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I believe the biggest mistake they made with the budget was to increase the VAT. Psychologically it was wrong, and I question whether the value of 3% of VAT spread among the other sources of income for the government, would have been too difficult to manage, or are they trying to make a point?

I know nothing about George Osborn, his background, his experience, but it probably doesn’t matter because he won’t have been the only person responsible for the Budget. What struck me about it was that the knock on effect had been totally disregarded. Let me give you an example, in the 50s, I bought my first house, four bedrooms, and cost about £7000. A few years later I bought another house, five bedrooms, a quarter of an acre of land, for £12,000. In 2003 I sold it and bought a chalet bungalow with only two-bedrooms and a box-room for £300,000, which is now only worth £270,000. The knock on effect of those 50 years is the variation in the economy with time, totally unpredictable, and in such vast swings. In this example the change in the first five years was at a thousand a year, in the next 40 years it was at an average rate of 6,500 year, and the fall has been at 4.000 a year. In circumstances like this people become cautious, especially when the levels of taxation, such as VAT, are varied, the unpredictability causes them to think twice, and we have the situation we have today with the sale of houses stagnating. The knock on effect of that is that people often refurnish when they move house. The current climate is not suitable to encourage house buying. Currently large furniture shops are having tremendous sales, and the small ones are going to the wall.

One could easily predict that as with Maggie Thatcher, there could be an up rise of union disfavour if the lower ranks are having a two-year wage freeze. The health service, Local Authority workers, and civil servants on the lower ranks generally, will find it unacceptable that they are working under pressure, because of the cutbacks, while their counterparts, self-employed or in industry are probably being reimbursed in accordance with the cost of living. The psychological effect of a rise in VAT is much greater than 3%. People actually went out and bought alcohol before the rise became legal. The money they were saving was negligible, it was the fact that hit home. I may be a Job’s comforter, but I believe 3% on VAT is going to have a greater effect on the economy than was intended. In my experience VAT looms larger in people’s minds than most other taxation, and until it becomes routine and forgotten about, sales will go down, especially in haberdashery and furniture. Osborn underlined the fact that the elderly will be cared for, but immediately they have lost 3% of some of their income. I fancy that the sales of vehicles will drop over the next six months, in an industry which is still fighting to stay afloat. When you see the level of advertising in the press, on the Internet, and on TV, one realizes that the credit crunch is hitting hard.

I looked at some of the World Cup opening ceremony, and it reminded me very much of the Africa that I knew in the late 20s. It had that innocence, instead of the technocratic approach in so many of the other opening sequences. On the other hand, I watched the first match and it saddened me to see the empty seating with all those crowds outside the stadium. It caused me to evaluate in my own mind how these large events were staged, what went into the staging, and who was responsible for the staging and footting the bill.

I can understand the virtue of sport in the round, to the individual, to the country, and the welfare of the people in it. We have all seen the upsurge of interest in sport when there are large worldwide and domestic competitions being promulgated by all the media. What I’m objecting to personally is the mindless approach to the problems of hosting any one of these large events. In highly developed countries such as ours, building new stadia and training facilities, is affordable and essential for the welfare and fitness of the coming generation, and inducing an urge to take part, if not necessarily to compete. In a country like Africa, life standards could not be lower, it is eminently farcical to build stadia to accommodate thousands, when the average figures for people on the terraces in the country is bound to be small by comparison. I feel that the lifespan of these stands and pitches will be short and they will crumble into dust. It must have been the responsibility of the international Board, to have overseen this possibility when Africa was submitting their proposals. As for leaving the stands empty, with people outside wanting but not affording to get in, has a lot to do precedent.

It is well known by my readers that I’m against hosting things like the Olympics because the people who are contributing to finance the games are the ones most unlikely to ever see an Olympic games themselves. It would therefore seem logical that the games should be held in several suitable countries, based on population, accommodation and ease of travel. This doesn’t stop the individual countries from having Olympic sized facilities for their nationals to train on and enjoy. To say that the value of the Olympic Games is that it influences countries to build facilities that they would otherwise not have, is clearly specious, in this day and age, public opinion would override this if the need and demand was there.

