Category: General

At a time when the trust in government is at low ebb, they bring back Peter Mandelson, whom for some reason they have made a Lord, to once again take up a post of being an adviser, rather than having been voted in as an MP. Whether it is the press or just public opinion, there seems to be the same amount of controversy over his appointment and his statements that wwre the case previously, one of which of course is his pay.

On a daily basis we are receiving woeful news about our finances, personal and national, the forecast for unemployment, and the general reduction in our standard of living, yet we also receive on a daily basis, from a government that didn’t realise the effects of the huge internal debt, new costly schemes in the various departments of our political structure, some as I have proven elsewhere, untried. Once again the government has grandiose schemes and innovations. A large proportion of the electorate, who could see the collapse coming, and were writing about it in newspapers and on blogs, including repeatedly on this one, are now giving warnings again which also will go unheeded. The last thing we need at this time either from this government or any other that is voted in, is innovation for the sake of innovation, we need to draw in our horns. If you read Peter Mandelson’s latest outpourings, you will find that he is urging the opposite to what I’m suggesting. I think some of them in Downing Street have even forgotten we still have to pay for the Olympic Games in 2012, in billions.

More costs in NHS. There is something called ‘The King’s fund health think tank’ which states that they want to improve care for patients by more innovation. They want to make use of video-conferencing – web chats, and patients should be able to send and receive e-mails from their GP, which all comes as the health service is in the middle of a 12 billion revamp, otherwise estimated at 50 billion. To me this is more like a case of having to say something to justify your existence. I never heard of anything so crazy, when only 45% of households are actually online, a proportion of them only the children in the house, and I suspect that 20% to 30% of the overall are the most vulnerable, the elderly, and those with only carers to look after them, who would never be online anyway. This sort of thinking underlines the fact that what we have are laymen pretending to be technocrats, while at the same time having no idea of the financial and technical ramifications of this type of proposal, both to the service and the individual. Yet again, when it is expected that our welfare bill will reach astronomical proportions, and the government is losing information, and having computer breakdowns on monthly if not a weekly basis, someone wants to throwaway more money on an untried scheme

Examining this aspect overall, underlines the fact that central government just does not work. More importantly, in this technical age of high-speed communication, records and number-crunching, instead of being in localised units, controlled locally, it has become a massive undertaking which I believe is totally unnecessary and undoubtedly exceedingly expensive and vulnerable. Big is no longer best

For a start the government is doing its world leader bit. They have built a hospital in St Helens which is alleged to be the best in the world. It was built under a system known as Private Finance Initiative, or PFI, whereby the NHS makes an agreement with the private sector to design, build and finance projects, such as this, and then the NHS repays the capital and interest over decades. In praising the design they highlighted, of all things, the skirtings and walls, which were curved so that the bugs could not take hold. As an engineer I can appreciate the increased costs both in design and construction that this type of initiative can add to a project, and I suspect that this is not the only case of experimental design. It is not clear who has the final say in the details of the design, and the cost is always in the detail. The Tories naturally are cavilling, possibly with reason, as this is just part of a huge scheme of 31 projects, allegedly at a cost of 12 billion, but the Tories suggest it will be closer to 50 billion. When I hear of talk of curved skirtings, so the bugs can’t take hold, I began to worry, because this is pure flummery. If it were designed with no skirtings, but a coven joint between wall and floor, cleaning would be easier and construction cheaper. The staff won’t care, and neither will the patients even notice, and who is to tell that the bugs can’t solve this problem like they do the rest?

The private sector may or may not have the interests of the NHS at heart, but what is certain, they are not in it just for the ride. I do question how much supervision is given to the initial overall specification, and later to the detailed design and execution, or are we just buying a hospital off-the-shelf, and picking the prettiest one on offer? As some of these contracts have already been constructed and others let, this credit crunch must come as an awful shock to the financial section of the NHS, who are going to have to foot the bill for decades to come, for any amount of new hospitals, and will they even get the additional money, or will there be cutbacks here as well?

The government is proposing that as a result of the large percentage of children of 16 and under who are becoming pregnant, and the level of sexually transmitted disease, they propose to have sex education of five-year-olds and upwards in the schools. I often use an analogy to discover the snags in a problem. If you teach a child of any age, depending on its ability, how to pick a lock, its imagination, and its interest, would have it experimenting with picking locks at every opportunity. Sexuality is a highly complex, psychological and physical change in outlook, and physique, as a child grows up, and the rate of change, the reactions to change, could be said to be unique to each individual, and are mainly dependent upon information and association, and hence this proposal has a high level of risk

