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With people losing their jobs, and in another six months, hundreds of youngsters coming on to the labour market, it made me think back over the years of careers that I have had, and how most of them were derived through circumstance rather than any careful choice. In all, I have had seven careers, and three part-time jobs. We, adults and children, were totally disrupted as a result of Hitler’s rapacious appetite. When I had completed my education while evacuated to the country, I had to think about finding work. My aunt wanted me to go to Lever Brothers, then a very big soap manufacturer, to join, and learn from, their advertising team, but I had been a guinea pig used to test out a psychological means of job selection, and the result came out that I should be an architect. I had an aunt who was a renowned hairdresser and she tried to train me in her footsteps. I learned Marcel waving, the rudiments of wig making, and did all the rubbish jobs that those at the bottom of the ladder have to do, and as I hated it, I did not become a ladies hairdresser. The heat, the fact that the hairdresser has also to be an entertainer, and the long hours and poor pay made the decision simple. One member of the family had influence with a surveying firm in London, and I became articled as a valuation surveyor – circumstance, not choice. I enjoyed the work and proposed to make it my career after my war service. I then became a sailor, again chance, and while doing so became a teacher. Being a sailor in wartime is totally different from being one in peacetime, but strangely many years later, working under heavy stress, I would have given anything to do six months as a deckhand on a tanker, where I would do as I was told, and didn’t have to think. As to teaching, again teaching in the Navy was not comparable to teaching in school, and tended to be more repetitive because the courses were shorter, but I did decide that if I had to I could be a reasonable teacher, but the work didn’t attract me, any more than remaining in the Navy. When I came out of the Navy and discovered that there was no vacancy for me in the surveying firm, I had to choose yet again. I had the possibility of a university place, and as they didn’t do surveying or architecture I blindly chose civil engineering. Between leaving the Navy and becoming a student I had a period where I had to study to pass the entrance exam, during which I was unemployed, so at the time I helped out behind the counter in a small newsagent’s and tobacconist’s shop, long enough to learn that it takes a very special type of personality to deal with the public, politely and with good humour at all times, irrespective of your inner thoughts. I was not suited! For a short time I worked as a clerk in the civil service. My problem is that I have a strong propensity for lateral thinking, with the result that if I consider something could be done in a better way, I have to try it, and this is totally disruptive in a clerical environment, which in general has arrived where it has through years of trial and error to the final resolution – again I was not suited.

Engineering, like many of the professions, whether you are at the top or the bottom, has constantly changing aspects often in location, often through development, and nearly always because of the demands of the client. Even at the bottom of the ladder, the level of the labourer, there is sufficient variety to retain one’s interest. Some are more fortunate than others, they can be in the right place at the right time, in which case the variety is almost endless. Another career I had was to do with inventions, where I tried to promote my own, and acted as a consultant to others in the same process. I discovered that national financial conditions are one of the factors which influence whether the product will succeed or not, irrespective of its quality. I also discovered that the inventor/designer should either take professional advice, or take his own true evaluation, but never that of friends and relatives, as a guide to the possibility of success. During the Blitz I was a part-time soldier with the Guards which was not totally rewarding, but in the short term interesting and an eye opener. Having also been a part-time constable during the Northern Ireland troubles, I am fully aware that while you may have spasms of interest if not excitement, the general run of the mill in the lower grades in the services can in peacetime be very tedious.

Finally, we in our day, had no Internet. My advice to the young people starting out, or someone unemployed thinking of changing his work ethic, is that they should read up and take careful note before making a decision. I was very lucky, but I could equally have been deeply disappointed if I’d gone in other directions suggested by friends and relatives.

It is not so long ago that Eire, for some reason, which I never clearly understood, and with a population of only 4.1 million, were contributing to the United Kingdom’s finances for some reason or other, by subsidising some project in the North. Yet here we are, a little more than a year further on, finding that they are reducing the subsidies on non-catholic, denominational students in segregated education, by 30%.

