Old Gaffer

Month: July 2010

  • Things I don’t understand, 5

    Natural development.
    Please understand, I’m not trying to educate you, I am just trying to draw attention to the way that nature has developed systems, which I believe are far from the ability of man. I came in possession of a government pamphlet that describes the working of the ear and the diseases that can injure it. Over my lifetime I have worked with electronics, been a technical designer and an inventor, and frankly I cannot see any human being able to design such a complex, clever and minuscule serious of parts, which together allow us to hear and balance ourselves. I’m not going into detail, merely giving the 5p tour.

    The ear has three parts the outer, the middle, and the inner ear. Sounds enter the external ear canal, travel down the ear canal finally reaching the ear-drum. There the sounds vibrate, and are passed into the middle ear. The middle ear is an inflated cavity that links the outer ear to the inner ear, and is also connected to the back of the throat. Which I interpret as the reason why we swallow when an aircraft goes from one pressure to another.

    Within the middle ear there are three tiny bones stretching from the eardrum to our hearing organ within the ear, known as the cochlea. It is these three bones that mechanically conduct the sound waves through the middle ear to the inner ear. The inner ear has two parts, the cochlea, responsible for hearing; and the vestibules system, responsible for balance. The cochlea is a fluid filled chamber that looks a bit like a snail shell. When the sound vibrations enter the cochlea, the fluid moves and hair-like sensory cells trigger an electrical impulse in the auditory nerve. Different hair cells pick up different frequencies of sound depending on where they are positioned in the cochlea. The auditory nerve passes electrical impulses to the brain which recognizes them as sound.

    The vestibules system is also filled with fluid and has three small sections. Each of these sections detects head movement in a different direction. When you move your head, the fluid within these sections moves. In a similar way to the hair-like cells in the cochlea, they turn the mechanical movement into an electrical signal and send the information to your brain. This information is used with your vision as censors in your joints to help you maintain your balance.

    The above seemed terribly long, but I wanted to demonstrate the complexity and the incredible facility that the ear has. When you consider that We are told that life started as an amoeba in a swamp, how in the world natural progression has brought us something so sophisticated is really beyond me, and I can only stand and admire.

  • Things I don’t understand, 4, Supermarkets

    This credit crunch is hitting everyone, even large cartels, and from what I read, the average solution appears to be to cut down on staff. Even large companies engaged in professional type commerce, such as the law and architecture are doing it. If you go into any supermarket today you will find it difficult to get help, because the staff is now running the place on a shoestring, and probably worked to death. The real problem though is that the supermarket is generally an out-of-town based conglomeration of two or three large stores, and a host of small ones selling specialized merchandise. Scattered among the housing estates, there are also franchised shops that are a small version of the supermarket. This situation means that there is little choice outside what is chosen by the supermarkets, and the franchises. In the old days corner shops catered mainly for the customers within their orbit, and passing trade was a plus. The corner shop was staffed relative to the trade. The other shops that we have today, are staffed according to some formula related to the size of the emporium rather than the number of customers, with long queues in consequence.

    What I don’t understand is why the government is giving planning permission for yet more and more supermarkets which is having a number of deleterious effects, such as unemployment, excessive driving to reach them, and the inevitable waste that vast choice generates. The alternative would be the local shops which instead of being tiny and tightly packed with goods, as so many of them are today, they would be like they were in the old days, well-designed and room enough for more than just a couple of people, and knowing their customers personally, providing a better service, and a better quality and freshness of product. It is my experience that at weekends and sale time, the roads, to and from these markets, are jam packed with cars, parking within them is also difficult, and because of the size of these large conglomerations, shopping would appear to have become a past-time rather than a necessity. I find this stultifying, and a way of life that does nothing for the health of those participating, especially concerning the ready-made meals, which are universally accepted as being a source of obesity.

