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Undertaking the caring of a loved one, with similar duties to those in a care home, being totally housebound, you have a lot of time, either due to circumstances or fatigue, to look back on the past. When that past represents at least three and a half generations, and one is of an analytical trend, it is surprising to me, what you discover.

Life is a series of learning curves, some incredibly steep, and some almost non-existent. The beauty of this type of perspective is that you can see, from your own childhood, through the development of your children, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren, all the phases, and what is more important, the changes that time has wrought. I write this because it is only now these aspects of life have become clear to me, and I find it so interesting that I feel the need to introduce others to this ploy. When you see little children in their first year or so, not only learning so rabidly, but aping their parents, you realise that they have almost a blank sheet of memory, filling hourly. Then there are the stages of learning, both in education and experience, changing every five or six years, until one day one is proficient enough to be self supporting. It is then that the new phases start with the arrival of the next generation, more responsibility, wider experience both in work and leisure, but often with less time now than would have been the case three generations ago.

It is at this point in the analysis that one might ask the question of what mechanism changes the standards, the attitudes, the tastes, and the politics, generation upon generation. There is no shadow of doubt that if one was to draw a graph of the quality of the changes in the life of the individual, generation upon generation, it would depend on your perspective as to whether the graph rose in jerks ever upwards, or where there were serious dips, or even that the graph started to fall. There are areas such as education, health, welfare and general well-being, where the graph would be rising steeply. When it comes to probity, respect, and political honesty, one has to make one’s own judgement, from one’s own perspective, as no one can decide what is totally best for others. This I believe is the stumbling block of the nanny state, where they’re so busy trying to anticipate and cure what they see as the wrongs in society, that they hog-tie any chance of individual initiative. Their approach has induced a money grabbing society, ready to sue at the drop of a hat, and I believe removes the initiative the individual’s needs to make his own decisions, even if he has to suffer the consequences.

TV advertising, TV game shows and TV talk shows have changed more than anything over time. Today it seems that razzmatazz takes the place of quality, the screen is shouting and screaming at you as you sit in your chair, it is crude, cheap and I believe counter-productive because it is setting new standards of aesthetic which is downgraded. Quality is being sacrificed for all those reasons I have said, and TV has more influence on the young than probably any other medium. The crude drawings are accepted by the children because there is no alternative choice, and taken on board and loved, as golly-wogs and teddy bears were in my day, but let’s face it, aesthetically they really are crude, and in my estimate, totally ugly. Industry has now taught us that throwaway is easier and cheaper than repair. What it hasn’t taught us is that in many cases quality is being sacrificed for commercial expediency. The advertisements advising us to claim, was something we would never have dreamed of before, is an element of the get rich quick at somebody else’s expense, mentality, demonstrated by the way in which pension funds are stolen, and is a trend that my perspective finds to be prevalent in practically every walk of society today.

The question I asked after all this, is has the graph slumped nearly off the board, or has it even further to slump?

‘Why what?’ you will ask, and my reply is ‘So many things I don’t understand’. For a start, why it is that in spite of the fact that one doctor complained to the authorities that the department was heavily overworked, but the Department in the hospital dealing with the baby who was so badly injured, ignored the warning and later another doctor was censured for missing apparently serious damage to the spine and other injuries, allegedly as a result of these pressures. I myself have been amazed, sitting in hospital, having been injured, at the throughput of patients that are necessary to keep abreast of demand. I have seen surgeons coming out of surgery into the seating area to collect the patients that they needed, because of lack of staff, when this should have been done by a less senior person.

I raise this matter as an example of the chasm between ordinary functioning professionals, and banking. I have never understood why, when the banking system failed, which was not only predicted by practically every newspaper, and scribblers like myself, month after month, that the banks were not left to sink or swim as they saw fit, while the government inaugurated a banking system under the auspices of the Bank of England, and public money would then have been secure against any form of excessive rewards being given for what is nothing more than doing the job they’re being paid for. When people in other walks of life, who have the safety of the population in their hands, such as design and build engineers, surgeons, the police and many others, they are expected to do their job to their best ability without any handouts. Just as an amusing aside, my son-in-law was a professional golfer, and everybody came up to me and asked me how he had done the previous day’s championship, but they never asked me how many piles I had arranged to be driven, or what structures I was putting up.

What is it about the bankers that gives them a licence to ignore, so it would seem, ordinary common practice, even though they are now in effect, civil servants being paid by the populace? It is our money that is keeping the banks afloat.

Another typical question is why when the Prime Minister acted outside his mandate, tries to justify his actions in the face of extreme opposition from true professionals, runs the country into billions of cost for wars that I as a child, reading my comics in the 20s and 30s about the problems that were faced by our troops in the Indian mountain passes, was totally aware of then and if I had been involved I would have been wary now, It seems that there is some distinction between the attitude of government to the misdemeanours, or mistakes of the man in the street, and those of a select few. The question is, why?

