My Influencers of the Year

This time last year I wrote an essay on my Brexit experiences that was retweeted by a couple of famous folk, and read nearly 2000 times. I captured what happened subsequently on ‘my Brexit journey’ a couple of posts ago, and have no intention of repeating any of that. Indeed, I’m going to largely – but not completely – avoid current politics. So many words have been written in the last few weeks it would be amazing if I had anything original to offer.

I don't think I have, so instead, I’m going to introduce you to a selection of the people who have given me pause for thought this year across a range of subjects, explain why I like them and their ideas, and make recommendations for you to discover them too if you’re not already familiar with their oeuvre. Interestingly, given my politics, three of the five describe themselves as ‘liberal’ or ‘left of centre’, one’s an apolitical figure, and the last one is, well, the last one is [spoiler alert], James Delingpole. So, in no particular order:

•           Paul Embery – Paul is a firefighter and trade unionist, and was on the executive council of the Fire Brigades Union until he was thrown off it earlier this year. I’m sure the FBU would quote some technical breach of an obscure union rule as the reason for that, but the truth is he was removed after expressing his pro-Brexit views.  Paul now writes for Unherd.com, and tweets prodigiously too (@PaulEmbery). On podcasts, he’s eloquent, balanced and sensible. I suspect Paul’s views differ from mine on just about everything bar Brexit (and the importance of upholding democracy), but he comes across as that modern rarity – someone of the left with whom you could have a proper discussion in good faith, without getting the impression they think you’re beyond the pale or morally reprehensible for disagreeing with them. An honourable and decent opponent in other words. With a Labour Party of a different time, he’d be on course for a Cabinet position if that’s what he wanted.

•           The Triggernometry podcast, featuring Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster – both are now comedians (Francis is a former teacher), Konstantin arguably the more famous one. But their podcasts are largely serious, albeit interspersed with humour. The format is roughly the same each week – about an hour interviewing people generally on the fringes of public consciousness, but nevertheless interesting and quite frequently experts in their field. The questioning style is gentle, but probing, and elicits great, insightful conversations of the type that just aren’t found in more mainstream media these days. I highly recommend it. And the final question they always ask (“what is the one thing we should be talking about that we’re not?”) is genius when it comes to eliciting some unexpected responses.

•            Rory Sutherland – I confess to a bit of both bias and pride here. Rory was a couple of years ahead of me at Christ’s, Cambridge in the mid-80s, and I remember his mop of curly hair well, as I’m pretty sure we lived on adjoining staircases in 3^rd Court. Anyway, Rory is vice-chairman of Ogilvy Group, the ad agency, and has become something of a star in recent years due to his fortnightly column in The Spectator, and his brilliant TED talks and other YouTube appearances.  He’s fascinating and insightful on many subjects, but if I had to be totally banal and extract just one thing I’ve taken from his work, it’s this: considering how to address lots of apparent problems/challenges should be considered from a psychological point of view, not just a logical, economic or engineering point of view. That way, the solutions can often prove cheaper, easier to implement and more effective.  He wouldn’t have spent £6bn on building the HS1 network from London to the coast, he’d have “spent £1bn, by putting great wifi on the trains, then paying some of the world’s finest male and female supermodels to walk up and down them handing out free Chateau Petrus; passengers would have been begging for the trains to be slowed down rather speeded up”. He has more prosaic, but equally interesting examples, some of which can be found in his book: Alchemy: the surprising power of ideas that don’t make sense.  Highly recommended.

•            Jonathan Haidt – Jon is an American social psychologist and academic. He’s a gently spoken, mild, self-described liberal (in the US sense of that term). But he, his books and lectures pack a common sense punch, explaining and exposing many of the Woke and mental health madnesses of the modern, English-speaking world. I recommend The Coddling of the American Mind, written by Jon and Greg Lukianoff.

