Fracking indignant of Newcastle!

I have to break my silence! I'm a Geordie - no really, I am. Born in the heart of Newcastle upon Tyne. Then brought up in Durham for the first formative couple of years of life. As far as I can see, Lord Howell has been in politics and journalism all his working life, and is a Home Counties' man through and through. His title is Baron Howell of Guildford of Penton Mewsey (a picturesque village in a sparsely populated bit of Hampshire). I discover that "the village is home to approximately 400 people and has about 110 houses. The name Penton derives from the word Penitone, which is a word for a farm held at penny rent. Until the 1920's the Pentons (Mewsey and contiguous Grafton) were mainly agricultural communities supporting sheep and corn, typical of northern Hampshire at the time. The Pentons are still surrounded by farmland which is currently completely arable" (Jody Cletus). 

Yesterday I put a rather knee-jerk reaction to a comment the noble lord made in Parliament yesterday on Facebook, which has provoked an interesting discussion. According to The Daily Telegraph “There are obviously in beautiful rural areas, worries not just about the drilling and the fracking, which I think are exaggerated, but about the trucks, the delivery and the roads and the disturbance,” Lord Howell said. “And those are quite justified worries.”
“But there are large uninhabited and desolate areas, certainly up in the North East where there’s plenty of room for fracking well away from anyone’s residence where it can be conducted without any kind of threat to the rural environment.”  And I must say I wasn't too impressed by the widespread mirth with which his remarks were greeted by his colleagues. I commented on my status, "As Geordie, what can I say - except I'm desolated!"

Someone pointed out to me that desolate means "devoid of inhabitants, deserted", which is true; but it also has the sense of "bleak and unwelcoming" - which is not true. As Justin Welby, who was Bishop of Durham before being moved to Canterbury, tweated: "North east England very beautiful, rugged, welcoming, inspiring, historic, advancing, not 'desolate' as was said in House of Lords today." I'd suggest the three pictures confirm this perspective.

My real beef with the noble peer is his presumption to know what the North-easterners would like done with their back yard. What he calls large "uninhabited and desolate areas" are the lungs and recreational facilities for the millions living in the large conurbations of the area. It may be that they would like the employment that fracking would generate. But he should first ask himself whether he'd welcome the industry, with its associated infrastructure, to the Test Valley, or wherever his favourite place of unspoiled beauty is. One of my interlocutors argued stoutly in Lord Howell's defence on the grounds of our need for cleaner energy sources and of the North east's need for employment. I tend to agree that the evidence for associated seismic activity and pollution of watercourses is dubious, though not disproved. On the other hand another uncertainty is whether our reserves would prove sufficient to contribute significantly to our energy security. It's very doubtful. Sadly because of our and Europe's inaction we have almost lost one of the renewable energy industries in which we were world leaders, the production of top-grade silicon wafers, essential ingredients of solar panels, to a hugely subsidised Chinese industry. 

As a heavily populated small island, the scope for producing sustainable energy without adverse environmental impact is indeed taxing. Every scheme that's proposed should be weighed against what will be lost. Lord Howell's defender lives on the West Sussex coast. I asked him, "I agree about energy supplies, and that our rather feeble efforts at renewables aren't enough. But the question remains: would YOU be happy to see the infrastructure accompanying fracking on the South Downs?" To give him his due, he replied, "I would accept it, if somewhat reluctantly." I wonder if Baron Howell of Guildford, Penton Mewsey, would be so noble... There are tracts of uninhabited desolate arable land and copses just north of the village, I see from Google Earth. I'm sure gas would be much more profitable than wheat and pheasants. And there's lots of it in Hampshire, we're told... 

Hot Cripple

This is dedicated to Jeannie Jones.

You might be forgiven for thinking that "hot cripple" is a description of me at the moment. Well, it's true. It could well be! I'm hot (in the literal sense); and I'm a cripple, also literally. However - it's not. It's the title of the book I've just finished reading. I was recommended it by my New York friend, Jeannie, who also has PLS.

