Cunard's 175th Anniversary. Celebrate, or hold a wake?

Hey everyone; Cunard is to hold its 175th Anniversary and we've all got to jump up and down with excitement, whoop whoop!! The heritage of this great 'British' company is to be celebrated and school children are to be advised as to how proud they must be.
I'm all for the teaching of history but lets not conveniently leave out recent history.

Facts:
Cunard is now owned by the Carnival Corporation of the USA. What happened was straightforward. The US giant placed before British management and shareholders a trough brimming over with dollars and the slavering pigs in question couldn't contain their drooling and dived in. Result; Heritage betrayed and this vital piece of our commercial sovereignty prostituted. In 1982 Thatcher requisitioned Cunard ships to transport British soldiers to the Falklands; this could never happen again because the asset is no longer sovereign and Carnival would say 'on yer bike' if pleaded with by todays politicians.

No British built ships are in the Cunard fleet and the country is now incapable of constructing such a high value/high skill product. With no orders to fulfill the skills have simply withered away through lack of employment.

British crews sacked decades ago in favour of cheap labour, a minimum number of Brits are employed for window dressing purposes. A career in the Merchant Navy once so commonplace is now a rarity.

Cunard re-registered the fleet to Bermuda supposedly so as to be able to conduct weddings onboard, nothing to be with tax of course; heaven forbid folks should suspect such a motivation!!

Foreign owned, foreign flagged, foreign built, foreign crewed, what heritage is it exactly we're supposed to be celebrating? A broken and betrayed heritage and that's a fact. Carnival bought Cunard for the highly desirable and profitable trading name and that is all. Lets not pop over to Southampton with our Chinese made plastic Union Flags and bunting because no celebration is warranted. A wake would be more appropriate. Let us indeed teach our children history; RECENT HISTORY. 

RIP Ford vehicle production UK. The last Transit.

This was the moment yesterday (25.7.2013) when the very last Ford vehicle of any class or description came off the production line in the UK. Ford's once healthy two sided relationship with Britain has now become a one sided relationship as every vehicle they sell here will from now on be an import.

What's the difference between Ford and other manufacturers that have never made so much as a nut and bolt here? The likes of Mercedes, Fiat and Citroen have always enjoyed a one sided relationship and all along British consumers have been aware that their money once handed over will leave the country and improve standard of livings elsewhere. Where Ford is concerned the relationship was until 1972 when the process of abandoning Britain began, the healthy one spoken of, with the company investing heavily and fairly in skills and communities. Today Ford supports a number of European economies, notably Germany where the cost of labour is higher than in the UK, and they take advantage of cheap labour such as in Turkey where all Transit production will now be based.

Type into a search engine 'Ford Transit' and top result will be the sales pitch for the new model. They don't say that it's made in Turkey but just bang on about how great it is. Profitable as well, because the labour making it is so cheap whilst the van itself is the most expensive it has ever been! These are mega-hard-bitten businesspeople that don't give a damn about people and communities but who are driven solely by greed. ... everything we do is driven by you... the slogan used to go 'everything we do is driven by greed' ought to be the update.

As to why the poor sod driving the van in the picture has a grin on his face? Got a gun in his back probably; smile for the cameras you limey bastard or else.    

  

Sheep No More's No1 influence.

The weekend just gone was the annual Larmer Tree Festival, a music and cultural event I have attended most years since 2000. At my first visit thirteen years ago, I sat on the grass on a glorious Sunday afternoon as a band called Show of Hands came on stage and started to play. Two guys, Phil Beer and Steve Knightly and I have to say the songs blew me away because of the power of the lyrics. The words of one in particular seeded itself into my own consciousness and has been there ever since. 'Cutthroats Crooks and Conmen' is about schools that have to fund raise not to buy luxuries but basics and the chorus runs... thieves and crooks and conmen running this jail, is there anything left in England that's not for sale. After the gig I pretty much ran to the merchandise tent and bought a cd titled 'Live at the Royal Albert Hall'. Over the years since, the band has released a good many cd's and all they ever seem to do is get better with each and every one. The records are loaded with political and socially aware songs carried along by great melodies and musicianship, and are not left-wing as might be assumed, but purely based upon rationality and common sense.

If required to account for how, what, where and when the idea for Sheep No More first got seeded, I would say it was on that particular day whilst sitting in the sunshine with my family. Steve Knightly writes the songs, so therefore he has to rate as the single most influential force to have steered my own thinking in the right direction. On Sunday last, Steve played a solo gig at this years festival and afterwards I had the privilege of meeting him and presented him with a copy of Sheep No More. He was pleased to accept it and we had a bit of a chin wag.

I worked incredibly hard on my book just as he works to craft his amazing songs and get the words spot-on. It was good to meet a kindred spirit, especially one so important to this project and I really hope he enjoys my book. Actually there's plenty of material within it that could inspire a new song or two, and who knows, maybe will at some point.

It was rewarding to meet this great lyricist and shake him by the hand, and as usual his performance inspired a prolonged and well deserved standing ovation. Good man!

Ford... From a healthy two sided relationship to a one sided piss-take.

