EUROPE: A LOUD AND CLEAR MESSAGE

Well, it was quite a European weekend, wasn’t it, with the political landscape transformed in the UK, France, Denmark, Hungary and Greece and much upset elsewhere. The electorate bothering to vote sent Brussels a loud raspberry and gave their respective fat-cat political “elites” a kicking they long deserved and a clear instruction to reform Europe or else withdraw from it post haste.

The UK was a great show; Nigel Farage and his UKIP ran rings around the established big 3 parties. UKIP is a shambolic mixture but at least its members are normal human beings not some laboratory- created or programmed clones from Head Office. For the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg epitomised the metrosexual arrogance of his type, was slaughtered in debate by personable Farage and will now spiral away into political oblivion. Ed Miliband has always seemed a trifle weird, but his feeble campaign underlined his out-of-touch weirdness to a T and his attempt to eat a bacon butty with nonchalance was a pathetic comic moment to savour.

Ed Miliband's Bacon Buttty Waterloo

Nigel Farage: Hero of the Hour

David Cameron was all sincerity and nebulous promises of “getting tough” with Europe. He was not believed: his leisurely timetable for renegotiation and 2017 referendum deepens the suspicion that he is as “tough” as a powder-puff. “Trust me, I get it” is no substitute for action; he needs to get off his Old Etonian backside and start re-negotiating the UK’s relationship with Europe now. He is required to produce some passion, some vision and some inspiration. He is after all the leader of a great nation which has a distinguished history of independence to support him. 

Cameron should immediately select a Minister for Europe, just as MacMillan did with Heath. This time round he should appoint a seasoned Eurosceptic with fire in the belly – Michael Gove or Theresa May spring to mind – who can master a brief, take on formidable vested interests (as respectively the teachers and the police were taken on) and work over the fanatical federalists of the EU. The UK wants a sustainable associate status in Europe centred on trade and services and will not submit to supra-national institutions nor intrusive rules dreamt up by Brussels bureaucrats. If there is no deal, we walk away. If Cameron goes down this route, judiciously making an electoral pact with UKIP and soon dropping the Lib Dems, he will prick the bubble of Scottish defection, win the 2015 election outright and lead the dynamic UK into luscious new pastures.

Marine Le Pen, the new Joan of Arc

The shock of the weekend was the rampaging success of the Front National in France, wiping the floor with the Gaullists and with Hollande’s Socialists, so recently the toast of Paris. Marine Le Pen’s father was an extremist but Marine has sanitised her party and, once treated like lepers, the FN polled higher than any others. It is now at the centre of French politics, amazingly advocating withdrawal from the EU and insisting on priority being given to French people within France – not unreasonably to any but a Brussels mind-set. Belatedly Sarkozy is now saying the right things about EU reform and maybe his discredited but experienced voice will be heard too.

The Right caused havoc in Denmark and Hungary while the odd man out was Greece where the insurgency came from the hard Left SYRIZA led by youthful and honest Alexis Tsipras. His party topped the European poll but not quite decisively enough to eliminate the tottering PASOK of Venizelos nor cripple the blithely pro-austerity New Democracy of Prime Minister Samaras. The coalition of these two, Venizelos and Samaras, has created a government containing ripe characters you might more expect to see during visiting hours at Armley Jail. Tsipras will have his work cut out to depose this regime which will hold on to power like grim death.

  

Alexis Tsipras

Samaras and Venizelos

                                           

The precise direction of European politics in the coming months is hard to predict. But last weekend was a moment to treasure. The Establishment in leading countries, smug beyond words, exploiters of their own citizens, weak towards overt enemies and subsidised by ruthless financiers, received a drubbing they will never forget. Do not let this opportunity pass by – strike while the iron is hot and free us from our EU shackles!

