Dialogue: Brits choke in new Dark Age

A traumatised Britain has few alternatives to the present government, writes BILL MILLAR*.

These are dark times in Britain.

A close friend who has just managed to get a 5.5 million pound ($19 million) start-up company off the ground told me about his recent conversation with an American colleague. It was more of a monologue by a US businessman, who was almost put off travelling to Britain by the foot-and-mouth epidemic sweeping the country.

"My Gaad, your trains keep crashing, your health service seems to be continuously stretched to breaking point and now your agricultural industry has gone critical. Whaat's going on?"

One might have added, among other things, that many people evicted from their houses by floods just before Christmas are still out of those homes, public services generally continue to flirt with collapse, and a crisis in the fishing industry remains headline news.

Buses and trains do not run on time, or simply do not run, and crowded planes are among the most expensive in the world for domestic travel.

We seem to be emptying the sea of fish stocks, intent on tampering with the vegetable and cereal food chain by genetically modifying it, and are now having to slaughter a considerable proportion of the national cloven-footed animal herd; that's the country's pigs, cows, sheep and goats. It is sobering stuff, made more so by the grim sight of massive pyres of dead animals being burned in the fields. The smoke from those pyres can be seen for miles.

This week, a middle-aged farmer from Cumbria, in North West England, broke down on television, weeping copiously when trying to discuss the herd of dead cattle strewn around his farmyard. They were still lying there four days after being slaughtered.

His anguish was heartbreaking to observe and Channel Four Television's estimable news presenter Jon Snow could be heard to offer a heartfelt apology off-camera.

Cumbria is one of the country's hardest-hit areas. But farming is now in crisis throughout the country, with no sign of the foot-and-mouth outbreak slowing.

This week, a huge cull of tens of thousands of healthy sheep begins in a desperate effort by the Government to stem the tide of infection.

The move smacks of panic and certainly reeks of desperation by an Administration having to endure ever-greater criticism of its handling of the crisis.

There is growing talk of resistance by some farmers who are not prepared to see their healthy animals slaughtered.

The Army is being called in to help with the logistics of getting slaughtered animals burnt faster or moved more promptly to rendering plants, which will melt them down.

Farmers are being restricted in their movements from farms, a process which, one imagines, may also be designed by the Government to ensure that it does not face the type of organised resistance demonstrated during last year's fuel crisis by lorry drivers, who almost brought the country to a halt.

For this is a Government which is hellbent on controlling what we hear and what we think. It's hardly surprising really, considering the sleight of hand it continues to perpetrate on its electorate and the gibberish which occasionally emanates from its mouth.

Consider: " ... self-interest and the common good at long last in alliance," from the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Or: " ... realism and idealism at long last in harmony," from the same man. Dangerous quasi-philosophical gobbledegook or not, it still seems to fool a lot of the people a lot of the time.

The Wall Street Journal recently announced that Cool Britannia was dead. Sorry folks, but the truth is that it was never alive, save in the minds of Government spin doctors and some fawning journalists.

But the Journal was right in stating that the United Kingdom had a choice - either to become a European-type welfare state with Government ensuring decent services for all, or a US-style bastion of capital with low taxes and high-quality private sector services.

At the moment it is neither. It is a low-tax economy offering generally shoddy standards of service which would not be tolerated in many other western countries, particularly those of North America.

But there's the rub, for the current Government will never make the economic choice outlined above. If it does, the cat will finally be out of the bag, the king will be seen to be in the "altogether," and the electorate may wake up to the fact that this Labour Government is a Tory Government by another name.

It won power by imitating the Tories and putting a Labour spin on the message. To keep power it has little choice but to continue on its chosen path.

Here in Scotland, some argue that things are better, the devolved Scottish Parliament having made a genuine difference by flexing its new muscles. To some extent this is true.

Scottish university students, as opposed to those from England and Wales, no longer have to pay tuition fees, for example, and teachers north of the border have negotiated a significantly better pay deal than their counterparts elsewhere in Britain.

It appears pensioners, too, may have a significantly better care deal in the future in Scotland than the remainder of the country.

On the other hand, the Scottish Parliament can only go so far. It has already angered its national parent on occasion and it is that parent that controls the purse strings.

The budgetary formula provides specific advantages to Scotland not enjoyed elsewhere in the country and it would be foolish for the Scottish Executive to lose those.

Also, recent actions when that same executive appeared to overrule the Scottish parliamentary vote on a fishing compensation package may not have endeared it to the public at large. This particular incident was little less than a slap in the face for democracy.

On the national front, though, it is not yet official - our utilitarian national Labour Government still seems intent on holding a general election on May 3. With the country in a genuinely traumatised state, this seems appallingly insensitive and may well rebound on it. Yet the latest opinion polls suggest that Labour will win with ease.

Either the alternatives seem so bad that the electorate feels it is now stuck with the devil it knows, or there is about to be a very low turnout fuelled by a truly alarming degree of cynicism.

That or those polls are misleading and Labour, while probably winning the election, may yet have to wipe some blood from its nose once the fight is over. We will see.

And the foot-and-mouth epidemic continues to grow. Poignantly, the first farming suicides, both actual and attempted, have now happened. There will be more. And the slaughter of livestock continues. It looks set to get worse.

An ageing relative of mine reckons it is the beginning of Armageddon. She argues that the Bible did not say the end would be quick. So why not all of this? Maybe she is right. Maybe we should all get down on our knees and pray.

At least we will not have to slaughter a lamb, or make a burnt offering. This Government is doing that for us already.

*Bill Millar is former business editor of the Scotsman newspaper and until recently was editor of Scottish Business Insider.