Old Gaffer

Blog

  • Africa 1928 – 30, Life as we lived it in Livingstone

    Indecent Exposure And The Rest I was in receipt of or witnessed discipline in the severest sense. The business of the witch doctor being arraigned for ritual killing could have been a case in point, but the first instance and the most frightful was to do with ‘indecent exposure’ and, if I had known of the trauma to follow, I would never have opened my mouth. It was mid afternoon and I was standing among the fruit trees on our patch, talking to one of the African servants, when suddenly he opened his trousers exposed himself for me to admire. Whether he had other proposals I don’t know, I was too taken aback to think and even if I had I was too inexperienced to know what they might have been. I had never seen anything quite like it before and its size and colour were a culture shock of the first order. I told my mother who told my father who was a strap man, that is, someone who takes off his belt to administer discipline. I remember hearing the young black man screaming and later crying, or more like howling, long into the night. I had not realised the enormity of what had happened and so the punishment seemed, to me unbelievably barbarous.
    Some time later, I was to receive the same treatment for what I would have considered a breach of etiquette – I had been rude as a seven year old will, from time to time, but little more. For this, with the help of the goading of Johnny Walker, I was stripped, held down on a bed with a hand across the back of my throat and whaled with the self-same belt. I’m sure I howled too. What harm did it do to me? Not much I think. I was never to receive worse, but I was destined to receive much more but rarely for even less.
    When children living in Livingstone reached a certain age they were generally sent to Bulawayo or Capetown to boarding school, and then later they were sent to the UK to finish their education, so most were in boarding school from an early age. We, who were too young, were left behind and only saw the older boys at irregular and long intervals so we were a prey rather than playmates, objects to be teased and worse, harried, and bullying was our permanent lot.
    The family-life which existed then, now seems pointless. At eight years or thereabouts, the children would be sent off and, to all intents and purposes, never be seen again except for very short periods. It reminds me of a tea-room in Newcastle, County Down, circa 1950+. Ted, my brother-in-law and I had been spending a few days walking in the Mourne Mountains and had descended into Newcastle, tired but happy. We found a tearoom to pass the time until we would board the train home. Seated opposite me was a familiar cameo in which the father, a stranger to the boy in the uniform of the local boarding school, was vainly trying to break the ice. Both would leave with a mixture of frustration, disappointment and the knowledge that they knew nothing of one another.

    SMOKING & WHISKEY I took up smoking on an experimental basis somewhere between the ages of six and seven. Smoking was the norm and the non-smoker was not so much a rarity as someone with a deficiency. My smoking started with reeds. All the Africans’ huts were roofed and often walled with bundles of reeds taken from the river. They stood about six or seven feet high, were about half an inch in diameter and were hollow. If, while hiding behind the huts in the kraal at the bottom of the garden, one lighted the end of a short length, the reed would glow and give off an acrid smoke which we would draw into our mouths if not our lungs,. It was only a small step then to steal the odd few cigarettes which were kept in silver boxes for visitors. There was not much check kept on them as they were very inexpensive, unlike the whiskey which had a habit of disappearing. We would take turns in supplying the cigarettes until the whole thing became a bore and then it was dropped. Tangerine scrumping was much more fun and mildly more dangerous, because the best tangerines were not ours, they were grown by an irascible old codger who liked tangerines a lot more than he liked little boys.
    I mentioned the whisky which disappeared from the locked Tantalus and bottles at an alarming rate. I found my mother holding a bottle of drink upside down and marking the label. It must have seemed odd to me because she explained that whiskey had been disappearing and she blamed our African servants. She added that if the bottle was marked upside down, the level of the liquid when the bottle was righted, would bear no relationship to the mark on the label – crafty! At the time I believed her, but with the experience of time I suspect the thief was a good deal closer to home.

