Shades of Grey

“Why is that dog listening at that ear trumpet thing?” David asked when passing HMV the other day.

“He is listening to His Master’s Voice on a gramophone”.

“Why would someone be talking to a dog via a record?”

And so it goes…

I first looked into the story of Nipper from a chance conversation with the Manager of Coventry HMV record store. Above the store was the ABC Cinema, whilst in the basement was a failed former Bierkeller which was re-opened as a music Pub called The Dog and Trumpet (still going, I believe). On the wall next to the rather unassuming entrance was the dog listening to the trumpet, a familiar logo from His Master’s Voice 78rpm records and it all belonged to EMI at the time.

I won’t retell the background here as it is documented online but it is interesting that a corporate logo should have survived more-or-less unscathed with a circa 1900 vintage anachronistic mechanical sound reproducer.

The images are public domain, sourced from Wikipedia commons.

School children don’t seem to wear coats very much these days and both Morley High & Woodkirk High school uniform is just a jumper, not a blazer. I asked the question on facebook and was given various answers that included them not being cool and them being banned within the school buildings (except in lockers and bags).

There certainly seems to be a fashion victim peer pressure side to this, but on a wet day, why would you want to spend all day in school steaming and smelling like a wet dog?

The other thing is that high schools don’t seem to have cloakrooms any more, generally becase the coats get nicked or damaged. Indeed, lockers replace open shelves for the same reason. (We didn’t get anywhere to put our haversacks until lower 6th at Kenton and it was only lockers in the upper 6th.)

Anyway, David has decided he likes the Heckmondwike uniform best- they wear blazers as opposed to just jumpers (and David gets very hot in jumpers). And- the students are allowed to take their coats into the classrooms. I’m not quite certain why hanging your coat on the back of the chair is such a hienous crime at Woodkirk & Morley High, although I’m sure someone will tell me in due course.

It is time to open up the Morleygate Blog again and I am delighted to welcome PJ as a highly experienced political person to the blogging chamber over there. This posting has now appeared over there and the thread will continue to be developed over there leaving this blog to discuss the shady stuff. PJ has introduced himself, I’m now looking forward to his maiden blog. (The post below is by Shades)

We have freeedom in speech in this country, unless of course we are not being nice to minorities, or they perceive it to be so. Otherwise, we are more-or-less able to express our opinions provided we don’t stray into the calumny zone.

Article 19 

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations, December 1948

In my “about the Blogger” page, I have the following statement:-

I have no malign intent to libel anyone, make implications that are misleading or breach copyright of other people’s images but will robustly defend my stance if I am bullied or manipulated. If you are paid by the public purse, you are subject to public scrutiny and I regard you as fair game. If you are a politician, I am reluctant to give you the benefit of the doubt. 

In that spirit, I turn my beady eye to the latest goings on locally. There are rumours circling the Morley chattering classes that Leeds City Councillors have approached the line managers of two Leeds City Council employees who have made postings on Facebook about what the councillor considers to be inappropriate remarks, i.e. disagreeing with them. Neither of these employees are believed to be in jobs that are classed as politically restricted posts.

Now this concerns me greatly as I regard this as suppression of free speech and depending on the circumstances, quite possibly an abuse of the Councillor code of conduct re 3.1 Treating others with respect, 6(a) Using your position improperly, 3 (b) Bullying and 3 (c) intimidation.

Now, I can understand this approach for the Private Sector. If I posted opinions about the Board Policy of the PLC that I work for I would expect some form of disciplinary procedure against me but there are clear guidelines in my terms of employment that I must not do such things and that all media contact is to be via our Corporate Communications team.

A Public Body, however, is another matter. I imagine that 95% of local government employees are not in politically restricted posts and I consider it perfectly fair that a bin man, say, should be able to argue about library provision, or a social worker hold strong views about education. They are employees of a legal entity with a statutory instrument of Governance powers and the Councillors are elected Members subject to full public scrutiny of their actions. All council tax payers are stakeholders in local Government and provided that they do not cross the line into defamation, there is no human right to not be offended. (Indeed, a defence against defamation proceedings is “fair comment in the public interest” so politicians have less protection than others against libel.)

Now I don’t know too much about the details about these cases and what I have heard is inevitably one-sided, some may well be hearsay distorted by the nature of story swapping. The two employees are inevitably going to be circumspect so I intend to find out about this the other way round, by asking the Councillors.

There are 99 Councillors on Leeds City Council, pictured below. (The images are copyright Leeds City Council but I clain fair use). I’m sure that most of them are honourable. I will shortly be composing a model email to enquire as to whether they are involved in this matter. It may take a number of weeks but I don’t give up willingly.

These days the Press have mostly abandoned investigative journalism, certainly at local level. However, bloggers are journalists as well and Citizen Journalists are starting to ask questions.

This isn’t a massive scandal, but it fits in with the Morleygate ethos. Councillors, explain yourself.

(Rotten Boroughs is a Private Eye feature about Councillors who overstep their authority.)

Someone who I know slightly through work is feeling a bit hard done by financially. Most of his shares were in Northern Rock (and various other turkeys) and his savings are with Icesave. He has been on the phone rather a lot today to the FSA and the words “Chocolate Teapot” spring to mind- He will probably get refunded up to £50,000 provided that he qualifies to do so but they can’t tell him the timescales. Besides which, the Bank aren’t actually insolvent, they have just slammed the virtual doors shut.

Now I have worked in Insurance before for my sins and in many ways Insurance is a high class version of William Hills- it is a sort of bet, but the outcomes are the other way round, i.e. winning is not losing. As with the turf, the bookie always wins unless they get the odds wrong. (This is why actuaries are so highly paid).