Do you, like I, not only feel confused about the current taxation philosophy by the government, but actually find it counterproductive in many ways. One of the things that I refer to, is the question of budgeting. The Labour party, when they were in power, fostered some things that made sense, Iike trying to maintain a steady rate of tax, rather than periodic changes in the system and the amounts involved. They wished, as I understand it, to foster saving by the electorate, because this also gave them the possibility of budgeting, based on loans, whereas with the fluctuating deficit, it made budgeting almost impossible. Unfortunately they were not in power long enough, after having made this decision, for it to be effective.

I expect that you are sick to death of hearing me moan on about the good old days, even though they had some pretty bad aspects. In those days we were brought up, from early childhood, to save not just money, but everything, we were a nation of horders. Practically everything was too valuable to throw away. People like myself, therefore, don’t get the level of financial help commensurate with those who have been spendthrifts, and are automatically entitled to. Saving is not merely a matter of hording when it comes to money, it is mainly budgeting for the future, ensuring that in our old-age, when we are living on diminishing returns, standards will not fall too low. If they bring in swinging inheritance tax, there is little purpose in saving too much, because those coming after you will no longer reap the benefits that you have anticipated. In effect you are budgeting in the light of inheritance tax levels. Hence, this is a two edged sword, the government will be paying out more in support, while at the same time having a diminished source of borrowing. In other words nobody gains, because the spendthrifts are bound to come upon hard times with no capital to ease the burden, the government will be under greater financial stress because they’ll be totally relient on the taxes rather than additional borrowing.

In my parents days they had little hideaways where they put money for specific needs, and a lot of the payments were in small sums on a weekly basis. This was their form of budgeting, and debt was an anathema to them, almost right across the board. I may be wrong, as I just did not understand a lot of the rhetoric we were presented with at the time of the election, and I feel that I am no wiser, because the signals we are receiving are not clear and indisputable, they give the impression that those stating them a not too sure themselves. It seems to me we’re going from one muddle into another, where there are no signposts, and those leading us are just as bewildered.

If you live alone, contribute to a blog, sometimes it’s essential to get another view on what you have written, because it’s all a matter of perspective, and perspective over nearly 90 years can easily be distorted by the viewer, me. I asked my grandson for his take on what I wrote yesterday. This is what he said, I wonder if you agree.

Ht JP
Nothing wrong with it at all. My only argument is that every generation feels they have it better than the next… If I’d been born in the 30s I would never have been able to play electric guitar or design Flash websites. I wouldn’t have had the chance to live in Japan. I probably wouldn’t have met a Scottish-born Chinese girl, as the first generation hadn’t even arrived from Hong Kong until the 60s… so I am thankful I was born in 1974. But even then, I had a safe childhood where I could walk home from primary school without my mum having any fear of me being in danger.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that its lovely to hear your reminiscinces about how good it was “back in the day” but also that saying how things are always just getting worse is the nature of getting older. We all think like that, I reckon.

Quite a long time ago, for security reasons, my bank asked me to give them the following, my postal code, my age, the number of my house, and my mother’s maiden name. At the time I thought this was fair enough, and complied. Subsequently, when telephoning concerning my account, I was asked these questions and gave the right answers. Imagine my surprise when last week I was asked the same question by two different authorities, one the electricity supplier, and another I think it was to do with having a new 60s travel card, but I cannot be sure.

I find today that there is a lot of fuss about security, but when it comes down to it, it means absolutely nothing. It is like global warming, people want to be seen to be caring, but at the same time don’t consider the overall picture, the varying parameters, and often the long term effects. I remember, a long-time ago, when I was a part-time policeman, having to carry a personal weapon, security men would run their hands all over a clean shirt, on a hot day, and never once find a gun. It was not hidden, just sitting in its holster, out of sight.

I have had one of my brainstorms, I had been listening to the news and felt Westminster was not in the quiet almost monastic way one sees it. I then questioned whether we really needed over 600 members of Parliament. I was aware that they were supposed to be occupied in committees, but, anyone who has been in committees will know, it is. as a general rule, that there are two or three strong-minded people, and the rest are a little vague, and it often falls just to one man to make the final decision. I then widened the question into a number. Presupposing that we take out the elderly, like me, people under 18, and those not permitted to vote, we will probably have an electorate of somewhere in the region of 40 million. I suspect that after two years, about 2% will remember the name of the MP they voted for, or about one million. To some extent that figure depends on the constituency work that the MP has done. What percentage of the people have ever written to their MP or contacted him? If my own case is anything to go by, I was in my 80s before I ever did, and that was because of writing the blog. When I have received answers from Cabinet ministers, or probably their secretaries, it has only been occasionally that the information given was useful rather than a palliative. One thing I do know is, for one to get into the civil service, at the level of those working in Westminster, a very high standard is demanded. Hence, civil servants could replace some of the MP’s working in committee, providing there are MPs in control. It seem that we would not need so many MPs functioning as committee members, and suggests, on the basis of cost per hour per person, there might be a considerable saving. Clearly, an overriding committee would need to rubberstamp the findings of the lower ones, but I suspect this system is already in place.

