Gateway to the New World

While the newspapers and TV news have been gorging themselves on the US Presidential nomination campaign, that - regardless of their tired self-justification - matters not one jot to Great Britain now or until the next President gets up and running, a small and mostly unrecognised miracle has been working its course on Merseyside.
Looking at the figures it seems that far from being the tragic "once second city of the Empire" and a great symbol of British decline for us all to either wallow in misery over or more likely scoff at, Liverpool's status as a trading city has surpassed its pre-1970/80s depression throughput.

Anybody who saw the 1980s TV drama "Boys from the Blackstuff" will recognise what this means. The last episode featured the father figure from the gang, George, who despite being a former Communist did not look like he embraced the lies of this ideology out of wickedness. He takes a final trip to the waterfront and recalling his youth as a docker is heartbroken to see the silted up, abandoned 1980s Albert Dock which looked about as finished as the rest of the country did in those fairly dark days.
The series was often feted as a critique of Thatcherism which it plainly wasn't. It was much more than that - there's a scene where the sons of George don't want any part of the old Communist agenda and like the rest of the moderate millions watching them in the early 80s, just wanted some hope, some purpose and some light in their lives. No, the series' message was summed up in the final words of the character played by Michael Angelis when asked "what's going wrong?" he says "everything's going wrong". And that's certainly how it looked from my own young memories, for what it's worth. But what was the answer?

Here's what this particuarly well-written BBC piece has to say:

"That it emerged from that dark period intact was due as much to the strength and initiative of its management as the political support it received at both a local and national level.
Compromises on both sides ushered in a new, more constructive era of industrial relations which strove to put the needs of the port's customers at the heart of the business. "

In other words the iniative and drive of those in charge coupled with the enviable pride and sense of identity of the local population wrought out from somewhere a revival of their home and livelihood in defiance of the slick presumptions and naysayers in the commentariat across the land. Would that this spirit be replicated in a dozen former industrial towns and cities in the north of England. These people went out, secured the contracts, marketed their assets and made the effort to search out of their comfort zone for new business. That's the kind of dynamism that if emulated on a wider scale would not only revive this country out of its woeful "end of history" mentality but propel it into a new age of the kind of "global success" Gordon Brown can only dream up accompanying rhetoric for. Along with that success would be a whole new set of presumptions about what this country stands for and, more importantly, what it should stand for in the world.

These changes were all made because a set of people in Liverpool - for the sake of pride if not survival - challenged their ingrained thoughts and decided to change their work to adapt to a new era so that they could keep the best of the past. This didn't require any revolution in government, nor extreme ideology, nor heavy-handed imposition - if any - from government. It just required a bit of risk to the ego, some brainstorming and a lot more determination.

Still the re-invention goes on with a reported 90m UKP expansion to accomodate the new generation of container vessels. Much is being said today of the western world moving from manufacturing and industrial-based economies to becoming the "knowlege-based economy". Well, surely the posession of knowledge should always be an objective and in any case not exclude anything else. So we see the same glib theories which for all their cleverness, through narrow-mindedness or vanity, are attempting to straight-jacket a future upon us with all the brutality of this country's post-war industrial decline as encapsulated so well in "..Blackstuff".

Liverpool has been and still is described as the "gateway to the New World" meaning America but how this city has - through keeping its sense of self - challenged received wisdom and proven this country should be able to compete on any terms with anyone has ramifications that could, if observed, be a passage to a new world indeed for the whole United Kingdom.

Backroom Boys

The last week has seen yet another award bestowed upon an early key figure in the iconic British IT company, Acorn which was sold off and split up in 1998 (the name and logo sadly having been re-registered by a box-shifter in 2006). Look further into that article and you'll see that unbeknownst to billions of people worldwide the particular genius of Acorn was not only in producing at least two of the most innovative computers ever but that they founded the chip giant ARM (centred around the Acorn RISC Machines, ARM, chip).

ARM Ltd still resides in Cambridge and there are literally billions of their chips on the planet running everything from set-top boxes, to iPhones to PDAs and not forgetting the micro-niche desktop RISC OS market. The 200million+ UKP value of Acorn before its cessation in 1998 was largely based on the shares it posessed in ARM Ltd and Acorn's bankers were quick to snap this money up thereby catastrophically collapsing the desktop market. Thousands of users are thought to have haemorrhaged away although almost 10 years on in an enduring testament to the company ex-users have started to buy and upgrade the 1990s era machines secondhand.

