Health and Safety
The elf and safety racket has knocked the stuffing out of us
If you have four young children and you sometimes find it difficult to keep order, let me recommend a television programme that seems to have an almost incredible narcotic effect. As soon as it comes on, they go into a semi-religious trance.
The programme seems to be far more thrilling, to the younger generation, than Men and Motors, or the Playboy Channel. It is called Takeshi’s Castle. It comes from Japan, and there is nothing like it, believe me, on British TV.
Takeshi’s Castle is a dystopic world in which the competitors are subjected to a series of tests involving medieval cruelty. They are endlessly bopped on the head, dunked in slurry, or attacked by horrible Japanese djinns and hurled into hot geysers.
In one of the competitions, they are forced – men and women – to curl themselves up into a human bagatelle ball, and amid tremendous banzais and shouts of excitement from the commentators they are rolled down a gigantic board, bonking and bashing themselves fearfully as they go.
At the bottom of the bagatelle course they are so shook up that they are offered a million yen if they can walk for 60 paces in a straight line.
Or they are made to dress up as human skittles, and then they stand cowering as a one-and-a-half ton rock ball is rolled down the hill towards them and – nyeee-hah! – they are knocked silly by the impact, and the commentators scream with pleasure.
Or they are made to leap from rock to rock as they try to cross some foul-looking mire, almost always falling headlong and clonking themselves in the face.
My children watch it with complete rapture, because it is so alien to our culture. There are real teeth being knocked out here, surely; there are ligaments being torn, ankles sprained, ribs bruised, and still the sons and daughters of Nippon queue up for more.
I do not think my children are being more than normally sadistic; it is just that Takeshi’s Castle responds to a deep and unmet need in modern British life.
It is the need to see real risk, real danger, real humiliation, and of course real failure: all the things that are so expensively and so ingeniously airbrushed out of our mollycoddled and over-regulated lives.
Only this very day my office has been engaged in a surreal debate with the elf and safety about whether or not we could have a new printer installed. Such is the volume of correspondence that the old printer packed up the other day, and some of my letters have been piling up (for which apologies to anyone out there expecting an answer).
So we got on to the works department, located a new Hewlett Packard, but were amazed to be told that the device could not be transported 200 yards by anyone in the IT department.
Nah, they said; we can’t do that. You need someone specially trained to do that, they said. It’s the elf and safety innit. You’ll have to wait two days, they said. So in the end we had to carry it ourselves and now it is of course chuntering out great quires of correspondence.
But what kind of madness is it, I ask, that prevents a couple of grown men from transporting a Hewlett Packard gizmo not much bigger than a milkmaid’s footstool?
How is it that the Japanese are willing to be kicked around like human footballs, on prime time TV, and yet we are so terrified of injury that we forbid adults from lifting a piffling little printer? How has it come to this, my friends?
I will tell you.
Our modern pathetic airbagged society is the product of the lust of politicians to regulate and above all to be seen to be regulating, even when the law they are proposing is wholly unnecessary.
Why is there a law against picking up a computer without proper training? Because at some time in the past someone was so foolish as to do this without making sure his lumbar vertebrae were all in a neat column, and the miserable swine then sued his company; and some idiotic judge made an award; and the company claimed it out of insurance; and the insurance people decided to insist that companies would have to follow elf and safety guidelines if they were to provide cover; and the companies decided they needed a “level playing field” in which everyone faced the same elf and safety regulations; and so some industry lobby group got hold of some dopy politicians and the result is that strapping British IT men may not pick up a printer, while in Japan you can be turned into virtual spagbol or hurled in a trebuchet before an audience of millions.
The elf and safety racket is a great conspiracy against the taxpayer, and the public, and at every stage you will find collaborators. There are the media, who love to whip up a good scare (see MMR, BSE, avian flu, cellulite, you name it). There are the lawyers, who are always hungry for new grounds on which to litigate.
But the most cowardly and reprehensible are the politicians, who never stop to think whether a piece of legislation is necessary, or whether the problem cited is already covered by statute.
All they think about is whether they will appear to be “doing something”, whether they look strong, whether they look in control; and of course it is always easiest to look strong and in control if you are passing some coercive piece of legislation.
Look at Patricia Hewitt, and her magnificently invertebrate performance in the smoking ban debate. She began the day wanting to preserve the right of clubs to have smoking sections; she ended on the side of a total ban – not, as she later claimed, because she had “listened to the arguments”, but because she had succumbed to the politician’s overwhelming lust to be seen to “act”.
And it is this endless “action” that means we are slipping down the competitiveness tables, and it is the profusion of new laws, and the legions of elf and safety monitors and clipboard toters that go with those laws, that have pushed our taxes above German levels, and if you want to understand why Japanese productivity growth, after years in the doldrums, is now surpassing ours again, it is because elf and safety has so completely suppressed our spirit that we don’t even dare pick up a printer without training.
Banzai!
139 Comments
Yes Idlex,
you echo one of my own concerns with the statement in that “…better place” implies perspective and, realistically, two are rarely (if ever) the same. So “…better place” in this context must imply the government’s perspective which is the very reason I find this sort of legislation intrusive and unnecessary. We should, therefore, replace “…better place” with “…more convenient place for the current government” in order for it to make proper sense (perhaps).
But as I said, taken holistically, Jack’s assertion is an extremely complex postulate, worthy of serious and extended examination.
