Old Gaffer

Category: General

  • Another warning, Coastal Paths.

    Someone in the government is trying to put forward a Bill to allow paths to be constructed around our coasts, taking over land belonging to those it will pass through. I believe this has not been thoroughly thought through. When my children were young we used to go walking in the hills, forests and on heath-land. When they became teenagers (1965) this was no longer possible because there was the risk of molestation, even being shot by youngsters with rifles. Later those same heath-lands were set alight at least once in the summer. Today I see them set alight at every opportunity.

    The level of vandalism, in towns and cities today is so vast, so extreme, so brutal, even with the level of policing we have, as to give serious worry to those in charge and fill the prisons to overflow. How much more dangerous are the paths going to be and how are they to be made safe? The property owners are going to have to fence their boundaries with razor wire, and keep guard dogs, if their property is anyway remote.

    There is no shadow of doubt that walking along the cliff path enjoying the countryside, the views across the sea, the sky and the wildlife is an ideal that we have all enjoyed, but times have severely changed. At the end of the war I and my brother-in-law spent three days walking every inch of the coast from Ballycastle to Coleraine, staying at youth hostels overnight. I have never forgotten that holiday and look back on all the different aspects with amusement and pleasure. So to some extent it hurts me to be so negative today, but in those days you didn’t even have to lock your front door. Today you are not sure who you can trust.

    I think that this proposal must be selective, made in such a way that it is safe for those using it, those maintaining it, and those whose property it skirts. This is a tall order in the light of the news on television every day in the week, of murder, assault, stabbings and rape. We have coastal paths. It would seem logical that an overall survey of groups of these paths should be made, delineating their type of location, from remote to paved and lighted, the amount of use they receive, and the number of incidents reported on each. A pilot scheme in some county will be worthwhile as an opener, and if it produced anomalies, then the scheme may not be worth enlarging,

    When I see the damage that is done to the Cave Hill, its wildlife and its fauna, so regularly, without any conscience, it gives me more than pause for thought.

    ..

  • Stress In Millennium 2

    Being retired with a relatively new, small house, and few responsibilities. I have time for things I never had time for in the recent past, and which so many people don’t seem to have time for today. No! Not flying of to a Costa, just sitting in a deck chair and crowd-watching, reading, walking for a purpose – to look and see and admire nature, not charging along daily, round the houses, to keep fit.

    Before WW2 few people as a percentage owned their own house. The smaller properties were rented on a weekly or monthly basis, and the larger were leased, on 99 or 999 year leases. Families lived in the one house for generations. Today there is little rented property and people move about four times during adulthood, resulting in the second and third purchases being progressively dearer. In the 30s and after WW2, we, in our early years, had security, no pension worries, no fear of redundancy. Life was so much slower, you can’t envisage just how slow.. with no electronic communication; few even had a telephone, so questions of any sort were either verbal or written; thus giving time for thought, to mull, to make a decision and then change it, if necessary, before an answer was needed., not ‘knee jerk reaction’, a 21st centaury complaint. This applied particularly in business dealing and politics.

    Most were in a stable environment, could predict what we would be doing this day next year. There was little peer pressure, because there was no rat race. Salaries changed little, year by year, and taxation was stable. Most of us followed in our fathers footsteps, if a tradesman, it was apprenticeship, Journeyman and a chance at Foreman. In the professions the route was mainly through written exams such as City and Guilds, or institution exams, mugged up for by correspondence course, not university, Development in design was slow, and mainly for the wealthy. One bought an article and if some part of it wore out one could replace it from a local shop. In Belfast, this state of affairs lingered until the Troubles, when the IRA blew up a shop and warehouse of long standing and we lost valuable spares, and ever since we have joined the throw-away society How that helped the cause I fail to see. There were door to door collections for insurance and the HSA, Hospital Saving Association. The doctor’s fee was seven shillings and sixpence, when the weekly wage was between 33 and £5 a week.

