A Brighton Boy Blogs

Winston Churchill's 1941 Great Declaration

In 1941, with Europe under the rule of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill sent out a message to all those who awaited or fought for the end of tyranny. It wasn’t a long message, or one that was particularly full of specific information or advice… but it was then, and remains today, an inspirational and resolute rallying call which proclaims in succinct and sparing language the absolute, unwavering belief in the triumph of the human spirit that is surely one of the most beautiful things about humanity. This was the message:

Lift up your hearts, all will come right. Out of the depths of sorrow and of sacrifice will be born again the glory of mankind.

There you go. Short, precise, elegant and powerful. Inspirational, strong leadership for all the people of Europe in dark times. Unfortunately the best we can muster for these dark times is apparently David Cameron. Or Ed Miliband. Empty, vacuous PR men; weak, simpering public school boys. Men of power who waste that power; who think that a verbless soundbite is a substitute for inspiring people to do their best. Men who can’t or won’t even stand up to the greedy individuals and corporations who got us into this mess and who refuse to cooperate in the arduous task of getting us out of it and back to sustainable prosperity.

So sad. Sadder still when you realise it’s self-inflicted…. After all, we chose them, through our democratic process. So… please can we have a proper leader now? Please?

For anyone fighting an unfair, unjustified or illegal PCN from Brighton & Hove City Council’s illustrious parking department, you may be interested to know that my appeal with the Parking Tribunal (now properly named the Traffic Penalty Tribunal) won by default because the Council didn’t even bother to present any evidence to the Tribunal.

Mine was a case of being accused of parking in a loading bay at 06:30 in the morning whilst not loading, whereas in fact I was loading – see also the original posts Testing the Parking Tribunal and Brighton & Hove Parking – criminal racket in disguise

The so-called riots in London are of course just theft, looting, arson and vandalism on a large organised scale. Disgusting and offensive as this may be, we have to ask ourselves why it has happened, and what we can do about it.

I’ve been claiming for years that our government leadership is weak, and it is this weakness that has caused this problem and goes on perpetuating it. We live in a democracy – which is actually a coalition of the meek. We’re the meek, the ones who want to live a gentle and peaceful life, with everything well ordered and civilised, where you work hard to achieve what you can, and you raise your children to have values which are not hugely at odds with those of the rest of society. The meek pay their taxes and elect strong leaders who can spend our money to organise the things that we don’t really want to have to deal with on our doorsteps – like education, social care, law and order, and defence.

So why are the riots happening? Because there are criminal elements at large who believe that in large numbers, covering their faces, they can get away with anything. So far, they’re right – because our political leadership is weak, blustering, full of hot air and with no stomach for decisive action – which sends a terrible message to those waiting in the second wave. The Police try their best but they’re outnumbered and outmanoeuvred. There are minority pockets of people all over the country who don’t care about anything except material goods, and if they think they can just take what they want, they will.

David Cameron and his government should take this as their Falklands, and either deal with it swiftly and decisively, stamping on the criminals with all necessary force… or step down, and let someone else have a go. The trouble is, we didn’t like our strong leaders because they spoke harshly to us and weren’t good media managers, so all we’re left with these days is pathetic ex-public schoolboy career politicians who would rather make us fearful of Islamic fundamentalists than to actually tackle the nation’s internal problems. Ah well, at least we only have ourselves to blame.

Brighton Parking Restriction Notice

Today is Sunday. The parking restrictions on my road are clearly displayed as Mon-Fri noon-1pm. There are very faded, patchy single & double yellow lines which haven’t been repainted for years, and a few months ago there were Council notices tied to lamp posts about lifting parking restrictions to allow more parking locally. So what was a traffic warden doing walking up & down issuing parking tickets? The Council is probably hoping that people are idiots who get scared into paying up even when they don’t have to. Hopefully they’re wrong.

A parking ticket (PCN) illegally issued by Brighton & Hove City Council

So, Brighton & Hove City Council – please tell us – what will it take to stop you and your imbeciles from wasting everyone’s time and money with these continued attempts to extort money from people fraudulently?

