"Remember, Remember, The Fifth Of November!"

In 1605, Guy Fawkes and others conspired in an attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament and assassinate King James I. Fawkes was given the job of keeping watch over the barrels of gunpowder in the basement and to light the fuse. On the morning of 5th November, soldiers discovered Guy hidden in the cellar and arrested him. Subsequently, to celebrate the fact that King James I had survived the attempt on his life, bonfires were lit around London, and later the introduction of the Observance of 5th November Act enforced an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot's failure. We've been celebrating Guy Fawkes Night, or Bonfire Night, or Fireworks Night (call it what you will) with pyrotechnics and the burning of effigies, ever since.

Guy Fawkes

That said, Guy Fawkes Night celebrations have increasingly taken a back seat compared with other Autumn/Winter celebrations. Now that the Christmas period seems to start in September and Halloween has gained greater prominence, Bonfire Night is a bit of an afterthought; a damp squib if you will. Halloween is now celebrated, or at least marked, with much greater fanfare than it was when I was child. Looking back fifty years (my goodness, where did the time go?) I cannot remember there being much, if anything, made of All Hallows Eve. But for anyone in the UK who laments the increasing prevalence of "Trick or Treat" and believes it to be an import from our former colony across the pond, the tradition of going house-to-house collecting food at Halloween in the UK dates back to the 16th century, as does the practice of wearing costumes at Halloween. It found favour in the USA in the late 1920's and has merely regained popularity here in recent years.

When I was child, Guy Fawkes Night was definitely the bigger occasion. In the weeks leading up to Bonfire Night there were the TV ads, "Light Up The Sky With Standard Fireworks," and then we would go out and buy our box, always Standard, never Brocks or anyone else. I would pore over the contents with anticipation until the night, 5th November, itself. In the risk averse, Health and Safety conscious world we live in today, I very much doubt that the proposed sale of these low grade explosives would be allowed were it not for the fact that they have a long tradition. Firework accidents are blessedly a lot rarer these days, but back in the 1960's when I was growing up, the build up to each Bonfire Night would include dire warnings of the dangers of fireworks,  and sadly most years there seemed to be stories on TV and in the papers in the days following November the Fifth of people, often children, horribly scarred and burned as a result of Bonfire Night mishaps.

Standard Fireworks implore you to "Take Care" while depicting a child with a firework clamped between his legs!

Fortunately in my childhood there were no major accidents on Fireworks Night, although one year a gust of wind did blow a rocket into a neighbour's bathroom window and a Spitfire firework (basically a banger with cardboard wings) once went haywire and had us all diving for cover! There was one year when tragedy might have ensued, however when I proudly showed my Dad my box of fireworks not realising that he had a cigarette in his mouth. Fortunately there was no errant spark, no catastrophic, impromptu, indoor display! There was one occasion however when a flash from a Roman Candle burned a hole in his spectacles; had he not been wearing glasses he could easily have suffered a nasty injury.

Other things that have changed are the growth in organised displays and the complete disappearance of children begging for "A Penny for the Guy." The former are generally a good thing. Rather than stand in the back garden with a box of pyrotechnics costing anywhere from £50 to £150, you can take in a spectacular display organised by a local council or club without the risk to life and limb (having once been chased round the garden by an errant Roman Candle, I appreciate not having to light my own). The increased popularity of organised displays must take some credit for reduced domestic firework related accidents.

The groups of children with their motley collections of Guys, pestering people for funds to buy fireworks have long since demised (in my neighbourhood at least; if you still see any where you live, let me know, I'd be interested), in their place are the Halloween Trick or Treaters. Sadly, I don't think I've seen anyone with a Guy collecting pennies for over twenty years, and I doubt a penny would be good enough now, I reckon a quid would be considered the minimum.

With Halloween falling on a Saturday this year, we had a huge number of small children (accompanied by responsible adults, I'm pleased to note) knocking on our door last weekend and they staggered away with huge burdens of candies of various types. We had a few knick-knacks on the house; a couple of ghosts, some skeletons and the like, to show we were Trick or Treat friendly, but some people in our area really pushed the boat out with some fabulous decorations.

Fireworks are increasingly a feature of celebrations not associated with Guy Fawkes. Diwali and New Year's Eve are just two occasions when you can expect to see and hear them and as much as I like watching them, why do so many of them have to be so damned loud? Technically, fireworks can only be set off  between 7am and 11pm, although the law makes exceptions for  Bonfire Night, when the cut off is midnight, New Year’s Eve, Diwali and Chinese New Year, when the cut off is 1am, but increasingly that 11pm cut-off seems to be ignored with impromptu displays going off to all hours. It isn't unusual to be woken at all hours by distant (and not so distant) displays.

Although it is Guy Fawkes Night we celebrate on 5th November, and Fawkes was the one discovered with his finger on the trigger as it were, he was not the leader of the conspiracy. That man was Robert Catesby. Somehow it's as well that it is Fawkes who is remembered; Robert Catesby's Night just doesn't have the same ring to it!

The Poor Have Always Been With Us, Ready Meals Have Not.

