In the 1720s Count Tommaso Sandi commissioned a cycle of five paintings to decorate his family’s palace in Venice. Three of the paintings were by the Rococo Artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and the other two by Nicol Bambini. Six months ago Sotheby’s in Milan auctioned the paintings for a record price to an anonymous buyer…the King of Nickel Angelo Guido Terruzzi…who paid four million pounds for the pleasure of adding to the 4000 works in his £350 million art collection.

Last month the paintings went on display at the privately-owned Cavalieri Hilton Hotel in Rome in the opening round of a Battle Royal to house the Terruzzi Collection. The province of Veneto has reopened a bid to house it in Venice, Milan is rumoured to be interested and there are whispers about a palazzo in Rome.

I know all this because a recent Italian Auction Record in The Times chanced to catch my eye because it was authored by Colin Gleadell who was ‘in my year’ at Churchill College…and remembered chiefly for the occasion he turned his Frank Zappa Poster to face outwards onto Storey’s Way. Such an act by a student in the Revolutionary Sixties provoked the College’s Ruling Council…after due diligence…to command its reversal or removal. Mr. Zappa was seated upon the toilet and actively engaged in doing what is done on toilets many millions of times each day.

Some people devote their lives to their old school or college. They return for the annual Founder’s Day Dinner and dine at Top Table twice a year. At the pinnacle of their Extra-Curricula Career they gratefully accept the honour bestowed upon them and become Honorary Secretary of the Old Boys’ Benevolent Society. The rest of us are only aware of such activities because a goodly proportion of the mail dropping through the letter box…or PO Box in my case…is high-class junk mail from institutions like Christ’s Hospital, Churchill College and Cambridge University.

Their magazines are of the highest quality…and their appeals make subtle hints as to my generous disposition. But where will it all end? Where Friends Reunited lead others must surely follow. Within a few years Deansfield Junior Mixed School, the Universities of Stockholm, Uppsala, Lund and East Africa, Wheelock College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alfred P. Stone Institute of Management and the System Dynamics Group will be in on it.

Already Cambridge has joined Oxford in providing a high-class Blue Stocking Dating Agency…should I wish to avail myself of their services. They then lowered the tone by advertising in Private Eye but no doubt we will be screened against the university records before each Introduction to counter Dating Fraud.

As Blues Match coalesced with Auction Record in the deeper recesses of my brain I reflected on the curious nature of Celebrity. Of the 200 young men in my college year…the college went coeducational after my time…I could recollect the names of just 10%…and half of these were no more than names.

In my College Celebrity B-list, Norman Wilson, Mick Brewer and Ron Sandford were reading Mechanical Sciences; John Kingsley and Tim Davison doing Natural Sciences, Geoff Hallett studying History; and Frank Dobson and Dave Anderson…two soccer-playing and Newcastle Brown-swigging Geordies…signed up for a Jeffrey Archer-style Graduate Education Programme. There is no record of them in Google…yet these were the Best and the Brightest…the elite 0.8% of the Baby Boomer Years.

Churchill College is unique among Cambridge colleges. Its statutes require that it discriminate positively towards Science and Engineering and negatively against Private Schools. It is therefore statistically significant that of the eleven on my College Celebrity A-list five were not reading Natural or Mechanical Sciences Tripos.

Johnny Watson read Classics, Malcolm Phillips and Christopher Frayling read History, Colin Gleadell read English and Nick Jaff struggled over Alfred Marshall’s Magnus Opus. Completing the list is a Chemist…Nigel McCarthy who spent several years putting lead into petrol…and three Engineering Colleagues...Christopher Singleton who works for computer firms and lives in Wokingham, Peter Charles Mechlin Thompson who joined the Civil Service and Robin Garnett who did Geology and then sold himself to the Oil Business for the duration of his working life.

Also on my A-list are Geoff du Bois and Her from Leeds. Geoff was another Geordie and a Research Scientist who entered college a year after me in 1966 but became part of the Watson-Shepherd-Phillips Social Set. The name of my only Undergraduate Girlfriend escapes me. We met when Girton College played Churchill at Table Tennis. She was reading Natural Sciences and we hitch-hiked to Leeds one weekend for a party my brother was throwing at Leeds University. I let her go badly when my wife-to-be came to town. If Blues Match could find her…well then…

According to legend the young Jimmy Goldsmith was being admonished by his father for failing to learn to read. He listened attentively and then replied. ‘But Daddy I don’t need to know how to read. When I am big I will pay someone to read for me!’ Edward’s young brother was just seven at the time.

In my archives is a hand-written letter dated 26 March 1997 from Sir James Goldsmith addressed to me as the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Oldham West & Royton. ‘Dear William Shepherd. Marc Gordon tells me that you are doing a superb job, and I just wanted to write to congratulate you, to thank you, and to say we are all behind you. James Goldsmith.’

The letter came from Dean Bradley House, 52 Horseferry Road, Westminster, London SW1P 2AF. It was here I first met Priti Patel ten years ago. Jimmy Goldsmith had declared the Referendum Party into existence in a television interview. Many professional firms…lawyers, public relations, accountants…received a significant portion of their annual income from the Goldsmith coffers. They were all caught off-guard by the announcement.

The Referendum Party had just taken a lease on the Horseferry Road premises. There were crates and boxes everywhere. Priti was at the centre of the storm…answering phones, directing removal men, greeting candidates and party supporters, and spreading good cheer among her fellow-workers…a mix of Alistair Campbell Political Operatives and Sloan Rangers on Day Release from Roedean and Benenden. Finding a young Asian girl brimming with confidence and directing operations came as quite a surprise…and for me a very refreshing surprise.

I had a couple of run-ins with Horseferry Road over the next six months…a section in my election address explaining that as an MP I would work for average wages with the rest of my salary going to a lottery for those on social benefit in the constituency and concern about my Fortnightly Update…which was otherwise extremely well-received… reprinting Flanders and Swann’s Song of Patriotic Prejudice. On each occasion Priti gave me her take on mood and substance…and on each occasion I took her advice and withdrew the offending piece. Priti was 23 at the time.

Last week Priti Patel was picked to fight Witham in Essex for the Conservative Party at the next election…a first for the Cameron A-list Strategy where HQ candidates challenge Favourite Sons to win selection on merit. In her Selection Interview Priti Patel had made clear her Conservative beliefs. Fortunately for her chances these beliefs were those the committee wanted to hear…like ‘I will never vote for the euro because I want to see a Britain that is governed by the British for the British.’ A bigger hurdle for Priti was keeping her place on the Conservative Party’s A-list nine months earlier when she just scraped through after much online criticism 49% to 48% with 3% undecided.