After I reported my parking ticket woes in my post entitled Brighton & Hove Parking – A Criminal Racket in Disguise, I appealed the PCN and got a rejection notice from the Council. No surprise there – after all they have to earn their money from somewhere, even if it’s from fraud.

Well, my fellow business breakfast club members were up in arms at the claims by Brighton & Hove City Council that I had parked my vehicle in a loading bay early one morning without any loading being observed. “But that was the morning of your presentation” one said, “I saw you unloading all your kit”. Others agreed and were outraged at Brighton & Hove City Council’s blatant attempt at criminal fraud.

So, one by one they submitted signed witness statements for me to forward to the Parking Tribunal. Unfortunately the rejection notice had arrived whilst I was away, which didn’t help, particularly as they give you a measly 28 days to bring the case to the notice of the Parking Tribunal. Not a lot when you have to gather evidence from disparate sources. But why should I be surprised when the vested interests of the multi-million pound parking racket are at stake, that everything should be stacked in their favour and run to their schedule?

So, now I await the outcome of the Tribunal and I’ll let you know when it arrives.

Some time later: Well, I have to report that Brighton and Hove City Council didn’t even bother trying to defend my appeal, and so the Parking Tribunal found in my favour by default. This indicates that the council knew all along that it didn’t have a leg to stand on & was just hanging on in the vain hope that I would shut up, give up and pay up.

When John F. Kennedy announced the Apollo manned moon landing project, some thought it was impossible. Others thought it was a waste of money. But still it happened. Hundreds of thousands of people worked for the next decade to achieve the goal, stretching science and engineering to incredible new heights, and the achievement inspired generations of children to become scientists and continue the exploration of our universe. All this from strong, inspirational, visionary leadership.

When Barack Obama cancelled funding for the nine-year-old Constellation programme to continue human exploration of space, he pronounced it “over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation”. He didn’t replace it with anything, let alone something inspirational. The project was born in the George W. Bush era, which speaks volumes. Instead of a clear, singular, ambitious goal from a strong leader, the programme seemed broad and woolly, and didn’t really make much of an impact with the press or public. Now the only hope for humanity’s further exploration of space seems to rest with India and China.

I was born at the end of the 1960s, and grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. I was brought into a world which had just achieved something incredible, and was looking forward to even more. As a child I loved Arthurian legend, where great things were achieved against all odds by heroic figures who were pure of heart and driven by a single-minded mission. I learned from Mister Benn about helping and being nice to people and improving one’s world through one’s actions. I watched Tomorrow’s World present new and wonderful innovations which would change all our lives for the better. I grew up watching Star Trek, in which mankind’s future had consigned war to the history books and was going to be dedicated to exploration and learning and discovery. I remember the Apollo 11 moon landing only as something people were still talking about a few years after it happened – which in turn shows just what an impression it had made on the public. I watched with excitement the development of the Space Shuttle, its atmospheric tests on the back of a 747, and its first orbital test flight in 1981. I watched as the International Space Station was built, to the yawns and boredom of the public. I watched as politicians increasingly became bogged down in the mire of their own self-interested, corrupt, short-termist dogma, and devoid of vision or grand designs. I watched as everything became less great, less inspiring and less impressive than my childhood aspirations. I watched the world become devoid of greatness. I am one of the generation of the disappointed. This is not the future we were promised.

So perhaps all that’s left to us, the grown-up children of a once inquisitive, innovative and aspirational world, is the robotic, astronomical and theoretical exploration of the universe. Even great projects such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN – have been dogged by public cynicism, scepticism and complaints of wasted money as well as the occasional technical problem and, ultimately, nothing yet that can be held up to the public as useful results.

Of course the Apollo Programme wasn’t the first great thing humanity ever did. Unfortunately it may have been the last. Everything else we’ve done for the last forty years is either market-led evolution in communication, like mobile phones and the Internet, or sticking plasters over self-inflicted wounds, like action on third-world debt or banning of landmines. We give Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize before he’s ever contributed one iota towards world peace, while wars continue to rage in many places around the world. We read newspapers which love to tell us how we fail, as a society, to do anything to rectify the things we moan about. We hope for greatness instead of aspiring to it and actively pursuing it.

