The Way We Live Now

 

Fogo not Forgetting

 

In a corner of this foreign field someone has ensured that the young men who died whilst serving at Charterhall are not forgotten.  The several graves of mostly Commonwealth aircrew have been meticulously maintained, ensuring that their death in war was neither anonymous nor unsung. Thank you, parishioners of Fogo, from an RAF veteran.

Taxes Made Easy

  

HMRC appears to be in small spot of difficulty with its customers.  The threat to deny access by telephone for months on end has been hastily withdrawn and, instead, HMRC assures us:

 “We continue to encourage people to use our highly-rated online services wherever possible, so they can get their queries resolved quickly and easily. This allows our expert advisers to focus on helping those who need one-to-one support, including the digitally excluded and the vulnerable.”

Public exasperation with the tax authorities does not appear to be a recent phenomenon.  Back in 1865, Punch published an exchange between disgruntled tax payer Mildmay Diddleton (Late of the Army) and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, WE Gladstone.

I came across the particular edition of Punch whilst relaxing in the superb visitor centre at Howick Hall in Northumberland (£9 admission for old folks is an absolute snip, by the way). 

Here is the full exchange of letters. 

Readers, particularly those frustrated by their failure to contact HMRC,  may admire Mildmay Diddleton’s sense if purpose and may, even, be tempted to follow his example?

 

 

Defence Chickens Roosting

 

In the past, Mushroom has lamented the incessant cutting of defence expenditure and derided the clichéd excuses such as punching above our weight and pivoting towards cyber warfare. He has sat, with former colleagues, and listened to senior serving officers emphasising the importance equality and diversity at, apparently, the expense of fighting effectiveness and esprit de corps.  He has become exasperated with the naïve party line that if only we should spend 2% of GDP on our armed forces, all will be well with our defence posture.  A stupidity that appears to afflict almost the entire political establishment.

Well, this week, the cosy complacency has been punctured as several respected authorities warn of the deteriorating security situation and our lack of preparedness for major conflict. 

The historian, Robert Tombs, weighed in, in the Sunday telegraph today:

“History shows that we have blundered into disaster by not seeing it coming. In the 1930s, public opinion moved faster than the politicians in realising the threat from the Nazis, but it was still desperately late in doing so. War is so terrible – modern war unimaginably so – that we cannot neglect any way of making it less likely. Retreating into neutrality does not seem an option in the modern world, as Sweden, long a proud neutral, has realised. We need politicians who are able to look without flinching at the dangers facing us, and explain to the country what needs to be done and what it will cost.”

To which our Government spokesman, apparently, “looking without flinching,” reassures us that “these kinds of hypothetical scenarios, talking about a conflict, are not helpful and I don’t think it’s right to engage with them,” adding that the Government had invested “significant sums into our Armed Forces”. Quite so and, as an old colleague in Northumberland reflects on a quote from Sir John Harvey-Jones on planning:

“Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something.  And the nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression."

Just the political ticket?