Here is a transcript of the Three-Minute Speech that won me selection as the Referendum Party Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Oldham West and Royton ten years ago. Election Result? Meacher 58.8%, Shepherd 2.5%. Hmm!

‘Good evening. Thank you very much for coming today…I am William Shepherd…I live in Rye...a small town on the south coast of England…I travel to Boulogne more often than Ashford or Hastings…I am a committed European… my son studies engineering in Sweden…my daughter is fluent in Spanish...and her best friend’s father is French...but I live in Rye because it is English…and because I love its Englishness…this Englishness is being destroyed…not by invasion from without...nor by corruption from within…but by stealth...stolen by a thief in the night.'

'Now I have decided enough is enough…I want a Nobler Europe...a Europe of the People…governed by the people...and for the people…but this is not the way it is going. The Referendum Party is going to change that…our aim is to secure a fair referendum…on this country’s future in Europe…twenty years ago we voted for a future as part of Europe…our politicians told us this would mean we could go to Bruges or Salzburg without a passport…buy wine, beer and baccy at French prices…compete for contracts in Dresden on a level playing field…the politicians lied to us…they were embarked on their own private millennium project…to create a United States of Europe.’

‘We lend our power to politicians…we lease it to them for five years...then we expect it back…as the Referendum Party we are saying…return the power borrowed from the people of Britain…we will decide our own future in europe…we insist on being consulted.'

'As a party we have no interest in whether you agree with Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone…or Margaret Thatcher and Virginia Bottomley…the Referendum Party is saying Yes to Europe…but as a party we are also saying a Nobler Europe is only possible by first saying No to Maastricht...a treaty too far in Margaret Thatcher’s words.'

'This election may be your last chance…once power has slipped away to Brussels…It won’t matter who you vote for in British elections…your Members of Parliament will be men of straw…Tony Blair will not have the power to reduce income tax to ten percent…John Major will not have the power to allow our farmers to grow healthy crops.'

'But a vote for the Referendum Party will change this…as a party we are saying…Let the People Decide if Westminster or Brussels governs Britain…as a party the Referendum Party has one policy...and one policy only…to obtain a fair referendum on Britain’s future in europe…once we have secured this...we will dissolve the party...now let me hear what you think...starting with your questions…thank you.’ [2m45s].

On 21st August this year Russia’s state-controlled Vnesheconombank( VEB ) paid off £11.8 billion in debts to the Paris Club of creditors. The seventeen countries had not expected repayment of their loans to the Soviet Union…and certainly not the £680 million technically due for early repayment. Eight years after the Financial Crisis of 1998 Russia no longer has any debt obligations while Gold & Currency Reserves are up 50% this year to £150 billion.

On the cabin table before me are five articles from a Russian Supplement distributed by The Daily Telegraph. Nina Kulikova writes about Inflation in Russia and Yelena Korop on State Investment in Russia. Nina and Yelena are women’s names so my anecdotal evidence reflects an important reality to emerge from three quarters of a century of Communist Rule.

The degree of equality in modern urban Russia where professional elites are to be found, matches the 40% requirement laid upon the Boards of Norwegian Corporations by their Oslo Parliament.

In the other three articles Vladimir Bogdanov writes once and Dmitry Dokuchayev writes twice about Russia’s Debts. Vladimir tells us the Russian Government no longer owes any money to the International Financial Brotherhood of Central Bankers. Dmitry tells us that the Russian People are mired in debts and in hock to something euphemistically called the Russian Banking Sphere and that this strange entity has presented the Russian Parliament with a plan for cancelling a goodly portion of the debts it has created. These five articles suggest that Financial Capitalism has done a good job in Russia and can pull out…after two decades…leaving Russia to her grizzly fate.

How much longer America’s Stormtroopers and Private Contractor’s remain in Iraq depends on whether comparable progress has taken place at the Iraq Central Bank between the First and Second Gulf Wars. It seems that their stay could be anything from three months to three decades. The Bush Dynasty may yet face interrogation about its repeated failures in Mesopotamia…not in Geneva or the Hague…but before a Court of Central Bankers in Basle.

During the Carter and Reagan Presidencies two power factors would have loomed large in the deliberations of the Foreign Policy Elites in Iran…an undivided secular and religious unity. First the fear of the Next Crusade of the Judaic and Neo-Judaic (Christian) Fundamentalists…the Koran versus the Bible. Secondly the Millennium Aspirations of Russia for a Warm-Water Port. Strategically both forces harbour dreams of a settlement that would last a Thousand Years. In response Iran would have formulated a strategy…with developments in Iraq as a key focus.

Iran Strategy would have been to destroy Iraq militarily; remove the danger posed by Saddam Hussein as a power rival; extend the Iranian Shia Revolution into Iraq; expand Islamic Fundamentalism in the Moslem World and beyond; and present the United States of America to the world as The Great Satan in the Middle East. Where is the cartoon of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad posing in front of a banner with the words Mission Accomplished?

On 30th October 2006 there was a Parliamentary Debate in London on the Second Iraq War. The war has been waging for 1 300 days…killing 120 and injuring 4 000 British Soldiers. The total death toll is estimated at 655 000 Iraqi Non-combatants and 3 000 Coalition Forces…twice the highest death count in any of the other 25 conflicts around the globe since the end of the Vietnam War 40-years ago. Her Majesty’s Government won the debate by a 25-vote margin. Twelve Labour Rebels voted against the ruling Labour Government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

During the day the Government made a series of retreats, refusing a proper inquiry into the conduct of the war in the morning before promising one in the evening…after Our Troops have left Iraq…in order to ensure its Commons Victory. In recent times there have been two occasions when this condition has been waived and The Commons have debated the conduct of a war before it had ended. The first was in World War I over the failed attempt to capture the Dardanelles. The second was at the start of the World War II over the fiasco of the Norwegian Campaign.

In 1940 the British Government defined Britain’s task as bringing American Power into a European War on their side. Forty years later when Saddam Hussein’s secular Iraq began to be groomed for Global Capitalism, Islamic Iran saw itself similarly threatened by a Foreign Invader. Although Military Courage in the field is ever matched by Intellectual Cowardice at home, the real task of The Historian is to challenge assessments of the National Interest.

Nobody reads H.G. Wells any more but three-quarters of a century ago he was a giant. He once remarked that Finance and Administration were key to the rise and decline of Imperial Fortunes. Wells was brought up to understand the two 19th Century schools of thought on Trade and War. But he also glimpsed as through a glass darkly a third possibility. This faded option was the driving force behind the 12th to 17th century Hansa Trading Empire.

In the 19th Century the Corn Laws were at the heart of English Parliamentary Debates. Most of the arguments were rooted in vested interests. Nonetheless underpinning the opposing positions were moral arguments about War and its relationship to Trade.

