Summertime blues

As this wonderful summer prepares to make way for the less inviting autumn and winter, a third of UK residents admit to being worried about their forthcoming heating bills. I'm only surprised it is as low as that. Fuel poverty has been on the rise for many years now and was first recognised by the government of John Major which seems a long time ago. The real scandal is that so little has been done to address this problem in the intervening twenty years.

Critics of course point to the age old mantra that "you cut your cloth according to your pocket". This is all well and good up to a point Lord Copper! The harsh reality is rather different. Leaving aside the rest of the population, millions of our pensioners will once more be faced with the very real choice of "heat or eat". Their incomes have not kept up with inflation and nor have they kept up with the spiralling costs of fuel. In my home, we re-opened a real fire in our front room. Had we not done so, I shudder to think how much we might have spent over the last few winters. We were lucky. Not everyone has this kind of option and are faced with the gas or electric conundrum. One of the biggest scandals of recent years has been the way in which internet users are advantaged when it comes to fuel tariffs. I say this because it is well known that many elderly users either don't have internet access or don't understand it. A I approach my second degree, I struggle with the way in which they tie up their deals in knots so that it is nigh on impossible to assess which deal is the best. Standardisation is long overdue. Unfortunately, we can't very well turn back the clock and re-nationalise these companies especially since so many of them are under foreign ownership.

The proportion of net disposable income being spent on car fuel and house fuel is now at an all time high and shows no sign of abating. Last winter, we endured the misery of a broken boiler system and I am glad it is behind us rather than in front of us. The effect on mental health is inestimable. Some would say we have become a pampered nation and to an extent we have. When we had no boiler, we had to adjust our lives accordingly. It wasn't much fun but with an extra layer or two we managed when we needed to. For the non-retired working population, much of this strain on income could be avoided if there was a way to use our cars less. Petrol was £1.18 per gallon when I passed my test 25 years ago. It is now £1.40 per litre (£6.00 per gallon). That is some inflation! A five-fold increase in 25 years is a staggering rise. That said, it is evidently here to stay and, if anything, is only likely to rise. The question therefore, is how to reduce our dependence on our cars?

The town where I live is reasonably rural but only about twelve miles away from the nearest high population. What is surprising is how many people from my town are commuting daily round trips of 80 miles or more. A quick calculation shows that such mileage is costing these people about £50 per week before they start to include the amount spent during their leisure time. Ergo, why are these people not working closer to home? In the age of the internet, we were given to believe there would be an explosion of people working from home. If so, I don't see the evidence. All the roads where I live seem to be permanently clogged up in spite of the spiralling cost of fuel. Meanwhile, the town centres continue their descent towards dereliction. The two seem incompatible. Logic would suggest that now more than ever, we need to be doing everything we can to get behind our town centres. The more they thrive, the more employment they generate. The more employment, the less local people will have to use their car - heaven forbid, they may even be able to walk to work! Thus they will get exercise as well - genius! Or so you might think. As councils up and down our land continue to support the building of new out of town retail developments, they are further exacerbating the impact on fuel poverty. I accept that a town will never be able to employ its entire population but strongly suggest that too little is being done on a local level to promote high street growth. Aside from the positive impact on local employment and fuel poverty, it will also drive community cohesion. As a rule of thumb, people doing their shop at a Tesco the size of a small African country don't tend to take much interest in the person next to them in the queue. In a small town they do though because there is a far higher chance that they know that person. The so called cost savings promoted by these retail behemoths is therefore one of the biggest cons of our times.

If the government of John Major had started the ball rolling and taken sustainable energy seriously, we wouldn't be in the mess we find ourselves today. The big scandal is that the succession of governments since have done so little. The hospitals will once more pick up the pieces of the health repercussions of the "eat or heat" generation and the shareholders of the energy firms will turn up the gas when the wind blows cold.  

Gone up in smoke..

As Wales seeks to further consolidate its own identity, it is today announced that the last NHS Trust in the Principality has signed up to the NHS no smoking policy which has been adopted elsewhere. In a bid to standardise policy, patients are now banned from smoking in any hospitals in Wales.

On the face of it, this is fair enough. There are basic flaws though. The first is that I've never yet known any ban to work. Drive home tonight and observe the people having a smoke in the entrance door of the local pub. That is a reasonably public place. Ban the playing of a song on Radio 1. Ban electronic cigarettes in school. The list goes on but the point is made. The problem with bans is not so much their intention but rather their enforcement. Go to any hospital you like in Wales or anywhere else and I guarantee you will see patients smoking at the entrance. The Welsh Assembly has a solution though. They will offer nicotine patches to all those caught smoking within the grounds of the hospitals. They can indeed offer but they are on a sticky wicket ethically speaking. If somebody chooses to smoke, that is a matter for them. The problem is that smoking is an addiction and it is not as easy as giving someone a nicotine patch because, believe it or not, if it were that easy, it would already have been done and there would be no tobacco kiosks. You can of course physically remove the lit cigarette from the person smoking it. By the same logic, they can then light another one. And so it goes on.

