Old Gaffer

Month: September 2007

  • Random Thoughts 36, The Strange Parameters of Shopping.

    In thinking about the subject I came to the conclusion that the motor car was responsible for our lack of choice today when we go shopping. I was thinking about a complex in a town just outside Belfast which had a huge parking area, one Tesco’s shop, 15 to 20 small shops, and a restaurant. The small shops were what actually required the large parking area because they covered so many different aspects of shopping, from computing, a watchmaker’s, food shops, garden shops the list is almost endless and there was very little duplication. One day Tesco’s bought up the area and is in the process of building a vast complex of its own, and almost overnight all those little shops were closed down. I know of one young man, who held all the merchandise necessary for computer printing, together with other aspects as well. He had to pack up and find somewhere else, and was hardly established there, when it too was bought up and he had to move again. The trauma that this must have caused him and inconvenience it caused to his customers is not hard to imagine. The people who frequented the original complex have never recovered the ease with which they could satisfy so many of their needs just by walking round a few shops. Now those shops are scattered throughout the area, those that haven’t closed forever, and now we have to use the car to go from place to place to get the same or similar articles. If people hadn’t cars, there would be no supermarkets. But the change doesn’t stop there.

    When shopping was mainly to smaller shops scattered throughout a city or a town, the merchandise was decided upon by the owner of the shop, with the result of this, the owners’ tastes varied from individual to individual, so the stock of similar shops varied, and choice was consequently increased. Now we have a reverse of that, with a consequent reduction in choice. Chain stores, generally have central purchase, it is this that enables them to be so competitive. The taste therefore, is ultimately settled upon by a small group and the outcome is what you are offered, and is what either suits them, or they think suits you, and that is all, and all you can select from. The next change that has happened is the era of the label, that little piece of advertising you’re carrying about on your clothes for two reasons, one is it is there you can do nothing about it, the second is that some feel that there is a cachet to be achieved by purchasing and wearing a ‘name’. This approach alone must inevitably reduce choice, as fashion has overtaken commonsense. Yet three more aspects of the reduction in choice are, cheap imports, buying on the Internet, and TV advertising. If you are advertising, with low prices, as a result of cheap imports, and mass production, you can’t offer a wide range and make the same profit. The same constrictions must also apply to Internet shopping. In my own case I have discovered that to a great extent my taste is not catered for, because I have never belonged to the throwaway society, so I tend to buy things that will wear well and last a long time.

    Some people buy by these inverted auctions on TV, where the price starts high, with a fixed number of products on offer, and as people bid the number of articles available is reduced and so is the price. This again is a case of limited choice, but is also accompanied by small print which advises that there are additional costs to be paid, including telephone charges, packaging and transport. I have not used the system, but I understand that the items are not ultimately quite as cheap as they would appear at first sight.

  • Random Thoughts 37, Is Political Change Required?

    This is not just a bit of fun, it is a search by someone not particularly politically orientated, or knowledgeable, to find a system which will improve on the one we have. Instead of writing this as I usually do, I shall do what it says on the tin, put down random thoughts. I have previously stated that Blair went his presidential way, because he believed that only he knew what was to be done. I know of no deputy Prime Minister who was treated like John Prescott. Now it’s got Menzies Campbell (I can’t spell Minges) adopting, basically, the same attitude. It doesn’t surprise any of us, we have known it for some time. The problem is what to do about it: Start by examining our political structure. We have local government, mostly part-timers, guided by civil servants, and loosely responsible to their community. They in turn have to obtain the approval of the civil service for what they choose to do and how they carry it out. The civil service, allegedly, is handling or passing on instructions from the ruling government, performing functions which run the country, and dealing with foreign powers. The civil service, to put it crudely, is divided into the secretariat and the technocrats. The technocrats are the professionals who run the services, engineers, medicals, lawyers, tax collectors, and so on. The secretariat liaises with government, advises government, sets the parameters in which the technocrats must operate, does the purchasing, oversees the running of the civil service, and monitors the running of local government. Some parameters the civil service sets can be contrary to good management when forced to be used by the technocrats, but it is set in stone from the distant past.

