Design for Living

This weekend I watched a particularly odious episode of Location Location Location where a northern self-employed dad and his graduate daughter traipsed around London looking for the ideal one-bed flat for her in preparation for starting her first job. It had to be in a certain area, have certain period features, have the light coming in from a certain direction in the mornings and not be too far from the tube station, lest daddy's little darling have too risky a walk home at night. Oh and be under £200k (dad's only stipulation since he was paying), with some decent night life nearby. After an exhaustive search Phil and Kirsty hit upon the ideal flat. Except that it was in Tooting. Kimberley stuck her bottom lip out before being persuaded to revisit the other flats in more desirable areas. Finally she accepted that the others were shoe-box like in proportion compared to the Tooting flat and she must prepare to make what was evidently the first compromise of her young life.

Eventually Phil swung the deal and won a smile from the little madam. Poor daddy got nothing, not even a thank you, let alone a hug and a 'You're the best daddy who ever lived, ever!)

Today I read that parents and grandparents are being encouraged to raid their pension funds to get their offspring onto the property ladder. Well obviously, they weren't going to do anything better with them, just squander them on heating, lighting and food, that sort of frippery. Luckily many pension funds are locked down with tight conditions and huge early release fees to save those parents and grandparents who would be so foolish as to listen to Nick Clegg from themselves. But it's not just about the undeserving Kimberleys of this world who've yet to do an honest days' work and seemingly take familial handouts and free flats for granted. Helping youngsters pay ever more exorbitant prices for ever smaller properties is helping no one and coming generations won't stand a cat in hell's chance of getting anywhere near the bottom rung of the property ladder, let alone on it, even with the family's entire piggybank of savings and pensions heaped upon them. Then there's that pesky student loan to pay back before they can properly start their adult lives. Small wonder that the marriage age and first child age is also rising ever upwards.

With all these factors in mind I ask:

• Why isn't the government acknowledging that this artificially overheated housing market has to stop and cannot continue indefinitely? 
• Why isn't the nation going on a house-buying strike to shake the market up?
• Why aren't buy-to-let house sales/mortgages and second homes being banned? Or at least supertaxed, with that tax being used to subsidise new social housing? 
• Why isn't more being done to bring the estimated 750,000 existing empty properties back into use? 
• Where is the rent-capping seen in so many European countries which enables tenants to comfortably afford to rent knowing they have security against unreasonable rent hikes and are not at the mercy of market forces or unscrupulous landlords? 
• Why are non-UK residents able to buy property in UK or even claim social housing, sometimes above those UK citizens who have been on council waiting lists for many years?
• Now it's hard to obtain a property for less than £250k in many towns and cities, surely it's time to raise the stamp duty to apply only to properties of £500k+ or discard it altogether?

And why aren't these measures being considered before the more outrageous notions of forcing elderly people out of their family homes, some of which may have been in their family for generations or building on the green belt and allowing unregulated back garden developments? As for the 'mansion tax' on properties of £1m+ proposed, that assumes that somone living in such a house has assets to go with their bricks and mortar. Not always the case. Not only is there much genteel poverty around, but sometimes what started off as a relatively modest family home may have jumped from £30k to £1m in the space of forty or so years purely because of the location of it, not because the house itself is in any way grand or mansion-like.

Keep Death Off The Roads!

The recently reported rise in road deaths on Brtain's roads, particularly among young men, and the current government rumblings about turning all urban areas into 20mph zones to counter it



has sent me musing on the public information films of my childhood and wondering where they've gone if the government truly gives a fig.

I was further shocked to read today that a young driver whose reckless behaviour led to a family of four being killed when he clipped their car in his hurry to get to work on time, causing it to flip into a reservoir by the roadside was only sentenced to FOUR years in prison. That's one year per life. He also lost his driving licence for a mere four years (scarcely an inconvenience to a man in prison). Bulging though our prisons may be, what kind of a sick joke deterrent is this, let alone example to others? What about drivers who cause death through careless or dangerous driving losing their licences for life in addition to receiving the sentences they would receive for any non-car manslaughter? Wouldn't that threat be more incentive to better driving than any number of exorbitant speed humps, cameras, islands or limits, not to mention more cost-effective?

