Showing posts with label ECONOMICS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ECONOMICS. Show all posts

Thursday, 4 February 2021

BREXIT BUGGERS BRITAIN

        February 4th 2021: BREXIT BUGGERS BRITAIN.

Dear Boris and the ERG,

Where is my Brexit Bonus and what are the Opportunities for me in your Brexit Sunlit Uplands?

Yours sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen and Voter.

Oxford - UK.

*******

City of London and Services Passporting Rights:-

https://ukandeu.ac.uk/what-does-the-brexit-trade-deal-mean-for-financial-services/

January 2021: "Meanwhile Rishi Sunak has the importance of enrolling finance into wider green economic recovery policies and supporting the development of digital finance.

He is right to note that the future of the sector is not just a London issue. It adds around £130 billion to the UK economy and 1.1 million jobs. For example, in Edinburgh around 10% of jobs are in financial and related professional services."

******

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_20_2532

On 1 January 2021, the United Kingdom will lose all the rights and obligations it had as an EU Member State and during the transition period under the Withdrawal Agreement. It will no longer benefit from seamless access to the EU Single Market and Customs Union, or from EU policies and international agreements (including its free trade agreements with other third countries).

This will create new barriers to trade in goods and services, and to cross-border mobility and exchanges that do not exist today – in both directions. While the new agreement will serve to limit disruptions compared to a situation without an agreement being in place, public administrations, businesses, citizens and stakeholders on both sides will inevitably be affected. The Commission has issued extensive guidance on how best to deal with these changes.

*******

Don't say we didn't warn you.


 30 November 2018

ANY BREXIT WILL COST 7.8 MILLION UK JOBS

UK BREXITS.   EUROPE ISOLATED

27th Feb 2019

UK government has revised its calculations of  the damage Brexit will do to the UK economy, increasing it to 9% of GDP (it was 8%). UK GDP (gross domestic product - all the work we do which adds value to the economy) is £1.73 trillion per year, multiply by 9% = £156 billion per year.  Convert to average  jobs at £20,000 wages per year = 7.8 million UK lost jobs - or equivalent reduction in wages. Well done ERG and Mrs May and Mr Corbyn - putting us well on our way to national bankruptcy. That will show those Brussels Bureaucrats that we Britons are not afraid of hardship. Bring it on! We survived the Blitz - and paid-off the USA War Loans. 


Thursday, 10 December 2020

BREXIT: BASED ON A FALSE PREMISE by Mel Cooper

 

WHY DO SERIAL LIAR BORIS & THE TORIES WANT TO
ISOLATE & BANKRUPT BRITAIN? 

BREXIT: BASED ON A FALSE PREMISE

 By Mel Cooper  - 10 December 2020. 

 Recently, Tim Stanley, an historian and journalist, who is a leader writer for the DAILY TELEGRAPH in London, UK, was talking about the wonders of Brexit on SKY News and how we would now get our sovereignty back at last. As a result, he stated, we would no longer be having laws imposed upon us by the EU.

 LAWS IMPOSED UPON US BY THE EU?!? I cried out, choking. I felt like screaming. “Listen, mate, we NEVER had one law imposed upon us.” Why, when people make these inane and illogical assertions does no one ever challenge them. For instance, can Tim Stanley name for me one law that was IMPOSED upon us? Can anyone?

 It cannot be done because we did not ever give up our sovereignty — we pooled it. Think about the difference. Surely it is not too subtle for you. Pooling Sovereignties! Which is, of course, the point of the EU. It is as much a collection of pooled sovereignties as the UK is a collection of four pooled sovereignties, so it is fairly rich that an intelligent, well-educated journalist and historian does not seem to see the parallels or get the drift.