Jamie Oliver recently addressed the  House of Commons Health Committee, and one of the things he said was that a so called "sugar tax" on soft drinks was the “single most important” change that could be made to tackle child obesity. Predictably this was met with some criticism. It's a tax on the poor, his critics claim. It's claimed that it is naive to think that poor people are obese because they eat food that's bad for them and by taxing them, they will be encouraged to eat more healthily. And that's possibly true, taxing people won't change their mindset, but then again, with some people, nothing will.

He's not everyone's cup of tea, and his messages sometimes get lost because of that.

 Whenever Oliver's critics run out of other sticks to beat him with, they deride him for his "mockney" accent, his businesses and his wealth and his perceived attempts to get us all eating goji berries and quinoa, and to buy everything from Waitrose or farmers markets. So let's set all of those aside and concentrate on the message, not the messenger, on the general idea of healthy eating, whether it's reducing our consumption of junk food and sugary drinks, or improving the quality of school dinners.

Oliver's foray into the world of school dinners may have smacked of publicity stunt, it was the subject of a TV series after all, but he made a serious point about the nutritional value of school dinners when they consist almost unremittingly of mechanically retrieved, reformed meat products, pizzas and chips. They are cheap, the argument goes, and with budgetary constraints, represent the best value for schools. Except, much in the manner of Oscar Wilde's cynic, we are confusing price and value. Yes, burgers and sausages, chicken bits and pies may be cheap, but good value? Not nutritionally. Jamie Oliver's attempts to make school meals healthier met with a predictable queue of parents at the school gates, posting takeaways through the fence to ensure that their offspring maintained their daily intake of sugar, salt, saturated fats and minced animal offcuts.

It seems that many parents are happier if their child's school dinner looks like this...

...rather than like this.

When all else fails, Oliver can be criticised for what his detractors view as his patronising belief that we can eat well for less. Strangely, programmes like "Eat Well For Less" presented by Greg Wallace and Chris Bavin, or predecessors like "Honey, We're Killing The Kids" which have both promoted healthier food choices that can be got by spending less than on nutritionally poorer alternatives, don't attract the same sort of opprobrium. And if you think that Oliver's recipes are "poncey" and that every one requires a large number of expensive ingredients, then use the recipes as inspiration, use your brain and adapt rather than trying to copy them exactly. But of course sneering at people while slurping down a microwave lasagne is so much easier and satisfying than chopping some vegetables and actually cooking a meal.

The misconception that Oliver's critics seem to have is that he expects the poor to shop at Waitrose or a farmers markets, to buy exotic fruit, vegetables and spices, organic meats and wholegrain pasta to create sumptuous banquets; he isn't. What he wants is people to look beyond the empty calories of the ready meal, the artery clogging piles of takeaway gunk and eat healthily instead. Oh, but chips are so cheap, you say (hence the expression, cheap as chips). They are not. A small portion of chips at a local chip shop costs £1.40 and a large one, £2.20 ; a bag of McCains oven chips, weighing in at 907g, costs £1.50 at Asda (that's the equivalent of £1.65 per kilo), or a one kilo bag of spuds costs 99p.

But apparently the poor have no alternative to the ready meals in their local convenience store or the chicken 'n' chips takeaway, with the occasional McDonalds Big Mac Meal or home delivered pizza as a treat, because real food is sooo expensive; except it isn't.  How much is a head of broccoli? 49p in Tesco, and that will be enough for eight portions. Carrots? Aldi sell them for 49p per kilo. Potatoes, enough for eight servings, 99p. Four chicken breasts at Tesco, £5. For £7 you can feed a family of four with food to spare, while your chicken bargain bucket will set you back a tenner.  Real food isn't exorbitantly priced and supermarkets sell meat and vegetables approaching their sell by date at reduced prices. What's needed is a little thought, thinking beyond the ready meal/takeaway option. Even when a ready meal is cheaper, it will be poorer nutritionally; the perceived economy is a false economy.

106 grams of fat, 35 grams of sugar and 7.6 grams of salt. 

It is undeniable that at the moment in this country a lot of people, even people in work, are living in poverty. There is undoubtedly food poverty  in this country, (the first UK food bank opened in 2000 and there are now 445) not that it's exclusively a British issue. France has twice as many food banks as we do and in Germany 1.5 million people a week  used food banks  in 2014, compared with just over one million people who used them in the UK in the whole of the two years 2014-2015. That isn't to play down the problem, but those who wring their hands and suggest that the poor are condemned to a diet of ready meals and takeaways are actually perpetuating the problem, and to some extent, it is in their interest to do so.

39 grams of sugar, or to put it another way, 9 tea spoons

Apparently the poor are not only unable to afford anything other than junk food, even though healthy food can be cheaper, they are unable to aspire to anything better and have no ambition to improve their lot, which is exactly what Oliver's critics want. The poor provide them with a stick to beat him and the Tories with, except at least Jamie Oliver is trying to do something - I can't speak for the Tories, they seem to have adopted the old song as their manifesto, "it's the rich what get the pleasure, and the poor what get the blame." Critics of Oliver, or anyone else who suggests that the poor might actually want to improve their diet, condescend to them; "you are poor," they say, "do not aspire to improve your lot, know your place."

