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This isn’t about a rip-off of global proportions, but to old gaffers like me it represents a fair proportion of their pension. I’m talking about Sky Television, the poor quality it offers, and the position it holds in the  life of retired people.

When I say old gaffer, I mean really old, – like ‘ought to be dead’ old – where every day is so like another you can’t remember what day of the week it is. Some of us no longer have our sight of the level that allows us to drive, and the journey that used to take about an hour, now takes three because public transport is so abysmal. Those of us who are lucky enough to have a Soph, who has managed to put up with us for more than 60 years, are not as disadvantage as those who live alone. I can only speak for my day. Being fairly fit, I can shop, garden, read a lot, go for walks along the sea, and occasionally see my relatives. At about five o’clock drink more alcohol than I should, but my liver hasn’t complained yet, and then I settle down after the evening meal to be entertained. And that’s the rub, that’s when I get frustrated because I feel that I’m being ripped off. Sky television has a nasty habit of not only putting up the prices, but introducing little specialities like, High Definition. which require either a change of the set or some other expense to enable one to see it, and then they put their best films in high-definition.

For the rest of us we find it bad enough that they are upping the charges every year, or even more often, while paying any more is an anathema, and so we have two choices, we can repeatedly look at the repeats, or we can switch off. I asked my local television guru if he could fit me a top box with one of those gadgets that records normally and also for short periods if the viewing is interrupted. He told me the system gave a lot of trouble. If he is right, and I propose to check, then Sky have the ball at their toe. It looks to me that there is an opportunity for another company to step in and give us what we think we want. The problem with Sky is that it thinks, that with all the general documentary channels, lifestyle and all the others, people have more than enough to see. What they don’t take into account is the fact that old gaffers have either been there, seen it , read about it or lived it, with the result that what we really want now is good-quality, well produced films, of any sensible age, by that I mean the sixtes on, in which the action is exciting, is possible, not totally outrageously ridiculous as to defeat reason,, and believable, where the diction is not only well delivered but can be understood, by these elderly folk with hearing aids. I am probably asking too much, because we, the oldies, only represent about 20% of the population.

Microsoft I have been operating my current Toshiba laptop for several years, happily and with delight. But in recent times I discovered that everybody wants to download everything in the name of updates on my computer, often without my knowledge. I got somebody to put the bar on this and consequently I now find that every time, and I mean every time, I switch on the computer I get Microsoft updates. Previously I was used to the way that the thing worked, it was like a reflex, and now Microsoft has changed the look of everything on my toolbar and in all sorts of other ways. I don’t know that it has helped me, as far as I’m concerned there is little difference, and the thing that I find strange is that XP has been available for years, so why, in the Devil, do they feel it necessary to keep changing it now, unless they are secretly slipping in bits of Vista, which I’m told is so bad, that some computer companies are selling new computers with XP on them rather than Vista? They say that their commercial customers are finding it difficult to talk to other computers that have not Vista, and even those with Vista are tricky enough in themselves. Have Microsoft made a Bobo? Overreach themselves in order to sell more equipment? You guess!

It seems that to save the world we have to be badgered on a daily basis with new government proposals, which will not be implemented for at least four or five years, and which are half baked anyway. They are running them up the mast. to see who salutes them as usual, but this won’t stop a few U-turns anyway. The status quo where I live, is no doubt different to a lot of other places in the Kingdom, but it consists of each householder having three bins, green, blue, and a grey black one – green, garden waste; another for cardboard, plastic and waste paper; and the third, household refuse for landfill. These bins are emptied once a fortnight and the green bin and the black bin can become abominably smelly in the meantime.

According to television, the government’s latest proposals, which may or may not be applicable to the green and blue bins, is that local authorities will have a choice of using bins with a chip which will weigh the contents and exact payment accordingly; or it may be the supply of bags which the householder purchases and fills with the bags in which they collect the food and other waste. The third system is for small bins which are included in the standard rate. It would seem that the system choice will be made by the local council and we will have no say. In view of the fact that waste disposal will inevitably be partially included in the domestic rate, any charges will have to be for excess above some given limits.

I see a number of problem issues, not least the plight of the pensioner, which I will deal with separately. Some people, pensioners included, find it essential to put their bin out at night as the bins are required by the authority to be on the kerbside at 7:30 a.m.. This alone, if weight is going to be a factor, will present an opportunity during the night for fly tippers to put their waste in other peoples’ bins, leaving them to pay the excess. By the same token if it is bags instead of bins, these can be ripped open by dogs, foxes, or malicious individuals.

