There is a lot in the press this week about workfare and the idea of poor jobless fellows becoming mindless drones, slaving away at a supermarket’s shelves without decent compensation.

Up goes the shout: Slavery!

When I was out of work (thirteen times in thirteen years before I employed myself), one of the worst aspects of unemployment was the total lack of communication with other people. Old colleagues were themselves looking for work, others proved that they didn’t value my friendship as much as I had hoped and didn’t help me search for work, and what with that and the inability to go to a pub to socialize because of the cost, I was left alone and miserable.

I did go once, and a guy I’d considered a friend offered to help me by buying my Morgan. I had nothing else left of value, all my savings from my twenties were gone, but I still had my Plus 8. That car was my pride and joy – but I had nothing else. It represented something of value.

Well, my drinking companion offered me less than half its value. When I pointed out it was worth rather more, he told me yes, but I needed the money urgently.

I still miss this car. Waited ten years for it to be built, and lost her in less than half that time!

Oddly enough I never drank with him again. I don’t like people who try to take advantage.

Still, missing company is one of the worst aspects of unemployment. It is the first issue that people contend with. The sudden loss of work means an equivalent loss of confidence and sense of shame, as if it’s the worker’s fault that it all went wrong.

For them it is hard, but for those who have never had a job, it’s probably still harder to motivate themselves. It’s not easy. Much easier to stay at home and hope it’ll go away. Smoke a cigarette, drink another beer, watch mind-numbingly poor television, and wait for someone to call.

The real world isn’t like that.

Some weeks ago, I was looking at a BBC page here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16812185 – if you look down, you see lots of interesting detail about a family on benefits. For one, their weekly shopping includes 24 cans of lager, 200 cigarettes and a large pouch of tobacco. I had to give up all smoking when I lost a job, and haven’t started again. I had to stop drinking too. Now, apparently, I’m paying for someone else to enjoy the pursuits I had to stop all those years ago!

There’s more. They have a budget for “entertainment”. Not sure what that is. Ah, but there’s “Sky TV” in there. That’s nice. I still can’t afford that now. But at least my taxes go towards someone else’s enjoyment of it.

Now, I’m not sure that too many people who are working shifts to fill the supermarket shelves can necessarily afford Sky either.

In the real world, people get up and go to work. They find jobs – any jobs – that pay minimal amounts, so that they can go out at the end of the week and have a couple of drinks with friends. They don’t enjoy it much, who does, really? But they know that nothing in life is free. If they want beer, they have to earn to buy it. If they want a television, they need to save to get the money together.

And the people who stack the shelves at the supermarkets up and down the country work not because they want to, necessarily. It is menial work: drudgery. But their taxes go to pay the living standards of those who remain on benefits.

Often those in supermarkets are only there a short time. They move up into other jobs, in retail or some other line, and finally discover a career that they do enjoy. But that is the point. People need to try out different jobs before learning what it is that they will want to do for life.

There are many who deserve benefits. The disabled, the ill, the old. But of those who can, they should work. No one should expect a free ride.

It seems absolutely crazy that people who are unemployed – and I don’t mean the disabled or elderly, I mean those capable and strong enough to earn their own living – are paid the equivalent of £35,000 to be unemployed. It is far more than the guys filling the shelves who are employed by the supermarkets – the ones who pay taxes so that the unemployed can have their incomes covered.

In the same way, I do not understand why people should be allowed to stay in council housing when they get back into work.

Council housing was always intended as a stop-gap to help those in most need while they needed it. It was not intended as a gift. Yet now if a family goes out of work, they can be rehoused and will remain there, paying lower rents, in a larger house than they could afford if they were working, and then, in a supreme ironic gesture, I am sure, then they can expect to be offered the house at a massive discount after some years.

Why?

Is there any other benefit that offers gifts once the period of difficulty is passed? It is absolute madness to throw away our Council housing stock in this way. Houses should be provided to those who have a passing need for a house, but it should be assumed that if they become fit and well, they should go and find work, and find their own property. The house should then go to the next deserving family in need, just as used to happen in the past.

Harsh? No. I never had my mortgage interest paid when I was out of work. I didn’t expect it. And recently there have appeared too many examples of senior politicians and trades union leaders who not only enjoy great incomes, but who also have council flats or houses. It is ridiculous that men and women with good incomes should be permitted to take houses and keep them at low rents, blocking those properties from much more needy and deserving people (Bob Crow, head of RMT union, earning £145,000 a year but using a subsidised council house; Frank Dobson, MP’s salary of over £80,000 a year plus allowances and subsidised food, drink and living costs, but has a council house as well as his other properties).

But a first pass at helping the unemployed would certainly include helping them to get out of their houses, and into working environments, where they can make friends with new people, get themselves motivated, perhaps even expose themselves to the risk of getting a job.

There are few things that can reduce me in moments to sheer, gibbering rage, but this one’s got me. Worked in a nanosecond.

No, not one of the usual ones. Not politicians claiming their food allowances, not even politicians lying through their teeth. No, this was much, much worse.

It’s the BBC.

All right, yes, I know the Beeb has its detractors. And yes, I am one of them, actually. There are some glorious heroes and heroines in the BBC, such as Jeremy Paxman (and Clarkson), but apart from them it seems to be full of very biased reporters and presenters. Much though I adore some BBC efforts, their reporting is too often sloppy and very distorted.

And they are enthusiasts for the nanny state.

I was watching a glorious programme last week. It must have been glorious because it had Hugh Dennis in it, and it was about Devon and Cornwall (with a chunk on Dartmoor). Superb.

Early in the programme, I sat up with excitement . . . well, not really, but you know what I mean. The delicious Julia Bradbury was on the programme, talking to a man I know well. Professor Nick Groom. They were discussing some old Dartmoor legends.

I know Nick. He’s a stalwart of our Morris side.

Nick Groom. Not his usual work clothes!

This is him. Sadly he wishes he was King Richard the Lionheart.

Anyway, Nick has long been interested in the Dartmoor legends. And there are many of them: I’ve made use of a few myself.

