Category: Uncategorized

To day for the second time since the scheme opened, my plastic and paper waste-bin has received a note of complaint due to ‘contamination’, this time by a tub. I am not an inveterate complainer, but I do expect logical, reasonable and courteous service, as I believe the residents to be the council’s employers.

The burning question in this case is when does a box become a tub, and what in fact constitutes a tub. Ice cream, and similar products come in tubs. I’m not entirely sure whether it was an empty egg box made of compressed paper, or the washed, bottom section of a plastic box that food is sent by carry-out establishments. Neither of these items would I have termed a tub. I found it interesting also that my neighbour had a tub that I couldn’t find when I looked in his bin.

The absurdity of this whole process is that the majority of us try to play by the rules, and if by some accident place on the very top of the bin, an article which is deemed to ‘contaminate’, itself an absurd phrase, when, if the offending article had been about four layers down in the bin it would never have been seen and had to be dealt with, and would have been dealt with at the receiving end. Nobody can convince me that the whole of a highly sophisticated recycling concept is going to come to a halt because somebody has placed, by accident, the bottom half of a plastic box. I can also understand that some people take advantage rather than play by the rules, and the council has to resist this, but I would not have thought it should be by a boorish note that does not make logical sense.

I believe the problem is to do more with the way that the men are paid, which I assume from everything I’ve seen of the way they work, is not by the hour but piecework. The only other time that the bin of mine was rejected was because lying on top was a piece of very light plastic film, half the size of a pocket-handkerchief, which presumably had blown in when the bin was open. To me this is a pettifogging rule, that a small piece of plastic, which could have been lifted out, and put in a container on the lorry specifically for that reason, causes rejection. I hardly think it would have represented a serious problem at the plant. . On one other occasion my green bin was rejected because, over the fortnight that it had been standing full, it had compacted to an extent that prevented it from being emptied in the conventional manner. As you know I’m in the late 80s, with serious spinal and hip problems, and having to empty that myself and refill it , after a fortnight of stagnation, was not only painful, it was unpleasant. The system takes no account of the householder’s condition or ability to empty and refill, when there is virtually no need

Instead of a blunt refusal, the piece of paper attached to a bin should say, even in their parlance, that the bin has been contaminated, with the reason given, but the bin had been emptied out of courtesy, but if this reoccurred the situation would have to be reviewed. I can’t see that it is all that difficult for the drivers to have a blacklist of repeated offenders, while at the same time aiding the householder who on an odd occasion has either misunderstood the terminology, or made a reasonable mistake. The fact that the operators do not hoke down through the bin looking for contamination, to me shows an element of unnecessary bureaucratic bias.

Several things have come to light in the last few days that I have found beat logic, that those involved seem to have got away with it. The biggest one of course is the question that we are all asking, where has the money gone that used to be swilling about in the financial world, and the banks lent to one another? My assumption is that places like Switzerland and the Seychelles are beginning to sink under the weight of it.

The big payout to the McCanns and their friends, by the press because they were libelled, seems to lend weight to an article in last Friday’s Daily Telegraph concerning statements made about the Blairs’ various meanderings away from the truth, and the legality concerning their financial dealings. I personally don’t care that they have been garnering a fortune with lecture tours in the US, because the audience could well afford to be duped. What I have found over the years to be so surprising is that when we have all been told repeatedly that Blair made decisions that have cost hundreds if not thousands of innocent lives in Iraq, while at the same time being responsible for the deaths of so many of our servicemen and women, I would have expected him to have been impeached, years ago.

