Old Gaffer

Month: October 2007

  • Belfast, ’69 on, in order, The Soldiers In Belfast

    Any right thinking person had to be sympathetic to the young men who were sent over here, whether they wanted to come or not, to become potential targets for hidden snipers. That was not all, their living conditions were apparently appalling and they were not permitted to mix with the Town’ people, for obvious reason – I had the impression it was as close to being in jail as one could get without committing a crime. The result was that they lived as we had in the warships, something which we accepted because times were harder in those days. The rest of the army in Britain, with the availability of more money, pressure groups, reducing recruitment, and the greater choices open to young people, made the living standards in general of the armed forces  unrecognisable to old sweats like me.

    When I tried to persuade Gwen, my aunt, to come over here for a holiday, the fuss her friends made was unbelievable and the way they described what might happen to her if she agreed brought home to me, not only the ignorance, yet again, of the English in Irish affairs, but how the parents of the soldiers must have felt and still feel. With the pressure from the job, the pressure from home and the tedium of confined living and no relief, it was surprising the men retained their humour, but they did, if perhaps in a cynical sense. I remember several instances of this, two in particular.

    A mature woman, living in a corner house in one of the Republican areas in or near the Falls district, had been annoying a group of soldiers who were supposed to patrol the area by rushing out, as soon as they appeared, and banging the pavement with her bin lid, a general warning signal used to great effect in the area in the 70’s. In the end the sergeant decided to put a stop to it.

    ‘Everyone bring their mug’, he said and that was all. The men duly climbed into the Land Rover armed with all their equipment plus their mugs. They arrived at the woman’s house so quickly she had no time to get the bin lid and immediately on arrival the Sergeant and corporal went to her door and knocked. While he was waiting he told the corporal to bring all the men who were not on guard to the garden path with their mugs. When the woman opened the door he started to talk to her, but shielded her from view in the street, he then told his corporal to collect the mugs and pass them to him. A few moments later he passed the mugs back, one at a time and instructed the men to appear to drink. Finally he ordered the men back into the Landrover and with a salute and a loud ‘Thank you for the tea!’, they left.

    Apparently, they were hardly round the corner when the woman had one of her windows broken by a neighbour. That story was going the rounds, but another along the same lines was witnessed by our Senior Tracer and can be vouched for. She was going to catch the bus to go to work when she saw a sight, which totally mystified her. She waited to see what it was all about.

    A lorry full of soldiers had stopped, the men had dismounted, and some had dustbin lids in their hands, they all tiptoed down a long road in the Springfield Road district. They spread out along the centre of the road and waited. On a signal, the ones with the lids bashed the road, giving the well known signal and within seconds a number of doors burst open and men, putting on clothes, ran into the street, into the arms of those without lids but with repeating rifles pointing at where the men’s breakfast should be. A cynical sense of humour? Maybe!. Devious? Definitely!

  • Random Thoughts, 46, ID Cards, Computer Fraud etc.

    Recently I wrote about a young woman, who had a driving licence stolen, and presumably as a result of the information therein, criminals not only emptied her accounts at banks, they used her credit card accounts and opened other accounts in her name. This caused me to try to understand how this had come about merely from a driving licence. I came to the conclusion that if a driving licence, with all the latest security checks is unsafe, is an Identity Card such a good thing?

    The driving licence holds considerable personal information including a signature. Banks and building societies are overhauling the security of their computer functions, but I suspect the Driving Licence bureaux feel they have not the same responsibility, and are more easily hacked into. People pay for their licences with cheques, and credit cards and this information is, more than likely, recorded as part of the general transaction. Cheques carry quite a bit of information, the bank account, the sort code, the individual’s number, and their signature. The latter will be on file for checking purposes.

