Month: June 2010

I was thinking about the last election, and my own take, which I posted, and how there was no real standard requirement that the politician had to pass through to determine his or her experience and ability for the job. In the very old days it was a sort of gentlemen’s club where people of the same ilk were virtually brought up together. Today people go to university to get a degree in political science, but how much experience they have other than the theoretical is something the committee of a constituency needs to know if they wish to adopt a particular person. Over these last few years we have seen some incredible mistakes being made, improper decisions, and self-aggrandizement at any cost. So I went right back to childhood as the basis of discovering experience and the way that this has changed over generations.

I have been fortunate enough, through marrying early, to have had the pleasure of seeing three generations growing up, and it is interesting that each generation has shown different responses to stimuli, than the others. Some time ago I wrote that the relative sophistication of generation upon generation was probably due to information being carried down collectively, through the genes. Thinking upon the statement further, and realizing that in my generation, married couples had their children early, and each subsequent generation, possibly through increased opportunities of leisure and pleasure, have had their children at a later age, I realized that the amount of information and the quality of it, passed on to the next generation, has increased generation by generation. I can only speak about those children that I have had considerable contact with, and I find that each generation has appeared to be more self-reliant at a very early age, and in general so interested in what they’re doing, that they are not bored enough to make nuisances of themselves.

Today, there is a demand by employers for people to have some sort of diploma. A diploma is only a certificate to say that a certain level of education has been reached, not necessarily at a very high level, and has no reference to experience. Whereas experience in his or her particular field, which is the vital element in an individual’s use to an employer, seems to be totally ignored except in the case of professional qualifications related to institutions, and were once also jealously guard by the trades, but now with people learning trades in colleges, rather than on the workbench, standards have fallen. So how does a constituency determine whether an individual is competent to carry out the complex work of the House of Commons? Today so many jobs require some form of diploma or degree, and yet people in the House, who are handling extremely vital, complex and in some cases shatteringly expensive decisions as mandatory, have no similar yardstick. From reading the handbills of the little band that I was offered in this constituency in the last election, there was obviously only one contender, and if that one had not been available, I shudder to think what we would’ve been getting.

I’ve been too long out of touch to comment on working hours of most of the trades, in my day it was eight o’clock in the morning to six at night, for the trades, nine to five for civil servants, posh offices like solicitors, accountants, and the rest had their own rules. Shops varied considerably, from a corner shop that opened at seven to sell newspapers to the men going to the yards, to 11 o’clock at night to catch the men leaving the pubs and wanting to buy cigarette. I often used to have to work nine to five, only the other way around, nine o’clock at night to five in the morning, when the roads were empty, and we could open up manholes, repair pipelines, and other work when the traffic was virtually nonexistent.

I expect you wonder what started this latest tirade, I’ll tell you. I visit Sophie in the Care Home at the same time on all days but Thursdays and Sundays. On Thursdays she has music and dancing, which she finds tiring, and Sundays others like to visit her. So that she knows when to expect me, I arrive every day before two o’clock, and leave about three fifteen. The roads are empty and I have an easy run in both directions. Today however I didn’t leave until three thirty, and the roads of the dual carriageway, in both directions, were head to tail as far as I could see. When I worked as a civil servant, just before I took retirement, the government introduced flexible working, which was intended that within certain bounds a man or a woman could adjust their working hours so they fulfilled their statutory hours, but in a different pattern. The limit in the evening was that you could not leave before four o’clock. I just wonder where all these cars came from, none that I saw contained children, so it wasn’t the mummy-run. I find it fascinating. At a time when we are in such financial difficulties I would’ve expected people to have their noses to the grindstone well after five o’clock.

Last night I was watching something or other on television and dropped off to sleep. Now I live alone, I tend to do this because the conversation is so dull. When I awoke I found that Newsnight was having a go at poor old Charlie, for having commented to a friend that he didn’t appreciate the architecture his friends was proposing. I will not go into the details because they are on the Internet. The architect in question, and presumably others, are proposing to sue Charlie for using undue influence in an area where he had no technical qualification, or something along those lines. These people anyway, were after his piggybank.