  • The Tank

    The house we occupied was at the corner of a roadway leading North into the bush. Across the road on the opposite side was the residence of my inseparable friend, Mike. For the two of us, every activity took on the drama of an ‘adventure’. Who was the instigator didn’t matter, the ‘adventure’ was important; and this was the ‘Run of the tank’. The tank had come from my house. It was a galvanised iron water tank, serving a number of houses and had been replaced. It had lain at the edge of the garden for some time and had served us as a hideaway, as a fort and any number of other guises, but on this day it became a tank, not a water tank but an army vehicle of destruction.
    In the First World War my father had not been a conscientious objector exactly, because he had voluntarily joined the army with his friends from the Surrey Walking Club, rather he wished to be categorised as a non-combatant because he objected to killing; with the result he had been enrolled as a stretcher bearer. Ironically, if it was at all possible, it was an even more hazardous category than the infantry to which he was attached. He had been wounded at least twice and severely gassed and in consequence he abhorred war and never allowed me to play with soldiers nor as a soldier; indeed one Christmas my Grandmother sent me a box of soldiers and these were confiscated as soon as I opened them, and I never played with them at all until I returned to England.
    Because the bungalows were generally used only for relatively short tours of duty, when one moved in one might find a small accumulation of other peoples goods, things they had no room for when travelling or were just left. We found a trunk left by someone who had served from subaltern to major at least, in a number of regiments. There were buttons, shoulder badges, regimental names in brass, cap badges and other insignia in mint condition and by the handful. My mother and I never told my father, it was our secret and while I never played with them then, I fondled them and dreamed. When I returned to England I had enough to outfit several of my pals and made my own army, using drainpipes as howitzers and stones for ammunition. We, all officers, were dressed to kill, in every sense of the phrase.
    While I was in Africa there was no hint of rebellion in my readiness to play at soldiers, it would have taken a more mature mind to have done so. It was just that playing soldiers offered more excitement and breadth for imagination, hence the ‘tank’. The tank was circular and shallow, but with a fair diameter. The bottom was sealed, in the top was a manhole which had lost its lid; this had given ingress when it had served its many other functions. Firstly Mike and I raised the tank on edge, then, one at a time, we climbed through the hatch and were able to stand, side by side in the dim interior. The tank had been constructed of long sheets of corrugated steel so our feet were precariously supported along the corrugations. We started to walk up the inside of the tank, steadying ourselves against the sides and one another. The tank began to roll and with confidence it rolled ever faster. We were totally unaware of where we were going until a stone got in the way of one edge and the whole thing collapsed on its side. Unhurt we climbed out and started over again, the idea was marvellous – just a few snags to be ironed out.
    After several abortive attempts, it dawned on us to roll it to the road outside where the system took on an entirely new aspect and from then on it was a breeze. We could not steer and we could not see, but we were totally confident it would travel in a straight line, seeing no problems we concentrated on rolling as fast as our legs could climb the side like two blind gerbils in a rotating cage. At some point we must have been aware we had left the track and were ploughing through the tall grasses of the veldt, because I still vaguely remember the sense of elation when we felt the grasses being rolled flat like a real tank.. Finally it fell on its side, fortunately the right side up, but when we climbed out of the steel oven, heated by the afternoon sun, we found we were out of sight of civilisation, surrounded by the bush, apparently miles from anywhere. I was convinced we had travelled miles, but two small boys working in that heat could not have gone far. My mother was made aware of the escapade only years later.