I must say it's great read. One reviewer called it "hilarious and harrowing" - which is pretty accurate. If you'd like a short (1 minute) trailer for it you could watch this. For a longer taste of its (strong) content you could watch this 15-minute version of Hogan Gorman's stage show which gave rise to the book. The book should be compulsory reading for MPs and anyone inclined to privatise the National Health Service, and for those who reckon that benefit claimants are shirkers and fraudsters.

It's ex-model and aspiring actress, Hogan Gorman's true account of being hit by a car reversing at 40 mph down a one-way street in New York and sustaining life-threatening injuries. As the paramedic comments, "I can't believe you're alive. When I saw the car I was sure you were a DOA" (dead on arrival). The snag is that, being a waitress, Hogan does not have health insurance - it doesn't go with the job. And so she falls prey to the also-ran medical provision for the unlucky millions of Americans who can have no private cover. The saving grace of her story of progressive degradation and repeated humiliation at the hands of an inhuman (with one or two exceptions) bureaucracy is the humour with which she recounts it. But there is no escaping the suffering she endures along with others she meets in the social security offices and the disability assessment centres and finally in the courts. She has to face the stigma of living on food stamps ($4.7 a day - that's just over £3). She undergoes sub-standard medical treatment, because the "best" doctors are doing the insurance cases, and as a result she has to resort to a 100% loan to cover the cost of putting it right. And so the catalogue of horror continues. I'm not going to tell the whole story, because I'd like you to read it (I'm hoping you won't be offended by the street language - not stronger than we're used to on TV). And in case you're concerned, I have to say it is not at all a dark book. Indeed I would say it's intensely life-affirming - almost joyous - and certainly remarkable. 

However the burning point of this post and the book is how catastrophic it would be if we ever allowed our NHS (imperfect as it may be) to be in the slightest eroded. It's also a strong warning-call, from someone who really knows, of the perils of the American system of social security to which we seem so curiously attracted. I challenge you not to be challenged and made indignant by all that Hogan is forced, through no fault of hers, to endure. From all inhuman systems, good Lord deliver us.

More heat than light in Iraq

I sometimes think that our Western tendency to intervene in other nations' affairs is like children finding a big firework and lighting the blue touch paper and standing back to see what happens. We mean it for the best - but the resulting explosion, though creating extensive copy and great pictures for our media, has tragic consequences for those in the vicinity, those who can't stand well back.

I'm provoked once again to think of this by a report in Reuters by Samia Nakhoul returning to Baghdad ten years after the American/British invasion of Iraq. He starts "The last time I left Baghdad was on a stretcher." He had been covering the "liberation" for Reuters from the 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel when it was hit by a shell of an advancing American tank. He gives an extensive personal account of what he found on his return. The survey does not make a comforting read. He concludes:
"I cannot make up my mind which is worse: Damascus at war or Baghdad under democracy. As a friend once told me: In the Middle East wars don't bring peace, they bring bigger wars."

Nakhoul particularly highlights the Shia-Sunni division that is such a cause of tension. Saddam Hussein was a Sunni; the current Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, is a Shi'ite as are 60% of the population. As far as I know the only man working with leaders of the two religious sects is Andrew White, vicar of Baghdad, that tireless worker for peace, who regularly sits down with both together. From his accounts, the leaders share a desire for an end to the violence and for reconciliation. One wonders where the fuel for conflict comes from and who stokes it.

Traffic lights in Baghdad, supplied by the British Army, but not
up to the heat (60ºC) of Iraq [Photo: Andrew White]

One Wednesday in Woolwich

I think it was the late Margaret Thatcher who talked about denying terrorists "the oxygen of publicity". In that she was wise.

The media machine and Westminster politicians have gone to town over the act of savagery that took place on the streets of Woolwich on Wednesday. It was a bloody and brutal crime with a young father being hacked to death in broad daylight and his murderers showing no remorse, but rather the reverse. It was an egregious crime. The two young men clearly wanted maximum coverage for what they had done and for their godless slogans of hatred. They clearly wished to be numbered with the dishonourable company of terrorists. And thanks to the media and the united declarations of our politicians - indeed of no less an ally than President Obama - their wish has been granted, beyond, I imagine, their wildest dreams. No doubt they will wear the title "terrorist" as an accolade for their rest of their incarcerated lives - with satisfaction.