Another issue is the disparity between family situations, from the wealthy husband and wife, both working, living in a flat where the gardening is done on contract, and largely eating out. These people within their rates charge will be subsidising the rest. The family consisting of a husband and wife and three children, husband and wife both working, for convenience and speed will buy a large proportion of their foodstuffs packaged, in consequence of which their contribution to both recycling and landfill will be considerably greater than the norm, and if they have to pay the extra, it will be a burden on the underprivileged. There are two other aspects worthy of consideration. One is the fact that the householder has no control over packaging which has reached. absurd proportions – huge containers for small items to draw attention to the product and serve no other purpose, or duplicated wrappings for the same reason. The other is the quantity of junk mail that we now receive. If private individuals choose, en masse, to reject food which is over-packed, and will not accept junk mail, because it will cost them money, this could induce problems for those companies involved.

Pensioners spend little, because their needs are little or they have little to spend, but are generally suffering physical deterioration. In consequence theirs will be the bins and bags set out overnight, and probably none of them should ever be charged for excess weight, but, their bins could be the ones to be topped up in the hours of darkness, or have other bags added.

I am aware that what I’m about to say cannot be applied generally, but here in the North of Ireland, and in Belfast in particular, land reclamation has been the key to not only waste disposal, but the expansion of the service areas of the city. It is true, that the land has to lie fallow for some time to overcome gases such as methane and also general settlement, and that the major properties being built there need to be piled. The area being filled is unsightly, and would be unsuitable for towns that are holiday resorts. The sites require to be those in estuaries and where the fetch, (the distance to the nearest land mass over which the prevailing winds will blow, causing wave problems), is not sufficient to cause coastal erosion.

There seems to be so much controversy today concerning education, with constant changes in how schools and examinations are run, that I decided to put my own view point.. Education comes in many forms if the school is doing its job. The children will be taught to think for themselves, to research, to know where to research, find their weaknesses and their strengths, learn to work as an individual and as part of a team, and at the end of the day make a reasonable stab for what they would be best at in later life. As one who had lost two whole years of education at the age of eight, and forever thought he was stupid, I realise just how much responsibility is placed on the shoulders of the teachers, as they, possibly more than the parents, mould the child and his or her psyche. Some teachers I have come across have such an ego that the child is only secondary to it and the laughter they can  generate in the rest of the class with snide remarks, and others have wisdom and compassion that help a lot of lame dogs over stiles.

A university education has become a status symbol, like a fast car or a fancy pair of trainers. If you can’t drive, it is not much point in having a swanky car. In the same way if you can’t complete your course, because the quality of your education at the outset was not strong enough to carry it forward, you should never have been there in the first place, and to remedy this they are now having an additional exam. The wastage is exorbitant. In my close family as a boy, I only had one relative who had been to university, and it wasn’t until I matriculated that i even thought that the university was on the horizon. As it was, with the war and becoming articled as a surveyor, a routine route to the professions in those days, the university was a non-starter I was also given an opportunity to be a trainee with Unilever to learn advertising. Prior to 1946 few people even expected to go to university, irrespective of their ability, and it was often a school teacher who told the parents of the child, she or he would be wasted without further education. In many of these cases, these same children were sent to factories, shops and other employment, because the family needed the income. In my engineering experience I generally found that the Foreman, and especially the General Foreman had as much or more knowledge of the site work than many of the engineers who had been to university. So university education is not a guarantee of excellence.

Today, teachers of the old school, of which my Sophie is one, will tell you repeatedly that without good grammar, and a good grounding in mathematics, access to university will get you nowhere, and the problem is that the schools no longer teach grammar in the way they did, nor mathematics. When shop-girls, educated to at least 16, can’t add the cost of two products without using a calculator, it is fair to say that the educational system has collapsed. When people speak on television, and I’m not excluding councillors, politicians and other people in high places, their grammar is often appalling. It is as if inverse snobbery has placed us all in a position with thick regional accents, bad language, and ignorance as an acceptable condition. However, if they don’t teach grammar, how can they expect their students to be able to write coherently, and lucidly, and learn foreign languages which are essential today with our multiracial society. It is bad enough that many of our call centres are overseas in countries where the people may speak English, but their regional accent is such that they are almost incoherent to the average Brit. Is it not therefore worse that our own people are in a similar state?