To nanny-state the entire population through changing the road system owing to the actions of an irresponsible few feels insulting to me as a responsible driver/cyclist/pedestrian, who does not drink, take drugs, suffer from road rage, take foolish risks, treat my indicators as optional extras, so why should my use of the roads be impeded and compromised on account of those who do?

As one who lives next to what has been termed 'Britain's most Dangerous Road' (the A4074 between Oxford and Reading) and who experienced an horrific car crash only yards from my home killing three people on the Jubilee bank holiday weekend (albeit not 16-24 year olds on this occasion), I feel increasingly strongly that public information campaigns and penalties would be the most effective two-pronged attack against irresponsible road use and thus the best use of my taxes.

Not only are we bereft of public information films shaping our formative years these days, we are distracted by a multitude of media to plug our senses into, tuning out of the real world and our responsibilities in it both to ourselves and to other people. Pedestrians crossing the road without looking because their mobile phone or ipod are far more fascinating than their life have become a daily hazard in the last 5-10 years.

However it is not the Transport Select Committee's job alone to stop the needless slaughter. It is also the responsibility of every last one of us - road users all - irrespective of which capacity. With this in mind, I e-mailed the Committee, proposing a National Road Safety Competition where people like myself could submit ideas for TV adverts and campaigns in order to feel we all had a stake in taking personal responsibility on the roads with prizes and the top ad suggestions being turned into real TV ads. Perhaps the DVLA could make a contribution from each driver's road tax towards this competition/any campaign.

If like me you grew up in the 1970s/80s I'm willing to bet Green Cross Code ads with David Prowse (otherwise known as Darth Vadar), not to mention many other ads such as 'Think Bike!', 'Clunk Click', how to use pedestrian crossings and general safety ads formed the daily basis of your TV diet. There was even the 'Tufty Club' which we could join to let a cartoon squirrel edutain us about road safety! Memorable, weren't they? It didn't matter that they were as cheesy as hell. So long as we got the message, job done.

In the mid-90s I worked for the Driving Standards Agency when the written part of the driving test exam was brought in. Making the driving test harder definitely drove up driving standards. For a while, but to temporary effect I fear.

Meanwhile I had a two line e-mail reply from the Transport Select Committee Chairperson Louise Ellman MP thanking me for my ideas but without commenting on any of them (I thought at least she might do me the honour of stealing them and passing them off as her own, not least as they would have saved the government a shed-load of money on nationwide traffic-obstructing measures.) Oh well. I'll save that killer TV ad for a mover and shaker who really does care about preventing death on the roads.

My Mixed Olympics

It is great that so many British nationals won so many medals at the 2012 Olympics, but I for one am relieved all the noise and hysteria which meant I found it more tolerable catching glimpses from the living room doorway rather than watching it properly, is finally over, not to mention the ruinous over-expenditure at a time when our country can ill afford it, and which may never be recouped for all the talk of how it would bring far more money to Britain than it cost (nonsense if all the half-empty hotels, eateries and attractions are any indicator). In fact the 45% drop in tourist numbers to Britain during the games was allegedly worse than the tourist drop which immediately followed the 7/7 London bombings.

Nor was it a Peoples' Olympics when so many people were denied the chance to purchase last minute tickets (affordable or otherwise) despite the obvious acres of empty seats visible on screen and small businesses who tried to join in the Olympic spirit to boost trade were swiftly stamped on by corporate concerns, no matter that these corporate concerns had actually paid very little towards the Olympics in real terms compared to the taxpayer and were in turn trying to dodge paying tax.

It might have offered up more razzmatazz than any previous Olympics but for me, momentous events should actually contain moments of gravitas, dignity and silence rather than endless shrieking and whooping, hysterical commentators and blaring pop music at every opportunity, thereby undercutting the genuinely extraordinary achievements of the athletes.

Dictionary definition of the word 'ceremony': 'The formal or ritualistic activities conducted on a solemn, important or state occasion'

(*note the words 'formal' and 'solemn'). Which, granted, you might not expect the opening and closing 'ceremonies' of the Olympics to have in spades as they are naturally more in the nature of 'celebrations' than 'ceremonies' but certainly the presentation of the medals should have been formal and solemn with no silly posing or biting the medal afterwards. As for the athletes constantly brandishing and flashing cameras and handycams as they made their way to the central enclosure during the closing ceremony - what next - a bride doing the same as she sweeps down the aisle for the biggest day of her life? It is for other people to take this kind of footage, not the principal players.