On my mind for much of the day has been Ford's abandonment and betrayal of Britain and the reasoning behind the move. The nature of the 'deal' Ford had with Britain and its people has changed in the most fundamental way, having gone from healthy and good when the company respected our country, to the unhealthy and bad version they operate according to now.

When at its best the relationship amounted to a partnership. Ford invested heavily in jobs, skills and communities here, the company was a powerful force for good, and the British economy benefitted enormously. Hard to believe now is that not so many decades ago, everything Ford sold in Britain was made in Britain.

Today the executives at Ford view Britain as a cash-cow they can get away with milking to the nth degree whilst investing the bare minimum that can be got away with. Skilled workers have been unloaded by the tens of thousands onto the benefits system so that Ford can take advantage of cheap labour elsewhere which means in reality, British taxpayers are being used to supplement Ford's ruthless business methods. Its not just them obviously, because using and abusing the benefits system to unload a workforce deemed inconvenient has been standardised as business 'tool'. Where once Ford maintained whole communities in exchange for the loyalty of consumers, now they just want our money, which is an entirely one sided deal. Shameful.

  

By this coming weekend ALL Ford vehicle manufacturing in Britain will cease when the Transit factory in Southampton closes.  Stark is the contrast between today's sorry state of affairs and forty years ago when my own father worked for Ford as a junior manager and was proud to do so. Back then everything Ford sold in Britain was made in Britain and the company was a powerful force within our country both economically and socially. These days Ford manufacture their products wherever they can find the cheapest labour to exploit and then they sell them to British consumers and companies for the highest prices they've ever been able to. Never has the product range been more expensive to buy and never has the company been able to make so much money from what they clearly regard as being an undefended and vulnerable cash-cow of a country.

Politicians of other nations make the effort to defend their own best interests; here in contrast, our lot shrug their shoulders and declare 'free market forces must not be questioned' and they refuse to do so.

Bearing in mind how many hundreds of thousands if not millions of vehicles Ford sell in Britain each and every year, that many are the products of cheap labour, all are highly profitable for the company, that Britain's skilled workforce is on the scrapheap effectively, our benefits system cannot possible sustain so many non-productive claimants, the nation has been systematically stripped of its manufacturing skills and the economy is an outright basket case; is it not time to at least begin questioning the 'wisdom' of the political and economic system we live under? The recreation of a breed of politicians and businessmen capable of fighting Britain's corner, surely cannot be beyond our currently cowed wit can it? Surely not. 

Family matters.

Three weeks since I last posted which is down to family matters that became all consuming of my time and attention. A close family friend died and then a few days later an even closer family member, both deaths were unexpected and came as a shock, and to make matters worse, my mother has entered a new phase of her life which is causing a great of family worry. At the age of eighty she's undergone major, but not life threatening surgery which has seriously affected her mobility. She's one of these old girls with a fiercely independent streak and declares " the only way I'll be got out of my own home is feet first in a box". The trouble is, the house she lives in is about as unsuitable as can be for a person with mobility problems and who has to use a zimmer frame to get around. Steps and tight corners and a large garden on a slope that was, and still is her pride and joy but that she can no longer maintain. Where she lives is quite isolated which is made all the worse by the fact that she's the last of the older relatives that once lived close by but have since all gone over to the great beyond, whilst all of the younger members have moved away. She is blessed with good neighbors and a few elderly friends all keeping an eye out and they will phone me when something is up, at which point it will take a minimum of four hours to get to where she lives by road.

Here's the really worrying bit; following the operation which involved a week in the hospital followed by two more weeks in an NHS recuperation facility, I collected her and spent a week (last week) looking after her needs and doing repairs etc around the house. I also spent time looking into her finances (as much as she would allow) one aspect of which was found to be deeply troubling. She's one of the old school that always looks for the best in people and finds it hard to accept that an 'official looking' item of mail might in actual fact have been sent by a crook. Her mail comprises almost entirely of scam letters promising £10,000, £20,000, £Half a million to the person that just has to reply to a mailshot and add their name to some scam lottery or other. Some purport to be sent out by legitimate sounding 'charities' and ask for a monthly contribution, and sorry to say, my old mum is gullible and easily drawn in by the bastards. I've a whole sack of this stuff I brought home and am working my way slowly through, whilst checking the many and various outfits out via the web. This week mothers brother is with her and he's finance savvy and going to gain access to her bank statements with her permission, to see exactly what has been going on and if necessary talk to the bank about defending her accounts.

Having an elderly relative, especially one so close become vulnerable health wise (both physical and psychological) and who is putting his or herself at risk the way my own mother is, could hardly be more troubling. My deepest sympathy to anyone with a similar problem to deal with. And here's a simple tip that may be of help if you fear a loved one of your own is falling prey to such scams. Type into a search engine the name of the so called 'charity' etc and see what comes up. It may be that they've covered themselves with a legitimate looking website and are able to quote registered charity numbers and the likes that may, or may not be genuine. Then type the name of the outfit into a search engine again but this time follow it with 'scam?' So ... 'XXX scam?'... and see what enlightening information comes up. You may be surprised and shocked at what you see, but it's good to be wised up.