.

Sian and I have been very involved with FolkWorkshops which has developed very quickly in recent months due to the great enthusiasm of those involved. We have no idea where it is all leading save to say that we are gradually building up our network with the intention of bringing more live folk music to south west Herefordshire and making sure we do not overlook events which we could car share to attend.

Mary has given us a years membership of the English Folk Dance and Song Society so we will be inundated with lots of information. We are looking forward to our next trip to London so we can spend some time in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House and possibly attend a ceilidh.

An ambition in FolkWorkshops is to develop an expertise in harmony singing and our rehearsals for the Carols at the Crown Inn session at Longtown before Christmas shows that we are on the way. The key is that our meetings should continue to be an enjoyable joint effort and in this spirit new musicians and singers are most welcome.

The trouble is trying to fit everything in, not only in our own lives, but in among the many events that get organised up here in these beautiful hills. You will not catch us complaining about that however as we are firm believers in 'community' and whatever quibbles the sociologists might have in defining it, we definitely know it when we see it!

Looking forward to your company in a peaceful 2011,

Dacier, Sian and Mary

Memories of the Troubadour Coffee Bar, Earls Court, London: Winter 1962

The present winter conjures up the vision of waiting for a bus in Seabrook on the coast road between Hythe and Folkestone and watching, through the sodium street lighting, the mass of snow falling on me and everything else. This was New Years Eve 1961 and I was leaving home for the first time. I got to the station in time but the train took nearly seven hours to reach Charing Cross through the Kentish snows. My first contact with work was to ring in and tell them I had been stranded on a train all night and would be in the next day. 1962 was not starting very well for this 18 year old.

My accommodation was primitive and had been found by a school friend who had moved to London about six months earlier. It was at the Youth Travel Bureau at 16, Cranley Gardens South Kensington and the room was split off from another resident’s room by a dividing wall of sorts. It was cheap and I soon found out why. The food was inedible, the rooms were freezing and the two characters who ran it knew full well that the cheapness kept a near full hostel throughout the year. Among the victims who endured this were some estate agency students of some kind who must have been studying nearby. As temporary residents these were the remand types, while we felt more like properly sentenced miscreants, especially when we found out that paying rent in arrears was not such a good idea when you went to move on. All the other landlords wanted rent in advance and so to be able to pay off the hostel’s rent in arrears and a new landlord all on one day meant that many people just did a moonlight flit.

Somehow or other we found a small bed sit further down the Old Brompton Road in Drayton Gardens. In one short walk we moved from South Kensington to Chelsea. It was a major cultural shift however. Our bed sit, with its own little balcony, was one room in an apartment on the third floor of Drayton Court opposite the Paris Pullman Cinema. This was what I would now call an art film venue in the nicest possible sense. I remember going to see Fellini’s 8½ but gave Last Year in Marienbad a miss as I was still trying to work out what the hec the other film had been about. Instead of becoming a film buff I became a regular visitor to our nearest acceptable coffee bar, The Troubadour, in Earls Court. Yet another short walk down the Brompton Road we soon discovered the club in its cellar which by today’s standards would be a health and safety nightmare. At the time it was a very warm, comfortable, and most important to a clerk with few prospects on £7 a week, just affordable. Such were my finances I never gave the poetry readings or the flamenco nights a go. I didn’t even buy copies of the new satirical magazine which was specially acquired by the proprietor hot off the press on publication day. When I did eventually borrow a copy of Private Eye I understood why the cafe had been filled with so much laughter so soon after its delivery.

The current Troubadour Coffee Bar and Club, which now occupies much extended premises, records on its website , ‘ the roster of troubadours ... includes Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Elvis Costello...’ but sadly doesn’t mention Martin Carthy ( awarded the MBE in 1998 for services to music) who was a resident singer. He also performed with Redd Sullivan’s Thameside Four. Sadly I don’t think I was there the night he brought along Bob Dylan anymore than I can remember Paul Simon dropping in. They would have all been part of a glorious procession of new voices from a world I hadn’t known anything about. At one time or another during those early years of the English Folk Revival anyone who was anyone, or no one, took a spot in that dark, smoky, crowded and wonderful cellar. I now know that Bob Dylan stayed with Martin Carthy during his cold winter visit to London. He had been asked to take part in a film for BBC TV called, Madhouse on Castle Street (1962) out of which came the The Ballad of the Gliding Swan.

It was so cold that he and Martin chopped up an old piano that happened to be in Martin’s garden for extra warmth from the open fire. I also now know that Martin is credited with being an inspiration for both Bob Dylan and Paul Simon and that there was an English folk tour circuit developing for American singers. That is why Simon and Garfunkel’s Homeward Bound came to be inspired by waiting in the cold for a train at Staly Bridge station where I am told a plaque notes this event.

The harmonies and singers I heard at the Troubadour in those days have stayed with me. I heard the guitar and the banjo played in a way which I had never heard on the Home Service or BBC television. I couldn’t understand where all this music was coming from; never having heard of Cecil Sharpe House or been aware of how much music had been preserved by the English and Scottish immigrants to America. I knew a bit about traditional jazz and followed skiffle’s short life. ‘Trad Jazz’ had been my first big musical enthusiasm in the late fifties but it was only later that I understood how all this joined up through the migrations to North America from Europe and the awfulness of the slave trade from which so many of our cities profited and on which many of our industries depended. I was eventually to learn the awful truth why the slave traders made sure there was a primitive banjo and other African instruments on board for the gruesome practice of ‘dancing the slaves’. By making them dance this warded off their wish to die while at the same time exercising them in an attempt to keep mortality rates at an acceptable level while the slaves were chained to the deck in the squalor of a slave ship. I had no idea that playing a funny sort of banjo in such a peculiar way ( nothing like George Formby or the Black and White Minstrel Show) had come to me by such a vicious route and at such an awful price. In the meantime the ignorance of my youth shielded me from this history while I soaked up the music of a momentous musical period I could not appreciate was happening around me.
Dacier

For full details of the Troubadour Cafe and Club and events go to: http://www.troubadour.co.uk/
Also, why not follow @FolkWorkshops on twitter

Folk Music, Harmony Singing and the West Gallery Choirs

If you haven’t heard a full West Gallery Choir complete with the old instruments then Vital Spark, which is performing at Clodock Church, Longtown, Herefordshire on December 28th at 7pm, weather permitting, is an evening out you should not miss. There is no charge for entry but there will be a retiring collection:

Traditional Old English Carols by Candlelight
with Vital Spark West Gallery Singers and Musicians
plus Mince Pies and Mulled Wine

Folk Music, Harmony Singing and the West Gallery Choirs

The first time I really heard this type of singing was at the famous Troubadour venue in the Old Brompton Road. I knew nothing about folk music but it was a cheap and warm evening out in the winter of 1962. I could just about afford the ticket and the cheapest meal on the menu; cheese salad. Little did I know that people like Martin Carthy, Bob Davenport, Red Sullivan, Robin Hall and Jimmy McGregor, Colin Wilkie and many others were the emerging establishment of the English folk revival. An evening in, by contrast ,was usually involved a feeble attempt to learn to play the guitar. In my case a rather dead sounding product of the now well known guitar rush of the 1950’s.
Although I enjoyed the sound it was only in recent years that I learnt the basic theory of harmony singing and started to understand what was involved. I had heard many harmonies without realising and of course this type of folk singing is most famously preserved by the Copper Family of Rottingdean in Sussex and the singers of various communities up and down the country. Many still singing Christmas carols of this sort in similar styles. It was only a few years ago that a fuller picture began to emerge when I first heard Vital Spark sing in Clodock Church. It was then that I first heard the term West Gallery singing.
As the name indicates it is the music which used to be sung in the West Galleries of our churches from about the start of the 18th century until it met its demise at the hands of the reforming Victorians. The first time I heard this music I recognised what to me was a ‘folk sound’. Where had this music been all those years. It was of course always there but like so many things during a working life my music had had to play second fiddle to surviving in the conveyor belt of rat race which rarely left an evening free for musical outings. OK, I now know that I should have made more of an effort but I realise that this is easily said now I am an escapee of the system.
Unfortunately West Gallery music did not escape another form of attack, church reform. My reaction to hearing Vital Spark for the first time was very much along the lines ‘ We was robbed’. Granted, the thieves, a combination of the anglo catholic Oxford Movement and the introduction of the more manageable Church Organ, has created a new tradition of English Church music which we would not like to lose, but even so, a rich heritage has been hidden away and only in recent times has it started to come out of the closet.
You have only to read Under the Green Wood Tree by Thomas hardy to see the resentment which was felt on both sides as the new formal and spiritual music replaced the more melodic and energetic tunes which would have been sung the night before in the pub before the choir managed to be in place on a Sunday morning. Luckily, like many of our old English songs, our ancestors who settled in America in the 17th had continued to sing in the style of the old country and happily preserved the old styles.

A FolkWorkshops publication by John Baxter with acknowledgments to Wikipedia.

