1941 in review

I had second thoughts about filling in gaps in this blog with quotations from the Daily Mirror compendium which I received as a birthday present. It would be hypocritical to do so after complaining about the continuing, virtually continuous, programming of World War Two features on at least two Freeview channels.

Now, though, seems a good time to review the reporting of 1941 as a whole as reflected in the selected front pages by the (anonymous) compiler. 

There was no doubt that the Mirror was wholly behind the war effort and the coalition government. Although as strongly Labour-supporting then as it is now, it is difficult to find any criticism of Churchill and the Conservatives or any other party for that matter. Hyper-patriotic, the Mirror made free with the epithets "Huns", "Japs" and "Wops" in its headlines which  a present-day editor may have had second thoughts over. The tone was set in the first sentence of the lead article: "The New Year will bring decisive events in the war against Hitler and his puppet Mussolini." There is criticism of New Year Honours as consolation for several worthies who had been given public appointments but then had to be relieved of them because they were not up to the job. There was no criticism of the DSO for Mountbatten who was clearly still considered a hero for his command of HMS Kelly. It was to be some time after the war that accounts by officers and men who had served under him revealed his deficiencies, which culminated in the disastrous Dieppe Raid.

Throughout the year, the Mirror reported on progress on three fronts, naval action, bombing raids in Europe and the regaining of ground in North Africa. However, it was not afraid to report Nazi advances or the effects of German bombing, such as the Swansea Blitz in February. 

The big events of the year were covered. In May, Rudolf Hess landed in Scotland. The Mirror was in no doubt that his peace proposal was a big con. Later that month, the sinking of the Bismarck was front-page news. In June, Hitler tore up the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact and, along with Axis allies, turned on Russia. A Mirror leader commented on American ambivalence. Hitler's avowed intent to strike at "International Jewish Bolshevism" struck a chord with the German and Irish communities of the US. President Roosevelt was however a friend of Britain. Later in the year, Stalin was to call for the West to open a second front as Russia, in great hardship, struggled to resist German pressure. 

A constant preoccupation was rationing, and in particular the food ration.

Two deaths caught my attention in a November edition. Frank Pick was the man credited with creating London Underground's corporate identity. The Mirror felt his contribution to government propaganda, as a former Director-General of the Ministry of Information, was a more significant headline. There was also  the death by suicide of the 24-year-old Mary Clement Davies, daughter of Clement Davies, MP for Montgomeryshire. He had, along with Clement Attlee, prepared the ground for unseating Neville Chamberlain after the Norway debate. Davies was to become leader of the Liberals after the war. One wonders whether the personal tragedy contributed to Davies's alcoholism.

Sadly, the collection of Mirror front pages finishes with the edition of Monday 29th December. This was filled with reports of the war in Europe and the Pacific, seemingly two steps forward and one step back. Doubtless there was an end-of-year message to come on 31st, looking back on Britain's survival against the odds in 1941, and with hopes for the turning of the tide which was to come in 1942. But I shall just have to imagine it.

Dr John Oldershaw

I missed the centenary of my alma mater, Oldershaw School, opened in September 1920. However, the CBE announced for its founder one hundred years ago today gives the excuse for some catching up.   John Oldershaw MD, who practised medicine in Liverpool, became a magistrate and alderman in the then county borough of Wallasey. Biographical details on the Web are hard to find, but he was clearly well-to-do as well as public spirited in order to found the new school at a time of economic privation. He must also have had some influential friends as donors, and perhaps some parents paid fees, but I do remember being told that Oldershaw was one of the first secondary schools in the country to be truly open to all. It was only later that it was taken on by Wallasey Corporation, presumably as pressure on public funds eased and the aspirations of the Education Acts of 1918 and 1921 (detailed here) could begin to be met. I remember that one of the staff at the time I joined the student body was J.A. Davidson who had been an early pupil and could be identified on a 1922 school photograph, one of those which lined the walls of a school corridor.