There is the tale of the “Hairy Hands” which grab the hands of the driver of cars down past Postbridge and invariably make cars crash. Yes, really. And there are headless horsemen, ghost carriages, tales of the Devil and his Wish Hounds searching out souls (which is probably where the House of the Baskervilles came from), amongst many others.

So did the BBC use these?

No. Having asked for scary stories about the moors, the producer (who is clearly only just out of kindergarten) refused to use them. He thought they would be too alarming for a BBC audience. So Nick was only allowed to use a little non-terrifying story.

I told my son (7 years). He agreed with me. After all, none of the stories are as scary as him.

I don’t think SOPA was well written legislation. In fact I can easily understand why it would have been so unpopular, because it did seem to be a catch-all for any misbehaviour.

The UK and USA already have extradition laws in place. There is a fellow, Richard O’Dwyer who is currently fighting his extradition to America to stand trial. His crime? Providing links from his website to people who could provide downloads, for free, of books, TV shows and films.

I have no doubts that the UK/USA extradition laws are a farce. If a US court wants to extradite a UK citizen, they need to ask and show that there is a reasonable suspicion of that person’s involvement in a US crime. There is no need to provide evidence to have the fellow arrested, held, and eventually shoved on a place. If a US subject is suspected and the UK asks for him or her to be extradited, there is a need to show that there is a case to answer. Evidence of the crime must be shown. It is very one-sided.

The laws used to extradite many people were not designed to prevent copyright infringements. O’Dwyer is being held and is to be extradited under laws designed to prevent terrorism.

This is daft. It is an extreme case, but it’s yet another example of British law being forced to bow to American law. In the past, Britain was accused of legal imperialism, forcing other, weaker nations, to submit to her demands. It now seems as though American ambitions are no less world-encompassing when it comes to the US’s most reliable ally.

First there were the National Westminster businessmen who were extradited for offences that were not committed in America but London, and whose offences did not directly affect America, but possibly their employer – a London bank based in London.

Then there was the Gary McKinnon case of a man who suffers from Aspergers, who hacked into a large number of computer systems in America. Not because of terrorism, but because he was convinced that the US military were hiding details of alien contacts. Yes, he was a believer in little green men and flying saucers. If he does get extradited, he will be a definite suicide risk, but he is being pursued.

And that’s natural, isn’t it? Someone who broke into computers in the military in a clandestine manner would deserve to be arrested.

Trouble is, he wasn’t operating in a clandestine manner. He was taking advantage of crassly incompetent security, and when he found poor security, he flagged it up to the US agencies concerned. His ten year battle against extradition will hopefully end in the summer.

And now we have young Mr O’Dwyer.

He will be fighting extradition, no doubt. It will cost a lot of money to fight his case, but he’s only twenty-three years old. Going to the US and facing five years in gaol will not help anyone. And he certainly isn’t a terrorist threat.

At the same time the owners of Megaupload are being held in New Zealand while extradition proceedings proceed.

Megaupload. And TVShack. Two companies that have nothing to do with terrorism, and all those involved are being extradited under terrorism laws.

It’s shameful, and I have really no sympathy whatsoever.

There is a new culture growing that seems to expect anything on the internet for free. If you want to watch a movie, go to the web. It’s free. A new game for your Nintendo? It’s going to cost you nothing. You want music? There are plenty of sites there which will let you take it without charge. And books. There are hundreds of thousands for precisely nothing.

Oh, you want a new one? One that is still in copyright? Well, if you go to TVShack or Megaupload.com, and you can get the new books too.

Why should you pay? The fact is that books cost nothing to produce. If you pay four, five, maybe seven dollars for a book, that means you’re filling publishing houses’ pockets. It’s a risk-free and conscience-free crime. You need feel no guilt. Why should you? A massive corporation like Mr Murdoch’s, or like Hachette, or Simon & Schuster are full of rich guys who don’t need the extra bucks you’d be passing them. Why should they get anything for the books they’re promoting? It’s like paying a banker for his job.

Except these sites don’t affect the super-rich in publishing. The additional downloads probably don’t cause Ian Rankin a headache. JK Rowling has already made plenty of money from Harry Potter and won’t pull her hair out at losing a few sales. Nor will John Grisham, I suppose, or Harlan Coben. They aren’t going to be hurt.

But the ones who will, the ones who are affected every day, are the struggling, lower-level authors. The ones who’ve written a book and seen it do not very well. The publishers are tough negotiators, and many of these poor devils have to earn advances back across an entire contract. That means, if you are paid a total of ten thousand pounds for three books, you have to earn enough to pay back the whole ten thousand before you earn a single penny.

Tools of the trade. Books and computers - and all cost money!

Put it into context: you write a book that takes a year to write and then you got a contract. For signing the contract you will earn some money. Usually you will earn a share for signing, then a second share for submitting the contract, and two more on publication of a hardback and the paperback.

So, you were writing for a year to get paid £3,333. About another year goes by before the first book is published. Another £833. Another year and another £833. If you are lucky, when the paperback of the first book comes out, it may do really well. You might get paid some 30 pence per book sold – and you may sell, if you’re really lucky, 20,000 copies. That will earn you £6,000. And at the end of the next royalty calculation, that will be added up and set against your debt of £10,000 to the publisher. But when the next book comes out into paperback, a year later, you may earn the same. And now you are £2,000 in credit. And a half-year later, because that is how publishing pays, that money will at last find its way into your bank.

Of course, by then you will probably have lost your house. It’s taken, what, four years to get this far?

In THE BOOKSELLER magazine last week there was a quote from Mark Billingham: ‘I hope I don’t get any more emails from readers furious at having to pay more than 49p for an e-book. Saying things like: “Why should I pay that much for something as ephemeral as the words?”’

Something has to be paid to the man or women who is stringing those words into long sequences, which hopefully make sense, and which all add up to a book.

If you go out for a meal, you will pay a few pounds for a quick burger, or considerably more for a good sit-down in a restaurant. If you go to the cinema, you will pay pounds for a couple of hours’ entertainment. If you buy a video, you get the same result. A concert will last two to three hours.

