Old Gaffer

Category: General

  • The anomolies of the credit crunch

    The power shift.The extremely wealthy will go on purchasing from the very best shops, otherwise no one would know that they were the very wealthy. The yuppies, with their champagne glass, before taking the tube home, I suspect will be searching the ‘situations vacant’ columns in the press. The middle class, and the lower-middle-class, with their two cars, their two jobs and two children, will struggle on in the way they do, but with fewer frills. The very poor will still be so. So this leaves the wrinklies, some with their pensions, their savings depleted, will be the last bastions supporting the British economy. This has been obvious for some time, especially in the supermarkets, where those in work are filling the aisles at the weekend, but for the rest of the week it is the elderly who are doing the shopping, buying a coffee and a bun at 11 o’clock, and in many cases cooking the food, rather than taking packets home,

    Irresponsibility. One aspect of the credit crunch, has been that everybody seems to be aware of where the responsibility lies for the situation we are in, the civil service departments and those in the government, that control financial transactions. What I find not only surprising, but unacceptable, is that no one seems to be taking the blame, no one has been reprimanded, when in my view the situation has been obvious to many of us all, and written about for over two years.

    The sea, sailing, and water taxis in the credit crunch. Having sailed to and from Africa in the 20s, and then served aboard a warship, I have always had a notion that I would like to have a small sailing boat. At one time I actually bought the plans to construct a sixteen foot amateur racing yacht which I was going to build in an extended garage. The problem was that the family wouldn’t sail with me, so it all came to nothing. We now live at the seaside, where once there was a harbour and a beautiful view of the Irish Sea, but in their wisdom the council decided to close off the harbour, build a huge revetment and install a large marina where the harbour had been. The other day Sophie and I went for a walk in this area, and the number, variety and cost of the boats tied up there was astounding. We had many Millions of pounds worth of toys floating in front of us. I think the proportion of sailboats to motor- boats was about even. I, of course, was mainly interested in the sailboats, but remembered a holiday I had had in the South of France, where a Frenchman kindly offered me a sail in his motorboat. Apart from the problem of getting it away from the mooring, the rest was just like driving a car on an airfield, with about as much skill and interest. I find it unsurprising that people in the first flush of enthusiasm, often do not wish to take the time and want to face all the difficulties of controlling a yacht in rough water and high winds, when the yacht becomes really interesting and is in its own element. Instead they buy a motorboat, a water taxi, at great expense, and within a year or so rarely go out in it, and try to forget about the annual costs. It is my experience of looking at boat yards all my life, that people tie up money in a boat, with every intention of using it, but there is always some reason for doing something else. I believe the credit crunch will affect the boating industry more than any, which is a shame, because it has taken decades to arrive where it is today.

  • Can we really understand Government policy

    After two months I think I’m back, really, but I’m suspicious enough to be cautious.

    These days I am very concerned because I worry that we are no longer governed by the Cabinet, but rather by un-elected spin doctors, representatives from the Labour Party and other influences, in order for the existing government to maintain power, and be successful in the next election. It seems that those at the top of government are more like gerbils in a cage running round on a treadmill, powered by public criticism. The number of unworkable proposals that have been put forward and then rescinded in recent months, especially under the pressures of the credit crunch, seem to prove my point. I have said before that the reason we are in this situation is that while the average man in the street could see it coming with the ever-increasing internal debt, because of buy now and spend later, unfortunately it was grossly aggravated by the Treasury and the Bank of England permitting dealers to invest in exactly the same problems abroad.

    How the very poor are going to fare in the coming years is a given. Those of us pensioners who have been frugal all our lives, those being made redundant, and those struggling in business at the high street level, have been and are going to be taxed heavily to make up the shortfall, and ultimately a large proportion of us will join the very poor. The other day I was talking to a lady who specialises in counselling those with personal problems, and the quality of her work is such that she obtains clients purely by word of mouth. She told me that an unusual and growing proportion of her clients are suffering severely on a financial level, many of them because of the credit crunch, which was so sudden and so deep, that it gave them no opportunity to retrench, as they had expected the high standard of living, that we had been given to believe was secure, and had made decisions accordingly.

