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It’s up to you to decide. The reason that the credit crunch is worldwide is that those responsible for our way of life across the globe, were so busy making their personal fortunes on the stock exchange, with their inside information, that they hadn’t time to read what we, the blog writers or the press were screaming about for more than three years.

Seeing that there is this urge for total change, and the Lords have failed in their duty to protect us from the excesses of Parliament, I decided they would have to go, and also some of the changes that I would make and what I would put in their place. To start with, there would need to be a replacement for the Lords, the members of which should be people from all walks of life, with varied experience and a high qualification in their own field, to act as watchdogs on Parliament. Experience is far more advantageous than purely academic ability. They must have no overt prejudices, and working allegiances with any political party. These people would act as consultants, highly paid because the country would have first call on their services, and they would be controlled by a select committee to look into aspects of government legislation, procedures and controls. Let us just for convenience call the system The Arbiters. But before that happened I would have every Member of Parliament required to write in no more than 300 words their justification for their position individually. I think this exercise alone will be very revealing, especially if they were involved concurrently in other ventures.

The Arbiters once in place, will be required to vet these declarations, and from the 600 or so, select, firstly those that seem surplus to requirements, secondly those constituencies that could be disadvantaged with a reduction in the final number of Members, and thus arrive at a smaller, more economical, and justifiable House. One aspect of this is that to ensure that the Arbiters themselves are behaving responsibly, the current Members, before the change, would have the opportunity to object, to suggests modifications and/or additions to the arbiters proposals -checks and balances, addressed to the inner select committee, as referred to above

There would also be limitations. There is no doubt that experience is the key to quality evaluation, not the talented tunnel vision of an academic genius. With this in mind, the requirement for an Arbiter will be that he was 50 or over, and under 70. His tenure would be for ten years, renewable at the behest of the select committee, during which the last two would be the changeover with his or her successor. Initially the Arbiters would be in two similar groups, one to arbitrate on the work going through Parliament concurrently with the change, and the second group carrying out the change. At the end, the final Arbiters will be selected from the two groups, at which point there would be a staged takeover in all departments, not necessarily concurrently, for the new Membership of the House from the old. One change I would make is that no unelected person could act as adviser or spin doctor, that the MPs would have to stand on their own feet. In this way we would really know the metal of our leaders, not what they want us to believe.

It concerned the stimulation of people hospitalised, severely handicapped, and I equated their lives to that of a man working on a freighter, except that they had no choice, while he had chosen that occupation. I’m not suggesting that nothing is being done, because I have a relative whose full-time job is stimulating those poor young children being treated in hospital for cancer. And I also know of other cases where people entertain the inmates of care homes, generally at times like Christmas. My problem is that there is a insufficient attempt to stimulate these people, and whether their carers are aware of it and not, they are left to vegetate.

I believe the solution lies mainly with those groups of people who meet on a regular basis, and are intrinsically joiners of a sociable nature. The athletic clubs would not be a source, as they are run professionally and especially for the stimulation of their members. It is more the amateur groups, the Cubs, Scouts, the members of Probus, retired men who meet on a regular basis for coffee or a luncheon, and receive or give lectures; art associations, or maybe the like of camera clubs. The one thing about any amateur charitable work is that the recipients, by its very nature, have expectations, which have been awakened, and this in turn demands stamina to maintain the proposition indefinitely. So many of these ideas start with good intentions, build up successfully, but the stamina is not there to maintain it forever.

Once upon a time I was part of a group who provided a Talking Newspaper for the blind. We worked in teams for two reasons, one was that it took a fortnight at least to gather up enough material, and the other was the weekly newspaper was too demanding on the time of the team. Taking this as a general example it is clear that if all the permutations of people incarcerated in institutions or their own home are to receive stimulation from time to time, the latter being taken to a meeting place, in every area this must be managed to ensure that it is not a seven-day wonder, and that sufficient people are available to supply, from time to time, different forms of stimulation, indefinitely. I have used the analogy of people on board ship. It was my experience when I was on convoy duty, and we had little shore time, that any change in our routine, from the like of a visit from an all women gun crew, to an inboard sports day while being on convoy, had two strong effects. To start with the anticipation was a subject of conversation realised a week if not more in advance. After the event, it was again a subject of conversation, of ridicule of some of the crew, and the effect on the morale was unimaginably high.

