Category: General

I just cannot believe all I’m hearing and reading concerning the vast changes in so many spheres of government, running concurrently, contrary to public opinion, and all in order to save money. Once again we are finding proof that Civil Servants, and Managers are not the right arbiters of standards in professional fields. Leave the Doctors, the Head Teachers, the Chief Engineers, to run their bailiwick, then we will save money. Every new approach, change in principles, and protocol causes an immense waste of time and money, which is the real problem. The Government is using every ploy possible to cut cost, raise taxation, and shed its load, because it has been budgeting badly for years.

Education.
In my last post I implied that I was certain government tinkering with the whole educational system had reduced the standards to a level, where Further Education suffered to the point where many degrees were not worth the expense they had cost the exchequer and drop-outs were at an excessive level. I was therefore unsurprised when I read in the Daily Telegraph yesterday, that Imperial College were adding a year to degree courses to bring the students up to an acceptable educational level. The philosophy of advanced academic education for all, while a proven fallacy for years, by its very nature unworkable, should have been abandoned and the old system, where the trades, which have also become degraded, could flourish once more so we would not have to use immigrant labour to fill the gap.

Medicine
Due mainly to government policy and harassment, we have lost our free dental care to a great extent. Do you notice they don’t reduce our tax because we are now paying our dentist instead of the Treasury doing so? Now the government wants to do the same with the Family Doctor. Many surgeries have modified their systems to accommodate the unsocial hours of the patients, offering small surgery units on prescribed days and most of the other proposals in this new approach the government is proposing, while still maintaining that personal relationship so vital to many patients. If the government brings in local Super Surgeries, not only will this have all the assembly line traits of hospitals, with no doctor-patient relationship, it will have a Manager, and soon become part of a commercial cartel, with all the cutbacks that will involve.

Lost CDs and Documents.
In my experience top Civil Servants have a soft ride, they pass down the work and consider their job is to manage. Middle management, the engine room of the Civil Service, is where the buck usually stops, where the stress is, and where most of the long hours are to be found. So one can’t say a top Civil Servant, carrying a politically hot potato, is tired, distracted, or confused, enough to forget he has the hot potato in his hot little hand. So I find it extra ordinary that knowing it should never have left the safe, it could be left on a train accidentally, not even in a brief case. Unless of course he had been reading it on the train and it had bored him to distraction.

Educational Chaos.
I expect like me everyone who reads this will fail to understand, first of all how they can have 600 schools that are in risk of closure, how they arrived at that situation, and what are they going to do with the children when they close them, also where are they going to find teachers of the right quality? Say each school has 500 children, that means that a third of a million children will be affected, .worse, if you take the population of each age group as being 0.7 million, and that there are seven age groups involved, say 5 million, of which two thirds are going to secondary school, or 3.3 million, then those affected represent roughly 10% – even as a rough calculation it is mind-boggling. Soph, who was a secondary school teacher, teaching to A level has said for a long time that the standards required to get into university and to graduate are too low, with the result that those who reach that level are not all confident and competent to finish the course, and that a high percentage of those that do are inadequate. When I was at university in the 50s in a class of 40, there were only two dropouts, one through serious illness. If her comments are accurate then some of the teachers are below par. Teaching requires dedication, a sensitivity to the reaction of the children, and the strength of character to obtain respect and that can control 30 unruly kids with a glance or a word, and doesn’t need to resort to a harsher punishment. It is not just yet another job!

Is this another government knee-jerk reaction, because inefficiency has allowed this condition to arise unnoticed? I’m sure it didn’t happen overnight, It is acting precipitately instead of with long and serious thought to the way in which standards can be improved without the children involved being disadvantaged.