•          The Delingpod, with James Delingpole – I couldn’t complete my list without including one rabid right-winger, and James and his podcast are my choice. I’m a Special Friend (podcast in-joke). If you know James’ work as a journalist, commentator, TV reviewer or from his occasional TV appearances, you’ll have made your mind up about him. Your opinion will, I suspect, be determined by your political leanings. That said, by no means all his podcast guests are ‘political’ (a recent conversation was with Trinny Woodall), which is one of the reasons it’s so listenable. The others are James’ slightly effete and butter-wouldn’t-melt manner, and the fact his obvious (and admitted) lack of research counterintuitively leads to some natural-feeling and fascinating conversations. Try it.

There we are. I could have included many others, and so I’ll mention a few in despatches: Douglas Murray, Andrew Doyle, Helen Dale and Claire Lehmann (and Quillette in general). If you need a bit of mental stimulation over Christmas, look any of them up.

A letter to Labour: you can win next time...

....but only by changing. Radically. It probably won't happen, given the stranglehold Momentum seems to have on the party, but here's my recipe for avoiding becoming a minor party for years to come.

1. Stop the insults. It's just bad basic psychology to call people who disagree with you stupid, uncaring, selfish, racist, and so on - do you really think that's going to convert them to your side? You'd have thought that would have been obvious from the 2016 referendum, but apparently not. And don't just stop the insults about your potential electors, stop them about the Tories too. Then people may believe you when you talk about 'kinder, gentler' politics.
   
   I can't over-emphasise this point. I've just seen on TV a Labour supporter in her early 20s ask what needs to change next time. She said the electorate needs to examine its collective conscience. The hashtag #notmygovernment is trending on Twitter. There's no trace of humility or wanting to understand people's motivations. Let me help you along - most people care just as much as you do about the less well-off in society, they just think/thought that the people and policies presented would make things worse, not better. It seems to astound some people that alternate viewpoints and analyses to theirs can exist; you need to get over the fact that they do, and that the people who hold them aren't bad people.
   
2. Find a decent leader. Tricky one, this. From what I've seen you've no-one with an ounce of Boris's charisma, so you'll have to settle for someone who at least seems competent. Keir Starmer or John Ashworth probably come closest. If you pick Jess, Rebecca or Angela, you've no chance.
   
3. Get more constructive on the NHS. Ok, so we don't spend quite as much of our GDP as some of our near neighbours on it, but our outcomes are frequently dramatically worse. That's because it's a producer-interest dominated terrible delivery system. You have a unique opportunity here not open to the Tories. They can't tinker with the current model without opening themselves up to all sorts of accusations, and ones that might be believable next time (sell the NHS to the US? I'm crying here). You, however, can quite plausibly propose changes that would move the NHS to an insurance-based, better funded model operated by most of the western European social democratic governments, without any electoral consequences. In fact, it would bear fruit; you'd be seen as developing Bevan's legacy.
   
4. Don't fight the creation of free schools. They're working, as England's march up the PISA international education standards table, and Scotland's march down it, prove. Go with it, embrace it, much as it'll hurt.
   
5. Put forward plausible plans to build lots of housing. And I don't just mean public sector housing, though that has a big part to play. Get to grips with the vagaries, inequities and weird incentives in the planning laws, rules and regulations, and demonstrate that enough can be built to dramatically increase the possibility of people under 35 being able to afford their own place. This is a long term problem, and if the Tories don't grasp the mettle on this in the next 12 months they're going to really vulnerable next time round.
   
6. Properly think about the things that affect people's day-to-day lives. Including:
   
   Transport: it's just not credible to say you'll both slash fares and nationalise the network; people didn't believe you. Instead, show where targeted investment is needed, and the benefits it'll bring. Come across as pragmatic rather than ideological. And don't be anti-car for purely Green reasons - lots of people in the northern places you lost rely on their vehicles to get to work and to exist; they don't have the public transport networks of the big cities. Clobbering the motorist is foolish; incentivise better behaviours instead, like promising to provide a bigger network of e-car charging points for example.
   
   Law and order: yes, you had a point about 'Tory cuts' to the police force, but rather than just make that point, why weren't you as vocal as the Tories about recruitment this time round? Next time, and you'll hate me for saying this, you need to take seriously the first part of Blair's "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" mantra.
   
