A Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year

It is the same card as last year, but it is more appropriate than ever.

Iraq And Trade Unionism

The TUC Publication On Iraqi Trade Unions

Iraqi Kurdistan has an active and influential Trade Union movement. Here is a valuable contribution on the role played by women in their Trade Union structure.

I visited Iraqi Kurdistan with Labour Friends of Iraq and fellow Trade Unionists in April 2006 and on the anniversary of the visit a year later I came up with the following lessons. Which I have taken from here -

(1) Iraqi Trade Unionists deserve and need our understanding and practical support.

Sue Rodgers the Chair of the TUC's Iraq Solidarity Committee was part of our delegation. The TUC provides a clear avenue through which people can help - numbers of these developed out of our visit. Specific Trade Unions such as UNISON have their own linked programmes of assistance.

(2) The Iraqi Government needs the continued pressure of the world's Trade Union Movement to repeal two major pieces of anti-Trade Union legislation.

First, Saddam Hussein's decree 150 is still operative in banning the operation of Trade Unions in the major public sector. Secondly, there is a post Saddam Hussein decree 8750 which sequests Trade Union Funds until such time as the State decide who it will recognise as registered Trade Unions. Neither of these decrees are, however, operative in Iraqi Kurdistan.

(3) Iraqi Trade Unionists (mainly those outside of Iraqi Kurdistan) face persistent terrorist activity, with occasional harassment from American and Iraqi forces.

Activists in the wider Trade Union and Labour Movement in the UK should not turn a blind eye to this when determining which actors to support and criticise within Iraq.

(4) Whilst Iraqi Kurdistan is not free from its own strains and stresses, it is important in its own right as an area of growth, development and democratisation. It is also important as an example and as a link to the rest of Iraq.

The Kurdistan Workers' Federation, their Teachers' Union and the professional Trade Unions we met have important links with their equivalents in the Arab areas of Iraq, as well as internationally.

(5) The economic development of Iraq is a key to its future.

In Iraqi Kurdistan there is a wide acceptance of the need for inward investment (even by their Communist Party) and for the democratisation of their form of command economy. They don't, however, wish to be taken over by a form of turbo capitalism and look for formulas in which public controls can direct private involvement. This is relevant to the development of the rest of Iraq. Democratic socialists throughout the world can fruitfully apply their minds to the development of such a project.

(6) Iraq, of all places, does not act in a vacuum.

In addition to the pressures of Coalition Forces and their Governments, we need to be aware of the complex range of interests coming from neighbouring Middle East Governments and internal groupings in their countries. These impact on legitimate and illegitimate trade, provide military problems and create diplomatic and religious/political pressures - including the impact of imported forms of terrorism.

(7) The complex nature of an often fractured Iraq is to a large extent a consequence of economic collapse over a period of more than three decades.

The Iraq-Iran war, the invasion of Kuwait, the Gulf War, smashed Shia and Kurdish uprisings, the hideous actions by Saddam Hussein in pursuing his shifting strategies, UN sanctions and the Coalitions invasion and subsequent insurgencies and mass acts of terrorism have had massive economic and social costs. Ethnic, tribal and religious divisions have been built upon in years of brutalisation under Saddam Hussein.

There are wide but battered elements in Iraq who have an alternative vision of peace, secularism, co-operation and democratisation. Their problem is that they have to operate in circumstances where many can not look far beyond than their daily needs of survival. Yet these people are part of a brave tradition within Iraq. They have shown their love for education, cultural development, urbanised communal values and solidarity. Helping to allow these elements of Iraq to come to the fore in association with those who bravely lead the struggle for such values (as did the late Najim Abd-Jasem) is the best task we can apply our minds to.

These lessons seem to me to have survived the test of time. Although the harassment from American forces (in 3 above)was essentially confined to the earlier period

Hat Tip - Iraqi Federation Of Trade Unions.