New legislation is the principle method of regulating behaviour in line with a government’s policies during the currency of a set of socio-economic circumstances and to create a level playing field for anyone/thing who’s actions should be controlled under the provisions of such legislation. But often, circumstances change and these laws persist. For example, The 3:00PM closing time in pubs (revoked about sixty years after its introduction) was, allegedly, introduced to make sure people got back to the munitions factories after a lunchtime drink (although this is possibly an urban legend). My point being that, after the war had ended, there was no sudden rush to change things back to the way they were any more than, when the present regime has been turfed out on its ear, the incoming government will bother to repeal the bunch of spurious, vexatious acts they have inherited.
What I am suggesting here is that useful legislation has it’s purpose defined in time as well as by viewpoint.
The Romans killed about 25% of the Jewish population in 70 AD, there doesn’t seem to be a law about denying that? Or what about Saddam( the monster) Hussein? I recall a speech by Tony Blair where he alleged our boy Mr. H had killed more than 250,000 people. …Yet Saddam’s only on trial for killing 143. Wouldn’t that constitute denying a/the (pick an article) holocaust if Austrian anti-denial type legislation were applied to his crimes too?
If someone can give me a good reason for this legislation or explain who it protects (rather than humours) and why, I will withdraw my criticisms. I just think, like the elf & safety crap discussed herein, it’s a sort of trophy law instituted to placate some pressure group in the electorate. An excrescence the type of which should be expunged from the statute books and replaced with proper, reasonable public debate.
Everyone got on their high horse about freedom of speech when certain cartoons were published so why is this issue such a sacred cow? Cows which, incidentally, are sacred in India but I don’t see too many Hindu’s with placards marching up and down outside the Jenning’s Bros Butchery in Henley high street)
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But that Marcarnie is the point, He didn’t say any of that.
When I heard Irving interviewed on Sky News this afternoon (and what a compelling, dispassionate and lucid speaker he is) I was incensed by the apparent unfairness of his position and frankly worried that, given Blair’s disposition toward ‘sending clear messages’ by means of legislation I thought: “Oops, we’ll be next!”
Here is the transcript Sky News – David Irving from gaol
What he alleges, fundamentally, is that he doesn’t deny a/the h/Holocaust took place just that he doesn’t agree with certain historical facts which have become dogma.
If he has a specific, undisclosed political agenda for promoting another Jewish genocide or promoting Neo-Nazi policies he should be tried for the real and legitimate crimes not potentially embarrassing historical interpretations.
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Sorry, the blog preview crashed, here is the Irving transcript:
David Irving
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Idlex is quite correct. In my enthusiasm I stated “European” rather than (more accurately) “certain European countries”.
I understand this, or predominantly similar, legislation has been passed in Germany, France, and Austria.
As Macarnie said, it’s a tortuous line from Elf & Safety to smoking and now the holocaust and freedom of speech. The common thread, it seems to me, is that all the issues contemplated are the manifestations of discontent with the cavalier attitude governments take with our rights and historic perquisites for a few extra votes at the next election.
Law should be simple, solid and designed for the benefit of all not multi-faceted, over-complex, redundant and partisan.
Just my view though.
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The common thread, it seems to me, is that all the issues contemplated are the manifestations of discontent with the cavalier attitude governments take with our rights and historic perquisites for a few extra votes at the next election.
(Joe Mental)
I agree, except that I don’t think it gets them extra votes. How many people around the country have banning smoking in pubs as one of their highest priorities? How many people are dying to buy themselves ID cards? Comparatively few, I imagine. Fewer still, if they actually thought about it.
These are not laws that grow from public demand for something to be done. Nobody has been demonstrating in Hyde Park against smoking in pubs. Nobody has been marching with placards demanding ID cards. These are laws demanded by powerful lobby groups. On the one hand the medical establishment. On the other, the police and, probably, the EU.
It is a corruption of our political process that instead of parliament representing the British people, it simply acts as a rubber stamp for decisions made by the Prime Minister – the Iraq war being the most egregious example.
Would that some party would promise to undo it all, as you suggest. But they never do. As in the case of the licencing laws, once government (of any hue) has gained control of some activity, it is disinclined to relinquish it.
At present, I can’t see what is to stop the government enacting absolutely any stupid and destructive law it likes. And so I expect they will continue to rain down from above, the edicts of a crazed dictatorship.
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One aspect of the smoking ban which hasn’t received much attention is the loss of civil rights which will be fully exploited by the ‘Elf and Saftee’ racket. We are already seeing the dominoe effects in employers banning smoking on premises and company vehicles (BT), a few weeks ago a woman was sacked after revealing she smoked in her own time off the premises and there’s also pressure building to stop people smoking in their own homes for an hour before a public employee visits them. There are a whole raft of laws in place to prevent discrimination on grounds of sex/race/religion but not one of them protects smokers. In fact Government funded advertisments go out of their way to portray this group as unhygienic, unhealthy, disease spreading misfits, thus conveying the message you can say/do what you like to this section of the population, they deserve everything dished out to them.
