Category: General

I’m writing about sleeping, not the sort of sleeping the Westminster civil servants do in the middle of a hot afternoon, when they can’t think of anything else to add to the Green Machine. I’m writing about the sort of sleeping that you, your parents, your grand parents, great grandparents and I have done over the last 90 odd years, how it compares with the duvet and its effect, in fact, on the environment. While those civil servants were so busy telling us about switching off neon indicator lamps for saving an infinitesimal amount of electricity, they missed one of the biggest, perennial, wastages of electricity and carbon footprint.

For most of my life I slept in a bed with a head and a foot, under and on sheets and blankets, and above me the inevitable eiderdown. In the very depths of winter I would have stone, or aluminium, or a rubber hotwater bottle, and the rest of the year, just by taking off a layer or changing the weight of a layer, or even taking off most of the layers, I was able to sleep comfortably, peacefully, with no worries about being overheated or cold. I suggest that in the coldest periods there were more layers of warm air and pockets of warm air in the old system than there are in the modern duvet. In the 30s I went on school trips to France and Switzerland, where I discovered the abominable bolster, that the huge, hard, stuffed encumbrance, that slouched across the top of the bed, and put such a strain on your neck you spent half the night awake. We discovered also the duvet, that continental, elephantine covering that was used from the Channel to Sicily. When you got under the duvet, you were totally lost, it was like entering a cavern, and if it started to slip, you were naked.

For some reason, round about the 60s, maybe it was the Flower People, we started emulating the continentals, some of our beds had no bottom end, we abandoned the traditional covering. The duvet, I grant you, did not have such gargantuan proportions, and at some point subsequently people realised that in the northern hemisphere it can get very cold in the winter and so everybody had to buy electric blankets. This whole diatribe started as the result of a few pensioners discussing the merits and demerits of the electric blankets they have purchased in recent years, complaining bitterly that there were areas, totally unheated. I have discovered for myself that this is absolutely true, the bed doesn’t stay warm like it used to, if you get up for an hour to make yourself a cup of tea or something, when you get back into bed you have to switch on the blankets to warm yourself up, then you either have to lie awake for ages until it reaches the right temperature, or you wake up to a strong smell of roast pig. And this is not only the problem, if you’re over 6 foot and tend to lie on your face, the extension of your foot coupled with the height, and the fact that you don’t like your head firmly pressed against the headboard, means that your feet inevitably hang out at the bottom and get frozen, or you have to curl up in the foetus position.

It therefore follows, although I haven’t done a survey, that most people today have one of these awful duvets, coupled with a huge area of electric blanket, and they are consuming electricity at the rate that makes turning off the neon indicator lights, as a comparison between a mouse and an elephant. But then of course, the civil servants don’t mention this wide extra use of electricity, because they wouldn’t want to do away with their duvet, after all it is the fashion, and they wouldn’t want to do away with their electric blanket, because they might lose sleep, and not be able to think clearly the next day, what they were going to stop us doing.

So the Green machine isn’t as efficient as they would like us to think.

I’m heartily sick of being badgered day and daily, to save the world. I suppose because I am writing this, I am also badgering, but I hope that I am treading slightly newer ground, and putting a more considered approach to the problem, than an awful lot of the stuff we are asked to swallow, by all those riding on another bandwagon, the Green Machine – the politicians, the journalists, the quasi-scientists, the manufacturers, the salesmen, and the sincerely concerned, many of whom have their own axe to grind.

I think the condition can be summed up by the understandable way in which vast numbers of Eastern Europeans, at some expense and great discomfort, are tracking across Europe to what they think is the source of a higher standard of living and a nest egg to give them a new start when they get home again. Now expand this principle on a worldwide basis, and you discover that nations with large, impoverished, populations have the same desire, but their approach is different. The introduction of satellite, communication, also means the introduction of advertising, TV and the introduction to a way of life many will not have seen before, and could not have imagined. Having seen it from mud huts in the jungles, the paddy fields, and in shop windows, there is an insatiable urge for self-improvement. This has presented itself in different ways. In places like Borneo it has meant hacking down the forests, burning and destroying, to provide farming, to earn money, to buy the products and attain the lifestyle that they see on TV. In places like India and China it is the governments who are raping the world to raise the standard of the elite in the first place, and then the rest of the nation. It is my humble opinion that until these aims are achieved across the globe, the Green Machine will basically be nothing more than rhetoric, a political football, the source of income for chancers, material for journalists, designers and manufacturers, with little hope of actually making very much difference, because the damage has already been done.

