When a woman cut the winter fuel allowance I felt this was the latest direct attack on women by the state (pink on pink again) and it went unnoticed. Why because nobody could extrapolate and have a guess. We know woman live longer on average so it stands to reason it was a tax on longevity or a saving from those living too long. Following the COVID cull it's what the rich would call progress. How many pensioners are over 90? Too many Whitehall cried and 80% are woman. Freeze them out, nobody cares about the old and it'll free up some housing stock. A callous way to sort the housing crisis I hear you cry but election manifesto promises must be kept (sic).
Hurrah, the bus has pulled into Pitlochry for my Highland adventure. It's time to see Tom, Sandra and the merry band at Killiecrankie.
It's also time for cake. Did I mention my waist is now 35" and yet my waist after a big Camino is 33". My weight is 15st and my weight after a big Camino is 16/4. I think my muscle has been eaten during this process.
I think it's time to do double cake while the merry band of folk singers entertain the growing crowd at Jaco Bite.
Tom and I recorded a song I've been writing. Don't worry, there's no link. It's about how people stand hesitantly on the sides wondering whether to get involved. My thread I tried to sow through it was the same cancer journey that many of us go on.
Tests, wait, pause, results,
Treatment, wait, pause for months.
Test, wait pause, results,
Treatment, wait, pause results
You feel like shouting out "I'm not standing still", but there's such a large part of "are you dancing, are you asking, if you're asking, well I'm dancing".
I like a bit of Dancing in my head so it's off to Inverness and then Ullapool today.
What is the split with men. It's more divide and rule but it's a side we should all take. Grannies, Mums sisters, daughters all being robbed of money again. So I demand again, what is the split?
"No shit Sherlock" was Miss Marple's response as the deer stalker looked sheepishly back at her saying 80% of people over 90 are women. I don't identify as a woman but I can have enough empathy to spot this injustice. As a man I know we tend to expire earlier which is just as well because historically we've enjoyed controlling the purse strings. The Christmas fuel allowance was, on balance, a messy payment to the poor women of this country. Whatever imperfections it had, as the wealthy women of the WI shouted, 'we don't need it', the voices of the poor women were never heard. Lobbyists from the funeral industry and Buckingham palace were delighted. Apparently as much as he likes his stamps, Chuckie two sticks and Charles first of Scotland doesn't like the 100th birthday nonsense and feels it should be updated to a more realistic rarity, An inter city 125. Divide and rule, it's been here all my life and I don't always spot it.
Earlier on Wednesday
It didn't happen before i was 9 and went to Washington with the rest of the family, much as I wanted to be home alone. While my dad was being a diplomatic attache I was going to the white house Christmas party and stuffing my face with sweets, while my mum had one less mouth to feed. I even got to sit down while my classmates did their Maoist "I pledge allegiance to the ....." Fascist salute of the flag. When I returned age 11, it was different. I stood out like a sore thumb, and it wasn't long before it was more than my thumb that was sore.
I'm just on my way out of town on a bus tour. The clock's ticking so better get to the other side of the road. I'll be jumping the Inverness bus at 10:17.
Meanwhile "back when I was younger they were laughing at me...." To borrow from SLF's Jake Burns.
Everything was about taking sides and having a Maryland accent marked me out.
Later on in life I'd work out divide and rule was a key industrial and society strategy. As I got older I realised that the rich were getting richer and the poor yet again poorer.
I had to decide as a wee middle class boy with a fair bit of entitlement from living in a "boat hoose", being a boy, to my class aspirations, do I join the rich or not. I loved the SLF line "there's always someone better off than you", but the Holyrood experience had clearly rubbed off. There were very few of me at that school. There were a whole lot more of those who saw leaving school, getting a job, a council house, fighting and drinking as the aspiration. The Specials called it well, "Married with a kid when they should be having fun". As council houses were still freely available in 1979 it probably made more sense than I realised. The boat hoose would look a silly move when the massive discounts on buying your council house arrived a few years later. Why go to university to leave home, just get a joab. Lots to admire about that too. There's more than one party to go to.
