Political correctness is currently represented as almost an act of Parliament, when in actual fact, I understand, it has no legality whatsoever. Its roots are in communism, and it is a tool for the minority to beat the majority with. From what I read and hear, I believe that it is increasing with every year, and is like a pebble in a shoe to the indigenous population. Political correctness seems to take precedence over common sense and logic. The gollywog, a prime example, is no longer seen in shops, or is not even on the dictionary in this computer. A well loved smiling, black faced, soft doll, with terrible tangled black woollen hair, was in every household in the 30s. Jam jars, and other articles had golliwogs as emblems to draw attention to them, they were loved, like the Black and White minstrels, for what they were, not what people suggest today that they represent – the Negro slave. My mother would refer to a colour as ‘nigger brown’, ‘working like a black,’ and sundry other statements, and neither she nor I ever considered how they originated at the time. As an immigrant in Northern Ireland, through my English accent, I have had to accept jokes, repeated ad nauseam, at my expense, and I never really thought anything about it. The gollywog could never be interpreted as anything other than an eccentric looking doll, but it is a convenient way of complaining, for those who wish to use political correctness as a tool to draw attention to themselves, and make a political point. We in the North of Ireland know all about political correctness; great arguments take place over the inscription on a memorial to dozens of people who were blasted to the hereafter, allegedly by a dissident organisation, which is now the phrase used to placate those who no longer wish to be blamed. This is a warning. If you allow political correctness excessive credence, over and above common decency, you are being blackmailed, and worse, manipulated. It is the camel and the tent syndrome, (an Aesop fable), whereby pleading, and acceding, repeatedly, can change the order of the day finally to be totally reversed. As an immigrant myself, I believe it is the duty of those visiting a country as guests, and having subsequently been welcomed, to make every effort to conform to the culture of the host country and not to try to impose, rather than suggest, aspects of their own culture which might ultimately lead to a ghetto culture. Harmony allows progression and understanding, insistence on political correctness and or aggression can only lead to disruption, and ultimately hatred. Before legislating, politicians should think very carefully of the long-term effects of what they do, rather than shooting from the hip, which appears to be quite common today. Above all, in today’s rapidly shifting political scene, political apathy must be avoided, it shifts the power and undermines the majority.

To some actions they are reactions, and to every reaction there is an outcome. Two things have happened recently, a woman saw a man waving her down, whose car appeared to have broken down. She stopped, went over to help, another man appeared and held and stabbed her and the two men ransacked her car. The other thing was the analysis on television and in the newspapers of the Shannon kidnapping. I am not fully aware of all the aspects to comment. So instead I would like to describe a scenario, like a TV film, press the pause button, and then assess the cause and the outcome, because I think they are most important. The scenario is a woman, who is short of cash, and has criminal tendencies, which are generally accepted, but not acceptable. The kidnapping in Portugal, with the offer of at least a million to help the cause, gave this woman the idea of obtaining money, by engineering a fake kidnapping, and getting paid by the media for interviews, if not also subscriptions to the cause. Let us assume that a great number of the police spent a long time searching for the child, and have discovered suspicious circumstances. It is at this point I press the pause button

There are aspects of this which I believe show up weaknesses in the police system, and give a serious warning for the future. When I was a boy in the early 30s, we knew a number of policeman quite well, who were permanently in our district, some even living there. There were those that we saw four times a day when they helped us through the traffic, like the lollipop men of today. The policeman talked to the residents. I remember the night, in Belfast in 1949, when I was walking home at two in the morning having taken Sophie to the nursing home to deliver our second daughter, a policeman stepped out from a gateway, demanded to know where I was going, and when he discovered that he had seen the taxi passing earlier suggested that we went for a walk together. I cite this because being a policeman on a regular beat can be boring and to relive that the constable will chat with passers-by they know. If in our scenario, there were police on the beat, I suggest that when this woman stated that her child had been kidnapped, at the age that the child was, I suspect that the policeman on the beat would have known the woman, her past, and her propinquities, so that some doubt would have been placed on her initial assertion, and more attention given to this aspect, than the wide ranged hunting for the child. The outcome of this of course, if the scenario turns out to be the case in fact, there will be a level of doubt across the board when the next parents cry kidnapper, which would be a natural reaction, understandable, but nonetheless serious in a legitimate case. There is something to be said for community policing, a trust between the community and the police, and a more detailed knowledge of the community by the police.

