THE BRITISH THREAD II

Today I saw four or five senior ministers of the Coalition being interviewed on the street with people and traffic passing by normally. Adding that observation to that of the unexpected unescorted drive back from the Palace to No.10 through the streets by the new PM's car it might be that a new policy of defying the terrorists is in operation. If so, whatever one might say about the Coalition, it is showing more guts than we are used to seeing.

Police overtime has to be cut. And not content with compromising their own safety, our cabinet voted themselves a pay cut today.

It's going to be a cold few winters to come, evidently. The chill has started.

I can tell when you are joking. If in the extremely rare event that is true, can you lend us some of those poly's ??

They are all millionaires Io. Taking 5% off their pay is not like taking 5% off the pay of a road mender with a wife and two kids. I gather it helps to cut the deficit by about £200 grand over five years or something equally fatuous.

Our first election was an embarrasement. Almost no-one voted so they had to make it compulsory or the poly's couldnt hold their heads up in other countries as our reps.

One benefit is that we always allow for the right number of polling booths, no long lines and everyone votes. Another benefit is that the vote tends to be less extreme. One decade we vote in the Liberals who take care of the business end, the next decade we vote in the Labour who take care to advance pensions and so on to catch up relative to the high salary earners.

You could almost achieve the same thing by changing parties every 10 years, but then they wouldnt work so hard. We have a strong tendency to change them quickly if they dont perform and if they move too fast in one direction.

Well that cools the warm feeling.

Keep it to yourself Io. Warm feelings need careful tending.

Though I don't know any of the details there, public employees here are often adept at gradually manipulating the rules for their own benefit. The Fire Chief of a small suburban community east of San Francisco (Orinda) recently retired at age 53 on a public pension of $250,ooo per annum. Pensions are based on the last year's pay and over the years the rules were gradually manipulated to include overtime and accrued vacation time (also allowed to accumulate without limit) in that calculation. California has an unfunded liability for pensions of public employees that is greater than Greece's total debt (unlike businesses government entities can get away with this kind of accounting). The Greeks aren't the only ones playing this game. And, as they are now discovering, when the lifeboat sinks, everyone gets wet.

Britain's last appeal to the IMF was followed by Margaret Thatcher.

George Washington turned down a salary to work for the new government for expenses only, which turned out to be many times the salary offered.

Cameron set out his stall, as we say here, with a remark like "people hve to stop thinking about their entitlements, and more about their responsibilities"

- which his speechwriters probably adapted from JFK "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

There has to be an austerity package. Without the LibDems, it would be more severe, and introduced sooner. But we'll have to take the medicine.
Maybe stop buying Trident submarines?

No chance Mac. We'll be darning socks before we get there.

It might make people care more?

Care about what? I care that we are not rounded up every few years and made to choose between alternatives we can only guess at the use of.

It's a sign of success and confidence that people don't care much. Millions of people thrumming with care would be hopeless. That's going off in Thailand. And talking in labels none of which are defined but all of which sound wonderful.

"Care" very soon degenerates into self-promotion.

You have to have Trident to counter the French threat.

We're in tight with the French these days Io. We both think we are the only really civilised nations on earth. Does anybody ever read for pleasure anything else but French and English literature? Reading Mailer is like going through boot camp. Lemmy Caution had led us up the garden path. We had never thought that Laurel and Oliver Hardy had any deeper meanings to it. We thought it comical. As we also did a number other productions of that wonderful period. The tragic side never entered our heads.

But for the mature man in the late evening of his life, such as I unfortunately am, amusement proper is only to be found in English and French literary productions of that period when men were men and women were for getting across the table end and being given a good banging when their domestic duties permitted and were so highly thought of for doing what women were evolved to do so well that we have died in our millions to enable them to be free to continue along the same lines. Where's the humour when they can hardly be told apart?

You could easily tell Doreen of Prisoner in Cell Block H from Elton John never mind Kirk Douglas. And she really was funny. I'll never forget that scene when she woke from a dream after a long sleep up against a wall when she got over the prison fence and had run half-a-mile in a big heavy coat she was using as a disguise. Nor the custard pie fight with the buffet for the Govenor's reception for local worthies. I used to wince when Bea operated that steam press in the laundry. I have a letter from Reg Grundy to thank me for congratulating him so fulsomely for that series. It was always on at getting home from the pub time when you are eating the supper that's been left out on a tray by your chair with the note saying "Don't wake me up".

Most good scriptwriters will be steeped in English and French literature. Nobody else could do Doreen and Bea. And visually it was groundbreaking. Doreen was the sort of feminist you have to take seriously.

We think we are just ahead and they think they are just ahead but we both respect our rival for history's crown.

btw--I think the steam press scene derives from one in Old Mother Riley.

Yeah, I also think there should be a 'none of the above' category.
I don't think it's necessarily a sign of confidence, I think it's that people think their vote won't matter anyway, or that all the parties do the same thing anyway.
I think it would be good if people were forced to vote because it might make them take a vague interest, even if just to align themselves with some form of ideology.

What about the rest of the last thousand years ? Even in WWII you were killing frenchmen, and so were we....can you imagine how even more snooty they would be if they had the bomb and you didnt ?

Living in the past is not good, did you know?

Hi Francis..I was waiting for you....how was your trip ? This is all tongue in cheek by the way.