Category: General

I’m not sure, because I am so old, if it is me who is going crazy or just the rest of the world. This is epitomised by the extraordinary divorce proceedings of Paul McCartney and his wife. They are fighting at great expense over sums of money that they couldn’t possibly spend. Even if I were to move house and buy a property ludicrously huge, by my standards, I would find it extremely difficult to spend two million, let alone hundreds of millions.

Today I even started to wonder whether I was responsible to some extent for where the world has arrived, and decided that I knew no one in particular at whose door one could lay the incredible change that I have seen in every area of life. This caused me to realise why there is so much naked aggression, inhibition, and manufactured pleasure, which has replaced the smooth, gentle, unsophisticated world I was born into. There is no doubt there was extreme poverty, my grandmother rubbed my nose in it to make me aware. There was a disparity between the very poor and the very rich, but as the very rich were very few, and the disparity showed itself more in accommodation, and pleasure, than materially, this meant that there was not the same urge for advancement, people were happy with the status quo. People today wouldn’t believe how many of our pleasures cost absolutely nothing, and that cost itself was not the key factor of determining the level of enjoyment. I never cease to be annoyed at how much it costs today for a father to take his son to a football match.. Seaside resorts like Hastings are, to some extent, dormitory towns because so many now go abroad.

I believe that the problem stems from affluence, merchandisers hoodwinking us into believing that we need the products they are advertising, and the high level of competition in manufacturing and retail that has spawned ever increasing, ever more expensive, ever more sophisticated ways of spending our money, and an outlook of change for the sake of change, that includes products with inbuilt redundancy. Our entertainment 70 years ago, was at that stage where each progression induced wonderment, from the rapidly expanding quality of the films and the stage shows, to the size and variety of rides and stalls at the fairs on high days and holidays. I don’t know when I last saw a really big fair. TV has superseded the cinema and the quantity of material required to feed so many competing stations is gargantuan, with the result that to maintain the flow the excellent is repeated ad nauseam, interspersed with the banal and downright awful. I believe we have become blase with so much sophistication, that some of us are striving excessively for the unattainable. The culture of the so-called ‘celebrity’ doesn’t help. At the end of World War II the film industry in England started a training programme producing our better known actors and actresses, who all spoke identically, having been trained by speech therapists to lose their own native accents. Today there seems to be no speech training, people speak with regional accents, often without moving their lips, making understanding difficult, and the dialogue today has not the quality of vocabulary and grammar that it had with the Rank Organisation. Indeed a high proportion of our films now are made by and for Afro-Americans, with Harlem patois, and a level of violence that no human body could endure and come back for more.

We are told, whether we believe it or not, that we are a wealthy nation, and it seems that we have the wages to prove it. We have an affluent society, based on national and home borrowing, and we are spending to the limit, and in a lot of cases without regard for the future. The government wrings its hands and comes out with solutions to solve the drink problem, which we never had as young people, because we couldn’t afford it, and we were taught drunkenness was antisocial. If that is an accurate assessment, it would seem that teenagers today have too much pocket money and not enough supervision. Instead of increasing alcohol taxation across the board, they should be arresting the parents for irresponsibility, if their teenagers are seen to be acting antisocially under the influence of alcohol.

Basically every sphere of life has changed, and affluence has enabled some to achieve the level of advancement that is wholly out of proportion with the good that they do. The material level of the average household is more comfortable, more easily run than it was in the 30s, but has come at a price that we are now having to pay, not only in our taxes, and in longer working hours per household, but in government imposed inhibition across-the-board. I suppose if we want to lay it at the door of anyone, it should rest at those who have become multimillionaires and have lost the notion of the value of money, and the town halls and seats of government, who want to be loved at any price, and aren’t too fussy who is paying the price..

Every week there is some proposed change in the educational system. The fact that proposing alone, means that headmasters throughout the country are having to assess the effect on a budget, their teaching staff, and the conduct of the school, even if only to protest to the union, or the government itself, which induces unnecessary stress. Often before these propositions ever come to fruition, they are cancelled. These exercises, if only proposed, are detrimental. If they are proposed and acted upon, then this not only affects the headmasters, but the whole school is disrupted and at times may be very expensive. The one thing that young people require is a stable environment, not an ever-changing scene. The parents in many cases are equally affected. Sophie tells me that the basic problem with education is that the standard of enrolment in the profession is so much lower, in both academic and social skills, (which implies IQ,) that the standards will inevitably drop. It is time a straw poll is taken of the views of teachers in work or retired, who are over 40.

