Old Gaffer

Category: General

  • In Search Of Progress, 1920 to 2000, 2 of 4

    ’39 to the Mid 50’s In 1939 most of the school children, with some parents and children of a younger age, were evacuated. I included, so I did not see the barrenness of the towns and cities without children, which must have been the case. Children by and large have a softening affect on their surroundings. Adults take the time to consider their needs and their wishes, even if they don’t always accede.

    In 1940 the whole fabric of life changed, almost over night, caused by three factors, recruitment, evacuation now a permanency and the Blitz. The speed with which the new war machine went into gear is a credit to the coalition government which was managing things. Then there were no spin doctors, or stop and start legislation. Life was real and earnest. People in every walk of life, from the hosts of the evacuated children to the women who went into factories, living a solitary life with husbands away, stuck it out with little complaint that I ever heard. The camaraderie during the Blitz, is well documented, the way country folk helped to look after the evacuees was of a similar ilk, but the class system was not dropped in the face of such hardship and damage. The classes came closer together but respected one another. The barriers might have been softened but they still existed, It was then all the open spaces were cut up for allotments, some never to be reclaimed.

    At the end of the war, there was a serious problem with respect to labour relations. Earlier, perforce, every vacancy had been filled by some young person coming up, until ’46, with the results that demobilisation caused chaos as many of us never did get our job back, because we in turn had taken somebody else’s job in the meantime. By the same token, rationing didn’t end until 1952, so in effect expansion was limited until then. In the late 40s one could still buy beautifully tailored clothes at knockdown prices, because the prices were held down by government policy. By the mid-50s all this had gone. Fashion had picked up, fashion itself was applied almost to every walk of life, and the Festival of Britain, celebrated throughout the country, seemed to inject a feeling of prosperity and a new awakening which lived with us for a long time after.

    This sudden feeling of freedom sponsored the Crazy 60s when everything went and nothing seemed too outr?. This was a period of free love, the flower people, and Carnaby Street. The problem was that nobody had thought it through, it was spontaneous, and revolutionary. Young people latched on to it with a zeal which was breathtaking, and the problems that we have today through the barriers being broken down so completely, can be visited on those few months when this madness was at its height. When drug taking took hold, new drinking habits were formed, and the class system crumpled, not overnight, but was badly bent. What had taken hundreds of years to establish by attrition and necessity, were swept away in a few months and nothing worthwhile was put in its place In this period, with food shortages and dried foods being imported, new recipes were being promulgated by the government, and food itself became more healthy – vegetables came into their own, and imported tinned food became a staple.

    In the 50s, life was virtually unchanged socially, although domestically it was again a unit and heralded the baby boom. All changes were slow because money was still short and we were having to shift into another gear. It was really not until about 54 that life really started to improve, wages started to rise, shops filling with imports and new goods.

  • In Search Of Progress, 1920 to 2000 1 of 4

    20’s to ’39. What follows here, and several other posts in this vein, are narrow views of one person, not over-views determined by research. They are done mainly to determine how life has changed over 80 years.

    Take children; the phrase ‘children should be seen and not heard’, in its various forms, was a Victorian maxim people lived by in the 20s’s. Children’s opinions were rarely sought, they would sit in company, hardly moving, until given permission to go elsewhere, if they were lucky. Visiting relatives were rarely on speaking terms with them, and their visits occasioned the best of everything to be produced, and one had to be on one’s best behaviour. For a child to offer an opinion might be considered insolence, and could induce a crack round the ear. There was little or no traffic, other than horse-drawn vehicles or men pushing barrows.. Playing in the street therefore, was not only acceptable, it was expected. Children built up relationships with various delivery men, men with horse-drawn milk floats, coal men, bakers, and anyone else who would allow them to have a ride on their carts, in return for helping with deliveries, for a short time. Children ran after carts, and grabbed a lift on the back, when the driver wasn’t looking. Children either for the family, or to earn money, gathered the horse droppings in a bucket to use as fertiliser in back gardens.

    The change clearly came, with the advent of commercial motor vehicles – a gradual process in which change was not really noticeable in the street, or in the general life of the children, until World War II, a period of nearly 20 years.

