Skidmore's Island: A Yen For Your Thoughts
"Whenever I have been broke it meant that I had no money. Apparently the same rules do not apply to countries.
"America, which rents its homeland from China, hasn't got enough ready cash to pay its civil service. But for some reason that does not mean America is short of money. It baffles me in the way I used to baffle the Midland Bank,'' writes Ian Skidmore.
I remember with joy the day my bank manager said to me “It would be nice if we could get back to our original arrangement where you gave money to me”.
That was the same bank manager, who, when I listed my hunting and boating expenses to illustrate the ‘Hamlet’s Ghost of my overdraft’,
replied, as older readers will recall: “May I remind you Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies as you are one of the Midland Bank's.”
Britain’s own fiscal fantasies soar to heights too rarefied for mere mortals. We are told that we have not sufficient money to run a decent health service or finance the wars in which politicians take such delight. Our fighting men are being rewarded with redundancy and we are spending £9.3bn of public money on a glorified schools sports day and £30 billion improving a rail service to cut half an hour off travelling times. By macabre coincidence, families will be £35 billion worse off as a result of cuts, which mostly will be wasted on Chattering Choo Choos.
About 30 years ago a man I met in a pub had a solution to our road and rail difficulties which even then seemed to politicians to be insoluble. “Canals,” he said. He pointed out that on the North Wales coast, 10 miles from where we were drinking, was a little used deep water port, one of many others round the coast of this septic isle. These ports were linked to what had once been a very efficient canal system.
Unfortunately, the canal system was much more efficient than the new rail service. So the rail companies bought the canals and allowed them to fall into disuse. If they were restored - and many have been since I met him - they would move freight at little cost whilst easing motorway congestion.
