I rambled in my October 11^th posting about the disconnection between what the financial industry does, and what the real economy needs.  This wasn’t, I confess, one of my more piercingly original thoughts.  The writings of Will Hutton before the crash and John Lanchester afterwards, follow the same line.  When the Labour Party leader Ed Miliband suggested that it was important to distinguish between good capitalist enterprises, and bad ones, he was attacked for a brief period before the pause when people realised he was … er … right.  To take a simple example: it doesn’t take a genius to note that the purposes of a bank are basically threefold:

1. To provide a safe home for deposits, and provide a reasonable return for savers – both of which they have failed to do in recent years. The banks would have collapsed without government support (read Alistair Darling’s account for the grisly details).  And they are still paying insultingly low rates of interest on deposits rates that have fallen since the Bank Of England has given them access to low cost funds (and removed their obligation to compete for real savings from real people).
2. To offer funds to business to allow them to expand – which they have failed to do in recent years. Project Merlin was a damp squib, so that now the banks are bribed with cheap funds to lend on, with the effect mentioned above.
3. To maintain and grow the shareholder value of the company, representing a decent investment for shareholders, which they have failed to do in recent years. Bank shares have fallen in value, and were pretty humdrum performers even before the crash.  Here’s an insight about the value of the stock market showing the true value of companies – the bank with the soundest base (HSBC) was one of the poorer performers against the adventurists.

The reasons for these failings come down to two reasons.  Most obviously, the executives have been generously paid anyway: their packages seem unconnected with these three core activities.  Secondly, there has been an alternative form of lucrative activity that seems to justify the term ‘casino capitalism’.

With this in mind, turn to yesterday’s Sunday Times business section, and weep.

• Front page story – Royal Mail is now profitable, so it must be sold off (and if it was poorly run, of course, it would need to be sold off, too).
• A hedge fund is shorting the stock of Ocado (who do Waitrose deliveries amongst other things) to make money when its shares fall. Exactly what value does this add to the economy ? This is a giant game of poker, with the difference that corporate reporting rules mean you can see your opponent’s hand.  It adds next to nothing to the economy.
• The firm that owns amusement arcades, casinos and tanning companies paid £109m in dividends to an offshore company owned by the (British) founder. Which is sadder – how they make their money, or where they send it ?
• The only noteworthy aspect of the business record of the new Chief Executive of a mining company appears to be that he sacked 12,000 striking African miners.
• Page 3 – the characters who made money out of Comet collapsing move their attention to a company which has already undertaken one ‘pre-pack’. This is a way to declare your company insolvent, and then open up again.  The article describes this as “dumping £18m of debt”, a more elegant way of describing defaulting on your creditors than it deserves.  My wife was left unpaid for consultancy work and lost several thousand pounds on a similar scam financial restructuring recently.
• Page 4 – the chief executive of Flybe airline explains how it is the tax system that is depressing his company results, alongside a story about the growing profits of easyJet, who I suspect pay the exact same taxes.
• The first hospital to be privatized as part of the dynamic new way of running the NHS “appears to be in poor financial health” (page 11), rather like the hospitals that entered into public-private partnership finance deals.
• Page 5 looks at executive rewards and notes “what appears to be lacking is a strong relationship between pay and returns to shareholders”.

I’m not sure what to do about all this, but I am sure what it shows – namely that the finance industry is not part of the solution, but part of the problem, and we should not listen to those who ask us (like the last and later disgraced chief of Barclays) to move on as ‘the time for remorse and apology is at an end’ (© Bob Diamond, 2011).

* footnote for nerds.  Economic theory was based on the idea that firms were profit maximising, because that was what their owners would want.  This motivation was an important driver in the superiority of the capitalist system – because maximising profit meant that costs would be trimmed and new markets discovered. If you’ve done “A” level Economics, you’ll even remember the diagram that shows where profit is maximised where marginal revenue = marginal cost, and which proves that competitive markets produce at the most efficient level possible.   However, in the 1940s some writers (Burnham, Berle and Means) noticed that companies were run by the managers, not the owners.  The shareholders who technically owned the company may have wished for maximum returns, but they had little or no power – they were part of millions of small holdings, or owned the company at a distance via pension funds and insurance companies.  Managers were a different class, had different interests, and were on the job all day and all week.  Why trim costs when you can get a million dollar bonus and a chauffeur driven car ?  Sad that the columnists of our major newspapers have not caught up with sixty year old insights.

I started this blog by calling it grumpy wisdom.  This represented the first few posts, which expressed my loathing for political language and economic illiteracy.  I don’t think I’m a curmudgeon at heart, and have found much to delight in family life, in history, in sport, in music and travel.

But sometimes the world calls you back to irritable grouchiness.  This week, it’s the modern tendency to sentimentalise and exaggerate how life actually is.  The wonderful Onion once ran an item in which a school kid who was accidentally killed was described as an unpleasant dimwit, in a satirical reference to the way premature death always happens to the glowing light of the school, who was going to choose between being the Nobel Physics Prize or centre-forward for Manchester United.  It seems that simple tragedy always has to be larded with nonsense.