One of the cries of the young house-buyers is that it’s almost impossible to get onto the housing ladder. The government keeps making proposals for building houses, but up to now it would seem that they are little more than proposals. Now with the Northern Rock problem affecting the whole of the mortgage system, the down payment required to obtain a mortgage, has been increased to a level which will inhibit even more young people.

More causes of waste are the endless judicial enquiries that seem to be insolvable from the outset. We in Northern Ireland have had more than our fair share, and the price is in millions.

I take exception to the fact that when anything and especially fuel, is subject to market forces outside the control of the government, and evidently going to make the cost of living rise across the board, affecting everyone, that the government allows the VAT to rise proportionately, influencing the cost of living even more. Because of the reasons for the increase in costs, this is not only unfair, but is a hidden tax on everyone in the country, and prompts claims for salary increases, while the pensioners suffer.

2 million children are growing up without a parent in work, which means that they are on benefit, and now the government is either giving or proposes to give, problem families a bonus of a thousand a year for three years if they go back to work. I don’t know who thought the scheme up, but according to my calculations a thousand a year amounts to £20 a week, which doesn’t seem like much of an incentive to me, when they probably like the status quo. Just think of the costs of the implementation.

Yet another proposal, is to increase the tax on alcohol, to reduce the crime rate. Whether selectively or overall is not clear. Once again, if this is put through, alcohol tax throughout the country, together with VAT will be levied on all of us, by the misbehaviour of a very small percentage of the population. This is not using a hammer, but a hydraulic ram to crack a nut. If the parents and the alcohol vendors were severely fined, if it could be proven that the vendors had sold alcohol to the under-aged, and also the age at which people could consume alcohol outside their own homes was increased to 18, these might be the first steps in the solution, before the whole population is fined for the criminality of a few. The tax on alcohol, like on petrol is excessive.

Another government money-saving dodge, is to try and reduce the prison population by letting people out ahead of time. Most of us have always felt that people were incarcerated, especially the young, with custodial sentences, which might have been dealt with in an entirely different manner. I do not believe that this country has a greater criminal population, than any other, and I’m certain, less than some I could name. The problem stems from the sterile life of many of the teenagers in the poorer districts of our country, and to some extent interracial disparagement, as a result of social inequalities. I believe that is where attention is required.

The trouble is we have complicated our lives to an unbelievable extent, and our waste in every sense, is beyond recognition. Today I was looking back at my childhood, and I estimated that the wage paid to a labourer had increased by approximately 133 times. In the 30s I could ride trams all day for sixpence. I’ve translated that and it equates to £3.33 in today’s prices. If I hadn’t a bus pass it would cost me over £1 to travel 3 miles. Someone I know well, who is not profligate, tried to sell at auction, a five years old settee, in perfect condition, they failed and it had to go to the dump. Our houses in the 30s, were furnished, even the meanest, in good quality oak or mahogany, with respected items, and all were handed down, because there was no advertising, except in newspapers, there was not this scrambling urge to keep up-to-date.. People put money on the plate on Sundays, in the cups of the injured jetsam of World War I begging on the kerb, and to the Salvation Army as they played on Sunday at the corner. We never had constant charitable demands. We didn’t carry vast insurance, we didn’t need it. We thought travelling to Devon from London, for a holiday, was an adventure, We were unsophisticated in the light of today’s gloss. Above all, we were mostly happy. If we had psychological problems we weren’t aware, because we had never heard of the word, but above all, we had the extended families. Today everything, wages, towns, houses, innovations, ideas, illnesses real or imagined, wars and egos are so big, so costly, they have taken us over. A lot of innovation is superfluous. Just lift, if you’re strong enough, an Argus catalogue. In there you will see page after page of designs of a single article, produced by different manufacturers from here and abroad. They have common functions varied on a main idea, they have different colours and shapes. Someday, go to the local supermarket, just to browse, and see how many different products fulfilling the same function there are, many of them perishable and have a very short shelf life. Guess how many are sold and how many wasted. Fashion, advertising, and pride are the cause of the duplication that is ultimately superfluous. The abandonment of the surplus, throughout the country, let alone the world, must be prodigious and represent an incredible wastage of materials perhaps in some respects, life itself. This proliferation, is engendered by people seeking to outdo one another, and make a fortune, and call it progress. I believe it is also fostered, by people treating shopping as an outing, rather than a nuisance that has to be endured. The converse to proliferation, of course, is equally repugnant, where there is no choice at all.

