Last Thursday I ended up on the 18.03 train from Birmingham New Street to Oxford with my daughter. We weren’t meant to be there. We were meant to be on the 8 carriage 17.03, but this, along with all of its seat reservations, was cancelled due to lack of train crew. The 18.03 had 4 carriages, so as we watched it roll into the station, each carriage full all the way down the aisles and also between them and the two of us both with big suitcases on the platform, my heart sank. There was no way we were getting on this train. Sure enough, when the train stopped, none of the queues at any of the doors seemed to be moving. It looked hopeless and the next train, for which there was no guarantee that the same thing wouldn’t happen again, was not for another hour.

Then something unexpected happened: two women who had managed to get on came back for us and engineered our way onto the train.

And so the worst train journey of my life began. I have been on trains all over Europe, including 16 hours travelling from Paris to Pisa with one seat for two people, but this one was in a different category altogether. Because the brilliant wheeze the two women had come up with which had created a space where none should rightly be was to occupy the Pendolino toilets.

There were 7 of us in there in all. The two lovely women, my daughter and I, another woman who I will call Queenie for reasons which will become clearer and two other men who I will call woolly hat and plastic jacket. We took it in turns to try and find a humorous take on our circumstances. The hand dryer’s irregular blowing was a great help here. We couldn’t work out which combination of timers, sensors or general boredom was driving this and the toilet flush for that matter, so that kept the conversation going for a while. But that wasn’t going to get us to Oxford.

There were doubts about whether the train was going to either, as it got more and more delayed. We arrived at the first station (Birmingham International) and the first of the regular pleas from the train guard – imprisoned at the first class end of the train as he was – came across the tannoy. We were apparently focused on the wrong problem, where we should have been focused on his problem, which was that of leaving people on the platforms due to his overloaded train. We needed to all get out of the toilet (actually I don’t think he knew we were in the toilet), off the train and onto the platform, so that more people could not claim against the train company under delay repay. Then we could take our chances trying to get back on board, when not even the toilet was available any more. You can imagine that we were unconvinced about what was in it for us in this scenario. A sense of solidarity and community was starting to build amongst the toiletistas by now.

There was another moment of drama when what sounded like an alarm went off, until I remembered that this was the technological triumph they had trumpeted back in the noughties for Pendolino trains. We were about to experience tilting toilets.

About two thirds of the way there we had another challenge. One man had been bold enough to squeeze his way in amongst the toiletistas and requested to use the facilities we had occupied. He said that his only request was that we all look the other way, and proceeded to keep up a steady stream of quips throughout the visit: “Not sure I can go with 150 people standing behind me”, “This may take a while as I am an older man” etc. He lost some of our sympathy when he announced he was going back to his reserved seat now.

At this point Queenie decided to close the toilet seat and sit on it. From the newly created throne of the toiletistas, she started tweeting “from the throne” which got us through Leamington Spa and Banbury. The only thing that was able to shift Queenie was another woman shuffling in and also asking to use the facilities. She had a whole load of additional demands however. Only women allowed in the toilet area for one. Closing the door was another. So we separated the men from the women, the men shuffled out and the women shuffled in.

By this time the guard had given up completely. He was talking darkly about how “sarky remarks and gestures were not appreciated”. We were losing toiletistas too. The lovely women left at Banbury. Another man arrived, with his mistress I think. He started complaining about property values and school fees and the unreasonableness of his wife in a kind of Hugh Bonneville drone which would have emptied the toilet republic far faster than the guard’s announcements ever could.

But for us the journey was over, finally rolling into Oxford around 7.30. We left the remaining toiletistas, bound for Southampton unfortunately, and headed out into the moonlit dreaming spires.

Crosscountry trains, the train operators responsible for all this are owned by Arriva UK Trains, who are themselves owned by Arriva, which is owned by Deutsche Bahn, the German nationalised railway. Remember this the next time the representative of the train operators tells you that nationalisation is the wrong answer as it is a political rather than a practical solution. Being nationalised from Berlin did not look all that practical from the toilet seat.

I last talked about Chartered Actuary status here two years ago when the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) set out how they had decided to introduce it. I focused then on what we needed to do to make this a change worth making: like offering roles for actuaries on completion of core practice modules; not necessarily insisting on further actuarial specialisation as a requirement for senior roles within firms; getting comfortable with a much wider range of specialisms amongst those we consider to be actuaries. Some were already doing this then, but most of us have still not travelled very far in this direction. And I note that the Route to Becoming An Actuary still features a diagram where an IFoA Associate is shown as a milestone on the way to the final destination of becoming a Fellow.