But a book of 120,000 words will last you days. And for all that entertainment, for getting into the lives of people you could never hope to meet, for being involved in the trials and successes of their lives, for experiencing their doubts, joys, terrors and horrors, for travelling to parts of the world you would never see, you should pay a few pounds. Because it’s worth it.

And authors are worth their small income.

Those who provide free downloads are actively destroying the livelihoods of authors. Authors can live only because of the small amount they get paid for each book sold, either a real chunk of dead tree or a download. If others are designing websites where they get paid some £70,000 a year in advertising, like Mr O’Dwyer, in exchange for destroying my income and the money that other writers like me depend upon, he will not win my sympathy.

SOPA was bad law, I think. The Extradition treaty between the UK and USA is too one-sided and must be renegotiated on the basis of parity.

But if either of them stop the theft of my work and that of other people, I will be pleased to support them.

Today he has called for the law to be changed so that parents can once more smack their children. Well, I wasn’t aware that it was illegal to do so (within reason). But I applaud his common sense. Shame so few politicians seem to possess that resource.

I can distinctly remember, at the age of ten, the day when it was announced that corporal punishment, smacking or caning errant school children, was to be banned.

The reasons were sound, and have been reinforced over the years. One need only look at Ireland and the way that schools operated under the Catholic Church to see why. Nuns took to beating with a sadistic delight in some cases; priests appear to have exercised paedophile tendencies with their use of the strap or the cane. There are all too many examples of cruelty, brutality and, yes, I repeat, sadism, in the way that Irish children have been treated.

In England too, we’ve had our grim examples. Fools who could not control their classes; bullies who enjoyed inflicting pain.

Yet for all that, I remember the additional discipline that canes or metre rules managed to enforce.

I remember early in my career being invited in front of the class, and Mr Rogers demonstrated with the aid of his metre rule that chatting to Mark Houlistan in the back row was neither attractive nor sensible when Mr Rogers could see and hear me. I also learned that throwing a pen at Mark in Latin was not effective as a means of learning that language. I was never allowed back in.

But I clearly remember the poor devil who came to teach my class full of modern principles of non-violence towards children. He was a kind, pleasant fellow in his early twenties who had been taught at college that old means of controlling classes were out-dated and silly.

Before him, we had learned under the rather more disciplinarian approach of a middle-aged man who rarely had to use physical forms of control. Like Nick Skues, our Physics teacher, and Mr Mossman, French, the older teachers used the cane extremely rarely – but the students knew that the ultimate sanction was there, and if they misbehaved, they would suffer that indignity.

Even John Jones (Chemistry) resorted to – I think it was a plimsoll – when a student (who will remain unnamed) conducted an experiment in the brand-new Chemistry block, investigating the period of time during which a Bunsen burner could be held at a cupboard door before combustion.

His yelps could be heard across the playground.

The new Maths teacher did not have a happy time. He entered the room with a mild, slightly anxious smile at first. The initial lesson was a little trying for him, but that was only the test. Once the class knew what they could get away with, he suffered unmercifully. Every lesson became more and more disorganised, with ribald comments, paper darts flying, and all kinds of misbehaviour, until the head of maths heard the noise and came to attend some lessons.

But the cane and beatings were not there to scare or terrorise – they were there to control, maintain discipline, and at the end of the process, to protect the students.

If you have several hundred young schoolkids, there has to be a means of stopping bad behaviour.

That was the concept I understood already at the age of ten.

After all, if there is no sanction, the natural escalation of response to poor behaviour is demolished.

Today, children can have lines issued, just as in the past. They can have detention, they can lose privileges such as playtime, they can have additional homework passed out. But when, in my day, children fought, argued, swore at teachers, or played truant, there was the additional penalty of the cane, either with or without the knowledge of the parents. Now this punishment doesn’t exist, and so the worse behaved children go through periods of being excluded from school, leading up to actual expulsion. These children then go to alternative schools, and are often starting on a spiral of failure, leading ultimately to their having no qualifications, no hopes, and commonly criminal convictions.

The cane provided a useful pause in that chain of detention through to expulsion. No doubt sometimes poor teachers would misuse their authority. But I never saw that myself. However, I did see (and experience) the effects. And, I remember, while talking to a barber, swapping memories of canings. He told me he always opted for a caning rather than lines. Lines, he explained, took up so much time. A caning was unpleasant at that moment, but after two rubs of the offended body part, the pain was considerably abated.

David Lammy has decided that if only parents could smack their children, we wouldn’t have had the outbreaks of yob violence that we saw last year.

The old prison at Lydford. Lydford Law ruled here, where they'd hang them in the morning and open the court later to convict.

That link has not been proved – and never will be. The rioting that devasted London and other cities had much to do with opportunity, and a common desire to loot because they could. Most were cases of simple theft – and most of those already caught were found to have criminal records already, we understand.

Perhaps, if their families had smacked more often, those looters would have been better behaved – but I doubt it. And for the reason that I anticipated at the age of ten.

Because I believe very firmly that as soon as discipline in school was taken away, with the ultimate punishment of physical force being removed from the teachers, then a fracture appeared in the education of our children. If they learned that teachers could not respond to verbal – or physical – violence, the power in the school moved away from the teachers to the pupils. And within a generation, those pupils became parents, who had never experienced physical restraint. Now, two generations on, the pupils who rioted and stole TVs, DVDs and clothes, feel immune from punishment.

So, yes, allow smacking at home, Mr Lammy. But parents already can. The big change that should be made is to permit corporal punishment at school and perhaps also in the courts once more.

But – and it’s a big “but” – when we had corporal (and capital) punishment for centuries, we still had riots. A good thrashing won’t serve to stop all bad behaviours.

How the rich used to live.

Whenever you hear people talking about the reform of the “Welfare State” it’s usually best to duck, shove on a Kevlar helmet and run for the nearest cover.