With the publicity in the other case, of the woman who was attacked, the outcome of that is more than likely to be that if you breakdown in your car, now, you’re on your own. It is sad to say that when these type of things happen we become more isolated, less community minded, indeed, and the repetition makes us more casehardened.

I start here by saying that what I write is my speculation, based on my own experience, and a little knowledge. You know what they say, ‘ a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’.

For a long time I have been frustrated by soap manufacturers, for constantly changing the ingredients in the soap, so I have to find another because I am allergic to perfume and the additives they put into soap. Right up until the 50s, when we had the copper boilers, the washboard and the galvanised iron bath, soap was soap, and except for the wealthy, or some fussy women, it was pretty basic and uninteresting stuff. When I was at sea we were issued once a month with a long hard piece of yellow soap with which we washed ourselves, our clothes, our bedding and hammock, and if need be scrubbed the deck. Housewives used bars of red carbolic, at least our family did, and I don’t ever remember people talking about allergies. Now my problems are not only with the piece of soap I use, and the shampoo, but also what my clothes are washed in, and I believe this is the greatest source of my problems to the extent that everything that I use, underclothing and towels, are rinsed twice to get rid of the additives, put in probably more to do with promotion and economy, than cleanliness. They are now adding perfume, or should I say scent to washing powder, designed to remain in the clothes and perfume them long after they’ve been dried and possibly ironed. So additives, you didn’t want anyway become a permanency. How long does the build up last, depending on the efficiency of the washing machine, how often the article is used, and to what extent can this become more than just a fad, but an irritant in every sense of the word,?

Two things in recent papers brought on these thoughts, one was fears about the addition of folic acid to bread during its manufacture to prevent spina bifida causing birth deaths, the other, eating too much bacon and sausages could give you cancer of the bowel. As a sausage and bacon freak, I believe neither the sausages, nor the bacon today, taste as they did when the butchers made their own sausages, and sliced their own bacon. For whatever reason, probably shelf-life and a perceived flavour, there are additives in these products, and are they all on the packet? There is such a thing as chemical reaction, if you put some chemicals into a product and you’ve got chemicals in the water, has anyone bothered to check that you can have a chemical reaction? Water companies in the different regions use chemicals in the water to purify it, for dental reasons, maybe others I don’t even know of, all without my permission. What really grieves me is that all of us are being asked to consume some chemical or other to save a very small minority of occurrences, mainly in health. Surely it is the responsibility of the individual, if their fear demands it, that they, not all of the rest of us, take the medication for a specific reason. I suspect that when people test for these products they don’t really follow up to see if there is a build up in the retention of these additives within the body, it would take years. When you think of the Thames for example, with water shortage in London, and sewage disposal some 50 miles from the coast, it is not surprising that the water of the Thames is recycled repeatedly. I question whether a lot of these additives, particularly in our food and soap, is totally eradicated by the filtration and treatment of the water supply, or is that also building up, as you go downstream in the quantity and effects of the additives.

I remember in the 50s that packet tea blenders went to the trouble to design the mix of the tea, to suit the water in different regions because it affected the quality of the taste of their products. I doubt they do this now, so must find a common denominator of water-taste across the board, and modify the selection of the various types of tea to suit generally, and maybe put in additives to make it more palatable.

