Category Archives: Short Stories

Here is an exert from a talk given to Teachers by the writer James Baldwin, I couldn’t but help think of the situation in Palestine when I read it. I don’t think the World has moved much since 1963 , or has it indeed gone backwards?

“It is inconceivable that a sovereign people should continue, as we do so abjectly, to say, “I can’t do anything about it. It’s the government.” The government is the creation of the people. It is responsible to the people. And the people are responsible for it. No American has the right to allow the present government to say, when Negro children are being bombed and hosed and shot and beaten all over the Deep South, that there is nothing we can do about it. There must have been a day in this country’s life when the bombing of the children in Sunday School would have created a public uproar and endangered the life of a Governor Wallace. It happened here and there was no public uproar.”

James Baldwin 1963

On our visit to the Wye Valley Youth Hostel,we came across Goodrich and it’s Castle.Which is about 20 minutes from the Hostel.

We couldn’t book into the accommodation until 5pm and we hadn’t had any lunch ,so we stopped at Godric’s Cafe(attached to the castle) and parked the car in the Castle Car park,which is £3 for all day.

After refreshments,we decided to walk around the village.The buildings are pretty and well maintained. We followed the pedestrian path and turned towards the Church.

To get to the church, we passed by the school and took a fairly steep path up to the gates to the entrance to the graveyard.

When we arrived , we realised there was a church function on.It seemed pretty casual,so we didn’t feel we were intruding, and we walked around taking in the views and reading the odd gravestone that caught our attention.

We meandered back to the Car Park,we would have liked to have seen more of the village,but we were getting close to booking in at the hostel.We did however decide that the next day,before heading home,we would visit Goodrich Castle,which is  looked after by English Heritage.Pleased to say they welcome dogs.

The next day ,we parked up and bought two tickets to go to  the castle.

Firstly,I was surprised that the first part of the castle was called the Barbican. It was the area where visitors were met by the porter and basically depending on their status or if they were expected was where they would wait and see if they could enter the castle.It had open latrines into the moat,and I believe the porter would bring them refreshments.So it had some creature comforts.

The entrance to the actual castle was well fortified with various defence mechanisms.

The Castle itself changed hands a number of times in various seiges, so the defences didn’t achieve their aim.During the  English Civil War ,the Parliamentarians managed to steal 80 horses from the Castle in a raid,the remnants of the stable can be seen at the level of the moat,but no one is quite sure how they managed to get the horses their in the first place.

Surrounding the moat, there are areas of stone from which the stone was hewn to build and rebuild the castle. Some of the more recent walls are sandstone, and the earlier walls are a black local stone ,probably what the foundations of the castle were made out of.

Unusually, on entering the castle ,on the left, just pass the castle  entrance ,is a religious area ,due to lack of space within the main castle ,it was put here and was probably where the family would worship.

In the room, there is a stained glass window that catches the light from the sun beautifully. Well worth a picture(above).On the opposite side ,there is a more recent stained glass window commerating those who lost their lives while developing and testing radar systems for the R.A.F.

We omitted a visit to the dungeon,in fear that the steps may have been too steep.However,the Castle itself is forboding enough.We weren’t too keen on going up the Tower either, as initially there was a school trip on and they were going up there in threes.By the time they had finished we had lost interest.

Goodrich Castle was well worth a visit and certainly brought history to life.

There is a lot of talk in the UK about the press and politicians not doing enough to counteract genocide when it is happening in the World.

I’m trying to think of the logic that they would want to do this and where it would lead them to.

Basically, oppression of any kind  is always resisted ; and unless the black fist of a dictatorship and a seriously psychotic belief that opposition should not exist ; usually the opposition will eat away and eventually win the day or at least the ability to live together peacefully and productively.

If our Press and Politicians are supporting an anhilistic,psychotic oppresser, then they are themselves anhilistic and psychotic which unfortunately precludes them from being either journalists or indeed politicians.

I really can’t see that this is the case, I feel that the situations that exist where genocide is happening are so complex that no one apart from the aggressive protagonist has the answer. They are the ones who need to change their behaviour.

Press and politicians favouring one side or the other,will not achieve anything

July is my Birthday month,so to celebrate I decided way back in February 2024  to book a night at YHA Wye Valley to stay in one of their six Bell Tents beside the beautiful River Wye.

One of the key considerations was that the hostel is dog friendly,which it is. It cost £63.00 for the night and cooked breakfast in the morning at £9.95 each. For two people,maybe the cost of a B&B with four walls and heating,but for five people which the bell tent sleeps pretty good value.

Also, it only takes us about an hour and forty minutes to drive to the Wye Valley.

The road by passing Gloucester was made more enjoyable by seeing this lovely dog in the back of a landrover.

Herefordshire’s countryside;after by-passing Gloucester, always seems to me to  be to be real organic farming land,green luscious with an  abundance of  small businesses with  poly tunnels and fabricated buildings for storage and growing of all sorts of crops.