The sporting costumes were also hideous and made our athletes look like they'd been to the pound shop rather than purchasing highly expensive aerodynamic kit made employing the latest high-tech space technology, which it probably was. The women were defeminised, the men turned into alien life forms, particularly the cyclists. Mr Federer was the smartest turned-out sportsman of the lot and I was almost sorry he lost to the sartorially-challenged Andy Murray (albeit ever so slightly glad that Andy finally got his own back after such a long run of bad luck against his Swiss nemesis).

There was no classiness about this Olympics beyond the VIP Zil traffic lanes (also stolen from the British taxpayer). It was loud, vulgar and unashamedly corporate, and what THAT says about Britain to the rest of the world, I shudder to think.

The untold side of the Olympics was that a number of East Enders who were promised that their homes wouldn't be swept away to facilitate the construction of the Olympic village and stadia (as the Chinese suffered for the Beijing Olympics) saw that promise dishonoured when 425 council tenants lost their homes to be re-dispersed across London losing their community and ending up worse off financially. But hey, they were only council tenants, so who cares, right? Other losses included the treasured Manor Gardens allotment which had previously survived two world wars and lay on ground gifted to the community in perpetuity at the turn of the 20th century, so who was the 'London Development Agency' to place a compulsory purchase order on it? A listed theatre was another casualty to make way for luxury flats as part of the gentrification of the Olympic area (presumably 'listing' now stands for nothing when it comes to protecting a valuable piece of our heritage). So the character and community of the Olympic area has been irretrievably changed forever, and who is to say for the better if it is now to begin pricing its natives out? This process certainly leaves any green credentials claimed by Locog open to question. Ironic then that a celebration of the working man and England's green and pleasant land, not forgetting history, played such a pivotal role in the opening ceremony, albeit in a very twisted version of British history conveniently omitting any controversial bits.

Which leads me to another aspect of the Olympics which made me uneasy. The dishonesty of portraying our nation as a nation of absolute abundance at a time when it is anything but. Nor is it anywhere near as free as it gave the impression of being, if still free-er than all those unfortunate nations whose athletes had western freedoms somewhat unfairly rubbed into their noses by a string of undiplomatically-chosen songs in the closing ceremony. Though it also crossed my mind this might be a sneaky ploy to encourage oppressed athletes to defect to UK in order that 'Team GB' wins even more medals next Olympics!

But for all this, the whole shebang admittedly turned out better than my cynical predictions of four years ago, and it's undoubtedly served to cheer a depressed nation up (providing we don't think about the cost), but for how long? What will the real legacy be? Apart from a rather funny sitcom entitled '2012'.

Rebel

Guilt

I’m a failure as a woman – I don’t hate myself like I should

I don’t wish I looked like someone else, I quite like my food.

I don’t flaunt myself in skimpy tops and crops and then bemoan

The quality of male life I attract is akin to that beneath a stone!

I have confidence my body clock won't detonate if I don't reproduce

I don't mind getting older as long as I don’t resemble a moose.

I'm a failure as a woman - I don't agonise about my weight

I don't regard the currents of my exes with red-misted hate

I'm a failure as a woman – I don’t read our magazines

That pose as our friends while undermining our self-esteems

Telling us what to think, do, fear and wear this season.

I choose sanity, free-thinking individuality and reason.

I’m a failure as a woman – just don’t conform to the norm

Though I do have a hang-up about my lack of insecurities...

©LS King 2012

Panda Awareness Week etc

What better week to return to blogging than the first ever world Panda Awareness Week?

Who would have thought our OxFringe show Panda Pride! would have led to it and BamBam and BooBoo's world dominational aspirations weren't just a pipe dream?

; - )

Seriously, it was a most enjoyable debut show and made the Oxford Times, but I doubt it held quite that much sway! Besides which, our pandas rather prided themselves on their rarity, and being lazy, decided they rather liked captivity and having 'servants' (aka zookeepers) too. If only they could get their paws on more doughnuts (the proper ones with jam in, that is), their lives would be complete. Well almost.

