The Old Gaffer

A long time ago, when keyhole surgery started to become a common procedure, I felt that there should have been some form of profit and loss bookkeeping, in the health service, so that when new procedures, inventions, medicines and treatments were introduced that showed a cost saving in parallel areas when compared with the earlier systems, the savings should be set against more expensive procedures, medicines etc., so that people could benefit where they hadn’t previously. In this way I felt that the health service could maintain its quality, increase the number of procedures that were open to the general public, while not increasing the overall expenditure by any great amount, and so provide a more extensive service at roughly the same cost. It didn’t happen, but then perhaps I was on the wrong track

Currently free prescription charges are being brought in, in stages throughout the UK. There is no shadow of doubt, as is happening with the loss of subsidised dental care, that people who are strapped for cash, tend to go without essential remedial measures. Consequently free prescription charges will somewhat alleviate this problem, but I do see problems ahead of the system as it is currently being discussed by the politicians who are, by default, broadly implying that there will be a blank cheque. The pharmaceutical industry is constantly discovering new medicines and cures, and it is the introduction of this research that creates the greatest income for the companies. I’m only guessing when I say that my experience of pharmaceutical products over a period of over 70 of my 86 years, is that the development and the spread and quality of these items has been exponential over that period, and will tend to be more so in the future. We are hearing of cures for various diseases that can cost hundreds if not thousands of pounds a year for just one individual.

I am aware that the health service tries to use viable products that are cheaper than some of the more popular ones. The problem that I see that requires addressing, with this new regime, is, there inevitably has to be a limit on what is available and to whom it is available. If I am right, also taking into account our current fiscal problems, then the rules must apply to all, the whole UK, and the postcode lottery must come to an end. In addition, the politicians must not only face up to this fact that some discrimination is inevitable, they must construct a feasible, legal structure for it to function smoothly, and admit that this is essential to the populace at large, if they are not to have a running battle of who is to get what where. Perhaps, with like the surgery, I’ve got it all wrong.

I’m not very well up on holidays abroad any more, and so I don’t know if the heinous crime which took place where my daughter, her family and friends were staying, is unusual, or now part of the holiday scene. What I did feel was that I should draw attention to what has happened, as between them the family’s jewellery, money, sleep and all the ambiance that one pays for with a foreign holiday was lost.

My daughter’s family and friends have been using a particular villa in Portugal for holidays over a number of years. It is nicely situated with respect to the sea, surrounding landscape, and access to towns for shopping and meals-out, in other words it was ideal. It has its own swimming pool, which means that the little tiny children, some who can barely walk, can swim away safely under the watchful eye of their parents. One day, on this last holiday, my daughter, her husband and their friends went out for an evening meal. When they returned they found the house had been broken into, and all the lockable, inbuilt safes in which were all their valuables and money, had been bodily removed with the contents. The shock, the disappointment, and the worry that it could happen again, perhaps with them in the house, ruined the holiday.

My daughter hasn’t gone into the logistics of what had happened, presumably because she doesn’t know. My interpretation is that this while the villa must lie idle between occupations for periods of time, this would give the thieves the opportunity to break in at their leisure, dismantle and re-erect the safes so the owners of the villa it would notice nothing out of the ordinary. It would then be a simple matter to watch the house and in particular if there were no small children, to assume that the holidaymakers would venture out for an evening in a restaurant, which would then give ample time to break in, break out the safes, and depart with the loot.

It seems that generally, we have lost yet another one of our freedoms, to enjoy safekeeping and

To my old eyes oddities were so prevalent in Belfast yesterday. I saw so many young men who clearly had a full head of hair, walking about in strong sunlight with their heads shaven. From a clinical point of view this was asking for skin cancer because it wouldn’t have dawned on them to replace nature’s sun-block, their hair, with a manufactured sun-block. There was one man who was obviously a bouncer, six foot four, built like an all in wrestler; his shaven head was a badge of office. I walked along comparing those still with their locks, and the skinheads, and from an aesthetic standpoint I was certain there was no justification for bald heads, unless it was that that all the barbers today are only capable of an all-off. I find it annoying to have to shave every day, the thought of having to muck about with mirrors to try and keep your head shaven back at front, is almost a music hall act.