I am all for artistic licence in a fairy tale sense, where imaginations can run free, but when it comes to what is really real life situations, I believe everything depicted must be part of the possible, the likely, or the everyday, not mayhem, razzmatazz or hyperbole for their own sake. I know that I am old-fashioned, don’t move with the times, and often find new fashions, both ludicrous and objectionable – take the time when it was the done thing to wear trousers that exposed the crease in the buttocks. What people do to themselves as their choice. What is portrayed for wide world consumption should be possible, if not totally acceptable, because we live in a world now, where anything goes, and standards are a thing of the past.

Being trapped in a house, the television can be a relief from boredom and in consequence is turned to on a regular basis. I have saved a number of films which when I came to watch them were so ludicrous, so totally impossible and so absolutely savage, that I switch them off. If you read my CV at the top of this blog you may conclude that I’m no powder-puff, and not easily disturbed. But now I find that brutality, the beatings that would be impossible if carried out as displayed, because none of those doing the beating would find they could use their hands after two or three blows of the quality we are offered. It was first in the Dirty Harry series, with Clint Eastwood in the title role, where gangsters and hitmen could fire-off innumerable bullets without reloading. Now this has become a standard in these types of films, with cars riddled with bullets, and the hero getting away scot free. This diet of crude murder and mayhem is almost daily and so I think it is little wonder that youngsters, particularly in America, can buy a gun which can assassinate their playmates and their teachers in one mad escapade, a copy of what they see weekly on television.

Before launching into the main topic, I would like to give a hypothetical case to make valid points. Take a large cartel, with business in practically every level of life, whose managing director is dictatorial, secretive and treats the Board of Directors shamefully. He has a close friend on the board to whom he has promised his post when he retires. Strangely, instead of having his friend as deputy director, he places him in charge of finance and budgeting, while having a nominee for the post, which is basically a political and logistical move, because this man he can control. In effect the Board has no teeth. In due course the director retires, and his friend succeeds him.

The problems for the friend are that first of all he is trustworthy, and in consequence assumes that those around him are also trustworthy. Secondly he has been holding down a highly complicated department and in consequence has had little experience in running the whole cartel. Once in office he finds that he has inherited numerous advisers, some of whom are not trustworthy.

Because I was unable to write to the blog at the time when Gordon Brown, for some unbelievable reason, presumably on advice, decided to write those letters to the bereaved, I choose to mention it now in my own way. I believe Gordon is under such incredible pressure, with backbiting, the election looming, and a credit crunch, he hasn’t time to think rationally when he is advised. A moment’s thought of the logistics, the imbalances and the criticisms this idea would generate would have hit him under normal circumstances.

I have lived in Northern Ireland since I was demobbed in ’46, I love the country, I like and respect the people, and I would wish to live nowhere else. This does not, however, mean that I approve of the way that we are governed. As I find it incredible that our senior politicians can’t come to sensible solutions, because their aims are so disparate, that they trot along to number 10 to bludgeon Gordon to come round to their individual ideas and needs, one after the other. This is a case of the sort of pressures that he is under. Unfortunately it also shows to me, a man with a brilliant brain, and a gentle nature, who is not tough enough to put people in their place.

My generation, which is well on the way to extinction, spent a large portion of its life in penury, which induced a high level of respect of the value of money. It was 1935 before we really began to come out of the recession caused by the First World War, and the change in our attitude and psychology can be seen everywhere. But then of course a few years later we were pitched into another war, and so it wasn’t until the late 50s that we began to get back to where we had been all those years before. In all that time there was no such thing as recognized minority rule, because the minority in a largely number of cases, by heredity, were ruling us anyway. To my knowledge the phrase only became common parlance when we started to have large numbers of immigrants from countries in the Empire.

What started the thoughts was the fact that recently, every time chemist delivers medication to our house, we have to sign a chitty, which literally tells us nothing, must be a bane to the chemist, a total waste of paper as far as I’m concerned, as once I wanted to find when something had been delivered, none of these chitties contain any useful information. I assume what little information there is, it is kept on record, and I can only believe that this has occurred, because somewhere, someone has been behaving in an antisocial fashion. This seems to be another of these knee-jerk reactions rather than considered thought. It is you and I who are paying every-time these reactions take place, when on a percentage basis the actual cause is committed by a very small percentage.