We have advanced so far there is no turning back, but it would be nice if different aspects of industry, inaugurated a system where there was adequate choice in design and colour, or taste, to suit most households, and held a competition every year to see if any one of the new batch of a given product, was overall better than those available, in which case, it would replace the oldest or worst design. It won’t happen, the world’s resources will go on being wasted, and it will be we who will be funding it in the cost of the products we buy, or our taxes on the disposal of our waste in packaging and old products. The generations to come will suffer as a result of some of those causes that are a knock-on affect of this level of senseless productivity It is basically crazy. We have shops filled with umpteen of the same product – take computers and their peripherals, which have a shelf life of little more than a year. This level of multiplication, surely must be unacceptable, in a world where they want us to carry out the most absurd and insignificant actions, to save the planet, all of which I personally believe is too late anyway, but I could not justify not trying, if only for the sake of our descendants.

One aspect that we must not forget and is highly relevant is that there are nations in the world who don’t have supermarkets, because they haven’t anything to put on the shelves. Whether the surplus from here goes to the tip, is given free to the very poor abroad, or is bartered, is a matter for conjecture as far as I’m concerned, as I have not the time to research it.

What I place here is part of a personal e-mail from a Dutch friend. It is un-edited, just as I received it, and I post it instead of what I originally intended for the sake of us Brits who, like me, have been appalled at what is happening to and within our country, only because the EU forced us, and I include Holland, to do away with our borders..

My friend wrote ‘One more advantage of living in an apartment we no longer have to fear for burglars. The criminality increases very fast and becomes  rougher by the day. They don’t hesitate to ram the door or break the window panes to enter and treat the people very rough and only for a few euros or a laptop. I think that soon the windows and doors will be equipped with bars.

These criminals are working most of the time in small groups and have an East European nationality. I think those people prefer the western countries because of the very soft treatment when they are caught. They stay in comfortable cells with TV, good food and books in their own language and after a couple of days they will be sent home by plane. Some days later they return and start again their crimes. Luckily, on the third floor of this building we don’t need bars!

I love reading your interesting blogs, in which I recognise all the problems and injustice we have in Holland. It seems to me that you want to carry all the problem of the world with you. But I think it is a relief for you to write it down and the fact that it will be read by others is not so important. So carry on with writing and don’t worry about the statistics.

Please revise your ideas of the discrimination of a high proportion of the people shopping with you. We’re not all mindless sheep, or obsessed with the cheap and cheerful. A lot of us were once good cooks, who are now reduced to being on our own, or just two of us, whereby cooking meals is no longer as viable or as economical as it was. There seems to be a policy whereby you introduce a new product on the food shelves, that has been carefully designed, tested, its packaging made as attractive as possible and the price is generally reduced as an introduction. We buy it, we try it, and we’re sold; it is all that it says on the tin, and so it becomes a staple, something we propose to eat, maybe once every three weeks. The honeymoon generally lasts about three months, then the price rises, but we don’t mind because we think we are still getting value for money, but then subsequently the quantity and quality starts to decline but not the price. This has happened with a number of products, staples and prepared food. For a year or so you are buying a particular article, say corned beef, Pacific salmon, tinned ravioli or maybe a Chinese meal. Then one day, the label changes, the price may stay the same or go up, but the contents of the tin or container, has definitely gone down. Ultimately not only has the quality and much of the flavour gone down, but the quantity has also gone down.There is more liquid in the tin than heretofore, if liquid is usual, the salmon looks as though it could be farmed, not wild, because of the increase in fat, and also made of the tail because of the size of the pieces and the amount of the skin. What is really aggravating is that you the purchaser have to start searching all over again, even elsewhere, to find another product of the same type to replace what you are now rejecting, and of course there is disappointment.

In the prepared meals department, almost invariably the size of the packaging and the printed picture cause one to expect more than is realised, in quantity, quality and taste, often by a big margin.I have found old-fashioned English dishes like steak and kidney with so much chilli in it, it killed the taste of the kidney, and indeed chilli seems to be a staple ingredient in a good deal of these prepared dishes. There is a marketing ploy in television, whereby the people determining the programmes operate on the principle that if you don’t like it, you can switch off. In the case of supermarkets, I suppose we can vote with our feet. Finally what really drives me crazy is this policy of changing the positions of the items, even scattering some of one kind in different parts of the supermarket, thus making them still more difficult to find. I know the principle is that it encourages you to see things that you didn’t anticipate, because you have been hunting for the last 20 minutes for something you normally found in a minute and a half, having fruitlessly looked along a few hundred yards of shelving. When so many articles of different brands are on offer, and there are so many miles of shelving, it can take a lot of time, better spent on happier things, than looking for articles on the shelves, or someone to find them for you.

