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This morning I was intending to write something entirely different, but when I saw the headlines that the Manchester police had arrested 362 people and are proposing to arrest more, a number of aspects immediately came to mind. The first of course was the problem of holding these people prior to being charged, then the logistical problem of getting them to court, retaining those not bailed, and what is more, in this world of reports, the paperwork involved seems monumental. The fact that this initial raid was so successful will have a knock-on effect across the board, because probably all the senior police officers will not be prepared to allow themselves to be pilloried, if they don’t carry out their own sweeps.

It is alleged, that we in this country have the highest prison population of any. People who appear to know what they’re talking about are constantly criticising this condition, especially in the case of young offenders, in which those sent to prison are in effect swelling the ranks of the seriously criminal. So, if up and down the country, in the bigger conurbations, hundreds of people are going to be brought to trial, not only will general policing suffer for a protracted period, the legal system and the prison system will both be overwhelmed, and at the end of the day chaos will reign because of the high pressure brought to bear on those dealing with the alleged criminals.

What this highlights more than anything, is that there has been negligence prior to this raid, either through lack of forces, or for some other reason. Clearly there has been no sudden and immediate upsurge in criminality to this extent, it has been gradual. Whether I am wrong in my criticism is for those who are not just using basic logic to view the problem, but in-depth of all the parameters. I firmly believe that a serious examination of selected prisons, and selected inmates graded by the quality of the crime and of the period of the sentence, should be carried out by someone unconnected with the prison service or the judicial system, to assess the percentage of people who actually require to be restrained in prison. If the ultimate percentage is low, then remedial solutions must be found. The cost to the Exchequer of retaining a prisoner, which is rising ever higher due to the need for ever more prisons, is so gross that something really needs to be done to justify it. What the future will bring as a result of this raid is anyone’s guess, but somebody high in the scheme of things, must bend his mind seriously to the cause and effect of this raid in the short term and the long.

Yesterday, I talked my elder daughter, who was born in 1945, and consequently whose childhood and early adulthood was in a period still recovering from the effects of WW 2. She raised the matter that she, like I, had had to pull ourselves up by our bootlaces, and this had provided us with a totally different view on life to those more fortunate. Everything we gained we had to work for, which we appreciated not only for our own success, but for their material value The next generation, those born in the late 60s or 70s, were often presented upon their marriage with a house fully furnished, a car, and an exorbitant holiday somewhere abroad. What has also snowballed is the cost of a wedding, and what seemed to be the incumbent prenuptial expenses as well. We no longer go to weddings, but our grandchildren seem to be going to them at an inordinate rate, and the total cost to the guests, of having to fly to the prenuptial party in some other country, having to fly to some castle somewhere, and provide what is considered an appropriate present, to our old eyes is exorbitant.
The increase in the average wealth of the nation, whether real or due to credit, prior to the credit crunch, made expenditure on social graces, and random pleasures, to reach average heights never previously experienced. This had two effects, the first was it put those less well off, into an embarrassing situation where they either had to stump up and make it up in some other way later, or not accept the invitation for whatever it was. The second was that material things and pleasures gained almost without a thought, were not appreciated intrinsically, in the same way as if they had been achieved by hard work and frugality. It arrived at a point where it was taken for granted, and we then achieved the throwaway society, where almost nothing is sacrosanct, but collecting tat from a bygone age, ironically is noteworthy, to the extent that programmes on a daily basis are devoted to it.

If I live long enough I think perhaps I shall see that the credit crunch will bring a little sanity to the way in which people value their possessions, and go for quality rather than brief fashion and style.

I am referring to politics today, where it seems that those who are supposed to be responsible, are being utterly irresponsible on a daily basis, because they are fighting the next election with lies, half-truths and invalid statistics. They have lied, or else not done their homework properly, about the provision of materials in Afghanistan, about the way in which the health service is run; they have been totally negligent with respect to the financial sector, need I go on, the list is endless? The thing that really annoys me is the fact that we seem to have a dual legal system, in which the man in the street can be had up for libel or slander if he makes statements likely to be detrimental, while politicians have no such restrictions on either their statements, written or verbal, and their actions. Those people who were supposed to be monitoring the stock exchange and the operation of the banking system didn’t take their work seriously. A cynic might assume that possibly some of them were more interested in the rise and fall of the value of the pound, through trading, than they were in the future of thousands of people who are now losing their jobs. For whatever reason, no action has been taken against these people. If a builder is found to have flouted the safety regulations, he can be taken to court, and if as a result of an accident he can be sent to jail.