SMD

27.05.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014

BLESS THE PLUMBER

Outside our summer house in Samos the drains are being renewed with pneumatic drilling, deep trenches have appeared and the inconvenience is considerable. My thoughts naturally strayed to  matters sanitary. Of all the multifarious services we take for granted in our Western feather-beds, one of the most overlooked is clean, running, mains water. We blithely assume the taps (“faucets” for our friends across the Pond) will deliver clean drinkable water, that our toilets will flush with gratifying discretion and that the drains (wherever they are) will receive easily the murky effluent of our indispensable clothes-washing and dishwashing machines, not to mention loos. 

These are reasonable assumptions for about 90% of our time, but if there is a little snag, be ready for a rude awakening and a highly alarming train of events. Drain blockages, machine malfunctions or flood contaminations represent the stuff of nightmares reducing you suddenly from the 21^st to at least the 18^th century if not the Neolithic Age. Most Westerners are ill-prepared for this drastic metamorphosis.

A blocked drain announces its presence

Drain blockages (your responsibility, as the water company only cares about the main drain) announce themselves with a penetrating and unmistakable pong and can leave you with horrid clogged sinks. This calls for the services of the Man from Dyno-Rod, an exotic specialist in the unblocking arts, not really a plumber. The Dyno-Rod man will appear in a van lugging a large empty water tank. He fills the tank from the mains with agonising slowness – agonising as he charges you £100 per hour. He fits up his rods with the same absence of alacrity. He sits in his van dragging on a fag (no, not that kind of fag, I mean “a cigarette” for our friends across the Pond). When his water tank is full he will pump water down your drain and energetically manipulate his rods; with any luck after a few minutes there will be a satisfying “plop” and a rush of foul water will disappear towards the main drain. I can see the attraction in being a Dyno-Rod man at such moments despite the lingering pongs – you are much relieved and he is about £300 richer.

A well-working flush toilet is another of life’s little necessities. The principle of the flush toilet is very ancient – Neolithic settlements at Skara Brae in the Orkney Isles diverted streams to flush away effluent in the 31^st Century BC to be followed by civilisations in the Indus Valley. These were public rather than private conveniences and so they remained for centuries. Tudor inventors perfected the toilet using the leaky floating valve principle to be replaced in the 1880s by the siphonic system developed by gloriously named sanitary engineer Thomas Crapper, whose premises once graced The King’s Road, Chelsea. The S-bend had already been patented preventing sewer gasses floating upwards and soon in the UK and USA the private internal loo, not outside in a garden shed, became more common among the prosperous, sweet-smelling bourgeoisie.

Yet plenty can go wrong with a flush toilet: washers need replacing, the ball-cock gets punctured and the loo overflows, the flush handle falls off and the bowl itself harbours all manner of nasties. Here in Greece one is regaled with stories of soaked rats suddenly appearing – I assume the fear of flushed-away baby crocodiles growing huge in the New York sewers is just another lurid urban myth. In Greece the old pipes were too narrow and could not cope with much toilet paper: you were instructed to place the used paper in a handy receptacle (Oh, my sainted aunt!).

Another horror, once common in Greece and still widely used globally, is the “squat” toilet a somewhat uninviting ceramic hole in the ground with size 12 footprints nearby to explain to the bamboozled Westerner what he or she has to do – the undignified, unfamiliar and acrobatic squat with not much to hold onto. Mind you, dignity is never easy in this area of sad necessity.

Flush

Squat

    

A blocked dish-washing machine will soon flood a kitchen as they will still pump away regardless. My dear wife always insisted on extravagant Miele appliances, of legendary Teutonic efficiency; a legend, alas, they have proved, as most are now manufactured away from Germany in countries like Slovakia and Hungary and break down like any others. You get Trabant quality at Rolls-Royce prices! Your friendly plumber will have to twist pipes with his monkey-wrench as if he were dealing with a humble Indesit.

