The Old Gaffer

My humbug factor is an imaginary figure by which I assess how much I am being given no real facts yet I’m being hoodwinked by a smooth sales pitch.. The higher the factor is and the more I’m subjected to histrionics, the less I believe what I am told. If the speaker gives the unvarnished truth, the factor is zero. Do you ever find yourself being spoken to with the greatest sincerity, about things that are vitally important, and you still have your doubts? I find this highly prevalent in the political field. I think the classic case is the primary electioneering currently running in the US. Everyone knows the problems the government is faced with, and the majority of the solutions, which while unpalatable, are generally accepted, yet millions of dollars are being ploughed into a race to the White House. I sometimes wonder who is getting all that money, and at the end of the day does it matter? Surely all that razzmatazz is purely hype, and people would still vote in the same way if it wasn’t there? I have been known to consider whether a few months after an incumbent has been voted in, if the electorate suddenly wonders how in the world they managed to pick him.

I am no aficionado when it comes to political protocol. In some ways our own system defeats my logic. For example, I believe that our system like many others, has a safety valve, the approval of the upper house, in our case the House of Lords. In addition we have the Queen, who clearly has some power, or the Prime Minister would not have to ask her permission to form or dissolve the Parliament. Yet how is it that decisions as disparate as the 10p tax and Afghanistan can come about against the general will of the electorate? Recently there was a TV programme hosted by Andrew Marr, in which the leader of the Opposition, and a representative of the government answered questions. What was apparent was that they were not going to commit themselves to anything, but wished to give the impression that they had everything under control, and each in turn was doing a better job than the other. Taken on face value the whole discussion system was a total waste of time, but less abrasive than the ones we get concerning Northern Ireland politics. In the former the humbug factor was very high, in the latter, because of the unvarnished distrust and dislike among the participants, strangely the humbug factor was low, because there was no need to play to the gallery, they were too busy fighting their own corner.

The one area where the factor is almost 100%, is advertising. By the people who are chosen to present the advertisement, the way in which the product is used on screen, and the visual claims by inference, are so absurd as to be laughable. Now to save money we are being treated like children watching Blue Peter, with articulating puppets, and absurd scenes. I wouldn’t mind all this nonsense, if first of all I was not having to pay for it in the price of the product, and that I wasn’t so sure that some, busy people, without the time to be critical, are taking it all at face value.

Recently in the newspapers, pensions have come under attack, by the managing director of the oil company, and the financial institutions who are saying that due to the change in the tax system, people will need to save more per month to maintain their expectations when they retire. I find also there is an overall feeling people like me should have died long ago, we are a burden on taxpayers, on the health service and goodness knows what. My generation and the one following me were, in general, frugal, hated debt and saved for their old age. We were never ones to blow our own trumpet, but today I propose to make an exception. In the 80s when a lot of us retired, we left a sound infrastructure, the roads were good, the water supply was reasonably clean, and in most cases the sewerage system was working well. From what I’ve seen I can’t say the same today. We had fought yet another war to end all wars, and for five unpleasant years had endured hardship. We were the ones who inaugurated the health service, the RSPB, the RSPCA, and innumerable other ways in which to respect the environment and its inhabitants. It is probable that we were responsible to some extent for global warming, but nothing like what has followed since.

Go into any small restaurant at coffee time or lunchtime, it is not the shop assistants or the general workforce who are eating there, it’s the Wrinklies spending their savings. Go into Marks any day but Saturday and Sunday, and probably the Wrinklies are in the majority. We may have free bus travel, but at the end of the travel it is we who are supporting the centre of town shops, because we have the money, and the time to browse. It is the modern generation, with a certain amount of lack of responsibility, who are allowing some children to run wild, and so having to drive others, nose to tail back and forth to school. It is not the Wrinklies who are filling the car parks of the supermarkets to overflowing on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. All this local motoring is probably the biggest carbon foot print of them all

The Wrinklies in their youth had not the expectations, nor the desires that are prevalent today, with the result that it was much easier to save, especially as it had been ground into us with the first shilling we were given by a generous auntie. I believe, as you would expect that I would, that on the whole, allowing for the fact that there are some who have no savings, I believe the majority of us rather than being a nuisance will show when we have gone that we were an essential to the economics of our families and the country, and were not half the drain we are alleged to be. I wonder if that will be the case in 20 years?