Like most rural England, it is seriously business minded, not a cow in sight,so it’s definitely  different from rural Glocestershire and Wiltshire where we live.Cows are very much part of the landscape there.

As we later found,through conversations with staff and residents at the hostel. The  road down to the Wye Valley Hostel is hair raising and not for the faint-hearted. In wet weather conditions,it would certainly make a good  episode of The World’s Dangerous Roads.

As we bumped and trundled down the steeply  inclined single track road ,avoiding deep ruts, drainage holes, and the sawn off trunks of trees that had blocked the road in the past.

We  briefly followed  the cyclist whose bike is propped up outside the hostel’s reception (picture above) and who we thankfully  passed when he dismounted  just before the steep downward  incline at the cattle-grid before the cut meadow.

We  learned later that  he  was from California on a trip around Europe.Been ex military  he had participated in the Normany landing memorial that had happened a few months previously.

Getting back to our journey ,I was blissfully unaware of the  view of the sheer drop from the driver’s side window.Uneven ground was all that lay between us and tipping over into a vast gulley.

While driving dry-mouthed and basically frightened I was told by said driver in no uncertain terms that I was to check with him before booking another  remote location,should we survive this one; and should we  ever  go away again together.

The hair pin was the final straw as we had to do a three point turn to get around it.I said

“Well done” as we made it around .

I was thankful that we could  now see what looked like the hostal building in the distance.

Later,the husband of another couple who were in  one of the other Bell Tents told me  that his wife had said that the hair pin could have been done in one go.

“Well ,we took two.”.Thinking if you’re not driving,then best stay quiet.

As the man later waved a very sharp knife around  in the communal kitchen ,(I think he was cutting the rind of  some  bacon and was very  pleased to find the knife. ) I  was making myself a cup of tea ,but it crossed my mind maybe that his wife was living on borrowed time.

Still, despite a rainy weather forecast,we arrived and it was sunny and  warm, and we saw where the bell tents were located.

I breathed in the fresh, warm air and looked for our bell tent ,which was No.5. As usual ,I was overwhelmed with the booking in procedure and was only half listening to the gentleman  explaining where our bell tent was.

However,no 5,( the only one not numbered) smelt a bit rancid and only had uncovered duvets and pillows.I was accused of not checking if duvet covers and sheets  were supplied I thought they were,but I suggested to keep the peace that we could use the blankets from the car.So we made up the beds as best we could and him indoors needing a call of nature went up to the hostel by foot.

On his return,we decided to go back up to the hostel to order pizza for tea as the shift change was at 5.00pm, and the guy who was going to cook would be there.

Fortunately, a lady and her daughter who were  camping in a tent opposite were heading up to the hostel to wash some clothes justas we were leaving  and that was how we  we discovered the back steps.Steep but better than the long road around  which him indoors had taken initially and brilliantly it gave us access to all the self-catering kitchen and spotlessly clean toilets.

When we got up to reception and  while talking to the guy who was going to cook the pizza(which we forgot to order)  I asked about the duvet covers,chaos ensued,he was beside himself,the two bell tents should have been made ready.

So we headed back down and found it was No.6 that had been made up. So we transferred our stuff and sat on the picnic benches beside the tent, drinking ginger beer and eating our sandwiches.Foolishly, we had declined the wood for the wood burning stove ,it was summer after all.

We then decided to go for a walk along the River Wye.It was a lovely evening and our dog likes to paddle,but we were a bit wary of the signs saying fast flowing river.It was lovely to be on the non-populated  side ,just fields and the banks of the river .Across  over the water was a main road and houses and a very noisy pub at one point.So, the peace and tranquillity of our meander along the river was much appreciated.

Tedi disappeared ,attached to his  long lead, into the undergrowth, and discovered a sandy beach with a paddling area.So he was happy to get his paws wet and have a good drink from the river.We clambered after him down  the steep bank and back up and somehow survived.

The sun was beginning to go down, and as we were right at the bottom of the valley,we decided to head back while it was still light. On the way back, we decided to have a look at the portaloos, which were for the campers in the field.They were handy but pretty awful.We did the necessary and headed back to the tent.

We settled in for the night ,had sips of ginger beer, and munched on some crisps.We used wet wipes to wash our faces and hands and charged our phones on the car battery,not realising that there was a battery pack in the tent.Neither of us fancied making the trek up to the stairs to the main hostal.

There’s this really oddly located Church and graveyard beside the hostal and the camping field . Apparently, it is now owned and maintained  by the Methodists. It has a working bell tower,which chimes every hour, and the building fabric is solid and looked after.However, it would be difficult,given the terrain for a congregation to gather there and as far a we could see no one was allowed in the gates.

When the sun went down,the tent went from being very hot to freezing cold. I luckily had brought some Ron Hills to wear in bed and a jumper.So with the duvet on top,it was bearable.My better half was not quite so lucky. He was feeling the cold very badly.

The dog, though, was quite happy,wrapped up in his blankets and duvet. Not a squeak out of him.