The Free Traders argued for Peace through Trade and the Protectionists for Peace & Permanence through Self-Sufficiency. The Hansa represented a third school. Trade per se was not the point at issue but the manner and moral tenor of that trade…Trade as a Carrier of the Usury Virus for instance.

In the Middle Ages, the walled town of Visby was at the centre of the Hansa Trading Empire with commercial treaties and lines of supply and demand reaching out into all the corners of the Roman Catholic United States of Europe. Maritime Law was determined by the Hanseatic Elders. Herring was the Hansa staple and a Hansa ship never travelled with an empty hold. Visby was host to the Hansa top brass for many years...as good an off-shore tax haven as one would wish.

The people of Gotland however were less than enthusiastic about this great cancerous growth upon their island home. There were skirmishes and unstable alliances. The little maritime interests of the Gotland fishermen and the little landed interests of the Gotland smallholder would not always coincide with the big European maritime interests of the Hansa Merchants…and as time passed even less with the commercial interests of the Confederation of Hanseatic Towns.

By the end of the 14th century Gotland wanted nothing to do with the military pretensions of the Hanseatic League. They wanted out. Their prayers were answered. Mysterious cosmic force caused the deep ocean currents of the North Atlantic Ocean to move and the economics disappeared overnight from the Hansa Shipping Cartel. Gotland returned to its former peaceful glory and became the home of such great Swedish poetic spirits as Ingmar Bergman…creator of the rich visual and emotional feast that is his silver screen production of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute.

It is normal to associate the Association of Hansa Merchants, the Confederation of Hansa Towns and the Hansa League of City States with the Hansa’s periods of Growth, Power and Decline. My model also has periods of growth, power and decline but my focus is on the key shifts in the Structure of the Hansa.

(I) Merchant Adventurers 1130-1180
(II) Merchants' Hansa 1180-1250
(III) Hansa of the Towns 1250-1350
(IV) The Golden Years 1350-1400
(V) Power Games 1400-1450
(VI) The War Years 1450-1480
(VII) Two Centuries of Decline 1480-1680.

In the summer of 1999 I sketched out a plan of research. My starting point would be the historic records of the five Hanseatic City-States of Visby, Novgorod, Hamburg, Riga and Danzig and the three Hansa Factories at London, Bergen and Boston.

Research into the Competitive Relationships between the Hansa and the Teutonic Order, the Roman Catholic Church, the English Court, the Swedish Court and the Spanish Court would also be pursued. Enlargement of the European Union would open up new opportunities to trace the relevant Medieval Documents.

Underpinning my Research Plan were two working assumptions. Strategically the Hansa operated like a modern multinational corporation. The Hansa’s goals would thus be to secure a minimum thirty percent market share in each key commodity sector.

Secondly, while the tariff measures of the Hansa at the end of the 13th century were grounded in Sound Political-Economic Theory and led to the rise of the Hansa, the confiscatory measures introduced at the beginning of the 15th century were grounded in Unsound Political-Economic Theory and led to the Hansa’s decline.

I have in mind to spend half of next year affiliated to the Economic History Department at Lund University while gathering the data needed to prepare Financial Accounts for 40 commodities traded by 200 Hansa City States from 1130 to 1630. Here is my basket of commodities:

Amber, Barley, Beer, Butter, Cereals, Cloth, Copper, Corn, Fish, Flax, Flour, Furs, Gold, Grain, Hemp, Herrings, Hides, Honey, Iron, Lead, Leather, Linen, Manufactures, Orientals, Pitch, Potash, Rye, Saffron, Salt, Saltpetre, Silk, Silver, Spices, Sugar, Tar, Timber, Wax, Wheat, Wine and Wool.

Seven years ago I argued that a Hansa Study of this nature would be valuable as Pure Research. However two further benefits now suggest themselves.

First my Hansa Study will establish the basis for exploring the hypothesis that the Financial Technique of Central Banking introduced in the second half of the 17th century shifted the relationship between War & Peace, Trade, Finance and Administration and led to our 300 years of Global Material Expansion.

Secondly…to the extent that British Imperial Policy from Elizabethan Times to the present day was grounded in lessons learnt from the success and failure of the Hansa…valuable insights are to be gained into Trading Policy for a new century by establishing the soundness of the Political-Economic Doctrines presently vying for public favour.

If the Ozone in the atmosphere were compressed into a layer on the ground it would be a few millimetres thick. If a 100-yard football pitch represents the Earth’s atmosphere the width of the chalk line is the amount of Carbon Dioxide.

If a scientist came up with a Homeopathic Theory of Atmosphere I might believe minute quantities of Ozone and Carbon Dioxide are crucial to life on earth. But homeopathy is being rubbished...and Atmosphere Theories to date are mostly nonsense. The Ozone Story…like the Carbon Dioxide Story…is complicated and poorly understood.

200-years ago Friedrich Schönbein noticed a strong odour lingered in the air after a lightning strike on a church near his home in Basle. 40-years later he noticed a similar smell when he passed a current through water. He named the substance Ozone after the Greek ozein ‘to smell’. He experimented and found the gas had some very unpleasant effects. It affected breathing, caused chest pains and irritation of the mucous membranes and killed small animals.

The Oxygen we breathe has two oxygen atoms…Ozone has three. Airlines fly six miles high. From here to 30-miles is rarefied Ozone…a cause célèbre for Environmentalists since 1985 when holes were found in it over the poles. A few of us pointed out that this was to be expected if the earth was spinning on its axis. But in September 1987 the Montreal Protocol banned chlorinated fluorocarbons (CFCs). Subsequently this agreement was trumpeted as proof that a One World Government is needed to make such agreements and exact compliance from recalcitrant states.

A few months ago we were told that the Ozone Layer would be hunky-dory by 2050. Then a month ago NASA’s Aura Satellite photographed an Ozone Hole over the South Pole of 10.6 million square miles…close to the record 11.4 million square miles on 9th September 2000. Equinox handbrake turns at the far end of an elliptical orbit will swirl the ozone layer about. Yet Ozone Layer Theories fail to take such a dynamic planetary orbit approach to the Ozone Hole.

Back on terra firma it is a well-known fact that pollution from industrial emissions and car fumes builds up in hot sunny weather. Ozone is accused of playing a big part in the subsequent Smog Problem. Ozone is also accused of damaging vegetation in rural areas ‘because wind can carry Ozone and the pollutants that form it hundreds of miles’. Perhaps someone can explain the mechanism to me. But until then I will stick with my anecdotal expertise. I was in London for the Great Smog of December 1952 which killed 12 000 people and led to calls to outlaw coal-burning.