   And here's a less obvious example of the kind of thinking you need to do: people love being able to sign up to new things on the internet; it's quick and easy. But ever tried to stop a Sky subscription? I hear it's hell. So make it compulsory that if it's possible to sign-up for something online, it's equally possible to de-subscribe online. Create regulatory standards for customer service provided by call centres for all firms of greater than 500 employees, so that folk aren't hanging on the line for 40 minutes merely trying to alter a direct debit amount.  An idea you can steal from the Tories - introduce portable rental deposits between houses (rather than the insane idea of rent controls). Make people feel you're trying to make their lives less hasslesome.
   
   I say it again: be less ideological, and more psychological.
7. Don't go any further down the Social Justice road. Your metropolitan voter base will stay with you if you never again mention, for example, LGBT or trans rights; they're going nowhere. But you'll continue to alienate a large part of the rest of your natural support, because subliminally it sends a message that care more about a comfortable middle class person who happens to be gay, rather than a poor 25 year old with few qualifications who works in Tesco in Middlesbrough. 

So there we are - Seven Super Strategies. Turning around a Tory majority of 78 will be tough, but adopt some of the above, and you might have a chance. Oh, and don't talk about "the many, not the few". The many have spoken - you should listen.

I turned down the chance to be a Brexit Party PPC - here's why

Earlier this week I was offered the chance to be the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate (PPC) for The Brexit Party in Hazel Grove, a constituency that lies between Macclesfield, where I live, and Stockport. However, I turned down that chance. What follows explains why, and how I got to be in that position in the first place.

Let's rewind to the end of April this year. Theresa May, having had her terrible 'deal' soundly defeated in the Commons, was hanging on as Prime Minister, the Tories were both polling in single figures going in the Euro election and seemed hopelessly pathetic and divided, and there was this shiny new party on the scene whose very name captured their raison d'etre - The Brexit Party (BXP).

So, first I became a registered supporter of the BXP, and then a few weeks later, I applied to be a PPC. The application took several hours to complete - it was clear I was going to be heavily screened. Then in June I attended a candidate selection session in London, and a few weeks later heard that I'd been successful.

There existed for a while two pools of PPCs - those who had been allocated a constituency, and those who hadn't; I was in the latter. It's hard to know exactly how many of us there were, but I think there were around 150 of us in the unallocated category. I assumed it was to give the party some room for manoeuvre when it came to withdrawals and the potential emergence of big name candidates. Anyway, apart from attending the first candidate launch event in London at the end of August, I then heard nothing until two days ago. (The purpose of this piece, by the way, is not to criticise the BXP; while I've been frustrated at the lack of contact since June, it comes across as a fast-moving, highly disciplined and well-managed organisation).

Then I was offered Hazel Grove. Some rapid googling told me what I needed to know; while it's currently a Tory-held constituency, it's had a Lib Dem MP in the recent past, and is in the top 20 Lib Dem target seats at the forthcoming election. It's the kind of place where splitting the pro-Brexit vote genuinely risks the election of a non-Tory, and I can't be the person to do that. I know the BXP will field a different candidate (unless a backroom deal is done) and that risk will still exist, but at least it won't be on my conscience.

Had I been offered a northern Labour constituency with a Remainer MP and a miniscule Tory vote, I'd probably have accepted the offer. It would have been quite fun trying to take some votes off the Labour Party. And that's what lies at the heart of my decision - deciding which battle is the biggest one to fight.

I've always been a strong advocate of Brexit - check out my blogs round the time of the referendum in 2016 - mostly for negative reasons rather then positive ones; as an economist I firmly believe that the EU's monetary union will eventually and fatally conflict with its lack of political union, an almighty conflagration will result, and we're best off out before then to avoid the collateral damage. Add in the anti-democratic aspects of the EU, and leaving has always been the most sensible way forward for me. That said, I'm not one-eyed about it; there were always perfectly respectable arguments for remaining if you didn't share my analysis.