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One aspect of the smoking ban which hasn’t received much attention is the loss of civil rights which will be fully exploited by the ‘Elf and Saftee’ racket. We are already seeing the dominoe effects in employers banning smoking on premises and company vehicles (BT), a few weeks ago a woman was sacked after revealing she smoked in her own time off the premises and there’s also pressure building to stop people smoking in their own homes for an hour before a public employee visits them. There are a whole raft of laws in place to prevent discrimination on grounds of sex/race/religion but not one of them protects smokers. In fact Government funded advertisments go out of their way to portray this group as unhygienic, unhealthy, disease spreading misfits, thus conveying the message you can say/do what you like to this section of the population, they deserve everything dished out to them.
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Joe M:
I was aware that Irving has now ,to quote his latest public utterances, admitted to have refined his earlier published words to the contrary, stating that his view of the matter differs from popular belief in the post war additions to Auschwitz, rather than to the sum total of the Holocaust.
I admire his honesty , even it it came much later; after the horse had fled the stable. He expected to be freed on the evidence of mitigating circumstances,perhaps on a plea of freedom of speech, and was mightily disappointed when his change of heart wasn’t reciprocated by that of the the Austrian court.
What he neglected to take into the equation was their differences in administering the law. If found quilty of whatever crime or misdemeanour, a more or less ironclad sentence is prescribed. He got the medicine. I don’t agree with the dosage, but I don’t sit in judgement of the law of another country.
Ignorance of the law , there, just as it is everywhere else, is no defence, but had he bothered to research the differences in the systems of jurisprudence , he may have been rewarded by being less disappointed with the outcome.
Regardless, we must still fight for our right to speak, without let or hindrance, on matters in which we truly believe , in particular if we harm no one on making these utterances.
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I agree, except that I don’t think it gets them extra votes [Idlex].
As always, it’s not that simple. Of course there are powerful lobbying forces at work but I lean towards the notion that most government ‘inishatives’ are designed to win votes.
Indeed, Idlex, we have not seen demonstrations against smoking in pubs, but you can bet that some NewLab analyst has spotted that the majority of people don’t smoke, therefore a smoking ban will win widespread support. Good inishative = more votes. Easy peasy. Never mind that the “problem” can be tackled in other ways or that there might be the more fundmental issue of liberty at stake. Smoking, like housebreaking, is bad, so a majority will support you if you offer to stamp it out.
ID cards? Dress it up as an essential part of the war on terrorism and you’ll have them queueing up.
Hunting? Disgraceful, cruel, should be banned. In fact, after seeing Tony Banks confirm the awful truth that hunting is nothing more than a bunch of toffs out to rip a fox to shreds, I just had to reach for another portion of Tesco chicken to comfort myself.
Unfortunately there are plenty of people who don’t see beyond the jerk of the knee. They fall for these superficially attractive messages, all devised by political harlots whose principal concern is regaining power next time around. This is not to “underestimate the intelligence of the people”; it’s a fact that many do not look beyond the headline.
In this me-first society, an awful lot of folk are interested only in what benefits them individually. When did you last hear of a dole scrounger voting Tory or a huntsman voting Labour? That is understandable and, to an extent, ’twas ever thus.
What grieves me so deeply about today’s politics is the thought that no-one is prepared to risk unpopularity by saying and doing the right thing. There is no vision beyond the next vote.
With possibly one exception. Step forward BJ, your country needs you.
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Afterthought: No-one has the skill to remain popular after saying and doing the right thing. Step forward, etc.
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a few weeks ago a woman was sacked after revealing she smoked in her own time off the premises (roughshod)
A couple of months ago I heard of a case in Wells of new employee who was fired shortly after being hired, simply because she was discovered to be a smoker out of office hours. Increasingly, it seems, companies not only ban smoking, but won’t hire smokers. A lawyer I know thought it probably breached EU human rights law.
In fact Government funded advertisments go out of their way to portray this group as unhygienic, unhealthy, disease spreading misfits, thus conveying the message you can say/do what you like to this section of the population, they deserve everything dished out to them.
But they are 25% of the population, for heaven’s sake. That is a very large minority. And in Scotland it’s 30% of the population.
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Good inishative = more votes. Easy peasy. (PaulD)
I really don’t think that it’s like that. But we’ll see in a month or two in the local elections. From what I’ve heard, Labour expect to take a beating.
As I said, the driving force behind this legislation are lobby groups. I suspect this government looks for legislation to which only a minority of people will object, not which a majority actively want.
And we live in interesting political times, furthermore. All three major parties are in process of transformation. I have no idea what the next General Election will bring, but it could be very interesting.
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Incidentally, while we’re on smoking, I recommend reading In Defence of Smoking by Lauren Colby, a US attorney. It’s only available online, as he couldn’t get it published. It’s about smoking rather than passive smoking. A brief excerpt from Chapter 1, The Hysteria:
In this book, I will show that the case against smoking based on bogus statistics and downright lies. I will show that the case for a link between smoking and disease has not been proven and that, indeed, the international statistics suggest that there’s no link at all. Furthermore, I will show that the government estimates of “smoking-related deaths” are simply fraudulent and that the recent EPA report, purporting to show a risk to non-smokers from second hand smoke was predicated on manufactured “evidence” which some of the EPA’s own scientists found appalling.
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My name’s Joe Mental and I’m an ex smoker.
I ‘m not a paragon of virtue when it comes to smoking. When I gave up (nearly six years ago now) it was like getting over a serious illness; my wife tore up the divorce papers! (although that, I must admit, was an unexpected side effect)
I smoked about 60 Camels a day so these admissions are, perhaps, not entirely unsurprising. People used to walk into my office and complain their eyeballs had been permanently etched.