  • Africa 1928 – 30, The car as a battering ram

    Our house was on a corner at the junction of two dirt roads and when we were going on trips my father would take the car and set it on the edge of the road, facing downhill, towards the River and the Falls. The servants would then load the car, my parents would get in, the servants would climb onto the mudguards and then we’d be off. When I actually joined in the proceedings is not clear except on THE Day. On that occasion, probably to get me from under their feet, I was sent to sit in the car, which I did, in the driving seat. Where else? I naturally pretended to drive, who wouldn’t, aged seven.
    To this day I maintain I did nothing, but then I would, wouldn’t I? It was hot. I know I was. I sat there for an age, and soon became bored with saying brmmm, brmmmmm, but what else was there to do? Start all over again? All I know is that the car suddenly started moving of its own volition and set off down the hill with an excited me on board. If my memory is correct it started to track from one side of the road to the other at a narrow angle, gathering speed until it reached the other verge, on a slight bend which it then mounted, knocking down some flimsy fencing, then a telegraph or electricity pole, which sheared at ground level, thanks to the attention of red ants, and which finally fell diametrically across the centre of a hut made of reeds and clay, used to house the servants working for another family. The pole demolished the hut. The car stopped short of the hut.
    For a short while nothing happened. Where the servants were who used the hut, I had no idea. There were no shouts or groans and death never occurred to me, I was too worried about the impending doom I could see gathering on the horizon, or more accurately at our garden gate.
    I was whacked. On principle, if in doubt, whack. I explained or rather pleaded that I had touched nothing, total amnesia though is never an excuse. I found that out years later in the Navy. In fairness, my mother had lifted me from the car amidst the disaster, but she spoiled the effect by scolding. I was never believed by anyone but myself, and that’s no consolation.
    A totally different and more interesting story was told that evening at Sundowners – alcohol has that effect. My absence in body, if not totally in fact, had been an edict, so I only heard what was said through a crack in a half-closed door, but the story had become a saga, the nub of which was not what had happened to the hut nor to the people who might have been in the hut, not even the traumatic effects on the psyche of a quivering child, (who had never quivered in his life), it was a long and tediously detailed explanation, with many repetitions, of how the car had been extracted from the hut and that it had not sustained so much as a scratch. Everyone has his order of priorities, mine were severely changed that night.

  • Africa 1928 – 30, The car as a Boy cartrier

    They tell me that once a racist, always a racist, and they may be right. Brought up in the British Raj it is hard to eschew old habits so when I say ‘boys’, I mean men, big black ones at that, in this context anyway – although I have since been taught the error of my ways – I think.
    In Africa we had a car, it was an American beast of great dimensions and incredible strength, called an Overlander. It had mica detachable side windows, which formed part of a soft, collapsible hood which rested behind the back seat. The wheels were huge, the mudguards were big and wide, and made an ideal seat for our African servants. Most weeks we went on picnics and this meant taking guards with us to guard the car and more importantly the food, not from marauding people, but baboons which gathered in enormous numbers around all the picnic sites. The servants also functioned in their named capacity and laid out the table cloth, on a low table or adjacent rock, brought chairs, and then set out the food. It is no wonder our neighbours who for all the years spent in Africa, had been dreaming of retiring to Eastbourne. When they achieved their wish after 1945, they only stuck it for two years and then returned to Africa. I suspect their muscles had forgotten what housework really meant
    Usually we would take two of the ‘House Boys’, one on each rear mudguard, hanging on to the canopy as we went over dry earth roads which could be rutted after the rains by the wheels of ox carts. In the wet season we might take two more, perched on the front mudguards in case we got bogged down. Our two main venues were the Zambezi and the Victoria Falls, two of the most incredibly breathtaking sights I have ever seen. The River for its sheer width and impressiveness and the Falls because it was so vast, so varied and above all, for its majesty. Seen on film it is certainly majestic, but to see the immensity, the rush of water, hear the noise and feel the constant rain of the spray is an unforgettable lifetime’s experience.
    Learning to Swim In The Zambezi The actual bathing was done in the Zambezi itself, an inlet in the bank reduced the velocity of the river to nearly nothing at that point. I have no recollection of currents being a problem. The main river was only about two miles from the Victoria Falls at that point so the velocity in the main stream must have been quite high. To protect the bathers from the ever present threat of crocodiles, wire netting on poles formed the perimeter of the pool, held to the bottom by stones, a crude system which later proved fatal for a friend of mine. There was a diving board of sorts and that was the total sum of the amenities available, but everyone was grateful for them, especially in the dry season.
    My father held a bronze medal for life saving which he had gained in the UK before leaving for Africa and he was keen that I should become a strong swimmer. Typically, he therefore initiated a novel regime of teaching. I was expected to jump in to the river off the diving board – a drop of at least six feet – and flounder until, at the last minute my father would rescue me and trail me to shallow water. At that time there was a coin, a silver three-penny piece, called a ticci. Each entry from the diving board was rewarded by a ticci at the end of the session. I, like any other boy of that age, with pocket money scarce and a voracious appetite for spending, thought money had little relevance other than gratification. I was therefore almost prepared to drown if need be to gain another ticci, and at times I thought I might as my father seemed so dilatory in saving me. I was terribly innocent of course, instead of appearing to be a slow learner and extending the life of his tips, sheer self-preservation made me learn the dog-paddle within days, by which time the bonanza was over, there was no more need for further bribery.

