Bankrupt Nation

Been here before, so see also my Government Savings, this Nation is overspending on its Government. Compounded by us, its citizens, with unrealistic, or rather unaffordable, expectations of what can actually be provided or responded to. The size of slice taken to run UKplc is far too great compared to the income UKplc can generate. We are living way beyond our means and get by, by opening a new credit card then spending to its limits without being able to pay back the interest. Suddenly people are waking up to the total absurdity of private investment in new NHS hospitals. It always was crazy double thinking but it got politicians off the hook and gave a back door way to pay for the desperate re-investment required. A back door that had a very nasty and a painful bite some years on. A bite some people are only now waking up to. There is a huge yearly ongoing cost just to service the investment. A cost way in excess of what it would have cost if governement had made the investment directly.

We are in the centre of fudge land. We have expectations of what our country should do and provide for us. UKplc just cannot afford to meet those expectations. The politicians cannot, if they are to survive, tell us to our face that we cannot no longer get what we expect as of a right. UKplc cannot borrow more as it has already exceeded its spending limits. So fudge, enter the world of magic mirrors, where you can spend on huge luxuries, but not actually spend, well not today but only later on down the line. A huge HP loan with deferred easy payments. Everyone happy right? Of course not. As the deferred payments kick in, as they must some time, surprise, surprise, what you have left to spend has been sharply cut back and you owe more to the remorseless repayment schedules and have nothing left to buy for today. It was and is a lunacy.


Yet we clearly do need massive investment in the NHS, and schools and roads and transport. We do actually need to upgrade the apparatus of government and bring it kicking into the ways of the C21 world. We are not in the realm of finding 5%, 10% or even 25% efficiency savings. We really do have to take stock of what we, UKplc, are and what is the level of governance that is supportable. We were once a global power with a huge global empire, a key player. US of A has made it its business to take us out of that role. Today we are a crowded off shore island associated with a big powerful European Union of large nations struggling to come together and work in some sort of harmony. We are a marginal small bit player. Getting marginalised because we fail to play our trumps wisely and opportunely. At this level of play we simply cannot afford  grandiose ideas of having an aircraft carrier, with all the attendant fleet, nuclear submarines, an airforce with world strike capability nor an army able to fight in all theatres of the world. What is affordable within our current so much smaller role in the world is a national defence force able to defend its frontiers, if you must, working in close collaboration with our neighbours. That is the stark reality.   


I do not have a down on the defence services per say, more on that another time maybe. It is just that they encapsulate so well this bloated transition from global power to small bit player. We cannot give up the baggage of our past and come to terms with today's realities. We just do not have the income to sustain a world power role. But look around and there is evidence of this same bloat everywhere. Ministries and support institutions that were fit and proper for an empire but are grossly oversized and over ambitious for our now current status. We need a new slimmed down model of government that is fit, sleek and apt for the situation we now occupy. Many cherished objects and institutes of national pride may have to be sacrificed as we navel gaze our way from that empirical past down to our new needs. Political Parties have talk the talk for years, exorcising this tip here or this unloved limb there, tinkering, not radical. We need radical now, what is the minimum basics we must have to survive in today's world? That is the starting premise.


Along the way we will have to confront the issue of our expectations that 'they' can and will do everything about all those things that perturb us in our daily life. This is a socialist fantasy, actually a nightmare dream, of the State being the all provider. We are too unique, too diverse and too individual to ever be content with a uniform state provision. But there is a lot of comfort in that escape route, the government must should do that, sort it out so I do not have to bother about it. It is lazy, self-indulgent thinking that has become deeply rooted in our national thought. Time to turn tables.Out of the chaos will emerge a sleek, energetic and quickly responsive UKplc up for taking on of what ever challenges lie around the corner. Confident in its abilities and able to deliver decisively. Well that is my dream.

Slow Death

The Accountants are slowly strangling and stifflling the life out of UKplc. Now let us get this straight from the outset. You have to make a profit to survive in business, no question. In hard times you have to work your business hard, cut out waste, improve efficiency, make sure you are as productive and effective as you can be. Run a lean mean machine, no problems. There is however a switch over point. When you run your business with the aim to make a better profit, achieve a percentage increase in market share, to improve your shareholding status or whatever of the many and varied slices the Accountants use to 'judge' the financial success of a business by. You have crossed the line.

The first and only criteria to be in business is to provide what you do to the best of your ability and to the customers satisfaction. Once you lose that motivation you have sold out any solid morale justification and thereby squandered your rights to be in business. No matter how much hype and smooth sounding customer focussed mission statements you come up with you have lost that vital contract. Your personal contract to provide the best. This is where UKplc is now finding itself. Whether we are talking the corner shop, a long-standing family firm, a national or international producer or supplier. The Accountants have their claw around them all. We have grown to expect short-term solutions to be the sole inspiration, another percentage point here or there in profits or growth. Entirely losing sight of the long-term goal of keeping your existing customers happy and wanting them to come back, again and again and telling all their friends to join in. This is real growth, this is real vitality and this is the only measure of survival.