Politicians are disseminating misinformation in order to fool the public into voting for them at the next election, and it would seem that all sides are up to it, or there wouldn’t be so much retraction of proposed government policy. Surely there must be some Parliamentary tool which enables retribution to be meted out to those who have been responsible for this misinformation, which is clearly disrupting some of the most vital services and departments of our government system, and causing public opinion, and our global standing, to be debased. I have always thought that Blair should have been brought to book for the lies he was responsible for repeating, without having taken the advice given at the time.

As I do not speak any of those ancient languages that have come down from different civilisations, like Egypt, India, and China, I am not in a position to draw comparisons. What I do know is that as a result of Britain being invaded by the Germans, the French and the Scandinavians, we are fortunate that we have a very rich vocabulary, if we would only use it. I’m not talking about Shakespearean English, which in itself is incredible, but the language of today, which is there for all of us to use, but is constantly being corrupted. When I was a boy I rarely heard the types of epithets that even small children are using today, but I only found to be common usage when I joined the lower deck of the Royal Navy, and later worked in one of the toughest trades, the building industry. It astounds me therefore to find in a film, Love Actually, produced in this country, an highly imaginative production, and clever interspersion of psychological profiles, that has a young boy 10 years old, allegedly, conversing with his father using gutter language. Clearly it was an intention to show that the age differential meant nothing in this circumstance, but it jarred on the sensibilities of even me who has seen it all.

I question whether progress is not regressive by its very nature, as conversation, be it intelligent or otherwise, is being replaced by home entertainment, the computer and silence. The young are not being treated to the sort of vocabulary that my generation was on a daily basis. They are not reading classics for pleasure, rather than from school necessity, and widening their horizons, both in aspect and vocabulary. There is no shadow of doubt that adults today are more used to using gutter epithets as part of conversation than they ever were in the past, and this applies, I believe, more to the upper classes, and the lower classes than it does to the middle classes, who were always hidebound anyway. I take it that this usage is to demonstrate some intellectual freedom, and a sort of strength of character, in men it would be called macho, but women also express themselves similarly.

Another aspect of the changes is the way in which the entertainment industry, when it discovers a success, such as the Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice, that they introduce a cheaper version of the same story without the quality of dialogue and presentation, and follow this with an up-to-date, modern day version of nothing like the language in the original. This is not an isolated case, but repeated regularly. The full use of the language with all its colour, nuances and variety, is not only pleasurable to the individual, but adds so much to the overall sense of what is being depicted.

Imitation comes in so many forms, copying, counterfeiting, and cheating. The most amusing version is among women. I was brought up by women, and my family, including the cat, has been mainly female. You discover that a young woman with excellent taste and the money to support it, buys a garment or accessory, that everyone applauds. Her friend, who has a thumping inferiority complex and little taste, copies her. Overnight the friendship dies.

The current battle of the DHSS as a result of President Obama trying to push through legislation that the American health service is similar to ours, is a case of imitation, which is having ridiculous and unnecessary reflections, totally undeserved, as the battle proceeds. The Tories have been allegedly responsible for feeding this frenzy. It is not until one is involved almost daily, even if unwillingly, that one discovers how fortunate we are in this country, and what an excellent service we are afforded.

The most awful type of imitation is being the way in which young people here and abroad, have massacred people, using high-powered weapons and spraying bullets without reason. Recently I have been watching television more than I’m used to, and switching on to films made in the last five or 10 years, mainly in America. Almost invariably there are scenes which illogically demands that hundreds of bullets are fired by a small number of people and yet a large number of people are killed. Last night in two different films which I ultimately switched off, there were a number of scenes in which a large number of people were randomly killed. I know I’m an old fuddy-duddy, and was brought up when films were censored, but I can’t understand how people are happy to watch these films that have no logic in the turn of events depicted, and are merely gross and lacking in any intelligent story content and would, without imitation, be totally remote from modern life. I think it is time that good taste, quality scripts, and intelligent and well crafted films, like they had in the 60s to 80s, and even occasionally British today, replace some of these extravagances.

It must be understood that young people are impressionable and that they do imitate, that is how they learn. Their lives, unfortunately, are not as multifaceted as ours was, when the world seemed to be our oyster, restrictions and horrors were few, and we had so many people to admire and copy, or imitate if you like, who were not excessive in their behaviour or their outlook. Today the horizons of the young people are so tightly limited, that this should be taken on board by those in charge of us, with funds provided to widen these very limited horizons, not only in intellectual matters, but physical pleasures as well. One of the most serious problems today is the inhibiting nature of safety legislations. So we break a few bones, I have broken probably more than seven, and it is only now are now when I am 86 that the bill has to be paid.