Anyway, Panda Awareness Week - surely more uplifting than National Continence Week, though personally speaking, I like to hope I celebrate that particular week every week!

Funny how some charities/causes get a day dedicated to them and others a week, a month or even a year. I wonder why that is. Who decides which cause merits what?

Following our brief surfing of the panda zeitgeist, aside from sorting out and amalgamating my many hundreds of electronic files from over the years into meaningful folders and subfolders and binning the rubbish (can't believe I used to be so untidy!), I have begun work on a World War I screenplay which I hope to have finished in time to attract TV commissioners for the centenary of the outbreak of WWI. Am not going to say too much about it at this stage for obvious reasons except that it is inspired by an aspect of the Home Front which has seldom been covered before, but owing to this factor, requires many times more research time than writing time.

Another reason for my recent blog-lag is that so much terrible stuff has been going on with the banking crisis/recession, I didn't want to pen any more depressing posts about it, looking at the more-than-enough postings I have previously written on this subject. Suffice to say that my own bank accounts and credit card are well away from the big 4 banks and have been with the Co-Op for some years, so I reckon the most positive contribution anyone can make is to vote with their feet on the matter and kick these financial institutions in the bottom line! Notwithstanding, I may have to revise my policy following the recent Co-Op funeralcare scandal. Are there no companies left with ethical credentials to be trusted I wonder?

I once started writing 'The Armchair Anarchist' about all the things an individual could do to make the world a better place if they were as lazy as me, but somehow it never got finished surprise, surprise, and meanwhile the world became a great deal more complicated as derivatives and hedge funds and Russian-doll like bodies which swallowed one another until the original could no longer be seen, let alone held accountable for anything, became the norm, among many other fiendish schemes designed to scramble our brains into spaghetti as we try to keep a grip and make sense of it all. Perhaps 'The Armchair Analyst' would be more useful now, to share tips on how to stay sane when all around us has gone mad.

So, I am going to try and raise the number of more positive postings from now on, though I cannot promise to forego the odd rant entirely!

Panda Pride! OxFringe 2012

It all started with a throwaway comment in a cafe about how Edinburgh Zoo must be bankrupting itself renting two giant pandas for £300k each per panda per year, and how pandas were now earning as much as some investment bankers, let alone humans! 

Four months later my friend Oliver Gozzard and I are set to don giant panda suits to explore the 'panda pound' in a hopefully packed Turl Street Kitchen, Turl Street, Oxford, on Sunday 3rd June 6pm-7pm as part of OxFringe 2012. 


As well as exploring the 'panda pound' our furry heroes and natural clowns of the animal world naturally get up to some mischief as they set about obtaining their Oxford degrees and resisting human pressure to procreate. 


Or official description as follows: 

Oxford Botanic Gardens hire two giant pandas, BamBam and BooBoo, to boost visitor numbers. However, the dizzy duo refuse to behave, quickly descending into rare bud binges, stem addiction and, tragically, panda poetry - before asserting their rights as a persecuted minority and giving world domination a go. Panda-monium ensues!


Hope to see you there if you will be in the vicinity. Admission £7 or £5 (concessions and pandas). Available from www.wegottickets.com or on door.

Why I'm Giving Up Alcoholics

For someone who drinks some six units of alcohol per month if that, and comes from a family tradition of a sherry or two at Christmas (to the extent my grandparents probably spent more on replacing the stagnant bottle each year than they did on content consumption), I seem to have known a disproportionate number of alcoholics in my life.

Housemates, colleagues, boyfriends, best friends, others. All undetectable as having a problem to begin with, have entered stage left to recite their part in that ongoing production that is my life, some to eventually disgrace themselves and exit stage right, others to eventually recover to feature in Act 2 and beyond.

Until recently I have always endeavoured to be understanding and sympathetic about alcoholic dependency, taking the view; 'There but for the grace of God go I.' And having survived a pretty challenging upbringing myself, not to mention a difficult young adulthood, I could so easily have turned to drink (or worse). It was all around me after all, along with the entreaties to get it down me from my peers. I have also known my share of despair and loneliness, have suffered yawning chasms in confidence, have endured ill health, have been bullied at school and occasionally work when younger and generally felt the desperate need of some kind of anaesthesia to get me through. To inure me against the harsh realities of life, if not absolve me of responsibility for myself and actions entirely during the times I have felt like giving up.