I have already referred to the fact that we are paying 31 billion, in interest on our National Debt, not internal debt. For years I lived with the national debt after the last war, when we owed the Americans and others for helping us. I vaguely remember that in or around about the 70 and 80s the National Debt was either non existent or low. When I find that we are paying more in interest from money borrowed than we are for some of our essential services, I begin to wonder if they’re using the same system in government, that the government expects us to use at home.

Every time the government changes its systems, especially if it’s on a national scale, the costs are incredible in management skills, history, refurbishment and changes in the clerical sphere – furniture, printing, decoration, – just equate it to moving house many times.. This government is constantly changing the deployments of services, the form of the services, for little improvement, if any in the end result. I believe waste, which was very low when there was stability in education, health, social services and infrastructure, is now at a very high level, I have seen it in a big way when I myself was taken over from local to national government. So many of the changes since the 70s, have been both costly and unnecessary. Indeed almost monthly we find that old traditions which were overturned on a whim, are been reinstated – one glaring example is the hospital Matron. If you go to the previous article, Part 1, and look at the list of budgets you will find that the ones that we worry about most, housing and the environment, agriculture and employment, public order and safety, and transport, aggregate to only 55% of that paid for Social Protection. As I don’t really understand all the relevant requirements for social protection, and the interpretation doesn’t help, I feel that this discrepancy between some of our greatest needs, and what I assume are the greatest needs of the world in general, should at least be explained to us simply, and in more detail, and be justified in the light of our national debt, and also if it comes to that, our internal debt.

On the 13th or February the Daily Telegraph had a list of how taxpayers money is spent. The total came to 589 billion, and they were as follows, Social Protection at 159bn, Health 105bn, Education 78bn, Other Expenditure unspecified 62bn, Public Order And Safety 33bn, Defence 32bn, National Debt Interest 31bn, Personal Social Services 26bn, Housing And Environment 22bn, Industry, Agriculture, Employment And Training, 21bn, Transport 20bn.

I was surprised that Social Protection, which I then assumed meant the police, CCTV, and presumably the prisons, until I found that we were spending 33bn on public order and safety. As defence gets 32bn, I couldn’t interpret what this large sum, more than a quarter of the total budget is being spent on as well as 62bn unspecified. When you see the health service which is only receiving 105bn and consider the size of it, the number of people working in it, and the complexity and technicality of what they do, it can give one pause for thought. When I went to the Internet and looked for the interpretation of Social Protection, the information that was available stretched to almost 300,000 items, but when I looked at Social Protection per se, my personal interpretation was that it is basically overseas aid. I was never aware that our overseas responsibilities extended to a quarter of our budget, especially when transport only receives the smallest amount, 20bn.

I took exception to the paucity of funding for transport, at a time when the government is telling us to turn off neon power indicators to save the world. The lamentable lack of public transport, and the lower portion of our national funding devoted to it, shows an illogicality in the approach to global warming, when so many cars are daily used along suitable public transport routes. I have firmly believed for years that the general public would not object to funding a cheap and efficient public transport system. The reduction in traffic at peak periods, and stress to the individual not worrying about parking, or driving in heavy traffic, would not only help the global warming problem, it would reduce stress in us all, young and old. There will of course be a reduction in the taxation which is gathered from personal transport.

I have not done sufficient research to comment on whether this vast sum for overseas aid is warranted as our responsibility, or if it is common in other countries to the same degree, and indeed if it is solely for overseas aid and the care of migrants. To my untutored eye, 159bn or 27% of our income, our largest expense, set against the other causes seems excessive, especially when you consider that we are paying 31bn to cover the interest on our national debt, (not our internal debt). The National Debt could currently be building, even now and even more, in the light of all the new demands on our Exchequer which are put forward daily.

On the BBC Political Show today, there was an item about the controversy between the government, and the bus companies concerning the supply of bus passes to everyone who is 60 or over years of age. The government has set aside money to cover the cost, while the bus companies can see problems of inequality between those who service highly attractive holiday sites, and the rest, with respect to reimbursement. It is easy to realise that this complaint is totally valid, but the government spokeswoman seemed adamant that not only had they supplied enough money but the bus companies had no argument. I have a few though.

