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In the 20s and 30s children were regularly admonished with the phrase ‘behave yourself’, or ‘behave’. In shops they would have been no more allowed free range to rush about the shop, than they would have been allowed to steal. Today this is not the case. Crime generally is a case of lack of self-control, where the whim overrides the normal boundaries. Bad behaviour in children indicates a lack of parental control. When radio and the press were subjected to censorship, there was a sweeping embargo on anything not ‘nice’. The swinging 60s turned this totally upside-down, to where films from America, for realism, have foul language scattered like chaff through the dialogue, and even between syllables. It is unsurprising that a high percentage of teenagers are cursing. Governments have a tendency, as was shown recently, in order to eradicate a wrong, they make sweeping legislation which affects the majority as well as the offending minority. This was the case with corporal punishment. I was amused when one of my grandchildren was sent to sit on ‘the naughty step’ at the bottom of stairs for some misdemeanour. She accepted it quite naturally, and it seems to work, but the amusing part was that when the older child had completed her sentence, she came back into the room and took a swipe at the other child, which underlines that it is a fact of nature, including the animal kingdom, that we naturally accept corporal punishment as a way of curbing bad or dangerous behaviour. I have repeatedly stated that I was caned more than most for less than most, but I don’t sincerely think that my psyche has been damaged. There were some I came across who went too far, but they not the system should have been curbed.

This long introduction is to show the continuous, and not necessarily the best changes that have taken place in our society in areas of social behaviour. What caused me to start this was that having been confined to a chair throughout the day, when reading became tedious I started looking at programmes on television which I’d never seen before, such as ‘Are you smarter than a 10-year-old?’ Gladiators, and a number of so-called, comedy programmes. We have known about canned laughter for a long time, this seems more prevalent, but one thing that I found difficult to swallow was the orchestrated hysteria not only among the participants, but in the audience as well. A large proportion of these types of promotions seen to be dependent upon offering incredible sums of money as prize money, thus providing the contestants with stress while deciding whether to take the next step or keep what they have earned. I believe that the ‘are you smarter.’ programme was more intended for the young than the adults. What I found absurd was the children had obviously been trained briefly, to act out of character, with wild gesticulation on their introduction, in order to hype the programme, which on the face of it was basically both slow and tedious. Both it and Gladiators were more to do with talking than action, and in the latter considerable weeping went on which I also think was pure theatre. There is no shadow of doubt that the drop in quality of television, from the point of view of repeats, re-enactments, and what is on offer, was predictable and inevitable, because of the vast number of programmes that are put out every day. We are told that we can switch off if we don’t like what’s on offer, and with the reduction in advertising revenue which is already hitting the industry, I think the quality will drop further and the repeats, especially those from archives that hadn’t been seen for over 40 years will increase. This is not the real problem, the real problem is whether the hysterical hype will find its way into our social lives, because in my view it shows a lack of taste, is pathetic and if it is truly hysterical, a lack of self-control. Today there is yet another anomaly, the cult of the celebrity. I was always under the impression that a celebrity was someone who had reached a high level of achievement in their chosen field, and was thus a household name, and highly respected. On television there are a number of programmes and repeats when so-called celebrities take part in game-shows, the introduction is lengthy because the chosen celebrity is hardly known, outside their television persona. These people permit themselves to be subjected to unbelievable indignities, presumably to enhance their acceptance. Like so much today this is yet another case of quality being sacrificed for a quick buck. The throwaway society by its very name respects little, and is symptomatic of the approach to so much that is on offer today, where money is more important than probity.

The radio Times has made it abundantly clear that a program that I thought was unique, almost an epic, and fascinating, if a little drawn out, was unworthy of publicising in its weekly paper, and only refered to it on the schedule in about four lines. It was a re-enactment of the Premier of Handel’s Water Music as it was played on the River Thames back in the days of George I.