Caveats.
I read somewhere that with the advent of the Internet instead of the passage of paper being reduced, as one would expect, it has increased immeasurably. Recently I have made a couple of purchases not on the Internet because almost all my purchases there have been a disaster, and I have lost money. These purchases were across the counter. In the old days, you walked into a shop, you trusted the man behind the counter, you expected the article that you purchased to last you a lifetime and it usually did, you paid, received a receipt and went home with the article. Today, the chances are that when you go into the shop they will only have a demonstration model, because warehousing costs money, and so you have to order, and then the paper-chase really starts, if you are fool enough to admit to having an e-mail address, not only do you get paper coming through the letterbox telling you about the delivery, the contract you’ve got, and an invoice, even though you walked out of the shop with a receipt that formed the guarantee, the whole thing is repeated on the Internet so, just to be on the safe side, you print that up so that you can read it at your leisure in case of some caveat that you object to. In some cases you even get telephone calls to see you if you’re happy with the product, generally at teatime. All I want to know is why the word of the man at the counter is not adequate, and if the product when it is delivered is not up to scratch, a phone call will get you a prepaid label and you can return it either to the shop or from whence it came. I strongly suspect, like the use-by dates on the packets of food, all this paper is to avoid being sued whether rightly or wrongfully.

On the second of this month I wrote a piece about knife crime. In the Daily Telegraph the other day both Blair and Brown were being castigated for the vast amount of money they have wasted during their time in office. In the piece, I quoted that Brown was proposing to waste a million pounds on advertisements in the hope of stopping knife crime, and I gave my reasons for saying ‘waste’. I now discover he has upped the anti for advertising to 3 million. What I find annoying is that it is pure knee-jerk.

Advertising has all the same principles as canvassing for an election. If you have been voting for one party all your life, the canvasser is wasting his time – except that if he doesn’t call some would be offended. Conversely if you dislike his party, he can talk or he might and you won’t be swayed. So he is really canvassing that small percentage of the waverers and the don’t knows. If you think of products instead of parties, the attitude of the viewer of advertisements, as a generality, follows the same path, after all politics is an intellectual product. One other thing, he is talking about 16 to 18 year olds who carry knives and are likely to use them, probably less than 1% of the population, and it is highly probable that this particular 1% wouldn’t waste its time looking at advertisements. If I am right in this assessment, the £3 million is going to be totally wasted. This government has always had a propensity for throwing money at things in the hope of getting away with a cure. The 3 million is needed because the government is going to use high octane professionals to direct, to write the scripts, hunt out the locations, select the cameraman and actors, and then put the whole story on a disc.

I have had a different idea which would involve the very people who share their lives with the knife carriers, and cost buttons by comparison. Instead of spending £3 million, on professionals, with their egos, their units, and their large salaries, why not have a competition for all secondary schools, or only those in areas where gun crime is prevalent. The schools to put forward how they would make advertisements that would be telling. The winning schools would be provided with the technical hardware as a permanent gift, to enable them to create the advertisements that they propose. This idea would have several aspects which would bring home the message. The fact that so many children were initially involved in the subject and the creation of a scenario which would show the horror of gun crime, the fact that some could be acting as part of the procedure as gun criminals, and the fact that it was competitive and one would we hope be highlighted on regional television as progressive programming, I believe that this would be far more advantageous than the ads.

My regular readers will know that it is now my policy only to write when I have something new to say, or something worth repeating, because in the last two years I think I have said it all. What I wrote yesterday caused me to think more deeply of the future, when I hear the outpourings of the multination meeting in Rome insisting that we grow more food, while at the same time government is still dithering about the production of energy. The problem is politicians have a habit of making grandiose statements to appear that they are doing something, without an in depth examination of the long-term effect or the side issues that these decisions can make. I give the usual caveat, I’m a civil engineer, not an authority on nuclear power and the other methods of generating energy.

