Category: General

Immigrants
According to the press, 2.2 million immigrants arrived in this country in the last five years. I must admit that I am finding that I’m dealing with foreigners, mostly on the telephone, but also in the shops and that to some extent, I have a language problem in so much that being slightly deaf I have no clue of what they’re saying, as their accent is totally foreign to me. It was interesting that in the same piece it said the UK born resident population had dropped by half a million in the same period. Speaking of my own case, a number of my family left this country to either be educated or work overseas, all of them hoping to return in due course. Some other statistics I found relevant were in the overseas-born of working age had increased by 26% to almost a million, while the British-born working population fell by 44,000. About 40% of the long-term migrants to the UK in 2005 were aged 15 to 24, compared with 13% for the UK population as a whole. I believe the significance of these figures is not only the problem of housing, health service etc which is being stretched, but with that age group it is possible that they will bring other members of their home community, as wives and so the multiracial mix of this country will increase year-on-year. A friend of mine employed a European person to clean house. This lady then returned to her own country, I assume having made the nest egg that she needed, and then her daughter immigrated and took over her job. I found it interesting that there was no one locally who was either prepared, or whom my friend was prepared to employ, and yet she picked a foreign person, with little English, and probably without a reference, and
found the whole system suited them.

Town terrorised by eight-year-old youngster.
I am not conversant with the law in England, when it comes to children having toy guns. When I was a kid I had dozens because I ran a small army in my back garden, with shoulder badges hat badges, the whole gamut. But it seems that times have changed, A copper in Wiltshire threatened and frightened a little boy of eight because he had an orange and black toy gun, and because the policeman said, that it was a replica, (what small child would want anything less?) he threatened the child with arrest, demanded that he broke up the gun and only left when the father broke it. The cream of the joke was he then returned five minutes later to warn the boy’s stepsister, aged six, about riding her battery-powered Barbie car on the pavement. Anything I would remark on that lot, would be superfluous. I told you I didn’t understand the law in England.

The EU Treaty
I never wanted to join Europe, if we had done in 39, we would never have survived after Dunkirk. I remember clearly the days when Edward Heath was extolling the merits of what is now the EU. Having spent my adult years touring Europe, meeting the Italians the French and the Germans, and spending time with them, the difference in their general approach was a key to the future, their patriotism and their parochial views predicted, as indeed ours did, that there would be serious problems. From my own assessment, I could never understand how a government could legislate for the whole of the EU, when the customs, the attitudes of the populace, the financial status, and most of all the geographical differences were all so variable, there was inevitably going to be mismanagement. Later Brussels started tinkering with legislation, which influenced purely parochial matters, probably instigated by commercial factors, not matters of state, if one considers the EU as a state. This tinkering had the effect of putting small businesses to the wall. The final nail in the coffin in my view was when France and Germany formed a voting coalition.

We need to have the small print relayed to us in language we can understand, explained without bias and then have a referendum couched in terms, which gives necessary options rather than just in or out. Unfortunately I think this so complicated, it won’t be workable

In the way that folk accepted the steady bombing of the cities during WW2, as something that if hated, had to be inured, the majority of the Northern Ireland population felt the same way during the 30 odd years until very recently.

The Story Of The Ludicrous Gift  I have referred before to the ‘liberation’ of articles by the terrorists. There are hundreds of apocryphal tales but one which happened on a contract I was engaged upon, took place a day or two before we stopped for Christmas. The contractor had a gang laying pipes down one of the main roads in the East of the City. On the morning, some men arrived in a car and one approached the men on the site with a gun, casually held in his hand, not pointed at them, just there, an implicit threat. “I want to borrow your lorry,” he said with no preamble. The ganger nodded, what else could he do, anyway the lorry belonged to the firm not him – there was no contest. The man smiled, thanked them as if he had been granted a favour and he and another drove off.

The theft was reported and we heard later in the day the lorry had been seen between Belfast and Ballymena going hell-for-leather down a motorway, filled with booze. Still later we heard a vintner’s wholesale store had been raided. The men were never caught. Next morning the lorry was found parked beside the pipe-track. When the driver opened the door of the cab he found a dozen tins of beer on the seat with a note thanking him and wishing him and his mates a merry Christmas. Is a question asked in Ireland an Irish question? In this case the question had been asked of the workmen and the questioner had answered himself – What a question!!