The wikipedia entry is regrettably scant, but I can add the names of two distinguished former pupils. Colin Morris made his name as the author of a Whitehall farce, Reluctant Heroes, but went on to become a pioneering TV presenter and producer. He donated a typescript of Reluctant Heroes to the school library, and I hope it is still there. (Francis Ernest) Martin Jenkins was the star of the school plays when I was at Oldershaw. He went on to become a stage director (giving actor Brian Cox an early starring role as Ibsen's Brand) and BBC radio producer, before going freelance. He is also an expert on trams and tramways.

Madame de Pompadour

 After last Sunday's dramatisation of sex in high places on BBC-TV, it is appropriate to remark on the 300th anniversary of Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, marquise de Pompadour, influential mistress of Louis XV, King of France.

Completing GWR electrification: wishful thinking?

On the basis of an item in recently published minutes of a Network Rail board meeting, the Evening Post headlined yesterday's edition "New hope for electric rail line". The board had been told that the unit cost of the projected electrification between Northampton and Sheffield was below European rates on a like-for-like basis. Since the ostensible reason for the majority Conservative government cancelling the electrification initiated by the coalition (a decision announced after a general election, it should be remembered) was the cost of the work, the Post draws the conclusion that there is now no objection to the project being resumed.

However, Grayling's excuse always seemed specious. Yes, there had been cost overruns on the English section, but these were largely due to a faulty strategy which had been abandoned and there was no reason to believe they would be repeated in South Wales. There must have been other reasons for the cancellation. 

By all means let us put pressure on the current Secretary of State for Transport (Grant Shapps) using this latest information as a lever, but remember this i the Department which drastically pruned the HS2 project. I am not getting my hopes up.

Book recommendation: "Sultan of Swing" by Michael Crick

 If politics are of no interest to you whatsoever, then this very readable biography of David Butler is not for you. Written with the cooperation of the subject, but not uncritical, it reveals that there is more to Butler than the invention of the swingometer. He did not coin the term "psephologist", however. Crick goes into the history of the word, including a surprising link to the Inklings. Butler did give wider currency to the term, though, including introducing it to America.

The big revelation to me was that Butler was more than an expert in front of the cameras on election nights. Together with the formidable Grace Wyndham Goldie, he defined the presentation and to some extent the production of the BBC results programmes. 

For me, another item of interest was the light that Butler's reminiscences shone on the mature thinking of Winston Churchill, with whom he had two long conversations. 

Boxing Day

In lieu of a Christmas Box, I tip my hat to the people who collect the refuse and recycling for Neath Port Talbot. In addition to the year-round standard service, someone on the round in Skewen occasionally makes sure that my waste caddy is put back within the front yard after their collection when storms threaten and are liable to blow the caddy away.

-o-

There are hundreds, probably thousands of TV and movie dramas about Christmas Day and Advent, but as far as I know, no screenwriter has tackled the remaining days of Christmas - except perhaps for adaptations of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Boxing Day offers some dramatic possibilities, being one of the days in the year when domestic violence rises. I have toyed with the idea of writing a Boxing Day scenario of which a family split is one of the two narrative strands, both being resolved in a hopeful ending. It needs filling out, though, and inspiration has deserted me.

Absent friends

 My cousin Chris Poole and his wife, who initially promoted his career as a Santa Claus, gave me permission to use any of the many photos in his gallery before she died. Not long after, he too slipped away quietly. So this photo brings mixed emotions, of sadness that they are not still with us but also happy memories. 

It is surely better to illustrate a Christmas day blog with the picture of a real person I knew, someone who enjoyed his annual impersonation, rather than with a stock photo. And it really does exude goodwill.

But once again, there are too many absent friends among the living. Once again, travel restrictions prevent me seeing either  of my daughters over the Christmas period, not to mention my brother or sister and their families. So I sympathise with those in a similar position or worse. Let us hope this pandemic will be behind us soon.

A Happy Christmas to you all.

Madagascar, an unlucky country

 On top of years of drought as weather patterns off East Africa have shifted, Madagascar suffered a shipwreck this week which claimed at least 85 lives. On top of that,  a helicopter sent to inspect the disaster crashed. Only two survivors have been reported.

