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Briefly, I have worked in consultancies, contracting, quangos, local government and central government, as a technician in the Navy, or as a civil engineer in the rest.

Let us first examine Local Government as I knew it, At the top is a Mayor and the Councillors. These are men and women who have worked their way up either rung by rung, are astute in business, or have been professionals. Few are young, and in consequence they are experienced in business and in life. Some are ambitious, some have a sense of duty, and some are there because they were persuaded.. Not all are honest, but that can be said of life generally. Local authorities are not given due credit, and are tarred by a broad brush for the mistakes of a small minority.

The next layer starts with the Town Clerk, then the heads of sections, and finally the General Staff within the city or town hall, and once in the waterworks the sewage works, mending roads, collecting rates and doing all the things that local authorities used to do. The heads of sections have generally been promoted from within, having been in the Council direct from school or university, and worked their way up partly through selection by ability, and dead man’s shoes. It is only in exceptional cases, such as the development of a new department that recruitment is taken from outside.

The history of the Council, its work and its records are not just on paper but in the minds of the staff because its their life. Councils employ some people who would not be employed by industry, thus giving dignity to those whose accomplishments are below par. I believe that this aspect, in this day and age, may have gone by the board. The benefit to the public is that they have easy access, to both the councillors and the council staff. The benefit to the staff is that they don’t have to go far to solve a problem, merely upstairs and downstairs, where they can discuss it face-to-face and generally find a solution. Surprisingly Quangos operate very much like local authorities on a smaller scale, and thus have the same advantages.

Central Government as a statement is a non sequitur, it is generally not central, but miles away, such that the public has rarely contact with those governing or carrying out the instructions of those governing – it’s a paper chase. The government is a collection of people either put forward by local wards, or often put forward by political factions. Like local government they are voted in, and sit with their own kind, while there are a few who are independent. We all know the problems of a government with total sway, but unlike local government which only affects individually a small portion of the electorate, central government affects the whole country, so the good or evil that it does affects us all, not just a small proportion. The opposition has a problem, it wants to get into office itself, so has to be critical. but if the government is operating sensibly, the opposition has no foothold, the government has drawn its teeth, so there are times when the House of Commons is pure histrionics. One other problem is that people are put in office for experience as much as need, and with time are shifted about, so the continuity is maintained not by the members of parliament, nor by the senior civil service, who also get shifted about for experience, but mainly on paper, and if there is a change of location, quite often a lot that paper is lost, along with the continuity

The Civil Service, graded from Eton and Oxbridge first-class honours, right the way down to the tea boy are situated in ivory towers and only communicate with one another and the public on paper. Technocrats are rare in the upper reaches of the civil service, with the result that those at the coalface have difficulty in persuading their masters, the senior civil servants, of the necessities of which they’re trying to convince them. By the same token the public can only contact their MP if they have a problem, and the MP has to contact the Minister and the Minister probably has to contact his civil servants to send a reply in writing back down the chain. The MP is sincerely doing the best he or she can, it is just the sterile system which stultifies question-and-answer – communication.

I trust I have made a good case for going back to the old ways where everything that really affected our lives was controlled locally and we had access.

I believe, unsurprisingly, that many of the old ways were best.
Strangely these thoughts came about because I had purchased freezer bags which I discovered to be half the weight of the previous ones, and slightly dearer. Everything today is subject to unheralded change which is frustrating, and in some cases frightening. My early life was like a ride on a big dipper, it had incredible highs and desperate lows, but it was not of the common run. From as far as I can remember right up until the end of WW2, peoples lives were generally ordained by their social standing, their education and their location. Most had a rough idea of what the future held because it would probably follow the route of their forebears. In their intimate lives there was relatively little change, little ambition and the prospects were meagre. They purchased their staples from the same shops that their grandparents had, and there had been little change in all that time in the price and quality. There were a few millionaires, but nobody thought about them, when the weekly basic wage was £3 a week to feed a husband and wife and several children, the gap was too large to be imagined, and there I think lies the problem of today, everyone would like to be a millionaire, and how they achieve it is not too important. It doesn’t seem to matter that the supporters of football clubs are being taken to the cleaners for their entertainment, and the kit for their children, as long as the footballers are getting seven figure sums every year. How can you possibly spend millions every year? If you can’t, do you need it?