However, the course of events from the 2016 referendum until Boris got his revised deal persuaded me there was a bigger battle to find than Brexit - the one for democracy (yes, I know that sounds over-dramatic and a bit pompous, but I have no better words). It was clear that there was a cabal of people in the UK - and I include MPs, Lords, some of the judiciary and the civil service, the BBC and other parts of the media in that - who genuinely and sincerely think that they know best; that they see things with a clarity and knowledge that 'the little people' lack.

The irony is that in their self-assurance that they're doing the right thing for the British people by using every legal and parliamentary trick to try to engineer the UK staying in the EU, they miss the most fundamental truth of all - the cohesion of this country, the sacrifices we make through taxation and the imposition of laws we may disagree with, the acceptance of results when things don't go our way - are all predicated on the basis of one person, one vote. If the sanctity of that arrangement is threatened, you strike at the heart of what keeps us together. I'm not just talking about noisy political activists here. I mean the millions of people who do dull jobs to pay the taxes and provide the social fabric upon which this country depends. Piss that lot off and while you might not have a short term problem (they're not the sort to riot or go on strike), you're sure as hell storing up a long term one for yourself.

So yes, back in May this year I thought with the Tories failing as badly as they were, with a Prime Minister who appeared to have had her personality surgically removed (it was an interview she did with Jonathan Agnew on Test Match Special a couple of years ago, rather than anything 'political', that persuaded me of her utter hopelessness), and with our democratic tradition under threat, the best contribution I could make to putting things right was to become a Brexit Party PPC. At the time, my fear for the future of democracy was greater than the fear of a Corbyn-led Labour government - I thought that if the British people were stupid enough to vote for Corbyn, as long as they were doing so with both Brexit and the democratic principle secured, that was up to them.

But times change, and most people reading this will know the course of events over the last few months; Boris was elected leader of the Conservatives, he's managed to renegotiate an agreement that the EU said couldn't be reopened, and the Commons has cynically stymied it, and every other course of action that looks vaguely like Brexit. I still find it massively frustrating that Brexit hasn't happened, but I am at least now convinced that the shaken-up and turned-around Tories respect and want to implement the result of the 2016 referendum.

There are two other things that are relevant. First, I think the BXP are wrong to oppose Boris's deal. Of course it's not perfect, but if longstanding Brexit advocates like Daniel Hannan, Steve Baker, and even Arron Banks can live with it, then that's good enough for me. The role of the BXP should now be to fight Labour where the Tories can't win, and keep the Tories honest as we go into the next phase of negotiations with the EU. Second, the Labour Party hasn't changed; it's standing in this election on a whole raft of insanities, whether that be the proposal to appropriate 10% of the share value of all companies over 250 employees, or the raft of wealth taxes we're likely to see. Frankly, continuing to argue about the best kind of Brexit in those circumstances is like arguing over what colour to paint the front door when the house is on fire.

So the biggest battle to fight now is not Brexit, nor even - I hope, and the Tories better not let me down on this, democracy - but stopping Labour getting anywhere near power. Their policies are punitive, ill thought-through, massively counterproductive and frankly, dangerous. The tactical voting we need to see is not anti-Brexit coalitions, but anti-Labour coalitions, even if that means voting Lib Dem MPs where the Tories are highly unlikely to win. I know there will be plenty of people reading this who will disagree with that. However, just as Boris's deal with the EU isn't perfect, I'm not saying a Conservative government would be perfect. But to go back to my theme; we need to decide which is the biggest battle to fight, and who's the enemy to fear the most. And those of us who oppose that foe must act as one, even if it means fighting alongside those with whom we have differences.

So there's my - cliche alert - "journey". From outraged and worried, to acting on what I felt was a call to action, and back to ordinary voter in next month's election. My political fires have been stoked however - I'm just not sure yet where they will take me next.

Time to end the madness

You might think, given its title, that this piece is about Brexit. Truth is I'm a bit bored by all that at the moment, and to coin a phrase, just want to get Brexit done. So no, this post is about running, cycling and me - its original purpose, going back the eight or so years to when it started.