    Presidents can be ruled by their advisers and pressure groups. Dictators are obviously a disaster. We need to ensure the people governing the country, in all its complexity, are trained, and of a very high standard of ability and political nous,. It is clearly dangerous for a party to have such an overall majority that none can gainsay a party policy be it right or wrong. The current level of political apathy indicates people no longer trust politicians. This is serious. The electorate must have a say. These parameters demand a rethink of the political system I have written before, that as a technocrat, operating within local government was simpler, more flexible, and less frustrating than National government – and I have experience of both.

    Taking into account the Lords, I consider the system has four tiers, because I suspect, especially if a parliamentarian is weak, that the civil service is a tier in itself. Q one, if we limit the majority of the leading party, are we disfranchising? A, yes. Q two, do we really need, local government, national government and the Lords? A. we would never get away with taking one of them out, but we might be able to modify. Q three. Do we really need all these MPs, if some of their duties were taken over by full-time representatives at local level vetting the work previously done by committee and proposed to be done by civil servants, would this not suffice? That is to say, at local level you have full-time and part-time councillors, the full-time ones, fixed number from major parties, not raving loonies, while the part-timers can represent anybody including raving loonies.. In effect the full-time councillors will act as backbenchers, have a much better knowledge, I suspect than now, of what is going on locally and would feed the information, the wishes of the electorate, and anything else pertinent, to the frontbench MPs in Westminster. If the elections at local level for both the local authority and Westminster, were concurrent, and with a proportional representation system for determining who moves to Parliament and who stays at local level, was considered, it would enable the electorate to vote for whom they liked, while understanding some of the candidates were professionals and some unpaid, part-time. Each member of the electorate would be provided with a. number of votes and the opportunity to give preference. It may sound complicated, but not a lot more so than people are finding today when they have both local and Westminster elections at the same time. One thing is certain, the system will be cheaper even with increased remuneration for the professionals., and I believe if properly organised, will give better service at grassroots level. The professionals’ selection would be conditional to passing some form of scrutiny with respect to training, social experience and competence. People would not be able to offer themselves for candidature as now, except for the part-time posts at local level.

    This is merely a thought, perhaps a crazy one, but even if it makes people think that there must be a better way than the one we have, which has served us for hundreds of years. Now, there are fewer people of quality interested in going into politics, the pickings are better and the interest greater outside. So it is clear that not only the system needs change, but the remuneration.

  • Belfast 1951 to 60 in order, Smoke tests

    Smoke Test No 1. Today inspection and testing has become remote, highly technical, and mostly computer driven. In my Dark Ages every thing was hands on, mucky and tediously prolonged. Pipes are now checked with robots and cameras. I have always found it strange that smoke really does issue from a sewer up through the earth and travels quite long distances through cracks in pipes and the ground. In those days this feature of smoke was used to assess whether a sewer pipe had been breached or was leaking. Theoretically every pipe leading to a sewer is trapped with a water trap, so there should be no risk of smoke entering a house. To carry out the test the operator closes one end of the pipe, or puts a temporary block at some point. At the other end he attaches a box, which is really only a source of smoke, and the bellows will force it through the pipe. He puts a rag, heavily impregnated with oil, inside the box, lights it, and then, using the bellows, pumps the smoke into the pipe until it is seen issuing out through a small hole in the block at the far end. If it issues from nowhere else it is assumed that the pipe is tight and has no leaks. This test took place on a Saturday morning when I was working for the contractor. The sewer we were laying was in running sand, a very unstable and dangerous material and we did not want the trench lying open over the weekend as the results of a possible slip could have been hazardous to the Public and expensive, added to which if a smoke test failed then we might have had to carry out a water test which can take hours. We were dealing with a very fussy Clerk of Works who liked his authority and enjoyed wielding it. He knew as well as we did that there was nothing wrong with the pipe, he had seen every joint made, he had nothing else to do, but the book said smoke test before passing the work, so smoke test we did. We set it up, put in the disk at the end of the pipe with the one-inch hole to show the smoke had gone the whole way through the pipe, and then tea was up. Well it was up for the Clerk of Works, it was up for the men, but not for the foreman and not for me. We had connected the crude smoke box with its bellows to the upstream end of the pipe, inserted an oily rag, lit it and were pumping the smoke for all we were worth and it was not reaching the other end. The Foreman said to me, “You go and join the Clerk of Works and I’ll have it fixed in the mean time, no sense both of us being here.” I followed his advice.