But the fact is that Chartered Actuary status has finally been launched this week. I am a retired actuary now but I have claimed chartered status nevertheless because it is a designation I very much think needs to be supported. However ultimately the success of it will not depend on employers or even the profession itself, and certainly not on retired old duffers like me. It will depend on students now and in the future. Therefore, in the unlikely event that any actuarial students are reading my blog, I am addressing this piece directly to you.

Whether you are a student who, like most actuarial students, started work with no or perhaps just one or two exam exemptions, or a graduate from an actuarial science undergraduate programme with most or all of the core practice exemptions, this means that the barriers to you starting to take your actuarial career off in the direction you want it to go in and think the world needs just got a bit easier to jump. If you are a graduate from some actuarial MSc programmes or even possibly a single qualification like the MMath in Mathematics and Actuarial Science at the University of Leicester (last plug for my former employer, I promise), you may be able to claim Chartered Actuary Associate status already.

Using it may not necessarily be so easy, particularly in the early years. Some employers may be resistant to the new designation. But if you are planning to join the profession to make a positive difference in the world, and that is in my view the best reason to do so, then you are going to have to shake a few things up along the way.

Perhaps there is a type of actuarial business you think the world is crying out for but it doesn’t know it yet because it doesn’t exist. Start one.

Perhaps there is an obvious skill set to run alongside your actuarial one which most actuaries haven’t realised would turbo-charge the effectiveness of both. Acquire it.

Perhaps your company has a client who noone has taken the time to put themselves in their shoes and communicate in a way they will properly understand and value. Be that person.

Or perhaps there are existing businesses who are struggling to manage their way in changing markets and need someone who can make sense of the data which is telling them this. Be that person.

Whatever you decide to do, do it with a chartered actuary designation, whether associate or fellow, as a badge that you are prepared to look beyond traditional ways of doing things and, where the historical way of doing things is obviously no longer working or could clearly be massively improved, do the hard work of rethinking things from first principles if necessary. If you do it right, this can be seen as a badge for actuaries who are both rigorous and flexible in their thinking. If that happens, the chartered actuary designation will flourish and it will also be of maximum benefit to you too.

So now it is up to you what becomes of Chartered Actuary status. I am really looking forward to watching what you do with it!

I have been reading many accounts of what happened last night. Richard Murphy was clear what he thought:

I reserve the right to change my mind on this and to revisit the issue, but my immediate feeling is that there is one point of common ground between those who have voted for Trump and those who read this blog, and that is that they have rejected neoliberalism.

Biden’s economic boost after Covid was not felt by most Americans. The growth went to the already rich.

Most Americans do not want to preserve an economic system that very clearly does not reward them and has no intention of doing so.

Many Americans already feel alienated within their own country.

The Biden support for Netanyahu’s tyranny in Gaza made many feel that the Democrats had already embraced fascism, so what would the difference be if they did so with Trump?

And, I have no doubt many Americans have good reason to fear the consequences of neoliberalism that it pretends do not exist, but which are readily apparent, from massively divided societies to fears of climate change, to constant reminders of inequality, to the loss of hope and the denial of opportunity as a consequence of ever-growing divides in a society when neoliberal politicians long ago ceased to tell the truth. In that situation, Trump might look mad and a terrible choice, except for the fact that neoliberalism and its perpetuation look to be even worse because there is a guarantee of failure to come in it, whereas Trump only offered the possibility of something that might be terrible.

David Allen Green, on his Empty City blog, recalled the essay written by Neil Postman’s son, Marc, at the time of Trump’s first election victory, about his father’s prophetic book Amusing Ourselves to Death. This postulated that we have been too worried that our future might resemble 1984 while a future strongly resembling Brave New World took shape instead. In it he quoted his father:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture.

Meanwhile Jason Hickel’s analysis on X ended with a call for action:

The deeper reality is that liberalism has failed, liberalism is dead, and people urgently need to wake up to this fact and respond accordingly. It is a defunct ideology that cannot offer any meaningful solutions to our social and ecological crises and it must be abandoned.

Democrats have proven over and over again that they cannot accept even basic steps like public healthcare, affordable housing, and a public job guarantee – things that would dramatically improve the material, social and political conditions of the working classes. And they cannot accept a public finance strategy that would steer production away from fossil fuels and toward green transition to give us a shot at a liveable future.

Why? Because these things run against the objectives of capital accumulation. And for liberals capital is sacrosanct. They will do whatever it takes to ensure elite accumulation, it is their only consistent commitment. At home, they suppress and demonize progressive and socialist tendencies. Abroad, they engage in endless wars and violence to suppress input prices in the global South and prevent any possibility of sovereign economic development.