    What I find extraordinary is that there seems to still be the same opportunity to buy, often heavily, if one accepts the TV ads, without security to back the purchases, with months if not years of interest-free loans. How often do you see someone open a wallet at the cash-out of a supermarket, that has pages of credit cards either in waiting, or perhaps redundant. The government is taxing everything in sight, without rhyme or reason in many cases. If the price of everything is going up, then the VAT is consequently rising also, and this is particularly applicable to food and fuel. I repeat, the government sets out its budget in April, but doesn’t seem to stick to it. If it did, the amount of money that it had calculated to receive from food and fuel would be so much in excess that on those items the VAT could be modified, to the benefit of every section of the community, especially transport and haulage.

    While I was without any access to the Internet I saw a proposal by the government for charging vehicles by the mile, using satellite identification. I just wondered, when one considered even the policing of the system, the recording , and the cost to the individual motorist for his equipment, just how much profit there would be, and the fact that there would be yet another government computer that will go down inevitably, as they all seem to do, and the chaos and cost that getting that lot sorted, would engender.

  • One last word on the Olympics

    To continue the comments on the Olympics written in yesterday’s post, and I hope for the last time. While it was pleasing to see that so many of our own athletes have achieved such success, the number expressing the extreme pressures the training had involved, and the relief of some that it was now over, was pertinent. It was equally interesting that others seemed to be dreading the fact that they have another four more years of gruelling training and an almost monastic life, for 2012. The people that I am really sorry for are those who reached the finals, carrying with them their own, their trainers and the tabloids belief that they would win a medal, when in fact all this workhas come to virtually nothing, because they won a fourth or fifth or sixth. For them there won’t be the plethora of media interviews, a book published, stores opened, and the financial rewards of the medal winners. What I inevitably wonder is what long-term effects this tremendous build-up of strength and stamina will have on the individuals as they begin to wind down. I have led a life which has resulted in more than an average number of breakages and torn ligaments, and I am aware of the long-term problems this can create.

    The difficulties that I have seen over the years, that I disliked, and distrust,is using sport for political ends. This recent decision to stop the Zambian team from playing international cricket had absolutely no effect on Mugabe, and yet the government seems to go on with this absurd approach to politics. In the North of Ireland, the politicians that represent the divisions within, have been squabbling for about three years concerning the site of a proposed stadium in which to stage elements of 2012, and an annual international final for Galic football. The fact that the stadium will require to be huge for those two events, and will sit relatively empty for the rest of time, while costing a fortune to build, and causing the fans to have to travel considerable distances to reach it, seems to matter not one jot. It is in fact just another political football.

  • 19.08.08,I am Back at last

    Authors note,and 4 questions
    Being without broadband for about 7 weeks and a telephone for a fortnight, has given me time to reassess the blog. Over a long period I have been unable to see my stats, but my Dutch friend, Jan, was able to tell me that my readership remained relatively stable in all that time. He suggested that schoolchildren were using my biography to help with their projects. In consequence I shall separate the biography as an entity, cut down on much of the comment, and just contribute, when I have something to say.

    Four basic questions which affect us all.

    Q1. Apart from war, can you think of any national requirement, that takes anything up to seven years to plan and put into effect, costs 20 billion pounds overall, or on average in Britain, £1000 per dwelling, and finally only takes three weeks to put into effect and complete?

    Q2. Apart from sport, can you think of any other activity where those who are most successful are required to be tested for drugs?

    Q3. While running two unsuccessful wars, probably having to go to obtain large loans from the International bank, bolstering failing banks, and with ever rising inflation, and a reducing standard of living, where is Britain going to find the money to pay for an extravaganza like this last Olympics.

    Q4. Do we really like the way that the Olympic Games has developed and the effect it has had on our daily lives and the BBC’s policies.

    It’s all really about money. I can remember when it was purely amateur, then sponsorship came along, followed closely by professionalism coupled to television broadcasts.. Do we need to have the equivalent of one whole, National, television channel taken up, not just with the athletics, but the hours of tedious chatter-patter padding, so that we see it as it happens? A good many of the heats are a bore, and esoteric events like shooting of interest to a very few. If you go through a list of all the events, I just wonder how many really interest you, or do you just switch channels. I haven’t the time to sit and listen again to some has-been reliving his or her past. How many of us will be able even to attend London and see the games? We are no longer the sporting nation we used to be, we don’t see children playing ball games in the park, only of a few schools now train for cross-country races, and while I used to have PT every day, go swimming every week, play sports twice a week as part of the school curriculum I suspect today, there is not so much swimming, or even sport as part of the school week

    The opening sequence ofthe Chinese Olympics was incredible, The unbelievable, drilling, and a highly sophisticated electronic communicating system that must have gone into achieving such unbelievable unity in so many hundreds of people, all performing the same acts in total unison over an incredibly long time. The cost to those people by being trained for at least a whole year, in energy, and in their daily lives must have been immense. I assume they were soldiers.