>From the past on until WW 2, there was a strong taboo on the discussion of sexual matters between children, and some adults, and this applied pretty well across the board. Looking back to the period just before the war, our secondary school tended to have a social relationship with a nearby girls’ secondary school, with the result that some members of the fifth and sixth forms would gravitate at the end of the day to meet some of the girls. The whole thing was totally innocent; to my knowledge not only was there no petting, even kissing was not practised. In retrospect I think it was as much because we were generally totally ignorant where it came to sexual matters, and the jokes that were passed among the boys, would today be considered puerile. The war put an end to that, because we were scattered like chaff in a wind, by evacuation. The war also tended to divide the sexes, men and women were cut off from relationships outside the services for long periods of time, which made a return to quasi-civilian life, when they were on leave, to be totally surreal. In consequence, the mores that functioned before, were now steamrollered and relationships were less permanent. After the war there was a period in civilian life, of scarcity of major proportions, which in turn put us back more than the four years of the war, with the result we were so busy catching up, we were probably living at home, under the rigours we had had before we left.

I suggest that teaching children of any age the facts of life, from basic association to deep sexual relationships, has so many pitfalls, that it is the reason adults over the years have avoided taking on the task. Similarly I believe that not every teacher who will be required to give these lessons will be adequate to the task. This again is one of these broad brush attacks on a problem by the government, without a trial run on a small number of children, whose ages are within the range of those who are currently becoming pregnant and or suffering sexually transmitted diseases. The silly 60s, coupled with unbridled sex as a daily diet of TV, have torn away much of the reticence, and consideration, our generation took for granted. I believe the clock has run so fast that it will be very difficult if not almost impossible to turn it back, and sex education, which includes and possibly underlines the mechanics of intercourse, will open the door to more rather than less abuse, and possibly at an earlier age. The government is opening a Pandora’s box.

With the governments of the world clearly in a tailspin, it is difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff and this hasn’t been helped with respect to our own economy, when doubts have been cast on the high reputation of the last Chancellor, and few seem to trust our current one. There are some extraordinarily wealthy people who are buying up companies at this very moment at knockdown prices, there are others who are complaining that they’re in trouble. I find it incredible that, in the middle of this crisis, Bombardier have contracts for new aircraft for companies, when there appear to be dozens of aircraft grounded due to the collapse of the companys across the globe. It is this level of irrationality that makes me feel that this panic has in some way been engineered, or if not, is perhaps not as serious as the politicians would like us to believe

Somewhere, someone has put the frighteners on us all, and I just wonder, just how valid this is. Pensioners who can afford to, are forced to save for that evil day when they can no longer look after themselves, and yet the government insists that if they have savings they will be required to pay for themselves for care in a nursing home. So we put money into savings accounts and buy stocks and shares that we think are blue-chip and consequently believe them to be safe. Suddenly we discover they ain’t safe, and we lose that security we were banking on, because the government, while happily proposing to take our money, did nothing to secure it.

Unless we also lose our pension we still have to shop, buy clothes – how ever little, travel, and give small gifts to our great grandchildren, so to some extent the economy is going to be bolstered. Apart from those poor devils who lose their jobs, this will be the status quo of a very high proportion of the whole of our nation, we have to eat, we have to clothe, public transport will still be running, hospitals will still be full, and life for a large proportion of us will be relatively normal, except that we might just be peering over a shoulder, to see what the government has in store for us. It is this latter that frightens us, not because of the collapse of the financial markets, because we can’t make head nor tail of that, but because we do expect swingeing increases in taxation as a result of enormous bailouts, and possibly some irrational thinking by our Chancellor.

As I understand it, the real problem is the liquidity of money in the commercial sector. It has been for many years an accepted policy that business is run on an overdraft, just think of an unnamed company the size of Tesco’s, the vast number of shops, the incredible variety of products on offer, and the inevitable waste, all of which must cost millions, and is unlikely to have been supported by cash, so the unnamed company is paying the interests to the banks on the money borrowed, at this moment. This must apply to a tremendous amount of the high Street, so why the panic? From where I sit I see a feeding frenzy by the media, government officials running about like chickens with their heads cut off, and yet me and my much younger neighbours can still sit down to a reasonable meal, go shopping in the car, they even go to work, and even if we choose, go and spend a night in a hotel at a seaside resort. Anybody who knows anything about finance will probably think me a total idiot, but then, I don’t think I’m alone, because I am finding the whole business of so-called meltdown to be difficult to understand, and believe that it contains elements that have nothing to do with me, that I would find irrational, and even suspect.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from my friend in Holland . Previously I had said that I would like somebody to elucidate. And while I’m not sure that he has done that totally, he has certainly given me yet another slant on the whole sorry business. It is interesting that a quiet and charming, very conservative man, living in a very conservative country, can suddenly have this level revulsion.

This is part of what Jan wrote
It is amazing what is happening at this moment. All the money is simply evaporating, just like boiling water. It disappears but then it returns very slowly to condense in other places. I think that especially the small investors, who wanted to increase their profit a bit because the interest does not compensate for the amount of taxes they have to pay, will be the losers.