There are few areas of political life which are used to better effect to empasise the tribal allegiances of political parties. For me, it’s irrelevant because I have no tribal allegiances. I’m torn between the “since none of them support me, I’ll support none of them” and “I’d never want to be a member of a club that would accept me as a member” camps of political thought. However, I do have views on the daft welfare system the UK has built up in the last few years.

Why should my views carry any weight?

Well, I’m a UK citizen with children. I have a vested interest in the system from that perspective. Also, I have used the welfare system on several occasions. I’d like to say I’ve benefitted from it – but that would be untrue. And lastly, as a taxpayer, I have an interest in seeing how my tax money is spent.

OK, so I have children. Of what relevance is that?

Perhaps not too much – but I have an interest in seeing that my children are not paying for all their lives for the greed and stupidity of their father’s generation.

And it is driven by greed and stupidity, yes. We have a system now that rewards failure fabulously. The more failure you can cram into your early years, the more you will be rewarded.

For instance, if you don’t bother to work, if you show yourself as feckless and incompetent, and promiscuous, and thereby create a large family, you will be rewarded. You will be given a council house or flat, you will be told that after a certain amount of time you can buy that house (at a large discount), and still be paid sums towards your children and living expenses.

Where is the logic in the state building, at high expense to the taxpayer, a series of houses which are then to be given to people for them to sell at a profit? And let’s be clear – many of the people who are shoved into council homes are going through a short period of financial trouble. Why should they be rewarded with low rents for life because of a short term problem? And then be sold their house at a discount?

It makes no sense whatsoever. We need rental homes for people who get into trouble and need a short period of stability to get back into work, but the idea that those who are hard up for a limited period should expect to be given cheap accomodation for life is moronic.

There are others who have claims on council housing. A large number of young women now live in council housing because they have children, and they need somewhere to live.

This has become another disaster. Originally it was felt to be a good idea to let young mothers have somewhere safe to live. I am no social scientist for modern times, but I can see the logic. There was the move to help war widows after the two world wars, and the idea of single parent families caught the public’s attention – and the swinging sixties led to more unmarried mothers who, it was felt, should not be demonized. They needed sympathy and kindness, not bullying.

Result? There are some now who think that rather than get qualifications to leave school and better themselves, it’s easier to get pregnant. The state will come to their aid, it will provide housing, pay for the children, provide an income for the mother.

And what an income.

People are up in arms now because there is talk of capping the support which the state will give to families. It will be capped at some £26,000. Twenty six thousand pounds! Ye Gods! That is more than most authors can hope to earn – at a recent investigation it was learned that over three quarters of all authors earn less than this. And since some of this income is tax-free, the actual income involved could be as high as the mid-thirty thousands.

It is easy to see how people could see this as a potential money-spinner. They have a child, are provided with a house, with money to help bring up a child, with money for their own income. Their bills are paid for, their rates and other taxes compensated. It is an easy concept for someone who is too feckless to want to work.

In the past, if you needed support, the Church would provide it.

But there are more who, rather than being blameworthy, deserve our sympathy.

Some who are honourable, and who only want to be able to pay their own way, can be trapped by this comfortable existence. They don’t necessarily want to stay on benefits, but if getting a job means losing money, because the benefits are significantly better than any potential salary, those people don’t deserve to be villified for choosing to stay on benefits rather than see their income drop. It’s human nature to want to keep the money coming in.

That is a big problem. We have a massively expensive benefits system now. It involved tens of thousands of social workers, admin managers, tax administrators, and other civil servants. They draw money in from taxation, absorb a large sum themselves, and pay out the residual amount. The system itself tempts some to remain on benefits for life, and no doubt makes some people utterly unemployable. Those who want to get back to work can be persuaded not to bother because the salary may not give such a good standard of living as the benefits.

And at  a time when our social housing stock is at the lowest level for – what? Fifty, seventy years? – we are still selling the houses at a discount to those who live in them – a bonanza for some, paid for by all the rest of us.

It’s being said that now, because of the proposed cap on benefits, children will be forced into poverty, and many made ‘homeless’.

That is a damning conclusion. Clearly all Conservative politicians are evil, home-wrecking devils who seek the destruction of all the poor.

Garbage. The definition of ‘homeless’ in this context apparently means that the child is forced to share a room with a sibling.

Excuse me, but when my family lived in large houses, because we were a large family, my brothers had to share their bedroom. It didn’t make the family poor or homeless. We were neither.

My children until recently had to share a bedroom. It had nothing to do with us being poor or on the brink of homelessness. Many families which are struggling to get by on reasonable wages cannot afford the cost or upkeep of a house large enough for a bedroom per child. Only those who live on social security can afford that luxury, apart from the top 5%, perhaps, of the income earners in the UK. It is a stupid, deliberately dishonest term.

OK – full disclosure here. I was very lucky when I was younger, and had two good jobs in my twenties. However, those jobs went bust, and after that I had a series of other jobs, all of which lasted for a limited time during the last recession. I had to claim social support at various times.

At no time could I claim mortgage support, even though I was potentially eligible. I did claim the weekly allowance, which kept me in food, but it certainly was not a luxury.

All the companies I worked for went bust while I was still employed by them. As a result, by the time I was in my early thirties I had lost all my savings, and it was only good fortune, and some excellent advice, that I managed to keep my house and not fall further into the mire. I managed to get a book accepted, and that way set myself up on a new career as an author.

I do not think that all those who’re on social support or who live in council housing are lazy, workshy or stupid. However, the system is setting people up for exactly that.

This system is failing. It worked for a short time, but in paying people to have children, paying their rent and rates, providing council housing for life, we have created a culture of dependency that doesn’t help anyone. It must be changed because we cannot afford it.

We need to return to a culture of self-sufficiency and independence.

Time was, if you were ill, you went to a stone like this, not a doctor earning five times the average wage.

Today the British Medical Association has declared that they will be ballotting their members on strike action over proposed reforms to the NHS.