I understand all too well the reasons why some people feel the need to drink often and copiously. I've felt the same need for something to serve all the functions that alcohol can. Before it starts to take over and potentially destroy. It can be a tough life and 'deal some pretty mean blows' as a friend recently observed.

It doesn't help that we live in a country which recognises alcoholism as a disability and bestows generous benefits on those incapacitated by it, which rumour has it, many do not use for medicinal benefit.

Somehow an inner inkling that alcohol might add to my problems rather than solve them and coming of age in a pre-alcopop era where you had to get over the horrid taste in order to form a habit conspired to keep me from temptation, and books and old films (and chocolates) became my refuge when times were tough.

I certainly don't think I could have kept my intake moderate if I'd allowed myself to develop a taste for it though, hence my empathy for those who come to need a drink as oppose to wanting a drink (the definition of alcoholism).

But years of experiencing alcoholics benign and bad, and my favourite type, reformed, have led me to several conclusions: -

• Alcohol seldom makes anyone funnier, sexier or cleverer, just louder and more deluded about their powers in this respect.


• All alcoholics are inherently selfish. Everything revolves around them and their access to supply and if you become a threat to that, watch yourself. In the worst cases, other people and their needs scarcely form a blip on their radar as far as the alcoholic is concerned, even though they may display symptoms of guilt, remorse or self-loathing when in certain frames of mind and use such to reassure the other person that they are sorry and genuinely do need them. This makes alcoholics supremely time consuming and often high-maintenance as well. Ask yourself if investing too much in them is the best use of your own life, mindful that excess alcohol can impair memory so how much of the time/energy you devote to them do they remember in any case? They may swear they love or value you, but make no mistake, they love and value the bottle far more.


• The 'sweeties', ie those who turn into the human equivalent of cuddly toy bunnies with the batteries running down with each glass to eventually fall asleep on your shoulder, whispering affectionate endearments and reliant on you to ensure they get home safely can be endearing sometimes, and are probably worth retaining friendships/relationships with, but too often and this too becomes wearing.


• Those who turn either verbally or physically malicious and hate-fuelled or controlling when drunk need to be ditched, the sooner the better. They will either value you enough to get help as a result of the shock of your rejection or continue their descent to a place you wouldn't want to accompany them to. These personality types may or may not be psychopathic but why take chances? Parents with children need to be particularly careful about granting such individuals/partners second and third chances and taking them back. It is worth bearing in mind that even the founder of The Samaritans Chad Varah opined that it was impossible to help a psychopath and advised walk away, and he was not known for giving up on people with problems. Not that all psychopaths are alcoholics or vice versa, obviously.


• Heavy drinkers are more prone to cancer, impotence, stroke and dementia than the rest of the populace in addition to liver failure and sudden death through alcohol poisoning, particularly if binge drinkers. New research shows that low level brain damage begins in the right frontal lobe area which houses the emotional quotient (EQ) governing not just the bit of the brain able to fall in love, but memory, empathy, response times, impulses, common sense, self-control and behavioural boundaries among other useful brain functions. The brain, being the world's most brilliant computer, will forge alternative neural pathways and circuitry to bypass the damaged areas to the best of its ability but once it becomes too badly damaged in its own right to continue, a major health failure will occur, often disabling the alcoholic for life if not killing them. This is the future for the average alcoholic who refuses to use their IQ to rescue their EQ and take action against their dis-ease, particularly if they compound the damage by smoking to restrict the blood flow and atrophy the arteries.

To summarise, I have a new personal policy where I'll hold onto the friends I have who have triumphed over or assumed control of their alcoholism through strength of character and determination, have learned life's lessons through a major health failure, or who are making strenuous efforts to seek help, but those who cannot be bothered to help themselves or take their lives and friends seriously have wasted enough of my life.

No longer will I allow myself to be heartbroken and sleepless over the often otherwise highly-intelligent and talented individuals I have known throwing their lives away, or naively optimistic enough to believe that maybe I can make a difference or inspire them to wish to recover and that their alcoholism is a temporary state.

