21 st March.

21/03/2007

07:54
Another inexplicable early rising.
Could have done with stopping in bed today because it is bloody cold!
Radiator and fire are struggling to inject any warmth into room.
Had a bath last night before going to bed; never realised the effect that lack of insulation and pipe cladding in particular can have on water temp. by the time the water had gone from the heater through the loft and came out of the taps it was lukewarm.
The contents of the bath were just to say warm enough to warrant taking a bath,
I will have to get onto landlord to have loft and pipe work seen to.

How do I feel today?
My mind is like one of those irritating illuminated rolling advertising signs, it displays one message and that is smoke.

My tinnitus is in good form this morning, volume is way above that of the 777 radio.
Hope a few of you have tried the station out.
I haven’t spent much time looking for alternatives; even less time since I “upgraded” to the newest edition of media player which to me seems to be very much sales orientated, which of course holds no pleasure for me.
All I required was something to listen to in the background whilst typing or doing course work. And 777 delivers.
I have even forgiven it for supplying the Xmas channel!

Yesterday I surfed for about six or seven hours, restricting my search engine to four main topics of interest and came across some interesting, often unusual sites.
Nothing new about that but I found the combination of two or three serious topics with a fourth art orientated choice gave me just the right balance to keep my interest.
If I’d spent the p.c. time of the last few days studying instead of surfing I would be about finished the course section, but I chose to relax and explore.
I found a couple of sites offering tutorials in XML and CSS;
too many sites offering advice on how to set up viable sites,
I found a difference in opinion on a few sites regarding what makes a site popular and financially rewarding.
A lot of the preferences are, I think dependant on the audience you are seeking.
I do tend to agree with the “purists” who do not like overkill on sites, i.e. pages full of advertisements be they text or otherwise.
A lot of wannabe entrepreneurs are setting up sites and manipulating as many aspects as they can possibly influence to provide a site which may generate an income.

I read one site which focused on consistent content of quality rather than visiting trade, relying on word of mouth to improve ranking.
The present generation has indeed a chance to break away from the “traditional” trade of time and labour in return for financial reward.
No longer will a person’s worth have to be gauged by the amount of labour during their working day.
This generation has the chance to break with tradition and produce something of value which will generate an income 24/7, often with very little maintenance and supervision.

I remember as a child being taken to an Open day at the chemical plant where my father worked; both my Mother and myself were affected when we saw him doing his allotted task.
I made a promise to myself never to become similarly employed.
Indeed my parents tried so hard, desperately hard to provide me with as many chances as possible to allow me a choice of employment.

If puberty hadn’t got in the way those aspirations may have come through.
I had very few, if any, role models to give me inspiration to do anything more than join the herd and acquire a house, mortgage, job ( any job) and a child.
I had my chances and didn’t have the faith in myself to take them.
I see the youngsters of today who seem to want so much more,
not in a sense of quality of life but of material possession.

I started married life with a mattress on the floor boards and a metal kitchen table in a two up two down rented house.
Youngsters today seem to want good quality, decorated housing fully furnished with everything they could possibly need, TV, washing machine, kitchen appliances, etc.
Then they think about finance, usually not for too long.
I do tend to agree with the people who take offence at the way the state funds youngsters once they have left the nest.

I was “lucky” to have entered the labour part of my life at a time when jobs were ten a penny and one could literally walk across the road and take up alternative employment.
The system was geared up to providing a relatively unskilled pool of labour for the established industries steel making and chemical processing plants being the main employers in my area.
The generation previous to mine had been bred to take their place in the force and hold down a “job for life”, a commitment to one company, and in return for loyalty and long hours of toil the boss would pay a pittance on which you lived and reared potential replacements for naturally lost members of the workforce.
People often use the phrase, job security.
Thinking back, how secure is a job when because of the abundance of potential workers the boss can utter those two words, “You’re fired”,
Any time he chooses to.