    If the criminal organisation is large enough, and sophisticated enough, run like a National business, it could easily manufacture new cards, with a picture of the criminal using the card on it, on a National scale. Subsequently, it could be used where an ID was required. To arm themselves with this is clearly simple and enables them to open any number of accounts and have access to the current ones. It must be understood that this is my version of the scenario, arrived at through lateral thinking and basic commonsense. We have arrived at the point where throughout the world vast sums of money are being sidetracked by criminals, and while the banks make good the losses, they are of course transferring those losses to their customers, probably not always in an equable form.

    The government, and indeed industry, now talks in billions. I never knew what a billion was until the other day when I calculated , roughly on the basis of £10 per hour, as the average wage of a large proportion of the electorate or an average of about £20,000 pa. A Billion represents all of the average salaries of 50,000 wage earners. When they were talking about that absolute necessity, the Olympic Games, they weren’t talking in one billion they were talking in several, as they are about the train that is going right across London., saving the travellers anything from zero to fifteen minutes. We can wait twenty for a bus.. To pay for all these billions, we are taxed to a very high proportion of our income, more than we are aware of in most cases. A fair proportion of which is squandered through bad management, idiotic projects and specious decisions made against firm advice, the Dome being probably the least..

    I know there are lies, damn lies, and statistics, and possibly what I have written above might fall into one of those categories. I just cannot get my mind round the way such vast sums of money are bandied about almost like confetti, and to some extent appeasing one faction to the detriment of the majority. Ask people in the middle of the UK how they feel about the government spending a fortune again in the London area, when the infrastructure throughout the land is below standard, we will be faced with vast sums of money needed to protect our citizens from flooding. If infection, that we previously haven’t experienced, is to be carried by the atmosphere as a result of the tremendous changes taking place in the world as a whole, there will be another bottomless pit for those zillions.

    From my biased standpoint, I’m against government by one party with an impregnable majority, which really should be made impossible. In our current situation the power is only in a few hands. The theory is OK if corporate management was what it is intended to mean, management by agreement of the majority, but anyone who has operated in committee will know that there is one voice above all others, or, as in our government system, the Whips control, and the members jump, because they are afraid of being ousted in disfavour and so losing all the kudos and perks which are so dear to them. There have been some recently who resigned rather than being dubbed as sheep, but nothing like the integrity yeas ago – the old school,. with all its faults was more competent, experienced and less precipitate. JUST THINK ABOUT IT!

  • Why The Idiotic Trends In Entertainment?

    I can’t help being an irascible old so-and-so, because I am driven to it by coming across so many things I just don’t understand, and cannot see the reason for. Recently I accidentally came across a new version of Robin Hood on TV. I think probably all my life, as a childish romantic, I have enjoyed the various versions, written and in films, of the Robin Hood saga. This time however, Robin Hood’s merry men were fighting with martial art techniques, and performing not just clever feats, but unbelievable ones. My old brain fails to understand why it was necessary to jazz up the battle scenes in this way, when the weapons and armaments of a bygone age are every bit as interesting if not more so, than the total impossible gyrations, and jumps, leaps and bounds which would dwarf the high jump and long jump records. There was also another film, for which the title attracted me, which started off with what I took to be Buddhist monks in some sort of seminary. They were being taught martial arts and for a while this was amusing and then they went out into the wider world, where just the two of them were defeating an army of hundreds. I switched off, but couldn’t put the image out of my mind, that some producer was able to sell this codswallop, to a gullible public. If you want to tell a fairytale, that’s fair enough, the whole atmosphere of the story, written or visual, is clearly romanticism, so anything goes. But to take any story, which is about hoodlums, hoods, people in the 16th century, and just basic criminals, and give skills and astronomical abilities to the people in the story, totally outside any reasonable excuse, to me is absurd and can’t be justified. Entertainment should be believable within the overall context, smashing everything, wrecking cars, wrecking whole streets in car chases, is common, gets a hero or the criminal conveniently out of trouble, but defeats reason. We fortunately have Sky plus, a system whereby it is possible to record in seconds, or weeks ahead, and as a result have sufficient material for when we come across something that is totally stupid, to switch off, erase it and go to something else recorded. My problem is that this is happening more, and too often.