But, regardless of the fact that my lungs generally felt like someone had given them a nice coat of varnish, I didn’t give up for health reasons; the wife’s nagging or because I couldn’t make it up two flights of stairs without sounding like a steam calliope. I gave up because I couldn’t laugh any more!
Literally! If I attempted slightly more than a giggle I descended into a coughing fit for ten minutes. A good guffaw was out of the question. I nearly rubbed myself out whilst drinking a cup of (very hot) coffee in the car (I had a cup rest so don’t panic about the tort implications) and on seeing a blue rinsed granny with a blue rinsed poodle, went apoplectic and spilled the bloody cup all over myself.
I can assure anyone reading this, that sub-fusion temperature coffee over your knackers is something of a distraction to driving and the old lady and her dog nearly had a hard time of it. So I had my epiphany and gave my remaining fags to a kid on a bike at the next set of lights.
I still let people smoke in my home (as long as they exhale toward me) but I’m no longer allowed to make the same reasonable concession in my office. I’ve never been particularly compelled by passive smoking rhetoric and it irritates me that I cannot be magnanimous and and allow someone who’s obviously gagging for a fag to have a few drags in my office without the prospect of being hauled up before a disciplinary tribunal. Strangely though, if I offer the same person a bottle of scotch and they subsequently wobble off and take themselves out along with a brace of school kids on a zebra crossing, I’m not culpable in the least.
The punch line to this homily is that, when I recently went for my annual company medical checkup, I was informed that, because of all the weight I’ve put on since giving up fags (about six stone), it’s put such a strain on my heart that, on balance, it may have been better if I’d carried on smoking!
Go figure.
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Before anyone suggests my weight gain is due to a sedentary lifestyle and comfort eating I would advise the following:
1) I eat less now then when I smoked (I have to or I’d have the only pin stripe suit visible from space)
2) I exercise every day now (there was no chance of this when I smoked, I would have exploded)
3) The ball & chain only allows me salads (with chicken if I’m particularly despondant) in the evenings and pencil sharpenings (euphemistically meuesli) in the morning as opposed to my previous diet of half a pig, toast and tomatoes for breakfast and, at the very least, a quintuplet of lamb chops & mash for dinner. I am no longer allowed lunch (some vacuum packed fruit presently serves as an inadequate substitute)
I could get quite cross about anti-smoking advice sometimes.
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The punch line to this homily is that, when I recently went for my annual company medical checkup, I was informed that, because of all the weight I’ve put on since giving up fags (about six stone), it’s put such a strain on my heart that, on balance, it may have been better if I’d carried on smoking!
Not the first time I’ve heard this. Smoking suppresses appetite, and is probably one reason why I’m as thin as a rake. I needed a minor op a couple of years back, and the consultant who saw me before it exclaimed: “Why, you’re a young man! We’ll have no trouble operating on you.” And they didn’t.
Never heard of an inability to laugh before, though. I can laugh all too easily. I suffer no ill effects from 35 years of smoking, apart from an occasional cough in the morning when I’ve overdone it a bit. But I’ve noticed that even older non-smokers also sometimes cough a bit on rising.
Yours is an example of how useful facts are suppressed. It’s well known that giving up smoking often results in weight gain, but do guvmint health warnings ever mention that? No, of course they don’t.
I did a BBC online lifetime expectancy test a month or two back, and was awarded an (un)expected lifetime of 82. Only one question out of about twenty was about smoking. The rest were about BMI (Body Mass Indicator?), diet, and family histories of various diseases like diabetes.
My father (also a smoker, who lived to 79) used to refer to his doctor as “the quack”. I increasingly think he was onto something.
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My father is 89 this year, he’s smoked 40 a day since he was 14 (unfiltered Woodbines) and apart from cataracts allegedly caused by smoking (tuh!) is healthier than me! Not that that’s a particularly Herculean feat unfortunately.
Some people will get lung/throat/tongue/nose(?) cancer from smoking, but these are the same people who would probably get it as a result of living too near Heathrow airport or the motorway. On the other hand, many people could spend their entire lives plugged in like laboratory beagles (anyone remember those?) and not even suffer a sore throat.
What, as Idlex quite rightly says, one isn’t readily informed is the potentially catastrophic effect of pulling the pin on fags after an extended period of heavy smoking. I’d probably put weight on now if I ate half a slice of toast a day! Apparently nicotine isn’t just an appetite suppressor it also (allegedly) inhibits fat absorbtion.
I am constantly reminded by the handbrake that, by stopping smoking, I’ve saved +/- 26,000 quid in fags over the last six years. Alas, this has all been spent on gym equipment (and contracts), personal trainers and bleedin’ health food because I certainly don’t see more in the bank account at the end of the month than I did when I was smoking!
A cautionary tale by an evil (but reformed in society’s eyes) ex-smoker.
If only I’d know.
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gym equipment (and contracts), personal trainers and bleedin’ health food
This is another strange modern phenomenon: keeping fit.
I hardly ever exercise myself. From time to time, if I’m going to travel, lug suitcases, and the like, I do a little light exercise just tone myself up slightly.