I presume the same stands today, there must be a surplus of people seeking employment, but now the bosses have been replaced by anonymous companies and franchises whose administrators are struggling to choose staff from the increasing pool of illiterate, underachievers who seek money, in return for their labour to have the chance to live a lifestyle which quite frankly 99.5% haven’t a hope in hell of even tasting.

How can children brought up to expect ridiculously priced clothes, footwear and electronic gadgets have any realistic knowledge of what life on their own will be like.
I see now that the Government has decided that children must be given the opportunity to learn a second language; hell! Most of the kids today don’t seem to have that much command of their native tongue.
The service industry is a growing sector and as many more of the traditional work areas disappear more and more employees come into contact with the general public.
The power of the teenager to influence the high street is diminishing fast and the “senior” pound is taking the no. 1 rank.
I for one would never seriously want to be served, assisted, or cajoled into buying anything because of the input of a spotty ,ill-mannered, semi-literate assistant.
Anyone who walks down any high street and listens to a crowd of youngsters and then contemplates the idea that these people are the future leaders of this country would be forgiven for thinking “thank god I won’t be around”.

Britain has always let down the successive generations because of the lack of foresight,
True there were the Agrarian and Industrial ages, I refuse to use the term revolution.
The progress made during those times would have happened naturally in any country because it was fuelled by need, at a time when religion still played a part in the schooling of potential workers and their offspring.
True Britain has been able to exploit its mineral resources and become a country which actually was able to produce a surplus of power.
Resources gave us the advantage of being able to site heavy industry in areas which lent themselves to development and in which resided the captive workforce eager to follow in the lifestyle of previous generations, ambition nil.
The institution of guild and later apprentice schemes supplied industry with the tradesman element of their workforce.
The success of such schemes and the control of the worker by the “teaching authority” meant the introduction of hundreds of new skilled and semiskilled opportunities both in the public and private sectors.
The break up of the National and large traditional industries such as shipbuilding and the newer employer of the masses, the car plants.

Automation arrived and the growth of the factory unit, production lines, man and machine worked along side each other and everyone expected a boom in exports which came and quickly disappeared as the rest of the world proved that they could do the job better, more efficiently and therefore at a lower cost per unit.
The labour force had little need for education to function as a worker and probably because of the media propaganda of the time believed that life was sweet and with work and commitment to same, families could escape from the dismal conditions experienced by their parents and become part of the new, cleaner, consumer orientated, friendly world.

With the dawning of the computer age Britain was once again ill prepared, the people in power were totally oblivious of the impact that computers would make to our little island and its inhabitants.
The opening of the global economy was never seen for what it was; we still hung on to the belief that people around the world would still want goods “Made in Britain!”,

Shite, even the British population had been groomed to be a society of consumers the majority of which would choose “Made in Taiwan” over the overpriced, poorly manufactured, British equivalent.
Britain was left on the blocks when it came to the possible development of a computer technology industry.
A lot of time and money had been invested into researching computers and their likely effects on the country, unfortunately the funding was withdrawn at an apparently critical moment and once again Britain stopped, looked around and considered what the other countries were doing, because by now whether we liked it or not we were more than ever influenced by world affairs and developments.

Sadly some of the important initial developments in the computer industry were initiated by British researchers and developers who had basically fled Britain and gone to work in America where their expertise was recognised and rewarded.
There was a trend , the phrase “ the brain drain” was coined to describe the exodus of skilled personnel who left these shores to seek their fortune abroad.
The scope for employment was now growing as countries united first by coalition into a European community and then by technology into a global community.
Britain was once again caught in a time warp.

New businesses and manufacturing units required their employees and operatives to have a higher degree of education.
The sheer diversity of employment opportunities meant choices were no longer restricted to training tradesmen; a workforce of semi-skilled grew at a time when manufacturing was relying on a hierarchy of management and administrators,
reminiscent of the divide between the blue collar workers and the shop floor.
Huge areas of the manufacturing landscape lay deserted as more and more businesses failed in their attempt to compete globally.
The government invited, nay begged, foreign investors to consider Britain as their manufacturing base.
Ridiculous incentives were offered;
one cannot blame some of the investors for making the most of these offers;
often milking the situation for all it was worth then disappearing having made huge profits by way of paying nominal rent for land, equipment and employing a subservient workforce no longer united by Union doctrines; grateful to work.