The fact is that the poor have always been with us; ready meals haven't, they only became commonplace in the UK in the 1970's. What did the poor do before then? Well, if my parents were anything to go by, and they were by no means well off (my Mum didn't work for most of the 1960's and my Dad was in and out of jobs during that period, often unemployed and receiving no benefit) they eked out what they could. A cheap joint would stretch to six servings at least, padded out with potatoes, vegetable and bread.

Jamie Oliver is a soft target and frankly it's so much easier to attack him than it is to address the issues of Britain's poor diet and obesity problem. The real problems are that it isn't in the interests of a lot of people to actually find a solution; perpetuating the problems of the poor is to their advantage. You could give a lot of the more feckless poor free meat, vegetables and potatoes that they had to prepare themselves and they'd still be microwaving junk and queuing at the chicken shop.

Project 10 - Walking To Tilbury

When Fabrice Muamba collapsed on the pitch at White Hart Lane playing for Bolton Wanderers against Spurs in the 2012 FA Cup tie, having suffered a heart attack, his life was saved by the prompt action of the club's medical staff and a cardiologist from Barts. The lower down the football pyramid one goes, the greater the likelihood that a player suffering  a similar event  would not be able to expect the same level of care. It is a sad fact that players do die on football pitches following heart events; at the start of this season Junior Dain died after collapsing while playing for Tonbridge Angels at Whyteleafe.[1] It is also not unknown for spectators to fall ill at games; a defibrillator could save the life of a fan too.

Fabrice Muamba. Photo: mirror.co.uk

My club, Romford FC have been lucky enough to be able to call upon the expertise of Katie Thwaites and, before her, Peter Shepherd, as physios. Supporters of Romford and of Chatham Town will remember how Katie's actions helped save the life of Chatham's Corey Holder after he ruptured his spleen[2], proving the value of well trained medical staff at all levels of the game. But for all the skill that medical practitioners at football clubs may possess, their ability to save a player who has suffered a heart event is greatly enhanced if they have access to a defibrillator. Fabrice Muamba received 15 defibrillation shocks in all – two on the pitch, one in the tunnel and 12 in the ambulance, which were vital in saving his life. The British Heart Foundation state that when  someone has a cardiac arrest, defibrillation needs to be prompt because for every minute that passes without defibrillation, chances of survival are reduced by about 10%.  Research shows that giving a controlled shock within five minutes of collapse provides the best possible chance of survival if CPR has been carried out as well.

Defibrillators are becoming common in public places like shopping malls and railway stations and schools, and while many football clubs have their own defibrillator, Romford FC currently do not. One of the objectives of the club's Project 10, which was launched earlier in the season,  is to raise sufficient funds to purchase one and fund training courses. My aim is to raise as much money as possible towards those costs, which will be in the region of £1,000

To do that I am asking people to sponsor me to walk to Romford's away game at Tilbury FC on Saturday 7th November 2015. I'll be setting off from the site of Romford FC's proposed new home at Westlands in London Road, Romford to walk to Chadfields, which Google Maps informs me is about 16 miles and should take me just over five hours, taking into account alterations to route, how often I get lost and any necessary comfort breaks! All being well I hope to set off between 8 am and 8.30 am and will live Tweet my progress. You will be able to follow me at @mikewcdx, #WalkingToTilbury. With a bit of luck I'll reach Tilbury between 1.30 pm and 2 pm.

If you would like to sponsor me,  you can do so by going to https://crowdfunding.justgiving.com/mike-woods

In preparation for this little jaunt, I've been getting in some practice. A few weeks ago Val and I walked from Herne Bay to Margate, which is 12.2 miles and which took four hours and three minutes. I've also walked the  elements of the course from Romford to Tilbury to work out the route and having done so, it seems that in theory at least, the time and distance that Google Maps suggests is a tiny bit awry, as this table, using statistic from the Map My Walk smartphone app, shows:

Leg	From	To	Miles	Time
1	Westlands	Roneo Corner	1.90	00:32:00
2	Roneo Corner	Chandlers Corner	4.80	01:22:00
3	Chandlers Corner	Stoneness Roundabout	5.23	01:27:00
4	Stoneness Roundabout	Chadfields	4.45	01:13:00
		Total	16.38	04:34:00

This is my route.

The third leg is a bit interesting as it involves crossing the slip road for the A13, and parts of the A1090 have no pavement. That road is used by lots of HGV's, which whip by at a goodly pace, which is a bit unnerving .  It's long time since I walked 15 miles in one go, not since I did a Midland Bank sponsored walk for Guide Dogs for The Blind back in the 1980's in fact, so this isn't a task that I'm taking too lightly; completing all 16.38 miles in one go is likely to be a bit slower than doing the four sections separately.

If you can sponsor me, that would be marvellous because every pound will help towards buying a truly vital piece of equipment.  Even if you can't sponsor me, please, please share this week's blog, I don't usually ask but this is something that I care about very much and would really like to get it out to as wide an audience as possible.

Oh, and if someone can give me a lift back to Romford after the game I'd be grateful, because there is no way I am walking home!

---

[1] This list shows that sadly, footballers suffering cardiac arrest while playing is not as rare as one might expect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_association_footballers_who_died_while_playing

[2] See: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2470185/Footballer-Corey-Holder-spleen-removed-freak-injury-playing-Chatham-Town.html

In Out, In Out, Shake It All About!