I found it interesting when I took a train ride, an unusual event, and noticed that a high proportion of the people who got on the train, almost immediately took out a mobile phone, and either texted or talked to somebody or somebody talked to them. On the way home, while waiting for a bus, I saw school children wending their way home, and of these, about 30% of them were using their mobile phones for some reason or other. I just wonder what is so vital today it requires instant speech or a text message, when in the 20s I had no telephone even in the house, and in the 30s just one in the hall, and rarely if ever had any strong urge to seek out a call box. Finally there were four of us standing in a bus queue, one was texitng, one was playing a game or perhaps having difficulty texting because he was tapping the thing almost all the time, and the third was talking on the phone. I was standing admiring. What sadly crossed my mind was that these youngsters led such an insular life at home, that this was their method of socialising.

I find it extra ordinary that our leaders still pretend that we lead the world, and go on acting like it, trying to right the world at our expense, when the French take over our power supplies, the Dane’s take over our banks, and the Yankee crooks are allowed to cripple us financially? Once upon a time we built a large number of the railways across the world, our ships sailed all the seas, and we were a power to be reckoned with. What has changed all that? I suspect it’s because the other nations woke up to what we were doing. I just wish the politicians would lower their sights just a little, I can no longer afford to be a world leader.

When the scientists proved to me that the gas used in my fridge would be causing global warming when I got rid of the fridge, and all the rest of the science that went with it, I was astounded, as I had done a course in geology years ago. I listened to all the political outpourings about what we were to do to save the world, and tried to do my little bit, which I thought was a total waste of time in the context of what was going on in the whole of the world. Now I see incredible change in the weather, in the conditions of the Earth with its flooding, tsunamis, eruptions, and on and on. I no longer believe all of this is as a result of global warming, on the contrary’ I think if some of the same scientists drilled through the ice, drilled through the rocks, examined fossils, they would find similar periods of unusually fast change in the earth’s history.

Years ago people didn’t talk of initiatives all the time. It seems that this government is obsessed with initiatives, we get them two or three times a week. For example, nine universities are co-operating to ensure that the brighter pupils from poorer homes will take up university degree courses. I got the impression, true or not, that the pupils would have further training to make them acceptable to the universities. What was certain was that there were particular universities, thought to be more advantageous than others, that were grouping together with a system which allowed them, if they were not able to give a place to a deemed bright student, that student would then be recommended to other universities in the system for a place. If the idea is so good why are only nine universities involved instead of all, right across the board? I think that someone somewhere is missing the real point. I have said before as many have, that the educational standards have been steadily dropping, and that many universities, to maintain their attendance roles, have been reducing their acceptance levels, and in consequence having to degrade the degree levels. Retired secondary school teachers, will tell you the same thing. Have the politicians also forgotten the current enormous dropout rate? In the 40s it was probably as low as 2%, but we valued the experience, we didn’t take it as a right. Other people have called the system social engineering; I believe it is a publicity ruse.

At a time when Labour is fighting a rearguard action trying two stave off losing the next election, the Prime Minister comes out with a proposal in stages to ultimately give us all identity cards, a subject which I believe is a total anathema to the whole nation. The strangest part of it is that the Tories have stated categorically that if they come to power, they will do away with the proposal that we should ultimately all require to have a card. Labour proposes to bring it in, in stages, with immigrants being the first to require a card. This is a sop to those who feel that there are too many immigrants here without permission. I realise that in the next few days everybody with a blog will be bleating, some writing in the newspapers, or talking on television or the radio, and condemning that this proposal should be taken much further than the first stage, although the government is intending that the next stage includes students. I am writing because not only do I think the general scheme is wrong, too expensive and totally unnecessary in the wider context, but I am worried that we are opening a door to enable the world’s criminal elements to obtain all our vital information.

When I was a student I was told that it was possible to duplicate someone’s fingerprints on to an article by using something like Sellotape, and that was 50+ years ago. If you study crime at all, you will find that from the dawn of time every scheme to thwart the thief was ultimately bypassed by the thieves. The greatest example of this is the level of criminality being perpetrated on the Internet, being cancelled year-on-year and bypassed year-on-year. The government seems to be making these cards too sophisticated for everyday need, with the result that they will cost a fortune to design, for the machinery to implement them and check their validity, with all that means in centres throughout the country, and with stop and such etc. At the end of the day more records are probably going to have to be kept by the various authorities, insurance companies, and employers, opening up more opportunities for fraud, and wasting the time of all those people keeping these records.

The most heinous part of this proposal is that the government itself cannot keep control of the information, so why should we give it to them to hand out again, either by theft, negligence, or just plain pure stupidity? All I can say is that I’m grateful that I am so old I am unlikely to qualify for any more identity cards, discs or even secret handshakes, I’m just sorry that those coming behind may not be so lucky.

