The Old Gaffer

It’s a fair comment if you say I’m a reactionary. A lot of what I write has that implication. I constantly compare our lifestyles today with those, of the even and relaxed 30s. While acceding to the fact that some of the aspects of our lives have been improved by progress, I believe that that same progress has come at a very dear cost. It was the rehash of a crazy, totally dotty film, ‘The girls of St Trinnions’ that prompted my thoughts. If you have read my blog, I believe you will see that I have led quite a tough life, on the lower deck in the Navy, in one of the hardest professions, heavy engineering, and so do not consider myself to be a powderpuff. But when a film, shows one girl head-butting another and considers this funny, at a time when aggressive interaction is considered a serious problem, it gives me more than pause for thought, and so I fear I will be going over old ground again. To my regular readers I apologise.

Today we are being sold short in so many aspects of our lives. The quality of our leaders leaves so much to be desired, because it is now a job, with all that implies, not a vocation, and those with the real ability are no longer going into politics. The serious, and wrong decisions made over the last few years, and the gross mismanagement which has affected us all, in so many departments, such as banking, going to war, child support, the health service, public transport, serious crime, road maintenance, and now air traffic control, just to mention a few, cause one to question how this could come about in such huge proportions, with hard-working people being disadvantaged because they made the right decisions at the wrong time through no-fault of their own, savers losing their capital and the taxpayer being forced to pick up the bill, whether he thinks it’s fair or not. Greed and lack of probity are the root cause. Throughout the world, not only in this nation, has the shortcut to wealth by any means, been to the advantage of a few at the expense of the majority. It would seem that the throwaway ethos has crept into every aspect, where respected and once responsible organisations such as the BBC, stoop to sharp practice. Where the government in its lack of wisdom, and our money, provides for and encourages spending with a view to helping the small traders and manufacturers with their cash flow, then discovers that only the major players with their periodic one-off sales are gleaning the cash and pandering to the natural innate greed of the individual.

Responsibility and consideration for others, is still the standard of some, but is no longer the general yardstick, people no longer put their names and addresses on advertisements for services, they merely use a word that gives a reference to their offer and a mobile telephone number. This in itself is an indication that trust has gone out the window. The person offering the services, for some reason is not using his own name and address, and the person wishing to employ them will be questioning the level of trust he can equate when he is inviting them into his house. Everyone knows of cases where, when receiving a handful of change which includes a bill and notes as well as silver and copper, there are occasions when ‘mistakes’ can be made and the purchaser is short-changed. I’m not saying that this did not occur in the 30s, but then people had not the same opportunities for advancement. Parental control was both harsher and sterner. School discipline was rigid and in some cases excessive. Workers accepted their position equably, and their ordained future as generations before them had done. The woman’s place was in the home, the man was the breadwinner, and to some extent their roles were maintained. Now everything has changed, there is a greater increase in single parents, people expect the state to provide more, and the desire for aggrandisement in every walk of life is now commonplace. This has resulted in the buy now pay later or never, ethos, criminal activity to a level where people have the shred their own mail from fear of theft, where people don’t integrate as they used to and the whole scene of entertainment would appear to be based on impossible thuggery, razzmatazz for its own sake, and cheaper and poorer quality productions as the norm.

The problem is, the choice of parties seems much of the same quality, with rughly the same political backgrounds and experience, so the outcome may be little better.

I apologise to my regular readers for not having posted anything the sometime. There are two reasons, the first is that I and Sophie have been ill on and off from a number of weeks, and over Christmas she was taken into hospital seriously ill, with all that implies for both of us. The second reason is that I believe that I have little to add to the chaos and doom and gloom that has spread across the country since the credit crunch.

I would like to post an edited version of my letter to my MP at Westminster, as averse to my MLA at Stormont, in Belfast. The letter is self-explanatory as to the reason why I feel is worth posting at this time.

The letter to my MP
At the height of the Troubles it was accepted as fact that damage to the environment, and any other ploy which would put a financial strain on the UK Treasury in order to persuade them to dump us, was IRA policy. Recent years have thrown up a number of cases of murders etc, which have cost millions of pounds to research, investigate and take to law, with little to show for them. The rights and wrongs of this policy by Stormont and Westminster are debatable, especially when the criminal acts were perpetrated by both sides of the divide, and the innocent victims have been totally ignored. What caused me to write this letter was a report on the news that either 9 million or 19 million had already been spent trying to discover how someone was murdered, and that the government is proposing to persist with this in the current climate with an estimated final total of 36 million. I am beginning to think the government both here and in Westminster is totally detached from reality. Who, I ask, is going to stop this incredible waste of money, presumably supporting lawyers in a standard the rest of us are losing daily.

Up until recently the public at large was cushioned by a buoyant economy, and hence while some of us were incensed at what was being done in our name, saw little point in complaint, or even the possibility of changing this sort of policy. But now we are in a different era, the government is forcing, not asking, people with savings to contribute materially to philosophies and policies that they, the contributors, have little faith in, especially when some of these proposals seem to be concurrently conflicting, and blatantly of a political rather than a social nature, and the banks who were responsible for this state are not living up to the requirements for which the money that they have been bailed out with was intended. The fact that the main parties are fighting the next election with every soundbite, instead of combining to find an amicable solution that is safe, intelligent and has a hope of success, as was the case in 1939/45, together with words like ‘running around like a chicken with its head cut off’ being banded across the dispatch box, provides little faith and assurance to the very people who are footing the bill.

On a personal note, the situation has changed so much politically that it would take a brave man to comment, when those who are doing the commenting tend to talk at cross purposes, and all we are getting is doom and gloom, which nobody wants to read.

I trust that this letter has not been too long. I have seen such incredible changes in my life, even a chicken with its head cut off running around our compound, in Africa, in 1929, at the behest of the gardener, who, was then called The Garden Boy, probably aged 40,