Author: tomkilcourse

Listening to The Today Programme this morning I was struck by the way language is used to influence one’s impression. In an item on young Chinese homosexuals who deceive their parents by going through a sham marriage ceremony between a male and a female homosexual, the phrase ‘gay and lesbian’ was used constantly. Not once did I hear the word ‘homosexual’.

It reminded me of the way the feminist movement used the term ‘single mother’ to blur the distinction between unmarried mothers and mothers who were divorced. This was done to confuse antipathy to the former with sympathy for the latter. As time passed, the word ‘mother’ was dropped to favour ‘single parent’, which has in turn been dropped for ‘lone parent’.

This was no accident, but a deliberate manipulation through language. It was the feminists who told us how important language was to our impressions, hence the suffix ‘man’ was dropped from numerous previously used titles. That this was no accident is shown by the conscious, sometimes silly, avoidance of the suffix. So, a few weeks ago Peter Tatchel spoke on radio of a ‘clergyperson’, while someone else used the term ‘dustpersons’. The word ‘pathetic’ comes to mind.

Indeed, for anyone on this site who writes, I have been told this week that the new on-line publisher’s web-site is now fully operative, and seeking writers. The editor will consider novels, collections of short stories, or even single shorts. If you are interested, go to http://www.writersreadersdirect.com/home

In a radio interview this morning it was alleged that Britain has forgotten how to develop strategic planning in defence and security. The interviewee told us that the Civil Service College has reduced training in strategic thinking from a six-month course to a one-day module. The allegation has the ring of truth, and not simply in defence and security.

It appears to me that British thinking is plagued by short-termism, with policy initiatives being entirely reactive to latest events. There is little sign that anyone is thinking of where the country should be in the longer run: twenty or thirty years’ time. Why is this? A clue lies in the present obsession with the obscure notion of ‘fairness’. It seems that every initiative becomes swamped in debate on whether it is fair to this or that group. In these debates the word ‘discrimination’ is commonly used in its newly pejorative sense.

Well, long term strategic thinking demands discrimination. If the country continues on its reactive, egalitarian course the future will be determined by the loudest voices, rather than by a vision of where and what we wish to be. Britain must learn afresh to discriminate in numerous fields. In education it is important that children from poorer homes have access to higher education, but it is arguably more important to ensure that graduates can find gainful employment without having to emigrate. Such a future is not assured if we treat all degree courses as equally worthy.

It is economic madness to pretend that a degree in media studies or visual arts is as important to the nation as one in material science or engineering. People with the latter qualifications can ensure that Britain competes in tomorrow’s industrial world. They are the people who can ensure that others are able to indulge in the arts. Britain needs a diverse manufacturing base if it is to remain a developed economy, and it needs politicians who are prepared to discriminate in their policies to bring such a future about. Nigel Lawson was clearly wrong to discount the importance of manufacturing.

Certain degree courses should be financed entirely by government, and certain industries should receive discriminatory preferences to ensure that those young people with the preferred qualifications do not have to go abroad to find work. The alternative is to have a poorer future for Britain as a whole.

The intention to check the condition of people drawing incapacity benefit, and to switch those who fail to job seakers allowance, led to a discussion on the BBC during which opponents of the idea protested loudly and repeatedly that there aren’t enough jobs available. This diverted the discussion from the real, and only, issue, whether or not some people are registered for the wrong benefit. The number of jobs available is irrelevant to that point.

On the radio this morning someone announced, with a hint of astonishment in the voice, that the proportion of British prisoners who are black is higher than in the US. Clearly, British police and courts are racist. What other explanation can there be? Well, the result of some recent research in France may provide a clue. Here, it was found that men of sub-Saharan origin were four times more likely to be involved in criminal activity than white men from the same social group. Those of Arab origin were twice as likely than whites. Could there be some connection, perhaps?

The following is taken from ‘Oiklet’ (www.crazyoik.co.uk), the on-line ramblings of the Crazy Oik magazines editor. It appeared originally in the Fortean Times. You couldn’t make it up, as they say in literary circles.

An interesting item on The Today programme this morning reminded me of a suggestion I made some years ago, when Blair was giving free rein to his obsession with university for everyone. James Naughtie toured some manufacturing workshops in Birmingham and interviewed their executives. They claimed that there are two big problems faced by small manufacturers of quality goods, access to finance and a lack of trainees to learn the necessary skills.