The Young Molotovs In ’98 one grandson was getting married in Scotland and another had been diagnosed with meningitis in Ireland. While we were all worried for the patient, we had been assured that he was recovering, so we went to the wedding, staying overnight. The following day, on our return, we were in a hurry to see the invalid, and as I was still well above the limit, the Scots are very generous and persuasive; Sophie drove to Bangor straight from the airport, about thirty miles. Late in the afternoon she started to drive us home when we found that UDA Militants were blocking the dual carriageway and we were forced to drive through a housing estate. We rounded a bend and were flanked by and held up by young boys, anything from 10 years old and upwards. One of them was brandishing a lemonade bottle with a rag hanging out of it in one hand, and flicking a cigarette lighter in the other. The rest were telling us to get out of the car, one hammering on the side door. They proposed to steel it. I looked as Sophie, she looked at me – we had been held up a couple of time before by Republicans and each time I had driven through them, hoping to hit none, but if I had, my policy was I would immediately report to the Army or Police. In this case, without hesitation Sophie stamped on the accelerator and, thank god, they were so surprised they didn’t throw the bottle, but one did try to climb into the back seat – without success – none was hit – Sophie was revving with no regard to the engine. She was 78 years old, and old habits die hard – ‘No Surrender’ is written on many walls in Northern Ireland – the paramilitaries should read their own slogans.

The government is letting our dairy farmers down. I could have been forgiven for thinking it was another April the first joke, but in fact it was another idiotic suggestion, rather than directive, from a government source. They want us to start drinking Long Life Milk instead of fresh milk, to save the planet. They believe that if we buy cartons of Long Life Milk, we won’t need to put it in the fridge, and so will be saving electricity, which will reduce our carbon footprint. Where have they been for Gods sake! Yesterday I was in Laser and discovered the size that television sets have risen to as the norm. I suppose you will be finding them wanting us to go back to the 9 inch screens of the 50s.

On the television news, a spokesman was brought on to tell us that if we had Long Life Milk as a staple as a child, we would prefer it to fresh cream milk. The inference from that of course is that tastes built up in childhood will take precedence for the rest of you life. This of course is absolute nonsense, I used to like Spillers Shapes, dog biscuits, pink in colour, when I was about eight. I haven’t eaten them since, and would probably hate them now.. The presenter demonstrated that while we in this country hardly drink Long Life Milk at all, it is a staple on the Continent. I can’t seriously believe that someone in their right senses could think that adding one particular item, daily, to the contents of the fridge, which even if it’s only half full, is running 24 hours a day, will make any difference to our individual carbon footprint, Even the preparation or Long Life Milk, I am told, uses more electricity in heating, than pasturisation does.

Being of a suspicious nature, I feel that there is more to this than meets the eye. Is it the EU who is pressurising because GB is not an open market for large quantities of Long Life Milk manufactured in the EU? Our dairy farmers have had a rough time recently, thanks to the inefficiency of the running of a government department, although the latter cannot be blamed for bluetongue. I would have thought that the government would be doing the best they could, at this time, to boost the sale of milk to help the beleaguered farmers in this country, rather than opening up borders to a possible upsurge of surplus milk for abroad. Perhaps someone somewhere has a lively interest in selling Long Life Milk.

I remember, in the 20s, that a man delivered milk in a churn, from a two wheeled donkey cart, ladling the milk with a measure into one’s jug. .From then until the late 90s, we had milk delivered to the doorstep daily, in bottles. That milk had anything from three to four inches of cream on it at the top of the bottle, something I have never seen in the milk from supermarkets. I have always found it incredible that while the full cream milk that we buy tastes as if it has cream, the cream never settles out. Why is that, are additives being used? What I have also noticed is that the milk, since the onset of the latest foot and mouth outbreak, has not stayed as fresh, even in the fridge, as it did previously, which leads me to believe that because they can’t sell their milk abroad, or even because the distribution in our own country has been disrupted, the milk is being delayed somewhere in the system.

When government agencies waste their time coming off with the unbelievable rubbish like this, and make us turn off neon indicator lights, because the small amount of electricity required to drive them, taken overall would have some effect, even in the face of the scandalous footprints of the larger countries, it would be more to the point if they transferred their energies to the failure of the Child Support Agency, and similar deficiencies.

