A Question of Taste

Keith Salmon

Description

State bankruptcy is a reality!

It is far more important than trivial factors like Global Warming.

Do you want to eat? Who will pay you to do so? Not the Government: the USA will be bankrupt by 2075, UK by the same time, Japan will not last until 2050, Germany, France and the Netherlands are similar How will you eat?

Following on from his successful first book Immigration! Keith Salmon delights us with an intriguing tale of mystery and political treachery as Governments strive to balance the books and avoid state bankruptcy. The way they do it is a closely-guarded secret which must never be revealed -on pain of death. Gavin Henderson, a journalist with the Times newspaper is warned not to publish. Will the public ever know the lengths to which the Government will go to keep its secret?

The story is fast-paced and the stakes are atmospheric as political careers are made and broken in the quest to keep the secret in:

A Question of Taste

Sujets

• Keith Salmon
• A Question of Taste

Informations

• Publié par: Toplink Publishing, LLC
• Date de parution: 08 février 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781950256587
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

A Question of Taste

A tale of political intr igue

Keith Salmon


Other books by this au thor
Immigra tion!


About the Author
Keith Salmon initially trained as a Pharmacist before embarking on a career as a Creative Flavourist with Unil ever.
He has since become a Chief Executive in the City of London and has worked in litigation support on both sides of the Atla ntic.
As a freelance consultant, he has advised many Government departments and agencies on wide-ranging and difficult change-management prog rams.
He lives near Carlisle in north west Eng land.


Copyright © 2019 by Keith Salmon.
PAPERBACK: 978-1-950256-57-0
EBOOK: 978-1-950256-58-7
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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Printed in the United States of America


Contents
Question of T aste
A Question of De gree
A Question of S mell
A Question of Loy alty
A Question of Law
A Question of Perspec tive
A Question of Sup port
A Question of L ogic
A Question of Seni lity
A Question of Neces sity
A Question of Expedi ency
A Question of Ti ming
A Question of Ch oice
A Question of Consci ence
A Question of Public Inte rest
A Question of Friend ship
A Question of Ac cess
A Question of Obedi ence
A Question of Econo mics
A Question of Res pect
A Question of Rev enge


Question of Taste
“I t’s all a question of taste, you know,” said Sir Joseph Malthouse, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, biting a small piece from his garibaldi biscuit, his eyes studying my face to see whether he had convinced me. He decided that he had, or at least gone as far as he could for the time being. He stood up, offered his hand and said to call him any time.
“Yes, he’ll do”, Sir Joseph thought as he watched me close the door to his Whitehall of fice.
“Is that the new boy?” asked a tall thin man, about forty-something years of age as he entered through a panelled door to the left. “Yes, that’s him” said Sir Joseph. “Meeting go well?” enquired John taking the comfortable green leather armchair underneath the Rembrandt to the left of Sir Joseph’s desk. “Yes; tolerably well; certainly worth having, I think” he answered. “I have a warm feel about this one. I think he’s a pragmatist, one who sees the larger picture and the needs of the nation as a w hole”.
“Well, I hope so” said John, putting down his cup and saucer on the highly polished surface of his superior’s desk. “If you don’t mind, John” said Sir Joseph looking over his half-moon spectacles. “What? Oh yes, sorry and all that” said John removing the offending art icle.
Sir Joseph studied his deputy and mused how things had changed in the civil service during his time. He could remember quite vividly his first day in Whitehall and the start of his distinguished career, a career hard fought for and richly deserved. Well some would say so and Sir Joseph and his friends were those who said so. But then he had always known what he wanted to do. Maybe that clarity of mind was the product of his strict Christian upbringing – his parents were Plymouth Brethren – or the expression of the beauty of his native Gloucester – ordered, dignified and delicate – like so many classical treas ures.
He had always known that he would go to Balliol, get a double first, marry Isabel whom he had known since childhood and have two well-behaved and intelligent children. All this had been achieved and was a great source of satisfaction to him. It represented a tradition, a personal history and that meant knowing who and what you are no matter what you were called upon t o do.
Sir Joseph had often thought that the absence of tradition was the cause of many of the world’s problems. It was all very well to have this fashionable tolerance of every crackpot faction of society, demanding the attention of the media (so easily given in the absence of real news), and the scarce resources of society. A lack of tradition manifesting itself in a personal vacuity, which those people tried to fill somehow, more often than not with a demand for approbation in respect of some obnoxious and extreme display of bodily interac tion.
Standards had certainly dropped, he thought as he glanced at his junior – Deputy Secretaries were much different in his day. It was not that John lacked intelligence – he had a double first from Balliol, as one would expect. It was not as if he was unaware of the requirements of a situation – he had proven himself very capable in that direction during the necessary removal of the previous Junior Minister. It was perhaps that he lacked a certain style; a certain sophistication; a certain breeding which manifested itself in the appreciation and practice of good taste. Yes, that’s what was lac king.
“Yes indeed” said Sir Joseph aloud. “It really just boils down to good taste in the end”.
And with that the Permanent under Secretary to Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State for Home Affairs closed his diary and left for lunch at his club with his friend the Head of the Home Civil Service and Secretary to the Cab inet.