On Saturday night there was a feature on British television concerning the early years of Queen Victoria, when she was virtually in solitary confinement, as a result of her mother’s personal ambitions. The fact that Victoria’s mother got away with it for 18 years says a lot about the Victorian public’s relationship with the monarchy. She would not have got away with it, with the sort of press that we have today. The article made me think about affection in all its forms, and affectation and its effect on affectation. I have found that affectation is corrosive when it comes to affection. Affection has to be nurtured because it comes in so many different ways, and in so many degrees. There is our love for a child, the affection and indeed love, we feel for close friends and relatives, and the affection that we receive. In the case of men, especially between men, any affection is rarely signalled overtly. We tend to take affection for granted, generally without question, and it is only when that affection is withdrawn, either in fact or we have inferred it, that we really notice it is missing. Affection or the lack of it, is what moulds our characters from our early days, and as the programme on Victoria underlined, if there is hostility, or even merely disregard, it can have a serious effect on the responses of the individual in later life. I believe the speed of living today, the necessity in a lot of cases for two incomes, is the root cause of a of lot the problems that we have with our youth today. I believe that many want and really need the affection in their early years, this often demands time that is not available

Do I believe any more, the things that our politicians are telling us? Either yes or no! For starters, while they were assuring us of how well they were managing the economy, they, nor their highly paid advisers, saw what was happening in the world stock exchanges. Surely it is unfair for David Cameron to be criticising, when the whole purpose of the Opposition is to check the weaknesses in government, and the Tories missed the big one. The USA is allegedly the world leader, do I trust its leader or his inexperienced successor? The answer in my case is no to all, so I question the statement made by a Cabinet member on television, that, in spite of the credit crunch, we are going to increase our spending to save the world. I thought about it. We have been wrecking the world since the dawn of time. Just take the number of trees the Spaniards felled to build the Armada, the trees we felled for duckboards in World War I, and the incredible clouds of exhaust by the Industrial Revolution. The Yanks never do anything by halves, they got rid of the indigenous population, then got rid of the bison, and subsequently built dustbowls and wide plains which must have had some effect on the weather also.

I am unconvinced of what the scientists tell me about global warming. As they do the testing over the poles, and cold air falls and is replaced by warm air, carrying any other gases with it, I suggest the testing over the poles could give a higher concentration of carbon etc., not the mean. I am unconvinced that these recent Globwarm changes are solely due to carbon emission etc. I believe there is a wider explanation related to the world as a whole. We have been emitting carbon as long as I remember, with the fogs in London every November, and Manchester was famed for them. The changes have been too quick and too extensive, to be placed at the door of global warming, which by its very nature is a slow process

Let it be clear, I am not a scientist, nor a mathematician, just a bloke seeing if the politicians are getting it wrong yet again. I made a table setting out 20 countries who allegedly have a carbon emission greater than 1,000,000 tonnes. I took their emission as a percentage of the whole, and divided it by the country’s population as a percentage of the world population. This gave me a series of figures for the CO2 percentage per head of population, varying from about 5% in the USA to 0.3% for India. Unsurprisingly China was about 1%, but surprisingly Canada and Australia were in the 4% range. We supply 2.4%, or a 40th, per head of population.

The question that I’m asking myself is, if we are giving off 2.4% currently, and are ordered to halve this by some date in the future, I just have no idea of what this will cost in the course of a generation, but believe that our gang want to lead the world yet again at our expense, when they personally haven’t a clue of what they’re really talking about. I believe it is just political claptrap, a sop to the green lobby. I would want a lot more hard proof of exactly what is causing climate change, of how much other countries were going to subscribe, as a common problem, which should be tackled universally. The range in the figures is a clear indication that some countries are bound to increase their percentages as their innovation and wealth increases, others may not change but will not bother reducing them, and there will be few if any that do reduce them to the extent our government is proposing.

All those who think I’m wrong, raise their hands!

I read a piece in the UK News section of Google, which gave the league tables of the first hundred universities of the world, starting at the top with America. It was noticeable how few British universities appeared on the list. The comment accompanying this list was a verbal wringing of hands. To me, who has been wittering on for a long time about the poor standards required for entry to, and the quality of the degrees at the end of the day, it came as no surprise. You probably get sick of me harping back, but when I see the level of dropout that we are paying for with our taxes, and think back to what university life was like in the late 40s, some obvious lessons just jump at you. There was a fair cross-section of educated humanity which made up the average Year in any faculty, but in those days it was rare to find someone who didn’t appreciate that he or she had been selected for an experience that few enjoyed, with the result that the majority of us worked consistently and even in the Vacs, to make sure that we passed our exams at the end of each year. A university education is as much to do with the social and sports side of the year, with societies, educational trips, and above all the interchange of ideas in the union over a coffee. There were some who wasted the opportunity and had to resit, but most of us, especially the older ones like myself on an ex-service grant, worked hard, and if we had time played hard. Those like me with a young family were at a disadvantage where it came to the out of hours activities, which was something that I regretted losing, but I had my responsibilities.