Calculating Roughly on a population of 60 million, an average life expectancy of 75 years, I look at the prospects if people don’t save. The babies, schoolchildren, advanced education, and unemployed, together amount to approximately 25%. Old age pensioners amount to 20%. So the employed, the ones providing the source of income for the country, are only 55%. Currently I suggest more than half of pensioners own their own houses, at least half have savings over and above that, so there is liquidity, and tax income from this area. If however, the level of savings drops dramatically, as it would seem logical, then in 20 years time the old age pensioners will not be a source of tax revenue, they will be a further drain on the Exchequer. The world, let alone the UK, may not be so economically buoyant, so all the immigrants will have gone back to where they came from, and the skills that we should have been building up, instead of depending upon them, will be lost to a great extent. I’m Jobe’s comforter I know, but the question is am I right or even half right, or is this just yet more rubbish? I believe that saving, stable pensions, and more general stability for the outlook for the young and even the not so young, is essential if we are to maintain the sort of standard of living that we all wish.

This is not directed at my peers, but at those who are contemplating retirement or for whom it is just over the hill. It was the current financial situation prompted these thoughts and so I will deal with the financial front first. The real problem of old age can be financial, the effect of an ever dwindling income, not necessarily caused by profligacy, often by circumstances. The difference between just enough and not enough can cause stress; finding food that is inexpensive, and perhaps having to wrap up on a cold night because the money for the electric meter has run out, and it is a choice between light and the TV, or a few minutes with the electric fire. The current financial environment is sending all the wrong messages, when English banks have been taken over by other banks in other countries, who then take over even more banks, only to discover that the last takeover was of a bank who had been particularly risky, and the whole effort is collapsing like a pack of cards; when the young see the careful savings of their parents dwindling in this way, as a result of the vast minority who have been allowed to ’spend today and pay tomorrow’, they are likely to see little point in saving for their old age. This could be a natural reaction, especially in the light of all those people who have lost legitimate pensions at the whim of an employer. It is one that must not be allowed to become the norm, because the welfare budget in the future, and the level of poverty could be of such dimensions as to cripple the country. Pensions should be a government responsibility, contributed to by the employer and the employee, but guaranteed by the government, currently it is too easy to get out of hand

Retirement and old age are so different, and so progressively different in time, from the workaday life as to be worthy of a comment or two. All sorts of things, such as your type of work, type of play, accidents, bone breakages, and especially your psychology up until you retire, can have strong effects on your life in retirement. For example I’m convinced that taking golf seriously, and especially bracing the left side to ensure an even follow-through, caused me to have a replacement in my left hip joint. Broken collarbones, broken ribs, and breakages in limbs have all contributed to a situation where off the peg clothes no longer fit properly, and I certainly can’t afford tailor-made. I can just about pick things off the floor if I’m barefoot, that an extra inch on the heel of my shoes makes it impossible, and more than once in trying I have measured my length on the floor of a supermarket.

Your day at work was ordered by necessity, your day in retirement is totally unordered, except by necessary chores, but after the first flush, when you had done all the things that you wanted to do, or more to the point imagined you wanted to do, your life devolves into a smooth routine, where you can’t remember what day it is, they are so much alike, where a lot of the old familiar faces have disappeared, and travel becomes more tiresome than pleasurable, because you’re forced to use public transport. It is at this point a strong sense of humour, even a sense of the ridiculous is important. If times are hard, or perhaps even if they’re only boring and just a little tedious, where everything on the TV you have seen before, where you go for a necessary walk every day, but it is for exercise, not pleasure, then it is essential that you still smile. Many people in serious old age forget to smile instinctively, and what is worse they don’t realise that smiles are a reciprocal reflex action. The people you meet don’t know you very well, because those who knew you are no longer with you, and so you have to make not so much new friends, but friendly acquaintanceships, and a smile is the key to that. There is also another pitfall, and that is garrulousness. You’re on your own so much, you have thought about so many things, that when you come into company, unless you are careful, the dam on your thoughts will break, and you would be unaware that you were talking a blue streak, and all the good that your smile did will have been wasted.

One absolute essential for a happy old age is that you take, or make a point of finding and taking from your previous life, interests, call them hobbies or whatever, but ones you can still enjoy and indeed share with others, irrespective of your physical condition.

View ‘The Sterile Landscape of Old Age’ posted a year ago.