Instead of using the Green Machine as a basis for dubious increases in tax, of curbing our way of life, and all the things that I have listed above, there should be a serious worldwide policy of how we can internationally combine, to combat further damage on a sensible scientific basis, rather than these ad hoc tickles at the problem. Some of the proposed housing, for example, is so hideous in design, and yet being applauded because it is green, is one demonstration of the rush to be the first rather than the best.

When you’ve read this, of course you will consider it could be purely a gut reaction. Let me assure you, that while I know that I am a voice crying in the wilderness, I have in fact thought long and hard about the problem and am totally frustrated at the way I feel that I am being led by my nose, rather than by honest scientifically based, reasoned analysis, in-depth. Governments ignored the warnings given by scientists over decades if not generations. They are in power all the time the electorate is in a happy mood, so they find it difficult to feed their voters a really bitter pill. It is easier to appear to be caring, than to really care.

A lovely recent example, according to what I heard on TV yesterday, is the fact that our PM is prepared to give the Labour Party a free vote on the use of animal embryos as long as it doesn’t upset the status quo. Just how free is that?

The way in which the value of certain shares was lowered dramatically in order to make a killing on the stock exchange shows several things, the instability of the market, the worry of the individual, the level of criminality and sheer, uncaring selfishness. This in turn made me think of what the value of money is doing, or indeed not doing, to our society today. When I was a schoolboy in the early 30s, I could buy four aniseed balls for a farthing, off a man with a tray on his chest standing at the school gates. The farthing was one 960th of a pound. In those days the average labouring wage was three pounds a week, and because we didn’t have a nanny society, the labourer had to pay for his medicine and everything else out of that, but he didn’t have to buy his house.

I can’t speak for England, because I have only been there mainly as a visitor for the last 60 years, but in the 30s there was a level of poverty that today I believe is unimaginable, where people were starving, there was nothing like the numbers of charities there are today, and it was the communities that looked after themselves as best they could, with little help that I remember from the State. It is just as well today that the there are all these charities, because people like myself cannot believe how insular everyone has become. Some families are a tight unit, if they can’t keep together they at least communicate, but there are so many others that are scattered without that level of help, guidance and assurance.

This in turn made me think about poverty, and I mean real poverty, which I have experienced when, in the period of a year, my mother and I went from a house with six servants, to me and my brother being farmed out separately, and she taking a job as a live-in housekeeper. Being poor doesn’t necessarily mean being unhappy, or didn’t in those days, because poor people were the order of the day, brought to that condition by World War I. What I find interesting about people who are impoverished is that their pleasures are simple, because they must be, and that the people enjoy them even more, I believe, than the wealthy do with their expensive pleasures. The poor invent their own games and pastimes, which cost little or nothing, and they can all enjoy. Further up the scale, there is a pecking order, need I say more. Our government should provide the same sort and quantity of facilities in the towns and cities, that we had when we were young, so that the impoverished could use them for their own entertainment at no cost.

Over the years of our retirement, Sophie and I have found that our gross income, has dwindled year by year, in spite of being indexed, but then having experienced a wide range of pleasures in the past, and steadily finding that our physical endurance is also dwindling, our needs and demands are just about keeping pace with our reduction in income. We find it ironic that our grandchildren are earning several times more than we, but while we are comfortable, if not expansive, with their colossal mortgages, the increased cost of living as they do, and as we did in our day, they are finding it almost impossible to make ends meet, and they are not alone.