BBC 4, presumably, had staged this because it was an anniversary. A small team of people, researchers, archivists, shipwrights, painters, sound engineers and musicians, the latter using period instruments, produced a spectacle that one was likely never to see again, in ideal circumstances, accompanying Handel’s exquisite music. The logistics of this project were mind-boggling, they had to find a vessel which looked like an 18th century royal barge, which alone was a mixture of persistence and luck. The conductor had to experiment with the aid of the musicians, to find the best order in which to place the musicians on the barge, for the best musical effect with these unusual instruments, and also so the musicians themselves could hear one another while sailing down the Thames. The sound engineers had to experiment with these different instruments being played on water to discover if they could be heard and recorded ashore as well. The barge had to be modified, decorated painted. The musicians had to be robed, and provided with wigs, in such a way that they looked the part, but could play just as they were. In one instance a wig gave serious problems. The barge itself was referred to as a ‘dumb barge’ which implied that it had neither power nor steering and would require a tug to propel it, and another astern to steer it through all the bridges that have been built between the Houses of Parliament and Chelsea over the intervening years. The amount of current research going back hundreds of years was incredible, and this paragraph does not give credit to the amount of work that these people put into this project.

The spectacle started at Westminster in broad daylight and finished at Chelsea in darkness. As the progression went on it was noticeable that none of the public knew this was happening because those watching from the bank were patently there for another reason, and they were very few. The sight of that barge in daylight was wonderful, and if people onshore could hear the music as we did, the scene would have lived with them for the rest of their lives. The barge in the evening, allegedly lit by candles, but probably assisted by battery driven light, was also beautiful.

The logistics with respect to the water are probably the reason why wasn’t publicised in London. They would have to take into account the state of the tide at a given time, fine weather, and a relatively calm river. From the film it was clear that they have fulfilled all these requirements, and probably this prevented them publicising the occasion as a lot of people could have been disappointed if the parameters were not achieved. But nonetheless this does not stop the Radio Times from doing more to promote it than they did. I just hope that BBC 4 gives this as many repeats as we get of other programmes from the past.

There are still a few of us around, born just after the First World War, living through a number of credit crunches, highs and lows, that has given us a different perspective to those who govern us today. Born into the tail end of the Victorian era, people were straightlaced, talked of being gentlemanly, ladylike, with words like indecency, disrespect and consideration, as common currency. We played in the street because the only thing likely to knock us over was a horse and cart travelling little more than walking pace. Everyone cycled everywhere, and the trams, buses and trains were modes of transport. There was little change from the 20s until well after the end of the Second World War, because that was the credit crunch of all time. Open land, originally the Common land of olden times, had become Commons and parks where we played in the holidays and after school.

Commons, in WW2 were turned into allotments and many never recovered. In recent years school playing areas have been sold for housing, and so the recreational areas have diminished considerably with time, and even cycling, let alone playing in the street is now impossible. In the 20s and 30s the working-class and the upper-class had rules of their own, the majority, the so-called middle-class, was hidebound, pretentious and relatively impecunious, and so much of the fun of life was frowned upon, and my reckoning was there was very little drinking let alone drunkenness. Has it occurred to you that a bus full of people in the 20s has now been converted into some 60 cars with one man one-car?

The Labour government, and I include the Blair era, have constantly run flags up the pole to see who would salute them, and like this proposed tax on alcohol, if the opposition was too strong they ducked out. When we were young, right up to the end of WW2, drinking to excess was not as common as one is led to believe, because we hadn’t the money. Wages were terribly low, in my first job, I was 17, I earned half a crown a week, which equates to five pounds today, and paid my fares and lunches. Even in the Navy, some people would drink to excess on an occasion, but as we spent so little time ashore, and the only booze aboard was rum or in the Wardroom, one was generally not likely to become addicted. My father was an alcoholic in the 20s, he lived as a colonial official, in Rhodesia, where there were very few whites, there was also a pecking order, and so socialisation was both limited and repetitive. I’m sure that booze would not have been taxed and was consequently cheap. I remember as a child that the adults had sundowners nearly every night. Limited socialisation is a total bore.