I could never imagine how hard I would find myself fighting to convince the poor that they should not stomp on the head of their victims. Later in the song, "don't be told, don't be consoled", flies out of Jake's gob to remind everyone to ignore the platitudes. I don't blame people for pulling up the drawbridge as very few knew they were doing it. The vast majority however we're just jostling for position and pushing their way to the front of the queue. They knew about winners and losers, so winning was their side. They were stuck in the meat machine. Political nonsense was a distraction and communities were going to start fragmenting. This would be the age of get on your bike, but only a few had a bike.
Society was dividing and generations were dividing. The musical back drop was punk rock replaced the hippy prog rock era while mods, then the new romantics completed the move to gloss it all over. Deadbeat was conceived, published and completed in those turbulent years.
Yet for many who got a start and were working life wasnt too bad.its why even now there's a great perception of revisionist thinking but it's not. It just depends which side of the divide you fell on.
I thought that as I was getting the PET scan. Would I prefer not to know and find out when it was not treatable or would I rather know. Many of us walk around with our cancers and do we say ignorance is bliss or with hindsight, I wish I'd known. On years to come genetic screening will ensure we know when our immune system has fought off a cancer and when that cancer is having a party at our expense.
I joked nervously at the beginning about Stockholm syndrome and getting too fond of my lump. It seems the lump responded with ardour as it's still here. Am I unlucky because I'm a good host or am I lucky I had it checked out.
Many people believe you have a number and when it's called, your time is up, the boat must return. I don't know but I'm happy on my pedallo for now.
I remember the song like it's been my mantra for 40+ years. The punchline resonated because it was all about consider yourself lucky you're not one of them really poor folk.
I look back at all the stuff I wrote from the 80's onwards. Many people ask why we don't have a sovereign fund when Norway do. The answer is tragically very simple. We made choices, we elected people and gave them the choice of how all our windfalls are spent.
The government, in the 80's did one hell of a lot of redistribution. Like all governments they talked about decentralised power while sucking the wealth into London.
They sold the council houses, out from under the councils who had been the ones who maintained and upgraded them. The councils were left with the debt and given none of the revenue from the sales. They took this money into the centre, where as we know all governments have done since.
They started a programme of privatisation reversing 35 years of government investment in industry. Selling the assets at a discount some viewed at the time as a fire sale. The issues were so oversubscribed people accused them of naiviety or worse still corruption for not getting value for the country. They used some of the proceeds to fight wars both internally with their citizens and externally. It was a bizarre time. They weren't alone as the graphs on public assets globally were plundered. What the Greeks, Romans, Vikings etc never realised is you need a religion.
When the world lurched to the right in the 80's, very few people did not like having a few quid in their tail. The issue I had was only those with capacity could take advantage. The more cash capacity the greater the greedy could be. Some might argue ours weren't as bad as what the Russian oligarchs did, but we're just discussing semantics. Theft for some, not all, is very unfair. Or should I rephrase that, some theft is prosecuted, some is encouraged.
Some people still think theft is too strong a word but as someone who signed the cheques in WoodMac for these privatisations I can confirm it's not.
At the time we all thought it funny when one of the directors applied in 50 different names from his household. Mickey mouse and Donald duck appeared many times on the Share register albeit only until the shares were sold on first day of trading. The practice was called stagging. You applied for as many as you could afford to, selling them at the guaranteed profit, the early trading indications were rarely overstated. You were not allowed to apply multiple times but it was not policed. Many people used initials after their name to indicate a "child". It was self policing and the greedy couldn't help themselves. It was free money and they wanted as much of it as possible. The industry were not interested in policing it either. Every application ensured they got paid an introduction and a selling fee.
At the time it was both funny and extremely sad. I found myself quite bipolar on it. I could see the humour of the greed as not everyone was. I could also see the calculations they'd done. If you applied for 10,000 it would be scaled back to 1000. If you applied for 50@200, you would get 10,000. If you wanted to make £3000 you did 50@200.
I would take a lot of slagging and I'd give it out too. My holier than thou attitude to not taking this handout would ensure I could continue to be poorer than those who did. I'd miss out on the champagne celebrations when the final numbers were added out. I'd miss out on the Carribbean holiday BT would be providing. I'd console myself I could sleep at night and wasn't part of the great government train robbery. I wasn't any good at cracking jokes back then either. They won the cash and the banter but I had my morals whatever they were. I'd eventually concede after 5 or 6 of these things that I'd better join in or I would never be in a position to change anything. I thought the least I could do was try and find the theft for other people.