  • Africa 1928 – 30, Rugby and the sergical saw

    Rugby Was Certainly A Culture Shock Prior to leaving England for Africa, the only male member of our family whom I had any regular contact with was my grandfather and he was rarely in the house when I was awake. Hence I had never heard of Rugby, as in those days it was mostly a Public School activity. The horizon of women rarely rose above ladylike pursuits, add to this the fact that playing in the street was anathema to our family, for these reasons I was only vaguely aware of the games real people played. My first real run in with life in the raw came about almost as soon as we had arrived in Livingstone, it was a rugby match. Most of the civil servants were hand-picked which meant Oxbridge, if not that, then Public School, so the prevalent games were rugby, golf and tennis in that order. Hence, as a matter of course, we attended a rugby match at the first opportunity. I hadn’t a clue what was going on, I recognised the ground was hard because I was standing on it and if I had had any doubts to the fact, when two or three of the players, including the dentist, were carried off with broken bones or concussion, I had ample proof. It was an impressive introduction to Africa.

    The Case Of The Surgical Saw.
    I loved the sensation of the sand under my bare feet and when out of parental gaze I would kick off my shoes and run about barefoot. Totally daft behaviour, there were all sorts of grubs and creatures just waiting for lunch, and, of course, I paid the penalty, I contracted a sore on the instep of my left foot which would not heal. Years later Willie, my mother, told me it was Beri Beri, but I think she must have been mistaken. We had no private medicine, there were doctors provided by our avuncular Colonial Service and they operated from the hospital. If you were sick you went there unless you were too sick, and then they came to you. I had earlier contracted a severe and persistent case of malaria, so I was well versed in the habits of our local medical profession.
    The sore made itself a nuisance at about the time my brother was born, so Willie had her hands full and as I knew most of the medicals socially as well as professionally, she sent me up to the hospital on my own for treatment. As I remember it, there was little to choose between the architectural design of the hospital and our bungalow, just a few extra stabs with the bungalow rubber stamp and hey presto, a drawing for a hospital. Someone or other must have told me to wait because I was seated on the veranda at the back of the hospital kicking my heels and looking round me. People passed and spoke and so time moved on until a doctor stopped, looked at me and said something like ‘I won’t be long’, and disappeared, only to reappear with a bone-saw in his hand. It was similar to the things butchers use, a coarse version of a hacksaw. ‘Won’t be long, Jack,’ he said brandishing the saw and smiling from ear to ear like a pantomime demon, ”When I’ve finished with this chap you’re next,” and he gave another flourish with the saw and disappeared.
    Aged seven plus, I was no coward, but I let out a screech and my feet barely touched the ground as I ran crying all the way home. Some joke! The fact that I remember it is not surprising, it is still vivid. What I really wonder is whether it really had any long term affect on me. I probably had nightmares for a day or two, but at that age, I believe there was too much going on for it to be taken seriously and I’m sure my parents were not too bothered. Jung, Adler, Freud and litigation were not on everyone’s lips and in those days, it was probably all treated as a silly prank. Pity! Today I’m sure I’d have been scarred for life and only compensation in six figures could possibly assuage the hurt.