FolkWorkshops Christmas Newsletter

We all deserve a big thank you from ourselves to ourselves! Without FolkWorkshoppers we wouldn’t be getting together to sing at regular intervals and to eat some rather splendid cakes. We are all at different stages of our musical journeys, but I think you will agree it’s great to be on the move together.

We are not really just a Folk Club or just a choir. We are ourselves, and long may our relaxed and mutually supportive ethos continue.

In addition we wouldn’t have been around for the following:
i) A summer solstice barbecue courtesy of John and Bridget
ii) John and Bridget’s fund raiser Ceilidh for a school in Nepal
iii) Singing at a fundraiser for Longtown Village Hall and School
iv) the Village Quire Workshop Concert fundraiser for St. Margaret’s and Newton Churches
v) The Workshops in Newton Church Room which also contribute to the hall’s running costs
vi) Car sharing to the many events in our area such as Harp Songs at the Harp Inn Glasbury
vii) Meeting people like the Village Quire who value our group and want to encourage us
viii) Starting to improve our musical skills, both through rehearsals for carol singing and the occasional ‘strum- ins’ to swap tips for playing the banjo or guitar
ix) Being asked by the Vicar to sing carols at the Crown on the 17th December
x) Making plans for a Burns Night on Wednesday 26th January in Newton Church Room
xi) Making plans for a ceilidh on Saturday 12th March in Escleyside Hall. (Hall booking to be confirmed)

John Biggs and Allison Price asked us whether we had any idea that so much would have happened in FolkWorkshop’s first 12 months and I suppose the honest answer is probably that we always try to travel hopefully and that arriving somewhere enjoyable is always a bonus. FolkWorkshops has an expanding mailing list and can now be found on twitter as @FolkWorkshops, link http://www.twitter.com/FolkWorkshops . There are various folk music contributors being followed and we already have 9 followers from the folk music world. This might prove to be a useful notice board and a collector of useful information.

This Newsletter will eventually appear on www.blackhilltales.blogspot.com and the link http://t.co/nk1AlFV will take you directly to any articles involving folk music, thus avoiding the various other polemics/articles on this blog site. This could be a purely temporary arrangement while someone sets up our own FolkWorkshops blog site. Any volunteers? You could start by seeing if Wordpress would be a suitable medium.

Other interesting bits. The Cecil Sharp Library is a source of lots of material from 5 collectors and visiting the Cecil Sharp House home page might give you an idea for something to do if you are in London. If you sign up you will get their national newsletter e-mail sent to you each month.

Stop Press: Village Quire at the Globe, Hay. 23rd December. Christmas program with Parti Mari Lwyd ,from Llantrisant Folk Club. (Check out the Mari Lwyd on Google)

As usual I am going on a bit too much. Many thanks to all who have provided cakes, sheet music, suggestions, hospitality and very good company.

Happy Christmas from your very own,
FolkWorkshops and from John and Jane Baxter

WE WAS BRUNG UP PROPER !!

Dear Reader,

The following is a reproduction of an e-mail which was forwarded to me. I would like to acknowledge the author but who that is has not been made known to me. The least I can do is thank him or her for cheering me up on a rather gloomy day. I am sure many of us can add to the things which we have survived, but that's another blog.

"And we never had a whole Mars bar until 1993"!!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE
1940's, 50's, and 60's
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank Sherry while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos...
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, bread and dripping, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.
Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds , KFC, Subway or Nandos.
Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on a Sunday, somehow we didn't starve to death!
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers and Bubble Gum.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter,milk from the cow,and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O..K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY ,
no video/dvd films, or colour TV
no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no
Lawsuits from these accidents.

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time....

We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!
Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet because we didn't need to keep up with the Jones's!

Not everyone made the rugby/football/cricket/netball team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on
MERIT

Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and throw the blackboard rubber at us if they thought we weren't concentrating .
We can string sentences together and spell and have proper conversations because of a good, solid three R's education.
Our parents would tell us to ask a stranger to help us cross the road.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO
DEAL WITH IT ALL !


And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.
And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.
PS -The big type is because your eyes are not too good at your age anymore

You can’t have the town without the country

I am now trying to get stuck into some real country living having been on a quick tour of the Black Country and Birmingham to go to the dentists and to meet up with our daughter. Those of you who follow me on twitter may have detected an urban element in my comments. That’s because I grew up at the centre of a county town in the south of England which is now surrounded by motorways and bungalows. A short bike ride would mean I was in the countryside. In the fifties that meant cherry and apple orchards. A longer bike ride would bring me to cornfields, hop yards and mixed farms and then the high downland. A longer bike ride would find me descending the old coastline escarpment through chestnut under wood onto Romney Marsh.

From my town centre bedroom window I could observe the summer weekend dash of London Transport buses taking community outings to Margate and Ramsgate, I saw the Olympic Torch pass by being carried to the 1948 Olympics and later the Monte Carlo Rally speed through the traffic lights fixed at green at the top of the town. But what fascinated me just as much were the sheep, and occasionally the cattle, which on rare occasions were driven down the High Street to the Tuesday livestock market in Market Meadow.

And that’s the point which we seem to have forgotten. Its not town and country, its town with country and visa versa. That is why the growing interest in getting your hands on some real food is well overdue. Real bread, real beer, fresh vegetable and properly produced meat is all part of a reaction against the mass production of protein and carbohydrate that the food industry makes available to the thousands of victims of long working hours which makes it impossible, so they think, to prepare real food.

I am an expert on this subject. As a bed sit teenager the height of my quick fix cuisine was a Vesta Curry! I haven’t read the ingredients list on this dietary anachronism for some time but I bet when I was eating the stuff, when the e number did not exist,salt and fat was high in the list. Ironically, when I eventually became a mature student and escaped the bedsit I spent one summer making the stuff and saw chicken and beef flesh come in at one end of the factory, get dried to a crisp, so much so that you could press it to dust between your fingers, to eventually be thrown in with the curry source ( mainly fat) and then dried out again. The meat that came in seemed to be soaked in a strong brine and I remember thinking, I don’t think I would start off making a curry this way. Not that I ever did of course. But one thing which this brought home to me was that the ‘food’ I used to pull from the shelves in my NW10 ‘supermarket’ had been manufactured in my own county and was the product of a farm somewhere. Who knows where? I also remember thinking that not far from the factory where I worked and acquired the need for a bath every night after the shift, to rid me of the smell of curry, were those green fields and hop yards where it all starts as well as the deep litter sheds and battery farms where the chicken meat came from. I don’t know about the beef, but I can imagine.

The schism that has arisen between the urban and rural is literally fatal for many. We once pointed cows out to our neighbour's children when we all went for a ride out into the countryside from a large east-midlands industrial town where we lived at the time. To the statement that, ‘..that’s where milk comes from, pointing to a dairy herd, was met with laughing and the comment, ‘ Don’t be silly it comes from the milkman’. That was then. Is it better or worse now? I suspect the freezer stuffed with ready made meals in may homes sums it all up. Unless we restore the relationship between town and country which I grew up being fully aware of, both sides of this relationship will be condemned to a short lived future, in which both will be diminished.

Springtime and the Hay- on- Wye Festival

The day started well with good sunshine and the fact that yet another member of the slapper twitterati had been reported for spam by the time I checked out her ( for ‘her’ it always is), profile. Then the day took a downturn with our on-line banking account blocking Sian’s ID while she tried to help me get the necessary numbers to retrieve my points so we could get a nice voucher for Sainsbury’s before the points were cancelled due to old age. After 90 minutes on the phone and not being allowed to continue with my request for an ID number because I didn’t have an ID number, we were eventually told to go to our branch. For good measure someone must have thought at this point that it was a jolly good idea to take Sian’s number off the system as well!

As neither of us now had on-line banking a trip to Hay-on-Wye became essential. Normally this would not be a problem but in Festival Week? Oh dear! Nevertheless, as things turned out, we had a very pleasant sunny afternoon in the town. Our banking problems would seem to have been sorted within 10 minutes, although we have not actually tried the new numbers out on-line. We managed to get very quick service at the Post Office. ( If you go to Hereford’s new Post Office with more lights, counter numbers and service tickets, than actual service, it’s best not to be in any kind of a hurry at all) followed by two cones of sheep ice cream from Shepherds. A quick check in the charity shops for bargains and then an attempt to get a copy of Broad Sheep, the live arts bulletin. The bookshop where I regularly check out the latest second hand sheet music denied all knowledge of having held such a publication for distribution. As I have picked up quite a few editions from this establishment I left without comment and later learnt from the helpful ladies at the Tourist Information Office by the main car park that it is due out any time now. Perhaps the warm weather had brought the guy out from his dark hibernation into an unfamiliar world.