Who will be the great winners? One day the buying will exceed the selling, the rates will rise and the grabbing by the very wealthy will start. Money makes money. Also a number of Banks will pull off a big stroke of business, leaving pension funds and small investors with their losses.

In an interview on TV we were told that all the bonuses which were given to the presidents of Banks, companies and concerns in the USA in 2007, were equal to the amount of the 37000 Human help organisations, that are giving their assistance in Africa. That must be many billions.

I don’t know what will happen. For the first time in many years the price of houses is going down, and inflation is rising up to 5%. Why do so many banks become bankrupt? This could be the moment to hide earlier terrible losses or fraud? In time we will learn. We hear alarming messages about the Fortis Bank which I wrote to you about. This Bank is now nationalised.

My final comment
What I’ve found disgusting about this whole business is that once again it is the poor and the innocent who are being made to pay for their naiveté, when what we are really discussing is a form of theft, where those with no shares, very little income, will be taxed, even if, at the end of the day, they have any incomes to tax, to pay for this enormous bill that even the financiers can’t grasp properly. Our governments across the world have let us down, have kowtowed to wealth, instead of being critical of how it was achieved. What worries me is that the new cycle of buying and selling has already started.

It started with the ‘Silly Sixties’, when anything was permissible, and coincided with the new age of the computer. Prior to the sixties the average man in the street had pretty parochial horizons and ambitions, because he was not wealthy, but he was sure of his own security of tenure in employment and some if meagre support in old age. Mortgages were for the wealthy and upper middle-class, Joe Bloggs paid rent weekly or monthly, and the repair of the property was not his responsibility. He had no car to maintain and replace, he didn’t need it, public transport was efficient and abundant, and his house was unlikely to contain many electrical goods apart from a radio. About this time foreign travel started to become more available, where office boys, on low salaries could have aspirations to sun themselves on a beach in the Costas, and this financial relaxation also applied in every aspect of our lives. Exotic foods were brought in, new cheap furniture replaced the family heirlooms of mahogany and oak, because the design was alleged to be chic. People ran about half naked, and the crease in someone’s buttocks was a common sight. In effect it was all change for the sake of change, from the type of soap that we used, to the new electrical labour-saving equipment we bought, all of which became a must-have, and we as a nation became borrowers instead of savers. This was accentuated because the warehouses that used to sell spare parts, enabling the repair of damaged products, rather than buying new, went out of existence, causing the throwaway society to become established. Takeovers became common and competition for markets increased, enlarging the availability of different designs of the same product, which in turn encouraged people to keep up with trends. People no longer shopped as a necessity, instead shopping developed into a pastime, which had a price. If the money wasn’t available, it was just too easy to use the credit cards so gratuitously rained upon one. Finally there spawned a new market, car boot sales, where products that had cost not only tens of pounds, but some 100 of pounds, sold, in pristine condition for a pittance.

Global meltdown results primarily through the existence of the World Wide Web. Previously traders could not make instant assessment and instant decisions which were instantly implemented. In which case Greed, always with us in every walk of life, would have been discovered and dealt with before it became dangerous. Before the computer, trading was done by telephone, by telegram, and by Telexes, and this meant that the information at some point had to be written down, or typed by hand. In other words the whole process was slowed down to a pace whereby reflection was possible, and it was more likely that the instructions would require a second opinion before being sent. The new traders were not playing with their own money, were given a smack on the wrist if their performance was poor, or a thumping bonus if they made a killing. They presented an entirely different and new set of circumstances. People in charge could now be in office for a short time, and their contracts permitted them to leave with a golden handshake commensurate with their success.

Because I know little about banking, and even less about worldwide financial interchange, I am a putting my thoughts on paper, in the hope that perhaps someone will elucidate. The question all of us are asking, possibly subconsciously, is where the hell has all the money gone? Perhaps like foreign aid to some of the African countries, it has been siphoned off to Swiss or similar secret banks, but surely not in the quantities we are talking about. I fail to understand why we, the taxpayer must provide the money for banks to actually lend to one another, which is what I’m being told on TV. If there was sufficient cash a few days ago, it surely isn’t, in fact, cash that they want, but it is cash that they are taking away from us.