At some point in the next couple of years we are going to have the opportunity to vote on whether or not Britain remains a member of the European Union. If that vote was today, which way would you vote? If you know, then good for you;  I have yet to make up my mind.

The problem is that I find myself swayed by the arguments of both sides, depending on who is doing the talking. If we were to exit the EU, goes the argument, we could still retain our trading links with Europe, as do the Norwegians, the Swiss and Turkey, all of whom are outside the EU. The Norwegians, for example, have access to the single market  (with the exception of some financial services), but are free from EU rules on agriculture, fisheries, justice and home affairs. Sounds good; rid ourselves of the pettifogging bureaucracy and the loony policies on the angle of bend of a banana and the like but retain the benefits of trading with mainland Europe. Except of course that  Norway (and Switzerland) have to abide by many EU rules but have no influence over how those rules are set, and they still have to pay to access the single market. Successive Prime Ministers, from Thatcher, through Blair, Brown and now Cameron, have made pledges to go to Brussels and renegotiate Britain's deal with the EU with limited success. And that's fighting for a better deal from inside the group; imagine how much success they would have had trying to bargain from outside the European clique?

What about employment, jobs, then? Leave the EU, the argument goes and freed from the petty red tape of EU regulations, firms would be able to expand with those who trade outside the EU benefiting most. But on the other hand, how many jobs would be lost through companies moving their operations to lower cost EU countries? And what about financial services? Chances are that many of these would relocate to Europe, specifically Frankfurt which is already a major competitor to London in terms of financial services. HSBC for example indicated that they may move their headquarters away from London in the event of Britain leaving the EU; they would not be alone.

Other factors that weigh heavily in the pros and cons of EU membership include the immigration issue. That is something that I see as being wholly separate given the state of affairs with the number of migrants currently making their way into Europe. With Britain not being a member of the Schengen Area and with the Channel forming a greater physical barrier to free movement than exists between the mainland European states, immigration, especially in respect of refugees and asylum seekers, is increasingly becoming beyond the control of existing EU legislation. Germany's decision to close its borders recently suggests that open borders do not work in these circumstances, even if Angela Merkel's government promises that border controls are only temporary. Future agreements on border controls will have to be negotiated whether or not Britain remains in the EU and the fact that as an existing member, Britain is outside the Schengen agreement indicates that EU membership is not the most important factor in the matter.

The EU horror stories so beloved by the tabloid press are generally gross exaggerations designed to provoke Angry of Tunbridge Wells into a blood vessel bursting invective over his cornflakes. "EU to ban selling eggs by the dozen," was a story that surfaced in the press...in 2010. Last time I looked, Tesco were still selling eggs by the dozen or half dozen. Similarly, stories that the EU had plans to ban coffee makers, British number plates, double decker buses and Prawn Cocktail crisps have all been proven to be nonsense. Another story was that the EU would ban bagpipes on the grounds of noise pollution. Sadly that one was a myth too.

 

Stuart Rose, formerly chairman of Marks & Spencer is leading the Britain Stronger In Europe group.

Ukip MP Douglas Carswell unsurprisingly backs the side campaigning for Britain to leave the EU.

At least the official launch of the campaigns to get voters to make up their minds, with "Britain Stronger In Europe" on one side and "Vote Leave" and "Leave.EU" on the other, has taken our minds off the crisis that engulfed the nation last week when the 5p charge was introduced on the use of carrier bags in supermarkets and other large retailers. "Supermarket 5p A Bag Chaos Fears" screamed the Daily Mirror headline, while the Daily Mail warned that "Plastic Bag Chaos Looms." And as if to prove their point, these papers, and others, carried stories of shoppers arguing over the 5p charge, being stopped from carrying their shopping to their cars in supermarket baskets, of overcharging (one shopper was charged £3 a bag in error), of stores putting security tags on bags, of shoppers stealing bags. Given the literally millions of supermarket transactions undertaken every day, the fact that there are so few stories proves that this is very much a non-story.  

The EU debate and the refugee crisis in Europe, both considered less important than having to pay 5p for a carrier bag.

Supermarkets haven't always given away carrier bags at the check outs; my Mother used to go shopping with a proper shopping bag or two, and in her later years used a trolley, not free carriers.We will get used to paying or taking our own bags quicker than the tabloids give credit for. The whole industry around stories about 5p carrier bags is pretty pathetic, and at a time when there are much more serious things with which we ought to be occupying our thoughts, insulting of our intelligence. I think I have been in a supermarket pretty much every day since the charge came in and not yet seen even a discussion between shoppers and staff about the charge. Still, as they say, the papers rarely let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Not sure which one of the Kardashians this is, but I don't think it is the one married to Kanye West.

But, to return to the EU referendum issue. Whether Britain would benefit from continued membership of the EU or would be better of pulling out is an impossible question to answer with any certainty as there are no precedents; no one has as yet withdrawn from EU membership. So, In or Out? I don't know, but at least I have plenty of time to shake it all about and make up my mind, with no date as yet fixed for the referendum. In the meantime it will be a case of sifting the wheat from the chaff in the media...assuming they can tear themselves away from stories about carrier bags and those aliens from Star Trek, the Kardashians.