  • A miscellany of rants

    The Banker’s handshake
    On Monday of this week I glance at a headline in the Daily Telegraph, which said a banker had received a £10,000,000 pension. I had not time to read the rest, but that statement set in motion a number of thoughts, and the greatest was that I couldn’t see how he could spend 10 million intelligently. In the dark ages, when they introduced the National Lottery, I decided to set up a system whereby I did the lottery, and if I won any money I would share it among the family, so I had to decide how much I was aiming for, and I discovered, as I was near retirement age, that a £1m, even spread among the family, would go a long way to fixing their needs, after all a house only cost, at that time, about £100k. I consider that this amount is obscene. A banker is in a position to lend money personally, at high rates of interest, let us suggests 7%, that would bring him in about £700,000 before tax, which would be pretty difficult to spend year on year. I’ll also bet he is about 60, instead of being in his 70s is my children will be, If this government has its way. When I retired I found the family home was far too big for just for the two of us, and ultimately moved into a smaller accommodation. I also found that we had enough of practically everything with which to furnish the new house, and had to spend very little to make a new home as we wanted it. For the life of me I cannot see firstly, how this guy can spend all this money, and secondly, at a time when industry and shops are cut to the bone, and people are being sacked from jobs, which once upon a time were secure, there is any justification for such a handshake, especially, since my savings have been reduced by the very people handing out this money, with the government supporting them. Is there an upper echelon in this country that I don’t know about, where policies of this sort are the norm?

    MPs
    Like everything else in life, MPs come in good, bad, and indifferent. If like me and my neighbours, you have someone who keeps their eye on a ball, I reckon you are lucky. At the time of the last election, I wrote about some of the people who had put themselves forward, and at the time I commented that the quality was not what one would expect. When someone is elected to parliament, they don’t have to have a string of letters after their name, like some professions, they walk into parliament, literally wet behind the ears with a steep learning curve in front of them. I suggest that the people who are employed to aid them, their staff, will probably be considerably better educated, and far more experienced in the political arena than your prodigy may ever be. There is no shadow of doubt in my mind that when you write to your MP, your letter will go through a number of hands before it reaches your MP, if it ever does in some cases. A civil servant of will draft a reply, the MP may, or may not have to approve it before it is sent out. If the MP decides to write to a minister, concerning your concern, I believe the same approach will pertain. I am certain in my own mind that at times it is the civil servant who makes the decision on behalf of the MP, a system which is logical, as the questions being asked will be repetitious and in a lot of cases manly verbose complaints. The question I therefore ask, is just how many MPs are really needed to keep the ship afloat, and whether the system should be changed to enable a greater number of highly trained and experienced civil servants to not only do the research as now, but also make proposals which are then transferred to a board of MPs for ratification, modification, or rejection. We are told that they need 600 because they are all working away in committee. I have said before, that in my experience most of the people on committee contribute nothing, and the decisions are made by an elite few. In view of the committees that I suggest here, the number of MPs could be reduced considerably, say to 200. If this happened, the cream would come to the surface, and the average quality and experience will be considerably higher at a point of the decision-making process than it might be currently. At the time of the election, prospective MPs would have to come under greater examination by the parties putting them up for election.

  • Fear

    I was watching a CD of the second world war, which was concerning people who went to Europe under-cover, and I realized from my reactions to the film, that I would have been useless in that form of warfare. It must take a tremendous amount of guts, and a special type of person to be able to function properly under those circumstances, with all that stress, and spending your life looking over your shoulder.

    I have worn three different uniforms in my life, that included carrying a gun. I started analyzing my remembered periods when things were a little hairy. There were occasions where fear might have intruded, but the necessity of the moment was so strong by comparison, the immediacy, the union with other people in the same circumstances, that I don’t remember fear being a major element. Of course I was young, which makes a difference, as experience induces awareness. Those of us who were in London during the blitz and others across the country, grew to take it as a way of life, even the falling shrapnel from the shells being fired at the German airplanes, was the norm. I thought about our troops in Afghanistan, where they appear to have very little cover, and there is always that element of the roadside bomb. I cannot speak for them because I haven’t asked them, but if you’re faced daily with the same conditions, you might be concerned at the beginning, but, in my view, routine and companionship combine to give a different perspective – the everyday element. Also in my experience, there is the certainty that we all had, that it wouldn’t happen to us.