We are told that the problem is across the world’s financial institutions as a result of them buying up promissory notes for properties throughout the world, and especially in parts of Europe and America, which in turn represent the value of properties, and the value of those properties is dropping, primarily because once there was trust between these institutions and banks, but when a few of them failed, panic spread like a virus and the whole system collapsed like a pack of cards. I believe it has been universally accepted that part of the cause has been as a result of what can only be referred to as a response to a mindless dealing by the finance houses for short-term profit. The overall problem as I see it, put simplistically, is that if I buy a second-hand Rolls-Royce I can hardly afford, at a price in excess of its value, and then try to resell it, I’m going to lose money, but surely I am not so stupid as to buy at a price that includes the value of my house, my assets and my income. So if I lose a packet on the deal, I may have lost some of my assets, but surely not all, and I will still have my income. In other words it is a matter of scale, and bearing in mind that the assets that these people bought still have a value, because throughout the world, there is a shortage of accommodation, and they surely are also trading at the same time in other commodities for which there is a market and a profit, I find it difficult in my simple way of understanding exactly what is going on. Can you imagine 700,1000,1000,1000 dollars even as a number, let alone as a value?

What I find equally surprising, if my assumption is correct concerning the actions and motives of those involved in the finance houses, is a that they are not being asked to repay the hundreds, thousands and millions that they received in bonuses and handshakes. If when all this mayhem started I immediately guessed the cause, I cannot believe that those within the industry including members of the civil service, did not realise what was happening could lead to disaster. After all, it didn’t happen overnight.

Is it purely panic that is responsible for the meltdown, or is there a serious underlying cause of some monumental scam, financial or political, that has wrecked the economy of so many countries, but not all? I notice that the markets are still functioning, people are still buying and selling, and rather like in the wild, there are hyenas circling the kill, only these are called ‘bargain hunters’.

A long time ago, when keyhole surgery started to become a common procedure, I felt that there should have been some form of profit and loss bookkeeping, in the health service, so that when new procedures, inventions, medicines and treatments were introduced that showed a cost saving in parallel areas when compared with the earlier systems, the savings should be set against more expensive procedures, medicines etc., so that people could benefit where they hadn’t previously. In this way I felt that the health service could maintain its quality, increase the number of procedures that were open to the general public, while not increasing the overall expenditure by any great amount, and so provide a more extensive service at roughly the same cost. It didn’t happen, but then perhaps I was on the wrong track

Currently free prescription charges are being brought in, in stages throughout the UK. There is no shadow of doubt, as is happening with the loss of subsidised dental care, that people who are strapped for cash, tend to go without essential remedial measures. Consequently free prescription charges will somewhat alleviate this problem, but I do see problems ahead of the system as it is currently being discussed by the politicians who are, by default, broadly implying that there will be a blank cheque. The pharmaceutical industry is constantly discovering new medicines and cures, and it is the introduction of this research that creates the greatest income for the companies. I’m only guessing when I say that my experience of pharmaceutical products over a period of over 70 of my 86 years, is that the development and the spread and quality of these items has been exponential over that period, and will tend to be more so in the future. We are hearing of cures for various diseases that can cost hundreds if not thousands of pounds a year for just one individual.

I am aware that the health service tries to use viable products that are cheaper than some of the more popular ones. The problem that I see that requires addressing, with this new regime, is, there inevitably has to be a limit on what is available and to whom it is available. If I am right, also taking into account our current fiscal problems, then the rules must apply to all, the whole UK, and the postcode lottery must come to an end. In addition, the politicians must not only face up to this fact that some discrimination is inevitable, they must construct a feasible, legal structure for it to function smoothly, and admit that this is essential to the populace at large, if they are not to have a running battle of who is to get what where. Perhaps, with like the surgery, I’ve got it all wrong.

I’m not very well up on holidays abroad any more, and so I don’t know if the heinous crime which took place where my daughter, her family and friends were staying, is unusual, or now part of the holiday scene. What I did feel was that I should draw attention to what has happened, as between them the family’s jewellery, money, sleep and all the ambiance that one pays for with a foreign holiday was lost.

My daughter’s family and friends have been using a particular villa in Portugal for holidays over a number of years. It is nicely situated with respect to the sea, surrounding landscape, and access to towns for shopping and meals-out, in other words it was ideal. It has its own swimming pool, which means that the little tiny children, some who can barely walk, can swim away safely under the watchful eye of their parents. One day, on this last holiday, my daughter, her husband and their friends went out for an evening meal. When they returned they found the house had been broken into, and all the lockable, inbuilt safes in which were all their valuables and money, had been bodily removed with the contents. The shock, the disappointment, and the worry that it could happen again, perhaps with them in the house, ruined the holiday.

My daughter hasn’t gone into the logistics of what had happened, presumably because she doesn’t know. My interpretation is that this while the villa must lie idle between occupations for periods of time, this would give the thieves the opportunity to break in at their leisure, dismantle and re-erect the safes so the owners of the villa it would notice nothing out of the ordinary. It would then be a simple matter to watch the house and in particular if there were no small children, to assume that the holidaymakers would venture out for an evening in a restaurant, which would then give ample time to break in, break out the safes, and depart with the loot.

It seems that generally, we have lost yet another one of our freedoms, to enjoy safekeeping and