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The trouble about being extremely old is that you have seen so many changes in social behaviour, criminal behaviour and politics, that you become a boring critic. From childhood education is probably more by imitation than it is by instruction, and this does not stop entirely after childhood. One only has to see the way fashions, often ridiculous, becomes the norm. The bare crease in the buttocks, shining large over the back of the trousers in females and males is a case in point, no one will call it attractive or elegant, but it’s there for all to see. The problem as I see it is that changes in fashion and social behaviour seemed to have gone downhill since the end of WW II. I have said before that in the 20s and 30s counter hands in some of the larger high street stores, and waitresses in some of the better restaurants talked with accents they believed were aping the Sloane Rangers. To me this was an indication that they were trying to better themselves by their own volition. In my school newcomers spent one lesson a week for a term having Oxbridge elocution lessons, as the class system depended to a great extent on how one spoke. Today, even presenters on television, with regional accents difficult to translate, are fronting a game show, which itself has been downgraded to a ludicrous point of hysteria, hyperbole and razzmatazz, being offered for economy rather than quality. Actors and actresses in the 50s went through an elocution mill that brought them out all talking like one another. Today the better, more respected actors speak clearly because they had high training. The also-rans that populate the poorer films and domestic drama, seemed to relish their regional accents, and they along with American actors speak through the teeth, which are sometimes even clenched, to the point where their mutterings are indistinguishable.

It is no coincidence that we now have the credit crunch. When I was young the adults in the 20s and 30s looked upon owing money to be a condition to be avoided if at all possible, because it carried a social stigma. The radio, such as it was, had high standards in every quarter, and a level of censorship within itself, that I believe was used as a yardstick right across the country. Now gutter language is commonplace in the spoken and written word almost universally, and at every level, life in all its forms, seems to have gone downhill with respect to the freedom of the individual, and the social graces. The only thing that has improved is the general standard of living, much of which is now controlled by the cartels, and while having more advanced design, has in fact taken away a lot of our freedom of choice.

The other day I was hunting about for a shopping bag in which to put rubbish. It suddenly dawned on me how government policy is once again so totally crazy. We are admonished for wasting valuable resources by using plastic shopping bags, and urged to use more substantial shopping bags repeatedly. Now that I can’t shop myself, and have no wish to be a burden on others, I order a large proportion of my groceries online. One of the questions asked by the system is whether I want my purchases bagged or not bagged, and as a result of government pressure I automatically pressed the ‘not bagged button’, with the consequence that I have run out of free bags for the rubbish bin.

Today, kitchens are more or less universally standardised with either a waste bin behind a small door, or a freestanding one. I don’t know whether it’s by accident or design, but most of the bags your groceries are packed in just happen to be the right size for one of these bins. So it occurred to me that if followed the demands of the government and got gratuitous points from the shops, for not obtaining my own bags, I would have to buy plastic bin bags. Hence, at the end of the day, I will be using a brand new bin bag instead of one which had previously served its purpose, to store my rubbish in, thus defeating the saving of the atmosphere and the resources of the world in accordance with government policy, and costing me money at the end of the day.

Two things about this annoy me, it has taken me all this time to appreciate the illogicality of government policy, and that I, like a fool or a sheep, did as I was asked thoughtlessly

Recently I was looking at a costume drama film that had every type of horse and combination of horses, single as hacks, in matched pairs and fours, often standing about waiting to be ridden or pulling. It caused me to wonder what they were thinking about, and surprisingly it turns out, as I suspected, they do think in the abstract, and respond. It seems their method of communication is by smell, and using their body parts as indicators. Some years ago I had a golden retriever who used to play tricks on me, and in time I became aware of his bodily movements which warned me that he was making up the same old trick again.

I had previously wondered, when dogs snuffle, and horses do too, that this was some form of communication, but it seems that I was wrong. I put up the title of this essay on the Internet and found that there was a lot of material out there concerning the communication of animals, even to the extent that one lady says that she can telepathically communicate with animals. If you’re interested in animals I strongly recommend that you take a look at the different approaches to animal communication, I’ve found it most interesting, even fascinating..

I know as little about the law as I do about everything else, so when I say that I find it incredible that if I use the word ‘allegedly’, I can make libellous or slanderous statements without being sued, I could be wrong. In a court of law, having promised to tell the truth, if I tell a lie I can be had up for contempt of court, and depending on the seriousness of the condition, could be sent to jail. If I don’t use the word allegedly when slandering or libelling somebody, they can take me to court in the hope of extracting damages. And yet, if one is a parliamentarian of extremely high stature, one can allegedly tell lies, if said official has decided we shall to go to war, that have far-reaching effects on the finance of the country, and the conditions of its citizens, many of whom are either killed or seriously injured, it would appear that this is a case where ‘allegedly’ is misused. It is unsurprising that reports are saying that the UK will be slower than anyone else coming out of the recession, when we have the burden of two wars to carry. There is something wrong with a system that has two standards.