The modern fitness craze began at around about the time that the anti-smoking crusade started. Suddenly there were joggers everywhere – and I note that Boris is one -, and gyms filled with very strange contraptions started opening. Exercise, we are told, is good for you. And the more of it, the better.
But some 5 years ago, I was listening to the radio, and heard former Sheffield (or was it Newcastle?) striker Malcolm MacDonald say that nearly 50% of professional footballers retire with premature arthritis, and that he himself was unable to play golf.
It made sense to me. Intense exercise stresses muscles and bones. One would expect that performing intense physical work over a long period of time would result in various forms of damage, in exactly the same way that driving a car fast results in worn bearings, cylinders, gears.
I tried to contact MacDonald a while back, unsuccessfully. But I suspect that he was telling the plain truth, and a truth that is being concealed from us by the devotees of the cult of physical fitness.
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Professional athletes do have incredible rates of debilitation as a result of the stresses placed on their bodies. Repetitive stress of any kind builds strength at the proper dosage, but too much and you have strain, not stress, when the body can’t compensate by growing muscles, bone, etc.
Pros overdo it, for as long as they possibly can before retiring. At the other end of the scale you have weekend warriors who overexert their bodies once in a great while, and the body hasn’t built up the support systems to be able to cope at all. They also have huge rates of injury. And there are those who don’t know enough to work out efficiently: a friend of mine lifted weights every single day because her doctor told her it would help her recover from a car crash injury. She didn’t realize that if you don’t let the muscle rest 48 hours between workouts you destroy it, rather than build it up.
Moderate exercise is associated with longer life, and will longer mobility and higher quality of life as well.
There was a study in the US two years ago that reached the conclusion that if you were a pack-a-day smoker and quit, you would have to gain 150 pounds for the weight to have as much negative impact on your health as the smoking. So if I do the math right, you’re still ahead of the game.
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I knew it was best to keep still!
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They’ll never find you that way!
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Oh, unless you become one of those recurring features on fark where someone realizes you’ve not shown up at church for three years and goes looking for you, only to find your mummified corpse.
So, how do you want to get famous?
I adore the story of how they chose the Canadian Olympic luge team; they placed an ad for all interested parties to show up at a certain ski run outside Montreal. They gave the volunteers a luge and sent them on a run to the bottom. Anyone who wasn’t scared to do it twice made the team!
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Joe
My rather clumsy construction there was meant to say that in an imperfect world there are certain things that must be prohibited by legislation and this prohibition enforced by the state. However we should always be trying to get the minimal amount of legislation possible consistent with folk being able to go about their individual business. I am not a libertarian.
That as I see it is the legitimate extent of legisaltion and I trhink we have an awful lot of illegitimate legislation.
When it tips over into saying in effect what is true and denying people the opportunity to say the contrary then it is getting silly as well. As it happens I do not believe the Earth is flat or in intelligent design, and I do believe that about 6 million people, mostly Jewish, were murdered by the Nazis. I will happily discuss the first two matters with people who believe otherwise, and indeed the third but rather less happily. I just don’t think views should be outlawed. The search for truth is the province of the sciences and humanities and should always be regarded as incomplete.
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No criticism intended Jack. It was simply that there were a number of concepts expressed the nuances of which need to be examined collectively which made the statement very interesting (but complex).
And (that said) I agree with you!
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So, how do you want to get famous?
Who wants to be famous?
When I was aged about 17, I suddenly, right out of the blue, asked myself very seriously: “Do you want power and wealth and fame?” I was quite taken aback by this blunt question, which nobody had ever asked me before, and which I was now asking myself. And so I pondered upon it.
Fame was the first one out the window. What is the merit of fame, but to have won the applause of others, yet not perhaps one’s own? What is the point of being recognized wherever you go, so that you can’t even sit in a pub quietly having a drink and smoke without burly bodyguards standing over you? Who wants bright lights? I mean, really, what is the point? What sort of fool wants to be famous?
Wealth was the next one heaved bodily out of the window. I have some small experience of it. When you have lived in a select district of Rio de Janeiro with a chauffeur, a maid, a cook, and a gardener, and when you have lunched at the Copacabana Palace hotel, and when you have lain sunning yourself by the pool at the Paisandu Atletico Clube in Ipanema, I think you have known a tiny little bit of what it is like to be wealthy. But I hated it. I was always deeply uncomfortable with it. I hated that we were so rich, and that the inhabitants of the shacks on the other side of the valley beneath the Dois Irmaos were so poor. No, I don’t want servants and chauffeurs. I don’t want swimming pools and squash courts. I don’t want pink tablecloths and prawn cocktails with 1000 island dressing. In the end, wealth is all show, just like fame. It’s all about looking well in the eyes of others, gaining their approval. But who cares what other people think?
That just left power. Did I want power over people? Did I want to order people around? Did I want to be a big boss, a general, a prime minister? Not really. If I didn’t want maids and servants, then I didn’t want subordinates and underlings either. In the end, power is – just like fame and wealth – all about appearing well in the eyes of others, earning their fear if not their admiration. And so, finally, after long thought, I heaved power out of the window as well.
And with that went all ambition, I suppose. But I have never regretted my choice. I remain an lowly and impecunious nobody, and long may I continue in that exalted estate. It’s a magic life to live.
And if, in the end, I am to be found mummified along with my last cigarette, so what? I will become one of those faintest of stars: a smoking statistic.