    Family life; the two world wars seriously affected the size of families and the up bringing of children.. In the 20s and early 30s there were ‘Maiden Ladies’, unmarried women who lived at home, because the men they might have married were lying in rows, rotting in a foreign field. So the children of those who had married were looked after by their grandparents, their parents and the maiden aunts. Housing was in short supply with a building programme just getting underway. Hitler set it all back and once again extended families were forced to live together, resulting in children being cared for by a number of people. In the 60s all this changed, people’s aspirations became greater, with greater affluence, and a burgeoning housing programme. Families now lived in their own homes without the same amount of inter-parental care. There has been a steady change in domestic circumstances, through aspiration, necessity, or just keeping up with the Joneses, until we have arrived at the point where both parents are working, and the children are leading much less gregarious, and more singular lives. In the 20s wages were low, transport took time, families were large, and extended families could be colossal, so every aspect of life was determined by these factors and the class system. Then the classes varied in size tremendously. The upper class was a small group, very wealthy, with a total disregard in most cases for the plight of the under classes. The upper middle-class consisted of professionals, very successful businessmen, the clergy, schoolteachers and those with inherited wealth. The lower middle class or artisan class, included shopkeepers, businessmen and the like. The rest, the biggest class, were rubbing along on what amounted in most cases to a minimum wage – the working-class. It was the class system as much as anything throughout those years, which determined the limits of family life.

    In the 20s the upper class and the upper middle-class, would go on Continental holidays, stay in hotels here and abroad, drive cars, live in detached houses, or terraced houses in selective neighbourhoods, or in the country. The lower middle class generally lived in small terrace houses, might run a car, would holiday at a seaside resort, staying in a boarding house.. The working-class holiday was taken on the local Commons or with daily trips, if they could afford holidays at all ..From the 20s up until about 1930 there was little change, but in the late 30s change became much more rapid. Traffic increased, Woolworths came to London and expanded throughout the country, making competition for the working-class’s spending more competitive, and therefore increasing choice automatically. Motor vehicles were being used for transportation, with the result that private vehicles were regularly coming down in size and cost, and hence more common. With more spending there was more affluence, even for the working-class and the cycle effected great changes in the social boundaries, producing a flow of movement upward and downward between the classes, the beginning of what we have today.

  • Cartoons

    If you choose to read this, you can decide whether I’m talking rubbish yet again. Inside all of us there is a semblance of the Peter Pan syndrome, a little corner that harks back to childhood – mine is elephantine. My grandchildren, in their 30s, give me Shrek, Valiant, and other cartoon DVDs for anniversary presents. Joseph Barbera , of Tom and Jerry fame, died recently aged 95. His death drew my attention to how cartoons have advanced from the jerky days of Felix, through Popeye, the Barbera reign, so now all is wham and bang and hell take the consequences.

    Since the dawn of time humans have been making up simple, almost childish, stories and folklore to entertain themselves and their children. Christmas used to be time for a regular treat to visit the pantomime, where outrageous stories were enacted by ridiculous actors. Those stories and the stories read to children at bedtime were silly, simple and entertaining. They didn’t contain sharp dialogue or philosophical content, rather they conjured up an entirely new vista, peopled with strange, bizarre heroic or devious people or animals in people form. In the old Tom and Jerry cartoons, assuming one ignores the animals are bipeds and have human attributes, the story held together; nine times out of 10 we had an inkling where the mayhem was leading – the coloured lady always jumped on a stool at the sight of Tom, and fell off, and so on, but it was all logical. Now if a character jumps, he leaps so far, the jump becomes a flight, with no reason how this has been accomplished, rather like the totally absurd actions of Martial Arts Films, which are equally illogical. I believe it is a soft option of the script writers, to get the characters out of trouble without complication, more detail and less cost to themselves.