    Advertising was not honed to the insidious level it is today. The placards and news paper ads were cosy pictures with banal messages, not warnings of doom and disease if the product was not bought and used. There was little pressure selling, Radio Luxembourg did not transmit until the mid to late 30s, ‘Auntie’, the BBC, had a clear field untrammelled by commerce. The working classes generally hated being in debt, there was a stigma attached to being insolvent, and pawning, while frowned upon, was for some families a regular ritual, popped on Monday, redeemed on payday, and the window of the pawnbroker’s shop held a fascination for most, especially children. There was stress, but nothing like today. With just news papers and the radio programmes, which had a censorship code, we were not clued up as people are now, we had taboos, we didn’t openly discuss things which were not ‘nice’, we were not faced with murder on the doorstep daily, or exhortations on health. The generally low level of wages, coupled with the fact that we walked so much, kept us healthy, eating good wholesome food, with little that was pre-prepared or likely to cause obesity. .We were without the stresses of driving, public transport took the strain, and with so little money, and the fact that furniture was handed down from generation to generation, so well made it could stand the test of time, shopping had not the significance it has today, when it has become a regular family outing. If iin difficulties we could call on relatives who lived close by, and families tended to remain in the same locality for generations, rather than being scattered as they are today.

    Am I wrong to consider much of the stress today is self-inflicted? That affluence has spawned a desire for acquisition, self betterment at any cost, peer pressure, permanently sailing close to the wind, making life a race, with no let up, and no time to take the long view. Too much emphasis placed upon nonessentials, such as status and conforming It is difficult enough to maintain one house, let alone two, and some have even three, the maintenance must be stressful. Possessions induce stress, and pride can often induce acquisition out of proportion to need. We in the 20s and 30s had such a limited horizon, due to our financial situation, that we led a simple, relatively stressless existence. Surprisingly it was not dull or boring, but our pleasures were possibly more simple and cheaper.

  • A Serious Warning, Flooding.

    Northern Ireland’s First Minister had Question Time. Firstly the questions had to be submitted days in advance, and answering the question was less important than unrelated views and policies. This meeting coincided with a deluge providing the worst flooding we have seen in Northern Ireland for a considerable time. The Minister for Development made a statement as to why the conditions were as bad as they were. It was clear that he had not done his homework as he constantly referred to The Water Service as the Water Company. One would have expected better, as the Water Service replaced the Company in 1973.

    A VERY SERIOUS WARNING TO THE UK. Aspects of Drainage the Populace should know. This is a UK matter, not one confined purely to Northern Ireland.
    Flooding was inevitable through the demand to increase housing, and the fact that gardens and driveways have been paved over. We should not be surprised, if the outcome is flooding, – although everybody seems surprised.

    I have no wish to be boring, so I will try to explain simply how this has come about, and how those responsible for maintaining the drainage, had not and have not a hope in hell of keeping up with progress. To demonstrate the problems the drainage engineers have to face I will use the analogy of the tree. Consider the trunk of a tree, the branches and twigs, starting small and year on year growing taller, the trunk gets thicker and so do the branches as they extend. The drainage of a city started when it was possibly a small village and while the configuration of the pipes of the sewer is like a tree, as time progresses with the city getting bigger the sewers have to be relaid or duplicated; this creates drainage problems, disruption, inconvenience and controversy. House extensions, including conservatories have aggravated the conditions. It is therefore obvious that some trunk sewers will inevitably lag behind the progress of the city. This is a prescription for flooding.

    In Victorian times surface water and sewerage were combined, and constructions called storm overflows were later inserted, so that in heavy rainfall the surplus water overflowed into a storm drain and ultimately into the rivers or sea. Unfortunately some of those systems are still in place or being got rid of as fast as possible, but much of the old housing built before the 60s is probably still on a combined system. Engineers designing drainage used to use parameters based upon decades of experience and records, designing in the past for a storm arriving once in a century. Rain falling on hard surfaces has a very fast run off, the rate determined by the gradients. Rain falling on cultivated areas is first of all absorbed and then with saturation, run-off is slow due to the nature of the ground and what is growing there. This is what the minister should have been explaining, especially that no one could have anticipated the rate of rainfall experienced.

    Some years ago there was severe flooding in the south of England caused by heavy rainfall and the failure of river revetments. This was not an isolated case and caused me to examine the possibility of designing attachments to the access doors of properties that could be quickly erected by even the most infirm, to hold out the floodwaters. This was possible, however, it didn’t prevent water and sewerage backing up into the house through the toilets and the ventilators.