You can't force people to do things. You can advise them until you're blue in the face. You can offer patches, pills, cognitive behavioural therapy, counselling and all the other solutions but it does not follow that people have to comply. That is the aspiration but they are entitled to the choice they make. I don't for a minute condone smoking because the harm it does is so well documented. I do respect the right of everybody to make informed decisions about the way they choose to live their lives even if that choice exerts a massive drain on NHS resources.

Just last week, a report found that the British are a nation of addicts. Its just possible that the report was right. But then, aren't we all addicted to something? If what I read is correct, a worrying number of us are addicted to alcohol to various degrees yet I don't see the Welsh Assembly seeking to ban alcohol consumption or its effects on NHS sites. Go to any Accident and Emergency department on a Friday or Saturday night and feast your eyes on the rather more unpleasant aspects of alcohol. Yet the Welsh NHS appears to do little to address this. Of course, the list of illicit drugs seems to grow by the day as factories in China churn out another concoction aimed at achieving an even newer form of high. Again,no bans on these of which I'm aware. Having a ban on anything is relatively futile but being selective about those things you choose to ban is a bit hypocritical. Given recent stories about the drinking habits of various members of the Welsh Assembly, this is perhaps unsurprising.

So really, rather than banning the smoking of cigarettes in and around Welsh hospitals, laudable though it is, the Welsh Assembly would surely do better to invest more resources in tackling addiction. Clearly, they will never win with every case of addiction but they can at least have the intention to try. The money spent at the beginning of the pipeline will be chicken feed compared to the money needed at the other end if the addiction is allowed to grow and exert its ill effects on that person's health. It seems as though there is a good deal of fire fighting going on without any obvious desire to question where the fire is coming from. This, I would suggest, would be a far more constructive place for the Welsh NHS to begin its crusade against smokers and the like. Although it is highly irritating to be faced with a blast of smoke when entering a hospital, we need to be more pragmatic about it. The person smoking that cigarette may have been doing so for decades so it is a trifle unrealistic to expect them to suddenly stop after having extracted so much tax out of them for the privilege. Addiction is no laughing matter and many such people would love to stop if it were so simple. Banning it ignores the root cause. Progress will only be achieved when the root causes are addressed.

It wasn't my fault!

Last November, over 100 new homes were flooded in Ruthin in North Wales. Today, ten months after the awful events which left many homeless, independent investigators have published their findings.

The people who bought these new homes were given assurances that there was only a 1 in 1000 year chance of their homes being flooded. There are therefore two possibilities before considering the findings of the report. The first is that these poor residents were just monumentally unlucky and the 1 in 1000 years chance actually happened. The second is frankly more plausible. The second is that those assurances should never have been made in the first place because the infrastructure did not support the promise made.

It was widely known in the locality that the site of the new homes had once been an area which flooded frequently. A culvert was then constructed by the local council to alleviate the problem. This obviously opened up the possibility of the local council sanctioning the building of new houses which was duly done. So what exactly happened, I hear you ask?

The independent investigators found that screens on the new estate which surrounded the culvert were of a poor design which didn't meet with current standards. This resulted in the culverts becoming blocked with insufficient access. But who was responsible for granting permission to build? Whose responsibility was it to ensure that the builders complied with regulations? You may, like me, be forgiven for thinking that such a responsibility would rest with the local council given that they gave the green light to the building project and they have a planning regulations department complete with inspectors for the enforcement thereof. Wrong. Despite the fact that the council freely admit that they have no maintenance records relating to when the culverts were unblocked, the report concludes that the local council are not to blame. This despite the Chief Executive admitting that there were lots of things which could have been done better. Given that he is the Chief Executive of the council, I can only assume that he was referring to his own organisation. It is hard to imagine circumstances in which the council could be held to account on the basis of this report.

To all the poor residents, my heart goes out to you. To have your home flooded is one of the most distressing events there is. To have gone through this and learn that it ought to have been avoided must be hard to swallow. In keeping with the times, nobody seems prepared to accept responsibility and all the while Joe Public foots the bill. The effect on their home insurance is not worth thinking about. The effect on them emotionally must have been extremely distressing. You work hard to invest in your home and make it your own little piece of pride and joy. I am gutted for them and can't believe that there is no culpability at the feet of the council. It must therefore bring into question exactly what the point of planning and building regulations are. Back in the real world though, this will be booted in to the long grass and swept under the carpet.