Addressing the rise in serious, Alphabet diseases in the DHSS. This is not, repeat not, a criticism of hospital staff, but of management and the Government. Recently I had a small surgical operation, and had to return to have the stitches out. At one point, the nurse attending me had a problem, and sought the help of a Sister . The nurse was wearing surgical gloves, and everything she was doing was done with cleanliness in mind. The sister, at the time of the request, like the rest of the staff, under severe pressure was merely passing, she had no surgical gloves on her hands, absentmindedly bent to pick up a piece of paper from the floor, read it, put it to one side, and then without gloves attended to my wound. I site this not as a criticism of the nurse, but of the fact that the whole department was being overworked. The surgeons and doctors were running approximately one and a quarter hours late due to an influx of emergency cases. From my experience, in this small hospital, this was not unusual because they were understaffed, and under funded. However, in general, I think one could be wrong in thinking that the Health Service is under funded when everyone talks in Billions. I believe it is a matter of mismanagement, spending money on bureaucracy, trying to reach targets to justify government policy, and not listening to the people at the coalface, the senior nurses, the doctors, and the specialists. Talk to any of them, and you will get an entirely different picture, but unlike in the old days they are no longer in charge.

Every time they raise the question of alphabet diseases on television, they always show someone swishing away with some sort of mop, cleaning the floor. Surprise surprise, when inspectors went round a number of hospitals recently, they discovered that under the furniture there were little piles of debris of one sort or another. The actual cleaners have targets, and are commercially driven, probably with very little slack. Way back in the dark ages when I was in hospital, they had matrons and I believe at that time a lot of cleaning was done actually by the nurses as well as cleaning staff, and they scrubbed. Today it is out on contract, the ward is just another job in a day of many jobs, it has no personal relationship, the cleaners aren’t part of a team, and they too are under pressure, but for a different reason. So I find it unsurprising that the cleaning is inadequate, and in consequence one assumes, the rise in the alphabet diseases, is increasing.

Nearly 10 years ago I had a hip replacement, and after one day in considerable discomfort, I was expected to get up and walk, go to the bathroom to wash, and go to the toilet. Any man will tell you that there are a number of their kind who find it impossible to aim correctly at the WC and persist in leaving the lavatory in a worse state than when they arrived. I understand, whether correctly or not, that some of these alphabet diseases are transmitted through unclean toilets. Short of having a permanent lavatory attendant who cleans up after each patient, I fail to see how transmission of the disease by the passage feet, can be controlled adequately. Swishing about with a mop may impart a certain amount of bleach, but it will also be gathering and moving about whatever else is there. Recently I questioned why the alphabet diseases were not as prevalent in prisons, and I have just realised, that unless I’m mistaken, each cell has its own WC. While we are talking about patients walking about, they are touching furniture, television knobs, passing on newspapers and so on. They might even be carriers, and certainly some of them will not be washing their hands after having been to the WC. So I think it is totally unfair to blame the medical staff for an outbreak, unless it can be proven to be due to rank negligence on their part, and not that of other sources including incoming contractors. By the same token, it is absolutely right to blame the management, because it is their job to oversee, if an inspector from outside can come and find debris underneath something, it is purely about management that someone in-house hadn’t discovered it first.

Recently I wrote about a young woman, who had a driving licence stolen, and presumably as a result of the information therein, criminals not only emptied her accounts at banks, they used her credit card accounts and opened other accounts in her name. This caused me to try to understand how this had come about merely from a driving licence. I came to the conclusion that if a driving licence, with all the latest security checks is unsafe, is an Identity Card such a good thing?

The driving licence holds considerable personal information including a signature. Banks and building societies are overhauling the security of their computer functions, but I suspect the Driving Licence bureaux feel they have not the same responsibility, and are more easily hacked into. People pay for their licences with cheques, and credit cards and this information is, more than likely, recorded as part of the general transaction. Cheques carry quite a bit of information, the bank account, the sort code, the individual’s number, and their signature. The latter will be on file for checking purposes.

If the criminal organisation is large enough, and sophisticated enough, run like a National business, it could easily manufacture new cards, with a picture of the criminal using the card on it, on a National scale. Subsequently, it could be used where an ID was required. To arm themselves with this is clearly simple and enables them to open any number of accounts and have access to the current ones. It must be understood that this is my version of the scenario, arrived at through lateral thinking and basic commonsense. We have arrived at the point where throughout the world vast sums of money are being sidetracked by criminals, and while the banks make good the losses, they are of course transferring those losses to their customers, probably not always in an equable form.