Someone like the Mayor or the Lord Mayor of a town or city should appoint somebody to oversee the type of entertainment I’m proposing, consisting of interesting talks preferably illustrated, music, some of the performing arts, and especially children performing for these elderly people, who above all enjoy the company of children. There will be those in the audience who will be comatose or irascible, but they will be in a minority. I believe the trial runs of a period of six months during the winter, in two or three areas in the UK, should be tried with all the stops pulled out. Once that is analysed, possibly pulled apart and put together again, some effort should be made to make it universal, where large quantities of associations are involved for very short periods, with long intervals, to ensure that the stamina is maintained, and therefore the project is workable. I know from my own experience that people generally enjoy being part of a charitable organisation, but only if it is smoothly run, without bitching and rancour, which can be quite common, and that the recipients are equally happy.

For some time I have been curious as to whom and why had someone given the expenses information of Parliament to the Telegraph and why they published it piecemeal over weeks instead of at one go, apart from the financial element. In this form it is clearly disrupting the work of the parliament. Anyone who was an MP, was a political guru, or knew the workings of Parliament, must have known this information for a long time, so why now? As someone who has been taken over by the political machine, I can tell you unequivocally that the cost, the disruption, the loss of records and continuity by a serious takeover does not justify the experience either in efficiency or cost. I am therefore assuming that this has been a cynical political ploy, by one of the Opposition parties to steal a march on the others and the government, and force an election, the run-up to which they have already planned in detail, including this scare campaign.

There is no shadow of doubt that the propositions being put forward now, by the two major opposition parties, might, in theory, be attractive, but in fact would cause unlimited chaos, disruption, animosity, and sidetrack the more important events and decisions that we need in this current time of crisis, without creating yet additional crises. If this happens, procedures, which have arisen by attrition over hundreds of years, will be swept away, modified or retained in too short a time, and these are in their hundreds of thousands. Redesign is generally a matter of inspiration, experience and trial, if further changes and modifications are to be avoided. The amount of work, the amount of discussion, and the amount of acrimony will be immense. That alone has to be justified before it has even started. How can you run a country with all that going on in the background? To my uneducated and simple mind the whole thing has not been thought through, is a political stick to beat the opposition and government with, and the man in the street hasn’t a clue of what is going on, nor why. It all started with somebody wanting to make a bit of money, by presenting a storm in a teacup, as a National emergency

Surely it can not be deemed, that a total overhaul of government functions so precipitately is essential, and that it should take place immediately after an election, which can be a time of takeover from one government to another, and in turn lead to chaos on chaos.? If it is truly essential, and I have not seen or heard any detailed justification, but is agreed as such on a cross-party evaluation, then it should be handled, as the War was handled in 1939, with a Coalition Government, until stability, and the overall principles have been set in place agreeably. Only then should there be an election. Or better still, shelve the whole idea, until we have got our finances, our manufacturing, unemployment and pensions in order.

I believe that, if it is intended to pursue this idiocy, her Majesty the Queen should step in now, use her authority to dissolve parliament as it stands, create a coalition government with representatives from all the major parties, and also set up a Revision panel to examine in depth the veracity of the claims for change, currently being voiced, apparently, off-the-cuff, at strength 10.