The quality of the teaching in any university reflects the quality of the teachers. A man who has spent years arriving to a point where he has a PhD, is not going to be satisfied with just being a schoolmarm, his main drive is to do the sort of research that has been his main objective all along, to catch the eye of industry who will subsidise this research, and in the end to produce papers in technical journals that will enhance his reputation, and inevitably that of the University. The life of a university lecturer is what he cares to make it. There are those who are glorified teachers, but there are those who are specialists of a very high quality, and it is these that we need in our universities to raise the standards to those we had years ago. If you have that level of expertise and innovation on the teaching staff, you will inevitably improve the quality of the degrees, but this also can only be effected if the intellectual quality and enthusiasm of the students is commensurate. It is clear from what I have written that you either have an upward or downward spiral, nothing in this life stays still and remains the same. Even years ago when I was working, and I had graduates joining my staff straight from university, while there were some who were extremely bright, I felt in many cases that the standard had dropped since my day, and that was years ago. I believe the spiral has been winding down ever since.

The answer is to pump more money into the salaries of the teaching staff, in order to raise the standards of teaching, and research, so that industry subsidises the research in the universities, and consequently increases the income to the University, instead of dropping the standards in order to increase the income by increasing the student population. I am told that overseas students pay a lot more for their education here in university than ours. The only way you’re going to attract overseas income is to raise the standards across the board

Forgive me for plagiarism but I believe the phrase fits the bill. I’m referring to Peter Mandelson’s return to British politics from his role as Trade Commissioner to the EU. I find it surprising in view of the fact that he resigned twice from the Cabinet in his days with Tony Blair. What astonishes me is his right to receive roughly half a million pounds per year, for two years, while at the same time receiving approximately £180,000 for his services to our government. I assume he will also qualify for expenses during his service. In addition he will qualify for a 30,000 a year pension for services as a commissioner. My astonishment is on a number of levels, firstly he only worked there for four years, which shows you the incredible cost Brussels entails, when you consider the number of people there and the grades at which they work, not to mention their expenses for travel, accommodation, entertaining, lunches and pensions’. Another level of astonishment is that our government, in spite of his history, is having to bring him back. This would seem to indicate a paucity of people who would agree to, and are able enough, to fulfil the post that Mandelson is taking up, which itself I find extraordinary, because I believe that apart from someone like Einstein, there are few of us who are unique. I wonder what the public as a whole thinks of this in the light of the credit crunch, in the light of the Blair aftermath, and the possibility of Peter copying the Blairs’ incredibley lucrative lecture tours.

Another surprise this week was the theft of David Beckham’s memorabilia. I have considerable sympathy for him and his wife, and this is yet another twist in the change in morality that we think we can rely upon. I inevitably wonder if eBay, as an intermediary, should not ensure that the products they are advertising have not been stolen. The purchasers have no way of vetting the source of the products yet they are receiving stolen goods, which is against the law. Surely, if a series of articles whose value was increased by being once the property of the Beckham’s, suddenly appears on the market, it must raise questions?

Some councils are proposing to turn off the street lights at some time in the night to save costs and save the world. The criminal fraternity must be rubbing their hands, and the elderly will be vulnerable. Joy-riders will be harder to catch and girls will be afraid to stay out late. The irony is that everybody will be buying their own street lights in the form of spotlights, so once again the ratepayers will be paying twice, and the world won’t be saved at all. They do of course mean well – these councillors.