They say that comparisons are odious, but when you get very old, to some extent that’s what you’re left with. Take the coinage, in the 30s, for the average man in the street, it was divided into tenners, fivers, guineas, pounds, half crowns, florins, shillings, sixpences, threepenny pieces, pennies, halfpennies and farthings. I have always thought it was a pity that we lost our coinage. Today I wouldn’t give my great-grandchildren anything less than a tenner, as one of those gifts we give to children whom we don’t see that often. On the principle that the differential between the 30s and today is probably about a hundred times, the tenner would represent in the 30s a florin, or 96 farthings, and as a child it was rare that I would find more than a silver threepenny piece in my pocket. This in my view represents not only a devaluation of the pound, but a devaluation of the respect for a pound.

I was thinking further about the post office problem in connection with those who are incapable of having easy access to their weekly welfare money or old age pensions. Some are going to be mentally disturbed, some illiterate, some physically handicapped, and in consequence require the money to be collected by others. It occurred to me that an identity/credit card, specifically for this purpose could be provided to both those able to collect the money themselves, and those who had to have it collected by others. I have stood in the queue at the cash out of a supermarket and seen people paying by credit card for their goods and receiving cash as well as the receipt. I don’t think it’s beyond the capability of the government to provide a foolproof system whereby an individual can obtain money from a specified source, such as one given shop or supermarket, by the use of a specialised card issued to the claimant, or someone nominated by the claimant, with a shopkeeper rewarded commensurately.

Boiler Room Scams are now being discussed on the television, and I found it interesting, when I looked up ‘USA share scams’ on the Internet, that the FSA made it very clear that if you had been dealing with an unlawful trader, you’re on your own. On the television programme dealing with this, which was referred to as the ‘boiler room scam’, a representative of the FSA gave the impression that they were happy to try and deal with the matter after the event, but only to give warnings before.

You will probably think I’m stupid, for what I am about to write. The FSA has been sent a vast amount of information about the people who have lost their money, in an unbelievable amount, including one individual who lost a million, the whys and wherefores of why the money was lost are fairly obvious, preventing a recurrence is more important. I assume that those running the scams are able to tap into records of people buying and selling shares, or dealing in large quantities with banks in the form of savings. So to me it was logical that the FSA should investigate all those who have been involved in losing money in the scam, and look for common occurrences of their financial dealings that would indicate the sources of the information that has led to these scams, and lay traps for the people in the boiler rooms to step into. I got the impression, although I may be misjudging the case, that the FSA was just standing about wringing its hands

When you read this you will realise that I have insufficient knowledge of the running of a Post Office, so I can only speak from my own experience. Like most pensioners today I only use Post Offices to post parcels, post special letters, and buy stamps. I would say that I need their services on average about once a fortnight. In our district our post offices are all part of flourishing businesses, and there is no shadow of doubt that I can’t remember when I last went into one of them and didn’t have to queue and queue and queue. One of the things that seems to have slipped the government’s mind is that today there an awful lot of people, housewives, retired men, and up-and-coming entrepreneurs, who are using the post offices for sending away articles that were purchased from them on the Internet. Many a time, I have stood and watched one of these people, in the queue ahead of me, with two or three large sacks, receiving a receipt that looked more like a toilet roll, than the receipts I’m normally used to. The Post Offices that I use, I can only reach by car and are several miles away in different directions and the main post office is on the other side of town.

I think the real problem is the supermarket. Before the 40s, small shops in the villages, miles from anywhere, fertile ground for gossip, were visited daily, because in those days fridges were almost unheard of, and so the storage of food was an ever-present problem. This is what we old codgers grew up with, and we looked upon the village shop and post office as an essential part of our lives. We all had post office savings books, and there was no such thing as an Internet. So when I think of the whole problem, the people whom I am concerned for, today, are those who receive benefit of one sort or another, gathered on a weekly basis at the local post office, who live hand to mouth, and if they were to get money, as many of us do on a monthly basis, they would be in serious financial trouble inside a fortnight, because the amounts that they handle are so small, the temptations are so great, and they, therefore, are the ones that we should be looking after.

