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I am nearly 88 years of age which means that I spend a lot of my time not only looking back, and comparing then with now, but trying to assess what is going to happen in the future if things go on the way they are. Most of my childhood and teenage were spent living in terraced housing, with very few dual carriageway main highways, but a large amount of agriculture and manufacture. These types of thoughts had me worried not for myself, but for those coming after me, because the resources of these very small islands are being sacrificed on the altar of convenience. I have written on this blog many a time about what I see of the precarious nature of our economy when it is considered two of the vital elements are no longer given a high priority that they demand. I’m referring to agriculture and manufacturing.

What is immensely obvious is that the lack of public transport and rail services are causing an ever-growing demand for fast highways, and wider roads too, through the increase in both number and size of the vehicles now in service. Once upon a time the excuse was that the car manufacturing industry required to be bolstered by private vehicle ownership. In view of the fact that we don’t have a burgeoning motor industry, this theory would then be farcical, By the same token the corner shop is no longer the mainstay of the district, and in every town that I have been in I have found empty shops caused by the arrival of a supermarket. Supermarkets engender shopping by motorcar, and on Saturdays and Sundays, this fact is eminently proven. When I was designing large drainage concerns, the standard then was the houses had to be built at no more than 12 to the acre. The houses that we knew in the past were built by leading manufacturers and the like, were 75 to the acre. Go into any dormitory town built in the last 30 years and you will find that they are built on a plot of land that provides approximately 60 x 30 feet garden, front and back. If you examine any one street, you will find that 40% of those houses have driveways in the front instead of a garden. This entails several problems, one is that the drainage of the run off will be considerably increased beyond the design factor, and there are other problems such sight distances. The worst thing of all is that it has been agricultural land that has been taken to revive this increased parking space for cars which are being used almost solely in shopping and the mummy run.

I think therefore that some re-evaluation of the terms of reference are required urgently if we are to remain self-supporting in an emergency, such as WW 2, let alone the economics and carbon emission factors, both of which are affected by the use of our islands for agriculture. For example, single-parent families are too preoccupied to consider any gardening to any great extent, and it would therefore seem more sensible to provide accommodation for them, and the elderly that is on a more amenable level, such as terraced housing, where there is a small garden at the back requiring little maintenance and the front is at footpath level. I believe that this will have the effect, socially, of improving the lives of these sections of our population. Currently we have lost the sociability of a village within a town or city, and the disadvantaged suffer badly from this insular existence.

I say these are obvious areas of consideration, and leave some of the others, such as communal play areas, localised shopping, increase in public transport by vehicle and rail, and even perhaps a subsidised system of mimi-buses to obviate the mummy run, to you for your consideration.

Not only Commerce, but the government is now enlarging the ranks of the unemployed. Anyone who ever had any dealings with the Civil Service, would have been aware that it was top heavy, due to the Mandarins having great influence, and being bent on empire building, their own empire.

The management of a budget, be it large or small, is basically the same. One has income and outgoings, and obviously, for stability, they have to balance, or the income may be larger than necessary. Germany, who maintained its manufacturing, is recovering faster than the other EU members through income from abroad. Some of our manufacturing of goods we need or trade, like our services, such as call centres, are based in the Sub-Continent or the Far East. The financial saving of this ploy is not for the Exchequer, but the individual company exploiting this system, and the rest of the savings is born by the tax payer in unemployment benefit to the people who would have been carrying out the manufacturing and services in this country. It would not surprise me if Government departments were also buying from abroad. It seems that, today, buying manufactured products is buying imports. I am therefore, not surprised our recovery is slow, and the taxes for everyone are rising. Why is there not a commensurate tax on services and products from abroad which truly reflects the cost of the unemployment payment this practice induces, unless import duty is in fact commensurate?

It said in the press today that the government is fighting to retain the way with which we pay surgeons. As far as I know this is the only country in the EU that has a national health service, so what the EU is making a fuss about is illogical, because, if I’m right, all the surgeons in the other countries will be individually making their own arrangements. I never approved of joining the EU for the simple reason that the French don’t like us because they reckon that we cleared off at the time of Dunkirk, and forget that we stood firm for all the following years. You can understand Germany’s point of view. As to the other countries, Italy, Spain and all the other smaller countries that have since joined the EU, it would seem that they are flouting the rules with very little redress.