  • Africa 1928 – 30, Arrival

    Livingstone From the age of six until I was eight years old, I lived in Livingstone, Northern Rhodesia, as part of the British Raj, although then it was not thought of in that way, even if we behaved so. As a little boy, lifted out of a simple, stable environment, dumped into a totally rarefied existence, I was to find nearly everything alien and therefore a searing experience. For example, the ground was of loose, red sand, with sparse clumps of brown grass and insects and small creatures squirming away as I walked. To a child who went to the seaside only once or twice a year, the opportunity to run barefoot and enjoy the sensuous experience of loose, warm, or hot sand beneath my feet and between my toes, was a transition which was only renewed in my thirties and forties on the hotter beaches of southern Europe. Our house was on the edge of the Veldt, only a few hundred yards from land as it had been since the dawn of time. Certainly not like South London, you did not hear the roar of lions at night in Wandsworth. Cautionary warnings about the dangers of wandering outside the permanent encampment, our town of Livingstone, only fed my imagination and the sounds at night confirmed my wildest dreams, but then I was a dreamer who longed for impossible adventures. If I had any suspicions that the warnings might merely be some form of parental ruse to keep me within hailing distance, they were soon dispelled; at night I could hear the cries of animals in the distance.
    In the garden at the rear of the house were huts, made of reeds from the Zambesi river, plastered with mud, and in these huts were seemingly huge black men, some single, a few with families, who were required, by a tradition imposed from outside, to be subservient, even to a little alien boy. I found that these huts and the occupants had a particular smell, one I remembered long after I had left Africa, it was neither good nor offensive, just distinctive. Years later I was to recall this with some embarrassment when I heard an African remark that whites smelled horribly to Africans.
    My father was a civil servant in the Colonial Service provided with standard, rubber-stamp type furnished accommodation, filled out by personal possessions collected along the way. To a boy of that age, the traditional civil service delineation of rank by the size and quality of the dwelling and its furnishings would have meant nothing, but the hardness of the tiled floors, the zinc lined boxes and steel trunks against the ravages of the red ant, stayed with me. Livingstone at that time was the seat of Government for Northern Rhodesia, with the Residence of the Governor at ‘Government House’. It was there visiting notables, such as Jim Mollison, the flyer, were put up, where parties were held, even for the children, and where one had to be on one’s best behaviour – children and parents alike.
    I still believe I can see most of Livingstone as it was then, the houses in rows, occupying such large tracts they seemed scattered, each with its small kraal for the servants, its chickens, its fruit trees and a few vegetables. The fruit trees made a great impact on me, the lemons were like Jaffa oranges, with thick skins which were as tasty as the fruit they wrapped, which in turn was so sweet no sugar was needed. There were tangerines, oranges, plantains and groundnuts – pea nuts, – and what was more, for most of the year the sun shone and shone.
    Looking back, now experienced in the ways of the Services abroad, I realise that the hierarchical system, the division between families according to the relative ranks of the bread-winners, certainly pertained, because my first few months were not all sweetness and light, there was a pecking order among the children which I didn’t understand, – at six, how could I? I found myself subjected to bullying by older and bigger boys, from families senior to ours. Strangely the most recurrent image of those days is the ‘Sundowner’ The white population of Livingstone was very small. The whites, by definition, were the masters, in authority; while many of the more menial jobs were either carried out by Africans or Asians. In the evenings, there being no commercial forms of entertainment, the whites tended to meet regularly at one another’s houses for drinks prior to the evening meal – for sundowners. The tantalus was unlocked, the whiskey decanter produced and the same old chat got under way. I, on orange juice, made myself invisible and sipped slowly – when the glass was empty I was sent to bed, and I suspect the real scandal was then discussed.