Millions are spent every week in the hope of a lucky win, people win millions on a simple quiz show, directors who have made a total disaster of the finances of their company are given a seven figure golden handshake instead of being shown the door. When you read of a Prime Minister who owns two multi-million properties, and is reaping a vast income, while the rest of the country is suffering financially, and in the deaths of some of its young, from his faulty decisions, it becomes evident that society has totally changed. Without restraint there are those, right across the board and around the world, who have been playing Monopoly with our personal finances, to the point where we have no security. These are the outcome of unbridled greed, megalomania and a disregard for probity, all of which is now creeping like a fungus into our daily lives, where products and services are modified to cut costs, without warning of the change, and what we are getting is neither what we used to get nor what we expected to get. We can no longer rely on our government, it makes one statement one day and changes it the next, our media are fined millions for malfeasance, we are taxed in so many different ways that it is impossible to decide what percentage of our income is taken, and we are also fined at every opportunity for the mildest discrepancy.

I believe that the old ways were not the worst ways, and in my next article I propose to demonstrate that Local Government may have had its weaknesses, but it was a hell of a sight better than what we’ve got today.

Joan Ruddock, Minister of the environment, like me, is shouting down a well  and the only voice that replies is her own echo. She talks as if she had just discovered the wheel, when the rest of us have been aware and talking about the waste of our money by the food that we buy, rotting before it is fit to eat for at the least a couple of years. She is perturbed because, from a sample of over 2000 houses in England and Wales, they estimate that 3.6 million tonnes of food is wasted annually, 60% of which is untouched, and frankly there’s nothing she can do about it, because it has now become endemic.

Any shopper understands the logistics of shopping and the problems that face working families today. The car parks of the supermarkets on Friday evenings, Saturdays and Sundays, bare evidence of the results of working full-time and responsible parenthood – one large shop per week. The shops don’t offer three for the price of two because they think you need three, on the contrary you will need only one but they wish to sell three. The consequences of having to guess the menus for a week are obvious but in today’s climate,, unavoidable. The Minister hasn’t a hope in hell of changing the system, it is ingrained, and our whole life structure is built round the supermarket. Everyone it seems including chefs are jumping on this food- waste bandwagon as if it was a new religion. A lot of us are sick to death of buying products because we look forward to the flavour of them but it was never realised because the product rotted before it ripened. We might of course still be able to learn something from the past, and give credence to the farm and corner shop.

One aspect that nobody seems to have taken into account is the plight of these people in underdeveloped countries who have been persuaded to set up  manufacturing facilities to provide the supermarkets with all this out of season food. It’s all very well for a couple of chefs to scream at one another through the ether, and for politicians to make capital gain out of the waste situation, which didn’t start just yesterday. But before they start lambasting, they should take into account that it was we, the wealthy nations who, without long-term thought set the ball rolling, and now want to retract, and leave those who are ill-equipped to pick up the pieces

In the 20s and 30s, with no refrigerators we made a number of trips throughout the week to the corner shop, and on Saturdays into the high Street for the roast and possibly something special. The Minister is right to be concerned, because she has to deal with the waste that we throw out, and also is probably concerned about the energy lost in the growing, processing and transporting of what we have thrown away. As pensioners I find that we waste very little because we have the time to shop, and are more careful with our expenditure. Unfortunately I don’t think there are any lessons to be learned from what I’ve said here, it’s too late

Not really, more a reassessment in the light of the last few days. I believe that national and international government requires considerable political experience covering most circumstances. This was a feature of the governments of the distant past, and should be borne in mind at a time when political change seems to be on the horizon. In those days also life was slower and there was more time to make considered decisions, not hysterical reactions.

In the latter years of Conservative government one recognized a lot of the names and faces on the government front bench, and the opposition bench. Today I question how many people who are not politically inclined, can name more than a couple on each bench. During the last period of Blair’s dictatorship, plus our current government and opposition, there have been so many changes and so many new faces, coupled with extreme apathy that I suspect very few are known as they were in the days of Major and Hague. The old guard has disappeared, even the bully boys of Tony’s reign, John Reid and Peter Hain.

