“The Anglo-Dutch energy group, which is one of the world’s biggest polluters” says The Times today

This is nonsense. The multinational energy companies like Shell cause very little pollution in their activities which are the search for, production of and transportation, processing and marketing of oil and gas. Energy consumption along this supply chain is modest and tightly controlled.

Shell does not create demand but supply it. The demand is a factor of economic development around the world. Societies have created a demand for energy as they have grown. There is a linear correlation between GDP and energy demand.

Those that attack Shell should turn their attention to the users of oil and gas not the suppliers. Persuade electricity generators to switch to renewables. Persuade motorists to take the train or get electric cars. Persuade those of us with gas boilers to replace them with something more efficient.

Oil companies have been essential elements in the growth of prosperity. But they have not themselves created that prosperity only facilitated it. It’s the same with the collateral damage from energy consumption. Shell does not pollute. Its customers do.

Whilst it is the high profile environmental improvement stories , like heat pumps and electric cars, that hit the headlines in fact we could significantly reduce our hydrocarbon consumption with more conventional changes.

In the home there are many relatively inefficient gas boilers in use. If we replaced every unit that is more than ten years old with a modern far more efficient condensing boiler that would have a significant effect. Similarly the installation of double glazing and better loft insulation would be hugely beneficial. Better heating system controls and thermostatic radiator valves could also help. These are all relatively low cost and straightforward changes and government subsidies could be used selectively to make them available to all.

Home appliances are also far more efficient today and the replacement of old cooking, laundry and cleaning devices with higher tech modern ones would be beneficial.

Modern conventional vehicles are also far more efficient than those of only five years ago, let alone the many that are older than that. Replacing and scrapping a ten year old petrol-engined car with a modern more fuel efficient one would be easy to do and if people were incentivised to do this with grants the take up would surely be considerable.

Lifestyle can be moulded without too much intrusion if it is done thoughtfully. To switch travellers from the roads to public transportation is hugely environmentally positive but to do this you do need to improve services, introduce new ones and make them affordable. Critics of the High Speed Train HS2 should remember that every journey made on it will be far more environmentally friendly than the alternative of travel by car.

Long term strategies to increase the numbers of electric vehicles and heat pumps in homes (etc.) grab the headlines and can make sense. But there is still plenty of low hanging fruit to be picked that can be achieved in a far shorter timescale and lower cost.

Mo Drake the creator of the “Beanz Meanz Heinz” slogan has died at the age of 92.

The key thing with a slogan is credibility. It mustn’t just be catchy, it must be capable of being seen to be true. “Beanz Meanz Heinz” did that. It confirmed what was entirely credible – that Heinz took the humble baked bean away from commodity status and made it special. And when you do that your customers will pay a premium price, or enough of them will be make it worthwhile.

In my Shell career I worked with a slogan that for me is up there with the best – “You can be sure of Shell”. My memory fades a bit but I think the slogan originated on posters in the 1920s. Post war Ogilvy and Mather, during David Ogilvy’s time, refined it and made it ubiquitous . For the slogan to have worked it had to be seen to be true. Not one word is wasted. “You” says that we serve our customer or partner (etc.). So it’s not about us but about your needs. “Can be” is assertive and certain. No ifs and buts. “Sure of” says rely upon. Again confident and unequivocal. “Shell” is the brand name – and there’s only one Shell.

Internally “You can be sure of Shell” was a challenging target. If something we were doing brought the certainty into question the slogan was a vital check. If for whatever reason Shell could not be relied upon (it happened!) then that had to be rectified or the slogan became a lie.

For Heinz they had to source the best beans and deliver them in a superior way. Taste tests had to give Heinz the edge. Otherwise Heinz would no longer mean Beans. The own label brands would drag them down to their level and price would be the only discriminator.

“People proclaim that they “believe” in the NHS, as if it were a religious institution rather than a medical one.” Matthew Syed in the Sunday Times today.

The problem with religions is that their teachings are largely non negotiable. Transubstantiation is obviously and scientifically provably nonsense. But if you’re a Catholic you are supposed to have faith to believe it. The current construct of healthcare in Britain has been created as arbitrarily as the Catholic Church was. It is equally full of sentiment and lack of logic at times.

We lived in a mixed economy in which virtually everything we do requires a mix of public and private enterprise. The treatment of the COVID emergency is a good example. Looking after patients has been primarily a public sector task, but the development of vaccines was handled by private companies. In the NHS the dispensing of prescriptions is, and always has been, carried out by independent pharmacies large and small.

The mixed economy nature of British healthcare requires careful “Who does what?” decision-making. But for many if you suggest an activity would be better contracted out by the NHS to the private sector you move into “Who moved the stone” territory. You won’t be burned at the stake for apostasy these days but you may well be vilified.

The NHS is a huge employer and a huge enterprise. As such it needs the most professional management in both its patient care activities and in its structure. It does not benefit from ideology. It needs systematic efficiency improvements, less sentimentality and a far better definition of what it’s really for and how best to run it.

Reunions are full of nostalgia and the recent one for pupils of The Leys School from the 1950s and the 1960s was no exception. My first term at the school was Autumn 1959 so I fell pretty much in the middle of the group age-wise. We all looked reasonably prosperous this week though none of us was quite the same shape as we had been fifty or sixty years earlier.

Key to the nostalgia were the buildings. The Kings Building (above) was the same as it had been when Norman Wilkinson captured it eighty plus years ago. The same applied to my own House, East, which viewed from outside seemed identical. Indeed the same as it was when my father was one of its first inhabitants in 1930.

The other building in the photograph is the “new” Music Centre a superbly equipped place where students can study any instrument (including the bagpipes!) and play in world class music rooms.

The Grand Hall, now ten years old, has a theatre that would be the envy of any professional Company. And, in truth, every other aspect of a modern day rounded education is covered by quality facilities. Sport, The Arts, science and the rest.

Back to the historic buildings some dating back 120 years. As I have said externally they are all as I remember them. Internally, however, they are unrecognisable from my day. The dormitories are gone to be replaced by study bedrooms and a range of other facilities. And it’s not just the internal physical fabric of the buildings that has changed. The Leys has been co-educational since 1990 and girls now comprise almost half the pupils.

The Leys was founded as one of the first Methodist public schools though by the time I came up in 1959 the methodism was fairly muted. Alan Barker, the new Headmaster, was an Anglican and that, to an extent, set the tone. The school chapel is magnificent and in my day we attended services every day, and twice on Sundays.

Author and polemicist the late Christopher Hitchens was at The Leys when I was there. He was a couple of years younger than me and in a different House so I didn’t know him well. Like me he did not emerge from the school a Believer – a Methodist or any other sort! That said this strident atheist did once say that he “learned more in the Leys Chapel than anywhere else in the school” ! I wouldn’t go quite that far but we did have some good visiting preachers including the Rev and very Red Donald Soper. The Chapel , opened in 1906, with its fine stained glass owes more to Oxbridge College chapels than it does to the rather austere meeting halls of the Wesleyan tradition. It is largely unchanged inside and out from 60 years ago.

Historian and Leys teacher Derek Baker called his book on the school “A Partnership in Excellence” . I like this descriptor, a tad boastful though it is, because there is a continuity in the thought that excellence is transferable from one generation to another. It was a fine school in the early 1960s and it is a fine one now – the times have changed radically but to be excellent is an achieved goal.

This brings me inevitably to the contentious subject of private education – the ability that parents with money have effectively to buy privileges for their offspring. It is perhaps a bit simplistic to say that “excellence” is the result if the ordinary can be transformed for the better. But surely if “Levelling up” has a meaning you need an excellent model of attainment to level up towards. The Leys is assuredly that.

The school motto “In Fide Fiducia” means “In Faith, Trust”. This has also morphed a bit over time but for a modern parent to believe that they can trust their child to be looked after and developed in a school is a prerequisite of education. For me this means much, much more than “just” passing exams.

We met today’s Housemaster of my old House East who said that all his charges go to University – no doubt it’s the same from all the other Houses as well. But the partnership in excellence between pupil and teacher, sports or drama coach, for unexamined subjects is at the heart of what the school does as well. I think it always was – culture is not narrowly defined. And examinations are not the only challenge.

Chris Hitchens in his memoir remembered a magical summer evening when our own home grown rock group “The Saints” gave an outdoor concert culminating in their version of “The House of the Rising Sun”. Of its time perhaps but my collector’s item copy of their LP “Saints Alive” reminds that they were pretty good. Today the School drama group regularly puts on performances in the wonderful theatre which like that rock concert all those years ago are open also to the good burghers of Cambridge. A recent performance of “Chicago” got rave notices.

The school song “Joyful word at parting spoken” is unchanged except that the line “Distance from her sons can sever” is now “Distance from us all can sever” – a reflection, of course, of the now co-educational nature of the school. But better in other ways as well. “Us all” can be seen to cover all of us with Leysian connections even those like me and my friends at the Reunion whose connection started many decades ago

Each verse of the school song finishes with the Greek word Χαιρετε! Former headmaster John Barrett, in his splendid sermon to us in the Chapel, focused on this word which is a joyous expression very versatile in its meaning. I think our old boy community all hoped that it means “adieu” with its theme of meeting again. Let’s hope that we can.

Paddy Briggs, October 2021

There was rather restrained “more in sorrow than in anger” piece about Britain’s woes from German journalist Peter Tiede in The Times yesterday. Tiede concentrates on the present but for me underlying the differences between our two nations is how Germany has atoned for her hideous 20th Century past whereas we ignore our deadly mistakes and wave flags in a sentimental frenzy about ours. The Germans have moved on. We haven’t.

Because our present and recent past is so singularly awful we cling on to the myths of a once noble land of hope and glory. What a pompous, boastful nation we are. In my baby boomer lifetime British soldiers and native civilians perished in large numbers in a last ditch defence of imperialism, in Kenya, Malaya, Cyprus and other places over which collectively the sun never set.

We allowed the deadly partition of India. We walked away from Hong Kong not leaving a vestige of protection from the murderous Beijing regime. We so failed diplomatically to protect a few barren rocks in the South Atlantic that we had to fight a last, and deadly, imperial war to get them back.

When economic need dictated that we needed labour to run the buses we windrushed them in. Then we insulted and discriminated against these immigrants for years, for decades, and still do. And when their descendants told us that black lives matter and took the knee all too many of us booed from the sidelines,

We were told to find a post imperial role and eventually dragged ourselves reluctant and wingeing into Europe only a few decades later to walk away with our pram going around in circles and our toys all over the ground.

Our “troubles” are manifest and all of our own making. We will get no sympathy from Germany, nor deserve any. Brexit was the final straw. Membership of the European Union helped hold Germany and Britain together – that common purpose is now gone.

Jack Hobbs was a batsman, as is Joe Root. Not to mention every other male cricketer over the more than 200 years of the great game. If you check an authoritative dictionary you will find that the word “ Batswoman” is there – a gender determined descriptor like (for example) “Spokesman” and “Spokeswoman” and countless others.

The ugly and completely unnecessary “Batter” turns cricket history on its head. Is somebody going to tell Ian Botham that he played great innings as a “batter” – good luck with that.

Cricket terminology may change over time for good reasons. I don’t recall “Reverse Sweep” in my youth but accept that it’s a useful addition to the cricket lexicon. “Batter” most certainly is not. I’ll have my batter on a piece of cod thanks, not on a cricket pitch.

As for the MCC they grow increasingly craven over time. These self-appointed guardians of the “Spirit of Cricket” sold their souls to the devil when they turned Lord’s Ground over to the drunken revelry that was “The Hundred”. When their history of malfeasance over Lord’s redevelopment was revealed in a recent book “The Covers are Off” the club loftily ignored it. As it has loftily ignored the legitimate complaints of members on a variety of issues for a decade or more.

The MCC may think that they own cricket as once they did. Any student of cricket history would shudder at the thought. May the batsmen and batswomen of today utterly reject this nonsensical attempt to rewrite cricket history.

Natural Gas is a commodity. A very important one to our way of life and our economic welfare. Most homes are heated by it, many cook with it and without it our lives would grind to a halt. However the supply of Gas lacks a coherent and user-accountable structure. Here is a brief discussion of the gas supply chain.

Exploration and Production. Looking for and producing gas is generally a private sector activity. In The Netherlands, for example, the Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM), a joint venture between Exxon and Shell has been operating the Groningen gas fields for over 70 years. In Britain the still substantial Gas production covering 58% of inland demand is also entirely in the hands of private companies.