    Water does not flow uphill, but it can be driven uphill by pumps. Totally improving the drainage system of the whole country in areas likely to flooding from downpours similar to those encountered this June, 2007, will never be eradicated using simple drainage methods, it is too vast a problem, especially with global warming, and also rising tidal levels. Pumping in low-lying areas may be the only solution. One of the problems presented with this solution is the plethora of underground piping, cabling, and culverts, that will make this work both difficult and very expensive.

    It is therefore possible to appreciate not only the problems to be faced, the urgency of viable solutions, the vastness of the problem, but the timescale and the incredible costs for remedies. The latest intensity of flooding shows that new areas are now vulnerable. I believe the solution lies in segregating areas so that the aggregation of run-off is reduced, with the excess water from these areas being pumped when the rate of flow requires it, to other secure systems of trunk sewers and storm drains. Floodplain problems require different solutions.

  • Obscene Wages and Insurance

    The Wages Today. I start with a disclaimer. Some of my family think I’m in my dotage. so take what I have to say with a pinch of salt. Donkey’s years ago when the lottery first started, arrogantly thinking I might win, I created a consortium to ensure that the family shared my luck, and the government failed to, I tried to assess what was the maximum amount of money I could possibly need, and came to the conclusion I couldn’t spend,(not waste),more than £500,000. Some of the family thought they could handle a million, but when put to it they were spending for spending’s sake. So I wonder why these footballers, entertainers and film actors are being paid such obscene amounts, millions a year, when they have no hope of ever being able or spend it, while those paying them with their bums on seats in the terraces and the cinemas, are in many cases being taken to the cleaners. Those in charge, or acting as agents have some responsibility, because they are on a percentage. When youngsters start out on a football career their main interest is in getting picked for a team, and I believe that while some of them have ambitions of avarice, the majority have come from a background where a few thousand is a fortune, and their sights are set on their own accomplishments rather than greed. Surely it is time that those on the terraces brought the major clubs to heel, because they are draining the minor leagues and not really giving value for money If you want to gauge how the average person feels about money in thousands, watch that slick, TV programme, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Recently there were three contestants who had arrived at £8000, with no safety net, but two were pretty sure of the answer which would give them £16,000. A sure £8000 meant so much, none went on, but two would have won the higher amount. These people were not poor, but they were not prepared to lose what they had gained. The staggering discrepancy between what these people valued and what some others believe they themselves are worth, and apparently are right to do so, is extraordinary, and defeats common sense, because the money the latter earn, at the cost of many who can’t afford the entrance fees, could not all be used, merely stored in some form. I am aware that some of these high earners perform and support charitable works, but so do people who contributed to their extortionate salaries.

    Insurance It was thinking about insurance that directed my mind to the extortionate salaries being given in certain circumstances. I have recently been ripped off by an insurance company, using specious logic to disclaim my request. I have a daughter who carries a lot of her own insurance. This gave me an idea, that perhaps we could all take out our major insurance – for serious house damage, and third party liability, then for the rest, as a family, collectively carry our own insurance for the cars, the contents, minor house damage and anything else you care to think of.

    I started looking back over my 60 odd years of property ownership and driving, and realised that what with preserving no-claims bonuses, I had made very few claims against insurance. In fact if I had carried my own insurance for all but the very serious damage to the house, and third-party liability, I would have a nice nest egg. Currently an awful lot of the companies that you think you’re insured with are in fact part of a group where the head company objects to paying claims. I wondered if these wealthy footballers and film stars have their money stashed away all over the place, and could consider acting as insurers for the serious damage to premises and third-party. How many houses do you know of where there has been serious damage? True, with climate change, whirlwinds (I nearly said twisters but that might have been misconstrued) and the like might become more prevalent but even then, as house insurance is a necessity demanded by mortgage lenders, it looks to me that this would be a sound investment, and enable the man in the street to get from under the insurance burden he is suffering today. I may be wrong, but I suspect insurers don’t compartmentalise their liabilities, they are lumped together, so when a disaster occurs somewhere in the world, say the sinking of the Titanic, the payout is partially coming from our premiums. – just a thought, it’s a form of bookmaking after all, just at a more polite level, and bookies lay off when the heat is on.