In one part of the United Kingdom there is a senior official who is being taken to task by some of the public and the media, for not having sufficient isolation wards attached to a hospital with a sudden and recent large outbreak of one of these killing viruses. I personally don’t blame him, it would be far too expensive to have vacant wards in every hospital just in case there is an outbreak. I would have thought that it would not be difficult to modify mobile homes, by using additional strutting in lieu of the internal walls, to provide torsional strength, and design in such a way that four of them could be bolted together, with additions, in short order, to supply an isolation ward, suitable for the 20 beds, plus a sluice plus also an area for serving meals. These could be set in place very quickly and moved from hospital to hospital as required. These days with all the advances that have been made in the mobile holiday home industry, toilets, washing facilities and all else, could be accommodated, with just a little thought and co-operation from the mobile home industry. If the police can set up incident rooms on a similar basis, why not wards within the DHSS

Art today is driven more by money and exposure, than by genius and the quality of the work. So many of the artists, whose paintings are now so in demand as investments, were quite often very poor. In the earlier centuries they had to depend upon patronage or commission. At the time of the Impressionists they were mainly dependent, as it is today day, on agents. Agents tend to set trends which suits their clientele rather than the artist. If there is collusion between the agents and the critics, especially in this age of sound bites, then the artist will suffer. Success in submitting material for exhibition, in any of the fields of art, will be dependent upon the taste of the judges. You can offer, say two paintings, for submission, one because you have great faith in it, and it has attracted respect and praise. However, judges could easily prefer another painting, submitted by the same artist, who feels that it contains errors and in consequence is nowhere near the quality of the other, yet is hung. This experience says something about selection, which is a form of criticism and possibly fashion. Criticism applies to a great extent in amateur circles, where people’s sensitivities are more vulnerable, and hurt is not uncommon. Teaching, explanation, example should be the tools of instruction by experts, not random criticism. Criticism is a blunt tool easily misunderstood.

The appreciation of art: might be learned from explanation and presentation, but it will also always be subjective, that is obvious, but what is not obvious to me at least, is the spate of presentations in national and private galleries of what amounts to little more than everyday experience. This is then further stretched to represent conditions that may occur, as demonstrated in a website entitled, Channel 4, Anatomy Of Disgust, which demonstrates art that wishes to portray openly to the viewer, domestic conditions they consider hold a special message. The purpose of art is to provide not so much a palliative, but stimulation of a positive kind to the mind, through vision, and I fail to see how various versions of an unkempt bedroom of the worst kind could be a positive stimulation.

I accept that once students have seen illustrations of, or visited the sites of the incredible work, as paintings and sculptures, that have been executed over hundreds of years, it is hard to believe that there is room to better them. It would seem, therefore, that they must find another way of self-expression. In many fields today advancers have almost reached saturation point and innovation has become considerably more difficult. What the new breed of artists do, and how they do it, is their business. The responsibility for maintaining the standards rests solely with the exhibitors, some private, some nationally funded. It is they and the media who hold sway, broadcast their opinions, while the man in the street is sceptical, unable to understand how a set of bricks that he sees daily as he drives past a builder’s yard, can ever be, art when set out in a rectangle. When you see the better work of regional artists in all the different media, they raise the spirits in many cases, because they see a landscape, a situation or a portrait, with different eyes, and the next time you see anything similar, perhaps your own appreciation will be modified. Looking at my own bedroom when I get up in the morning is depressing enough, God knows, I have no wish to look at someone else’s clutter.

What I write here is really only relevant to people who are interested in the law, or over 50 years of age. The fact that a woman had to go to the High Court to discover whether her husband would be charged with the criminal offence or not, of aiding and abetting suicide, if he went with her to Switzerland to help her and be with her, in her last hours, for a clinical suicide, to me is totally illogical. First of all, on his wedding day, he took an oath to keep her and look after her in sickness and in health. That was a religious undertaking, as well as a legal one as it is used in the oath in registry offices. The fact that suicide is a criminal act, even if it is justified, because the condition is unendurable, is surely based on religious doctrines that have come down through the ages. So here we have a dichotomy, do we obey the law, or standby our oath? The history of religious intolerance, with heinous acts, and unspeakable punishment for merely having adherence to a different version of the same religion, should itself make any law based on religious doctrine, suspect.