All dreading the bills which they had to pay for their lifestyle as consumers and fearful of the word Redundancy.

Short term injections some only lasting five to ten years, often less.

Each generation of workers were told how much their life had changed, advertisements displayed goods, once deemed to be only affordable to the rich, available to all;
in return for labour.
There was a time when unemployment figures were issued and any rise was seen as shameful, a reflection of failure.
Politicians soon realised that issuing of such figures could harm their positions so clever ideas to camouflage the figures were implemented.
After a few years of messing about with the figures and disguising certain groups of unemployed as job seekers and invalids, the statistic is almost impotent now.

The climate of Britain was one of uncertainty and investors were wary of starting up new ventures. The government bent over backwards to encourage entrepreneurs to set up small businesses, many people relished the idea of “ being their own boss”;
a high percentage, totally ill equipped in business skills lost life savings and accrued huge debts because of their idea failing.

There was a glut of older workers looking for employment as well as a growing number of school leavers who were unable to find employment.
The government had no idea what to do and relied on market forces to influence their half hearted strategies.
There was an era of reform which swept the nation in an attempt to instil national pride and give hope for the future.

The education system was screwed out of all recognition;
teachers were given ever greater workloads and schools held accountable for their results or lack of progress up the league table.
No guide lines were issued, no one was sure what kind of workforce would be needed at the moment and in the future.
One thing was certain if the future of Britain depended on the ability of the workforce to continue learning throughout their working lives and thus being able to adapt to changing trends in manufacturing, then we were surely sunk.

As jobs became scarce and employers more selective there was a huge rise in the number of unskilled, poorly educated people, young and old whose numbers grew at the end of every school term and tax year as they joined the population of unemployed skilled and semi skilled ex- workers.
Casual labour, part time , off the books, cash in hand, a sub community grew up and sometimes new ventures would get off the ground from such beginnings and a blind eye was turned as every person in the U.K. knew of someone who would “ do the job for them”.
There was an endless stream of people willing to work, often for ridiculously low wages.
There were others who had bought into the consumer lifestyle and were now finding it difficult, almost impossible to maintain their desired level of living.

A huge sector of civil servants sprung up as these people seen as being disadvantaged were given numbers prior to being “ helped” by the state.
The safety net of social funding;
once used to help only the poorest and needy was now full;
every school leaver, redundant worker, long term unemployed, sick, disabled.
Everyone seeking assistance.
I don’t know exactly when this happened but a population of unemployed and unemployable came into being.

The stigma of being out of work, on welfare, had long since disappeared and people saw the money paid out in the form of benefits as a right.
After all it “wasn’t their fault if they couldn’t find a job, because they weren’t any to be had”, or they weren’t prepared to work those hours, or for that wage, or under the supervision of that person, or be prepared to travel that far.
The workforce had become choosy and awkward, the religious and moral instruction as to the benefits of employment had long since gone.

We now see Britain in a position where its’ economy is kept afloat by the influx of a cheap foreign workforce who are prepared to do the jobs which others have refused to do.
The Welfare state was set up to help the poorest of the population and is dependant on contributions made by the workforce of the time.
If the number of contributing workers drops then it stands to reason the coffers will empty, as is the case of pensions.

If these workers are prepared to come into this country, work AND pay tax then surely they will be entitled to the same benefits as other residents in this isle.
What I cannot understand is the scenario in which two of more generations of a household have never worked,( and therefore contributed ), if that trend continues then what is the future?
The British family has not been producing enough offspring to provide a sufficiently large working population for the future;
unlike the trend among the immigrants, who, once established tend to produce more offspring in conditions of financial security, with strong family values, work ethics and to whom opportunities abound in almost exclusive communities.