The dog managed to get asleep and stay asleep. However,we  tossed and turned, feeling the icy cold on anything that was exposed to the atmosphere,we just couldn’t get to sleep. Really, we needed the wood burner,it was a shame we didn’t make use of it.

Inevitably, at 3am in the morning,we felt the need to reply to the call of nature. We had a tacit agreement that if I needed to go,we all would go,including the dog.So we  trotted off  to go to the portaloos . (Walking by the disused  Church and up the stairs seemed a bit spooky at that time of night.)

The dog weed in the bushes, and we  relieved  ourselves in the nearly overflowing portaloos.At least the walk relieved the freezing cold in the tent.

We were nearly back at the tent when  we came across a large hedgehog  crossing our path.The dog took one look and ignored it.We did the usual awe isn’t that wonderful and then  after a short walk we all got back into the tent.

We moulded ourselves into the double duvet ,and I suggested that we make use of the duvets from the other beds.So I think we finally got some sleep for a few hours.

I woke up  when it got light  and sat on the futon and used the last of my phone charge to keep up with my Spanish Apps,Memrise and Duolingo.I then decided to go up to the hostal for a wee and make myself a cup of tea which I did.It was lovely.I wondered back down,half drunken mug in hand and warm sun on my face and thought this is the enjoyable part of camping.

When I got back, Dog and Bod were still fast asleep ,and my phone battery had died.So I sat on the futon and snoozed.

We’d booked a cooked breakfast for 8am,so we went up to the hostel for that.I made some more tea and we had two very good cooked breakfasts,plus a cold sausage for the Dog,which he was most appreciative of.

It was nice just staying one night,packing and unpacking was easy, and when it was time to go, it didn’t take long to put our things in the car.

We were assured that the road up the hill would be clear,as those going down had the right of way. The staff are often asked to reverse people’s cars down the hill when they meet an oncoming delivery lorry.

On the road up ,I was, of course, on the side looking down at the drop,it was impressive. We made it, and we had already decided as we were in Goodrich that we would visit Goodrich Castle,that though is another story….

Just a short update on my bird listening efforts.Have had nothing new to report since February 2024.I’m finding I’m hearing common birds who are resident in the UK all year round ,but what the heck,they make such a beautiful sound.

However,I can now add a new bird,the tree creeper.

There is one species native to where I live,but most other species of tree creeper seem to be more exotic and live in more exotic locations.

Still excited to hear  one.

Chapter 12 So What should we do?

©GeraldineBanksJuly2024

Today is first the first of July 2024, and the General Election is now just 3 days away and having looked at some of the economic ingredients that add to the mix of the Recipe for Disaster that will be the next 5 years or so economically in Chapters 1 to 11, now is the time to look at what we should do to make the best of a bad job.( so much more honest than saying make Britain Great Again which has been done to death).

Firstly , should you vote, well yes if you are eligible, it’s probably a good idea. When I’m walking down the street or even thinking of how my relatives and friends will vote, I figure out my vote will be cancelled out by someone who votes in the opposite direction to me, however, if I don’t vote then the ones who vote against what I believe won’t be cancelled out by me so therefore I’m deciding to let them win. Sounds a mite defeatist just to let the other side win and wash your hands of this whole democracy thing. Just think of your vote as cancelling out someone you really don’t like, we are after all a cancel culture aren’t we?

I won’t have covered all the things that concern all the people in Britain in my Chapters, but then again the Politicians with their sniping and sniveling haven’t covered very much in the last 6 weeks either. The Public have been carefully fed what they want you to know, rhetoric about stopping boats and Labour’s GB Energy Company who even the Labour Party’s MP’s don’t quite know what it will do or how it will really affect our supply of Energy. Let’s face it who wants to read those boring manifesto’s? Apart from journalists, who will take great pleasure in telling said politicians that they lied three years down the line. Surprise , surprise.

I got to admit I chuckled at the Reform Party having some of their members caught on video calling for our PM to go home to Pakistan, when he’s a thoroughly British product of upper class education and lifestyle and let’s face it despite not having Sky Television as child he has no reason to visit Pakistan except in his role as the top representative of the UK Government. I’m hoping that this will have made right thinking people in the UK choose not to be prejudiced towards skin colour, when you see the irrationality behind such taunting from a party who wants Reform, but what type of Reform?

Getting back to the Economy, well it’s going to be difficult for everyone for the next ten or twenty years. Things that we’ve taken for granted, peace, clean water supply, cars, public transport, healthcare , energy supply and education are all under threat, but threat from what . Lack of investment. This has been going on such a long time that it’s impossible to make up lost ground. It sounds to me that our next Government will be playing everything by ear. Not the best listeners though, apart from at election time and then it’s only superficial.

Despite Liz and Kwasi’s ideas on a quick, supercharged fix, trickle down economy and new global business deals and markets opening up , well that is just pie in the sky. The whole world wants the same thing, everyone wants to maintain or better their standard of living and if you believe that you’ve got to earn money to do this and manufacture and sell goods that people want or aspire to then, everyone will be doing the same thing.