    Insurance, which is based on fear, has really gone crazy, the other day I bought a tin opener for only a few quid and I was asked if I wanted to ensure it, for an additional 20%. Some commerce today is now based on implied fear. One only has to read the ads on television to see how insidious it is, especially if you don’t have a scientific background. We are pleaded to buy bottles and tablets of this and that to ensure that we don’t catch some unmentioned and unmentionable disease

  • Random Thoughts No. 6

    School reports. A grandfather proudly showed me the reports of his 7 year old grandson .I hadn’t the heart to tell him what I really thought. It was divided into 19 separate categories with type-written reports in each category, the smallest, music, was 19 words long, the longest was roughly 42 words, and the average, about 30 words. Forgive me for being sceptical that these comments are as detailed an assessment as they appear. Two ex-teachers thought it was difficult to assess children of that age in any great degree. I don’t blame the schools, I blame the system which dictates targets, information and a host of other requirements not related to the teaching of the children. Assuming there are 30 children in the class, and these comment categories are required for each child, the teacher, or teachers, have to compose and write out, or dictate, 570 items in 17,000 words. This stretches my credibility, I just don’t believe it. What I suspect is that the teachers have standard phrases on a computer, and by tapping single codes these can be coupled together and put into the categories. The question that presents itself then, is whether this flowery language and extreme detail is truly representative. It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of schools and educational levels have gone down, because the teachers are wasting their time with this type of window dressing. In my day the teacher’s comments were handwritten and generally said something like ‘has the ability but could do better, ‘excellent’, or some other sparse comment. Then they used an alphabetical code which soon told the parents the child’s ability when read along with a pithy summary. The amount of work needed for this report, even assuming the computerisation, would have burdened either a teacher, or a combination of a teacher and a backroom staff, excessively. The teachers I spoke to are glad they are not teaching today

    Bush really frightens me, has me waking up at night with the screaming hab-dabs. I have known ever since World War II, what I knew in Edinburgh in 1940, time and again depicted on television in race riots, Vietnam, and recent wars, that the American psyche is based on its own myths of the Wild West, of shoot first and ask questions afterwards. I find that Bush’s inarticulate delivery and vague bearing lead me to believe he is purely a mouthpiece for some very aggressive lobbyists. He seems to me to have about as much diplomatic delicacy as a seven pound sledge hammer. The trouble is this huge juggernaut called America, which for years was lying dormant, has suddenly woken up believing its own publicity, that it is a world leader. The precipitate action, and the unguarded utterances, with no reference to the outcome and the reactions of other nations, coupled with a strong political bias induced by the ethnic and fiscal balance at home, and subsidising rogue elements in other countries, should not be the stance of a great nation that considers itself to be a world leader, they are a prescription for strife.

    The Olympics, the mummy run, and railways. I can imagine that you are wondering. what twisted mind can link these three items – money as usual, today it links everything. I am heartily against the 2012 Olympics in Britain because I believe over the next five years our public coffers will be empty as a result of the proposed new housing programme, the two wars, bringing the infrastructure up to the level that it is acceptable, without even wasting it on something which so few of us can enjoy, except visually on the box, and that could be the case wherever it was held. We need money seriously for public transport. We must reduce those rush hours constituted by the mummy run, grasp the parking problems in towns and cities, all created because of a lack of public transport of a quality and quantity to make it viable. I believe nationally, we spend a tremendous amount of money both in fines and on wages just for parking, let alone the vast amounts on renewal and the construction of trunk roads, bypasses, and increasing the strength of the existing network to accommodate ever heavier and longer vehicles. We really need to re-examine the whole of our transport philosophy, with a view to getting the individual back into busses and trains, even if it means heavily subsidising. The cost to the individual of using public transport, especially over long distances seems extortionate, especially when the conditions of travel and pricing seem so unacceptable. Even our local bus has seats that only children can sit in really comfortably, because health and safety have cut down on the number of people standing, and, it appears, the bus companies, needing the passengers to make it pay, have increased the number of seats in the same area.