Most crucially of all, is the water potable (drinkable)? In my native Scotland the water is lovely other than in some of the peat- infested Hebrides and London water is fine. My experience of Parisian tap-water (ugh!) is rather dated but it probably would not actually kill you. In Athens, surprisingly, the water from the tap is excellent although that in many of the springless Greek islands is not. In the US I suppose it is generally drinkable but when you move to Asia and Africa the picture changes radically and the water often carries ghastly diseases and dire microbic perils.

The plumber who mends your leaks and tightens your spigots is a friend indeed. Sing his praises as you wallow in a hot, soapy bath vigorously scrubbing with your loofah.  If you know more than one reliable plumber “Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel” in Polonius’ phrase. When your day of doom arrives and your old body gurgles and bubbles, do not send for a doctor or a priest but send for a plumber, who understands such things, and at least go out with a splash!

SMD

20.05.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014

THE CITY of LONDON LIVERY HALLS: London's Finest (6)

Visitors to the City of London will certainly take in splendid St Paul’s Cathedral, probably gaze at the Mansion House, the Bank of England or the Guildhall, possibly ascend The Monument if in good wind, fruitlessly look for the Stock Exchange floor (now a computerised inter-dealing room tele-operation) but they are likely to miss entirely one of the City’s glories, the stately Livery Halls of the once-powerful Livery Companies of the City.

Fishmongers' Hall at London Bridge

The Livery Companies are a historic survival of the medieval Guilds regulating the trades of the time. Their Halls are private properties though access is improving and there are regular conducted tours. The connection between the medieval trades and the Livery membership is now very tenuous in most Companies and the membership is diverse. All Liverymen are Freemen of the City with some voting privileges but the Companies themselves are now largely philanthropic institutions, sometimes with connections to schools, with much socialising thrown in. Some of the Companies are extremely wealthy from historic endowments, managing large property portfolios.

There are 12 “Great Companies” - in order of precedence, The Mercers, The Grocers, The Drapers, The Fishmongers, The Goldsmiths, The Merchant Taylors, The Skinners (alternating in precedence annually with the Merchant Taylors), The Haberdashers, The Salters, The Ironmongers, The Vintners and The Clothworkers. Of the pre-1746 traditional 80 or so original Companies, prominent also are The Brewers, The Wheelwrights, The Stationers, The Scriveners, The Saddlers and The Cordwainers. These cosy oligarchic clubs were democratised in the 1970s and “modern” Companies were created – there are now 110 Companies including my own, The Worshipful Company of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators, a modest 87^th in precedence but a fine and stalwart group of charmers. The modern companies like The Chartered Accountants, The Hackney Carriage Drivers and The Information Technologists require liverymen to be members of their profession, reverting to the medieval model.

There are only 41 remaining Livery Halls in the City – The Great Fire in 1666 and the highly destructive Blitz of 1940-1 all took their toll.  The Halls vary from the grandeur of The Goldsmiths to the relative domesticity of The Innholders.

Goldsmiths' Hall

         

Innholders' Hall

Most Halls are professionally managed and they are matchless venues for wedding receptions, presentations and other occasions. The Liverymen use them for lavish Livery Lunches and Dinners and ceremonial inaugurations and the larger halls have Court Rooms for internal business meetings and elegant reception rooms to receive visitors.

The British love to dress up in white tie and tails (less general now) or black tie and tuxedos, long dresses for their ladies with jewellery and medals on show. A Livery function is well worth attending as the food and wines are usually of a high standard, the speeches brief and the company convivial. 

Dinner at Drapers' Hall

Those Companies without their own Hall rent from the better-endowed and their Liverymen have the peripatetic pleasure of seeing all kinds of Halls. In their diversity, the Livery Companies are staunch supporters of the institutions of the City of London as they reform and evolve. At the apex of the hierarchy is the Lord Mayor himself and the Companies always provide floats for the magnificent annual Lord Mayor’s Show.

A Livery Hall visit is strongly recommended – better still, accept a dinner invitation!

Pageantry of The Lord Mayor's Show

SMD

17.05.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014