Humbuggery!!

Sad to see that no expense has been spared with this year's continuity links on BBC2. Half a dozen warblers screeching 2, two, too, to … 2, two, too, to the tune of several traditional seasonal ditties. It isn't even half way through the month and I am already climbing the wall every time the closing credits of a program start to role. I know that the BBC are under severe budgetry constraints but how many media graduates were required to come up with the idea that simply repeating the name of the station ad infinitum would convey the spirit of Christmas.

I would suspect that by the New Year there will be viewers seeking counselling for post traumatic stress having had this wretched tootling bouncing around in their heads for weeks. Remember the days of the Soccer World Cup when the singing or humming of Nessen Dormer was banned from the workplace? These days political correctness would mean that such actions would breach employment law though I think that if colleagues are determined to exercise their right to tootle in the workplace then they should go and join the pariahs in the smoking shed.

I hope that other government agencies are also taking note of the BBC's lead and look forward to seeing similar cut backs at a time when austerity is the key word. Perhaps BoJo will send us each a party popper in place of the New Year Fireworks celebrations. Maybe the Queen could arrive for the State Opening of Parliament on a Tuk-tuk in her onesie and a paper hat. Better still, forget the speech altogether and just send an email.

Given that literacy rates are falling why do we need libraries any more? Why do we need to build more schools and hospitals? We don't have enough teachers and nurses to staff those that we already have. Maybe we can solve the overcrowding in our hospitals by installing bunk beds.

The country are not building enough new homes for us to live in, there aren't enough graves to bury us in and the pressure groups complain that there isn't enough free space for us to enjoy the countryside – Nowhere to live, nowhere to die, I am not sure what the alternative is.

I am guessing that this year's FIFA Christmas party in Switzerland will be the non-event of the year – expect a low turn out especially from the South American delegations. At least Sepp Blatter, will be able to save a few bob on Christmas cards. I don't expect he will be receiving too many in the post either (other than from Russia or Qatar), though he might just get one from the FBI which probably won't be wishing him a prosperous New Year.

Congratulations to Tim Peake on becoming the first British male astronaut, a proud claim to list on one's CV but 6 months on the Russian Space Station is a bit extreme in the Christmas avoidance stakes. Do you think sprouts taste better in space? A question for Heston Blumenthal I think. Personally my choice for avoiding the Christmas mayhem would be to be an England test cricketer. They always seem to spend the festive period in warmer climates, nice hotels playing with their mates. I am available for selection and given their erratic batting performances over recent years would consider that I still have something to offer in the middle order or even at the top of the line-up.

Congratulations also to anyone who had a bet on Leicester being top of the Premier League at Christmas, I suspect only hardened Foxes supporters would have dreamed of that. I wonder what odds you would get on Donald Trump becoming the next US President and Jeremy Corbyn the next British Prime Minister. If that prospect doesn't strike fear into your heart then you really should see a doctor (while there are any left).

Once again the press have been talking up Christmas ever since August, oblivious to the grim events that have taken place over recent months. Barely a day has passed without headlines of global economic crises, immigration concerns, corporate corruption, terrorist atrocities, global warming, Chelsea's demise or falling audience figures for the X-Factor. Never has the festive notion of peace, forgiveness and well being to all mankind been under so much threat, for that reason alone I shall be putting up the decorations, lighting a candle, sipping a toast to absent friends and hoping that a mince pie (or two) will not leave a bad taste in my mouth.

A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to one and all.

A party political broadcast on behalf of The Unelectables – or Who cares who wins?

So game is on and the election battle is off to a rip roaring yawn. The most closely fought contest since the … the last one.

The fact is that the major issues remain the same, as do the stock answers. The health service, the economy, immigration, education, housing, transport and pensions have always been the key concerns, always have been, always will be. The bottom line is that we all want utopia, there is only so much money in the pot and it all comes down to how the spoils from the pot is divided. Fundamentally there are more problems than there are solutions and it comes down to politicians to put whatever spin and window dressing on the situation they can to make their party look different from the rest. The election run in is not the for radical thinking so my guess is that we are in for another mud-slinging contest.

I would no more wish to be a politician than stick my head in a kitchen blender, far too much finger wringing, back stabbing and baby kissing for my likes, however in the spirit of contention I would like to put forward my own thoughts of what I would like to see in a manifesto. Not that I expect that my proposal would be adopted because it wouldn’t work, proposals seldom do, but at least it would be a more entertaining debate than the usual fodder.

My proposal would be to extend the day from 24 hours to 26 hours which would not only produce a variety of benefits, which I shall outline, but also go a long way to solving some of the unanswered questions to the key concerns listed above.

This may seem like a ludicrous idea though I do believe it does have a number of merits.

It would need to be a 2 hour increase so that you could spilt am and pm into whole numbers.

An additional 10 hours to the working week would bring a boost to the economy through productivity and taxes. Those in employment could see a rise in their income of up to 30%, while this will also be an opportunity to create thousands of new jobs. More money in our pockets with more time to spend it.

Those who like to party will have more time to do so, while those who claim they do not get enough sleep will get longer in bed.

There would be the equivalent of an additional 28 shopping days till Christmas, giving us more time to ponder what to buy our loved ones. If like me you struggle with this task the good news is that we will have fewer Christmases and birthdays in the future.

The extra 2 hours will give the government an opportunity to cram ever more ridiculous demands into an already overcrowded school curriculum and more time for students to complete their homework.

Students staying on longer at school should see an improvement in grades and there should be a welcome decrease in youth unemployment.

With the extra 2 hours even the most inept transport provider should be able to ensure that their buses or trains run to schedule. The potential for staggering journey times should lead to a drop in road congestion. It should also free up slots in the air reducing the need for a new runway at Heathrow Airport.