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Well, the Charles post did show that, if nothing else, it can get you an audience when you want to be heard. I think for that alone it’s useful.
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Charles post? You’ve lost me there.
Do you mean Prince Charles? Or Sir Charles George?
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I meant the article Boris wrote about Prince Charles and the diary theft. I’d get the link but A) my linking abilities are not what they used to be and B) I’m just too lazy.
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Boris – have you got a real understanding of ‘elf and safety’ – do you want some training, or some more information?
Alternatively could I join the Conseratives and be your spokesperson?
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When you say ‘in the end we had to carry it ourselves’ Boris does that mean you actually got off your backside and rolled your sleeves up?
How many were in this team described as ‘we’ which you assembled to move what you describe as a ‘piffling little printer’, ‘not much bigger than a milkmaid’s footstool’?
Could not a lumbering giant of a chap such as yourself not have carried the small item on your own or were you afraid that you might injure yourself If you did?
Congratulations Boris. You have actually just done a risk assessment, as required under ‘elf and safety’ legislation.
Your not as much a rebel as you think old chap.
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Correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I recall the Conservatives were in goverment in 1974,
The 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act (HASAWA), prepared by the Robens Commission was appointed by Ted Heath, so the question is – are the tories doing a ‘u’ turn?
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I notice that no-one from H&S was actually involved in this situation or indeed consulted – It was IT as usual refusing to do anything which involves physical hard work
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Makes you feel old ..but it also brings back loads of good memories.
If you were born after 1980, this does not apply to you… Kids of today are
wrapped in cotton wool……… Read on.
If you lived as a child in the 50′s, 60′s or 70′s, looking back, it’s
hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have…
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
Our cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paint.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cupboards, when we
rode our bikes we had no helmets.
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.
We would spend hours building go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the
hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.
After running into the bushes a few times we learned to solve the problem.
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were
back when the streetlights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day.
No mobile phones.
We got cut and broke bones and broke teeth, and there were no law suits from
these accidents. They were accidents. No one was to blame, but us. Remember
accidents?
We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned
to get over it.
We ate cakes, bread and butter, and drank cordial, but we were never
overweight…we were always outside playing.
We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one died from
this.
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-Boxes, video games, 65 channels
on pay TV, video tape movies, surround sound, personal mobile phones,
Personal Computers, Internet chat rooms … we had friends.
We went outside and found them.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s home and knocked on the door, or rung
the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.
Imagine such a thing. Without asking a parent! By ourselves!
Out there in the cold cruel world!
Without a guardian – how did we do it?
We made up games with sticks and tennis balls, and ate worms, and although
we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the
worms live inside us forever.
Footy and netball had tryouts and not everyone made the team.
Those who didn’t, had to learn to deal with disappointment…..
Some pupils weren’t as smart as others so they failed an exam and were
held back to repeat the same year.
Tests were not adjusted for any reason.
Our actions were our own.
Consequences were expected.
No one to hide behind.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of. They
actually sided with the law – imagine that!
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem
solvers and inventors, ever.
The past 50 years has been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We
had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal
with it all.
And you’re one of them. Congratulations!
Please pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as kids
before lawyers and government regulated our lives……. for our own
good……
If you’re not smiling by the end of this, then what were you doing when
you were young?
Close your eyes and go back in time…Before the Internet…Before
semi-automatics, joyriders and crack…. Before X-Box, SEGA or Super
Nintendo… Way back……..I’m talking about Hide and Seek in the park.
The corner shop.
Hopscotch.
Butterscotch.
Skipping.
Handstands.
Football with an old can.
Fingerbob.
Beano, Dandy, Buster, Twinkle and Dennis the Menace.
Roly Poly.
Hula Hoops, jumping the stream, building dams.
The smell of the sun and fresh cut grass.
Bazooka Joe bubble gum.
An ice cream cone on a warm summer night from the van that plays a tune
Chocolate or vanilla or strawberry or maybe Neapolitan or perhaps a
screwball.
Wait……Watching Saturday morning cartoons, short commercials or the
flicks.
Childrens Film Foundation, The Double Deckers, Red Hand Gang, The Tomorrow
People, Tiswas or Swapshop?, and ‘Why Don’t You’? – or staying up for Doctor
Who.
When around the corner seemed far away and going into town seemed like
going somewhere.
Earwigs, wasps, stinging nettles and bee stings, white dog poo.
Sticky fingers.
Playing Marbles.
Ball bearings.
Big ‘uns and Little ‘uns.
Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, and Zorro.
Climbing trees.
Building igloos out of snow banks.
Walking to school, no matter what the weather.
Running till you were out of breath, laughing so hard that your stomach
hurt.
Jumping on the bed.
Pillow fights.
Spinning around, getting dizzy and falling down was cause for giggles. Being
tired from playing….remember that?
The worst embarrassment was being picked last for a team.
Water balloons were the ultimate weapon.
Football cards in the spokes transformed any bike into a motorcycle.
Choppers and Grifters.
Eating raw jelly.
Orange squash ice pops.
Remember when…There were two types of trainers – girls and boys, and
Dunlop Green flash – and the only time you wore them at school was for P.E.
You knew everyone in your street – and so did your parents.
It wasn’t odd to have two or three “best” friends.
You didn’t sleep a wink on Christmas eve.