The Dirty Diesel Deception

A couple of months ago I had a letter from Nissan, recalling my car due to a possible defect with the steering. I took it back to the dealers and fortunately nothing was amiss. Since the car is seven years old, I can't imagine how I would have felt if they had found a fault; relieved  that nothing had happened before the recall probably! While I was there I was buttonholed by one of the salesmen. He asked if I was in the market for a new car, and as it happens, I have been considering it lately. He told me that they had some really good deals on diesels.  Now, when I hear a salesman say they have a really good deal on something, my instinct is to think a good deal for who? Usually it will only be good deal for me if it's an even better deal for them. I told him I would think about it.

It was only a couple of days later that I saw some news about some towns and cities either banning diesel cars or at least imposing charges on their use due to concerns over pollution. Paris has announced plans to ban diesel cars from the French capital by 2020 due to worries about how much pollution the cars cause and apparently London Mayor Boris Johnson has plans to raise the congestion charge for diesel cars by £10 in a bid to cut air pollution. Having digested that information, it wasn't long before the story about Volkswagen fitting their cars with software capable of cheating vehicle emissions tests broke. According to Reuters 8 million vehicles in the EU have been fitted with this software, although the story at first concerned VW cars in the USA.

Volkswagen used allegedly low emissions as a selling point...

...inevitably, the internet had fun with that.

While there is no suggestion that Nissan have been playing  a similar game to Volkswagen, the potential charges for using diesel vehicles and the cheating by the German manufacturer naturally make diesels a somewhat less attractive proposition than they once were. Diesels have long been seen as a cleaner, more fuel efficient alternative to petrol driven cars, so much so that in 2001, the then Chancellor Gordon Brown introduced lower vehicle tax for diesel cars, on the grounds that they were less polluting. Former Labour minister Lord Grayson now says, "We have a much better understanding than we did just a few years ago of the health effects of the products of diesel, and they are literally killing people. It is clear that in retrospect that it was the wrong policy ... we have got to take action really quite quickly." Clearly Nissan, and indeed other dealers, now have stocks of diesels that they want to shift because the long standing benefits of diesel now no longer apply, so "deals" may be their best bet in getting these cars off their forecourts. That said, the depreciation that begins the moment you drive your new diesel away from the showroom might just be considerably worse now than what it was a month or so ago; your deal might not be so attractive when you come to re-sell your car.

In an industry like the motor trade, just as in others like banking, scandals like this are rarely confined to one player. Remember PPI, avoidance of money laundering regulations, fixing interest and exchange rates; it might have been one bank that first hit the headlines with one or another of these antics, but it was not long before it became apparent that others were involved. While Volkswagen remain the only manufacturer implicated so far, one cannot help but think that it is unlikely that all of the others have entirely clean hands.

When the VW news broke, The Financial Times reported that a charity worker in Frankfurt said, "It’s catastrophic. I feel let down. VW and the other (German carmakers) were companies I felt I could believe in, but Volkswagen has ruined that image for me." Volkswagen were, perhaps will be again, a company that people put their faith in, but a reputation built up over many years can be destroyed in a day, by one single action. I imagine that the VW workforce feel let down, well those who were unaware of the scandal until it was reported anyway. I occasionally take part in online surveys, some of which list a number of employers in a certain field and ask whether I would be proud or embarrassed to work for them; I think VW would have been one I would have said I was proud to work for, but would now be embarrassed.

It is the same in any industry. My erstwhile employers regularly banged on about the need for us (some way down the organisational hierarchy) to act with probity, prudence, integrity etc, etc, while further up the food chain there were all sorts of dubious practices going on. But eventually they get forgotten when something else comes along, after all there was the horsemeat scandal a couple of years ago, but the supermarket shelves remain well stocked with ready meals, the provenance of the meat content of which we only have the stores' word for, and people are still buying them if the baskets and trolleys I see at Tesco are anything to go by. 

Diesels however, might not recover so easily, not just because of the VW affair, but because their previous merits have been largely discredited. Prospective London Mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith was on the radio last week, promoting the idea that electric cars are a better alternative for the future, but while I have seen quite a number of them on the roads in recent months, more than I would have expected, they have some way to go before they become more prevalent than petrol or diesel cars. Last Saturday I drove to Liverpool and back, a round trip of about 380 miles. With a range of 124 miles on a single charge for a car like the Nissan Leaf I would not even have made it all the way there without having to stop and recharge the batteries, and with it taking 8 hours to do so, such a journey by electric powered car is not practical. Some way to go before we are all driving electric cars, I think.

Buy an electric car and you may do almost as much of this...

 

...as this.

A problem we all have, whether it's choosing a ready meal, which bank we use, or the type of car we buy, is that we can only go by the information we have to hand at the time (and our gut instinct). It is incredible to think that, given that we now all know how detrimental smoking can be to our health, in the 1930's right up to the 1950's, smoking, or at least smoking certain brands, was promoted as "healthy," yet they were.The Philip Morris tobacco company advertised their cigarettes with the claim that for people with irritated throats, their brand cleared or improved that irritation, so we should not be beating ourselves up about having previously considered diesels to be an environmentally preferable alternative to petrol cars. 

Hard to be believe, but there was a time when cigarette advertising came with endorsements from doctors, not health warnings.

Meanwhile, I'm procrastinating over a new car purchase, but I think it's fairly certain it won't be a diesel.