Better In Basra

Today's Basra
Having spent most of my National Service at Basra in Iraq back in 1955 and 1956, I am particularly pleased to see that it has now started to overcome some of its recent problems. In today's Daily Telegraph, Thomas Harding states that -

Basra was among the most liberated, secular and artistic cities in the Arab world, and it seems that with (Jaish al Madhdi militia HB.) JAM's strict Islamic stranglehold gone, better times have arrived. Couples can walk the streets holding hands, women have replaced face veils with liberal coatings of make-up and shops openly sell curvaceous evening gowns. On Thursday evening, the start of the Muslim weekend, the streets and restaurants were filled with people keen to enjoy nights now free from bomb blasts and gunfire. Two floating restaurants have even taken station on Basra’s famous cornice, where couples and families happily wander to the fairground.

Oliver Postgate

Oliver Postgate the creator of the Clangers (see photo) and of other children's (and adult) favourites died yesterday at the age of 83. He fitted into a famous background.

His maternal grandfather was George Lansbury the noted pacifist who was leader of the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935, whilst his father Raymond was a leading social historian and mystery writer. His father's sister, Margaret married GDH Cole who was a leading socialist theorist, historian, academic and a prolific writer. Oliver's father Raymond also worked in 1938 with GDH to produced a classic about British working class history entitled "The Common People".

Margaret Cole and her husband wrote over 30 detective stories together, whilst she was also a significant socialist activist and writer. Angela Lansbury the actress is George Lansbury's grandchild and Oliver's cousin. She is still seen on our TV screens in repeats of the long running detective series "Murder, She Wrote".

Oliver Postgate was a conscientious objector during the second world war, as his father had been during the first world war. GDH Cole had the closest possible links with the New Statesman and Oliver came to blog for them in his later years.

It is good to find such a close family resemblance in the arts of creativity and socialism. Perhaps it is why the Clangers have always been favourites of mine.

The Global Paradox

Here is a BBC News item of some 2,000 words by Robert Preston (see photo) in which he makes claims about what is likely to arise out of the current global economic collapse. He states that - "A New Capitalism is likely to emerge from the rubble. And although it's impossible to be precise about how the reconstructed economy will operate, parts of its outline are taking shape.....For many, the New Capitalism may well seem fairer and less alienating than the model of the past 30 years, in that the system's salvation may require it to be kinder, gentler, less divisive, less of a casino in which the winner takes all.....(however) the return to equilibrium, to a more balanced global economy, is happening in a horribly painful way that's impoverishing millions of people."

He essentially examines the way in which economic trends are likely to effect the UK and other developed economies. This leaves two important factors out of the equation. What impact will the global economic collapse have upon the world's poorest nations and what political consequences will flow from the current turmoil?

Paul Collier's book "The Bottom Billion : Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It" has recently been updated and published in paperback. But it was written prior to the global economic collapse. So the terrible conditions he describes are likely to worsen and the solutions he suggests (which were gaining a hearing in significant places) are now likely to be placed upon the back burner.

In situations of economic deprivation (whether in poor or developed nations), political extremism is likely to be given a further boost as political and military leaders offer brands of racial, ethnic, fundamentalist religious and other ideological panaceas as answers to the plight people find themselves in.

To both humanise economic re-construction and tackle modern brands of fascism, there is also now an opening for the spread of countervailing democratic socialist understandings, which are needed on an international scale. As the late Royden Harrison once said "Never have the objective circumstances for socialism been greater, yet never have the subjective circumstances for socialism been worse". Socialists now have a desperate opening to show that a new world is possible.

Yet whilst the current crisis cries out for the spread of democratic socialist understandings, we also need to be aware and beware of simple minded solutions which can lead us into looking for Stalinist-style shortcuts.

The paradox is that we might not even reach the limited objectives of Robert Preston's New Capitalism without significant pressures for a New World of Socialism. For capitalists don't give ground unless they are pushed.

Act Immediately - Updates

UPDATE 1 DECEMBER : See Labour Start, link to 28 November.

INITIALLY POSTED 26 NOVEMBER : Iranian Trade Unionist Farzad Kamanger is to be executed today - your urgent help is needed to attempt to prevent this. See here.

Further information here and here.

NOTE - 27 NOVEMBER : News is still awaited about the intended execution. Unfortunately 10 other executions took place yesterday, but Farzad may still be alive.

