Cold Calling, Round II- Getting Out of Debt

This is a Government warning. Did you know that, if you are struggling with debts of £5000 or more, then you can have 70% of it written off for free? That's right, legally written off for free. Press 5 now...

Once I got over the initial terror that budget cuts meant that now warnings of nuclear attacks had to be phoned through to us individually, this automated call gave me a good laugh.

Because, like millions of people my age, I am indeed struggling with debt, and significantly more than the £5000 mentioned. If this is a real government warning, then that's fantastic.

Of course, the money I owe is *to* Her Majesty's Government, in the form of my student loans. But hey, maybe if I'd have pressed five, they really were willing to write 70% of it off...

Wistful thinking much?!

The Shots Heard Around Britain

TERRIBLE SCENES IN THE STREETS, BAYONET CHARGE AND BULLETS, WOMEN AND CHILDREN VICTIMS

Headline in the Daily Chronicle, 27/07/1914. It was describing the aftermath of the Howth gun-running, when the Dublin Metropolitan Police and the Kings Own Scottish Borderers opened fire on crowds in Dublin, having failed to intercept arms headed for the Irish National Volunteers. Four people were killed and about 30 injured, and the incident was widely seen as the cue for civil war.

As it was, a shooting in Sarajevo a month ago ended up dominating the headlines and averting a civil war, at least for the time being. But that's a story we already know...

Welcome Back to 2008

And so the long, long night has finally ended. Today we hear that the UK economy has finally regained all the ground it lost in the aftermath of the Great Recession. We're now officially all richer than we were in 2008.


But statistics aren't everything. As a country, our GDP is higher, yes. But that says nothing for all those people who were cast onto the scrapheap of unemployment during that time, either for a while or long-term. It says nothing for all those people who have remained stuck in jobs they don't really want to be doing, for fear of having nothing else. It says nothing for all those graduates (personal gripe here!) who left university to find the world didn't care as much as it said it did when they got into university. The true cost of the Great Recession is not over. It's hiding beneath the surface, and one day will emerge.

And with wages still lagging well behind GDP growth, very few of us are actually any richer than we were in 2008 anyway. This may be a day for politicians to trumpet the idea that Britain is back, or at least back on track. But remember this question:

Next Tuesday is Election Day. Next Tuesday all of you will go to the polls, will stand there in the polling place and make a decision. I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago?

Ronald Reagan, debating with Jimmy Carter, 1980

The Wit and Wisdom of... The First Doctor

One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.

The First Doctor, leaving his granddaughter Susan, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, 26th Dec 1964.

A Law for All Seasons

Alice More: Arrest him!

Sir Thomas More: Why, what has he done?

Margaret More: He's bad!

Sir Thomas More: There is no law against that.

Will Roper: There is! God's law!

Sir Thomas More: Then God can arrest him.

Alice More: While you talk, he's gone!

Sir Thomas More: And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!

Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast– man's laws, not God's– and if you cut them down—and you're just the man to do it—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

A Man for All Seasons, 1966.

The Wit and Wisdom of... Jeremy Thorpe

Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his life.

Jeremy Thorpe, Liberal MP, in 1962, about Harold Macmillan's brutal Cabinet reshuffle, dubbed 'The Night of the Long Knives'. The quote is a deliberate inversion of John 15:13.

Exit Hush Puppies, Centre-Right

If a week is a long time in politics, then 42 years is pretty much an eternity. In 1972, Edward Heath was Prime Minister, Harold Wilson Leader of the Opposition. There were no Liberal Democrats, just the remains of the once mighty Liberal Party. The public sector was much bigger, with key industries run by the state. Trades unions were pillars of the workforce, and when they went on strike, people took notice. Scotland and Wales enjoyed virtually no autonomy, whilst it was beginning to dawn on politicians that maybe Northern Ireland had too much. Britain had not long shed the last of her colonies, and the military bases around the world which went with them. NATO was our most important foreign alliance, although we were on the brink of joining the new-fangled EEC.

Into this world a new Conservative MP was made a government whip. From that date until this evening, he has held office in every Conservative government. A junior minister at the start of the Thatcher era, he eventually rose to be Health Secretary, Education Secretary, Home Secretary and finally Chancellor of the Exchequer, arguably one of the most successful Chancellors ever. As if this tour de force wasn't enough, he also narrowly missed out on being Tory leader twice, once in 1997 and again in 2001, despite polls showing he was much more popular with the public than the eventual victors. Many believe he could have at least eased, and maybe even ended earlier, the Tory wilderness years of 1997-2010. Retreating to the backbenches gave him the independence go vote against the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In the current Conservative government, this man served as Justice Secretary, and a Minister Without Portfolio.

And today he goes. If any of the current Tory ministers repeat this feat, I shall be 66 when they leave office. But I doubt they'll do it with the same jazz-loving, cigar-smoking, pro-European moderate Toryism we've come to know and love. So farewell Ken Clarke, maybe the only Conservative leader I could ever have voted for. You shall be missed.

Murray-fever

Once again, Wimbeldon-mania is gripping much of the country. People who know literally nothing about tennis the rest of the year are transformed for a week or two into internationally renowned experts. And as Andy Murray, defending champion, winds his way towards defending his title yet again, I figured we could all do with some light relief:

http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/thework/885043/

N.B. This is from 2006, sufficiently long ago enough that I remember my Dad saying "Oh yes, that's the other one in the queue, the one that isn't Tim Henmann"!