    After looking at a Hong Kong version of Robin, I wondered why children accepted this, and what effect it was having on them. I looked at some research on the Internet and found a treatise on fundamental responses in young children. Cartoons of objects were shown to children in the first, fourth and sixth grades. The young ones responded to movement. Both older grades responded mainly in terms of intention they attributed to the objects, what they expected to happen next. Their responses to more difficult cartoons took into account movements and quantity change. What I write here, is very sketchy and elementary, my interpretation is that the older children, from experience, anticipate in advance what they expect to happen Whether I am right, I can’t guarantee. What I. have discovered, however, is that in cartoons and in films now, the action and the dialogue are a lot faster and more confusing to me, they jump from scene to scene rather than having a smooth progression, so that much is left to interpretation and imagination. It would therefore seem that the fact that children and adults are assumed to anticipate, is used by the entertainment world to allow them to portray stories in these complicated and juddering scenes, rather than in a smooth flow. Economy maybe is the basic reason.

    One other aspect of a modern-day entertainment scene is that more violence enters into every aspect, be it in films or cartoons, than in the past. Even Tom and Jerry, who were castigated years ago for the level of violence, when really the scenario was so graphically unbelievable, while being highly amusing, people didn’t think of it as violence. But in some recent Tom and Jerry cartoons I have seen, kung fu or whatever, has found its way in. I believe that a lot of the gratuitous violence, incredible destruction, and totally unbelievable action in entertainment, is on the increase, and could well sub-consciously be accepted as the norm, when it becomes a daily diet.

    It is for my readers to decide whether I am talking nonsense, an old man disillusioned with progress and moaning, or perhaps an octogenarian whose experience might at last be bearing fruit.

  • Random Thoughts 45, Westminster at Playtime

    I simply could not believe the behaviour of our politicians, knowing they were in the public eye, acting like children in the playground, even worse than usual. There was a ‘Ya! Ya! Mine’s bigger than yours,’ element that I found absolutely absurd, throughout the whole debate during Prime Minister’s Question Time. After the Prime Minister had done his famous U-turn, I would have thought that the point had been made adequately by what he had said, and that a dignified response would be more appropriate and indeed more telling. Who do they think they’re kidding, when they meet one another in the corridors I’m sure they don’t behave in this way, so why on the floor of the house. It is pure theatre, and as they are on TV, they seem to have to behave like students on rag day.

    The thing that worries me is that I, not even a journalist, just a man in the street, have been pleading for over a year, about the very things that are now causing the government problems and forcing new Draconian measures. They have university professors, financial analysts, advising them, and yet for some reason they ignored the direction in which the tide was flowing. One could almost feel that they are governing on a hit-and-hope basis, rather than reasoned thought. We were told that the whole purpose of our finances being controlled by the Bank of England, rather than the government, was to bring about a greater stability. In my mind it was to shift the responsibility. We were told that Gordon Brown was a highly intelligent, calm and capable Chancellor, and one of the best we had ever had. I think ‘had’ is the operative word.

    What I don’t understand is why, at a time when we have so many crises, that the Prime Minister found it necessary to accompany his Minister to a hospital, and stand there wringing his hands, when the Minister was talking. His body language gives me to feel that he is suffering a high-level of insecurity and is in fact out of his depth, which seems to me to be borne out by recent events, and yet another kite being flown, concerning Corporation Tax..