To me, the Prime Minister’s speech was pure electioneering, currying favour in selected quarters to raise his stock. Throughout the speech, I was amazed, in the current financial climate, at the number of references to rising expenditure in so many categories, including foreign aid, In addition he talked about full employment, when professionals and tradesmen are being laid off, because of the credit crunch. In one report I believe he said that he would find additional finance by improving government efficiency. If after 10 years of Labour control this has only now been discovered, need I say more. Some proposals are only going to cost a few million, but I take exception to them on social grounds.

Gordon Brown’s edict concerning providing childminding for two-year-olds, is at the top of the list. Once upon a time, before television, or even radio, people took extended families for granted. Relatives gave the young parents the opportunity to socialise, and get a change of perspective at least once a week. Women didn’t go out to work months if not weeks after a child was born. They nurtured the child and the later children, played with them, trained them and loved them consistently for about seven to ten years. If both parents are working, the logistics inevitably become more complicated and more difficult. In the old days big shopping expeditions were a treat, there wasn’t the choice, usually you nipped round the corner to buy what you needed in no time at all. Today cleaning house, shopping, socialising and the time taken to go to and from work, while at the same time having to care for the children, or earn the extra hundreds of pounds to pay for care, even if it is subsidised, is going to truncate both the socialising of the family, and more importantly the bonding with the children. By introducing subsidised or free nursery care for the poorer parents in our society for two-year-olds and presumably upwards, the PM, is not only condoning, but abetting young women to abandon their children to strangers at the age of two, a time when the bonding, the training, and in truth a most wonderful period in the development of the child, could be lost. It seems to me to send all the wrong signals, and yet might further encourage young women to become single-parent mothers.

Gordon Brown’s proposition to provide free laptops to some families, I find equally ill considered, because the children of today, for a number of reasons, don’t socialise anything like we did as children, when our pleasure was mainly in taking part in scratch games on the local commons and village greens and the cinema on Saturdays. There are too many houses where the bedroom windows in the dark of the evening shine blue from the reflection of the screens of TVs or laptops. With single-parent families, the loss of the extended family, and the current fear, which walks our streets, children are isolated now more than they ever were. Instead of providing high quality play facilities, open fields for scratch games, paying for the provision of evening supervised interests, this proposition will lock up more hundreds of thousands of kids, surfing the net, with parents without IT experience, who won’t have a clue what the kids are finding or are looking for. A few free theatre tickets have absolutely no bearing on the case.

One other thing in the same speech was free medicine for cancer patients. I have had skin cancer, and Sophie has had breast cancer, my mother died of cancer, but when this occurred all of us were pensioners. I haven’t access to the true figures, but I strongly suspect that at least half of the cases of cancer reported, especially those that required severe treatment, have been suffered by pensioners. Pensioners receive free treatment already, so it would seem that the cost of the scheme would not appear to be so shattering, but, as someone pointed out to me, the scheme will open a different can of worms. Some of the treatments for cancer are highly expensive, even up to thousands of pounds, to such an extent that there will certainly be a postcode lottery as to whether you qualify or not, even as a pensioner. It would therefore seem that Mr Brown has allowed his script writers once again to dig another elephant trap for him.

Having read a number of the reports of statements made by different MPs, I get the impression that all they are interested in is their own party politics, and the internal infighting that is coupled with it. The interests of the country seem to be on the backburner at a time of the greatest turmoil in our history since the First World War, when we are currently fighting two wars, and are facing not only national but international financial meltdown. I have been writing, as others have, that this government, ever since its inception, has been making change for the sake of change, without trial periods in test areas, and often against the advice of the professionals involved. The government spin doctors issue statistics of how various aspects are improving, when the man in the street knows full well that they are just publicity, and have absolutely no bearing on the true situation. When things go wrong Ministers come on television and give us spiels of rhetoric, but the outcome is no better, or even if there is one, it is short lived.