    The American film industry has adopted fast cross-cutting,- shooting from one scene to another, when the first scene has not been fully played out, and the viewer is required to mentally filling the gap. Any lack of concentration by the viewer, or to miss some vital section of footage, and the logic of the story is ruined. This has moved now to cartoons, where the action is at lightning speed, but the detail, the storyline and the drawing quality is sacrificed to a soft solution and saving in cost. Compare Shrek, Valiant, Wallace and Grommet, with the Ice Age cartoon, the difference is incredible – the action and the stories are so at variance. In Ice Age the dialogue is repetitive, sophisticated, over the heads of the average child, and contributes boredom rather than interest, in my view – even as an adult.

    Fairy stories are not just for the child, they are the world in which people’s imagination can be stirred, their mind is distracted from their everyday world, and perhaps the child in them still wants to climb the been stalk. Let’s keep it that way, and forget progress for progress’s sake

  • It Is Almost Beyond Belief

    It must have been an April fool’s joke it could not have been anything else, or so I thought, it is so ridiculous. I have been fishing from childhood, in lakes, in the sea and now, years later, the government suddenly wants to charge me for fishing in the sea. The fact that it’s a ruse to get more money to pay for the war, which none of us wanted, is believable, and if true would only add salt to the wound. As far as I know the government has only jurisdiction on the coast between high and low tide. I remember having to get a way leave for doing work below high tide. If it wasn’t a joke, I would have thought that the legal departments of the government would have pointed out that the government has no jurisdiction beyond low tide and therefore no right to charge for fishing from boats. I was not aware that fleets of foreign trawlers, fishing off the coast are paying dues to this country for the privilege of doing so. But even if they are, to charge a man for the standing on the shore on his day off to put a piece of string with a hook on it into the sea, with no guarantee of a return, is ridiculous. Is it so vital, that the government is prepared to waste our taxes supervising this farce, collecting the money, and running it? I could only believe, in view of the month, that it was an April fool’s joke, and should have been promulgated on the first of April. However, because last evening, 11th of April, it reappeared on the Northern Ireland News, one has to believe it is fact. I have long been convinced that there are people working for the EU and Number 10 who have so little to do they think up asinine legislation, rather like others might do the crossword puzzles.

    It would be rather interesting if on a given day, right round the country, those living within easy access to the sea, should all take rods and pieces of string with a weight on the end of some, bait-less hooks on others, and put their lines in the sea to confuse this vast band of men who are going to be policing this heinous activity of murdering, if they’re lucky, a few fish

    The bane of the elderly. I don’t know precisely what people are being paid today who are doing the job I did when I retired, but I suspect that it is five or six times what I now receive as a pension, which is allegedly half pay. What is happening to pensioners and the people on lower incomes shouldn’t happen to a dog.

    The incredible rise of single-parent families within the country, together with the fact that a lot of young women become pregnant so that they are entitled to a small dwelling, and get away from home and the environment that they don’t like, is putting a tremendous burden on our housing stock. This in turn has the knock-on effect of making housing so expensive, that the young married people cannot get on the housing ladder, and the pensioners are penalised to such an extent, that they can’t help. The pensioners are in a Catch-22 situation. When they fall ill, as a fair proportion do, the money they had scraped and saved to help the families will be eaten up paying about 500 hundred pounds a week for sheltered accommodation, or taken at 40% in inheritance tax when they die, because their houses have risen in value to such an extent. Those pensioners on low incomes, with little savings, are finding that their take-home pay has diminished appreciably, because for long periods their dividends and pensions have been tied to bank rates which have been lower than the cost of living index.

    The Conservative Party in Northern Ireland. Recently a questionnaire came round to the houses in our district, asking our political views. Clearly the Conservatives feel that they can offer an alternative solution to our problems if they are selected. Whether this is true or not is beside the point, because politics here have devolved into nothing more than a bipartisan system on tribal lines. I personally found it ludicrous that Eire is subsidising the British economy by several million pounds, indeed I’ve found it degrading and Blair should be taken to book for allowing it to happen.

