The Passing Show
Faster In The Air . . .
Have you ever been to London Airport? Quite possibly you have. It’s nothing unusual for workers to travel abroad by air nowadays. Perhaps also you have stood on the spectator’s platform and watched the hectic scene around you. The piercing whine of the jets and the frequent chatter from the loudspeakers. The all-pervasive sickly smell of fuel oil. The grubby-fisted schoolboy plane spotters, scurrying from one vantage point to another, clutching binoculars, notebooks and the inevitable sweets. Hardly the place for a rest cure.
Even so, it is difficult not to feel awed at the technical achievement of the soaring monsters, or at the size and complexity of the organisation behind them. It is, indeed, an impressive demonstration of man’s social capabilities and his power to control and change his environment. Just think! In less than fifty years, he has shown that the world can be spanned in a matter of a few hours.
Of itself, this is not a bad thing. No one can sensibly oppose the prospect of greater contact between people. But taken in the context of a very commercial world, it is not an unmixed blessing. The first consideration of the airlines is to operate profitably, and such is the fierce pace of competition -between them that planes with years of service left in them are being scrapped for new ones which will lop chunks off any given journey time. The new jets due shortly for service on short hauls will notch up over 600 miles :per hour, and the Anglo-French Concord will fly at 1} times the speed of sound. But its lead will be short-lived, because the planned U.S. air liner will fly twice as fast as sound.
Hard pressed as the airlines are in this frantic scramble, it is not surprising that the vital factors affecting human welfare and safety do not always get the attention they deserve. This is admitted in a Guardian article of September 24th by D. Royston Booth. Discussing the questions of airworthiness standards, he says:
“Aviation is such a fast growing industry nowadays that there is hardly time to test every component exhaustively before the aircraft is committed to everyday use, and there are many unanswered questions, particularly arising from aircraft behaviour and basic design. Not that B.O.A.C takes bigger risks than before …. but it does mean that when aircraft are developed so quickly assumptions have to be made.”
So they are prepared to take a chance with your safety—for it can mean nothing else—because if every conceivable check were made, it would slow them down in the mad race with their competitors, and maybe put them right out of the running altogether. Admittedly, there is a risk in the very act of flying itself and it is difficult to see how it can ever be eliminated entirely. But in any sane set-up no effort would be spared to bring that risk to the minimum before any aircraft left the ground. It is the profit motive which increases the risk of life and limb in this and every other sphere. Remember that when next you board a plane for a hard earned holiday. Happy landings!
Slower On The Ground . . .
Remember last winter with its weeks of icy winds, and cold that froze you to the marrow? Remember the endless dreary frustrations of frozen pipes, power cuts and transport chaos? Of poor old pensioners dying quietly in their unheated pathetic little lodging house rooms?
Perhaps you will recall, too, the outcry at the inability of the fuel and power industries to cope with the extra demand— a reasonable enough human reaction you will say. The government had an answer —also reasonable enough but from a capitalist point of view. It was pointless, they said, to spend good money on plant which would be needed only about once every ten years, and that was that! You were just to carry on shivering until the weather eased.
Since then, though, the weather men have been suggesting that we might get a repetition of all that again this winter, perhaps worse. One or two town councils have taken the hint and laid in extra snow clearing equipment, but strictly within their financial limits of course. And such is the criterion which is applied in any field we may care to look. The guiding principle is not “do human beings need it? ” but “Can we afford it?” … “Is it profitable?”
British Railways, for instance, have been making preparations. Some big snow ploughs are being built and some extra points heaters will be installed, but only at key junctions. Actually there are some 100,000 switch points on the railways but only about 2,500 will be heated. Why? Because it would cost about 10½ millions to do it. A B.R. spokesman added:
Insurance against all weather risks could be achieved only by spending enormous sums of money. Spending on such a scale in the railways’ present financial straits could never be justified merely to prevent what may be only an occasional hazard (
Out of the horse’s mouth indeed ! But this will probably not stop their prattle about ” Service to the public,” etc., at some future date, as if their existence was purely for altruistic reasons.
Housing Problem! What Housing Problem ?
Are you suffering from a housing problem? Well stop worrying. Just take a ride to Bournemouth, “that elderly army officer among seaside resorts,” as the Guardian describes it. For there you will probably find plenty of empty flats, between 2,000 and 3,000 according to architects and estate agents in the town, and more are nearing completion. Apparently, property developers have burnt their fingers badly and are fishing around for buyers.
Meantime, the flats stay unoccupied but not because of lack of need. We will take a level bet that there are plenty of people in the Bournemouth area alone, who could do with some better accommodation, but like their brothers and sisters elsewhere they will not get it for one very good reason. They haven’t enough money. They, of course, will be working people and their dependants, who have to wait perhaps for the allocations of a cheap council house or flat, and we all know how long that will be.
The property developers are not very interested in them because there is not much prospect of profit in building low cost houses for workers—in fact, some building firms refuse to tender for Local Council housing contracts because of this. And this is the point which we have stressed for years, that housing is dominated by the profit motive and human needs come a second best. Some reformists may even recognise this, but seem always to miss the obvious answer, Socialism.
For the record
When Lord Beveridge (Sir William as he was then) first made his national insurance proposals over twenty years ago, they were hailed with a fanfare of the usual ballyhoo. These proposals, we were told, would abolish poverty once and for all, as if the difference between poverty and riches was just a paltry few shillings a week.
Well, its an old story now, but whoever did believe it. Lord Beveridge certainly did not. When he died, he left over £20,000. Peanuts by capitalist standards, maybe, but certainly enough to have kept him and his family well above the bread line.
E. T.C.