In the depths of the newly revamped Richard Booths Books ( now under new ownership) we discovered an excellent collection of photographs by students from the Hereford College of Art, entitled ‘Portraits of Hay’ with many familiar faces recorded. Chris Gibbon’s butcher’s bike featured in one of them which reminded us that we must get some of his brilliant sausages. This we duly did after calling in at Kilvert’s Hotel. Sian had a glass of local apple juice while I treated myself to an afternoon pint of Butty Bach. (Sian tells me this last sentence sounds like Mr Pooter: that can’t be true. H e would have made it in time for a ‘cold collation luncheon’.)
Chris Gibbons was coming to the end of another busy day when we eventually reached him with much of his stock retiring to the fridge for the night. We still had time to talk about his prize-winning Welsh Ponies and his planned showing of them at the Three Counties Show and the Royal Welsh. A man who clearly knows and loves his chosen breed. I told him of the many happy gallops I had had as a student along the sands at Harlech on a Welsh Cobb and how I regret having never got round to making a trip over the Abergwesyn Pass to Tregaron. I think this passed for as some idea of heaven for us both, and as I am always fond of saying, there is no harm in keeping the dream alive. It shows we are still here to appreciate this lovely part of the world.

The afternoon sun was now quite hot and the shuttle bus to the festival site was doing good business. The idea of the festival is great and it is an important annual boost to the local economy but it is very frustrating finding so many of the tickets are sold to Friends of the Festival before they go on general sale. The kind of thing we would like to go to is either on at 9 am or sold out, so we just soak up the business of the festival in the town and delight in seeing local businesses thriving. We see Hay as being on loan during this time and the peak summer months to those who, in a way, need it much more than we do. We can always reclaim in the damp days of winter and chat in the Sandwich Cellar with Sue and Mal when times are less fraught. Never can the phrase ‘gather ye rose buds while ye may’ have more meaning for those who have to make the bulk of a year’s living in a few summer months. ‘Visitors? Dont knock ‘em, we’re farming people now’, as a much missed farmer friend of ours once said.

Dacier

13 Rules for Resolving a Hung Parliament

Having heard rather a lot of muddled thinking from politicians, gargling journalists and on Newsnight from no less than Lord Armstrong, sometime Cabinet secretary, I thought I would try and state the constitutional conventions as clearly as I can.

If there are any Constitutional Lawyers left in the UK they might well want to add to these rules. It is hoped that Anthony Howard and Peter Hennessey will be made great use of during the election programmes as they are fascinating authorities to listen to on this and many other political and constitutional matters. Here for what it is worth is my penny worth, which I suspect will be challenged as being divorced from reality or inaccurate by the time Rules 12 and 13 are reached, if not before.

The Queen
I do not expect the Queen to get in contact as she will be too busy getting ready for watching the results come in or getting an early night. She received one to one tutorials on the British Constitution from the age of 13 at Eton College just across the road from Windsor Castle. Her teacher was Sir Henry Marten and the teaching was probably based on the writing of the Victorian Walter Bagehot. She has seen the Constitution operate with regard to Prime Ministers' Harold Wilson and Edward Heath after the 1974 election and so she will not need to do much homework in preparation for a stalemate on Friday. Her great grandfather King George the V became familiar with the rules during the great Constitutional crisis which led to the Parliament Act 1911 so there is some family experience involved here. On being advised by his Private Secretary that he was constitutionally obliged to follow the advice of his Prime Minister in all circumstances, even if he was advised to sign his own death warrant, the King replied in his usual nautical language, ‘If he did, I’d shoot the bugger dead!’

Even if Queen Elizabeth II might feel like using strong language I suspect that the handbag on the table and the regal look might be enough to discomfort a modern Prime Minister.The rules that follow are constitutional big time and hopefully will never need to be applied through to Rule13 because I suspect it would be lucky for none.

Contingency Plan
The current Cabinet Secretary's contingency plan is designed to allow time for the Prime Minister to establish whether he can form a Government from the new House of Commons. If the Conservatives win an overall majority of 326 seats or more he must resign and recommend that Mr Cameron be asked to form a government, If there is no overall majority then the Prime Minister will have to decide whether he can do a deal with another party so that he can either run a minority government or form a co-coalition or pact of some kind. If the Conservatives do not reach 326 seats but nevertheless have more seats than Labour and Liberals combined, then he will have to consider resigning he should advise the Queen to invite Mr Cameron to form a minority government.

In all such negotiations the Queen should not be involved although the Prime Minister is under a duty to keep her informed. The Opening of Parliament is set for May 23rd so whatever the outcome the new Government must present its Queens Speech to Parliament to accept or reject.

The 13 rules for resolving a hung parliament
I think i have covered all the points but I must confess that by the time I got to the end of Rule 13 I felt I was entering an Alice in Wonderland constitution.

1) The Prime Minister is the Queens principle adviser until he resigns
2) The Queen must always act on the advice of her Prime Minister
3) The Prime Minister must give reliable advice to the Queen
4) The Queen may advise, encourage and/or warn her Prime Minster
5) The Queen cannot insist that her advice etc shall be followed
6) The Queen may only have a person as Prime Minister if he or she commands the support of the majority of the House of Commons
7) Until that confidence is clearly not available the PM can stay in office
8) The PM is entitled to establish whether or not that confidence will be forthcoming when the Government presents its programme to the House Commons in the Queens Speech.
9) If that cannot be done then the Prime Minister should resign and recommend who else should be invited to form a Government.
10) If the Prime Minister’s party, and its other supporters, have not won the vote on the Queens speech the Prime Minister would ask the Queen for a dissolution of Parliament and a new election should follow.
11)The Queen should not intervene and should await advice from the Prime Minister but her Private secretary will keep her informed in the meantime.

It now gets a bit unpleasant:

12) It would seem that the Queen may not be obliged to grant a dissolution. She might ask the Prime Minister to see if he or another person could form a government.In the event of losing such a vote the Prime Minister can either resign with a recommendation to the Queen as to who he thinks will be able to form a Government, or ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament so that a new election could be held.

13) The Queen being entitled to advise, encourage and warn, will seek advice from the Prime minister as to whether another election would be in the nations interest due to e.g., a serious run on the pound or public hostility etc. There would have to be something seriously wrong either with the UK's position or the Prime Minister if the Queen was to delay in responding to Prime Ministers request for another election. She is entitled to seek the advice of others such as Privy Councillors to see that there is no possibility of forming a Government from the recently elected House of Commons. If the Prime Minister insists that a General Election is the only way forward the Queen would be obliged to follow his advice. However, if the Queen feels that someone else might be able to form a Government she could take the highly risky step of inviting another person to do so, but of course the Prime Minister might refuse to resign. In which case the Queen can advise, encourage and warn him of the consequences and should follow convention and dissolve Parliament. If she did refuse the Prime Ministers request this would be a major departure from the usual and it could be seen as ‘unconstitutional’ although it would be completely within the law. It would also be perfectly lawful for the Queen to dismiss the Prime Minister in these circumstances but again this could be seen as unconstitutional.

The Queen is required to keep above politics but at the same time must act on the advice of politicians. It is up to the politicians to get their act together when a Hung Parliament arises. Should she receive advice which could causes excessive damage to the nation she will warn. If the position is so severe she could act as a constitutional long stop. Such circumstances could put the Constitutional Monarchy itself in jeopardy. The Queens obligation is to protect the Constitution in accordance with her Coronation Oath. No Prime Minister should put the Monarch in such a position as he himself would be seen to be undermining the Constitution.

While we are at the limits of constitutional bad case scenarios, the Queen would probably be taking little risk to sack a Prime Minster who refused to resign after failing to form a Government or losing a vote of confidence and did not want a further election. There would be no Government and the Queens intervention would be the only legal course of ending the stalemate.

How to run a Marathon:One persons run in the London Marathon

Mary received this account of the London Marathon from a friend who took part this year. We all thought it was moving and inspiring and we publish it here with the kind permission of the author. Our last information is that a full recovery has been made.


Dear all,

As many of you already know, I successfully completed the London marathon on Sunday in 4:18:32 which put me in 15679th place and the 3272nd woman to finish! Not quite the first place some of you were rather ambitiously predicting but in the top half! A massive thank you to all of you for your interest, good luck messages and your sponsorship. Your generosity means that I blew away my target amount for sponsorship for Whizz Kidz as well and am currently climbing towards £2,100! Well done you all.

The day didn't start well as I woke up to a flat phone battery and no idea what time it was. After showering and getting dressed I finally found a clock on the central heating controls which told me it was still only 6.45a.m.! Mairead had been a star already, feeding me pasta and donating her bed to me, and she made sure I was delivered to the station time. I had been worried about finding my way to start but there was no need - both the train and the platform were full of friendly fellow runners. Most of the people I talked to were also first time runners including one girl who had given birth only 10 months ago!

The start was a hive of activity and the rain didn't seem to dampen anyone's spirits. I made a new friend from Norwich who was starting in the same zone as me and was also running for Whizz Kidz so we lined up together. Finally the big moment was there and 15 minutes and 58 seconds later I crossed the start line, pretty close to the back of the field and alongside a man in armour.