The BMA is a trade union for doctors and consultants, and it is therefore logical that they should seek to protect their membership. It’s what professional and union bodies do, after all. Some look after train drivers, some school teachers, some lawyers, some doctors. And the perfidious government is proposing changes that will affect doctors.

These changes are not drastic. They do mean that doctors’ pensions will be affected. Some will see their pensions reduce. It must be hard for them.

However, doctors are uniquely privileged just now. Doctors can opt out of the long hours they used to endure, deciding not to work weekends and at night. In ten years, according to the Telegraph, the average position has seen a 54% increase in pay. The GP contracts were botched incredibly by the last incompetent government, so that a GP will earn £110,000 a year. A typical doctor retiring at 60 (not the increased age we all expect to have to work to) will earn £48,000 a year from his pension. Now, since the usual calculation of a pension is, to pay X, a sum of 50xX must have been saved, this means each doctor on retiring is possessing a pot of getting close to two and a half million quid.

But, correct me if I’m wrong, this money is not saved. It’s all coming out of current expenditure. In other words, the doctors are getting their pension payments from our current taxation.

And they’re given a £143,000 lump sum on retirement too. Nice.

So what is getting them up in arms?

They’re being asked to work to beyond 60 to get the full pension. Like everyone else in the country. That’s a reason to strike?

It’s been suggested that they should give up some of their pension in exchange for a larger lump sum.

So now, this little cartel of privileged professionals is threatening strike action.

It’s one more example of how badly our civil service pensions have become out of kilter with the majority of citizens, who either have no pension or only a small one, and who still have to pay tax to pay for the inflated pensions of those who had guaranteed jobs.

And while they argue, the annual budgets of the hospitals are being relentlessly tightened to accommodate ever rising salaries as well as the legacy of debt caused by Brown’s disastrous PFI scams.

Doctors are good to have. I know several who are friends, and I am sure I’d like still more. But for their union to demand that all their rights and privileges should be protected in the current climate is lunacy.

The proposals appear on the face of them to be providing doctors with a very comfortable livelihood for years to come.

Sit back, folks, and take the medicine.

Mr Cameron, select your defence!

Last week we had a pretty unanimous conclusion from within the government about the impact of the meetings on Thursday night. The use of the British veto was necessary, because, as he said last Friday:

“The demands Britain made for safeguards, on which the Coalition Government was united, were modest and reasonable. They were safeguards for the single market, not just the UK.

“There were no demands of repatriation of powers from the EU to Britain and no demands for a unilateral carve-out of UK financial services.

“What we sought to ensure was to maintain a level playing field in financial services and the single market as a whole. This would have retained the UK’s ability to take tougher, not looser, regulatory action to sort out our banking system.”

However, of course, now he says that he is bitterly disappointed, and that Britain risked becoming “isolated and marginalised” from the European mainstream and, along with senior Liberal Democrats, spent the weekend contacting European leaders in a “strategy for re-engagement to recover lost ground”, according to a senior government source.

Paddy Pantsdown has been on the TV and radio declaring that our Prime Minister has failed, in words that left me gaping, suggesting that any other prime minister in the last fifty years would have done better. He has declared that our Prime Minister has “tipped 38 years of British foreign policy down the drain in a single night.” Vince Cable was much more measured. He said Britain was left in “a bad place” and there were rumours of his resignation (I wish). Meanwhile Chris Huhne – the one who’s being investigated for perjury, told everyone that his brilliant negotiating had won the day at the climate change discussions. It was a great success for “European diplomacy” he said.

His smugness made me nauseous.

So, just now, Britain has been removed from discussions about the Euro. We are excluded, a lonely, unwanted little island on the fringes. We’re on the sidelines, and are being forced to watch as our companions surge ahead, all engines racing, on a large, safe, vessel, towards a glorious future, while our little raft is buffeted by the wash from their propellers.

But their ship’s name is “Titanic”.

After all the discussions last week, which were too late, our friends came up with a plan that was predestined to fail, mainly because nothing has been done. They agreed to think up some new rules, they agreed to have more controls from the centre. They agreed that they would meet again to discuss how to do so, what to impose on other countries, and how to address all the problems with the Euro. Er. The disaster is here and now, but for all the guff from European politicians, you’d think they had a year to fix things. They haven’t.

I am sure that the French and Germans were determined to remove the UK from these discussions.

I think someone could be aiming the gun at Cameron's back. Probably a Libdem Quisling ...

No, I’m not paranoid. But the simple fact is, it helps all our European “partners” to take a swipe at Britain. We have a different background, different policies, different culture, even a different accounting system from their “Napoleonic” methods.

Britain has been an enemy of almost every nation in Europe at one time or another. We’ve fought with the French and Italians against the Germans; with the Prussians against the French; with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Belgians against the . . . well, you get the message. Britain built up the world’s largest empire in competition with Europeans. And we have strong ties elsewhere.

Now, one message which is being put out on the airwaves is that Britain needs Europe more than Europe needs Britain. Well, perhaps that’s usually true – but Britain is by nature an international nation. We trade all over the world. And while yes, we export a lot to Europe, we import more. We are valuable to Europe. Not least because we help bankroll the “project”. We would save billions a year, were we no longer paying to grow ever closer.

The European project is an ambitious concept. The idea is to tie all European states into one super state that will have centralised control over all nations. This disaster with the Euro has provided a marvellous opportunity for all those who believe in binding all states ever more closely into Europe, because they can see a chance to impose new rules on all European banks and governments. Straitjackets will be tied tightly around these unhappy nations. And any chance of growth will be stifled.

Ireland, whose economy has depended upon being able to entice foreign investment on the back of her low corporation taxes, will find money going elsewhere as she is forced to agree to increase taxes to meet German standards. The same taxes in Greece and Italy and Spain will, I would have thought, have guaranteed that their populations would remain impoverished for a generation.

And France and Germany asked that Britain, who depends for some 10% of GDP on our finance sector, and who relies on banks and banking to pay some £54 billion a year into our exchequer, asked us to agree to a series of new taxes.