    One of the things that the phantom election threw up, was how many new faces appeared on television, representing their parties at high-level. We were shown from time to time, some of the old guard advising the new, but now so much time has elapsed since the Tory old guard was in control, that there are few of them left to steady the ship. Instead we’re getting sound-bites which the politicians feel is what we want to hear, when, actually, it’s not hearing that we want, but action, and action that makes sense, stopping the rot, stopping the crime and raising standards generally. It was the sort of thing that used to happen in the past, but we haven’t seen much of it in the past five years, rather there has been a steady flow of kite flying, rescinding, legislating from the hip, U-turning, until the electorate hasn’t a clue of where it stands, has no faith nor trust in its leaders, and is drowning in apathy..

  • Belfat, ’69 on, The Troubles, The Royal Ulster Constabluary, Part timers

    I intended writing about the RUC sometime, but do so now, not as a rant, but to draw attention to the reports we had at the time of the Gulf War and currently of the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where my relatives and friends are being asked to fight without the proper means and support. The details are in the Press daily, but there is little action by the Authorities. I can vouch, being at a disadvantage, unnecessarily, is frustrating, dangerous and stupid.

    In the 70’s, aged 50, with a large staff, and responsibility for a number of Civil Engineering projects, I would have been silly to volunteer for service with the Police, part time, at night. I was aggravated by the IRA calling shooting old men in the back, as ‘legitimate Targets’, whose sole selection was they performed a menial, civilian task in a police station. – the Press called them ‘soft targets’ – they were unarmed and unsuspecting. I believe, an ‘army’, means fighting head on, not one or two civilians, bombing and shooting indiscriminately. In Armagh a young police woman, merely carrying documents was shot in the back and killed. This was the last straw – the police were under severe stress, working incredible hours and the shootings and bombings were at their height. The police woman, part time, was married with children. I joined up, primarily to relieve one professional at least, from standing guard duty, something I could reasonably do. He could get on with policing.

    A new world, new procedures, a new uniform, and more study. We had to understand the Law as applied to policing, shoot a Walther, 9mm automatic (007’s choice), accurately, and mostly stand guard duty at the barracks, a judge’s house, or ride around in an armoured Land Rover, going to ‘incidents’ at speed. The average policeman, unsurprisingly, was like any other serviceman, interested in guns, his job, football and so on. There was, naturally, the odd bad apple. Sometimes I had to stand at the gate of the barracks, checking the traffic and watching all those places where a sniper could shoot me with equanimity – no chance of being caught. I was amazed no one had ever had a pop. One night, we were drinking coffee and eating buns at ‘break’ when there was a call. We shot off at speed, but when we arrived at a house which had been shot up by a speeding car, the Army and another patrol were already there, so we stood in a group, under a street lamp discussing. I wondered if it had been a set-up, and casually pointed out that someone in the nearby wooded Cave Hill could shoot several of us easily and get away and that we should disperse. It was met with derision

    Sometimes we sat in a small hut at a judge’s house singly or in pairs, or manned street barriers looking for arms; then I rushed to keep guard in the hedge with the Stengun, my Golf Club was nearby and I didn’t want to nab a friend for drink-driving. Once, a car entered the drive of the judge’s house with two young people in it, when they saw the uniform and the Sten they reversed hurriedly. Another night a regular copper asked me what I would do if I was in a pub and the IRA made a hold up. I said I would have a go. He pointed out that, presupposing I shot the raiders, I would be standing there in civvies, holding a smoking gun, if the army came running, they would shoot first and ask questions after. Some weeks later that scenario was played out in a garage in N. Belfast and a part-time policeman in civvies was killed. The most hairy part of being a policeman, for me, was during office hours when I had to supervise work in ‘No Go Areas’, where the IRA were receiving protection payments and I, a copper, was carrying a gun.

  • Belfast, ’69 on, in order,The troubles, The Royal Marines

    The number of ironic stories attributable to the heightened atmosphere of the ‘Troubles’ are legion, this is just another. While you read what follows, bear in mind, if you will, that I was originally English, also Protestant, ex- Navy and a civil servant working in sensitive areas, and if I had been needed at the time of Suez I would have held the temporary rank
    of Commander.