Having only ever watched the marathon (every year) on tv, I wasn't really prepared for how overwhelming I would find the atmosphere. The crowds are mindblowing all the way around the course. They turn out with buckets of oranges, mars bars or jelly babies to help the runners. Or they set up sound systems or bands in their gardens or the local pub to help you along. They cheer people's names if they see them looking tired and some defy the many tube disruptions to appear multiple times along the course in support of friends or family. If I ever started to feel a bit tired, there would be a fantastic song to dance and clap along to as I ran past - 'Tonight's gonna be a good night' by the Black Eyed Peas was a particularly good one. I had hundreds of high fives with kids around the course. At times, I was struggling not to cry - it was amazing.

The running was not nearly as bad as I expected. I kept drinking and managed to eat a mars bar in bits during the race. I gave in to the need to pee after about 15 miles by which time the queue for the portaloo meant I only had to wait a couple of minutes! The Whizz Kidz supporters were giving me a big cheer at various points along the course and I managed to spot Mairead after about 21 miles which gave me a big boost. Sarah, Jo and Sian saw me and screamed at me but I completely failed to spot them - sorry girls! I pretended any Vote Labour posters were Gwynne cheering me on, which I knew he was in spirit. The last couple of miles were a case of picking off each 100m as it came and trying not to think that the finish was close in case all my muscles gave up. The crowds and the other runners carried me along - there was no way I was going to stop at that point.

And then I crossed the finish line, nearly tripping the girl next to me in my attempts to wave and smile at the camera! There is sense of quiet satisfaction in that area behind the line. No-one has the energy to celebrate flamboyantly and I happily got my medal and goody bag and put on my foil blanket so I looked the part! I managed to find the girls in the crowds and they fed me sweets and delivered me safely home to Cardiff for a well deserved and very much appreciated hot bath. The legs were pretty sore the following day and going downstairs was an issue but I seem to have made a full recovery!

It has definitely been one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had. And not just the day - everyone's support and encouragement has been brilliant. I recommend that any of you give it a go if you can!

Thanks again for everything.


Whizz Kidz is a charity which is all about giving disabled children and young people the chance to enjoy an active life whether at home, school or at play.
http://www.whizz-kidz.org.uk/

Lost in Rochdale

(Or Gordon goes deaf in the mill towns: Did you say ‘Flocking?’)


In the summer of 1960 I decided that I would spend my week’s holiday hitch- hiking to Fort William in order to climb Ben Nevis. To cut a long story short I finished up bouncing around in the mill towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire before escaping with the help of a lorry driver who to my good fortune was heading for Glasgow. As a southern 16 year old those mill towns were a bit of a shock with the girls sitting out having their lunch break, all looking like Gracie Fields.
I have since learnt quite a bit about life in the mills, the hardships of the working people and especially the noise that caused many of them to go deaf due to the clatter of the machines. I now know that Rochdale has the proud claim to be the home of the Rochdale Pioneers who brought us the idea of the co-operative movement and it is this bundle of memories which makes Gordon Brown’s electioneering gaff all the more distressing. He is, as far as I am aware, of sound hearing, but he wasn’t listening to Gillian Duffy, and for some time hasn’t been listening to Labour’s traditional voters.

Of all the places to visit this surely was a Labour homeland, albeit having been represented by Cyril Smith for the Liberals for many years. This was a place where Labour’s record and plans for the future should have been articulated at their clearest with the help of the many faithful lifetime Labour voters who would find it unthinkable to vote for any other party. Gordon’s Black Wednesday was to bring none of this. Like Tony Blair before him he seems to have paid little attention to history and presumably thought that a succession of handshakes and small talk would suffice.

Unfortunately he was introduced to model traditional voter, Gillian Duffy, whose working class tradition of speaking out would normally have been a credit to any Labour constituency branch. Such is the shallowness of modern political life that this grandma was not heard but dismissed as a bigot even though as a person concerned for the future of her grandchildren she wanted to hear Labour’s plans. Whatever impression the film footage might have given, the now well known interlude of accusing anger, says much of Labour’s loss of vision and connection with its roots.

Gillian Duffy was a sure bet for a Labour vote but the signs of disconnection were already showing. The 10p tax controversy and the ridiculous purported correction which Gordon Brown claimed to have made and the whole fiasco of immigration and asylum seekers are the most obvious. Gordon Brown’s slogan, ‘British Jobs for British people’ if it had any meaning at all, was too late. The Labour Government rejected delaying open borders for those seeking work and, getting its estimates wrong, jumped in with both feet. It appears to have had no inkling of how working people would perceive this. Was it really all about having cheap strawberries for much of the year! Unfortunately not, it was about the arrival of a great deal of competent workers who would provide added competition and keeps wages down. Worse still, it was providing much needed skilled workers when the Labour Government since 1997 had undermined the value of acquiring practical skills and promoted the higher education route.

It has falsely raised the aspirations of many young people who in another age would have been the proud and natural recruits for the modern skilled workforce we need. While Polish plumbers were fully employed, many British youngsters were finding it extremely difficult to find a place on a plumbing course at their nearby college, while those who went to university had to take on part time work to supplement the crippling debt which crippling fees required. As a result the quality of their university experience has been reduced, aided and abetted by the dash to acquire funds by overvaluing researchers and regarding good teachers as unimportant. How many stories have you heard of lecturers who regard the teaching as a chore attracting no kudos, or of post-grad students teaching with poor communication skills?

Not surprisingly the cartel of older universities has managed to keep the impact of this muddled expansion to a minimum, and exploit research funding to great advantage. For a generation of Labour politicians who benefitted so much from free higher education this speaks of Jack and his ladder with more to come in further education with practical skills courses already being cut.

Whatever the complicated reasons for this influx of labour from the EU or elsewhere, it is clear from listening to the many debates and watching the faces of the audiences, that a large proportion of working people remain unconvinced when they see the lack of jobs, houses and investment in areas like Rochdale. If a party seeking re-election is unable to respond in a convincing manner, and does not appear to even listen to its thinking and articulate supporters, is it any wonder that some people exploit the job shortage/immigration ratio, imagined or not, for their own unpleasant political purposes. It should not be forgotten that many potential Labour voters will not all have the principles which prevent their sense of betrayal leading them to the extreme right. Mrs Duffy has chosen not to vote at all, whilst others might be thinking of ‘flocking’ elsewhere thanks to Labour’s failure to stay in touch with its roots. Let us hope that the Rochdale incident reminds people of what the Rochdale Pioneers represented and what New Labour never seemed to understand.

Postscript: The Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday won the exclusive interview rights with Mrs Duffy and it would seem that the editor was happy to print her story without embellishment. Presumably on the basis that its speaks for itself. The interview story was accompanied by an excellent piece by Rochdale girl Liz Kershaw.

See also: Michael Collins, author of “The Likes of Us: A biography of the White Working Class”

The co-operative movement and the Co-operative Party seem to have been hidden behind the aristocratic embrace of the Labour Party establishment for too long and it is ironic that suddenly the merits of companies like the John Lewis Partnership are now expressly referred to in the Labour Party Manifesto. It is ironic on several levels. A party which has had so much faith in British management and bankers now recognises that employees are very much third fiddle to Directors and shareholders. Would it have anything to do with the popularity of their products with MP’s when refurnishing their homes at the tax payer’s expense? Too little too late me thinks.

That said the John Lewis Partnership and the co-operative models are ideas whose time should have come years ago. Let’s hope they are not forgotten in the coming hard-times we are about to enter.

6 Reasons for enjoying the General Election 2010: Pt.6

Reason 6: Election Night

I had not long been born and the Third Reich was already providing my childhood playgrounds just round the corner. It had prepared plans for one of its battle routes to London along the A20 which came right past my dads pub in Maidstone. Rather than serving these travellers a drink or two my dad would have been shipped off to a slave labour camp somewhere. The rest of us I know not where, although I have a few horrible ideas. When I last looked over the English Channel from Hells Corner tucked away in the cliffs below Dover Castle I couldn't help pondering how that twenty miles of sea has affected me and what I like to believe is my thinking.

In 1943 it was just wide enough for this sceptred isle to dig in, prepare the defence lines, get ready to flood Romney Marsh as we had done in readiness for Napoleon, to build all the pill boxes and tank traps and to get a network of last stand heroes hidden away in their bunkers among the chestnut under-wood of my home county of Kent. The Men of Kent would have been in the front line. In 1066 on the other hand these narrow seas were just not wide enough and the Norman invader met a battle worn army. Once again, all these centuries later I ponder how those events have affected my thinking.

Some wars are completely pointless, and indeed I might go as far as saying that most of them are. Some had their point but it is lost somewhere in the library. Some had clear causes while others like the First World War need a lecture course to explain, yet still leave you asking, 'Why?' My granddad was in the Boer War and my dad in the First but the reasons and the significance of the Second is at another level of understanding and justification. Election Night reminds me that it was a close run thing back in the 1940's and that it was worth the fight. That is why I will be an aggressive democrat, both in the sense of using it and criticising its product, till the day I die.