What I’d really like Barack Obama to do (or someone else with vision, determination and inspirational leadership) is set America and the world on a new path toward something genuinely great. Something that some say is impossible. Something that coordinates the efforts of many hundreds of thousands of people in many countries to achieve incredible things. Something that inspires future generations. Something like “We choose to solve the problem of world poverty in this decade, not because it is easy, but because it is hard”. Or climate change & sustainable energy – that must be solvable with the right leadership & vision. And there’s the problem.

Even if I live for another fifty years, I’m guessing that the overwhelming emotion I’ll be feeling on my death bed will be disappointment.

People are always bemoaning the state of the country. They always have been, for as long as I can remember. “It’s not like it used to be, is it?” they say. They’re right of course, and perhaps it’s also right that a country shouldn’t be static, but should be progressively marching forward into a new and better future. But is the UK of 2010 “not quite the same as it used to be” in all the wrong ways?

Most of the population seems to live in fear, far more fear about everything than ever before. There’s the fear of terrorism. Then there’s the fear of being unable to pay one’s way (or indeed the massive credit debt bill)  and the associated repossession etc. We fear all the diseases we can get too, which seem to number more than ever, including the global pandemic killer swine flu. All those fears are old ones: the terrorism & Al Qaeda thing conveniently replaced the cold war & Soviet Union; we always need more money; and disease has been with us since the dawn of time. The trouble is, now we fear each other as well. We’re brought up to think that the rapist, murderer, paedophile or Satanist animal-sacrificer could be living next door. Or that we’ll meet them walking down the street. We used to have “eccentrics” – harmless individuals who had character and behaviour beyond the norm – but now they’re all weirdos and not to be trusted. The result is that nobody can walk down the street without being in danger. Children can’t be let out to play. Women can’t walk the dog at night. Reception teachers can’t give an upset child a cuddle or even stick a plaster on them, despite the child seeing the teacher as a parental figure. And heaven help you if you should smile at a stranger, much less wish them “good day” or give up your seat for them on a bus – you pervert, you.

So how did we get ourselves into this mess? How can we get ourselves out of it? Is it a purely British problem or is it global? Well, having travelled in other countries and been greeted warmly and offered great trust everywhere  despite being a stranger, and worse – a foreign stranger – I can safely say it’s not a global malaise. So what caused it here? I’ve no idea – although it’s definitely institutionally encouraged and perpetuated within government, both local and national. It’s something to do with “political correctness” and bureaucracy and the never-ending desire of politicians to avoid doing the right thing and instead opting to look like over-enthusiastic puppies wanting to please their masters. Or worse, chameleons pretending to be puppies.

I also think it’s something to do with the appalling state of education. Here I’m not speaking of league tables, or exam results, but of whatever became of our tradition for a robust general education. Perhaps it’s the fault of the National Curriculum, or perhaps that was just a milestone along the way. In the Britain of 2010 teachers would much rather have a pupil diagnosed with ADHD or some such other non-existent syndrome than take responsibility as an educator for their lack of understanding in maths or English. And don’t tell me this doesn’t happen, because I’ve seen it for myself. They’d also rather tell school children that all alcohol consumption is bad for you and that if you drink alcohol you’re an alcoholic, rather than leaving it to intelligent, caring parents to impart ideas of self-control and moderation. Again, this has actually occurred. In our schools, our children are taught to fear everything in our society… and just beyond fear lies the vast, desolate wasteland of hatred.

Hatred is rife in our society. We hear the word every day. Actually it’s not so difficult to hate something, we seem to do it all the time, to television programmes and foods and politicians. Hate is the new dislike. In fact we “hate” so much that we no longer have a word to describe true hatred, which may be why it goes unnoticed when it happens. You might be forgiven, observing the lack of running street battles with National Front vs Anti Nazi League and riot Police in attendance, that racism has disappeared in the UK too. But it’s alive and well – the targets have changed, as have the perpetrators. Yes, some white people are still racist against black people, and some black people are racist against white people. Some people of every colour and religion dislike someone because they’re different, and it was always so. Jewish people have become very closely integrated into British society, and we have establishment figures and celebrities who are Hindu and Muslim – but it doesn’t stop the racism.