Recently I lost my hearing aid, with the result I tend to miss chunks of almost every conversation, and so, I doubted that I had heard correctly, that Gordon Brown was proposing legislating that the removal of any or all body parts of a cadaver for transplant, would be totally legal and an irrefutable right. It was only when my daughter came into the house complaining about this edict, that I was prepared to reassess it. My daughter was complaining that the government had no right on any grounds for making this removal of organs compulsory if required. Both she and I feel that it is a step too far, a rejection of the rights of the individual, and in my case, I find it totally inconsistent, because the individual is not allowed to do away with himself, even in the most dire circumstances, and if all necessary responsible conditions would be fulfilled.

There are a lot of us who in our wills have donated our bodies to universities, and or, filled in those forms for allowing removal of organs for transplant. It appears that the offers are too low so the uptake is also too low for the system to function for everybody who needs a spare part. What I really suspect is that laziness, forgetfulness, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, has caused a large proportion of the population not to fill in a form, which in most cases would neither matter to the individual once he is dead, nor to the average relatives. If I am right, a campaign to make the public more aware, would seem to be the logical way forward. I am friendly with a Jewish family, and I remember at one point there was considerable discussion, either about an operation, or a death, because at the time it appeared that in the Jewish religion a person must be buried whole. I found this interesting when you consider the Israelis, with their running battles, how impossible it would be to collect up all the bits if someone happened to be in the path of a cannonball. On the basis of the Jewish religion, they would have to be made exempt on religious grounds, and this could seriously open up another can of worms, which might be hard to stop.

I shall soon be approaching the point where, with help from my grandson, I shall be rehashing the blog and removing a lot of the articles. It will then be divided into two parts, the biographical information which I believe is what interests most people, together with essays on things that interest me, and less on political carping. This change has come about because I have repeated myself a number of times, and said the same thing in different contexts, to little effect. It seems to me that people, especially in responsible positions, don’t seem to learn from past experience. Obviously, if I see some outstandingly stupid or an unreasonable occurrence, I don’t think a ball and chain and iron mask would keep me silent.

This is the last time I shall write an essay on the subject of euthanasia. This 90th celebration of one of the greatest massacres of all time, together with the repeated interest in the second greatest massacre, World War II, together with the daily recording of killing going on round the world, represents annihilation so obscene, so unnecessary, so unproductive and so useless, yet is repeatedly perpetrated at the behest of some individual or individuals. While at the same time those in dire need of relief from indignity, incredible agony, and mental distress, even if some actually have some mentality left, are allowed to continue unabated, because governments will not grasp the nettle of euthanasia. Caring for the elderly is causing governments considerable concern with respect to cost, as articsles in the press point out. This I believe is one of the reasons that euthanasia is on the backburner because governments are afraid that if they introduce it, some will see it, as a money-saving exercise. This is not a valid reason.

At my age, whether we like it are not, we are forced to face our demise, because death has caught up with relatives and friends of a similar age. It is not so much the act of dying that perturbs me, it is the prior conditions that occur, as a result of illness, general deterioration, and above all the loss of a mental capacity, and the indignities one can be subjected to, and the problems this makes for others. There is an excellent American website, euthanasia.com, which includes British information, giving all the pros and cons, and the fact that the medical profession is split. It mentions a slippery slope, implying that deregulation can in time, cause the moral values to be watered down. We need regulation of a rigorous kind. The word kind is important not only for selection, but for the relatives, and for the individual who finds his condition, either physically, mentally, or both, to be unbearable, to a degree that all will agree to a cessation. The problem is that no one will give this agreement, and the end result, of not having done so, can be a disaster to the individual, if he doesn’t succeed, and the family in either case. After all, forewarned is forearmed. If you were to be interested enough to cherry pick from the information given on euthanasia.com, you would realise a lot of these problems should not be laid at the door of the doctors, who are currently understandably refusing to take them on. Governments should, universally, set up strongly structured advice centres, legally based assessment centres, and some type of form, which enables an individual to arrange for his own termination under circumstances that are acceptable to the authorities, the family and the individual, in every respect.