The government, and indeed industry, now talks in billions. I never knew what a billion was until the other day when I calculated , roughly on the basis of £10 per hour, as the average wage of a large proportion of the electorate or an average of about £20,000 pa. A Billion represents all of the average salaries of 50,000 wage earners. When they were talking about that absolute necessity, the Olympic Games, they weren’t talking in one billion they were talking in several, as they are about the train that is going right across London., saving the travellers anything from zero to fifteen minutes. We can wait twenty for a bus.. To pay for all these billions, we are taxed to a very high proportion of our income, more than we are aware of in most cases. A fair proportion of which is squandered through bad management, idiotic projects and specious decisions made against firm advice, the Dome being probably the least..

I know there are lies, damn lies, and statistics, and possibly what I have written above might fall into one of those categories. I just cannot get my mind round the way such vast sums of money are bandied about almost like confetti, and to some extent appeasing one faction to the detriment of the majority. Ask people in the middle of the UK how they feel about the government spending a fortune again in the London area, when the infrastructure throughout the land is below standard, we will be faced with vast sums of money needed to protect our citizens from flooding. If infection, that we previously haven’t experienced, is to be carried by the atmosphere as a result of the tremendous changes taking place in the world as a whole, there will be another bottomless pit for those zillions.

From my biased standpoint, I’m against government by one party with an impregnable majority, which really should be made impossible. In our current situation the power is only in a few hands. The theory is OK if corporate management was what it is intended to mean, management by agreement of the majority, but anyone who has operated in committee will know that there is one voice above all others, or, as in our government system, the Whips control, and the members jump, because they are afraid of being ousted in disfavour and so losing all the kudos and perks which are so dear to them. There have been some recently who resigned rather than being dubbed as sheep, but nothing like the integrity yeas ago – the old school,. with all its faults was more competent, experienced and less precipitate. JUST THINK ABOUT IT!

I can’t help being an irascible old so-and-so, because I am driven to it by coming across so many things I just don’t understand, and cannot see the reason for. Recently I accidentally came across a new version of Robin Hood on TV. I think probably all my life, as a childish romantic, I have enjoyed the various versions, written and in films, of the Robin Hood saga. This time however, Robin Hood’s merry men were fighting with martial art techniques, and performing not just clever feats, but unbelievable ones. My old brain fails to understand why it was necessary to jazz up the battle scenes in this way, when the weapons and armaments of a bygone age are every bit as interesting if not more so, than the total impossible gyrations, and jumps, leaps and bounds which would dwarf the high jump and long jump records. There was also another film, for which the title attracted me, which started off with what I took to be Buddhist monks in some sort of seminary. They were being taught martial arts and for a while this was amusing and then they went out into the wider world, where just the two of them were defeating an army of hundreds. I switched off, but couldn’t put the image out of my mind, that some producer was able to sell this codswallop, to a gullible public. If you want to tell a fairytale, that’s fair enough, the whole atmosphere of the story, written or visual, is clearly romanticism, so anything goes. But to take any story, which is about hoodlums, hoods, people in the 16th century, and just basic criminals, and give skills and astronomical abilities to the people in the story, totally outside any reasonable excuse, to me is absurd and can’t be justified. Entertainment should be believable within the overall context, smashing everything, wrecking cars, wrecking whole streets in car chases, is common, gets a hero or the criminal conveniently out of trouble, but defeats reason. We fortunately have Sky plus, a system whereby it is possible to record in seconds, or weeks ahead, and as a result have sufficient material for when we come across something that is totally stupid, to switch off, erase it and go to something else recorded. My problem is that this is happening more, and too often.

After looking at a Hong Kong version of Robin, I wondered why children accepted this, and what effect it was having on them. I looked at some research on the Internet and found a treatise on fundamental responses in young children. Cartoons of objects were shown to children in the first, fourth and sixth grades. The young ones responded to movement. Both older grades responded mainly in terms of intention they attributed to the objects, what they expected to happen next. Their responses to more difficult cartoons took into account movements and quantity change. What I write here, is very sketchy and elementary, my interpretation is that the older children, from experience, anticipate in advance what they expect to happen Whether I am right, I can’t guarantee. What I. have discovered, however, is that in cartoons and in films now, the action and the dialogue are a lot faster and more confusing to me, they jump from scene to scene rather than having a smooth progression, so that much is left to interpretation and imagination. It would therefore seem that the fact that children and adults are assumed to anticipate, is used by the entertainment world to allow them to portray stories in these complicated and juddering scenes, rather than in a smooth flow. Economy maybe is the basic reason.