On Election Night we witness the re-constituting of a Norman institution which was teased out of a succession of Kings, including the despotic King John. We won't be having a King choosing that name in a hurry. Many great improvements have been won down the centuries but it must not be forgotten that at the centre of our Executive branch of government the vestiges of despotism still lurk in the modern equivalents of the contingency plan filing cabinets and , given the wrong conditions from the citizens point of view, are ready to be implemented by a latter day despot. Anyone who thinks otherwise has failed to understand the purpose of democracy, the rule of law, scrutiny and accountability. Worst still, they know nothing of the nature of our system of government or our history. Democracy is all very inconvenient to the bureaucrats but that is how it should be. That is why those bureaucrats who advocated the abolition of Election Night for administrative convenience are the unwitting, not to say witless, enemies of democracy. They also give an insight into how governments can become divorced from the people. A small example but nonetheless revealing.

This is my sixth reason why I will not only enjoy this General Election but both savour it and thank my lucky stars that it still happens. As the results come in I hope you will join with me in celebrating this fact of a decent life, and think of those in the world who are denied fair elections. Whoever wins, if we lose sight of the reason why we are going through this process, we are lost.

6 Reasons for enjoying the General Election 2010 : Pt.5

Reason 5: Time for the House of Commons to Reassert and Reform itself

After the expenses scandal the House of Commons will be one of the least experienced in recent times. How will they adapt to the rigours of parliamentary life and more particularly the dreaded Whip System and 'toeing the party line'? There was a lot of talk by the time the Euro elections arrived of more independent candidates standing and there night be one or two. Not as many as I was hoping for back at that time and it will take a while to see how many party rubber stamps make it to the chamber. More importantly, how many of them wish to get promotion to the front bench via the many career moves towards a Government post and pension. It will take a while to establish who these are but if there are a great many of them the old old problem with Parliament will continue, namely, 'never mind the merits', think of your career'. As so many new MP's will have been on the usual political training routes and have not had established careers, saying 'yes' to their could well be an automatic response.

If this were not enough, the amount of legislation government's seem to want to pass has reached a ridiculous level. If it is true that a lot of EU material just passes though for approval with little scrutiny, why is it that the House of Commons so often gets passed by when legislation is being discussed. A great deal of rubbish reaches the statute book without our elected representatives getting much of a look in. If this is inevitable then there is either something wrong with the system or the amount of legislation is too great or is rushed through. Granted, the House of Lords does a lot of scrutiny in committee as does the House of Commons, but it is the Government which dictates the timetable, which amendments will be discussed and when the guillotine will fall to push the Bill through to its next stage. When measures involve civil liberties, criminal liability and human rights the missed provision can be disastrous in the long-term. Governments fully understand their short term aims are best enacted in haste, leaving the rest of us to put up with the results at our leisure.

All the parties are promising one form of constitutional reform or another. Having fixed term Parliaments is one such idea as is the reduction of the number of constituencies. I cant help feeling that many of the reforms that are out there are rather cobbled together without looking at all the variables which the present constitution embodies in its conventions. When a manual working system is being transferred to a computer based system it was always my understanding that a Systems Analyst was the person who set out what the old system did. I remain to be convinced that those suggesting constitutional reform haven't done any in depth analysis. As a half baked idea House of Lords reform will take some beating as it has ended up stalled, but with a second chamber that has excelled at delaying legislation with more legitimacy than the old hereditary dominated chamber. Any reforming government must come to terms that a second chamber that is merely a rubber stamp is a waste of money and a dangerous constitutional omission from the few checks and balances that are left, after it is realised that a Government can almost always on the House of Commons as its lap dog.

The problem to be confronted is how our elected chamber can acquire some credibility, sandwiched as it is between the remote Leviathan of the EU's institutions on the one hand and the emasculated local authorities of England and the aspiring Welsh and Scottish legislatures, on the other. How reducing the number of Parliamentary constituencies will help, inevitably making them bigger, is a puzzle. Distancing electors still further from their representatives doesnt seem a good idea in the light of the invisibility achieved by Euro MP's. Should the Westminster Parliament ever make provision for dealing with English matters without the interference of Scottish and Welsh MP's, representative proximity will be essential as will the need for a proper system of proportional representation so that one party will not predominate to the exclusion of all others.

In the meantime I will enjoy the coming election not only because it will prompt so many of these speculations but it will also be entertaining in spotting how many of these would be political animals have failed to understand the constitutional and political cage they are about to enter.

Dacier

6 Reasons for enjoying the General Election 2010: Pt.4

Reason 4: A Democratic Parliament for the UK and England

Devolution in Wales and in Scotland seems to be working with growing confidence and self - esteem on the increase in both Celtic nations. Why this has come about can be traced back to a few by-elections in the 1970's and growing pressure from within both nations. Now that Northern Ireland has secured its own form of devolution only one part of the jigsaw remians to be put in place to give consistency to our nations formal title of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, no less than devolution for England.

Why did England miss out? Could it have been that Labour Governments have in the past owed so much to these nations constituencies to secure and retain power? Could it also be that the English have not only forgotten much of their traditional culture but have become rather shy in reasserting it. Thankfully no such inhibitions seem to be found in the English folk music community or among enthusiasts for English classical music. Sadly the nationalist lack of inhibition is also found in large measure at the mid to far right bearings of the political compass with more flag waving than even I feel is tasteful.

Nevertheless it is now a good time for the centre ground to start shedding these inhibitions. Firstly the lame attempt at a form of devolution for England, the Regional Assemblies, have now been abolished. The name was a misnomer if you think that they came into being by local elections. They were just another product of the nomination culture that brought us the Quango and the Regulators of the Offtrack variety. I wonder what they achieved
and at what cost? Present plans to have another go still look like a new fudge of the old culture which would leave voters cold should they be given a look in.

While Wales and Scotland were gaining control of their affairs the English were seeing their once proud local authorities being starved of funds while having to act more and more as mere agents of central government. Add to that a range of new decision making processes, different from one authority to the other, the import of the modern corporate manager with salary to match, and a huge consultancy dependency, and it is no wonder that the average elector is alienated from Town or County Hall. So much so that local election turn outs are way down among the 30 per cents. I am sure I am not alone in concluding from my own dealing with local government officers that they no longer seem to regard themselves as servants of the local community but slaves to the financial constraints created by central government imposing more and more work but without the funding. All this adds up to a loss of local control and a demeaning of function. Without adequate funding local authorities seem to spend much of their time explaining why they cannot act.

It is therefore time to bring some real power to the people. At a national level English MP's alone should decide English matters. I was surprised how attractive the English Democrats election broadcast was since it defined the problem very graphically. I had several reservations about their claims regarding the funding of Welsh and Scottish affairs and the inevitable objections to EU membership but the central argument makes sense. I cannot say that their website inspired with confidence with so many emotive symbols which made me feel rather uncomfortable, but why should Welsh and Scottish MP's ,who have an Assembly or Parliament back home dealing with devolved matters, be able to poke their noses in and vote on purely English issues.

There is still nothing in it for Labour but with the possibility of a new type of Parliament the time for the fudging to end has arrived. Many of the changes and reforms that Labour are proposing sound a lot like asking for a chance to clear up the mistakes they themselves have made or ignored in preference to some pet or half baked projects like the now abolished Regional Assemblies : an unnecessary extra layer between incompetent central government and emasculated, sometimes also incompetent, local government. A distinct English component within the Westminster Parliament would have a legitimacy which would give credibility to the delegation of real powers and duties and budgets to local authorities which could start to rebuild their local commitment and in return start to earn local loyalty and appreciation. This would be more about democracy and what you do with it than the business development that the Regional Assemblies seemed to be limited to. To think that they would bring decisions nearer to the people now looks like a conclusion promoted by the misguided for consumption by the gullible.

So, as the results come in on Election Night it will be interesting to see whether the figures will show how far England has been the poor relation in the culture of bringing powers back home. If Labour survive by the skin of their teeth due to their Welsh and Scottish victories the question of English Devolution will be buried and those protesting at the graveside dismissed as the eccentrics of the flag waving right.

Dacier

6 Reasons for enjoying the General Election 2010: Pts..2 & 3

Reason 2: Exposure of the Electoral System

The first past the post system can work quite well in some constituencies. This will depend on how many candidates stand and what the predominant political views are. Take for example a constituency in one of the old coal mining areas where the sitting Labour MP could have a majority of 20,000 or more. If a Conservative stood there would be little chance that the Labour candidate would not be a clear winner with the Conservative getting a very small share of the votes. In more mixed constituencies with a three way split and possibly with several small parties, it can happen that the winning candidates will have had more votes cast against them, than for. If the total votes cast for the winners opponents exceeds the the winners votes, the split vote, rather than the winners popularity, has brought about the victory.

A similar situation can arise nationally with the total votes cast for each party There is much talk at the moment of the Labour Party winning the majority of the seats despite being third in the current opinion polls. There is a real risk that Gordon Brown will have to be asked by the Queen to form a Government because his party won more seats than the other parties put together despite being second or third in the national popular vote when all the votes are divided up between the parties. Lack of popularity does not always prevent a party winning.