The next paragraph is maybe not to be written on Remembrance Weekend.  OK, deep breath.  Have you noticed how all injured service personnel – sometimes all service personnel – have become ‘heroes’ ?  Now, I am terminally glad that I have never had to enter battle in my life – a wonderful bonus for most of my generation.  I am not a pacifist, and am glad that someone else does the fighting for me.  And war casualties are profoundly to be regretted, and deeply sad – and, to use a word that is overused, often tragic.  This doesn’t, however, mean that everyone connected with the armed forces needs to be covered in a sugar shell of sentiment or exaggeration.  The word ‘hero’ has a meaning, as I explain here.  You don’t have to be heroic to be injured, and you don’t have to be heroic to deserve the support of the nation in your rehabilitation, or in the support of your dependants.  Recently, the poppy campaigns seem to have become a plebiscite of support for the military, not a means of acknowledging the debt we owe to those who have suffered, and a way of raising funds for their support and rehabilitation.  Keep your eye on the prize: peace for the nation, and support for casualties.  The politicians who stand at Prime Minister’s Questions sonorously reading out the names of those killed in Afghanistan are the same ones who sack service personnel early so as to avoid paying them a pension, and who approve compensation that values amputated limbs lower than intercepted mobile phone messages.  Kipling had a poem for it.

At a different level of emotion, why are relatives now called “loved ones” ?  Why are all funds “hard-earned” ?  Why are all families “hard-working” ?  This seems to me to be a sign of the emotional incontinence that has soaked into everyday discourse, the Dianafication of life.  And maybe it’s part of the unattractive modern search for victimhood.

When I was in India, I met the family of our guide, which included a super-intelligent eleven year old.  He has e-mailed me, and asked me for a list of British scientists.  My draft is below, bulked out with comments for the passing adult.

I found it an interesting exercise for a non-scientist, because you tend to know the names but not exactly what they did or found.  So, scope for an afternoon on the internet.  There are more than 80 British scientists who have won the Nobel Prize, but of course the Nobel Prizes were not around in the days of Newton and Darwin.  So how to choose – particularly difficult for the non-expert.  Why leave out Hooke or Boyle or Halley ?  What’s the criterion?  Originality ? Hard to justify, because a lot of discoveries were simultaneously made in different countries by different people (e.g. the controversy as to whether Newton or Leibniz first discovered calculus), or occurred to different scientists at the same time (Darwin published The Origin of Species after Alfred Wallace had sent him a version of a very similar theory) .   Importance for the modern world ?   If so, why put Fleming in – because the antibiotic potential of penicillin was really released by Ernst Chain, Howard Florey, and unnamed American chemical engineers who worked out how to mass-produce the stuff. You could put in  Babbage and Turing – because although they were first to invent computers, the modern digital world came from somewhere else (and in any case a German scientist was doing similar stuff in the 1930s).

Anyway, here’s my list, arranged like a Channel 5 list show without the Jimmy Carr voice-over.  Comments, criticisms and additions welcome

1. Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) most famous for the theory of gravity, explaining planetary movements through the three laws of motion, but “he advanced every branch of science he worked in” – for example, optics. His later years were not very scientific at all.  He was appointed Master of The Mint, supervising the issue of coinage, he did endless research into biblical matters, and also dabbled in alchemy.  Though he was the second scientist to be knighted, it is said that he was actually knighted for political reasons.
2. Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) published The Origin Of Species, showing how different plants and animals evolved through natural selection.
3. Michael Faraday (1791 – 1867) made many discoveries in the field of electromagnetism – his discoveries led to the development of electrical motors. But he was also a chemist, discovering benzene. Einstein kept a picture of Faraday on his study wall, and the SI unit of capacitance is called a farad in his honour.
4. Ernest Rutherford (1871 – 1937) was a New Zealander who worked in Britain. He won the Nobel Prize for his research on radiation, and built on that work to develop modern atomic theory.  I’ve visited the laboratory in the University of Manchester where he first split the atom – it is like a school lab from the 1950s, all wooden benches and sash windows, and it is still radioactive. He had a way with words – “we haven’t got the money, so we’ve got to think”; “all science is physics, or it’s stamp collecting” – but famously called atomic power “moonshine”.
5. Henry Cavendish (1731 – 1810) discovered hydrogen, measured the composition of the air we breathe, and the water we drink. He also calculated the density of the earth (very accurately) in 1797.  He lived in south London, very near where I used to work.  I once had a Polish visitor to my Clapham office who was keen to see where Cavendish worked: I weakly pointed him to an undistinguished stretch of road just off  the South Circular called Cavendish Road.
6. William Thomson (1824-1907) – later ennobled to become Lord Kelvin – did important work in mathematical physics and created the laws of thermodynamics. He was also a very good electronic engineer, and made a lot of money from improving the electric telegraph.  I like theorists who make a packet – it seems to me that it gives a certain credibility to their ideas.  Example – John Maynard Keynes made himself a fortune whilst publishing his economic theories.  Kelvin also realised that there was an absolute zero that was as cold as it was possible to get – now named 0° Kelvin after him.
7. James Clerk Maxwell (1831 – 1879) brought all the theories of electricity, magnetism and light together. He worked on the behaviour of gases, researched the rings of Saturn and had time to create the first colour photograph !
8. Joseph Priestley (1733 – 1804) discovered oxygen, and wrote a book about electricity that was used by Volta (who made the first battery), Herschel (who discovered infra-red radiation) and
9. Hans Krebs (1900 – 1981) came to England as a refugee from the Nazis in 1933. He became an eminent scientist, and Professor at the University of Sheffield.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering the Krebs Cycle, which explains how life-giving energy is set free in cells by oxidation of glucose to carbon dioxide and water.
10. Alexander Fleming (1881 – 1955) discovered penicillin, which opened the way for all the antibiotic drugs that have helped modern medicine save millions of lives around the world. His discoveries – made at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, where my daughter trained – were the start of work by Ernst Chain, Howard Florey