In writing the above cases made me examine the possibility of the cumulative build up of MRSA and the other alphabet scourges in hospital wards. Some people take excessive amounts of antibiotic. Animal husbandry, I read, injects their young animals and birds with antibiotics because of intensive production. The doctors have long instructed us that excessive use of antibiotics causes the germs to become resistant and the individual’s resistance to be lowered. Can the effects of antibiotics and the injection of medicines into the animals be passed on to those eating the meat, and the effects among humans passed on through generations? Can the level of cleaning in the hospital’s today make them so drastically dirty, by comparison with those in the past which were just scrubbed by the nurses? Is there not perhaps another knock-on effect that has not been researched?

I am writing about a specific case, but it doesn’t mean we don’t all know of those selfish people who, without respect for the outcome, scrabble, possibly cheat, and certainly can ruin not only the economy of individuals, but the economy of a country. I remember there was a man, I forget his name, who played the financial markets in America, in the 70s or 80s, to the extent that he crippled the economy of some of the European countries and then himself became a billionaire.

The specific case I’m talking about here was raised by my Dutch friend Jan, during a telephone conversation I had the other day. We were talking about the English language, which he speaks perfectly, with a very wide vocabulary. He was talking about this blog, and saying he couldn’t understand why if I had the level of acceptance and the vast number of pages read every month, I hadn’t been requested to contribute to a newspaper. Of course he is my friend. I have been writing for my own amusement from I left university in 1950, until two years ago, when I started writing the blog. I wrote doggerel, short stories and about 15 novels. I wrote to solve a problem. For example I am writing a novel at the moment about a highly capable detective who was blinded by acid being thrown in his face, and yet became a consultant to the police. When I had finished a novel I sent it off, it was rejected, so instead of sending it to a few more, I sat down and wrote another novel, because that was my interest, not really publication. There was a young man some years ago whom my daughter knew, who had written a novel and had I think anything from 60 to 100 refusals before he was accepted, but when he was, the novel was actually a bestseller.

Times have changed, if you want to be published you either have to be a journalist, with the contacts that that entails, or to have a name in show business, or be a politician, or be famous for some other reason. It seems that you don’t even have to be able to write, ghost writers will be knocking on your door, and the chances of publication are very high. The reason for this is that the public today are not so much interested in the written word for its own sake. Many of us read books because the subject must interest us, but often the way in which the book is written, its approach to the subject and its vocabulary are even more entertaining. The classics are so because of the English, some of it is antiquated and for that reason even more interesting. This applies to plays and films also. Possibly some of the reasons why people are reading books less, is not only because of television, and the Internet where they read snippets, but also, perhaps at school they were no longer taught the appreciation of fine prose, as a subject in itself. To take a modern-day example, the Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice has some lovely archaic English which I find a joy to listen to. There are examples that beat the trend like the Harry Potter series.

However, I suspect the real reason is Mammon. The urge to make money, which generally involves high levels of publicity, together with, in many cases, salacious tittle tattle. This is not a cry from the heart of a frustrated old man, I never had great aspirations, and was always too busy trying something else to worry if I didn’t succeed in one particular sphere. In effect of course with respect to writing, in the long-run, I have had a surprising success, thanks to the generosity of my grandson. What this is, is a plea to the book trade, or even people who are disgustingly wealthy, to fund new writers of promise, as a speculation and, if you like, charity, so that money, and a high return is not necessarily the prime movers, the quality and language are.

I don’t remember members of parliament in the past, showing so blatantly the wish to be loved, as those we have today. It seems that this wish determines some of the priorities in the order of legislation. Currently Gordon Brown is behaving as if he was permanently on the stump, with photo opportunities in hospitals, schools and pretty well anywhere, instead of at his desk in Westminster. Churchill had it very tough, and while the Royal family were going round bombsites and army headquarters, one rarely saw pictures of Churchill, unless the need was great.

Why is it that a fair proportion of the population, the press, and oddballs like me writing in blogs, have been predicting the sort of problems, like Northern Rock, single-parent families, overcrowding in prisons, and a lot more, and that those who are guiding the country seem to have set these to one side in favour of tinkering with the education system, the health service, not once or twice, but on a regular basis. Is it because they believe that the populous is more concerned with these matters than those I’ve mentioned? All of the above problems have destabilised the country, put up taxes, and made us all politically apathetic. We are subjected to highly expensive judicial enquiries, and indeed the inquest of the unfortunate Princess Diana, all at incredible expense, and trauma to the bereaved, when again the man in the street knew, before they even started, that the outcome would be no better than the original status quo.