The current leaders by their age have comparatively little political experience, compared with those even in Tony Blair’s initial ’97 Cabinet, quite a few of whom were either moved out of office or resigned, which says a lot for Tony Blair’s single-mindedness. Now, while I suspect some of the old guard are keeping a watching brief, these three young men will have to tread very carefully if they don’t repeat the mistakes of recent years. Vitriolic rhetoric is not enough, logical and reasonable substance is what the electorate demands. It is noticeable for example that David Cameron was a back-room man from 1988 at the age of 22, until 2001 when he entered parliament. Today he talks mainly in the first person, and the other two have not been exposed sufficiently for the electorate to assess their capabilities, nor the capabilities of all their shadow cabinets, and indeed that of the current opposition.

It is fairly clear from recent events that the current government will behave like silver birches, and sway gently in the wind of popularity, and only make decisions when absolutely necessary, to avoid losing office, in the hope that in the meantime, the new boys will make sufficient gaffes, for New Labour to survive at the next election.

The problem of governing today is complicated by the close scrutiny of the media, which is instant, selective and often biased, the sheer speed of communications and of the daily life of the electorate, this all induces thoughtless reaction by the government, and apathy amounting to almost resentment in the electorate, because a lot of the policies inflicted are both unpopular and sometimes unreasonable. The rise in international conflict, population movement and terrorism, together with the problems hamper budgeting. What is needed is a Parliament, where the balance of power is not completely with one party, where reasoned debate and common ground for action and legislation is achieved, and knee-jerk responses are a thing of the past.

In this country we have developed a new culture, where the silent majority foots the bill for the iniquities of a miniscule minority. It isn’t just one case, it is dozens of cases. Yesterday we were warned by the newsreader that if we did not show the MOT disc on our car windscreen, we would be fined £200. This is because a very small percentage of vehicles are being driven without MOT and probably no licence and no insurance. The reason my savings have gone down the Swannee is because a very small percentage of bank directors, whom we thought we could trust, in an effort to increase their financial situation, have overextended the takeovers of other directors, in other countries, who also took rash decisions. The government, in order to curtail binge drinking by teenagers, has decided to increase the cost of alcohol across the board, which in turn has unreasonably increased the VAT also. I tried to think of how many teenagers I have known who are binge drinkers, and could think of none in 86 years. I tried to think of the number of alcoholics that I have come across in my normal associations in the same period, and it was about five out of what I assume is about 200 people in all. All this business about fining you if you’ve ‘contaminated’ a waste disposal bin in some manner, is another case in point. The majority are being castigated for the few. I don’t really believe there is the level of fuel shortage that has required this hype in the price of petrol, electricity, heating, and in consequence every other aspect of our lives, including a hype in VAT. This business of don’t drink and drive, is not because the whole nation has become totally irresponsible, it is because some drunks, I suspect a miniscule percentage of the population, have killed somebody while under the influence of alcohol. For this, the whole of our social fabric has been turned upside down; where we used to have a convivial evening with a few drinks, and a sense of responsibility, we are now being treated like children, as if we have no sense of responsibility, and the nanny state has to take charge and breathalyse us to make sure we really are responsible. Political correctness is yet another case.

Over the years I have watched this concept, mainly by government, creeping into our existence, yearly tightening the straps on the straitjacket that is now our existence. Fining for so many different errors, in every case has two reasons, one is that it is easy to control in this way, whether it is reasonable or not. The second is that authorities derive income, from yet another source. The worst example of this of course is clamping.