Who are the runners- up who did not make my list ?  Well, that must include

• Hooke, who got involved in everything from watch-making and astronomy to early ideas of evolution and town-planning, built microscopes and air-pumps and argued with almost everybody from Isaac Newton downwards. His first biographer described him as ‘despicable’.
• William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of blood and the pumping action of the heart.
• Robert Boyle, who showed the relation between the volume and pressure of a gas
• Crick and Watson, who discovered the structure of DNA, allowing us to understand the building-blocks of life
• Any one of a number of astronomers – Flamsteed, Halley, Ryle, Airy, and of course Herschel, who discovered the planet Uranus, its moons, and the moons of Saturn.
• Britons involved in the development of computing – starting with Charles Babbage and his mechanical computer of 1822, Alan Turing who designed the first electronic programmable computer to break German military codes in the Second World War, and Tim Berners- Lee was central in developing the internet.

Footnote – interesting how many scientists we revere as British were born elsewhere, and came to Britain either because it was the centre of the Empire (Rutherford, Florey, Wilkins, Klug), or a place to escape Nazism (Krebs, Chain, Bondi, Gabor, Perutz, Kroto).  Paul Dirac was born in Bristol to Swiss parents: Herschel came here when Hanover was under the British crown.  Kelvin, Bernal, Boole and Boyle were Irish.  I guess this is early evidence of the Mo Farah Syndrome – if you’re good enough, then you’re British enough.

As you’ll see from earlier posts, I’ve just got back from India after a two week fair trade tour – meaning not just that we visited five fair trade producers (and paid them for our visits), but that the hotels we stayed in were Indian owned, and the organisation was by travel agent and guides committed to its principles.  Most of the people on the trip ran fair trade stalls and networks in the UK, often through a local church.  Even an old atheist like me needs to acknowledge that religious groups (like the Mennonites and Church of the Brethren) were around when fair trade ideas started.

My previous trip to India was at a beach-front hotel in Goa, which was great but not exactly a gritty view of the real India.  This time, I wanted to get a bit below the surface and learn more about India, whilst acknowledging that I am too soft (and my knees too bad) to do a back-packing, 24 hour train-riding, hostel-sleeping tour.  Also, the economist in me wanted space and evidence to think about development and aid issues.  I went with a belief that I retain with greater force than before – that the way forward for poor countries is economic growth, more than aid or charity.  Growth is the only prospect of generating the volume of wealth needed to raise people out of poverty in a way that aid will never do; and charitable transfers are even smaller, and carry the wrong message that the fate of the poor should be determined by the preferences of the rich.

So where does fair trade fit into this ?  The World Fair Trade Organisation has been going for more than twenty years, and the arguments seem familiar – that free markets favour the rich and developed and stacks the odds against the poor producers.  There are those who put forward arguments against fair trade, some of them quite respectable.  I wondered whether a price premium might make producers uncompetitive and take away the main asset they have in international trade, which is low costs.  My view has changed on that, partly from the knowledge that ‘low cost’ can mean child labour or appalling work conditions.  Not that I can be an expert after a few days away, but here are some reflections that might be of interest:

• The fair trade benefit is not only about letting producers have a higher price to live a little easier. It also involves making sure kids get an education, workers can save for old age, women are not exploited, work conditions are healthy, a surplus can be available for micro-finance and the environment is undamaged.  A major (arguably the major ?) benefit is the increased confidence and optimism it gives to groups and communities, especially empowering women.
• Fair trade retailers in the west sell at a considerable mark-up compared to the prices they pay the producers. Our guide, Ranjith Henry, a former manager in a multi-national, reckons that a ratio of 5:1 is not uncommon, and we saw bigger mark-ups in some fair-trade catalogues.  This isn’t exploitation, as a margin is needed to maintain the infrastructure (and pay for transport & marketing), but you do wonder whether there is the opportunity for a lower ratio.
• Fair trade is gaining ground in mainstream retail outlets and supermarkets – it used to be hard to buy (e.g.) fair trade coffee and tea, but it is now on every supermarket shelf. However, the sales of the outlets devoted to fair trade (and the producers we met in India) are flat or declining.  Some producers have had to lay off workers. This may be because …
• … there are issues about the product range and design, of craft products especially. There are only so many hemp bags, soapstone candle holders or hippy necklaces that can be sold.  I guess the answer is to get into areas where there are repeat sales (foods and snacks, cosmetics) but those are very competitive.  Managers at Sasha pointed out that there are now a very large number of firms producing ayurvedic cosmetics.  Another approach is to use fashionable western designers, and we saw this happening to an extent.
• Which is the role for capacity building. In the west, this can be a dishonest term – I had a dose as a technical college principal of agencies cutting our budget to pass to meddlers who wanted to get involved, invariably less well and at higher cost.  But in less developed economies, fair trade producers need to be developed, to understand the standards and deadlines needed to develop western consumer markets, and put in touch with promising outlets.
• The least encouraging project we saw was the pineapple juicing plant in Kerala. This was a very smart modern factory, packed with state-of-the-art stainless steel equipment made in Milan, and funded by the EU and supported by the state government.  However, it is financially challenged, and doesn’t work for most of the year.  Local pineapple farmers grow for the table, which is a different variety than pineapples for juice.  The alternative product is ginger, but orders there have been slack since farmers were encouraged to plant the crop.  The moral, I guess, is to support local ideas and initiatives, rather than imposing grand ideas from outside.  The other worrying piece of evidence from our visit was the news that the factory was dropping out of one fair trade line because the cost of accreditation – including visits from European assessors – were too high.  Replacing exploitative middlemen with costly bureaucrats seems a less than useful exchange.
• And this will work. Indians are endlessly entrepreneurial.  A group of very poor women in Delhi started to market second-hand shoes, using micro-finance to clean and repair discarded items and sell on.  This has the additional advantage of creating and exploiting a local market, rather than being dependent on American, Austrian or British organisations to order.
• Which I think implies that government aid should be about infrastructure not second guessing the market.  Donors could help ensure that there are decent roads to move products, inexpensive but healthy homes for workers, secure electricity, clean water, and effective garbage disposal.  Creating real things might also get around the propensity for corruption in aid.