To return to the case of the school leaver, often pushed into parenthood by the arrival of unplanned offspring, little prospect of employment yet provided for from a fund he hasn’t contributed to.
Accommodation and a weekly allowance to keep the occupants in essentials such as food, and clothes.
So where does the money come from for drinking and expensive clothes and jewellery?
Do they “hock” their possessions during the week and redeem them on weekends to gather and parade around with others of the same ilk?

In a way I feel sorry for some of them.
They have no idea of what they want save for what they are told they should have by friends and advertising.
The country appears to have no use for them, has failed to give them tuition in life skills, and basic numeracy and literacy;
this lack of direction is due in part to the fact that the country does not know what it needs and no one is prepared to invest in the future.

Politicians in Britain show very little interest in investigating possible models of the future.
After all they are concerned with themselves and they only have a limited time to make the most if it and gather as many financial rewards as they can while serving their country,
not forgetting to make adequate preparations for their own future, once they leave public office.
This policy of leaving the country in the hands of self motivated, self interested, ambitious individuals began when Maggie was in power but has been taken to a degree of almost “pillaging with a license” by some of the more ambitious members of the government and civil service.
These people play the system and reap huge rewards, bonuses are paid to people who have obviously failed to do anything constructive, why?
Often their mistakes are paid for by Joe public and thus forgotten about, allowing same person to take up residency on another board of similar names without the pressure of supplying results at the end of their term.
Obviously corruption is rife, but the model of leaving commerce and government to these type of people allows, nay expects corruption to be a part.
More and more opportunities for corruption are created almost daily as the incessant flow of beurocracy continues.

Red tape, triplication, government interference, issuing of reports, failure or success dependent on the publication of satisfactory statistics;
performance results, now there’s one of the biggest cons introduced recently.

Strategies, dating back from the eighties and based upon the results of statistics produced and analysed by relevant government departments.
The whole country is run by a system based on numbers.

A persons’ life can be summed up with rows of figures, and therefore the statiscians hope to predict the future needs of that individual,
makes no difference if the government can’t meet those needs,
at least the relevant departments will be aware of the future burden of this individual and will be able to budget.
Take those figures and multiply by x amount of millions and people get and idea of what is required to sustain growth, prosperity and an acceptable standard of life in an ideal world.

But this is not an ideal world,
Britain is not even an ideal island, its shoreline is being eroded and damaged by the elements in much the same way as it is being rotted away by the big business giants who dictate trends, fuel demand, incite greed, control prices, eliminate competition and then supply the goods.

I realise that Britain has fell behind other countries in development in the last 50 years, but by dropping behind it allows us time to catch up at our leisure,
which in turn should allow the wisest of us to spot the mistakes left in the wake of the other countries and alter our path accordingly.

All I see is an increasing tendency to import all that is bad about an American way of life.

Unfettered consumerism, a pay as you go medical care system which relies on people adopting the American way of life to keep them in business.
As the food industry helps the yank get fat it also gets paid when the person becomes obese requires medical treatment and needs a regime of slimming methods.
In very much the same way as the smoking industry gets revenue whether you smoke or use products to give up, either way you are a customer.

Being so behind the computer industry set up in America by English boffins who left England because of lack of funding, we became a market for all the obsolete or soon to become obsolete equipment stored in American warehouses.

Blair promised access to computers in schools hospitals and other places he deemed needed them;
didn’t he learn his lesson from the huge, expense installation of new computers in some of the civil service departments and the waste of money of the flight control systems.

We should have been investing in new technology, not soon to be obsolete machinery.

We are Americas gateway to Europe and as such was valuable to them, as long as they kept their position as major power;
the world is changing and we have to decide what is best for our small island.

Japan and China, the far East, Europe;
its getting more like America versus the rest of the world and America is bricking it,
its financial system and whole social structure is dependent upon the world giving it the respect it thinks it deserves, nay has come to command.
The apparent alliance and friendships of the last few prime ministers with the American presidents was because of trade treaties etc. I see it in simplistic terms as “you scratch my back and I’ll etc.”

If the only exports of the country are a life threatening fast food and equally life threatening eagerness to wage expensive wars I have no interest in being connected in any way to them.