One other aspect of a modern-day entertainment scene is that more violence enters into every aspect, be it in films or cartoons, than in the past. Even Tom and Jerry, who were castigated years ago for the level of violence, when really the scenario was so graphically unbelievable, while being highly amusing, people didn’t think of it as violence. But in some recent Tom and Jerry cartoons I have seen, kung fu or whatever, has found its way in. I believe that a lot of the gratuitous violence, incredible destruction, and totally unbelievable action in entertainment, is on the increase, and could well sub-consciously be accepted as the norm, when it becomes a daily diet.

It is for my readers to decide whether I am talking nonsense, an old man disillusioned with progress and moaning, or perhaps an octogenarian whose experience might at last be bearing fruit.

I simply could not believe the behaviour of our politicians, knowing they were in the public eye, acting like children in the playground, even worse than usual. There was a ‘Ya! Ya! Mine’s bigger than yours,’ element that I found absolutely absurd, throughout the whole debate during Prime Minister’s Question Time. After the Prime Minister had done his famous U-turn, I would have thought that the point had been made adequately by what he had said, and that a dignified response would be more appropriate and indeed more telling. Who do they think they’re kidding, when they meet one another in the corridors I’m sure they don’t behave in this way, so why on the floor of the house. It is pure theatre, and as they are on TV, they seem to have to behave like students on rag day.

The thing that worries me is that I, not even a journalist, just a man in the street, have been pleading for over a year, about the very things that are now causing the government problems and forcing new Draconian measures. They have university professors, financial analysts, advising them, and yet for some reason they ignored the direction in which the tide was flowing. One could almost feel that they are governing on a hit-and-hope basis, rather than reasoned thought. We were told that the whole purpose of our finances being controlled by the Bank of England, rather than the government, was to bring about a greater stability. In my mind it was to shift the responsibility. We were told that Gordon Brown was a highly intelligent, calm and capable Chancellor, and one of the best we had ever had. I think ‘had’ is the operative word.

What I don’t understand is why, at a time when we have so many crises, that the Prime Minister found it necessary to accompany his Minister to a hospital, and stand there wringing his hands, when the Minister was talking. His body language gives me to feel that he is suffering a high-level of insecurity and is in fact out of his depth, which seems to me to be borne out by recent events, and yet another kite being flown, concerning Corporation Tax..

One of the things that the phantom election threw up, was how many new faces appeared on television, representing their parties at high-level. We were shown from time to time, some of the old guard advising the new, but now so much time has elapsed since the Tory old guard was in control, that there are few of them left to steady the ship. Instead we’re getting sound-bites which the politicians feel is what we want to hear, when, actually, it’s not hearing that we want, but action, and action that makes sense, stopping the rot, stopping the crime and raising standards generally. It was the sort of thing that used to happen in the past, but we haven’t seen much of it in the past five years, rather there has been a steady flow of kite flying, rescinding, legislating from the hip, U-turning, until the electorate hasn’t a clue of where it stands, has no faith nor trust in its leaders, and is drowning in apathy..

The incredible circus, which has been built up around what I believe to be an unnecessary inquest on Princess Diana, must be hell for the Princes and her close friends. It would certainly not be at the request of the Queen, and so one assumes that the press, with the paparazzi, have engineered this for increased sales. Many of us feel that if there had been no paparazzi there would have been no accident. This prompted me to consider manipulation in the round.

The dictionary definition states, ‘to give a false appearance to; to turn to one’s own purpose or advantage.’ This does not cover the wide range of applications, and the sheer terror and horror that it can cover, such as the plight of subjugated peoples in dictatorships, throughout the world.

We are currently being subjected to a mild form of manipulation by our politicians who are playing childish games with our lives, by making speeches and counter speeches, which are not necessarily policy, but rather inducements to make us vote for them. When the incumbent sees which way the wind is blowing he will then make up his mind whether it is in ‘his ‘ interest to go to the polls, not ours. This I believe is manipulation. It was noticeable that when David Cameron was talking without notes, a point which was strongly made, (even Soph thought it great), to indicate that he was speaking from the heart, it made me wonder if all our actors and actresses who can go through a three-hour play without a note, are also speaking from the heart. I suggest this is another form of manipulation. Just in passing, I noted that his speech from the heart, was only his heart, not that of the party, it was always the first person singular. Another Blair?