The respectable-appearing UKIP wants to “Ban the Burka” and the BNP is just the National Front in suits. There are still lots of people in the UK who would happily see someone else carted off to wherever they came from, as long as someone else did the dirty work for them. But now we have the bloody Eastern Europeans coming over here and stealing our jobs too. Oh dear, I’m sorry, I appear to have come over all “Duffy” – for the purposes of demonstration only, of course, for I am a descendent of a relatively recent previous wave of Eastern European immigrants, for whom the UK was a sanctuary from likely death from the forces of hatred. So it’s always bothered me when hearing a Jewish person, for example, being racist against a black person. Of all the people on this planet, what right has someone of a race that has been so persecuted through the centuries to be racist? Alas I heard only yesterday a first-generation British man of South Asian descent talking about the Eastern Europeans who should be sent home, and how out of touch Gordon Brown is for thinking that a million European imports doesn’t balance a million British ex-pats in Euroland.

Let’s be very clear about this, if people want to come & live here it’s because it’s not a bad place to live. Perhaps that’s why so many Brits are working so damned hard to make it a place where nobody wants to live.

Nick Clegg was right to imply that Britain has never quite got over itself as victor of world wars and sore loser of its empire. We still like to believe that our industrial might is still intact, that our foreign policy word holds sway over the majority of the civilised world and that we are still a world power. We have never quite come to terms with the idea that the smashed shadow of post-Nazi Germany, which we helped to rebuild, became a more successful economy retaining much of its engineering & manufacturing base with a better standard of living & quality of life. Still, we’ve not done badly by and large, and so here we are in 2010 with high-definition LCD TVs and computers in every home, and eight years olds with mobile phones – mostly on credit. And shopkeepers stabbed by schoolboys, unprecedented levels of under-age alcoholism, sex, teenage pregnancy and thirteen year olds with chlamydia. Where everyone is scared of everyone, and where everyone seems to think the world owes them something. Yippee, what a wonderful country we’ve created.

Oh look, since I’ve mentioned those two I may as well mention the David Cameron one as well. Alas when you look at the detail you discover that he’s personally said very little of any meaning about anything, particularly as it relates to healing our society. He and his little Oxford chum George Osborne would rather engage in old-style Conservative political personality point-scoring, which is all fine and dandy except for all the stuff a chap called Ian Duncan-Smith has been up to since entering the back-benches and forming his Centre for Social Justice. So far, from the Cameron-commissioned report entitled “Breakthrough Britain” which came up with a very coherent set of almost 200 recommendations for healing social injustice, Mr Cameron has taken a piecemeal set of only 29 cherry-picked recommendations into Conservative policy. However he has indicated that Mr Duncan-Smith might be his Minister for Social Justice if they get in, so who knows… Ian Duncan-Smith might yet be forced to compromise his principles and forget social justice.

Finally, a little about politicians in the era after the expenses scandal. A lot of people say they mourn the passing of a prior era, when strong leaders like Winston Churchill were around, who would take difficult, unpopular and very often distinctly unsavoury decisions on behalf of the nation. Yet they also say they want politicians to be human and trustworthy and… nice. Then they complain when Gordon Brown is heard muttering something under his breath about someone, and not without some justification if you actually bother to listen to the woman and her attitude. We all have a public face and a private face – even Nick Clegg & St David Cameron – it’s part of being a human being, with all the complex social behaviour that brings. Churchill himself was difficult, temperamental, depressive, and borderline alcoholic, and yet few would dispute his courage and leadership during the years of the Second World War. So come on, people, actually work out what it is you want the politicians to be… you’re confusing the poor dears.

Let’s just hope on May 6th we don’t take a further step towards wrecking our country and our society. Lord knows we’ve been fantastically good at it so far.

This unadvertised special offer from Brighton & Hove City Council occurred on… yes you guessed it, April 1st. So how many others received PCNs (Penalty Charge Notices) erroneously? How much has it all cost to sort out?

Just to explain, for some reason some Brighton parking ticket machines were issuing one-hour tickets when they should have been issuing two-hour tickets. Yes it’s all so easy to sort out, but why should I have to spend my valuable time sorting out yet another Brighton & Hove City Council bureaucratic cock-up? It might help if they employed Parking Wardens with brains… sorry, “Civil Enforcement Officers”.