Now we are faced with a Prime Minister in whom the country has little faith, and a government divided against itself. With the run-up to the next Labour AGM, we are hearing a lot of different inflections, issued by members of the Cabinet and senior Labour politicians, that are more to do with self-aggrandisement than the serious issues facing the country. It is therefore unsurprising, that as we are getting conflicting suggestions from the other parties, which also involve change rather than stability, that many of us feel that the political choices open to us are not for picking the best, but perhaps avoiding the worst. If this statement is true, then we would be best off with a hung parliament, which will involve the LibDems making inroads, by getting their act together. I am very old, perhaps losing the plot, but all I see on the benches of parliament are professional politicians, college rather than experience trained, led by young, relatively inexperienced leaders. It is long political experience which tempers rash statements and untried policies, and is cautious when dealing in international relationships, all of which have been lacking in recent years, and are still lacking. Lying to the electorate, either directly or by implication, has increased considerably since my day, when a Chancellor resigned because there had been a minor budget leak.

The power shift.The extremely wealthy will go on purchasing from the very best shops, otherwise no one would know that they were the very wealthy. The yuppies, with their champagne glass, before taking the tube home, I suspect will be searching the ’situations vacant’ columns in the press. The middle class, and the lower-middle-class, with their two cars, their two jobs and two children, will struggle on in the way they do, but with fewer frills. The very poor will still be so. So this leaves the wrinklies, some with their pensions, their savings depleted, will be the last bastions supporting the British economy. This has been obvious for some time, especially in the supermarkets, where those in work are filling the aisles at the weekend, but for the rest of the week it is the elderly who are doing the shopping, buying a coffee and a bun at 11 o’clock, and in many cases cooking the food, rather than taking packets home,

Irresponsibility. One aspect of the credit crunch, has been that everybody seems to be aware of where the responsibility lies for the situation we are in, the civil service departments and those in the government, that control financial transactions. What I find not only surprising, but unacceptable, is that no one seems to be taking the blame, no one has been reprimanded, when in my view the situation has been obvious to many of us all, and written about for over two years.

The sea, sailing, and water taxis in the credit crunch. Having sailed to and from Africa in the 20s, and then served aboard a warship, I have always had a notion that I would like to have a small sailing boat. At one time I actually bought the plans to construct a sixteen foot amateur racing yacht which I was going to build in an extended garage. The problem was that the family wouldn’t sail with me, so it all came to nothing. We now live at the seaside, where once there was a harbour and a beautiful view of the Irish Sea, but in their wisdom the council decided to close off the harbour, build a huge revetment and install a large marina where the harbour had been. The other day Sophie and I went for a walk in this area, and the number, variety and cost of the boats tied up there was astounding. We had many Millions of pounds worth of toys floating in front of us. I think the proportion of sailboats to motor- boats was about even. I, of course, was mainly interested in the sailboats, but remembered a holiday I had had in the South of France, where a Frenchman kindly offered me a sail in his motorboat. Apart from the problem of getting it away from the mooring, the rest was just like driving a car on an airfield, with about as much skill and interest. I find it unsurprising that people in the first flush of enthusiasm, often do not wish to take the time and want to face all the difficulties of controlling a yacht in rough water and high winds, when the yacht becomes really interesting and is in its own element. Instead they buy a motorboat, a water taxi, at great expense, and within a year or so rarely go out in it, and try to forget about the annual costs. It is my experience of looking at boat yards all my life, that people tie up money in a boat, with every intention of using it, but there is always some reason for doing something else. I believe the credit crunch will affect the boating industry more than any, which is a shame, because it has taken decades to arrive where it is today.

I am referring mainly to this endless debacle of airlines going out of business. First of all I want to consider insurance, in the round. Over a period of nearly 60 years I have been duped a number of times, by allegedly responsible and trustworthy insurance companies, because the small print has been both ambiguous and basically interpreted in the interests of the company rather than the client. One of the aspects of this current scourge has been that many of the travellers have innocently believed that they were covered for such an eventuality. From my own experience I believe that the whole of the insurance industry should be more under government scrutiny, so the conditions are transparent to the most unworldly and innocent of clients.

A writer on air travel and airway logistics, speaking on the television news, stated that there had been about 25 instances of aeroplanes being grounded without warning as a result of the firm going into receivership. He then blandly stated that this last instance was as a result of the accountants responsible for the receivership, refusing to permit the tour company to fly their planes home. What I found even more remarkable was that he blandly said that there will be many more occasions like this one. I would have thought, after the first two or three occurrences, and in the face of the occurrence being repeated as a result of the price of oil, that there would have been an international agreement whereby governments interceded in these situations and would have some agreement to arrange for the aircraft to return to base bringing with them as many of the holidaymakers as possible, and where necessary, utilise them further and bring back the remainder. To my simple mind the transportation logistics were in place and could have been triggered almost instantly. This would have had the effect of saving the individual vast sums of money for overnight stays, finding other transport, and the worry, especially for those with young children. The fact that after 25 such occurrences there is still nothing in place, seems to me a total lack of humanity by the travel industry and the governments involved.