When nobody owned a pure-bred dog, 25p was decent pocket money, Curly
Whirlys. Space Dust. Toffo’s. Top Trumps.
You’d reach into a muddy gutter for a penny.
Nearly everyone’s mum was at home when the kids got there.
Any parent could discipline any kid, or feed him or use him to carry
groceries and nobody, not even the kid, thought a thing of it.
When being sent to the head’s office was nothing compared to the fate
that awaited a misbehaving student at home. Basically, we were in fear for
our lives but it wasn’t because of drive-by shootings, drugs, gangs etc.
Parents and grandparents were a much bigger threat! and some of us are
still afraid of them. Didn’t that feel good?
Just to go back and say, Yeah, I remember that!
Remember when…. Decisions were made by going ” Ip Dip Dog sh!t “.
“Race issue” meant arguing about who ran the fastest.
Money issues were handled by whoever was the banker in “Monopoly”.
The worst thing you could catch from your opposite (boys/girls) was germs.
And the worst thing in your day was having to sit next to one. It was
unbelievable that ‘British Bulldog’ wasn’t an Olympic event.
Having a weapon in school, meant being caught with a catapult.
Nobody was prettier than Mum.
Scrapes and bruises were kissed and made better.
Taking drugs meant orange-flavoured chewable aspirin.
Ice cream was considered a basic food group.
Getting a foot of snow was a dream come true.
Older siblings were the worst tormentors, but also the fiercest protectors.
If you can remember most or all of these, then you have LIVED. Pass this on
to anyone who may need a break from their “grown up” life…
“I DOUBLE-DARE YOU” !!!!
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Beautiful.
Absolutely beautiful.
But you didn’t mention the gobstoppers that we used to buy back then.
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Nice one Psimon! Apologies for pickiness but what’s 25p?
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Did you guys ever make the “human volcano” with Pop Rocks and root beer?
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Good grief, no. I have no idea what Pop Rocks are. Nor, for that matter, root beer.
The most dangerous things we had were roller-skates. We could get up to 20 or 30 mph on those, downhill. And come off them at the bottom, slide along the tarmac, and rip our knees to shreds. But the bloody injuries healed after a week or two. It’s probably illegal now.
It reminds me that I had a school chum who was an expert at drawing bruises. Some of his creations were vast, lovingly drawn in pencil and biro, with purple welts in the middle. They used to get him off games (compulsory games, that is – bot proper games) regularly. This is probably illegal as well now,
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what’s 25p?
Five bob to you and me. And that was a fortune, back then. You could buy a Mars bar for sixpence, and a farthing would buy an individual sweet.
A farthing is, or rather was, 0.1041666 new pence, by my estimate. Shops still sell individual sweets for 1p, which I suppose means prices are ten times higher than back then.
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You are correct idlex, a farthing was 1/960th of a pound.
Farthings had, as I recall, a relief picture of a robin on one side. I remember this because my brother used to use a fret saw to cut the robin out to make earings, tie pins and cufflinks. That’s probably illegal now too (although I suspect it probably was back then as well)
I think you’ll find the inflation rate a little higher than ten though. I recall the house we lived in, at the time, was sold for 960 quid; try buying a semi for 10,000 quid today (unless it’s on Mars or similar). Sweets have evidently enjoyed some sort of peculiar immunity.
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I STILL don’t understand why ‘British Bulldogs’ isn’t an olympic sport. Maybe they should consider it for the 2012 games; Doesn’t the host nation get to introduce an event?
Apologies for the lack of gobstoppers. I was always fondest of the ones that changed colour several times whilst being sucked, enabling me to develop sticky fingers whilst simultaneously ingesting the detritus previously adhered to said digits. They tell me that dirt will kill the current generation of children. I wouldn’t be surprised!
)
Psi
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I’m sorry about this, but , as you all know, if you have a black cat, there is always someone who claims to have one which is even blacker. I claim a blacker one in matters sweets and pocket money.
My pocket money was 6d per week, and with this largesse, I could buy a Halls Lucky Bag, (1d), which not only had a miscellany of sweets inside; there was always some little gimcrack gewgaw included, for example, a miniature scales, stamped out of the thinnest tin plate imaginable.
I could then visit to the Odeon cinema (earlier called the Astoria), to the Saturday morning Mickey Mouse Club matinee, (2d), and would still have money left. There was always 1d for the Sunday school collection, and the rest was wasted during the week.
I would be sent, by my mother, (now, today, that would not only be illegal, it would be tantamount to child abuse), across the road to the cigarette machine on the church annexe wall to put in a shilling and pull 20 Players Medium out of the drawer, complete with a penny piece stuck down the cellophane covering.
Later, after the war started, with the “abundant” sweet coupons available, I used to waste my ration in one go: 2 ounces of the cheapest boiled sweets were 1 1/2 d. As the war progressed, I used to sell my sweet coupons, and doubled my pocket money. Gobstoppers were out of the question, you couldn’t trade with them , they were too big,
Cigarettes became at best scarce, and at worst non-existent to non-regulars. Even to their regulars, some shops would only sell 5 cigarettes per person at one time: 2 Pasha (some Turkish, oval, evil smelling things), and 3 Virginia cigarettes. They
, the tobacconists, would decide what cigarettes you would receive, dependent entirely on what they had left. Notvthat I smoked, but you can’t help noticing things.
Under-counter along with other black market dealings flourished, and some people never went without.