You have a bloody cheek, Mr Putin

 You annexed major parts of Ukraine, which had been given her independence by your predecessor. You attempt to prevent freedom of navigation in the Black Sea. You had shot down an airliner, killing 282 people including young families and several world-renowned AIDS experts. You sent agents on assassination missions to Britain on at least two occasions, and probably more, endangering British lives, taking one totally innocent, in the process. This after we welcome children of your plutocrats to be educated in our private schools and allow your people to invest in our sport and even our political parties.

And you have the gall to accuse us of expansionism and provocation? You are rather like the footballer who protested to the referee: "He assaulted my boot with his face, ref.".

[Later] Russia's latest adventure is to send mercenaries into Mali.

EU moving slowly towards anti-money-laundering regulation

https://epthinktank.eu/2021/12/22/proposal-for-a-regulation-to-fight-money-laundering-and-counter-terrorist-financing-eu-legislation-in-progress/ refers. Is it too much to hope that this will largely be mirrored in the UK? 

More expired vaccines destroyed in Africa

 In this case, the recipient nation is hardly to blame. According to today's news story, the Covid-19 vaccines had only two weeks' viability left when Covax despatched them to Nigeria. The Nigerians managed to administer almost half the doses in the short time they had available.

Questions have to be asked about the supply chain. Were they held up within the WHO, or was a donor nation at fault? Today's TV newsreel showed that the product was AstraZeneca's and that the labelling was in English. That might indicate the source as the USA or the UK. We know that the UK has virtually abandoned the AstraZeneca product in favour of Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. On the other hand, English is a lingua franca in international commerce. 

Whether or not the batch in question was belatedly dumped by the Johnson government, the prime minister and the relevant departmental ministers need to be questioned about their donation policy, just as soon as government returns in the New Year.

Events: then, now and in the future

Sarah Dunant, in a recent "Point of View" on Radio 4 describes how she came across a set of newspapers from late 1941 lining a chest in a second-hand shop. She remarks that those on the home front in those days had only BBC radio and such newspapers to keep them informed.  The tone was striking, she says: sober, factual and does not ratchet up the sensation. She may have been fortunate in the newspapers she found; they were clearly broadsheets of the time. The Daily Mirror was quite capable of stirring emotions,  and I guess the Daily Sketch was the same. But the basic point remains that the reporting was factual and the balance of stories was not skewed. She contrasts this with the decline through "if it bleeds, it leads" of print journalism to "the lies it tells, the more it sells" of clickbait in Fleet Street online and the parameters set by Facebook and Twitter. 

What struck me most about this particular broadcast was Ms Dunant's coda, which began "I am resigned to dying soon". She is nearly ten years younger than I, so, unless she was thinking of "soon" in geological terms, I guess this must be an intimation of an unwelcome diagnosis. It certainly got me wondering as to how many more Christmases I will see if I survive this one, not to mention the pandemic and those zoonoses which are to come. 

That same week, BBC Four broadcast the Sky at Night programme's review of the year. Hitherto, I have taken on board the long time-scales of space explorations but this time it hit me that I may not see the results of the extended Juno mission (Europa fly-by in 2025), BepiColombo (not due to orbit Mercury until 2026) and maybe not even those from the James Webb Space Telescope, due to be launched soon. 

Regrettably, I may not even find time to read one of Sarah Dunant's books, but at least there should be one or two more Points Of View to enjoy and enlighten.

Royal Mail trouble

Throughout England, mail is piling up in Royal Mail centres. The trouble is particularly acute in the Midlands and North, it seems.  From my own experience (my sister had to go in person to a Solihull sorting office to retrieve an overdue letter of some importance from me early in the year) it has built up from the start of the pandemic. However, if the Mail had still been under public control, one imagines that the effective direction of labour which has driven the vaccine roll-out could have been applied to the problem. 

If only Vince Cable had stuck to Liberal Democrat guns and insisted on the public retaining a 51% stake when the Royal Mail was privatised!