The difference of life today from anything we have seen before has been engineered through considerable affluence, the desire to embrace standards that are unaffordable, and in some cases, a complete rejection of the necessity of moral standards. Those who have suffered most are the children living in deprived areas, with no facilities to give them a challenge, except gang warfare, with parental control almost nonexistent, irresponsible, or spasmodic. These statements are not a case of discovering the wheel, everybody knows about them, but only the odd charity tries to stem the tide. There are local schools, probably with a the lovely gymnasium marked out as a badminton court, with a hall that seats hundreds, all lying idle for months at a time, sitting firmly amid playing fields. Raising the price of booze will achieve nothing. I am not suggesting an overall strategy, but I think that with careful planning, a programme of games, practical work, interests such as the performing arts, teaching of the hobby-type pursuits, designed to interest the various age groups, with proper supervision, might be worth experimenting in a number of areas to see what exactly could be achieved, instead of a broad brush approach, which the majority of the people have no faith in.

It is clear now that this credit crunch is not a seven-day wonder, and one of the worst aspects is that factories will be falling vacant. It strikes me that here is an opportunity, not as a permanency, but as a short-term experiment, to use the space of an empty factory to provide leisure facilities for the young, the not so young, and possibly even my generation, that they all share on different evenings, and thus broaden their interests and their outlook. A word of warning. I was a latchkey child looking for companionship and interest. For a while I found this in the Scout movement and later I went to a number of youth clubs, set up by generous amateurs. The problems with these were that they were dowdy, poorly lit, the facilities were old and sparse. If it is a trial run, it has to be done properly and expertly, if any true answers are to come from it

To simplify my thinking I take the theoretical case of a man who successfully opened a television shop, and built up an empire throughout the UK. At 65 he retired and his son took over with disastrous results from bad management, with the consequent debts. No public body would dream of bailing him out. In the case of banks, they are the guardians of peoples’ savings which they use as a basis of their trading, and their other activities are nothing more nor less than barter, as with the television shop. Considering money as a commodity, then it is easy to realise that when a bank gives you a mortgage the transaction has the same connotation as purchasing on the never-never. What keeps the whole system afloat is the fact that people with surplus money lend to the bank, and those who need money, borrow, and the banks, overall, do a balancing act, between borrowing and lending , in the way bookmakers lay off. What happened was that the government took its eye off the ball when the banks started a competitive need to increase their status, come what may.

Initially forgetting about the overseas investments made by the banks, the repair system demands that those who had savings in the banking system, keeping the system afloat, not investments in banking products, should be compensated for their loss. The new system introduced should revert to something close to the building society model, with the government actually instituting its own banking system and buying up the UK properties from the existing banks at the current face value, or outstanding mortgage value, not the value at the time of the mortgage. This then aids the building society concept for the new government bank, and leaves the existing banks with the problems they have made for themselves. The banks after all are private companies, why should we be pumping money into them when we are not pumping it into failing businesses? Why should we, the taxpayer, be saddled with debts for purchases in other countries, just because the banks were based in this country? We are told that the money that has been lost is unrecoverable as a high proportion of it is stagnating in offshore banks. If that is the case it is tantamount to a vast sum of money being lost in a fire. It would therefore seem logical to irrevocably change the form that money takes so that that which is being stored off shore becomes obsolete, and it is then possible to print new money to fill the gap which otherwise would never be filled. Feeding our money back into a system that has so obviously failed, and for which we have no assurance that it will not fail again, seems ludicrous, against having a totally new banking system, state-controlled, including a national pension fund, and not in any way subject to the rise and fall of the money markets, which are an entirely different issue, subject to suspect trading

I suspect that some of you think I have given up, others might think I’m dead, but the fact is, I and Sophie, my wife, have had an horrendous five months. We mutually shared the virus in November, which put her into hospital on Christmas Eve for 16 days. The doctors required us, for future safety, to transferred our bedroom to the ground floor, because climbing the stairs could be fatal for her. With the help of my grandchildren this was achieved, but because I think I’m 40, instead of being 86, I too shifted furniture and wrecked my shoulder to the point where even moving the mouse on the computer was painful. She came home, and I nursed her until one night, to avoid putting on the light and waking her, I groped my way in this strange new bedroom, spun round and fell heavily, and crushed my spine. I had a week in hospital, and have been virtually chair bound ever since. It is only now that I have discovered that during those months my website went haywire.