  • Hydrogenated oil

    Hydrogenated oils
    My next-door neighbour and I were talking about injurious additives in food, usually taken over a long period, and the incredible rise in obesity in the population as a whole. We talked about all the usual reasons, junk food, boxed meals, carry outs and suchlike when she suddenly introduce something I had never heard of, hydrogenated oil. She said a friend of hers, who was a trained chef, had asked her if she would like to eat a Tupperware box, because a similar process derives hydrogenated oil. I wasn’t prepared for reading what I did in Google when I put up hydrogenated oils. I went to www,wisegeek, and also to ‘partially hydrogenated oils’, on the same page.

    When I read the descriptions of all that is wrong with taking in hydrogenated oil, and the injurious effects on the body, I could not understand how the government would permit this material being used in the food industry at all, let alone under regulation. It’s whole purpose is to speed up, and probably cheapen the manufacture of a number of items such as biscuits, cakes,etc, not right across the board, but by selected manufactures, at what cost to us?. Some fish fries use it because it keeps the oil clean for longer periods than conventional oils. I don’t propose to go into further detail, just read the websites on Google and then make up your own mind. Don’t forget to read the ingredients content when you buy biscuits and cakes and even oil.

  • Things I don’t understand, 3

    In some ways, over the last decades or more, the wishes of the individual have taken precedence over the welfare of the majority, generally due to personal greed and self-aggrandizement of a relatively few. Just for a second let us just take sport. Our regional teams in practically every professional sport are chock-a-block with foreigners. There is not a shadow of doubt the man on the terraces wants to see the best players, but then they are sick as ducks when the national side doesn’t come up to their expectations. The same thing is happening in industry, individuals are taking their manufacturing overseas, where it will be produced, even including transport, for a lot less than being manufactured here. The end result is exactly the same as with sport, there is no training ground to bring on our youth with the skills essential for manufacturing. For years I have not understood why we allowed our manufacturing ability to be downgraded year-by-year, when for centuries it has been the backbone of our wealth in this country. We were told, if we questioned it, that the financial markets were where our wealth lay, which was ultimately proved to be wrong.

    What is there about the banking system, which enables it to function without the normal responses that other commercial undertakings have to endure? If Joe Bogs down the road gets into difficulties either through his own fault, or because the banks won’t let him money, the government doesn’t turn round, pat him on the head, and tell him to do better, and also pull him out of his mess, at our expense, no! He is hung out to dry. So what is there about banking that allows them, presumably, to take my money that I have invested in the bank and play a big boys game of Monopoly, totally unsupervised, and when the wheels come off, and champagne and fast cars might be a thing of the past, there is a fair chance that they will not starve, because they’re professionals, and will have taken care of that eventuality? The big bosses of course have to maintain their style, and it would seem that they were unaffected, instead of like poor Joe Blogs, who has gone to the wall.

    I just wonder if this Consortium Government will have the same policies that the last one had with respect to banking. I find it ludicrous that several of the banks who are holding my savings, and presumably fairly strapped for cash, can afford to sponsor sport in a way that they do. I was watching cricket, a very poor quality of cricket, playing limited over matches, to stadiums which were very poorly supported, I wondered how they were managing to do this, when the interest they were paying seems to be abysmal, and the excuse is, of course, the credit crunch, and who brought that about?