    For almost 40 years we have been hoping to get back to those halcyon days of 1968, when politics was the last thing on the mind of the major portion of the population, and Catholics and Protestants were living side-by-side amicably. Instead of which we’re back into the bad old days of charge and counter-charge, rhetoric and the blame game. We need yet another party like a hole in the head, the more parties we have the more the vital votes are split and manipulation and tactical voting produce the same old results.
    When you consider that the Unionist party, which used to dominate the horizon for eons, only now fields one member of Parliament, the writing is on the wall. I find it incredible that David Cameron would allow his name to be used on a circular, when anyone with any political knowledge of Northern Ireland would know that at this time it was a total non-starter

  • Random Thoughts

    Nature. We humans are so desperately and collectively arrogant, we think we know nearly everything, and God help us, we know so very little. This morning something made me think of how wonderful nature really is, its overall appreciation, not in little pockets here and there, but globally. How nature reacts.; for example you don’t have to tell it to reduce your pulse rate or increase your pulse rate for various circumstances, it knows that. Magnify this on a global scale and you have the most incredible level of sophistication we humans could never achieve. Yet we tinker repeatedly, not only giving ourselves manufactured drugs that can have a long-term effect, but we feed them to the very animals were going to eat later. When you’re as old as I am, and retired, you have time to think all those thoughts you were too busy to think about for all those years. Nature anticipates, takes precautions against hunger, and, if you think about it, almost every natural eventuality. Sometimes we consider it gets it wrong, but then again we have not got the wider picture. People at the moment are fiercely worried about the future, with some justification, but they’re not giving nature the credit they should, for all its checks and balances. This doesn’t mean that we can hare on in the way we have in the past, on the contrary, but it could mean that things are not quite as bad as David Attenborough says.

    Opera singers. Sophie told me this morning that she had heard that the people who seem to know are saying that the opera singers of today are not of the quality of the past and I think this is highly likely. I knew one of our great Covent Garden opera singers, he was enticed away from his butcher’s shop to sing all over the world. How many of those in the past, were sons and daughters of farming stock, labourers and other people who led a strong healthy outdoor life, which built up their muscles, their tissues, and their stamina. Practically all of us lead lives which are much more governed by time, by rules, and have more leisure content, with a result we are becoming a different race. We are going against nature’s basic rules.

    Fred the Computer. No, I’m not going gaga, or am I? I do not call my computer Fred, but from time to time I catch myself on, nearly apologising to it when I do something stupid and it actually corrects me. Subconsciously I can’t believe that the machines can do what they seem to without somebody inside it working levers. This reaction is most prevalent when I am performing repetitive operations, lose concentration and do two or three of the operation, wrongly. What an idiot?

    Advertising. In October, 06, I wrote about James who bought a small news agency, sweets and tobacco shop as a hedge against the insecurity of the shipyard. It was there, while helping out, I discovered the strength of advertising. We had been warned by the traveller that the advert would be on television and consequently stocked up by 300%. However when the advert appeared, not only could we not keep up with demand, neither could the wholesalers. Since those days, I find the changing form of advertising presentation to be most curious, with the ridiculous lengths to which the advertising industry goes to draw attention to a simple product,. For example, not so long ago, the Nat West had an advertisement in which, presumably the manager, smashed his way through a brick wall, and, followed by some of the staff, went out onto a flat roof and started to dance in a most ineffective way. I bank with the Nat West, and this gave me pause for thought, that those in charge of advertising could be so asinine. Have you noticed, more and more inanimate objects such as telephones, stuffed toys, in fact almost anything, is telling us how to spend our money on important matters like insurance, health, and finance. Clearly it is cheaper to employ an illustrator than a whole body of actors. It must be working or they would have given up years ago, so it says something about us the viewers, rather than about the advertisers.

    TV Programming, Years ago, out of interest I calculated the number of programs that were being put out on TV in one week, and then on only four channels. I was dumbfounded by the amount of work that was required to entertain us, and that was before Sky and all the other proliferations of sources which are now available. I have been running this website for nine+ months now from a standing start, and have found that items I thought would go down well have fallen like a lead balloon while others unsuspectingly have been popular. This exercise has made me realise the problems the TV planners have, year in year out, even with repeats. I now moan less than I did, but still am not really satisfied.