Fifty years ago Parliament passed the Clean Air Act banning coal smoke. In the early years of the twentieth century November Central London averaged a total of just 38 hours of sunshine. After the Clean Air Act the hours of daily sunshine improved hugely throughout the winter months. By the end of the century November’s sunshine in the capital had soared to more than 70 hours with lichens recolonising the capital’s trees, parks and gardens.

In December 1952 the smog was as acidic as a car battery. The corrosive effect of centuries of acidic smogs eating into metal and stonework disappeared when buildings were scrubbed clean of grime and black soot. By the end of the millennium London was sparklingly clean.

Back in the days that the climate computers were being run in reverse to predict a Nuclear Winter the dust particles in the atmosphere were key parameters. Erupting volcanoes were also accused of depositing dust in the atmosphere. Yet where are these Clean Air Acts in the Global Warming Studies?

In the summer of 1952 a fine woman of my acquaintance came home from school in East Berlin…and woke up the next day in Dusseldorf. Six months later she was joined by her parents and her elder brother. She had been smuggled out of East Germany. How this was done she will never know. I met her 18-months ago. She drove me back from a Ryesingers Rehearsal and accepted my invitation to take coffee on Vemara. Conversation was animated.

Then a strange thing happened. As I looked across the cabin table her appearance changed. For about 15 seconds I saw her as a Young Pioneer about 12-years of age…pigtails, red kerchief and the look of fervour associated with Soviet and East European posters of the 1950s. It was a vivid impression. Even today I can still capture its vividness in my mind’s eye. In 1966…14-years after she had left the city…I crossed into East Berlin…twice.

The first was a day-trip. I passed through Checkpoint Charlie, sent some postcards and returned to West Berlin. The following day I passed through Checkpoint Charlie again and carried on walking for 3-hours until I reached a railway station on the city outskirts. I bought a ticket to the end of the line…two miles from the Polish Border. I walked across a bridge into Poland. Ten days later I was sitting in my one-man tent on the beach at Mamaia on the Black Sea…with hundreds of other East European tourists. I was bemused. I had expected to be turned back at the station.

I returned to the Eastern Bloc twice…to Romania for my honeymoon and to Russia in a Hillman Imp with my brother and a college friend. We were in Red Square when the Red Army marched into Prague and followed them.

This time we were turned back at the Czech Border…and told to head for Poland and The West…like fast. We did. My general impression of the Eastern Bloc in the 1960s was of drabness. All the buildings were grey and there was no colour in the few shops. Paint was a luxury and Plastics and Packaging were preserves of The West. I breathed a sigh of relief when returning to Western Europe. An acute sense of claustrophobia set in a few days before being free.

As I walked through the Park Meadow Shopping Centre in Hastings on Thursday I was bemused to find a shop devoted just to Calendars and another…called The Name Shop…with nothing but Personalised Products…for Teresa, Tracy, Samuel and Sean. The sheer flamboyance of it all, the exuberance and the bright colours.

The Emma Maersk is 1270 feet long and 251 feet high…the largest ship in the world. Eleven sister ships are planned. She docked at Felixstowe two weeks ago after a 63-day Maiden Voyage from China…with a crew of thirteen. Cruising speed was 25 knots and it used a tiny fraction of the fuel cargo jets would have burnt air-freighting similar quantities of goods. Emma Maersk was launched in Aarhus and got to China via Rotterdam, Suez and Singapore.

On board were 11 000 metal containers…each the size of a large lorry. Inside the containers were shoes, shorts, jeans, skirts, bras, socks, bibs, pyjamas, spectacle frames and handbags; Christmas decorations, hair curlers, toasters, microwave ovens, digital cameras, cocktail shakers, fizzy bath bombs, sofas, lampshades, carpets and kitchenware; 10 tons of mussels, 150 tons of New Zealand lamb, 138 000 tins of cat food, 63 tons of frozen pumpkins, 82 tons of rice noodles and 1548 pieces of frozen chicken. There were 1236 crates of calendars too.

And then there were the toys…dozens and dozens of containers of toys. China manufactures 80% of the world’s toys employing a million people in 5 000 factories…halls with barred windows locking workers in for 18-hour shifts and paying them less than £50 per month. The madness does not stop here.

In the world of Shipping Agents and Merchant Adventurers no hold is ever left empty. The Hanseatic League collapsed when there was no herring for their holds. For several hundred years Dutch Shipping had a Ships Monopoly in Northern Europe based on full holds other nation failed to match. The British Empire invented triangular trade to keep its holds filled. The media has shown no interest in the loading of the Emma Maersk in Felixstowe.

Rye Chamber of Commerce has received a Green Action Award for its Cardboard Recycling Project. Businesses deliver on Thursdays and Smurfit Kappa Recycling UK collects and disposes. We are being told of a 10% fall in the amount of municipal waste going to landfill in the UK…municipal waste accounts for 7% of the total…and 27% of UK rubbish being recycled last year. So that’s all right then. Or is it? What do Smurfit Kappa and Biffa and the others do with their increasing share of the 10 million tons of packaging waste? You are there before me.

On Guy Fawkes Day the Emma Maersk lifted her 29-ton anchor from our territorial waters for the return voyage to China…gathering up scrap and waste from around Europe en route. Having unloaded thousands of containers of in less than 24 hours the Emma Maersk left Felixstowe reloaded with crates of waste plastic, paper and steel.

In 1998 115 000 tons of waste was exported from the UK to China, India and other Asian countries. This year it will be over two million tons. It ends up in vast unregulated dumps with horrifying environmental conditions. So the next time Government and Local Authorities start crowing about their progress towards their EU Recycling Targets and Landfill Directives ask for a breakdown of where the waste is going…final destination. Lies, damn lies and statistics are the order of the day. Oh…and keep upwind of the Emma Maersk on her return voyage to China.

John Papworth e-mailed to let me know that he had read England’s Climate & Energy Politics and concluded that my position was that ‘the current Global Warming scare has no basis in truth and that people with their own agendas are promoting it for their own reasons’…and could he please have a letter for Fourth World Review that ‘in a couple of sentences summarises your conclusions for the general reader and indicates what you think the game is’.

My response was that I was right to start getting worried about the Global Warming Debate a couple of years ago and that it was clear to me two years on that there is something very odd going on…but that I was very uncertain about just what this was. So my current advice to colleagues is to proceed with caution and be very careful with anything they read or write about Climate Change. This was as far as I could go on the record. However the Human Scale Movement has a Climate & Energy agenda which in England stands in stark contrast to Official Government Policy.