 The UK had (and theoretically still has) the power to VETO all new EU policies and laws. Every EU law, every single one, was discussed, debated, and, guess what, sometimes we decided to compromise for good and sufficient reasons. Votes were taken in the EU parliament, just as they are in Westminster. Often we proposed the laws in the first place and even drafted them for the EU. We were as much part of the process, the third loudest voice, for 45 years as people in parliament who oppose a law, and then it gets passed by a majority, and then, hey presto, they do NOT consider that the law has been IMPOSED upon them! If so, then Brexit was imposed upon nearly 50% of this country and the people who voted against it should be allowed to exit the Brexit. 

How about we form a country within a country consisting of all the cities that voted not to leave the EU? Shall I start making the list?

 It is this kind of thinking and language as used by Tim Stanley on that program on SKY that is going to ruin this country completely in the end. It is this kind of illogical and lazy thinking that is a real danger for us all. Because of the insistence of Brexiteers that we somehow have given up our sovereignty by joining the EU, and because no one is questioning this nonsense properly, Brexit is based upon a total misinterpretation of and even a downright lie about how the system works. To take one example: we are about, for instance, to lose the whole freedom of movement for pets within the EU. That was a British initiative. That was something proposed by and fought for and then passed for the British! And the EU itself will continue to benefit from this idea for people travelling within its territories; but not the UK. It will not be so easy to take your mongrel or moggie to the South of France with you when you rent a summer cottage there. Indeed, it will not be so easy for you to travel within the EU any more either. Or for our kids to get educated at EU universities. And that is just a very tiny start to the changes we are about to have to live with. But hey, folks, that is what you voted for.

 What Brexit means to me, finally, is an act of betrayal. And do not kid yourself. It is not only that we are betraying the vision of a Europe united and at peace. Tim Stanley says that we should be relaxed because once we get our laws back inside our own country and are in total control of them, hey presto, no one wants to change any of the EU initiatives on better working hours, paternity and maternity leave, protection of workers’ rights, etc, etc. Really? Then why are we leaving the EU? Well, apart from demonizing the judiciary and trying to break international law in his internal market bill, PM Boris Johnson’s covert intelligence bill permits undercover agents to break the law. His use of statutory instruments allows him to evade parliamentary scrutiny. Boris Johnson wants to be the one to appoint judges, just like his idol Donald Trump; he is also setting up a review of the Human Rights Act. We are still waiting for Johnson to publish important things like vital independent reports, the Covid procurement contracts and the Brexit impact studies. Or have you not noticed any of these worrying examples, Tim Stanley? Boris and his cabinet are also fairly cavalier about appearing before various parliamentary scrutiny committees. However, maybe this has nothing to do with anything sinister. Maybe they are just all lazy.

 Brexit is not about the people or even about sovereignty. It is about authoritarian rule, unfettered government economic ambitions and isolating the UK from EU initiatives about offshore tax havens so that the UK can become the best, go-to place to launder international money.  Try reading a book called Britannia Unchained published in 2012 by Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Christ Skidmore and Liz Truss. Perhaps you should have read it before the 2016 Referendum? Are you actually aware of it? So here is a question: is Tim Brexit Stanley simply not aware of any of these activities; is he implicated in this effort of a Boris Takeover; or is he simply too naïve to notice? Personally I do not have a lot of hope in any of the members of the cabinet keeping the faith and not messing around with EU laws that protect workers and citizens’ rights.

I will tell you why. Firstly, because people like Jacob Rees Mogg have an already-declared agenda and are hoping precisely to erode the rights that they feel make them marginally less rich. And notably, we are all leaving the EU but Jacob has moved some of his headquarters to Singapore and Dublin; and Dublin is, emphatically, in the EU. Any thoughts about why? Are no alarm bells ringing?

For me the Brexit Project is about one simple thing: elitist authoritarian control by very far right Tories. And it was sold to voters for one simple reason. Take Back Control is a great slogan for people who feel deprived and challenged in various ways, who feel that they have been excluded. It was based on tweaking people’s feelings of xenophobia. And it feeds in to a strange Superiority Complex that still plagues the English and unthinking nationalists and would-be imperialists of all countries.