However to be too non-judgemental about alcoholism to my mind risks insulting the alcoholic as a helpless victim incapable of turning their life around, even offering complicit approval for them to carry on killing themselves through smiling support, via this act of passive suicide or possibly late self-abortion...

The New Elizabethans

I thought I would reproduce my nomination to Radio 4's The New Elizabethans in honour of the 60 most definitive British figures during Queen Elizabeth II's sixty years on the throne.

The late great Quentin Crisp was not just an Englishman, a Gentleman, a Wit and 'Britain's Stateliest Homo', on queenly par with any real-life queen (as if that weren't enough). He was that even rarer creature - a British philosopher - who endorsed the philosophy of 'being' as well as just 'doing'. He preached the gospel of the individual and how we are each so much more than just a job, just a gender, just an income, just a sexuality.

A true ambassador for Britain at its eccentric best, his style, good manners and dignity in the face of adversity and the trauma his uncompromising 'otherness' caused him in a climate of strict illegality were inspirational and he shot from being a nobody (or even the British equivalent of an 'untouchable') to a celebrity at the age of 66 when his autobiography 'The Naked Civil Servant' was dramatised, becoming a surprise TV hit, starring the then little-known John Hurt.

Being so English, it is supremely ironic that it was only when Mr Crisp emigrated to New York in his early 70s as a result of his late-life success, that he became truly revered and appreciated for the 100% British treasure that he was.

He refused to fit the category of 'gay icon' though as he did not believe that homosexuals were any different from anyone else and to ghettoize themselves or demand elevated rights was wrong. This did not always make him popular, but he was used to that. The core of everything he stood for was as follows:

'When You Know What Your Style Is, Then You Will Know Who You Are...'

Landlords Then and Now

Gone are the days of the late 70s and 80s when according to a friend who was a student at the time, a landlord could pick up a terrace in the north for between £5,000-£8,000, so that even a landlord of fairly modest savings or a small inheritance could quickly amass four or five of them, cram them full of students and never have to work again!

I never cease to be amazed what fond memories many of the parents I speak to in my job at a university seem to have of these near-slum dwellings, often with only one gas fire in the living room as the sole heating for the entire property, no shower and 1950s-flowered walls and leftover furniture crawling with damp, as they marvel at the comparative luxury of the power-showered houses their own university-age youngsters are about to move into.

In the good old bad old days of student housing holes in floors abounded, wiring crumbled in the hand and dangerous water heaters pumped out carbon monoxide. As for energy performance certificates and carbon reduction, these concepts were but a distant dream. Then a succession of Housing Acts and rising consumer expectations came along to spell the end of the glory days for many slum-standard landlords whose whole purpose in life had been to spend as little as possible on each property, though the knock-on effect of this (and probably the bit most fondly remembered by the parents of today's students) was the knock down rent most students paid of between £6-£30 per week, depending on region.

Of course these Housing Acts took some years to take effect with some landlords even now, getting away with renting seriously sub-standard housing, particularly to the broke and desperate and illegal immigrant workers.

At the other end of the spectrum, some would say local authorities have now gone too far with HMO licencing even forcing landlords to replace perfectly good locks for those which might actually compromise the crime-safety element of the house, even if they slightly increase the fire-escape times (not as vital as it used to be with modern fire detection equipment installed giving more notice). Many local authorities are also condemning perfectly good study bedrooms as being 'too small' when no tenant has ever complained about the size and the rent charged is commensurate to the size of the room and they typically also have use of a communal lounge. This reduces the number of rentable rooms per property/the affordability of the house per se and makes the landlord think twice about continuing if he is to lose a room. Six person property landlords with two spacious bath/shower rooms including WC's are also being asked to provide an EXTRA WC, which again the tenants have never asked for (ironic when an airline can get away with one WC per 50 passengers). All this cost has to be absorbed somehow, yet affordable rent becomes ever more pertinent in these constrained times.

Where the modern landlord is concerned, the costs of becoming a landlord have now risen to the point that many would-be landlords are deciding against it, or retiring early as the profit margins grow too narrow to make it worth their while with the high cost of the property itself, exorbitant buy-to-let mortgages, the ever rising burdens of tax, insurance, licensing fees, refurbishment, maintenance, maintenance contracts for fire safety, electrical safety and gas safety. The cumulative effect of so many costs is to remove a lot of good landlords from the market as the bad ones don't tend to be those who pay insurances, costs, maintenance or fees if they can get away with not doing so.