  • The African expeiience part 1 1928

    My father, severely gassed in WW1, had to take up a post with the Colonial Service to be able live in a dry climate. He was sent to Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. My mother had returned in 1922 and I was born and lived for 6 years in South London. In 1928 my mother and I went out to Africa to join my father. It was an unforgettable and totally strange experience, what with the eccentric British Raj, meeting Africans in their own environment, and a foreign one to them, wild animals and scenery that is still marvelled at today.
    The Journey Out In ’28, we, my mother and I, joined the Balmoral Castle. On board were the cricketing greats of the day, the English Test Team. At six brought up by women, the occasion was totally lost on me, so when .Jardine actually gave me a ball, I didn’t even know enough to get it autographed. Every day nets were erected on one part of the deck for practice. As the only child in First and Second Class, I was taken under the wing of a kindly deck hand. I suspect he was sorry for my solitary existence. The journey of several weeks was like prison. Phrases starting with ‘Don’t..’ took the place of conversation; I fed alone in the Second Class Dining Salon with the same pomp adults had, which only stressed the isolation. Much of the food, unsurprisingly, was new to me. The three classes were not allowed to mix, nor stray out of their territory, but I went everywhere as assistant to the Deck Hand – thank heaven. I can still see the rounded timber rail with its highly polished brass fittings, which allowed access from mid-ships – Second Class – into the other two classes and how empty the First and Second Class decks were compared with crowded steerage. I rose early, found the Deck hand, and helped set up the games paraphernalia for the day. The quoits were made of thick rope, smelled of tar and were as hard as stone when they rattled the knuckles. Apart from setting out the steamer chairs and the shuffle boards, that was my work done till evening when we put it all away again. The smell those ships, the older cross channel ferries, and the old navy ships had, has all gone long ago – it imparted a memory of a different and pleasurable sort, a mixture of hot engine oil and tarred rope. At night there was some form of amusement but I would have been asleep by then.

    When we reached Madeira three things stood out for me. On each occasion, even before the ship had dropped anchor, there was a host of small boats laden with fruit and trifles made by the locals, which we could buy. There were also children who would dive off the boats for money thrown from the ship. At the time I thought it marvellous that they could catch the money before it disappeared from sight and it was many years before I discovered that the coins planed back and forth in the water and so descended slowly. Another take-on! The other vague impression I still retain is the wealth of colour of the Madeira I have been told we went on one of the famous dry sledge rides, but I don’t remember that,. Leaving Madeira, going South to the Equator, the whole ship came together for the Line Crossing Ceremony. You can imagine the welter of mixed emotions of a small boy who couldn’t swim, who was being taken on deck to watch a sailor dressed in a fierce beard, a paper crown, outlandish clothes and brandishing a trident, sitting on a throne set up above a tiny canvas swimming pot, about the size of a waste-skip, surrounded by his shouting henchmen lathering the faces of the passengers before they were chucked unceremoniously into the pot. I stood there, waiting my awful turn, petrified but went through it nonetheless. Later there were fancy dress parties. The categories for prizes were ‘Brought onboard’, ‘Bought onboard’, and ‘Made onboard’, mine was the latter. I was a Candelabra, swathed in some form of copper-coloured material, with a headdress of a copper-coloured candleholder with candle and a candleholder in each outstretched hand. I won second prize to a Red Indian. We went down to the shop somewhere in the bowels of the ship and I received my first camera, a leather-cased Box Brownie On the return journey on the Edinburgh Castle, I was dressed as what we Rhodesians thought of as mealy-corn, – maize to Europeans. I was strapped in a shaped, elliptical tube of green crepe paper, which rose above head level encasing most of me, but revealing bobbles of yellow paper corn on my chest. I believe it was very fetching, but as one can’t defend oneself with encased arms I entered the competition in tatters, having had a fight with, I believe, yet another Red Indian. Mother was not pleased. From Capetown we had a tedious journey for days, cooped up in a railway compartment.

  • Auther’s Note

    My regular readers will be aware that I have been ill in the last three months and in consequence have not been writing on a regular basis, but I now intend to change that in a radical way. Over the years I have said more or less everything I intended to say that illustrated a principle which is applicable to similar circumstances. As a result of having said the same thing in many different ways, I feel that I’ve covered the ground adequately, and will only write, as I do now, when I have something cogent to say, that is worth saying. Originally, I was given the blog by my grandson to express my autobiography, and in the early years that is what I did. I am convinced by the statistics, and the fact that the years between the First World War and now, are of a high level of interest, and also because it would seem that they are being used in some cases for school projects. I have no way of knowing that this is the case, so I propose to start at the very beginning and for one week post a page of a biography on a daily basis, on the blog, and subsequently, instead, two pages every Saturday and Sunday. I do this for a specific reason, above wanting to give new readers an opportunity to see those pages, I wish to gauge the popularity of the auto biography in the current climate.