University Challenged

Britain's universities are currently running open days, inviting prospective students to come for a look-see, to decide at which campus they want to study after their A levels. Our younger daughter has just embarked on her second year of Sixth Form, so we've begun the round of university visits. This Saturday we aim to go to Liverpool Hope; a few weeks ago we went to Southampton. As we wandered around the campus at Southampton it dawned on me that this was probably the first time I had ever set foot in a university. I'll discount the University of East London (UEL) on the grounds that I only did a HNC in Business Studies there on day release and besides it was called the North East London Polytechnic then, and in all honesty, the course was not much harder that A levels (in fact the Economics was easier).

The old North East London Poly, later UEL, now flats..  © Copyright Glyn Baker and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

There is clearly a difference in expectations for school leavers now compared with when I was a teenager. I left school in 1976, proud of my A levels in English Literature, Economics and Geography. I got a B, an E and a C respectively, grades that would be unlikely to get me into any university now, but back then fewer people took A levels. Merely passing one, let alone three was cause for celebration, so I was chuffed. It was only in 1972 that the school leaving age in the UK had been raised to 16, so by 1974 when I reached that age, it was only just becoming the norm for children to take O levels let alone A levels. Now, children born after 1st September 1997 must remain in full time education until they are 18 unless they take an apprenticeship or a job that provides training and the custom is increasingly to study for A levels. As time goes on, going to university will increasingly become the norm, but in 1976 it was the exception; well, it was at my school. I cannot recall anyone actively considering going on to university, although I'm sure a few must have.

 My parents, who both had modestly paid factory jobs at the time, were not all that keen on my taking A levels, since they could really have done with another wage coming into the house in 1974. That year, when I could have left school, I had no idea what I wanted to do for a living. I envied (and still envy) those people who have a career ambition, but I had none, so Sixth Form was, apart from anything else, a two year thinking space. I remember my Mum saying, "I hope you're not going to spend two years in Sixth Form and then just get a job in a bank," because I could have got a job in a bank at 16. After two years of A level studies, a job in a bank was precisely what I got. Not because I especially wanted one, but because they were easy to get and I still didn't know what I wanted to do. Forty years on, and now retired, I still don't know what I would have liked to have done.

 In 1976 there were 1.3 million people unemployed in Britain, but you wouldn't have known it if you were a teenager, fresh out of school, looking for your first job. Banks, insurance companies and the Civil Service all recruited large numbers of school leavers each year; many of my peers had multiple offers but more out of a sense of inertia than anything else, I accepted the first offer I got, from Midland Bank. A job in a bank, or an insurance company and especially with the Civil Service, was then considered to be a job for life. Banks were very labour intensive, with highly manual processes and there was a career path of sorts that many followed. Nowadays the job for life is as rare as hens teeth; today's school leaver or university graduate should instead be prepared to acquire the sort of  transferrable skills that will help make them employable for life.

I mentioned that one of my A levels was in Geography, which is the subject my daughter wants to study at university. On our trip to the University of Southampton, I joined her at the talks on the subject. There are several courses, including Population Geography (PopGeog  as it is referred to by students and lecturers, and to my daughter's disapproval, me as well) and the way the university sold them made me want to go and study the subject there, especially PopGeog.

Gardens on the Highfield Campus of the University of Southampton. Photo: Iamtheabelman

I didn't particularly like Geography at school; I did an A level in it because the teachers thought I was good at it, but there were some elements that I enjoyed more than others. Economic and social geography were fine, but physical geography and practical geography (most of which seemed to consist of converting an Ordnance Survey map into a cross-sectional diagram, or vice versa) were not especially my cup of tea. I remember coming out of an astonishingly hard practical A level exam to see my ashen faced teachers shaking their heads and muttering about it being the hardest paper they had ever seen. Fortunately the economic geography paper featured questions that were so close to what our teachers had predicted that they may as well have written the paper. That I have always felt is a great skill in a teacher, being able to predict with any sort of accuracy, the types of questions that will feature in the exams. Looking back, it seems to me that in all three A level subjects my teachers were pretty good at identifying the topics likely to come up.

Back in 1976, leaving school at 16, with or without O levels, did not make you unemployable, although passes in Maths and English helped in finding employment. Having A levels did not necessarily get you a better job (it entitled me to a few bob a week more than if I hadn't got them though). Today's school leavers , even with decent A levels, may feel that they are at a disadvantage when compared with university graduates as it seems that expectations are (among employers and the potential employees) that higher levels of qualifications are constantly necessary to differentiate between the jobseekers.

There's a saying that youth is wasted on the young; in some ways that is true of education too. At 16 or even 18, possibly even at 21, education is just a means to an end, the A level differentiating from those with "just" GCSE's and the degree differentiating from those with "just" A levels in the race to get a better job. How much satisfaction university students get from their studies is moot, although I do think that those years at university must be responsible for teaching them some invaluable life skills.  Looking back at my 18 year old self, there were several reasons why I did not consider going to university; if I had the opportunity now, I think my decision would be different. I'm not sure how much I would have appreciated or enjoyed it then; rather less than I would now, I suspect.