The other thing about insurance is that to contain costs, customer validation is generally carried out at the point of a claim, rather than at the point of policy issue. In laymans terms, this is often perceived as the bastards are looking for reasons to wriggle out of it.

Now, how competent are we to expect the FSA to be? I imagine that they will sort it out in the end but in the meantime, hundreds of thousands of people will find their cashflow disrupted somewhat. The words fund of last resort rings bells with me that they aren’t going to be sending the cheques out by the end of the day.

So, how can me batten down the hatches and weather the storm? Well I imagine the smart people with independent wealth will have invested in Krugerrands and a safety deposit box (or perhaps steel window bars and assorted weaponry) but what is the average Joe to do?

I’ve been thinking about this for a few days and have a few suggestions, I’m not a financial adviser of course, so they are worth what you have paid for them.

• You could bank hop to one that is looking less shaky, or maybe hope to be in the first wave of collapses in particularly dodgy ones, but opening a bank account these days is rather a lot of jumping through hoops because of the money laundering regulations and they are bound to cock it up anyway. Perhaps it is best to sight tight with the devil you know for your main checking account.
• Similarly with mortgages, the offers are scarce so sit tight, you’ll only have to pay silly fees to move anyway.
• Get your credit card debt down, preferably to zero. Even if you pay off your balance every month, don’t expect a payment holiday just because you can’t temporarily access your money.
• Use your debit card in preference to credit cards- but keep enough of a balance to compensate for this.
• Don’t cut up your credit cards- you might need them in a crisis if your liquidity dries up.
• Move a chunk of savings to another banking group as a financial buffer and if you are lucky enough to have more than £50k (£100k for joint finances) then don’t fall into the trap of having the money in the same banking group.
• Find out what your household insurance covers you for on cash in the house- and get that much cash in the house. Don’t put it under the mattress or in a pretend tin of beans in the cupboard.
• If you have an offset mortgage of £100k and savings of £50k, that £50k is not protected by the FSCS Scheme. Instead, if the bank goes to the wall, you find yourself in the rather good position of now only having a £50k mortgage instead, so you will be able to pay it off much more quickly. On the down side though, you haven’t got any money. At all. Your current and savings account balances are at zero. Ouch.
• Start buying slightly more long life foodstuffs (tinned food & rice).
• Resist the temptation to buy new books, CDs and magazines- you probably have a load of them you never got round to reading or listening to anyway. Now is a good time to tighten your belt.
• Get a small generator- they are quite cheap from the likes of ALDI. If the leccy goes off (and it is probably going to go off this winter anyway) you probably need power to keep the central heating boiler working. There WILL be power cuts in the future, I am sure of it.
• Get an explosion-safe jerry can for petrol.
• If you are into negative equity and you are max-ed out on your cards, be prepared to kiss your lifestyle goodbye.
• Get yourself a copy of Farnham’s Freehold, lots of ideas of how to survive in a crisis.
• Don’t believe any cak about more regulation being needed, it is regulation that got us into this mess, along with successive Governments who have eroded the Gold Standard and forced socialistic policies onto the markets.
• Take stock about how the 1983 Labour Party Manifesto is being implemented in adversity and Vote Libertarian at the next election, or better still, join the Libertarian Party. Even in these cash strapped times, it is an excellent investment of your Tenner.

(This post also appears at the UK Libertarian Party blog)

Morley has a new parking scheme. Our biggest car park (Queensway) gets busy at times and teeters on the edge of fullness on Saturdays. All parking in Morley is free, apart from one small car park belonging to a shop that has a pay & display scheme with refunds for Customers.

So, our burghers decided to improve things. Did they look at removing yellow lines on some little used side streets in order to create more parking spaces? No. They decided to introduce three hour limits on the lower half of the Queensway car park, the busiest bit because it is nearest the shops.

How did they decide to implement the three hour scheme? By introducing parking discs perhaps, or simply getting the wardens to keep track of number plates the same way they do on the on-street parking? No. They put in two pay ticket machines, on free dispense. So, electricity and paper consumables are required. (It looks like thermal paper). How is the scheme going? Here is a Facebook report from PJ-

Just got back from Morley. Morrison car park pretty full, but got parked easily, near the top.

The bottom bit was jam-packed and, being nosy, I had a look at a few windscreens in the hope of seeing one of these newfangled tickets.

I was sorely disappointed. Didn’t see one. Zilch.

In fact, I nearly got one out of the machine just to see what they looked like.

Good thing our lords & masters have kindly granted us a few weeks reprieve from prosecution, otherwise the wardens would be running out of tickets by now.

It is not very well signed, in my humble opinion, and I can easily imagine locals not realising about it, let alone our out-of-town visitors.

I really, really look forward to the first penalties being issued. Maybe there could be a little civic tea party at the town hall for the lucky recipients to mark the occasion, followed by a public proclamation of pardon from the town hall steps.

There is much discussion on Facebook (account required), not much of it supportive.

I went there at about 9am yesterday morning, to get a sunday paper from the Garage (ASDA doesn’t open until ten). I was the only car there, but I took a ticket just to be on the safe side, as the rules appear to apply at all times. My ticket was number 498 which strikes me as a low number after four working days.

Meanwhile, Morrisons Garage will be temporarily closing to install new petrol pumps that are “better for the environment”.

Now as carbon based fuels are regarded by the watermelons as the spawn of beelzebub, this raises a question.

What is an environmentally friendly petrol pump? One that dispenses Marmite instead?

(I assume it means the pumping mechanism is very efficient and the electronics have low energy power save features).