EDITORIAL : THE GUARDIAN, ENGLAND

          

 

Public sector pensions: Talking not shouting

There are two obvious reasons why public sector pensions have suddenly erupted to the top of the government agenda

There are two obvious overarching reasons why public sector pensions have suddenly erupted to the top of the government agenda, culminating in yesterday's speech by the Treasury chief secretary, Danny Alexander. The first is that this is such an inherently major social policy issue, an epochal challenge not just for the current Conservative-Liberal Democrat government, but also for the last Labour government, which agonised long and often about pensions, and moreover for any future government too. Nor are pensions purely an issue for this country or for the public sector alone; all advanced societies have to work out how to provide decent affordable pensions for people who are living longer in greater numbers than ever before, whether they are employed in the public or the private sectors. The issue is live, resonant and divisive across the whole of Europe. These would be – and already were – large and difficult issues irrespective of the financial crisis or the recession, though these hard times have obviously dramatised the current context.

The second reason is that the politics of British public sector pension reform are beginning to get more difficult to manage, with government and unions each beginning to accuse one another of bad faith as a series of public sector strikes loom at the end of the month. Both sides must bear some of the blame for this. It is true that some unions are trying to jump the gun and increase the pressure by striking against the government while talks are still continuing and the final package of changes remains under discussion. Yet it is also true that the coalition has taken its eye off the ball since the former Labour cabinet minister Lord Hutton published the generally sensible report in March on which much of the government's approach is based. Given the importance of the pensions question, David Cameron and George Osborne should have taken more public responsibility for the political handling of what was always bound to be a difficult issue over the spring months. That carelessness has now come back to bite them. That is why Mr Alexander's speech was not so much the declaration of war that some on both the right and the left pretend; it was an attempt to reassert some lost political grip.

It would not be without precedent if some in the coalition, preferring to embarrass Labour than to govern in the national interest, fancied a run-in with the public sector unions, and especially some of their leaders. But it would be quite the wrong course. Mr Alexander's speech was well pitched in this regard. It was rooted in the frank and fair approach of Lord Hutton. It insisted, in defiance of some of the morning reporting, that the government was still in the negotiating business. It was a speech of consensus not confrontation. And, as was evident from Mr Alexander's later comments to Brian Strutton of the GMB – one of the unions which, like the TUC itself, has approached the talks constructively – there is plenty of substance still to discuss, including transitional arrangements and the local government implications.

No one should pretend, though, that these are not difficult issues. But Britain cannot stand aside from the historic need to recast the transition between work and retirement. The holy grail is to avoid, or at least to mitigate as much as possible, the triple whammy of asking workers to pay more, work longer and get less. There is no cost-free answer, but there are better and worse ways of producing a balanced package. In the long term, working a bit longer is crucial, as Lord Hutton and the government both believe. But so is protecting the lowest-paid, as Mr Alexander rightly stressed yesterday. And so is the need to avoid dumping the costs on the next generation. Raging against these conflicting imperatives is understandable but pointless. As so often, this is an argument in which jaw-jaw is better than war-war. Both sides need to remain at the table, avoid a shouting match, and accept their responsibilities.

Travel writing: Lost art in search of a lost world

Few authors have been able to equal Patrick Leigh Fermor's ability to dissolve into the places described in his books

"I hate the French cookery, and abominate garlick," Tobias Smollett told his readers 245 years ago, with a snooty disregard for foreigners that runs through too much travel writing today. Describing distant places fairly, curiously and entertainingly has never been easy. Few authors, in any century, have been able to equal Patrick Leigh Fermor's liquid ability to dissolve into the places described in his books, so that he seemed to be less reporting on than living in them. His death this month, at 96, with the third of his great trilogy of prewar European exploration still unpublished, is a moment to ask what travel writing can still achieve.

Leigh Fermor was lucky, in that he walked through an archaic and aristocratic eastern Europe soon to be obliterated by the second world war. His two greatest books, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water, take readers into a time and place that can never exist again, and that, as much as his pitch-perfect writing, is why they are among those few books worth reading many times.

Few of today's writers have this advantage. They must describe a world in which it is easier to communicate, and travel, than ever before. No teenager setting off from Tower Bridge now would find themselves amid ballgowns, hunting parties and lonely mountaintop shepherds. Facebook and text messaging have brought Bucharest and Birmingham closer. Describing difference has been made harder.

Leigh Fermor was one of the last of the great travel writers whose experience spanned the previous century. A varied assortment, mostly men, wrote books that still stand as classics today: among them Eric Newby, Norman Lewis and Wilfred Thesiger. Jan Morris, still writing, deserves to be among them. Two decades ago, a fresh crop of authors revived the art but then fell victim to their own celebrity, Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux included.

Where does travel writing stand now? There are fewer famous authors and fewer sales. Some of the best books involve almost no travel at all: Roger Deakin's account of wild swimming in Britain, Waterlog, or Neil Ansell's lovely Deep Country, about the birds and landscape of mid-Wales. William Dalrymple remains an explorer in the classical sense: in From the Holy Mountain he shows Byzantium is not quite destroyed. William Blacker's Along the Enchanted Way, about eight years living in rural Romania, is the closest modern writing has come to Leigh-Fermor, and not only because the Gypsy and Saxon life he shares is almost gone.

Always, the attraction is the slow pace. There is no need for hurry, no requirement for horror, just immersion in a place and time that is different, even when it is not far from our own.

Unthinkable? No second serve

Imagine if the neophobes at the Lawn Tennis Association were to pioneer a ban on second serves

Wimbledon starts on Monday. For the miserablists who dismiss tennis as a tiresome game for the privileged middle class, it is a fortnight of shrieks and grunts and the uninhibited rearrangement of underwear. But for the rest of us, it is a series of titanic struggles, starring feats of unimaginable athleticism salted with a mix of personal antagonism. Not counting south London's unpredictable weather, there is only one gloomy thought ahead, and that is the relentless procession of high-velocity serves that, if they are in, are effectively unreturnable. They dominate the early rounds and, while big servers can be tiresome on other surfaces, on grass they can hammer the excitement out of the game. And nowadays, 130mph is more or less standard. The record for the fastest serve, 156mph, is held by the Croatian Ivo Karlovic, a 32-year-old currently ranked somewhere outside the top 100. Pitting him against the 20-year-old, up-and-coming Canadian-Montenegrin Milos Raonic – currently top of the ATP's list of ace-hitters and in the top three (like Karlovic) of winners of first serves – would be a recipe for the dullest match in top-class tennis. They would just take it in turns to blast the ball at each other and the winner would be the one who was most accurate. But imagine if the neophobes at the Lawn Tennis Association were to pioneer a ban on second serves. It would transform the first week of the championship. Versatility and strategy would replace brute velocity. We spectators would be the winners.

                                                                            Dated-18/06/2011