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on fear of adult life
A few months back the Berkshire Belle read me something about youngsters, those who had not long left school, being on the dole because they were afraid of going to work, or of having to be in the workplace. It seemed astonishing at the time. Then yesterday we were watching a recorded TV programme an someone around thirty was expressing the fear of moving from teenager into adult life. It is easy to just brand these people, ten years or so apart in age, as snowflakes, but there is a deeper issue in trying to understand why they should feel that way.
Society has changed a lot in the years since I was at the point of moving from school to full-time work. There just was no question that we would leave school and go to work. Was it wrong that we were conditioned that way? I don’t think so. Most of us had part time jobs of some sort outside of school hours: Paper rounds, shop jobs and so on. I started my first job aged ten, working Saturday mornings at the village butcher. Later I had two paper rounds, one evening and one on Sunday mornings, pumped petrol, stocked supermarket shelves and did gardening jobs. Why? Because I earned money.
It was as simple as that. I understood that to live I needed funds. Yes, there was a choice of turning to a life of crime, but I was bought up differently, so the only choice was to exchange my mind and body for wages. If you worked, then people paid you, and, if you were not earning enough, you got an evening job.
And so I come from a different time, but where did we go wrong? What have we done to change society to the point where young people are afraid to join the adult world and go to work? I know that the workplace can be a scary place, and, whilst the extreme initiations that some had to go through, especially on apprenticeships, are a thing of the past, these days all you have to do is to meet expectations.
I recognise the problem, but don’t understand it. Going to work is one way to contribute to society, sitting at home collecting benefits is a drain on society. We need to to something about this issue to support young people at home and at school so that they can move into adulthood with some confidence. It is society’s problem, and if it is not solved we will implode.
on three score years and ten, plus two
It’s nearly two years since I hit three score years and ten, (Psalms, 90.10 KJV) and I’ve twice almost failed to add much to that score, with the Grim Reaper making further attempts to take me downstairs. Again he went away empty handed, and I am grateful to my medical teams for pulling me through from his grasp this year and last as their colleagues did back in 2012.
It’s good to be alive for the time being as I have the ambition to outlive the Berkshire Belle and fulfil the promise I made not to leave her. My medical teams commented that the will to live was strong in me and was a factor in my rapid recovery. So, another bullet dodged and I get to lurk around the planet for a bit longer.
My body tells me several times a day that I am getting on a bit. There are some things that I just can’t do anymore and my mind isn’t quite as sharp, although I can still run rings around a fair few of the people that I have to interact with. I am still reasonably fit, walking 6 miles or so most days of the week and I still have the hunger to learn that has been with me since my days in short trousers. Maybe time has not taken too much of a toll so far
One of the things that you encounter through life is obsolescence; cars, TVs, ‘fridges, ‘phones, computers, tablets and more. They come and they go. Some are replaced as soon as a newer model comes along, others soldier on, but performance suffers and maintenance needs get higher. A bit like humans, really.
Simple maths show that I don’t have too much longer to go. Ten years, twenty years? I might make 100, but I really don’t fancy being around that long. One of my mothers-in-law had a saying, “I’m of this world, but I’m not in it”. I understand what she meant now, for the world I live in is not one that I particularly enjoy.
I am becoming more insular. I used to be an avid follower of current affairs and would read at least one newspaper every day from cover to cover (when I was travelling I would bag a copy of every paper, English language, that the hotel had to offer and would get through most of them. Reading the same news in, say, the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Mirror gave breadth to any storyline, and I could come to an informed conclusion of my own. On a transatlantic flight comparing international news across The Times and the New York Times was also interesting.
These days I read very little of any paper, and if browsing the web, rarely get behind headlines. I do have some favourite columnists on both sides of the Atlantic, but, with not that much time left on the planet I choose to shut out things that annoy or upset me. I can’t be bothered anymore, and spend my time with my books and music. I don’t watch much TV either as it seems to have lost the ability to produce programmes with style and wit. It seems that modern audiences will loose interest if there is no example of violence or sex every two minutes. I was watching a drama programme made in 1969 the other say and the two featured characters spoke about four words in a two minute sequence. It worked, but I don’t see anything like that these days.
It’s another example of my obsolescence, and I do not care. I am happy in a world that is smaller than the one that I used to inhabit.
on democracy
I’ll start by saying that I did vote in the recent UK general election, and my vote did not go to the lot who won. I am disappointed with the outcome, but it is what it is. We have a system in this country, it isn’t perfect, but it is better than what goes on in some countries around the world.