    About ten minutes later he stuck his head into the hut and said all was ready for testing and when the Clerk of Works and I went to the other end, there, sure enough, was the smoke puffing out in spurts in time with the pumping of the man at the other end. Honour had been satisfied and come twelve o’clock we would all be going home. When I was out of earshot of the Clerk of Works I said to the foreman that I was surprised at the amount of smoke issuing. Considering the length of the pipe, usually there is dilution by the air within the pipe for some time, and it seemed to me the smoke was denser than I would have expected. He smiled. “I helped it on a bit,” he said. “I thought it could do with another smoking rag so I put it in the other end, I knew he’d never guess, he’s all talk and no experience.” This accounted for what I had seen. The foreman, unknown to me and the Clerk of Works had inserted a piece of burning rag at the other end of the pipe from the bellows and the air within the pipe was being pushed by the bellows to make the smoke from the second rag issue from the small hole. Instead of the pipe being full of smoke as it seemed, it was probably partly full of air. For all of ten seconds I wondered what to do, and then for another ten seconds I suppressed my conscience with the thought that I saw the Clerk of Works from time to time, I saw the foreman daily.

    SMOKE TEST No 2 There had been a complaint of rats in the lower part of the Ormeau Road area in Belfast and it was laid squarely at the door of the Sewerage Section. Sam was sent to investigate and decided that he needed a smoke test. He had it set up with the smoke box in one manhole and the round timber block with the smoke hole in it at the next manhole In Sam’s case the usual results were amplified. In the first instance someone shouted that smoke was issuing from the lamp standards, and as these were gas lamps, panic ensued until he managed to explain what was happening. Next he heard screams coming from the back-yard of one of the houses. The sewer in question ran between the backs of two rows of houses and at that time, those houses only had outside toilets in the yard. Apparently a householder had been in one when she found smoke, firstly coming up round her feet, and then all round her; her plight was understandable. Finally he had to pacify the fire brigade who had been called with a 999 call from someone further afield who had found smoke coming up through the floor boards. The theory that the sewer was at fault, seemed to have been thoroughly confirmed.

  • Belfast 1951 to ’60 in order, Memories of France

    PARIS, on the way south we had stayed for a couple of days in Paris. Sophie’s friend had told us of an hotel in the Rue Du Caire, the red-light district, which was closer to our budget than most. Being on a B&B basis we had to take our meals elsewhere. We tended to buy the food near the hotel, to leave the rest of the day free. Sophie would go into the shop and I would stand outside with the girls. One day Linda and I had been watching the Ladies plying their trade, they were standing row on row in tight satin dresses, disappearing with men from time to time into a small hotel opposite the shop. I was quietly timing them and being amazed at the through-put, when Linda, aged 12, hit me with a question I should have anticipated. ‘Daddy, why are all those ladies standing there?’ she asked innocently, staring with interest at the ladies in question. ‘Ah’, I said floundering, then I decided to give half the truth, she would learn the rest soon enough. I explained they were waiting for their men friends to take them into the hotel. Mercifully Sophie rejoined us and we went off sightseeing.

    I suffered one culture shock at the Notre Dame. I might have been lethargic about religion to the point of rejection, but old teachings die hard and I had been taught to respect the worship of others. We visited the Cathedral on a Sunday, and found a stream of people going in and out. It was only when we were inside, in the middle of the noisy scrum consisting of excursions, sightseers, people leaving, assumedly having worshipped, people going in to worship, that we found a service in full swing. It left me with a recurrence of the vision of the inside of the Temple in Jerusalem as I had imagined it when as a child I had been told the story of Jesus and the usurers. I had expected the calm and hushed atmosphere of St Paul’s, augmented even, because it was Sunday.