  • Things I don’t understand 2

    Euthanasia I have written about before, taking into account religious beliefs and the control exerted by the State. In the past, there was some justification for this control, because religion, right up to 1945 was the mainstay of the average home in Britain. But now we have an almost totally godless world, where members of so-called religions are killing in vast numbers, members of other religions, and entertainment appears to consist of killing, total mayhem, and mindless destruction. So to me, control on a religious standpoint seems one step too far. I am in no way suggesting that there should be no control. I have known of someone who committed suicide in the most ghastly fashion who would have suffered excruciating pain. There are those among us who are leading lives which none of us would envy, and I believe many of them would like to end it. There are those who commit suicide because of psychological imbalance, and these people should be protected from themselves. To achieve this I suggest that there should be a board set up consisting of three people, a doctor, a solicitor, and a civil servant. The doctor would monitor the reason for the approach. The solicitor would check the financial, and legal affairs of the individual concerned, and the civil servant would be the one to give the final approval, and institute the arrangement.

    People who live to a great age, ultimately find themselves stranded in a sterile condition, they have outlived their friends and relatives of their own age. In this day and age where travel is taken for granted, families no longer live in close proximity, and life is so fast and ruthless, that the younger members of the family are scattered across the world, and their own lives are in no way as calm and measured as were those of the ones of great age. Normal people do not like to be dependent on others, they are afraid of over burdening them, especially if they’re quite competent to carry out the duties that living requires. Hence they arrive at a condition where their sole purpose is to maintain themselves until it is time to die. It isn’t only those who live alone and share this stark condition, I have had friends in some care homes who felt exactly the same way, and seeing the conditions under which they lived, I didn’t envy them.

    If people find themselves in a condition that is unsupportable, the temptation to commit suicide could be so strong that they have go, and like the case I have quoted, if they make a hash of it, they will be in a far worse condition themselves, and they will be a burden on the State. I cannot understand that if I can make this case, which I believe is cogent, why government sources are failing to act. If I have got it wrong and there is a valid reason for not having the facility in this country that they have in Switzerland, I feel that this should be blazoned for all to understand

  • Things I didn’t understand, 1

    One of the problems of being very old, living alone, and slightly injured, it is that one has a lot of time to think, to question, and above all compare the old with the new. What I write here today, is one of these doubts and questions.

    The DHS This is not the first time I have mentioned that I believe our hospital and medical services are the best in the world. In the last few years as a result of my own necessity and that of my wife’s, I have had considerable time in which to evaluate these services first-hand. The degree of expertise, care, and consideration is of the highest order, and when you see the hours that people are working, often carrying out tedious repetitive jobs, and still maintaining a balanced outlook, we should be grateful. It beats me why the Health Service system is constantly under review by government, and changes either threatened or being made. Just over a week ago I was in hospital watching, as you would expect, and was amazed at the amount of writing the nurses, doctors and technicians were having to write for each patient as they were treated. One can only assume that the growth of advertisements suggesting that legal proceedings can be an option, if there is a possibility of accident or malfeasance without cost to the individual. I would have thought that a document could be produced for the patient to sign, which maintained their rights, but was couched in such a way that it would only be in the very severest circumstances that the lawyers would have a foothold. There is no shadow of doubt, that records are essential, but I believe what I propose would cut it down by half. From my experience in heavy engineering, there was no doubt that from the end of the war, right up until the 70s or 80s there was a level of shoddy workmanship, which induced injury by some of the more delinquent contractors. The Health And Safety Act was brought in to change this condition, but unfortunately, I believe, people who are not technically involved but were re-droughting the act, were taking every opportunity to increase the area covered by the Act without reference to the long-time effects on those at the coal face, and the Health Service has thus been heavily inhabited by it.

  • An apology and physical contact

    My life these days, is rather like a ride on a Big Dipper, I’m fit and well one day, suddenly out of the blue I am trapped in my house, by some monstrous inability. Just over a week ago I went to a hospital for a check-up, and it is a good thing I was there, because suddenly the room I was in rotatation about me, and I hit the deck with such force that I got whiplash, followed by Meneir’s disease, which is a clever name for being totally unstable, and having to resist falling about the place. In consequence writing has been out of the question, as indeed is practically everything else. Hence the apology. But when you’re in that condition one tends to dose, and when not dosing, cogitating on some of the most abstract and irrelevant considerations.

