Ships and Sealing Wax

There has been some publicity about the Royal Families desire that Camilla should be called “Queen” when the current Queen dies and Charles becomes King. I am not bothered one way or the other, but I am afraid the air of mystery that once surrounded the Royal Family has now gone. Unfortunately once that has gone, you are not left with anything very much other than a bunch of people who are overprivileged, under endowed with brains, and living a life worth of a soap opera.

When you add to that the gross abuse of the honours system with so many political cronies being made peers that the House of Lords is creaking at the seams, it seems to me that the time has come for a complete reform. It is about time this country became a republic with a properly elected second chamber. Queen Elizabeth is to be commended for carrying out her duties in an exemplary way for her entire life, but she really is the end of an era. The time for change is coming.

I recently read an article by President Putin “”On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians“ http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 published in July last year. I had some trouble following the historical narrative and would need some time with paper, pencil and maps to work it out fully. However, what came across was the history is rather complicated. For example I had not realised that the Crimea became part of Russia in the 18th century after wars with the Ottoman Empire but was moved into Ukraine in 1954 by Russia during the time of the USSR. The territory of Ukraine after the breakup of the USSR was not a long-standing entity.

Whilst I don’t understand the complexities of the positions on both sides, it does make me wonder whether the West has helped the situation by encouraging Ukraine to think that it might be feasible for it to join NATO and the EU. I can see why Russia is not happy about Ukraine trying to turn towards the West and maybe it would be better to work out a middle way. President Macron is said to have floated the idea of “Finlandization”, which I understand was not well received in Ukraine. It refers to Finland’s approach of refraining from criticising Russia, recognising that it did not have the ability to challenge its more powerful neighbour.

I have no idea what the solution might be but it does appear to me that Ukraine and the West need to be realistic about what is possible. I can’t see Russia being happy with the countries on its borders creeping more and more Westward in their world view.

I read a report in the newspapers about a survey of customers of a number of large organisation such as banks and utilities. This contained the amazing revelation that their customers are more interested in the quality of their products and their level of customer services than their so called social responsibility activities.

Last week I had to contact CO-OP bank who decided to freeze my debit card when I made a standard payment. It was to another large organisation that I have made many times before and so was completely unexpected. Unfortunately, I was forced to phone them. It took ONE HOUR AND FIVE MINUTES before they answered the phone. The person I spoke to did not have the authority to do anything about the problem so I spent another fifteen minutes hanging on whilst they spoke to someone else and managed to unfreeze my card.

This is the bank that regularly bombards me with self-satisfied crap saying how ethical they are. What a load of rubbish! It isn’t ethical to have such poor customer service and to hold your customers in such contempt. The banner on their home page says “We’ve had a customer-led Ethical Policy for almost 30 years, meaning our customers and communities always come first.” If it wasn’t so annoying, it would be laughable.

How on earth does Boris manage to do it? Every time he has a problem, whether it be holidays, wallpaper, Tory donors or illegal Christmas parties, he manages to make the problem very considerably worse by prevaricating, blustering and, on occasions, telling downright lies. You would have thought that he would have learned by now that his approach doesn’t work. It is truly the way of the fool to keep trying the same thing and over again in the hope that the same failing approach might work next time.

I read an article in the financial pages about M&S saying that their stores were doing well in out of town locations but not in city centres. I am not at all surprised. In recent weeks I have been to M&S high street stores in London, Winchester and Edinburgh. It was like walking back in time as the stores are cramped, with 1970s-style ceiling tiles and lights, and a general air of neglect. It is no doubt difficult to improve stores that are in old buildings, some of which have somewhat quirky layout, but unless major firms do something to improve their high street stores, they will just dwindle until they are closed. There are no doubt many other considerations such as rates and rents, but something needs to be done to imrprove the high street, instead of encouraging people to drive out of town to shopping centres.

Incidentally, the quirky layout of Edinburgh means that to get between the escalators to travel to the men’s department, you have to walk through the middle of ladies underwear. At least, I assume that the building layout is the reason, although it could be some sort of misplaced marketing idea to encourage men to buy lacy underwear for their other halves. I can’t imagine that any such purchases will result in anything other elevated expectations ending in disappointment.

The people arriving in the UK as refugees by whatever means, whether they are escaping from poverty or persecution, are hoping to find a better life for themselves and their families. We can hardly blame them as we all seek to do this in one way or another, the difference between us and them is that their situation is so dire that that they are are prepared to go through danger and deprivation. I don’t see any long term solution to the problem unless we can help people to get a better way of life in their own countries. It seems to me that cutting the foreign aid budget is very shortsighted, it is in our own interest to help people so that they don’t have the need to leave home.

Climate change and population growth are likely to make the problem worse as people seek to improve their lives and to obtain many of the basics that we take for granted. If the technologies that are used to provide things that we regard as essential, such as electricity, are the ones that are proven, lowest cost and have been used in the western world for many years, then the inevitable result is that their carbon emissions will increase. Finding solutions will take time and money. Restoring our foreign aid budget and targetting it more effectively would be a way that we could contribute. If we don’t we will reap the consequences in the future and it will be a bitter harvest.