Merkel to turn down Austrian freebies

 Former German chancellor Angela Merkel and her husband have been regulars at the Salzburg Festival for many years. Her Austrian counterpart has offered her, as a gift from his nation, free access to any Festival event she chooses for the rest of her life. However, it is reported that she has expressed gratitude for the offer but will continue to pay her own way.

I don't suppose she will accept free holidays from millionaire supporters, either.

Rail travellers punished once again

 Deferring the rise in regulated train fares by a couple of months is scant compensation for a percentage increase greater than that of average earnings. The government persists in using the discredited RPI to calculate the annual adjustment, without regard to the distortions that creates.

Taking control of our borders?

 Last Wednesday, a German court found guilty of a political assassination a man said to be a Russian agent. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. In Britain, at least two incidents involving murder or attempted murder of political opponents to the Putin regime have gone unpunished. The agents, who in both cases put innocent British citizens at risk, were allowed to return home even though the Russian involvement was apparent at an early stage.

Germany was an EU member last time I looked.

If the Tories bleed, their story leads

 Helen Morgan's triumph in Oswestry and district yesterday clearly has to be the first post of the day here. The headlines elsewhere will be of the verdict on Boris Johnson and speculation as to how long he can last. My guess is that he will be the last person in the country to realise that the glitter has come off his image and that it will take an emergency meeting of the 1922 Committee to shift him.

So here are a few sidelights on the result. First, it reinforces the observation that there is no need for a Women's Party. There was already a female majority on the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party before Helen takes the oath on 5th January. I make the new ratio of Lib Dem men to women at Westminster as 4:9.

Secondly, there was not only a swing of 34% from Conservatives to Liberal Democrats in North Shropshire, there was also a swing of over 24% from Labour to Liberal Democrats. It must worry the Labour National Executive that Labour, who were the challengers here in 2019, should have fallen away so badly. If the sole aim of the voters had been to hasten the departure of Boris Johnson, logically Labour, as second party at the general election, should have been the beneficiaries. 

Finally, just a bit of fun: plugging those crude swings into UKElect produces a forecast for the result of a general election if held tomorrow of Labour 250, Lib. Dem. 219, Conservative 112, SNP 44, DUP 8, Sinn Fein 7, Plaid Cymru 3, Independent 2, SDLP 2, Green 1, Alliance (NI) 1, Speaker 1. 

Our mop-haired Goebbels

Most of us know the dictum that if you tell a lie often enough, no matter how big it is, it becomes the truth. Boris Johnson is well-known by now for distorting the facts when it suits him. From his time sending fictitious reports from Brussels, which eventually saw him fired by the newspaper which employed him, to claiming Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe as one of our agents and thus sealing her fate as an Iranian hostage, his lies have been very damaging. Rather less damaging to our national interests, more to the public's trust in government, has been his prevarication over the social meetings at the heart of Whitehall when the rest of the country was mandated to avoid contact with others.

All of the foregoing have been exposed, though rather too late in most cases. That is not true of another one of his favourites which he spouted twice at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday, that membership of the EU would prevent us from mounting our own independent vaccination programme. This is not true. There is nothing in the Lisbon Treaty, no directive, no rule nor any convention, which forbids a member state of the Union from acquiring vaccine and delivering it to her citizens as she sees fit. Leaving the European Medicines Agency conferred no advantages, only the disadvantages of not being able to influence medicines policy across the continent and the loss of the EMA's England HQ with its roster of high-quality jobs. To be generous to the prime minister, he may be confusing the EMA with a separate initiative. Member states were invited to join the cumbersome EU Vaccines Strategy, but there was no compulsion to do so. 

There were many occasions on which the Leader of the Opposition could have put the prime minister right. But Keir Starmer is playing the populist card, not willing to say anything which might hint at disapproval of Brexit. It is left to Labour back-benchers not yet forced into the Starmer mould to call for a Brexit impact assessment, as Fleur Anderson did this afternoon.