    Brush With The French Police In the 50’s we were on our way home. I had looked at the map and knew I was on the main road.. I drove along it, and passed another, angling from the right, giving a cursory glance because of ‘priorite a droite’ , when a Gendarme stepped into the road and made us go into a lay-by. It was cleary a regular occurrence – he had that practised air about his arm-waving. ‘Now remember,’ I said to the family, looking meaningfully at Soph, ‘we don’t understand French, and I’ll do the talking’.. The policeman told us we had breached the highway code and he was going to fine us some astronomical sum. I explained in pigeon French – what else? – that we were on a main road and showed him the map to make the case. No sale. The argument went on for ages as I had no intention of paying a fine and he was steadily getting more heated and Sophie was getting more worried, especially when he threatened to take us to the next town and impound the car. The fact that there was no ‘Halt’ or other sign obviously meant nothing to him, he was probably on a percentage. ‘Say nothing,’ I said to Soph, ‘Let him bloody well take us in, I’ll make an international ncident out of it.’ That went down like a lead brick, but just when a real decision was about to be made, along came another miscreant in a Deux Chevaux, who had to be stopped.

    The copper was having a field day – that was until the car door opened and a shapely, long, silken clad leg issued, attached to a beautiful, blond dolly-bird – then it was he who had a decision to make. She had a mate who was even prettier if that were possible. Oh! La la! Poor Frog!! He remonstrated to them next, explained; they smiled and she moved the leg, he looked back at us, we looked innocent and, believe it or not, straight faced, he capitulated, we went on our way. The last we saw was him leaning on the roof of the car breathing garlic fumes into the little Deux Chevaux.

  • Random Thoughts 34, Transport and The Environment

    Ask schoolchildren about the environment and they will probably know more than you do, added to which they are probably more enthusiastic about preventing global warming. Ask some old man like me the same question and he will tell you that he’s sick of it, it is used as a stick to beat us with, it is used as a means of extracting more taxes, and when about 80% of the world’s population has absolutely no intention of doing anything about it, fiddling about with solar panels on the roof, driving at fixed speeds, and all the other plethora of things they heap on us, isn’t going to make a jot of difference. People I’ve spoken to tell me it has got to start somewhere.. Okay! But why does everything seem to have to start here? I won’t give you the list it is too long. I know that what follows will never come to pass, until it’s too late. What seems obvious to most people, would appear to be considered absurd by governments, if their actions are a gauge, and so things get done when they become more complicated and dearer, because governments have other agendas, reviews, white papers, and U turns.

    Take transport for example, we are constantly being badgered about how we can save the environment by driving this car and not that, driving this way and not that’ When all the time we shouldn’t be driving at all, we should be using public transport, most people did up until the mid-50s, and they were happy with the situation. Then they took away the trains, people had more money and wanted to be free to get up and go when it suited them, not when they had to meet a bus schedule. One thing has been evident throughout the years, the government draws a tremendous amount of tax from the motor industry and people using cars as transport, so there clearly isn’t an incentive to underwrite a tremendously sophisticated public transport system, which would meet the needs of most reasonable people. I find it totally ironic that the government at the present time in Northern Ireland is bringing out legislation that planning and the sale of houses has CO2-saving elements, when the roads are burgeoning with one-man-one-car, with children being taken to school, only short distances in a car. This sort of reasoning defeats credulity, and I think it is widening to include the whole country. There is no shadow of doubt that to create a comprehensive, integrated public transport system would not be cheap. But on the other hand the sooner it is done the better, because it will be done eventually anyway.

    To my mind, although I have not costed it, by the time you take into account the rising cost of fuel which will be inevitable, the increased road works with flyovers, multiple lanes etc, to cater for the  the heavy lorry and trailer combinations, there probably won’t be a saving, because the government will no longer be able to draw on the same taxes on  insurance, licenses, fuel and vehicles, they will have reduced. One other consequence will be that there will be once again, more small shops in town centres and locally, and land available for building, because the car parks at supermarkets will be empty. There is one other certainty, Gordon Brown will be pleased, because he’s exhorting us to exercise more, and by the nature of the system we will have to walk a lot more, like we did all those years ago, so it cannot be all bad. It will probably never happen!

    Just to demonstrate the bizarre thinking of our various political parties, this notion of differential taxation, according to size and fuel consumption already exists, because the gas-guzzlers cost more and use more fuel, so those drivers are already being differentially taxed. Bringing in another tier of taxation is only going to add work for the licensing offices, and, all the time we have the mummy run, make little difference.