We, the very old, just by visiting friends and relatives incarcerated in so-called ‘homes’, which by no stretch of the imagination, and the efforts of those running them, could be called home, dread the possibility, that we too are destined for this sterile existence.

I am neither an economist, nor have I got a financial background, and perhaps that is the reason why I find our current financial situation to be surreal. I have now seen the future I referred to in ‘Crazy Mathematics’ and I still don’t understand it, but feel that, as I, and my family, will be helping to foot the bill in our taxes for the payment of interest and capital on these colossal loans, I’m entitled to some explanation that I can understand.

As I see it, millions borrowed money they couldn’t pay back, and thousands speculated rashly on the stock exchanges round the world. During that period money was flowing around the world and between banks, as tangible currency. Suddenly, virtually overnight, in a high proportion of the more wealthy countries, the money seemed to disappear down a black hole, irretrievably. There are two things about this that defeat me logically, the first is how it could go as it did, so suddenly, and apparently without trace, and without any prior indication that this was a possibility. The second imponderable is where the hell has it gone? I don’t know; you probably don’t know, even if you are the manager of a local bank, you don’t know, because if you did, you would have been bound to tell somebody, and then we all would ultimately know, because it would be on TV remorselessly. You would think at least at the Treasury, the Bank of England, and the chancellors in all these countries would know, and somebody would spill the beans. I cannot help but believe, because all these eminent financiers seem to be running around like chickens with their heads cut off, that they don’t know either, but how can that be?

Our taxes are maintaining the governments which allowed this debacle to take place, despite all the warnings that they must have been getting with reasons explained, but chose to ignore them, across the world. We trusted the banks with our savings as shares, some companies trusted financiers with their workforces’ pensions, and yet nobody has told us where all this money, that we personally have lost, has gone, and how come we lost it? This raises the burning question of what are the chances of these trillions going the same way? If the system in the past was wrong, why is what is now being perpetrated so okay? People are losing their jobs mainly because the banks are hanging on to the money that we allegedly have loaned them, instead of supporting the small and medium-sized commercial enterprises that have a legitimate case for borrowing, and a high potential for repayment and thus save jobs. It is our money over the years that is going to be required to pay back the interest and capital, not the banks, as they are totally dependent on us. One aspect of this that I also find impossible to understand, is why the leaders of the parties in Westminster are now talking about reducing the very taxes that I would have assumed were necessary to maintain the repayments that I have mentioned, and to prevent our standard of living being whittled away with time.

If you are in a hurry, and want to discover what prompted this post, then I suggest you cut to the final paragraph. I have always had a dislike of tipping. I first came across it in the 30s, when I discover that the father of a friend of mine was a floor manager in the Ritz hotel in London, and that the staff under him did not receive a wage, but indeed gave a percentage of their tips that they received to him. I also discovered around that time that the managers and owners of restaurants considered that the tips the waiters and waitresses received were part of their wages, and it was up to them to give the service to get the heavier tips. Recently I have seen relatively modern American films where anyone opening a door, closing it, or providing a simple service, stands about and waits to be tipped as a right. The logic of this is so amazingly stupid. If people are demanding the level of service that an upmarket hotel has to offer, and they wish to dress in their night attire and have a late supper in their suite or room, instead of having to dress up to go to the restaurant, the price for the meal and presumably the service, will be on their bill, so why should the waiter stand about for a tip for just bringing up a prepared meal in the lift? What is he paid for? Or like in the old days, has he to live on his tips?

When I worked as an engineer supervising the laying of miles of steel and concrete pipes, I often would be dressed in a highly expensive, beautifully cut sweater, which my then son-in-law, an extremely successful professional golfer, had kindly given me from his vast store of freebies. It used to give me cynical amusement to realise that at the end of a day, when we, the combined force, consisting of the workmen, the Foreman and me, had achieved a laudable increase in productivity, that none of us received any recognition in any form, let alone goodies; while my son-in-law was eligible for freebies in a number of categories, because he was both successful and permanently on show. Nobody ever asked me how the job was going, but they were quick to ask me how my son-in-law was doing in the current tournament. It is no wonder that politics has slid quietly into sport.