NOTE - 28 NOVEMBER : Farzad is still alive, but remains under death sentence. Nationally and internationally Labour, Trade Union and Human Rights Organisations are pressing the Iranian authorities in efforts to protect Farzad. Your support is still needed via the early links.

FURTHER UPDATE - 1 DECEMBER : Press TV, the Iranian state-funded station has today started broadcasting on Sky on Channel 515. If anyone comes across any mention of Farzad Kamanger (in say a question which manages to find its way onto the George Galloway programme), please let me know. Or even if this case makes main- line British TV.

In A Fog

Following an 8 week spell in which I hadn't attended a football match, I turned up yesterday for the 5th time in 11 days at Sheffield FC's ground.

The freezing fog of the morning had burnt away and the sun was shining although it was still bitter cold. A hundred or so boys and girls in football kit and sportswear provided a guard of honour as the teams ran onto the pitch and later engaged in a half-time penalty contest. This is a great form of community involvement. It also boosts the size of the crowd as parents also turn up. I suspect that they are allowed in free, but it is likely to have a future spin-off at the turn-styles.

The game against Lincoln United was going well. There was some good play, except that both sides were given to hoofing the ball in the air. At half-time Sheffield FC had the edge due to a goal by Goddard.

The fog was rolling back in by half-time as Martin and I made our way to the Coach and Horses pub. It got worse as we looked at the half-time League score on their telly - but as luck had it, it hadn't got into the pub! We returned to the ground to find out that the match was abandoned.

Sheffield FC are now into a bit of chaos over their league fixtures. Although that are level pegging in the league with 4 wins, 2 draws and 4 defeats; they are third from bottom in the league with 6 games in hand of the team above them and between 3 and 9 games in hand of everyone else.

The main problem has been cup runs. We have played 14 cup games, 10 league games plus yesterday's abandoned match. Yet our cup runs have mainly come to nought. We have been in 5 competitions and have been knocked out of 4 of these. We remain in the Unibond League Cup and had a worthwhile and lucrative run in the FA Cup, just failing to make it to the first round proper.

When I made it back home, I picked up on the news from the Premiership. My team Sunderland lost 4-1 at home to Bolton. Our half-time fog had been in the wrong place.

Welcome The Iraqi Referendum

The Iraqi Parliament has agreed to a plan that would see the withdrawal of US troops from their country by the end of 2011 and their removal from the streets by the end of June, 2009. It leaves open the question of whether the US will then obtain future bases in their country. And whilst a referendum will be held about the current decision, this will not take place until July 2009 after US troops have been returned to their barracks. A rejection of the plan would then speed up troop departures and would probably create a political situation in which the US would find it more difficult to establish permanent bases in Iraq.

Western Security Contractors (such as Blackwater) also become subject to Iraqi law.

Whatever the shortcomings are about the referendum and its timing, it does give the Iraqi people a voice in the changed situation that has developed since their last General Election. It will need to be democratic and open, with its decision being honoured. It opens up the prospect of the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq by around the end of 2009 (instead of 2 years later) by a decision of the Iraqi people themselves. We need a democratic decision with the Iraqi people deciding what they want on this matter - one way or the other.

A Twist From Chimbonda

Here is a another picture of Pascal Chimbonda in Sunderland's change strip. He will be found seated on the hallowed turf of local Sheffield FC's ground. The incident occurred yesterday evening when he did one of his trade mark 180 degree turns and twisted his ankle.

He hobbled on for a period and seemingly recovered, but he was subsituted after 60 minutes. I'm not sure whether he was being rested for a place in Sunderland's first team on Saturday or whether he is now on the injured list.

He was playing in central defence in a cup game between Sheffield United Reserves and Sunderland Reserves. The Blades are currently playing their 2nd XI home games on Sheffield FC's ground.

Although Chimbonda played well, I am not sure why Roy Keane (who was at the match) was trying him out in central defence - where his qualities are known. I would have liked to see how he can play in the midfield. For when he plays at right-back, his strength is coming forward into attack rather than blocking opponents.

Chimbonda was a regular in Sunderland's first team at the start of the season, but for some unknown reason he has recently been dropped entirely from the first team squad.