I know very little about world finance, but that doesn’t stop me worrying when I see the rate at which unemployment is rising, through nothing more nor less than greed and incompetence. So I sat down yesterday and thought about possible changes in the way the world’s banking was operated. I have said before that currency is purely a convenient commodity to permit payment for services rendered, but the problem is that there is not a stable value against which all currencies can be viewed, because different currencies are bought and sold like commodities. It then occurred to me that in effect we have two forms of currency. There is the internal currency that each country uses for barter within that country. Then there are the money markets buying and selling these currencies and so allowing individuals or companies to make money. I may be an idiot, but it occurred to me that we should have an international currency that has a fixed value that never changes, what it is related to is a matter of choice, but it must be inviolate and totally stable. The same applies to the National currencies only their value would be related to the international currency.

The value of a commodity produced by a factory or sold in a shop is what the market will stand, and so the value of the commodity should be the thing that varies, not the currency. If this were the case, and the currency was stable, then we wouldn’t be in the plight we are today. There would not be any money markets, each country would only use its currency within its borders, and in any transaction outside its borders would be carried on in the international currency. The only sticking point is determining the value of the international currency and making sure that its intrinsic value never changed with time.

These last statements point to the fact that all we need is an international currency which is set in some way so its value never varies with time, rather like the metre and international measurement.

I am talking about the rumpus caused by the assessment that it is going to take over £1 million per annum to jail the members of the family who brutalised that child. One of the reasons offered is that attempts will be made by other prisoners to carry out their own form of justice, and in doing so will endanger prison officers and other prisoners. I’m assuming that this is based on the philosophy that these people are going to be treated in exactly the same way as someone caught nicking cars. My approach would be considerably different, and while I know almost nothing about running a prison, during my war service for a few days I was a jailer in a naval lock-up, in charge of two would-be murderers who were there because they failed to kill the very person the rest of us were dying to kill.

For a start off I would decide on permanent solitary confinement for each of the family. I would then put in hand the construction of a cell-block, consisting of three units, each with a bed sitting-room and a toilet-cum shower room. This block would be accessed from some part of the main prison with a suitable double door security system. At the rear of the block would be an exercise yard partially planted so that the atmosphere was not totally barren. Each unit would be provided with a flat TV and radio sets within the walls behind unbreakable glass panels and operated by remote control, to prevent vandalism. The whole unit would have CCTV connected to the control centre of the prison. Food the would be provided as it was in the prison that I was in charge of, of such a type that knives and forks were not required and the food would be eaten either by hand or using a plastic spoon. The inmates would go on exercise individually, twice a day, for acceptable periods. They wood be provided with a keyboard connected to a hidden computer, using the TV screen as part of the equipment, to give them some mental stimulation. I would assess the construction of this property, considering it was only required for a short time, unless it became popular, could be built little more than £100,000. The supervision would be remote, both sound and vision, but adequate, and they would only need to be attended morning and afternoon to have verbal communication rather than just visual, which would overcome all the worries about further excesses. I don’t care if these people have lost their human rights, as seen by some more socially advanced than I am. What I do see is that these people are not unique in this society that we have today, and we are going to have to change our views on how they are treated when they are discovered. The number of brutal attacks being perpetrated on a daily basis throughout this UK is rising steadily. Whether the thought of this solution will be a deterrent is no more likely than hanging was, but at least if it saves millions of pounds per annum, then in my book it is justified.

I know this is a dull subject, but the incredible change in such a small time, globally speaking, must have had a tremendous effect on the development of our young people. Call me an old fuddy-duddy if you like, but in retrospect I can’t believe the straitjacket in which our youngsters now grow up. Progress has given them access to unbelievable toys and tools, and until recently, prosperity has showered vast quantities of generous presents of toys into their store cupboards. Fortunately, they are totally unaware of what they have been missing over the last 60 years.

Way back in the 20s and early 30s there were so few cars that the streets were totally unencumbered by parked vehicles, and in consequence the children of the lower and middle classes were able to play simple games on the streets, sometimes in pairs, more often in groups, but these groups were having fun not mayhem. On the high street there were toyshops, with windows packed with toys of every sort and occasionally with automata, railway trains running on a track, toys well beyond the pocket of most children, but it was lovely to stands, gaze and dream. Today, if there are any toyshops at all, they’re in the form of an ugly warehouse in a shopping precinct on the edge of town, with no chance to see the toys at their best, or narrow, but deep emporia, with a narrow window filled with stuffed toys, while the shop itself and its stock disappears in the distance in this narrow space in a supermarket. There is no time to stop and stare and wish. In fact shopping for children has become a tedious procession round the same old shelves of the supermarket on Saturday mornings, not having to be dragged away from these wonderlands.

