GOING BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Last night Marianna came to supper. She is from Bulgaria, from somewhere on the coast of the Black Sea, north of Varna towards the Romanian boarder. During our chat she talked about travelling to the west when she was quite young, at the time of the cold war. She said it was very difficult to get permission to travel ‘behind’ the iron curtain. One could travel anywhere else without difficulty, but going behind the curtain to the west was very problematic, but she did manage to travel to Paris. What was odd was the reference to going ‘behind’ the iron curtain. Having grown up in the ‘west’, we were used to using the same phrase when referring to the easter block – going behind the iron curtain. My first reaction was. ‘If we’re both behind, then who’s at the front?’

On reflection, if both sides were behind, then both had to be in front as well. It was a simple matter of a point of view. The performers on one side where the spectators of the other. A very human condition of being simultaneously performer and spectator. It was a performance that ran for nearly 45 years. West Berlin, being encircled by the curtain, was centre stage. Clearly, from any point of view, West Berlin was behind the curtain. Or was it?

What was even more nonsensical was the scenario for exchanging spies. The Glienicker Brücke across the Havel River to Potsdam was the favoured route. This meant that western bloc spies had to walk east across the bridge while Soviet Eastern bloc spies had to walk west. Again a matter of a point of view.

More conversation led on to the difficulties of citizens in the Eastern Bloc. Whilst the regimes were severe, there was a system of attempting to ensure full employment. Everyone had to have a job. As a consequence there were four or five people on night duty at hotels where only one was actually required. Similarly, public transport operated 24hrs a day, so that conductors and drivers were employed even if some stood around the depot doing very little. Jobs were pretty cushy in some respects, which led to a kind a laziness; however, if anyone wanted to retrain or return to education, then they could do so and be paid the same salary they would have received on their job. Self-improvement was encouraged and paid for by the state. Sadly too few took up the opportunity. This is a course a terrible thing in the minds of anti-communists and anti-socialists. That the state should pay and encourage self-improvement is heresy; however, I have recently noted adverts on television recruiting people to work at Amazon. Any amazon employee can apply to do a course in engineering or management in order to improve their status within the company, and the course and training is paid for by the company leading to a better job and higher salary within the company. Jeff Bezos may be one of the richest men in the world but he is clearly a communist or perhaps just a champagne socialist. What his company is doing is clearly anti-American.

The idea that government is there to help people better their lives is somehow difficult for certain politicians to grasp. It’s OK for private enterprise to pay for benefits for its employees, but not all private enterprise will do that, nor can they afford to do it. Only a very few actually perform in that way. Most private enterprise is just that, a company that accumulates wealth for its governors, pays minimum dividends, or whatever they can get away with to shareholders, who are probably already wealthy, and all involved try to avoid taxes and pay minimum wage to employees. So what is the problem about the state trying to better the lives of all its citizens? It does not prevent private enterprise from being enterprising, so what is wrong with the state taking up the slack?

The state’s problem in taking up that slack is mainly financial. There are so many people in need of assistance, spreading around the funds is not an easy proposition, particularly when it has a problem with raising funds through taxation. Methods of raising and spending funds differ greatly, and priorities can become confused. Government should be about who has the best plan. Many feel that the whole question of bettering lives is best left to the market place. Smaller government and lower taxation allow the economy to flourish and improvements in economic status and education will trickle down from the wealthier entrepreneurial citizens. Except that it doesn’t and never has. Adam Smiths benevolent ‘person concerned’ is mostly myth.

What is clear from the state of the world is that small government or non-interference does not work. The pandemic is evidence that government interference and assistance is essential. The imposition of regulations around containment of the spread of the virus was an absolute necessity in the circumstances. Private enterprise was helpless and required the assistance of the state to keep afloat, and still, because of the stretch on that economic assistance some private enterprises could not continue.

One is reminded that during the financial crisis of 2007-2008, a sort of economic pandemic, it was only through world-wide co-operation of governments that led to any kind of recovery. That plan was initiated by Gordon Brown who effectively went door to door in every major capitol to enlist those countries to bail out the world. A feat for which he has been largely ignored. Indeed he was even blamed for the crisis at the time, rather than lauded for having fixed it. The British public elected a coalition in his wake, which led to austerity, Brexit and the current fall out being suffered by the United Kingdom, which has unfortunately been exacerbated by covid. But the fallout is real, and the clownish grand guignol of Boris and crew, are not the answer.

So think very carefully when you next go behind the curtain in a polling booth.