The Prime Minister’s Address to the Labour Party Conference two months ago included a section on his government’s Energy Policy. The Times condensed what Blair had to say into 180 words. Here they are. ‘Ten years ago energy wasn’t on the agenda. Ten years ago I parked the issue of nuclear power. Today I believe without it we are going to face an energy crisis and we can’t let that happen. Global warming is the greatest long-term threat to our planet’s environment. Scarce energy resources mean rising prices and will threaten our country’s economy. In 15 years we will go from 86 percent self-sufficient in oil and gas to 80 percent imported. We need therefore the most radical overhaul of energy policy since the war.’ Blair went on to outline his strategic approach.

‘We will increase the amount of energy from renewable sources fivefold; ensure every major business in the country has responsibility for greenhouse gas reduction; treble investment in clean technology including clean coal and make sure every new home is at least 40 percent more energy efficient. We will meet our Kyoto targets by double the amount and we will take the necessary measures step by step to meet one of the most ambitious targets on the environment ever set anywhere in the world - a 60% reduction in emissions by 2050.’

I responded with a 180-word English Energy Policy for a New Century that went like this. ‘Ten years ago it was blindingly obvious that energy self-sufficiency was the right energy policy goal. Ten years ago it was blindingly obvious that nuclear power was a dead-end technology. Nothing has changed. Global warming and the greenhouse effect are fantasy not fact. To imagine Governments can stabilize the Earth’s atmosphere is arrogant beyond belief. Human beings cannot control the climate and must stop meddling with it. There is no energy shortage. The sun takes 45 minutes to provide all the energy we use in one year.’ I went on to outline the barebones of my strategic approach.

‘We will outlaw the use and development of climate weapons immediately. We will withdraw from the Kyoto Treaty immediately. We will decommission all nuclear power stations immediately. We will stop wasting electricity on space heating. We will adopt zero tolerance and polluter pays policies for emission of all substances into the landscape and the atmosphere. We will establish a Lord Lieutenant’s Department with Cabinet status to direct the dismantling of the country’s national piped energy grids. Prince Charles will head the department, negotiate county disconnection dates, issue the money and provide the people.’ I hope the contrasting policies are what get published.

I emailed copies of my response to the Human Scale Movement’s Steering Group…Dr Aidan Rankin, Chris Wright, Anton Pinschof in Europe and Kirkpatrick Sale and Thomas H. Greco in America and mentioned that Tom had suggested I apply for two weeks at the Mesa Refuge…overlooking Tomales Bay in Marin County north of San Francisco in the spring of 2007. This might make sense with a place to write in Tucson for 2-weeks before and in Mexico City for 2-weeks after en route to 2-3 months in Bogotá, Colombia…and if I could find a way to pay for it all.

With dark nights upon us and the shops full of Winter Solstice Cheer…to be politically correct…my Hey Fellow Well Met! greeting is spiced with a daily rundown…not of Shopping Days to Christmas which are of little consequence to Sad Live-Alones without Festive Family Connections…but of Days to Winter Solstice. Hale and hearty I merrily declare: ‘Days Start To Get Longer in 28 Days!’ This goes down better at this time of the year than ‘Nights are Drawing In!’ immediately after Mid-Summer. My official Longest Night occurs on Thursday 21st December to allow a day of rest before my Japanese Rising Sun Celebrations two days later on the Emperor’s Birthday.

Last week I ran an experiment. Results are in. Ten Pound Coins last seven Days. Operant conditions? Warm Weather outside and Coal Stove going inside on two evenings. Some time in the next two weeks my Winter Fuel Allowance drops into my account. A two-pronged Energy Strategy had been devised to greet this happy event. Here it is.

First I will embark upon a couple of trolley runs to Sea Cruisers to fetch four 25kgs sacks of coal. Secondly the electricity meter will be force-fed Pound Coins until it can take no more. Add Fire Lighters from the supermarket and some Kindling Gleaning around the boatyard…and voilà…all set until well into the New Year.

So much for the best laid plans of mice and men. Big lift-out two weeks ago so with a lovely weekend promised up on the bank boats were being worked on…including my new neighbour. Computer, lights, radio and CD-Players do not work off an empty meter but as far as electricity usage is concerned, they can be ignored. My 2 kilowatt-hour fan heater is another matter…Hey Big Spender! But if I use the oil-filled electric heater sparingly then no problem. Wrong! Power tools use electricity and my neighbour plans to work weekends. His boat runs off Vemara’s meter.

We assured each other how laid back we both were about it. We agreed to keep an eye on the situation. And we would not mutter under our breath if we felt short-changed but talk to each other. The last thing either wanted was to record coins in and kilowatt-hours out.

Nonetheless, after briefly believing that I had total control, cooperation came as a bit of a shock. I spent today finding excuses to offer up Ten-Pound Notes at cafés and shops in Rye and Hastings. Never have so many Two-pound Coins and Five-Pound Notes been given as change for a Tenner.

November has turned wild and wet with snow on the hills up north. Not before time. I have yet to find anyone in Rye who remembers a year when the trees lining Whitehall were still in full green leaf on Remembrance Sunday. Perhaps New Labour has stealthily replaced them with Douglas Firs under EU Draft Directive THD01212881790. The good news is that last month, Westminster Road Sweepers picked up only half their normal 40-ton October Leaves Quota.

Sunny days and cool nights should be ideal for boosting the sugar content in leaves so they produce the red-coloured anthocyanins which give Maples their distinctive autumnal look. Why do they bother? One theory is that the red pigment behaves like a sun screen protecting the foliage from intense autumn sunshine while they salvage valuable nutrients from the leaves before finally shedding them.

Tree Tourism is big business in New England. It’s what to do between Labor Day and Thanksgiving. Could there be something here for Blair’s Brassy Britain? Lengthen the Tourist Season by declaring the end of October to be Leaf Week. Then bring on the Yanks for a Leaves & Fawkes Experience…complete with computers predicting daily percentages like the New Englanders. Computers can predict anything so this is for programmers and copy-writers.

The leaves of Lime Trees are a delicate yellow with the light shining through them. Beeches are a tumultuous riot of deep yellow and brilliant orange. Scarlet Oaks from New England have jagged vivid red leaves which after last night’s storm were all over the high street even though there was not a tree in site. Perhaps Henry James had them planted in the garden of Lamb House a hundred years ago so he wouldn’t feel too homesick? This might explain some of the orange-brown leaves with yellow veins mixed in amongst them. Yellow Poplars are big in Vermont and are sometimes called Tulip Trees because in spring both their leaves and flowers are tulip-shaped.

Beneath Horse Chestnut Trees are lots of long stalks. When a tree sheds its leaves the stalks separate and stay put while the leaves get blown away. Why do they do this? If Linnaeus had his way the People of Rye would take Nature Walks every weekend and discuss such matters of an evening under the auspices of the Royal Rye Botanical Society.

