FraserWords

We have discussed the state of our roads before, and we have discussed the state of public service in this country. One is chronically underfunded and understaffed and things are getting worse and worse every single day. So is the other.

Today, with no prior warning whatsoever, Cornwall Council sent workmen down the lane past Fraser Towers. We are the only property on a half-mile-ish stretch, the main road into our village.

The workmen, without knocking on the door or wishing me the time of day, dug vast holes in the ruined surface of the lane, presumably as a prelude to resurfacing. They put up ‘road closed’ signs at either end and then naffed off.

So at 1pm I started trying to contact Cornwall Council to find out how long they plan to leave me marooned in a sea of ruts and potholes even worse than the sea of ruts and potholes that already surrounded me.

It is now 6.35pm. I have spent a total of 30 minutes today in phone queues. I have spoken to three separate switchboard operators. I have been sent one e-mail form. No calls or e-mails can go directly to the department responsible – everything sits in a queue and is dealt with in order. Not even the staff can bypass this Kafkaesque system. Needless to say, the call back I was promised at 3pm has not materialised. The switchboard team leader I spoke to at 5.40pm has gone off shift without even the decency to call back and apologise for not having sorted things out. Like she said she would. I don’t mind the road repair. We need it. What I mind is the sheer bad manners.

Such is the abject, rude, inefficient world we have allowed ourselves to make. Every time a Westminster government has postured about capping the council tax, what it has meant is more local job losses and an ever worsening standard of service to the extent that we now have a local council that is as hard to contact and deal with as the very worst exemplar of corporate incompetence in the entire history of the known world, BT Open Reach.

We believe Westminster has helped us by keeping council tax down. But we are too stupid to ask ourselves: “How many years has my council tax bill gone down, then?”. Nor do we ask: “What has happened to all the money we have saved? Where has it gone?” We just pay and pay and pay and let the recipients of our munificence refuse to speak to us or even treat us with the tiniest degree of courtesy. We don’t even require our companies and services to have good manners. Remarkable.

Little victories

Talking of the wretched shambles that is BT Open Reach, I hear from Sister Animal Aunts (www.animalaunts.co.uk if ever your pets need a helping paw) that she has settled for a large sum in compensation for being abandoned, phoneless, for a month over Christmas. At the end of the lengthy exchange of e-mails on the subject, the appalling BT attempted to put a deadline on our Sister’s response. She told them that was a bit cheeky seeing as they hadn’t been able to give themselves a deadline for fixing her phone. Touche! Well played, Sister!

Breaking the law

In political arguments, it is the law of this country that any debate with a socialist like me must end with my opponent asking, with curious logic, if I want to return to the 1970s because they were terrible.

It is illegal to challenge the view of that ill-starred decade that the media has instructed us to accept, so we rarely hear the interpretation of the 70s you get from the have-nots like my father, who remember the decade fondly as the time that he and mum could first afford a TV, a washing machine and a holiday. Before then, bus drivers like Dad had little legal protection and there was precious little regard for their safety, and therefore the safety of their passengers. After then, it was possible to go to work and not be dangerously exhausted.

That simply doesn’t match the legally required view of the decade: rampant trade union power wrecking the country’s economy, ruining prosperity, switching off the lights and leaving the dead unburied.

If you ever do feel tempted to question the law, however, then consider the obituaries today of the trade unionist Mick Abbott, who has died aged 74.

Through the 70s he fought for improved safety on the building sites where he worked, and for decent pay for the people whose lives were being risked. In 1972, the building industry went on its first national strike. The law demands that I point out that these workshy greedy Trotskyists were holding the country to ransom. However, it all depends how you view a demand for safety improvements and a wage of £1 an hour. According to the National Archives Currency Converter, that’s equivalent to £5.57 in 2005 prices. I expect Daily Mail executives would work for less.

For his pains, Mick Abbott was jailed (alongside his fellow campaigner, the actor Ricky Tomlinson) after secret intervention by Tory Government ministers, an act that was only made public years later. He and many others were illegally blacklisted in the construction industry, making it hard for them to support their families. This blacklist, too, was only made public years later. The blacklisting operation was carried out with the support of the police. This, too, was…. You’ve got it. In 2014, we know that the jailings and the blacklistings, though illegal, were politically motivated and sanctioned. An investigation showed more than 3,000 people were prevented from working because they wanted improved safety and better pay.

It’s a different narrative, isn’t it, to the one the law requires you to accept? It’s hard to think about the alternative: all the time those greedy workshy Trots were trying to better the lives of themselves, their workmates and their families, they were being illegally bullied by an establishment determined not to share the benefits of advancement.

You are also not permitted, of course, to ask what all these greedy workshy Trots actually achieved. You must certainly not pause to reflect on how much safer workplaces were by the end of the 70s, how many hours workers toiled at the end of the decade compared to the start, what pension or holiday rights had been improved by action during the decade, how much pay had improved for the lowest paid. Because that might make you wonder whether the people who tell you what to think really have your best interests at heart.

Not that such behaviour has stopped, of course. The latest example of the way democratic rights must come second to the demands of the establishment can be seen in the Scottish referendum over independence.

North of the border, the air is thick with the sound of bullying and threats designed to win the referendum for the ‘no’ campaign: businesses and rich people will leave if Scotland goes independent. Scotland will not be permitted to have the pound, even though Scotland has shared it, contributed to it, shed blood for it, for 300 years. And so on.

What the people have actually voted for in Scotland is a Scottish Nationalist Party that delivers social justice policies, policies a million miles removed from the peevish, jealous little Englander greed that dominates Tory thinking. Yet we are asked to ignore the topics on which people have voted and accept that if the people – the free people – of Scotland vote for what they want, they will be punished by unelected business leaders, shareholders and politicians.

Every time we are warned that the rich will leave us if we vote for independence or put taxes up or cap bankers’ bonuses or extend the most basic of rights to wortking people, I wonder when – or if – people will finally get it: the rich people who are running our country with these threats weren’t actually elected and we are better off without crooks and blackmailers.

Turned off

So BBC3 is to close. You will note, please, that you heard it here first: my palm is closed tight around the zeitgeist’s throat, as it always was. Chief suit Lord Hall even used my argument that BBC3’s young audience sought entertainment in a large number of ways that differ dramatically from the old stereotype of a family crowded around a box.

Chateau Linkinhorne

A red letter day, yesterday. Not only did the sun shine (Brother Badger must have forecast storms in his Sunday night Tweet), but I also lifted the lid on the vat of cider brewed with Brother Bertie and Brother Fiddle back in October. Crikey! The Chateau Linkinhorne ’13 may look like a freshly-filled sample jar, but it is very dry, very sharp and remarkably potent. So much so that I went outside and gave my apple trees a talking-to, entreating them to provide even more this year. Wearing (let Sister Shine note that her orders have been followed) my shorts.

Now, after a day of trying to deal with Cornwall Council, I’m going to put Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken on very loud, and have another sample jar. Cheers!