Oh dear, now I’ll probably be chastised & hated for insulting council workers… but let’s face it, it doesn’t take much brain power to work out that a parking machine saying “£3 for up to 2 hours” and a parking ticket saying £3 paid for 13:12 to 14:12 means that no PCN should have been issued in the first place!

Sometimes, just occasionally, inspiration comes along and in a flash you have the answer to a whole raft of problems, all at once. It was a bit like that for me one morning as I fought my way up the A23/A27 slip road trying desperately to move from the right hand lane across three lanes of traffic to the left hand filter lane for the A27 Westbound whilst the other drivers coming up the inside aggressively accelerated to prevent me from doing so.

We all know that our roads are too crowded. We all know that there are many, many bad drivers on the road. Most of us know that we’re killing the planet by driving too many cars, and that we should stop. Many of us aspire to improving our health and that of the planet by cycling everywhere, but it’s made harder by belligerent car drivers and dangerous cyclists, as well as the Great British Weather. We also know in our heart of hearts that it would be better for the environment, and probably for our souls, if we all took public transport but we’re also aware that it’s a less than perfect transport solution for a number of reasons. First, there’s the underinvestment, partly caused by a lack of bums on seats; second the fact that it has to share space with all the other more dominant forms of transport including all those idiot bad drivers in their cars… who, incidentally also make our roads more dangerous, cause more accidents, cost the NHS, emergency services and British businesses lots of money, and generally cause misery and stress.

So where’s the inspiration in all this? It’s quite simple actually. Just get the UK Government’s so-called Driving Standards Agency to do its job: raise driving standards. In short, make the driving test a lot more difficult, and the required standard of driving far higher. Then less people will pass, and there’ll be less drivers on the roads. Anyone who has had a road traffic accident in which fault was either theirs or inconclusive should be forced to retake the driving test, as should the elderly, annually. Anyone who took their driving test before, for example, 1985, should also retake their test, and the general population should take a fresh test every 10 years.

The result: less cars on the road, more use of public transport, more income to public transport, more investment in public transport; safer roads, less cost to NHS, less disruption to surgical schedules by emergencies; and the nation would be far more likely to hit its carbon emission targets with fewer cars sitting in traffic jams caused by selfish twats who drive like morons on our overcrowded roads.

So, over to you… what do you think?

The Royal Mail is the arbiter of all addresses. If it’s not on their database, it doesn’t exist. Thankfully my studio is on the database. So are quite a few other businesses in the local area. However it doesn’t stop the Royal Mail’s employees from deciding that they’re all based here, despite a very clear notice on the door saying exactly which businesses are based here, and even despite other notices that have been posted up at various times explicitly refuting the existence of other business names at this address.

So there I am, regularly left with large piles of other company’s post.

Should I just bin it? I think there’s a law against that, and besides I’d hate to think that another company might be getting loads of my mail & treating it as trash.

Should I play postman? I did for a while, but the novelty of my new unpaid position soon wore thin.

Should I complain? Yes, I’ve done that too. It took weeks for someone to contact me, and then weeks more for someone from Royal Mail to finally come and pick up the pile of by now unforgiveably late mail. And worst of all, the very next day there was yet another piece of misdelivered post.

Now I even have a red “sorry you were out” card on which the postman has written the name of a company never before heard of at (nor depicted on the door of) these premises. I tried calling the 0845 number on the card but their automated telephone system not only failed to acknowledge that these circumstances could ever possibly exist, it also failed to connect me to another human being so that I might report the error. So now whatever it was will sit at the sorting office for a few weeks until it’s returned to sender. It’s such a waste of everyone’s time, energies and resources, and ultimately all down to one man’s utter inability to read and compare simple names and phrases.

Still, perhaps it’s partly the council’s fault. They name and sign everything so confusingly. I’ve had my studio premises for five years now. Almost every day, someone comes in asking “Is this the trading estate?”. “No”, I reply, “this is the business centre, the trading estate is on the next road up”. In fact it’s probably true to say that if I had a tenner for every time it had happened, I wouldn’t need to actually do much work at all; £100 a time and I’d be in clover.

Clover? Hell, I’d even turn vigilante privateer postman.