This is the front page of The Times today (that’s in what was once referred to as a “newspaper of record”). Is the Monarch’s illness really such an important story that it warrants such blanket coverage?

Research suggests that the generation born in the new millennium are not as enamoured of the Royals as their parents and grandparents. And whilst other nations have monarchs as head of state (some even borrow ours) nowhere is there such sycophantic adulation as here.

The nations of the United Kingdom have interesting histories and our collective Imperial ambitions and “success” certainly made us a global power. Similarly the Industrial Revolution of the Victorian nineteenth century (warts and all) created a preeminent manufacturing and trading nation. In the 20th Century our military might and national courage helped us win two World Wars (with a little help from our friends). But now?

Some of the historic pomp remains though not much of the circumstance of the past. We are like a national Miss Haversham reluctant to discard our once finery despite the fact that we have been jilted. And that’s what the royals are – glitz and pseudo glamour without any substance. How preposterous is this image in the twenty first century?

The explanation for the ongoing obsession with this frankly dysfunctional family is that there isn’t much else. The Empire is long gone as is our industrial and military might.

In 1962 Dean Acheson memorably said that “ Britain had lost an empire and had not found a role. He added:

“Britain’s attempt to play a separate power role – that is, a role apart from Europe, a role based on a ‘special relationship’ with the United States, a role based on being the head of a Commonwealth which has no political structure or unity or strength and enjoys a fragile and precarious economic relationship – this role is about played out.”

And that was sixty years ago and in truth we have gone further backwards since with Brexit setting us apart from Europe and creating an insane anachronistic faux independence that makes us look ridiculous.

Ridicule is the only sane reaction to Little England and our silly delusional games. Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister in “Love Actually” said

“We may be a small country, but we’re a great one too. The country of Shakespeare, Churchill, The Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter, David Beckham’s right foot, David Beckham’s left foot, come to that.”

That summed it up – though he didn’t mention The Queen or James Bond. Or Dunkirk, a crushing defeat that we incomprehensibly turned into a noble victory!

After we decided to be European we actually played the role rather well for a time. We celebrated joining the Union and Brits played a significant role in the governance of the uniting Europe . Then we blew it all.

This brings us back to what we are now. “Played out” as Acheson put it and absolutely without a “role”. So we substitute genuine significance with the illusory pretensions of Royalty. It goes down well in America the inventors of the soap opera. In truth we are more Schitts Creek than anything substantial. Living rather like Moira Rose on departed glories but still dressing extravagantly in denial about the loss of of meaningful fame.

I wish Charles Windsor well – my despair about the monarchy and its grossly inflated significance in the national psyche is not personal. But that royal obsession is a veneer below which we are, it has to be said, “played out”.

Netanyahu and his close supporters have made it clear that they intend to expand Israel permanently into Gaza and that is an objective of the response to Hamas. Israel has expanded during war – it’s doing it again, The irony that this ambition is analogous to Hitler’s seeking of Lebensraum is profound.

The frequent statement made on antisemitism is “I’m not an antisemite, but I oppose Zionism”. That statement is, in my view, not just a non sequitur but an antisemitic one.

The pure definition of Zionism is to support a Jewish homeland in the Middle East – and , for many, one where Israel was before the Yom Kippur war. Prior, then, to the substantial expansion of the State – for example the settlements in the Golan Heights.

Those of us who believe that Israel should withdraw from most of the land taken in or around 1973 are not opponents of Zionism and certainly not being antisemitic. Those of us who believe in a two State solution likewise. It is perfectly logical and principled to believe both in Zionism and Palestinian rights.

To move from opposing Israel’s land grabs over the years (and now) to being “Anti Jew” is intellectually bereft of logic. But, sadly, many do this. Many years ago when I visited Tehran frequently on business antisemitic and holocaust denial leaflets were placed in my hotel bedroom. And, yes, some of this’s protesting against Israel’s action today in Gaza are unquestionably antisemites.