    To me the Olympics has become an ego trip for a small group of people, some at the head of sport, some who are politicians seeking approbation, and a high proportion of those involved are as much, if not more, interested in the financial returns as the sport. The Olympics, like professional football, is no longer a sport. Sport in my day was nowhere near as refined as it is today, it was a lot more casual, and to be honest, a lot more fun both for those partaking and the audience. I believe a lot of the fun has gone out of sport. Sport is clearly far more stressful for the participants now, and it includes considerably more cost to the fans. I just wonder how long it will be before the man in the street throughout the world will wake up to the fact that so muchof sport is just an ego trip for a very select few, at his unaffordable expense.

  • The last post?

    I feel rather like an American redwood tree, growing contentedly in a field, and now felled in the name of progress, because it was on the centre line of a new motorway. My current inability to go on the Internet, has given me pause to reassess my future.

    My daughter is convinced that circumstances are telling me to give up the blog. To some extent I feel that I have come to the end of the road because my comments are sometimes repetitious, as the sins I comment on are committed repeatedly, and often I find what I have said one day is repeated the next or a few days later in the media. I find that I also occasionally a have an incredible number of readers, and someone told me that it was probable that schools were using my biographical material for projects.

    In consequence I am at a crossroads. Clearly, at sometime in the future, I am going to have the Internet problem untangled by a specialist, who is currently on holiday. I get very few comments on what I write, and as I have said before, it is rather like shouting down a well, all you get back is the echo of your own voice. I am therefore considering taking the biographical material, adding previous apposite posts, and leaving it so that those who want to research the past and review the rate of change in 80 years can, thus leaving it to others to point out all the dishonesty, the subterfuge and the downright criminality that is abroad today.

    I suppose what I’m doing is running a flag up the pole to see if anyone salutes it, a ploy I learned from Tony Blair.

  • Please leave us alone

    Until the the Northern Rock affair I was a relatively happy man and then everything changed. I had built up savings over a period of time so that if the wheels come off we can pay for care. I had no problems writing or posting the blog, and life was relatively uncomplicated. I have previously said if it ain’t bust, don’t fix it, but one can’t fend off the deluge of Microsoft updates forever. It seems that everyone takes the Internet for granted, and if for any reason one is cut off, the whole system of information exchange breaks down.

    Now someone has engineered the loss of quite a bit of my money without me lifting a finger. I am having taxes imposed because the government is footing the bill to make up the shortfall created by a few people seeking high salaries and golden handshakes, with little thought for the future but at our expense. Unfortunately it doesn’t stop there, firms are taking over companies and forming huge conglomerates, that in turn force changes on the individual. With my broadband supplier being taken over, presumably as a financial proposition, I have lost my broadband, and telephoning the helpline is a nightmare. In addition I had a free anti-virus, which I was told was no longer free, and for safety’s sake I paid up a two-year subscription and am now being asked questions about blockages that I have no idea of the answers. In consequence it could be this ignorance which has caused the problem with my broadband. To sum up, by my accidental downloading of so-called updates I don’t want and don’t need, takeovers, nonsensical investments abroad, others who wish to make more money, have all contributed to me changed in my whole system of life, and are persistently trying to change it even further. I do not believe that they are doing this for my benefit, hidden in the system there is a cost to pay.

    I am old, not totally stupid, but I find having to learn something new every week, not of my choosing, about changes in banking, political changes, rules from the council, shops and practically everywhere else, is all beginning to annoy me and exhaust me to the point where I feel I must give up and hibernate. The problem is that it is not in just one sphere. Those who have control are constantly making new rules, deluging us with information leaflets with get-out clauses in small print, and insurance is a complete take-on. I believe we have arrived at a point where the phrase ‘buyer beware’ is no longer relevant because it is now too complicated to know what to beware of, and have so lost control of our own destiny.

    I find it ironic that I am having to put this on disc and send it to my grandson by surface mail, to post on the blog for me, because progress has cut me off at the knees.