  • Writing

    Writing for pleasure is not everybody’s cup of tea. Indeed many find that writing a simple letter is a chore; writing for gain on the other hand is what your psyche makes it. I have read of famous authors whose output is only a few hundred words per day, hashed and re hashed for perfection.; but that is not the problem for those in it for a livelihood, they have the problems of trying to obtain recognition, getting published, and selling sufficient books to make a living. I have been writing short stories, novels, articles and even treasure hunts for almost 60 years. In the early days I tried getting novels accepted either by literary agents or publishers, but found that the chore of constantly sending the material off and only getting a standard rejection in return too tiresome. I was earning my living in another field, and so instead of persisting in trying to get published, I would write another novel. Sophie liked them, she thought they were as good as or in some cases marginally better than what graced the shelves in our local library, not high literature, just entertainment. Today it is even harder to obtain a publisher willing to risk promoting a new writer. ‘Names’ and journalists are ahead in the queue, and persistence needs to be almost limitless.

    My writing has been fun for me, because I have used the basis of a novel to solve a problem, to find a way out of difficulty. I have written 15 novels, without getting any published. The last one was on the subject of cardboard city, those poor unfortunates sleeping in doorways, under arches in cardboard boxes. I tackled it from both ends, the do-gooder with a bucket of money, and the disadvantaged trying to claw their way back into society. The more I delved, and the more I researched, the more the subject fascinated me, and in the end I was pleased with the result. I only sent it to two publishers and got two nice replies and ‘no thank you’.

    I found that short stories are much more difficult, because they have to be crisp and tight, imagination catching but no superfluous verbiage. Very often I’d start off with a great idea, write what I thought was a good story, and then when I went to read it, found it had not got the bite that a short story needs. The bite sometimes is gentle, could almost be a tearjerker, but it has to surprise, that is the real bite One day I may post a short story called ‘The mouse in the bottle’, my Dutch friend Jan has suggested I should; if I do, it will be interesting to see the reaction when reading the reader stats.

    Doggerel if you don’t take it too seriously can be amusing. It will never be poetry, but who cares, as long as it’s funny, slightly cynical, and raises a laugh or makes a point, it has done its job. On this website, under ‘Kissing’ you’ll find doggerel. Real poetry is a gift and a science which I believe is given only to a few.. I wonder if people still run, and go on motorised Treasure Hunts, hunting out clues, generally written on a sheet in rhyming doggerel. I used to churn them out for office and charity does, but they are a lot more difficult than they seem. You might have found the best clue of the lot, but simply can’t put it even crudely into four lines of doggerel.

    Writing the Blog has been a real experience, allied to some extent to what journalists must feel, with interest a top priority, reader preference and deadlines. As a high proportion of my stuff is biographical and I only have one life, that side will be coming to an end, but, while I originally said I would pack it in, there is so much controversy in every sphere, I just can’t keep my trap shut – like Politics.

    So, in May or June, look out for a new Heading on Old Gaffer, called The Groomsport Herald, and even earlier, have a look at my grandson Steve Jones’s interesting blog WWW. S*T*U*F*F.Reloaded, He is a musician playing with top bands and the breadth of his interests is incredible..

  • Is Sleight of Hand Deceiving the Eye yet again?

    Take for example, the fuss about North Korea and Iran having nuclear facilities, and making bombs. Is Bush right to create a fuss? Really, just stop and think for a minute. Can you imagine any state, nowhere near the size of the US, Russia, or China, becoming a nuclear aggressor? They’d be wiped out – any one of the others similarly, would immediately get their come-uppence – for my money, this whole business is sabre rattling, unnecessarily and for another reason entirely, as everything international seems to be today.

    I am firmly convinced that the entrapment of the naval boats had more to do with internal politics in Iran, than it had to do with presupposed aggressive actions by the Royal Navy.

    You can’t turn on the television today, or the radio, without being deluged by a whole variety of statistics, examples, theory and counter theory, concerning Global Warming. I have already dealt with this, but I must return to it, because the attitude of the government, even the EU, is so at variance with the true facts to be laughable if it was not so damned expensive and serious. When we hear of this factory in Russia making converters and polluting not only the whole atmosphere but the whole area surrounding it, that other huge countries are putting forward counter reasons and statistics to demonstrate why their policy is perfectly adequate, surely we should reassess our position.. There is no shadow of doubt that there is a bandwagon on which all the media has climbed, – one suspects because there is no other news, – making claims which are clearly unproven, or are only to be expected, and yet put forward as a reason why we, the Brits, should pull in our belts, pay that much more in taxes, and have to buy cars that we don’t really want, and will make very little difference to the environment, .taken on a global calculation in the long run.