Today people talk in millions, as well as billions, and we are constantly seeing vast areas of waste, some predictable, some as a result of panic, as in the case of the flu pandemic. It seems that they are educating people in different skills, who haven’t a hope of getting a job in that skill for the foreseeable future. The public are making demands, both in the health service and in education, that may be valuable, but in effect are the icing on the cake and not essential,. The controversies over the policy of the war in Afghanistan have rumbled on since its inception, never more so than now. These are generalities, and there are many more. It would therefore seem that there should be a board whose responsibility is to oversee government proposals as related to necessity rather than just as a policy, and submit its criticism of any areas that it considers is waste, for Parliamentary approval, before implementation. Almost on a weekly basis, and sometimes on a daily, policies are implemented and then later changed, and this can cause disruption, which is expensive, and additional outlay that could have been avoided. I have said before a lot of the changes have been a matter of doing something for the sake of being seen to do something, which are then later proven to have been a mistake. I think most of the people dealing in billions, or even millions, while they may not have even a clue of the relationship of the sums to the general economy, nonetheless make these decisions. The sort of parallel is the one where many years ago I started to do the lottery and questioned whether I really needed any more than £500,000 to live in a state that I would like to become accustomed, when other people derided me. I personally could not see how I could justify spending more than that sum, over a few years, without actually wasting it.

The Media, cause-and-effect.
Very old people like me, tend to reminisce, possibly because the future is not as attractive as the past was, in spite of all the progress. I can go back as far as when we had no Media as it is called today, other than the daily newspaper. There was strong censorship, there was a sense of what was ‘nice’, and, I suppose above all, there was not the general level of crime and misbehaviour. Then we had a the crystal set, that we listened to turn about, with a pair of headphones, and on Christmas Day, for the royal speech, had a baking bowl in the centre of the table with the headphones in it, and we all crouch forward to listen to the King. The coronation of Queen Elizabeth coupled with Television and the roaring 60s changed all that, and then censorship was relaxed.

Since then there has been a build up of sensationalism in what is now called the media, which has steadily increased its influence on our daily lives by advertising, thoughtless reporting, when it comes to the effect of the reports, uncontrolled influences having far reaching effects, few of them for good. We have now arrived at the point where the media, more spoken than written, is influencing government decisions and worse still, reactions. This statement is not new, but needs to be repeated when you see children considering murdering their schoolfellows in copycat; when government policy becomes a knee-jerk reaction to the media, rather than slow and careful analysis, before taking action. This business of the Lockerbie bomber is a case in point, where politicians are trying to justify their existence as well as the decisions they have made in a hail of recrimination and justification, which at the end of the day cancels itself out, and is basically more hot air than substance. I’m not decrying the wishes and the considerations of the relatives and friends killed in the bomb blast, merely the hype on an hourly basis that has gone on ever since the decision was made. We are bombarded today in the media, more about the lives of celebrities, than about what really matters to us. I put this down to the fact that politics is no longer a subject that attracts attention in the way that it did, for all the reasons we’ve discussed before, and the pressures and the speed of life is such, that ephemera is more relaxing, than trying to unravel the claims and counterclaims of the combatants in Westminster, each struggling to fight its own corner for its own advantage rather than ours.

I wish we could bring back some sort of censorship that considered the effects of the written and spoken word both from a point of view of the security of the individual, and good taste. Today it seems that anything goes, and people are more interested in becoming notorious than they are in becoming famous.

This new ASBOS, banning alcohol offenders from public houses, would seem to me totally unworkable as it would require the police to have available while on the beat, written and photographic information on all those banned within something like a 30 mile radius, otherwise, how can they pick out the people who have offended and band? These youngsters are not stupid, if they are band in one town they will go to another, and most of them have access to the transport needed. I notice that the magistrates condemn it, I just wonder how it ever got adopted, even as an experiment?

A long time ago I wrote a piece entitled ‘the religious round’, based on the period of my youth when I was completely incensed by the behaviour of our vicar. At that time my mother forced me to go to church on Sunday, she didn’t care what the religion was, as long as it was a religion. My mates joined me in my search to find some religion that fulfilled my ideas of fairness. The first one we went to was the Salvation Army; the four of us were greeted with enthusiasm, probably because we were an unusual contribution to the day’s proceedings. They seated us in the front row, in front of a brass band, and you can imagine the joy that the four of us had listening to the band and watching them play.