My humbug factor is an imaginary figure by which I assess how much I am being given no real facts yet I’m being hoodwinked by a smooth sales pitch.. The higher the factor is and the more I’m subjected to histrionics, the less I believe what I am told. If the speaker gives the unvarnished truth, the factor is zero. Do you ever find yourself being spoken to with the greatest sincerity, about things that are vitally important, and you still have your doubts? I find this highly prevalent in the political field. I think the classic case is the primary electioneering currently running in the US. Everyone knows the problems the government is faced with, and the majority of the solutions, which while unpalatable, are generally accepted, yet millions of dollars are being ploughed into a race to the White House. I sometimes wonder who is getting all that money, and at the end of the day does it matter? Surely all that razzmatazz is purely hype, and people would still vote in the same way if it wasn’t there? I have been known to consider whether a few months after an incumbent has been voted in, if the electorate suddenly wonders how in the world they managed to pick him.

I am no aficionado when it comes to political protocol. In some ways our own system defeats my logic. For example, I believe that our system like many others, has a safety valve, the approval of the upper house, in our case the House of Lords. In addition we have the Queen, who clearly has some power, or the Prime Minister would not have to ask her permission to form or dissolve the Parliament. Yet how is it that decisions as disparate as the 10p tax and Afghanistan can come about against the general will of the electorate? Recently there was a TV programme hosted by Andrew Marr, in which the leader of the Opposition, and a representative of the government answered questions. What was apparent was that they were not going to commit themselves to anything, but wished to give the impression that they had everything under control, and each in turn was doing a better job than the other. Taken on face value the whole discussion system was a total waste of time, but less abrasive than the ones we get concerning Northern Ireland politics. In the former the humbug factor was very high, in the latter, because of the unvarnished distrust and dislike among the participants, strangely the humbug factor was low, because there was no need to play to the gallery, they were too busy fighting their own corner.

The one area where the factor is almost 100%, is advertising. By the people who are chosen to present the advertisement, the way in which the product is used on screen, and the visual claims by inference, are so absurd as to be laughable. Now to save money we are being treated like children watching Blue Peter, with articulating puppets, and absurd scenes. I wouldn’t mind all this nonsense, if first of all I was not having to pay for it in the price of the product, and that I wasn’t so sure that some, busy people, without the time to be critical, are taking it all at face value.

Recently in the newspapers, pensions have come under attack, by the managing director of the oil company, and the financial institutions who are saying that due to the change in the tax system, people will need to save more per month to maintain their expectations when they retire. I find also there is an overall feeling people like me should have died long ago, we are a burden on taxpayers, on the health service and goodness knows what. My generation and the one following me were, in general, frugal, hated debt and saved for their old age. We were never ones to blow our own trumpet, but today I propose to make an exception. In the 80s when a lot of us retired, we left a sound infrastructure, the roads were good, the water supply was reasonably clean, and in most cases the sewerage system was working well. From what I’ve seen I can’t say the same today. We had fought yet another war to end all wars, and for five unpleasant years had endured hardship. We were the ones who inaugurated the health service, the RSPB, the RSPCA, and innumerable other ways in which to respect the environment and its inhabitants. It is probable that we were responsible to some extent for global warming, but nothing like what has followed since.

Go into any small restaurant at coffee time or lunchtime, it is not the shop assistants or the general workforce who are eating there, it’s the Wrinklies spending their savings. Go into Marks any day but Saturday and Sunday, and probably the Wrinklies are in the majority. We may have free bus travel, but at the end of the travel it is we who are supporting the centre of town shops, because we have the money, and the time to browse. It is the modern generation, with a certain amount of lack of responsibility, who are allowing some children to run wild, and so having to drive others, nose to tail back and forth to school. It is not the Wrinklies who are filling the car parks of the supermarkets to overflowing on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. All this local motoring is probably the biggest carbon foot print of them all

The Wrinklies in their youth had not the expectations, nor the desires that are prevalent today, with the result that it was much easier to save, especially as it had been ground into us with the first shilling we were given by a generous auntie. I believe, as you would expect that I would, that on the whole, allowing for the fact that there are some who have no savings, I believe the majority of us rather than being a nuisance will show when we have gone that we were an essential to the economics of our families and the country, and were not half the drain we are alleged to be. I wonder if that will be the case in 20 years?

