William Shepherd

It is the fashion nowadays of many ladies to ignore their husbands’ pecuniary affairs; they profess ignorance of money matters, and encourage themselves in the idea that their wishes at least must be gratified…with the rest they have nothing to do. Now the affectations of this is bad enough, but nothing can be worse than the actual practice…many a ruined house, many a bankruptcy and insolvency springs out of it…many a domestic circle is broken up and the pride which caused the ruin is humbled to dust as a reward. Tessa Jowell’s mortgage is four hundred thousand pounds. But the Blairs’ property loans are closer to four million pounds. Oh…and Mrs Beaton wrote most of this paragraph in 1857…Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine.

This housing bubble is beginning to make more and more people nervous…on both sides of the loan agreements. The Alliance &Leicester have started running one of those thermometers you see outside city churches when they are trying to raise money for a new roof. But this shows rising interest rates…not the mortgage rates which would have been more useful but the Bank of England’s base rates which is a few percentage points lower. At present with base rates between four and five percent Alliance & Leicester reckons the country is between fighting fit and comfortable. But at six percent the financial health of householders in this sceptered isle turns poorly and by seven percent they are registering high fever. The health of the nation goes critical when base rates reach eight percent. Bear this in mind as you read the financial pages in the daily newspapers.

But there are glimmers of good news amidst the gloom. One of the banking industry’s greatest secrets is that many of the fees they charge their long-suffering customers are illegal. A while ago the Office of Fair Trading ruled that attempts by the banks to cash in on late payment penalties is illegal. Now the Courts have backed this up by threatening to send in the bailiffs to remove goods to the value of two thousand pounds from a branch of Lloyds TSB. The hero of the story is Brian Mullen, an accountant who ran up an unauthorised overdraft as a student but then took the bank to court arguing that the charges constituted an unfair penalty rather than a reflection of the bank’s costs. Lloyds failed to show up at court in Reddish near Manchester so the court granted a warrant giving bailiffs power to seize bank assets to the vale of the outstanding debt. Lloyds blamed their failure to contest the action on an ‘internal error’. Like what? Fraudulently claiming money? Big error.

On my walk into town every morning I often pass straggling groups of young men and women on their way towards Rye Harbour and its industrial estate. For some reason Rye is now a centre for furniture workshops…particularly low-grade pine furniture…and there are workshops dotted all over the place. These young people were clearly off to work...with a smile and a song…and were all white. Who are they?

A report was published recently entitled Employers’ Use of Migrant Labour. Reports in the tabloids concentrated on the Eastern Europeans and my numbers are taken from The Times. Unfortunately the diagram accompanying the article did not add up so these are my adjusted figures…and could be wrong. Top of the list come the Poles with 200 000. Next are the Lithuanians at 40 000 and the Slovakians at 35 000. Despite all the reports abut Estonian Mafiosi and their prostitute rings, Estonians and Slovenian are in the relegation zone with just 5 000 registered workers arriving in the UK since May 2004. Above them come the Latvians , Czechs and Hungarians at 20 000 each making a grand total of 245 000. What are they all doing? Here are the top ten occupations: Factory 36%; Catering 10%; Warehouse 9%; Packing 9%; Cleaning 8%; Farming 7%; Waiters 7%; Maids 5%; Care Work 5% and Retail 4%.

I have a job with Cultura running through this week so I am on call coordinating the Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Spanish and Russian translators and liaising with the client by text, phone and e-mail. I registered several dozen messages in and out during the course of the day making it difficult to settle down to anything else.

However I did get an e-mail off to John Papworth about the September conference. I have been pushing to keep the focus on the Real Communities Charter and was concerned that John was looking to give equal billing to the Real Nations Charter. But it seems I was worrying unnecessarily. In particular I an anxious that Any Real Questions concentrates on the Real Communities Charter side of our concerns rather than going for the global concerns of our Real Nations Charter. I want to see Local Governance as the principal focus of this year's radcon and the setting up of the Edward Goldsmith Institute as the jewel in the crown of the Press Release following the Final Plenary.