I usually avoid leaving home between 8,20 and nine o’clock, because the Mummy Run is in full swing, with cars nose to tail for miles rather than hundreds of yards. There is no shadow of doubt the current system is a total waste of time for the parents, the other drivers who wish to use the roads, and also a waste of valuable fuel, so we need to find an acceptable solution. The reason for the Mummy Run is clearly to do with safety, the lack of safety in cycling in our congested streets and the general fear of gang fights and molestation. The government seems either disinclined or unable to tackle the problem. I have a suggestion, whether it has already been approached, tested and rejected, or whether it is really a viable one, would need work, but if it were, it would save so many families from having to run two cars, at a time of financial stringency, and would save damage to the environment as well.

The proposal is based upon the mass use of minibuses, driven by retired people with proper accreditation, to meet the logistics demanded by the school’s. Put simply, professional drivers, and competent driver’s who have passed the required tests, who are also retired, but keen to have a new job and to augment their pensions would be employed and paid for by the government, which would also supply the buses and the cost of maintenance and fuelling, while the children’s fares would be met by some sort of monthly payment from the parents and surrendered to the government. The schedules and logistics for the collection of the children, their return home and their transport to sports and other activities, could all be accommodated, because the drivers would themselves have no fixed schedule other than the standard runs. The economy to the parents, considering that the second cars would have very low mileages but the same overheads as a family car, would surely be an inducement to make the system work. The governing body could possibly be the local education authority or Local Government.

The one foreseeable problem would be the children being late at the meeting points, and thus vulnerable. Another would be those children living off the beaten track, but it might be possible to have one bus that does a wider sweep of these children specially. There could be a problem with some of the parents falling behind in the payments. But I believe that if the trial was made, even for one large school alone, placed in a County Town, where the children come from both the town, the outlying estates and the rural area, it would be worth the expense to try to make it work, iron out any problems and reassess it on a nationwide basis.

Until the 60s most people were naive enough to trust all but those with an inherent reputation for deceit, such as men selling things off the back of a lorry. We didn’t bother locking the front door, a lot of houses had the key on a string so the kids could let themselves in if the parents were out. We trusted the government without question, as we did most trades-people we dealt with. We never really trusted foreigners, which hasn’t changed. Now we trust very few, and very few trust the government any more. The government doesn’t trust the trades-people, having an army of people checking up on them. So all in all we don’t believe what we’re told, what we read, and what we see, - an insecure world. Are we right to be so untrusting?

The heating oil caper. Up until 2003 I had never used heating oil. The first two or three deliveries I accepted what I was given and then I decided to calibrate the oil tank. It is not an exact science because of its shape. I was able to mark where one delivery started and stopped on the plastic visions tube. Over a period of time, because deliveries started at the same spot and finished at different spots, it showed that there was no control over what was being delivered, and I became suspicious. I improved my calculations and found I was often given short measure but I had no legal proof. The delivery printout starts at nought and registers the total amount, not as it should do, by starting at whatever the tanker first contained and to the remainder in the tanker. I’m sure not all dealers are crooked, but as the tanks don’t have a reliable recorder the system is open to abuse.

Sound quality. Recently I have found the speech in films on television to be muffled, and often difficult to make out. I blamed the filmmakers, until I discovered that similar films on CD, viewed on the same television set had no such problems. I also found that the really good films could only be got on HD (high-definition), to which one had to pay yet again. I just wondered, but couldn’t really believe, that the difference in quality could possibly be engineered to make me buy into HD out of pure frustration. But then, I’m fanciful!

This is one of those subjects where even the title could be misconstrued, and the blog stats go up disproportionately. The reporting of the Shannon kidnapping, and reference to her mother, who is alleged to have a string of children, five of whom also allegedly have five different fathers, prompted me to go back into my mental archives and view the changes in sex and romance over the last roughly 100 years.

My mother was very Victorian, sex was definitely the taboo subject, she didn’t even appreciate slightly salacious jokes on the two valve radio, but thankfully my grandmother did. I remember at the age of about seven I accidentally went into the bathroom, in our African home, and she was naked. The rage that followed has lived with me for 80 years. In the middle 30s, I remember having a friend, when I was in primary school, who used to tell me jokes that he thought were hilarious, and with hindsight I realise were mildly blue, but to me I could never see the point, I was that ignorant. Like every other generation, boys and girls from single sex secondary schools would meet up going home, but my experience was that any fumbling was not even in the mind, let alone an urge. Our relationships with girls were, I think, governed mainly by a level of ignorance probably fostered by our parents. We tended to pair off, and took the whole business quite seriously, but the outcome was defeated because she would be evacuated to one part of England and the bloke to another.