Calculating Roughly on a population of 60 million, an average life expectancy of 75 years, I look at the prospects if people don’t save. The babies, schoolchildren, advanced education, and unemployed, together amount to approximately 25%. Old age pensioners amount to 20%. So the employed, the ones providing the source of income for the country, are only 55%. Currently I suggest more than half of pensioners own their own houses, at least half have savings over and above that, so there is liquidity, and tax income from this area. If however, the level of savings drops dramatically, as it would seem logical, then in 20 years time the old age pensioners will not be a source of tax revenue, they will be a further drain on the Exchequer. The world, let alone the UK, may not be so economically buoyant, so all the immigrants will have gone back to where they came from, and the skills that we should have been building up, instead of depending upon them, will be lost to a great extent. I’m Jobe’s comforter I know, but the question is am I right or even half right, or is this just yet more rubbish? I believe that saving, stable pensions, and more general stability for the outlook for the young and even the not so young, is essential if we are to maintain the sort of standard of living that we all wish.

This is not directed at my peers, but at those who are contemplating retirement or for whom it is just over the hill. It was the current financial situation prompted these thoughts and so I will deal with the financial front first. The real problem of old age can be financial, the effect of an ever dwindling income, not necessarily caused by profligacy, often by circumstances. The difference between just enough and not enough can cause stress; finding food that is inexpensive, and perhaps having to wrap up on a cold night because the money for the electric meter has run out, and it is a choice between light and the TV, or a few minutes with the electric fire. The current financial environment is sending all the wrong messages, when English banks have been taken over by other banks in other countries, who then take over even more banks, only to discover that the last takeover was of a bank who had been particularly risky, and the whole effort is collapsing like a pack of cards; when the young see the careful savings of their parents dwindling in this way, as a result of the vast minority who have been allowed to ‘spend today and pay tomorrow’, they are likely to see little point in saving for their old age. This could be a natural reaction, especially in the light of all those people who have lost legitimate pensions at the whim of an employer. It is one that must not be allowed to become the norm, because the welfare budget in the future, and the level of poverty could be of such dimensions as to cripple the country. Pensions should be a government responsibility, contributed to by the employer and the employee, but guaranteed by the government, currently it is too easy to get out of hand

Retirement and old age are so different, and so progressively different in time, from the workaday life as to be worthy of a comment or two. All sorts of things, such as your type of work, type of play, accidents, bone breakages, and especially your psychology up until you retire, can have strong effects on your life in retirement. For example I’m convinced that taking golf seriously, and especially bracing the left side to ensure an even follow-through, caused me to have a replacement in my left hip joint. Broken collarbones, broken ribs, and breakages in limbs have all contributed to a situation where off the peg clothes no longer fit properly, and I certainly can’t afford tailor-made. I can just about pick things off the floor if I’m barefoot, that an extra inch on the heel of my shoes makes it impossible, and more than once in trying I have measured my length on the floor of a supermarket.

Your day at work was ordered by necessity, your day in retirement is totally unordered, except by necessary chores, but after the first flush, when you had done all the things that you wanted to do, or more to the point imagined you wanted to do, your life devolves into a smooth routine, where you can’t remember what day it is, they are so much alike, where a lot of the old familiar faces have disappeared, and travel becomes more tiresome than pleasurable, because you’re forced to use public transport. It is at this point a strong sense of humour, even a sense of the ridiculous is important. If times are hard, or perhaps even if they’re only boring and just a little tedious, where everything on the TV you have seen before, where you go for a necessary walk every day, but it is for exercise, not pleasure, then it is essential that you still smile. Many people in serious old age forget to smile instinctively, and what is worse they don’t realise that smiles are a reciprocal reflex action. The people you meet don’t know you very well, because those who knew you are no longer with you, and so you have to make not so much new friends, but friendly acquaintanceships, and a smile is the key to that. There is also another pitfall, and that is garrulousness. You’re on your own so much, you have thought about so many things, that when you come into company, unless you are careful, the dam on your thoughts will break, and you would be unaware that you were talking a blue streak, and all the good that your smile did will have been wasted.

One absolute essential for a happy old age is that you take, or make a point of finding and taking from your previous life, interests, call them hobbies or whatever, but ones you can still enjoy and indeed share with others, irrespective of your physical condition.

View ‘The Sterile Landscape of Old Age’ posted a year ago.