    It was just an ordinary day in the early 70’s, I was on my way home after taking site photographs and had finished late. It was well past lunch time, the day was fine and dry and I was in a good mood. Out into the road stepped a Royal Marine with his hand up, I was being stopped – an everyday occurrence. “Park over there,” he said pointing to the other side of the road, I complied. “Get out of the car and open the boot,” he continued. By now his companions were surrounding my car and pointing their rifle at me. Well, why not? They had to point somewhere. I opened the boot. Lying there were two expensive cameras, films, lenses of various sizes, and other equipment amounting to a tidy sum, even on the second-hand market. “Go and open the bonnet” He said, starting to rummage. I am sure that the stories I had heard about the proclivities of the Royal Marines, when I was a sailor, were totally apocryphal, slanderous in the extreme, and Marines are really loveable, almost to the degree of being cuddly – but – as I was on my own with no witnesses to confirm what I had started out with, just to be on the safe side, I refused, politely but firmly.

    “I said, ‘open the bonnet’” He reiterated. “Of course I will,” I said quite reasonably, “when you’ve finished here.” While this was going on his colleague was in my car looking through my correspondence, and a friend drove past and waved to me and I waved back. The first soldier repeated himself and I refused, adding “I am supposed to be present when my car is being searched. When you have finished, I’ll lock the boot and then you can look in the bonnet.” The argument went on until he had finished, his companion was still going through the car.

    The same friend drove up and wound down her car window. ” My God,” she said, “Are you still here?” and laughed at my wry expression, it had been a considerable time since she had last passed.. “You wouldn’t think,” I said, taking the opportunity to make a point, “that I’m one of the few English civil servants in this neck of the woods.” She laughed, shook her head and drove off. I opened the bonnet after locking the boot. The marine now went to look in there. I got into the car and switched on the radio. By this time the Marine’s colleague who had been reading my mail was on the radio to base, telling them that they had a desperate criminal with a car registration number of XXXXX.

    However, that was not the final curtain, there were a couple of scenes still to run. The officious Marine, I thought of as ‘Chummy’, toured the district with three others of whom two were supposed to be stationed away from the searchers to cover them from other directions, but the dialogue between Chummy and me had been so interesting that one, who had been within earshot, had been edging closer and closer, abandoning his position in favour of the drama. At this juncture, probably bored to death, he decided to take a hand and as I sat tuning the car radio he stuck his rifle into my face and said “Get out!” I must admit I was taken aback. “Why, I?” asked, reasonably, “What now, all I’m doing is waiting for your mate to clear me as he will.” “Get out, or I’ll shoot!” he said this time. I think if there had been a witness I would have put him to the test to see if he really would, but one man on his own with no witnesses should never tempt fate. I got out. We had only been together for twenty minutes so I had not really had a chance to build any bridges, we still hated one another, even when I left.

    That evening I was seated watching TV when I saw my beloved wife come in through the front door beckoning some men in camouflage to follow her. She stuck her head into the room and said, “I was sorry for these poor chaps, I’ve brought them in for coffee or a beer.” She wondered why I laughed, but she was too busy with her social duties to find out, she had four mouths to feed. That’s right, they were Royal Marines!

  • Belfast, ’69 on, in order,The Troubles, The Farce at the Barrier

    On the site of a large sewage works under construction in the 70’s I was telephoned from Head Office to be told that bombs were ‘on all the bridges’, this meant rail, road and river. I closed the site to give the men time to get home and tried to pick a route for myself which would be trouble free. It was at the height of the bombing campaign by the IRA, At every turn I was frustrated and slowly found myself herded by circumstance into what was then thought of as ‘no-go’ areas At one point soldiers appeared from behind a hedge and held me at gun point until they were satisfied I was bona fide. I then had to decide whether to either drive through a certain UDA (Protestant militant) barrier or possibly one set by the IRA. I chose the former. I found railway rails driven into the roadway at junctions by the UDA to stop speeding bombers, a not unusual occurrence.

