The pedalo invasion

Back in the 80s many people talked about "getting on your bike" but that's not what my pals did. 

Many of them did pedal but they didn't pedal their bikes.

We was part of the Scottish invasion, we were part of the migrant crisis as my pals from Berlin told me.

We answered the call. Trainspotting covered what some Hibs supporters were up to but the others ventured off shore. They left Granton in their pedalo fleets. Pedalling perilously out of the firth of forth with nothing more than a few tinnies, pilchards, special and lager. It's a long distance to Germany we laughed.

Today it seems ridiculous but 40 years ago it seemed like we were reliving history. With every splash we felt the freedom from a frightening regime. Thatcher was sending her boats to the south Atlantic and we were launching our invasion in search of lunch.

People were starving as unemployment spared. We didn't have the benefit of the wondrous welfare state. The queen hadn't opened her 1000th food bank. We had homes but our rental sector was shrinking. They were being sold and put children couldn't hope to get one. The age went up and up, the points went higher and with that, your 25 year old child's desire would soon expire.

I knew the pedalo promised something our politicians couldn't offer. Norman Tebbits was almost right. We'd all got on our bikes and cycled around the country. We'd searched every corner. There was no work. The council houses were being sold. We thought they will need to build new ones. We kept holding fast, we kept believing but there was no new building.

We were fit, with families to feed. We fled in our fifties, out five hundreds, our five hundred thousands. We took to the water. Deacon Blue sang about our march in a song called Dignity.

We pedalled until we reach the shore. We got work. We sent cash home. Some of us earned so much we could fly home. We flew home to partners who had never been abroad. How do you describe a workplace. It was work. We had work. 

Free Markets & Movement in 2026

Many economists talk about free movement they usually mean capital and very rarely mean labour.

Most people recognise that freedom of movement allows labour to move to where the jobs are and results in cities or concentrations of population approximate to where there is work.

The free market theories become unstuck regularly and fans of Adam Smith are often confused or bemused about the moral fibre of ruthless opportunistic individuals.

Sadly those people need to wake up and smell the roses. Give opportunity to all, make it a competition and you'll produce winners and losers.

In the middle is the prize money executives.

When the prize money is all or nothing, you have a society in decay.

In ancient cities it breeds collapse.

Whether you choose Almunecar as your point of reference or Babylon.....will I go on.....do you remember what happened at hanging rock 1000 years before, or atapuerca millions of years before that?

Oh please, can we move the conversation on. It's about the smiles, hugs and love in the room.

It's about the music that inspires us not the shite that drags us down.

It's about the art of conversation and the pictures in the pub.

It's the lives we been lucky to know and the people we have touched.

Thank you for those moments, I'll cherish them every day.

Thanks for having the strength to believe in a better way.

Most of the song is CF...G, all my songs are....

Look after each other, it's going to get very messy.

The diminution of the age related tax free allowance

Also known as the how the old got poor.

It was well recognised during "austerity" as they liked to call it that those who lived long enough to get a pension should not get it tax free.

Signing up to the triple lock whilst removing any age related tax free allowance has ensured pensions are now taxable.

They always have been but we're largely lower than the tax free allowance. Now they are higher.

What a cruel twist of political fate that pensioners decided which government got elected and both shafted them.

That's one thing the politicians agreed on. 

Get their vote.....😘

The demise of leg up capitalism, ok it's last stage capitalism

Pinpointing when ladder up replaced leg up capitalism is difficult. Choosing an exact date is impossible.

The conclusion is it was a gentle generational shift commencing during the 80's. Restoring the natural order of keeping the riff raff at arms length wasn't easy. It's been a challenge. The battle raged across many industries as legal ducks were put in a row. Fixing the patriotic flags to the mast and managing them into the ground, from wars via Olympics to national grieving. The marketing was magnificent. Devastating the manufacturing industry and replacing it with service jobs from finance, fashion to marketing and tourism. Selling everything from the fabric of the nation, the bricks and mortar of our national wealth to information superhighway dreams. We had the unlimited oil revenues. We were a major player.

We talked about children having their own PC at school and how advanced those children would be. By the year 2000 every kid would have an iPad and jotters would, well, get their jotters. Teachers, well they'd never had it so good.

Silicon Glen was about to be nationalised to provide universal free laptops to the nations politicians, hospitals, schools, even households.

We were sold a dummy and we took it. Misdirected by the politicians and the trusted TV screens. Instead of free fibre we all pay service fees (aka taxes) for WiFi, for phones and still pay an additional income taxes to fix the pot holes left by these service providers. The market allows you to shop around the marketing people make sure we don't try too hard. They're highly skilled having honed those skills selling double glazing or timeshare in the 80' & 90's. 

They are the epitome of the ladder up generation of grifters.

Even now I find it stupendous that political commentators don't understand how living standards can crumble while economic growth could double.

We don't all rise with the tsunami of economic growth. Some of us drown quicker.

In the case of communication (phones / WiFi) it is easy to see the GDP growth of the service sectors and how it impacts on the poorest.

Wages at the lower end are not keeping pace with property costs. With a rising number of our nation's people sliding further into poverty what the poorest spend their money on needs our focus.

If it is rent then how far away from Hoover ville are we.

I wrote over 10 years ago about property increasingly becoming an investment class that parents were using to both get the leg up for the children while inadvertently pulling the ladder up too. It really accelerated during the 90's and the pedal went to the metal this millennium. All of it fuelled by the Thatcher/Blair bung to a chosen few. Some put the figure at 10% and I'd say yeah possibly more but 5 million well chosen people easily earn you a landslide. 1 million was probably enough for Starmer.

We talk (occasionally build) affordable housing but how can it ever be without radical intervention. That ship has sailed. Is the only saviour housing associations. Surely there has to be a solution for those working in housing associations too. This is where my brain goes off on one. How can my treatment be delivered by qualified radiographers on £24000, when 4 times their wages buys nothing but a camper van. Why can a qualified member of the NHS not receive a government backed 0.00% loan to buy a house. Just like the banks who tied their staff with low cost mortgages. Come on government, it's not inflationary to improve your staff's lot. Save the NHS, give them houses.q

The macro is they can't afford to buy unless they get a huge subsidy, rise or live a longer way from work and then we are back into greenhouse gases.

When the Olympics legacy was being discussed I remember listening to the voices of Josephine and Tommy C. They both talked about the Olympic legacy in terms of a modern mini city.

When you walk around Stratford and that area of East London you can see aspects of what succeeded and where the ambition was thwarted or just lacking. From the new parliament, a working hub for local and national government to the provision of hospitals, housing and education.

The whole area could have become a technological Mecca. Even now it represents an opportunity to reset our climate chaos focus.

The truth is there before our eyes. We will keep pretending that growth is the answer when in fact we might want to consider surviving. We talk about prospering but we should be discussing ways of surviving. I feel like Cassandra all the time. I'm not a prophet of doom, or someone with a vision. I'm merely a guy who has played chess before. I can see a check mate coming. I didn't start the game but I'm part of the endgame.

If AI is the answer riddle me this. If you ask AI how much damage to the environment AI will do as it acquired the ingredients and power it needs, how will it answer.

Hmmm.

Do we really need more power or learn to need less. I have given family members and friends money my whole life. Did they ever stop needing more. I always naively believed that once out of a hole you wouldn't volunteer to go back into it. I am naive.

Digression is my thought process. As I lose focus I calm down. Ah, that was cathartic.

My next post will be on an investment trust I want to create for those who will likely find it difficult to get on the property ladder. Sliding ladder on way down investment trust-SLOWDIT.