For those who might not be interested in Northern Ireland politics, that is what this is about. On the second of May I wrote that I was even more confused because I found that the Northern Ireland Unionist party was proposing to become affiliated with the Conservative party at Westminster. The reason offered, is that the union will enable better representation concerning our domestic needs, such as farming, fishing and so on. I question that, because the population of England is somewhere in the region of 50 million, while the population of the North of Ireland is 1.25 million, who are currently represented by three main parties with respect to the population, but not with respect to seats in parliament, although the representatives of Sinn Fein don’t actually sit in parliament. When a big cartel takes over a corner shop, one tends to wonder at whose advantage? It is obvious that David Cameron wishes to increase his majority in Westminster. Currently the Northern Ireland MPs virtually have a free vote on all issues, because they are not under the same sort of control by the whips that the other parties are. I wonder if this would change in the new regime, and whether it should?

Generally it is the leader of the party who speaks on behalf of the party, so does this mean that in future David Cameron will be speaking on behalf of those Northern Ireland Unionists, who are not affiliated to the DUP? There is no shadow of doubt that the Ulster Unionist party is in need of a boost if it is going to represent Unionists who do not adhere to the DUP policies. What I fail to understand is why the party thinks affiliation with an English party will enhance our standing, when the problems of England are so vast and varied, and those in Northern Ireland are virtually parochial, because of the size of our country and population.

There is no shadow of doubt that the level of agreement on most subjects in our own parliament at Stormont, can at times be very controversial, and often stultifying to the point where there is no progress. I cannot see how changing the name of a party will make any difference in our own parliament. I find that our politics, which years ago had seemed so simple, is now so complex because we have the interference of Eire, the Irish lobby in America, and Westminster holding the purse strings, all of which has to be accommodated, and all to some extent affecting major legislation. If we now have another strand, what is the relationship between the leadership of the Conservative party and our domestic representatives, when it comes to making policy?

Most of you know that I am very old, and therefore my standards are old as well, and my background is far more simple than those of today. So it is unsurprising that I was more than staggered when I heard, on the BBC Politics Show, yesterday, Sunday, that the army was considering women should be in the forefront of battles, even to the point where they were trained in bayonet fighting. I was brought up by women, but if you read my CV at the head of this blog, I trust you will discover that I am no powder puff.

I have been trained over the years in many of the arts of warfare, taking cover when bombed, shooting, bayonet fighting, long-range gun fire, depth charging, and police work in periods of terrorism, so I feel that I am at liberty to express my reaction to this proposal. Of all the things that I did, went through and was taught, the most unsettling, contrary to my character, and hateful was bayonet fighting, which fortunately I never had to put into practice. Let me tell you about the training in my day, 1940. The sergeant stood in front of you all and held up a bayonet and started to describe the way it was designed in the most horrendous detail. He pointed out that the blade had a groove in it so that air was carried with it, into the wound, which broke the suction, otherwise you wouldn’t get the bayonet back out again, and thus leave yourself open to attack. He also pointed out that in certain situations it could get jammed in the rib cage, which again needed special solutions. There was no doubt that the sergeant relished the fact that he was frightening the daylights out of these 17 and 18-year-olds, and he had been there and done that in the First World War. I won’t labour the facts, merely say that other aspects of hand-to-hand fighting were taught us, and none of them recommended themselves to me at any rate, because I have a strong visual imagination, and can see for myself the horrors that not only I would suffer, but I would inflict on the enemy. I think we should bear in mind at this point, that friends and relatives are being put under this sort of stress from time to time in the Middle East and Afghanistan, whether they like it or not.

I said I was brought up by women, I was taught to respect them, treat them separately from the rest of the family, and often as they got older to be the fulcrum of the family. The duty of the men was to protect the family in all circumstances in every way possible, even at risk to themselves, and that included providing the home and necessities of life. I’m not suggesting that women are weaker than men when it comes to courage but in my uneducated way, I believe that their psychology is totally different from men’s, having been brought down in a different route through their genes.

My wife was 7 1/2 stone when I married her, not particularly tall, at 5 foot six, an average woman, but I do not believe she would have had the strength, even if she had had the will, to combat a clubbing, screaming man charging at her with a bayonet at her throat. This is not the subject to be handled lightly, we’re talking about people’s lives, the love of their families, and also their futures when they leave the army. We are told repeatedly that many of those fighting today are suffering post traumatic stress, how much greater will it be for the women, assuming they survive.