This time around it is reported that about 60% of eligible voters expressed a preference, although The Guardian was quoting as low as 52% (that could have been one of their legendary misprints), but, taking the higher figure, the current government was elected by around a third of those who voted, so about 20% of those who were able to vote on such things. Hardly a triumph, more a show of apathy.
My Leftie friends have had a tendency to shout Not in my Name over every vote that they have lost in recent years, but I don’t see it that way. We have a system of first past the post, so one side will win and the others will lose. It has its detractors, but it’s what we have.
One alternative would be proportional representation, but that has been shown to lead to stagnation and, for me, it would be a disaster for the country because we would be unable to get back out of it short of a revolution. As much as I think that the new Labour government will also be a disaster, at least we get a chance to be shot of them in five years.
I don’t agree that voting should be compulsory as it is in Australia, amongst other countries. If you are not interested, but are made to do it, then you’ll probably stick your cross anywhere and that isn’t going to help. Democracy should be about involvement, and that is where we are failing.
Giving the vote to 16 year olds is not a good idea either, unless you are a Leftie, because most kids will vote left if given the chance. I would have done back in the second half of the Sixties when I was full of idealism, but lacking any sort of realism.
We still have, if only just, a decent society in this country. Change is always with us and the last twenty five years or so have seen a massive change with the last Labour government’s failed attempts at social engineering. I don’t like the country that we have now, but the system of democracy that we have does, at least, give people a say. Don’t let’s lose that.
on developing strategy
I see more and more focus on developing strategy through the likes of spreadsheets and data analysis, with even use of AI, not as a tool per se, but allowing it to do the analysis and produce the outline strategy. This gives me cause for concern.
There is far more data available now that at any time in my working life, but what does any of it mean? I see a lot of market research surveys and almost all of them are only ever going to generate gibberish, and some poor sap is not only paying to have that gibberish accumulated, but is also, because they have paid for it, probably going to waste more though acting on it.
The best data is that which is captured as part of doing the job, for example, in a retail environment, scanning product through the till. The basic act of selling product will tell you how many you sell, how much you earned and will drive your stock replenishment systems. This can be extended back into the supplier’s systems if required, so that they can gear production and the purchase of raw materials from that data.
All good stuff, and you can, if your people are clever enough, to factor in seasonal trends and things like that within the algorithms that drive the programme. But, for me, the problem is that here we are still talking about the fact that the computer is doing what we tell it to – we still need human intervention.
Strategy still need to be decided by people. Sure, they can use data provided by the computer, but the end decisions should be made by people who know what they are doing. It is an important skill, it comes from experience and it is one that we can ill afford to lose. Computers will get better as they learn from us, but should they ever take over? Not as far as I am concerned.
Human decisions are not always reliable; we take longer to evaluate information and we do bring emotional aspects into the decision, but we do have the ability to see and feel the environment in which the decisions will be enacted. Strategy needs tactics, and that is where humans are still much better at reacting to the changing circumstances that will always prevail.
Every business, or organisation, should have a strategic plan, but there is still a tendency for departments within the business to have their own strategies. To a degree I can accept these, but all too often the departmental “strategies” seem to have no linkage to the overall one. They should be tactical plans in my view, and non the ego trips that so many look like. I’ve even seen departmental strategies that conflict with the overall aims of the organisation.
Strategies don’t need to be complex. What are you going to do, by when and with what resources is a good starting point. It needs to be clear so that people can understand it, and if it is people that have developed it, then they should have no problems.
on sports
I watch almost no sports these days, I haven’t been to a sporting event for around twenty five years and don’t watch more than the odd highlight on TV, usually via my tablet. I just have no interest anymore.
I used to go to watch motor racing, football and cricket at amateur and professional levels. I played the latter two sports at local club level and marshalled at motor sport events. These were things that gave me great joy, but sport, in all forms, has changed and, in doing so, they have moved away from me.
At the time of writing this the Olympics are about to start and these would have been something that I would have followed on TV and in the printed media with enthusiasm. Not all of the events, but a good few, and all of these would be compulsory discussion topics the next day at work. If anyone in the office talks to me about the Olympics next week I won’t have the faintest ideal what they are talking about.
I used to enjoy watching skill, and do not need constant excitement. Test cricket used to be a particular favourite, something that I could sit amongst spectators from both sides and we could chat about what we were watching, applauding good play regardless of which side it was. I am old enough to remember when football crowds were not segregated either, and, on afternoons when I wasn’t playing, I would often take a ride on the train to watch West Ham. I wasn’t a fan of the team as such, but it was a cheap afternoon out to see a couple of top teams play. I never felt threatened, even on the Saturday I went to and East vs West London derby to see the Hammers play QPR.