I have always liked and respected Charles, he has a tough life with people picking on him at every turn, and all he is doing mostly is voicing what most of us thinks. As you probably know I was a civil engineer, and the sort of work that we do doesn’t exactly lend itself to flights of fancy, it is reasonably impossible to try make a sewage Works look other than what it is. Architects on the other hand, like interior designers, if they are any good, obtain their work through word of mouth, which means that they are in competition with one another, which in turn means that they’re designs too must be original and eye-catching if they’re going to be successful. This in turn leaves the whole system open to people trying to out-do others of the same ilk. It’s not surprising that Charles has complained often, I have myself, but nobody will sue me because I have no influence.

So what is influence? Influence is only likely to be successful if there are financial considerations involved, for which the person doing the influencing stands to gain, or that what he says is seen to be reasonable and fair. From my reading of this case, the furore is concerned with itself losing money, and trying to blame it on Charles. I cannot see any reason why Charles cannot write to a friend giving his own views on what his friend is doing. It’s beyond belief that Charles has any financial interest in stopping the project, merely that he likes common consideration, not competition, to dictate planning policies in the interests of Great Britain. On the contrary he is well known for his concern about many things in this country, and voices them at regular intervals, to the approval of his many admirers. I tell you this, I would sooner have my backside rubbed with a brick than be a Royal!

I am of a generation who looked upon sport as a pleasure, for those on the touchline and for those playing, not something that was so important that it had grown men crying in public. When I was younger I played in amateur games, went to matches as a spectator, and watched sports on television like any normal person. Now, I rarely look at contact sport because firstly it is all too serious, secondly the level of dirty play has become unacceptable and vicious.

I was watching the Italian match yesterday and two things came out of it, the first was that the Slavs were highly trained, controlled and very fit. By contrast the Italians seemed to have no serious game plan, and also to operate on the basis that anything goes if you can get away with it. This is not the only match that I have watched, but I have come to the conclusion that the level of refereeing on such an important occasion as the World Cup, is blatantly abysmally low.

I therefore, stupidly, because no one will agree with me, offer a solution. The number of people involved in refereeing would need to be increased. Firstly there would need to be a panel of three experienced professional footballers high in the stands, watching the game, and portrayed on television, and reporting any adverse occurrences. Secondly there would need to be about two extra people on the two touchlines, in communication with the three in the stand, and with the referee, who, among them all, could then perhaps bring order to the conduct on the pitch.

There will always be people who don’t play by the rules, but sport is not that important that people’s health, and in some cases, their lives, need to be put in danger by some vicious, hot headed hooligan. Both systems of rugby are a prime example.

I believe the biggest mistake they made with the budget was to increase the VAT. Psychologically it was wrong, and I question whether the value of 3% of VAT spread among the other sources of income for the government, would have been too difficult to manage, or are they trying to make a point?

I know nothing about George Osborn, his background, his experience, but it probably doesn’t matter because he won’t have been the only person responsible for the Budget. What struck me about it was that the knock on effect had been totally disregarded. Let me give you an example, in the 50s, I bought my first house, four bedrooms, and cost about £7000. A few years later I bought another house, five bedrooms, a quarter of an acre of land, for £12,000. In 2003 I sold it and bought a chalet bungalow with only two-bedrooms and a box-room for £300,000, which is now only worth £270,000. The knock on effect of those 50 years is the variation in the economy with time, totally unpredictable, and in such vast swings. In this example the change in the first five years was at a thousand a year, in the next 40 years it was at an average rate of 6,500 year, and the fall has been at 4.000 a year. In circumstances like this people become cautious, especially when the levels of taxation, such as VAT, are varied, the unpredictability causes them to think twice, and we have the situation we have today with the sale of houses stagnating. The knock on effect of that is that people often refurnish when they move house. The current climate is not suitable to encourage house buying. Currently large furniture shops are having tremendous sales, and the small ones are going to the wall.

One could easily predict that as with Maggie Thatcher, there could be an up rise of union disfavour if the lower ranks are having a two-year wage freeze. The health service, Local Authority workers, and civil servants on the lower ranks generally, will find it unacceptable that they are working under pressure, because of the cutbacks, while their counterparts, self-employed or in industry are probably being reimbursed in accordance with the cost of living. The psychological effect of a rise in VAT is much greater than 3%. People actually went out and bought alcohol before the rise became legal. The money they were saving was negligible, it was the fact that hit home. I may be a Job’s comforter, but I believe 3% on VAT is going to have a greater effect on the economy than was intended. In my experience VAT looms larger in people’s minds than most other taxation, and until it becomes routine and forgotten about, sales will go down, especially in haberdashery and furniture. Osborn underlined the fact that the elderly will be cared for, but immediately they have lost 3% of some of their income. I fancy that the sales of vehicles will drop over the next six months, in an industry which is still fighting to stay afloat. When you see the level of advertising in the press, on the Internet, and on TV, one realizes that the credit crunch is hitting hard.