If the country as a whole has decided that it prefers out-of-town shopping at the expense of the small shop which contains a Post Office facility, that is a legitimate choice. The big outlets have now made the small corner shop, upon which we depended so much in the past, almost impossible, by buying in such vast bulk and having such a tremendous throughput. We still have some corner shops, but I find that they too are dwindling, and there is not always one in a given area which contains a Post Office. In general we can no longer walk to our post offices, which is an indication of how few there are already. To do away with even more, I believe is nothing short of a mean approach to the needs of the few of us who’d still depend on them. The government needs to take a reassessment.

I think that the whole matter should be rethought on the basis of regional, and especially local need, primarily, even if the opening times are not necessarily on a daily basis, but just several days in the week. I believe that it is essential that some small shops are given financial encouragement to either retain, or obtain a Post Office licence, on the principle that government is here for the good of the people as a whole, and that the rich, must subsidise the poor. To my mind a levy, as part of the overall thrust, proportional to the need, and proportional to the marketing damage done by the out-of-town shops, should also be placed on those out-of-town shops, which that by their very nature, in primarily selling foodstuffs, have done away with our corner shops.

I’m not so stupid as to think it will happen, but I might as well suggest it. Unfortunately I only have something in the region of 400 readers a day If only the newspapers would take up the fight, TV run a survey of public opinion after proposals similar to mine have been put to the voters, perhaps we’ll get somewhere. This government with its huge majority, its incredible debt and its inability to see the wood for the trees, is unlikely to do anything unless it is forced by public opinion, as it is scared stiff of losing the next election.

Political rethinking. On the 16.03.08, on the BBC programme, The Politics Show, David Cameron was talking as if he had just discovered the wheel. His point was that our financial situation, coupled with that of the world, currently, was such that no party, if it came into office, could guarantee tax cuts. At first I thought that this statement was not only a given, it has also applied for at least the last two years when our internal debt, let alone our national debt, has been allowed to grow beyond all reason, and more people than I have been screaming about this for even longer than two years. Then I started thinking more deeply. Just take one case, let’s take the rise in tax on fuel. The week before there was a big rise in the cost of fuel there was no mention by the government that it was running out of cash and had a need to raise another hefty tax. Then the cost of fuel went up, the VAT along with it, so the government now had a swingeing rise in taxation, because not only was the fuel going up in price, but everything such as transportation, that fuel affected, also increased in price and so the VAT went up again. The irony of this is that we are being taxed in this way by a number of causes, such as the rising cost of wheat and so on. If Cameron, unlike the Conservative Party, feels that there is no case for cutting taxation because we are in a parlous state, I find that there is a dichotomy here, some of the taxes have to be raised for the reasons he states, but these sideways increases are a different kettle of fish, if there was no need for the tax prior to these rises in prices, then there should be no need for the increased taxation after the prices are risen, so there is actually a case for some reduction in tax. Am I wrong?

Not another tax? Nine years ago I had a very serious hip operation which has since made it impossible for me to get in and out of standard cars with anything like ease. Once I had recovered from the operation I bought a Renault Scenic at a price higher than I would normally have paid because this allowed me to step up and step down into and out of the car, without a struggle. The car is now nine years old and has only done just over 45,000 miles, and yet as far as I understand I am in a higher tax bracket and in consequence not only is my motoring expensive, but now is even more so. I live in one of those hinterlands where public transport is alright for long distances but hopeless for shopping. As you know I am in my late 80s and therefore a pensioner, and in consequence still need the car, as I can only walk very short distances. I do not believe that I am the only case, but the Chancellor’s broad brush has taken no account of parents with squads of kids sharing the driving to school, and thus being green, and old idiot’s like me, who feel they have done their fair share for their country, all being penalised because he, the Chancellor, can’t balance the books.