It will mean that patients will spend fewer days in hospital, freeing up much needed beds. The average pregnancy will be 3 weeks shorter than at present. The number of work days lost due to sickness will drop. Hospital waiting times will be shorter and those on daily tablets will not have to take their medication for so long, reducing the NHS drugs bill.

Those who believe that the legal system is too lenient on criminals can take heart from the fact that sentences will now be longer.

One of the biggest problems that this country faces is that there are more of us living longer lives. Increasing the length of the day addresses this problem by ensuring that life expectancy, which also helps reduce the pensions bill and the demand for home care for the elderly.

Some may view a shorter life expectancy as a negative factor but on the positive side we will not age as quickly, so no one will be worse off.

Assuming that most people will continue to eat 3 meals a day, increasing the length of the day by 2 hours should see no, or minimal, increase in our food bill which would effectively mean that the cost of our weekly shop would go down and this would reduce the effects of obesity in society.

As I see it, there are 2 downsides to this proposal, for the situation to work it would require the rest of the world to adopt the same option and extend their day. This may not be beyond the realm of possibility given that most of the other countries are in a similar financial mess and have just as few ideas of how to get out of a crisis.

The other concern is the impact it would have on nature. This again is possibly not so problematic. Climate changes would be largely unaffected but items such as bird migratory patterns and crop growth may. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your view, modern techniques have already dealt with timing issues for milk, seed and egg production. As for the birds and the flowers, well they are probably already confused by our fickle weather conditions but nature is very dynamic and adaptable so maybe the impact of any change would be minimal.

In the longer term there would be a changing of the seasons which could bring further challenges that may work in our favour. Heatwaves in November might expand the tourism market, removing the bottleneck for July and August breaks. It may also mean that our highly paid golf professionals who seem to play a disproportionate number of tournaments in exotic places where the sun always shine may find themselves on waterlogged or windswept greens in the middle of July. It would be nice to see how they get on in conditions more suited to the enthusiastic amateur.

There might be problems with future Winter Olympics being held in Summer conditions, but if they can hold the Soccer World Cup in Qatar in December then perhaps this will not be an issue. Personally I would look forward to seeing the ski jump turned into a water slide though I suspect that will never happen.

Doubtless there will be detractors who will be argue that it will mean the demise of the traditional clock. We are living in a digital age, changing the watch face should not be too difficult. There will be campaigns to keep the grand time pieces such as ‘Big Ben’ – you mean the ‘Big Ben’ at the crumbling halls of Westminster, the one that would probably disappear if parliament was ever relocated? Decimalisation saw us change from the old £-s-d to new pence yet the value of the pound did not change overnight, why should changing from 24 to 26 hour days be any more difficult?

That just leaves the housing shortage and immigration issues to be tackled, both far too complex for me to contemplate in my lifetime no matter how long the day is.

Bemused, bewildered and befuddled.

Having reached a stage in life where I have had to come to terms with hair growing in places that have hitherto served no other purpose than lend a certain symmetry to my face. It would seem that the growth of hair from ears and nostrils is inversely proportional to the recession on my scalp. This in itself has come as no great shock though I am more perplexed by the transformation on my legs. In my youth I fear I could have been mistaken for a hobbit, such was the abundance of hair on my feet and shins but just as the years have crept up on me so has the hair on my lower extremities. I guess it is one more of life's great imponderables of which there seems to be an abundance at the moment.

Britain has announced this week that it is at the forefront of technology in trialling driverless cars which probably signifies that we will be at the bottom of the league within 15 years having sold off the rights to any breakthroughs we may make to foreign competitors. This caught my eye because I am toying with the idea of replacing my car. It may be many years away but the thought of being able to drive from London to Edinburgh and sleep most of the way is quite appealing though I am not sure that I would be too confident relying on computer technology alone to control the vehicle. Perhaps it is not such a bad idea given that 70% of all road accidents are attributed at least partially to human error. To all intents and purposes there is no real need for a pilot to fly a plane, then there is not so much traffic in the air and it will be a brave airline that would wish to be the first to dispense with their flight crew.

Quite apart from the technology is the way in which this form of transport may be used. In this age of litigation the ramifications for the insurance industry would be huge. Who would be to blame? Who would you sue? By the time you have finished reading this article I would imagine that there is some embryonic business ready to target those who have been injured by these vehicles or mis-sold such insurance. It would be nice to see this technology used for public transport but considering that the technology would be designed to avoid pedestrians how would a vehicle know whether a pedestrian was an obstacle or waiting for a 'bus'?

Another story in the public eye that has perplexed me is the trial of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former chief of the International Monetary Fund and one-time potential candidate for the French Presidency who is on trial in Lille accused of helping to procure sex workers for a hotel prostitution ring. He told the court 'I am one of the world's most powerful men. Many people wanted to please me. Women have offered themselves to me ten times. It is nothing unusual to me'. What I can't understand is how he can claim that he was unaware that these girls were being paid to provide services at these parties. What did he think they were doing, tagging along for the champagne and Ferrero Rocher? They may have been there to bonk a banker but it would seem from the trial that the bankers were too busy doing what they normally do, shaft everyone else.

Someone else paying the price for abusing their power this week is Heather Cho, the daughter of Korean Air boss, Cho Yang-ho, who has been jailed for a year having forced one of the South Korean national airline jets to return to the gate at New York last December and offloaded a steward because she was unhappy with the way he served her nuts in the first class section of the plane.

She was prosecuted on charges of breaking aviation law, assault and interfering in an investigation.