Basically, I am asking questions that I believe need urgent answers. I have had the theory for a long time that the reason we were able to go to the moon, design computers, and achieve so much in the 20th century, was because each successive generation since the dawn of time has passed on skills and intelligence through their genes. I know that this is obvious, but to my worried mind it has an unpleasant corollary. I come from a generation that was relatively honest, reasonably hard-working, enjoyed simple pleasures, and without even thinking about it, had high moral standards. That was in the 20s and 30s.

I said that I was worried, and I believe with reason, not for myself or even mine, but for the nation as a whole, because those standards that we took for granted, have been watered down, twisted out of shape, and the world is an entirely different place. I’m not suggesting that there was no crime, greed, and malpractice, but the degree as a percentage was minuscule by today’s standards. I admit that the rewards for the majority were poor, but as their expectations were commensurate it wasn’t a problem.

A number of things are outstanding, we have greater global communication, moral standards at all levels, which to some extent are engendered by religion, have reduced, as has religion itself, and especially as it has also become more of a political tool. In a rush to be unique, when so much in the past was of such a high standard, I believe even our aesthetic has dwindled. Those in charge seem to take it for granted that in certain elements of our society, criminality is inevitably endemic. This alone shows a level of acceptance, which in itself is criminal. We are having criminality and mindless violence as a daily diet, parochially and worldwide, in low places and high places. Is this primarily because those with influence or by situation, are greedy, selfish and irresponsible, or would it have been inevitable with the increase in population, and outside influences?

It is not my business what all these people are doing, but like the rest of us, I have to bear the upshot of their actions. What worries me even more, is if there is this tremendous change in society, and my proposition about the genes is correct, are we now in a different spiral from that which I was born into, and if so, where will the spiral take us? I have said previously that we are in the incredible era of celebrity worship. Youngsters always admired film actors, sportsman and possibly the extremely wealthy, with no hope of achieving the status. Over the last 30 or so years, commercial changes brought on by high-pressure communication, have altered all that, the celebrities now seem to have more sway, their excesses emblazoned, almost applauded, and perhaps aped. In other words, have our values totally changed, not for the better, as one look at the opening page of broadband demonstrates?

There is some hope. I know many families where the genes have successively produced cleverer, well mannered, and considerate children, generation upon generation. The question that I find unanswerable, however, is whether this is still the norm when one sees and reads the terrible headlines from around the world. If we, in Britain, are to come out of this credit crunch successfully, we must harness the abilities of these young people, train them and give them a future, as a priority, because they are the future. Our manufacturing ability must be enhanced, we must stop farming out a lot of our production to be manufactured overseas for profit, which translates as greed, before our ability to manufacture totally disappears, even if we have to pay more for the product. In some ways this culture of greed and selfishness must be overcome, by the example that success is not measured by popularity, overexposure, and excess, but by respect, diligence, and a desire to achieve for its own sake, rather than popularity. Whether this would be accepted, or is even achievable today, is open to question.

I have previously remarked on two things resulting from the credit crunch. One is the increase in advertising on television, and its increase in quality, the other is that advertising now seems to depend more than ever on fear, or psychological instability that is a form of fear. In advertising one needs more than just a description of the product to sell it, you have to justify the need, and what better way is there than the fear of contamination, or destitution.

What has sprung up over the years is advertisers selling us the suspicion that if we don’t use these products we will have illnesses beyond belief, and in some instances the graphics are unbelievably crude, which in turn shows the disrespect the advertisers have for the intelligence of the market they are trying to attract – we are not children, we see the amount of the product that seems to be required to achieve its end, which alone should deter us, but unfortunately advertising is more to do with the subconscious, because it’s so repetitive, that we cease to be critical.