It's never wise of course to make hasty decisions after significant moments or events, but what I'm about to describe has been coming on for a year, and was cemented by what happened at the weekend, which I'll cover in a moment. The basic point though is that I've decided to give up challenges that are hard and painful, merely for the sake of being hard and painful. 

To go back to August/September 2018, I did the 'Cent Cols', multiple days of very hard riding in the Pyrenees. By day 8 or so, I was so tired, it was hard to even get out of bed in the morning, though I did, and carried on riding. But the exhaustion was great and one particular saddle sore painful, both of which took the edge off the magnificent scenery and great overall experience. It was then that a few things dawned, or at least became more sharply into focus: first, these 'leisure' activities should be enjoyable. Some people talk about 'Type 1' enjoyment (experiencing pleasure in the moment something is happening) and 'Type 2' enjoyment (experiencing delayed pleasure after the event).  Some folk are happy to get very little Type 1, providing Type 2 compensates, which for me, for many years, it did.

But then it stopped compensating, or largely did. Type 2 enjoyment can come through either or both of a self-contained feeling of achievement, or the kudos you get with others. I didn't get, or felt that I needed, either any more. I wasn't going to shun them of course, but I wanted more Type 1 - enjoyment in the moment itself.

The next thing I realised is that I'm lucky to be blessed with a fairly efficient aerobic system, and certainly one that's enough to make me reasonably competitive generally, and pretty good for my age. And the last thing came to me was that I find it easier to be competitive, than to pretend that finishing places and rankings are of no importance.

Despite all the above, after good reports in October last year from a guy at work, I still entered - along with my son - an event called the Atlantic Coast Challenge; 3 marathons in 3 days down the south west coastal path in Cornwall, finishing at Land's End. The event was last weekend. I didn't finish it. In fact, I didn't start day 3 at all, as all the above dominated what was going on in my head the whole time.

What happened was as follows. Day 1 was horrendously windy; brutal, battering gusts that could - and did - stop you dead in your tracks, make you have to battle merely to stay on the path, and at one amusing point support me leaning forward over 45 degrees. It sapped your strength just as much as the running, and Seb found it unbelievably tough. The alternately rocky, sandy, sharp, and soft terrain, and the near 3000 feet of ascent contributed to that as well of course. It took Seb and me 2 hours 45 mins to get to the halfway point, at which juncture he decided that he was to have any hope of starting Day 2 he should withdraw at that point; it was a wise decision, as cramp and blisters had already set in. Meanwhile, I cracked on with the second half, moving up from 101st position on the day to 35th at the end, out of 190 starters. My second half-marathon time was top 10 on the day.

On Day 2 Seb and I decided that he should start with the earlier group, and me with the later group of starters, and we calculated I should catch him around mile 20, and we should finish together. I decided to race the day as quickly as possible, and catch him up as quickly as I could. Unfortunately there were several on beach/off beach options around the mile 20 point, inevitably we opted for different ones, so we didn't see each other. That meant however that I completed the run in 4 hours 40, enough to make me 15th on the day, and first UK over-50 finisher (I was beaten by a very tall Dutch policeman in the overall over-50 category!).

I paid a heavy price for that though. There was another 3000 feet of climbing on Day 2. The going up isn't the problem though, it's the coming down. I'm sufficiently confident and light on my feet to descend really quickly, no matter what the surface is, including rocks. That's great, but a) one day I'll be too cocky and fall and hurt myself, and b) your legs generally, and quads in particular, take massive impacts, which you get away with in a one day race, but not more. I woke on Sunday barely able to walk because of muscle soreness, and Seb, who heroically finished Saturday despite doing 1.5 miles more than he needed to because of a routing error (he got lost for a bit), was similarly broken. If our lives had depended on it, we could have grovelled our way through the 30 mile course, which had even more ascent and descent than the previous two days, but I suspect it would have taken 10 hours, as it did a good number of the participants.