    Get Real. Get a level playing field. All of us realise that there’s quite a lot of truth in some of the scientific proof which is being offered at the present time, we only have to look at our lawns in the summer, Definitely, steps should be taken even before the whole matter has been totally proven, to do something about global warming. But these should be done on a per capita basis, an ability to pay nationally, true analysis, so as to provide what one would expect to be a fair distribution, throughout the world, of remedies, jacked up universally, as and when more concrete proof is forthcoming. This ‘lead the world’, knee-jerk reaction, of our incompetent government, is leading us nowhere likely to have any effect on the problem, merely painting a pretty picture of how righteous our government is, at the expense of the rest of us. Actually I forgot to mention, the Government is skint, broke, the coffers are empty.

  • Gap Years, Crash Courses

    Gap years. When I was editing this piece, for some reason I started thinking about gap years, and realised I actually had four and a half gap years. There are two sides to this equation, for those intending further education, it can be useful to take a temporary job in the profession or trade you’re thinking of following, this will harden your views on the subject. If it is just a protracted holiday, with a dilettante interest in some vague subject, one is lucky to be able to afford to do it. For those not involved in further education, the sooner they get on the bottom rungs of the ladder, the wider is their opportunity and broader their perspective. In my case the gap years affected me both from the point of view of scope, because so many of us were returning all at once, and also from my pension aspect. In today’s climate, with such wide access to information and ideas, careful thought, and good research is essential, as at this stage one’s whole future is at stake.

    Crash courses. One hears a lot today about crash courses. My introduction to a crash course was the first 22 weeks of my naval career, 18 of which consisted entirely of learning the rudiments of electronics, and the entrails of dozens of radio and radar transmitters and receivers. When we passed out, we would be having to maintain the sets, be totally on our own in a strange environment, in difficult conditions, with only a handbook for guidance. I believe that whoever set out those courses, knew the essentials, new the conditions under which we would work, and tailored the course accordingly. It certainly worked. While I was at sea, thinking I would be returning to my job as a surveyor, I started a primary correspondence course in building construction but I discovered, even though I had considerable spare time, the lack of easy communication, was a serious deficiency. I therefore wonder if some of these courses which are sold on the Internet, or promoted on the Internet, have the same problems as I had. What we learned in those 18 weeks, by reading, listening and with hands-on, was incredible. Crash courses, to be of any use must be of a high standard, tailored to suit the requirements of the individual and in a first-class teaching environment. Courses I have attended in evening class were never up to these standards, and the products of some of the technical courses currently replacing apprenticeships, are suspect.

    3 Weeks In The Isle Of Man. After three months in Newcastle we left for the Isle of man where we were billeted in boarding houses on the front at Douglas. Further along the front, similarly housed but behind barbed wire, were the Italian internees, mostly harmless waiters and restaurateurs who would probably have been a greater asset to the war effort than some of us. Unsurprisingly, none of us realised the welcoming officer, the Entertainments Officer, was John Pertwee, the actor, later to be of Dr Who and of Worsel Gummage fame. It was his job to inveigle us into contributing to the overall entertainment on the island. With a pleasant, innocent smile he enquired if we played rugby and those foolish enough to admit to it were promptly enrolled in the team and issued with navy blue kit. Later he was back recruiting volunteers for an amateur show to be put on at the local theatre. If you have read my piece on Hypnotism, you will know the story of the heinous hypnotist.