The banality of evil is best understood by its ubiquity. It wasn’t a few villains committing monstrous crimes. It was a whole industry dedicated to the goal of genocide on an enormous scale. The microcosm of the family in “Zone of Interest” can be multiplied thousands of times. And where were those who blew the whistle or tried to stop the horror?

In effect The Holocaust was normalised and not just where it happened or just by those directly involved. You can’t construct gas chambers, operate them, bring victims to them and repeat daily without building a complex and managed infrastructure. The shock of “Schindler’s List” is that Schindler whilst not, quite, unique was one of the very few who resisted.

Frau Hoss of course knew what her husband was doing. And across Europe there were many thousands of Frau Hosses equally turning a blind eye. Murder on an industrial scale requires more than structure and organisation. It requires complicit shoulder shrugging by everyone from the industrialists of I.G.Farben to the drivers of the Auschwitz bound trains. 

And when we say “Never again” we should make sure that we don’t delude ourselves that death and destruction and murder of the innocents has stopped. Reports reach us every day confirming that it hasn’t. And, like Frau Hoss, some of us look the other way and tend our gardens.

Rape is rape – the problem is agreeing what it is and how to prove it. During 2021-2022, of the 70,330 rapes reported to the police in the UK only 1,378 led to a conviction. This is a conviction rate of less than 2%. Every case was, by definition, unique but there is clearly a pattern. The securing of a conviction is extraordinarily difficult.

Consent is a problematic concept and follows no consistent pattern. Post event a number of forces may come into play for the woman. Guilt, disgust, anger, revenge, fear…and more. It’s an emotional time and when emotions are aroused rational thinking may be difficult.

Above all consent may be very subjective and will often be one person’s view/opinion against another’s. Sexual arousal lifts us, mostly pleasurably, momentarily into a different world. The pursuit of satisfaction can be an overwhelming driver and when the male’s need and action exceeds that of the female’s consent can be a very grey area indeed.

All of the above is in no way intended to exculpate rapists. It’s a hideous crime , but sometimes a very hard one to prove.

The trouble with political “splinter groups” , of which the Conservatives seem today to have several, is that they always put ideology before practicality. That’s what defeated Liz Truss as Prime Minister – her apparent ignorance of the solid rule that politics is the “Art of the Possible”.

Yes Truss’s ideology was utterly flawed but that was less damaging than that she rushed into office like a bull in a china shop. Little more than a year after this disaster she’s at it again. This time with the launch of the oxymoronic “Popular Conservatism”. Oh dear

In a way you have to admire Ms Truss who is bouncing again like Tigger but without the brainpower. If at first you don’t succeed…

JFK had his hundred days which seemed rather a short time to judge him, but we did. Mostly positively as I recall. Truss had half that time and actually tried to shake the system far more than Kennedy did. Margaret Thatcher, at heart just at least as ideological as Truss, had a few wise folk around her and by comparison with La Truss took her time. Wisely.

The splinter groups like Lizzie’s new one are all freakishly ideological and talk only in slogans. What the heck does “Restore democratic accountability mean?” My “favourite” was also Ms Truss’s the “anti growth coalition” about which the Financial Times wrote “the absurdity of the term is matched by its hypocrisy.”

Cliché it may be but creating political change is like manoeuvring an oil tanker. Politicians need to know it takes time to turn things around. And you do, to some extent, have to stay in the shipping lane. Britain’s most dramatic change in generations, Brexit, actually sank the tanker. That Brexit was a “big idea” there’s no doubt. But the “Take back control” slogan was superficial nonsense. Control of what, and why? We weren’t told.

Keir Starmer has taken years to restore Labour’s credibility after the disaster of Corbyn. The latter showed that it’s not just the Tories who can pursue ideologically extreme policies. Sir Keir is distancing himself from any commitments that might suggest he’s strayed from the Centre ground. It’s a bit bland and dull (“Where’s the beef?) but it should work, let’s hope so.