If one wants to find a shop devoted to sweets and chocolate of every variety, one has to go down some narrow little street off the main thoroughfare to find it, it’s not as it was in the old days standing like a jewel in the High Street for the kids to drool over. Today the sweet shop is either some uppercrust, pretentious oasis, devoted to expensive, rich chocolate, that the kids couldn’t afford, or toffee and sweets produced by only one maker, without brandy ball or a gobstopper insight.

Mechanisation has also done away with the simple pleasures of the harvests of corn and fruit in the countryside, by those kids having a cheap holiday in the farming environment. I suspect I have written this before, but the difference in the way my great-grandchildren are growing up in so much sophistication, compared with my own childhood, makes me feel sad, because the memories that I have are so pleasurable. These children are well brought up, within the confines of our society, it is just that progress has made everything more regimented, and consequently not simple and basic. No doubt my great grandchildren will be a lot more sophisticated and clever than my generation was, but I wonder if they will be as relaxed and carefree as we were, and there lives ultimately as gentle and unworried as ours were before 1939.

Ever since the beginning of the credit crunch, I have found that in financial programmes on television, somebody stands up and demonstrates that the markets are buoyant and suggests that things are better than quoted. A day or so later a government spokesman tells us that in fact the crunch is going to last couple of years longer than originally prognosticated. I remember in the past, when a mid-European, with vast sums of money at his disposal was trading in currency, and managed to ruin the economy of some small countries. We were told that the crunch was as a result of people trading in our country with our money and getting it wrong, so, obviously, somebody or some people elsewhere have our money tucked away. What worries me is that history can repeat itself, because as far as I understand the banks are still trading in currency. I always believed that currency was merely a tool to enable transactions to take place smoothly and with security, not a commodity. Shares are a different thing, in so much as the companies involved require them, to be able to obtain money with the promise of profit, at a time when they want to open up, or expand. It seems that this is no longer the case because the element of security in the value of the currency, as we have seen in this country, cannot be relied upon because of currency trading, with the result that purchases like pensions, shares and anything else you like to imagine are at risk, and as is happening today, being curtailed, or used for other purposes, and those who have contributed are the losers.

I am under the impression that currency trading is still taking place, and the only reason for this is that some people in the financial sector are playing Monopoly for their own aggrandisement. It seems to me that for some reason the Banks are inviolate, seeming still to be able to make their own rules without curb or redress, which in the light of recent history would seem to be a nonsense.

The elderly, possibly because they have time on their hands, often privately reminisce about the early part of their lives, their childhood in particular. It is probable that most will eschew those periods of horror subconsciously, and dwell on the more pleasant aspects that have been superseded by so-called ‘progress’. With me it generally happens at about four o’clock in the morning, and today I was thinking about the change in the landscape in 80+ years. One of the causes is the curse of inheritance tax, which has caused so many of those great estates to be sold up, and where there were avenues of trees leading to the big house, small copses as shoots, there are now roads, dwellings, shopping centres and above all, concrete and tarmac.

A long time ago I used to paint quite successfully for pleasure, mostly landscapes. In those days there was a renowned artist called Adrian Hill who had an art programme on television and published books to compliment it. One was called ‘knowing and drawing trees’, depicting almost every type of tree growing in the UK and their appearance in winter and summer. After WW2 there was an urgent need for timber and large swathes of the countryside were devoted to producing pine. These pine forests did little for the environment because the trees were planted so close together, to induce tall straight trunks, that little grew under them. One of my greatest pleasures as a boy, when I escaped from the sterility of London, was to walk in the autumn, down one of these tree-lined avenues, thick with fallen leaves, which one shovelled through with one’s feet, the atmosphere redolent of the smells of the country, clean and clear, gentle and undisturbed, where stress had no place. I strongly recommend that if you have time, go to the public library take-out books on trees. The silhouettes in winter and summer are so different and beautiful in a way that only nature can be beautiful; they are interesting both from their fruit and their effect on nature.

>From time to time there have been schemes for planting trees, but they seem to have come to nothing, because commerce is more important than the aesthetic. The forests, the copses and even a single tree standing at the corner of a field was a heritage worth leaving for our youngsters not only to enjoy, but to study, because there is more than the beauty of the trees, there is their effect on the local environment, with wildlife and flora and fauna. Inheritance tax has been a very costly imposition, aesthetically.