So we packed up and left Cornwall, and I spent my birthday driving from Cornwall to Macclesfield via Shrewsbury. It was ok as it happens - the sun shone, there were no hold-ups, we had some good chat (and part of the point of the weekend had been to spend some father-son time), and we had a well-deserved lunch of the unhealthiest things we could find on the McD's menu.

I'm sad we didn't do all three days of the event, but I don't regret Sunday morning's decision at all. I genuinely don't think it would have been much fun, either Type 1 or Type 2.

Which brings me back to the point of this post: time to end the madness. There'll be no more daft events for the sake of it; there's nothing left I want to prove to myself in terms of my ability to either take pain, or to keep buggering on. There'll be plenty more road and trail half-marathons and 10k's I hope, and probably the occasional marathon too, but my aim is to approach them more competitively than in the past. It's time to stop the mindless slog, dismiss the fantasy of running a 100 mile ultramarathon, and try to do as well as possible in my age category for shorter events. And the cycling will continue too. That won't have any competitive element, but the prospect of seven days of hilly riding next September will be enough to keep me focused through next summer.

There we are then; me, me, me. Sorry. I want to finish by going back to the weekend, and acknowledging the guts it took Seb to get through Saturday. He still looks like the American footballer he was at university - muscled and powerful; to get his 90kg frame round over 27 miles of that course was a sterling effort. However, next time he and I hit the countryside together, I think it'll be for one of our traditional two-day hikes with a decent pub and B&B in the middle...altogether more civilised...

Dirty Vegas

Ok, I should say at the outset that Vegas is not somewhere I’d ever have chosen to go of my own volition. Two things, however, persuaded me to give it a go. First, the lovely missus declared she wanted to spend her Special Birthday there. Much as I love her, even that wouldn’t have been enough usually. But several friends and work colleagues whose opinions I respect used so many superlatives about the place that I thought 'what the hell'.

Now, as with the rest of the trip, we packed a lot in. A night show, a day and night on the Strip, a full day at the Grand Canyon (which is exempt from everything that follows), the Fremont Street experience - zip wire, Heart Attack Grill, various freaky street performers, etc. - and a helicopter flight. Now, the activities themselves were fun - the helicopter, the KISS Crazy Golf, Raiding the Rock Vault, and so on. But as for the rest of it - oh my God, I found it truly hateful.

First, the casinos. Dark, confusing, noisy, poorly lit, cigarette smoke palls everywhere (indoor smoking still being legal here). As for the people, I’ll come to them. But the environment - just disgusting. Quite why any non-avid gamblers would choose to spend time there is a mystery to me. 

Next, the punters. I saw three main groups. First, the actual punters in the casinos. For the most part, these were sad, pallid, alternately obese or hollow-eyed addict types. I’d be happy to bet their average life expectancy doesn’t exceed that of Somalia. Second, the visitors, those spending their days doing the strip. Aside from the relatively normal overseas tourists, there were fat girls in barely-there bikini tops holding foot-long daiquiris; redneck groups of good ol’ boys, barely able to stand after drinking too many giant size beer cans; families with small kids that just left me thinking ‘why?!’. Third, the hustlers - the topless cowboys, the virtually-topless Mardi Gras girls and the cartoon characters all vying to get their picture taken with you and lift $20 from your wallet as a result. Oh, and the oriental grannies handing out cards for escort girls; bizarre.

And then the crowds and design of the Strip. Admittedly we were there on a public holiday weekend, so the numbers were probably swelled. But the walkways round the hotels, the sheer volume of bodies, and the vast width of the road itself just meant getting anywhere was a nightmare. A hotel that looked within touching distance from the hotel window turned out to be a half hour walk, or shuffle rather. 

Talking of hotels, they’re expensive, impersonal, crowded and designed to wring every last dollar from you. It’s a transparent business model, designed to maximise short value even if it leaves guests pissed off, knowing that when you leave town there’ll be another mug along shortly to take your place.