What we actually witnessed too many times on Wednesday was no more than a grubby vicious murder by a pair of deluded and feral young men, who dressed up their murder most foul as a political quasi-religious act. The very broadcasting of the murderers themselves was questionable. The repetition of it ad nauseam was merely dancing to their agenda and in my view played to the basest instinct of voyeurism. The elevating (if elevation it is) of the crime to an act of terrorism has been merely to achieve the young men's aim on their behalf, to instil fear. The continual media headlining of the incident merely maintains the spotlight (as, in a small way, I admit, does this - my only comment on the subject).

The East End Imam, Ajmal Masroor, potently denounced the murderers on Sky News. I can't find the clip on YouTube, but the terms he used were very similar to his reaction to the tube bombers in 2005:

An imam talks about so-called terrorists, which is well worth listening to. 

From the Levison enquiry we learned about the positive symbiotic relationship that can exist between press and police - where the publicity given by the press is able to help with official investigations. In this case it seems that the publicity given by the two estates of government and the press have merely added oxygen to a horrible immolation on the streets of Woolwich. It wasn't great news. Last year about a hundred people were murdered in London. But Wednesday was a tragedy for one young man, Lee Rigby, his wife, Rebecca, their toddler son, Jack, and their close family. And they probably don't need to have the details of Lee's death endlessly pored over by the rest of us. May they all have some peace.

Where angels fear to tread

People sometimes ask me if I've ever been to Israel - or to the Holy Land. And the answer is that I have, in 1966! That was before the Six Day War, when the political map so radically changed. As a family we did something which would be impossible nowadays, I suspect: drove overland across Europe, through Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, in a black Ford Consul 375, spending a week in East Jerusalem (as it then was) before crossing through the Mandelbaum Gate into West Jerusalem (as it then was). The political arrangement seemed to be working quite peacefully, as far as I in my teenage  years could tell. However the uneasy equilibrium was destroyed when less than a year later Israel launched preemptive strikes against the perceived threat of hostile forces gathering on all its borders.

I'm not one for pontificating on the rights and wrongs of the present situation in the Middle East. I do suspect that meddling by external "powers" only exacerbates the mess. The British establishment has not learned the lessons of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, it seems, with its careless encouragement of the Syrian uprising over two years ago. I've just been listening to Katie Melua's thoughtful song:
"If a black man is racist, is it okay
if it's the white man's racism that made him that way,
'cause the bully's the victim, they say?
By some sense they're all the same,
'cause the line between wrong and right
is the width of a thread from a spider's web...". Apportioning blame is a mug's, or a thug's, game.

One thing I am certain of is that isolation and non-communication is not a productive policy. Which is why I am sorry that Stephen Hawking has decided not to attend a conference next month in Israel. At first it was announced "for health reasons"; then it was because of a boycott of Israel by British academics - New York Times report. It's sad, because dialogue is always more productive than silence. It's ironic, because the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem appears to be on the threshhold of a breakthrough in an ethical stem-cell treatment for ALS/MND (from which he and I suffer) and other neurodegenerative diseases, and I personally wouldn't want Israel to boycott me or fellow MND patients with the fruit of their research. A further irony is his nifty speech-generation device which is so well known as his "voice" has at its heart "a fiendishly clever silicon chip that was designed in . . . yes, Israel" (Rod Liddle, in The Sunday Times yesterday).

I much prefer the Jewish conductor, Daniel Barenboim's approach with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which he co-founded in 1999 with Palestinian American, Edward Said, which brings together musicians from all over the Middle East, including Israel and Iran. "The aim of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is to promote understanding between Israelis and Palestinians and pave the way for a peaceful and fair solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Barenboim himself has spoken of the ensemble as follows:
'The Divan is not a love story, and it is not a peace story. It has very flatteringly been described as a project for peace. It isn't. It's not going to bring peace, whether you play well or not so well. The Divan was conceived as a project against ignorance. A project (for) the fact that it is absolutely essential for people to get to know the other, to understand what the other thinks and feels, without necessarily agreeing with it. I'm not trying to convert the Arab members of the Divan to the Israeli point of view, and [I'm] not trying to convince the Israelis to the Arab point of view. But I want to - and unfortunately I am alone in this now that Edward died a few years ago - ...create a platform where the two sides can disagree and not resort to knives.'" (Wikipedia) 