Whether or not the industry of America is harming the environment is not the question,
why should their level of blatant consumption be tolerated?

I tried to explain to some Americans on line that when English kids go to school they lie down because they are relaxing or tired not because they are being shot at.

I absolutely hate, detest, and loathe the majority of American television programs,
Do not like the music built around gangster rap;
but I do get a laugh when I hear some of the English kids try to emulate the gestures and language;
trouble is some of them go on to believe in a way of life which is manufactured by the media.
The media of America glorifies the lifestyles of a small proportion of people who have screwed a particular genre of music of become proficient in any area of life which hasn’t entailed education, study or work, god forbid.

American parents with kids see their offspring as being gateways to possible fame and riches. Kids will have to undergo from an early age the routine of appearing in pageants, talent shows and wannabe trials.
This trend has come to our shores;
years ago potential talent was spotlighted, home audiences got involved and many successful television careers were launched.
With the advent of shows such as pop idol generations of kids who were once satisfied with an air guitar now audition for a chance of fame and riches.

Having successfully integrated the show into prime time viewing on both sides of the pond,
Success has brought huge rewards financially to the shows developers and networks.
It’s so simple but successful only because some entrants are even prepared to go to the lengths of having plastic surgery to increase their chance of success in selection.

Hell all he has to do is endure a few minutes of agony or ecstasy as each person struts their stuff on the stage and then like a candle is heard no more as the judges personal cash registers ring up yet another dividend.
Surely the popularity of these cheap to stage and therefore highly profitable shows illustrates the lack of perception present in some of the entrants.

Fame and fortune, being rich and the trappings which one could expect from such a life style.
The youngsters of today would never consider employment as a means of getting such rewards.
Having a job to them is something a loser does to live.
They may be right.

I’ve known a helluva lot of people who live, breathe and talk about nothing else but work.
Their circle of friends consists of…people they know from their workplace,
they socialise with same and become entombed in a secure bubble created by their job.
Some have had break downs and become unable to function after being told by the boss they had grown to respect,
“You’re fired”.
If you are in regular employment you are of course more likely to conform to the accepted model of a citizen and your life can be more or less predicted by anyone who cares to take an interest in it.
You are one of the herd and even though you may think of yourself as being different enough to stand out from the crowd, the fact is you are one of the herd and your behaviour will be governed by the majority.

Being unemployed for whatever reason restricts the individual in many areas of their life.
The obvious financial limitation, theatres and the like are out of range, socialising in the normal places, public houses clubs is usually out of the question on a regular basis because of the lack of funds of yourself and your peer group.

You have become a part of another herd, governed by money or rather lack of it!; socialising has to restricted to gathering on the street or groups meeting in available residences;
the partial removal of alcohol from the equation by reason of the group meeting away from a licensed outlet led to the popularity of cannabis as a communal drug.

It is in these gatherings that ideas, wishes, thoughts aspirations are shared with like minded people who are in a similar situation.
True at times the result of the discussion may be a pre-planned burglary but on odd occasions sufficient thought is put into a project and if some or all of the members put effort into their idea then rewards can be reaped.
Often outside assistance is needed especially if there is a chance to make money and lets face it most wishes are of wealth.

Thus youngsters and the unemployed tend to be the ones thinking abut money making ideas. Whereas the ones in employment have accepted their fate and are happy moaning to each other about petty aspects of their increasingly boring daily existence;
all the while avoiding the knives aimed at their backs, they then return home and bore their partner with the same gripes.

There was a time when prospective employers would ask for experienced applicants;
Experience is something you get two seconds after you needed it.
Now employers are happy, I suppose, if applicants posses the simple skills of reading and simple maths.

I can appreciate the student becoming bored with lessons if they see no direction or point in studying but I cannot accept that someone can leave a school after 10 years study and not be able to read , write or do simple arithmetic.

Someone wrote that a word will become accepted into the English language if it can be understood by enough people. That thought scares me.