The decision is urgently needed now on the way forward in the face of a fast changing world, to ensure that we can maintain the power necessary for our needs. The problems of nuclear power are well known. As an engineer who has dealt in marine design I can assure you that using wave power, with the singular parameters that it raises, make it a slow and expensive process, with an unpredictable outcome as it is dependent to a considerable extent upon weather conditions.. I know only what I have read concerning the production of petroleum and diesel from farmed produce. It would appear to take up a tremendous amount of space, and I suspect that with the changing conditions associated with global warming, the problems of over farming and the usual ravages of weather, the needs of a nation, let alone the whole world, will be poorly served by this system. Solar energy and wind power are only tinkering with the problem. With respect to oil, greed by the producers coupled with politics make it a racing certainty that if we are not to have our personal and national economies controlled by foreigners with an axe to grind, we have to find a solution which we can rely on in the face of all the changes that are going to occur in the future We may not like the idea of nuclear energy, but from my uneducated corner I can see no alternative and cannot for the life of me understand why the government has not set a course, long ago, instead of wringing its hands

Thinking about vast acres of rape being grown to provide oil, made me think more closely about the speeches concerning world hunger, that came from the international meeting in Rome. I have read for many years that our aid has a strong propensity for falling into the wrong hands, and that those for whom it is intended are no better off. Burma is a case in point. We have been paying our farmers set aside money to avoid overproduction and in consequence, waste. Are we now going to be asked to pay for these pastures to be dug up and sown with produce to feed the Third World, when the reasons for the poverty of the indigenous populations that concerns us so, is as a result of the greed and the politics of the people in charge. What assurance have we that the outcome will be any better than it currently is, and that those indigenous people will once again be respected? I am a cynical old man who has seen it all before, I believe that this is rhetoric with no logistical basis, and while it all sounds wonderful, so does the Charter of the United Nations, and just look how useless that body is when it comes to healing the wounds of the individuals it was intended to support. I just hope our political representatives have the nous to be very circumspect before they commit us to a policy that I see clearly will have very little outcome until the grip of the military juntas has been relaxed.

Are we getting our eye wiped? Yesterday, 02.06.08, the television newsreader gave a dissertation that the increased cost of oil was going to be passed on to air travellers now, and also sometime in the future, even though the purchaser had paid upfront for the contract of their journey, and would be further charged increased costs that could amount to anything up to £400. She also added that one could be stranded at one’s destination because the airline had gone out of business. I would have thought the Office of Fair Trading would have stamped on all this as soon as it was mooted. It appears that airlines want their cake and they want to eat it. They make offers to encourage us to fly, which I would have thought was a contract, and then they propose to put further surcharges on without any action being taken. Currently if you walk into a shop and an object has a price tag clearly written, the vendor, in all but extreme circumstances, is required by law to honour that statement and hand over the article for the price stated. I can understand that carriers of all sorts can no longer give long-term pricing when the cost of fuel is unstable. If this is the case, then they should not give long-term offers that they cannot sustain. People today have financial conditions that are totally outside their own control. It is therefore unfair to the unwary and the naive, that the government allows this situation to pertain. It is not sufficient to say ‘buyer beware’, after the event, the government should insist that once the contract is made it is inviolate, in common law a verbal agreement constitutes a contract and is inviolate, why should a written one be different?

The government itself is also playing ducks and drakes; in this case with taxes. Unless things have severely changed from when I worked with government contracts, the money to pay for them was budgeted annually, irrespective of the date on which the contract started and how long it would take. If for any valid or invalid reason, the assessed amount of money was not spent within the financial year, the surplus was taken back into the Treasury and had to be reassessed in the following year’s budget. This implies that the government at some point in one financial year is taking into account all the expenditure for the following year, presumably with a sensible sinking fund should anything go wrong. This in turn must mean that they have taken into account the amount of tax that they require, based on a yardstick, some weeks or months previous. How is it then that when the cost of fuel rises, which raises the cost of transport, heating, lighting and all the other dependent services, and these costs are then added to all our purchases, with the result that VAT has also risen, and thus tax income, that VAT is not modified? Some government expenses will unavoidably rise, such as school meals, but the overall assessment will no longer be valid and should be reassessed. It is noticeable that wages and many other costs have not yet risen accordingly. The government in effect has achieved a windfall-tax, which is totally unfair, and which it appears to have no intention of refunding, or reassessing. I always thought Westminster was populated by members of Parliament representing their constituencies and responsible for their welfare. Clearly I’m mistaken.