Landlord's mortgage companies are also starting to insert impossible clauses such as the following from the Nationwide, which no landlord/letting agent could accept when their first duty is to their tenants and the legally-binding tenancy contracts they have with them.

"ln the event of the property being repossessed by a mortgagee of the landlord to ensure that vacant possession of the property is given with a reasonable period"

Or this one suggesting that the tenant should pay any mortgage arrears belonging to the landlord!

"lf the tenant receives notice from a mortgagee of the landlord that the landlord's mortgage account is in arrears then to make payment of the rent to such mortgagee until the arrears are paid and the landlord hereby consents to this arrangement".

Landlording particularly grew in popularity during the pension fund plunders and Lloyds name scandal of the 90s as those of middle-income who thought they were making reasonable provision for their old age had a horrible shock and realised they needed to invest in something they could count on as a return for their old age. With property prices on the up after the last slump, this became bricks and mortar. This trend became fuelled still further by the explosion of TV property programmes suggesting that becoming a property developer/landlord was easy.

And while too many landlords have their down side (ie not leaving enough affordable property in the market for first time buyers), they still serve a function for students or for those who cannot afford to buy in any case, yet have no chance of progressing on their local social housing list (and I was on my own local council social housing list for the best part of 10 years with scant progress, until in the end I had to look to alternative solutions.) The only problem is that even reasonable rent will now swallow up an individual's salary to the point they can ill afford to save for that 20% minimum deposit. And since Margaret Thatcher's 'Right to Buy' scheme for council tenants from the early 80s, vast swathes of social housing have left the housing stock pool never to be replaced, resulting in today's drastic shortage.

Dying for Compassion

Anyone who considers that Assisted Dying can be legislated for with the subsequent legislation faithfully adhered to without dilution or abuse has only to look to the British Abortion Act of 1967 which stipulated:

‘Abortion is legal when a pregnancy is terminated by a doctor, and where two doctors certify that one of the following conditions is met:

a) risk to the woman's health or the health of any existing children of her family (within a 24 week time limit)

b) risk of grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman (no time limit)

c) risk to the life of the pregnant woman (no time limit)

d) substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped (no time limit).’

and observe how abortion has subsequently degenerated into a ‘woman’s right to choose’, despite no great change in the Abortion Act, bar the termination time limit moving back and forth as technology advances and more is discovered about foetal viability at each developmental stage, and despite a smorgasbord of contraceptive options available to the modern female which were largely unavailable to the 1960s female.

A former neighbour of mine worked in an abortion clinic where it was not uncommon to have clients walking in for their 4th or 5th abortion. Some were unusually fecund, it is true, and no contraceptive seemed to work for them. Others were so casual about the subject of contraception, they simply shrugged when they found themselves pregnant again and no amount of education or free contraceptives seemed to change that, even though they were not seemingly educationally-challenged. One particularly memorable case involved a high-earning woman who demanded an abortion because being pregnant would interfere with her skiing holiday which would then cause her emotional distress!

So if it is seemingly impossible to get the populace to observe the rules of the Abortion Act and maintain a high level of respect for human life, why would they pay any more heed to an Assisted Dying Act?

While something undoubtedly had to be legalised regarding abortion owing to the estimated 15% of maternal deaths caused by back street abortionists, Assisted Dying is something that many people are requesting through fear of infirmity in one of the most ageist societies in the world and where many still have no access to full palliative care or anyone capable of allaying those fears. These individuals may or may not end up in the physical state of decline they most dread or in the hands of uncaring carers who malnourish them, but increasing numbers are taking no chances and killing themselves or flying to Switzerland whilst still in good health. Is this to be encouraged?

These are the issues that need to be addressed first before we even think of making Assisted Dying legal. Moreover doctors are not trained to kill but trained to treat. There is something deeply wrong about asking them to turn into assisted killers, not least if they have sworn the Hippocratic oath; ‘First do no harm.’

And there really aren’t enough Harold Shipmans (thank goodness) to spawn such a perverse twist in the medical profession.