There is a great deal of unease in South Korea about the power wielded by a number of family-owned and run conglomerates. It may be that the humiliation is a bigger penalty than the prison sentence.

Sadly all too often power, money and corruption seem to go hand in hand. No chance for me then, money and me are no more than passing acquaintances and even the cat ignores what little authority I claim to have.

Sorry to read that the Fire Service are bracing themselves for an epidemic of 999 calls following the release of the '50 shades of Grey', the film version of the erotic best seller. Funny that, one minute they are wanting to strike over changes to their pension package then suddenly they have no problem filling shifts when it comes to freeing couples who have had unfortunate accidents with handcuffs or vacuum cleaners.

2 other wonderful pieces of disjointed government thinking – the tories want reduce benefit payments to those who claim they are too overweight or dependent on drink/drugs to leave the house. Trying to force them into work through poverty isn't going to work, especially for those who are so overweight that the only way that they can physically get out of the house is with emergency services assistance. And in another piece of inspired thinking it has been suggested that schools should be including 'happiness classes' in their overstretched curriculum. Maybe if they put more emphasis on teaching pupils their multiplication tables in year 1 instead of by year 6 then they wouldn't be so stressed out and in need of 'happiness classes'.

While I continue to ponder the perplexities and injustices that punctuate our strange existence it is worth remembering that not every cloud has a silver lining and there will always be someone worse off than you – somebody out there is going to have to live with the knowledge that the first record they ever bought was 'Mr. Blobby'. Now that was a crime against humanity. 

 

Back to the future for the Lilleywhites

This month has simply flown by. Returning to work after 2 weeks on holiday, my deflated mood has been lifted by a book I was recommended to read before my departure to sunnier climes. The book in question is The Bromley Boys by Dave Roberts (Portico books) – available through all good online bookstores (and Amazon).

It is a story of a 15-year old boy's obsession for his local non-league football team, Bromley Football Club, a club with a proud history who in 1969/70 were enduring a season to forget.

I was particularly keen to read the book because not only did I grow up in that area but Bromley Football Club was also part of my life during that period. From the book I have learned that Dave is slightly older than me, we played football in the same local park, but probably have never met.

It was a wonderful trip down memory lane, a reminder of my forgotten youth and some of the joys of living in the borough. It was interesting to read that we both went to private schools – Dave managed to get expelled from his because of his love for Bromley Football Club – How cool is that! Theft, violence, vandalism, arson, insubordination I can understand the need for such a drastic course of action but to be expelled for being obsessed about a football club, and Bromley of all clubs, must have been a first.

The book documents the difficulty of being a fan of a non-league football team at school in great detail. It is not easy living with the taunts and jibes especially when you are at a rugby playing school and everyone around you supports one of the big league teams.

I wish I had thought of getting expelled in the same way because the 1969/70 season was a difficult time for me. I had just moved from primary to a completely different (or should I say indifferent) secondary school. All I wanted to do was play football, morning, noon and night. I'd like to think that at the age of 11 I could run faster with a ball at my feet than without it. I doubt that was true but at that age there is nothing you believe you can't do.

My new school didn't play football, they played rugby – I had been sold out by my parents, a pill I found even harder to swallow when I learned that I had been offered a scholarship to another school in the area that not only played football but had a good reputation for their cricket. From being a promising footballer at primary school I found that because of my height (or lack of it) I was allocated to the lowest tier for my ongoing rugby education, consigned to the group of carthorses, shirkers and asthmatics. Fortunately my form teacher recognised early on that there was little value to be gained from adding my paltry weight to the scrum and I was allowed to play in the backs where I at least had the opportunity of outrunning the carthorses or belting the ball as far as I could before they clattered into me.

In the book Dave talks of his teenage crush on Una Stubbs. I was a bit young to have a crush on anyone but I was very taken with Caroline Munro whose image was being plastered on giant billboards across the country in a series of posters for Lamb's Navy Rum. I seem to recall KP nuts producing a marketing pack with photos of a series of glamorous models on, I think she may have been one of them, but maybe I am mistaken. There were 24 packs of peanuts on each display and as each pack was sold it would reveal a bit more of the hidden photograph. The nuts were always on display in the tea room at Bromley and I made a point of checking to see how many packets had been sold every time I went in for my mug of tea and iced bun.

There is a section in the book about Dave's Christmas wish list which reminded me of my own experiences. Unlike Dave who proudly sported his supporters club badge on his blazer, I wanted my passage through school to be as painless as possible so had already nailed my colours to the mast as an Arsenal supporter (I chose to wear my Bromley pin on the back of my lapel, which gave one kid a nasty surprise when he tried to rough me up in the playground).

In my last year at primary school a friend had been kind enough to lend me his pair of George Best Stylo boots that had the laces at the side. They were dog's doo-dahs and I really felt that they helped my game so this was top of my wish list, along with the familiar red and white Arsenal shirt.

Come Christmas, what did I receive? A red and black striped shirt and a pair of rugby boots! It was definitely not my year. My father told me that I could play as AC Milan – but I didn't want to play as AC Milan, I didn't even know where Milan was (geography was not one of my subjects). As for the rugby boots, what was I to do with a pair of ghastly, ill-fitting lumps of rubber with laces thicker than a washing line. They were probably molded from old tyres, they certainly smelt as if they had been. Part of the Christmas surprise was not letting me know what my parents were buying me, which explains why they didn't fit me properly.

My limited understanding of the construction of a standard rugby boot is that the high sides are supposed to give padded protection to the ankle. From painful experience all I can attest to is that I lurched around the field like Coco the clown, the high sides rubbing the skin off my ankles which they were supposed to protect.