As written before here, this is another sad tale of Britain famously failing to capitalise on undeniable home-made genius with the newly incumbent Blair - seduced as ever by the rich and famous - allowing a visiting Bill Gates of Microsoft to achieve dominance in the education IT sector. This was virtually the final screw in the coffin and at the time rumours abounded in certain circles of the same Gates visiting Acorn in the early days and asking "what's a network?" to the network capable pre-release BBC Micro.

Whether, as Acorn co-founder stated in 2001 that Acorn "could have set the world standard" (it did after all quite successfully penetrate the Australian and New Zealand markets, as well as Europe) is academic now but with every reminder and bittersweet personal recollection on the internet of Acorn you are reminded that this loss to Britain has been others' gain yet the reward for everybody could have been all the better.

Anybody who has read Francis Spufford's superb "Backroom Boys" which achieves the not minor feat of bringing together Acorn's story with the British space programme as well as Concorde will appreciate the commonality - that is unrewarded genius. As if that wasn't enough, this week plans are announced in China to extend the Shanghai Maglev railway shuttling the flow of manpower at unprecedented speeds between an upcoming transport hub of the world and an upcoming financial centre of the world. The same technology (as the BBC article reveals) whose origins and first commerical implementation were in Britan are now employed to further propel an economy that is growing at probably 3 times the rate of the UK's.

The spirit of the Backroom Boys book is that underlying the advances in engineering, science, technology and even in conceptual thinking itself (the originality of the epochal game "Elite", the strategies behind the genome project) were generally unglamorous and unrecognised miracle-workers whose efforts tangibly or overtly changed human societies yet not in the way intended. The lesson which Spufford never is so crude as to utter is that Britain has an awesome knack for overlooking its own innovations in favour of latching onto somebody else's ideas or schemes. This trait plays out today on the biggest scale with our government planning vastly expensive offshore windfarms ostensibly in the name of energy self-sufficiency whilst the obsession with carbon-neutral biofuels eats into the global grain harvest. At the same time, our food supply is significantly at the behest of politics derogated to Europe. With the obsession for environmentalism continental-style this country has managed to simultaneously overlook its costal assets and nutritional needs and thereby its very lifeblood.

If there is any hope it is the same backroom fellas questioning, scrutinising and upbraiding as necessary the received wisdom and the practises of our masters and rulers usually with little or no credit save the satisfaction that they planted the seed which ultimately started to bring a nation to its senses.

Reality Check

The one headline that really stood out for me this last week was "Queen honours airport attack hero" referring to the Glasgow airport baggage handler who's just received the Queen's Gallantry Medal on top of other awards such as the Everyday Superhero award in New York.

What was it that John Smeaton said? "We British have seen worse than this" and warned "we'll set about ye" to anyone thinking of trying what he foiled? Well I suppose it's good to see the BBC bother to report this when so much of their grown-up newsroom is frantically searching the world for stories containing the word "penis".

The point is however, Smeaton was somebody who in his words "just clicked" and got stuck in to do his "civic duty". This was not as the SNP's Alex Salmond described it "as a nation we united" but somebody who recognised instinctively what was right and wrong and knew the immediate picture - his home - and the broader picture - Britain. In fact the statement Smeaton gave after his undoubtedly heroic actions said more than a hundred politicians could ever say. They say more than, say, Tony Blair ever could in all his rhetoric and oft-noted messianic zeal and they arguably say more than even Churchill could (someone Smeaton himself has some regard for).

His words that day must have punctured and deflated the destructive hopes of every Scottish Nationalist in the UK. Their usually visible irritation at anything resembling fondness or loyalty or association to "Britain" would have been a joy to behold under less serious circumstances.

From a broader perspective however, Smeaton's "pride of Britain" conduct is far more valuable in showing that yes, indeed, there are many in Britain who are not just going to sit back and let our way of life be eradicated by terror nor by stealth. So, deservedly embarassed by John Smeaton would have been anyone who thinks their daily life here is just a matter of biding their time before the British way of life and treasured heritage gives out and recedes into oblivion under the weight of their antipathy or contempt.

Returning to the SNP, its most famous supporter (he who plays British heros when there is good money in it) is of course Sean Connery. He often says that "Scotland should be for the Scottish" meaning (as naturally only England is racist) that Scotland should have national self-determination. Leaving aside the argument that it always has had (together with much of the self-determination of the UK) a threat exists to the self-determination of Britain as stealthy as any personally held hopes of revolution or dissolution. That is of course, the never-ceasing accumulation of political power by the EU which contrary to what anybody says about certain other stories associated with the EU rightly or wrongly is not and never has been a "tabloid myth". It's a factual, historical and ongoing phenomenon.