I wish to tell you about a painting my mother made just before she died. She had contracted cancer in the neck and shoulder and come to us in Ireland for company and to be cared for. Religious all her life, she became a Christian Scientist in latter years, so when she became seriously ill she took no medicine, nor the help of a doctor. Shortly before she died she painted a picture in water-colours. The picture was a series of concentric rough circles, in varying intensity of colours starting in brown going through deep red, red, a light red through orange and yellow until she came to a blistering white in the centre. The ragged edges where the colours intercepted, and indeed sometimes merged, were spattered with dark thorns at irregular intervals. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is what it feels like.’

I wrote on ‘The sterile landscape of the old, 25, 4, 07’, and ‘The responsibilities of old age, 28, 5, 08,’ which can be found currently on the blog, I also wrote a piece about euthanasia which has since been withdrawn. What is undeniably essential is that there is a legal framework to ensure that people do not take their own lives without careful thought and guidance if necessary, and that if they do so, they do it within a legal framework, approved by two professional opinions, either medical or legal, and conducted in an approved and regulated environment.

We will never stop people from committing suicide, but the cost to the individual concerned in the act, also to him or her if it’s a botched attempt, to relatives, and to the officials who have to clear up afterwards must surely demand a better system. This doesn’t take into account the cost to the ratepayer or the government in the subsequent investigation, which could include heavy plant and divers, to ascertain whether it was indeed suicide or murder.

It is time that those responsible for our lives and our welfare, appreciate the problems that the elderly face, and in many cases suffer, starting with their dignity, stretching to intolerable pain and psychological suffering, unnecessarily, even in some conditions not being aware of such. If a racehorse breaks its leg, in some cases it could be saved, but it is shot out of hand, mainly for economy’s sake. In the case of the humans it is not finance that is at stake, it is psychological and physical suffering from an outdated concept, in a country that does not hold anywhere near the religious belief that it once did.

Having listened to David Cameron stating that the Conservatives intend saving money by getting rid of consultants, I felt I had to write to you, as I believe this short-term approach would lead to total disaster. I believe him to be wrong both in principle and in practice, what is required is long-term change in policy. While I am speaking only as an engineer, I do believe that where possible, governments should not be handing out work to consultants but carrying out the work themselves, but to revert to this system will take time, This would also be particularly applicable to the use of computers in the civil service where currently I believe the interest of the supplier is put before the interest of the civil service.

I have worked as a consultant, a contractor, and in government service as a design engineer and a construction engineer, in the civil engineering field. I have designed and constructed marine works, sewage works, waterworks, runways, and tunnels, while working for Belfast Corporation and the civil service, and have been in charge of large workforces handling millions.

On retirement in 81, I left a team of experienced, well-trained engineers in both construction and design, It saddened me later to discover that the civil service, had decided to farm out all design work to contractors. In-house-trained people at any level or position, are a priceless asset. In engineering one starts at the bottom, progresses, gaining experience year-on-year, handling more and more money and controlling more and more people. This is essential, firstly for the engineer to know the quality of the work and the reasons for it, but more importantly he will retain the information, should it be required later if problems occur. His designs will be let to contract, and then the construction supervised, by him or a colleague, examining the quality, the competence of the work and agreeing the payments. The beauty of the in-house system is that accurate information is available in the face of unseen problems, and local knowledge is invaluable. It would seem that Mr Cameron proposes to delete all this. When Departments hand out work to consultant, they are detracting from the training of the very people who will be responsible for supervising and approving the work of the consultants, which includes the preliminary assessments, the designs, the implementation and verifying the payment.. If the in-house engineers have not had sufficient experience, then the government department has either totally to accept what the consultant is offering, or employ staff of the quality of standing and experience to be able to control the contract and oversee the consultants. Some contracts are for millions of pounds, some for a few hundred thousand, and as most contracts contain a contingency sum, placed in the contract precisely because in civil engineering the unexpected can be expected, the man responsible has got to be able to understand the problem and make the right decision, where a tyro would be totally lost.

You will see from what I’ve said above, either you have to lift experience off-the-shelf and this is not easy, is divisive, nor always successful, as the best are always in great demand, or it will take years to sow the seed and reap the harvest, in-house. Small organisations generally have small contracts and so the experience of the engineers is commensurate. Big organisations consequently require people versed in large works. I’m sure that these remarks apply not only to civil engineering, but in all the professions.