This paragraph is of something I wrote two years ago. Auto-suggestion prompts the ills of today. The editors are less critical, much is gratuitously violent and brutal. In the 30s we had not these options, just sport and our social life, not hunched over a TV, or reading magazines far worse than those we were forbidden. We played simple games, indoors and out, the main stress in general terms was schooling. Single-parent children suffered more stress than others, but we were unaware that this was detrimental to out psyche, and so we just accepted our periodically unhappy lives. Sport figured largely, from being toddlers. Universally, areas such as village greens, parks etc, once common grazing land, were where we all played. Often there were tennis courts, running tracks, and everywhere, small groups of children were playing some game or other. Children skated in the winter at ice rinks, most schools played football, rugby, and later the teenagers formed small groups to play games like tennis, football and cricket, and these developed, as they grew older, into a plethora of local teams, especially football and cricket, on local open spaces.

WW2 ended all this, with Dig For Victory, new housing, building etc. The young people were now thrown back on their own meagre resources, tribal wars, and later a more monastic life mainly spent in front of a blue screen in their bedroom. Hence the tougher, more bolshie elements make trouble. The money spent on so many, fruitless government advertising projects should be used to provide greater facilities for the young. I once joined a youth club, it was an aesthetically cold place, poorly run by amateurs – I left in a hurry. Young people know roughly what they want, and don’t look for the moon, but do not want second-best, an insult giving exactly the wrong impression. Perhaps the young should be consulted. A nationwide survey, of successful clubs might reward and give a benchmark for future design. The club must be better in every way than the homes that most of the young people come from and therefore valued by then, abuse resulting in banishment, would deter most bad behaviour, and respect is a two-way street

Assault and knife crime, currently under review, has gone beyond the above point. When the photos of the people who have been stabbed were viewed, it was noticeable that eight out of 10 victims were from immigrant backgrounds. We are told the tribal wars are more often between these groups. Lack of local district and parental supervision is a contributory factor, and possibly some local relationships with the police might have additional effect. People carrying out these crimes are not to be swayed by a million pounds worth of advertising, they probably never look at it. Previously I had suggested the use of mobile metal detectors randomly set up in schools and at night in areas subject to gun crime, but now I realise that with the ubiquitous mobile phone, the element of surprise would be almost immediately negated. What is clearly required is something like a three pronged approach. There must have been successes in some parts of the country in controlling these crimes, these should be studied. Young responsible leaders of social groups and members of the gangs should be canvassed for their opinions of cause and solution. This information then correlated from across the country, instead of the million pounds being spent on advertising, with say three trials made in different dissimilar locations of the proposals thus produced, might give a valuable lead to cause-and-effect.

The effect of the media? I saw a film called ‘The Departed’, it revolted me. My working life has been in environments where bad language and sexual metaphors are common, but those spoken on the film were so gratuitously used in practically every sentence, plus the most revolting sexual metaphors, something I had almost never experience at that level in 70 years, and I served on the lower deck of the Royal Navy. The gratuitous violence, totally unsupportable in a logical sense had people hammering one another with their fists to a degree that would have broken their fingers and torn their skin, but the battered, who should have been dead, got up to fight another day, while the batterers walked away with clean hands. People were shot out of hand, tied up and executed with a shot in the back of the head, and another for good measure. What I found so revolting about the whole process was that this film had been passed for viewers of 18 years old, had not been censored, was on television with recommendations for viewing, and a five-star accreditation. Aren’t young people without the experience to be critical of the logic of what is presented, at risk from films like this – providing a scenario to ape?

I find the government extrapolation of roughly gathered statistics, is causing knee-jerk reactions by both the government and the media, when quiet contemplation might have a totally different interpretation in what is seen to be a problem. Today we had a very crass example, where some backroom boy had done a bit of extrapolating and was frightening the daylights out of the Cabinet, by telling them that in 18 years the number of people with Alzheimer’s will be nearly doubled. I and my wife are a lot closer to 90 than we are to 80. We are fully aware of what the future could hold, we have seen it so often among our relatives and friends, from the ages of 60 upwards. We are fully aware of our responsibilities with respect to the Health Service and more importantly members of our family. We have no wish ever to be a burden on anyone, even ourselves. Having visited friends and relatives in even the very best of care homes, that barren existence has no place in our future plans.