    The rooms in the boarding houses had been modified to be small ‘cabins’, a euphemism for a ha box. We slept on two-tiered steel bunk beds. The dining room and lounge on the ground floor, was where we were supposed to study, but in which we mostly played a gambling bastardisation of Ludo called Uckers. Each morning we were marshalled and marched up to Douglas Head. The building there, once a hotel, was converted into a radar signal school. Radar then was incorrectly called RDF,(radio direction finding,) as the Germans were understood not to have it. The original designs were for use in aircraft and consequently small. We were also trained on substantial versions for use in ships. The theory was difficult to master in such a short time, and the distractions of being on the Isle of Man, where the war seemed so far away, didn’t help. There was a dance hall, there was poker, Uckers, and the local services canteens. Finally, of course there was Lieutenant Pertwee and his bloody rugby, and I use the term advisedly. The RAF had a policy of retaining on their station, anyone who was a blue, or international rugby player so they built up what amounted to an international team, but Pertwee didn’t tell us this when he asks us if we played any sports. I turned out with the rest of the sheep for the slaughter. It was evident, very early, we were going to lose heavily. I noticed that my team mates tackled late. For some insane reason I decided to show them how. A six foot four, 17 stone, international was lumbering down the field when I tackled him round the knees. I was told he didn’t even stutter, just went on to score, while I lay there, literally out for the count.

  • The New Party, Concluded.

    From the stats it would appear that the subject is popular but not the flavour of the month, but having started it I must complete it. I propose to set out the structure and the reasoning behind the structure of the nucleus and the outposts. The purpose of this exercise is to regenerate political awareness, get rid of apathy, and to give back to the man in the street a political voice. By the nature of things it will have to start as a ginger group, using independent politicians as a means of stirring the government and drawing attention not only to the ills it is hoping to eradicate, but also any successes it might achieve.

    To start with we need a Selector, a man or a woman, educated, highly intelligent, liberal, politically minded, and a member of the House of Lords – a young Shirley Williams would be an ideal selector. The purpose of the selector is to enrole the first layer of the nucleus. The nucleus is intended to be divided into a series of functions, such as law and order, health and welfare, social services, the police and the penal system, education, commerce, etc, and international relations. The latter is not a substitute for the foreign office. In a supervisory role will be the Director, a person who has had considerable experience in retailing and pulling companies out of trouble. He or she will have a sound knowledge of public relations and will oversee the second layer, the people responsible for those sections of the nucleus mentioned above, some of which could be amalgamated. The director coupled with the selector will persuade suitable people to lead these groups, and the variety of professions encompassed, will add to the competence of the nucleus. It is not intended that these people would receive more than nominal retainers plus expenses, and care should be taken to ensure they have no strong political affiliations. The siting of the individuals of the nucleus is unimportant as the work would be carried out on the Internet.

    The backup staff would be in two categories, the analytical core and the outposts. The analytical core would be made up of professionals such as IT, analysts, a librarian, and those who understand the needs, can keep track, record and save the flow of information between the core and the outposts in each particular. The outposts will be manned by volunteers pure and simple, selected for their energy and ability rather than any specific training, collecting information either spontaneously or at the behest of the core, and passing it back to the nucleus for analysis and priority.

    If this proposal is to be a success, publicity and media interest are cessential and so contact with local press and national media would be essential. This would require the assistance of someone well versed in this field of activity. Canvassing for information and assistance would be a suitable tool to advertise not only the project, but its aims and breadth.

    The trial period. Unless the documentation and general management framework are sound, information collection, storage, extraction and correlation would be a nightmare. It is therefore necessary to have a trial period in which the gremlins and the unforeseen problems can be identified and rectified. The area for the trial period must have all the elements found in the United Kingdom on a smaller scale. The trial period itself does not have to be a full dress rehearsal it will be sufficient to take, say, four elements and deal with them in exactly the same way as is proposed for all the elements. As it is a trial there is no need for the electorate to appreciate what is going on, especially if there are likely to be errors. No one county in Britain would fulfil the requirement, and so it would appear that Scotland would be ideal, it has the full range of commerce, large cities with their inherent problems, rural areas and a thriving tourist industry. Due to the secrecy the collection of information might be slightly different from that for the final operation, but it will be adequate for a verisimilitude.