Of course we all knew about the Salvation Army, every Sunday there would be a small group of them going from road to road, in the most horrendous weather, playing and singing hymns we all knew. They would be there for 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour, then either move further down the road, or go to another. These people were and still are dedicated, selfless, and generally in the lower income group, practising what they preach. During WW2 they could be found in every port, on many railway stations, and in towns close to encampments. We were on convoy, on a quick turnaround basis; shore leave was minimal, but after a few pints, we drifted along to the Sally Ann Canteen for a meal, totally different from what we were used to on board ship. These canteens across the country were a source of comfort and warmth, if only for a brief period, and most servicemen were grateful to those who gave up their time to keep these places open.

Even in this throwaway and one-time affluent world, it is interesting that the Sally Ann is still functioning in the way it did, supported by similar people. Every Christmas we get the appeal for toys for the underprivileged children, and the work they do in cardboard city is unbelievable. Religion per se seems to be on the backburner, and it is unsurprising when so much mayhem is laid at its door. The Salvation Army is the least pretentious of all the religions, and from my irreligious standpoint, I feel it to be the one that portrays in every way, the basis of its own teaching.

I have already written and I believe that the young today are short-changed. I want to widen that to include the way they are, and we were, taught. This business of homework, which I believe to be totally unnecessary, and taking up valuable time of the children and the parents, who are obviously struggling because the parents have forgotten or never needed to know what the children are doing, and the children are not so well taught that they have to do more at home at night. It is my experience that those destined for university, unless they are particularly brilliant, will go into first year where all the things they learned at the school, and require for the degree is revised in much more detail and breadth than they ever got at school. Homework is often a waste of time because the child is totally befuddled and the parents can’t help him so both are frustrated, and put under pressure. These children are sitting at home when they should be having fun and exercise on some playing field, either under supervision in this wicked world, or as we were, free as a bird. Children and university students are taught more than they may ever need in subsequent life. How is it that other form of teaching such as technical schools, universities, and work experience-type instruction doesn’t seem to need homework is a necessity, rather than choice? Yet many children are required to have additional teaching by a private tutor, to reach the standards that are required. This shows a lack of supervision of the standard of teaching, yet most children can tell you which are the good teachers, the poor teachers, and those totally incompetent.

In the real world, what we in the dark ages learned at school broadened our outlook in many ways, but little of it affected what we would require once we were in a job. It was at that point that the real education started. I believe that the education that I received gave me a more interesting take on the world about me, and I worry that these tight educational selections that the children have to make and are so influential, not only on their job prospects, but on their appreciation of the world they live in, when in fact it has reduced the breadth of vision, and I suspect in most cases taught them to a standard that is not required other than as a yardstick of their ability.

Modern cars
Yesterday, because Sophie and I need help, we had visits from eight people before lunchtime. Each one of these people had their own car. In consequence of this on a weekly basis, I find I am subconsciously researching the complaints of motorists concerning the electrics of their cars, and the number of complaints made concerning the fact that once the computerised system within a modern car breaks down, the repairers appear nonplussed, and the car is off the road for weeks at a time, time and again, is ememse. The interesting thing about this is that the people who are complaining don’t want all these clever add-ons that are now part of the electrical system, and yearn for the good old simple ways.

The cult of the celebrities
I know I have spoken of this before, how the media are obsessed with the doings and the wrong doings of the people they call celebrities, but who are all really actors and actresses with minor roles in many cases, but considerable exposure. Why I’m writing now is because of the fore of the Michael Jackson saga, and in particular the way he died. As you know my age, you will realise that when he was at his prime, I was too old to be a fan, but I was aware that this young man, with his incredible physique and energy, was unusual, and I could understand why he was popular for those who enjoy that type of music. What I find particularly obnoxious is this media frenzy concerning the way he died, purely for gain rather than the possibility of a crime. Anyone who has been on painkillers for months or even years, for whatever reason, and approved by a physician, would find it easy to build up a collection of potent drugs, along with the written admonitions of the side-effects, and the effects of the combination of the drugs. No matter how careful a doctor is, and I have found from my own experience that repeat prescriptions are carefully monitored within the surgery system, to ensure that people only get what they’re entitled to. To this collection one can also add alcohol, and the subsequent cocktail, not necessarily administered by a doctor, is lethal. I am at an age when a very large number of friends and acquaintances have died while in severe pain, and I have always concluded that some of them personally administered their own fatal dose. I rest my case.