All the resources we need to manufacture these aspirational goods are in areas that are either owned by someone else or are very inaccessible. These are going to get more expensive and their availability will be restricted. So what is the answer recycle and reuse, enjoy the challenge of making something, at the moment you have a choice to do this , but in the future you won’t. We have to learn and understand how to use our resources better .Why not start now and enjoy it.

The Government can live beyond it’s budget but individual’s can’t . The government can borrow both from the Public or from Global Funding and because in essence they are big borrowers, perhaps they can get away with it. The individual can’t , and it’s a double whammy , because if we start reducing our spend then the government also loses income and increases their costs because private sector manufacturing and service industries reduce head count and increase unemployment. A viscous circle

No one, however, is going to keep lending the individual money, if it looks like they can’t pay it back. That is what is going to happen to house buying and therefore house prices. They’ll soften and the landlords with multiple properties and fewer people able to afford their rents will find their assets reducing in value, at a time when repair bills are increasing, and it is harder to sell their properties on.

This is perhaps the biggest worry for a property owning population. Not to mention, the value of the house being used for future medical or care bills. Can governments afford to have all this money locked up in property , I’m not so sure, particularly if they are not been maintained. I expect a few demonstrations with

” Hands off my Assets” placards.

Push marketing is a young persons career, can you imagine where they want to push the old folk. They want what old people have. Me in my 60’s, I can feel the ire that young people feel towards us. Ridiculously , I have to work until I’m 67, I have to work with young people and find it quite funny, they want to succeed but lack confidence and no wonder.

If I was them I’d wonder what the hell I was working for, over the last thirty years working terms and conditions and job quality has been eroded. Even a push marketer is expected to be deskbound for 8 hours a day and knows their future is to be replaced by an AI software programme, once the patterns of consumer behaviour have been established and “human” input is no longer required. My confidence would be knocked too.

In other words the job market has changed for the worse. There will be less people to sell to and the only work that will be available to those of working age are jobs that society needs and inevitably they will be regarded less well and be lowly paid eg. road maintenance, healthcare , customer service.

The skilled jobs, such as lawyers and bankers will probably go the AI way to , after all , it’s the process of reading, assimilating facts , recognising patterns and implementing a plan based on that information. Thus it may well be that the higher level jobs will disappear along with the higher level salaries. I mean Keir Starmer has given up his lawyerly career to become a politician, that’s telling isn’t it?

So the world of work will change significantly and less people will need to be employed. It is then that a universal income plan will need to be introduced , as well as a human right to be suitably housed and have access to suitable leisure facilities. This won’t be just in the UK, it will be throughout the whole World. This is Global Economics or at least Global Aspiration Economics.

Car manufacturing used to play a big role in employment, I’m not so sure that it will in the future. It’s been decimated in the UK, and I suspect , increasingly other manufacturing countries will go the same way. Without putting restrictions on travel, individual car ownership will reduce and people will decide not to travel. I used to think nothing of driving a hundred miles to a beach at the weekend, but now I look at the price of petrol, wear and tear on the car and decide no it’s not worth it.

I certainly won’t ever be able to afford an electric car every five years or so( when the battery reaches it’s end of life.) Replacement batteries are not going to be cheap.

Because I’m old I’ll accept that, but the young won’t, and because of lack of investment there is no good public transport option. Thus , the new government has a dilemma, just how do they sustain an economy based on a combustion engine and with no cost effective replacement for every day working people who have restricted employment opportunities?

The most likely solution is that the combustion engine will be around a lot longer than people think and that there will be good quality second hand market for cars with low emissions and no I think the new Government will find it hard to tax them out of the market, although they may try. I do believe that any government will find it impossible to give working people no options on transport and will override the noise about battery power and the reality of climate change. Yes , get rid of diesel buses, but the truth is modern cars with combustion engines are pretty clean and efficient.

Finally, reduce what you consume you’ll feel better for it .The Global Economy is out of your control, but the big Plans that politicians have, needn’t impact you for the worse. Whoever is voted in must be held account for their decision making, we are a smaller Britain, we have an economy that is teetering on the brink of implosion, a lot of money has been wasted by corruption. Vote with your heart and head and whoever gets in monitor what they do and if they do something you don’t like contact your MP and talk to others about how they feel. Don’t feel that you aren’t part of it and that somehow these Gods in Parliament know more than you do. They don’t. Thank you for reading.

©GeraldineBanksJune2024

Chapter 11 Confidence ?

They’re used to be endless surveys on business confidence and consumer confidence. Haven’t seen any of these for while, have we lost our confidence? We certainly haven’t lost our surveys , there’s a lot of them about, phishing for information. Who are you? What do you do? What do you want?

