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I can understand, but don’t necessarily approve of young children having a piece of blanket that they carry to give themselves security. In my early days I don’t remember children having bits of cloth, rather a heavily damaged soft toy, often a gollywog. The learning curve for a very young child is exceptionally steep. We all know that to all intents and purposes, their brain is like a very clean, pristine piece of paper, and every day, information is printed on it, which the child has to assimilate, understand and try to apply. To me, the piece of blanket serves a purpose, but it doesn’t add anything to the sheet of paper. I believe it would be much better if the piece of cloth were periodically, and gently changed, so that the child would become accustomed to these changes and at the same time, discover subconsciously, things of beauty.

A child is accepting what is put before it, uncritically, because it has no comparison, and consequently, no choice. Choice has to be given by the adults with care and attention. When I was young, the books we were given were beautifully illustrated, and the characters had a gentleness about them that appealed to the children, and in fact still does. But what I’m finding on television programs, with children’s toys and children’s books, is a level of aesthetic that is based on economy rather than beauty. To draw a face with almost no features is quick and easy, as it is to make soft toys of the same ilk, but to my old mind, what should be offered to these children, is either things of beauty, or things that have a purpose, such as the difference between good and bad. I find it incredible that not only the children are being battered with these ugly representations, but adults are now being offered them in advertisements, because they’re so cheap in comparison to using a film crew. I have said before, that I find it crazy that people are swayed, to make serious and expensive decisions in their lives, by some drawn puppet.

American aesthetic has come into our lives via Skye, and the films that are being offered have nothing like the quality of those that were made 30 years ago, when actors spoke clearly, and the story was told more by the action than it was by speech, again this is a cutback for economy. The crime and action films now seem to be heralded at a level of mayhem, murder and gunfire that is totally beyond any possible level of occurrence. To find anything up to 10 dead bodies in the first five minutes of a film, is a gross, and giving the wrong impression to those young people who are easily impressed. Somehow, excess in every aspect seems to have risen to an unacceptable level. People are portrayed on film as being totally irrational in their behaviour, both in action and comedy films. They shout, gesticulate, slap one another on the back, and I believe that this is not scripted, but they’re given a rough scenario and left to get on with it, come what may, yet another economy. We shouldn’t be surprised to find youngsters with a Kalashnikov are cutting down kids and teachers in a school, it is, after all, their daily diet.

Over the years I have wasted a considerable amount of sauce, because the jars contain enough sauce for four people, and in those days we were only two. Now I’m living on my own I have had to take steps to save this happening to a greater extent, and as a result I believe the manufactures would actually be doing themselves a favour if they followed my example. The problem with the system they have is that once the jar is opened it has to be used within three days, or frozen. The solution which I have adopted, is to buy small plastic containers and fill these with one helping for one meal, or the helping for two meals. These I freeze.

Living alone is now far more common than it has ever been in the past, with fewer marriages, broken homes, single mothers, and widows and widowers. For those who are handicapped, the meals that you make are small, have to be made easily, cheaply, and quickly. One other requirement is that, as you require to have fresh vegetables in the diet, meals such as spaghetti Bolognese, sweet-and-sour pork, and similar dishes, cannot be an everyday event which then means that the sauces have to be stored in the freezer. It seems to me that if the manufacturers package their sauces in two forms, one as now with four helpings, and the second system using two plastic containers, each holding two portions, this would have considerable appeal, because the purchaser would not only be able to freeze as and when they required to, they would be gaining small containers which they could use for other purposes, such as leftovers, splitting plastic packaged gravy, and similar items. My problem is that probably sauce manufacturers don’t read my blog.

Natural development.
Please understand, I’m not trying to educate you, I am just trying to draw attention to the way that nature has developed systems, which I believe are far from the ability of man. I came in possession of a government pamphlet that describes the working of the ear and the diseases that can injure it. Over my lifetime I have worked with electronics, been a technical designer and an inventor, and frankly I cannot see any human being able to design such a complex, clever and minuscule serious of parts, which together allow us to hear and balance ourselves. I’m not going into detail, merely giving the 5p tour.

The ear has three parts the outer, the middle, and the inner ear. Sounds enter the external ear canal, travel down the ear canal finally reaching the ear-drum. There the sounds vibrate, and are passed into the middle ear. The middle ear is an inflated cavity that links the outer ear to the inner ear, and is also connected to the back of the throat. Which I interpret as the reason why we swallow when an aircraft goes from one pressure to another.

Within the middle ear there are three tiny bones stretching from the eardrum to our hearing organ within the ear, known as the cochlea. It is these three bones that mechanically conduct the sound waves through the middle ear to the inner ear. The inner ear has two parts, the cochlea, responsible for hearing; and the vestibules system, responsible for balance. The cochlea is a fluid filled chamber that looks a bit like a snail shell. When the sound vibrations enter the cochlea, the fluid moves and hair-like sensory cells trigger an electrical impulse in the auditory nerve. Different hair cells pick up different frequencies of sound depending on where they are positioned in the cochlea. The auditory nerve passes electrical impulses to the brain which recognizes them as sound.