Later, after marrying and moving home I became a regular at Portman Road whenever Ipswich were playing at home and then, once I began travelling at work, would try and get to see an evening game wherever I was staying but, by then, segregation of crowds had been introduced, and then all seater stadiums had become the rule. Football is not a game to see sitting down, at least not for me.
It is more than twenty five years since I last attended a sporting event, so what went wrong? Football became all seater and teams became full of overseas players. It is a more athletic game now, but I just do not enjoy watching people being paid a fortune to fall over and roll about feigning agony. Cricket has sold its soul to the short game and boorish spectator behaviour. Tennis I stopped watching when Wimbledon failed to chuck the oafish John McEnroe out and the game let people grunt loudly every time they hit the ball.
As for my big love, motor sport, I could write a couple of blogs, but it just isn’t the sport that so enthralled me from my schoolboy days through to middle age.
Sport has become more about entertainment than competition. It is looking for an audience that does not include me, and money is at the root of it all. Do I miss it? Not really, for I have other things in my life now. Occasionally I will find some film clip on the internet of a sporting event from the fifties, sixties or seventies and will enjoy the nostalgia, but modern sport belongs to a modern audience. It’s not for me.
on the changing of times
As with most musicians that I like I don’t slavishly follow all of their catalogue, and Bob Dylan is no exception, but some of his 1960s work resonates with me as much today as it did when I first heard it as an impressionable teenager. The times they are a changing is a potent set of lyrics, as valid today as it was back in 1965 when it first hit my ears.
I won’t quote them here, they are copyright, but they are freely available on the web if you want to look. They effectively describe the generation gap, from a younger persons perspective, and reinforce the French saying that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Time do change. The world today is as alien to the one that I grew up in as the one of my youth was to my parents. That’s life, we evolve, as does the world around us. As a schoolboy I knew people who had been alive both when we first achieved powered flight, and when we landed people onto the moon just 66 years later. At the same time I marvelled at science fiction where people carried personal communicators (now I wish that they didn’t a lot of the time).
Two World Wars, plus a Cold War, drove much change in the twentieth century, with technology and medicine perhaps at the forefront, one so that we could kill and maim and the other for treating the survivors. In more recent decades, the consumer demand for new fripperies has kept the race for technical advance going.
Returning to my music allusion, I have seen vinyl come, go (and now come back), eight tracks, cassettes and CDs following in succession, and on to streaming (via those personal communicators). The Berkshire Belle and I have been early adopters of much technology having had to be at the forefront of some things in our jobs, until we retired a few years back. We are, maybe, slowing down a bit now, and often mutter darkly about not being able to find a ten year old to explain how something works, but we still enjoy our electronic toys.
The problem, for us, is that the content has left us behind. We both love books and are avid readers, but struggle to find new material that we can enjoy. We watch more oldies on TV that we do new stuff, and it seems that, in both written and visual media, there is a need to new action every few seconds. All subtlety has gone. And as for music! I know I sound like my Dad did when my sisters and I listened to the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds et al back in the Sixties, but there it is again, that generation gap.
It’s OK though. I know it is how the world works. The times will always be a’changing, and, whilst they do, we will also see the various cycles that show that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Another old adage is that we all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. We keep on making the same mistakes.
I am glad that I grew up through the years that I have had. I would not want to be twenty again but, if I was, it would all be different because I would not have known any of the life that I have. I can cherish my experiences, and I hope that those who are coming through now will get to cherish theirs.
We all have to live our own lives, and each generation will find the world different to that of their parents. It is both what they want and what they need, just as I, as a teenager, wanted to move on from the world of my parents. And, on that note, I’ll finish this off and go and find my iPod.
on the UK general erection
I am writing this on the Tuesday before a bunch of posturing pricks, and persons sans pricks, get, or don’t get, our vote, so you will be reading this in the full knowledge of the outcome.
A move to the left seems inevitable, and that seems odd as the EU, beloved of our left, seems to be moving right, so I am likely to wake up on Friday to a Labour government. My only hope is that the majority is nowhere near what some of the polls are predicting.
The other possibility that bothers me is that, if Labour win, there will be a repeat of what happened at the GLC election of 1981 where Labour won, but within 24 hours the man who had lead the party to that victory was deposed by the hard left of the party.
Here in the UK we are still trying to recover from the last Labour spell in power, so, for me, the thought of another term of spending money that we don’t have, most of which will be wasted, is abhorrent. But we are a democracy and live by the results. Fortunately, for me, I don’t have too many years left to suffer a Labour win. A lot of you do though, and I think that you are going to regret electing a Labour government. As my Mum used to say, you make your bed, you lie in it.
Good luck.
on criticism
One of the things that comes with the territory of an internet presence is criticism: You offer your opinion and others may not agree. If they don’t, a lot of them are all too willing too launch into print and tell you, often in ways that avoid politeness.