  • Belfast 1951 to ’60 in order,The Ancient Art of Helmet Diving Part 2

    The Diving Course, taught by serving Petty and Chief Petty Officer Divers, was mostly practical, and had hairy moments. In fact they taught at such a rate one tended to forget all but the frightening bits. We were taught to signal with the air-line and lifeline, how to inflate the suit by reducing the escape of air from a valve on the side of the helmet, but warned that too much air would blow us up like a balloon and our arms would be so stiffly outstretched by the air pressure in the suit, we would then not be able to open the vent with the result we would be blown to the surface, which I proved. They also said if this happened when we were diving deeply we could risk getting the bends – nitrogen bubbling out of the blood – a possible killer. They then cheered us up by saying that if the suit was damaged or the airline cut at depth, the pressure could force our bodies up into the helmet. Next they put us into great tanks of water and taught how to burn steel under water, with the warning that as the hands would be cold, and since we were not allowed gloves, we could cut our own fingers off with the acetylene cutter if we were not careful. They made us practice decompression stops on the way up from the dive, to equalise the suit and blood pressure to the water pressure in stages. We weren’t deep enough for it to matter, but in the compression chambers and on a deeper dive it would have been essential to avoid the bends

    Just prior to our final test they taught us to measure in total darkness, using our hands and arms as measures – the width of a hand, 3.5 inches, a span, 8 inches, the 1st joint on a thumb, 1inch, elbow to wrist, a foot – the old haberdasher’s measure of a yard, chin to outstretched fingers, and width of two outstretched arms 2 yards, What they do now Imperial Measure has gone by the board is anybody’s guess. Then they threw different pieces of metal into the ooze without us seeing. We had to find them, directed by signals on the air-hose and line, measure them and return and make drawings with all measurements, from memory. We were not allowed a telephone in the helmet.

    We were made to breath pure oxygen to see if we would develop oxygen sickness and then taught how to swim under water in a wet-suit with what is called ‘closed-circuit breathing’. This is the system Naval Commandos used in WW2, breathing only oxygen, which is circulated through a cleansing system. In this way there are no tell-tale bubbles rising to the surface as with Scuba diving. I suspected that we would never have done inspection work with oxygen, but we were now partially trained and so a possible source of underwater demolition recruits, should the need arise, or pressed men if you prefer, – after all that was a good Naval tradition once. Inspection divers check old underwater structures for deterioration, the installation of new works and under water surveys prior to design.

    Now the sickening story related cynically but factually by one of the tutors. The story concerned a diver in a port who contracted to recover the body of a young girl who had drowned in a car she had driven off the pier into deep water. In those times pickings for the diver had been poor and seemingly were getting poorer, which one must assume prompted his heartlessness. While he searched, the father of the girl sat in a cafe near the harbour and looked into space, just waiting. It transpired that the diver knew pretty well where the body was, through knowledge of sand bars, currents and outfalls, but avoided that spot assiduously and carefully quartered the harbour every day leaving that part until last. He wanted to make the most from his contract and also the vital knowledge of the harbour he had gained over many years of diving there.

    My short brush with helmet and oxygen scuba diving was a highlight in a varied career.

  • Belfast 1952 to ’60 in order, The Ancient Art of Helmet Diving Part 1

    Today professional diving is sophisticated and technical. My training by comparison is like that with halberds compared to AK47 assault rifles. From what I read, it would seem I am one of the very few left who have been a professional helmet diver. I thought the experience might be of interest. Part 2 deals with the course exams, closed circuit diving, and an unpleasant diving story.

    In the early 50’s I worked for the Admiralty and one condition was that I qualified as a helmet diver for inspection work. The thought raised youthful visions embedded from my reading ‘The Adventure’ and general comics with a torch under the bed clothes.. Unsurprisingly it wasn’t a bit like that. . I am convinced the whole course at the Diving school at Chatham was intended to put the fear of God into us which it nearly did. We had to learn to dive in those old fashioned helmets and canvas and rubber suits which were so popular in the black and white films. Were put in decompression chambers with the pressures increased to simulate depths we would never reach – our speech sounded like Pinky and Perky.

