January 14th 2023.
A Happy New Year from the frozen North.
After a welcome break over the holidays it is back to what currently passes as normal in the UK.
We are greeted back with the nurses, ambulance drivers and NHS workers continuing their industrial action. The railways are getting worse, last week had five days with no train services. Sections of the Civil Service are still striking and today, teachers announced that they will be going on strike. As the sections of the country taking industrial action grow, we are left with the growing suspicion that they are connected and are part of an effort to bring down the Conservative Government. One thing the strikers have in common is that they all work in the public sector. If they tried these actions in the private sector, they would be in danger of destroying their private employer or losing their jobs due to the long-term damage they would be inflicting. A private company would not be able to survive 19%+ wage increases.
As things progress it is becoming ever more apparent that Rishi Sunak is out of his depth. He may well be extremely competent when dealing with financiers and banks, but he does not have the “common touch”. As I have said before he lacks a political antenna and needs a good team of politicians and advisors around him. He is what in the old days would have been called a technocrat, being able to calculate discounted cash flows in his head but being unable to understand what a reduction in benefits of £10 would mean to the poorer sections of society.
He is, to give him credit, a very able manager, but we still have to address the question – is he a leader? He doesn’t seem able to communicate or put a message across. He doesn’t have a vision for the nation that he can share and get people to support. I am struck by the similarity to Chris Luxon. Luxon took over from Rob Fyfe at Air NZ. It can be argued that Fyfe was a leader and communicator of a vision. Luxon was a controller and manager who understood figures but seemed to have a block when dealing with people.
I was also catching up with a friend who has had a business in inner-city Auckland for the last fifteen years, and he reminded me that eight years ago he said to “watch out” for a Labour politician called Jacinda Ardern.
The holidays were a good time for reflection on the state of the nation. Gun crime is increasing, with an innocent 26-year-old woman being shot dead on Christmas Eve in a pub in the Wirral (across the Mersey from Liverpool). A 22-year-old male has been arrested for this, allegedly carrying out the shooting as revenge in a dispute between drug gangs. Five other people were injured as the suspect sprayed the pub with a converted Scorpion submachine gun.
Two days ago people attending a memorial service at a church near Euston station were attacked by a suspect with a shotgun. A seven-year-old schoolgirl is in a life-threatening condition in hospital following the shooting, which also injured a 12-year-old girl and three women aged 48, 54, and 41. The service was for a mother and daughter who died late last year from natural causes. Police are pursuing an interesting line of enquiry, which disclosed that the late husband and father of the two women was Carlos Arturo Sanchez-Coronado, a convicted member of the Colombian Cali drug cartel. Sanchez-Coronado was allegedly involved in money laundering for the cartel. A 22-year-old man has just been arrested in connection with the shooting.
Coming back to the subject of what will happen this year, I just can’t even guess, let alone forecast what will happen in the UK. I have never seen a situation that is so volatile and unpredictable, both socially and politically. One thing is certain: The war in Ukraine will continue to cause distress and death in Ukraine and European nations will have to learn to work even more closely together to maintain their joint security.
On a personal note, I can only worry about the increasing crime in the UK and the pressure on people’s incomes through the cost of living crisis. Even in my little oasis in Southwest England, we aren’t immune to the problems prevalent in the rest of the country.
Until Covid struck I travelled extensively on business, and I am now able to resume my activities, with a trip to Berlin coming up soon. I was planning to return to New Zealand but was prevented by the government’s lockdown policy. Now I look at the situation and have to consider where my short-term future lies. The hard question is why would someone with multiple master’s degrees (with distinction) and a doctorate, having spent years working with governments and NGOs on business development projects in the third world, return to New Zealand? What would I gain?
I leave the question unanswered, but it is the same one that is vexing many people, as I find out when attending expat networking functions.
The Ardern Government has not only ruined New Zealand for the people living there, but she has deterred many capable people from returning and helping New Zealand to grow. New Zealand’s international reputation has also taken a hammering.