There were many honest people with a small amount of savings that said I will buy these and lock them away as part of a savings plan. The irony is that if they were good enough to be locked away as a savings plan why was the government in a hurry to sell such valuable assets. It's true, it was a valuable savings plan.
The same was true of council houses. Many sharks realised they could get as many house as they had council houses in their names so would fund family members to buy their homes. Children would beseech their parents, aunts and uncles to buy their home. Some would do so and others would hold firm. Some belonged to the generation when there had been no such housing and they knew it's value only too well. Like a good wine, when it's gone it's gone. When the council houses had all gone, they were gone. They now appear, largely for rent in an estate near you.
It was a wonderful time to study human behaviour and why nazi Germany rose so quickly. Why the Hutu could create such hysteria and hatred about their Tutsi neighbours, resulting in the Rwanda genocide of 500,000+. It still sits with me that my world sat by while in 100 days this genocide took place, largely with swords. Machetes that hacked through flesh. It's frightening to think of, hotel Rwanda is a tough watch. These atrocious events like Gaza today, make me want to stand up, call it out and it's the same with where did all the money go. I just hear Jake's "don't be told, don't be consoled". Even if things aren't so bad what's upsetting is things could have been so much better for us all. We have just found ourselves victims to the political class having fewer morals and even less capacity.
The north sea oil revenues which would start to flow into the treasury during the 80's were another excellent chunk of change but far from creating a sovereign fund the cash was used to fund more nonsense. Political battles to win idealogical wars. Moving unemployment from 1m to 3m in under 3 years was a masterstroke of right wing thinking. The unions and the labour party destroyed in one swift purge. The fact it cost a fortune became the reason why the welfare state had to be abolished. The skittles fall beautifully into line and the only disappointment the right got was not freezing the pension there and then. Transferring the education debt to the students was an outstanding piece of conjuring, a national disgrace.
The 80's culminating in the reversal of the ill conceived poll tax. How much of that shortfall was paid for by local citizens and central government will doubtless never be known.
What we do know is the parliament like the royal family was not privatised.
Westminster for whatever reason, like Buckingham Palace, was not sold and leased back during this period, well not to my knowledge. Clearly some assets were worth preservation. Perhaps they have been handed out and Iissed the memo.
Fast forward to the late 90's and 2000's and we see the political momentum for saying decentralisation while continuing with abhorrent asset stripping of the state. It's what politicians do, hide in plain sight.
I sometimes find myself reading the Scotsman column Edinburgh property guy David Alexander takes enormous pride writing about, usually house price inflation.
In the latest he proudly describes the top end of the market as being particularly bouyant. I'm not quite sure why he's so smugly saying to our nurses and doctors, lecturers and teachers that they'll never be able to afford a house. They'll be lucky enough to hold a job down the university will tell us, they're so skint.
The good David tells us Edinburgh prices are up £67611 in 12 months for detached property, an average of 10%. Well I'm pretty sure wages haven't moved that way. It used to be those stomping grounds I walk through used to be owned by those doctors and educationalists but are much more likely to be owned by a sports star, tax accountant, builder or financial planner.
The good David goes further and says despite Scotland's higher taxes for income and property stamp duty. I think if house prices are up £67k then we are clearly taxing too little. At the top end of the market there is no price sensitivity being displayed.
In economics if there is no price sensitivity you should migrate to the point where there is equilibrium. In short move tax until they feel it. The highest band of council tax needs a higher band. The highest bands of stamp duty need increased. We need to impact consumption. Once we do we can refine it. A big empty house needs even more police to monitor it when the alarm goes off. Edinburgh is full of them now and their policing is not a victimless crime.
So has the cold weather payment cull worked and thrown more houses onto the market to dampen demand.
I somehow doubt it. I think this is Ullapool - I'm liking what I see. If you are waiting for something this seems a good place to wait. Time I found the FBI. Every fishing town has a Ferryboat Inn.
When I return it will be time to get some result and a bit of redemption at last...
I hope.
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