If your priority of attention is to squeeze another percentage point of profit out of your business, the end figures may look very impressive, with lots of noughts, but along the way you have had to sacrifice. The sacrifice might be one or some of many things, quality, supplier relationships, staffing morale, reject standards, returns handling, future investment, plant upgrades, transaction delays, support, or a whole host of other such issues. A host with one thing in common they directly impinge on what you supply and your customers satisfaction in receiving what you offer. A host that might add a small percentage in your costs and that can look large in the balance sheet. They can make major contributions to achieving quality, but quality is not a balance sheet account. So any of these minor irritants that you have given ground on have set off a time-fuse. Your criteria for quality has become compromised. A fuse that will, over time, gradually eat away at customer satisfaction and confidence. By then your business will be in terminal decline and your helpful Accountant, that helped you make more profits, will have slipped away to a better and more promising punter.


Once you give ground on being the sole arbiter on what you are offering and it becomes subject to others value-engineering assessments then you are in the mire. Savings are always easy to offer but retaining the standards you set for yourself are a daily nightmare battle only you can make. 

This is where this blog wants us to all stop and think. As we too are the Chief Executives of our own business. How we put ourselves out and about is our business and we need to be clear in our minds the standards we set ourselves to achieve. Not to be seduced by tempting offers to buy more, buy cheaper, buy easier but to keep on taking ourselves to task for not quite attaining that quality standard we know is right for us.

So look around, be alert, questioning and challenging on whose products you bring into your life. Keep your life account in balance but strive within that limitation to make the quality happen on a daily basis that you know is right for you.

All in the Genes

Very late in my life I found out about my paternal grandparents. Up until then I had interpreted all my personal characteristics within the terms of what I knew about my maternal side. Only just very recently it has become crystal clear that my (and other members of my family) single minded focus and concentration on fine detail counterbalanced with an aloof distancing from anything beyond my direct control, clearly comes down the line from my Paternal GMa. Equally my 'blue-sky' thinking, that gazing eagerly at an unfocussed future together with a passionate deep socialism, not your limp wristed capitalist lap dog Labour Party style, comes staight down the line from my Paternal GPa. So all my past assumptions about family characteristics were so wrong and are now history. I have had to reinvent myself at my age.

So what? Well the more that is being revealed about those genes that we inherit the more it becomes clear that everything, just about everything, from facial features, postures, to skin blemishes, the site for and wrinkle formation, our personality mix, it is all set in the genes we get at conception. The journey to understanding the gene contribution is on its way but it still has a long way to travel. What I am picking up is that hardship endured a couple of generations before will impact on the latest generation. I sense that particular trades accumulated particular aptitudes that fine tuned them for the demands of their work. I can see that a tailor has a different skills mind set from a coal-miner or farm labourer, a skill set that gets passed down the line. Or a weaver has a different take on life than a ship welder. All down to the genes. Sure environment plays a crucial part, emphasising or suppressing characteristics until lady luck gets to play her hand, but only working within that unique blend of genes you to inherit.

What on earth then do people think, when they go in for a donor child, whether by egg or sperm? A child is not a feel good status symbol toy. It is a huge investment, of time, emotion, energy, self-sacrifice, money that last for the remainder of the parents life-time. Not a glib, wouldn't it be nice, choice but life changing with no return ticket. The genes that you pick to mix up with yours are important, not to be left to some vague random factor. Not that I am saying a rapist or a murder passes these traits on in their genes but there are mind sets that clearly could sit very uncomfortably with another. But the genes your own mixes with are relevant and important. The next worst option to a wildcard choice would be to try and select for a particular aptitude. Crufts and dogs springs to mind, we just do not have skills to select for a well rounded human, versatile and flexible to cope with a very uncertain future. What has served us so well in the past is still the best option on offer, mutual attraction. Financial advantage, social status and stability are also runners but often with a latent sting in the tail. No, mutual attraction wins hands down.

Our understanding and conciousness of the ideal mate selection process may be almost entirely missing but there are, nevertheless intuitive processes at work, if only we give them time and a chance. It takes more than a steamy aroused one night stand to suss out whether a soul mate has been found. Conception really is best deferred until there is a solid air of certainty that this mate will be good for the long haul and that prospect, of living together, looks attractive. We have not even scratched the surface of why people develop mutual attraction, so for me, there is no techno fix. Just this belief in an intuitive process at work that rules some potential mates in and a lot more potentials definitely out. A complex process, this mate selection, with all sorts of variable and alternative game strategies. There is only one endgame objective, to find a mate that will care, support and bring up any progeny for the duration. Liking them in the meantime can be a considerable bonus.

So no one-night stands with a lifetime of regret for what might have been, certainly not a donor child with who knows what genes on offer and a categoric no to a technical profiled best gene match until, or if, we get to fully understand the processes. In the meantime just learn to listen to your heart strings.They are the very best thing you have going for you to find the best fit gene match to what you have on offer. Genes matter, it is all in the genes.

ps Have now found out that I inherited an ability to be cold, detached and dispassionate when faced with conflicts from my Maternal GMa. Keeping emotions in check and out of the equation can be a good analytical tool but boy it does make relationships fraught!