These thoughts all started because I was discovering that banks, of which some are partially now government-owned, in many cases are being bolstered by money from the Middle East. It seems only yesterday that there was the most frightful row because a plane manufacturer had, through traditional necessity, provided some of the Arab officials with what can only be termed baksheesh. As long ago as I remember, this was a recognized conduct in more than just the Middle East, but particularly there. I once had to turn away bottles of whisky and turkeys on Christmas Eve, delivered by a contractor, because we on the job were civil servants. I just wonder if these associations are going to create similar, national differences, in the approach to the conduct of business, and how the provision of oil will marry with these arrangements.

Advertising I have written about advertising on a number of occasions, especially last May when I berated the advertisers for insulting our intelligence, because so many were using puppets to mouth their messages, for the sake of economy. I now find it very interesting that large companies are advertising more, and I personally believe the quality of the advertising has improved enormously in presentation, if not in content. A friend who works in the industry has confirmed the fact that advertising has increased. Clearly, it must increase sales, and firms are doing their best to combat the credit crunch, making their must-have message more upmarket and slick. But what I strongly object to in the case of television advertising, is that each advertisement can occupy anything from 30 seconds to a minute of my time, and it is generally only in the last five seconds I can confirm the product, all the rest has been some vague window-dressing, often totally abstruse.

Advertising was very mild until about the 60s, which were times of change and the start of the boom and bust cycles. In those days people portrayed the value of their products in honest statements, but advertising is a notional industry, highly competitive, requiring a high degree of originality and inspirational thinking. The problem is that practically everything normal and reasonable has been done before, so breaking new ground in order to draw attention to a product or theory, is requiring more and more abstruse approaches, hence the puppets. The client really has very little say with respect to the advertisement and how his product is portrayed. He is totally in the hands of alleged specialists in the field, who would have you believe they understand the psychology of the buyer, so, having decided on the general approach, and the price, the advertising agency has a free hand to do its best, and the efficiency of the result is basically suck it and see.

For years I have been watching advertisers trying to frighten us, with fears for our health in a number of scenarios, fears of losing our security through not having insurance, and worst of all, being chatted up by highly lauded celebrities, mainly from the television world, on products that they only have our experience of, and are not in themselves experts. I personally find this degrading the respect in which we used to hold them. I wonder if we’re sufficiently critical of advertising. For years I have been annoyed, by watching the quantity of disinfectant that actors pour down the pan of a WC to attack imaginary, and crudely, horrifically portrayed, germs. If the householder used all their detergents at that rate, they would be destitute in no time. Yesterday I accidentally watched an advertisement for a disinfectant. The cameo showed a number of children playing on an upright piano. The allegedly worried mother rushed in with a spray-can of disinfectant, made the children remove their hands, and sprayed half a can of disinfectant over the keys. Why she should have considered that the children were in such danger in this instance, while not considering that the constant use of this quantity of disinfectant would grunge the piano for all time, was beyond my reasoning, and especially how the manufacturer could have been inveigled into approving this travesty.

I can remember when we all believed what we read in the newspapers, what we were told on the radio, and what it was alleged the government was saying. The older I get the less I believe, and now I am in a state of total bemusement, because what I’m told, what I read, what the parliamentarians tell me on television, and the television presenter’s hammer at me at every news broadcast, seems to make no sense to me, or even to some of my brighter friends, from the evidence of our own eyes and experience.

On Friday morning at ten o’clock I couldn’t find a parking space almost anywhere, and certainly not near the entrance to Tesco’s, and when I had selected my few paltry items, I had to queue to pay for them. I have some young friends and relatives who are self-employed, and telling me that they’re so busy, they’re looking forward to the Christmas break, and this is only November. Try and book a plumber, I understand that they are still finishing off building contracts. Those who frequent them tell me restaurants, the pubs, and even the banks seem to be functioning as they ever did. One of the things that we are being told, and seems to be borne out by the slackness in house turnovers, reduction in house prices, losses of jobs in estate agents, that I can prove, is all blamed on the fact that the banks are not lending money to one another and mortgages are like hens teeth. This fact is creating unnecessary hardship to small, apparently successful businesses, to allow them to expand, and we all know, in this new day and age, business either grows or goes under. Previously it was our house shortage that put up the prices to an unrealistic level. Now the prices are coming down, but people can’t get mortgages for the lower prices.