I don’t propose to list all the areas that are in this class, like health and safety, and above all drink-driving. Just as an example I propose to examine drink-driving. I believe that anybody who drives a car while under a dangerous level of alcohol abuse is a criminal. But the effect that the law now has, has totally wrecked what used to be pleasant social events, an invitation to dinner, a buffet party, or just a family going out on a Saturday night for a meal. At least one member can’t have a drink, this fact may seem trivial, but in reality it sets one member of the party apart from the rest. In the, 60s and 70s we used to run enjoyable dinner parties for say eight people, and quite a large number at other celebratory times of the year. These do’s were obviously reciprocated. They started generally about eight o’clock and went onto the small hours. There were no serious cases of drunkenness because by that time in the morning the effects had considerably worn off, and also traffic was so light as to be almost non-existent.

People are constantly creating about the loss of human rights, in my view it is the government’s inability to control the minority in whatever heinous act if it is involved in, by bringing such legislation that costs the country a fortune, creates mountains of paperwork, and the people who suffer most, on a percentage basis are the silent majority, both financially and with the regulated loss of legitimate freedom. Punish the criminal, not the silent, law-abiding majority. It is too easy just to introduce random criteria on a catch-all principle. It removes the need for self control.

A personal message I have not written anything for the blog since the 17th of October due to the fact that I had lost my connection to broadband. What I have been most interested in is the fact that so many people find what I have already written of interest. I rarely get comments, but I take this fact as an indication that what I write is of interest. My Dutch friend, Jan, once tried to prove to me that one of the reasons that the blog runs without my continued additions, is that schoolchildren could be using the biographical material for projects. If this is the case it is very gratifying.

Sophie, my wife has become quite ill, and you will know if you have read the blog that I am disabled also. I am now acting as a full-time carer, and pleased to be doing so, but it does give me little time to sit and cogitate about the vagaries of life today. Tomorrow I shall start once again putting down my thoughts on any subject I take an interest in, in order to stir criticism and perhaps generate a wider subject for your interests. I have said before that I run this blog because my grandson gave it to me as a present and I have had incredible fun trying to keep up with the times, and also trying to decide whether development over 87 years, to the extremes that we now enjoy have been worthwhile. Thank you for reading, John

If our governing bodies throughout the UK were commercial, they wouldn’t last a year. If one considers that we the taxpayers are buying a service from what amounts to be a conglomerate, we should not be subjected to all these changes in policy because decisions have been spur of the moment reaction, rather than intelligent and reasoned proposals. No company would allow a situation where the infighting would reach the levels that it has done in Westminster and Stormont, not for the benefit of the customer, but because of the selfish, self-seeking attitude, lack of responsibility, total ineptitude, and the lack of an internal leadership which is strong enough to inhibit this type of behaviour. The Board of Directors of our Parliamentary companies, in control of the overall conduct of Parliament, rests I believe with one man, the Speaker, rather than a Board of Directors

Psychologically the shenanigans going on in these two Parliaments are responsible for the total apathy of the electorate, or in this parlance the customers. Economically the system is over the staffed, and under-qualified due to a high level of the staff being inexperienced. On a value for money basis the level of waste is disproportionate to anything that is likely to be seen in the commercial field. Notions are put into practice in which in themselves cost millions because in many respects they are changing new for old, unnecessarily and without forethought. Every time you sponsor a new department the cost level must rise because everything has to be newly found, when in fact in some instances the new is less efficient than the old, which was arrived at by attrition over time.

If you’re running a commercial business you don’t get the customers to pick the staff, that is done in-house, and by a board of experienced professionals. I think one of the failures of our current system is that there is no longer a pool of older, wiser and experienced politicians to pick from, and to do the picking. Similarly, the method of candidate selection seems to be arbitrary and more to do with personality, than with competence and experience. I am aware that the electorate in the long run is the arbiter, but the quality of the selection offered is important, that is something that the electorate has neither the experience nor the resources to check.

History has taught us that no system is perfect, but that doesn’t mean that an overhaul of the system on the basis of economy, experience and competence shouldn’t be attempted.

I have not been writing for some time because I now only write when I have something useful to say. I write to my MP when my concerns are serious, and she passes them on to the various appropriate government departments. In due course I receive ministerial replies, couched in broad terms that unsurprisingly never seem to answer the questions asked, because the questions are a veiled criticism of government policy, which is broad-brush, with little respect from the side-effects.

The major parties here in Northern Ireland, and in Westminster, are more interested in their personal standing as individuals, the public assessment of the parties as a whole, and media reaction, than they are of the effects of the legislation they induce, which is often a knee-jerk reaction to give the appearance of doing something when the pressure is high, with little regard to the effects of this legislation in the short or long term to the individual and generally. Once, parliamentarians were there because they felt they wished to make some improvement in the plight of the electorate. Today it has become a job, in which their actions are controlled by the whips, and it is unwise to step outside the ruling. There are some cases where, due to the low number of members of a given party, there is no whip and the members can vote as they see fit, even in the face of party policies. The electorate is not stupid, it is aware of these conditions, but is so tired of the continuous broad brush approach, promises that are never kept, and U- returns on a regular basis that apathy is now paramount.