MRSA etc, when alphabet diseases are debated on television, inevitably some person is shown shoving a colossal, two-handed, feather duster, about a yard wide, with fluffy edges, across the floor or along the walls. Away back in the 50s a wonder brush, along with a bottle of gunge, was invented for people to be able to rub over their cars and give them a quick clean, allegedly collecting all the dust as it went. They went out of favour fairly quickly because they were a seven day wonder, and in the long run were not efficient, and we all went back to using soap and water. When I see these broad mops being shoved round the floors of airports, railway stations, supermarkets and worst of all hospital floors and walls, I know from my long experience that those mops are only shoving the muck or germs from one place to another. When I was in hospital in the 30s with fractures, I had plenty of time to analyse the way in which the nurses scrubbed everything in sight including me. The fact that we didn’t have penicillin as a do all remedy for the hypochondriacs, went some way to us not having any of these alphabet diseases. I just wonder if the health service has bothered to carry out experimentation on a scientific scale, to discover if these hairy mops actually do what they are supposed to do

Unfortunately I didn’t hear the radio programme that dealt with this matter. I received it second hand from Sophie, but when I heard it, it was so obvious, I was amazed that I hadn’t realised it myself, as basic common sense. I can remember in the 70s we used to drive after going to a party and I have seen men who had to have their hand actually placed on the handle of the door of the car so that they could get in and drive home, which they did. Now, as we have seen the error of our ways, the pendulum has swung almost in a circle, crushing the pubs out of existence. ‘Not drinking if you are driving’ has been the greatest killer to social drinking. The fact that one member of a party has to be TT, has a knock-on effect to the rest. The fact that taxis are hard to come by at two in the morning has been part of this effect.

Drinking in Ireland is a serious business, drinking in England, in my experience, is generally a social routine. There is the lunchtime drink on Sundays which used to be a ritual throughout England in the 40s, when I was in the Navy. Public houses were clubs, had a steady clientele, where some even retained a tankard and a set of darts, behind the bar for the regulars. I remember taking Sophie into a pub in Hampshire, where I and my friends were playing bar billiards, and the owner came over and took Sophie off to join the group sitting round a fire, and put a sherry in her hand. Television films are forever using the pub for a social atmosphere in which to stage some discussion or other in a calm atmosphere. They do so because their viewers will be comfortable and relaxed from habit.

We are finding continuously that the tail wags the dog. In this case, because parents are not taking responsibility for their teenage children, or even younger children, the whole country, casual drinkers, pubs, even alcoholics, are being selected for special taxation, by a misguided government. I think it will have little effect whatsoever on children and young people drinking, or drinking to excess. If they have the urged, or in some cases the need, the young people will find a way of getting the money and getting a drink, while the rest of us will probably slow down on our drinking, stop going to the pub, and our whole way of life will be turned upside down because people either don’t want to, don’t intend to, or simply can’t control their children. If the government can’t control drug abuse, what chance has it got of controlling excessive drinking?

My eyes were opened by that one incident, in that English pub; to the calm, relaxed, friendly atmosphere that is the seal of the English pub, especially those in the rural areas. To see this all taken away, at a time when television, poor transport, and the rush of modern living is making us all more insular, when alcohol can be bought over the counter at grocery stores, and at prices far below those at the pub, an allegedly caring government should not be scrabbling for a few more taxes under the pretence that it is for the good of our young people, when any sane individual would know that it would take considerably a more than the increased cost of alcohol to achieve a result. Why does this government constantly try to hoodwink us, when we are now so apathetic and so weary of its perpetual changes, and above all sceptical? It is just possible, that alcohol like drugs, will be forced underground, and these young people will be drinking bath tub gin, that will blind them in the long run. If bath tub gin is not already available, it soon will be, as it is so easy and cheap to make, I saw it in the 50s.

There is concern among the population generally that our national identity is being diluted, and this seems to have been taken on board by the PM, who has instructed Lord Goldsmith to look into the matter. It would appear from what has been said on television today, 11.03.08, that there is a proposal to require children to swear allegiance to the Crown. When I lived in Africa as a small child, Empire day was a great occasion and I have a feeling that allegiance to the flag was in there somewhere. When I joined the Navy, on that first day I think we were lined up and had to swear allegiance. When I was a boy scout, I think we swore allegiance at the same time as having a short prayer at the beginning of every meeting. In retrospect possibly in later years, when there were splinter groups like the Brown Shirts, the Red Shirts and the Black Shirts, we were so British it had almost hurt.