I am told I write well. This is no accident. I have practised hard for many years. As a slight example I dwelt on the word ‘for’ in the previous sentence, replaced it with over’, spoke the sentence aloud and then reinstated ‘for’. I am also a minimalist with punctuation. I accept Lynn Truss’ criteria in Eats Shoots & Leaves but add my own question. Is a particular item of punctuation essential? Is there misunderstanding or ambiguity without it? No. Then leave it out.

I have studied my craft. I delight in getting beneath the surface of words. I insist on knowing why a sentence works. It gives me great satisfaction to take 1000 words and reduce them to 600. To reduce the previous paragraph in this manner I would delete ‘in the previous sentence’ from the fourth sentence. Reducing to 300 is quite different. P.G. Wodehouse interested me when he refused me a 10-6 reduction and insisted I employ my 10-3 tricks of précis and synopsis…which runs off the tongue better than ‘synopsis and précis’. Span and spick jars. Spick and span is fine.

So I was all astonishment when reading Persuasion…Jane Austen’s last completed novel written in 1815 twenty years after Pride and Prejudice first saw the light of day as First Impressions. Austen had invented the literary trick of free indirect speech with its power to embody dramatic elements within the flow of the narrative...something Ernest Hemingway was much skilled at. The trick is to use actual phrases but indirectly so the narration combines the voice and moral perspective of the original speaker with those of the reporting or narrating agents.

In The Language of Jane Austen (Oxford 1972) Norman Page illustrates the point. ‘How Anne’s more rigid requisitions might have been taken is of little consequence. Lady Russell’s had no success at all – could not be put up with-were not to be borne. ‘What! Every comfort of life knocked off! Journeys, London, servants, horses, table,-contractions and restrictions every where. To live no longer with the decencies even of a private gentleman! No, he would sooner quit Kellynch-hall at once than remain in it on such disgraceful terms.’

Here is an example of Jane Austen’s subtlety in Mrs. Clay’s remarks to my son’s namesake John Shepherd… Estate Agent to Gentlemen of Fine Breeding & Delicate Sensibilities. ‘Certainly sailors do grow old betimes; I have often observed it; they soon lose the look of youth. But then is not it the same with many other professions, perhaps most other? Soldiers in active service are not at all better off; and even in the quieter professions there is a toil and a labour of the mind, if not of the body, which seldom leaves a man’s looks to the natural effect of time. The lawyer plods, quite care-worn; the physician is up at all hours, and travelling in all weather; and even the clergyman -‘she stopt a moment to consider what might do for the clergyman;- ‘and even the clergyman, you know, is obliged to go into infected rooms, and expose his health to all the injury of a poisonous atmosphere.’ Jane Austen has her continue.

‘In fact, as I have long been convinced, though every profession is necessary and honourable in its turn, it is only the lot of those who are not obliged to follow any, who can live in a regular way, in the country, choosing their own hours, following their own pursuits, and living on their own property, without the torment of trying for more; it is only their lot, I say, to hold the blessings of health and a good appearance to the utmost: I know of no other set of men but what lose something of their personableness when they cease to be quite young.’

This passage has little immediate bearing on the plot. A 10-3 reduction would have it deleted. It could be removed for an abridged version. But the sentiments expressed are as radical as anything from Wordsworth and the Romantic Poets. Indeed we have here echoes of John Keats’ Ode to Indolence. Three hundred years on we have made little progress towards the society implied. Mrs. Clay spoke on for two reasons…and only one was relevant to the plot.

Jane Austen was acutely a-tuned to the Establishment of her age…and realised its relevance to all establishments at all times. Establishments dislike nothing more than those who blurt out loud what everybody knows but prefer to leave unsaid. It embarrasses people. Parvenues who think to join the Establishment while elbowing aside the delicate web of hypocrisies, deferences and understandings that support it infuriate the Establishment’s old guard.

This is Tony Blair’s real crime in the Cash for Peerages Scandal creeping ever closer to 10 Downing Street. Matthew Parris made the point in his column in The Times last Saturday. ‘Imagining that all he needed to do was cloak an outright gift in the garb of a soft loan was slapdash to the point of arrogance. If this was camouflage, it was cursory.’

For the past nine months Rye has had a Big Issue Seller in residence on the pavement in the High Street…and on occasions setting up his stall outside our local supermarket. He has two dogs, himself and a large rucksack. This constitutes stall dimensions…and outside Grammar School Records it monopolises one of the two benches.

One fine woman of my acquaintance…bless her…with practical experience of homelessness from devoting part of her life to setting up and running a Battered Woman’s Hostel in Central London has tried to get behind the Big Issue Seller’s situation…quizzing me about the intricacies of Working Tax Credit along the way. I don’t do guilt trips but I know someone who does…bless her…each time she walks along the High Street unsure of which side of the street to pass him by.

The Vicar of St Mary’s…bless him…wrings his hands and discusses with one of his more generously minded parishioners…bless him…the idea of putting the Big Issue Seller into a caravan for the winter. Caravans can be acquired. But a landowner willing and able to accept a caravan, two dogs and a Big Issue Seller is another matter. I suspect there are dozens of similar stories around town. Does one person have the right to generate so much unease?

There are two big issues here with half the proceeds of one going to the seller…a decent percentage by charitable standards. But the other is of interest too. John Stuart Mill argued that people can do as they wish…provided they do not stop others doing as they wish. The philosophy of the Modern Welfare State…throughout Europe…believes Welfare Recipients participate in a Social Contract with mutual rights and duties. There is no such thing as a free lunch. The Queen’s Pence is yours but in return you must make yourself available for Work. No work - no benefits.

Since 1997 Parenting and Caring have been viewed as Work and a Roof Over Your Head has become equivalent to a basic right. The moral case for pensions has also shifted. Thirty years of Past Work has long been regarded as endowing full Pension Benefit Entitlement. But Present Work is also entering the equation. Many one-, and even two-income families are only kept afloat by grandparents minding the children.

Our Big Issue Seller is entitled to shelter so either he doesn’t know this or he chooses not to avail himself of Rented Accommodation and Housing Benefit from Rother District Council. If he is homeless it is by choice or from ignorance…or by refusal or inability to work. Local people who feel guilty should not fool themselves. Old-style Liberals have no philosophical objection to someone over-nighting on The Salts in summer but in winter there is a problem. Either he will infringe on somebody’s personal property rights…trespassing to stay warm…or end up in a National Health hospital at tax payers expense. So it is time to take issue with John Bird the founder of The Big Issue.