Thankfully, my feet grew very quickly and it was not long before I had outgrown these monstrosities. It took 7 more years for the rest of my body to catch up, considerably less for my ankles to heal, but I was at least given the opportunity to choose their replacement, a more sensible pair of Pele Santos football boots.

I never did get my Arsenal shirt, even though they went on to win the double in 1971. Dave Roberts now lives in the States where he writes his books and continues to follow the exploits of his beloved team via the internet. Bromley FC have never achieved the successes that they experienced in the 1940s and 50s, they remain a non-league side, subjecting their supporters to a rollercoaster of emotions that no theme park ride could ever capture.

I never played regular competitive football after leaving school, though I do still carry a pair of boots in my car in case a kick around is in the offing.

A film based on the book is in the planning which I am really looking forward to. In the meantime I am still available should Roy Hodgson wish to give me a call.

Silly Season Summary

The dumbing down of O and A level exams, the frailty of England's middle order batting, Prince William's nappy changing prowess, will we ever have sex with robots and Jeremy Paxman's beard – It can only be August and the Silly Season is upon us once again.

The annual scrutiny for the leadership of the political parties is not only the cheapest way of filling column inches for political commentators in the absence of MPs to give them sound bites but also forms a useful lead in to the conference season. Given the choice of reporting on a week of David Cameron's holiday antics or dreaming up a shortlist of likely and unlikely candidates who could fill his shoes I know which I would choose. It may be mischief making but the answer is simple, pictures of the aforementioned in Speedos and beany hat do not sell as well as speculation plotting his demise.

The Ashes series (part 1) was surprisingly good considering how inept both sides were at times. A few decent innings and good individual performances glossed over the fact that by and large there was a dearth of world class players and neither side had produced or did produce a performance of any consistency that would support their claims to be world-beaters. The weather may have played a considerable part in the outcome of 2 of the tests but the biggest disappointment to me was the influence of the technology, especially the 'snickometer'. As a traditionalist I was never in favour of the introduction of cameras and microphones to the sport. I felt it was a populist fad introduced by the television companies to spice up their presentation and still believe that before long we will have a presenter rushing on to the field of play at the fall of every wicket to capture the reaction of the batsman or bowler. Umpiring is a pretty stressful occupation without the scrutiny of cameras and slow motion replays, most of the time the umpires get the decisions right, so why make their job any harder by putting increased pressure on them. Having said that, I am in favour of having home country umpires – there are not enough elite umpires to cover all the cricket being played around the world and you can't expect them to maintain the same level of intensity when they are being called on to officiate in all forms of the game throughout the year.

I must admit that I slept a lot more soundly the night that I learned that William had been granted the honour of changing Prince George's first nappy but not quite as soundly as I did when Jeremy Paxman appeared on TV sporting a faceful of fuzz. Ordinarily this would have passed without comment but for the fact that the Newsnight presenter had pointedly made comment in a previous interview that 'No one would vote for the MP, Frank Dobson, because not only was he a politician but he had a beard.' - What an anchor! Rather than setting a trend for hirsute presenters his new addition only seems to have prompted a rash of articles on Pogonophobia (the fear of beards) – hooray for the internet and the spellchecker.

Despite having watched 'Westworld' in the cinema, the 1973 Yul Brynner sci-fi/western movie that depicted robots living alongside humans I have never given a great deal of thought to the prospect of having sex with a robot. The article that I read on this subject went on to explain how the latest models of sex toys have real hair and 'life-like' skin though there was a disclaimer saying that the toys lacked empathy. I would also hope that they come with a warning to those who have an allergy to Latex. I am no expert on robotics nor have I been intimately acquainted with any woman who has had extensive cosmetic surgery but I don't know of any other material that would feel 'skin-like' even if it does smell like a pair of old wellies. I think it unlikely that such a robot will ever feature on my Christmas list, the eyes alone would be enough to freak me out – I had nightmares when Palitoy brought out the Action Man with 'Eagle-eyes'. I even found the clockwork robot with the flashing red eyes that I received for my 7^th birthday disturbing. Then there is the issue of where would you put the batteries? Maybe there would be different models, different shapes and nationalities and libraries where you could hire them out – Perhaps they could be slot machines? I think that is enough on this subject – I remember how 'Westworld' ended; we have enough problems coping with our own intelligence let alone start picking fights with artificial intelligence and life forms.

The perennial argument over educational achievement shows no sign of decline. On the one hand politicians and educationalists want to see the number of pupils reaching higher grades increasing year by year and on the other there are those clamouring for subjects to be more appropriate to the workplace and exams to be more rigorous. With 25% of 16 to 24 year-olds unemployed or struggling to find work there has to be something radically wrong with system. I don't think the youth of today are any less ambitious than previous generations, nor do I believe that they are any more stupid. It is very hard to remain positive when so many doors are being closed in your face, equally there are only so many vacancies for forensic scientists, media consultants, psychologists and entertainers. The powers that be may continue to work their magic with smoke and mirrors, calling on the accountants to manipulate the figures in whichever direction it suits, the fact remains youth unemployment is scandalously high, not enough is being done to tackle it and we are storing up a time bomb for the future which extends far beyond the classroom.

As another August draws to a close we can set aside the silliness for another year and get back to the comparative normality of everyday life, whatever that is.

Intellipets

One of the most useless pieces of information to emerge this week has been the finding that a 2 day old chicken is more intelligent than an average 5 year old. Having had considerably more chicken friends than I did humans at the age of 5 I would probably have concur that they were pretty intelligent. Certainly I could not jump a 6 foot fence, trot off up the kitchen path and have a nose around the kitchen as one of the family's brood was given to doing from time to time. I'm sure my mother welcomed the company though I'm equally certain that, had my father been around at the time, the adventurous, feathered friend would have had received an early introduction to the oven.