I didn’t retire until I was 70, by which time I had bought a motor home and travelled over a lot of Europe in periods of six weeks at a time, and parts of Britain more often. I played golf, I walked for miles, and was a keen and strong swimmer, also I was not on the breadline. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-80s that I applied for one of those blue cards to allow special parking for the disabled. Others are not as fortunate as I, and their problems should be catered for as far as is sensible, and equable. I have had a bus pass since I was 65, but as there are very few suitable bus routes, I have used it rarely. The ability to take public transport for a change of scene, if one has no car, and thus change one’s perspective from time to time, is essential for both physical and psychological reasons, and should be encouraged at all levels and particularly in the aged. Those pensioners with low incomes should be assisted by being given a number of free passes, to travel to places of their choice. On the other hand, if the travel is free, a trip round Britain, which with the government system would appear to be valid, is the opposite to this, it is abusing the privilege.

It would seem more logical, and reasonable that some travel, is provided free on the same principle as parking for the disabled, to provide for a proven need. On the basis that the elderly require to be encouraged to get out, shop, see new sites, a limited system could be provided with a more general bus pass for those over 70. Those between 60 and 70 whose income is too low, or are handicapped, could apply over and above a free pass for the local area, for a limited amount of free extended travel, which they would obtain in the form of vouchers they could use to pay for the extended journeys they propose to take. This will enable them to visit relatives who live some distance away, in this society of ours that is so scattered. Those over 70 would also be able to apply for the vouchers which would provide a limited amount of free extended travel per annum.

From my own experience I know that no matter how healthy you are at 60, you rogressively wear out with time, your need to travel and see new places diminishes exponentially, because it becomes repetitive with those within easy reach, and too exhausting for those far off. Setting up the system will be expensive initially, and will take some organisation on the lines of the blue badge. There will be teething troubles, quite a bit of discussion as to who is entitled to get what, but with time, after a period of experimentation by the recipients of the free travel, the system will bed down at a lower level than is anticipated, will be more equable for both the public and for the transport authorities, and one might be able with this voucher system, coupled with a limit of only travelling at off-peak, to actually apply the system also to the railways.

When I heard what was said on the television, the total take-it-or-leave-it attitude of the spokeswoman gave the impression that she considered what was on offer was a charity, if it didn’t suit everybody, hard luck!

Sophie and I have subscribed to some charities over many years long-term and also one off. Now we are on a mailing list which is passed from charity to charity and we are receiving junk mail and presents for which we have no use, but overall costing a fortune to purchase, wrap and post, so that the small sum we sent has long been used by this process alone. I repeated this statement because I am convinced that the maintenance of charities is now a marketing industry, supporting not only the charity’s staffs, but a number of marketing specialists. The nightly advertising on TV, and the vast quantity of paper that comes through the door justifies this statement. The whole charity industry needs a close examination. What amounts to blackmail of the conscience should be outlawed, especially as it must by its very nature, waste charity funds, and annoys the likes of me, and causes generous hearted people, often poor themselves, to part with money that may never reach the intended destination, either because of waste, or through diversion at the other end.

I know what I’m about to write is simplistic, might even be incorrect, but I have found in many circumstances that stresses build up over time, until that moment when the stress is greater than the resistance and the system snaps. The life of man on earth is miniscule to that of the Earth, and the damage being done to the Earth has taken place in a very short time of even man’s occupation. I find that the sudden climate change is so widespread, that perhaps the accumulation of stresses from the cooling of the Earth, from deforestation, plate tectonics, and the greenhouse effect etc. has all combined with some other changes to bring about this sudden vast change. Around the world, changes are taking place, both political and geographical, which are almost unique in the widespread seriousness of their effect. In consequence the level of demand for charitable help throughout the world has risen to an unanticipated level, and can no longer be accommodated by subscriptions from individuals. It is now a worldwide problem to be countered by a worldwide charitable organisation encompassing more than the UN is currently capable of.