Other countries don’t care too much. After all, almost all the serious trading that goes on is based in London. But those banks can easily move. Frankfurt would like to see them relocate to their city; Paris would like them too. But British banks wouldn’t relocate to cities which demanded identical taxes. They’d go to Hong Kong, Singapore, New York and Toronto.

Britain would be hugely impoverished (like bankers or hate them because of their greed, but don’t cut off the flow of money they bring in unless you like the idea of being broke). We would lose our tax revenue, which would mean austerity on steroids. And would Europe be happy for us then to renegotiate our annual payments into Europe? I don’t think so.

Sarkozy and Merkel could not agree on how to resolve the present disaster that is the Euro. Merkel wants nothing that could sniff at central bank control and the risk of inflation caused by printing money, while Sarko has a simple attitude that he must get motoring if he wants to win his reelection in 2012. So kicking Britain is on everyone’s agenda. Sarko looks strong as he insults Britain, and Merkel and he can deflect all attention away from their lack of progress.

The request by Britain that such a vital part of our economy should be excluded from a new treaty was not unreasonable, and had been broadcast in the media beforehand.

In any negotiation it is crucial that the negotiators know where their red line is, beyond which they cannot retreat.

Last Thursday night, France and Germany knowingly forced Britain to that line and tried to keep pushing. It should have been no surprise that David Cameron was forced to use his veto at that point.

Time to defend the realm again. A referendum on EU membership has to be in Britain's best interests. Put the decision to the people and make up our minds.

Using the veto has raised lots of negative comments. Shocking, after all, they say, that the veto should have been used. Cameron should have used the threat, but never have gone for the nuclear option.

Hold on, guys! What the hell is the point of having a veto if at every single negotiation, you’re going to back down at the last minute?

For the last God knows how many years, Britain has backed down. We have never used the veto before on any issue. We have been forced to accept changes in working times for all workers (which has screwed our systems for training doctors), we’ve accepted changes in laws covering almost every aspect of life – and huffed and puffed, but never done more than complain.

Just as has happened in the past, no doubt new rules and new taxes will be discussed and imposed on Britain. They’ll do it under different rules. That’s the great thing about European law-making. Since it’s not democratic, bureaucrats can invent ever more creative ways of imposing laws on nations, against the wishes of the population.

But surely there are greater moves in place than just changing some laws.

Tectonic plates are sliding around under the surface.

This is oddly like the time a few weeks ago, when the Greek Prime Minister declared that he wanted a referendum on accepting the EU’s new rules.

His words went down well that day. His government agreed, and the Greek Cabinet was unanimous.

Within a day it began to unravel. A series of broadsides from opposition parties, and then from the cabinet itself began to show that there was a strong anti-referendum sentiment. Within a week, the Prime Minister had to resign, and somehow a new government was formed with a banker from Europe took over.

Compare that with the positive initial comments from Nick Clegg, and his sudden change over the weekend.

Now, apparently he is holding discussions with European partners, reforging links.

He is mad. So are the Libdems generally.

This isn’t rabid, foaming at the mouth madness. It’s the madness of lemmings. The Libdems can see the cliff in front of them, and they’re increasing their speed at the sight, egging each other on and cheering wildly as they go. And if lemmings don’t cheer, just look at the Libdems.

In Britain it would not be easy to remove our Prime Minister and impose a European technocrat to rule in his place. There would have to be a take-over from inside Parliament to oust the PM, and then there would have to be an election because the people here would not tolerate having someone foisted upon us.

So, let’s consider what would happen in an election. There would be millions of pounds spent from European coffers to promote Europe and how Britain’s future is only to be secured within the great European project. That money could benefit Labour, but in reality any election would become a pro- or anti-Europe vote. It is likely that party loyalties would be broken in that event, because Britain is more and more eurosceptic. And I think the Conservatives would be strong in that kind of election, especially if they promised a referendum on Europe.

Against that there would be the Libdems.

The party that promised a referendum “in or out” but now say we don’t need a vote, that promised with written guarantees that they would not support higher student fees, that promised so many things – and failed in all of them.

I don’t think they’d do well in an election just now.

So, if Europe wants a real show-down, bring it on. The Eurosceptics would win hands-down. And it’s time Britain was asked.

Do we want to be a part of a “European Project” or not?

OK, don’t expect this to be entirely rational. I was up until early this morning signing Christmas cards. Still, my natural grumpiness has been enhanced today by the entirely predictable sulkiness of Mr Sarkozy this morning.

It’s all Britain’s fault.

Mr Sarkozy made this plain enough. He said that “the sticking point had been Mr Cameron’s insistence on a protocol allowing London to opt-out on proposed change on financial services” (source www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-16104089). We are the culprits once more.

And not only the French say this – British Liberal Democrats are up in arms. Lord Owen was almost incandescent on the radio this morning. He wanted us to be out of the Euro, but ever more closely European, and this decision, he said, would leave the UK ”in great danger of being neither in the eurozone nor in Europe”.

Let’s just think about this. The man who signed away so many of our rights in 1978 is now complaining because we have vetoed a new treaty. He was always happy for us to agree to new treaties provided we retained our vetoes, but apparently this was the wrong time to use it.

In the last week we have seen the French and Germans growing more and more cosy. There have been visits to Paris by Angela Merkel, and the two great European powerhouses have discussed in private how to take things forward. They had much agreement. Just as they had about the need to remove the elected and democratic leaders of Greece and Italy. Somehow (and I don’t know how it was achieved), Sarkozy and Merkel quickly had the two out, and replaced with technocrats from Europe. Selection of two large nations’ leaders by French and German diktat – am I the only person in Europe who finds that deeply concerning?

Europe charging at the perfidious British

But for all their discussions and happy smiling photo opportunities, Sarkozy wanted a French model by which the European Central Bank would become a lender of last resort, and the Germans would not consider it. So the possibility of forward movement was bogged down last week by France and Germany, before Britain was included in any discussions at all.

One cure for the Euro would be for all the European nations to agree to sign up to a treaty whereby all their finances could be controlled centrally by European administrators.  That would help. It would create a massive fund, theoretically. Europe, ruled by Commissioners, could allocate funds as necessary, taking from the richer states to give to the poor.

