Saturday 27 August 2011

British Rail

Rail fares are going up again, in some cases by up to 13% and the government still has to chuck £3.7  billion at the rail franchise companies, more in real terms than under the bad old days of British Rail. If you want to travel the London to Bristol route at peak time, it costs £169 for a return. For the same price, you can fly to Rome. But when in Rome, you'll find that if you do as the Romans do, you'll pay 50% less for train tickets.

In Britain, unlike those stupid Continentals with their high speed rail links and affordably priced fares, we have decided that the purpose of the railway network is to provide good retail units for branches of Marks and Spencers Simply Food and the West Cornwall Pasty Company. The trains and stations themselves are an expensive inconvenience, perhaps we should just do away with them altogether and fill the space with more branches of Clinton Cards and WH Smiths. Now anyone who remembers the catering options of British Rail will agree that a beef and stilton pasty is a huge improvement on the state run burger chain Casey Jones, a franchise found only at stations for good reason. The burgers were marginally more edible than a fried newspaper and the chips were actually made from wood pulp.  Casey Jones' unique offering was an ultra thick milkshake, which doubled as a soft drink and a heavy-duty industrial lubricant.

Yes, the food was terrible, and yes British Rail had questionable advertising such as the posters of Gary Glitter in tight trousers. Another odd BR campaign was for Motorail, a bizarre concept where instead of driving to your destination, you put your car on a train to get there which is sort of the point of owning a car in the first place. Based on the advert, Motorail's appeal was that you could get thoroughly plastered in the buffet carriage and then drive your Rover into a tree the moment you disembarked.

The truth is that the privatisation of the railways has benefited no one apart from consultants, lawyers and certain chief executives of rolling stock companies. Pound for pound, Network Rail's capital investment delivers one third of what British Rail achieved.  All the Major government did was transfer a public monopoly to a private one, leaving us with the most expensive rail network in the world. On the plus side though, the sandwiches are better.

Sky high prices and ticket options which would baffle a maths professor, have put people off rail travel.  This is a  real shame as there numerous social benefits of railways versus private cars: less pollution, less congestion and less unbelievably tedious conversations between Jeremy Clarkson book reading males about the  relative merits of luxury diesel saloons.

Let's get retro, do a Life on Mars and bring back British Rail. Many privatisations have been highly successful but this was always going to be disaster. It also spurred the growth of The Sock Shop, now mercifully defunct, where busy commuters could buy hideous novelty socks for their loved ones. This partly explains Britain's rising divorce rate during that that era.

The railways were originally private, but they were dogged by safety concerns, funding crises, lack of capital investment and were chronically unable to make money. Does that sound familiar and ever wonder why they were nationalised in the first place?  The free market does many things very well, like providing a wide range of snack options, magazines and books, but it's no way to run a railway.



Wednesday 17 August 2011

Debt Monster

Every week that sails by, the Western economies sink deeper and deeper into debt, with one exception, Germany, who foolishly based its economic growth on high-end manufacturing rather than house prices and hedge funds.  American superpower is revealed to be less stable than a house of cards in an epileptic's house in an earthquake zone.  The USA's political journey is from super state  to supergimp; its recent political paralysis much like Superman neutralised by kryptonite, a toxic, alien substance, in this case known as the Tea Party. And remember when Superman loses his powers thanks to kryptonite; then he's a just a strange man wearing his underpants on the outside of a lyrca bodysuit. Next thing you know he's chaining himself to railings outside the Family Court, howling that the bitch won't let him see the kids.

We are all collectively drowning in debt, most of it owed to the Chinese. They have such vast foreign reserves that they could buy Italy; or alternatively Portugal and Spain with Ireland thrown in as a three for two deal. I'm not sure exactly what the Chinese would do with Italy, but if they start installing a monorail into the hollowed out base of Mount Vesuvius we should be worried.

Individually Britons are in saddled with debt. Our corporations are loaded down with debt, the public sector is infested with PFI contracts (which is just another way of saying debt, plus loan shark mark-ups for the consultants involved), not forgetting the Treasury which is borrowing so much that I think our grandchildren will have to work until they are 85 to collect a state pension. It will still be £5000, but thanks to compound interest only buys half a Curly Wurly.