The Democrats have done all this purposefully and knowingly, for my whole life, not as some kind of “mistake” but in full consciousness that it is in the interests of capital.

And because liberalism cannot address our crises, and because it crushes socialist alternatives, it inevitably paves the way for right-wing populism. They know this pattern, and yet they risk it every time – this election being only the most recent example. They did it in 2016, when they actively crushed the Sanders campaign and sent Trump to the White House. They do it because ultimately they (and I mean the liberal ruling class here) don’t really mind if fascists take power, so long as the latter too ensure the conditions for capital accumulation. They 100% prefer this to the possibility of a socialist alternative.

So, progressives have to face reality. The dream of “converting” the Democratic party is dead. This is now a fact and it must be accepted. The only option is to build a mass-based movement that can reclaim the working classes and mobilize a political vehicle that can integrate disparate progressive struggles into a unified and formidable political force and achieve substantive transformation. This will take real work, actual organizing, but it must be done and that process must begin now.

This was taken up in turn by Roger Hallam (who co-founded Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain, the cooperative federation organisation Radical Routes and the political party Burning Pink, and who is currently, ridiculously, imprisoned for 5 years) with a suggested plan. As he says:

Progressives and the Left fail repeatedly because they are wedded to an Enlightenment secular religion that assumes people respond to ideas over emotions and ideology over connection. They’re embarrassingly mistaken. Fascist men, for instance, often abandon their views after forming personal relationships—such as getting a girlfriend. There are countless stories of individuals entering far-right spaces, listening, building personal connections, and subsequently helping others to leave those spaces. During the recent English riots a group of Muslims, faced with an angry crowd outside their mosque, offered food and listened to people’s concerns. Conversations ensued, tensions eased, and constructive dialogue began.

You can sign up to join this social movement here.

This in turn chimes with what George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison (and Lucas Sabean in the film) are saying in their new book The Invisible Doctrine, where they talk about a politics of belonging as what is needed to replace neoliberalism.

And just to cap it all off, the book I have been reading for the last 2 weeks (the excellent The History of Ideas by David Runciman, also available as a podcast here) arrived at the final chapter on Judith Shklar this morning and was suddenly discussing Trump:

Trump is a cruel politician. Cruelty is one of his calling cards. He can be cruel in how he treats the people around him and he’s often cruel in how he goes after his critics, mocking them and seeking out their vulnerabilities. He goes for the weak spots of his opponents and he takes no prisoners. To be in Trump’s orbit is to be vulnerable to degradation and humiliation. But Trump is not a hypocrite. Indeed, that is one of his great sources of appeal as a democratic politician – he is as he seems. He appears to be willing to be as unpleasant in public as he is in private. All the accounts I’ve read of how he treats the people who have worked for him – in the West Wing, in his businesses, even the members of his family – are reminiscent of how he treats his political opponents: bullying, mockery, rule by fear. Trump is himself all the way through – cruel all the way through – which makes him consistent. The opposite of hypocrisy, on some measures anyway, is sincerity. There is a case for saying that Trump, though he is an inveterate liar, is also a sincere politician. He is sincere about being a liar, he doesn’t try to hide it or to dissemble his true character. There is a brazenness to it.

Our pervasive intolerance of hypocrisy is one of the things that allowed Donald Trump to wind up as President of the United States.

This came out earlier this year, so is referring to the 2016 election, but it still rings true for me. We spend a lot of our social media activity and journalism on trying to expose and then punish public figures for hypocrisy. We don’t expend nearly as much effort worrying about cruelty. Judith Shklar thought this was a mistake and I agree with her. Of course we need to set up our institutions to be honest and not hypocritical but people will always have things about themselves that they do not want the rest of us to know about. And, hard-wired as we are to obsess about finding out such secrets, we often lose focus on what is more damaging to our society. I will finish with one last Trumpian extract from The History of Ideas:

The emergence of an unauthorised recording of a talk she [Hillary Clinton] gave to a Wall Street bank dogged her campaign – it apparently gave the lie to her public protestations of being tough on financial fat cats. Worse, she seemed to know it was damaging – why else go to such lengths to cover it up? It did her far more damage than the emergence of a tape in which Trump talked in demeaning, sexualised terms about women (“Grab ’em by the pussy”), because in Trump’s case it was what you’d expect him to say.

Our relationships with each other and how we behave within them are, I believe, the most important things in most of our lives, not the finer details of the political ideologies we favour. I fear that Trumpism is growing in the UK too and we need to keep our current closeness (what Roger Hallam refers to as our “proximity”) to each other and indeed build on it if we are going to repel it and build something better in its place.