The Crow Road

When Margaret Thatcher died the obituaries written years beforehand were taken down, dusted off and liberally published across the globe. World leaders lined up to pay glowing tribute and she was afforded what amounted to a de-facto state funeral. Bob Crow got Twitter. At only 52 and on his usual ebullient form, nobody expected the burly communist bear of the RMT Union to go out with a whisper. A lone voice called for a state funeral via an e-Petition, which was rejected out of hand; some would say a fitting response from the establishment he fought hard to oppose.

I missed the Twitterfest, but I gather it was mostly good-humoured variations on the themes of Buster Bloodvessel comparisons and suppositions that at least a London council house would shortly be available. One I did see and retweet was to the effect that finally, like many unfortunate Tube passengers suffering the numerous strikes he orchestrated, he was now ‘The Late’ Mr Crow. There certainly wasn’t the visceral, seething hatred that was spat out when the great lady passed, in fact many on the right showed grudging respect for his formidable and indefatigable devotion to the cause. There was no murder of Crows.

Of course, wee Owen Jones was bereft, but later the fragile boy got all teary when Toby Young challenged the way he and his ilk eulogised the big man. Given that, by all accounts, Bob liked a laugh and despised the modern diversity-driven milksop version of the world he would probably not have given the drippy little tosspot the time of day. Anyway, he must have had a sense of humour if his ideal world was a Socialist Workers’ paradise – like Cuba, perhaps? Or Venezuela.

Many sought to lionise his stalwart championing of his own workers’ rights, holding the capital to ransom, making travelling across London more than three times the cost of an equivalent journey across Paris and inflating tube drivers’ wages to over twice that of a nurse. Odd then, that having pushed his members’ salaries into the 40% tax bracket, he didn’t then lobby for tax cuts for higher wage earners? It’s a tricky business, this socialism, isn’t it? And then of course there’s the oft-mentioned matter of his own remuneration.

One of twitter’s Reds made the point that he was paid entirely out of the willing contributions of his union members and didn’t take money directly from the state like, for instance, every MP in the land. But then that surely made him an exemplar for capitalism and free market pay bargaining; how could he then complain about banks doing the very same thing? As this Spectatorblog suggests, he was very nearly a Conservative.

Whether you saw him as the scourge of the ruling class or a heroic warrior for social justice; whether you believe his brand of communism was lunacy or utopia; love him or loathe him he’s gone now. If he ruffled your feathers there’s no need to Crow about it. No reason to get in a flap, the pecking order is clear. He fell off his perch and squawks no more. Maybe after that Brazilian holiday he just came back too orangey for Crows.

Women Trouble

Yesterday London commuters were trying to find alternatives to moving around our horribly congested capital city as union strike fever returned. Despite only a small minority of Bob Crow’s overall membership voting for strike action, because of union rules he now has an open mandate to call a strike whenever he feels like it. And once again the strike is based on Luddite tendencies of resisting change regardless of the logic.

Curious then that instead of voicing concerns over the way in which the avowed communist and career unionist Crow rode roughshod over the needs of millions of working people, the leader of the party whose very name declares itself for the workers decided to mount a stunt during Prime Minister’s Questions. Packing his side with as gruesome a pack of harpies as you could wish to find and fortuitous that the few women normally on the coalition front bench were away doing useful work he chose, as this week’s tactic to avoid discussing the economy at all costs, to berate David Cameron with the toothless taunt that the Tories have a problem with women. Actually his reasons for doing this are not curious at all; Labour has slipped inexorably back into its old ways.

Why do left wingers fall for the dogma that says e-quality is everything, even at the expense of actual quality? And why, having been taken in themselves do they become so evangelical that they now know better than those who genuinely do know what they are talking about? Why do they always bring about legislation to impose unwanted and unworkable change on those who have to live with and suffer the consequences without redress? During the New Labour years the workplace became choked with pretty round pegs hopelessly adrift in a sea of grubby square holes and to justify it the enemy in our midst ‘Human Resources’ was drafted in to propagandise and feminise and accessories the darkest corners of the most satanic mills – for men are the devil.

In meeting rooms niceties replaced robustness and consensus took the place of healthy challenge. In between offices ‘Break out Areas’ appeared – the adult equivalent of Soft Play facilities – places to share and spread the largely fictional cult of ‘soft skill’ mumbo-jumbo. Just as New Labour sent out search parties for immigrants to suppress our wages, women were sought out and shoe-horned into jobs regardless of talent to suppress our rages. A quip became sexist abuse and a harsh word bullying and some, even though fast-tracked ahead of abler and more experienced men (I preferred it when it was more honestly called flashing your tits) proved inadequate for the roles and left in tears or else kicked the absolute arse out of maternity leave. For all the Demi Moores in movies like Disclosure the vampish, predatory – for which read male-like – female boss is almost entirely a fiction; a left-wing, rad-fem, socialist wet dream.