The word is being used to such a great extent these days that I started thinking about it in the round. It is misused at every turn. When they talk about the poor, it can mean anything, or indeed nothing, because the relationship has to be stated to have relevance, and this is often the stumbling block.

The current financial squeeze will not be over for quite a time, so inevitably peoples’ savings, possibly their jobs, and even their homes will be, if not sacrificed, diminished in some way, and while not poor in the true accepted sense, their lifestyle will unhappily revert to the one that, in the 30s we would have said, we enjoyed. Unfortunately, the downsizing will be grossly unwelcome, hard to accept, and will in some cases lead to psychological problems.

Poverty, sometimes, can be a state of mind, it is certainly relative.. Some people are really poor. Over several periods in my life I have dropped into that category, where others in our extended family, not the state, had to help support my mother and me, or me and mine. In the 30 it was more than once as a result of family break-up, and post war when I left the Navy and was unemployed, or at university living on a grant of £210 a year to support a wife and two children. In those conditions every penny spent detracts from the ability to buy something else, and to me, this is the true condition known as poor. A lot of the Poor suffer from pride, and especially the elderly, and will do everything they can to avoid being classed as such, almost certainly to their own disadvantage. From the time of the Industrial Revolution, until the late 30s the factory workers, farm labourers, the lower orders of the armed forces, and others, were often very poor, but would have resented being classed as such. The one thing they had was security of tenure, they had a job for life, and might live, from when they were born until they died, from hand to mouth, but they did not feel denied because their aspirations were so parochial. When we were poor, a lot of our friends had a better style of living, but I don’t remember that we envied them, or strove to emulate them, we were too busy with life itself and its problems, and we accepted that it was impossible in our condition. We budgeted both financially and mentally for the horizons that were possible.

The years of affluence that we have enjoyed have changed our outlook, with the throwaway society, the buy now and pay later philosophy, where some enjoyed, what my grandmother would have said was a condition above their station, and there were phrases from the politicians convincing us not only that we have never had it so good, but that It was here to stay. This sudden reversal of our fortunes, will have serious effects on many. One of the problems is that we have become used to a nanny state, where everything is done for us, and we have stopped looking over our shoulder. Unfortunately legislation has moved on, with the result, that unlike the labourers in the Victorian era, every year a large number of us are now legislated out of the security that our forebears enjoyed, and we have also lost that self-sufficiency in many cases, to think for ourselves. Otherwise the stripping of the world’s assets by a greedy few would have been assessed almost as soon as it happened

To my old eyes oddities were so prevalent in Belfast yesterday. I saw so many young men who clearly had a full head of hair, walking about in strong sunlight with their heads shaven. From a clinical point of view this was asking for skin cancer because it wouldn’t have dawned on them to replace nature’s sun-block, their hair, with a manufactured sun-block. There was one man who was obviously a bouncer, six foot four, built like an all in wrestler; his shaven head was a badge of office. I walked along comparing those still with their locks, and the skinheads, and from an aesthetic standpoint I was certain there was no justification for bald heads, unless it was that that all the barbers today are only capable of an all-off. I find it annoying to have to shave every day, the thought of having to muck about with mirrors to try and keep your head shaven back at front, is almost a music hall act.

I found it interesting when I took a train ride, an unusual event, and noticed that a high proportion of the people who got on the train, almost immediately took out a mobile phone, and either texted or talked to somebody or somebody talked to them. On the way home, while waiting for a bus, I saw school children wending their way home, and of these, about 30% of them were using their mobile phones for some reason or other. I just wonder what is so vital today it requires instant speech or a text message, when in the 20s I had no telephone even in the house, and in the 30s just one in the hall, and rarely if ever had any strong urge to seek out a call box. Finally there were four of us standing in a bus queue, one was texitng, one was playing a game or perhaps having difficulty texting because he was tapping the thing almost all the time, and the third was talking on the phone. I was standing admiring. What sadly crossed my mind was that these youngsters led such an insular life at home, that this was their method of socialising.