In yesterday's game, Sunderland Reserves dominated the proceedings and won 3-0. From a Sunderland perspective (which I share) there is a fine report here.

I agree entirely with the writer (whom I chatted to twice at the match) that El-Hadji Diouf and Daryl Murphy had poor games. Yet they both came on as substitutes in Sunderland's last premiership game. I had finally come to the conclusion that they should both be substituted this time, when Keane did exactly that. I just hope that his motive was the same as mine and that he wasn't saving them for the next Premiership game.

Due praise is given to numbers of Sunderland's regular reserves in the report I have linked to above. I would, however, also add left-back Nathan Luscombe to the list. He was particularly creative in the second half.

For a Sunderland supporter it was a good night out. Especially as I used my free bus pass to travel the short distance too and from the ground and then only paid a £1 concessionary entrance fee. It wouldn't even pay for the time it took Chimbonda to twist his ankle.

Margaret : Your Chance Has Arrived

Given that Gordon Brown and Margaret Beckett are reported as looking for means to boost house building, is there still hope that we can move towards a major Council House building programme?

Margaret Beckett as the Minister for Houing has a final chance to go out in a blaze of glory on this one and retrieve her past reputation for being a socialist.

Thumbs Up

Yesterday evening Sheffield FC were at home to North Ferriby United in a Unibond League Cup game. We expected the worst as our opponents play in a higher Unibond Division to ours and are pressing for promotion. Furthermore our team experienced a humiliating defeat on Saturday from the bottom team Brigg Town, who had been without a league victory until they turned us over 2-0.

But you can't apply logic to football. We were transformed and outplayed our opponents from the start with a smart passing game. Admittedly things went wrong at some stage. A defensive blunder enabled our opponents to take the lead via Alex Davidson in the 32 Minute. We also had two goals disallowed and when a North Ferriby defender belted the ball into the crowd it nearly burst my thumb. The pain only made the subsequent gain more enjoyable.

Once Dave slipped out just before half-time to get the drinks in for Martin and me, we scored two quick goals from two of our stars Steve Woolley and Scott Partridge. It is a pity that we haven't a bar like the one at Gresley which overlooks the ground. But we are working on that one.

The start of the second half was delayed as a substitute linesman had to be found. Once in action again we pressed on. But again a defensive error cut across our efforts. Peter Davidson put the scores level after 58 Minutes. But with Smudge (Paul Smith) marshalling our forces from the left-back position with free kicks, corners, centres and defence splitting passes, we felt that justice would emerge.

After duties at the County Council at Matlock. Janet turned up for the last 20 minutes of the game. Just in time to see us run riot. Scott Partridge ran onto through passes in the 73 and 88 minutes. Each time you knew that he would not miss the net. He had added a hat-trick to the 4 he had scored in the first round of the cup. Then on 90 Minutes, Daz Winter scored a well deserved 5th goal.

So whilst Dave only saw us win 3-2, Janet his wife saw us win 3-0. It was Martin and myself who saw the full 5-2 victory. And it wasn't until we got back to the Coach and Horses at the end of the game that I noticed the swollen state of my thumb. But it was a small price to pay for a fine evening.

Lost - Our Political Opinions

For a UK political blogger, the most helpful link I know has been "Political Opinions" run by Grant.

Unfortunately, his site seems to be facing its third crisis.

First of all in September 2007, Grant decided to pack it in. Numbers of us helped to pursued him to continue with his vital service.

Then this September, the site was highjacked for a period before Grant was able to restore it.

And now (unless Grant is in transition to a new service provider) he seems to have been hijacked again, this time by 1&1 Internet.

I hope that Grant is back soon - you can check here to see if he is now back or this is still 1&1.

The history of my past comments on this saga can be found via the label below.

Spend And Tax - Update Added

Tomorrow's Pre-Budget Statement should seek (a) to stimulate demand in the economy, (b) with the knowledge that monies will need to be paid back at some stage - although if the package works and demand grows then some of the payment for it will be self-financing. I will judge what is proposed by Alistair Darling to the extent that it fits in with the following pattern. But I won't be holding my breath.