 I was very angry at Tim Stanley when I heard him spout the idea that, despite our powerful VETO, we have been having laws imposed upon us by the EU, but I am also very, very saddened that he cannot see how false that idea is. England has indeed been a great country in many ways over the centuries and produced some wonderful writers and scientists and actors and explorers and so forth. But it is now all in jeopardy. As is the whole EU project. And we were the ones to be in the vanguard of de-stabilising it. For centuries Europe has kept descending into wars because of countries that were looking out only for their own narrow and short-term interests and seeing themselves entirely as uncompromisingly at odds with all the other countries around them. So they formed alliances and reformed alliances and fought war after war after war. Whatever the flaws of the EU, the whole project was able for 45 years to avoid that mentality. And look what has happened since we, the UK, voted for Brexit? Right-Wing resurrections in Poland and Hungary and the Czech Republic; France and Marine Le Pen and the damned fisheries. It is all starting up again. And Britain is already slipping from 5th richest to 6th richest to 7th richest. And look at how badly our government, so in love with the authoritarian and centralized approach, has handled the whole pandemic?

 And so here we are, ready to leave the EU on 31 December 2020 as it turns into 2021. Even if we get a deal, it cannot be as good as the EU deal we have that we voted to abandon. Does that not say something important?

 And I suspect strongly that in the future, when the history of this low decade (dominated by Conservatism in this country and Donald Trump’s style of Republicanism in the USA) is written, that Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees Mogg, Dominic Cumming, Michael Gove, Priti Patel and the whole self-serving lot of them will be perceived as traitors to their country that they truly are, people who put their own narrow, blinkered interests before their country’s good; and people who betrayed the rest of Europe to boot - just as Putin and Trump want. They are Quislings, the lot of them, and they do not give any kind of damn for the less privileged citizens of their country.

 But I fear there is no point trying to debate with them or convince the average voter of any of this. You see, Brexit is based on that stupid, proud Superiority Complex of theirs and for the Ruling Elite of our country it is based on their Daily Telegraph approach to their own wealth. They do not give a damn about educating the country. And they do not, I think, speak sincerely or truthfully if it is going to go against their private wishes and secretive agendas. I am sure they are intelligent enough, some of them anyway, to work out the logic behind a false statement like “taking back our sovereignty”. They know perfectly well that every idea they sold you to get Brexit was ultimately based on the false premise that we had given up our sovereignty, not that we had pooled it, which is the truth of the matter. I am certain that they can figure out the difference between giving up sovereignty and pooling it for the common good of all concerned. So if we allow them that much intelligence, they are people totally and completely without integrity or any sense of idealism; and they are liars.

 Thus, my question is: does Tim Stanley believe what he says, has he fallen for it; or is he one of the liars too? And if they or he cannot see it, then they truly are too stupid and incompetent to be believed in any way. Mind you, there is nothing to say that these two things are mutually exclusive — the mind can hold two things at the same time. They can believe in the totally illogical and false while at the same time knowing that they are conning us.

 And so there seems to be nothing we can do, fellow citizens. If we scream, yell, or articulate any protests, all that happens is that the people who can see it agree, but the Make Britain Great Again-ers call what we are saying Project Fear to deflect from the fact that it is actually Project Due Diligence. And they will never change their minds any more than people who wanted to see Dreyfus go to Devil’s Island could be convinced, even after all the evidence that he was innocent was before them; or people who thought six months of Hitler in power would lead to cleaning up the country as he promised and then he could be got rid of. But do not kid yourself. Once people like Boris Johnson and his cohorts get the power, it is very hard to get rid of them. And once they start progressing towards their true, hidden goals that dare not be articulated properly, they go forward step by step eroding all that Britain has stood for democratically and intellectually for a good four hundred years. And so, as in so many things, we are following the USA and just lagging behind it. Think of our Conservative Party as becoming more and more like the Republicans or the Tea Party, in the USA. And think of Boris as being Donald Trump Light. And that is what this country voted for.

 So please tell me at last: what law was imposed on us? Give me one example in the last 45 years of a law that was imposed by the EU against our will, against our sovereignty? One example of a law made by the EU that we did not participate in considering, debating, formulating, voting on, passing and even writing up for the parliament of the EU to ratify? We had a VETO on every decision that impacted on Britain.

