The Old Gaffer

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.

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.

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.

I am at that stage in life, where I seem to have less interest in learning, than I do in being amused, but when you live alone, with all your contemporaries no longer here, being amused, becomes almost a matter of will power, that is to say deriving one’s own amusement, however banal. Believe it or not, thinking up television games with more intellectual content than just a quiz show, among other things, can be quite interesting and distracting. But unfortunately at the end of the day one tends to revert to the wide screen, and watch films. This will have naturally forced me into Criticism Mode, especially with the pap currently on offer from Skye.. I was never a devotee of Woody Allen and his obsession with New York. I now find that somebody in the chain of command, has bought up vast quantities of Woody Allen’s films from way back, I remember them even from my teens. Coupled with that they’re also dragging out British made films even before the 40s and a lot not long after. Some of them are very good, but many of them nowhere as good as whoever it is, says it’s is, when commenting on them in the Radio Times. Time and again I have saved on Plus a film highly recommended, only to find it was verbose and not to my taste.

One thing I do discover is that in these old films, the diction is much clearer, that the actors actually used their lips, whereas in the modern films, especially the American ones, one has to try to follow the script which is being mouthed with almost tight lips, and a quasi-Afro-American accent that is mostly unintelligible. Going back to the days of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, even the Westerns had actors talking in language that we could understand in Britain. When you watch an American film today, devoted to criminals and roughnecks, I don’t know whether you would agree with me, but it seems that they adopt this deep Southern accent as another dimension of colour, which is very difficult to decipher, especially as nowadays the musical directors seem to have more influence than the actual director?

If you go to the back pages of each day in the Radio Times, you’ll discover that day, after day, after day the same old films of being offered not always from the same source, but on the same pages, and if you read the blurb you might not mind because there appears to be so much on offer, but repetition rapidly reduces choice.

In doing my accounts, I have discovered that not only I, but everybody else is dilatory in cashing cheques, for a number of reasons. We obtain our loose change from a hole in the wall, and consequently rarely go the bank. The amounts that the cheques carry are often small, money presents to small children, discounts, and a small payments in moieties. In my case the bank is over 5 miles away, in a part of town I rarely visit. I have also discovered that even large companies are not prepared to accept a credit card payment without a service charge, and therefore the tendency is going towards using a debit card, presupposing your account is not in the red. Clearly this change in policy is a by-product of the credit crunch, and the practice of so many people not to honour their debts. If you receive a cheque and for some reason cannot, or wont take it to the bank, one is then forced to write a covering letter and affix a stamp and take it to the post, all of which is another waste of time. As I have said repeatedly, the majority are penalized by the misdemeanours of the minority.

If my analysis is correct, in another year or so, whether we like it or not, we shall be forced to carry out all our financial dealings on the Internet, and those without a computer will be forced to go to one of these computing centres, or more likely the facility will be provided by local government in their offices and libraries. For someone like myself who has lived through so many changes, we find that life is no longer simple, as soon as you are competent in any particular field, the rules and operations of the field are changed again and again, often for very little purpose.

Strange Meerkats
I have written before about the fact that people are prepared to trust the information given by the picture of a disgruntled dog with adenoids, called Churchill. The other day, I was informed by someone in the advertising business, that the advertisements using meerkats are an incredible success. It’s all very well to say the British are mad about animals, but it does seem a step too far to set aside common sense to that extent. There is no shadow of doubt that not only the quality but also the quantity of advertising has increased incredibly since the credit crunch. The advertising executives seem to have discovered that entertainment in any form, is preferable to giving the facts straight from the shoulder, and much of the entertainment seems to err on the side of razzmatazz, and the facts and figures that one would have thought were essential, are more than a little sparse. Just out of interest, instead of skipping over the advertisements on TV, once in a while take a look at them, they certainly are entertaining in many cases, but whether they are as informative as one would like is a matter of opinion. I must say I find it highly amusing to imagine how some of these highly paid doyennes of the entertainment business, who were themselves preaching on the value of various products, must be feeling now they have been usurped by what the Africans probably considered as vermin.

The diversification of interest
No one could say I was sport mad, I will watch the odd football match, or international rugby but I don’t think that I would willingly support these championships that are springing up all over the country, and the Olympics. However, I am of the opinion that I am doing so through the back door. Long before the credit crunch, I had a number of shares in banks and building societies which formed my savings. When the credit crunch arrived at lease three of these concerns were taken over by bigger companies that later were to have been found to be making irrational decisions. The result of this has been my income from these investments, which was supposed to be stable, was in fact reducing at an alarming rate. I now discover to my horror, through watching sports on television, that these actual companies are currently supporting sport in its various forms, which itself entails supplying kit to the players, travel expenses and probably footing the expenses of the various events in the stadia around the country. I vaguely remember having seen that some of them were also funding tours. When you consider that the government has bolstered these people out or our taxes, and to this must be added loss of income to the pensioners who have been saving for their old age. I find it remarkable that the government is happy for this procedure; the perpetrators will tell you that it is wise spending as it generates business through advertising. They’d have a hell of a job trying to prove that to me, when I see how many seats at the matches are empty.