It is these two forms of what may be called, 'the popular vote contradiction' which could be exposed by the coming election results one and for all. This always happens to varying extents in most elections but the present position of Labour in the polls and the growing popularity of the LibDems due to the Clegg effect, is raising expectations. Given that Gordon Brown has not yet been elected as the PM, not even by his own party, to return to power with a third rate popularity vote could be too much for many voters to tolerate. The popular vote contradiction will not just cause academic interest but public outrage and disillusionment in equal measure. Perhaps this is why PM Brown is promoting a watered down form of proportional representation to head the opposition off at the pass. Even this decision seems beyond him as he has promised a referendum. Where did I hear that before?

Granted, the first past the post system normally has the advantage of giving a clear cut decision but this is by no means guaranteed in this General Election. In any case more and more people will come to realise that a clear cut decision should not be achieved at the cost of fairness.

Reason 3: The Hung or Balanced Parliament

The British Constitution is a story of the Executive gradually conceding power from the top down. Often the concessions have been begrudging and have often turned out to have been rather thin. Starting with the Reform Act of 1832 it took just short of 120 years to arrive at one person one vote. Lets hope that we do not have to wait much more than the 170 years we have been enduring an unsophisticated electoral system which has favoured one branch or the other of the political establishment. On this occasion the usual model may not deliver that certainty and a House of Commons with no clear party majority will emerge. The Queen, acting as a Constitutional Monarch is perfectly well equipped to deal with this situation even if the Cabinet Secretary thinks it is necessary to have a special contingencies plan in place just in case some constitutional nightmare was about to be acted out on the black tarmac of Whitehall or the red tarmac of the Mall. The electorate may not understand the rarely applied conventions about choosing someone to try and form a Government but it will be the Queens task to find someone in the House of Commons who would enjoy sufficient confidence to form a Government. In such situations that person does not even have to a leader from any of the parties but would in such a case have to be an outstanding character. Unfortunately there are not likely to be many of them in the next House of Commons so one of the party leaders would be the most likely. I can however imagine Vince Cable being considered if the financial establishment gets the jitters at seeing the UK preparing a coalition government. This is rather strange since first past the post voting systems are the exception rather than the rule and probably has more to do with not having a Conservative government more than anything else. In any case the Constitutional Monarch has to tread carefully, lsien to the advice of her Prime Mister Mr Brown and then consult with the other party leaders. She can asl the advice of anyone she likes and has a large number of Privy Councillors to choose from. As most people have no idea that this is the only real political job she has it is bound to be misunderstood by many. Hence the need for caution and her long experience should provide it. That is why a Monarch is never out of the country when an election result is due. If a coalition works then electoral reform will be inevitable as the electorate will want a voting system in which such outcomes are more likely. If so there will be more work for the Queen.

So, will my enjoyment of the prospect of a hung Parliament be translated into seeing the actual thing come to pass. We will know whether it is likely by the small hours of the 7th May,but if it is really on the cards, the following week will be taken up with a lot of toing and froing between Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. Even if all of this is new to the Cabinet Secretary I can assure you that the Monarch will have seen much of it before. It is at times like these that I am pleased that our Chief Executive is not in place because of being an elderly political time server. We have had a glimpse of that model with Speaker Martin's career. Ironically, she is not only elderly but she is pursuing her specialist subject on behalf of her subjects because of an even more unacceptable political device from ancient times, the hereditary principle. Having seen the creatures that modern political systems too often throw up, so to speak, as Presidents, I am at lost to suggest a reliable alternative. Hey ho.

Dacier

6 Reasons for enjoying the General Election 2010: Pt.1

Reason 1: The Internet

For once I feel I have a voice either via this blog or through Twitter. I have been interested in politics from the first time I heard my mum and dad calling to each other as another result was announced by the BBC Home Service. My parents were Conservatives and I now know that this was the 1951 election which brought Churchill back into power after the post-war Labour landslide had rejected his party's policies despite his wartime leadership.

Once the results came out on election night TV the whole process became much more dramatic and so by the 1964 election when it looked clear that the old grouse moor Tories would be bowing out the true election night tradition for me began. I had access to a TV! Where the Internet makes everything so much better is that if you have the time to spare you can track the election debate from start to finish. For those who have never engaged with the political process, especially those young people who feel elections will not make any difference to them, there is a chance that the Internet might just draw them in. There is certainly no lack of comment, from the comic through to the serious world of the political analyst, whether dealing with voting projections or the stature of the party leaders. The statistics for Twitter alone show how many go in for re-active TV viewing.

There will be those who say that the Leadership Debates have changed the election campaign into a sort of Pop Idol event to the exclusion of the traditional hustings and interviews. At the moment I see no signs that the latter will come to an end. What I do see is the possibility of previously disillusioned voters engaging with these new electioneering methods. Whether the leaders will agree to such debates again remains to be seen but with the arrival of the Internet, television is only one part of the democratic process . The Internet will have an increasingly important role if computer literate youngsters become convinced that an election can lead to improvements in their lives, rather than waste, ineffectiveness and broken promises. This is crucial because an election with few voters is meaningless and there are elites who would be very pleased to fill the vacuum thereby created. In five years time who knows where the Internet Election will be.Such speculations should make it interesting and intellectually enjoyable. To those who say that nothing changes I answer, 'Yes it does, and often for the worse. If you don't vote you can't complain, and one day it could have serious consequences if you did complain.' There is no benign circuit hard wired into our political institutions. I am therefore enjoying this election because it means so much for the future of democracy in the UK.

Dacier

Comments: Unfotunately many comments come through in code and cannot be moderated. If your comment does not appear it is unlikely to have been censored. It just couldn't be read.

Reflections on St.George's Day

Flying the Flag?

Why is it that as a mongrel Englishman I feel uncomfortable while writing this note about our national day? The Celtic nations within the United Kingdom have no inhibitions about their various ways of celebrating their national day. I suspect it is something to do with not feeling the need because whatever the Celts might do, being English automatically meant that you were British and that was enough. This attitude seems to be echoed by our American cousins who often talk of England when they really mean Britain. With the promotion of Wales and Scotland through their devolved governments this is changing. With Northern Ireland now having a form of devolution the picture is nearly complete within our nation's formal title, 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'.

A new Patrotism?

The reasons for this discomfort are many and various. Firstly, the embarrassment which many people have about talking about patriotism. Following your government, right or wrong, is not a good idea, but there is surely nothing wrong in saying that you love where you live, you like the people around you ,and you appreciate its wide ranging culture, its quirks and its eccentricities. I get particularly moved by both our natural and man-made landscapes and the histories they reveal and there is nothing wrong with being proud of an understood heritage. Nor is there anything wrong in saying you can't stand the government of the day whilst saying 'but it is ours' rather than that of an invading or colonial power. Even this brings on feelings of guilt to anyone who knows some colonial history But, that was then and this is now, and I have always found it a remarkable fact of post imperial life that so many citizens of our old colonies are more than happy to be on speaking terms, and I have always found great affection for Britain coming from the many Commonwealth students I have taught. That is why I feel that the present wars both bring out patriotic feelings for our troops but great doubts with regard to the judgements of our politicians.

English Devolution?

The movement for devolution has shown Englishmen like me, contrary to my initial fears, that bringing decisions and a budget nearer to Cardiff and Edinburgh has made, and highlights some difference, not least student fees and prescription fees. Although it seems an odd thing to say, decisions which affect only England, should also be brought nearer to London. The time must surely have come to exclude Welsh and Scottish MP's from votes which exclusively deal with matters within the borders of England. English MP's cannot vote on matters dealing with matters being voted on by the Welsh Assemby or the Scottish Parliament. The exclusuion of the Celtic vote would mean that for English matters the Parliament of Great Britain and Northern Ireland could revert to its old title of the Parliament of England which was abolished with the Act of Union with Scotland in 1706. Matters of defence and Foreign affairs and anything else not within the remit of the devolved instutions would remain where they are now. There would probably be no need for yet another building but this would become clearer once the principle of English devolution was established. The nonsense of English Regional Assemblies, who knows what they are anyway, could fall by the constutional wayside. Futhermore the case for fewer MPs would be strengthened and the art of scrutinising the national executive branch of the national government might be rediscovered.

With an effective and accountable English Parliament in place there would be no embarrassment in flying a flag above its rooftops which at its simplest represents the triumph of Good over Evil.

Briefing Notes for Candidates and Electors on Rural Housing Issues

i) What are the problems?

If we want to have viable rural communities they need a sound demographic spread. The outgoing youngsters and the incoming or remaining older ones will be the cause of an elderly community. National market forces mean that those who retire from high value property markets can down size and reap the benefits from the high value of the property they are selling. Young people starting out to make a home and raise a family will not be able to compete unless they can inherit a local property or have already established a means of high income. The only hope for buying a property depends on whether they can get a run down building or site and rebuild through their own resources. Those who have done this are fully aware of how lucky they have been.