It was at least relatively cool on our full day on the Strip. It must be an even worse version of hell on a typical hot day in Vegas. But that was the only redeeming feature of our daytimes there, other than the specific activities. I wasn’t a fan, as you might be able to tell. It’s full of people having what they think is fun, but in reality is sordid, the most expensive kind of cheap possible, pointlessly hedonistic and spiritually valueless. I won’t be going back. Other opinions are available of course; you might love it...but I don’t recommend it. Go see one of the other parts of the US that can truly justify a transatlantic trip; a great city, the Appalachians, the Deep South, whatever, but not Vegas, baby.

Dumbfounded by truths

I’m going to write two blogs about our recent trip to the USA. I use ‘trip’ rather than ‘holiday’ advisedly, as we packed too much in for it to be something that could be defined as rest. That’s not a bad thing by the way.

But yes, two blogs. Neither will be a tedious diary. This one will be about the unexpected contrasts and pleasures we discovered. And the other will be about Las Vegas. 

I hadn’t been to the US since 2001 prior to the last two weeks, and even then it was a only a five day work jaunt to San Francisco and Silicon Valley. In the UK over that time we’ve seen the widespread adoption of American-originating work expressions (“Reach out”? Bugger off more like), the adoption of nauseating mission statements by even public sector bodies for God’s sake, and the over-commercialisation of just about everything. I expected the US to have developed along those lines, but be even more so.

Other expectations or preconceptions: to be regularly irritated by unnecessarily loud Americans, exhortations to “have a nice day” to be manifestly insincere, and to be met with the cold impersonality that characterises just about any big city in our visits to Chicago, San Francisco and so on. Just about all of that proved to be completely and pleasingly wrong.

Some examples to illustrate my points. We took two internal flights in the US, from Kansas City to Las Vegas, and from Vegas to San Francisco, with those well-known airlines, Spirit and Frontier respectively. Both are US budget airlines. The contrast between those experiences, and those  I've had recently on Ryanair, and EasyJet to a lesser extent, couldn’t be greater. At one level, it was the service provided - efficient, pleasant, no-nonsense on the one hand, but on the other no pressure selling, none of the customary brusqueness of the cabin crew, certainly on Ryanair, a decent amount of legroom, and little sense of the airline attempting to screw every last cent out of you. At another level, it was the passengers. Maybe it’s just my recent experiences on Ryanair, but the behaviour and civility levels were markedly better than in the UK. No fighting to get bags in or out of the overhead lockers, no passive-aggressive competition to get on or off the aircraft, and a low level hum of conversation rather than feeling like you’re unwittingly part of an extended stag party.

And then the people. They are, overwhelmingly (in the sense of the great majority rather than I was overwhelmed), lovely. A common-ish language helps of course, but each and every engagement felt warm and genuine. Of course many of the folk we spoke to were in the hospitality or service sectors, where you kind of expect that, but beyond that, state employees like Amtrak employees and lavatory attendants were helpful, often volunteering help and information over and above what was asked and might be reasonably expected of them. One of my favourite moments of the last fortnight was when I checked with a Kansas City bus driver that his wasn’t the right bus to board, which he confirmed and then pulled away. The bus had done no more than 10 yards though when he stopped, beckoned to me, and opened the bus doors. I peered up at him. “You talk funny” he said, and then closed the doors again with a big grin. I don’t think he caught my “No, you talk funny” in response.

And it was the same everywhere we went. Even the slightest effort at real conversation, rather than just pleasantries, was met with smiles and engagement. It was great. Americans are great. It was a pleasure to meet and be among them. 

And I found the general environment surprisingly understated. Logos, announcements, conversations, advertisements, were all just a toned down a notch from where I expected them to be, and arguably, less in-your-face than in the UK these days. The only things that were as large, noisy and powerful in reality as in my mind were their rather fabulous pick-ups and agricultural machinery, particularly in Illinois. Las Vegas was an exception to everything I’ve just said, but I’ll cover that horror show separately, as mentioned.