Anyway, the views of an utter non-expert who will now look more closely at the labels in Waitrose.  There may be a price premium, but knowing about the levels of income in India (where living on dollar a day is not uncommon) it’s worth it.

Those wishing to know more can pick up a good primer in Fair Trade: A Beginners’ Guide by Jacqueline DeCaralo.

They say that most blogs stop after a few weeks as people run out of steam.  Well, the reason I haven’t blogged for a while is that I have been touring India with a fair trade group organized through Traidcraft. It was a superb trip, combining tourism (yep, the Taj Mahal) but also meeting local people and visiting local workplaces, temples, ferries and homes.  Thanks to Ranjith Henry, our intrepid guide, and his team.  I’m sure I’ll write more, and if possible upload some photographs, but here is a resumé.  We flew out on October 14^th, via Dubai, and met up with our seven travelling companions at the Godwin Hotel in the heart of Delhi – on a really lively road full of scooter rickshaws (“tuk-tuks”), workmen, school-kids, street barbers, vegetable stalls and milk stands – and a temple.

Oct 15^th – Delhi  Started with a tour of the new city, laid out by the British – impressive wide streets with magnificent Presidential Palace and ministries, parks and monument.  Empty plinth where poor Queen Victoria has been taken down.  Then a walk round traditional Delhi in the afternoon – getting to terms with the noise, the extraordinary press of people and traffic (the first time I’ve been in a human traffic jam – unable to walk because of the crush), the stalls on the pavements and the cows in the road.

Oct 16^th – Extraordinary day visiting the fair trade projects – inspirational people (mostly women) providing decent jobs for craftspeople, health clinics, and getting their kids to school.  We spent the morning at Tara projects, and in the afternoon were invited to Manjeen run by a young couple (He Muslim, her Hindu) and then to the homes of three young women project workers in a Delhi slum – don’t know whether to be depressed at the conditions people live in, or impressed by how positive they are, and how clean and pretty they kept tiny shacks without running water or toilets.  Both, I guess. Photos taken inside the shacks don’t convey anything, as they are so neat and clean, though leaky and without mains sewage or water.  Food still great, wine less so.

Oct 17^th – Up at 5.45 to get an enormously long train to Agra – Indian railway stations are everything they say – people living on platforms, cows wandering through, trains bulging with humanity.  Got to Agra, visited a fair trade workshop that makes soapstone ornaments – the Buddhas, elephants, tea light lamps, soap holders etc that you see in Oxfam and Body Shop.  Hard work, milling and grinding and carving.  Then off to Agra Fort – massive Moghul Palace Fortress with what you might think strong defences (alligators in the most, tigers between the walls).  Chipmunks and hoopoes around our feet, monkeys on the battlements.  Then on to the Taj, which is as lovely as they say.  Admission for locals 20p, for foreigners £8 – but we get to jump queues (of which there are none).  At-seat curry tray on the train home, then past the sleeping bodies in Delhi railway station, then to bed.

Oct 18^th – Last day in Delhi. This morning, walking tour round Old Delhi, past historical sites (usually of massacres) and including a wonderful Jain temple up a narrow alley with exquisite houses. Then we went to Gandhi’s tomb in tranquil gardens. The rest of the group planned an afternoon of more  Moghul tombs and castles, so we ducked put for a siesta and visit to the Main Bazaar, getting round on classic Morris Oxford taxi, tuk-tuks (scooter taxis) and bicycle taxis. Back to hotel in time for India’s Got Talent and the Six O’clock News. Off to Kerala in the deep south early tomorrow.

Oct 19^th –  Kerala  Travelling day, plane stopped at Hyderabad on the way down, then arrival at a beautiful Indian owned hotel overlooking the estuary of Kochi’s port – so mixture of native fishermen in canoes and container terminal.

Oct 20^th – We’ve had a restful day in Kochi – partly because it is now pouring with rain in a warm tropical storm.  Spent the morning at the historic sites – because this is the first port of contact it has the first European church (we saw the tomb of Vasco da Gama, though the body was later taken back to Lisbon), a big Dutch Palace that became the royal household, and then the state museum. Took a workers’ ferry today to look at the island opposite, then back for Liz’s ayurvedic oily massage.