Recently, I have been considering revamping the website. There is no shadow of doubt in my mind that my Dutch friend, Jan, is right when he says that my website is being used by schools as an historical source, for the schoolchildren doing projects. The hits during term time rise rapidly, and drop off on the next lot of school holidays. All the time this justifies maintaining the historical part, I shall go on occasionally making comments, and in time I shall change the format of the website. From my point of view, it is nice to be back, and thank you for reading the blog.

It’s a fair comment if you say I’m a reactionary. A lot of what I write has that implication. I constantly compare our lifestyles today with those, of the even and relaxed 30s. While acceding to the fact that some of the aspects of our lives have been improved by progress, I believe that that same progress has come at a very dear cost. It was the rehash of a crazy, totally dotty film, ‘The girls of St Trinnions’ that prompted my thoughts. If you have read my blog, I believe you will see that I have led quite a tough life, on the lower deck in the Navy, in one of the hardest professions, heavy engineering, and so do not consider myself to be a powderpuff. But when a film, shows one girl head-butting another and considers this funny, at a time when aggressive interaction is considered a serious problem, it gives me more than pause for thought, and so I fear I will be going over old ground again. To my regular readers I apologise.

Today we are being sold short in so many aspects of our lives. The quality of our leaders leaves so much to be desired, because it is now a job, with all that implies, not a vocation, and those with the real ability are no longer going into politics. The serious, and wrong decisions made over the last few years, and the gross mismanagement which has affected us all, in so many departments, such as banking, going to war, child support, the health service, public transport, serious crime, road maintenance, and now air traffic control, just to mention a few, cause one to question how this could come about in such huge proportions, with hard-working people being disadvantaged because they made the right decisions at the wrong time through no-fault of their own, savers losing their capital and the taxpayer being forced to pick up the bill, whether he thinks it’s fair or not. Greed and lack of probity are the root cause. Throughout the world, not only in this nation, has the shortcut to wealth by any means, been to the advantage of a few at the expense of the majority. It would seem that the throwaway ethos has crept into every aspect, where respected and once responsible organisations such as the BBC, stoop to sharp practice. Where the government in its lack of wisdom, and our money, provides for and encourages spending with a view to helping the small traders and manufacturers with their cash flow, then discovers that only the major players with their periodic one-off sales are gleaning the cash and pandering to the natural innate greed of the individual.

Responsibility and consideration for others, is still the standard of some, but is no longer the general yardstick, people no longer put their names and addresses on advertisements for services, they merely use a word that gives a reference to their offer and a mobile telephone number. This in itself is an indication that trust has gone out the window. The person offering the services, for some reason is not using his own name and address, and the person wishing to employ them will be questioning the level of trust he can equate when he is inviting them into his house. Everyone knows of cases where, when receiving a handful of change which includes a bill and notes as well as silver and copper, there are occasions when ‘mistakes’ can be made and the purchaser is short-changed. I’m not saying that this did not occur in the 30s, but then people had not the same opportunities for advancement. Parental control was both harsher and sterner. School discipline was rigid and in some cases excessive. Workers accepted their position equably, and their ordained future as generations before them had done. The woman’s place was in the home, the man was the breadwinner, and to some extent their roles were maintained. Now everything has changed, there is a greater increase in single parents, people expect the state to provide more, and the desire for aggrandisement in every walk of life is now commonplace. This has resulted in the buy now pay later or never, ethos, criminal activity to a level where people have the shred their own mail from fear of theft, where people don’t integrate as they used to and the whole scene of entertainment would appear to be based on impossible thuggery, razzmatazz for its own sake, and cheaper and poorer quality productions as the norm.

The problem is, the choice of parties seems much of the same quality, with rughly the same political backgrounds and experience, so the outcome may be little better.