It has taken Christine Nicol, Professor of Animal Welfare at Bristol University 20 years of research to come to this startling conclusion. Surely, anyone who has ever witnessed the carnage on the streets of Newcastle any Friday night would take less than 30 seconds to deduce that a 2 day old chick is considerably more intelligent than most humans in their early 20s.

According to her research hens can navigate using the sun by the age of 2 weeks. They also exhibit skills including numeracy, self-control and structural engineering from a couple of hours old – skills that it takes a human several years to learn.

Come on – get a life! No wonder so many people want to go to university. Maybe some kind benefactor would care to sponsor my 10 year program to study the origins and potential uses of ear wax.

Despite growing up with a veritable menagerie of pets I would no more wish to have a pet as an adult than rollerskate to Mars. There is something distinctly unnerving about watching supposedly intelligent human beings repeatedly saying “who's a clever boy then” to their pampered pooch who has mastered the art of lifting a paw (to shake hands?) retrieving a stick or barking what may vaguely pass as an aberration of the word “sausages”. You could argue that many animals enhanced sense of smell and/or hearing is a superior form of intelligence though it would take more than the ability to lick your own genitalia or crawl through a cat flap barely larger than your head to convince me that a pet was MENSA material. My neighbour's dog barks continuously from 5.30 in the morning until 11.30 at night without any prompting, does that mean he can tell the time or is it simply that he only knows how to make a noise (a vain attempt to attract the attention of an absent owner).

Last year a dog act won Britain's Got Talent - What a sad indictment of the state of the nation and a slap in the face for those entertainers who spend years traveling around the circuit with their act trying to make a living.

If dogs are so clever why do they spend so much time chasing the postman or their own backside? They are not beating their tails in time with Vivaldi's '4 Seasons' they are simply wagging their tail because they are pleased to see you. Dog's do not sing, they howl because they find a particular sound irritating. Get over it, your pet is not a music prodigy.

The British are depicted as a nation of dog lovers so why does the term 'I've been working like a dog' conjure up an image of ill-treatment. The saying 'you pay peanuts, you get monkeys' will be familiar to many employees, it is not meant to be a compliment to monkeys, the inference being that they are not the brightest beasts in the jungle.

The way that many owners fawn over their pets is incomprehensible to me. Back in the days when I used to visit many of my clients at their homes there were certain people that I tried to avoid, not because I was afraid of their pet but simply because of the way that either the pet or the client behaved. 

I found it very difficult to conduct a sensible conversation with someone who was jumping up or down from his seat every 5 minutes to go to the kitchen to let their dog or cat  into or out of the house. Another distraction was having a couple of demented budgerigars flying around the living room while I was trying to explain an important point to a client. There was a feeling of trepidation when walking into a living room that followed a ticking off I once received for inadvertently sitting in 'Rover's favourite TV chair'. It wasn't as if there was a great deal of choice, there were only 2 seats in the room and the client was sitting in one of them. At least I did not sit on Rover, though I did get the impression that he was not overly keen on my presence in the house. I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that he was in charge of the remote control. I won't even go into the kind of programmes I expect that they watched together.

I have sat listening to clients talking lovingly about 'Roger', 'Arthur', 'Lily' or 'Little Elsie' being at the hairdressers anticipating at any moment to be introduced to a relative I was unaware of, only to discover them to be an old English sheepdog or something akin.

Whenever a client started a conversation about their beloved animal 'being human and not knowing that they are a dog / cat / rabbit / goldfish or whatever' I knew it was time for me to pack my bag and head for the exit. I knew that my task was doomed to fail and from that point on I might as well have been speaking to a sponge. Clearly they had already taken the bonding process too far. Your pet may display a few simple human traits, you may feel a certain empathy towards them, you may even consider them to be part of the family but there is no reason to go soft in the head about it.

I remember a solicitor friend of mine telling me that in one occasion he had to brief one of his clients at his home and found it incredibly difficult to concentrate because he had converted an elaborately carved 1930's style dining table into a chicken coop and there were a couple of chickens clucking throughout the interview. I don't suppose they threw to many dinner parties.

Scientists would argue that chimpanzees are intelligent. OK, they may be able to learn a few tricks by rote, just like a toddler. You can dress them up in kiddies clothes so that they look cute like a toddler but that is about as far as it goes. So they put a chimp into space - yes, they blasted him into space in a capsule, he was not flying the rocket himself.

If I was to make any acknowledgement of intelligence in animals it would probably have to be cats. Not that I particularly like them but at least I can understand what makes them tick. With the possible exception of killing the occasional rodent and making half-decent draft-excluders what purpose do they fill in life? If they are not sleeping then they are eating. They can normally be found lying in the sun or the warmest place in the house and don't like getting wet. They are natural scavengers and rely on cunning to ensure that they are fed and watered properly. There is a logic to their thinking but is this intelligence?

Friends have told me that horses are intelligent. Jockeys tell TV pundits that their mounts 'know their way around a particular course', 'know when to lengthen their stride', 'are natural jumpers' or 'can sense when it is a big race' – it has nothing to do with them being prodded in their sides by the heel of a boot or slapped with a crop then?

Humans and animals have an inbuilt awareness of fear and pain that are essential tools for self-preservation. Most animals can sense when a person is apprehensive about them, they are also able to sense when their life may be in danger. Some animals are capable of displaying affection which may be perceived in a number of different ways, this is not intelligence, it is nature.

My father's advice was never to trust anything that had more legs than you, or was that his betting advice? 