Now there's no point asking most economists for help, they failed to spot the last recession and still cannot explain how it's possible that the UK has undergone the longest ever boom in its economic history and everyone is flat broke. Perhaps you have to do a Masters to figure that one out. But one very smart economist, Nouriel Roubini, one of the very few who predicted the 2008 crash and the current second round of calamities has a heretical idea: debt default.

Without debt default or to use the acceptable term 'restructuring', how are going to slay the debt monster? St George Osborne's brilliant plan for recovery is that we should all take a huge hit in the standard of living so that no one in the banking industry takes a loss on their crappy loans. I think the debt dragon is going to win this encounter with our noble knight Osborne, because quite frankly, what is the point of us working hard, setting up new enterprises so that we can bail out some moronic, borderline criminal investment that RBS made on Irish property or American subprime mortgages. Seriously, what is the point? I would rather bang my head against a brick wall, ideally a wall made of bricks baked with the blood of dead bankers.

If the UK were a person, we would go bankrupt, renegotiate our terms and bounce back. It's worked for Donald Trump and countless other enterpreneurs.  In Trump's case that is in spite of a hairpiece that defies both the laws of fashion and physics.  I don't know about you lot, but the idea of working for the next 30 years so Bob Diamond and his peers don't suffer a loss on their loan books and their precious bonuses, isn't like being on a treadmill:  it's a treadmill that's going backwards down a hill whilst you're being pickpocketed.

Thursday 11 August 2011

Mental Revolt

Order has been restored by the police and we should all breath a sigh of relief, whilst quietly chucking in the canal the brass knuckles and can of mace we bought off the internet. It will no longer to necessary for men to patrol their streets in vigilante groups, which is a shame because I had a whole look worked out, based on the 1979 urban gang classic The Warriors. We were going to dress in cricket pads, gloves and helmets, coloured black to show we meant business and be called 'The Fast Balls'. Looters would be dispatched with cries of 'Six'. My fellow vigilantes and I would trade humorous quips about leg breaks whilst actually breaking bones. Best thing about being dressed in full cricket gear is the police cannot stop you for carrying a bat as an offensive weapon. The stumps converted to fire live ammunition, those were always going to take a bit of explaining.

The London riots and their viral spread around different cities were unexpected; the poor quality journalism that followed was perhaps more predictable and the clean up for that will take a while. The Left in particular has gone into denial mode, much like right wing commentators went into intellectual lockdown about the financial crisis. They just can't admit their cherished belief in self-regulating markets has been falsified and resort to bizarre leaps of logic, where it all ends up being Bill Clinton's fault that Goldman Sachs devised toxic securitised debt products. Don't even mention the bank bail outs,  the masters of the capitalist universe taking public money from the dead hand of the state. If you remember another eighties classic War Games, this is the bit where the computer controlling America's nukes fries its own brain through a logic loop.

Much the same mental gymnastics, revolts and loops are happening now in the minds of British liberals. You see the riots must have a cause, probably police brutality or racism. What about those children firebombing a police station in Nottingham? Then it must be the alienated youth. But several of the rioters are in their thirties and have jobs?  Consumer society, it's all our fault for being greedy as a society. We should really see gangs of ten year olds descending on Debenhams as a social critique, a form of spontaneous political street theatre. They certainly aren't to be blame, it was society wot robbed Boots. And didn't Cameron smash up a restaurant when he was in the Bullingdon club, so in a way he started it twenty years ago in an Oxford Tandoori.

The other important thing to consider is sometimes you have to have studied at university and read a lot of turgid tomes to say things as stupid as many of the chatterati:  these riots have complex roots and we need to listen to what the youth are saying on the street. It goes like this: 'Yo mate, gis ya phone or I'll shank you'.

'Some men just want to watch the world burn', to quote The Dark Knight. We don't need detailed, verbose and fatuous commentary to work out that people have evil, destructive impulses and they have to be kept in check. Have you seen Primark when there's a sale on? The riots were an eruption of those dark passions, you only need to hear the rioters description of why they set fire to buildings. It was fun.

