Category: General

When I woke, because it is Sunday, I thought about religion as I saw it as a child. Our Church of England did a lot for the young. It had a full gamut of Scouting with a band, girl guide troops, and there were lectures every Wednesday evening for the young with a religious content, and we pretty well believed what we were told. It stopped when I discovered the rector did not practise what he preached. See The Religious Round’ which describes this instance. We enjoyed one other thing, the Church had a full peal of bells which rang out every Sunday calling the parish to prayer. Those bells had the most beautiful sound and have stayed with me for the rest of my life.

I have a strong visual imagination, and see things in the round, like looking at an oil painting. In those early days I was highly religious, went to Sunday school and church, where our rector and all the other instructors were very insistent on Heaven, and hell. I imagined heaven as it was depicted in oil paintings with everyone dressed in a white flowing gowns sitting about. My problem was that I had been told this went on from the dawn of time, that Peter stood at the gate and checked your passport, and there was some deadline determining entry, but I failed to see how all these burgeoning generations could be accommodated, and why we were not told the limiting factors that denied our entry. I also believe that subconsciously I felt it was unfair for all the other religions to be debarred.

Those were times when people didn’t question anything that they were told, by people whose standing and education gave them the authority. It is only when you become adult and well read that you begin to question the damage that has been done in the name of religion, to all those indigenous tribes and nations, many of which are now misusing their religions as a political excuse for material gain. Perforce, people today are ever more questioning. Religion is a very personal philosophy upon which many people depend on for various reasons, and especially in later life. The basic tenets of religion are sound policies for communal living, I feel it’s just a pity that at this time, when we are so materialistic, and to some extent irreligious, that there is not a viable alternative that will catch the imagination, uphold these values, and have sufficient influence to deter, in a way that religion once had.

I miss the sound of those bells, all those things that religion stood for and have been set aside because they don’t stand up to critical examination. The problem is that the human psyche, whether it is aware of it or not, does not want existentialism, but some power, of an unworldly nature, to answer the imponderable questions, and while religion in all its forms is adequate for the many, those who seem to have power and influence, may give token service to religion, but in fact are really materialistic with their own agenda, that often bodes ill.

What grips me is that we, the ubiquitous man in the street, are taken to be stupid and inexperienced, when the majority of us are fully aware of what is going on. Take the case of the junket that went to Australia in the late 60s or early 70s, at the behest of a contractor to see some pipes laid. Ultimately I laid those pipes, but the price of that junket, I am sure, was included in the price of the pipes. At the time I found it so absurd, because it implied that we were communicating either with Morse code or flags, when men were actually walking on the moon.

It is obvious that somebody somewhere has an axe to grind, when they gave all this information to the Telegraph, and then people rushed about acting all surprised, when even I, a stupid old idiot in the backwoods of Ireland, have known that it has been going on since the dawn of time, you only have to remember Tony Blair’s excesses. If I had gone into Parliament, wet behind the ears, a little in awe of what was going on around me, and discovered that among all the rituals that have been handed down from old rascals like Lloyd George, a few perks are taken for granted, you might just think it all natural. You certainly wouldn’t kick over the traces, it might be frowned upon, and you would be thought prissy.

The one thing you can say about Brown is that he is precipitate, afraid of his own shadow, and I strongly suspect under the influence of his spin doctors. This sweeping condemnation, like many of his others, is unreasonable, when one remembers that people’s reputations are at stake. Probably most of the MPs who are forced to have second homes, are responsible for no more than oversights, and anyone who has had a second home will realise that is not quite so easy to keep everything together as it is with only one home, and reasonable errors can occur. I myself have recently, as a result of the illnesses of both Sophie and myself, had a tremendous disruption within the home, and valuable documents have been mislaid. This has involved us in having to request duplicate documents to keep our heads above water.

I hope that those people who are going to be required to push another one of Brown’s new brooms, in this financial shake-up, will use commonsense, understanding, and not go at it like a bull in a china shop. First of all I think they should discover who leaked the information and why.

All this business about expenses has yet to be proven in every case, and it probably amounts to little more than a million if that, yet our Prime Minister, along with the Cabinet are getting their knickers in a twist about it. But at the same time of course, billions and billions have been lost by the banking system playing some form of roulette with my money and your money, without retribution, and what is worse they were given more of our money to play with again, and the government hasn’t seen, not only how out of proportion that all is, but seems to think its own reputation is more important than the jobs of the thousands of people who are being laid off or will be laid off, for the lack of a small amount of investment, which the banks with our money seem unable, for their own security, to supply If I was really cynical I might think that all this fuss is a purposeful distraction. When Hardy comes to Hardy I think we will find very few if any of the politicians currently under review will be found guilty – in other words it’s a storm in a teacup, that should never have blown up to the proportions that it has, with apparently so little basis for it ever to have started.