To Increase Economic Demand

1. Increase Pensions and other Benefits.

2. Increase Expenditure on Social Provisions in areas such as Health, Social Welfare and Education.

3. Finance a Council House Building Programme.

4. Take over houses that have been repossessed and rent these out to their former owners.

5. Raise the Income Tax Threshold, without allowing the wealthy to benefit from this.



To Pay For This Programme

A. A Wealth Tax.

B. Windfall Taxes on Super Profits and Bonuses.

C. Raise Income Tax on the Top Earners.

D. Corporation Tax Increases.

E. Work also for International Taxes on currency and other forms of speculation. With the proceeds being used to overcome third world poverty.



POST BUDGET AFTERWORD, Monday November 24

On moves to increase demand in the economy, Alistair Darling produced thin versions of the points I made in 1,2,3 and 4 above - although he covered a wider and more problematic range of issues. Whilst there was nothing about a specific Council House building programme (my point 3), social housing was included in the capital spending that is to be brought forward from 2010-11. So perhaps I should be half satisfied with this half of his equation.

On moves to pay for his programme, Alistair included none of my points A,B,D or E. He did include the much trawled and future promise of an extra 5% income tax band for those earning over £150,000. Whilst this is a mild version of my point C, I am aware of the significance of such a change of principle. I once asked Tony Blair if we could not move towards a more progressive element at the top end of the income tax scale. To which he said that we could not go into a general election promising an income tax increase. Gordon Brown answered the same question by saying that nothing was set in concrete. It is nice to see that we are now out of the concrete, even if I did ask my questions over ten years ago!

Frozen, Teetotal And Defeated

Yesterday afternoon everything looked set for Sheffield FC to record a thumping home victory.

Their opponents, Brigg Town were without a League win all season, having drawn only 3 games and lost 13. Earlier in the season Sheffield FC had recorded a 5-0 win at Brigg's ground and only last Tuesday they had seen off high flying Durham City with an impressive performance.

But it turned out to be a pretty miserable afternoon. It was freezing cold and I was on medication which ruled out a half-time pint. Worse still Sheffield FC suffered a shock 2-0 defeat.

We conceded two sloppy goals, nothing went right for us when we put the pressure on and we finally resorted to hopeful and unimpressive long range punts at goal in the final 20 minutes.

At half time we were 1-0 down and I then dashed to the Coach and Horses for warmth and companionship. I was with Dave and Martin who had pints in front of them. When Tom joined us with his drink he was astonished to see that I was abstaining. I pointed out that my medication did not permit alcohol and that the instructions went on to say the tablets' side effects could lead to constipation and a lowered sex drive, but unfortunately they did not lower my urge for alcohol when the temptation was all around me in a pub.

I soon decided it was time for me to return to the ground. For once I was back in time for the second half kick off. Brigg went straight up the field and scored their second goal.

Once the dismissal game was over, Martin and I dashed for the bus to get away from things. I was hardly going back into the pub to watch others drown their sorrows.

I can only hope that the weather, my medical condition and the football pick up for Tuesday evening's game.

King Charles - The Last

Here is Johann Hari at his best in today's Independent.

Watch Your Back, John

At long last I made it to a football match at Sheffield FC's ground. This was on Tuesday evening and it was 8 weeks since I had attended. On the surface it looked as if we were in for a drubbing.

It was the second round of the Unibond League Cup. Our opponents, Durham City play in a parallel league. Although they are in fifth position, they are unbeaten and have sufficient games in hand of the teams above them to readily take over the top spot.

In contrast, Sheffield FC have a middling league record and have suffered so many injuries that when the teams ran out onto the pitch I only recognised five of our players - two of whom used to occupy the substitutes bench.

But my fears were soon put to rest. After 13 minutes we had established a two goal lead and were pouring on the pressure. We were three up after 63 minutes and seemed to be coasting it.

Jez Mitchell, a new signing had provided the assist for Mick Goddard's opening goal and added the two other goals. In the first half he had three carefully placed shots which just crept past the Durham post. Then a Durham defender made a dramatic save by blasting the ball against his own post.