In Northern Ireland we have been manipulated constantly, by Westminster, Dublin, the USA Government, the American Irish Lobby with its funding-raising and back-seat driving, our own political factions, the UN the EU and anybody else who can stick their finger in, for nearly 40 years, and we are worse off now than when it all started, certainly politically, the infrastructure, and of our personal knowledge of our place in things generally. If you think about it, you too may have been thoroughly manipulated.

The most subtle form of manipulation, of course, is advertising. They use fear, sex, suggestion rather than fact, in its many forms, and portray a Utopian environment, obviously associated with their products.

As you know, recently I did a survey of how much people read, and it was clear that TV and the Internet are on the increase in providing information, while written matter is being reduced by 40%. How this affects newspapers I have not researched, but I am of the opinion that it applies to them as well. However, I do not think, as a result of this, the paparazzi will be reduced proportionately, because the sensational press will probably maintain its position, which says a lot about the taste of the average citizen.

I hesitate to make statements about religion, firstly because I think it’s none of my business, secondly so many people are dependent upon it. But recent events of religious leaders and political factions, pretending allegiance to religion, are taking advantage of the modern day sophistication, easy transportation, and a highly mixed race environment, to perpetrate acts of violence which are manipulation of the individual bomber and of us, but go beyond that to a hideous extreme, to encourage fear and panic to achieve an end, which in itself is unreasonable.

A hundred years ago soapbox politics was simple, unsophisticated and what you saw is what you got. Today with the professional use of psychology, with spin doctors, speech writers and all the plethora of outside interests and influences, in our everyday lives, not only in politics, we must become ourselves more sophisticated, more aware and above all more questioning. When a man stands up giving a long speech, not necessarily a politician, it is difficult to take in all that he says and to remember it, therefore what you get is a warm impression, and if he is any good at manipulation, a few nuggets that will cheer you, and the cold hard facts, while still being there, are enshrouded in verbiage and showmanship.

The appearance of a flyer on my front doormat on the first of October made me realise how very much Christmas has become degraded. A local restaurant was advertising Christmas lunches and dinners at reasonable rates, presumably to kick off about now, I haven’t checked because it is not Christmas yet. Christmas for the elderly is not the same as it was when they were able to prepare a spread for anything up to fifteen people. For a start they had control, but in a way that induced anticipation, pleasure and the prospect of enjoyment for the whole family.

But I want to go further back than that, I want to go back to my childhood, and that of my children, both of which were so terribly different to the childhood and Christmases of today. Christmas really didn’t start until the beginning of December, didn’t reach its full enriched colour and excitement until a few days before Christmas. It was at this point that the paper chains were made at the kitchen table out of packets of strips of coloured paper, stuck together with a wet sponge, lists of presents were made and secrets exchanged. It must be remembered that small children would be taken shopping at about four o’clock, on the last Saturday before Christmas. It was relatively dark until one reached the shops on the High Road, and Christmas descended on you in a blaze of colour and light. This would have been the first foray to find Christmas presents. There would have to be another foray with another member of the family to help choose a present for the one who was taking the child on that Saturday – no secrets no fun. These trips, of course, had to include a visit to see Santa at one of the two grottos on offer. The adults thought the present was rubbish, and inevitably not worth the money, but to the child it had a significance that was worth the money. These trips involved a tremendous amount of trooping from shop to shop, breathing on the windows, watching demonstrations of new toys, and trains going through tunnels, under bridges stopping and starting. There was an unspoken understanding between adult and child of what was possible and what was beyond the budget for all of them. So the trip generally started at Woolworths and worked up, and something was bought for every member of the family, bar the one conducting.

For the young children Christmas was an encapsulation; it was a bubble in which everything was coloured by the coming event and all the preparations that went before. All the time, in conversations with other children, with the decoration of the school rooms, the end of term party, the excitement and anticipation steadily grew, culminating at some absurd hour in the morning when the child crawled to the end of the bed and lifted its stocking in the dark, and tried to envisage what each lump inside the stocking held. He or she knew that the big lump wrapped in Christmas paper was a piece of coal, I believed that strangely if that had been missing the child would have been disappointed because that was an extra parcel from Santa, which made it special, and unwrapping was as much part of the fun as the receipt of the gift from Santa. A lot of the contents of the stocking were predictable and traditional but there were always lovely surprises of little intrinsic worth, but a tremendous amount of pleasure to the child, especially the ones that still believed in Santa, which gave the presents an aura they would not have otherwise have had. To maintain the fiction the adults hung their stockings across the kitchen fireplace, and they received things that would give the children amusement on Christmas morning, when the recipient feigned horror.