The vestibules system is also filled with fluid and has three small sections. Each of these sections detects head movement in a different direction. When you move your head, the fluid within these sections moves. In a similar way to the hair-like cells in the cochlea, they turn the mechanical movement into an electrical signal and send the information to your brain. This information is used with your vision as censors in your joints to help you maintain your balance.

The above seemed terribly long, but I wanted to demonstrate the complexity and the incredible facility that the ear has. When you consider that We are told that life started as an amoeba in a swamp, how in the world natural progression has brought us something so sophisticated is really beyond me, and I can only stand and admire.

The Banker’s handshake
On Monday of this week I glance at a headline in the Daily Telegraph, which said a banker had received a £10,000,000 pension. I had not time to read the rest, but that statement set in motion a number of thoughts, and the greatest was that I couldn’t see how he could spend 10 million intelligently. In the dark ages, when they introduced the National Lottery, I decided to set up a system whereby I did the lottery, and if I won any money I would share it among the family, so I had to decide how much I was aiming for, and I discovered, as I was near retirement age, that a £1m, even spread among the family, would go a long way to fixing their needs, after all a house only cost, at that time, about £100k. I consider that this amount is obscene. A banker is in a position to lend money personally, at high rates of interest, let us suggests 7%, that would bring him in about £700,000 before tax, which would be pretty difficult to spend year on year. I’ll also bet he is about 60, instead of being in his 70s is my children will be, If this government has its way. When I retired I found the family home was far too big for just for the two of us, and ultimately moved into a smaller accommodation. I also found that we had enough of practically everything with which to furnish the new house, and had to spend very little to make a new home as we wanted it. For the life of me I cannot see firstly, how this guy can spend all this money, and secondly, at a time when industry and shops are cut to the bone, and people are being sacked from jobs, which once upon a time were secure, there is any justification for such a handshake, especially, since my savings have been reduced by the very people handing out this money, with the government supporting them. Is there an upper echelon in this country that I don’t know about, where policies of this sort are the norm?

MPs
Like everything else in life, MPs come in good, bad, and indifferent. If like me and my neighbours, you have someone who keeps their eye on a ball, I reckon you are lucky. At the time of the last election, I wrote about some of the people who had put themselves forward, and at the time I commented that the quality was not what one would expect. When someone is elected to parliament, they don’t have to have a string of letters after their name, like some professions, they walk into parliament, literally wet behind the ears with a steep learning curve in front of them. I suggest that the people who are employed to aid them, their staff, will probably be considerably better educated, and far more experienced in the political arena than your prodigy may ever be. There is no shadow of doubt in my mind that when you write to your MP, your letter will go through a number of hands before it reaches your MP, if it ever does in some cases. A civil servant of will draft a reply, the MP may, or may not have to approve it before it is sent out. If the MP decides to write to a minister, concerning your concern, I believe the same approach will pertain. I am certain in my own mind that at times it is the civil servant who makes the decision on behalf of the MP, a system which is logical, as the questions being asked will be repetitious and in a lot of cases manly verbose complaints. The question I therefore ask, is just how many MPs are really needed to keep the ship afloat, and whether the system should be changed to enable a greater number of highly trained and experienced civil servants to not only do the research as now, but also make proposals which are then transferred to a board of MPs for ratification, modification, or rejection. We are told that they need 600 because they are all working away in committee. I have said before, that in my experience most of the people on committee contribute nothing, and the decisions are made by an elite few. In view of the committees that I suggest here, the number of MPs could be reduced considerably, say to 200. If this happened, the cream would come to the surface, and the average quality and experience will be considerably higher at a point of the decision-making process than it might be currently. At the time of the election, prospective MPs would have to come under greater examination by the parties putting them up for election.

Hydrogenated oils
My next-door neighbour and I were talking about injurious additives in food, usually taken over a long period, and the incredible rise in obesity in the population as a whole. We talked about all the usual reasons, junk food, boxed meals, carry outs and suchlike when she suddenly introduce something I had never heard of, hydrogenated oil. She said a friend of hers, who was a trained chef, had asked her if she would like to eat a Tupperware box, because a similar process derives hydrogenated oil. I wasn’t prepared for reading what I did in Google when I put up hydrogenated oils. I went to www,wisegeek, and also to ‘partially hydrogenated oils’, on the same page.

When I read the descriptions of all that is wrong with taking in hydrogenated oil, and the injurious effects on the body, I could not understand how the government would permit this material being used in the food industry at all, let alone under regulation. It’s whole purpose is to speed up, and probably cheapen the manufacture of a number of items such as biscuits, cakes,etc, not right across the board, but by selected manufactures, at what cost to us?. Some fish fries use it because it keeps the oil clean for longer periods than conventional oils. I don’t propose to go into further detail, just read the websites on Google and then make up your own mind. Don’t forget to read the ingredients content when you buy biscuits and cakes and even oil.