As I understand it, the primary function of an MP is to act as a link between Parliament and the electorate in a given area, to look after the needs of the individual, and preserve the rule of law. Local government has a very close relationship with the populace it works for, and it would therefore seem logical that there should be some strong combination between the local authority and Westminster, but I fail to see if this were the case, where you had only 200 MPs, that it could not work more efficiently than it does at present, assuming the reorganization of the communication between Westminster and the local authority. There must be large areas of overlap in the current system. The systems in Westminster and local authorities were set up in the days of pencils and paper, and later with the telephone. Now with the Internet, which the government is determined we shall all use, I believe the time taken to pass on information, relative to the past, is a vital clue to the way in which our governmental system could be overhauled to give the individual better access if he wants it, as a cost saving exercise, and a rationalization of tradition which is rapidly crumbling, as we’ve seen in the last few years. It is all very well that Westminster is a sort of private club, relatively unassailable to the individual, and run on traditional lines possibly dating back to the Magna Carta, but everything has moved on at such a speed since the 50s, that I believe radical re-structuring is imperative. Not overnight, not in a year, but piece by piece, carefully, over time.

Off and on for quite a long time I have had trouble both with not having a steady broadband, instead it kept crashing when I was half through ordering online, which turned out in the end to be expensive because I was ordering twice. By the same token, I was getting what some people refer to as death messages, those little windows that suddenly appear and start ordering you about. I obtained the services of a self-styled ‘Specialist’ who had a strange approach. I had put together a couple of computers and all the etceteras that one gathers, it was rather like Mecano, and I thought it was simple. He however said he could not understand it at all, he would strip it all out and reconnect it, and only then be able to understand it and able to fix it. At the end of this session which took two days I discovered I was little better off than I had been originally, because he hadn’t fixed the thing which was originally the problem, the broad band. Running a blog means that you need to be able to grab the moment, or what you write will be out-moded. Fortunately I had a White Knight who came to my rescue, a man who could actually diagnosis what was wrong with the computer in another country, just with his mobile. Now I’m on the Internet, about my life back, and all is bliss

You can imagine that I had a lot of time to sit and think as I could do little else, and I started to relate the professionalism of the computer specialists with specialists in other media, such as medicine, engineering, scientists; the list is almost endless. Every specialist needs training. In the days when I started training,1940, it was often a mixture of evening classes, a correspondence course, and working for a firm, starting at the lowest level, and this of course was called indentured, or articled, and was not cheap. In the trades, it was and still is very similar; one became an apprentice, more like a dog’s-body, or started in a technical school, or college. There were differences in the way in which different trades and different professions ensured that the trainees, when they left their place of learning, were of the standard required by the governing body of that trade or profession. Prior to 1939, the standards were not only high they were rigorously enforced. Today of course, more people go to university to learn their occupation, but this does not mean that their degree is the end product, there will be a governing body that will require that later they will spend a specific number of years in further training in their occupation, and possibly a final examination before they can be said to be what they purport to be. This applies equally to medicine and, engineering etc., and the regalia of the Masons points out the fact that this system also applied to many of the trades.

I’m sorry if this has been tedious, but when I saw what the White Knight who rescued me knew and was capable of, it made me consider that as people who know nothing whatsoever about computers are in the hands of people who may or may not have a degree in the subject, but more, it is a question of whether they have the experience. The way in which the governments and practically every other concern considers that our houses are universally equipped with a computer, shows the level at which the computer is now used. It is a highly sensitive, and overall, an expensive piece of equipment. There are those who have arbitrarily offered to repair them, in the local press or the Yellow Pages. This expertise should have the same principle of training as the professions and the trades. It is time that there was a governing body overseeing the experience and expertise of the people we are trusting, and are paying highly, to repair our equipment