 

In the unlikely event that I was given the opportunity to return to this planet as an animal which animal would I choose? I don't really know. I'm not sure that I would wish to return as a domestic animal. Wild animals are more appealing though if they don't have a load of predators they are probably on the endangered species list. I guess it would have to be a dolphin but I am in no hurry to exchange places.

Hug a hoodie?

Dear Dave,

'Hug a hoodie' was an ill-conceived soundbite and boy, has it come back to bite you. As for the 'Big S' – less 'Big Society', more 'Big Shi2'. Your fingers are not so much on the pulse but in your ears.

An alien visiting Britain for the first time last week could be forgiven the confusion, given the bedlam that has taken place up and down the country. Yet in amongst the violence, the thuggery and the looting there was an oasis of calm that allowed a cricket match to take place in a city that had been besmirched by gangs of youths rampaging through the streets barely 24 hours before.

It reminded me of the scenes of the orchestra playing on while the Titanic was sinking.

Undoubtedly the aliens have as much understanding of the rules of cricket as anyone has as to why carnage should suddenly erupt on the streets.

It is gratifying to see the way in which some of the communities have responded, pulling together to clear up the wreckage and protect their community, but this in itself opens up another series of questions - how far does it go before it descends into vigilanteeism? So far no government has properly addressed the extent to which an individual can protect their own property. Equally, the police whose job it is to protect the public are increasingly being placed in positions where they are reluctant to carry out their duties for fear of prosecution for their own actions.

I would like to think that the majority of people living in this country are honest and law-abiding, if that is not the case then we may as well all pop off and join the aliens. Within any community there will always be a minority of individuals who are hell bent on mindless thuggery for any reason.

There have been as many reasons given for the disturbances as there have been solutions put forward. A lot of attention has been focused on the young, who make up the larger part of those who have been arrested for the various offences.

Undoubtedly there are issues that need to be addressed, and quickly, but this has nothing to do with protest and youth culture. I would not wish to be a teenager these days, with high youth unemployment, a high cost of living, intolerable peer pressure and poor prospects of getting onto the housing ladder. It is very difficult to accept having so many doors shut in your face at a time when most youngsters are trying to work out in their heads just what type of person they are or would like to be. It doesn't help when you see fat-cat bankers being rewarded for screwing up the economy and politicians fiddling their expenses.

Some of the excuses given by numerous perpetrators have been as disgusting as their actions. “We showed the rich and the police that we could do what we like;” “People should show us more respect”. When someone travels from Winchester to Manchester to go on a looting spree it doesn't sound like a cry for help from someone stuck in the poverty trap. So many excuses given to try and justify the mayhem; what I found particularly frustrating was that none of the interviewers ever asked any of the perpetrators how they would have felt if they had been the one who had been beaten up or had their property stolen.

One particularly smug looter claimed that they were not making a stand against society because 'they were only attacking the rich shops, they left the butchers and the grocers alone because they were needed by the people' – Sorry, they were pillaging PC World, Phones4U, JB Sports, Debenhams, the jewellers and the chemists because these places had high worth goods that were more desirable and easier to sell. If the market for fondant fancies was as large as it is for hookey Rolex then perhaps the bakers would have been ransacked.

It is not just the young who feel aggrieved, there are millions of people of all ages who are struggling to make ends meet. They too feel frustrated, they too have been promised things in life that have not materialised. Theft, vandalism, the wanton destruction of property or giving someone a beating solves nothing.

This is not a class struggle because there is no such thing. There will always be those 'who have' and those 'who have not'. In an utopian society everyone would be equal, though there would always be those who are more equal than others.

People talk about gang crime and gang culture – my dad was in a gang in his late teens. No one wanted to be in the gang and everyone tried to get out of it. He spent his formative years cooped up in a filthy room with a group of lads with no money, little food and very little to do. His incarceration was at the behest of Adolf Hitler and you could say he was slightly more than frustrated by his position.

Similarly, my grandfather never mentioned his youth, he did have a few books about the Great War, though they seldom came out and he never discussed any of his teenage years with anyone. Stories he recounted to me seemed to stop at around the age of 12 and pick up again when he was in his mid-20s.

Fortunately my own youth was not beset by global conflict, there were jobs but you always had to start at the bottom and it could take years to work your way up. By the time you reached your 20s you realised that the opportunities of advancement were largely reliant on someone leaving, retiring or dropping dead. It still wasn't easy to find your place in society, I guess we all strived to advance our position in life but we were not under the pressure that is ever present these days. The mantra of the day, if there was one, was 'if you worked hard, things would get better, eventually'. Nowadays from an early age kids are force-fed this ideal of 'get a degree and a £40K+ job is your for the taking'. Everything is geared towards instant gratification, immediate results, immediate reward – I want it, I need it, I must have it – NOW.

Perhaps the fact that there were no credit cards when I was growing up meant that there was less pressure on individuals. If you needed something you saved for it, bought it cash and savoured the experience. Today it is too easy to make impulse purchases, slap it on a credit card and grow bored with your purchase within days.

I struggle to comprehend how rioters/looters can claim that they acted the way they did out of boredom. I never had a computer, an ipod, a playstation, fancy clothes or my own TV when I was growing up. My first car was nearly 20 years old and I had to pay for my own driving lessons. What little money I could set aside was spent doing up the car. I never felt any compulsion to steal, to set fire to or destroy anything, nor beat some innocent bystander to a pulp for the hell of it. I was not bored, there was always something I could do – sport, read, listen to the radio or talk with friends.