I have often claimed that the best Government I have lived under was in Hong Kong in the 1980s. I admit that I am being a tad provocative (!) but there is more than a little substance to my claim. The provocation comes from the fact that Hong Kong did not hold elections and that its Governor and officials were all appointed. Not an elective democracy then. The defence is that it worked – the government did a good job.

Hong Kong was a benevolent dictatorship – at least it was when I lived there. There were important freedoms – of Speech, the Press, of Association etc. etc. After Tiananmen Square in 1989 my staff asked me if they could join the mass protests underway. I of course agreed.

So nobody had a significant vote in Hong Kong in my time there , but it was a liberal and civilised place. And rich – the lightly regulated financial sector encouraged investment and businesses of all sorts flourished.

The colonial government of Hong Kong built or started huge capital projects in the territory. Two cross harbour tunnels, a magnificent new airport. A state of the art Metro system, and much more.

Defenders of the magic of the ballot box argue that voting out leaders you don’t like is a cornerstone of democracy. The ballot box is the guarantor of democratic freedoms. Well up to a point Lord Copper. But what if the electors get it wrong? Hitler and the Nazi Party won 37% of the vote in 1932. He promised a dictatorship which he delivered. Donald Trump promises to be a dictator on “Day One” if elected. We saw what Trump supporters can do in 24 hours on January 6th 2021. Day One is all he needs.

Brexit supporters argue that the Referendum result in 2016 was conclusive, but of course it wasn’t. The New York Times put it well:

“Though such votes are portrayed as popular governance in its purest form, studies have found that they often subvert democracy rather than serve it. They tend to be volatile, turning not just on the merits of the decision but also on unrelated political swings or even…on the weather. Voters must make their decisions with relatively little information, forcing them to rely on political messaging — which puts power in the hands of political elites rather than those of voters.”

In 2019 Boris Johnson was elected Prime Minister on a single issue and the reservations the NYT had can equally be applied to that election.

In 1932 Hitler told the German people who the enemy was. For the Leave campaign in 2016 and Johnson in 2019 it was, of course, the EU. IN 1932 the Nazis were no less unequivocal:

So voting is no guarantee of democracy and the absence of elections is no guarantee of totalitarian dictatorship. Which begs the question as to what democracy actually is and how can it be achieved.

As we have seen superficially democratic electoral systems can be manipulated to benefit the elites. The only real beneficiaries of Brexit were the rich, which is why the campaign to leave the European Union was mostly funded by five of the UK’s richest businessmen.

The extent of the corruption in Government in Britain over the past five years or more is unprecedented. The true story of government contracts during the pandemic is yet fully to emerge but if you wanted proof of the adage that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely it’s not far away.

So the ballot box doesn’t always deliver outcomes that with hindsight can be seen to have been desirable. But, of course, proper democracies have to have elections and choose the parties and leaders to run things. In 1933 Hindenburg sought to restrict the Nazis by forcing a coalition with moderate parties of the Right under Hitler’s chancellorship. This failed and we know what happened next. A similar process is underway in The Netherlands at the moment. An attempt to tie the hands of the neo-Fascist Geert Wilders, who won the last election, by forcing coalition with the rather more moderate centre Right. The Dutch do have a history of pragmatic compromise. There’s no guarantee that this will apply this time around however.

In Germany the AfD a Far Right party is strengthening, especially in the former East Germany. Again the likely outcome is that the centre will hold, possibly with the formation of a “Grand Coalition” and the protests which remind Germans of 1933 have been encouragingly strong. But these are uncertain times.

In Britain we should study carefully what is happening in The Netherlands and Germany (and France where Marine Le Pen has surged in the polls). Nigel Farage and UKIP had a profound influence on British politics without ever having an impact in a General Election. We should be cautious of being complacent now despite Labour’s strong lead in the polls. UKIP’s successor party Reform UK and it’s Geert Wilders like leader Richard Tice are currently at 10% in the polls – ahead of the LiberalDemocrats!