I was recently sent a link to this fascinating YouTube clip about Ulfat Khaider, an Arab-Israeli athlete. On Facebook, she's described as reaching high peaks "not only as a mountain climber, extreme sportswoman and volleyball player (she played for the Israeli national team), but as a remarkable woman striving for peace": YouTube Ulfat Khaider. This comment followed on Facebook: "Et on dit qu'il y a l'apartheid en Israel?! Pas seulement qu'il n'y a pas d'Apartheid, bien au contraire: dans quel pays arabe elle aurait pu devenir la champion qu'elle est? la femme libre et moderne qu'elle est? Bravo Ulfat et merci!" (And they say there's apartheid in Israel! Not only is there not apartheid - quite the contrary. In which Arab country could she have become the champion she is? The liberated modern woman that she is? Bravo and thanks!)

I try not to be naïve about the complexities of the Middle East and the Palestinian "question". Of course, I don't know the solution, but I would say, whether you're a scientist, musician or sportsman, that fighting ignorance is the better way than colluding with it. In Barenboim's words, "It is absolutely essential for people to get to know the other, to understand what the other thinks and feels, without necessarily agreeing with it." 

Family-friendly government

If you choose to stay at home to bring up your children or care for your aged parents or an ailing spouse, things don't look too good for you, after yesterday's Queen's Speech. They were already looking grim for you, in fact, as a result of the government's child care plans.

Should you choose to do anything as old-fashioned and quaint as to keep your children at home until statutory school-age or even forego employment so that you are there when the kids come home from school or available when they are ill, it will affect your state pension - for the worse. How come? Hitherto, when you were a stay-at-home mum up until your children finished at school (or aged 20 if they were still in education), you were counted in on your husband's national insurance contributions (in effect his salary counted as both his and yours, which of course is what it was). That meant that the years you were busily employed caring for your children counted towards your state pension. This could be worth up to £66 per week, plus pension for years when you had been in employment up to a maximum of £110 per week. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2013/may/07/pensions-bill-flat-rate-changes-married-couples)

The new scheme will discriminate against those who stay at home to care for their children, as the state pension will be based solely on your national insurance contributions from employment. It's yet to be announced what the minimum number of years' contributions will entitle you to any state pension (between seven and ten?). If it was seven, you'd get £28.77 pension a week. Less than that, you'd get nothing. To me this sounds as though the Government, for all its fine words, sets no value on mums or dads staying at home for the sake of their children. Certainly the usual pattern of family life has changed since the 1940s, but the jury is still out on the benefits or otherwise of that change for children. Incidentally I heard this proposal first mooted, leaked, poisonously on the BBC as a measure to prevent immigrants cashing in on our welfare system - no contributions: no pension.

This morning I heard Laura Perrins, barrister and stay-at-home mum, talking on Woman's Hour about the Government's discrimination against people like her. She hit the headlines in March taking the Deputy Prime Minister to task over the double injury inflicted on those in her situation by the new child benefit and childcare policies. As a barrister married to another barrister, she took a big cut in income to stay at home. Since her husband earns over £50,000, they are now no longer entitled to child benefit (Fair enough, they thought; times are tough), even though couples who are both out at work earning up to something over £90,000 are entitled to child benefit. To add insult to injury, the Budget introduced a provision for up to 15 hours' free childcare - but only where both parents are employed.

To quote Laura in her exchange with the oleagenous Nick Clegg:

"Well, Mr Clegg, child benefit was a fair way of recognising everybody's legitimate choice either to work outside the home or to work inside the home. You've essentially abolished that for families like me and replaced it with this, which applies only to mums who want to go out to work.

"I've absolutely no problem with mums who want to do that – there are plenty of my neighbours who do that and I support them fully. But they also recognise that I do a difficult job at home, and by taking away our child benefit and not replacing it with anything you are clearly discriminating against us.