I read some of the online correspondence, some sites even have their own list of abbreviations, ( I am not a lover of standard abbreviations ), let alone some of the styles of writing used by web users.
Is this turning a blind eye to a self-destructive way of writing, our way of accepting that use of these almost hieroglyphics will cover some of the inadequacies of school leavers.
By omitting letters the person is saving time;
what the hell is so pressing in their lives that they have to butcher the written word to save time,(or effort).

The popularity of texting was never expected to reach such a level; but because it caught on so dramatically phone technology and development has been able to progress much quicker than originally planned.
I still haven’t got one and as long as my life remains peacefully solitary I will not be in any need of one in the future.

Eventually the major retailers will have enough information on individuals as to be able to offer them advertisements and purpose made shopping details vial mobile phone while they stroll around the hyper market.
Supermarkets will become bigger and bigger, stock is already automatically ordered to replenish purchased items, simply needing some single mother or desperate pensioner employed as a shelf stacker to tidy up the rows and rows of produce.

Getting the single mothers back to work,
I remember promises of child care services and the like to enable mothers to return to or take up employment for the first time.

Redundant workers were being offered grants to start up their own businesses;
hell must be easy for a worker with 20 years in a car assembly plant, or a miner to begin his own business knowing as he does all about being self employed and how to look after a work force whilst keeping up the growing number of health and safety regulations.

Anyone looking for a job was to be known quite aptly as a job seeker and given an allowance and guidance to allow them to continue seeking, even though they knew there weren’t any jobs in the area because they were living in a regeneration area.

Disabled people were tempted with offers of suitable chairs in an attempt to get them to enter the workplace; after all what’s the point of fighting for disabled people’s rights if no one was going to go to work?
Employers were told it was expected of them to have a certain percentage of disabled or disadvantaged people on the payroll.
I wonder how many disabled workers feel they are wearing the badge of the obligatory
Quota.
The long term sick and or disabled were to be screened and then placed on yet another different benefit according to their incapacity.

If you can’t get the school leavers into employment, pay them to go on to higher education to train for a diminishing amount of jobs which need serious qualifications, or put them through a short course after which they gain a basic certificate which will allow them to work in the ever growing service industry.

All the above were plans to address the unemployment problem; don’t forget it still is viewed as a problem, even though it is thankfully not dragged out as often to illustrate the ministry’s success.

Strenuous efforts were made to recoup benefits paid to people who didn’t deserve them,
A propaganda campaign akin to those screened during Hitler’s rise to power invited people to shop their neighbours.
The money recouped is I think less than the amount of money that should have but was NOT paid out to people who do have a right to claim it!
Mainly the elderly and sick.
I cannot get any enthusiasm into shopping my neighbour when I see fat cats getting paid a quarter of a million pounds for six week’s work, which involved putting in a token appearance some two hours per. week.

Since the 80’s money seems to have escalated out of all proportion.
Successful employees can demand and receive high salaries, the tax man is kept at bay and bonuses are paid for no apparent reason.
The new millionaire is the billionaire.
In the majority of cases the lifestyles envied by the unemployed kids has been financed by them in the first place.

Anything and anyone can be marketed, with the right crew of people working in the background.
Thus potential earnings have to be high enough for everyone to get a fair slice of the money.

I suppose the most popular wish would be to have “ lots of money”,
Forgetting for a while what hassle having a lot of money causes,
Just think what difference having a lot of cash would make to you at this very moment in time.
If you were content with your life would you want to drastically change it because you had the cash to do so.

I admit to being overwhelmed by figures of millions, its monopoly money,
I cannot imagine listening to Bill gates having a piss and thinking he’s made half million dollars while he was pissing.
At first I’d be thinking how much my bank balance was increasing while I was going about my daily life, i.e. so much while cleaning teeth or having a wank etc.

Which brings me back to the entrepreneur who uses his web site to not only earn money during the normal working day, while he is present, but 24/7 because in the global marketplace there is only a continuous loop of 24 hours in which the consumer is able and eager to spend.
All you need is a quality product; create a demand either by throwing huge amounts of publicity money at the site or relying on word of mouth, and a bank account.