 Oh, and then there is the other important thing you might want to think about: that there was no real Opposition at the time of the Referendum. Because life-long-Leaver Jeremy Corbyn and his intellectually limp gang had control of the supposedly opposing party and undermined the campaign to maintain our membership in the EU. I blame Corbyn, his cohorts and that ineffably old fashioned dinosaur Len McCluskey (Labour’s flip side of the Dominic Cummings coin) as much as I blame Boris Johnson and his people.

 But right now I think I am going to go out and sing Christmas carols in the street and cheer myself up by hibernating, probably for up to a decade. When I re-emerge, we will see who was right about Brexit and immigration – me or Priti Patel.

********

11 DEC 2020 Letter to The Guardian:

The Guardian headline  “Johnson tells ministers to prepare for no-deal Brexit” 11 Dec 20, and your several commentaries forecasting 2% fall in GDP, “But we plucky Brits will get through it” are ridiculously optimistic. Prepare how? Prepare for what? They must be penned by people who have never built a business, marketed exports or financed a payroll. All respected global agencies from the Bank of England to Bloomberg have consistently warned of 8% drop in GDP and 15% - 20% fall in Sterling – for any Brexit. That translates to 5 to 7 million UK job losses or equivalent reduction of wages. 

Any Brexit, spurning our share of “The largest and richest market – ever” will bankrupt Britain. It is what Rees Mogg and chums in their tax-havens are betting on; they will blame the calamity on Covid-19 but Covid will have a V shaped recovery. Cafes, Pubs, Hairdressers, Nail bars, Theatres, Vacations etc. and other pleasures will quickly switch back on, accelerated by the Internet-Revolution. 

Basic, essential, serious agriculture, engineering and City of London services, our exports, sabotaged and fragmented by Brexit, will be swallowed whole by competing nations. Our only hope is to stop and abandon this idiotic, moronic, suicidal Brexit. – Noel Hodson, Oxford.

 Noel Hodson - Director

Tax Reconciliations, 16 Brookside, Oxford, OX3 7PJ UK,

From Tax-Havens to Safe Havens

Tel +44 1865 (0)760994 Mobile 07713 681216 

Noel Hodson Blog


Tuesday, 1 September 2020

COMMUTE COSTS £6,500 P.A. or WFH

IS COMMUTING PRODUCTIVE OR EXHAUSTING? 
"GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY COMMUTE." Silly, deluded economists and a few crazed employers want to ban Telework. The majority of new teleworkers want to continue working from home. 

1st Sept 2020: The inept UK Government is now reversing Covid-19 protection advice and is urging 27 million workers to quit Working From Home (WFH) - and to crowd into city centres. The crazy HMG rationale is that petrol-stations, buses, trains, taxis, coffee-shops, nail-bars, pubs, clubs, gyms and other amusements are going bust. Not least - the owners of city-offices and commercial premises have no tenants and are in danger of going bust; unless they change the use of their buildings. Of equal weight, BP, Shell and Big-Oil sales have slumped and new car sales are decimated. UK private pensions rely heavily on dividends from the oil companies. 


LETTER TO THE GUARDIAN: You report that empty city centres need revival by re-establishing commuting, for example Pret a Manger cuts almost 2,900 UK jobs as sales plummet” – Guardian on-line 27th August 20. Interviewees on BBC News today argue on one-hand for Pret, who seek full restoration of commuting – on the other for Siemens, who will rotate 75% who remain working at home and 25% in socially distanced offices. Both need to redesign their business-models. To re-boot the UK economy and create real lasting wealth, we ought to immediately convert the empty town and city premises to homes. We calculate that from 3 to 6 million new, quality homes, with telework-offices, can be created in locations already fully supplied with roads and services infrastructure; quickly creating several million building jobs. The idea that millions of ex-commuters, now happy home-workers, must waste 2 to 4 hours a day and spend an average of £5,000 a year on travel, to rescue city sandwich shops – costing the workers another £5 per day, is very bad economics. The thousands of new High-Street-Village-Families will ultimately compensate the landlords, and restore Pret and similar service businesses – without the polluting, costly, gruelling commute. The national energy savings will be immense.  