It could be argued that this particular lie is now irrelevant, as we have well and truly left the EU. But Johnson is still using it as part of his personal propaganda, implying that it was down to his leadership that we had a vaccine programme. A few seconds' thought must show this to be fallacious. The vaccines did not come from nowhere. The two early leaders in the field came out through preliminary research and the early (December 2019) recognition of the danger of SARS-CoV-2 on the part respectively of a high-tech company set up by two immigrants in Germany and a university research laboratory in England, a lab. which, it should be pointed out, often had to scratch around for public funds. If it had been down to Johnson alone, the history of PPE procurement leads one to think that we would still be waiting for product. It is the government contention that they did not realise they had an emergency on their hands until the second week in March 2020 when they hurriedly threw money at favoured companies without thoroughly checking their ability to come up with the goods.

Clear water, with a drop of poison

 Thanks to Nigel Rees, of Radio 4's Quote Unquote for clearing up the source of one of my favourite chess sayings by directing me to a discussion at https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/sources.html. The epigram as published by Irving Chernev in The Bright Side of Chess is "Lasker's style is like clear limpid water - with a drop of poison in it!". I had thought that the subject of the quip was Akiba Rubinstein, one of the great might-have-beens of chess, but I can quite see how it fitted the style of Emanuel Lasker. Finally, Edward Winter nails the original author as Jacques Mieses, one of the first grandmasters, a naturalised Briton and a wit. For the record, the German original is "Laskers Stil ist klares Wasser mit einem Tropfen Gift darin, der es opalisieren lässt."

One could apply the same epigram to certain authors, with or without the "opalising" bit. Christopher Isherwood and Franz Kafka come to mind.

Mr Rees was unable (yet?) to help with another quotation which has been gnawing at me. I have a dim recollection of a distinguished actuary at some function defining his profession as metaphorically waiting until the battle is over, then coming down from the hills to bayonet the wounded. If any accountant or auditor is reading this, could they help provide a source? 

Electric vehicles are not pollution-free

 Under the dogmatic headlines "electric cars a dead-end diversion" and "Electric cars are no answer to pollution", an article in the current railwatch magazine begins:

The benefits of switching to electric vehicles to clean up our toxic air were given plenty of attention at COP26, said Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation.

However, evidence shows that electric cars still emit PM2.5 particles, the most worrying form of pollution for humans.

I would guess that the particles are abraded from brake pads and tyres, and thus a problem for any type of vehicle no matter what the method of propulsion. This is surely not insoluble. A change in the materials used could produce particles which cause less harm. 

The loss of harmful oxides, particularly those of nitrogen, is surely a positive result from replacing propulsion by internal combustion with electric power.

Just one more midnight?

Inspired by John Donne's poem, I have regularly taken to musing on St Lucy's Day ahead of the true winter solstice, on the subject of the turning year. Two years ago, it marked a true crisis, the general election which decided whether the UK would thrive peacefully in the EU or fractiously decline outside it. Last year, although we were on the downward path, I was somewhat hopeful. 

Once again, we seem to be at a political turning point. Tomorrow sees a debate in which the Conservative troops may revolt, requiring the Opposition to save the government's fresh anti-Covid measures. Later in the week, the North Shropshire by-election will deliver a judgment on prime minister Johnson and Tory corruption.

UK economic recovery falters

 Third quarter 2021 economic data show the EU as a whole, and France, Germany and Italy in particular, growing faster than the UK. We were slightly ahead of the USA. France is already back to pre-Covid levels.

Trust the voters

 Voters do not need to be told how to get rid of an odious government. By-elections this week, up and down England, have demonstrated that they will support the candidate, be they Labour, Liberal Democrat  or even Green, most likely to unseat a Conservative. Conservative Campaign Headquarters (formerly Central Office) takes note of local election results as well as their own private opinion research, so will surely shortly be handing Boris Johnson the proverbial revolver and injunction to do the right thing. One trusts that, with possibly three years to go before the next general election, senior figures in the party will advise a return to traditional Conservative values of probity and financial responsibility. The new PM must also address the social concerns with which the Johnson cabal was out of touch right from the date of its accession.