The Big Issue was a clever entrepreneurial idea in Thatcher’s Britain. But it is past its sell-by date. There will always be a case for a Campaigning Journal on Homes, Shelter and Housing…immigrants, second homes and pre-empting residential property for commercial use are topical issues. But in the New Labour Welfare State where housing is an entitlement Big Issue Selling should be seen as Charitable Collection. The collector should not be seen as a Homeless Person but as a Charitable Object. From the Public Policy point of view the Big Issue Seller is a Stallholder. If he does not have the requisite Planning Permission or Trading Licence he should be moved on by the police.

Selling Big Issues is not a job. It is not gainful employment in any meaningful sense but a form of begging. Ayn Rand viewed Society as made up of Producers, Looters and Moochers. Producers create wealth for Society. Looters use laws to destroy the wealth of Society while Moochers use guilt. In The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand shows the degrading effects this has on the souls of the Second-Raters who live by the Looters' and Moochers' codes.

Getting the Big Issue Seller off the street yields immediate benefits to everybody. But what of the Big Issue Seller? Ayn Rand sidesteps the question of redemption…of how to turn Moochers into Producers. Virginia Woolf wrote a book entitled A Room of Your Own that considers the question. But the title is misleading. The room is just the first step…and without Money of Your Own it is of little worth.

Virginia Woolf understood Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Rooms and money are just the first steps towards Self-Esteem and Self-Actualisation. An enlightened society’s policy for its Big Issue Sellers would not seek to enforce the contractual terms of the Social Contract for the Queen’s Pence but would recognise the need for a Period of Convalescence. One week of benefit without a duty to work for each week on the streets is one form such a policy might take. Local people could even chip in a bob of two.

When you leave Rye’s Church SquareGungardens with its splendid view across the East Bank of the River Rother to Romney Marsh beyond, you come at once to the Ypres Tower. Take a sharp left turn around the corner of the tower, just before the arch into the Gungardens, and you will find yourself at the top of the Ypres Steps. Halfway down…below the Town Stocks…is the Ypres Inn. At the foot of the steps is the busy A259.

On the other side of the road is a football pitch, a putting green, the Rye Bowls Club and a children’s playground. Cross the road and keep The Salts on your left and The Chair Doctor’s workshop on your right. Ahead you will see the entrance to Rye Yacht Centre where Vemara is moored. To the left of the Boatyard Gates is a pretty red and black cottage belonging to John and Margaret Houslander. Behind Ferry Cottage is Rye's new fish quay.

Six years ago as editor of Rye Harbour Boat Owners Association’s magazine I published a Fishing Supplement. It opened with this quote: ‘Sea fisheries remain the only significant economic activity of developed countries which are a form not of harvesting or of processing, but of hunting’ and mentioned the fact that Sir Edward Heath has dismissed as ‘absurd and insulting’ the notion that he had betrayed the country’s fishermen. Insulting - yes. Absurd - no.

Four years ago the Public Forum Supplement to the last RHBOA magazine under my editorship…Number 94...included a defensive letter to the Rye Observer from John Morgan…Area Navigation Manager for the Environment Agency alongside a blistering attack on the Environment Agency from Rye’s Labour MP Michael Foster who described the delays and overspending as ‘a cock-up on a par with the overspend on London’s Jubilee Line’.

Here is an extract from John Morgan’s letter: ‘We have taken this opportunity to carry out a strategic review and to assess the value of the harbour to the local community. This will provide a sound basis for seeking investment for the Rye Fish Quay from other outside funding partners. Duncan Grant going into receivership may have caused us delays anyway as some of the land needed for the development is tied up in his leasehold.’

Mr Foster was not amused and had this to say: ‘I am furious and want to know how it could have happened. I led a delegation of fishermen to Parliament myself. The money was agreed and everything was in place. They have already spent £ 800 000 on Admiralty Jetty and it is nowhere near enough to upgrade the fishing quay. I don’t know whether it is the Environment Agency or its Consultants who are to blame but the whole thing smacks of maladministration and negligence and I want some straight answers. How can you start work without having the correct figures? I want to know what is different now to what they already knew before they started work. I feel incandescent with rage. The people of Rye and the fishermen deserve better. It is an enormous disappointment and continues to put our fishermen at risk working on a quay which falls well below EU standards. The quay will be improved. It has to happen; it is just a case of when and how.’ Mike Foster turned out to be correct.

The Simmons Quay opened on 14th July this year…named after Ronnie Simmons the Fisherman’s Representative who devoted ten years of his life to banging heads together and refusing to be fobbed off by bureaucratic excuses. It is a remarkable success story and one that Rye can take pride in. Several times a week French trucks load up. A regular visitor is Comptoir de Marée du Marche Commun of 23-25 Rue G. Honoré, 62200 Boulogne-sur-mer who makes pick-ups all along the English South Coast…Shoreham, Brighton, Newhaven, Eastbourne, Hastings, Rye, Hythe, Folkestone, Dover and Ramsgate before heading for the Cross-Channel Ferries or the Channel Tunnel.

Nearly all of England’s cod is brought into the ports of Grimsby and Hull from Norway, Iceland and the Faeroe Islands. Our local waters are not cold enough for cod. They lay their temperature-sensitive eggs just beneath the surface. Boulogne is the biggest fish market in Europe and this is where fish landed in Rye goes. For years Brian Stent fished out of Rye on Akela. This year for the first time he has seen red mullet and swordfish landed at Rye. At 13 my father started work in London’s Billingsgate Fish Market. He would have approved of Rye’s new fish quay.

Last Thursday a huge whale was washed up on Camber Sands. The local paper spoke to the Dover Coastguards who reckoned it was too big to be a Minky Whale and unlikely to be a Humpback. The Daily Mirror had no doubts. At 55 feet it was a Fin Whale…the second largest animal on Earth. It was missing its lower jaw and tail…hit by a ship said the Mirror…and had lost its skin which is what whales do when they die. It had been dead for several weeks.

The inshore waters around the British Isles are teeming with wildlife. Dolphins are being brought ashore in fishermen’s nets along the Dorset Coast and all along the East Coast seals are flourishing...so much so that the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St Andrews University decided to take a look at the situation. They estimate that grey seals are eating 8000 tons of North Sea cod a year…4% of the total catch and four times as much as 20 years ago.

Predictably this prompted the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation to call for the grey seals to be culled…and Animal Welfare Groups to call for the fishermen to be culled instead. ‘Shame seals don’t look like toads’ and ‘they may look cuddly but they’re vermin’ gives the flavour of the debate. The last official Seal Cull in Britain was 30 years ago. Seals are smart hunters. They swim together to corral the cod before swallowing as many as they can.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is torn between protecting the interests of our fishermen and kow-towing to meddling outside interests like the European Fisheries Commission in Brussels and the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas. These organisations bribe scientists with research grants to report declining fish stocks and recommend quotas and other bureaucratic devices to enhance their power over our fish. Here are two typical reports. The first is the EU 2004 Cod Recovery Plan which claims the right to limit catches by EU Member States to 26 500 tonnes a year and seeks to control how much time boats can spend at sea. The second is an article in Science by Professor Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax Nova Scotia.