In the services the attitude to sex, and to women, was still dictated to some extent by the values that had been instilled at home. I remember sitting at a table in a chiefs’ and petty officers’ mess, where one of the men was carrying on a typical naval conversation scattered with swear words. Somebody protested, because the people serving were WRNS, he replied, with startling logic, ‘if she has never heard it before she won’t understand it, and if she has, it won’t do her any harm to hear again.’ There was no shadow of doubt that casual sex was quite common, for I remember a girl I knew who was in the ATS, who would be asked by the other women with a great deal of hilarity, when she returned from a night out, if she been introduced to Fagan. When I left my ship, totally drunk from having been given ‘Sippers’ of rum throughout the ship, when I came too on the dockside, surrounded by my kit, I found that my friend the sick bay tiffy, had filled my pockets on one side with aspirin, and on the other with contraceptives. After the war, when I returned home, while I was married, from my own experience I would say on average the mores of the 30s had not been seriously tarnished.

The freedom loving 60s changed all that. In the meantime jokes, references on the radio, and in the magazines had steadily become less censored, and sex in all its aspects was becoming more recognized. The 60s introduced drugs becaming more common, society itself was less critical, to the extent that by the 80s sophisticates thought it rather fun to play the key game. I was reliably informed that married couples, or couples comprised of single people, would go to a standard party where there was drink, food, dancing and party games; at the end of the evening the men put their car keys in a hat and the ladies would take a gamble on whose key they lifted and they would be paired off with one of the men whose car it was. What happened after that, presumably, was a joint decision. My informant said that some of the ladies knew the tabs on the rings and when they fumbled in the hat, selected the person they wanted, and who was expecting to be selected. At this time casual sex was still disapproved of by parents, but was nonetheless increasing, and often portrayed graphically on television and in the cinema.

We now come to our present condition, where only 50% of the children born are of parents in wedlock, that the government has had to advertise in order to try to reduce the rise in sexually transmitted diseases, the number of single-parent families has increased dramatically and casual sex, while not yet quite the norm, is no longer frowned upon. It seems today, for reasons I’m not clear about, the sexual act, or the directors idea of it, has to be included in practically every other film. The question is, where will we go from here, and what will be the long-term affect on society generally?

What I wrote yesterday opened other avenues of thought. Aggression achieves nothing, and religion is often an excuse for aggression. I only have to mention the Crusades, the Conquistadors, Bonnie Prince Charlie in the wars of accession to make the point. The incredible massacres of WW1 and WW2 achieved nothing. The uprising resulting from the Salman Rushdie book always left me with a feeling that it had been engineered to make a point. It implies that a person’s thoughts, if uttered are treasonable, and there is no place for free speech. It is not the British way to care very much about what someone writes, or even says, we are more phlegmatic. Internecine conflict, as I know, can be unreasoning, random and vicious, but we have moved on from the mindless random shooting and bombing, to a much more destructive, and again mindless form of warfare, the roadside bomb, the car bomb, and the suicide bomber. These are not selective, merely a demonstration of international hatred, and political pressure.

When religion enters into the equation, as it allegedly did with the Satanic Verses, there are generally other, more abstruse reasons underlying, such as the self-aggrandisement of individuals, greed, jealousy justified or unreasoned, and territorial gain. Strangely, there are times when other ploys to achieve the same ends are mooted. I remember at the height of the Troubles in 1971, when the IRA was at its height bombing and killing, a Republican woman seen on television, was shouting that the Republicans would achieve their end because’ they would breed the Prods out’. It was ludicrous I know, but that is the level at which the hatred between factions can drive people.

When one travels across Europe, what is most apparent is the difference in the way of life, between one country and another. For example, when I spent a month at a time living in France surrounded by French families, I’ve found their way of life, their way of living even, were so different to what I was used to in England and Ireland. I may be wrong, but I believe that the Brits carried their rural interests along with their rural values, with them into suburbia, and that is why gardening to the British is so important and possibly why they are so phlegmatic. When I see pictures on television, of areas of London that I knew as a boy, I am often amazed at just how much these areas have changed by the tastes of the new residents, with their vastly different cultural background. If our cities are going to be carved up into small communities, for a start there will be political representation, at which the different needs of the different cultures will inevitably presents problems of choice. I think it would do no harm for some university which is situated in an area where there are large amounts of small national enclaves, to find out about the relationships between the different factions, how local government operates, and above all the degree of, the causes of and results of international stress, and if it does exist as has been postulated by the television programme. It is of course possible that this survey has been done, but if so I was surprised it wasn’t included in the programme.