    Only those of us who lived at a time when all there was, was public transport, can be truly aware of what has been lost. Travelling on the Tube was always a torture, but on trams and buses one can relax and let the driver take the strain. In those days one didn’t have to wait long for trains, buses or trams, but today it is different.

  • The Costs Of Tony’s Ego

    I’m talking about the overall costs, not just the cost of the farewell bonanza, which I would find hilarious, if it wasn’t for the bad taste, the arrogance, the cost to the country in conception terms and the financial costs also. I have never heard of a politician going on a farewell trip round the world, while still in office, with high responsibilities, two wars in progress, and an infrastructure in chaos. Of course, if one is no longer in office, the protocols in the visited countries will be much lower grade. I think that covers it.

    For the two years after Tony Blair took office, I like a lot of people thought we were seeing a new approach to politics, which of course we were, but in our innocence, we didn’t recognise it for what it was – and then we began to. There were rumblings. in the media that the members of. the Cabinet were being overruled, even if they were actually consulted. Then we had the spin doctors, some falling from grace, the bully boys who kept the rest of the backbench toeing the line, and brow beating any public reaction to legislation. This then was followed by some of the more responsible members of the frontbench, resigning their posts. What we were finding was probably something that had always been there, the Prime Minister’s belief in his own omniscience, his incredible ego, and an insatiable desire for applause. I cannot believe that educated people, filling the ranks of the front bench, would normally have allowed so many trial legislations, or trial proposals that had to be abandoned, or subjected to a U-turn, unless their voices were totally unheard.

    The high point of the ego was the desire to be aligned with Bush in a venture that on the face of it would be over in a short space of time, with the added advantage of the adulation this would produce. The fact that this was coupled with a venture into Afghanistan only aggravated a total misjudgement. In spite of warnings from cooler heads in Parliament and the Armed Forces, the war went ahead with no planning for the future, to arrive where we are today. It always amazed me that when the might of the Russian army, with its ruthless approach, failled to subdue the Cali ban in Afghanistan, how Bush and Blair believed that we would do it in short order.

    I can best demonstrate the different effects change can have in different circumstances, by using design procedures. Take the design of a bridge across a navigable river. To go back to the beginning one must assume a tree crossing a stream. With time each design has been, copied, and modified to suit the circumstances of a particular location, and only rarely have bridges been so modified and so original a concept that they are virtually a new breed, as in the case for the Tacoma Straights bridge disaster. When one is faced with the design of a totally new concept, it is necessary to go through many stages of trial and error before both the design itself, and the method of construction can be relied upon to be perfect. Prior to 1946 change was relatively slow which gave time to modify products and routines in the light of experience, in the certain knowledge that those changes would not be disastrous or expensive. This approach brought us to where we were in 1939, stable, confident, and only a few with overwhelming ambition.

    When the whole regime, such as local government, or nationwide ministerial control, are suddenly changed, almost overnight and something different put in its place, the loss is unimaginable. Whole properties are vacated,, new ones either built or leased, interiors are changed, new equipment and furniture purchased, and the paperwork requires new headings and a totally new filing system. Add to this the effect, the loss of history, records and valuable staff, and it is like starting from scratch. This has been happening a lot over the past 10 years. The greatest example, of course, is a Child Support Agency, which I believe was a totally new concept because different demands were being made both by those seeking restitution, and those from whom it was being sought. This was not like banking, or tax collection, it is a two-way aggravation with an ordinarily civil servant in the middle. If there was something that should have been tried on a small-scale this was it. As one who has been taken over from a job that he enjoyed, to become a civil servant, was an eye opening experience, and one I would not wish on anyone else. In the same way the U turns must have created chaos, uncertainty and confusion.

    From where I sit I believe Tony Blair has little to be proud of

  • The Extended Family Heading For Doomsday

    In re-examining some of the statements I have made in the past, I’m wondering if the nanny state is as much responsible for the loss of the extended family as a drop in the birth rate. Let me go back in history. In 1931 my whole family fell apart. There was only unemployment benefit, and as my mother had not been employed she did not qualify. With the result our family was totally split up among the members of our extended family. My brother was taken in by an uncle and aunt in a lovely home in the country, and I didn’t see him again as part of the family until the uncle died. I was taken in by a grandmother and an aunt who lived with her. My mother was employed as a housekeeper to her sister who had a flourishing business and needed one.. The only time I ever saw my mother was at weekends when the aunt in our house walked me about 3 miles on Friday nights, and back again on Sundays, and I spent a weekend with her.