The only way of stopping the imbalances of property values between, say London, and Herefordshire would be intervention through planning controls and regulating what properties can or cannot be available to outside purchasers. Add to this the increase of city bonuses and the differences in incomes and it is no wonder that some villages and even towns become deserts from September through to March as has happened in other parts of the country. If intervention occurs however local people who want to sell will be denied the opportunity to secure the best price under unrestricted market conditions. Intervention by national Government seems unlikely but it is the only way that market forces can be prevented from emptying the countryside of young people. In so doing government subsidy would be necessary to compensate present owners

The other problem is having something to make young people want to stay or settle. In France the process of ‘desertification’ has meant that more and more farms have been left to rot. The result, an influx of British ex-pats taking advantage of the much lower prices. This is not always popular with the French. The result? : a potential elderly British population in France.

The Consequences: A viable community depends on a range of ages so that various facilities can operate. An elderly populations will give employment to doctors, but the need for schools will fall. A house bound community will be dependent on others to deliver their supplies. Public transport is unlikely to be needed for older members of the community who cannot venture out, and not very convenient for those who would like to due to the difficulty of getting to a bus stop and so on.

Elderly residents may find it hard to shoulder the burdens of local civic duties, running a church or other social activities. Young people will look elsewhere to nearby towns for their entertainment and probably change to urban living where they have a better chance of earning a living and getting accommodation. Add to this the decline in agriculture and the ‘desertification’ process gains momentum.

Shops, Churches, Chapels, Pubs, Youth Clubs, Community Centres all need money and physical support from the local community if they are to survive.

ii) What could be done?

Schools need to be maintained as a reason for youngsters to find a way of staying or moving in. Although the bureaucrats will always tell you that a bigger better school many miles away will be much better, it rarely is, and the result of the closure of the village school is to rip the heart out of the community

If nothing is done to reduce the consequences of a free housing market by national government then local communities need to nurture the idea of cheaper housing through housing associations. Currently housing associations are being told by national government to reduce their rents in line with the fall in inflation, with the result that their building budgets will be reduced. Political pressure has to be brought to bear on national politics because there is little which can be done locally in this respect. The one thing which can be done is to try and establish the places where land might be available and where demand for the housing would fit in with employment and transport opportunities etc.

Council Housing may make a come back but this seems too far in the future to make a significant contribution to halting the drift away to the towns by the young and the creations of detached elderly communities.

Empty properties should be monitored so that the local authority should make use of its powers to discourage this wasteful use. 3% of the national housing stock remains empty for more than 6 months with 1.6% being from the private sector. 20% of the population live in rural areas. Government policy on their website.



This site gives a wealth of information regarding housing generally and how owners can be helped to bring their property back into the housing pool. Such properties should be identified and the Empty Homes Agency will try to involve housing associations and the local authority in returning such properties to the housing stock. Whilst rotting ruins may be seen as having some visual amenity there is a growing recognition that if the owners cannot make use of them as part of the housing stock, local authorities will have to intervene more.

Since 2006 local authorities may issue last resort enforcement orders under the Empty Dwelling Management Orders (EDMOs). For once there seem to be some intervention powers which could be used after a property has been empty for more than six months. In rural communities there are often properties which have been left empty for much longer. Rather than going on the open market perhaps the next stage is for local authorities to find ways to bring them into a social housing pool or to give assistance to local young people in financing their purchase. Is the return of the local authority mortgage well overdue?

The second homes problem should also be analysed and consideration be given to regulation but this is again a problem of national policy rather than local. It is also complicated by the restriction of choice that central intervention could bring about. The debate to date has been rather simplistic because the phrase in effect covers several categories.

Those who buy to let for the purposes solely of letting the property out as a holiday home on commercial terms should be discouraged in areas where there is a housing shortage. In some parts of the country where the local population has moved on the empty properties are at least used to contribute something to the economy for part of the year. Those who simply buy to let as all year round homes can bee seen as making a contribution to the local housing pool as long as rents and housing benefits are in a realistic ratio.

Second Homes in Transition could cover those properties where the owners have purchased a property with a view to retirement and may be taking advantage of the differences in national house values. Others may have purchased the property as their main residence as they are in tied accommodation and the ‘second home’ is their insurance or, as is more likely, their eventual residence on retirement. The same can apply to properties which have been inherited but the new owner has to seek their living elsewhere, pending retirement. In the meantime these properties are sometimes let out as holiday lettings while be the owner may visit for weekends or longer breaks in the winter months. Others may choose to keep the property unlet.

The Second Home as a bolt hole pure and simple is probably the least valuable to the local community in removing a potential home from the market. These maybe seen as the least complicated and where the property is isolated or without facilities may not be viable units in the housing stock. However, where they would be viable there is a case for intervening by way of legislation creating special planning permission and setting maximum quotas. If a perfectly sound starter home is going to be removed from the market for this purpose then present free market laws will not prevent it. Such a property might be an ex-council house situated in a viable community with a shop, pub and good communications.

Sometimes the owners of such properties will not have any intention of getting involved in the local community because that would contradict the rationale of ‘getting away from it all’ and their retirement plans may be centred elsewhere. These owners may contribute to the local community if they shop in the area and employ local firms for building etc. They now have to make a full contribution to Council Tax. Restrictions of selling for this purpose would have to involve compensation of some kind to the original owner if the restriction reduces the sale value.

Purpose built second home complexes such as those round water parks etc are not available for housing as such due to the planning conditions, rather like mobile holiday parks which cannot be use throughout the year, and so should not be a housing issue apart from questions of land use generally.

Improvements and extensions to existing properties to accommodate younger people do happen but the biggest bug-bear is the difficulty of getting planning permission for new houses outside the designated development zones. Again there is little that can be done at the immediate level of local government and the real decisions are made at higher levels. Classic reasons for refusing permission will be that the property would be out of keeping with the landscape (even where the proposal is to rebuild a property which had been in the landscape for many years before planning control was invented) or the access is restricted for emergency vehicles, or access onto the road is inconsistent with the highways policy etc. Within these rules it seems that conversion of barns into dwellings often seems to be acceptable in many cases as does, on occasions, the demolition of an old house to make way for a modern replacement. An additional house adjoining an existing farmhouse or nearby, seems to fall outside the criteria, while housing estates can gradually grow within designated development areas. It is very frustrating for people who have access to land for building but cannot get planning permission but is it equally frustrating to see green field building occurring in a way which would undermine the visual impact of the countryside. All this against a struggling agricultural industry and at a time when food security is becoming recognized as an emerging issue. Somewhere a compromise has to be drawn as a countryside with declining agricultural use and a population imbalance might look pleasant for a while, but it will not last as the people who used to keep it that way gradually leave..

What should be done? The bullet of rural housing needs to be bitten, as indeed does the national problem of a housing shortage. From the citizens point of view this means that the opinions in favour of housing initiatives in the rural community have to be expressed and organized with both local and national politicians. The present situation is destructive of the rural community in the ways outlined above and as a society we either have to accept the consequences of a free property market e.g., desertification and demographic imbalance, or develop equitable methods of intervention.

Dacier

Caravan Touring and Wasting Time

In one way wasting time is a privilege which we should all occasionally exercise, although what might seem a waste of time to one person is valuable endeavour to another. I was checking out an e –bay entry for a seller of a caravan today and was advised that ‘time wasters’ would not be welcome. As I have difficulty in deciding what is a waste of time I promptly moved back to my inbox and deleted this impatient vendor once and for all.

My wife and I might ‘waste our time’ or spend it, by going off in our old caravan. Current value £300. Never shy of the controversial we would be prepared to go head to head with the devil incarnate of the anti-caravanning world, namely the national petrol head leader, Jeremy Clarkson. Why, because caravanning as has the potential to be a low impact leisure facility, it tends to cross seasonal boundaries, and it is democratic pastime: it’s said to be the national sport in Holland, now that is sad.

It is low impact because a touring caravan is not a permanent feature. Many of the locations where used are purely temporary, or at least, rather small and hidden, when compared with the vast aluminium cities of Porth Cawl or the east coast. It is flexible as to season as many of us choose to take our main breaks in early or late season or during the winter months, thus leaving room for the prisoners of the school holiday booking season free of us older types. Finally, it is democratic because our green and pleasant land becomes available to all, whether in a £300 van or in a gin palace on wheels. It is mainly a middle to working class pastime, although the touring caravan was invented by the upper class. Mr Toad of Wind in the Willows was recently cited by a spokesperson for the Caravan Club as a fictional example of an early enthusiast. It was also pointed out that he only went off the rails, and the road come to that, when he dumped his caravan (the horse drawn) in favour of the speed which could be achieved by the solo motor car i.e., when he joined the Clarkson Camp.

In addition to all these benefits it is a significant contribution to the rural economy. Large static sites are sometimes unfortunate eyesores, but not always, while touring sites can be very small, allowing a regular contribution to the income of a farm. In spite of these benefits there is a large body of snobs out there who would rather pay silly prices for the poor standards which often prevail in many of our hotels. We do not like hotels much anyway. They are usually too hot, the beds and bedding are unpredictable, and the regimentation of the breakfast slot is contradictory to our idea of leisure.