I am neither an accountant nor a logistical engineer, but there seems to have been more than a little sleight of hand when it came to the cost of fuel. As I understand it, when the fuel price rose so dramatically, whether by necessity or design, the tour operators felt it necessary to enter into supply contracts at a fixed price in order to remain solvent. It would seem that the information that they had upon which they made this decision was clearly wrong, because the price of fuel then dropped. A large number of the denizens of this world are going to be seriously affected over the next two years by the credit crunch, with no redress, many through no fault of their own. It would therefore seem logical that at times of serious need such as in the case set out here, some relief to the individual should be forthcoming, even if it is at the expense of the heavily taxed lower and middle-classes.

Being without broadband for nearly 7 weeks and a telephone for a fortnight, together with my anti-virus becoming over sophisticated so that I can’t give it the answers it wants, and my Blog provider changing his system, have all given me time to reassess many things. One is whether we all need to be so sophisticated as others feel we should. My lack of sophistication, where I don’t understand jargon, and the questions that the computer asks me are merely the tip of the iceberg. I stopped being sophisticated in the early 90s, when I had retired for the second time, and I have never caught up since. So I question whether we, the simple denizens, need the level of sophistication that is thrust upon us, with or without our knowledge and consent. On the other hand, sophistication, particularly with respect to health, has also made it possible for more of us to receive an incredible progress in treatment. The sciences, and policing with the use of DNA, are all areas that show that sophistication and progress, if it is to the benefit of the individual, rather than that of the shareholder, is to the advantage of all. It is when the sophistication is introduced for its own sake coupled with greed, or is unregulated, then it can be detrimental.

Technocrats naturally invent, reinvent, modify, in effect changing our lives, not always through necessity but because it will provide a new, have-to-have product, for those who want to appear sophisticated, thus increasing profits. In some areas, such as entertainment, progress has resulted from sophisticated changes in equipment and taste, with I believe, in the majority of cases a drop in standards on the back of cheaper production. I have seen watches costing two month’s salary, weighing a ton, and telling you a dozen things you might need to know once-in-a-lifetime. The list is endless. Forgive me repeating myself when I say, some want to make a lot of money for themselves, while the man in the street, is unconsciously funding this, and is suffering the consequent results and pressures. The worst example was the computerisation of business transactions that enabled those in the dealing rooms of the finance houses, who, without a thought for the future bought and sold anything that would give a short-term profit, to enhance their own salaries and gain golden handshakes. I also condemn the politicians we trusted with the finances of the country and failed to monitor and moderate that excrescence, which was reported daily in newspapers, in this blog, and many others.

One of the causes of course, has been the rapid rise in the worldwide use of the Internet and the computer, that enables such speed of transaction, that deliberate thought, and the possibility of monitoring, is put on the backburner. The astronomical increase in the variety of abuses that have consequently been generated, from fraud, theft, murder in some cases, child pornography to terrorism, can all be laid squarely at the door of the information highway, and now the whole thing has got so out of hand that we are having to pay for armies of technicians to repair the government computers that are wrecking the lives of so many, and also the law trying to catch the miscreants. We oldies worry about the future for the sake of the young and the not so young, who have been told they have never had it so good, when my generation believes that, since 1935, while there are better washing machines, smarter cars, so much of the infrastructure and the way of life has suffered. Today stress is commonplace, dishonesty and aggression in all their forms at all levels, have grown like a cancer in our society. It is now endemic, and much of it as a result of so-called sophistication. The problem is we can’t turn back the clock, or will circumstances turn it back for us?

The total change in our way of life, in which the corner shop has been replaced by vast supermarket complexes deciding, from their own selfish standpoint, our choice of products, has reduced the number of small manufacturers and specialist dealers in different areas of the country, that provided products that generations in those areas bought as staples. National, if not international, companies have swallowed up these independent manufacturers. The result has been that choice has been reduced, that quality has been sacrificed to mass production, and as takeover after takeover takes place, so the quality of the products and the number available are reduced.

This current credit crunch is inevitably going to change our lives, something which has already begun, and we will find that as firm after firm goes out of business, and finances get tighter, the sophistication, which to some extent has been fostered by the throwaway society, may itself disappear.