We are an island nation with only one land border, and even that is under some stress. We are insular by nature, and none too quick to adapt to other people’s ways. In the days of the Raj, when we conquered a country, we didn’t try to understand their ways and adapt ourselves while living in their country, we tried to turn the whole country into a little Esher, with cricket clubs and afternoon tea. I have never understood why we went into the EU, we were told it would enhance our trading prospects, something which I also thought to be illogical. If you are producing products or intellectual properties, they have to stand on their own merits, and if people want them they will find them irrespective of where they come from. If they’re not up to standard they will not sell. That is standard trading practice. Recently I have discovered that a large number of the young people today don’t need to advertise, word-of-mouth provides as much work as they can handle. With a credit crunch we haven’t got that level of product production we had when we joined the EU, and I believe that this is another reason why our manufacturing base should be given high priority, then perhaps we could leave the EU to flounder in the way it is, at incredible cost to the taxpayers, and go back to trading like we did in the old days.

This credit crunch is hitting everyone, even large cartels, and from what I read, the average solution appears to be to cut down on staff. Even large companies engaged in professional type commerce, such as the law and architecture are doing it. If you go into any supermarket today you will find it difficult to get help, because the staff is now running the place on a shoestring, and probably worked to death. The real problem though is that the supermarket is generally an out-of-town based conglomeration of two or three large stores, and a host of small ones selling specialized merchandise. Scattered among the housing estates, there are also franchised shops that are a small version of the supermarket. This situation means that there is little choice outside what is chosen by the supermarkets, and the franchises. In the old days corner shops catered mainly for the customers within their orbit, and passing trade was a plus. The corner shop was staffed relative to the trade. The other shops that we have today, are staffed according to some formula related to the size of the emporium rather than the number of customers, with long queues in consequence.

What I don’t understand is why the government is giving planning permission for yet more and more supermarkets which is having a number of deleterious effects, such as unemployment, excessive driving to reach them, and the inevitable waste that vast choice generates. The alternative would be the local shops which instead of being tiny and tightly packed with goods, as so many of them are today, they would be like they were in the old days, well-designed and room enough for more than just a couple of people, and knowing their customers personally, providing a better service, and a better quality and freshness of product. It is my experience that at weekends and sale time, the roads, to and from these markets, are jam packed with cars, parking within them is also difficult, and because of the size of these large conglomerations, shopping would appear to have become a past-time rather than a necessity. I find this stultifying, and a way of life that does nothing for the health of those participating, especially concerning the ready-made meals, which are universally accepted as being a source of obesity.

I was watching a CD of the second world war, which was concerning people who went to Europe under-cover, and I realized from my reactions to the film, that I would have been useless in that form of warfare. It must take a tremendous amount of guts, and a special type of person to be able to function properly under those circumstances, with all that stress, and spending your life looking over your shoulder.

I have worn three different uniforms in my life, that included carrying a gun. I started analyzing my remembered periods when things were a little hairy. There were occasions where fear might have intruded, but the necessity of the moment was so strong by comparison, the immediacy, the union with other people in the same circumstances, that I don’t remember fear being a major element. Of course I was young, which makes a difference, as experience induces awareness. Those of us who were in London during the blitz and others across the country, grew to take it as a way of life, even the falling shrapnel from the shells being fired at the German airplanes, was the norm. I thought about our troops in Afghanistan, where they appear to have very little cover, and there is always that element of the roadside bomb. I cannot speak for them because I haven’t asked them, but if you’re faced daily with the same conditions, you might be concerned at the beginning, but, in my view, routine and companionship combine to give a different perspective – the everyday element. Also in my experience, there is the certainty that we all had, that it wouldn’t happen to us.

In some ways, over the last decades or more, the wishes of the individual have taken precedence over the welfare of the majority, generally due to personal greed and self-aggrandizement of a relatively few. Just for a second let us just take sport. Our regional teams in practically every professional sport are chock-a-block with foreigners. There is not a shadow of doubt the man on the terraces wants to see the best players, but then they are sick as ducks when the national side doesn’t come up to their expectations. The same thing is happening in industry, individuals are taking their manufacturing overseas, where it will be produced, even including transport, for a lot less than being manufactured here. The end result is exactly the same as with sport, there is no training ground to bring on our youth with the skills essential for manufacturing. For years I have not understood why we allowed our manufacturing ability to be downgraded year-by-year, when for centuries it has been the backbone of our wealth in this country. We were told, if we questioned it, that the financial markets were where our wealth lay, which was ultimately proved to be wrong.