    I was brought up short at a barrier with no escape route except to retreat the way I had come. I locked all the doors of the car and put the car into reverse with the clutch out and the engine running, while deciding what to do. A young thug dressed in camouflaged army surplus, with a bush-hat over his eyes, swaggered over to the car and knocked on the window. “Show me your licence,” he said, parroting the police and military in similar circumstances. “I will not” I said, firmly. I resented these vigilante groups almost as much as the IRA itself, although I could understand their predicament. “You’ve no right to ask.” I added. This conversation went on its boring, and repetitive way until finally I became fed up and said, ” you might as well let me through, because I’m not giving you my licence.” The irony and indeed stupidity of the whole performance was that when I was stopped by the barrier, I was leaving the area they were supervising, not entering it.

    At this point a large man in his forties appeared, not in camouflage, but clearly a man to be reckoned with. His gait was steady if slow and his face expressionless. By this time, while outwardly calm, I was in a state of high tension. Alone, with no witnesses, completely vulnerable to say the least, I had made a stand and now was not the time to capitulate. There ensued a question and answer session between the two men and then the older man asked me if I had any other means of identification Luckily, I had a work pass which I showed through the closed window. This seemed acceptable, and I was about to put the car into forward gear, preparatory to departure when the man said, “Get out and open the boot.” I hadn’t expected that, caught off balance, incensed, I made a totally stupid remark at anytime, but especially in those circumstances. “If you intend stealing the car,” (a common occurrence at that time), “you’ll have to steal me with it, I’m not giving it up.” “No!” the man said, “I just want to see into your boot.” “I suppose I have to trust you,” I said, he nodded, I opened the boot. Inside was a valuable set of golf clubs belonging to a professional, circuit golfer, each club chosen and modified to suit I was scared it would be ‘liberated’. “A golfer,” he said, smiling broadly, “what’s your handicap?”

    The sudden volte face, the drop in tension, the banality of the words in this charged situation, was nearly my undoing. I silently got back into the car, the barrier was removed and I drove round the corner for a hundred yards; I could go no further. The tension, the build up of adrenaline in the system, and then the sudden release had produced a pain in my back of paralysing proportions. For a while all I could do was sit there and wait for it to disperse, my brain in limbo.

    Over the years I have had a number of stressful instances, and this final one made me evaluate the degrees of fear, from apprehension to terror, an exercise I found illuminating and totally contrary to what I had expected. The problem was I could not generalise, we are all different and must respect that.

  • Belfast, ’61 on, The Period of the Troubles, James.

    There is so much to Northern Ireland that is so enjoyable, so worthy, so beautiful, I must share it, but this inevitably means I have at some point, to mention those two incredible, euphemistic words, ‘The Troubles’, not in the context of politics, and rarely touching on the frustration and horror, more, about ordinary people living in spite of them. When I say that I was total ignorant of what Ireland was like, and didn’t even know it was divided nationally, you will realise the overall lack of interest in that country by the Brits right up until the ‘Troubles’ .For this reason Northern Ireland did not change radically until recently, we were held, as it were, in an aspic of ignorance, and later, fear of involvement in the backlash of war.

    I met James in 1943 along with his daughter. He was a quiet man, never given to raising his voice or exhibiting temper. He was strong, tough and had been a sportsman in his early manhood, playing football for Crusaders, a local team, and running in cross country races. Reticent, generous and always smiling he had started work apprenticed to a Printer, losing the tip of his little finger in the process, but he was earning so little compared with his friends, he joined them in Harland and Wolf’s shipyard where he became a Leading Plater – the toughest of trades.

    He would describe how, when he was apprenticed, they formed the shaped steel plates for the keel, bow, and stern as well as others plates. Later there were hydraulic presses, rollers and punches, working on cold metal. When he started the plate was heated to red heat, the men, stripped to the waist, holding sledge hammers, stood in a queue, ran in, in turn, and hit the plate a single blow, accurately, and then ran clear because of the heat.