So pre-election pacts with other parties are not needed. Indeed, they may even be counter-productive as the Liberal Democrat leadership's abortive deal with the Green Party in 2019 proved. 

Prison reform

 The commitment by the government to restore the prison officer complement, so disastrously cut over the last decade or so, is welcome. Long term, of course, the solution to prison overcrowding is to cut back on the number of needless imprisonable offences (estimated to have been added at the rate of one per day of the Blair-Brown governments) and to implement alternatives to prison. In the meantime, the second-largest prison population in the Western world needs to treated humanely and given the opportunity to reform. More supervision will also reduce the scandalously high use of drugs in prison.

Recruitment may be difficult, but perhaps the government should look at the pool of ex-services personnel. They are people who are used to discipline and are aware of its advantages. Many have found it hard to adjust to civvy life but should fit the HMP structure.

A fish rots from the head*

 I am uneasy about the concentration by the Opposition on the almost certain flouting of their own rules on partying by the Johnson government. After all, the transgression occurred a year ago and there are continuing scandals which need more exposure. Raab's inadequacy at Justice and Patel's draconian measures against incomers come to mind, not to mention the failure to tackle the London laundromat. 

On the other hand, ordinary citizens understand unfairness and hypocrisy readily, while the implications of hot money may be lost on them and their opinions may be divided on refugees and on civil rights. The disgust at their party's behaviour clearly had its affect on Conservative voters in Old Bexley and may even be telling in North Shropshire. 

There will be no immediate effect on party control at Westminster if the Conservative vote in by-elections continues to fall, even to the extent of losing North Shropshire. However, back-benchers on the government side will be casting anxious eyes on their prospects in the next general election. The pressure for a change of leadership must be intense.

There are reasons beyond mere self-preservation for the Conservative party in Westminster to change direction. What does it say to those people identified by a former Conservative prime minister as "just getting by" as well as those even worse off if they see their elected leaders getting away with lying, taking bribes and disobeying laws imposed for public safety? It is surely significant that recently released figures reveal a steep increase in crime, particularly in violent crime in the London area. The example of people at the top misbehaving with impunity must encourage crime at lower levels of society.

Morality must be restored at the top, and the sooner the better.

* an old Turkish proverb - allegedly

"A date that will live in infamy"

The Daily Mirror, though obviously concentrating on news of the war in Europe, throughout 1941 kept its readers up-to-date with developments in the Far East. On February 25th, a headline proclaimed JAPS WARN WHITES TO QUIT THE PACIFIC. The report began:

As Mr. Matsuoka, Japanese Foreign Minister, told the House of Representatives in Tokio yesterday that the white race "must cede Oceania to the Asiatics," Mr. Churchill saw the Japanese Ambassador, Mr. Shigemitsu, in London. [...]

Japan's conception of Oceania, it was thought by US observers, extends to the entire South Pacific, including the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines and possibly Australasia.

This was based on Mr. Matsuoka's reference to the number of people that could be supported in such an area:-

"This region has sufficient natural resources to support between 600,000,000 and 800,000,000 people. I believe we have a natural right to migrate there."

There are pre-echoes there of present-day China's pretensions in the South Pacific.

In July, the Mirror stated:

Vichy [the Nazi puppet regime in France] and Japan are negotiating over French Indo-China, where the Japs want bases from which to threaten British and U.S. possessions.

The news of the talks came last night from authorised circles in Vichy soon after the British Singapore Radio had issued a blunt warning about Japanese moves in Indo-China. 

At the end of the month, it happened:

Japan began to occupy Vichy's Indo-China yesterday. Troops disembarked at ports in Cambodia [...] At the same time, Japanese military lorries entered Saigon, capital of Indo-China. Bombers roared above them. According to the Chinese National Military Council in Chungking, Japan has also presented demands to Thailand to join the "new order in South Asia".