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI), bless them , does and has published regular surveys about the general business situation and confidence. Obviously for an election called by the Conservative Government they had to be pretty upbeat for the last quarter, up by 4% having in the previous quarter bombed to -14%. Of course it’s all lies and statistics particularly with an election looming and the threat of the Conservatives ( traditionally the party of the members of the CBI.) losing.

If you link business confidence to consumer confidence then you see the bigger picture. If consumers aren’t confident then they aren’t going to spend their money and this will be reflected in the performance of the private business sector. Which having always worked in the private sector I can assure you has been pretty dire and has deteriorated over the last thirty years. No matter what the Government economists say.

Con is short for confidence and it’s natural for people running business’s to be confident about their plans and prospects. Is it a con? Are they trying to hide the reality of poor sales figures and increasing costs under a false bravado that things will get better, they must get better, or else.

There are many mechanisms for Senior Managers in the Private Sector to walk away from a business that is failing, before ;that is; they’ve taken the brave steps to cut the workforce, change working practices and cut costs in all areas at much emotional cost to themselves.

When it still hasn’t worked they acknowledge they have tried and failed and will get a six figure compensation package to retire to the country and recover from the emotional trauma of failing. This has been the pattern for a number of years.

It’s definitely a them and us situation. The workers have never felt more stretched or unstable, while those that managed to get into a position where they decided the future of the workers have given up on working altogether , either to retire and follow whatever dreams they had or more likely to buy a big house, with a bit of land and spend their time like landed gentry in the Countryside, eventually getting bored with it all and deciding to start their own business , employing people on minimum wage or play the stock market and put their profits into tax havens abroad.

This is where we are at the moment, the workers ( who are needed) supporting propertied gentry in order for them to exist and do nothing to help the economy but do plenty to help themselves. Their wealth is dependent on keeping land and property prices high. They want cheap food production from some of this land to feed their workers. The rest of the land is their play thing, their ornamental garden. They are the achievers and they deserve it. They will pass on their hereditary land to future generations and the assets which they’ve gained remain in the family.

That is a pretty ancient model, and the confidence in it; is; I think waning. I touched in a previous chapter on the phenomenal increases in rental property prices and the reluctance to offer watertight tenancies. Tenants have little security and owning property has become unaffordable for many. A lot of people feel cornered by the current system, they are seeing their children left without the prospect of being able to afford a house and being at the mercy of disreputable landlords, not to mention being employed by disreputable employers.

Take for example a young lad I know of who after leaving school with reasonable qualifications, just wanted some work experience before deciding what he wanted to do. He got a job with the Council Library, however, it was very flexible , they would call him in when they needed him. It was in effect a zero hours contract. He was lucky if he got one shift a week, not enough to help him save towards anything. For example a holiday , move out of his parents or indeed put something away to save up for University.

Eventually, he gave up on the Library as what shifts were available were given to existing staff who were indeed older ( nice to know how local Council’s youth prioritise youth employment) and got a job in a local amusement arcade which had food outlets as well as entertainment and bars. This gave him slightly more hours , but it came with the responsibility of locking the place up at night and having to get the bus home at unsociable hours . Sometimes it was so late the buses would not be running. Did the employer care? No.

Sadly, young people will take up the gauntlet of a challenge, but disreputable employers use this “spirit” to do the jobs that a paid manager should be doing( the manager’s pay incorporating the responsibility or the inconvenience.) The job itself may not have any prospects so this “spirit” may fall on fallow ground and have the opposite effect of leading to disillusion. The young man who I am thinking of had the sensible approach of getting experience in all areas of the business and using that experience to apply for another job with another company , hopefully with better conditions and more hours.

Perhaps we have had the free market economy in operation for many years and there has been an assumption that everyone should look after themselves. Or as I prefer to regard it , we have a dog eat dog workplace mentality, the worse environment to get anything done well.

From an economic point of view I don’t think the Free Market has lead to increased growth or to better sales or better working conditions. It’s basically being a free for all.( except it was never free and we’re all having to pay for it now).

It’s main result has been abuse, abuse of the system and abuse of people. In fact, it’s followed more of an inevitable Human Nature model , where those who ” dominate”(not always the brightest tools in the box) have as is their inclination abused those who they see as lesser mortals.

This is probably a soft socio-economic model , but certainly one that would be interesting to map out now, include a few of Society’s megalomaniacs , Bob Maxwell, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Rupert Murdoch and Phillip Green to name a few who have impacted the economic confidence in this Country, not to mention the people that started me on this track Kwasi ,Kemi and Liz.

In summary , our confidence in the current system has been seriously knocked, it seems that corruption has won the day and that normal people are having to fight for the crumbs that they are being thrown. The natural question for everyone now is what can we do?

©GeraldineBanksJune2024

Chapter 10 Global Warming :The Cost of Living

The nature walk in London last Sunday had a sprinkling of celebrities and apparently wasn’t taken as seriously by the media as it should have been. Possibly the Election and Nature are not compatible. Let’s face it what is most important to the electorate, the Economy or protecting our wildlife and fauna. Daft question really.

