A Spectator's Notebook
The Government has been outwitted by the Civil Service (ably assisted by the National Insurance computer at Newcastle upon-Tyne) in the matter of the e10 bonus to old-age pensioners, and made to look miserable and mean into the bargain. The £10 bonus was intended as a sweetener for the pensioners, as a kind of compensation for the rise in the cost of living, as part of the anti-inflationary freeze. The Government said it would do its best to see that the pensioners had their £10 before Christmas. You might think that giving old age pensioners an extra 00 was an administrative task of no great complexity: after all, pensioners in the main take their pension books each week to the local post office, and it would really be very simple to authorise the post offices to pay out the extra £10 and mark the book accordingly. But the Civil Service was out to ensure that as little as possible was paid out. Exceptions were made to the rule. This meant that the computer could be — indeed had to be — programmed. Now, it transpires that all manner of pensioners won't get their £10 bonus before Christmas, and many of them won't get it at all, unless Sir Keith can outwit the civil servants.
This is a fine example of how bureaucrats can frustrate politicians. It is not the first in the history of the present administration. When the Tories came to office, they had promised to give extra pensions to the over-eighties. Again, the bureaucrats, determined to scrimp and save, discovered or made exceptions to the rule — so that there were for a time some over-eighties, in genuine need, who got no pensions at all, despite the promises and intentions of the Government to give them pensions. A second Bill had to be passed. Barbara Castle may get some political mileage out of the present £10 bonus fiasco. But it looks now as if many many pensioners will not be getting the £10 they had expected — and doubtless had budgeted for. A sorry and a mean Christmas tale.
Lunatic vision
The last moon shot of this series, very likely of this century, was a very apologetic affair. It is now almost universally accepted that these moon trips have been an appalling waste of money. I remember suggesting as much a few years ago and being howled down on almost all sides by idiots who thought that space exploration was a further extension of 'man's insatiable curiosity' and all that sort of thing. The end of the Apollo series is a formal admission that John F. Kennedy's vision of space was lunatic in more ways than one. Possibly I am being premature; but I think the banalities and nastiness of the 'sixties are coming to be recognised. The 'seventies might well prove to be a more civilised decade. What is becoming accepted is that the student riots of 1968 were not as important as they seemed at the time; and that the student revolutionaries of those heady days had nothing to say, nothing useful to contribute. They have gone, along their sentimental little songs like 'Where have all the flowers gone' and 'We shall overcome.' At their nicest and best, those heady salad days were bathed in a kind of summery innocence. But then the flower people wilted, and some became garbage, but most dropped back in. In their different ways, the last moonshot and the Angry Brigade trial were the endings of two of the most characteristic false starts of the 'sixties. It was interesting to learn that the moon , smelled of old fireworks, although it ' would have been more fun had it stank of green cheese.
Moon smells, Earth smells
It occurred to me, when I read of what the moon smelled, that possibly what the astronauts were smelling was the exhaust fumes of their own machines. How do astronauts know that it is not themselves and their gear they are smelling but the moon dust and rock? I dare say the find that one difficult to imagine, unless it be that when moon rock is broken up on earth, it emits a very powerful smell of old fireworks. Those who play revolutionary politics witt scientists of NASA know the answer, but 1 bombs cannot complain if, when caught. they are severely punished by the institutions of the society they seek to destroy. It was fascinating to look at and listen to the two girls, Anna Mendelson and Hilary Creek, being interviewed on television (the recording was made in the summer by a Granada team). The girls' inarticulateness was startling, even bY present day standards. When asked simple questions, the girls replied with long
baffled silences. If people like this are angry, and can find no words to express their anger, then they turn to violence t° express themselves and to conspiracy for company. They seem to have been extremely amateurish revolutionaries and conspirators, which may explain how it was that the police had such difficulty in finding them. The popular press, too, seemed not 0, understand them. They wrote of sexut° orgies and ritual slaughter going on in s village I know, close by Essex UniversitY. This lurid stuff was based on an incident when youths, drunk at the time, pinched couple of live turkeys, killed them to stoP them squawking, and took them back the house they were dossing down in. trail of feathers and blood led the police t° the place, and there were feathers and bits of turkey innards and suchlike on the floor. It was undoubtedly a filthy mess' sordid, squalid. But this was not enoug,11, ' for one or two of the reporters. Morro If you don't want to be accused 'of going is for sexual orgies and ritual slaugrite don't steal turkeys.
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