    Physical contact
    The era I was born in was a hang-over of the Victorian psyche, and physical contact, even in families was not as common by a mile, as it is today. I cannot ever remember my mother kissing me, even, to my surprise and disappointment, when I came back from a stint on convoy in the North Atlantic. All nature requires contact between the newly born and the mother. From that point contact between relatives and individuals is an essential part of learning and security. Put briefly, there is nothing like a hug, and at times of stress, loss and injury, physical contact is reassuring. The handshake, as we all know from our schooldays, has come down in time from the days when knights were bold, and the handshake indicated that there was no hidden agenda, such as a dagger up the sleeve. But the handshake today has all sorts of nuances, from a reawakening of a past friendship, to the closing of a deal.

    We all know that physical contact can also be abrasive, as on the field of sport, or behind the cycle shed at school. I have found it interesting to think of all the different ways in which we communicate between ourselves, and to some extent with the animal kingdom, all by touch. The passing pat on a shoulder, at a function, signifying friendship and acknowledgment. The touch of the schoolmaster’s hand, and again on the shoulder, after looking at some work, noting approval. Contact has its own language, which is related to circumstances and geography, but today, when I see so much hugging and kissing between total strangers meeting for the first time, bearing in mind my own history, I find it totally over-the-top, and meaningless. In the entertainment world hugging and kissing has totally different nuances, it can be used by an individual to draw attention upon themselves, to give the appearance of being on equal status, and very often is just as meaningless

  • A slant on the Cup

    If you were to ask my family what I know about sport, and football in particular, they would laugh, and they would be right, because I gave up playing soccer when I was 10 years old. However, that doesn’t stop me from having a view on the way the Germans have been playing. I am firmly convinced that what they have been doing has been a matter of set pieces, derived from an incredible amount of research, and a lot of training and discipline. I have listened to the pundits on television, and to the best of my knowledge no one has suggested this. I set myself a problem of how I would approach making a team world champions, and decided that the only way to do it is by analysis and training’

    Initially, I would take a number of mathematicians, a vast amount of recorded video of the games of the top teams in the world. These would be carefully examined with respect to defence, and attack. A study of about 10 of each of the best systems would emerge, these would then be analysed, set pieces derived, the players of the Cup team would rehearse them, until they wwere second nature, and then they would be made to play against some of the top teams in the country, and the results of these matches analysed again.

    That goal that Germany scored against England, where the goalkeeper kicked the ball the length of the field, almost to the toe of a member of the attack, was not luck, it was a well practiced set piece. In the match with Argentina two of the goals were almost identical, the ball was taken down on the outside, a pretence was made to appear to be attacking goal, but what they were doing was playing back to a man standing on a 10 yard line, in the centre of the field to take the ball and score, with the goalkeeper taken off guard by this system. The fact that it was done twice successfully convinces me it was a set piece. Similarly the goal which was scored from a place kick as a result of a foul, was also a set piece. It is not difficult to engineer a foul in such a way that the opposition are blamed for it. In this case the man taking the kick was not looking at the goal but at the far side of the field, and consequently the Argentineans were also. I believe that that man had practiced that kick time and again so he could do it with his eyes shut, and curl the ball to within feet of his colleague standing in front of goal.

    By the same token, it was rare for more than four men to be in the attack, while there would be seven well-versed in positions necessary to form a phalanx that would inhibit any attack. If you can stop the opponents from scoring you have any two to one chance of not being beaten, you will either win, or draw and then be faced with shots at goal. So it is safer to maintain a highly trained defence team with many options of the pattern of where and how they stand or manoeuvre. I am firmly convinced that this is a totally new, and highly technical approach to training a football team. With this in mind it will be interesting to watch the Germans in their next match.