Saw Indian dancing last night – truly bizarre – mixture of legendary story telling, ballet, martial arts and pantomime.  Food is wonderful – chicken and lentils up north, fish curries in coconut sauce here, lots of vegetable dishes, Indian breads. Not enough booze, but we can live with that. Went to the off licence in Delhi, and it was for serious drinkers – almost all spirits !
Only downside so far is a total lack of interest in picking up litter, which is everywhere

Oct 21st – We have discovered how to get booze in Kerala – see attached photo. This morning we went for a punt in the peaceful backwaters, passed a gentle working elephant, visited some people spinning coconut matting. On the way back, dropped in to the nationalised men-only off-licence:  fortified, long queue and steel shutters ! Lunch of noodles, chicken and prawns (£1.80).  Afternoon visit to Jew Town, a district with the oldest synagogue in the Commonwealth (1506), and then some shopping. Out now to drink our ill-gotten purchases.

Oct 22^nd.  Kerala – Left Fort Kochi today and arrived at this idyllic hotel complex a bit further up the coast by a big inlet of the sea, travelling via some agricultural projects, driven by a manic driver.    A pool at last … but as we are having another torrential tropical downpour – the third in three days – we aren’t lounging by it. The pineapple juice and ginger factory was big and modern (paid for by EU money) but underused – as it is out of season we didn’t see a single pineapple squeezed (and orders for the ginger they persuaded farmers to grow are falling).  However, in June and December 1000 small farmers use it to pack their pineapples into the little juice boxes our grandchildren like so much, and they like the support the company offers.  Followed, though, by heartening visit to family farm with pineapples and rubber, teak trees, ginger and nutmeg plants, where we had wonderful lunch.

Weather is very thundery, and we’ve both got heavy colds. We’re taking more Day Nurse tablets than anti-malarial ones.

Oct 23rd – Last day in Kerala – Hindu temple and old synagogue today, plus the most eccentric ferry ride you’ve ever seen. The jetty is strapped to the side of the rattling old ferry boat (makes the African Queen look like a cruise liner) and pulled across to be used as the jetty on the other side. Arrived at the church of St Thomas (who came to convert India in 52AD) which is located where he landed from Palestine: it features a weird but watchable multimedia show. Fish curry, rice, popadums and all the trimmings for lunch. Dips on the pool and naps on the hammock this afternoon. It’s Hindu new year so we went to a magical local festival with fireworks and dancing (and offerings to the god of smallpox – who says religion doesn’t work?). Not a tourist do – we were the only Europeans in a crowd of hundreds.  Only downside – you have to take your shoes off as a mark of respect, but no-one told the ants.  Ouch !

Oct 24th – Kolkata (Calcutta) Spent most of today travelling – plane changes at Bangalore and Chennai (= Madras as was), pretty straightforward but takes the time it takes, so we arrived at the hotel at 4.00. Amazing old British run hotel – Hello magazine and Rich Tea biscuits in the tea-room, pictures of William & Kate on the wall, plus autographs of the celebs who have stayed here (An important place for Felicity Kendal and her Anglo-Indian acting family, but also Michael Palin etc).

Went out tonight to the most amazing festival – Durga Puja, with Shiva and other gods in vast illuminations, in what is claimed to be the biggest outdoor festival in the world.  Our guide got us in to extraordinary temporary temples – ‘pandals’. People are kind and interested in us: Liz’s blonde hair is a particular draw (teenage lad asked to be photographed with her).

But we have also seen the other side of Calcutta. Beggar with mutilated arm, children clinging on to our legs, families living on the street, beggars tapping on the minivan window at traffic lights making ‘feed me’ mimes. Two homeless rickshaw drivers sleep on the pavement outside the hotel (see below – I paid him, for the picture, but not a ride !). Tomorrow we’ll visit some projects that aim to help, but we’re left with an amazing mixture of vigour and fun on one hand, and utter misery on the other.

Oct 25^th – Another extraordinary day. Calcutta is a vibrant city with wide avenues, parks, a 95,000 seat cricket ground, heaving markets, gaily painted buses. This morning the visit included Jain temples and the home of Mother Teresa’s order, though I ducked out with my first dose of Delhi belly. Liz went and was struck by a museum exhibit of Mother Teresa’s work which used dressed up Barbie dolls as models.  Caught up at lunch in time to have a ‘paper dosa’ – crisp pancake about a foot long with vegetable filling. Later saw grand imperial buildings – this was the capital of India till 1911 – and some of the old English tombs including the founder of Calcutta, John Charnock. Then a boat ride up the Ganges, which is cleaner and nicer than expected, stopping off at one wharf which boasts the best samosas in town. The tradition of throwing the festival statues into the river meant we saw various gods floating down to the sea past us. And on the river steps (‘ghats’), there is all human life, washing, bathing and scattering the ashes of the dead.

The family of Anup, our Bengali guide, joined us for evening meal, and I had the great pleasure of sitting next to his very bright ten year old who spoke fluent English and grilled me about England, Europe and life (“do you have your own farm ?”), whilst showing me how to eat fishy rice with my fingers. At home we spend time getting grandchildren not to eat with their fingers, and now a ten year old tells me not to use a spoon (“it tastes better this way”). He is in a class of fifty, which appears to hold him back not at all.