Homeland. In the last piece I wrote I mentioned the portcullis psychology. Today as always, the Englishman’s home is his castle, but I see the UK, my homeland, in the same terms as I see my home. I am therefore cautious of strangers, welcoming to friends, and object to being taken for granted by those who wish to profit from any generosity I might show. I therefore fail to understand why we have foreigners sitting on our pavements begging, sleeping rough, all without invitation. I would have thought it was logical that if we needed special skills, and were unable for some reason to train them up at home, we should be adopting the same policy of advertising, seeking references, having interviews and selecting by a face-to-face meeting, those we wish to invite into our homeland. It is totally beyond me how Europe has permitted this increasing rush by immigrants, unchecked, who wish to improve their lifestyle at the expense in every sense, of the established nations of the EU. Surely it is time that we reinstated, right across Europe, a border system that was convenient for free trade, but reduced the movement of drugs, criminals, and immigrants with no visa to justify their entry, or for crossing state borders. I can see a loophole whereby, I suspect, it would be easy for Eastern Europeans with passports, to arrive in Eire ostensibly on holiday, and merely walk into the United Kingdom via Northern Ireland.

If you read the Government current and proposed control systems, here and abroad, and one assumes it is replicated by other countries, it would be more logical and more secure to just shut the borders. While I read what is said, I believe it is too fragmented to be secure. It proposes introducing ID cards for foreign nationals in 2008, people who stay in the UK longer than they should will not be able to access benefits. My two objections to blankets ID cards are that they were going to cost us £60 plus, and from the way the credit cards and other identity cards can be forged today, I always felt that they served little purpose in the long-run, as the honest didn’t need them, and the criminal could get them for a small sum.

My experience stretches for nearly 90 years, and I see those past times as individual periods. From the end of the First World War until the middle of the 30s, was a time of overcoming the horrors, and retrenchment of the values we had had before. From the mid-30s until WW2, there was a new peace, it was a time of tranquillity, when people were reasonably happy with their lot, and we as a nation felt secure. Then came World War II, and all of that was wiped away and we didn’t really recover until the 1950s, and then again the feeling, as far as I was concerned, was that level of calm and tranquillity that we had had in the mid-30s. This was thrown over almost totally in the 60s by the flower people, who had none of the charm or the beauty of those plants, but introduced us as a nation, to the horrors of drugs, and the relinquishing of the chains which had previously held our society together. The religious ties were no more, and to some extent the social mores were frowned upon as being old hat. After 69, I couldn’t really tell what the atmosphere was in the UK, outside Northern Ireland, as we were too concerned with our own problems.

But what we have today is an underlying, unnoticed fear, which affects our lives from almost birth to old age. We don’t trust people as much as we did, and some of us take extreme security measures to ensure our own safety. We fear new diseases with good reason. Streams of cars, nose to tail, are taking children to school because the parents are afraid. The elderly have special locks on their doors, and to a great extent, batten down the hatches as soon as the sky darkens. Youngsters are carrying knives either from aggression or because of fear, and parents often keep the children within the house at nights, staring at a screen because they’re too afraid to allow them to stroll the streets. Over this 90-year period our standard of living, our comfort, and possibly a large proportion of our incomes have risen, but there is not the relaxed atmosphere that those of us who were lucky to be in the right place at the right time, enjoyed. What concerns me most, is that I cannot foresee the outcome, with our society being fragmented the way it is, being also subjected to considerable psychological adjustments, having our way of life controlled to an unreasonable extent by a new form of government in a foreign country, as all this can overburden many to the point of a high level of frustration, and discontent.

I am probably too old, and too set in my ways to see the future clearly, but that doesn’t stop me expressing my views. Increasing the population, having more large towns and cities, is only aggravating the situation on such a small island. Instead of bringing immigrants in to perform jobs our people seem reluctant to do, it seems to me that as the indigenous population is waning, the jobs are being manufactured to feed technical advancement, such as call centres, the mobile phone, as the need created by advertising, rather than the stable requirements of a contented society.

Speaking personally
My regular readers will have found that my output has dropped considerably over the last six weeks. This was for a number of reasons. Firstly, I have to use a magnifying glass for reading print on paper and on the screen, secondly I have had to be careful of my eyes, and thirdly and more importantly, I believe that I have arrived at a point where I am beginning to repeat myself. As my grandmother used to say,’ I am boiling my cabbage twice!’ As I have written something like 500 articles, it will be too tedious to go through them to see if I’ve already made the same comment before, so I rely on my creaking memory, and your forgiveness. The condition of the eyes will not be complete until May or June, when the other eye has been done, and at that time, because I shall have little of my own experience to offer, I will only be writing what I feel is important, and worth the reading. I still have other interests such as painting, writing, illustrating personalised books for my great-grand-children and of course the inevitable gardening, although each year I find I can only do successively less. I just hope you will understand. John