The glaring question, which I have already addressed previously, is that nobody seems to know where all the money went. I think it would be fair to say, that persons, or groups unknown have stolen it. If it is treated like that then the logical thing would be to assume that it will never come back into circulation, without this being discovered, when there is such a large amount involved. I know nothing about the ins and outs of high finance, but I would have thought when so much of the commercial world has been affected, that two things should have been done. One should be a worldwide analysis of trading on the stock exchange over the period when the damage was done, and the second, new currencies should be brought into service so that any of that stolen would be invalid. Something like that was done on this part of the world when the money was stolen from the Northern Bank. Above all I find it incredible that the government is proposing to take strict action, in accordance with the law, with those in Parliament who have knowingly transgressed. While on the other hand its representatives are happy to sit across the table of a finance committee talking to the manager’s of the very banks that committed these crimes, who are still demanding monumental salaries and retirement pensions, as if they had done no wrong. Surely they were complicit?

The thing that grieves me is that finances were never previously supplied to make recreational areas and recreational establishments, for those children and young people, latchkey folk, running the streets and creating mayhem. Yet now that we’ve got a crunch they are able to bolster the very banks who committed the crimes with more of my money and yours.

You can’t call the extreme criticism deluging Gordon Brown as a witchhunt, because after all he is a man, so it must be a Warlock hunt. From time to time I have criticised his statements, and his government, as so many people have, but I now believe that it has risen to such absurd proportions as to become totally unfair, unproductive, and a serious reflection on how we are viewed from abroad. He came to power as Prime Minister with the overall approval of the Labour Party, not by his own volition. He served under Tony Blair, who ignored his cabinet and treated them as if they were superfluous, with the result that some of the more strong willed resigned. This was no training ground for a future Prime Minister, who by his very nature tended to be reclusive. Hanging over him was this ‘will I won’t I’ concept of the chances of ever moving into number 10. I think that Tony Blair gave more credence to his spin doctor, whom he ultimately sacked, than he ever did to anyone in the Cabinet. Gordon Brown was particularly unfortunate in the timing of when he came to power, partly due to Blair not honouring his original agreement. Also, Gordon Brown is not an extrovert, which in itself makes his job more difficult.

Since coming to power, we have had serious crises of one sort of another that could never have been imagined by the average person, but the people looking after our welfare, and that includes Gordon, should have at least taken measures to halt the overspend that was so prevalent, and so widely condemned, resulting in the crunch. One of the most serious problems has been the intrusive nature of media reporting, making suppositions that ultimately turn out to have no basis of wrongdoing, but waste valuable time being dealt with and or answered. This was totally irresponsible, and I lay it at two doors, electioneering by the opposition, and a desire to create sensationalism in order to sell papers. This is further accentuated by the spin doctors or those around him, advising the Prime Minister to go public, when he should not give credence to this onslaught.

When people in responsibility are treated despicably, and at the same time there is a wish to maintain a high standard of capability within those responsible posts, you will inevitably disillusion any quality candidates who might have considered putting themselves forward, who would now seek their future in other media or abroad. It is time for the slanging match to come to a halt, for those in charge to stop dancing to the tunes of the media, and instead get on with the job in hand, and make it clear that there are proper channels for complaints if they can be justified, otherwise they will be ignored.

Most people today are sophisticated enough to realise that market research polls are based on the opinions of a carefully selected representative panel of people. I am firmly convinced that the majority of people do not want yet another outlet for their identity, they feel enough is enough. What I don’t understand is why the government has gone ahead, spending a fortune, on something the electorate abhors. I can’t believe that they have continued with this absurdity on the basis of a market research which tells them that it appears to be popular. With 50% of the population having access to e-mails, I would have thought that it would have been possible that someone in the government could have done a research for themselves. I assume that children below a certain age will not require a card. Pensioners already have an adequate identity card in their travel pass, which is either free or doesn’t cost us as much as £30. A high proportion of adults have driving licences which are acceptable under most circumstances for proof of identity. Finally with world travel, as common as it is today, there must be a few million people with passports. What in effect do these reductions mean to the overall scheme? Probably, a so-called national identity system for a very small proportion of the population that are prepared to pay, for personal reasons, £30 to have their identity in tangible form, and for foreign migrants.