Interesting Times

The Labour party's election of a new leader after their underwhelming display at the last general election was, even for disinterested observers like myself, interesting, intriguing and dare I say, not a little entertaining. Even I, as someone whose interest in politics could best be described as distant, could see that as soon as Jeremy Corbyn threw his hat in the ring, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall might as well have packed up their tents and gone home. It was less an election more a procession, followed by something akin to a coronation.

With many staunch left wingers being considered a little too left of centre once they applied for membership of the party, while those so far on the right that they were actually fully paid up Tories appeared to be accepted, it seemed that there were as many staunch Conservatives who wanted Corbyn elected as there were Socialists, their expectation being that Corbyn's particularly left wing views and policies would make unelectable as Prime Minister come 2020. So, is he unelectable? Who knows; he may not even be Labour leader the next time Britain goes to the polls, and no one knows what sort of fist the Conservatives will make of the next five years after having some of their excesses reined in by the Lib-Dems during the last Parliament. With David Cameron having already announced that he will not stand again, Corbyn's opponent in 2020 could be as unpalatable to the electorate as Ed Miliband was this year. Mind you, the allegations made in Lord Ashcroft's unauthorised biography of David Cameron may sink Cameron before the end of this Parliament anyway.

The early days of Corbyn's tenure as Labour leader have seen a lot of emphasis placed on image and style rather than policy, particularly over his failure to sing the National Anthem, with the Daily Telegraph suggesting that he should appoint a spin doctor tout de suite. All things considered, given that Corbyn is supposedly differentiated from most other politicians by his lack of superficiality, that is probably the last thing he wants.  With the somewhat alarmist and at times bizarre criticisms that have been levelled him however, perhaps Jeremy could do with a spinner to refute some of the more extreme stories. On the other hand, despite his beard and initials he is far from being the new messiah despite what some Labour supporters, who feel that criticism of JC in the press is unjustified and disproportionate, may think. Given the well known right wing leanings of most of the print media the criticism is scarcely surprising. Besides, a forensic examination of any new leader of any party is only to be expected. Labour supporters have also accused the BBC of bias, going so far as to start a petition to call upon the BBC to describe David Cameron as "the right wing Prime Minister" in retaliation for the Beeb's frequent reference to Jeremy Corbyn as the "left wing Labour leader." The difference of course is that Jeremy is left wing in comparison with some of his party whereas Cameron is no more right wing than many in the Tory party. In fact accusations of an anti-Labour stance at the BBC are somewhat off the mark, since the organisation is frequently charged with being too left leaning. If anything I would say it does have a tendency to favour the left, even in light entertainment. The News Quiz for example features Jeremy Hardy and Mark Steel, both staunchly left wing,  as regular panellists and in recordings I have seen these two have launched into vitriolic anti-Tory, anti-Cameron diatribes at every opportunity,  even when the question has relates to the mundane, like a poisonous spider found in a bunch of Waitrose bananas. At one recording one panellist described Cameron as "a nonce" which I am sure was not broadcast, but if ever there was an instance when those who live in glass houses should not throw stones...The fact that the BBC is accused of bias by both sides of the political spectrum tends to suggest that on the whole it is pretty even handed.

But what of Jeremy Corbyn's policies? A well publicised goal is to take the railways back into public ownership, line by line as each franchise expires. Given his stated aim of fairer fares and proper integration, this is not such a bad idea, especially given the current over complicated fare structure. But since British Rail wasn't exactly synonymous with reliability, efficiency or punctuality I'm not entirely sanguine about a "People's Railway" being any better than our current set up.  The name alone evokes images of a Soviet style network, bloated and bureaucratic.  UKIP leader Nigel Farage claims it  would be illegal under EU law to renationalise the railways due to European Union directive 2012/34/EU, but there again Mr Corbyn aims to renegotiate Britain's deal with Europe...which has worked well in the past, hasn't it?

Then there are the energy companies. Currently the focus of much criticism for their complex tariffs, their poor customer services and the difficulty in switching from one supplier to another, a return to public ownership might be a good thing except for the complexity and cost of such an undertaking. The fact that some, like eDF, are foreign owned is perhaps as good a reason as any to bring them back into British ownership, public or not. Perhaps Mr Corbyn would seek to fund such a purchase, and other projects, by returning to the days when Labour sought to "squeeze the rich until the pips squeak" with his plan for a national maximum wage and higher taxes for the rich.  Mind you I can't fault his idea to crack down on tax avoidance and evasion. After the years of a Tony Blair led Labour administration that was in many ways so indistinguishable from a Tory government that I often wondered if Blair was actually a Conservative Central Office plant, it is perhaps refreshing to see a Labour leader returning to the party's roots. Certainly  a strong opposition is important to keep government from excess, but as we have seen in the past, opposition parties often find that they have to compromise on a lot of their beliefs once they discover the realities of being in power, and JC would be no exception if he became Prime Minister.

One interesting outcome, should Jeremy Corbyn ever reach 10 Downing Street, could be that we all have the opportunity to enjoy a lot more romantic, candle lit dinners. I appreciate that it isn't one of his stated goals, but renationalising the energy companies and in all probability reducing the constraints placed on the trade unions by the Tories could make them a thing of the future, just like they were in the literally dark days of the 1970's.

However Jeremy Corbyn's term as leader of the Labour Party, and possibly as Prime Minister one day, turn out, I can't help but be reminded of the curse, "may you live in interesting times," because I have a feeling we may be experiencing a very interesting few years one way or another.