One thing was however certain; Britons have never been so healthy as they were at that time.
I will not say how old I am, but Jack R: you are a mere youth.
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Gobstoppers were out of the question, you couldn’t trade with them , they were too big, (Mac)
Quite so. They were enormous things, and fully lived up to their name: you could hardly speak a word for an hour with one of those things in your mouth. And they’re probably illegal now.
It was long before my time (and perhaps beyond yours), but I used to know an old gentleman who told me that in 1914 you could catch a tram from the outskirts to Bristol city centre, have a pint of beer, see a show, catch the tram back, and still have change from sixpence.
I recall the house we lived in, at the time, was sold for 960 quid (Joe M)
The same old gent once pointed out a large five-storey house in Bristol, and told me that it had been sold, shortly after the war (the second one, not the first) for 100 pounds. I think the last time it changed hands, some 10 years ago, it was for something more like 300,000 pounds.
No wonder nobody saves these days, given money depreciates at such a rate.
Speaking of money, it used to be an occasional prank of my school chums to put a penny on a railway line, wait for a steam train to go over it, and collect the warm flattened disc afterwards. That would probably fall under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, these days.
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Idlex: can’t compete with your old gentleman, but I remember my father telling me , and not tongue in cheek at that , that he got 1d pocket money, and was always told , ” En divent spend it aal in one shop maind”. My parents were exiled geordies , and even I was born in Newcastle, ( I won’t say when ).
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And I won’t ask.
But I’m a bit puzzled. If your father got one penny of pocket money, that was four farthings. And a farthing must have gone a long way. Was there once a still smaller unit of currency than the farthing? A groat? (Unlikely, as that seems to have been four pennies.)
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Yes, answering my own question, there were smaller coins: the half-farthing, the third-farthing, and the quarter-farthing. Although they stopped being minted in the mid and late 19th century.
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Idlex: I don’t think there were any 1/3 farthings. but 1/2 farthings were certainly in use until the introduction of the ” Godless florin ” which appeared in 1849.( I was NOT there , contrary to the opinions of my various offspring)
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idlex, some friends of mine actually derailed a train with the penny trick; the track ran right by the school, and people were always putting pennies there. It became a sport to see how many you could pile up. Unfortunately, unlucky thirteen is how many it took to derail a train. Didn’t do that again for awhile.
I can be your gobstopper connection. There’s a store on Granville Island that sells them in all sizes from 1/2″ diameter to something an ostrich would have trouble with. And they do change colours and they have gum in the middle.
Pop rocks (you might have had Bottle Caps, which were much the same) were a kind of candy that fizzled and sort of exploded in your mouth. I think it was some kind of acid/base reaction like baking soda and vinegar. They tasted like different kinds of fruit, and the Bottle Caps tasted like different flavours of pop. Root beer is like ginger beer, only darker. So when you put the two together in your mouth your face sort of exploded in artificially-flavoured foam. It was cool.
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I have to take issue over this “Root beer is like ginger beer, only darker”.
Ginger beer tastes like ginger, whereas root beer tastes like fizzy sweetened TCP.
And i recall pop rocks were called Space Dust…until the elf and safety decided kids might choke on it, blah, blah, usual story.
How long until anything small enough to be put in a mouth has the legend “Warning! Possible choking hazard!” inscribed upon it?
Is there any truth in the rumour that the shape of Earth’s continents spells out “Contains Nuts” in Galactispeak?
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Root beer tastes like Sarsaparilla roots. And it IS darker than ginger beer; they also have a similar bite, at least when made well. Try Barq’s.
I used to work at Starbucks, and long ago when the nutty old woman sued McDonald’s for the fact she spilled hot coffee all over her ladyparts, an edict came down from the corporate lawyers. From that point on, every time we handed out a beverage (of ANY sort, even the bottled ones) we were required to say, “be careful, that’s hot.” Even, if you can believe this, for the frappucchinos, which are frozen. People were honestly disciplined for NOT saying it when handing out cold drinks. It was a perfect moment of lawyer-driven corporate idiocy. We used to get around it by handing out the cold drinks and saying, “Be careful. That’s really cold. Don’t … freeze yourself.”
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Here’s something a friend sent me. So, so true. I got a huge sense of satisfaction when I proved to my mother that I walked farther to school every day than she did. And half the time, she got to ride in a sleigh! Softie.
————————-
When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning .. uphill BOTH ways through year ’round blizzards. Carrying their younger siblings on their backs … to their one-room schoolhouse, where they maintained a Straight-A average, despite their full-time, after-school job at the local textile mill …. where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death!
And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no wayin hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it!
But now that I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today. You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don’t know how good you’ve got it!
I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!
There was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter .. with a Pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! There were no MP3′s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day! to tape it off the radio and the DJ’d usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! And talk of about hardship?
You couldn’t just download porn! You had to steal it from your brother or bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of “Hustler” at the 7-11! Those were your options!
We didn’t have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that’s it! And we didn’t have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn’t know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!
We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like “Space Invaders” and “Asteroids” and the graphics sucked! Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and fast er and faster until you died! … Just like LIFE!
When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn’t see, you were just screwed!
Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your butt and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I’m saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little brats!
And we didn’t have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up .. we had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire . imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid JiffyPop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You kids today have got it too easy.
You’re spoiled!
You guys wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1980.
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