Ultimately it’s about policy and competence rather than ideology , the battle for the Centreground. But as we saw in 2016 and 2019 votes can be won by politicians who reduce complex issues to simple (and simplistic) binary choices). Trump won the New Hampshire Republican Primary by doing just that. Be scared, Democracy may not be all it’s cracked up to be !

The Decision of Boots to dispose of its £4.8bn Pension Scheme to Legal and General is significant because with 53,000 members this is the largest such scheme to move to an insurer. You can read a specialist view of the decision here:

https://www.pensionsage.com/pa/Boots-completes-4-8bn-buy-in-with-landG.php

To me the key line in the report is this one:

“The trustee and Boots have written to members to inform them of the changes, confirming that savers in the scheme will be provided with individual annuity policies issued by L&G, who will then be responsible for paying members’ benefits directly.”

In effect every Boots pensioner will cut their pension links with their former employer and, I assume, nominally receive a DCF value lump sum based on their pension value. The value is a function of the current annual amount of their pension and their age related (but otherwise unspecific) life expectancy. The lump sum is notional in that it can only be used for the purchase of a L&G annuity. Whether the annuity is inflation linked, isn’t clear. I would assume so.

Could Shell follow the Boots example?

The current company backed model for our pensions is in my opinion infinitely preferable to having an insurer buy in. However there are more than straws in the wind that Shell’s commitment to its pensioner stakeholders is shaky, at least in the U.K. The failure to meet its promise to ensure pensions meet inflation, the removal of elections for trustees and the overt flirtation with the Consumer Price Index are among these straws. I also sense that the Pension Fund trustee boards see their role primarily as mouthpieces for the company rather than representatives of the pensioner community.

In a conventional Defined Benefit pension scheme, such as the SCPF and SOCPF , the guarantor of the scheme is the Sponsor, Shell. The very high financial strength of Shell in assets, profits and share value, makes this as close to gold standard security as one could imagine. In the event that Shell followed Boots’ example (there is no current suggestion that this will happen) the security for members would, in my view, be less. In the past famous financial services companies like Lehman Brothers have folded. The unexpected has happened.

My gut feeling, without any direct hard evidence, is that Shell would wish at some point in the future to follow Boots’ example and divest itself of its DB Pension Funds. Put bluntly but truthfully the funds are of no value to the company and require management to devote some time to their management. Cost without Benefit is unattractive in the modern day world of business !

 

29th October 2023

 

Tim Morrison

Chair of the Trustee Board

Shell Pensions Trust Ltd

Shell Centre
York Road
LONDON SE1 7NA

 

Dear Mr Morrison

 

Pensions and “The Source”

I am in receipt of the latest issue of “The Source” for which many thanks. It does, however, raise as many questions as it answers not least in your own “message”. In this you say that “we… benefit from continuing robust support from Shell. The pensions promises made to members in their working lives are supported by this.” I wish to contest this most strongly. But first let me comment on the fact that this statement reinforces the reality that “Shell” is a separate entity from the “Shell Contributory Pension Fund” which is indeed legally and morally the case.

The separateness of the SCPF management has been weakened in recent times. Sadly, I see no evidence that the Trustee Board fought on behalf of members to ensure that our 2023 Pensions increase matched inflation – in fact the reverse seems to be the case. It would not be putting it too strongly to say that you and the Board meekly kowtowed to the Company’s wishes. Whether the increasing control that the Company has over the Board is a reason for this I can only speculate but the gradual disappearance of independent elected Member Nominated Trustees and their replacement by Company selected apparatchiks is evidence that this is the case.