I don’t think I’m unique, when I say I’m suspicious of the reasons for which the government intends to introduce this crazy scheme, at a time when it can ill afford the cost and the increase in civil servants, while having no idea about the take-up, especially as it’s not free.

Using my experience and my current needs, I wonder if I have the solution to the problem of purchasing those little items for the larder that are often forgotten about. Years ago I had a friend called Leslie, who was a shrewd operator, a fine businessman, who ran a large grocery Emporium in a country district where his customers came from all walks of life. He ran three mobile shops with great success, the basis of which was that he knew his customers needs

I suspect that a lot of pensioners, like myself, are dependent upon friends, including neighbours, relatives and hired help. I also suspect that young mothers under pressure are in a similar state. We all probably get one large shop a week or a fortnight, but the problem is that at the last moment we discover we are short of some essential, and short of taking a taxi at great expense, we have to do without. It therefore occurred to me that there might be an opening for entrepreneurs across the country to start running mobile shops in those areas where shops have ceased to exist. The basic principle is quite simple, once the shopkeeper knows the taste of his customers, he will not require a vast selection of commodities, like a supermarket, which in turn will reduce his overheads and the storage capacity at his headquarters. A simple system of flagging by the customer when they want him to call, will save him time, and probably all they need will be a few items to carry them over to the next big shop. He will never be able to out do the supermarket.

The fact that there are no mobile shops could signal one of two things, either nobody has thought of it, or it is unsustainable. Leslie, didn’t carry a great variety of goods in his shops as far as I can remember, but he would never have maintained the system unless it showed a handsome profit. Perhaps the buying public needs trained to the idea, and it might turn out that the more they use it, the more they want to use it. I suspect there will be quite a number of white vans coming on to the market at reasonable prices in the near future. As an offshoot to one of those small garage supermarkets, it might be a worthwhile experiment, or at least assessing the possible viability.

I rarely write about Northern Ireland because not many people are interested in it, since it was a daily diet of murder and mayhem, but now I am urged to say something because I believe our local and international politics are going down the tubes. 40 years on, we are not the country we were, we still have terrorists, but now we also have the indignity of a foreign country, Eire, interfering in the internal politics of the UK, where it affects us. The Good Friday Agreement brought about by David Trimble, was to some extent a sop to the IRA, the Eire government, and the American Irish lobby. I believe an American senator acted as chairman. At about that time the Ulster Unionist party was the strongest party, and had several seats at Westminster. Since then, possibly due to apathy on the part of the more conservative population, who were sick to death of politics, allowed the DUP to take over the representation of the Protestants, to a point where now the Ulster Unionists have one member of Parliament, Lady Sylvia Hermon, representing, probably, a high proportion of the electorate, who are still apathetic.

Recently we have had two conflicting financial problems, on the one hand we have the Treasury demanding that we make £122m efficiency savings inside the next two years, which is clearly a mountain to climb, and will have far reaching deleterious effects, at the same time, the Appointed Minister Designate for Social Development for the new Executive, Margaret Ritchie, makes a serious political blunder, which I believe to have been intentional, thus causing a judicial enquiry costing £300,000 and judicial censure. When asked about this she was totally unrepentant, and determined to continue in office. I find this also confusing as today there seem to be so many cases in political life both here and in Westminster, where lack of honesty seems to be able to be maintained without reprisal.

For example, Sinn Fein, whose elected representatives refuse to sit in Parliament, seem to be making a mockery of Parliament itself, because while not attending the debates, they are actually enabled, through knocking on doors, to achieve their ends. This implies by the very nature of its success, that in fact the debates are a waste of time, and the whole system could be conducted behind closed doors. This statement, of course, ignores the need for open government, which has been the basis of our legislative system. On the face of it Sinn Fein has disenfranchised the electoral seats that they allegedly represent, and they have been allowed to get away with it.

Recently, on a Sunday, in the politics show, Sir Reg Empey was confusing me with his new proposal of joining the Ulster Unionists in some manner with the British Conservative party, as a unit to represent Protestants in the North of Ireland. His confusing explanation, citing the different combinations that one can vote for, made me believe yet again, that the Unionist vote will be split among so many parties, that the whole of Northern Ireland conservatism will be relatively unrepresented. Whether this matters, in the light of what I have written in the paragraph above, seems open to debate.