Now we have an army of geriatric, once highly respected TV personalities, being suborned into telling us the benefits of financial products that I suggest they have no technical insight or true knowledge of. What I find particularly aggressive, is the fact that these people are appealing to those of us who are in serious financial difficulty, otherwise they wouldn’t be needed. They are not offering the services out of the kindness of their hearts, but are jumping on yet another gravy train. We hear regularly of the plight of those who have gone to moneylenders with horrendous results. I feel that the government should be advertising and increasingly subsidising the meretricious Citizens Advice Bureau. It should also advise those with little or no financial knowledge, who are in dire financial straights, that the advice is at a cost to the state, in effect free.

Let us take banking, I’m sure most people have had the same experience I have, where you have sent a cheque to pay your credit card charge, in what you consider is reasonable time only to discover that you forgot that Monday was a bank holiday and in consequence you have been charged £12, at least, as a late fee. It doesn’t matter that you have a couple of thousand in your current account, and the bank is holding a few Isas for you, and they have the use of your money to speculate with. The corollary is among the headlines almost daily. How is it that they get away with it? I personally know of instances where members of staff are being given unpaid leave, whether it suits them or not, while the partners in the company are earning whacking great salaries, allegedly untouched by the crunch.

Have you ever driven West on a dual carriageway, as straight as a die straight into the falling sun? You have the visor down, and yet you’re still blinded. Along the road you know there are speed traps, so you think you have slowed down, but you’re afraid to take your eyes off the road to look at the speedometer, and a couple of days later you discover you have received a fine and a few points lost. The driving conditions are no excuse.

We have all made an insurance claim, and then discovered the that the small print, interpreted by their specialist, enables the insurance company to reject the claim, and you can write reams and get nowhere, except an ulcer from frustration. It was ever thus, you don’t have to go so far back to remember the time when the printers in Fleet Street lost their pension fund through a bit of sleight of hand by a multimillionaire. The whole business reflects an attitude of ‘please sir it wasn’t me!’, but there is still that differential of what is deemed unreasonable for the man in the street, and acceptable for his masters

In these last weeks I have been stressing that I believe that only a few of our Masters have been responsible for these alleged oversights, and the press is having a field day. Reputations are at stake here, and everyone should be assumed innocent until proven guilty. The fact that there is probably some guilt does not substantiate this feeding frenzy, and this broad brush approach that seems to tie everybody into the same bundle is reprehensible. It is doing our reputation in the world no good whatsoever, but on the other hand if it is substantiated in certain cases, then the retribution should be quick and severe. These people are the custodians of our economy and our way of life, and should behave as such.

If I were an MP who had played by the rules, and I’m sure that would apply to those who had only recently joined the Parliamentary system, I would be a little bit peeved that the PM’s broad brush had tarred me with the same epithets that applied to the wrongdoers. Just for amusement, let us assess the likelihood of an MP being bent, it requires one to take the whole population, deduct those under 25 years of age and those over 70. This would leave us with about 25 million, of whom only those with sufficient education, sufficient ambition, who are articulate, moderately extrovert, and have an interest in politics generally were chosen, I would suggest that this would leave maybe 6 million who would qualify, but there are only 600 plus seats. So those whom we have selected have a one in 10,000 chance of being an MP. It therefore seems highly improbable that one of the criteria which has not been mentioned, dishonesty, is so prevalent in this class of people, as to apply, as the Prime Minister suggests, to everybody in that 6m. We knew we had open government because they told us we had, but we never imagined it as open as it would appear, with daily exposes, some inaccurate. It makes one wonder just how really open, ‘open’ is, and should we worry?

FOOD. Sophie and I have never really joined the 21st-century, especially where it comes to food. We are still firmly fixed in the aspic of Edwardian culture that requires food to be ample, tasty and made of fresh ingredients. It is interesting to consider the effect that the electric refrigerator has, decade by decade, changed the eating habits of modern day Britain. I have said before that in that period up to the 50s, people shopped almost on a daily basis, in consequence and by necessity, ate the food when it was fresh. We are now in an era where it is necessary to put a ‘use by’ date on practically everything in the food line, because it could lie in the fridge, for long enough.

