England’s founders

England’s founders

Andrew Adonis, on Twitter, has challenged us to name three people as founders of England. I thought that’s a good game. Who would I choose?

What is England? I think it needs to be seen as defined by its Parliament, its capitalist economy and its social wage, the remaining jewel of which is the NHS. So I nominate the Immortal 7, Sir Robert Peel, and Aneurin Bevan.

The Immortal Seven are seven members of the House of Lords who invited William of Orange to England to ensure a protestant succession. Modern historians may argue about the extent this established Parliament as the supreme authority but it is generally considered the act that ended the English Civil Wars and started us down the road to our current constitution.

Sir Robert Peel not only founded the Tory Party but the Joint Stock Companies Act was also passed under his stewardship, I toyed with Marx as an observer of Capitalism and Brunel as the innovator/entrepreneur, except he wasn’t, but capitalism is about capital mobility and capital markets and so that Act which enabled these two things to happen.

Our benefit system is in tatters, Beveridge and Keynes will be turning in their graves, but the NHS remains, and it seems we have to associate Bevan with it. Bevan is of course Welsh.

At least one commentator on the twitter thread makes the point that analysing history through the lives of single people is not wise.

Left by the wayside are Henry VIII, Oliver Cromwell & Horatio Nelson …

Sound the alarm

Sound the alarm

I have just started the Secret Barrister, in the forward, they say,

When you have sat in as many decrepit court cells or tired, coffee stained witness suites as I have, looking into the eyes of someone whose most basic sense of what is ‘fair’ and what is right has been entirely crushed by their exposure to the criminal justice system, you can either slink into jaundiced defeatism or sound the alarm.

The Secret Barrister

And while I have not sat in courts, or witness suites, I (as an accompanying rep) too have met many who are shocked at the lack of fairness amongst our employers, and in our law.  …

Shropshire North By-election

The Tories have lost a seat they’ve held forever. You can find lots of people commenting often spinning it according to their agenda. I am not saying I am not biased, but the one incontrovertible truth is that it would seem that candidate quality counts. The winning Lib Dem is a committed local politician and campaigner, the Tory was not.

See what I said about Batley & Spen and candidate quality then, …

Sometimes ministers go to gaol.

I am astonished to read that Inger Støjberg, an ex-Danish immigration minister has been sent to prison for breaching migrant’s human rights. This followed a European Court of Human Rights ruling. I look forward to one of many cases against Priti Patel going to Strasbourg, for instance, this and this on her illegal and inhumane instructions on push back of refugees crossing the channel or her failures in progressing Windrush compensation or her discriminatory behaviour towards pre-settled EU citizen residents. She should be worried although her mate Dominc Raab has an answer. Neuter the ECtHR. …

Meyer’s Cultural Map

Meyer’s Cultural Map

I have just finished the Culture Map by Erin Meyer. It’s taken me longer to read than it should, but that’s not her fault. She argues, building on the work of, her predecessors, including Geerte Hofstede,  that there are eight dimensions of business communication, these are communicating, evaluating (feedback), leading, deciding, trusting, disagreeing, scheduling and persuading. She argues that cultures share positions on these dimensions as people’s comfort and natural style is based on their education systems and often deep seated cultural and historical factors. She argues that differences are relative i.e. you might be mediumly robust in offering direct feedback, but if you come across someone more so, you will find them rude, and need to recognise that if delivering such feed back to some one from a more robust culture, they may fail to understand. She uses charts to illustrate cultural differences across the dimensions and I reproduce one. I also offer an Anglo-Dutch phrase translator. I finish by wondering how useful this is for 121s. The blog article says much more, ...

An arithmetic concept

I am considering again, the role of Presidents of presidential republcs. Democracy means that the voice of the governed is heard, and is ideally final, that programmes are accountable to the people and the rights of the minority respected. Presidents, Leaders. or General Secretaries with weak mandates have the power and inclination to ignore the majority of their demos. Trump’s presidency among others proves that the argument, “that’s how it works” leads to crisis. Democracy is more than an arithmetic concept.  …

Fix the Tory Brexit, I don’t think so!

Fix the Tory Brexit, I don’t think so!

Up until now, the Labour Front bench has been promising to “Fix the Tory Brexit”, a statement echoed by Rachel Reeves in her speech to Conference, but the plaster seems to be cracking. David Lammy, in an interview with the BBC suggested that getting it right will involve renegotiating Boris’s deals, a move from Starmer’s position in January. Why this is controversial, I have no idea, if Labour don’t get their first, the Tories will. I should add that there is a growing support for rejoining the Customs Union and Single Market as solutions to the Northern Irish problems and the UK wide shortages and inflation. …

Fit for the Future

Fit for the Future

There's been a lot of words caused by Labour in Communication's publishing of their report Fit for the Future. This was covered by Labour List, who majored on Neil Kinnock, who wrote a forward and gave an interview. Much of the press and labour party comment followed this lead and talk about the ongoing purge which Kinnock, surprisingly, suggests is a distraction. The usual culprits are banging on about the unacceptability of legacy Blairite politics and how Kinnock lost the next two elections after he expelled the Militant. This is not helpful and suggest that the report has not been read. I precis the interesting bits and quote some other commentators. I think it's too long but more helpful than some might think. ...