Oct 26^th – Today we visited a women’s textile cooperative outside Calcutta, in the rice fields to the south west (I think). The journey was eventful – I’ve seen people queue-jump in traffic jams before, but never buses with people on the roof charge down the wrong carriageway to get ahead. We ended with a stop-start journey through the most extraordinary village shopping street, with every service from vegetables to barbers, mobile phones to working carpenters (above). The project was great – Liz got into the needlework – and we visited a worker’s home before more fish’n’rice served on banana leaves, and more Indian dancing.  Back to Calcutta for the New Market (est. 1887, by the British, natch) humming with locals shopping for everything. Not much hassle, nice shops and friendly people. This is a wonderful city, despite the poverty and filth.

Oct 27^th – My last bulletin. This morning we went to Sasha, the rather up-market shop that sells the goods made by yesterday’s women’s coop, and much else from fair trade workshops, farms and factories.  Very savvy manager, PowerPoint presentation, modern product range a scale up from the idea of Oxfam hippy shirts and canvas shopping bags. Then tea and biscuits (not as nice as it sounds.  Indian tea tends to be very sweet and brewed: half our group call it “builders’ tea” and lap it up, the rest of us drink water instead).

This afternoon to the Victoria Memorial, which (unlike other buildings here) has retained its name and statues because on the whole Indians appreciated that under Victoria Britain (a) got rid of the East India Company after the Mutiny/First war of independence (b) opened up the civil service posts to qualified locals and (c) had Indian servants in Buck Palace.  Opposite is a vast park with lots of informal cricket matches and cows at square leg (for the mishit hook, I guess). Then visited the Marble Palace – vast stately home owned by Indian tax gatherers, now down on its luck despite the statues and oil paintings.

I’ve never been convinced by the idea that a policy of austerity would lead us to economic recovery.  This was the approach tried after the 1929 slump (look up the May Report in Wikipedia) and it didn’t work then.  The UK is actually coming out of the current slump more slowly than it recovered in the 1930s, and more slowly than the USA with its wicked deficit spending .  This is in line with the predictions of Keynesian economics (not terribly fashionable I know, but rather better than those T-shirts featuring Karl Marx saying “I told you this would happen”): if you follow Paul Krugman’s tweets, or New York Times articles, it is all horribly predictable.

The current edition of the New Statesman features a survey of economists who wrote to the press supporting austerity Osborne a couple of years ago.  Their current stance is, how to say this delicately, rather more nuanced.  They don’t, of course, say “I was wrong”; it’s all “I actually didn’t quite agree, but the subtleties of my approach did not come across at the time”. Oh yeah ? Then why write to the paper saying you do agree ?

It’s plain that (a) there is plenty of work to be done in the UK; our infrastructure needs radical modernisation* (b) there are people that want to do it (c) government borrowing is historically very cheap, and there is no sign of the bond markets taking fright. It’s a good time to borrow and (d) the National Debt is low compared with the 40s, 50s and 60s. It’s so sad that the self-flagellation advocates can’t see this and put together a sensible recovery policy.  I think they’re waiting for the magic confidence fairy to return and energise private industry.  Well, she will return one day – even Robert Mugabe couldn’t quite kill off an economy – but she would come back a lot quicker if there was a sign of useful activity out there. And the government deficit might fall if tax receipts rose and welfare benefits fell (the Conservatives are currently borrowing more than Labour planned).

Footnote: three days after posting this entry, we learn that the government deficit is bigger than expected.  We also learn that the Minister put up to explain things – poor, poor Chloe Smith, savaged on TV in the past – says this proves how important it is to stick to the current policy.  An analogy: it’s like finding that a key doesn’t open a lock, but just turning it harder rather than try another.

* I speak as a man who drove from Sheffield to Manchester on Tuesday, crawling between two of Britain’s major urban centres on a single carriageway road through what might (in the absence of Polish artics) be picturesque Peak District villages.   A perfect project for regeneration. 

Some countries put considerable effort into saving the purity of their language.  The Welsh and Gaelic speaking Scots have their own TV channels, and the Irish insist that their schoolchildren spend hours learning the language of their great grandparents.  I once gave a speech to a conference of Welsh head-teachers, all of whom I am sure spoke fluent English, yet was simultaneously translated.  The French, of course, have an Academie which arbitrates on, and finds alternatives to, English neologisms.  Software becomes logiciel, e-mail is courriel and so on.  It’s a bit of a losing battle, given the coolness of American English in France: it is pretty impossible to stand anywhere in urban France and not see English in some form, even if it is incorrect.  TV makeover shows, for example, feature ‘relooking’, a word that does not exist in English.

The English are more relaxed about their language – apart from the occasional correspondent to the Telegraph, pointing out what words such as ‘disinterested’, ‘prestigious’ or ‘refute’ actually mean (or used to).  It’s a mongrel tongue anyway, words have always changed their meaning, and some of the neologisms are good fun.  American friends have introduced ‘wine o’clock’ into our daily usage, for example.  I also like ‘cyberchondria’ – seeking symptoms on the web to prove that you’re really ill.  We are happy to welcome useful Americanisms, and Britishisms – snog, sell-by date, ginger – have taken root in the USA.  This does not, however, mean that we give up the struggle for shape and meaning in our daily language.  It is under serious threat from a number of sources.