Noel Hodson, Oxford


6 Sep 2019 - Britain's commuters spend 492 days travelling to work at a cost of £37,399 over a lifetime; One in five (21%) say their commute has become less reliable over ... While many may dream of rolling out of bed and straight into the ..

Of the 27 million workers across England, by far the most usual method of travel to work is car; just 11% take the train. However, the share of train commuters has been increasing and is up from 1.6 million commuters (7%) in 2002 to 2.9 million at the last count.

The sane alternative to herding 27 million workers into towns and cities is to convert the empty buildings into homes. From 3 million to 6 million new homes, with telework offices, can be built.  There are of course, two sides to every story. 


How working from home affects family life

Letters
Noel Hodson and his wife Pauline Hodson point out that WFH has its downsides
‘It is extraordinary that in an editorial exploring the pros and cons of working from home, there is no mention of the impact on family life,’ writes Pauline Hodson. 
The Guardian Published onThu 6 Aug 2020 18.07 BST
Re your editorial (The Guardian view on empty offices: goodbye to all that?, 4 August) on working from home (WFH), in 1992 I was commissioned to edit the book Teleworking Explained, which analysed and promoted the socioeconomics of not commuting to work. My colleagues have just formed a new group, Resurrect the High Street, to encourage the conversion of redundant commercial premises into 6 million new, good-quality family homes with home-telework offices or local hubs. From 30 years of case studies, we can assure employers, employees, families, economists, environmentalists and property owners that WFH is hugely beneficial and will, as you say, transform all nations and clean the air we breathe.
On the downsides, the most neglected issue is family life. My wife wrote Bringing Home the Electronic Baby in 1995, a psychotherapeutic analysis of the impact on families. One of the earliest recorded cases was of the Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson retiring to work from home. His wife, Maryon, commented: “I married him for better or worse. I didn’t marry him for lunch.” The disruption to the home is significant. As you say, we must plan for the downsides.
Noel Hodson
Oxford

• It is extraordinary that in an editorial exploring the pros and cons of working from home, there is no mention of the impact on family life.
As a couple psychotherapist I see the stress, albeit currently on Skype, that working from home can bring. It seems that neither employers nor employees – nor indeed the couple – take seriously the impact of this new way of working. Consequently no allowances or understanding are brought to the new situation and therefore no emotional or psychological help is sought or given.
I believe there is an unconscious expectation that “home”, just like “mother”, can cope with anything and adapt to any situation, but just like the office our home is an institution, and as such has a culture and adheres to a set of rules and boundaries that need to be recognised and taken into account if working from home is to be successful.
Pauline Hodson
Oxford


PRACTICAL WAYS FORWARD:

Directors: Ayes Amewudah, Marcus Hickman, Noel Hodson, Richard Nissen
Piltdown Lodge, Piltdown, East Sussex, TN22 3XJ
Cellphone: 07957 622545 E-mail: ayes@amuda.co.uk

RESURRECT OUR HIGH-STREETS - DISCUSSION PAPER

The current situation:

COVID-19: May 2020. The decline in people travelling to work and for family or leisure reasons is not yet calculated but common experience and business statistics indicate that passenger traffic this month is 80% less that before Covid-19 took hold.
The reports of traffic reducing to 1955 levels indicate a fall from 32 million licenced cars travelling 7,500 miles per annum to about to 4.5 million cars. Similar reductions have occurred on buses and trains. People are staying at home – and where possible are working at and from home. (WFH)
From our own statistics of workers who stay at home and use IT to communicate, prior to the Covid-19 Lockdown about 4 million worked in this way at home “on any one workday”. Approximately 12.5% of the workforce. Add to that the 80% of new WFH (work-from-home) workers, which is 16 million, and it totals 28.5 million in voluntary or imposed lockdown. Only 4 to 5 million continue to commute daily.
Many business leaders have commented publicly on the positive benefits that they have seen, first-hand, as a result of their employees having to work from home during this lockdown. In particular, the well documented productivity gains which can be achieved from flexible working.
Employees have been able to effectively demonstrate to their managers that they can effectively manage the additional conflicts, which can arise when working at home, and deliver on time.
The current lockdown has also placed a further strain on the following two challenges which government, local authorities, town planners and property developers are trying to address:
Provide more affordable homes inside and outside of cities.
Restore High Street shopping and office work.
We see opportunities to collate and analyse the positives from the current lockdown and use them to rapidly rethink new ways to address these.

 The opportunity

As lockdown lifts, over the coming weeks, employers will have to meet the additional cost of implementing new government guidelines to minimise the spread of COVID 19 in the workplace. For example: It is likely we will see the implementation of one-way stairways, deployment of automatic hand sanitising dispensers and flexible working hours or and staff rotation. These costs could be minimised with the implementation of better facilities for employees to live and work locally in a more flexible way or live closer to the office.
The average space occupied by a worker is 250 sq. feet. (23.2 sq. metres.) Multiply by 28.5 million WFH workers = 7,125,000,000 sq. feet or 7.1 Bn sq. ft  (662 million sq. metres). Average family homes plus a telework office are about 1,200 sq. ft; so, the recently emptied space is equivalent to 6 million home units. This space is already built – requiring conversion to create homes+offices.

Empty retail property could be converted into homes (with a home office) and into Telework hubs, which would have all the additional facilities that employees need to work efficiently away from their main offices. For example, they should have telephone integration and reception facilities, meeting rooms, workstations, state of the art video conferencing suits, postal and courier services mass printing, photocopying and IT support services. The work-space in these hubs could be rented by businesses on a per hour, per week or per year basis. Employees could live locally and work flexibly between their home, local high street hub, or any other high street hub and their main central office.

Sample Some of the benefits for to central government and local authorities:
High streets would be rejuvenated, as a result of the additional homes and the telework hubs – enabling increases in spending locally.
Increased local jobs (building and maintaining homes – plus eateries) and a greater sense of community.
More homes could be provided rapidly in town centres, through the conversion, using less green belt land.
Cleaner air in the towns and cities – promoting better health.
Less commuting and congestion -

Our goal

The International Flexible Working Association aims to provide government and local authorities with well-researched proposals that will enable developers to convert local empty business units into family homes – with telework offices and telework hubs in High Streets. This will provide millions of new homes, revive High Streets day and night with families, support the businesses that remain – and, of equal importance, greatly reduce commuting and business-travel – and preserving the clean and quiet environment we are all now aware of due to the Covid-19 Lockdown.

What we are seeking

The founder members of The International Flexible Working Association will apply for government grants to make a public study, to create partnerships with builders, architects, planners and finance houses, and to put the economic facts to mortgage companies for the provision of family finance to buy the converted homes. We have development companies standing by to deliver action-this-day.
Our credentials
The International Flexible Working Association’s founder members:
Richard Nissen invented the concept of the Virtual Office in the 1990s, set up a consultancy and has lectured on how to implement working from home and flexible working.  Advances in technology have  made this much easier.  However, the importance of the human dimension covering how employees feel and how to manage remote workers to promote productivity is paramount.