    James, And The Early Troubles The first time I ever heard any deep discussion on the Northern Ireland political theories, was one night when there had been some trouble or other in Belfast, long since forgotten. That night Jimmy told me of the twenties and thirties. He was apolitical, and, held no brief for discrimination. He told me of how, in the early thirties, the men at the shipyard were worried for their jobs as so many had been laid off, even to the extent that through lack of traffic passing along the Queen’s Road supplying the shipyard, grass was growing between the granite sets. He said that there had been marches to Stormont and the City Hall and the interesting part of those marches was that both factions had buried the hatchet, and Catholic and Protestant were marching in unison. He alleged, that when this situation was realised, a false wedge was driven between the two factions so that they went back to addressing their separate grievances and left the unemployment problem alone. James was never given to hyperbole nor political extremism, therefore I believed him and with hindsight I am convinced he was right.

    James got himself into difficulties on one occasion through his broadminded attitude to religious bigotry. The situation was similar to those experienced over the last decades but lasted only a short time. People were shot on the doorsteps or put out of their rented houses simply because they were of the wrong religion, and people who had the lack of foresight to marry someone from the other religion, even if they never went to church, were also shot. At the time he owned a small shop as insurance against redundancy and Catholic customers living in a mainly Protestant York Road area, came to him to be helped across sectarian lines of demarcation to get to their own kind in safety. James, well thought of by both communities was able to ferry them, on foot, by his own routes to the Catholic districts. On one occasion though, things were not so simple. James had been standing in the door of the shop one evening when he heard a shot coming from the shop on an adjacent corner It was an off-licence owned by a Catholic, Without thinking James entered the shop to find Paddy lying dead on the floor of his shop and at that moment the door opened and a policeman entered, gun in hand, to find James leaning over the body. “Think yourself lucky it was me who came in.” said the constable, “If it had been anyone else who didn’t know you they would have shot first and asked questions after.’

  • Belfast, The Period of the Tooubles, An Overview.

    In 1944, as an Englishman, I was welcomed into an Ulster Protestant family with liberal views, and if you read a piece entitled James, you will see the level of that liberalism. This is not a detailed sortie into Irish history, just a preface to the pieces concerning the Northern Ireland troubles which will be posted in the next few weeks.

    Everyone must know that the troubles started long ago even before, Cromwell, The root of them is that the original indigenous population was invaded by the Brits, and later the Scots and others settled here for various reasons, mainly economic and political. There have always been outside influences which have sculpted and moulded politically, mostly to the detriment of the inhabitants. That situation is believed to be still evident by both factions in this country, and this is the nub of the problem – the political perspective is always distorted, and not necessarily always by the inhabitants.

    The real flare-up might not have happened if there hadn’t been heavy-handed precipitate action, politically and militarily. My father-in-law told me that often we had been on the brink and drawn back. This time it was for real, and on a percentage basis the majority of the population might have had strong views, but it is my belief that they were not in favour of what was being perpetrated either in their name, or by the other faction. Even if you have strong views, finding a coffee shaking in its cup, on a restaurant table, because a bomb has felled a building in the street behind, and you know you’ll be late home again that night, can cool your ardour. Having officials running their hands over your body in car parks, shops and office entrances is something you will never become accustomed to.

    I have been threatened that my house would be burnt down, held up by both factions when I have been on my own and therefore vulnerable, I’ve been threatened to be shot by the Royal Marines, for no reason other than they didn’t like me insisting on the correct search procedures, amazing especially as I was English and a senior civil servant. I look back over the senseless waste of life, time, materials and know that it shouldn’t have happened, because, on a comparative basis, in 1969 I know Northern Ireland was in a better state financially and socially than a large proportion of Great Britain. On the whole I believe that in 1969 there was less cross-political animosity than there had been at any time in my experience. There were definitely wrongs that needed to be righted, but none were so grave as to warrant all that killing or the level of destruction.