    Chatham is at the mouth of the Medway estuary. The water consists of black impenetrable silt. We went out in a barge, with hand operated air pumps and everything else we needed on board. We dressed into the smelly suit, which, I’m absolutely sure, was as clean as they could make it, but if you can’t scratch your nose when the helmet is on, and almost immediately everyone unconsciously tries to and is then driven mad, because the urge becomes obsessive, think how much more difficult it is if you are taken short – enough said. The belt was put on, the weights tied on the chest, the heavy brass boots were next, and then the helmet was bolted to the heavy collar.

    When I staggered to my feet they threaded the lifeline and the air-line through the belt and then I had to climb slowly and ponderously over the side of the boat and stand on a ladder while the face piece, the glass, was screwed in place. With a tap on the helmet which sounded like thunder inside, and now breathing the fetid, oil and rubber, smelling air being pumped through the air-line, I slowly descended the last three steps on the ladder before launching into nothing but water and a steadily increasing darkness.

    I never noticed when I reached the bottom, it rose round me as I sank into it. We had been told relatively little of what to expect. I think the idea was to give us a shock to start with and then anything later would be easy. I tried to move my feet and nothing happened, I was stuck. I tried to feel with my hands because any light there might have been had been obscured by the rising silt as my feet struggled in the mud. I did the only thing I could do, I stopped, I told myself not to panic and I just stood, slowly sinking, controlling myself and taking stock. It was then I remembered about shutting off the air release valve so I could rise. This I did and kicked my feet at the same time. The suit which had been grasping me like a cold second skin with the pressure of the water swelled away from me, and I was on my way up like a cork. As I rose the external pressure steadily decreased and correspondingly the internal pressure was increasing. Suddenly it happened, my arms were pulled inexorably out straight from my side and like a cruciform, I floated to the surface, there to lie like a dead sea-elephant, to be pulled ignominiously to the boat by the lifeline. It was only then they told me that in that type of ground-conditions the diver had to kick his legs out backwards and get on his face, propelling himself along by digging his arms into the mud. When one considered what might be lying on the bottom of an old harbour like Chatham, the prospect was not enticing, to say the least. I had other opportunities to practice my new found equanimity in the face of near panic, like the time, again in total darkness, I became entangled in the piles of a jetty

  • Belfast 1951 to ’60 in order, Characters 3.

    DAN and other Chauffeurs Dan was a Chainman, someone on a survey team who is essential, but bottom of the pecking order. He runs the errands, stand in water, snow, burning sun, holding whatever he is asked to hold without complaint. Dan was sandy haired, short, tough and generally smiling. He dressed like a country squire, with a hound’s tooth, vented jacket, fawn trousers, punched brogues and a flat cap which would have graced most saddling enclosures. In fact he looked so smart there was a story going the rounds that the Chief Engineer, who was descending the stairs to meet an influential guest, was totally ignored by the guest as he rushed past to shake Sam’s hand and to say how glad he was to meet him. This did not endear Dan to Authority, but it did to us.

    We, Dan, another engineer and his chainman and I, were surveying a large housing site at the back of Larne, in Country Antrim, preparatory to designing the roads and sewers, and it was raining heavily. We took shelter in the empty barns belonging to a farm which formed part of the site. We sat about, ate our lunch early so we could work through, once the rain stopped, we had a desultory conversation and then Dan introduced the subject of hypnotism as applied to chickens.

    He said he could place a chicken with its beak on a chalk line and it would not move off the line even if you walked right up to the bird and what was more he had ten shillings which said he could do it. Ten bob was ten bob, so we tried to get him to demonstrate without a wager but without success. In the end we pooled, we knew he could do it, Dan never made a bet unless he had a more than an even chance of winning, but we were curious to see how he did it

    The first thing he did was to draw a straight line on the concrete floor in chalk. Next he went in search of a chicken, we had seen some roaming round the place. When he came back he had hold of one by the body with the wings clamped below his hands, and its beak facing away from him. His next act was to swing the chicken round and round in a wide flat circle at waist height and then, shifting his grip so he had the chicken clamped in the palm of one hand and the other holding its head with his forefinger firmly along the line of the top of the beak, he put the beak on the line, set the chicken’s feet across the line and held the bird like that for about ten to fifteen seconds. When he straightened, the bird remained and we walked round it, looked at it, and until he took it off the line, there it remained.