A strangely couched phrase, for a complicated subject. During WW 2, I used to laugh when I read that Montgomery said he was a simple soldier, he was about as simple as a Chubb lock. I, on the other hand, am a simple fellow, who, when he is not on top of a subject, goes back to first principles. I’m not a accountant, and I am not an economist, and perhaps that is why I don’t understand inflation. When I was a boy the pound sterling could be broken down into 960 farthings, so a small boy, at the school gate could buy any number of sweets for a farthing, At the time the average labouring wage was about three pounds a week. At the end of WW2 the average labouring wage was little, if any more, In 1950, I at 28, with a wife and two children, and a university degree, earned five pounds a week. So how was it in all those years there was so little change if any. Certainly there was no great development, the War had seen to that. Since then we have had mass production, mechanisation, stack ’em high and sell ’em cheap, imports at unbelievably, impossibly cheap prices, when you take into account transportation, and profits at either end. So I wonder why, the basic wage today, at say, £150 a week, is 50 times higher, in a lapse of 60 years, when the rise was zero in 20 years, and everything is theoretically so much cheaper. Assuming that taxes are proportional to wages, that government purchase equates to costs in the high Street, where is all this extra money going? .True, in those dark old days, we didn’t have a health service, or the plethora of viruses and germs we have today, of course a lot of us had TB, but perhaps we didn’t know enough about getting sick, we hadn’t all those germ advertisements. Only a few of the middle-class bought their own houses, the rest, and the working-class rented houses that had been handed down since Victorian times. Our pleasures, simple, by today’s standards, almost childish, kept us amused. We did have railway trains which ran on time, carried vast quantities of materials, and people into the nether reaches of the country, that’s gone, maybe its transport charge? I cannot think of a valid reason why inflation should still be with us, it should be deflation, because costs appear to have come down over the years.

This diatribe started because I was looking at the plight of the prison staff and failed to understand the reasoning that had brought it about. I assume the government, annually bases its taxation partially on the current cost of living, and sets a figure that I often think is arbitrary, as being the rise in inflation. If government employees, or any employees come to that, have their wages assessed annually by whatever company they are paid by, inflation is naturally, or should naturally be taken into account on the same basis – annually, not piecemeal. Once the rate has been set, it is an indication that the level of inflation has risen to that point, so I fail to see any justification for adjusting the wage other than by the set level and paid on a weekly or monthly basis in those moieties. I suspect it is because we have central government now, with a vast wage bill, due to overstaffing in many cases, that some crank has put forward the proposition that if the cost of living increase is provided in increments, it will save money, which of course is true, but could be construed as theft, and the wage bill would not appear so large. I can not believe that! It doesn’t make sense, we’re talking about a 1% integer. The fact that it is unreasonable in the true sense of unreasonable, contrary to reason, or even that the judges have upheld it, doesn’t alter the fact that it doesn’t make sense and is totally unfair, so there must be a more devious reason for this action. I am not necessarily on the side of the prison officers, as I don’t know enough about their situation vis a vi the employer, I just think on basic principle the whole thing is extremely odd. Perhaps it is a toehold to introduce another system of assessing and paying the increase in the cost of living – after all it would affect wages, pensions, benefit, and think what the monthly bill is for that lot!

My mother was living in a house called Glenlea in Dulwich. It was a huge house standing within its own grounds and had been taken over by whatever Department of the War Office was responsible for receiving, training and returning Dutch escapees from German occupied Holland, who wished to become saboteurs and Resistance Fighters. A cousin of ours who was a ship’s captain pre-war, and had lost a leg in an action earlier in the war, was now a Commander in the Navy, liaising with the exiled, Dutch government officials. It was uncharitably suggested by some in the family that he had been a smuggler before the war, so this might account for his close association with the Netherlands. For whatever reason, he set up this sort of spy school and then persuaded my mother to take charge as housekeeper. When I went home on leave, I had permission to stay there at Glenlea with the ‘Dutch Boys’, as she called them, and was privy to much that went on. They had a radio room where they learned to use radio transmitters and, one assumes, code books although that was never discussed. On one side of the garden was a very tall tree growing close to a wall and from the tree a thick rope hung. I understand that the routine was to climb onto the wall with the rope and then, swing like Tarzan, until fully extended, let go and thus learn the technique of landing with a parachute.

Every Sunday evening, a ritual was performed. The BBC would play, in turn, the National Anthem of each country in exile. The radio was on, the evening meal was over and we sat, smoking, drinking, all were listening. When it was the National Anthem of the Netherlands, the men would stand, some would sing, and at the end they would toast Queen Wilhelmina in unison. Over weeks the men would disappear from time to time to go on courses elsewhere and then return, all without comment. The idea was that no one should know if they had left on an operation or merely a course. In spite of these precautions many were caught as they landed in Holland. It was said later that one of the men I used to go to London with for nights out was a Nazi spy passing information. I was never able to confirm that.