Everyone will know that I sound off from a basis of ignorance, and am doing it again, this time about Swine Flu. Before I explain why I am dazed, amazed and think the government crazed, I want to set down a few basic thoughts. Ever since the Falklands War, when it was bruited abroad that Maggie had taken that momentous step, to distract from the financial situation of the country, when America rashly went into Iraq, taking us with it, because America’s financial situation was tricky, and as I’ve never understood why we are in Afghanistan, I’m always a little suspicious when governments seem to act almost in a panic, and illogically.

Because Sophie and I are not only very old but infirm, and in consequence do not meet that many people, we have found our immune system to be very delicate, and if we come into contact with people who are suffering from colds and flu, the chances are we will too. We have seven great-grandchildren, most of whom attended preschool crèches, and they too had their immune systems heavily tested. I’m not suggesting this is unusual, it is a recognized fact, and for this reason I was aghast to find that people flying in from Mexico to Heathrow, appear to have no individual check on where they have been spending the previous week or so. To allow a child who had flown in from Mexico, without any isolation precautions, however simple, and instead was permitted to attend school, and thus disrupt the schooling of a large number of children, was something that was totally illogical and predictable. The government is going to deluge us with copious leaflets, and has upped the number of treatments of this virus from 30 million to 50 million, in-store. What the shelf-life of these pills is, I don’t know, but it is probable that people would require the treatment over a fortnight or three weeks, if it is antibiotic. But at this moment, while I am pleased to say that we have very few cases, I find it beyond belief, that the whole information system is clogged with repeated reports of very few cases, when at the same time the government is allowing people to arrive unchecked in detail, presupposing that they feel that the flight information is an adequate check in itself.

Because the opposition didn’t pick up on the fact that the returning people from Mexico were passing through a public causeway and on to trains, in contact with others, struck me as surprising, when one compares it with the hype that the disease itself is being given. Do they know something I don’t? Is it not as bad as they make out? I’m just at a loss. After all, it was apparent that the travellers were prepared to be questioned, possibly have further examinations, because of the seriousness of the conditions in Mexico. To have carried out some basic checks, possibly even limitation of movement for a given time, on the travellers, will be less disruptive, on a percentage basis, than letting them drift in to circulation, as would seem to be the case. I would have expected that if the government was making that sort of gesture, it would have been emblazoned across the headlines, and there would have been discussion as to whether it would be reasonable and effective or not.

It all started roughly around the time that I was on honeymoon with Sophie, November 1944. She was frightened out of her wits when she heard her first Buzz-bomb, I was used to them, teaching in the South England, with them flying over everyday. If you heard them you were safe, once the sound stopped, one waited to see where it had fallen, thankful when it was not on you. Then followed in order, the V2, and the atrocities of the atomic bombs on Japan. We didn’t think of them as atrocities then, merely retribution, the change of heart came later. That basically was the beginning of the Cold War, and the Space Race, where scientists were given large sums of money to pursue their own private hobbies, without let or hindrance. Ever since there have been burgeoning space programmes, throughout the world, that to me seem nonsensical. I think it is time that an accountant brought up a balance sheet to see whether the gross, worldwide expenditure, on space travel, space stations, satellites and the rest, have provided the taxpayers throughout the world with value for money.

Yesterday there was a piece on television about the Jodrell Bank telescope which had been refurbished. I have no knowledge whether fibre-optics was the discovery as a result of the space programme, or was inevitable. What amazed me about this television screening was that by using fibre optics, with the refurbishment of Jodrell, they are now able to link up all the other telescopes in the UK, and then make such discoveries that will show all the features that the scientists have been trying to find, such as planets similar to ours, without going into outer space, at what must be a fraction of the cost.

That is only one feature of the way in which governments take decisions of how they are going to spend our money, often without reference to us, or value for money. Currently, according to the pundits, we are facing the slippery slope that could lead to a severe recession, and yet every day practically, the government is producing spending plans in millions, that clearly are off-the-cuff, and proposals, not thought out in any detail. Yesterday they were talking about leading the world yet again, which always cost money, and at the moment we are broke – they never seem to learn that the world doesn’t want us to lead them, even if we could.

There is a dichotomy between the approach of the individual and the approach of our leaders, and in that I include both opposition parties. They are fighting an election, and trying to achieve acceptance in any way they can. This in general, seems to be a modification of the tax system, and expenditure on eye-catching projects. The man in the street on the other hand is scared out of his wits in case he is one of the next ones to get the boot, so his approach is to save as much as he can, and in the future live conservatively, until there is day light. I wonder why the government and the opposition don’t take this into account, but are steadily intending increasing the long-term future tax burden with their current policies, which seem to be at variance with the grassroots approach, the people providing the taxes?