Some of the reluctance to admit that ideas and policies need to change is a misguided belief amongst many liberal people that it's a binary choice: North Korea or Woodstock, there's nothing in between.  Fascist or hippy, pick a team and stick with it.

 If you say you are in favour of more police with tougher tactics and expanded prison places,  that does not mean you are also rejecting all the social changes after the 1960s. You can be in favour of gay marriage and water cannons, though preferably not at the same venue.







Tuesday 9 August 2011

London Road

Over the last few days, Londoners witnessed a giant psychological experiment: what happens when the police lose control? All across London Town, regular law-abiding citizens were wondering if their city had become a real life version of The Road and were making secret mental calculations about what they should do if the forces of law and order were overwhelmed. Vigo Mortensen ran a bath and it is important not to let personal grooming standards slip even if gangs of looters roam the streets. But many of us, rather than washing, were doing a mental tally of potential weapons and realised that a breadknife and a beach tennis set were a bit lacking. My personal arsenal amounted to a squash racket, a kitchen knife and an elephant prod; so I'm fine if I come up against  a pachyderm armed only with squash balls and a courgette.

None of us are much keen to take part in another re-enactment of Mad Max dsytopia, especially not if we live in a flat above JD Sports. If renting above commercial premises, make sure you pick a retailing unit that is anathema to ratboys. I would suggest a vegan cafe, run by transgender classical music enthusiasts is a safe bet. Either that or make sure you flatshare only with cage fighters or ex-special forces.

It was a tough call which was more depressing: watching brain-dead junior G's torching their own neighbourhoods or listening to politicians scoring cheap political points during the mayhem. When your neighbourhood is on fire, let's concentrate on putting it out. That's you at the back Dianne Abbot and Ken Livingstone. I do hope Darcus Howe was drunk during his Newsnight performance of Monday evening, that would be some kind of excuse for comparing the looting of Foot Locker to political protests.

Although many people will also be asking questions about Teresa May. What is the point of having a Tory home secretary if they are going to say things like 'the way we do policing is through community consent'.  I'm going to take a wild guess and say the residents of Clapham Junction would consent to a more vigorous police response.  She should have stared down the camera lens and said  'we will terminate these riots with extreme prejudice' and watch the poll ratings jump.

There's no doubt that during the last 48 hours, many normally pacifist types will have been shouting at their TVs for some real police brutality, especially when you hear a rat girl in Birmingham saying the 'police don't respect us'. Apparently that's why she and her friends felt they could help themselves to the contents of the Orange shop. If we're talking respect, then we, the regular citizens, could reclaim the word. For every masked teenager that was out on the street, there were hundreds in Hackney who weren't, wishing that someone in their neighbourhood would stand up to the gangs and the hoodlums.

That's us, by the way, who have to stand up to the gangs.  You cannot solely rely on the police for a civil society.  Every time we let a teenager drop litter in the street, swear and spit at passers-by, disrupt lessons, play their music loud on the bus, rob someone in plain view, we lose respect for ourselves and our communities. We put our heads down and walk on by.  Sure, when there's ten youths smashing up a phone box, then calling the police is the right idea. I'm not getting stabbed for BT, particularly not with their line rental charges. But as a general rule, law-abiding citizens need to man up (in a non-sexist manner).

When anti-social youths demand respect, we owe them nothing but contempt. They are a minority in these areas, what about the silent majority in Tottenham or Dalston who has to put up with this petty criminality 24-7. Why did not one commentator talk about them? No, all the debate was how we needed to undertand the youths more. I think the rest of us understood what they wanted pretty well: to set things on fire and a new TV.

We should collectively take back our streets, our parks and our public transport. There's so many more of us than the scrotes, let's think Gandhi with attitude. The Turkish shopkeepers of Kingsland Road had the right approach, try to loot our shops and we will batter you with sticks.  If we don't take back our public spaces, then get used to some more nights like the past week.