I’m not going to cover American politics or culture. That’s not what we were there for particularly, though we learned a lot about our host cities by going to museums and on walking tours. But what did come across was a sense of the famed American positivity- have a go, well done you!, what’s the worst than could happen?, etc. There's clearly a much stronger sense of aspiration, and admiration of those who've succeeded, than in the UK. I rather liked all that. If I were 30 years younger etc. Though I’d trade mercilessly on my accent and use far more long words than would be strictly necessary. 

And finally, sorry, can’t avoid it, just a few words on some of our destinations. Chicago - cool, sophisticated, clean, interesting. Would happily live there if it weren’t for their mental winters. St. Louis - bit of a hidden gem. San Francisco - not nearly as afflicted by the homeless problem as I’d be led to believe, laid back (no surprise there), buzzy, architecturally fascinating.  Napa Valley - beautiful, moneyed, wish I’d had my bike there (though a blood-red Ford Mustang wasn’t a bad second choice mode of transport).  Grand Canyon - no words beyond phenomenal, in the original sense.

So there we are; our America outside Las Vegas. More on that story next....

Deeds not words

Graeme Archer published a lovely piece in UnHerd yesterday called 'This age of semiotics is breaking us' (I urge you to read it if you haven't already - link here), towards the end of which his father features, in a very positive light. 

It got me thinking about an aspect of my father's life and character too.  As well as Graeme's piece, I was also reminded of it when I walked past the new statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in St. Peter's Square, Manchester, and specifically the inscription behind the statue...

Now, this is not because my father was a early-adopter male feminist (he died in 2010 aged 75, so this would have been very unusual for a man of his age, still less believable once you read on....), and the context of the suffragettes' use of the motto was different to his, but nevertheless he adopted it as his own, and it became a lesson that's stuck with me. 

During the 1970s my father had two quite separate lives outside the family home. By day he was a lecturer in agriculture, working at Reaseheath College (of The Archers fame, and beyond) for nigh on 40 years. That was what paid the bills.  By night and by weekend he was a Special Constable, rising to become a Divisional Commander in that branch of the police.  That was his true love.

As most people know, most parts of the British police in the 1970s weren't very enlightened, particularly in their treatment of pretty much any minority group. Like many other towns, Crewe (our home town) had a reasonable size Afro-Caribbean community, members of which were known as 'NWCs' by the local police, a term my father picked up and started using. I won't explain it - it's composed of some very bad words, and I suspect you can have a shrewd guess at them anyway.

So that's how my father referred to black people at home. Even in the mid-70s, we kids knew there was something suspect about it.  Then something happened slightly out of the blue.  Reaseheath gave some places on residential agriculture courses to a group of Nigerian students.  After the language used at home, I expected my father to be somewhat hostile to this development; to teach them if required, but little more.

That wasn't what happened.  He wasn't needed to teach them in their first term as things turned out, but he heard that they were struggling to adapt to aspects of life in the UK, pastoral care in those days being a bit less developed than it is now. So in his own time, he took groups of them to a local bank, introduced them to the branch manager, and sat with them while they went through the formalities of opening accounts. "Poor buggers had no idea how to get cash or pay for things" he explained. A simple, if time-consuming deed, that materially improved the lives of those Nigerian students.

And that wasn't a one-off. Whether through his work as a special constable, or mentoring GCSE-age school kids in local secondary schools after retirement, or taking the 'old biddies', as he called them, in his street to the supermarket (he was 74 at the time), he regularly did things for no reward. And while his language and attitudes moderated considerably as he got older, he could still be judgmental of other people's lifestyles and attitudes - in private.  The point, however, was though he may have been judgmental, it didn't appear to lessen his humanity; it didn't stop him doing good, to use an old-fashioned expression.

I think we can draw on that.  Too much do I sense these days - particularly from the left - a view that if someone holds a particular opinion then there's no hope for them, they're morally bankrupt, they're in the basket of deplorables.  Simple courtesies, let alone acts of kindness, become out of the question. That seems a shame, to put it mildly - it's probably a vain and naive hope, but at the start of 2019 it would good to think we could start treating each other with a bit of humanity again, regardless of our views and affiliations.  Let's pay a little more attention to people's deeds, and slightly less to their words.