I looked at some of the World Cup opening ceremony, and it reminded me very much of the Africa that I knew in the late 20s. It had that innocence, instead of the technocratic approach in so many of the other opening sequences. On the other hand, I watched the first match and it saddened me to see the empty seating with all those crowds outside the stadium. It caused me to evaluate in my own mind how these large events were staged, what went into the staging, and who was responsible for the staging and footting the bill.

I can understand the virtue of sport in the round, to the individual, to the country, and the welfare of the people in it. We have all seen the upsurge of interest in sport when there are large worldwide and domestic competitions being promulgated by all the media. What I’m objecting to personally is the mindless approach to the problems of hosting any one of these large events. In highly developed countries such as ours, building new stadia and training facilities, is affordable and essential for the welfare and fitness of the coming generation, and inducing an urge to take part, if not necessarily to compete. In a country like Africa, life standards could not be lower, it is eminently farcical to build stadia to accommodate thousands, when the average figures for people on the terraces in the country is bound to be small by comparison. I feel that the lifespan of these stands and pitches will be short and they will crumble into dust. It must have been the responsibility of the international Board, to have overseen this possibility when Africa was submitting their proposals. As for leaving the stands empty, with people outside wanting but not affording to get in, has a lot to do precedent.

It is well known by my readers that I’m against hosting things like the Olympics because the people who are contributing to finance the games are the ones most unlikely to ever see an Olympic games themselves. It would therefore seem logical that the games should be held in several suitable countries, based on population, accommodation and ease of travel. This doesn’t stop the individual countries from having Olympic sized facilities for their nationals to train on and enjoy. To say that the value of the Olympic Games is that it influences countries to build facilities that they would otherwise not have, is clearly specious, in this day and age, public opinion would override this if the need and demand was there.

Do you, like I, not only feel confused about the current taxation philosophy by the government, but actually find it counterproductive in many ways. One of the things that I refer to, is the question of budgeting. The Labour party, when they were in power, fostered some things that made sense, Iike trying to maintain a steady rate of tax, rather than periodic changes in the system and the amounts involved. They wished, as I understand it, to foster saving by the electorate, because this also gave them the possibility of budgeting, based on loans, whereas with the fluctuating deficit, it made budgeting almost impossible. Unfortunately they were not in power long enough, after having made this decision, for it to be effective.

I expect that you are sick to death of hearing me moan on about the good old days, even though they had some pretty bad aspects. In those days we were brought up, from early childhood, to save not just money, but everything, we were a nation of horders. Practically everything was too valuable to throw away. People like myself, therefore, don’t get the level of financial help commensurate with those who have been spendthrifts, and are automatically entitled to. Saving is not merely a matter of hording when it comes to money, it is mainly budgeting for the future, ensuring that in our old-age, when we are living on diminishing returns, standards will not fall too low. If they bring in swinging inheritance tax, there is little purpose in saving too much, because those coming after you will no longer reap the benefits that you have anticipated. In effect you are budgeting in the light of inheritance tax levels. Hence, this is a two edged sword, the government will be paying out more in support, while at the same time having a diminished source of borrowing. In other words nobody gains, because the spendthrifts are bound to come upon hard times with no capital to ease the burden, the government will be under greater financial stress because they’ll be totally relient on the taxes rather than additional borrowing.

In my parents days they had little hideaways where they put money for specific needs, and a lot of the payments were in small sums on a weekly basis. This was their form of budgeting, and debt was an anathema to them, almost right across the board. I may be wrong, as I just did not understand a lot of the rhetoric we were presented with at the time of the election, and I feel that I am no wiser, because the signals we are receiving are not clear and indisputable, they give the impression that those stating them a not too sure themselves. It seems to me we’re going from one muddle into another, where there are no signposts, and those leading us are just as bewildered.