What is there about the banking system, which enables it to function without the normal responses that other commercial undertakings have to endure? If Joe Bogs down the road gets into difficulties either through his own fault, or because the banks won’t let him money, the government doesn’t turn round, pat him on the head, and tell him to do better, and also pull him out of his mess, at our expense, no! He is hung out to dry. So what is there about banking that allows them, presumably, to take my money that I have invested in the bank and play a big boys game of Monopoly, totally unsupervised, and when the wheels come off, and champagne and fast cars might be a thing of the past, there is a fair chance that they will not starve, because they’re professionals, and will have taken care of that eventuality? The big bosses of course have to maintain their style, and it would seem that they were unaffected, instead of like poor Joe Blogs, who has gone to the wall.

I just wonder if this Consortium Government will have the same policies that the last one had with respect to banking. I find it ludicrous that several of the banks who are holding my savings, and presumably fairly strapped for cash, can afford to sponsor sport in a way that they do. I was watching cricket, a very poor quality of cricket, playing limited over matches, to stadiums which were very poorly supported, I wondered how they were managing to do this, when the interest they were paying seems to be abysmal, and the excuse is, of course, the credit crunch, and who brought that about?

Euthanasia I have written about before, taking into account religious beliefs and the control exerted by the State. In the past, there was some justification for this control, because religion, right up to 1945 was the mainstay of the average home in Britain. But now we have an almost totally godless world, where members of so-called religions are killing in vast numbers, members of other religions, and entertainment appears to consist of killing, total mayhem, and mindless destruction. So to me, control on a religious standpoint seems one step too far. I am in no way suggesting that there should be no control. I have known of someone who committed suicide in the most ghastly fashion who would have suffered excruciating pain. There are those among us who are leading lives which none of us would envy, and I believe many of them would like to end it. There are those who commit suicide because of psychological imbalance, and these people should be protected from themselves. To achieve this I suggest that there should be a board set up consisting of three people, a doctor, a solicitor, and a civil servant. The doctor would monitor the reason for the approach. The solicitor would check the financial, and legal affairs of the individual concerned, and the civil servant would be the one to give the final approval, and institute the arrangement.

People who live to a great age, ultimately find themselves stranded in a sterile condition, they have outlived their friends and relatives of their own age. In this day and age where travel is taken for granted, families no longer live in close proximity, and life is so fast and ruthless, that the younger members of the family are scattered across the world, and their own lives are in no way as calm and measured as were those of the ones of great age. Normal people do not like to be dependent on others, they are afraid of over burdening them, especially if they’re quite competent to carry out the duties that living requires. Hence they arrive at a condition where their sole purpose is to maintain themselves until it is time to die. It isn’t only those who live alone and share this stark condition, I have had friends in some care homes who felt exactly the same way, and seeing the conditions under which they lived, I didn’t envy them.

If people find themselves in a condition that is unsupportable, the temptation to commit suicide could be so strong that they have go, and like the case I have quoted, if they make a hash of it, they will be in a far worse condition themselves, and they will be a burden on the State. I cannot understand that if I can make this case, which I believe is cogent, why government sources are failing to act. If I have got it wrong and there is a valid reason for not having the facility in this country that they have in Switzerland, I feel that this should be blazoned for all to understand

My life these days, is rather like a ride on a Big Dipper, I’m fit and well one day, suddenly out of the blue I am trapped in my house, by some monstrous inability. Just over a week ago I went to a hospital for a check-up, and it is a good thing I was there, because suddenly the room I was in rotatation about me, and I hit the deck with such force that I got whiplash, followed by Meneir’s disease, which is a clever name for being totally unstable, and having to resist falling about the place. In consequence writing has been out of the question, as indeed is practically everything else. Hence the apology. But when you’re in that condition one tends to dose, and when not dosing, cogitating on some of the most abstract and irrelevant considerations.

Physical contact
The era I was born in was a hang-over of the Victorian psyche, and physical contact, even in families was not as common by a mile, as it is today. I cannot ever remember my mother kissing me, even, to my surprise and disappointment, when I came back from a stint on convoy in the North Atlantic. All nature requires contact between the newly born and the mother. From that point contact between relatives and individuals is an essential part of learning and security. Put briefly, there is nothing like a hug, and at times of stress, loss and injury, physical contact is reassuring. The handshake, as we all know from our schooldays, has come down in time from the days when knights were bold, and the handshake indicated that there was no hidden agenda, such as a dagger up the sleeve. But the handshake today has all sorts of nuances, from a reawakening of a past friendship, to the closing of a deal.