Immigration, The Inconvenient Truth, was a programme produced by Channel 5 and presented by Rageh Omaar, an immigrant Somali. This is a plea to the MPs and MLAs not to consider the immediate concern, but to look at the long-term effects of what they will leave to those coming after us, causing them to complain in hindsight that we had the facts but ignored them. The government is complacently protesting that there is 80% racial harmony in Britain’ The programme partially confirms that, but it points to a more hazardous and dangerous future. The programme concerned the long-term effects, real and potential, of our multiracial society, that is now so insular. I have written of my own construction on and extrapolation of what I have read.. This programme is the result of research, not supposition, and is divided into two parts, the action and reaction of individuals, and the racial mindset mainly induced by the ghetto living of the immigrants, and their evident wish to maintain their own identity. Leicester’s white population is now a minority, and the various nationals from Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and Europe live in isolated communities, with generally little intercommunication.

Enoch Powell talked about a dangerous social fragmentation, and Omar has reiterated this and shows that. tension is created when a foreign community moves into an area. Woolwich is an example, where gangs consisting of Afro Caribbean are opposed to Somalis, to the point where non-combatants find it almost imperative to take sides. These fights take place in small areas, through tribal and territorial concerns. People looking for protection also devolves down to becoming a tribal concern. Since the 1960s, Leicester has steadily become primarily a non-white city, with the white population a minority. Highfield, part of Leicester, has become totally Muslim with a high number of mosques. Surprisingly, Leicester does not have the same degree of aggression that is evident elsewhere. What is happening is that there is total racial segregation with no communication between the various enclaves.

Segregation of the mind is the other consideration. The Salman Rushdie novel, The Satanic Verses, created a mental segregation, the British Muslim, which overrides ethnic backgrounds. Immigrants now find new identities, steeping themselves in .cultural and the ethnic traditions of their forefathers, idealising that culture and its traditions as they interpret them, in preference to the British way of life. Global communication aids and sponsors this. While British churches are empty, in the segregated areas religion has a strong influence and bonding. We have become a community of communities, each with their own culture, religion and tradition. 50% of the people in this country feel that there are too many languages, cultures and religions. In 2005 an unsubstantiated rumour created a riot which led to two deaths and a number of casualties. A multi-cultural society can result in the international hatreds being fought out on the streets of this country. These divisions are driving people apart rather than aiding them to accommodate their differences, and they themselves augment their differences as a badge.

I have lived for more than 60 years in a divided society in Northern Ireland, where segregation induces tensions, and aggression can well up from a small beginning and overtake the majority. When you hear that in recent years we have received nearly a million immigrants, and there are more to come, the worry must be not only as I have shown above, but the effect on the infrastructure, the inroads into the countryside to provide housing, and the whole way of life of the country.

Emigration and a plea. I plead particularly with the MLAs in Ulster, Wales and Scotland, to think seriously about these long-term effects, and apply some sort of restriction so that their own cities do not become a collection of isolated ghettos. I am not competent to judge whether we need this level of immigration, what I do believe is, is that it is sponsoring an unusual level of emigration to countries like New Zealand and Australia, where the way of life is still British. These emigres are the cream of this country, trained at our expense in the professions that we need, and which are being replaced by foreigners. It is unsurprising that the standard of the 3Rs has dropped so radically over the past few years, as a significant proportion of the country is populated by people who in their own homes speak another language, and have difficulty with English, which is a complicated language in itself.

If it wasn’t so criminally wasteful of taxation, it would be laughable. The government is proposing in conjunction with the bed manufacturers Dream, to inaugurate at the new Buckinghamshire University, a two year course on selling beds. Just imagine, one hilarious moment in the practicals, with all climbing on and off beds. Where have these people in Westminster been all their lives, have they never heard of second-hand car salesman, few of them came from a university, but they have the apocryphal reputation of being able to sell you something you later regret, in the wink of an eye. I have known salesman, and commercial reps, who started life on the shop floor, and through their natural talents of selling, communicating and being sociable, rose to great heights. These talents cannot be taught, and I suggest the whole idea is farcical. To even give diplomas will be over the top, where will it stop, university courses for checkout girls, after all that’s very technical?