Recently while out for a walk with our little dog, my partner pointed out an area of wild grass which was basically full of very Scottish blooming purple nettles. As we are in the South of England although pretty they did look out of place and as the area is usually used for sheep grazing I asked him how the sheep manage to get through to the grass with all the nettles.

“They trod on them to get to the fresh grass .” he replied.

He continued saying that he was suprised that there weren’t more wildflowers and other fauna among the nettles, but that it was the farmers use of insecticides that had caused the nettles alone to thrive and kill off insects that need the pollen and also spread the wildflower seeds.

The cost of producing food outweighs the benefit of promoting nature and letting the world develop as it should. If you listen to the Climate Changers we are on the slippery iceberg slope and unlikely to be able to retrieve the situation.

However, we live in a World of Command Economy where to feed the population is a priority. Or is it? Is it more important to make profits from feeding a certain portion of the World’s population who can pay for the supra-normal profits the food manufacturers want to make. With all the suffering of innocent populations in global areas and conflicts , I suspect the latter. So economists what have you done about it? Where are the models proving that we can feed everyone in the world, where are the arguments that prove this point? Can’t get finance to produce the report?

There are those who argue on the Climate Change side that we have too many people and population needs to be controlled if we are to feed the planet and stop the onward march of boots over are beautiful countryside.

They have indeed won the argument in first world countries. With birth rates taking a nosedive because of a) the cost of having children b) the preference to have individual freedom and c) maybe the thought that why bring children into this horrible World anyway.

In second and third world countries, even if there is less birth control , and the willingness to have children is stronger. There are factors such as healthcare and conflict that controls the future of their children, with low childbirth survival rates and high infant mortality.

This is a reflection on Global Humanity. Personally with all our knowledge and technological achievements I am not convinced that there is a need for all this suffering and I believe there is enough scope for food production that no one needs to be without food and water. This would be a good economic modelling scenario. Would someone explain why it is not happening.

I’m not fooled by the Chief Executives of Food Banks in the UK, if there are food banks that are making so many profits that they need a Chief Executive ,then something is very much wrong. If they are paying themselves a salary to run food banks, then they are not Charities. The supermarkets are over producing and the excess food is being redistributed through Charity to people who because they do not have sufficient income left each week cannot go to said supermarket and buy the food.

This is not a healthy model. Those who are working in the supermarkets lose customers because the food bank users no longer go to the supermarket. Why would you pay for something that you can get for free. Also why are people on such low incomes that they cannot afford to feed themselves and their children. Perhaps they work in supermarkets and have so few hours they can’t pay their bills. Meanwhile the Chief Executive of the Food Bank is paid their salary and appears in the press and television to publicise the cause of Food Banks. None of it makes sense.

Then we have Celebrity Chefs coming out with meal plans that mean we can make a nutritious meal for four for £1.50.( As long as you have the staples in the cupboard) , it’s cheaper to eat vegetarian, and to cook for yourself than have ready meals. We still have cookery lessons at school , but how educated are the general population about nutrition? Would they be willing to sacrifice their fat and sugar for healthier options if they knew about it? Do they already have the knowledge but have rejected the options, because on the whole they are being push marketed into choosing the unhealthy options.

In other words feeding ourselves and feeding the World is a complete mess. Not to forget about the rest of the expenses in the Cost of Living, but if we cannot feed ourselves in a nutritionally beneficial way and indeed feed the world then we are doomed. As are the insects and fauna who are part of our World and who are decimated in the cause of increased food production.

Think it’s going to take more than a Nature Walk to solve that one.

Chapter 9 Children and Education

©GeraldineBanksJune2024

Unlike work which people seem to hate, School Days on the whole by most people are remembered fondly. Of course some hated school and just wanted to get out of it or experienced bullying or unacceptable behaviour from those in authority. For a lot of people from Nursery age to maybe about the age of ten or eleven, learning and being with your class mates was enjoyable. Once the terrible teens arrived with the pressures of exams and growing up maybe the perspective changed.

The key to a good education system is recognising that learning can be enjoyed by everyone, perhaps not all at the same time , in the same way. There is no homogenised analog that will teach everyone and everyone move forward at the same pace. There are many environmental issues that make learning difficult for some. That certainly doesn’t mean that they should hop off the Education bus and never get on it again.

Again, we have a media that tell us all about top grades, top results, not to worry if things go wrong at exam results time, that it’s not the end of the world. Look at Jeremy Clarkson he’s a millionaire journalist (or is it billionaire journalist)and he didn’t do well at whatever exams he sat.

When I was exam taking age , there was never this interest in how you did in exams, you did them got your results and then saw what you could do or not do with them. Looking back the important thing was not to be put off by them or on the other hand to think that somehow with top results , you were a top person. They did not define you and they shouldn’t define anyone now. I didn’t need the likes of Jeremy Clarkson to tell me that .