"And then, secondly, in relation to the 15 hours of free childcare or the free early-years education, which I knew you would say ... that doesn't just help stay-at-home mums, that is as you know a universal education provision that is for the children, not for the parents. That's like saying free primary education helps mums, or free secondary helps stay-at-home mums

"There is absolutely no provision within the tax system to help families like myself, and our family is no doubt a net contributor to the Exchequer.

"I just feel that this provision is to bump up the GDP numbers, because if I was looking after someone else's children that would count as a GDP number, which is all that I think the Treasury care about. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing." (Stay-at-home mother, Laura Perrins, talks to Nick Clegg)

I seem to remember Mr Cameron trumpeting his intention to lead "the most family-friendly government Britain has ever had". Well, it seems to promote the model of family of its leaders, where both parents go out to work and "delegate the care of their children to paid strangers" (Milli Hill, Letter to Nick Clegg), and to penalise the alternative. So much for the espousal of "choice" that we hear so much about. Choice - but it will cost you dearly. Of course it won't cost our PM or his deputy or his cabinet for whom state pensions and childcare costs are irrelevancies.

Spring hopes

Woke up this morning to hear a cheerful dawn chorus, notably blackbirds, with robins and pigeons in the background. Our small garden isn't a great wildlife haven but it's nice to be reminded that spring has arrived. In fact we were at a young friend's wedding in Oxford on Saturday, bathed in sunshine on the banks of the Cherwell river. It is true that spring is not as advanced this year as sometime, but I gather that fruit-farmers regard it as good news and anticipate good crops - assuming the bees survive the neonicotinoids. Certainly it seems to be a good year

The bride's mother embracing Jane

for primroses and the daffodils and narcissi in our garden. 

Contra yesterday's Countryfile on BBC1. Usually it's Tom Heap who specialises in doom and gloom, and, if we've recorded it,  through whose Cassandra-like reports we tend to fast-forward. However, yesterday it was the normally sanguine farmer Adam Hanson who was bemoaning the weather. Fair enough, he looked like losing his field of over-wintering oil-seed rape, but it won't actually ruin him. He had the gall to describe it as "a disaster" (originally a cosmic event of the destruction of a star). For one thing in our climate nature has a way of compensating - think of last year's transition from drought to flood. For another, it won't actually render him destitute. And for a third, did he not watch the wonderful programme also by the BBC, The Toughest Place to be a Farmer, in which Devon dairy farmer, Richard Gibson, went to work with a Samburu farmer herding cattle in the desolate northern part of Kenya?

As the write-up said,  

BBC photo

"British farmers have suffered from low milk prices and squeezed margins but it is nothing compared to the struggles of Richard's host, village elder Lemerigichen. In recent years drought has decimated the herds in this region, forcing many Samburu off their land and into the poverty of local towns. Richard launches himself into an alien lifestyle - sleeping rough in the wilderness, drinking cow's blood and digging and digging to find water. The two men form a touching bond through the love of their animals and the basic drive to support their families, whilst Richard gains an insight into what it is like to tend a herd when surrounded by lions, leopards and hyenas." In producer, Hannah Griffiths' story of meeting Lemerigichen, she wrote, "he’d lost cattle to drought, his brother to tribal warfare and a child to illness. He’d fought bloody battles to protect his herd, gone for days without food and water in times of drought and suffered prejudice and abuse when he’d gingerly ventured 200 miles to the city to find paid work. Yet he never gave up."  

Don't mistake me. I do not belittle the reverses that farmers have suffered this year, least of all the tragic loss of livestock that many hill-farmers have sustained. The sight of mounds of sheep carcases waiting to be disposed of from the Welsh border farm was shocking and distressing, and must have been devastating for the farmer, Errol Morris, whom we saw dragging yet another two of his decimated flock across the snow. It must take real courage to pick oneself from yet another reverse inflicted by the weather or by disease, and like Lemerigichen and Errol, never to give up. It's the farmer's territory, fate and gift. I trust and believe that better is to come. I hope so.