On November 17th, there was a reinforcement from prime minister Tojo and foreign minister Togo  of  the message that Japan would risk war with Britain and America in her determination to press on with her expansion programme. On November 26th, the Mirror reported that President Roosevelt expected the Japanese to launch an attack on Thailand at any moment. All the while, Japanese special envoys were talking to the US administration.

So an attack by the empire of Japan on Western interests in Asia was not unexpected, but Pearl Harbor was in Hawaii: US territory. Moreover, peace talks were technically still in progress. What made the Japanese raid more shocking was that service families and civilians alike were preparing for Christmas at the time. Early estimates were that 1,500 Americans died in the bombing raid of 7th December, with an equal number severely injured.

In the end, it proved to be a disastrous miscalculation by the Japanese in that it brought the US into war not only with Japan but also against her Axis allies. Britain was no longer alone. Finally, the US wrought a terrible vengeance at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Sarah Gilbert's Dimbleby Lecture

 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0012b15/the-richard-dimbleby-lecture-dame-sarah-gilbert

Revealing and inspiring - what more can one say?

Practical psephology is alive and well in Gambia

 Students of electoral science will know that R.B.McCallum coined the term "psephology" to describe his discipline and David Butler publicised it. It is based on the ancient Greek use of pebbles to cast votes. In the 1960s, Gambia revived the practice in order to combat fraud involving ballot papers, using glass marbles (or alleys, as we called them in my young days) deposited in drums bearing candidates' names and descriptions. Despite moves to replace the system with a more twenty-first century one, it was still in use yesterday to elect a new president for the nation.

Dame Margaret Hodge

 Margaret Hodge MP may not be a saint (one recalls her benefiting from a tax-avoiding family trust at the same time as she was castigating such schemes when she chaired the Public Accounts Committee), but government ministers and Treasury advisers alike will no doubt celebrate her announcement that she will not stand again at the next election. However, she will go out on a high, if she continues to keep up pressure on the government on its record of inaction against economic crime, as in the debate she introduced yesterday.

The government response to the litany of financial abuses which she and SNP speakers listed? "It is important that the Government pursue a targeted and proportionate level of enforcement, focusing on achieving compliance from companies." In other words, practical inaction.

Pandemic hastens telecommuting

 For almost as long as I can remember in the computer business, certainly since the invention of the personal computer, the future of office work was going to be distributed to people's homes. "Telecommuting" was what we called it then, but it really did not take off in any big way. A rare exception was Steve Shirley's F.I. Group which basically employed women working from home, largely those who were professionally qualified but who had taken a break to start a family. That would probably not have taken off but for two factors: the high skills of its members and the tenacity and drive of the founder. In the case of humdrum office work, too many managers had a need for the comfort of warm bodies around them. It was too easy to drip feed instructions and/or change ones mind knowing that your staff were instantly accessible, nine to five. No need to work out a coherent and detailed plan of work.

The pandemic has given many a rude awakening. The skills necessary to run a distributed office have had to be acquired. And now a new opinion survey commissioned by the i newspaper shows that "a third of millennials will look for a new job if their employer insists they return to office working full time". What economic logic has failed to achieve, a coronavirus has done the trick, probably helped by the Green revolution pounding out the message that personal travel adds to carbon equivalent emissions.

Omicron: cause for optimism?

 The fact that a SARS-CoV-2 infection in the Netherlands which occurred before the South African announcement  has now been shown to be of the new omicron variant may give some hope. It clearly raised no special alarm at the time of first diagnosis, suggesting that omicron is not more lethal than the currently most widespread strains. The major question remaining is whether existing vaccines offer the same degree of immunity or at least protection from serious complications. However, both Pfizer and Moderna have confirmed that their vaccines can be tweaked within months to recognise the new strain specifically should it be necessary. One would expect AstraZeneca to be able to offer the same assurance.

The Netherlands analysis also throws open the question of the origin of the variant, though the dates do not rule out an infected person bringing the virus to Europe. The odds must still be on a sub-Saharan African source, given the vast pool of unvaccinated people there, a population also affected by HIV. This situation must be tackled by the major nations, acting independently of the slow-moving UN agencies if necessary.