An obvious one is political language.  Orwell’s essay Politics and the English Language is a magnificent place to start the debate.  Language mattered to Orwell – the tyranny of Nineteen Eighty Four used Newspeak and doublethink to show the connection between ugly and careless expression, and ugly and careless government.  We are lucky not to live in a country where state murder is called ‘liquidation’ or ‘elimination of disloyal elements’, but there is still plenty of clichéd and thoughtless political language.  Politicians continue to construct speeches, in Orwell’s words, ‘like a prefabricated shed’ – from preformed phrases such as ‘zero tolerance’, ‘tough decisions’, ‘exciting challenges’, ‘sending a clear message’, ‘XX is not an option’.   We are told of measures that will ‘make a real difference’ (as opposed to the other sort of difference), usually to ‘local people’ (as opposed to the other sort of people). Words that are never used in real conversation – ‘slur’, ‘pledge’, ‘smear’, ‘vow’, ‘snub’ – come easily to the front-bencher.  The curious expression ‘delivering on’ has entered the language: there was a time when pallets were the only thing that products were delivered on.  It’s striking to see that Orwell himself, in 1947, mocked politicians who promise to ‘lay the foundations’ or ‘achieve radical transformations’, phrases still in widespread use.  Management speak has added ‘vision’, ‘obsession’ ‘passion’, ‘focus’.  The phrase ‘world-class’, which can be reasonably claimed to be meaningless due to differences in international statistical practice, is brought in to give a spurious air of evidential support to the latest idea.  Government spending is always referred to as ‘investment’, private price rises as ‘revised tariffs’.  There are even real world examples of Newspeak or doublethink. The Olympic Games, tendered for at £2bn, cost £11bn, yet was delivered ‘under budget’.  The last Labour administration claimed to ‘safeguard’ adult education by freezing – that is, in real terms, cutting – its budget.  Our current Prime Minister explains he is introducing efficiency not austerity. Maybe the reason so many people would prefer Boris Johnson – who would be a walking disaster as Prime Minister – is that he speaks like a human being, even if a very odd one.

Politicians are not alone.  The press joins in the pollution of language with tired phrases – postcode prescribing, Frankenstein foods – that cut off serious debate about local flexibility or GM foods.  They have their own locker of words no-one else uses – slam, snub, slur, pledge.  The egregious Americanism “of all time” is now everywhere.  This expression usually totally redundant.  The greatest athlete or worst disaster are just that – no need to add the ‘of all time’ as some sort of verbal vitamin supplement.  Other words are not allowed out on their own, and have to be accompanied by a bodyguard: fatally flawed, top model, essential services, absolutely free, much vaunted.

Corporate cant also contributes.  I may be a cold fish, but cannot believe that so many products, services and appointments are ‘exciting’.  The proliferating number of awards ceremonies keeps hotels in business, and pays the mortgage of many a second rate comedian; that probably explains why so many products and services are ‘award winning’.  This is, to be fair, international: try buying a bottle of wine in France that doesn’t have a medal on it.  This may be to show they have taken things “to another level”.  Firms promise to stay with us ‘every step of the way’ – corporate stalking ? – so that we can be sure that we have something  ‘that’s right for you’ on our ‘journey’.  Prepositions now cling to nouns: our on-train team offers at-seat service, and when we arrive we can get bargains in-store (and be offered expensive insurance cover to give us ‘peace of mind’ as if we live in a froth of worry that our kettle or iron will break down and destroy social cohesion).  The overall effect is simply to create an impression of boring dishonesty – think of the advertisements that say (usually with a gentle Scots burr that surveys have said we trust more than any other accent) “that’s why we at XXX  (fill in as appropriate)”.

And underlying it all, is the widespread awfulness of ‘incredible’.  A grumpy pedant like me sometimes passes the time listening to boring radio interviews by counting the number of times ‘incredible’ is used – even ‘literally incredible’.  It’s not just the fall back of breathless athletes asked ‘how do you feel ?’.  Contemplative people can be infected: Ian Bostridge’s Desert Island Discs became unlistenable because of this.  David Cameron has proclaimed an ambition that commemorating the start of the First World War will make the Imperial War Museum “more incredible than ever” – exactly what you don’t want from a museum, I’d have thought. There are many adjectives that could convey meaning better – substantial, astounding, surprising, remarkable, unprecedented – but maybe that would involve thought and invade our ‘peace of mind’.

The battle is not forlorn.  My father’s bete noire (yes, grumpy pedantry is genetic) was ‘fabulous’, and that seems to be dying away.  In any case, one of the great pleasures is listening to people who talk well, and do not fall back to the chicken-shack construction.  Salman Rushdie, Clive James, Alfred Brendel, Simon Callow, Jonathan Miller: an entertainment and a delight.

Time to go to bed.

I notice that the vicar of the estate near Manchester where two policewomen were killed has lit two candles for them.  Hmmm.  I hope this might some help to the poor families of these young women, and I know from my own family that religious faith can be some consolation in moments of grief.  Even though it’s not true.

That doesn’t remove some thoughts about the formulaic way that journalists deal with incidents like this.  The local community is always shocked (Why would they not be ? What reaction is expected ?  “Oh, well, just another murder round here: who gives a toss ?”).  And journalists usually ask the local vicar for local colour.  Now, church attendance in the UK is about 6%, I would guess much less than that on tough estates, and falling.  Why ask the vicar, then, when other people you could approach – the local school head teacher, or the local councillor – will have a much richer understanding of local issues ?  Or even, as a friend said yesterday, the check out assistant at Tesco.