It is the second problem that I address. Why do we not allow children to leave school at fifteen if they obtain an apprenticeship at such a company? In my view, insisting that all children remain in school later than that age is a facet of the intellectual snobbery of those decision makers who have never worked with their hands. Many children simply do not wish to continue schooling after that age and some, through boredom, become disruptive and interfere with the education of more studious classmates.

As well as ensuring the continuance of crafts and relieving teachers of the uninterested, the system would produce income in families that really need it.

A couple of days ago someone posted a blog on MyT in which it was claimed that only fools write without being paid. As a compulsive writer for many years, I had to confess to foolery. I was firsts published in 1959, an article in ‘The Miner’, but it was in the seventies that I really caught the bug. From 1976 I had about three articles a year published in various management and academic journals, for the next twenty-odd years. After retirement, I turned my hand to journalism and fiction, short stories mainly. Over all those years I believe I received no more than two, small cheques (The journalism apart). Foolish? Well, that is a matter of opinion, but the blog set me thinking in broader terms.

Throughout my career I cannot remember ever being motivated by money. What drove me was a sense of achievement, and new challenges. I tended to change employers as soon as my job became simply routine. I worked in management and organisational development, establishing the policy and framework, and operating it for a while once in place, but moving on fairly quickly.

My reward now is not financial, although I was not impoverished, but in memories of things done and people worked with. A few months ago I received an e-mail from someone I had not seen for twenty-five years. A mutual acquaintance gave her my address. In the e-mail, she said:  “…I can still remember parts of the training course you ran at ——-, decades ago. You were instrumental in enabling me to have enough confidence to have a career that has taken me all over the place”. “The impressions and impact you made led me onto being a Local Government Chief Officer, then going into freelance consultancy….”  I have received similar remarks from a man whom I influenced in the same period. They are rewards that I value more than a few extra quid on my pension.

In this respect, I don’t believe that I am at all unusual. Most people, in my experience are motivated principally by non-financial rewards. Or am I out of date?

Someone suggested recently that extensive foreign ownership of British industry and utilities does not matter. I disagree, but am prepared here, for the sake of brevity, to accept that ownership by foreign commercial companies operating out of a democracy is not a critical problem. Rather than debate that matter, I wish to focus on a form of foreign ownership which can indeed be a serious problem, should Britain be subjected to it.

I mentioned yesterday (Straws in the Wind) that in the western form of capitalism, those with economic interest act in politics to pursue their commercial objectives, and that state capitalism reverses this process. There, those with political objectives act on the economy in pursuit of their political aims. Therein lies a danger.

A number of countries, most notably, but not exclusively, China are running up huge foreign reserve funds through their trade surpluses. In many cases, those funds are then siphoned into a government controlled bank and used to build Sovereign Wealth Funds. Those funds are then used in turn, sometimes through a nominally commercial company, to invest in acquiring foreign assets. Such investment may not have a commercial rationale, but be more the result of geopolitical aims of the government.

So, if one can be sanguine about foreign commercial companies owning British assets, perhaps a little more concern is called for if those companies are too close to their domestic government, and may, under political pressure, use ownership as a lever to influence Westminster. Certainly, concern is now being expressed in America.

Empires do not collapse in one cataclysmic event. Rather, death creeps up on them in a series of incremental setbacks, so slowly that most of those living within the walls remain unaware of their growing frailty, their complacency and decadence making the probable end inevitable. Though external enemies may hasten decline, they cannot strike fatally when the empire is at the height of its power, but must wait until that power wanes as the system on which it has been built is superseded by another. We live now in such a time. The enemies of American style capitalism, whether they be Muslims or others, need only wait.

Both America and its British satellite are destined to social fragmentation and economic decline because of two aspects of globalisation: migration and the attachment to ‘free’ trade and movement of capital. Voices are raised in awareness, but they are of a minority. Two recent books, ‘The End of the Free Market’ by Ian Bremmer, and ‘Free Trade Doesn’t Work’ by Ian Fletcher, both authors being American and pro-capitalist, warn of impending doom, but the majority of economists bury their heads in trusted models.

William J Barber began the prologue to his book ‘A History of Economic Thought’ with the question “Why should the history of economics be studied?” To me, the answer is plain: those who do not know their history are likely to repeat its mistakes. Modern theorists such as Bremmer and Fletcher are reminiscent of earlier observers like Adam Smith and David Ricardo who so effectively criticised mercantile thinking that preceded the capitalist system. Continue reading “Straws in the Wind”