The EU Plan reports that twice the approved catch was accidentally caught last year as bycatches by fishermen chasing other species. The idea of bycatches is a silly bureaucratic invention. Down go the nets and into them go the fish. Cod are bigger than haddock, whiting, hake and plaice so in they go too. Ban all fishing is the official response.

Boris has a computer so he prophesies. By 2048 every seafood species in his 100 fishing regions will have collapsed and no longer be commercially viable. The Global Fishing Fleet is two and a half times its sustainable level. North Atlantic Fish Stocks are a sixth of what they were 100 years ago. The Global Cod Catch is down two thirds from three million tons in 1970. Naughty Russian Trawlers are illegally catching 100 000 tons of cod in the Barents Sea. Bluefin Tuna catches in the Mediterranean are 60% above quota. Overexploitation is up 150% since 1970. And so on.

Over the years sheep on the Falkland Islands taught themselves to avoid Man by keeping out of rifle range. No doubt fish have also learnt a few tricks…like diving deeper and reacting to the tell-tale signs of approaching trawlers. The ocean’s currents shift too. The decline of the Hansa in the Middle Ages can be traced to a shift in the ocean currents which took the herring with them. And Quota Regimes cause shifts in recorded and unrecorded catches. If the statistics are unreliable…and EU’s Auditors and the European Parliament do not hold Eurostat in very high regard…then garbage in will produce garbage out with computers churning more of it much faster. There are fundamental flaws in Fish Stock Counts. The methodology is poor. Conceptual grids are stretched over the oceans, hypothetical boxes are created and the fish in the boxes counted. Keep still! We’re trying to count you!.

Anecdotal evidence is mounting. Fish move faster than scientists. The vessels of the Rye Fishing Fleet pass a few feet from my stern several times a week. I have been talking to them. They know their business and they are doing very nicely thank you. Fishermen and divers are reporting record numbers of codling and growing numbers of juvenile cod. Methinks that the best way to help our fishermen would be to get out of their way and let them get on with it.

Ten years ago I decided it was time to bring E.F. Benson’s Mapp & Lucia tales up to date. Five years ago I started to sketch some plots and characters. Out with the bridge and the golf club…and move the setting from Rye Citadel in the 1920s to the boatyards on Rock Channel in the 1990s. Up Rock Channel Creek…my everyday stories of boating folks…eventually got the working title of Creaky Tales.

In the spring of 2004 I got away to Västeräs and Hersonissos for two months. I returned to Rye with a hundred thousand words on my laptop and the ability to invent plots, create characters and write dialogue. Since then I have seen plots everywhere and don’t really need to make them up. True facts are implausible. Fiction writers lie to tell the truth. They tone down reality.

The Cheeky Girls live in Rye. In 2004 I worked out behind them at Hilden Gym. I caught glimpses of muscles I didn’t know existed…on them. Ray Semal…their father-in-law…insisted they give me their autographs. At the gym Ben taught me how to avoid being thrown off a running machine. Ben has been seen on Hove Station in the early hours with Heather Mills…who has split from her husband Paul…whose daughter Heather learnt pottery from Connie. Son James learnt karate from Mike Avery…and my daughter worked on Barnaby Rudge…moored in Rock Channel.

Mr. McCartney has a cameo part in Creaky Tales. ‘Councillor Williams reflected upon his forthcoming meeting with Mr McCartney. He had resolved a small dispute with the locals a year ago. Complaints about the danger to local children from Paul’s wildlife park had required his diplomatic touch. He saw himself as a born conciliator and was pleased with the outcome. But it was not good enough for Her Indoors. ‘All well and good until some young girl gets gored or a Jack Russell gets eaten alive by his wild boars and the paparazzi are camping out on our doorstep.’

'To show his appreciation Councillor Williams had been given permission to stroll the woodland paths of Mr. McCartney’s Peasmarsh Estate. Being nervous of wild boar he had not done so . Councillor Williams was not a brave man…nor a fast runner. In fact running was not in his repertoire. But there was a first time for everything.

Councillor Williams decided that tomorrow he would stroll. And he would invite the Efficient Morgan to ride shotgun. Having the Efficient Morgan chased by wild boar might concentrate everybody’s mind.’

The author then has a few words about our man from the ministry…and the rights and wrongs of removing him from Blandings Castle in Shropshire. After this brief interlude Councillor Williams’ phone rings in his study. It is the Efficient Morgan speaking.

‘Today’s the day. I have the solution. I need your OK.’
‘What solution? Whose problem? Where?’
‘Allotment Association. Dredging. Bypass. Skulduggery. Rock Channel. Men of Dark & Dismal Fate. Today’s the day.’ There was a pause.
‘Hello! Are you there?’
‘Yes…yes…Rock Channel...No I haven’t forgotten…You want my OK…Has anything happened?’

Councillor Williams was irritated. Morgan had this effect on him. Why on earth did he slip into Morgan’s ridiculous monosyllabic mode of address. He was on the telephone not writing a telegram.

Then he heard himself say the fateful words.
‘You have the answer…Good…But not on the phone…’
The fates began winding in their threads.

‘I am meeting the owner of Barnaby Rudge at two. Meet me at The Queen’s Head in Icklesham at one thirty. Leave your car in the car park. We’ll go up to Peasmarsh in mine. Bring the file. I want him on our side. He moors Barnaby Rudge in Rock Channel so he’s an interested party. Not that it made a blind bit of difference when his wife went for us over that Memorial Hospital business. No…not her…the first one. We’ll take a walk in the woods afterwards. No…no…just the two of us. Mr. McCartney’s a busy man. I have the run of his estate. A thank-you after that wildlife park incident last year. Well…that’s what he calls it. Yes I know what the locals call it. Wear stout shoes…steel toecaps if you have them…we might be attacked by wild boar. Now I must get on.’

Yet how can this compare with reality? Sir Paul McCartney has revised his deal for building in an area of outstanding beauty without planning permission. His ‘beloved’ log cabin would come down if he could keep his pavilion. Beanacres and two agricultural barns could go as well leaving ‘the intrinsic landscape quality and character of the High Weald’ better off than before his wooden lodge and pavilion went up.

Beats me why he doesn’t get John Prescott to nod it through. Cash for Honours? Autographs for Planning Permission? Can’t see the difference myself!