Now it’s time for Scrooge and his traditional complaint. I think it is difficult to find a shop with trains running round, or young students demonstrating new toys, and everything laid out from tiny replicas to dolls’ prams, cycles, scooters and all the other dreams that would not materialise on Christmas morning, but which on the shopping expeditions fostered a vague hope. Catalogues, the Internet. and all the other sources today, where commercialisation has taken a shortcut to wealth, is at the expense of the dreams of the child. Some people call me an old .., and you can fill that in as you like, and your vocabulary permits, but I really do find it sad that such incredible pleasure for so many days, that cost nothing and was available to all, rich and poor, like many of the other traditions and folklore, has been overridden by progress, Christmas is now extended over so many weeks, even months, that repetition leads to boring familiarity and devaluation.

Irony In High Places Stormont is our seat of Devolved Government in Northern Ireland. It is there our elected representatives determine what is good for us. There are some, with an extreme Republican brief, who wish to and are allowed to conduct their affairs in Irish, to the annoyance of the majority which either has no Irish or a smattering. On Thursday 4th October, there was a news item on lunchtime TV about a furore concerning a female MLA who gave a dissertation in Irish on the floor of the House. Later she was asked by a TV reporter why she did so, and I was amused to find that she justified her actions in English. Her priorities suddenly became clear, what she had to say about herself was clearly more newsworthy than what was reported earlier as a recording of the proceedings which she made in Irish. I’m not too sure whether she is making a fool of herself or of the electorate.

Personal Security. I’ve heard of a person who had her driving licence stolen from her handbag, and after a lapse of time she found that her joint accounts, in different banks, had been raided on more than one occasion, and sizeable sums removed. It would seem that the information obtained from a driving licence somehow then led to her pin numbers on more than one of her accounts.

A member of my family who uses eBay and other Internet shopping, pointed out that first of all, sending a cheque gave a lot of information about your bank, your account number and your signature. In consequence she now deals mostly in cash, and uses a security system ‘paypal’ on the Internet which vets financial transactions for the individual.

Inheritance Tax, I have written about this on several occasions because we, the elderly, are initially affected, but the rest of the family become affected as a knock-on effect from this insidious tax. David Cameron in his urge to achieve popularity and in consequence votes, is suggesting that he proposes to put a threshold of inheritance tax at £1 million. I know one or two people who are recognised as being millionaires, and that it is not really difficult today to reach that figure when an ordinary five bedroom house can go for nearly a million. One must assume that he has reason for thinking there are sufficient people in this category to warrant this level of threshold. My first reaction is that it is pure electioneering, with people so relieved by the switch that they don’t assess all the parameters that this will encompass. How many millionaires do you know intimately who are likely to be of an age that this will affect? It would seem that the pendulum has nearly swung off the scale, while with Labour, the reverse was proposed, that the seven-year period of this being free of taxation, was to be modified or rescinded. I think we’ll have quite a bit of this political tennis over the next few weeks, to the extent that the two parties will cancel one another out and we’ll go back to people voting for parties rather than ideas.

Dieting. If you are of a sensitive nature, skip the next couple of sentences. I first heard about dieting when I was a child and I heard the adults in my family discussing the latest diet product for reducing weight. Apparently one could buy some form of alleged medicine, which, while the patient was not aware of it, contained the eggs of the tapeworm, the sure-fire way of losing weight if not your life. Since then various members of the family since the end of World War II right up to today, including myself, have at times done their best to lose weight. Christmas is always a killer to any resolutions one might make. You have just about got yourself down to where you want to be, by whatever means, Christmas comes along, and you might just as well not have bothered. I’m writing this because I am in the throes of losing weight in order to relieve the pressure on arthritic hip joints. I have discovered, as a result of listening to my daughter, that home-made bread, in one of these bread-making machines is less likely to put very much weight on compared with commercial loafs and buns, which contain so many additives today that tend to put weight on. There are so many diet products on the market, advertised on television, some cheap some costing a fortune, and none guaranteed. Self-will, with a reduction in portions rather than the change of diet, and eschewing additives, seems to me my only solution, and it does work, however slowly. One disadvantage though is I married a good cook who doesn’t need to slim and likes her food. As somebody once said to me ‘God help your wit’ – it is like pushing a pea up a uphill with your nose.