So, if all these people seem to us to be spending all this money, and only the banks withdrawing lending facilities, except in exceptional cases, seem to affect, say 10%, where in hell is all the money going? I know from my point of view I have lost money because my shares have dropped and the dividends are small; why I’m not sure. But apart from that, I still run my car, eat well and even treat myself to a Scotch. Is it really true? Or is it just all talk? Are people being sacked unnecessarily? Are we to believe all that we are told on TV? At grass roots level it seems to be the reverse, there doesn’t seem to be a credit crunch, but the doom and gloom that people like the PM and Osborne are spreading is certainly having its effect. Is it any wonder I’m bemused?

The other day I castigated Osborne for making frightening statements without giving the reasons of how he had arrived at them. So I think it would be very foolish of me to wander into the realms of supposition as to how we have arrived where we are, but merely to say someone somewhere knows it all in detail.

Are you as disgusted with the theatre of Prime Minister’s Question Time, as I am? The body language, especially of David Cameron, when he leans on one elbow, almost as far as the dispatch box, screaming at Brown, makes me think of Playtime in an elementary school playground. All, or almost all of the children are trying to justify their existence, to the TV audience. So much of what the screaming is about is relatively unimportant, except to them, such as the contributions to, and behaviour of other members of the house.’ In this current period of severe distraction from our domestic problems to that of world finance, some of these exchangers we could well do without as they take us no further, just waste parliamentary time.

This business of Obama spending upwards of 150 million to get into office raises that old hackneyed phrase, ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch’. Few if any of those contributions are given without underlying strings, and it clearly applies in all circumstances of today’s life. In this particular case the number of people involved must be huge, and where their influences and demands will take American politics, and consequently that of the world, is a $64 question. It is my firm belief, as we demand unbiased politics, we should be prepared to pay the costs of reasonable electioneering expenses, graded to be commensurate with the neutrally adjudged chances of outcome. I would suggest that a large proportion of the money donated, has actually been provided by the electorate, in its purchases and financial dealings, it had to come from somewhere. From the start, this proposal would stop so much bickering across the Chamber, and the subsequent feeding frenzy in the press. It would also, I would hope, provide a level playing field for the contestants at election time, and concentrate their minds on how best to use the relatively small amount of funds they would now have available. Those, assumed generous benefactors will be keeping their millions, and those parties who are not the flavour of the month might just have a better chance of being seen and heard.

It was thinking about the new hospitals that prompted me to write this. Design is an art and comes in several forms, the architects, product designers, the visual arts and even music. It can be influenced as much by fashion as by aesthetic. Fashion being a product of advertising, of celebrity influence, and often a demonstration of status, has no true validity in determining the quality of design, but its influence is of great proportions in the design of the products that we buy. Civil Engineers and Structural Engineers are obviously designers also, but their work tends to be more prosaic. They design things like bridges, railway stations, sewage works; structures that are designed to perform a function rather than be decorative. For the sake of the world at large, we try to make the designs pleasing to the eye, and in some cases such as sewage works we actually hide them with specially selected trees. Occasionally the work is done in conjunction with an architect, such as a row of flats and shops, then we also have to accommodate the design flourishes of the architect.