    I wish to stress that what I have written in the autobiography is not so much about what I have done, but about the ambiances with time, the dramatic encapsulated in the ordinary, and the converse. I personally found through my 88 years such an incredible change in every aspect of life and living, that it is worthily of note. Circumstance has given me the opportunity to live and work in a vast variety of totally different milieu, which gave me, standing on the sidelines, this immensely graphic perspective.

    Thank you for your continued support

  • A Prodigious Reassment

    I am nearly 88 years of age which means that I spend a lot of my time not only looking back, and comparing then with now, but trying to assess what is going to happen in the future if things go on the way they are. Most of my childhood and teenage were spent living in terraced housing, with very few dual carriageway main highways, but a large amount of agriculture and manufacture. These types of thoughts had me worried not for myself, but for those coming after me, because the resources of these very small islands are being sacrificed on the altar of convenience. I have written on this blog many a time about what I see of the precarious nature of our economy when it is considered two of the vital elements are no longer given a high priority that they demand. I’m referring to agriculture and manufacturing.

    What is immensely obvious is that the lack of public transport and rail services are causing an ever-growing demand for fast highways, and wider roads too, through the increase in both number and size of the vehicles now in service. Once upon a time the excuse was that the car manufacturing industry required to be bolstered by private vehicle ownership. In view of the fact that we don’t have a burgeoning motor industry, this theory would then be farcical, By the same token the corner shop is no longer the mainstay of the district, and in every town that I have been in I have found empty shops caused by the arrival of a supermarket. Supermarkets engender shopping by motorcar, and on Saturdays and Sundays, this fact is eminently proven. When I was designing large drainage concerns, the standard then was the houses had to be built at no more than 12 to the acre. The houses that we knew in the past were built by leading manufacturers and the like, were 75 to the acre. Go into any dormitory town built in the last 30 years and you will find that they are built on a plot of land that provides approximately 60 x 30 feet garden, front and back. If you examine any one street, you will find that 40% of those houses have driveways in the front instead of a garden. This entails several problems, one is that the drainage of the run off will be considerably increased beyond the design factor, and there are other problems such sight distances. The worst thing of all is that it has been agricultural land that has been taken to revive this increased parking space for cars which are being used almost solely in shopping and the mummy run.

    I think therefore that some re-evaluation of the terms of reference are required urgently if we are to remain self-supporting in an emergency, such as WW 2, let alone the economics and carbon emission factors, both of which are affected by the use of our islands for agriculture. For example, single-parent families are too preoccupied to consider any gardening to any great extent, and it would therefore seem more sensible to provide accommodation for them, and the elderly that is on a more amenable level, such as terraced housing, where there is a small garden at the back requiring little maintenance and the front is at footpath level. I believe that this will have the effect, socially, of improving the lives of these sections of our population. Currently we have lost the sociability of a village within a town or city, and the disadvantaged suffer badly from this insular existence.

    I say these are obvious areas of consideration, and leave some of the others, such as communal play areas, localised shopping, increase in public transport by vehicle and rail, and even perhaps a subsidised system of mimi-buses to obviate the mummy run, to you for your consideration.

  • Things I don’t understand,8. The actual cost of buying from abroad

    Not only Commerce, but the government is now enlarging the ranks of the unemployed. Anyone who ever had any dealings with the Civil Service, would have been aware that it was top heavy, due to the Mandarins having great influence, and being bent on empire building, their own empire.

    The management of a budget, be it large or small, is basically the same. One has income and outgoings, and obviously, for stability, they have to balance, or the income may be larger than necessary. Germany, who maintained its manufacturing, is recovering faster than the other EU members through income from abroad. Some of our manufacturing of goods we need or trade, like our services, such as call centres, are based in the Sub-Continent or the Far East. The financial saving of this ploy is not for the Exchequer, but the individual company exploiting this system, and the rest of the savings is born by the tax payer in unemployment benefit to the people who would have been carrying out the manufacturing and services in this country. It would not surprise me if Government departments were also buying from abroad. It seems that, today, buying manufactured products is buying imports. I am therefore, not surprised our recovery is slow, and the taxes for everyone are rising. Why is there not a commensurate tax on services and products from abroad which truly reflects the cost of the unemployment payment this practice induces, unless import duty is in fact commensurate?