Next to me Dave was busy on his mobile, letting the absent Martin know when each goal whizzed in. Near the end, however, the tide turned with Adam Johnson (73 Minutes) and Tommy English (83 Minutes) putting Durham back in the game. But it was only just that we held on for a 3-2 victory as we had dominated most of the game.

Events were enlivened when the Sheffield FC supporters heard the referee regularly shout out to the Durham captain Stephen Harrison, calling him "Steve". A series of wisecracks came from the terraces on the assumption that Steve was the ref's son. If we hadn't gone on to win, I think that there would have been calls for a steward's enquiry.

When Dave, Janet and I settled into the Coach and Horses pub after the match, it was time for chats with the visitors. I originate from Easington which is just eight miles east of Durham, so I was keen to find out what gossip I could.

I came across two Durham supporters. One was from Shiney Row and the other was from Murton Colliery. John Cummings (photo above) whom I know well, is the MP for the Easington Constituency and he worked at the pit at Murton. When I mentioned this the reply came back "why I, I used to wash his back for him at the pithead baths".

I next talked to the Durham City goalkeeper Craig Turns, as the programme said that he was born at Easington. It turned out that he had been born at the maternity hospital at Littlethorpe, Easington Village and that he really originated from nearby Seaham. But that was fine as our son was born in the same "baby farm" and the first job I ever had as a railway clerk was at Seaham.

The programme notes also said that Tommy English a Durham goalscorer was born at Easington. But he had left the crowded pub before I could discover whether he was another product of the baby farm. I had shouted at him from the touch line about his Easington connection, but I didn't hear what he shouted back. Perhaps I incensed him that much that he ran up the field and scored!

Four of the Durham team had been on Sunderland's books at some time (including "Steve" and Craig the goalkeeper), whilst two others were born in Sunderland. But although (like John above) I am a Sunderland supporter, this did not undermine my support for Sheffield FC. My chance to support Sunderland from the terraces will come on 26 November when Sheffield FC host a match between Sheffield United Reserves and Sunderland Reserves. There is only once that I ever supported a team playing against Sunderland Reserves and that was when they played Easington Colliery Welfare. I am hardly going to desert the lads to support a bunch from Bramall Lane.

A Lot Of Harlots ?

The economic downturn does not stop for breath. Financial and business decisions are made which circulate the world in an instant. Each loss of confidence, spreads its own momentum. So the answer for some politicians is to seek to re-establish growth (and hence confidence) via measures such as interest rate cuts, tax cuts, co-ordination and Bretton Woods-style regulations.


But they have a job on their hands. Not least because free media outlets also have their own worldwide momentum. They feel obliged to probe and undermine each fresh statistic or other piece of news, even if their new concern is diametrically opposed to what they argued yesterday.

So when our dangerously high rate of inflation falls back somewhat mainly due to a fall in petrol prices, then we are presented with the danger of our moving into a form of deflation on the style of inter-war years. This "news" will probably sap financial and business confidence even further and help bring about just what the media is "predicting".

So does this mean that I favour a State controlled media? No, but it would help if we had commentators with a mixture of intelligent and individually consistent outlooks. Instead, we find that Rudyard Kipling, Stanley Baldwin and John Lloyd were near the mark in seeing the mainline press (et al) as "exercising power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages."

The Problem With Gordon

This is from today's Guardian -

"Gordon Brown tonight called on the world's most powerful industrial nations to agree a programme of immediate and coordinated tax cuts to prevent the global economy sliding deeper into recession."

If the world economy is moving into a deflationary position, there is a problem with a co-ordinated programme of tax cuts. In a deflationary situation and with instability, there is an interest in people hording any newly found money from income tax or VAT-style cuts, which can be done by holding it in banks at even low interest rates as well as keeping it in their purses and wallets. For if money will be seen as increasing its value, people will wish to keep hold of it as some form of protection for the future. It will then only be via a growth in unemployment and the possibility of cuts in wages and benefits that the newly impovished will be obliged to spend the bits they have.