University Education, Then And Now. I matriculated in June 1940, when the universities were evacuated. I only had one relation and no acquaintances who, had been to university. Today, of my 10 grandchildren and their spouses, eight have been to university. I became articled to a profession before the war, but it didn’t give me a feeling, at the time, of being second-class. Today, if you haven’t been to university, there is a social stigma, so everyone is clamouring to go. On being demobbed, I went to university on an ex-service grant. I believe that only two people dropped out of our 40 student, four-year course, one through illness. Today one in five students drops out. Being at university, after the rigours of school, was rather like being let out of jail, you were free, you made your own decisions, not acting under instruction. This freedom affected different people in different ways, and varied according to the subjects that you took. We all had some free periods, the curriculum logistics required this, and how you spent those free periods was of your own choice. Some played poker, or billiards, others studied individually or in groups. The sciences, medicine and engineering were more concentrated in the number of lectures that we had to attend, than the arts and more philosophical
degrees. As a result unlike those in the arts etc, the rest of us had fewer free periods and I believe had to work harder.

I’m sure the reason that medicine, the sciences, and engineering generally have not been the chosen subjects for university degrees, is because the other degrees offer more free time, are in no way as concentrated, and the chances of passing are greater. In spite of an £800 million effort to stem the rate of dropout, there is still a 22% drop out from university, which is costing us millions every year. Sophie, who was a grammar school teacher, and taught many children to university level, is convinced as I am, that the problem lies squarely in the fact that the level of achievement at A Level is lower, and the corresponding reduction in entrance standards, in order to keep up the university intake and to maintain viability, is the stumbling block. There must be some reason why the rate of dropout has increased. When I was at work, every year I had an intake of a number of university graduates, and had to train them. Their knowledge in some of the more abstruse aspects of engineering was more advanced than anything I knew, but they were deficient in the bread-and-butter issues, and it was there that I had to do the training. The chances of them ever having to design the fancy structures that they had been taught was minimal and in most cases zero. I wonder therefore whether the academics, running the degree courses, for their own satisfaction and interest are widening the range of the subject to an abstruse level, and consequently reducing the overall quality of the
teaching of the bread-and-butter issues, which is what the examination should be testing on.

Doing away with selection examinations, is doing away with any yardstick by which an employer, or a university, can evaluate the overall intelligence, achievement and general ability of a student under scrutiny for a job or a university place. Any system of assessment has a serious weakness, it is dependant upon personal preferences and bias. Unequivocally individuals have favourites. The reverse is also a given, people can take unreasonable exceptions which ultimately could influence others’ lives. It is the principle of the ‘old boy net’. In spite of this, as a result of pressure by a minority, because exams are allegedly stressful, the government intends imposing an assessment system whereby school students are assessed, in lieu of written and oral examination. It is a tortuous path to mediocrity. There is no assurance the assessments are standard, across-the-board, by their very nature this would be impossible. Assessment only transfers the stress from the examination room to the ignominy felt, by those not meeting the standards that they have been assessed at, in a job or at university, and are sacked or sent down.

The incredible circus, which built up around what I believe to be an unnecessary inquest on Princess Diana was nothing short of abominable. It must have been hell for the Princes and her close friends. It would certainly not have been at the request of the Queen, and so one assumes that the press, with the paparazzi, 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, especially to do with infection, health and cleanliness. Subtle sex is another tool, along with suggestion rather than fact in its many forms, and usually portrayed in a Utopian environment, obviously associated with their products.

I did a survey of how much people read, and that TV and the Internet are on the increase in providing information, while written matter is being reduced by 40%. I don’t know how this affects newspaper, but I think it applies to them as well. but as a result of this the paparazzi will not be reduced proportionately, because the sensational press will probably maintain its position, which says a lot about the taste of the average citizen.

In my childhood, religion was centre stage and the churches were full. Today, religious leaders, contrary to the edicts of their religion, are encouraging young, educated people to blast the innocent across the world, with baseless inducements of a fictitious hereafter, I find this not only shocking and astounding, it is the extreme of manipulation for political ends.

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 it all in 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.