Fri 7 Nov 2008
Gluttons for punishment
The end is nigh! Or, that’s what I keep hearing.But don’t believe it for a minute.
We don’t have war, pestilence, death and mass destruction, or even soup kitchens. Not yet, anyway, not in the areas cutely known as the ‘civilized world’.
What we have are difficult times ahead. Difficult financial times which can lead to loss of homes, jobs, pride and every-day fulfillment. Some of that is due to the see-saw, roller-coaster economies of the modern consumer world – and most of it down to the reckless greed of those who chased bigger and bigger rewards at the cost of the aspirations of ordinary people. It was capitalism out of control. It wasn’t the stronger who became Masters of the Universe, but little bullying men in £1000 suits, hiding behind their stainless steel and glass desks, whilst recklessly playing the financial systems with other people’s money in the trough in which they stuffed their snouts.
The truth is that greed is good, but gluttony is the first step to perdition. So, while the bankers run for cover, as all bullies do, they leave the rest of us to pick up the pieces and step through the inferno while we try and sort out the mess they have left behind. But picking our way through negative equities, smashed pension funds, lost jobs and the paraphernalia of a financial holocaust means there is a chance that we will find ourselves, that we will get back to some of the decent business and governmental ethics that should protect us from those who steal from us under the guise of being professional advisors and experts in their chosen fields.
The classic example of this happened in the construction trade. Every level of this industry gulped down large and unnecessary profits. They forced the prices up, and used archaic and substandard work practices to milk as much as they could out of the ordinary homeowner. They used health and safety as a means to slow down work and ask for more money in return. They built small and pokey homes in which we were forced to live, helping destroy social and family values by cramming people like rats into ever smaller spaces. Their profits and take-home pay exploded, while the price of homes and buildings rocketed upwards. And when they were warned to ease back, that it could only end in tears, they laughed because they knew better and just went on hammering the ordinary citizen, knowing he had nowhere else to go.
And through all this, the government with its ‘experts’ and quangos on construction methods, ecology, saving the planet and every other strategy they could come up with, just yacked plenty in a myriad of conferences at five-star venues – and did nothing. Various housing ministers and their civil servant teams paraded in and out of Whitehall, each one promising the earth and delivering nothing. We even had a team come down from Caroline Flint’s office (remember her) to say we were further ahead of everyone else with our building techniques, and close to achieving Code 4. They promised they’d be in touch. Where are you, fellas? It’s six months on and I’m still waiting.
I don’t want to start up again attacking those who are laughingly known as ‘tradesman’. The decorators, plumbers, carpenters, et al. They were just the bottom of the pile, just learning from their bosses above and milking the system with more money for fewer hours, less work, and shabby products. In essence, the building trade was just another arm of those who took a lot and offered little. We all knew it would end in tears: we just didn’t know when.
Now I may sound like an old-fashioned communist, but I’m not. I believe in a capitalist society – communism and socialism was always doomed to failure. But under capitalism, however bad it is, it will always recover. That’s because it builds on peoples’ hopes and aspirations.
What matters now is that government, industry leaders and we, as individuals, learn from our mistakes. Government must support and draw guidelines for a stronger legislated business environment which allows creativity and enterprise to flourish whilst allowing those who take chances to have big profits whilst creating jobs and industries that grow with the needs of a global market. We have some of the world’s greatest brains in this country and, in my view, some of the best and most talented, hard working staff. We need to go back to the old- fashioned work ethic of offering a fair reward for a good day’s work. We need to lose the legislation that binds and drowns our decision-making endeavors in red tape, yet still insure the protection of our society.
We must discard Brussels and its business policy making and eternal directives, and focus on what we can do and plan accordingly. We aren’t an island any longer, but we don’t have to be perennially wedged between a rock and a hard place. We can be in Europe, but with our own identity and some of our old freedoms intact.
The building business – and it is a business – needs to decamp into the modern age. We need new thinkers, and newer entrepreneurs. Let’s not get the old fogies back when business picks up again. It can be a new dawn. And we can build eco-homes, larger family units, attractive buildings, lower cost homes on lower priced land, and places we are proud to live in.
But it won’t happen if we get through this, and just let the old ways creep their way stealthily back in again…
Sadly as ever, I suspect it’ll generally be the pioneers attracting the arrows and the "fat-cat" followers gaining the land. Nothing changes?
He tells it as it is, one of very few.
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