The actions of John Smeaton on June 30th 2007 shouldn't by right be overlookeed regardless of the immediacy of much of the daily news media. They are a reality check to those of us who so easily lose sight of what really matters, what underlies our self-advancement within our own treasured niche in life. They are an example of bravery, unselfishness and British patriotism whose value is incalculable in a culture of identity-group special pleading and nihilistic separatism. When we're tempted to think how important we are or can become it's worth a reality check to see who really is the greatest and who isn't.

Rumours of our demise

BBC News reported today that the World Bank has updated its estimates of leading economies' GDP size. It appears that China has been greatly overestimated. Whether that's a surprise to anybody is one question but this surely demands a reassesment of this country's relative fortunes in the future. Interestingly, with a GDP of 2.243 trillion US dollars, China is still more than five times behind the US (although purchase power parity somewhat closer).


Still, leaving the stats to those brave or clever enough to hang on them, the UK has an economy of 2.244 trillion dollars although prices being so high the PPP is considerably less than China's. So the economy is still by one major measure bigger than China and yet this deserves no mention by the BBC in their article.

Now there is being realistic but there is also being destructively negative. How about a bit of talking up the present assets of our country just once in a while let alone its future prospects. Wasn't it Buddha who said "what we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday"?

It's not in the nature of much of the news media to do this of course and while organisations like ITN and BBC are only to glad to send breathless reporters to China sensationalise the end of US hegemony or something like that, a piece of interesting news like NASA's significantly growing interest in the hard-won expertise in the space sector of this country is barely sniffed at. A relaxed looking Michael Griffen with the key to untold bounty for the UK pales in comparison to the awe of an all-powerful autocracy and its erratic recent movements on land, sea and in orbit.

Rejoice! This "small island" is a major country, it can do things around the world, it has influence and power still. Certainly, there are fundamental problems with governance ebbing in near tidal waves to Brussels but when you feel brought low you need to start examining your assets and your strengths. Because it's only from a position of strength that any battle for the future can be won.

Slaughtered

Channel 4 news tonight reported on the destruction of rainforest in Indonesia for the planting of "biofuels" aimed at meeting the growing obsession for reducing "carbon" emissions, for example by the EU. This is the great - so far - underexposed scandal of the EU. Although the Biblical wickedness of the Common Fisheries Policy and its wanton destruction of the life that we steward on this planet is not anything new, the vanity of competing with other political regions around the world in scale of biofuel usage surely plumbs new depths.

The report stated that the closest genetic human relative, the Orang Utan was being shot in significant numbers for attempting to feed on the new political (well who needs food?) crop of the age. That a fascinating and intelligent (if not more intelligent than man judging by recent Japanese studies with chimps) animal is being shot and killed is a travesty. That an endearing animal - which for all its strength is no match for human society - is being slaughtered to feed the megalomania of a ever-more desperate power-bloc is evil.

This is the absolute worst of transnationalist and and usually leftist tendencies: to elevate an ideology to a level where it becomes so much the popular epitomy of piety and virtue that in turn brings the appeal of being associated with it the ultimate prize. Out of the window go the really important considerations such as our duty of care towards the life and quality of life on this planet (animals and humans alike) and in mode cometh the attribute of "saving the planet".

We have huge quantities of fossil fuels remaining in this planet which by its nature has reached the end of its chemical (let alone biological) journey. Coal reserves in Britain alone remain considerable and increasingly economical to extract. This is near the basal state of matter and its not going anywhere unless humans can find use of it. Their conversion to oil is likely to become more economical in he future. And alternatively, the millions being spent yearly on the Atomic Energy Agency and Atomic Weapons Establishment in the UK could be better directed into finding alternative or additional energy sources either directly or as spin-off technology respectively.

Much like the hypothetical situation of a man praying to God to "get me out of here" and ignoring the helicopter appearing above in favour of supernatural intervention, we are fools to ignore the natural assets we can use.

Instead, and for equally sanctimonious human vanity borne out of the projects that politicians are still masterminding above our heads, we butcher the animal kingdom around us and like the proverbial ignorant pigs placate our self-righteous exhibioinist egos in the false assumption we have done something upheld as virtuous.

Remember Mad Mitch

The history of a country is, I believe, essentially what perpetuates the idea of nationality, identity and through this - in short- a contribution to the story of the human race. A reminder of this came today in the form of an articleon BBC News online on "Mad Mitch" about whom the fascinating mini-series "Empire Warriors" covered a couple of years ago.