  • 05.07.08, I’m Apalled

    I believe today, the press, en masse, are often allowed to act like a school of sharks in a feeding frenzy with no respect or decorum, even at a PM’s briefing. What I found unbelievable and which spoke volumes was that when asked why he did not pass through the Lobby, he actually answered instead of telling his interlocutor to do something earthy. On another tack, it doesn’t take even a normal person to realise all the implications of the vast amount of changes government is proposing in the near future. First of all it is going to cost a fortune because change is expensive in time and materials, and the recipients of the services that are being changed, will suffer in the meantime, if not in the long term as well. It is clearly just an effort to gain brownie points in the face of such wide disillusion, and the shortage of time before the next election. I would have thought that at a time when the majority of us are actually losing hundreds if not thousands of our savings, as well as being stripped of it by increased taxes and rising costs, the government would draw in its horns, and move slowly, rather than starting massively expensive ventures into unknown fields, where the outcome is not totally predictable. There is more than one area where this is apostate, housing and the carbon foot-print are just two. What I find most aggravating is that no one seems to take into account past history, when they are making decisions in the short term, when the effects will be felt long-term.

    Recently I was thinking about my life immediately after the war, our carbon footprint then was minuscule to what we have today. By today’s standards we were poor, considering every purchase carefully. We had no car, few had central heating, we generally heated only one room at a time, public transport was mainly driven by electricity, and most of the shops that we needed were within walking distance, which in turn was good for health. Very little of our food was imported, and holidays, if they were taken at all, were spent within reasonable travelling distance in Britain. Are unripe strawberries out of season, worth bringing all the way from California? This aspect never occurred to us in the old days, when we waited for the season to change and then enjoyed a renewed experience, and didn’t feel deprived.

    Now we are talking about whole swathes of our countryside that have been vandalised by vast housing estates with, maybe only occasionally a small group of shops, which are certainly not in walking distance for most of us. This was induced by the arrival of the vast shopping centres, and one could conject that some were at the instigation of the supermarkets. Now it is clear that even green field sites are being used in preference to brown ones. Essentially government policy obviously means nothing.

    People like myself have been writing for years about the efficiency of small groups of shops within a conurbation covering the major needs of the local inhabitants. This, not eco-housing of unspecified standards and quality, is what is required. Another vast housing estate, even if it does theoretically appear on paper to have a smaller carbon footprint, will, socially and with respect to travel, be another open prison. You only have to listen to the people who live in flats where the shops that are part of the area have had to close down. They claim that they have lost more than the convenience of the shops, they have lost that social element so necessary to their lives. Today, without the extended family, with two incomes, and the mummy run, there is little time to be sociable, and lives are far more insular. There are fewer church halls, scouts and girl guide groups, and less socialising among the young in a safe environment. Both these last statements and the psychological effects of them are well known, but the government only talks about reversing the trend.

  • 03.07.08, Three Thoughts

    An open letter to the medical staff of the DHSS I would like to confirm that the majority of us consider ourselves very fortunate to enjoy the quality of the Health Service we all have. In attending hospitals since I was about one year old, in the 20s, I have had operations, breakages and in recent years, been operated on, stabbed with needles and provided with new bits and pieces to keep me going. In all that time, and ongoing, I have received nothing but courtesy, sympathy, care and professional attention of the highest order. Any time a politician chooses a photo opportunity in a hospital, the patients questioned by the presenter will give glowing reports of the sympathetic care, consideration and the competence of the staff looking after them. The Health Service is unfairly denigrated, not because of the medical professionals working within it, but the politicians, the non-medical managers, and the media short of a story highlighting some individual short coming. This all combines to inhibit and or criticise the excellent work, with pettifogging targets, changes of direction, interference and random criticism. No organisation of the size of the Health Service can be perfect, but on a percentage basis I believe its record would be hard to be surpassed with the number of successful procedures that it handles daily..

    The Quantum Computer. I find it interesting that a few days ago I was writing to say that I thought there was a potential for a simple computer, reasonably priced, that needed no updating, and will perform most of the functions that the average home user would need. On the first of July, the Daily Telegraph wrote about a new system so complicated that it would take a highly trained person to manage it, yet they predicted it would be commonplace in the future. They say it operates by harnessing atoms. To me, who lost his hair over a short period through having the wireless transmitter for the computers, too close to his head, I am convinced that here is a source of great health risk. If you read up about it you will realise that it has some potential for scientists requiring highly complicated calculations, but would be a sledgehammer to crack a nut as a home computer.