Because we are now very old and to some extent infirm, we are constantly being persuaded by our family to use pre-cooked meals, with carry-outs in preference to cooking our meals, which entails additional washing-up. Unfortunately the majority of these meals that are on offer, in boxes that imply that there is twice as much food in the box as there is in fact, are not to our taste. Our problem is that our food has always been wholesome, and flavoursome, and above all simple. So when I buy something as simple as an Irish stew in a box, I am more than a little surprised to discover that one of the ingredients is chilli. In actual fact I find that that is an ingredient that seems to be de rigueur in an awful lot of the boxed food. I believe that TV chefs, with their competitive environment, are responsible for this and the introduction of so much overseas cuisine as part of the British diet, because they are forever seeking to be original.

There is no shadow of doubt that the young people today who actually cook, are more adventurous in their cooking than our generation ever was. With us it was a case that what was good enough for Grandpa is good enough for me, and I am afraid no one will beat this doctrine out of Sophie and me.

I don’t know if I have become more critical, or the whole world is changing so rapidly. I can remember when I didn’t have anything to moan about for days on end, and yet these days it’s a daily occurrence. I always thought that conduct in such august institutions as the White House, Parliament, and 10 Downing St, demanded an adult approach which was dignified, respectful, rather than like a three ring circus, or a brawl in a downtown pub.

With respect to politicians, it would seem that more and more are being steered to make exhibitions of themselves for the sake of sound bites, to gain popularity, and most of all at the behest of spin-doctors, making instant decisions. The most glaring example was when Obama, the supposed leader of the world, theoretically, if not practically, suddenly took a decision to have a hamburger, in a hamburger joint, for lunch. Can you imagine what the surging of all the hoard into one restaurant, must have done to the quick snack of the regulars, with the security that is required, the advisers, the hanger-ons and the Press, all jostling. The fact that it was a publicity stunt dreamed up by some spin doctor, only adds to the indignity.

I wonder what genius decided that our Prime Minister should go on to You Tube. Anyone conversant with his withdrawn character would have known that it was a disaster. He hasn’t had, nor never could have the devil-may-care outlook of Tony Blair, who might have got away with it because he could speak off-the-cuff. Once again, spin doctors, with a totally different perspective, were shooting from the hip. I always thought Prime Minister’s Question Time was a publicity jaunt, rather than a political tool. I consider that it is designed to please the electorate that our representatives are attending the debates, when we all know that usually only a few are, because the rest are either in committee, in their own offices, or in their constituencies, if not in the restaurant. That particular showpiece is nothing more than pure theatre, and the PM got it right when he said that the leader of the opposition was screaming personalities, and therefore fighting the next election, not important matters that should have been dealt with in all our current crises.

This business of being able to record TV programs, and then play them later is a great advantage when you have the most disorientated programme ever, The Apprentice. I have mentioned this before because I find it so undignified, so disrespectful, and so totally divorced from common business practice, that it must be engineered, even scripted, for sensationalism, offered as entertainment. We have experienced time and again the way the programmers of TV fool the viewer, by using outtakes, and other ruses to enhance what is basically a dull subject. What I object to most is that this is presented as the efforts of people who were chosen because of their high ability as contestants for a senior post in a viable organisation, and in consequence pretending that the backbiting, the ill manners and the undermining behaviour are acceptable in the UK business world. We are supposed, I assume, to think of it as a lark, because in the following part of the programme, these people are held up to ridicule, with flashbacks of their off-camera behaviour. I just wonder if they knew what they were getting into when it all started, and, if they are not actors, how it will affect their future. On the second thoughts, the whole set-up, the projects and the behaviour are so farcical, theatrical and absurd, that I have decided it is scripted and the contestants are actors. No one, seriously hoping to become a senior member of staff could possibly behave in the way they do.