I often think that everything that is decided, that is going to cost billions, should be set before an independent panel, selected by the electorate, not the politicians, to oversee what the money is being spent on and how it is being spent. I know all about the committees, but they didn’t stop us going to war, nor the building of the Dome. We on the periphery of the United Kingdom, think in an overall way. For example if I were to choose a place to live in England, it would probably be Cheshire, because that gives easy access to the whole of the UK. I suspect the people in Westminster are blinkered by where they live and can see no further than from the south coast to Luton. This then is why vast sums of money are spent in the southeast on things like the Dome, and the Olympic Games, things we, on the periphery, will never be able to afford to enjoy at all, or if we do, just for one day, but we are being asked to foot our proportion of the bill.

While I’m on the subject, I have always thought that today, with all the modern sciences and equipment, reasonably large sized copies of the national treasures of not only Britain, but the world, should be readily available either on stands carrying 20 or 30, or on screens, in our local museums. The quality of reproduction in the books that one gets in the library, are so poor by comparison to the original, that they almost defeat the object of having printed them. We on the periphery, unlike those in the southeast, haven’t access to many of these treasures, but we need them in some form or other, so why not large visual replicas

I wonder if all prime ministers today are as pigheaded as the last two we have had, who make parlous decisions without the money to support them, ignore the real professionals, the highly trained people at the workface, and go ahead, willy-nilly, with their own agendas. Blair’s agenda was his ego, he thought he had the potential of being the greatest politician ever. Instead his reputation has been ruined by so many of the decisions that he made in the latter part of his office, which have been paraded time and time again. I’m sorry to say the current incumbent is of a different cut, he not only wants to be loved, I suspect his agenda is driven primarily because of the fact that Labour are probably going to lose the next election, is in the forefront of his mind. What drove me to write this was his incredible arrogance, in the face of empty coffers, and the advice of the medical profession, to go into a vast screening programme, when the Health Service is so underfunded they are closing local hospitals, against the wishes of the electorate, are understaffed  in various departments including maternity. I could be wrong, but two or three of the decisions that have been made in the last few days, like the screening programme, are being aimed at the elderly because we are a large, Conservative voting wedge, with more time to vote, and are more likely to vote, than in any other section of our apathetic community.

Parental control. I think the nanny state is reaching gargantuan proportions, and instead of encouraging parental control to be a reflex action, is wasting our money bringing out new legislation to control the lives of the youngsters across the board. I read that the government is proposing to legislate for a classification system for video games, in the hope that this will reduce the violence in our young people. Where have they been? We have classification of films, and legislation up to the eyeballs about carrying knives, guns, being abusive, threatening, and violent, and yet our TV screens depict levels of shooting, or beatings, that would both be totally impossible for anyone to survive, and the hero walks out unscathed. All this legislation seems to have been ineffectual, because my tired old mind tells me that every week the level of violence in our streets is increasing. In my view it would be cheaper and quicker to legislate that parents are responsible for the actions of their children, and if they, the children, contravene the laws of the country, and by their age are outside a proper level of appropriate punishment, then the parents should be severely punished. You only have to look at the effect of parking fines over the years, to realise that adults, not children, take punishment seriously.

On a lighter note, when I want a belly laugh, I switch on Nigella Lawson, and watch her with her little shaky head movements, the flick of the eyes and her little grin, as she climbs in and out of a taxi to do a bit of shopping, sits in a corner of her house eating what she has just cooked, smiling the while. I find it very difficult to eat and smile, it makes my cheeks ache. After the programme I just marvel that she can get away with it, and people watch daily. I think her producer uses the same script every week, just changes the ingredients.