If that is accepted, presupposing that the government has a legitimate worry about finding the money with which to deal with the problem of old age in the electorate, one could be forgiven for thinking that they have not taken an overview. Most of my family, and especially my wife have been religious people, by that I mean churchgoers, not fanatics. I myself originally had strong beliefs up to my teens when I was rudely awakened. I have always been careful never to attempt to influence anyone, including my children, about religious doctrine, because I am aware, especially in old age, it can be more than just a crutch. Now though, religion no longer has the strong views that used to be held, especially in Victorian times, and are now not common currency. In consequence people are not so restrained by their religious beliefs when it comes to suicide. What I find strange is that some countries accept euthanasia, and yet this country would prefer someone who is at the end of their tether, and an amateur at suicide, to attempt to take their own life, make a botch of it and thus become a serious responsibility to themselves, to their relatives and to the social services, instead of promoting personal choice with suitable safeguards, being carried out professionally, and responsibly. Who is it who is restraining what I see as the march of common sense, in an age where brutality is clearly increasing and to some, if you believe what you see on television, acceptable?

Politics. Because of my experiences as an adult over 70 years, it worries me when I see that those in Labour are proposing David Miliband as the next leader. He has been a member of Parliament for seven years, and held three successive posts as Minister of State, each for about a year. The worry, because a general election is on the horizon, is that if Miliband is appointed, our three main parties will have relatively young and inexperienced men as potential Prime Ministers. I believe that the mess we are in is due to the fact of Gordon Brown’s inexperience. It therefore follows that none of these young men should have over all, unquestioned responsibility, as has been the case since the landslide that took Blair into office. I remember the landslide that brought Labour to power in the 40s, and others since. An overall, unassailable majority is tantamount to dictatorship, and should be avoided at all costs. I think it unlikely that we would be fighting two wars and facing destitution if Labour had not had an overall majority. There are good people in all the parties, and their views at times of serious content should bear weight. I just hope that the electorate, in the next election, in apathy and frustration, will not take the easy way out of getting rid of Labour, but think long and hard of what they’re doing.

The Internet. I have been very unsuccessful in my dealings on the Internet. So it worries me when I am forced by commercial forces to have dealings on the Internet, or have to pay an excess for a bill in paper form. We are urged to have a care when making financial transactions on the Internet, that we don’t give away vital information. It seems that all in the government and business, are under the impression that everyone is computer literate and owns a computer. This of course is nonsense, but if those to whom it does not apply have to pay more to transact, the elderly and the underprivileged will yet again be disadvantaged further.

Verbal Talk-Talk contract. Anyone with any wit will not enter into a contract of any substance on the telephone, but the other day, Talk-Talk, forced me to do just that. I had a 20 minute monologue on the telephone with a gentleman who clearly was speaking from the subcontinent, and insisted that I listened to, and presumably tried to understand, all that he had to say, concerning the fact that my telephone lines and broadband were being switched to his company. I stated I was 85, was partially deaf and had no wish to continue with the discussion, all to no avail. He even had the outrageous cheek to say that as he was recording it, the discussion itself was a verbal contract, and that I would be receiving a written contract later. To me this was totally crazy. He insisted I sit while he read, and if I tried to stop him or question him, he would only go back and reiterate. If they were sending me the information what was the point in making me let my lunch go cold while he was feeding me information that represented pages, of which only some would be remembered, and call it a verbal contract. It seems big business has no respect for the individual, makes up its own rules, irrespective of whether they make sense or not. – the steamroller syndrome.