What strikes as much, if not more, than the determination of a man who realised his "60 seconds of distance run", his moment in the spotlight of national history had very much come was the thoughts of those in Britain watching the horrors unfold of an event which would - in a less US-obsessed world - have had echos following the debacle of Clinton's invasion of Somalia in the 1990s. Mitch led the effective regrouping of the British following the murder of 24 British servicemen and their butchering and parading through the streets. This was, if not the last - one of the last - battles of the British Empire observed by a public who had for years been spectacle or subject to grinding austerity and declining national prestige. As I've remarked before, the loss of prestige in a world in which we all have a stake of course impacts on the ordinary person of that country.


Thus it is a painful moment in the few times in the day when I can, by virtue of the internet, escape the work "bubble" it again becomes clear that such a moment of very real importance to the nation has been all but forgotten. The uncertain (and as it turned out depression-struck) future of Britain no doubt seemed to hinge on doing the right thing and upholding the dignity and righteousness of everything good the Empire and Great Britain stood (and stands) for in Aden in that summer.

It is equally disheartening to see, therefore, bouts of America-bashing by high-profile figures in this country (such as the Archibishop of Canterbury) and the ensuing rash but predictable retaliatory attacks on British history. If influential figures writing for major newspapers - not to mention these organs themselves - were to pay more attention to "end-of-Empire" situations such as Aden and Malaya, the current events in Iraq and Afghanistan could be presented in a far more wise and publicly-illuminating fashion.
Instead we see figures of awesome reputation - let's say British historians - produce selective accounts of prejudice and very often mediocre commentary which disregard the hopes and very soul of generations of Britons in an attempt to spectacularly influence the present. The waste of talent for this country's ongoing cause is so saddening.

The arrogance of the present means that the deadly (in British military terms alone) situations of even the recent past are disregarded by the newspapers, television news and far too many politicians in favour of the suffocating focus on what the United States does or says it will do. Consequently, from failing to pause to think and reflect we as a country learn nothing, we become a nation without a history, without pride and prestige and we suffer in the present for it.

Crudd

Today, in view of John Howard's ousting as Prime Minister of Australia, a shameful thought came to mind concerning his successor which won't be repeated here. The same thought was voiced and the silence of my companions spoke volumes. Whether this was due to the media's (ITV news in this case) framing of the election or not is not clear although bullet-pointing Kevin Rudd's manifesto as "sign Kyoto treaty/withdraw from Iraq/remove Queen as head of state" gives some clue as to the sense of destructive forces at work.

The sight of Rudd's face beaming over plans to rupture the alliance that has slowly, desperately and painfully brought the prospect of a free Middle East into contention is extremely hard to stomach. Alongside, the oh-so-populist reported plan to "sign Kyoto" in the face of growing evidence against its tenets and to say "XXXX off mate" to the Queen is to my mind a more than head-in-hands scenario.

But the icing on this wretched cake is the knowledge that so few people in this country could actually care on way or another what Australians think or do. Indeed the headlines on ITV centred around a survivor of the rescued stricken Arctic tourist vessel saying they are "warm, dry and safe" and that if they weren't then the situation "would be more serious".
Howard, despite his shortcomings, is right in declaring Australia a more prosperous and proud nation for his period of stewardship - a period in which he has managed to secure a free-trade arrangement with the world's biggest economy, implement structures to permit population change within a humanly-tolerable pace and a lot more rooted in his instincts to advance Australian success.

What Prime Minister Brown thinks of all this could be argued to be irrelevant given the restrictions imposed on this country by defence arrangements (e.g. the European Rapid Reaction Force) and trade with the EU. The obscenity this week however of remaining British fishermen tipping shiploads of dead fish back into the sea to meet EU quotas together with the symbolic prospective rejection of our head of state might be thought likely to raise some sustained interest in the media and populace. You can be forgiven for thinking this will not manifest in practice nevertheless.

The desire of Australians to see change in their country tonight leaves its future in the balance and potentially in a very dark place from where its difficult to see the light.

What is more certain however is that Britain's inability to engage with its former territory in any meaningful sense over the past 10 years leaves it with little esteem in the eyes of ordinary or ruling-class Australians. Whilst this seismic shift takes place in the Pacific, we remain in our insular world denying even the reality of our own democracy's decline let alone looking outwards to what was the greatest ally this country ever had and until today could ever wish for.