Thirty minutes

It is hard to believe that this screen of ubiquitous buddleia, scenting the suburban air, hides a railway line that has triggered intense debate, caused thousands of people to protest, and made a minister of state into a figure of hate. It is often referred to as “the Chiltern Line” and if the government has its way it will be the route for HS2, a high speed rail link connecting London to Birmingham and reducing the time of the present journey by about thirty minutes. What could you do with thirty minutes? Start the clock.



Spend your thirty minutes trying to complete a public consultation document, bearing in mind that it has been drawn up by someone who wants you to fall into a trap, to make you say that you actually do want a train charging past your home at over 200 miles an hour, that you have no objection to years of construction work, that you believe every word they say about noise levels. You left school to get away from this kind of thing and here you are taking an exam to stop your home becoming worthless, to justify the years, decades of work you put into paying a mortgage. You take advice, watch videos, listen to the experts before you answer “no” to everything, in a desperate attempt to save all that effort and sacrifice.


Think of all those minutes and half hours spent in a job you hate, gritting your teeth to get through one more day, hour, minute without flinging your letter of resignation at the boss, all for nothing because you are a nimby, small fry, nothing to a man whose salary you pay but didn’t vote for. Another nameless face in the crowd at a demo, along with all the other unwanted little people who have cluttered up his day, getting in the way of “progress”.

You will never be one of those gaining that extra half hour on a train moving so fast that the rest of mankind becomes a blur. You will never afford those plush seats and wonderful service. You will wait with all the rest on a station platform waiting for a worn out train that has been held up, again. Because there is no money to improve what already exists, what you can afford. You will sit in your car, on a bus, in a jam caused by the years of construction work that you are paying for to build a railway line you don’t want, can’t afford, don’t need. You will grind your teeth and curse those who inflicted this upon you and your lowly kind and know that you are helpless. You don’t count, your kind never have.


Thirty minutes in a bluebell wood, deafened by birdsong yet wishing you could make less noise as you walk amongst trees that were old when you were a child. A thousand cobwebs and caterpillar threads cling to your arms as they must have done to those of your ancestors when places like this were vast and untouched. You are the first to walk here today, in a place that has never changed and you thought never would until the minister expressed his opinion. Knowing that you are barely a heart beat in the time it took to make this place that cannot be replaced, replicated, remade. Thirty minutes, a pin prick in time in this woodland set like sapphires and emeralds amongst the coral of suburban rooftops, one last place to remember what it must have been like in this land before “progress” came and ate away at your soul. Time counts for nothing here.


Half an hour at an estate agent’s office, listening to all the advice he can give you on how to sell a worthless house. Paint the walls a neutral colour, thank God you redecorated some of it last year, it will take less money, less time. You’ll get the downstairs lav done in thirty minutes. Put the “For Sale” sign up and hope to hell that the neighbours don’t put one of those bloody posters in the window, hope that whoever takes the bait doesn’t check up on what that means. Keep your fingers crossed for a lot longer than thirty minutes, through every rare viewing, trying not to wince when “it” gets mentioned until you realise that they were just curious, not serious, bad luck. Wish that the things that once made your home such a bargain (“Five minutes walk from the nearest station!”) weren’t the things that make it so undesirable now.

The worst half hour is the one spent listening to your tearful elderly neighbour, born in her house, the one she hoped to die in. Listening to the despair of a woman who cannot fill in a form at the best of times and is rendered incoherent at the thought that her childhood home might be demolished, just another of the worthless small fry who will be swept away for the greater good. She loves her garden but even that has made her a target for the mockery of businessmen. She doesn’t own a bowler hat and her lawn is tiny, a postage stamp of green, but she knows each lily and rose, remembers the ones her mother planted and loves them still. It has taken many a half hour to make this patch of heaven and it was worth every moment.


Wonder, sometimes, how long it would take, how many pills, how much booze, to take the problem away forever. How many of those affected regularly spend thirty minutes that close to edge, when the worry becomes too much - “Why are you crying Mummy?” - when there is no fight left and despair takes over. When you begin to think that all the effort is pointless, that all those half hours have been wasted and you are worn away to nothing, for nothing. Knowing that, when the dust that can never settle makes its way, every day, into your home, your precious half hour will be frittered away by a business man, distracted by the many pleasures in that brand new temple to retail - the station - rushing off half an hour late in a wasteful carbon heavy cab to the appointment he might have made, had he been more mindful of those thirty minutes.

Stop HS2 - advice on completing the consultation document
Stop HS2 natonal petition

Made in China 2: Something to remind you

Just in case you’ve been on Mars, two major events are on the horizon that will be especially significant for Londoners.

The first is a royal wedding, an occasion when at least two of those involved will probably wish they could just get on with it without all the attention. The second is the 2012 Olympics, an occasion where all of those concerned hope for lots of the right kind of attention (a sports festival free of corruption/scandal/performance enhancing drugs - don‘t hold your breath).

What they have in common is that they will provide opportunities for a great many people to make an awful lot of money, in some cases by selling something truly awful.

Having perused gift stalls in the stifling heat myself, I can understand why someone saw a certain item and thought of me. They were thirsty, their feet hurt and they felt they had to get me something. Besides, everything looks terrific in strong sunlight. Bad taste isn‘t really why I‘m raising this issue, if someone cares enough to buy me a gift on their holiday I should be grateful for it. What winds me up is how often I turn these things over and see the words “Made in China” on the back.

One of the ugliest gifts to grace our home was a nightlight holder from Lanzarote, nasty to handle and impossible to clean because it was so rough, a humorous reminder of the black volcanic landscape of the island. It was horrible but at least it had the virtue of being made in the place that it represented! Its maker is holding their own against an onslaught of foreign made souvenirs.

If, as I do, you live near a big city that attracts tourists, take a look at what’s on sale to those who spend their hard earned money in your country. Take a long hard look at the things that some retailers have chosen to represent you, your culture, your home. Remember, they’ll see them and they’ll think of you.

Walking past a shop in a local station overflowing with items aimed at visitors, I’ve always wondered where the small plastic Union flag purses were made. So in the interests of research I bought one and found that it was, of course, made in China.

I doubt if those buying these purses really give a damn where they were made, they probably just want something cheap, but I’m beginning to wish that they did. “Souvenir” is a French word meaning “to remember”. If the people who buy these things want something to remind them of the time they spent in the UK I would rather it was actually made here and reflected the good design we are capable of, however cheap the item.

Those plastic purses are made by a British company and according to their website they design what they sell. At one time they also made their products in the UK. All sorts of reasons get cited for the transfer of production abroad by companies like this. Top of the list is that it is often cheaper to manufacture goods outside the UK. Lower costs, fewer regulations, quicker production and supply of short runs all figure in the reasoning behind a move abroad. It makes for a wider profit margin and you could argue that, as the company is based in the UK, it’s a good thing because the profits stay here. However, lower costs means lower wages. Fewer regulations can mean poor working conditions and little or no trade union representation. Speedy supply and short runs? Pressure to work long hours in a job with little security. It also means jobs lost or never even created in the country that these souvenirs are supposed to be a reminder of.


The company responsible for the purse has also created a royal wedding range and I would be surprised if any of it has been made in the UK. They’ve used licensed photographs of the couple on their plates, mugs and magnets which means they’ve had to pay to do so. Another company has avoided this by producing a range called “Royal Wedding” which makes no specific reference to them. You’ll find it in branches of a large supermarket chain, everything from paper napkins to a replica of that sapphire engagement ring. It appears again, in miniature, as a pair of earrings, made in China. The official royal wedding range sold through the Buckingham Palace shop, is made in Stoke-on-Trent, where ceramic goods have been produced for centuries and the profits will go towards preserving the extensive Royal Collection.

I find the failure to provide British made souvenirs for a truly British event like the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton particularly frustrating because I keep being told that the UK will benefit from both it and the Olympics. It’s hard to see how we can if there are factories in China just waiting for the news of a royal engagement and capable of turning out thousands of items within days.

The Olympics should be an opportunity for the creative as well as the sporting community of a host country to profit but it seems to me that the benefits and rights of the occasion are shared out amongst corporations long before the circus hits town. The contract to supply enamel pin badges, one of the most lucrative elements of the souvenir industry for the London 2012 Olympics, was awarded to a Chinese company. Many of the twenty-six companies it beat off to win the contract were British - where did they go wrong? I contacted one company that sells enamel badges and according to the person I spoke to there is only one small business still making them in this country. The reasons they aren’t using that manufacturer? Cost and lead time. The profit made on these things is so big that even notching up thousands of air miles by flying them to the UK is no big deal.


It is the small, almost disposable items like badges that bring in the cash, the things that almost everyone can afford. Ask the person managing the shop at any stately home in the UK what the best sellers are and I guarantee that the answer will be erasers, pencils and postcards, because they regularly welcome parties of school children with pocket money budgets. It would be fantastic if all those small basic souvenirs could be made in the UK. A company called Pageantry Postcards is making the effort to produce its goods here and they are typical of the sort of company we should all be supporting. Another, at the more expensive end of the scale, is Colonial Soldier which sells hand carved figures of British soldiers alongside antiques.

I find it extraordinary that a country with such a great reputation for studio pottery does little to promote it to tourists visiting the UK and to organisations such as the London Olympics Organising Committee. Use of the Olympic brand is so tightly regulated that it is unlikely that a local potter could get away with knocking out a few mugs with “Olympics 2012” painted on them. In fact he or she wouldn’t even be allowed to paint on the words “London 2012” without the written consent of LOCOG.

In my opinion it is only legislation and official promotion which will help local artists to genuinely benefit from big events. Discussion and awareness of the issue by local legislators is long overdue. In some cases it is takes simple embarrassment to effect a change but what will it take to embarrass our politicians into changing this?

Think about what you spend your money on when you next take a holiday or mark an occasion. It isn’t just about job creation and national pride. Concerns about human and animal rights should make everyone think twice about what they take home with them. Personally I don’t want to look at something in my home and know that the person who made it is denied rights that I take for granted, nor do I want visitors to my country to believe that I’m happy that British souvenirs are made somewhere like that. It’s nothing to be proud of. There are so many gifted craftspeople and artists out there - make the effort to look for them. They might not be plastering what they make with the local flag but what they create can be just as effective a reminder of a good time.

Guggenheim Museum petition for Ai Weiwei, collaborative artist, Bird’s Nest stadium, Beijing
Olympics 2008

Make a donation to Kate and William’s favoured charities

Today's non-story

It seems that the Prime minister’s hand writing needs work. It would also appear that he sometimes writes letters in a hurry. We learn this courtesy of the Sun newspaper who have filmed the distressed mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan who received one of his letters (“Exclusive to the Sun”) and plugged it on every news channel.

Jacquie Janes is in the process of grieving for her son, a 20 year old Grenadier Guardsman who died on the 5th of October this year. The Prime Minister sent her a handwritten letter offering his condolences. He spelt her surname incorrectly (“James” instead of “Janes") along with the words “greatest”, “condolences”, “yours” and “colleagues”.

Jacquie is very upset about this. In the Sun’s article she states that she is also upset about the fact that our armed forces are under equipped. This would suggest that she was predisposed to regard Mr. Brown’s condolences as offensive, whatever form they came in. So whether the letter was a calligraphic masterpiece or something cold and formulaic churned out by a flunky on a PC and signed in the PM’s absence by someone we’ve never heard of, the Sun would still have had a story.

In the last few days I have wondered whether it is wise for those bereaved by the present engagement in Afghanistan to allow the press into their lives beyond issuing the most basic statement. This week’s headline in my local paper was “Iceland bans poppy sellers” and the front page features the photograph taken some time ago of a local woman whose son was killed in Iraq. They obviously phoned her for a comment. The thing is, they will now always phone her for a comment. If they don’t she may wonder if they have stopped caring.

It is easy for someone made vulnerable through bereavement to find a journalist (and I use that word loosely where the Sun is concerned) a good listener who can feel their pain, especially if compassion fatigue has set in amongst others of their acquaintance. Journalists know this and use it. Even those we might regard as more reliable and sincere have an eye to their careers and what they will gain from their collaboration with someone like Jacquie Janes. They never forget that they are trying to get and hold an audience. Her sorrow is grist to someone’s mill. In this case it is the Sun who will sell many, many newspapers on the back of this ( yes, they have been fundraising for “our boys“ - it‘s great PR).

The Prime Minister is an extraordinarily busy man. He is blind in one eye and the sight in his other eye is deteriorating. He is running a country and engaging with other powerful people who make decisions that affect the lives of billions of people every day. He found time to write a letter to someone who does not fall into that category. Today, following the fuss over his letter, he telephoned Jacquie. That phone call won’t make any difference because the damage has been done. The story was not about Jacquie, her son or poorly equipped British forces. This was about the Sun’s owner and his politics. However you feel about Gordon Brown don’t lose sight of how the press manipulates the public mood. Don’t fall into the trap.

The PM can write a reasonably tidy letter. How do I know this? I attended an exhibition at the Pitshanger Manor Art Gallery called “Therefore I Am” organised by Breakaway, a charity that supports people with learning disabilities. It offers those visiting the exhibition the opportunity to complete a card that has the words “…therefore I am” in the bottom right hand corner. There are framed cards from Paul Daniels, Lynne Reid Banks and Lynda Bellingham amongst others.

In pride of place is one from Gordon Brown. His hand writing is as untidy as it is in Jacquie’s letter. I can’t remember anything about the standard of spelling. What I do remember is that he went into some detail to describe why he went into politics and his father’s influence on his life. Of course, you could argue that this is great PR, but there has been little publicity about the exhibition which is tucked into a side room at the gallery. I don’t think I would have been able to make that phone call after what has been said about that letter. Gordon Brown is not perfect but I would not be in his shoes for a £45million lottery win.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/campaigns/our_boys/2720283/Prime-Minister-Gordon-Brown-couldnt-even-get-our-name-right.html