    No matter what it said in Stormont, nor the political mouthing of platitudes by the UK government, out problems, I believe, have been painted over for appearance’s sake, but deep down those who feel there is opportunity in maintaining what used to be the status quo, will wait. Criminality reached massive proportions during the troubles, eradicating that will have to be the first step, and as some of it is cross-border, and I don’t necessarily mean solely in the South, there is an uphill struggle, which the majority of the men in the street are to war weary to care about.

  • Manipulation Generally, also in Politics

    The incredible circus, which has been built up around what I believe to be an unnecessary inquest on Princess Diana, must be hell for the Princes and her close friends. It would certainly not be at the request of the Queen, and so one assumes that the press, with the paparazzi, have engineered this for increased sales. Many of us feel that if there had been no paparazzi there would have been no accident. This prompted me to consider manipulation in the round.

    The dictionary definition states, ‘to give a false appearance to; to turn to one’s own purpose or advantage.’ This does not cover the wide range of applications, and the sheer terror and horror that it can cover, such as the plight of subjugated peoples in dictatorships, throughout the world.

    We are currently being subjected to a mild form of manipulation by our politicians who are playing childish games with our lives, by making speeches and counter speeches, which are not necessarily policy, but rather inducements to make us vote for them. When the incumbent sees which way the wind is blowing he will then make up his mind whether it is in ‘his ‘ interest to go to the polls, not ours. This I believe is manipulation. It was noticeable that when David Cameron was talking without notes, a point which was strongly made, (even Soph thought it great), to indicate that he was speaking from the heart, it made me wonder if all our actors and actresses who can go through a three-hour play without a note, are also speaking from the heart. I suggest this is another form of manipulation. Just in passing, I noted that his speech from the heart, was only his heart, not that of the party, it was always the first person singular. Another Blair?

    In Northern Ireland we have been manipulated constantly, by Westminster, Dublin, the USA Government, the American Irish Lobby with its funding-raising and back-seat driving, our own political factions, the UN the EU and anybody else who can stick their finger in, for nearly 40 years, and we are worse off now than when it all started, certainly politically, the infrastructure, and of our personal knowledge of our place in things generally. If you think about it, you too may have been thoroughly manipulated.

    The most subtle form of manipulation, of course, is advertising. They use fear, sex, suggestion rather than fact, in its many forms, and portray a Utopian environment, obviously associated with their products.

    As you know, recently I did a survey of how much people read, and it was clear that TV and the Internet are on the increase in providing information, while written matter is being reduced by 40%. How this affects newspapers I have not researched, but I am of the opinion that it applies to them as well. However, I do not think, as a result of this, the paparazzi will be reduced proportionately, because the sensational press will probably maintain its position, which says a lot about the taste of the average citizen.

    I hesitate to make statements about religion, firstly because I think it’s none of my business, secondly so many people are dependent upon it. But recent events of religious leaders and political factions, pretending allegiance to religion, are taking advantage of the modern day sophistication, easy transportation, and a highly mixed race environment, to perpetrate acts of violence which are manipulation of the individual bomber and of us, but go beyond that to a hideous extreme, to encourage fear and panic to achieve an end, which in itself is unreasonable.

    A hundred years ago soapbox politics was simple, unsophisticated and what you saw is what you got. Today with the professional use of psychology, with spin doctors, speech writers and all the plethora of outside interests and influences, in our everyday lives, not only in politics, we must become ourselves more sophisticated, more aware and above all more questioning. When a man stands up giving a long speech, not necessarily a politician, it is difficult to take in all that he says and to remember it, therefore what you get is a warm impression, and if he is any good at manipulation, a few nuggets that will cheer you, and the cold hard facts, while still being there, are enshrouded in verbiage and showmanship.