This tirade started because I objected to the banning of certain incandescent lightbulbs which are required for special types of light fitting whose purpose is more to do with elegance and personal aesthetic, than it is to do with the brilliance of the lighting. The government reply I received stated that phasing out such bulbs could save up to 3,000,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum. It gave no yardstick as to how this immense weight of carbon dioxide compared with, let us say, air travel. Using statistics without reference is, to my mind, a form of slight of hand. I was not talking about the average hundred or hundred and 50 Watt bulbs, but those small, clear candle bulbs that are in chandeliers and wall fittings. These are only 40 watt, used in the winter mainly, and represents only a minuscule of the amount of light used throughout the house. There is no reference to the incredible amount of lighting within large stores, street advertising, street lighting just to mention a few making up the 3,000,000 tonnes. There was no mention of the disruption to the household that the change in fittings as a result of the law would produce. The extreme waste of money and natural resources, and the damage to the environment caused by the lack of public transport seems to have been ignored, and it would be interesting to find out how many tonnes of carbon dioxide this represented. The bulbs I am talking about are insignificant with respect to their effects on the environment, but serious to those of us who find them attractive. It has taken my lifetime to go from a gas lamp buzzing about the head and belching out gases, to a nicely designed light fitting which is attractive and a pleasure. One aspect our masters have not thought of is that in the winter months we seek warmth, physically and psychologically, and the warm glow of the old-fashioned lightbulb will be infinitely preferable to the cold light of these new inventions. In addition, I have noticed since I have been chair-bound that in the evenings when doors are not constantly being open and shut the artificial lighting provides enough heat in a high proportion of circumstances to negate the necessity for additional heating. This really must save duplication of the heat and light sources, which must be a plus.

Surely there is a point where justification of this type of sweeping legislation should be open to discussion, especially when, as I believe, the causes of global warming, are speculative rather than factual.

Sir,
On the fourth of June this year I posted a piece on Mix and Match, on this website depicting how I used your product, produced at that time, to make the drink, which to my taste is better than any of the single malts that I own and were presents from family at Christmas. This is not a begging letter, nor a weepy, it is the request for an accommodation that will enable me to enjoy the product of my invention at a cost that I can afford. If you look at the top right hand corner of the website you will see the word ‘About’, which will inform you that I have been retired for some considerable time with the consequent annual diminution of my income. It will also inform you that I have had a tough life, am a stoic, and also that I am fully aware of the legal minefield of a manufacturer receiving written modifications to his product, and adopting those modifications.

Up until recently I was able to mix my drink at the cost, although slightly rising, that I could afford. Your product now has gone from approximately £16 to £30 which places it beyond my budget. Last Christmas, I had a serious accident and crushed my spine, to the extent that for nine months I was unable to leave the house, and carry on a normal life. I shall have to live with this impediment forever. You can imagine for a man of 86, this change has been considerably radical. The one brilliant spot was that every evening at five o’clock I drank an excessively large measure of my concoction, enjoying every sip. It had been my policy to buy three bottles at a time of Glen Moray, which would last me approximately 3 months. So it was that I suddenly found that my main pleasure had been usurped by the sudden change, presumably in Glen Moray that warranted its increase in cost. My knowledge of commerce makes me think that within your warehouses there are still bottles of the original Glen Moray. I am therefore asking that perhaps you can accommodate me and allow me to purchase three cases at roughly the price I was paying a few months ago, and that if I should live beyond 91, I would like to think that I can still obtain the old Glen Moray, a case or two at a time, as I am ever upbeat. In your situation you will obviously appreciate what a loss this change in your product has caused me, I know I shall never find a drink, which has the flavour and quality that pleases me as this does, and I trust you will look upon my request favourably.

These days I just can’t believe what I see and read. Yesterday the Prime Minister was telling us that he was going to give a shakeup to government spending so that the reduction in the recession when it came would be easier. The implication was that this move was a forerunner of a relaxation of the crunch, thus implying that things were not as bad as we expected, or was I reading more into his statement that he intended? If that was the case I suspect that I will not have been alone in this assumption. Now today the headline is that the unemployment figures are going to be astronomical and that the crunch downturn is almost virtually over the horizon.

So much of what we get is a result of the electioneering, giving a seesawing effect, one day everything is fine because they’ve just done something clever or are going to do something clever, and the next day the facts negate this rosy effect. They are representing us not themselves, and we don’t give a damn about their job prospects, but we do about ours, and those of our descendants. Why don’t they all get together, pool their resources, find out why this country is doing worse than any other in getting out of the recession, and like a good rowing eight, pull together? As an ex-oarsman in an eight, there is something about the unity of the whole boat pulling together that is quite inspiring. They should just try it! After all, it is not so long ago they were wanting to be world leaders in every thing.