For inspiration, clink on these links:

Community policing Turkish style

Grandma tells it like it is

More power to your elbows

Additional note Weds 10th August - the tragic deaths in Birmingham don't change the need for us to take charge of our own cities. More police on London streets has calmed things down, but we can't live in lockdown because of a bunch of ratboys and ratgirls. They are angry, so the usual apologists say, because there are no jobs. Yes, there are no jobs for violent, foul-mouthed wannabe gangsters, very true, employers tend to be a bit picky about the whole can you be trusted with stock or money thing. See this: . that little dot is the world's smallest orchestra playing for those poor frustrated looters. It's playing just for them.

Thursday 4 August 2011

Turning Japanese

JK is a little bit worried that Britain might be turning Japanese. No, I don't mean we're going to eat more raw fish, have elaborate hot drink ceremonies, read dodgy cartoon porn or digitally record every waking moment of our entire lives. It's the economy stupid; it's turning Japanese. Back in the eighties, the land of the Rising Sun was the nation which produced the Walkman, the compact disc, the Honda Civc and of course everyone's favourite karate grandfather figure Mr Miyagi. There were even those Benihana restaurants (not strictly Japanese, but as close as the Americans could manage), where the chefs juggled knives at your table, which was also a metal cooking plate. Amazing!

Being Japanese was cool; they were the future, even if Hello Kitty was and still is, deeply weird. They were also the richest nation on Earth and we decided to forgive them for the genocidal war they launched a mere generation ago, on account of Nintendo's Super Mario being so much fun.

No one wants to be Japanese any more.  Over the last twenty years, Japan has experienced no net growth whatsoever and by some measures they are worse off. They had a massive property boom, followed by a huge slump, banking bailouts and wholescale state intervention in the markets, leaving Japan with a whopping 200% sovereign debt. Politician after politcian has ducked the difficult choices, sound familiar?

The recent fiasco with the American Debt Ceiling, which despite it's name is nothing to do with DIY or loft extensions, is only a taste of what's to come. Notice the UK latest's growth figures, which were zero in all but name. Now apparently there were lots of exceptional factors: the Royal Wedding, warm weather, wet weather, the price of fish. This, to use a technical economics term, is a load of bollocks. We're hosing down the country with money, borrowing £165 billion a year, and interest rates mean that with inflation, money is virtually free. Yet the growth figure we managed is... wait for it...0.2% - a rounding error, the sort of money the Chancellor might find down the back of the metaphorical Treasury sofa. The lousy growth figures  do not necessarily mean we should scrap the the austerity plan. Like the new boy in the prison showers, surrounded by a group of burly, tattooed men, we are screwed whichever way we turn.

There was no way we could start trying to reverse the largest credit boom in human history and not expect a little  pain re-adjusting. Going cold-turkey off a debt binge is going to produce some scary side effects, the economic equivalent of the dead baby on the ceiling when Renton kicks smack in Trainspotting.

But one habit we should definitely quit is the childish whining that it's all our politicians fault. It isn't. We chose to pay too much for houses, again - remember the other housing bust and the one before that? We bought things we couldn't afford, we preferred cheap credit and cheap mortgages to responsible behaviour. As nations, the British and Americans behaved like a drunk teenager given access to dad's credit card.

If we want to avoid wasted decades like Japan experienced, then perhaps we should take a little responsibility for own actions which means allowing politicians to talk openly about the problems, instead of the pantomimes which currently pass for TV interviews.  Note to Newsnight producers and presenters, finding small inconsistencies in what one government politician said relative to another is not investigative journalism, unless your aim is to achieve Stalinist orthodoxy in all organs of government.

Here's another thought, why not try electing someone on the basis of their abilities rather than how good they look on camera. You must have noticed that David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Milliband are basically the same person and not even an interesting one - just a vapid, focus group's idea of what politicians should look like: the margherita pizza of leadership candidates. Perhaps the reason Cameron kept inviting Rebekah Brooks round for dinner is he was short of guests, because unless you wanted a government contract or a tax break,  you wouldn't want to spend three hours with the man, a waxwork has more personality.

The first step in beating an addiction is to admit you have a problem. We're debt junkies, time to face facts. Or we could bury our heads in the sand and blame our politicians. As The Vapors sang in 1980, 'I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese'