Author: Ian Middleton

Ian Middleton http://wavinganddrowning.wordpress.com Ian has written columns for Retail Week Magazine, The Independent, Huffington Post, Evolve Politics, The London Economic and the Byline Times as well as contributing comment pieces for national newspapers and magazines. He was the Green Party Parliamentary candidate for Banbury in North Oxfordshire in the 2015, 2017 and 2019 General Elections and is a County, District and Parish councillor in Oxfordshire. Ian has appeared on TV and local and national radio talking about politics and retail. He is an ethical entrepreneur with areas of expertise in retail and social entrepreneurship, but he also writes and comments on music, food, the environment, ethical consumerism, technology, renewable energy and animal and human rights. He is also a trained psychologist, musician, runner, hiker, allotmenteer, vegan, humanist, a committed atheist, beer drinker and compulsive crosser of lines.
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Bullying Banks and Toothless Ministers

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cable_1825216cMy latest piece on Huffington Post – Also available at http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ian-middleton/uk-banking_b_6232648.html

I just watched a documentary revealing some of the outrageous behaviour from UK banks in their dealings with small and medium businesses.

It’s a cliche I usually try to avoid, but this really does beggar belief, especially from two of the banks the tax payer bailed out to the tune of billions of pounds of our money!

RBS, who are still currently 81% owned by the British taxpayer, and have oozed out from scandal after scandal over the past few years, have now been accused of systematically manoeuvring businesses into collapse to reduce their loan books and make a few quid on the side.

They even allegedly set out on a personal vendetta against Lawrence Tomlinson – The government’s ‘entrepreneur in residence’ – forcing him to close his RBS accounts and other facilities, he says, because he had the temerity to criticise them in an official report.

Lloyds Bank, also substantially owned by you and me, and equally mired in the slurry pit of libor rigging and other misdemeanours, were found to be involved in similar unsavoury activities with their own business borrowers.
It seems people who borrow from Lloyds, after being promised a personal relationship with the bank, have their loans and overdrafts quietly flogged off to an asset management/investment company with the reputation for being about as supportive to small businesses as a toilet paper hammock in a hurricane.

The bank’s representative, being interviewed for the programme, visibly dodged questions and weaved around responsibility for this breach of good faith with his customers, citing the small print in their loan agreements like a dodgy used car salesman explaining his way out of a warranty claim.

The programme was also notably seeded with cutaways containing well versed gobbets of personal opprobrium from our finger wagging Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills – Vince Cable.

Now I’ve been in awe of this man for many years. Not in terms of respect for his work, but more in quiet admiration for how he has managed to stay in a post that he is so singly unsuited to for so long.

From the early days of being caught on tape plotting his dastardly revenge on Rupert Murdoch, through to the incompetent and catastrophic underselling of Royal Mail to city investors based on his quaint belief in the ‘gentlemen’s agreement’, this man has shown that he is about as qualified to be a Minister of State as he is to be an international gymnast.

I once had a great deal of respect for Dr Vince. I remember he was even touted before the last election as being a candidate for Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the improbable event of the LibDems winning outright. Yet since he took on his government position he’s demonstrated his complete lack of influence and grasp in almost every issue he’s been involved with.

He has, throughout his tenure, made scary noises about what he’d do to the banks if they didn’t straighten up and fly right. Yet whenever they are found up to the armpits in the cookie jar, he fades quietly into the scenery like a withering wallflower, only to appear some time after the fact, sliding his glasses down his nose, staring myopically at the camera trying to look like he knows what he’s supposed to be talking about.

Each time he promises to get tough next time, like the pub orator boasting about what he’ll do to anyone who crosses him, just as long as he never has to follow up his words with actions. And by the same token he does very little, if anything, to back up his chest puffing and table thumping.

I’m sure on a personal level he’s a lovely chap. He looks, after all, like everyone’s favourite cuddly uncle. But in terms of his day job, he has all the business acumen of a used teabag, the bark of a housefly, and the bite of a tortoise with gingivitis. In the face of an upcoming election, he really should be considering his retirement options.

The only reason I can think of that he is still in post now is because these qualities are exactly what his Conservative masters want in a minister for business. Someone who’ll make all the right noises, but ultimately stay out of their way and let them get on with filling their boots and those of their big corporate chums.

While people like this are in the positions they are, it’s little wonder that we’ve seen no genuine bank reform since the crash. No prosecutions of bankers, who to any fair-minded person have been guilty of, at the very least, dishonesty and in all probability of fraud and deception, if not plain old daylight robbery.

Until we have a government who seriously wants to take these guys on, we’ll be living in an economic groundhog day, enjoying the odd bits of prosperity, in between stumping up yet more of our own cash to prop up the lavish lifestyles of city wide boys.

In the meantime I guess small businesses will need to think of alternative sources of funding for their next venture. People who are more honest and reliable than most of the banks. The Triads or the Mafia perhaps. I hear they have some very tempting offers you can’t refuse.

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My Comments on The Virgin Galactic Disaster on The World Service

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VirginHere’s a a link to a programme I was involved in for the World Service a few weeks ago, discussing the aftermath of the crash of the Virgin Galactic space craft in the Mojave Desert.  This crash came in the wake of a similar event with an ESA rocket that crashed shortly after lift off in Virginia.

Sadly the Virgin crash cost the life of one of the pilots of the craft, but it raises issues around the viability of space tourism, not least because of the environmental impact of such catastrophic events.  Moreover the question remains as to the point of these sub-orbital flights and if they will ever amount anything other than a quick joy ride on a very expensive roller-coaster for those that can afford the $250,000 ticket price.

There’s much talk during the programme about the cultural impact of these flights and how individuals are inspired by their trips.  I don’t really buy that personally, and think that there’s a lot more that can be done to inspire scientific exploration on the face of this planet if you have half a billion dollars to throw around.

If nothing else Richard Branson could use that money to keep his long forgotten promise to make Virgin Atlantic the greenest airline on the planet.  If that isn’t already an oxymoron.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p029gwpg

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Carry On Westminster – The Tops Trumps of British Democracy

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Green SupermanThis is a piece I wrote for Huffington Post earlier this week.  I think it speaks for itself, although after it was published I thought I should have pointed out that none of the the politicians I refer to in the studio on election night were Greens.  As usual we weren’t invited to the BBC party.  There were however representatives from Labour, Conservative, Libdems and UKIP.  Given that the Greens had a reasonably good showing in the last General Election in Rochester (for a ‘marginal’ party) I’d have thought we’d have been worth a mention at least.  But apparently not.

Anyway I hope this serves as a good first post on my website/blog and you can see the original article here  http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ian-middleton/westminster-politics_b_6199214.html?utm_hp_ref=tw.

Feel free to comment below or on the original article on the Huffington Post site.

I recently became a parliamentary candidate for the Green Party. After years of railing against politicians, the irony, and perhaps the hypocrisy, of becoming one myself has not been lost on me.

Then again, there were the constant jibes about my complaining a lot but doing nothing positive to make a change. So when my local party group asked me to stand, I said I’d give it a go. And here I am. Feel free to point the finger.

One of the first things I’ve noticed about the underbelly of politics is just how strategic it is. Target wards, target seats, candidates standing in constituencies where they don’t live for the sake of political expediency. None of this is new, or unusual, or even un-democratic, but it does take some getting used to.

But watching the BBC election special on the Rochester and Strood by-election, you could be forgiven for thinking that the rest of the political world has turned into some kind of wife swapping party from the mid 70s. It seems these days that political manoeuvring between the ruling parties has moved beyond juggling their own family jewels, and has been reduced to chucking their keys into the fruit bowl with anyone who fancies a quick fumble with their majority.

Firstly we had UKIP’s Deputy Chairperson Suzanne Evans being interviewed about where her party would go after the predicted win in Rochester. This consisted of a serious of nods and winks about who might and might not leap out of their own party bed and sneak into theirs when the neighbours weren’t looking. A sort of Carry-On Westminster, but with less laughs.

She then went on to explain, with barely concealed glee, that her fondest ambition was to seduce someone from Labour to join in their little tryst. Nigel is apparently talking to a couple of MPs but she couldn’t reveal more. She did everything but tap the side of her nose, elbow Andrew Neil in the ribs and give a little Babs Windsor giggle.

Then we had an analysis from a political expert explaining how UKIP’s performance in the by-election would determine how other sitting MPs would behave in the run up to next years general election. His premise was that if UKIP did well in Rochester, many other career politicians would be considering their position in the next few months. The expectation is apparently that if they think UKIP is a better bet for them to hold on to their seat (ooh matron!), then they would switch allegiances in order to do so.

Now you’ll have to excuse me. I’m quite new to this game. But when one joins a party isn’t there something about ideology written into the contract? Or am I now being ridiculously naive?

Judging by the behaviour of at least two recent pantheons of British democracy I suppose I am. It seems that standing on a platform with a bunch of like minded individuals in the hope of doing something good for the country isn’t what it’s about any more.

No, apparently it’s more about hanging on to the House Of Commons parking place, the expense account, and access to the House of Commons bar, rather than the boring stuff like philosophical conviction. Some back-benchers are evidently more interested in maintaining a comfortable position for themselves, rather than for their constituents. Yet, in true British carry-on style, they still keep getting elected.

As a newcomer to this world, I saw with fresh eyes last night these four sombre suited politicians sitting uneasily with each other, smugly carving up the political cake amongst themselves. Like children at birthday party trying to decide who gets the last portion of jelly and ice cream, the polemic was about anything other than the issues that this country and the planet really face.

Iain Duncan Smith spent a good deal of his time justifying a particularly vituperative campaign poster that portrayed the idea of voting for Mark Reckless as on a par with seeking Pol Pot as a spiritual adviser. Reckless used to be an investment banker, he didn’t live in the area, he’d only moved there to take a safe seat. All very salient points for the local electorate, but ones that seemed exquisitely irrelevant when he was the Conservative MP only a few months ago.

Meanwhile UKIP expounded their claim that they listened to the people, and were offering an alternative to the status quo of careerist politicians who’d never done a days honest labour in their lives. Odd then that their success last night, and in Clacton a few weeks ago, relied on exactly the reverse of those ideals by welcoming with open arms two MPs firmly rooted in the rotten political establishment they claimed to despise.

On the point of principle I am in total agreement with them. The current political establishment has reduced democracy to the level of swapping football cards in the playground. But it’s a tawdry game of top trumps that they have just as much of a hand in as all the other entrenched Westminster parties.

If this is the future of politics in this country, I’m glad to be a member of a party that currently stands as an exemplar of how it is still possible to operate democratically without playing these cynical games. We may now have one less MP than UKIP, but at least ours is there on merit, rather than because she swapped her rosette for a more appealing colour.

And Caroline Lucas has just won MP of the year, which is something that gives me hope. Even so, she’s now the focus of a campaign to unseat her by the Labour party in Brighton, because, and despite of the fact, that Labour and the Greens share many of the same aims.

Moreover, if all these people care about is hanging on to their positions at all costs, what really is the point? And if the electorate is so fickle that they can’t see through this charade, maybe we deserve the graceless, flagitious mess they all seem to be making of the world.

One apocryphal anecdote from Rochester I heard today was that someone had voted UKIP because the sitting Tory MP hadn’t done enough for the local area. If that’s true, it’s an indictment of the great British voter more demoralising than anything supposedly implied by hanging a flag out of the window of your mock-Georgian semi.

But as an accidental politician I have to hope that it isn’t true, or at least typical. I have to trust that people in the UK will see past all the identikit politicos, the vested interests and the horse trading of their democratic heritage, and vote for real change and genuine representation in the next government.

I am ever the optimist.