 

The statement “The Pensions promises made to members” reminds us that there were indeed once-upon-a-time promises of “robust support”. But, regrettably, in 2022 and 2023, these promises have, for the first time in recent memory, not been met. The promise I received as an employee was made explicit in the “Your Pension” booklet (above) I received in 1995, some years before I retired. This booklet stated (page 14) that “The SCPF provides a high degree of protection to pensions against inflation, so that the real value of your pension is maintained”. In 2023 to honour this promise my pensions would have had to increase by 13.4% rather than the 7% I actually received.

Pages 12 and 13 of the “The Source” tell us that there are 26,394 SCPF members in receipt of pensions and that in 2022 Benefits paid amounted to £549m. This means that the average Shell pension last year was approximately £20,000 allowing for the fact that some pensioners have much lower-than-average pensions because of short service and that you include commutation lump sums and death benefits in the figure. But based on £20k the 2023 annual increase should have been £2680 if the real value of the average pension was to be maintained as promised. In fact, it was £1400 meaning that the average pensioner has suffered an annual lost of £1280 in real terms. This is a clear and culpable breach of promise.

Under the heading “Pension Increases and Inflation” you duck the issue that the company had the discretion to match RPI rather than restrict the increase to the Trust Deed minimum. Whilst the Trust Deed does “mandate” the minimum increase the Company can, of course, add to this to bring the increase up to the level of the RPI – as has happened a number of times in the past. There is in your “message” no apology for the impoverisation of the Pensioner consequential on the company’s decision and, it seems, the Trustee Board’s failure to challenge it. Instead, you indulge in an irrelevant statement about the “unreliability” of RPI as an index. You must know that the whole subject of Price indices is a contentious and debateable one and that it is entirely a matter of conjecture which is the better or worse measure for any subset of the population. No index is wholly reliable, certainly not as a measure of Pensioner cost of living. The fact is that the SCPF is formally linked to the RPI and that your references to CPIH are disingenuous and irrelevant. I am surprised that the SCPF is indulging in this misleading sham.

You will now be aware that in The Netherlands the Stichting Shell Pensioenfonds (SSPF) has increased the pensions of Dutch Shell Pensioners by a total of 12.1% matching inflation. They were not obliged to do this but exercised discretion in the light of high Dutch inflation – an inflation which was coincidentally close to that in the UK. Quite how Shell plc can justify matching inflation for Dutch Pensioners and falling well short in the UK is beyond me. I assume that the Trustee has been aware of this anomaly – has it been raised with the Company?

Finally, I find it regrettable that “The Source” reports on the Pension Fund as if it was solely a Financial entity. And some of the decision-making seems to emanate from this presumption. Of course, the financial health of the Fund is important to us all but for 26,000 Fund members in receipt of pensions being a member of the fund is as much a social matter as it is a financial one – just as in our days of employment there was more to being a Shell employee/stakeholder than the monthly pay cheque. All the Shell pensioners I know – quite a few of them (!) – take pride in our status and our continued links with our once employer. And many of us feel let down.

I apologise for the strong tone of my letter – there is nothing personal! But there has been a mean failure of judgment by those in the decision-making loop. I hope that you can find a way to put it right.

Yours sincerely

 

 

 Patrick S Briggs

 

It is hard to recall someone becoming a Cabinet Minister with so little political experience and to find himself in 10 Downing Street after just seven years in the House of Commons is unprecedented. He’s a one-man band of mediocrity at a time when so much more was needed after the disastrous years post Brexit and, it seems, a slow learner.

Sunak entered Parliament in 2015 with only the most superficial experience in politics. By no stretch of the imagination could he have been called a politician. His life had been privileged by his education and his high, but extremely narrow, abilities. His intellect is strong and he applied it well to have a successful and extremely well-rewarded career in Finance. But it is clear that he never wandered outside of his comfort zone. 

