Just for fun
Hats off to the Imperial War Museum which is making parts of its huge photograph collection available online, and allowing free-to-use for non-commercial sites. The chosen pic (above) is a Diamond T tank transporter in British Army service, moving a Churchill Mk I tank through heavy mud at the REME experimental recovery section at Aborfield, Berkshire, 7 April 1943.
To find this and similar, go to the "search" box at the top right of the site. In this case I entered "Diamond T" (without the inverted commas), which gives you this. Spool down the page until you see "Collections". This is a live link, so click it and it will bring you here. You then get presented with a fine list of photographs, any of which you can click and download.
This one here is extremely atmospheric – right-click the pic and its yours.
Enjoy!
Richard North 10/04/2012 |
Separate the local
Porter was chairman of the National Conservative Convention and deputy chairman of the Conservative Party Board, so one might presume that he knew a little of the subject about which he writes. Typical of the genre, though, he is a shallow thinker, and has very little to offer.
The thrust of Porter's complaint is sound enough – that there has been a "growing disconnect between the party leadership and the grassroots, and a loss of clarity, principle and policy direction". The voluntary party has been neglected, and the party leaders have lost touch with their members.
But in offering some very slight remedies, such as the election of party chairmen by the members, as opposed to being hand-picked by the leader, Porter has not even begin to study – or understand – the reason why the Party has centralised and finds its branch members so unnecessary.
Most likely, the root of the problem lies with television and the way the medium has steered general elections into a presidential campaign format. More and more, it is personalities that dominate the contests, to the extent that people are effectively voting for the man (or woman) rather than the party.
This means, of course, that an election campaign has to be planned and managed centrally. A local hustings meeting will be luck to get a few dozen uncommitted voters, whereas as single sound-bite on prime-time television will reach millions. In terms of vote gathering, the effect of the constituency parties is very slight indeed.
Rather than address the minutia, therefore, the answer to Mr Porter's problem may lie in addressing the root cause. As we suggested earlier, we might separate the electoral contests by having an elected prime minister.
On this basis, the central party system can run its presidential-style campaign, but the local parties should take complete charge of the elections for their own MPs. If local politics are to mean anything, the constituency parties should be in charge of their own destinies.
A clear break between the local and the national, between prime minister and MPs, would help do that.
Richard North 10/04/2012 |
Losing the knack of government
Millions of householders who want to build a conservatory, replace a broken boiler or install new windows will be forced to spend hundreds of pounds more on "green" projects, the paper said. It then tells us that they will not be permitted to carry out the home improvement or repair unless they agree to fork out for measures such as loft or wall insulation.
Autonomous Mind commented on the plans, linking to a piece on the Sky website, also bringing in the EU dimension, as did Witterings from Witney, giving us further background. The story is then picked up by John Page, who also refers us to a comment piece by Booker in the Daily Mail this morning.
This then, is all about our administration's obsession with climate change and the so-called "Green Deal", but there is another aspect here which has yet to be fully absorbed. It is part of the bigger picture relating to the management of our energy supplies.
The disgraced Huhne and now his successor whatsisname are bundling energy supply issues with consumption management, seeking to reduce significantly the amount of energy used.
In this case, the emphasis is on insulation standards and, in principle, the idea is not a bad one. Poor insulation in British homes is responsible for a colossal waste of energy and it makes sense to try to reduce that.
Nor is it necessarily a bad idea for government to be involved. Anyone who remembers the Clean Air Acts, and the mass conversion of domestic open fires to reduce air pollution, will know that properly planned government action, with popular support, can deliver a significant public good.
But, as Booker illustrates, what we have here is an unwieldy bureaucratic machine, seeking to attain an objective in a cumbersome, expensive and intrusive way, all in the context of a general lack of public support and engagement.
It therefore comes over as a top-down imposition, rather than a co-operative exercise, aimed at achieving a reasonable and desirable end.
And that encapsulates the problem with modern government. They have lost the knack of governing effectively. A potentially useful measure has been so badly designed, with such inept PR, that it is costing far more than it should, putting the backs up of innumerable people, and making life more complicated and unpleasant.
The lesson the administration has forgotten (I don't call it a government any more – that is in Brussels) is that, in order to achieve something of the magnitude of this project, you must engage people, enthuse them and carry them with you.
It takes a special kind of genius to mess things up this badly and, as the opinion polls will attest, that seems to be the only thing the Cleggerons are any good at.
Richard North 10/04/2012 |
People are mad
"There was no warning call and the risk of someone being injured was big, as the building is centrally located," a police official is cited as saying. The attack was the second in under a week. A similar bomb exploded at the office of former Prime Minister Costas Simitis last Tuesday.
The pictures in the Mail and elsewhere, however, indicate a far more serious explosion than the news agency report suggests, with the corner of the building ripped out and gutted.
Sky News is also at odds with the Reuters report, talking of a "powerful bomb", which indeed it must have been to have caused so much damage.
In a country where violence is fast becoming the norm, over the weekend mobs of militant protesters stormed a tiny television studio in northern Greece, pelting the news host with eggs and yoghurt for "airing the views of far-right politicians".
This, says Sky, signified something different and more telling. It then cites Yiorgos Karatzaferis, the leader of a small far-right party, who says, "People are mad. And perhaps justifiably so after so many years of austerity".
Despite that, not too much can be read into incidents, although the bomb could be the start of a growing trend. Greece is no stranger to civil war, and the people have been provoked enough for it to be on the cards. And when politicians stop listening, there are few other options left.
Richard North 09/04/2012 |
The sun has noticed
Each product, we are told, has its own code and staff must spend hours thumbing through a 912-page, 2in-thick manual to find the right one. And then we learn that this "hefty book", is called the Intrastat Classification Nomenclature, which categorises everything from livestock, chemicals and cosmetics to umbrellas, swords and wigs.
This "hefty book" though goes back to 1992, which is when we were writing on it. It goes so far back as to be pre-internet days. To remind myself of what Booker and I were writing at the time, I had to go back to The Castle of Lies, which you can now buy for a penny, plus p&p.
And there is pages 115-117 – all there, published in 1996 – the story of Intrastats. So, what Booker and I write sixteen years ago, The Sun finds news for today. If we wait another sixteen years, I suppose it might just catch up with what we are currently writing.
|
Posts