Looking at the employment situation , it is probably a good idea that the leaving age for school is now 18 years of age. Though I feel sorry for the teachers who have to interact with pupils who have no real interest in education and who want to get out into the real world and earn money to do the things their parents were able to do. What do the teachers find to interest them?

Well it’s a better alternative than the misguided suggestion that National Service in the Army, Navy or Airforce would be a good option for those who don’t want to sit at a desk and learn. Maybe a more productive avenue would be big manual labour projects that are needed, eg. road building , house building or renaturing landscapes that have been destroyed by said road building or house building projects. Anything that improves the environment and makes the world better for everyone.

The great opportunity is that , young men and women who have had enough of school and want to do something; that in their mind; is more useful, could have access to work, and could choose to return to education after a period of time, should they so wish The current economic model that says their labour is worthless is wrong. There are a lot of jobs that need done and there is money in the economy to pay for them.

What is sad is making generations feel that there only option is to be a burden on the state. They didn’t make the grades in exams and for whatever reason they were not comfortable sitting at a desk. Well find out what they are good at , gardening, knitting, coding, cooking, arranging flowers , looking after animals ,painting and decorating, the possibilities are endless and the work useful. Not only that we need these things done to make our world a little more beautiful. That is the only form of National Service I want and if it is done with a universal income more the better.

The benefit system just isn’t working, and it frightens me that so much effort is being put into reviewing it and changing it. Universal Credit and whatever disclosure comes with it , seems totally humiliating. The attitude seems to be if you are claiming benefits then you must be trying to fiddle the state. It’s a bit like the culture at the Post Office which made Sub Postmasters out to have their “grubby hands in the till”. Yet weirdly we say the Police can do no wrong, which blatantly is not true. That is the effect of perception and we must drill down and actually see what is going on in reality.

The reality is that we offer apprenticeships which may or may not teach young people valuable work skills. Has the National Vocational Qualification improved the general state of affairs for people wanting to learn. Is there any data on it? Do they have surveys that ask the young people how much their NVQ in Customer Service benefited them? I would suggest that a lot of this data gathering if it has not already been done could be a good practical exercise for young people interested in applying information technology. Perhaps young people could look at the benefits system too and suggest a better alternative.

The vast majority of young people do not have access to the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme, which encourages initiative and develops young people. Yes it’s a great idea but it’s elitist. The fact that it motivates and encourages young people is great, but we need a broader, government supported programme with the same ethics as the Duke of Edinburgh scheme or indeed the scouting organisations,

This is one of the greatest benefits of the IT revolution. Access to education is possible for everyone and can be lifelong. So stepping back on the education bus at thirty , when you have discovered something that you are passionate about learning is quite possible and beneficial to both the candidate and the world they are living in.

We need to move away from a Command Economy that tells us from above via Civil Servants and Government what we should and should not do , and instead makes the resources available to people both young and old to use their skills , intelligence and application to make the world a better place. That is the best economic solution to education and will by far achieve the best cost /benefit result.

Why am I not hearing this from the Electioneering Politicians?

Chapter 8 The Health of the Nation

©GeraldineBanksJune2024

I must put down my phone and ignore the current election tittle tattle and look at the Health of the Nation, or even Global Health. Journalists and Influencers tend to concentrate on the extremes of Health and Diet. The poor old NHS in the UK has to deal with the reality of a nation who either don’t understand how their own bodies work or think a pill will cure everything .

Healthcare work is a vocation, it is not a job. The people who do it well are definitely motivated to care for people. Yet everyone in Europe and even the World (well particularly America) , will recognise that the NHS is now one of the biggest Businesses in Europe and indeed all the talk of Privatisation of Healthcare comes from those who see it as a “Business Opportunity” not an organisation to look after the Health of the Nation.

Currently in the election debacle , there will be people who want to be elected who believe the only solution to being able to pay for the NHS is to privatise some of it’s more lucrative functions, oh and I should say to leave the expensive, potentially crippling expensive bits in the public domain. That’s entrepreneurship eh?

In some areas, eg. dentistry this feels as if it’s already happened. There are fewer and fewer dentists willing to take on NHS patients and an increase in insurance backed Dental Policies from the Private Sector. The joke is , you ask a NHS patient on the cost of their dental care (and actually it is quite a lot of money) . It is quite out of reach of people on low income or the unemployed.

Are teeth and appearance important to people, does it not affect their lives? Yes, probably in all areas. It’s as good as putting a stamp on someone’s forehead, saying

“I’m poor”

Let’s face it if you want to appear on television, your teeth will need fixed, if you want to be a pop star, you’ll need your teeth fixed.( The late great Shane McGowan of Pogues fame being the exception) .

Will the candidate at a job interview who has a nice smile and fresh breath do better than the one who doesn’t smile and has bad breath. So whatever administrator pressed the button on reducing the amount of care available for Dental Work may have indirectly affected the mental health of a significant portion of the population and reduced the effectiveness of the economy.