The mention of vicars brings another medieval practice to mind – the way that those asked to comment whenever a disaster happens (a child dies in an accident, a soldier is killed on active service) say that the family are “in our thoughts and prayers”.  Thoughts, OK, fine, but prayers ?  Even if Prime Ministers and head-teachers were given to nightly prayers (again, hmmm), there is decent research evidence on the effectiveness of prayers and, er, they aren’t effective in the least.  One of them found that people who were sick in hospital actually recovered less well when they learned others were praying for them.  Becky Pugh, a journalist in the Daily Telegraph, last year wrote an article wondering (as a devout RC Christian) whether the survival of her sick child was due to modern medicine or prayer.  She could have found out relatively simply, by contrasting the fate of children in the third world who only have prayer against those in modern secular countries that rely on medical expertise.

Terrible things happen in our world.  Illness, crime, floods and earthquakes, accidents.  There are often things we can do to help – disaster funds, training, social policy changes, engineering projects, vaccination campaigns.  There are ways we can understand – criminology, biology, climatology.  Sometimes there is nothing we can do except pick up the pieces.  I’m no theologian, but I don’t see prayer as part of this response.  Cold fish again, I suppose.  Problem is, there is solid scientific research that shows prayer does no good, and sometimes does harm.  Problem – should we tell people who are getting some consolation from it that it’s all tosh, because it is.

And most people know it.  The statistics about how religious the British are clouded by controversy, and the answer often depends on how you ask the question.  The 2001 census asked people “What is your religion ?” and 14.8% said none.  In 2008 British Social Attitude Survey asked respondents “Do you regard yourself as belonging to any particular religion ?”, and 50.5% said none.  Journalists need to learn to operate in this secular world.  It’s where we are.

Just a quickie on the topic of ‘reaching your dream’.  When interviewed after a success, sportspeople or talent contest entrants always speak of having attained their dream.  Now, perhaps I have more mental problems than the average sprinter or boy band, but my dreams aren’t like that.  They involve floating through the air only to arrive on stage acting in a part where I don’t know the words, or entering a college hall for an exam for which I have no knowledge at all.  Walking around having lost my shoes is another recurrent dream.  You get the point – I won’t go on – but the next time I win the Ashes or the Nobel Prize, be assured I will not tell the world that I have reached my dream.

The reason I won’t bang on about it is that there are few things more boring than someone else’s dreams.  There’s a Bob Dylan song – Gates of Eden – where we are told “at dawn my lover comes to me, and tells me of her dreams, without the attempt to shovel them in to the ditch of what each one means …”.  I suppose we must give the girl some credit: whilst Bob has to look interested whilst she drones on about her sleepy experience, at least she spares him the additional 30 minutes of amateur psychology.

Footnote: My stepson bridles at another cliche of successful athletes – “it was surreal !”.  Like what ?  Fish riding bicycles in a ginger coloured sky ? Limp stopwatches draped over willows ?

My wife has just (almost) completed a bout of jury service.  She has not been used, and has spent a fortnight basically hanging around.  I have served as a juror twice, and each was a frustrating experience.  I can’t go into details – it’s not allowed.  What I can reveal is that one trial was a complete waste of time, such that the judge stopped it halfway through.  Another was dragged into three or four extra days by testimony that was irrelevant to the crime in question, basically saying the accused was brutalized by the police after being arrested for the offence.  A third case involved the jury taking about 15 minutes in Miss Marple mode working out that the bloke the defendant claimed had committed the crime could not possibly have done so, in a way that seemed to elude the barristers presenting the prosecution case over several days.

We are now told that the Queen has expressed annoyance that four possible terrorists have spent seven years appealing against extradition.  Latest news: despite being turned down by the European Court, the accused have won another stay.  I don’t know the ins and outs of these cases, except to note the defence claim that the defendants should be tried in Britain, as if those accused of offences get to choose who tries them.   At least they haven’t taken the Julian Assange angle, that the accused should be able to decide which police force interviews them and where.

But seven years is an awful long time to resolve things.  It seems the only sphere where this sort of delay is acceptable is the law, or associated activity such as public enquiries.  The Savile Enquiry into Bloody Sunday (1972) was established in 1998, completed its hearings in 2004 and reported in 2010.  It covered controversial issues that had to confront obfuscation by some of the parties, but the pattern happens even on less significant levels.  The BBC today reports that those implicated in the phone-hacking scandal will face trial next September.

Next September ?? What can possibly justify delays of this sort ?  Elsewhere, time horizons are shortened so that (e.g.) a new car can be designed and manufactured in a very short time. The P-51 Mustang, the finest fighter of the Second World War, was rolled out 102 days after the delivery contract was signed.  I am no management guru, but was part of a team that opened six new colleges, closed thirty sixth-forms and twelve adult education divisions, in the process reallocating more than a thousand staff and countless students (who kept doing their current work throughout !), all in 14 months.  Every time I visit my old London stamping grounds, I see new buildings.  Opticians and telecom suppliers used to take weeks and months to deliver: now it is instant, or a few days.  We are living in a just-in-time society in every area except maybe one.

Several of my family members are employed in the law, so maybe this is a difficult as well as an obvious question.  At a time when there are concerns about cutting legal aid to poor defendants, is there truly no way we can reduce legal costs and delays ?