At least I was until today when I woke up realising we had been duped for years. In around the 70s a few of the members of my family were falling off the perch, and in consequence I periodically received small legacies. When some of these had accrued in my current account I went along to the bank and sought advice, took it and invested. With time I became more astute with respect to the dealings on the stock exchange, and my investments prospered, until that is, just before I went on holiday. I had been reading the press and interpreted that some of my stocks were in jeopardy. I trooped along to see the young lady who had been advising me at the bank, who had now been head-hunted by a financial adviser. When I had made my point she told me I had no worries, I believed her, went on holiday, but when I returned I realised I had been right. The situation has occurred more than once since then, even only a couple of months ago, just before Northern Rock.

The manipulations of the stock market and mainly the money markets, are a combination of shifting money to where it’s needed, but more importantly for some to accrue money. I suspect that the balance of the transactions is for generating individual wealth, rather than the good of society. I think the problem is that we took the stock exchanges of the world for what they were in the good old days when people had time to consider the options, and had not taken onboard the transformation of the computer and what high-speed communication had done to change the whole system. We were trusting.

Take the case of the young lady whose advice I sought, it wouldn’t matter how much or how little money she had to start with, as I’m sure she was on commission, so if she was as good as at the time I thought she was, she, and consequently all the hundreds of other financial advisers, should all be millionaires within a year or two, and be able to retire, but they were not, they were like the rest of us, wage earners. If you want an operation, you hope the surgeon has been thoroughly trained and is a member of the Royal College. This applies to all the professions, most of which carry insurance against professional error. Today round the world, there are rooms full of young people, probably some with a university degree, but no qualification in financial trading, sitting in front of several computer screens, making gargantuan deals across the globe, but the level of supervision is probably arbitrary, and the effects of those deals on the rest of us, unrecorded.

What I question is whether this current tremendous shake-up in the World’s finances is going to make any difference to the status quo in which financial transactions are conducted. I doubt whether either individually or collectively the politicians of the world will see the error of the ways finance has become global, and the risks that are thus embodied.

Youth Crime Impact. It appears that the increased spending has been almost a total waste of money and the targets have been missed in every case. In spite of this the government agencies are putting out statements which contradict those put out by the Criminology Department of King’s College London which has been doing a study. Add to this the fact that the crimes committed by girls has risen by 25% it seems to be another indication that a new approach is needed. I quote,’.. the government has placed too high expectations on the youth justice system and should be clearer about its limitations’. What I’ve found incredible is that the government appears to have not even tried a localised experiment, with the parents also charged with negligence at the time the child is charged with whatever crime is committed. Depending on the level of the crime of the child, the pair of them should then be required to do social service..

Change In Parent Status. Yesterday in the Daily Telegraph there was an article which indicated that fathers were not an essential part of family living, and it was quite acceptable for a child to have two mothers. I’m not entirely sure on what basis this has been decided, and whether it is yet another outcome of minority pressure, succeeding because there are other more urgent matters requiring attention by the legislators. If you look back through my biography which is on the blog, you will see that periodically I had one mother, one mother and one father together, then two mothers, my grandmother and my aunt, one mother etc etc. I was lucky in one respect that my grandmother was a sister of three boys, and played with them, learned their games and was able to teach some of them to me. I have had a long married life, two fine daughters, five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Home life is dependent on a number of factors, the parents sharing their responsibilities, the relationships between the parents, the relationship of the parents and the children, and between the children. For a rounded existence, provided that the above factors are adhered to, the children require advice, skills and companionship from both sexes, it is not enough for the boys of a two-father family to be taught manly pursuits and skills, nor if this new world comes about, for the opposite to take effect.

I know that in my case, and I’m told by others that I am not easily swayed, that there were many times when I missed having a father. Any zoologist will tell you that the animal kingdom has arrived as it is today through attrition and teaching within the groups, and the TV programmes of animal behaviour bear witness to the individual responsibilities of the sexes in the need to survive. In our sophistication, the desire by some people to be different, and others to spawn new theories in spite of their inexperience, we are steadily, and far more quickly than nature can accommodate, modifying our environment and way of life beyond necessity,  with little care for the final outcome that will affect our descendants.