With sweeping problems like this one, I often think of an analogy, and find the reduction in scale enables me to see my way more clearly. When I think of our country I compare it to my home as an analogy, and the nation as my family. We as a family don’t need to constantly assert our affection, we take it as a given, demonstrated by our actions, our respect and concerns. I have come across people who are effusive, and I find that they’re not respected. I think Lord Goldsmith perhaps has forgotten his schooldays, when we had assembly every morning, with a Bible reading and prayers. This, unlike Sunday School, impinged not at all on my religious outlook, it was a bore and a waste of time. When I was young we not only knew we were British we were proud we were, and I do not believe that swearing allegiance in any way is a solution. All the time that we have ghettos in our country, a sense of isolation contributed to by the lack of a cohesive family life, factions determined in every way to emphasise their difference, and a level of political  apathy among the indigenous population, we will continue to be more isolated, more indifferent. I can remember when we knew the names of practically everybody in our street, and had been, at some time or other, into about 30% of the houses. I lived for 42 years in a house in its own grounds and had very little to do with the residents who were more than 4 houses away from us. It is our lifestyle, of course, which is to blame. We are so busy, today, even more than we were 15 years ago, but I believe we have little time to even think about being British, until some occurrence causes us to wake up to the fact, such as the Archbishop of Canterbury wanting to meddle with our constitutional rights.

My own experience of having been evacuated in my last year at school, and then going into the Navy, has taught me that friendships made at school, if continued into adulthood last forever, providing geographically it is possible. Friendships made in later life, as a result of work or other associations, can be equally strong, but will be fewer in number. So this reasoning could imply that if Britishness is indoctrinated during the schooling years is should last. The problem is that being British, is not like favouring a football club, there is no contact on a repetitive basis which strengthens the bond. In my day we had two wars which brought the country together as nothing else could. Now we are told we are part of Europe, but we are being more and more concerned with our effect on Europe and Europe’s effect on us. This does not strike me as fertile ground for Britishness. It only surfaces when everybody in the country rises up against some European law which is totally un-British.

When I started the blog a year and nine months ago, I never thought I would still be writing after 500 postings. The reason of course is you, my readers, who still find what I have to say of interest, even if you don’t agree with it. A lot of the interest is in the biographical sections, but I believe that my rather sour outlook on the life of today is echoed in the minds of many of you.

Recently I have been thinking about the lot of those young people in their 30s and 40s, making their way in the world, and now under such a burden of expense, and in some cases ambition, but to my sad old eyes they are spending more time going from here to there, working, shopping, baby minding and worrying, more than we ever did, because we had an extended family who helped to carry some of the burden. We were not scattered to the four winds like families today, where they spend so much time travelling. The longest journeys we had to do were to the next town, and most to the next street. I feel there is so much more to life than the material things, in some cases the isolation, and above all the responsibility that these young people now bear, which we could share. I have written another one of my bits of doggerel, to show just how miserable I can be.

Thanking you for your interests, because that’s what keeps my brain alive, John

                                Requiem to the past

The young with blinkered eyes search the horizon
For a future they can only imagine.
Am I therefore wrong in looking back, not on?
Recalling what was then as an origin
Against which to compare with a critical eye
The immediate past and the rushing present,
So foreign to my way, my roots to defy,
Selectively, seeing chaos I resent,
Not for myself, my time has passed, good and bad.
But for those I love and those who I admire.
We have mislaid the honesty we once had
And probity is foundering in a mire,
Of our own making. Or perhaps I’m just mad?
Too simplistic? Seeing ghosts that are not there?
Held in the nostalgic aspic of the past,
Not appreciating progress, just unfair
To those who are making our lives go so fast.
Are we running to stand still, or in retreat?
With commands, countermands, changes till at last
With falsehoods, lies, and apathy, we’re downbeat.
Is it unsurprising our young are confused?
Restricted as they are by their parents’ fear
That they could be molested, perhaps abused
Through incompetence of those we don’t revere.