    In 1944 I married into a large extended family. At the time it meant nothing to me, other than a lot of faces at the wedding, Early in ’46 I received a elegram saying that my new daughter was seriously ill and I must return home. It turned out that she had developed a skin condition for which there was apparently no known cure. As the war was practically over, I was given unlimited compassionate leave. It was then that I discovered the value of the extended family. .People who had this condition died through pneumonia as the skin no longer protected the body from heat change, and the only solution was to treat the skin in a heat stable environment and hope for the best. At that time there was coal rationing and I went round our relatives and friends collecting coal to keep our daughter warm until she should survive, which thankfully she did. But this extended family functioned all the time, as I discovered once I was demobilised. For a start as the
    housing conditions were non-existent, Sophie and I were taken in to the family home, where there was an invalid uncle, later an invalid grandfather as well, then an invalid aunt, and finally my own mother who was severely ill prior to her entry into a nursing home.

    Today the health service, the social services and some charity organisations bear the brunt of what the average citizen had to bear in the past. What was obvious then was that the family, and even close friends took it for granted that they would help, because then they could not bear to see those they loved in dire straits. I just wonder, if the reverse is now taken for granted, that if you are in serious need the government will take over. The problem with that system is that the government has no sentimentality, and those carrying out its wishes, caring and generous as they may be, have not the same time, nor the same incentive as those members of the family had in the past. How would a little boy of nine years old get to see his mother living 3 miles away, when there was no transport available? Even today he would have to be whipped away in a car, and then there is no assurance that the people for whom the mother was working would want a little boy at weekends. By applying this logic to all the conditions I have mentioned here, you will see how impersonal the situation is today, and how much we seem to be dependent on the social services. There is no shadow of doubt that now the family’ consists of 2.4 children on average, instead of six or seven, the diminution of the extended family was inevitable, but unfortunately the social services, no matter how hard they might wish to, don’t give that level of human contact the family does, nor anything like the same stimulation. When we are young, there is so much to do and so much going on that we don’t think of the future to any great extent, and then one day we discover that we are totally dependent either on the social services, or the remnants of our family, and often the latter is scattered to the four winds. I don’t think there is a solution for this, and the sad thing about it is that the single-parent families are growing and so the extended families will disappear totally, and the end result, unfortunately, is obvious.

  • Random Thoughts No 5, I am sick of Bandwagons

    Every week there is something new which demands our attention, affects our lives and causes change for change’s sake. Much is in the cause of appearing to care, rather than caring

    Gas-Guzzlers are being taxed unfairly I believe, because the government wants to appear eco-friendly. I personally hate them; parking spaces were never painted to accept these monstrosities, thereby making getting in and out of one’s own car a contortion. At roundabouts they are like lorries and obscure one’s view. Half are driven purely for the Mummy Run, and parked outside schools in estate roads and so don’t help make through traffic flow easily, and get behind a slow one and passing is almost impossible. However, that is not the point, they cost an arm and a leg, so the Vat must have been shattering, we all are taxed on our petrol and as they are Guzzlers, allegedly, they pay more tax – it is unfair, it contravenes their rights by being selected for special attention, it was imposed without a reasonable period of warning, so the owners were caught on the hop. They have already, as others, paid their dues by differential, what has been legislated is, I believe a type of arbitrary action without due process, just to appear eco-friendly and is despicable.

    Shopping bags, the last comment The other day I wrote a piece about M&S stopping providing bags and proving to my own satisfaction the idea was silly. I realise it was a sop to the Green Lobby, looking for Brownie Points, but it is so inconsistent. As I deal mostly in Tescos I weighed a number of their ordinary bags and found they weigh 8 grams each. Then weighed the plastic packaging other items came in and they ranged from the box which had contained a small cheese (16g) to a small box for chocolates (58g), In my experience plastic boxes for tools, electrical and electronic components are of thick and heavy plastic. So is this gesture by M&S going to save the world on its own? Or is all plastic packaging going to be banned, or is it just another pointless band- wagon?