A Question of Degree
T he whole question manifested itself perhaps two years before my meeting with Sir Joseph when I was left in no doubt as to its answer. Looking back it had been creeping up on us for many years before but the British public did not notice, nor did their European counterparts, for that matter. They weren’t suppose d to.
BSE had been the scourge of the British Beef industry. It was the British, not the European, civil service who had said that eating British Beef was unsafe for humans; that it would give them a disease that would liquefy their brains. That disease was called Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis or BSE for short. At first, the Council of Ministers had been unable to act, impotent in their amazement that any Member State could be so stupid as to admit to an act which would inevitably lead to the destruction of one of its most lucrative export markets within the European Union. Why had Britain done such a thing? “To hell with the reasons” said the German contingent, “our country is always ready to fill a market need”. They were closely pursued by the French, Spanish and Portuguese. Each had its own statistics concerning the number of reported cases of BSE in its own, and more importantly, each other’s, country. Belgian newspapers had carried major articles concerning such instances among French herds and the Belgium government had been on the point of banning French imports until the European Commission pointed out that this would amount to a violation of Article 30 (a restriction on the free movement of goods within the European Community) one of the foundations of the Treaty of Rome. Yet Britain had admitted it and the Commission had imposed a worldwide ban on the export of British Beef.
Even more strange was the total amazement of the British contingent to Brussels. “Why” they argued “is our beef banned for export?” “Because you say it is unsafe for human consumption” replied the Commission. “Yes, but that unsafety is surely a question of degree” argued Geoffrey Mount, HM Government’s Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food ( MAFF).
“But how can you quantify that degree of risk for us?” asked Paul Souveryns, second in command to the EU Commissioner for Community agriculture. Paul sat back studying his adversary. He thought about that evening’s performance of “Swan Lake” to which he and his live-in lover had been invited. He hoped that Gavin would make an effort to be polite this time. Anyone looking at the Deputy Commissioner would never know that all this was happening inwardly because outwardly he was the model of attentiveness to his guest, “The British do have that extra something when it comes to breeding and presentation. Perhaps it is their immaculate sense of taste. It is rather a shame that it does not extend to their sense of judgment” he tho ught.
The Minister was saying something but Paul was deeply immersed in his own thoughts, having long since made his decision that nothing the British could say would make the slightest difference to the Commission’s decision to ban British Beef.
The Deputy Commissioner had come far. He was afterall just forty-two, having graduated with distinctions from the Sorbonne in Paris and had made short work of his studies at the Commissioners’ college in Belgium. He thought clearly – taking into account all available information, incisively – placing all useful information into correct pigeon holes and courageously – he was here to do a job and wasted no time with morals or guilt. If he were to be truthful with himself he would admit that he had no morals. He did not, for instance, believe in God – His existence had never been proved to him and faith, whic