    In the Navy I had Bert, a country boy from near Ballymena as a driver supplied by the Admiralty, when I was based at The Thompson Dock in Belfast Shipyard. – at the time the largest dry dock in Europe. Using the pool cars, he would drive as I had no licence. I noticed that, in heavy traffic, Bert had a habit of rubbing his knee with his left hand, as if frustrated. He also had another habit, less acceptable and more embaracing. At times of stress he liked to expectorate through the driver’s window, which he mostly kept open, but there were occasions when he forgot it was closed.

    Beside most dry docks were huge heaps of steel chains with links the size of a hand, used as ballast when testing the sea-worthiness of lifeboats and other purposes. On one occasion Bert was driving at his usual racing speed to deliver me beside an empty Thompson Dock – he braked but was on spilled oil and we just skated on and on to the edge of the dock, fortunately crashing into a bunch of the chains, otherwise this would never have been written – Hairy to say the least.

  • Random Thoughts 33, Sport

    For pure electioneering, yesterday, Gordon Brown, The PM, surrounded by professional footballers, youths and children, extolled the merits of supervised sport and training as the way forward to produce a healthier nation and subvert the street violence so prevalent. Where has he been? People with Blogs have been preaching it for ages. If you read on you will find it isn’t as simple as that, there are risks.

    Are people today as universally interested in sport for its own sake as they were 40 years ago? Then amateurism was at its height. Professionals, in games such as golf, unless top flight, earned a pittance, nonetheless respected, but not idolised. All of us played games, such as rough cricket for a pub team, and I actually scored, 50 not out for the only time.. I played rugby as a prop forward, and when the scrum collapsed on me, I heard the creaking of the bones of my skull. We learned by attrition, not classes, a lot of fun, with the odd bruise. My father, as a young man, joined my uncle in the Surrey Walking Club, to walk from Westminster to Brighton, with that strange gait. The Club joined the army at the outbreak of World War1 en masse.

    Not only are amateur clubs thin on the ground now, TV, international leagues, and now our league system, are reducing the number of viable clubs in the lower ranks through lack of funding, legislation, greed, and aggrandisement by the major clubs. It grieves me to see families on low income with maybe a couple of boys in the family, having to fork out ridiculous sums for tickets, and for kit for special presents for the children, at prices these people can ill afford, the money being used to boost the salary for some hotshot foreigner. It doesn’t stop there, the kit has to be changed yearly, because changing the hotshots is on the same basis, and the club needs cash. Over the years the attitude of athletes, footballers, and other sportsmen has changed, from the amateur ranks where success was rewarded with a cup, a medal, or just a silver, engraved spoon, to the point where money talks, and second-best walks. I am not worried about the state of sport, I gave that up when dope taking to obtain excellence became common, for money rather than success. I fear the latest trend, where very young children are being sent to groups to be coached in some sport or other, as if they were teenagers, and recently it has been reported that several children have suffered heart attacks, and I believe, died. One reason we know, there aren’t sufficient play areas for children to gather together, to make up small teams and entertain themselves. Another is that there is a culture in all sports now for the young people to start almost when they fall out of the cradle, to achieve excellence in tennis, and other sports, instead of being left to develop normally, and that has developed because in the professional game training is paramount, and I believe, not only is it too severe, games are at such intervals, stress fractures and the like are now common – not in my day!. Even amateur and school sides now train as if they were the professionals of the 70s. In my day, the playing and the enjoyment were paramount, excellence was a bonus.

    One other cause of the Training Group’s success is that the parents know their children are safe from mindless aggression. Whether they are safe from excessive pressures, physical and psychological, especially as there would inevitably be a pecking order based on ability is something else. There is a doubt in my mind that the sports trainer can supervise at least 22 kids, to the extent that he is aware of their physical condition as the period progresses. It is my untutored opinion, from my own experience of learning rugby and cricket at school, and nowhere near under the pressures that there are today, that accidents will happen. They used to happen when we played on the common, a boy would get a cricket ball in the eye, twist an ankle, but when he got tired, he would probably lounge on the grass and then the others would join him. There was no pressure, ,it wasn’t exerted by the whole, nor was the external pressure to be the best, to be a success, to excel.