Uniform Rules

The new academic year has started, the children have gone back to school and if the press are to believed, a lot of them have promptly been sent home, or put in isolation, because they have infringed school rules on uniform.

Apparently, 75 pupils at Felixstowe Academy were put in isolation and had to have lunch separately from their classmates for breaching school rules on footwear, despite, in some cases, wearing the same shoes as they had before the summer holidays. Meanwhile in Leeds, Allerton Grange sent over 50 students home for wearing clothing that failed to meet the school's new uniform code. In Stoke-on-Trent, Trentham High School, which banned its female pupils from wearing skirts last July on the grounds that their short skirts were embarrassing the male teaching staff, sent home some pupils (male and female) at the beginning of this term for wearing trousers that were deemed to be too tight.

Some schools, including the one that my daughters attended, have such strict uniform policies that parents can only buy the uniform from approved outlets. Anyone who has had to buy new blazers, skirts and the like from such shops will know that this does not come cheap, especially in a child's first year at such a school. We spent a small fortune the first year our younger daughter went to secondary school. Then there are the items like shoes, winter coats and bags that parents can buy elsewhere but must meet the twin demands of school rules and a teenager's fashion preferences.

Shoes in particular are a minefield for parents. They must be durable enough so that they don't have to be replaced every term, fashionable enough to satisfy the wearer but bland enough to meet the very exacting strictures the school set. It seems often, from the newspaper stories at least, that this is where parents most often fall foul of the rules. It has been reported that Ormiston Venture Academy in Gorleston sent a female pupil home because the soles of her shoes were brown, not black; the school suggested that the soles were painted black.

The offending black shoes with brown soles.

Winter coats are difficult too. Must be black, no logos, no fur trim. And bags; no backpacks, must be black, no logos, no shiny buckles or the like. Some years buying a bag for our daughter for school has involved multiple shopping trips and in the end, an element of compromise.

But while it is difficult not to sometimes have some sympathy with pupils and parents who fall foul of school dress codes, the other old faithful that the press love to churn out year in, year out, is the unacceptable haircut. If it isn't hair that has been died it is the "extreme" or unorthodox style. Usually it is boys who have had a severe haircut, normally involving at least part of the head shaved to a short stubble, that fall foul of these rules and it is harder to understand parents allowing this than it is the odd pair of shoes of which a headteacher may disapprove. Given that my blog is called "Rules, Fools and Wise Men" and I largely subscribe to the idea that rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men, then you may think that on the whole I would be on the side of the parents and pupils in matters of dispute over school uniform and hairdos; on this occasion, not. An argument floated by many a parent whose son or daughter has gone to school with the wrong colour coat, or a skirt that is too short, is what does this have to do with academic attainment? Directly, not a lot; indirectly, plenty. In one word it's about discipline.

Blind obedience of the rules is not something I would advocate in all walks of life, but in the military and at school, to give two quite different examples, it is important. You have to know when to challenge rules and there is a world of difference between questioning a rule and wilfully disobeying it. School uniforms do help schools maintain discipline; if you are sloppy about uniform you are likely to be sloppy elsewhere, and uniforms teach an important lesson about life after school, where many employers have strict dress codes . Being a rebel over uniform at school might gain you some kudos with your peers, it won't do you any good when working at Tesco. Oh, and without a uniform, peer pressure inevitably means that parents will end up paying for designer or at least fashionable, up to the minute attire because no child wants to be seen in last year's trainers or last year's hoodie, now do they?

Where I do have a gripe with schools on the uniform issue is, as I have experienced, the necessity of buying a particular outfit from a particular store. My old school uniform was black blazer, dark grey trousers (skirts for girls) and while shirts. These could be sourced anywhere and a tie, blazer badge and PE kit could be bought cheaply at Pollards (there's a name that has disappeared from our High Streets). Apart from the odd "lad" (or "ladette") told to tie their tie properly (the huge knot and tiny length of tie were de rigueur with many pupils in the 1970's, and it appears, to this day).  I cannot recall anyone being sent home for a uniform infraction and discipline at my school was no worse than anywhere else (apart from the time the Bomb Squad were called after a chemistry class made an explosive device, but that's another story).  So while a green blazer for my daughter's school costs £28 from the approved, and only supplier (a case for the Monopolies Commission, perhaps?) [1] a generic, grey blazer can be had for less than half that price from Asda.

Pollards, with another familiar name now absent from our High Streets, Freeman, Hardy, Willis.

The articles about children sent home for uniform violations are beyond parody; they all feature pictures of the child and one of his or her parents staring wistfully at the offending item of clothing accompanied by an article bemoaning the draconian uniform policy adopted by the school. The  thing that interests me about these stories that are so beloved of the newspapers is how they get hold of them.  From parents presumably.

Double whammy. This lad was sent home for having the wrong shoes and an inappropriate haircut.

I'm just imagining the conversation at home when little Jimmy is excluded from school because his shoes have the wrong colour laces. "You've been sent home because of your shoes? Right, where' s the phone number for the Daily Mail?"

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[1] The Monopolies Commission no longer exists, it is the Competition & Markets Authority now, but the old name has more of a ring to it.