I remember one of the men in particular, but not his name. He had been caught by the Nazis and had escaped. He arrived in England, either through Sweden and the North Sea, or through Europe to Spain and then London. When he arrived in England he had a large strawberry mark, on his face, yet he was so keen to get back into the fray he was prepared to undergo a skin graft. When I last saw him his face had not healed enough for him to leave our country. Many of the men had come from the Dutch East Indies.

The Doodle-Bug Sophie and I were just married, on our honeymoon and staying in a hotel almost opposite Glenlea. We would travel to the City by train,. Each night, coming home from London, as we handed in the ticket to the collector on the station at Dulwich he would say ‘Sorry you’ve got to walk!’ until this became a family saying. It was while we were at the hotel that Sophie first became acquainted with the Buzz Bomb. During one night, as she was a lighter sleeper than I, the siren must have woken her and then she heard the wavering, sometimes stuttering buzz of the bomb, sounding for all the world like a two-stroke motorbike with fuel troubles.

Unsurprisingly she woke me and then followed a conversation for which she has never really forgiven me. She has always considered that I acted boorishly, while I was only being logical. The difference between our outlooks rested with the facts that while I had become hardened to the vagaries of war in all its guises, she had only experienced a few air raids, and, being half asleep I reacted normally instead of in my new role as protector of the Soph.

“What’s that?” Soph – fearful. “It’s a Doodle-bug.” “It’s a what?” “It’s a Doodle-bug, a flying bomb.” “Oh my God!” “Don’t worry, Dear, if you can hear it you’re safe and if you can’t its too late to do anything about it.” “You’re dead?” “Yes. Go back to sleep, it’ll be all right, we get hundreds of them all the time.” “You expect me to go to sleep? Shouldn’t we be in a shelter?” Then followed the placation, the reassurance, all of which was worth being woken up for, but in spite of that I was never really forgiven.

Before replying to the comments, I would like to tell of an occurrence which has a bearing. A friend of very long standing, started life as a tea planter in Assam,, only to have to return to takeover the family business. Within a short time he had expanded what had been a fairly large grocery shop in County Down, to become a wide ranging business which included mobile shops travelling the countryside, selling them wares, while at the same time collecting eggs and other produce for sale in the shop. In due course he retired and to show his appreciation of the men working for him, he offered to those who had been driving the mobile shops, a gift of the shops fully stocked for them to take over and run themselves. I know for certain that at least one of the men refused, because he had not the confidence to do the buying necessary.

I received comments from someone called Wyn, who is puzzled by my comments about landed gentry, and feels that their wealth was at the expense of generations of tenants. In the early 30s, I spent a lot of holidays on farms and in the country, in areas where there were large estates, and I lived for a year in Sussex in 1939, mixing with the local farmers, gentlemen farmers and going to school with their children. In retrospect, while in the 30s we called all the land owners ‘landed gentry’, a generic term for people whose ancestry on specific tracts of land goes back hundreds of years, we used it for anyone who had a large estate, many of whom had become wealthy through business, and had purchased the land from choice. I don’t remember any resentment such as Wyn seems to have, on the contrary we enjoyed walking over their land, knew some of the tenants and helped at harvest time. From my own experience I saw there was a balance between the tenant farmers, the labourers on the farms, the locals and the landowner, each had its place in the system, and the system seemed to work. The point I was making in the piece I wrote, was, there were occasions when successive deaths created levels of taxation that impoverished the landowner, and in consequence the system could be disrupted. Because I had seen this happen, with a big house empty and deteriorating, it made me feel sad for the loss of a system of which I was only at the periphery, but was convinced was working. Like the driver of the mobile shop, not everyone who works on the land wishes to be his own boss and take responsibility for all that implies. A high proportion prefer to be wage earners, if possible have a tied cottage, and love the land because it’s inherent in their upbringing. Wyn states that my land has appreciated over the years through the efforts and presence of my entire community. I feel it is more likely that financial pressures enhance the value of land, and some of these have nothing to do with the land nor all the people on it, but is purely speculative. The piece I wrote was really about the problems that we might face once the government started its building programme, which in itself will enhance the value of land, and inheritance tax was a side issue.