If you think about the design of everyday products, buildings of all types, the visual arts and even music, there have been unbelievable changers in taste and presentation over the last 70 years. The problem in all these cases is down to the desire for recognition, the ego and the aspirations of those performing the designs. Up until the end of the Victorian era design was very much a prerogative of the well heeled, and it was their pleasure to search the world and collect artefacts from the past, or instigate elaborate designs for their houses and their objects. Even then there was an element of competition. Once the middle and working classes had more spare cash, manufacturers realised they had a growth industry, and with that growth came competition and the building of reputations. It was at this point that the designers were beginning to get a name for themselves and in consequence were in competition. Artists themselves have been in competition since the dawn of time, and one thing about competition is nobody wants a copy, so you have to be innovative to build a reputation. This philosophy has rubbed off into industrial design and architecture. Any work of reference will show you how designs of household products, houses, buildings, vehicles and even factories have changed as taste, and the desire of the designers to be different has also changed to keep up. Taste is transitory, dependent upon experience, as well as personal preference. This has been underlined over the years, in particular by the changes in taste in the pictorial arts, some of which are examples of promotional tactics rather than true artistry.

Innovation demands experiment, new methods and in some cases loss. If designers are given their head, rather than required to provide a simple traditional design, the client will inevitably be footing the larger expense, part of which is to bolster the reputation of the designer. Civil servants, handling our money, should think very carefully about whether particular features in a design submitted are actually necessary, or just an expensive ornamentation, or unnecessary innovation.

I write the following as a result of the boy being stabbed outside a youth club. At about ten, I visited a youth club, not of the quality of the one referred to in the press, but a miserable little room, in the loft of an old stables, dark and poorly equipped. I never went back

I have not written this before, because for the last 76 years, I have never thought of that night without shame. It happened during a very unhappy few years in my life, when my mother and I had been separated due to our financial situation, and now we were together. She had higher moral values, was highly intelligent, and was a fighter. Prior to that she had worked through the day, and at night attended an evening class to obtain a City and Guilds qualification as a pastry cook. She was now able to support us both, but this involved leaving the house early to walk, and travel by tube to Mayfair, where she demonstrated cooking for the Women’s Electrical Association. She returned any time after six o’clock. We lived in a two room flat, consisting of a joint bedroom and a kitchen. I had to prepare myself for school, was probably provided with lunch by my grandmother who lived more than a mile from the school, and from the time the school broke up in the afternoon, I was expected to go to the flat and do my homework, until my mother returned. Needless to say this was not always the case, in the summer months a group of us would play cricket on Clapham Common, but in the winter we tended to roam the streets.

I drifted into a gang, not entirely welcomed, because I had not grown up in the district, I believe I was merely tolerated, and I don’t think I had any real friends among the people I knocked about with. It was pitch dark, probably about five o’clock in the evening, when the caper started. I personally was not privy to all the facts, until the activity was well underway. The father of one of the boys had been sacked by a local entrepreneur and our gang was apparently going to extract retribution. A game was organised on the forecourt of a grocer’s shop which had a large number of boxes set out in the street, among them was a box of eggs. It turned out the game was to have two teams playing a game of catch using a large leather glove in lieu of a ball. The game went on until the glove landed, ‘accidentally’, on the egg-box and when it was retrieved eggs were stolen at the same time. The leaders then proceeded in a state of glee to the house of the entrepreneur, and his Rolls-Royce sitting in the street. They then ceremoniously broke the eggs over the radiator and smeared them as far as possible.

The point I’m making is that I, would not have joined in had I been in possession of the full facts, but I was an outsider tagging on for company. The scale of vandalism was relatively harmless, the eggs would have washed off, and a couple of eggs stolen was not in the upper ranks of criminality. What it does demonstrate is how easily an innocent member of the gang, permanently on the periphery, can be inveigled, unwittingly, to be party to a serious act of vandalism, or worse, that they would have had nothing to do with, or contemplated, if they had been in possession of all the facts. Gangs I believe generate their own momentum through the psychopathic tendencies of one or two strong-minded leaders within the group. It is loneliness that draws the remainder to the group. They have three choices, to join that group, or another, or spend their free time in miserable loneliness. Gangs once formed, if they have some form of glamour, will not only grow but they will persist through time. The interests of a computer will inevitably be short lived.

I’m not writing anything that the authorities don’t know, it is the way our society operates now, where we are more insular, the extended family is almost a thing of the past, we have less time for the social graces, and less facilities like parks, Commons, and well-run youth clubs, where the innocents can enjoy and pass their time.