Was I any different from anyone else of my age – I don't think so. We all have childhood dreams, I still do, but I recognise them as what they are – dreams. Dreams as large as our imaginations could take us. We all start out with dreams, in my case it was motor bikes and fast cars. My bedroom was bedecked with posters of massive amounts of chrome and metal yet I have never ventured beyond the realm of a sensible family car, and probably never will do. As I grew older so the realisation of my dreams drifted from aspirational towards achievable. No one starts out in life with posters of a rusting Ford Fiesta or The Red Lion Sunday League 4^th XI plastered on their wall.

Today the margins of reality and the virtual world seem all too often blurred. In my virtual world I was a sporting god, my Norton superbike drew admiring glances in the street and gorgeous women were constantly beating a path to my door, but there the fantasies ended. I was never destined for greatness in any category, though I still can dream of winning the Ashes with the last ball of the game turning at right-angles to remove a batsman's middle stump.

Sadly, using one's imagination has long since been dropped from the curriculum, we have computers to do that for us these days. If we were to harbour any grandiose ideas of becoming a professional sportsman / musician / investment banker or whatever others are obliged to accept this ideal without question, irrespective of the individual's aptitude or ability. I would not be so churlish as to knock a person for having a dream but there is a lot of effort that goes into every achievement before they reach the top; it seems to me that in this instant, consumer-driven, throw-away society that we live in there is an expectation that people can make the transition from novice to top of the tree without breaking stride. It seems to me that nowadays there are too many knockers, not enough people offering encouragement and fewer people prepared to put in the hard work necessary to achieve their goals.

When people are spoon-fed the belief that this is 'Easy Street' from an early age it is understandable that disillusionment and resentment will occur as reality kicks in and the realisation dawns that life is never that simple.

I would like to believe that all people are intrinsically good spirited; no one is born bad, though sometimes circumstances mean that individuals will stray. Most people go about their lives in a quiet and unassuming way. They will work hard and pursue their dreams, often subconsciously, in an orderly way. The human spirit is capable of great things, we all achieve some of our goals but few achieve all of their goals. The important thing is to recognise and celebrate our achievements no matter how small. If you set yourself a massive target then it may appear to be unachievable but if you then break that target into a series of stages then the task becomes a lot less daunting.

As far as I can make out man has remained pretty much the same since creation. The primary needs of food, sleep, somewhere to live, heat, love, communication and appreciation have not changed throughout history. That being the case then it must be something else that has changed which has fuelled the disrest that has led to this breakdown of law and order.

Growing up, food formed a high percentage of a family's expenditure, unemployment was low, housing affordable and transport relatively cheap. Only about 10% of school leavers went on to university and it was not that difficult for schoolleavers to find work. The country still had a manufacturing base and a vibrant engineering sector. There were apprenticeships and jobs in banking and the public sector were considered to be jobs for life. Vocational jobs in teaching, nursing and the police were highly respected and saught after. Today you would think twice before opting to enter any of these professions. Long hours, poor morale, lack of respect and unfathomable bureaucracy have seen a steady exodus of long serving staff frustrated at no longer being able to carry out the core work that first attracted them to the job.

The corporate view has changed dramatically over the years, privatisations have changed the perception of the way we do business. It used to be acceptable for companies to take 'the long view', not any more. You can't 'build' a business any more, everything is geared towards instant results. Shareholders expect to see healthy returns year on year – How can this be sustainable in an climate where there are finite resources and so many intangibles? Life is all about investing for the future, as individuals we do this by gaining an education, planning our lives and saving for the future. The rush to produce growth has seen not only employers but the country as a whole stop their investment in the future and we are now seeing the reaction to this shortsightedness. It is not by chance that fuel prices and transport costs have rocketed over the past few years, it is because the companies have failed to invest in maintaining the infrastructure that supports the network.The lack of investment in affordable housing has meant that property prices are now beyond the reach of so many.

What opportunities do schoolleavers have these days? Not a lot. The engineering and manufacturing skills base has gone, the public sector faces a massive reduction in staff in an effort to reduce costs, employers are no longer prepared to pay for training and the school system is not producing students with the qualifications needed by employers. Jobs have been moved overseas in an effort to reduce costs and some sectors have been decimated by foreign competition.

It is understandable that so many schoolleavers now want to go on to university because there is precious little else for them to do. To what extent tuition fees will reduce this number only time will tell. Even low skilled work is difficult to find since many employers now choose to employ part-time staff simply because the employee does not then have the same protection afforded to full-time employees. It is not unusual for someone to have 3 or 4 part-time jobs these days, but this is no way to build a career.

The country cannot afford to have 1 million+ unemployed people between the ages of 16 and 24, especially when we have an aging population and there will be an expectation of experienced people to replace these staff as and when they retire.

I can only speak for the short period time that I have inhabited this planet. Maybe my views have become jaded with age, maybe my expectations too have risen, though I concede that there have been many changes during my lifetime, some for the good, some for the bad. Perhaps this is the time for society to take stock of the situation and decide what type of society we want to be in the future.

Down with Skool

I can only assume that the little darlings are once more ensconced in their pillars of learning judging by the increased amount of traffic that greets this travel weary commuter each morning.

Tired with the incessant babble of John Humphries and crew on Radio 4 I opted to amuse myself while sandwiched between 2 over-sized rugrat transporters in a queue that I knew to be well over 3 miles, with little sign of movement, by challenging myself to recall what I regret most about my own school days.

In modern parlance you could say that I was scholastically challenged, in so far that my regular attendance at a large gothic monstrosity that formed the centrepiece of an otherwise non-descript secondary establishment of learning presented a greater challenge to the teaching staff than those fellow pupils who chose to ease their workload through lengthy periods of truancy.