    The transition from a ginger group to a National Party must be exponential if it is to retain the public interest. It would involve tremendous energy, shrewd manipulation, and a close relationship with the electorate, and the media. Initially independent politicians would be recruited on a lobbyist basis, to help promote the views, without actually forming a party. Once the numbers of those wishing to partake had reached a suitable level the
    party would then declare itself

    While I naturally have great belief in this proposal, I think it unlikely that it will ever get off the ground, but my philosophy has always been ‘never in, never win.’

  • The New Party, New Politics

    Some could say that I am naive. So be it. But, if it is thought there is even a grain of truth in the idea, and something is done about it, it will be worthwhile. This follows the piece I did on the 29th of March, concerning Trust, the Nucleus, the birth of a new party and the reason for it. Here I set out the reason why I believe the total overhaul of our political system is essential, and logically try to show how this might be achieved. I am a layman, without real political experience, most of us are, yet we repeatedly rail against the current system. From 1970 the teeth of Local Government were steadily extracted, with the result our influence is weakened. I submit that if corruption or mismanagement is a worry, it will come to light quicker and be less destructive in a council than in a National organisation. Hence pressure for improvement will be more effective at local level than Nation wide. If this submission is accepted, the New Party must have influence, a strong input at local level, which is where the Nucleus and Radial system comes into its own as it is based on National policy resulting from collected local research. Sophie says it is too idealistic – I say if you shoot for the stars you might hit the moon

    If a new approach is broached, people ask ‘where would one get sufficient people of sufficient quality?’ In the past few had university degrees in politics, they came up the hard way or were, born into it. Now being a politician is the aim of many young people, possibly for the wrong reasons. We need people of great talent, with political bent, retiring early from a profession, or commerce, with sufficient experience of life, and know-how to succeed in another profession. At 58 having had enough of doing roughly the same thing month after month, I took early retirement. In a new profession in a different field I qualified jointly to receive a British Design Award. I quote this, not to boast, but because I sincerely believe that there is a tremendous amount of wasted talent among the younger members of our retired population. I therefore suggest that some who have a strong interest in politics as a hobby, possibly working for a local party, long before retirement, should do part-time degrees in politics, through the Internet or the open University, as that would give us a pool to draw from.

    I believe the reason we need this change is paramount because the current political scene has insufficient contrast to get any real choice. The real priorities are not being addressed, lip service, and band wagons, are taking the place of what really needs to be done. The Green Party, apart from wetlands and other worthy but minor aspects, has been usurped by all the rest of the parties when it comes to green issues. However, as I have repeatedly said, the green issue is not the important issue here in Britain all the time the major populations, China, Russia, Eastern Europe and the rest, are belching out smog and CO2 – some of it on our behalf. Our major issues are prisons, and all the other neglected services. We have got our priorities wrong, and this is why I suggested that the process of obtaining a new party which would address this imbalance, could be started with the Radial System I proposed, feeding to and from the Nucleus, to give priority to the most urgent reparations needed and thus build a valid and sensible opposition bent on improvement rather than rhetoric and theatre – an open system the electorate can be involved in, contribute to and criticise,

    It won’t happen over night, it will take a lot of dedicated work, and a tremendous amount of logical, careful thought, not knee jerk reactions or winging it with a prayer. We still have the House of Lords, in which there is a good deal of political experience, and that is probably why the current government want shot of it. But I don’t think it likely that we’ll be able to rely much longer on it, in the way we have in the past, to curb some of the excesses of the House of Commons, We just have to hope that not too much damage will be done in the meantime and pray that the system will somehow be regulated and that we will be governed with less change for change’s sake, and more respect for the real priorities and the Public Purse.

    The populace is not apolitical, only apathetic through frustration and political impotence. If a government is totally secure, has the whip hand, then the electorate is bound to be apathetic, and frustrated, especially when any choice appears to be more of the same, in lesser doses. So a totally new approach, spelled out to the electorate so that they understand precisely what is happening might succeed. Even more so if they have the opportunity to engage in some form of relationship with the Termini of the Radial System, and are asked to contribute their views and even take part. Under these circumstances we might generate a much needed revised political awareness, with a more circumspect approach to grass root need rather than the flavour of the month.