Tax cuts for the poor makes sense as the poor have little option but to spend the bit they have (and the world is full of poor people), but in other areas would it not be better for Governments to increase their own expenditure rather than to give across the board tax cuts? The building of Council Housing and its equivalent being an alternative.

The problems with a move to increased Government expenditure is that (a) it might get bogged down in long term capital programmes which would not do what is needed to stimulate demand in the short-run and (b) numbers of Governments throughout the world are corrupt and would misuse such a programme. So Governments would need to use their expenditure to provide people with consumer type goods. In a world that has wide areas of poverty this is by no means an incorrect approach - although international co-ordination would be essential to the tackle corruption problems.

Housing Crisis - Council Housing Solution

Austin Mitchell the Chair of the Housing Group of MPs had this fine letter in "The Times" on Tuesday. Here is an extract -

".....your lead story (“Council homes for life ‘to be scrapped’ ”, Nov 10) isn’t a forecast of the Green Paper on social housing, but a last-ditch attempt by a tiny group of ideologically motivated barm-pots, some of them in Communities & Local Government, to achieve their longstanding aim of destroying council housing.....Yet....the idea..... foisted on an embarrassed Chartered Institute of Housing (not the other way round, as your article implied) in an attempt to push it on our new Housing Minister, Margaret Beckett.....won’t work. The Labour Party won’t wear it. Nor will the councils. Margaret is a Labour minister, not a Blairite, and she’ll give it the short shrift it deserves because she recognises, as we do, that the only answer to the acute shortage of public housing for rent is to build more. Indeed, the only way to get more housing built in a credit crisis is to finance the councils to put builders back to work and to regenerate estates so they’re not ghettos."

It is over to you Margaret.

A Little More History

I remember purchasing a copy of the Pelican edition of H.G.Wells' "Short History Of The World" in my mid-teens when I was making my way to a football match at Sunderland's former ground at Roker Park. It was a fine day and as I arrived at the ground early, I sat on the terraces at the Roker End to start reading. I was soon absorbed by its short early chapters with titles such as "The World In Space","The World In Time" and "The Beginning of Life."

I was so taken by the book that when I later arrived in Iraq in 1955 as a National Serviceman without my small library, I purchased a second copy. It is stamped "Coronet Book Shop, Rashid Street, Baghdad", although I suspect that I purchased it in Basra where I was stationed.

Now over half a century later, the excitement I felt when reading Wells' history has now been re-experienced thanks to my reading the book shown above. It is Ernst Gombrich's "A Little History Of The World" which has recently been published in English in a paperback edition (Yale University Press, 2008, £6.99p).

Whilst Gombrich wrote this book for children, adults will find it a delight. Especially, if they have an inquisitive child or grandchild to read it to - gradually, short chapter by short chapter.

The first edition was published in 1936 (the year I was born) in Vienna and it is, therefore, targeted at a mid-European audience. But this itself helps to broaden English reader's horizons - be they old or young.

In Britain, parents and grandparents will always be able to take an excited child to the British Museum, especially to follow up the fine sections on Antiquity.

I would have liked to have seen a chapter on Sub-Saharan Africa and the nature and impact of the Slave Trade, which included the base it provided for much of the initial industrialisation in Britain. And I am also concerned that young girls might be unable to identify with Gombrich's historical sweep as women are sidelined in his history. Why this is so could fruitfully have been faced and more could have been made of the role of women such as Cleopatra, Joan of Arc and Elizabeth I.

But Gombrich's book is to be absorbed and enjoyed, rather than criticised. The final edition includes a chapter based on his own experiences from the end of the First World War when he was 9, up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. This rounds his work off for us. It also has an extra relevance for me in that I was myself approaching 9 at the end the Second World War.

It will also encourage me to return to H.G.Wells. For his own short history is drawn from his larger work entitled "The Outline Of History" which I went on to buy second hand at 8 Shillings and 6 Pence in the days of old money, but which I have only used for reference purposes to date.

But above all it will lead me on to Gombrich. For after he produced the original edition of his little history (which has 40 chapters!), he went on to become the leading art historian of his generation. So I at last need to get hold of a copy of his international bestseller "The Story Of Art" - it has sold 6 million copies to date!