My point being is that the NHS as an entity should have a positive impact on the total population. It drives me mad when Celebrities go on about that ‘s it a “National Treasure” and that when they had a problem, that the NHS was there to sort it out like no one else could have done. Even Royalty sometimes needs the NHS, though for security reasons they tend to use the Private Sector. These people are only looking at what it does for them and not the total population. This is not what Aneurin Bevan intended.

The NHS is now the biggest employer in Europe, they lap up excess labour in the market in the UK. I for one, once temped in the Finance Department of a local hospital. One night when I finished work and was going home at 5 pm I found out my motorbike battery was flat. I was rescued in the hospital car park by the AA (formerly known as the Fourth Emergency Service). The man was full of praise for the NHS and me.

” I couldn’t do what you do , you’re amazing”. He beamed as he set up the leads to start the battery.

Not wishing him to be mislead , I told him I only worked in the finance department and I tried not to let my cynicism shine through. Where I worked was actually over staffed, incompetent and the proportion of administrative management roles far outweighed the cost and numbers of “caring roles”.

Not many workplaces offer paid non-working days to their staff , I thought to myself. As he drove away , he was so happy that he had helped one of the “good ones”. I was thinking if only he knew. I was close to leaving the job , because the bullying was so bad. One women had me lined up for debt collecting role that she didn’t want to do. There was no future for me there.

There is the rub though , we love our NHS and we like to think it’s the best in the World with the best hard working caring people in it ( bit like the Post Office eh?).Well it is really , the amount of good work that Nurses ,Doctors and Health Care Professionals want to do is amazing. I just wish we’d let them do it. Instead it has turned into the greatest Bureaucracy on Earth, separated into individual Trusts run by Chief Executives on phenomenal salaries and part-time Board members also on large salaries, contributing their opinions on how to run a hospital or health centre having no knowledge or experience of running or working in either. What happened to the ” National ” bit?

Somehow Paula Vennels after the debacle in the Post Office managed to get a plumb job advising a NHS Trust, thankfully she was removed from the role , but how and why was she appointed in the first place. How many of these types of predatory leeches are in the National Health Service, that’s not to say that there aren’t good leeches , cleaning wounds and stopping clotting in the real NHS. Medicine is amazing , let it be amazing and get rid of all these hangers on.

So what is the solution, we all want the NHS, we all want it to do well and for it to excel at what it does best. Caring for the Nation’s Health. Well actually there is really good work going on , particularly in the realm of preventative medicine. The Well Men and Well Woman initiatives, to help people understand how to help themselves are really forward looking.

We can look after ourselves and our health, by eating well and not abusing our bodies with drugs and alcohol. Education is part of the NHS’s role, not lecturing people or refusing to treat them should things go wrong. We should look at the numbers, most people do want to be healthy and if you give them the right information and support will make an effort to .

There is a manageable cost to that , perhaps all these TV Doctors who have successful media careers in the Private Sector because they saw a need and an income stream. They saw a niche and they pursued it . Now the NHS has Apps and programmes encouraging more people to take an active interest in their Health. The TV Doctors were acting like Public Health Broadcasters, paid ones of course, however, if you can’t afford the TV Licence or the Netflix Subscription , then you have your NHS.

Increasingly Mental Health has came into play, I’ve noticed this particularly in the various workplaces that I’ve worked in. It always makes me laugh, that the very people who cause unnecessary stress in the workplace are the very ones who are put in charge or communicating the “look after yourself strategy”.

However, once we enable people to feel comfortable in their environment, to earn enough money to live and to have decent housing and basically a “life” a lot of these mental health challenges will go away, saving the NHS a fortune. It is, afterall ,the NHS who picks up the pieces when mental health challenges become unmanageable.

So there comes the Economic Rub, the NHS is being targeted to be privatised at the same time it’s users are being challenged by an economy which leaves them feeling economically unstable, whether it’s because they can’t afford their rent, their food or because they have turned to unhealthy support systems such as as drugs or alcohol just to survive which I covered in Chapter 3. In other words the NHS doesn’t stand a chance unless those who can look after themselves.

The real job of the NHS is to look after those who cannot look after themselves and that I’m afraid is a cost that will always and should always come out of the Public Purse. The Private Sector does not care whether Mrs Smith down the road needs a coronary by-pass in order to survive. Their AI will tell them that she isn’t part of the plan for the future and that the cost is prohobitive , so best let her illness run it’s course and anyway she didn’t listen to the advice she was given. That is how the private sector thinks.

The private Sector have extended that thinking, so that anyone who does not meet their criteria of being rich, good looking , thin and superhuman really just has to get on with it and that well if they are that unlucky they are unlucky. Perhaps next time , they’ll place a bet on Ladbrokes on the chances of their survival.

The NHS on the other hand was created to let more people be able to live well and survive crisis’s where it’s humanely possible to treat them. The two philosophies are so different it is impossible to see them combine.

Let the NHS do what it’s best at , and stop trying to run it like a business. The Nation’s Health is it’s business.