The system is failing us, it needs revised
The pressure of minorities, paramount,
Causes our culture diluted, ostracised.
To some of us it seems we no longer count.
A steadying hand on the tiller we need,
One not tarnished with incompetence or greed,
Considerate and taking all into account.
Open, honest, trustworthy, like the old school?
Shrewd, tough, his own man, and nobody’s fool.

The small shopkeeper and a giant like Tesco, with up to 30% of the market, can use the same marketing techniques the intermediary sizes of grocers will probably find too expensive to initiate. One technique is to offer savings in some form or other if products, which are not selling well, are bought in sufficient quantities by the customers. I’m not referring to the 2 for 3 bargains, but something on a lower scale, a points system. With a vast number of products, in a large supermarket, it is impossible to visually modify the prices, selectively, as this would overburden the computerised cash-out. In a small shop the man can put up notices wherever he wishes telling of reductions, because he is doing the totting. Tescos, make points-offers on certain items if more than a certain value is spent on that type of item. The monetary differential is probably miniscule but the psychological effect is tremendous, and because they have a shop in practically every town and city in the country, and their computer systems are common throughout, it is a simple matter to download the information, so that at the cash-out, points are given on selected items by the cashier without her having any reference to a list.

Scale in financial terms. A young person said to me ‘you can’t expect to get much for £50.’ We were discussing giving presents. I only earned £50 a year in my first job, in the Navy I received ten shillings per fortnight, (50p), as most of my pay was dedicated to my mother so she would have a war pension if I were killed. Post war, at university. I had a total grant to keep a wife and two children, buy books, go on educational excursions, of £300 a year. My first job as a graduate in 1950 paid £250 a year. So it is unsurprising that pensioners like myself, and people on low incomes, still think in tens and hundreds. The professional classes, earning upwards of 40,000 a year, think in hundreds and thousands. Even the lower paid, in purchasing a house, are forced to think in tens of, or hundreds of thousands. The really wealthy, and those in the entertainment industry think in hundreds of thousands, and millions, and as a million is a thousand times a thousand my mind boggles even at that. The government, and the civil service, think in billions, or a million times a thousand, which really worries me, because I haven’t a clue what a billion really is and so I’m forced to wonder whether they do either. For a time I did deal in extremely large sums, in millions in fact, and one can have a mindset sitting behind a desk that is entirely different to the one sitting at the breakfast table trying to balance the home budget. As you will have seen in the last few posts, government spending, seems illogical to me, and I wonder if they also work in unrelated, and separate compartments, as I did, having two perspectives, but in their case in astronomically unimaginable figures.

I question the attitude, of those at the top of the civil service pyramid, our masters, as it is applied to these vast sums of money, in billions. The Cabinet talks and therefore could, I presume, think in billions. The heads of the various departments don’t see the detail, they are only concerned with the overall picture, in billions. The people who submit the budgets to department-heads seek to obtain as much capital for their own use as they can, still in billions. They in turn are supplied information being gathered for them from some gatherers right across the country, in the various sections of their department. These gatherers are given information by gatherers lower in the pyramid, which they have collected from the people responsible for determining how the work is to be done, where the work is to be done, when it will start, how long it will take, and more importantly how much it will cost. Some of this work is maintenance, generally short lived and only in hundreds of thousands of pounds, the new work can take years, and therefore has to be split up into sections, and costs anything from a few thousands to a few million. So really it is only at the very bottom of the pyramid that people evaluate costs in the smaller sums that they
understand? They are the doers, and the checkers. Once the information starts moving upwards in the pyramid, it becomes ever larger and hence, if we are honest, totally outside the imagination of those handing it. The bigger the amount is, the broader the brush is that it is used to paint the picture, and broad brushes are inevitably hard to control.