Needless to say, now that the horse has bolted, all sorts of measures are now allegedly being implemented to ensure that - all together now - "this never happens again"! In her closing comments, the "independent" Chairperson said, "Hindsight is a wonderful thing but we cannot see any evidence that the decisions taken at the time were anything other than reasonable" and that "things would be done differently from now on".

The residents responded by saying that the report raised more questions than answers. They also stated that "accountability has been avoided at every turn". Any neutral observer would struggle to contend with these views. As a final chapter to this sorry affair, the house builder now hopes to resume the project and complete their full quota of 178 new homes. They will though be working very closely with the council and other agencies. The arrogance of the builders and the council is beyond words. Are these people accountable to anybody? Anyone at all? I really do wonder how such a disgraceful chapter can be exonerated. On a final note, there is of course one obvious question. Who chose the independent investigator and how much money would have been at stake had either the builder or the council been found to be at fault? Doubtless, such figures are not for public consumption...

Where does the buck stop?

A study this week revealed that parents want schools to take a bigger role in teaching their children the core values of honesty and fairness. For me, this brings in to focus the bigger questions. What is the purpose of our schools? What is the role of parents? Up to a point, the parents are justified in making this request. The role of schools though should ideally be to build on the good work which has already been done in the home beforehand. Ideally. Of course, not everyone lives in this ideal world. Also in the news this week has been the charity NICHS (Chest, heart and stroke). They have highlighted that just 43% of 7 year olds are getting the recommended one hour of exercise per day. In short, the spectre of childhood obesity refuses to go away. The Chief Executive of NICHS has called for greater cooperation between parents, schools, food producers, government and health charities in a bid to address this problem. He is quite right to highlight this problem but I feel he is being somewhat naive in his call. The first bit and the last bit are fine because parents, schools and health charities all have vital roles to play in either getting the right message out or in just providing help and support. I have a bit of a problem with the other two. Because our government is so beholden to the food producers and manufacturers, it is hard to see how child health can benefit. Let me be clear. The state of California has recently banned trans fats from all its restaurants and supermarkets because they, like Denmark, recognise the adverse health effects of these hidden killers. Despite a lot of campaigning, trans fats are still to be found ubiquitously on the shelves of our supermarkets. They were supposed to have been banned but haven't been. The food manufacturuers are answerable to their shareholders who expect a nice dividend on their shares every year. The food manufacturers therefore lobby the government (for lobby you can use harangue) to death in order to keep their profitable products on the shelves. Not profitable to the health of the people who eat them. Profitable to the people who make and sell them. Child health like adult health is the culmination of several factors. It is down to what you choose to eat, how much exercise you decide to take and a variety of other factors including the environment in which we live. Getting children to undertake exercise is just one piece of the jigsaw albeit a very important one. Getting them to understand which foods are good and which aren't is a lot more challenging. If we start our children on diets high in sugar and fat, it is little wonder that they subsequently become accustomed to more of the same. By definition, this is therefore the place where parents can make all the difference. Likewise, if we, as entire families, sit in front of the TV as a matter of course, we can't reasonably expect too much else from the next generation. Again, the parents have a huge role to play. The schools should be the ones who take up the baton after the hard work has been done at home. To expect them to put right what has been pre-programmed in the first two or three years of life is somewhat unfair. So what about honesty and fairness? Are we being honest with ourselves if we put the wrong foods in ourselves or neglect our health through lack of exercise? Given the overwhelming body of evidence, I think we are. But we must always remain respectful of those who elect not to for fear of becoming a quasi totalitarian state mustn't we? Not if we want the NHS to remain free at the point of access. In the end, we can't have it both ways because the numbers just don't add up. That is where the fairness becomes apparent...

All change in Haverfordwest!

True to the modern trend, councillors in the Pembrokeshire town of Haverfordwest have voted in favour of a proposal to build nearly 800 new houses and guess what? Correct, a dirty great big Sainsbury supermarket is also coming. In words which will come back to haunt them, local councillors admitted that the project could "undermine the vitality and viability of the town centre". Given that the town already boasts a Tesco and Morrison's store, it is with little surprise that the report in to this latest fiasco admits that "the analysis of retail impact does suggest that there is a risk that the proposed superstore could result in closures of existing convenience stores in the town centre". But of all the priceless quotes revealed today, my favourite by far belongs to an "independent" councillor whose identity I will spare. He said, "I just think it will mean all supermarkets will have to become more competitive, which is good news for customers". Where do I begin? The only conclusion you can possibly draw from any of these frightening statements is that not one of these councillors has ever had to run a business in a town centre. Strange as it seems, they don't quite have the buying power of the retail behemoths of Tesco et al! Quite how they are supposed to compete is not clear to me. Perhaps this councillor knows something I don't? It is depressing that councillors regard such developments as a coup when they actually do so little to promote community cohesion. All the councillors seem to see is jobs. On this occasion, their solution is bordering on the comical. Since they know the local job pool couldn't supply the necessary man power to fill vacancies at the new supermarket, their solution seems to be to build more houses to attract people to the area. This is about as contrived as you can get. Another high street is being blasted to smithereens by corporate greed. Oh well, as long as we continue to elect for people out of touch with the realities of the places where we live, what else can we expect?