And Britain would be included.

There would be a series of new taxes on – oh, banks and other unpopular folks. That’s OK, isn’t it?

Actually, no. It’s not. Because here in Britain, thanks to over a decade of gormless Labour leadership under their “borrow till we’re bankrupt and spend even more” policies, about the only sector worth anything is the City of London and the money brought in by the banks and other financial industries.

Oh, who cares about bankers and all that lot, I hear you say. They don’t create anything, they don’t help anyone but themselves.

Well they do help some folks to be particularly greedy. But the finance industries go deeper. Since Gormless Gordon Brown’s efforts, our finance sector is responsible for a huge proportion of the UK’s spending each year. Last year our banks generated £53.4 billion in taxes, for example. And Europe of course wants a large slice of that. Why wouldn’t it?

But there are deeper risks. Germany would like to have all banking centralised more. Perhaps persuading banks to become more European, by having them relocate to, say, Frankfurt, would make their business more efficient? France has always been, until recently, a balanced EU contributor. By that I mean that they have taken out almost exactly what they have paid in, while Britain and Germany have been net contributors.

Britain, if we were to lose our banking sector, would be very heavily damaged. It would affect us much more than other nations because we depend on banks for so much in terms of taxes. But if regulation and banking taxes were standardised, there would be no reason for the banks to remain in England.

Oh, yes, there will be some who will think that we could survive without banks. Who need ‘em? But if they were to go to Frankfurt or Paris, we would all feel the pinch. And the British government would have to slash spending still further.

Of course this could be outweighed by the advantages of having bureaucrats in Brussels overlooking the banking and finance sectors.

They would manage them with great care. With the same care as they have managed, say, the European budgets. Riven with corruption, bribery and incompetence.

Piacenza - lovely city, but Britain needs British accountants and civil servants, not European ones.

Under the last administration, Ed Balls, Gormless Gordon’s sidekick, said he wanted more light touch control of the banks. Gormless Gordon and Balls set up a new tripartite system which was very light touch. When things started going wrong, no one could take responsibility, and three agencies pointed at each other to focus the blame for all that went wrong. But the failures in London pale into insignificance beside the administrative competence of Europe.

Marta Andreasen lost her job in the EU some years ago. In 2002 she was the accountant who refused to sign off the EU’s audit. But it wasn’t only her – the accounts for the EU have not been signed off by the external auditors since 1994 – yes! For seventeen years our administrators have failed to produce properly audited accounts.

And these morons in Europe wanted to have all of us sign up to have our national budgets  regulated by these same bureaucrats?

However, since France and Germany are keen to remain close buddies, with “Markozy” agreeing to a civil partnership, a big, bad enemy had to be found, and when in doubt, Europe always likes to lambast the miserable Anglo-Saxons. It was us and our banks who brought the world economy down, obviously. We always throw a spanner in the works.

It was a big spanner this time.

But perhaps if, in the past, we hadn’t already had to give away our fishing industry, our farming, our currency, our weights and measures, as well as our natural ties to the Commonwealth, we might have more faith in the project.

And before any European technocrat gets his hands on our taxes and tries to control our budgets, I’d like to see the European budgets properly audited and see their books balanced.

The first thing to strike you is that it’s ludicrous that a senior businessman could suggest not using email. I mean, it’s essential to all businesses now, isn’t it?

The second thing to strike you, if you think about it, is just how stupid was that first thought.

For centuries men have run organisations (some women, but historically, mainly men, so don’t be picky) without email. They have used fabulous modern technologies, such as wax tablets, slates, rolls of vellum, paper, pencils, pens and even, God help us, their voices to communicate.

The chaps who built this didn't need email.

There was a time only very recently when telephones were used to – get this – speak to people.Yes, they really weren’t there (as my daughter believes) purely to increase an individual’s Tetris score. They were not designed originally to send short messages (which on my phone may be received up to twenty four hours later), but to call.

I first started using email a long, long time before most others. I joined Wang Laboratories in (I think) March 1985, and there I first gained access to a worldwide network of some thirty five thousand other employees. All of them were available on the Wang email network. And it was brilliant.

In the old days, we used to use stuff like - well, paper. Thanks to my old boss, Mike Willcocks for demonstrating its correct use!

I could write to a US colleague about a specific client and get a swift response. If I had a client with a particular problem, I could send a flash message to all the support or sales teams in the world to find a solution. Wonderful! That way I found a digital mapping solution for Kent County Council that was integrated with voice and data that could solve all their internal data processing, image and voice requirements. It was way ahead of the competition. So far ahead, in fact, that I think they didn’t believe us, and bought a different system promised to them by a consortium – which didn’t exist, and which naturally never did. After spending millions, KCC ditched that project and went somewhere else.

But the email system was brilliant – glorious, life-enhancing and stupendous.

That was why it became so essential to all staff, and soon to everyone else. Who doesn’t sit at home for a while each evening checking emails? How could business have survived in the days before email, we all wonder.

And yet …

Yes, I was there at the outset. And for every email I sent out to my colleagues, I received an equivalent number from other people. Pretty soon Cobblers and Young Hermann, two of my mates at Wang, realised that we were losing good drinking time because of catching up on all the emails.

A superb techie friend of mine, Mike Haslam, used to have to wander around with an enormous Delsey briefcase. He was the head of support for the Wang VS computer systems and every day he received emails from UK and US staff who had serious problems with their customers’ computers. All these emails were “Extremely Urgent”.

Another use for paper. No email marketing, just good, old-fashioned methods. They work, you know!

I once saw him printing a fresh set of emails and stashing them in the bottom of the case. ‘Printing them to read at home?’ I asked.

He looked at me with a gleam in his eye. ‘No.’

‘Well, to read on the way home, then?’

‘No. I’ll let you into a secret. I won’t look at them,’ he said.

‘But surely you need to see what people have written? They’re all urgent!’ I protested.