Of course last year’s rise in caravan and tent sales is reminiscent of the boom of the sixties. The bookings reported by both the Caravan Club and Camping and Caravan Club (we belong to the more flexible latter organisation as we occasionally use one of our many tents) will not last. As with the last boom, this will be ended by a series of bad summers. People who buy the dream need to acquire certain fortitude, and realise that leisure is not just about having relaxation provided but to a great extent working for it. I suppose to that extent it can become a sport when you travel light or the weather gets heavy.

The national speed limit for caravans and trailers is 60 mph on motorways and dual carriageways and 50 mph for the rest. This is safe for the caravan driver and provided he or she keeps an eye open for tail backs, should not inconvenience solo drivers any more than a heavy lorry. Granted, you will see caravans breaking all these rules, even using the outer lane of a motorway which is out of bounds to all trailers, but this is a question of enforcement in the same way as it is for those motorists getting away with the horrendous breaches of the Highway Code every day

Mr Clarkson’s real bug bear is his belief that caravans cause holiday traffic hold ups and he greeted with great glee the experiment on the M5 on the climb out of Bristol which confined caravans to the nearside lane. I have heard nothing of his views regarding the result of that research. This is not surprising as he, along with Jonathan Ross, is the cause of many a quick channel change when his presence spoils one of our favourite programmes. The research showed that most caravan drivers got into the nearside lane for the climb even before the prohibition came into effect and that the worst offenders were fully paid up members of the middle lane club and lorry divers who took up nearside and middle lanes while they seem locked together on conversation. Apparently the middle lane driver is seeking to overtake its stubborn competitor which sometimes seems to go on for 5 minutes.

Why caravanning is picked on by so many is something which deserves a PhD thesis. Motor Sport and luxury road legal sports cars with ridiculous top speeds are apparently perfectly acceptable. Likewise football and coarse fishing because thousands take part and so the disruption and pollution they cause is brushed away, usually at public cost . So before you join the Clarkson tirade brigade just examine your own motives and take a look around and put some toleration lenses in your specs. Failing that take a look at your own leisure footprint and impact before becoming an uninformed snob.

Tony’s Legacy: Will it be Blair or Bliar when the Jury Returns?

With the sun at last shining and a General Election required within the next few weeks the view from my room is far from bleak. This is in contrast to the future which awaits the Blair Legacy. Tony Blair was seen by many as the antidote to Thatcherism and a way in which politics could return to principles of social cohesion and fairness. Of course, that is where the dream began to unravel since it soon became obvious that the principles which were to govern were nothing to do with political philosophy, but more to do with the principles of rhetoric, marketing and spin. Anyone who knows anything about this unholy trio will know that they are for the most part strangers to such principles, sometimes reserving the greater disdain for the principle of truth. For those who spin webs the fate that awaits them is often self entanglement. Such is the case with the Iraq War and it is that which will cast a shadow over the few achievements, whatever you think they might be, of Blairite New Labour.

About six years ago I was holding forth in a book shop in Hay to another customer about the shortcomings of Prime Minister Blair, when a homely lady emerged from behind an adjoining stack and admitted with some emotion, ‘ I’m so ashamed. I voted for that man: I feel betrayed’. I greatly admired her courage for speaking out as I suspect it has taken many of us sometime to approach the public confessional.

Tony Blair chose to play fast and loose with some fairly basic principles and institutions, including the Rule of Law, Cabinet Government, Collective Responsibility, Parliamentary accountability and International Law. Some of these featured in his own end of the Constitution Show that dreary Thursday morning of 29th January when he appeared before the Chilcot Inquiry. Outside the gathered crowd carried posters referring to him as ‘Bliar’, a point missed by the commentator I saw doing his bit to camera outside the building, while those with tickets filed in, in some cases in search of some explanation as to why their loved ones had died.

Before his appearance the case was forming in my mind that here was a man, whilst he endeavoured to be a ‘nice sort of guy’, was rather adrift in a sea of troubles unable to find neither guiding light nor sound anchorages to see him through. The book title which kept coming into my head on that dreary Thursday as I saw his robust debating technique gather momentum was that of ‘He knew he was Right.’ Of course Trollope’s character was far from being right and in Mr Blair‘s case he probably did sincerely believe that there were WMD’s beyond doubt. His problem now, like any scientist in the laboratory or lawyer in a court, is that we are now watching the process of seeing whether the facts on which it was based can be proved.

The justification he gave the Chilcot inquiry would seem to be no more than his assertion that he believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that he believed this beyond reasonable doubt. This would not be enough for a jury to convict without a bundle of proved facts and inferences, the evidence, which removes all doubt from the mind of the jury: just one reasonable doubt should prevent a juror from finding guilt. It would seem however that Mr Blair is asserting that war was justified beyond his own doubt, period.

Whether or not the evidence was there to justify his certainty is what Chilcot should decide upon but in the meantime Mr Blair’s case presents several problems, some of his own making. If we run the clock back to Sunday 12th December 2009 he appeared in an interview with Fern Brittan. His expressed conviction at Chilcot as to the existence of WMD’s appears to have been undermined by his earlier frankness with Fern Brittan
I paraphrase the interview thus:
"If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?"
Blair replied: "I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]",
Adding, "I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat.".... "I can't really think we'd be better with him and his two sons in charge, but it's incredibly difficult. That's why I sympathize with the people who were against it [the war] for perfectly good reasons and are against it now, but for me, in the end I had to take the decision." Guardian 12/12/09
No wonder the search for the number one justification, the existence of WMD’s, had been such a scruffy affair with allegations of alleged plagiarism, sexing up of documentation, and a bogus 45 minute deployment time. Oh, and by the way, since the Detroit bomber was charged in the US, we now know, if we are to believe the Federal charge sheet, that WMD’s can been hidden in undergarments. If only the UN inspectors had known that when they were trying to do their job.

I must confess that I forced myself to watch the Fern Brittan interview as I had not yet had breakfast and I didn’t want to be put off my grapefruit by an apologist’s master class. My self denial was however rewarded, not only by the admission of the backup reason for going to war but also by his claim that when making decisions on matters of life and death, like War, his faith didn’t appear to come into it. Oh dear I thought, so what is the point of your Christianity? O.K., perhaps George Bush would seem to have been informed rather badly in these matters but in his case I suspect it was possibly a matter of deficient critical reading skills. But in Tony’s case I remain somewhat puzzled as to why he bothered to go in for the interview given that the programme’s brief is within the BBC’s religious/ ethical Sunday morning slot. As a sometime Anglican and now a Catholic, can we really believe that his faith was irrelevant?

By the time he was questioned at Chilcot about the interview it seemed he still hadn’t realised that he was in a hole and that the time for digging had long since passed. Not a bit of it. What on earth was all that business about having had a great deal of experience in giving interviews but he hadn’t been prepared for Fern? Was his rather fumbled comment an admission that he had inadvertently revealed something he would have rather left out? He defended himself by saying that he had not used the phrase ‘regime change’. Of course he hadn’t: it was superfluous. He had said that even without WMD’s it would have been right to remove Saddam. Was it any wonder that some MP s who had relied on his assurances from the dispatch box were now feeling somewhat peeved.

In effect this all combines to show that in the absence of WMD’s he would not have been able to convince Parliament, not least because International Law does not allow one nation to go into another’s territory to remove a nasty person other than by way of self defence. In the absence a legal authority it is no more than an illegal act of war. This was probably why the international lawyers at the Foreign Office were also somewhat peeved when Lord Goldsmith’s advice to Cabinet was preferred to theirs. It was pointed out by one of them when before Chilcot, that the Attorney General was not a practitioner of international law.

This is clearly the weak spot in the Blair justification. Witness the crumbling of Alistair Campbell when asked by Andrew Marr ( BBC 1: Sunday 7th February), that if Chilcot fails to find unequivocal evidence to support Blair’s assertions from the dispatch box, the conclusion will have to be that the Prime Minister mislead Parliament. At this the ex-Cabinet Office hard case broke down and, breathing somewhat heavily, made a halting reference to the vilification of an honourable man. None of the debate away from the placards in the street had struck me as that, so this must have touched a nerve. Was the alliance with Bush, the dislike of Saddam’s ghastly psychopathic oil -rich regime and all the hype, so powerful that it swept Blair and his henchmen along on a self made wave of enthusiasm into an unjustifiable and illegal war?

The evidence of Clare Short on the 2nd February seems to support this theory. Unlike Blair’s performance the abiding impression was that here was a witness who had nothing to fear from Chilcot because all she had to do was tell the uncomplicated truth. It would seem that from Tony’s performance to date, the truth is anything but uncomplicated. Like Thatcher before him, he adopted a presidential role whereby he chose to exclude his colleagues from the decision making process to the point where he now tells us it was all on his shoulders. He apparently had no friend to turn to and not even his faith could help him with the decision. In a system which professes a convention of cabinet collective responsibility, constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy this need not have happened. Having for some reason felt that his shoulders alone were broad enough, it is on his own head that it now shall be. The time for vilification has passed: the word ‘pity’ comes to mind but doesn't quite make the journey.