These days it would appear that simply attending a class on a regular basis guarantees you at least a C grade at GCSE. In my days your reward was a warm classroom (heating system permitting) or 6 of the best if you opted not to put in an appearance for whichever class was thrust upon you.

My regrets, I could only come up with three, are:

That the so called ‘hardnuts’, who regularly threatened retribution on the school for putting them through so much pain, never, to my knowledge, even attempted to inflict the damage to the school buildings that was the focus of their wrath.

The principle aim of the school, as was so often pointed out by the governors, was to produce ‘well rounded individuals, ready and able to fit into a modern world’. To this extent the curriculum was remarkably bland and over-achievers in one subject would be given additional tasks in their weakest subject to compensate for their zealous enthusiasm. My regret is that if it was truly their intention to produce well-rounded individuals why did they opt to bar 50% of the species from sharing the benefits of their insightful goals?

It is not that I had anything against my fellow students but the concept of an all male environment seemed as alien then as it does now. Is it any wonder that there is so much misunderstanding between the sexes when there is so little interaction between them during our formative years. Growing up in a neighbourhood with an average age of 57 (the locality had a high density of nursing and care homes) I was well into my teens before I even realised that there were such creatures as girls. Up until then I feared that women were deposited on this earth in their 40’s and whisked away in their 80’s, I guess it never crossed my mind to think how they got here. All I knew was that you hardly ever saw any girls in the park and I didn’t really view my sister as a girl since it often fell upon her to make up the numbers when a group of us met up for an impromptu kick around.

My third regret is symptomatic of the era in which I grew up. As someone who enjoys listening to music it is to my eternal shame that I have to admit to growing up in the 70’s, a period that brought us the ‘concept album’, lengthy instrumental solos, dodgy fashion, heavy metal, even heavier make-up, punk and glam rock. There were a group of ‘choristers’ within the school, who shall remain nameless for their own protection, who would regularly meet early each morning to test the acoustics of the vaulted playground. 4 guys, wailing like banshees in falsetto homage to Lol Crème of 10cc and Thijs van Leer from Focus. Such pretentious tunes as ‘Donna’ and ‘Sylvia’ were never destined to be classics, and thankfully no one has thought to revive them. The fact that I can remember these particular tracks is largely due to the images that still haunt me of these individuals letting rip at full volume, in all weathers at 7.30 in the morning.

A few of my colleagues who had more liberal parents went so far as sporting the look perpetuated by icons of the day, in particular Marc Bolan, David Bowie and Rod Stewart. I trust these individuals are suitably proud of their family photo albums. Thankfully there are no dubious perms, mullets or eye-liner in mine. (not that I would admit it even if there was).

On one occasion I recall a cricket match where the 6th form common room was situated within earshot of the playing fields and our teacher was forced to call a series of no balls to one of our bowlers who was struggling to maintain composure since most of the team were ‘head banging’ in unison to a particular LP during his run up. The volume of the music would seem to rise with each delivery and drop as the bowler stomped back to his bowling mark, shaking with mirth. Our teacher did complain to his counterpart from the opposition, umpiring at square leg that this was hardly a sporting gesture, to which the young teacher replied that the behaviour of the 6th form was beyond his jurisdiction. His plaintive cries to the amassed group of 6th formers were met with signals of incomprehension, due to the volume of the music. (Secretly, I believe he was a Yes fan and was enjoying the distraction of the music, which prolonged the thumping his charges were being given by the Under-13s).

I would like to think that my taste in music has improved (or should that be mellowed) over the years, as has my hearing. It is a wonder my ears never bled during these outbursts though the recollection of these performances still send a shiver down my spine.

Does anyone use Tippex any more?

While correcting my 12 year old neice's grammar on an exceedingly boring essay she was to submit for a school project on the flora and fauna of the Amazonian rain forests I could not help feeling that the present generation are missing out on yet another of the delights of a bygone age - Tippex. For many a pen or pencil is simply an implement for extracting the accumulated wax from one's ear.

I hate to think how many gallons of Tippex I used throughout my school years. All those notes and essays that I would need to alter because of a glaring mistake, a change of heart or a fresh idea that had entered my head. I often wondered if the manufacturer would not have been better served had they introduced an industrial size bottle of the correcting fluid but, given the speed with which the fluid hardened this probably was not such a great idea. Was I actually making more mistakes than I needed to? I don't know. Certainly there was part of me that rose to the challenge of gaining maximum use from each bottle before it turned to concrete.

Once I had left school and entered the vast employment pool I was aware that this was a completely different ballgame. The whole population must have been just as incompetent as me since 2 entire shelves of the stationery cupboard were given over to these small white bottles. Not only was the fluid available in white but there were other colours. For some reason there was only ever a very small supply of the thinner that was used to prolong the life of each bottle. You would have thought it to be the other way around since I usually managed to get through at least 3 bottles of thinners with each bottle of the fluid. I guessed it may have been a Health and Safety issue, thinner being flammable as it is. I thought that the young girl tasked with manning the stationery cupboard was naturally cross-eyed and simply elated with the joy of her work as Stationery Officer / Filing Clerk (grade 1) - it never crossed my mind that she was as high as a kite on most days from sniffing thinners. Maybe I am naturally naive but the only solvent abuse I was aware of in my school days was pouring colourless glue on some nerd's seat.

I must admit that I too am now more likely to reach for my keyboard than I am a pen but I do miss the messiness of eradicating one's errors with copious amounts of white, or other pastel shades of fluid. My fingers used to be permanently caked in the stuff, bringing out my rebellious streak - my parents having banned me from wearing nail polish. So much of the time would be spent rushing to put thoughts down on paper that a pause to correct a mistake was often a welcome distraction to reflect on what you had just written.