Supply. The shortfall between U.K. Gas production and U.K. consumption is covered by imports via pipeline from Europe and by Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) imports.

Cost. Gas at the point of transfer from the upstream (production) to the downstream (consumption) has always been determined by the market with classic supply/demand factors in play. Economic recovery, some limitations on supply, inadequate storage and some other factors have pushed prices through the roof. Whether the cost relates to local production or gaseous (pipeline) or LNG imports the same commodity market forces apply.

Transportation. The inland starting point is the point of landfall for gas – the point at which the producer or importer feeds the gas into the gas network. This network is an asset that logic says should be publicly accountable but the current construct under which it is owned and operated by the private sector “National Grid” is confusing and sub-optimal. The parallel is with the railway network which abysmally failed as a private sector monopoly (Railtrack) and had to be taken into public ownership.

Marketing. They are of course not “Energy Firms” at all. They do not produce, transport or otherwise have anything practical to do with electricity or gas. They exist only as agents to scam off a margin and give the illusion of a competitive market. They might as well be selling pork futures or the rouble.

The privatisation of energy supplies in the 1980s was a fraud. In the main the new firms only exist because proper gas producers feed their production into a single grid. And power generators do the same with electricity. Then it’s a free-for-all as phoney companies angle for your business with price-led promotional marketing. None of them has a distinctive competitive advantage. They simply operate in the margin between product cost and consumer price. When product costs escalate , as they have recently, the Energy Firms may not be able to pass on these increases immediately to customers because of promotional offers they have made.

Gas and Electricity are vital commodities where the main driver of price should be product cost – smoothed out over time to protect consumers from wild fluctuations. This would best be done by a single supply body operating hedging to create some forward price stability. Instead we have the delusional nonsense of dozens of agents operating like market traders conning the public with snake oil. You wonder if Del Boy is in charge.

What an absolutely preposterous story this is! At no point has China articulated any threat to Australia. Why would it? The only country in the region about which the Chinese have territorial ambitions, understandably, is Taiwan. This has nothing to do with Australia.

Wars start when there is a response to aggression. The building of these vainglorious boats is a provocative act and the Chinese may feel, who could blame them, that they will need to respond. So a weapons war will begin and the size and resources of the People’s Republic is such that there will only be one winner.

On the road to fascism excessive militarism is one of the signs. Scott Morrison shares Boris Johnson’s populist, nationalist ideology and love of shallow show. And his “mine’s bigger than yours” delusions. This unnecessary , unaffordable nonsense demeans a fine nation and gives it ideas above its station – and confirms that our tinpot Prime Minister’s futile search for friends in a world that despises him will take him in some very strange directions.

One of the rules of economics I learned fifty years ago was the relationship between Supply, Demand and Price. It seems that Iain Martin has forgotten what he was also taught in his desperate scramble to find a Brexit Benefit. One of the reasons that Margaret Thatcher was a great supporter of Free Trade was that she knew that if you increase Supply competition will lead to lower prices and better products. This rule applies to all the Factors of Production, including Labour.

The artificial restriction of Labour supply caused by Brexit is having a devastating effect on labour availability and costs. And on quality. Making it easier to become an HGV driver is a quality reduction and irresponsibly unsafe.

The way to ensure that workers have higher disposable incomes is not to close labour availability but to raise the minimum wage and to reduce taxation. And to rethink what “employment” should be. Proper jobs with proper contracts and proper worker representation and collective bargaining.

All economies have unique characteristics where skills, social priorities and restraints are concerned. The larger the labour pool the greater is the employer choice. Immigration widened that choice and furthered growth both new workers from the Commonwealth and Europeans using their Freedom of Movement rights contributed to national wealth.

There is almost a nineteenth century mercantilist feel to Brexit Britain – certainly as far as labour is concerned. Who would have thought that a country that once lead the world on Free Trade would become a closed society, denying itself labour choice ?

To argue that restriction on labour availability is beneficial you have to argue that thirty countries across Europe participating in Freedom of Movement (including some like Switzerland and Norway not in the EU) are wrong. And Little England is right. Ha !