Alexander Chancellor on 'the nice decade' and The Gates Foundation | Comment is free

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name="&lid={navigation}{Other blogs}&lpos={trail}{10}">Other blogs</a> </li> </ul> </div> </div> <div id="box"> <div id="article-header"> <h1 id="heading-alone" class="article-no-standfirst">As the gap between rich and poor grew even wider, it was not such a 'nice' decade, after all</h1> </div> <div id="content"> <ul class="article-attributes no-pic"> <li class="byline"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080518164804/http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/alexanderchancellor" name="&lid={articleByline}{Alexander Chancellor}&lpos={articleByline}{1}">Alexander Chancellor</a> </li> <li class="publication"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080518164804/http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian" name="&lid={articleByline}{The Guardian}&lpos={articleByline}{2}">The Guardian</a>, </li> <li class="date">Friday May 16 2008</li> </ul> <div id="history-byline" class="send"> <div class="send-inner"> <div class="share-top"> <h3>About this article</h3> <span><a class="sendbyline">Close</a></span> </div> <div class="section"> This article appeared in <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080518164804/http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian" name="&lid={historyByline}{the Guardian}&lpos={historyByline}{3}">the Guardian</a> on <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080518164804/http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/may/16" name="&lid={historyByline}{The GuardianFriday May 16 2008}&lpos={historyByline}{2}">Friday May 16 2008</a> on p5 of the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080518164804/http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/may/16/g2/features" name="&lid={historyByline}{Comment & features}&lpos={historyByline}{1}">Comment & features</a> section. It was last updated at 00:27 on May 16 2008. </div> </div> </div> <p>So it's been a "nice" decade, has it? It's only now, when it's officially over, that they tell us. The governor of the Bank of England, in his gloomy report this week on the state of the economy, was doubtless using the word "nice" in its nerdish economic sense of "non-inflationary constant expansion"; but most newspapers were happy to let us think that he meant what we usually mean by the word.</p><p>"For the time being at least, the nice decade is behind us," Mervyn King said. And that made me wonder how nice the past decade has actually been, since it is not in most people's nature - and certainly not in mine - to think at any given moment that everything is wonderful.</p><p>Well, yes, inflation has been low, growth high, and unemployment down, which has been nice. People have been refurbishing their kitchens, holidaying abroad, and buying iPhones. But the problem with such good economic times is that they are very depressing for those who do not share in them; and they are even quite depressing for many who do. For there are no people more discontented than those who see others they consider to be their equals racing ahead of them in prosperity.</p><p>So in some respects, this has been rather a nasty decade. Most people have been better off and feeling more secure, but some have been very much better off than others, and the gap between rich and poor has markedly widened. It has been a splendid time for hedge-fund managers, non-doms and the like, but disheartening for those who have been excluded from this charmed circle. People have ruined themselves trying to emulate the lifestyles of those blessed with inexplicable good fortune, whether City fat-cats or footballers' wives.</p><p>Then there are the people, comfortably off by traditional standards, who have been prevented by soaring house prices from buying their own homes and taking even the first step on to the property ladder. It has been a horrid decade for them.</p><p>A period of harder times might actually make people happier, but it won't unless everyone suffers to some extent, which, alas, is most unlikely to be the case.</p><p><strong>· </strong>The world's richest charity - the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - is acquiring a new chief executive in the person of Jeffrey S Raikes, 49, president of the Microsoft Business Division. Having worked for Microsoft since 1981, Raikes is one of many employees whom the company has made extremely wealthy. He even has his own family foundation, with assets of more than $125m (£64m), which supports youth and education projects in the Pacific north-west.</p><p>The Gates Foundation has assets of $37.3bn, according to its website, and has so far spent about $16bn on grants to promote health and prosperity among the poorest people of the world. For the past 10 years it has been run by Patty Stonesifer, another Microsoft veteran, for a token salary of $1 a year. Raikes, who takes over from her in September, is to be handsomely paid, however. According to Melinda Gates, he is to receive compensation in line with what leaders of other large foundations get.</p><p>Nevertheless, Raikes has said that he had two doubts about taking on the job. One was the amount of travel involved, meaning long absences from home. The other was more surprising. It concerned "the amount of human misery I am going to see and be exposed to, and how that was going to impact me personally," he told the New York Times.</p><p>This seems both self-centred and excessively squeamish. I suppose that, as a person living a life of luxury in the prosperous American north-west, he was frightened that direct contact with poverty in developing countries would depress him, poor sensitive soul. But it seems odd that someone thinking of devoting his life to the alleviation of human misery should be so anxious about encountering it.</p><p>Luckily, Melinda Gates talked him out of his fears ("Melinda was very helpful in helping me think through that, and I got over those two hurdles"), and it would be interesting to know how. Perhaps she told him that exposure to the destitute is more often inspiring than depressing, for it is amazing how much joy and purpose people manage to find in even the most crushing circumstances. </p><p>Or maybe she just reassured him that it is possible to give away billions of dollars to poor people without actually seeing any of them.</p><p><strong>· </strong>The news that a robot has been conducting a symphony orchestra in Detroit made me wonder if Sir Edward Heath hadn't risen from the dead, for Heath was a sort of robot when it came to conducting - wooden and mechanical in his gestures, and incapable of emotional interaction with the players.</p><p>They paid him little heed and just got on with their work, and he was generally given unkind reviews. "M. Heath a massacré Mozart" was a headline I once read in a French newspaper. The prime minister was nevertheless so proud of being a conductor that his gift to Pope Paul VI during an official visit to Rome in the 70s was a recording of him conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.</p><p>However, it clearly wasn't Heath who conducted a piece from the Broadway musical Man of La Mancha with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra this week, for the conductor was a figure only 4ft 3in high, made of white metal, and manufactured by Honda.</p><p>But in other respects it was very like Heath. It kept time very well, though without emotion. "It was a bit like being conducted by a metronome," said one of the players.</p><p><strong>· </strong>This week Alexander watched <strong>ITV's sycophantic profile of the Duke of Edinburgh</strong>, presented by Sir Trevor McDonald: "I liked the old boy nevertheless, and he has done a lot of good without shouting about it." He also watched <strong>Kings of Cool: Crooners</strong> on BBC4: "Crosby and Sinatra both great, Dean Martin delightful, but Nat King Cole's voice unbearably unctuous."</p> </div> <div id="related"> <div id="mt-populated"> <div id="twocolumnleftcolumninsideleftcolumntop">  </div> <div id="twocolumnleftcolumninsiderightcolumntopGU">  </div> <div id="twocolumnleftcolumninsideleftcolumn">  </div> </div> <div class="relatedlinks" class="capsule"> <h3 class="first"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080518164804/http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/" name="&lid={inlineKeyword}{Comment is free}&lpos={inlineKeyword}{1}">Comment is free</a></h3> <h3><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080518164804/http://www.guardian.co.uk/business" name="&lid={inlineKeyword}{Business}&lpos={inlineKeyword}{2}">Business</a></h3> <ul class="relatedlinks-keywords"> <li> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080518164804/http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economicgrowth" name="&lid={inlineKeyword}{Economic 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Alexander Chancellor on 'the nice decade' and The Gates Foundation | Comment is free | The Guardian