    Finally, one of the reasons I don’t watch much sport any more, even on Sky TV, is because I’m disappointed that so many of the players in the teams, allegedly representing this country, the counties, and in the professional football clubs, come from abroad. Youngsters have to be honed by playing at increasingly high levels, but if those high levels are not available, because the ‘name’ from some other country is in the team, it all becomes purely an international moneymaking system on behalf of a select few. I find it incredible, probably because I’m not interested in sport any more, that people want to buy the shirts when the team they are supporting is 80 percent foreign. It is no longer Chelsea, Arsenal et al, it is a cosmopolitan team, playing good football, but not for Chelsea or Arsenal, but for money. As to the Olympics, that is a bottomless hole for the money that we need for essentials and a spectacle for only a few at the cost to the majority.

  • Random Thoughtss 32, MRSA, Pensions

    MRSA. There seems to be no end to the various viruses attacking patients in hospitals, I started to wonder about it. I know that I should not be writing this, I have never worked in a hospital, I have only been in hospital for operations twice, and apart from sticking a plaster on a cut and swallowing my pride, I have no knowledge about viruses or even medical matters other than what I read in the press. So what I write here is basically applied common sense.

    I come from a generation, that when young, rarely had reason to attend hospital. From my own memory they were dark, greenish places, shrouded in discipline and overseen by an autocratic hierarchy I don’t remember hearing any complaints, let alone the deluge heaped on the DHSS there is today. Even then there was a discrepancy between the quality of the older and newer hospitals, which is inevitable. As a result I ask a question which may have been asked recently, whether there is a differential between the known cases of viruses, over a given period, in hospitals based in socially disparate areas. Another question that seems obvious, is, if these viruses like to attack open wounds, which are attended in doctors’ surgeries as well as hospital wards, how it is that no mention has been made of people having caught MRSA or the other bugs by being treated in our surgery treatment rooms? With all the publicity, and in consequence extreme activity in hospitals over cleanliness, while surgeries are left to the good sense of the nurses responsible, you would think that the boot might be on the other foot.

    We read that viruses have a surprising longevity, in water, in dirt, and in people especially. When these viruses are discussed on television, they are always accompanied by shots of people washing their hands, and others sweeping or polishing the floor. It is possible, that the infection does not come mainly from the floor, unless patients contact the floor or articles stored there. If I were asked, although I never will be, where in the wards I would think most vulnerable, I would say, common toilets, the sluice, and areas from knee height to angle-poise-lamp level – hand touching areas. With the nurses urged to wash their hands repeatedly, the bookie would give you odds, that the contamination was more likely to come from other sources, possibly even the kitchen staff, going from ward to ward, collecting dirty dishes.

    I assume that like in all contagion, there are carriers. It would then seem logical that the introduction of the virus happens in visiting hours, visitors move chairs, open and shut cupboards, adjust the pillows of the patients, and bring food from home. This must have been examined in detail, but I find it surprising it has never been brought to public attention. Presupposing that I am right, it will be a lot cheaper for every visitor to be given disposable latex gloves to wear within the hospital than all the cleaning an outbreak prompts. The hospitals pride themselves, in many cases, on their cleanliness, and yet there is infection. One assumes that apart from the serious emergencies, there is a checking system of the blood of all those taken into care in a hospital, and that these reception areas and wards are clinically divorced from the A&E department, with some sort of quarantine area, before the latter patient is allowed to become part of the general ward environment.

    I appreciate that this will be thought rubbish by the medicals and hospital staff generally, but I needed to write it, because I am a belt and braces man.

    Pensions. I may have touched on this before, but it’s worth repeating. As a pensioner, not just an old-age pensioner, I’m aware of the value of a steady income when you are not as capable of doing things for yourself as you were 10 years ago. I am worried, not for my own sake, but for the millions out there working away, who cannot be sure whether they will have a pension or not. The current state of the financial markets doesn’t give confidence, and especially because those same markets hold the pension investments, people are worried. It seems to be a heads you win, tails you lose, type of lottery, probably with less than even odds, ‘for’. The government has always tried to persuade us to save, surely if they undertook to take over the whole of the pension system for all people at work, they would achieve this aim, and at the same time ensure that at some date in the future half the population would not be destitute, with all that implies with respect to taxes and welfare.