    Why do they do it? They are forever rehashing old films, which were not only masterpieces in their day, but are equally of high-quality now. I have always been a respecter of a high proportion of the films Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart made. They made one together, called Sabrina. It was a simple story beautifully scripted, touching lightly on social and psychological differences, was amusing and clean cut. There were no confusing crowd scenes, no padding, the story was elegant and placed elegantly. Now Harrison Ford has been persuaded mistakenly, to make another version, which is so crass that one wonders why anyone you would have put money into it. Yesterday I came across another horror, it was called Rush-Hour, had a totally unbalanced, Afro-American, presumably star, as the lead, persistently talking rubbish at high speed, and to the total impairment to the story. The mayhem and smashed up vehicles alone will have a cost a fortune – I just wonder why it was ever produced.

  • 21.06.08, An unpleasant thing happened

    I recently was forced to buy a new computer. Nowadays, it seems that when you get a new computer you get free, sixty-day trial, versions of the latest software. On this new computer I was given Microsoft Office. For over 30 years I have been struggling with each new advancement, from the BBC1, right up to the sophisticated versions that we’re getting at about half the price, and 40 times the complexity. I still only just write documents and letters, do the family budget, illustrate books on Photo Shop Elements, use my camera, and the Internet. My needs haven’t changed in all that time, but I now discovered, because a 60 day trial was over and my Word programme suddenly went walkabout that it had changed the whole format, it took away my menu bar, and when I started hunting I couldn’t believe all the complexity of what I was finding including something called ‘ Widows and Orphans’. It was something to do with the top and the bottom of the page, but what in the world do I need to know about that for? I know where the top and the bottom of the page are
    .
    If we can’t persuade Microsoft and all the other manufacturers to keep it simple, stop upgrading us with downloads we don’t want, and sometimes accidentally allow to be installed, thus making our own software, to the likes of me, unintelligible. Then I think it is time that a new manufacturer comes onto the market with a very simple machine that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, doesn’t have to have up-to-date software, on the principle that the Navy extols, a sort of ‘if it was good enough for Nelson then its good enough for me’. I can’t really believe that I’m the only one with a home computer, not high-powered business, who just wants a stable piece of equipment, that I understand, that never changes, and has stood the test of time, at a reasonable price. Please! Someone out there open a factory and turn them out, you’ll make a fortune. Something about the level of a good quality 1995 model would be ideal.

  • 20.06.08, Author’s Note

    My regular readers will have noticed that the rate of posting articles has dropped over the last month, this was because the Press and the Opposition were saying pretty well everything I would have said, and I saw little point in reiterating the obvious, and my e-mail had also made posting a serious problem. It is now time for my other eye to be operated upon, and for at least a fortnight if not longer, I shall not be able to use a computer. In addition I am in the process of revising the policy of the blog, which I think has run its course in its present format. This process will take quite some time and I will keep you posted on the outcome.

    Lies and statistics we all know about, because we have been subjected to them for a whole decade, when government has tried to justify itself by allegedly meeting targets that it has set itself, in every field of endeavour, when those with experience in these very fields have been warning consistently that standards have been dropping and money has been thrown away. They don’t seem to learn, they consistently tinker on a daily basis with our most valued services, ignore the financial warnings that are given continuously, and now they are busy digging a deeper pit in every respect for the opposition to fall into when they are voted in in the next election. Where they are going to find the money to support all these new changes, is certainly a mystery to me. The sort of rubbish that is being perpetrated was demonstrated yesterday when the BBC was quoting statistics that over the last month domestic spending had risen, and they blamed it on the weather, and the purchase of new clothes. It is my humble opinion that those with any sense had realised that within the blink of an eye they will not be able to afford the luxuries they were used to, and before they all rise in price and are out of reach, they are buying them in. It is equally clear that although the tax revenue on some items will rise along with inflation, the economic pinch will cut the overall revenue, with obvious further tax income reduction, and as the government has taken on several long-term heavily funded propositions, hidden taxes will continue rise.

    I have said it before, and I’ll say it again, my grandmother in the 30s repeatedly said of the government and commerce, ‘don’t believe all they tell you, dear!’