Data used to compile this initial discussion document:
#Pre-Covid: ONS : Of the 32.6 million in employment, around 1.7 million people reported working mainly from home, with around 4.0 million working from home in the week prior to being interviewed for the survey.
#UK road travel falls to 1955 levels as Covid-19 lockdown takes hold

#About 24,000 commercial properties in London that could be turned into temporary housing or workspaces are lying empty, a report has found.
#Workers eye a permanent flight from the office

Appendix – For further qualification and or quantification as part of the study

Obvious benefits of lock down
CLEAN AIR – Bringing major health savings.
QUIET STREETS – Bringing major health savings
FEW if any ROAD ACCIDENTS – Bringing major health benefits.
REWILDING – Eco-benefits are widely reported.
PRODUCTIVITY – All sensible studies from 1992 to date show 10% to 50% increases.
BETTER WORK-LIFE BALANCE – 70% 50% want to continue WFH.
MASSIVE SAVINGS OF FUEL AND VEHICLE IMPORTS.
NEW HOMES – About 3 million new-homes if 50% remain WFH.
VIGOROUS HIGH STREET ECONOMIES – Due to family residents.
LOW COMMUTING – Most work at home.
How to keep the benefits
CONVERT THE EMPTY SPACE This work will employ millions of UK residents.
CHANGE BUSINESS RATES TO DOMESTIC RATES. Business rate are failing fast.
MORTGAGES FOR THE NEW UNITS. Occupied by productive workers.
TREAT THE CONVERTED AREAS AS TELEVILLGES. Pleasant family areas.
INVITE TOP ARCHITECTS & DEVELOPERS. E.g. Docklands developments.
RESTORE BANK BRANCHES and POST OFFICES – Village scale
LATEST BROADBAND – Empower and fund BT. Ensure global reach.
EDUCATE ALL THE WORKERS IN I.T. Empower the Open University.

CONCLUSION
The benefits of clean-air and quiet-streets will be maintained. High Streets will be useful day and night, seven days a week. The blight of deserted town and city centres after 6pm and massive commuting crowds will vanish. The new WFH residents will create and support local facilities and local commerce.



Saturday, 8 August 2020

ANDREW MARR'S HISTORY OF THE WORLD



A History of the World
AT AMAZON


I have just finished A HISTORY OF THE WORLD by Andrew Marr; he of the Sunday morning TV political interviews show.

It is a Tour de Force. A compelling page turner of a book, densely packed with facts, interpretations and commentary. So much so that all the way through I suspected Marr employed a large backroom team of Oxbridge History Firsts to research and feed him the narratives. Or, he truly is blessed with a giant brain that can indeed contain and analyse the entire world and its past. As Marr himself says, he set himself an impossible task in encompassing the whole of human history in one paper-back. 

It has informed me of the socio-economic and egotistical forces behind history's major movements, such as I had never imagined. A great, intelligent, very readable book which I recommend to you; to while away some of these, probably historically important Covid-19 days. Have a notepad to hand to ensure you get the most from this work. 

History is not a subject that grips me. It has gone. It can't be changed. Been there - done that. Our past seems to have been bullied into shape by sociopaths, psychopaths and murderous mad dictators. Imagine what the human race might have achieved without those loonies marauding round the world, slaughtering All the Men, All the Women, All the Children and All the Beasts of the Field and all progress to date, with monotonous regularity. 

The Future is of far greater interest; so I read Part 8, which looks ahead, with even more interest than the preceding chapters, of those old, deeply, deeply stupid, knuckle-dragging  lunatic "leaders" - driven by massive excesses of matted or peroxided hair, sweaty muscles, testosterone, spite and gross idiocy to wreak havoc on our lovely planet Earth. And to often die in "glorious" battle or to commit suicide when thwarted. 

So, I was somewhat disappointed that the hugely well informed Andrew Marr concludes with such thoughts as "...we will have a 50/50 chance of survival" (Martin Rees) and ...today's parents in the West are the first generation to worry that their children will live more meagre, if less wasteful lives..."  And , of politics "Unfortunately , our willingness to believe the promises of rabble-rousers and our greed, our capacity for anger and violence, are part of the story too."

Better, Mr Marr, to point the way to a wonderful future - and to impress the possibilities on all those dull, thoughtless, timid, myopic civic leaders who you interview on Sundays. You do have masses of evidence to support a pessimistic view of the future of humanity but I think that we, The People, are at a turning point - and will head off to the Sunlit Uplands. Try this article - and read my book AD2516. 

Friday, 15 June 2018

Thanks for the book.