    The Psychological ploys of Vendors are not new. That old chestnut of charging £X and 99p goes back to the days of farthings. I can understand the placing of certain items at eye level or ‘jammer goodies’ where small children will see them, that is common sense, and if you are not careful 3 for 2 will fill the pantry to overflow. But what I really wonder is whether the Stores carry out exercises because they have been told they are effective, or have they really carried out surveys to check. I can’t really see logistically how they could have. One ploy which drives me mad is shifting product positions not only on the shelf, but shifting whole aisles, on the principle shoppers will see new items. A fallacy! The shopper is so frustrated he or she either asks, which takes up the time of the staff, or gets what is easy and goes somewhere else for what he or she couldn’t find. Have they checked peoples’ reaction to the ploy?

    Yet another case of government selectivity in seeking popularity I am imaginative, and I’m not basically hardhearted, so, as a great grand father, I can sympathise with the parents whose child has been abducted in Portugal, and sincerely hope for a successful outcome. What I find amazing is the dichotomy this incident has created. Millions of pounds have been promised, there may also be a fund; millions throughout the world are hitting a website, there has been a report on every news item for weeks, and a media feeding frenzy. The other day it was reported on BBC News, another child had gone missing, it received merely a passing comment. Dozens of our men are being killed, in wars unlikely to be solved, also with a passing comment, and I wonder how much compensation there will be for the grieving families. Yet our Prime Minister-in-waiting singles out this occurrence in Portugal for special attention. Perhaps, as he is not in office, no one has told him of the plight of the immigrant girls and young women, forced in to prostitution and being killed as a warning to the rest, when they rebel.

  • The Demise of the Corner Shop, and M&S

    The thought that in the not too distant future Soph and I will not be driving, and will therefore be forced to take taxis to go shopping, brought to mind the corner shop of old. Like farms where the barns had the most pleasant smell of hay, feed, leather and horse, these shops had the smell of their own, compiled from jute bags on the floor containing potatoes, kindling, and dog biscuits, and the provender and spices on the shelves. To their regular customers the shops were always of interest, because knowing the taste of the customer, the shopkeeper not only talked as a friend of long standing, but would introduce new products for their delectation. Under the awning, on the pavement would be the veg, the eggs, and glass-topped boxes of biscuits. Nothing was too much trouble, and often whole discussions would take place between the customers waiting and the shopkeeper. Today shopping can be either a matter of completing a list as quickly as possible, or drifting in the hope of finding bargains. There is nothing personal, merely business.

    The combination of the car and the supermarket has changed all that. Large conurbations are now built without a single shop, or a small area given over to selected shops, most of which are each part of a combine, having centralised purchasing and consequently the same products in every shop. In the old days, if you were a regular customer, the shopkeeper would buy in a small quantity of a particular brand that you chose, for you, and the chances are that others would try it. Now the shop determines the choice, the brands and the quantities. This is why mail-order has developed to enable people to purchase selectively.

    To quite a considerable extent the shoppers are to blame for the loss of the corner shop, in their search for bargains. I know of cases where people have been to specialised shops to seek advice and view the wide range those shops hold,, and when they have discovered that the supermarket is selling the same product more cheaply, they buy there, forgetting that the increased costs in the shop cover the overheads for carrying a wider selection, and paying a knowledgeable counter hand. In this way the specialised shops go out of business, and your choice is what the supermarket has to offer, which will definitely not contain some of the dearer, and perhaps more imaginative versions of the article.

    I am just sorry that the young people of today have to go to a museum to discover what a corner shop used to be like. But as an exhibit it won’t have the atmosphere, the smell, and the bustle that those shops had in their heyday.