Sunak was parachuted into William Hague’s safe Yorkshire seat. This is not the Yorkshire of the red wall but, generally, of wealth and advantage. He had no social intelligence when he arrived as a carpetbagger in the North of England and he gained none in leafy Richmond. In normal times Sunak would have been a backbencher for five years or more learning the politician’s trade. Then he might have got a junior ministerial job and gradually worked his way up if he performed well. But these are not normal times.

The best politicians have backing in the Party, their constituency and the country. But there are no “Sunakites” mainly because nobody has a clue what he stands for.

The Menier Theatre in Southwark has a good record in producing high quality musicals despite its small stage and limited facilities. “Funny Girl”, “Into the Woods”, “Fiddler on the Roof” , “The Boy Friend” among others in recent times. This year we’ve had original works in “The Third Man” and now “Close-Up The Twiggy Musical”. I enjoyed the former but doubt that it will transfer to a West End theatre as many of the Menier’s productions have in the past. The same may apply to “Twiggy” unless some drastic surgery is carried out on it.

Musicals, at least since “Oklahoma!”, have had a storyline as important as the songs (except for the mostly gruesome “Jukebox” musicals which are really a genre of their own. The ghastly “Mamma Mia” has a lot to answer for.) “Twiggy” borders onto this genre but is actually much better than that.

Twiggy’s life, in the musical, is a good story spanning as it does 60 years of “Working Class girl from Neasden makes good”. And some of the stories within that life are pretty remarkable from under age sex, via exploitation and an iconic* look to genuine stardom on Broadway. Didn’t she do well ?

She did. She was one of the key figures of the swinging sixties, photographed by David Bailey who as ever captured his subjects unique appeal:

Her modelling career was masterminded by the creepy Justin de Villeneuve a clever phoney who, as alleged in the musical, not only took Leslie Hornby’s virginity at 15 but helped himself to more than a fair share of her huge modelling earnings. In the musical he is brilliantly played by Matt Corner – a terrific performance.

But oddly Twiggy’s modelling years are rather rushed by. We needed to see more of her work in the years which launched her as an icon*. We see Twiggy’s move into fashion promotion and sales, she has a shrewd eye for quality of materials and manufacturer. We soon realise she’s no dumb blonde.

Crucial to those early years were her parents – the confident Lancastrian Norman Hornsby and her batty Londoner mother Nell. They are proud of their daughter’s success and do not exploit her – they leave that to others. Steven Sirlin and Hannah-Jane Fox are excellent in these. parts. (The former also impersonates David Frost well in an interview in which Twiggy charmingly gets the better of the inquisitor in chief !).

Soon “Twigs” is moving away from Swinging London to Hollywood where she stars in “The Boy Friend” (1971) and eventually to Broadway with the highly successful “My One and Only” (1983). The progress is seemingly effortless and driven by more that Twiggy’s unique beauty. Despite no theatrical or musical training she can act and sing at the highest level.

Twiggy’s personal life once she was out of the clutches of de Villeneuve was to revolve around her marriage to actor Michael Witney in 1977 – it was blighted by his alcoholism. He is well played by the evergreen Darren Day. This is a storyline that could do with some cutting in the musical. It was important in Twiggy’s life but is rather too centre stage for too long. It skews the dramatic balance.

The music is contemporary to the action but here Ben Elton (writer and director) was restricted by what the copyright holders would let him have. Rather than commission an original set of songs he selects from the. catalogue. I think this works but it risks the “jukebox” charge.

I saw understudy Harriet Bunton in the leading role. Physically she’s no Twiggy (who is?) but it was a very good performance. The cast as a whole is excellent – mostly song and dance.

If “Twiggy” is to be more than a Menier one-off it needs revision, some of it fairly drastic. I think the potential is there but a reviser would need to start by identifying what the real story of the subject is. We need fewer moments of “How did she do that ?” (become a film star for example ) and more “This is how she did it”.

*The words “Iconic” and “Icon” are grossly overused, often meaninglessly. Here I think they are appropriate. If anyone was an icon Twiggy was !