I developed a thick skin in my younger days, firstly at work where things that we would now label as bullying were commonplace. Back then it was banter and, often, it was to see what you were made of before admitting you to the clan. Later, I became a football (soccer) referee, and I learned a lot about leadership out there in the middle of the pitch, as well as how to take it on the chin when someone was not happy with me.
As I developed my own businesses customer feedback became a factor, and an occasional bad review was almost inevitable. Some of it you can learn from, even if it is only to spot people that you don’t want as customers, but the general rule that I evolved was not to lash back at someone who was unreasonable. These things are often public, and anyone reading it is possibly going to be put off by adverse criticism of you, but they will almost certainly be put off it you join in with the mudslinging.
At the end of the day it is all about opinions. If you are going to stick your head over the parapet and say something you can expect too be shot at. If you get some positive engagement then that is great. Sometimes the quickest way to establish a fact is to take the Publish and Be Damned approach: Don’t ask for help, just publish something and there will be loads of people who will tell you that you are wrong, and why. You’ll have your answer pretty quickly.
But if you are going to put anything into the public domain, then be prepared to take a few brickbats. Learn to duck, but, whatever else you do, don’t throw them back.
on the power of music (and the naivety of youth)
It’s the Sprint of 1967. I am a schoolboy in class 3A at St Andrews County Secondary Modern school in the village of Cobham, Surrey in the UK. I live in a white world, my parents are servants at a country estate just outside of the village and, aged 14, I know only two non-white people, one of whom is one of our maths teachers at school, and the other from, what was then, East Pakistan, a man to whom I deliver his evening paper.
This was rural England in the mid-sixties. Any non-white person was unusual in our community, but, through music, we knew loads of black people. Except that, when you first heard a record by someone new, you didn’t know what colour they were, it was only later, through the printed media or seeing them on TV, that you would find out. If you liked the music then the colour of the artist’s skin was irrelevant.
Back at school in Cobham, one of my classmates is telling me all about having been to see the Stax review, Stax, and sister label Volt, being one of the prominent soul record sources, and I had no idea that they had bought a number of their acts over for a European tour. Too late then for me to see them, but I was enthralled as my classmate, I can’t be sure now, but think her name was Caroline, told me all about the acts that she had seen.
Music was music. Like so many things it is all about personal taste, you like a song or you don’t. I have never been too faithful to any artist, in that I might like some of what they do, but don’t always like everything. I don’t, especially, like any specific genre either, and generally feel that there has been little that I like recorded since about the mid-eighties. That is just the generation gap.
For us in the UK back in the mid-sixties we still had a thriving pirate radio scene. For us down South Caroline and London were the primary stations that we could get loud and clear. They played the sort of music that we liked, and we thought that we were sticking it the The Man by listening to the pirates rather than having to put up with the crumbs being offered by the government backed BBC radio. We were, of course, just lining the pockets of a different Man, but we were naive, as we all are at that age. We just liked the music better.
It didn’t make any difference whether it was black music or white music. I certainly wasn’t too bothered about who was making it, it only mattered whether I liked it or not. I, sort of, knew that Motown and Stax were black, but even there some of the musicians were white: Steve Cropper, Lewis Steinberg, Duck Dunne at Stax, and even in the black walls of Motown one of the Funk Brothers was white, guitarist Joe Messina. None of that mattered, for the were all people making music that spoke to me.
Music had a uniting power. The Blues musicians of the Sixties brought us black music. Now there is a generation that calls such things cultural misappropriation, but to us it was just music that we liked being made accessible by our home grown groups. Now we can see the irony of white British bands taking black music back to the USA, but we were innocent of such things back then.
The innocence of youth left us free to listen and enjoy. Yes, we all had certain favourites, but the music we chose was an important part of our lives. At that age you are learning fast, but there is still more to come. You rebel against your parents in various ways as part of growing up, but you don’t know enough about the real world. Life isn’t fair and you are about to find that out.
Music has been a comfort to me, and I still love to listen. Sometimes it transports me back to when I first heard it, sometimes not, but, when it does take me back, it is to a more innocent time, one where I thought that I knew it all, but really knew little. It was a different world back then, and I am very glad that I grew up in my little corner of it.
The Spring of 1967 was time of awakening for me. Through the power of music I began to understand some of the injustice around the world. I already had a voracious curiosity, and music fuelled that to a great degree. I have never lost that hunger for knowledge, although now I am a lot more selective about what I want to know about.
The power of music and the naivety of youth was a heady cocktail. It gave me the life that I subsequently have lived, and I am very grateful to it for that.
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