Mirror, mirror on the wall..

On the day Gareth Bale is confirmed as a Real Madrid player for the frankly obscene sum of 100 million euros, I revisit two of his forebears. Like it was yesterday, I can remember the day Brian Clough of Nottingham Forest bought the striker Trevor Francis from Birmingham City for £1 million. It was 1979 and the country was beginning to face life after the now famous "winter of discontent". Unemployment was high. Strikes were commonplace. The first signs of the inner city riots of the early 1980s were beginning to show through and a football club was paying £1 million for the services of a striker. For the average Briton in 1979, the Trevor Francis transfer marked the day when football had really lost the plot. Little did we know where we would all be come September 2nd 2013. I have seen Bale play and he is a wonderful talent. There is no British club who wouldn't have given their right arm to have him on their books. That said, he is still one player and I can't help but fear that such a colossal signing on fee is setting him up to fail. Think about it for a minute. How many goals would he have to score to ever justify that amount? How many shirts would have to be sold? How much would his new club have to reclaim in marketing? Whatever the answers to these questions, it is obvious that the Spanish giants can't hope to recoup such a huge sum. On a more fundamental level, they have done one thing - they have ensured that he is not playing for any of their rivals, domestic or abroad. As far as my limited understanding goes, he is also just as liable to a major injury as any other player. As they say, you pay your money and you take your choice. The track records of British players being transferred to Italy and Spain are not generally great. There are of course exceptions. I started to support Leeds United in 1973 long after their most famous player had left the club for the Italian giants Juventus. Like Gareth Bale, John Charles was also Welsh. His name is still uttered with reverence now all these years later. For a start he played in a completely different era. Juventus payed a then record £65,000 for him in 1957. History suggests it was money well spent. In 1997, the Juventus fans voted him their best overseas import of their first 100 years in existence. John Charles was unique in so many ways, it is difficult to guess what his worth would be today. World class as both a centre half and as a centre forward, he was never booked in his entire career - never mind sent off. A real gentleman both on and off the field, John Charles remains the benchmark against whom British players are measured when they seek their fortunes in Spain and Italy. Bale will reportedly be paid £300,000 per week before tax. By my reckoning, he will need to be scoring goals in his sleep as well as during his waking hours. The weight of the transfer record did not burden John Charles but I suspect Gareth Bale might not be so lucky. While I wish him luck, I can't help but feel that the golden days of football were a long time ago before the money men got their avaricious hands on it. It is said that modern players have longer careers because they take more care of their fitness. John Charles began his career in 1948 and played his final match in 1972 so that is 24 seasons by my reckoning. Bale has a tall mountain to climb before he can be compared to the mighty Charles.

What's going on?

Last Easter, many parts of the UK were subjected to hosepipe bans by the privatised water companies. It seemed an odd decision at the time but was soon put in its place by one of the wettest summers I can remember. I have recently been reflecting on this gorgeous summer which has seen us bathed in sunshine. I would struggle to recall the days where we have had any rain. I played cricket today and judging by the state of the wicket, I could be forgiven for thinking that we might have experienced a drought. Not according to the water companies though. It is a mystery to me how these organisations operate. It seems bizarre that they can call a hose pipe ban after a winter which wasn't exactly lacking in snow and rain but they seem loathe to do likewise following a summer such as this. Of course I'm not complaining because we find ourselves on a water meter which means reliance on the water butt has come to the fore in recent times. The garden seems parched as do the gardens of my friends. In Wales, of course, water shortages are rare indeed due to the geography of the country and the high number of reservoirs. That said, many of the reservoirs serve the large populations of cities such as Liverpool and Birmingham. Although logic seldom has much to do with weather patterns, I would be expecting a decent drenching before too long as Mother Nature seeks once more to redress the balance. These are strange times indeed. The British and Americans have apparently elected not to go to Syria. Do I sense a turning point? It would be nice to think so because the will of the people remains important even if sometimes it doesn't always seem obvious. I've survived my first week in Knighton and rather enjoy the charm of the place. I have been fond of border regions since visiting Alsace-Lorraine in 2006. Like Alsace which struggles between its French and German identities, Knighton seems to want to be Welsh but always feels English in spite of its place on the Welsh side. History makes places like these interesting as the times change their allegiances. They are all the more compelling for it with an identity all of their own.