    Packaging Away back in their 20s and 30s measuring in grocers’ shops was cruder, more varied covering a much greater range of weights. Families were so much larger, their diet more simple, so they purchased fewer articles in greater quantities. I remember buying a stone of potatoes, weighed on a beam balance. Dried beans, porridge, sugar and other granular products, also dried fruit, were sometimes shovelled with a brass gauged trowel of standard volume, into pokes, pyramidal bags formed in the wink of an eye by the grocer from a pile of brown paper on the counter, and the flaps tucked in, in a flash. . The grocer always added a small extra to ensure fare quantities. Packaging was for meat, greasy articles and special items. The market stall holders might use bags, but most wrapped things in old newspaper.

    M&S are stating that they are proposing to charge for plastic carrier bags in the future, and are running an experimental period in Northern Ireland. I don’t really believe that previous to this the bags were discounted. It could be part of the pseudo ecological front we are being fed daily from every quarter. Someone quoted Lidl’s policy of not providing bags free, but that doesn’t stand up, because the throughput is so different, and if you have a large quantity of items, the speed with which they are put through the cash register makes packaging so impossible that one tends to chuck everything into the trolley, unpackaged. The other day I saw a woman in Tesco’s, with four of her own bags in a trolley, and a mountain of shopping, dithering and taking ages as to which bag each item should go into. The cashier and I watch this in frustration, and it dawned on me that there was no way this trial will be a success, because it will involve the companies in increasing the cashout units, as people fumbled unaided with their own bags. I can see some problems in having bottle bank type containers to recycle the bags. and shredders would be open to vandalism. I believe allegedly free bags are here to stay.

  • Do you quesrion our future?

    I’m a belt and braces man, where it comes to serious matters. I don’t fly by the seat of my pants, so when I read that Gordon Brown has sold off our gold reserves for a pittance, alarm bells ring. My problem is that I do not understand high finance. I was brought up in an era where we earned our money by trade, and down at the docks you could actually see what we were exporting and what we were importing. Today it seems we are dealing in money, and intellectual properties all by electronic communication. However down at the docks there are still ship loads of containers coming in from abroad bringing in commodities at prices that no one would ever have imagined, they are so low; and it’s not as if the quality suffered .as a result. In consequence, it is unsurprising that people are running into debt, they can’t resist a bargain, and when they see things priced as cheaply as they are they feel that they are only spending a small amount of money – until the card account comes in.

    The real wealth is held in just a few hands, while the government is creating new taxes at an unprecedented rate, the latest being the revival of that old chestnut, paying for refuse collection. I am assuming that a large portion of our income as a nation comes from trading on the stock exchange. One only has to look at the rise and fall of other markets, such as the Japanese, to realise that there is a level of instability built in to these dealings. If we no longer have a gold reserve then it would seem that we are open to being plundered.

    The loss of our impregnable borders, and the rush across Europe by immigrants to come here, to work for pay, in order to send money home to their families in distant countries, must inevitably make a drain on our internal finances, which should be based on the natural circulation of money. On top of this we are paying £450 a week to maintain migrant youngsters in accommodation, and in excess of £1000 a week to maintain the miscreant migrants in jail. To me, with my simple attitude to finance, this doesn’t add up, and can’t be justified. The cry is that we need these migrants to fill jobs, and yet we are appalled that our own youngsters are staying away from school and have the literacy and numerousy of seven-year-olds. These youngsters are clearly not being taught properly, their interest is not being aroused, and their parents are negligent. Would it not be better that these youngsters were taught to fill the posts that the migrant workers are filling? There is no shadow of doubt that they would expect to be paid a lot better once they are qualified, but even then taken overall, surely this is a more secure approach than having itinerants here for a short spell, and leaving when they have earned enough. This is not building skills for the future, it is denigrating our stock of skilled workers yet again.

    With the increasing national internal debt, comes a side effect. I believe we have replaced simple pleasures, such as walking in the country, simple hobbies and sports, with acquisition, shopping, and servicing the need for the capital to pay for it. This in turn means working longer hours as a family, having less time with the children, even taking on extra work. I am convinced that people are not as happy overall, as their parents and grandparents were, there is too much pressure, too much worry, and far too much hurry. When I was at school I learned the poem which started off with ‘What is this life, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare, no time to see when woods we pass, where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.’ In school today, instead of appreciating the sentiment, the children will probably be tittering at the word ‘nuts’, our language has been so degraded – it is almost impossible to construct a flowery sentiment without it having another connotation..