Do Tories have a problem with women? I’ll say they do: Consumer Affairs Minister, Jenny Willott, is reported as saying that women are being forced into professions that paid less well because of gender stereotyping when they were young children, producing the headline “Parents who dress their daughters in pink and force them to play with dolls are holding back the economy.” Oh, purlease! Maybe women are more naturally left wing, in which case it's a surprise the Conservatives have so many. And if that's so, why isn’t Labour dominated by them? Some might say it already is, although they have yet to elect one as leader.

The roles of men and women have evolved with the species and the fundamental differences are as surely rooted in biology as is the fact that only women bear children. But even that distinction may be under threat as thousands of years of shaping society in nature’s image is no longer good enough for the political theorists. As with all the sacred cows of the left it is all or nothing and they would rather persuade women into jobs they may not suit than have a single woman unable to take up a traditionally male role. So forget about applauding the achievements of the brilliant women who have succeeded and thrive on ability alone. Forget about simply removing gender discrimination, let’s go further and dilute those achievements by enforcing quotas and ticking boxes regardless of merit.

They’ve done it with human rights, suffrage, welfare, immigration, ‘social justice’, multiculturalism and more besides and currently there is a growing effort to identify and diagnose as many strands of mental illness as possible – labels for everyone. And accompanying this I hear every day about the ‘need to change the culture’ in one way or another, social engineering being far more important than the traditional kind, you know, the one that used to provide jobs. So while one of the world’s great capitals grinds to a halt for want of a sensible dialogue, the left are happy to see our entire society go down the tubes in the name of what they still insist on calling progress. Progress? About half a mile an hour. Backwards.

Decent Homes for Decent people

Have you heard of the Decent Homes Programme? Until today neither had I, but it’s been in existence for a while now. Introduced in 2000 and overseen by the Department for Communities and Local Government, the programme aims to improve the condition of homes for social housing tenants in England. The cost to date stands at around £40bn, so I was naturally curious to know where the money went.

There are four principle requirements for a decent home.

1. It meets the current statutory minimum standard for housing - to be decent a dwelling should be free of  category 1 hazards  under The Housing Health and Safety Rating System (England) Regulations 2005. This includes the nasty stuff like risks from asbestos, lead and various other inarguable hazards.

2. It has reasonably modern facilities and services.

3. It is in a reasonable state of repair.

4. It provides a reasonable degree of thermal comfort.

I would challenge anybody to deny social tenants these fundamental and ‘reasonable’ requirements. Even a nasty, snarling, frothing, right-wing aberration like me can see that to provide anything less would be an affront to human dignity.  But where it starts to get contentious is in the interpretation of just what is reasonable.

How did I come by today’s enlightenment? I spoke to a programme manager for a contractor involved in the scheme. His company is tasked with bringing up to ‘decency’ some tens of thousands of homes. But their brief goes far beyond what you or I may consider merely decent. For instance, in search of thermal efficiency they are installing air and ground source heat pump systems at a cost of around £6k per house. Some homes have solar photovoltaic generators to further reduce the energy costs to the household. This is on top of thermal insulation, rewires, brand new fitted kitchens, new bathrooms and new windows as a matter of course.

Naturally one wants to see wise investment in public housing stock, especially in terms of on-going savings in maintenance and energy costs, but isn’t this taking the piss ever so slightly? Where is the help for the couple on average incomes who have bought their homes and invested every spare penny into making them just liveable? Hands up who wouldn't want lower energy bills for life? How many homeowners in negative equity would love a new kitchen, a new bathroom… or some heat this winter?

Well tough. You can only have that level of decency by right if you live in a council house. Sod you, striving Britain with your penny-pinching thrifty ways. You deserve all the misery you go through with your wondering if you’ll have a job to go to next week and your wondering if you’ll ever be able to afford to retire. You chose to make your own way in the world, contrary to the great Marxist plan, you can bloody well starve out there, damn you.

Well, why not a government scheme to improve the stock of social housing tenants. A Decent Citizen Programme, if you will. Only a decent citizen should be allowed access to a decent council house – I think that’s only fair. A decent citizen would have to meet several criteria:

1. Demonstrate a reasonable standard of behaviour in public as well as in private.

2. Have a reasonable attitude towards the state which generously subsidises their accommodation.

3. Make a reasonable contribution to maintaining a civilised and decent society.

4. Have the decency to recognise when they no longer need to rely on the state to house them and move out to give a chance to another decent household.

Comrade Crow - decent citizen?

 In other news, a series of rail strikes are planned over the Christmas period. Bob Crow lives in a council house; I wonder if he’d pass the Decent Citizen test?