Wyn, I’m afraid, is out of date, as I probably am. His rhetoric reminds me of the sort of things uni students were repeating from Communist leaflets at the end of WW2 when Russia was popular. There are very few Landed Gentry now, but a vast number of millionaires. Some I have come across, started humbly, but are now buying up the estates of landowners who have gone broke, either through taxes, changes in legislation or mismanagement, and the millionaires are selling off parcels of the land to other millionaires for development and a few more millions. The entertainment industry, football, television, the cinema and promotion, has created a legion of millionaires, while the poor people he is so worried about, are building a level of debt, as in the US, which will crash quite a few of these millionaires if they have invested in the Market, so once again we will be back to that old adage of the Victorian era, ‘Clogs to clogs in three generations!’

There is one rider, however, if these poor people go on spending and the market does crash, not only they will suffer, the pension funds will crash too, and other poor people will be disadvantaged as well as the spenders and the millionaires.

Don’t Believe a word they say dear!’ was something my grandmother said to me regularly. She was a tough old bird with the heart of a Raspberry Ruffle – you would have liked her. Yet, clearly not new, I still am taken off guard by the sheer level of current deception, Take waiting times for hospital services. The government’s new strategy enables it to lie through its teeth. A friend of mine, in his 80s, suffering from severe arthritis, finds sleeping in one position extremely uncomfortable. Painful. skin cancer of the ear has resulted in him only being able to lay his head on a pillow on one side, and so must sleep in one position. In January he discovered the cancer, in mid-February he was referred to the hospital, in March he was re-assessed, and told he would have to wait two months. He thought he would go private, but a waiting list of nearly 2 months made him see no point in the extra expense. He wrote to the hospital explaining his loss of sleep and asked if he could be seen earlier Instead he received his appointment for operation which was three-month hence, not two. He decided to stick it out, only to discover that the date given had again been increased for reasons unspecified, by another three weeks. Out old curiosity, I telephoned a doctor friend in Scotland and ask him what the waiting time was there, he said four weeks, rarely more. I give this to make the point that waiting times are far more protracted than the government pretends. Logically, from the day the GP has written requesting a surgical appointment, the period until that is met is the waiting time. A second assessment implies the doctor’s diagnosis is inadequate, perhaps occasionally, but putting in an additional assessment could be a ruse to enable a waiting time of a maximum of three months to be increased to seven months – in my friend’s case, seven months of painful discomfort – it clearly also adds to the overall cost. I realise the surgeon wishies to allocate times related to seriousness, but surely the doctor using a simple grading system would generally be adequate.

Untrustworthiness is prevalent in all walks of life. Bush and Blair telling lies, television quiz shows being fake, and I have it on got good authority that where a member of the panel doesn’t know the answer to a question, the filming can stop, he is given the answer, and the filming reinstated, and this is common. How often have you been short changed, or found the bill is inaccurate? There’s a growing culture that some women are buying clothes on approval, wearing them for an evening, and then returning, allegedly unsuitable, only for some other person to discover smears of makeup and the smell of antiperspirant having made a purchase. There are thousands of pensioners who have last their pension, which should have been stamped on by government legislation, on the very first occasion.

Recently I have been watching films made in the 60s, to 80s, and those made after 2000. The difference in quality, quality of sound, speech, clarity of speech, and attention to detail is incredible. A lot of the techniques induced by electronic simulation, cross-cutting in the editing room, and cost-cutting are producing films that are mudled and confusing, and I believe the public is paying for a cheaper and poorer article. I looked at two films recently, Becket made 30 years ago and a cowboy made about 2000. Becket was beautiful in every way, The cowboy was allegedly a comedy film, but if having between 30 to 40 people shot dead is comedy, without a laugh in the whole film, there must be something wrong. John Cleese was given a very weak and simple role, totally out of context, and even he was as boring as ditchwater. Incidentally, the protagonists were supposed to be using Winchester rifles, but I think the technicians rather than the producer had became overzealous because certainly the Winchesters were firing like an Uzi. I find it unsurprising that there is so much aggression among young people today, the films themselves carry aggression, vicious wounding and murder to extremes that would never have been permitted in the past. I also find today that so many films have to incorporate sexual encounters, more like rape even than lust. Deborah Kerr, Jean Simmons and many others could impart love, attraction and fulfilment in the old days, without sexual callisthenics, and nudity in the most uncomfortable surroundings such as on a grand piano or the back of a hired car. Why can the act of love not be portrayed as a gentle, loving and delicate experience, as it should be, and not a brutal attack on the senses.

We should vote with our feet instead of being ripped off, even though it might costs a little extra. If we’re not getting value for money we should complain. There must be a web site where we could all write what we feel and name and shame. The problem of course is if you are wrong, you can be pouring money into the pockets of the legal profession. On second thoughts I will just tell my friends what I think, and not risk being sued for slander.