‘They stay there. And after two weeks, I’ll throw them away.’

‘But they’re all urgent!’ I said again.

‘If they’re that urgent, they’ll chase me up. If they haven’t chased me, they aren’t that urgent,’ he said.

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem with emails. It’s the same as the early days of the last Gulf War.

American troops had aircraft, they had satellites, they had men on the ground, and they had data coming in from all these resources. Too much. They couldn’t cope with the amount of data coming in, they didn’t have the intelligence staff to read it and assess what was important and what wasn’t. In the end there was a decision taken to ignore some inputs just so that they could make sense of it all.

We have the same information overload from emails now. I have now learned to take Mike Haslam’s advice and ignore the bulk of emails that I receive. Because most of it is dross.

And so one French Chief Exec has today earned my respect for saying what is probably blatantly obvious to so many, but it took one clear-sighted fellow to see it and point out the waste of time that email has become.

I love Europe - especially Italy

Right. I’ve said it.
I don’t object to Europe, and in fact since it’s been a project on the go since I was a boy in shorts, I’m quite used to it – sort of.
However, I’m not quite sure what it is I’m supposed to be used to.
At first, Britain joined a small group of nations called the European Economic Community (we tried to years before, but that base ingrate de Gaulle blocked our membership).
At the time we were promised that this wouldn’t mean a huge federal state, but only a free trading area. We wouldn’t see laws made elsewhere that would cover Britain, we wouldn’t see any diminution of sovereignty. It was just a trading group.
That was a good thing.
At some time, the name sort of changed. The letters merged and swam before our eyes, and suddenly it wasn’t the EEC anymore. Instead, we learned that we were part of the European Community. This was a good thing too. The EC meant that while in the past the French had taken to barbecuing British imported Lamb without bothering to remove the meat from its wrappings – things like lorries – for the future British exporters would be safe. They’d be able to take matters to European courts to ensure that they were compensated. Apparently, the compensation would come from the British government, but hey, that’s OK. That was what the British farmers and exporters paid their taxes for, to take it back later.
Hold on, though, then the name changed again – now, after the swimming before our eyes, it became the European Union.
Our politicians promised that this too wouldn’t upset the apple cart. No, of course not. We wouldn’t, for example, see new laws made in Brussels which would overrule UK laws. Oh, apart from laws on our being able to use pounds and ounces in shops, or the laws on signs we’re allowed to use, or the colours of electrical wires, or the way that employment laws work. Nothing major.
The Euro was a good idea, too, of course. It was great. It was planned carefully, so that all nations would have to show that they had come so close together financially that they would easily make the transition from Franc, Mark, Schilling, Lira or anything, to become members of one larger Europe. There were to be rules to control how countries spent their money. Oh, I know, the Greeks were a basket case, and so were the Irish and various Mediterranean nations, but that was OK. They’d soon come into line.
And as the politicians kept telling us, it wouldn’t matter because nothing could stop the European Project. Nothing.
Except now it rather looks like while the brakes aren’t slowing the locomotive, the wheels are loosening. Some are coming off.

It feels like the sun is going down on Europe.

Southern European states, as we all knew, and as has been stunningly effectively demonstrated in recent years, had not converged with the rest of the northern European states. Their finances were shot. In Greece, apparently, the underworked government servants earned more than their German counterparts, and retired younger. In suburbs of Athens there were areas where households earned, according to tax receipts, next to nothing. Yet they owned Mercedes and Audis. Top level dentists paid hundreds of pounds in taxes, living in splendid houses with swimming pools. I wish I could fail like that.
Over the years there have been extraordinary examples of the disaster that is (now) the European Union.
Agricultural policies that led to massive storage of food. Fishing policies that have led to millions of tons of healthy, good food, being killed and thrown away for no reason, other than to fulfil arbitrary capture quotas. The destruction of British apple orchards in order to support less efficient French farming, with British farmers paid to destroy their orchards while subsidies were paid to French farms to plant apple trees. British fishing fleets paid off, their ships broken up, while subsidies were paid to Spanish and French and other fleets to build their own new fleets.
Europe is a failed system. It was created after the Second World War by a ravaged France determined to clutch Germany to her closely so that Paris would not be invaded for a fourth time in a century, and by a contrite Germany desperate to atone.
Never again, they said, never again would Europe be devastated by war.

Over the centuries we have given a lot to Europe.

But Britain is not a part of Europe. We are different. We use the Common Law, not Napoleonic systems. We don’t use the same accountancy practises. We depend upon exports and our knowledge industries and finance. In Europe, however, they want to take more control of the British industries. Banking, we hear, would be better served if it were based more in Frankfurt. Well, it would no doubt be better for Germany.
For many years now, the British have wanted to have a say in their future. We have been promised for several years that we would have a referendum on any further integration or new treaties.
The Labour party swore blind we’d be allowed a referendum. And Gordon Brown changed his mind because the Lisbon Treaty wasn’t, ahem, a “treaty” as such. According to him.
The Liberals last year promised that they would allow a referendum on “in or out” of the European Union. But now they say it’s not what the people want.
The Conservatives swore we would have a referendum on any further reforms of the treaties with the EU. But now we are looking at a new, sweeping series of treaties, apparently it’s not the right time. It’s more important that quick, cobbled together fixes to the problems created by thirty years of ever-increasing centralisation of power should be forced on to a very reluctant populace.
Our Prime Minister now thinks that he shouldn’t give us a referendum.
Except that in the last weeks we have seen the EU removing the Prime Ministers of Greece and Italy. In the place of these democratically elected leaders ( I make no comment on their competence!) there are now EU placemen. An ex-head of the European Bank, and an ex-Commissioner of the EU are running those countries. That is a sign of the democratic deficit which we suffer from in Europe.
If we don’t get a referendum on a new treaty, we will be likely to see an election in which the Liberals will be crucified, Labour will see its support leaching away, and the Conservatives will see their own votes going to the UK Independence Party. Because that is the one party that appears to be promising to ask the people what they want.
And we are, supposedly, living in a democratic country, after all.