We all know that physical contact can also be abrasive, as on the field of sport, or behind the cycle shed at school. I have found it interesting to think of all the different ways in which we communicate between ourselves, and to some extent with the animal kingdom, all by touch. The passing pat on a shoulder, at a function, signifying friendship and acknowledgment. The touch of the schoolmaster’s hand, and again on the shoulder, after looking at some work, noting approval. Contact has its own language, which is related to circumstances and geography, but today, when I see so much hugging and kissing between total strangers meeting for the first time, bearing in mind my own history, I find it totally over-the-top, and meaningless. In the entertainment world hugging and kissing has totally different nuances, it can be used by an individual to draw attention upon themselves, to give the appearance of being on equal status, and very often is just as meaningless

If you were to ask my family what I know about sport, and football in particular, they would laugh, and they would be right, because I gave up playing soccer when I was 10 years old. However, that doesn’t stop me from having a view on the way the Germans have been playing. I am firmly convinced that what they have been doing has been a matter of set pieces, derived from an incredible amount of research, and a lot of training and discipline. I have listened to the pundits on television, and to the best of my knowledge no one has suggested this. I set myself a problem of how I would approach making a team world champions, and decided that the only way to do it is by analysis and training’

Initially, I would take a number of mathematicians, a vast amount of recorded video of the games of the top teams in the world. These would be carefully examined with respect to defence, and attack. A study of about 10 of each of the best systems would emerge, these would then be analysed, set pieces derived, the players of the Cup team would rehearse them, until they wwere second nature, and then they would be made to play against some of the top teams in the country, and the results of these matches analysed again.

That goal that Germany scored against England, where the goalkeeper kicked the ball the length of the field, almost to the toe of a member of the attack, was not luck, it was a well practiced set piece. In the match with Argentina two of the goals were almost identical, the ball was taken down on the outside, a pretence was made to appear to be attacking goal, but what they were doing was playing back to a man standing on a 10 yard line, in the centre of the field to take the ball and score, with the goalkeeper taken off guard by this system. The fact that it was done twice successfully convinces me it was a set piece. Similarly the goal which was scored from a place kick as a result of a foul, was also a set piece. It is not difficult to engineer a foul in such a way that the opposition are blamed for it. In this case the man taking the kick was not looking at the goal but at the far side of the field, and consequently the Argentineans were also. I believe that that man had practiced that kick time and again so he could do it with his eyes shut, and curl the ball to within feet of his colleague standing in front of goal.

By the same token, it was rare for more than four men to be in the attack, while there would be seven well-versed in positions necessary to form a phalanx that would inhibit any attack. If you can stop the opponents from scoring you have any two to one chance of not being beaten, you will either win, or draw and then be faced with shots at goal. So it is safer to maintain a highly trained defence team with many options of the pattern of where and how they stand or manoeuvre. I am firmly convinced that this is a totally new, and highly technical approach to training a football team. With this in mind it will be interesting to watch the Germans in their next match.

Today we are very busy, our lives are so full we tend to accept what people say without question. Very often what they have said is a half-truth or even a downright lie, but we don’t question it. These advertisements that keep reappearing on television are a case in point, in that they make broad statements of the efficacy of the product that is totally spurious. They make protestations about the necessity to keep germs away from toilet bowls. As far as I’m concerned the only time I ever touch a toilet bowl is when I’m cleaning it or carrying out a repair, normally I don’t touch it at all, or I sit on it and my buttocks touch the edges, so what is all the fuss about? They always bring children’s health into the equation as a sort of spur, when it is nothing more than a form of blackmail. They make statements like, ‘this is the only product which clears all the germs. A bucket of bleach would probably be an awful lot better. In other words, by not questioning we are taking for granted anything people like to tell us, and the problem is that we act on it.

By the same token, governments tend to take for granted what they say goes, and it generally does, but from time to time they have to have U turns, because the public has woken up. People like myself, a lot of them a lot more wise, draw attention to statements made by politicians that are woefully inaccurate, but as I said above, we are so busy we tend to take note, but not act. Certain members of families are taken for granted, Mum for certain, Dad as a general rule, and it is the children who are generally in focus. Being taken for granted, on a daily basis can be psychologically debilitating, where the subject begins to consider him or herself virtually worthless. I have seen this happen, and I believe that it is our responsibility within the family to see to it that it doesn’t happen.