An estimate on waste
Local authorities, by the amount of paper they use to cajole us to save the world, should be estimating the overall level of waste of the world’s resources which is induced by large food shopping centres importing products from abroad by air, to satisfy the rising demand for unusual and exotic products, as well as those products home produced. We might get a surprise. There has been a great rise in the amount of notice which is taken of sell by dates both by the traders and by the purchasers. I am of the opinion that there is a considerable safety factor built into these dates that reduces their life. For one who was brought up with no such things as refrigerators and freezers, where you built up an immune system to such an extent the tummy troubles were not a problem, I believe that one of the severest wastes of resources and man power is our throwaway society. Someone will tell me that it is our obligation to support commerce in the underdeveloped world. I feel that there is a better way than transporting food halfway around the world to satisfy a very small, out-of-season need, and the inevitable waste.

How often we have we said or heard that phrase, as an excuse to justify something not justifiable. The old find it difficult not to draw comparisons today, as things have changed so rapidly in less than a lifespan, and not always for the better. Those of us born at the end of the Great War or as far forward as the 30s, will have been subjected to the confining mores of the Victorians, to which today’s standards bear no relationship whatsoever. Indeed in most cases they have been reversed. I was brought up with phrases like ‘Little boys should be seen and not heard!’. Subjects today, which are commonplace, such as a family divorce, social and sexual relationships, were never discussed in front of the children, say anyone younger than 12 or 15. In my case, I was not allowed to go to the wedding of a relative who had been cohabiting with a married man, whom she was marrying after his divorce. A high proportion of people of the lower and middle ranks had a door key on a string, accessible through the letter-box, without fear of burglary. I wont bore you with any more of these comparisons, there are endless. The majority of the admonishments were for what were considered bad taste; assumed rudeness to adults; boisterousness, referred to as hooliganism; and speaking out of turn were all crimes for which a clip round the ear was a minor punishment, but could also warrant a thrashing or being sent to bed. It was the parents who took this seriously, while the children accepted it as part of daily living, anything else would have been too weighty. I firmly believe that these minor punishments never served the purpose for which they were intended, but made us more resilient, and taught us to duck and dive, which was a much better education for adulthood. Taking my case and those of my closer friends I’m convinced that our psyche was in no way damaged, it merely taught us the rules of the war between the old and the young, and us and our educators.

My interpretation of the behaviour between the Edwardian classes, the-haves, and the-have-nots, was mainly on a par, with where they could afford to live, the poor lived in large numbers in small accommodation, which meant that most of their activities took place outside the home, in public houses, on commons and in back-streets; while the rich could hide their extremes in large houses, clubs, and country estates. The Victorian era allowed the have-nots to introduce what became a middle class, in a size that made it noticeable. This in its turn created something for the ambitious to aim for, and with time the Victorian era ultimately totally changed peoples view of what was good or acceptable taste. Just consider the time that has elapsed, between when Queen Victoria came to the throne, and the 1950s which I feel was an amazing turn-around in our way of life. Then strictures were ignored or turned upside down, and an imaginary freedom where everything went was in vogue, and the meaning of ‘went’ covered so much, in a very short time.

What followed was first of all, a throwaway society, in which possessions were no longer respected, tastes could change overnight, taking with them inherited possessions that had come down through the generations. Strangely, with the aid of television, these rejected articles suddenly became collectors’ items in a small number of cases, but this did not stem the change from the old to the new. Designs in every walk of life seemed to bear little relationship to what had gone before, and the mores that went with these designs, including the taking of drugs, a total sexual freedom, and to some extent also, a disrespect for the tastes that has been the norm in society generally. Laws were brought in right across the board, without careful thought or testing, until we had situations which were totally ridiculous, and should never have been broached without more thought. One case is that of the chastisement of children in school by corporal punishment. One must assume that a number of cases of malicious treatment by teaches, up and down the country were used as the basis of condemning all corporal punishment. As one who was caned more than most, for less than most, I can’t say that I have any serious hang-ups on the matter, nor on some teachers who were vicious bullies. Their actions should not have limited the options for a responsible teacher to maintain decorum in a class. This business of the few determining the future for the many by the actions of the few, appears constantly in legislation today. This is one of the differences between now and the 20s, the legal eagles have got the country by the throat. Engineering, medicine and a host of other useful and valuable work is being hampered and made more difficult and costly by the ability of the individual to find advertisements advising him to possibly claim. It is only recently that doctors and dentists etc. have had to carry heavy insurance against being taken to court on a whim, or the hope of gain, something my forebears would have eschewed if they had heard of it.