I am not quite clear how to bring in Dele Oguntimoju's concerns but his thinking is much broader than the structure of Nigeria’s disunion so I am hoping that he might welcome the opportunity to talk about Real Communities Charter issues from a Nigerian perspective. Besides the principal of cantonisation and 'managing power' is something that needs to be developed as much at the local as the international level. So we may be able to persuade Dele to give this some thought and prepare a paper that brings Leopold Kohr's relative size and cantonisation principles on nation states down to a village scale? The Breakdown of Local Government.

Hrip Farm enters The Private Papers of Crocodile Uppsala in Book Eleven Chapter 174 but we will pick up the tale a few chapters earlier. Aslak is a fulmar…fulmarus glacialis...with family around the Arctic Circle. Once he spoke of dinosaurs as his ancestors. But for Aslak modern fulmar history starts a quarter of a millennium ago with small fulmar settlements on Jan Mayen, on Grímsey off Iceland and on the islands of St Kilda to the west of the Outer Hebrides. Aslak is descended from the Grímsey Fulmars.

In 1978 the Grímsey Fulmars celebrated the centenary of the family’s first successful nesting on Foula, outermost of the Shetland Islands. By 1900 Aslak’s family were breeding along the North Scottish coast. By the 1920s they were being sighted all along the east coast of England as far south as the Humber Estuary and along the north coast of Ireland in Derry and Donegal. By the end of the 1940s fulmars were breeding on the northern shores of East Anglia around the whole of the coast of Ireland and on the north coast of Cornwall and Devon in the Bristol Channel. By the beginning of the 1950s the only stretch of these offshore islands unfamiliar with the sight of fulmars breeding was the coastline 150 miles either side of Rye…to Brixham in the west and to Boston in the north.

In the Landnámabók there is a story about a Norwegian called Grímur who went to Iceland looking for land. He arrived in late summer and settled temporarily on Grímsey in Steingrímsfjördur in the north. Aslak was there. In the autumn Grímur went fishing…his young son Thórir lying safely tucked into a sealskin bag fastened at the neck in the prow of the boat. Suddenly Grímur hooked a merman, and when he had hauled him to the surface, Grímur asked about their futures. ‘Where in Iceland should we settle?’

The merman replied that there was little point in making prophecies about Grímur…implying that he had not long to live…but the boy in the sealskin bag would settle and claim land at the spot where Grímur’s mare, Skölm, lay down under her load. Not another word could Grímur get out of the merman but as in all good sagas it all went as the fates decreed. Eventually Sel-Thórir settled at Raudamelur Ytri…Outer Red Hill…where the modern highway to Snaefellsnes swings westwards into the peninsular.

Not so long ago I overheard Aslak telling Marley some more of the story. When Sel-Thórir was old and blind he went out one evening and saw a huge evil-looking man come rowing into Kaldárós…Cold River Estuary…in an iron boat. The man walked up to a farm called Hrip and started digging at the door of the sheep-shed. There was a volcanic eruption there that night and from here runs the lava field of Borgarhraun. Where the farm had stood there is now a crater. I got the impression that Aslak hoped Marley could throw some light on the identity of the man by the sheep-shed. But he’s a dark sheep that one. And so to the last of our horroscopes.

Leo (July 23 - Aug 22): You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are an idiot. Most Leo's are bullies. You are vain and cannot tolerate criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are thieving bastards. Virgo (Aug 23 - Sept 22): You are the logical type and hate disorder. Your shit-picking attitude is sickening to your friends and co-workers. You are cold and unemotional and often fall asleep while doing it. Virgo's make good bus drivers and pimps. Libra (Sept 23 - Oct 22): You are the artistic type and have a difficult time dealing with reality. If you are a male you are probably queer. Chances are employment and monetary gain are nil. Most Libra women are slappers and get VD.