My response
Reading the comments in the post below, no one could doubt the quality of thought, the determination of ideal, and the sincerity with which those ideals are held. I have taken a census of relatives and friends who have been senior officers in the army and have served in war situations, and it is interesting to find that in general they have the same outlook. They are not prepared to accept that there could be change; is currently every country must spend a vast sum of money just in case someone decides to invade them, or that nations together will act as policeman on any nation that might have reprehensible intentions

To me, this is the mindset of not only the army and the politicians, it is also that of the population at large. This I believe is where some change must be wrought to overcome this mindset, in the face of such carnage, useless expense, and ultimately in down grading the lives of so many for so long. When you consider the way the advertisers can make people believe, in many cases, boasts that are clearly based on a miniscule of fact and blown up to gigantic proportions in order to sell a product, when one thinks of the cost of advertising, manufacture and distribution, it is evidently a paying proposition. I therefore believe that there should be inaugurated World Wide Web sites in every language, and in many guises, showing the futility of war, in all its facets. In particular the waste that is so unproductive. People Power is sometimes mobilised, but never on more than parochial a scale. What I am proposing is that groups of people in every country should form to persuade their countryman that their leaders must find an alternative to war, and combine with other countries to sustain this theory to a level that even the thought of going to war, when other solutions are eminently possible, would be an anathema. . Surely it is the responsibility of the members of every nation to question the validity of the ideal, the mindset, set out above, and insist that their leaders search every avenue to avoid resorting to war. As I have said in my proposal there are unscrupulous people with their own agenda that conflict could well ensue. It is for this reason that I propose a worldwide police force of military capability, subscribed to, in every sense, nationwide.

I fondly believe that although I shan’t see it, the Internet will have such influence in the long run, that what I suggest not only is a possibility, but so obvious it will become a fact.

I wonder if anybody in the government has sat down and questioned this absurd urge placed upon us to drive 5 miles less every day to save the planet. The logistics alone are impossible, and at what point does one make a decision not to go somewhere, because it is more than 5 miles longer than you have allowed for the day. Who’s going to sit down and map out their mileage to achieve this? I know that it is a ruse to make a point, but it is so pettifogging and muddled, I believe the point is lost.

Reality in filmmaking
So many of the films that are produced these days are divorced from reality, not because the story is unreal, but because its interpretation by the director includes bizarre, impossible features. Okay, if you want a fairy story then it should be couched in that environment, not in an everyday one. These martial art pictures are fair enough, you know the hero is going to be able to, not only leap vast distances, but is also going to be able to nail half a dozen of his own kind in a matter of minutes.

The other day I was looking at Notting Hill, and in particular at that section in the story where the hero has parted from his truelove, and is walking down the street to the tune of a song which says, that it snows when she has gone. To my simple mind this was one of the greatest piece of filming I have ever witnessed, because the hero not only walked full-length of the road, he started in sunlight went through all the stages of rain hail and snow, with barely a break, surrounded by a very lively street market. When I thought about it I realised that it must have taken days to choreograph so that it was so seamless, which in turn made it so very effective.

When you are, as I am, responsible for somebody’s health, you have long hours a night to watch old films you have seen before, and very often it is the duplication which causes you to see things that you would have missed the first or second time. The opening sequence of, ‘ Once upon a time in the West’. Where there is a thug sitting waiting for a train, in order to kill one of the passengers descending from it. The sequence follows the route of a fly creeping across this man’s face slowly and aggravating him, until at last he catches it in the barrel of his 6-gun. To me that was pure genius, what with the time that it took to choreograph and film, and the incredible delay in the viewing of what one knew was going to be a stand-off, slowly built up the suspense.

A lot of our lives today are governed by economy rather than skill, and the quality of the goods, the choices we have, and the speed with which we now rush, doesn’t allow the sort of quality of expression and product that I have mentioned above. You have to be as old as I am to be able to draw comparisons; they say comparisons are odious, believe me, if more time was given to the aesthetic rather than the throughput, I think the quality would rise rapidly

On the BBC news I think I heard, although I have not been able to verify it, that this figure quoted, so unbelievable, as the cost of maintaining soldiers in the Middle East, I doubted my hearing but it was repeated at the time. I in no way believe that I have the answer to anything like those in charge of the army, I can only postulate my own views, from a basis of ignorance, tinged with commonsense. Perhaps what I am suggesting is already in place, but it is not being published to the same extent as the military condition.

As I understand it, the infrastructure in Afghanistan and Iraq has suffered considerably as a result of the wars, and the insurgents are consequently hard to riddle out. I gather the population in these places has been suffering from a severe lack of quality or even a basic infrastructure to a point where there is practically none. In any process of renewal one has to start at the most advantageous point, and then work out. I understand that attempts have been made to bring the basic necessities in some areas of the population, as the military clear the way. The only way of winning over the hearts and minds of people in such dire straits is to make their lives at least a little more than bearable. It therefore seems reasonable if we are spending a third of one million per soldier, that amount of money in the eyes of the resident population would be staggering if it was applied to the infrastructure. That also applies in this country. The logistics of carrying this out are immense, but it would seem that if companies that are involved in agrarian and simple manufacturing, were encouraged and financially supported, while being protected, in the way areas were protected in Northern Ireland, thus generating jealousy, greed, or just pure necessity, it would be more persuasive as a tool.

From my own experience in war and local uprisings of a serious nature, it is wrong to speculate because one is never in full awareness of all the facts. I therefore accept that what I have remarked here could be written off as nonsensical rubbish, but one of the advantages of having one’s own blog, is it allows one to make statements like the above, if for no other reason than to generate a debate.

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