In the real world, doctors unofficially up the morphine/equivalent on a regular basis in a dying patient in the full knowledge that this will probably hasten the end, but the compassionate thing to do is ease the patients’ pain to the best of their ability. However they will seldom act against the wishes of the patient or their families (ie keep them alive at any cost), unless keeping them alive at any cost is the patient’s or familys' wish, particularly in a terminal case.

In many instances, it is plain for all to see, not just doctors, that the patient is fading away literally and losing their interest in the world and the dying is a natural process when someone reaches a certain point in a terminal illness, a natural process of letting go made easier by being as pain-free as possible in calm and caring surroundings.

However if we cannot guarantee the calmness and caringness of the surroundings or the total pain management, I believe that’s where a lot of the fear creeps in, whether rational or irrational. This society also seems to have lost its ability to deal with death and dying per se. Hence palliative and geriatric care units are often under-resourced, compared to children’s or heart departments, where there are higher chances of happier outcomes and greater success rates. Cottage hospitals – ideal for the dying – continue to be closed in their droves with their human contents transferred to vast impersonal general hospital blocks where they are more likely to be ignored or overlooked rather than properly nursed and comforted.

Finally there will never be a shortage of greedy relations out there, not to mention insecure elderly people (sometimes in the same family) who fear they are ‘a burden’, whether or not that is a figment of their imagination. Who will protect the vulnerable patient from having assisted dying foisted upon them or being scared or coerced into it as being ‘for the best’, whether or not they are competent or confident enough to express their own true wishes?

More outrageously we might even begin to hear of the loving grandparent suffering no more than the usual minor ailments of ageing who knows that the only way for their grandchild to afford to go to university would be for the grandparent to die and pass on their inheritance early and because Assisted Suicide has become legally and socially acceptable by then, no one bats an eyelid when they request medical assistance. As for the grandchild, they wouldn’t even have to send a thank you letter for this supreme act of sacrifice! You do get parents and grandparents who will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure their offspring never hear the word ‘No’ these days.

So my message to the government is to hold fire on an Assisted Dying Act until all of the above are fully considered and debated, not to mention the moral and religious angles. For now the law is far better left to judge on a case-by-case basis where a loved one has helped another loved one die, and use their discretion as to whether each case is murder, coercion-in-disguise or a genuine act of compassion in accordance with their late loved one’s wishes

23/02/12 Breaking news: Doctors agree to abort babies of the 'wrong sex'

Humane Shopping

Yesterday I popped into my local WH Smith to see if the latest edition of my favourite magazine had come out.

Lo and behold three quarters of the shop assistants had been replaced by machines since my last visit a couple of weeks ago.

A girl was directing the customers to them.

'If you've only got a few items there's a till free over there.' she repeated breezily at regular intervals.

When it was my turn I replied;

'No thanks. I don't agree with putting people out of work.'

'Oh well, they're here now.' she said, indicating the machines with a wave of her hand no less breezily, as if that were an end to the matter.

'I can still take a moral stance' I replied, waiting for one of the two human shop assistants left to become free. She carried on directing customers to the automatons, though I noted with satisfaction that the three customers immediately behind me also refused to be herded towards dehumanisation. Had they overheard my exchange with the girl, or was it natural repugnance that they no longer warranted a 'Hello, how are you today?

Even more shockingly it seems that Central Library in Oxford has dispensed with almost all its staff in favour of check in and check out machines as part of a radical recent makeover (despite Oxfordshire County Council's pleas of poverty regarding even keeping all its libraries open, let alone finding money for expensive makeovers).

Now you might not expect WH Smith to care that a friendly human greeting might be an elderly customer's only human interaction for the day. They are there to maximise profits after all, but a Library....?

Nor is any payment offered by the commercial concern to the customer for doing all their own checking out and packing, no matter that they have shifted this labour onto the customer and slashed their wages bill, albeit granted investment in the technology will take a while to pay for itself).

And what happens to all the staff who are now surplus to requirements? Where do they go? How do they maintain economically-useful lives without jobs? Is all this redundancy cutting off their former employers' noses to spite their faces? Are not staff also customers who keep the economic lifeblood of this nation pumping round?

On a Radio 4 programme recently I heard a commentator opine that if you give £1 to a working person it will go more or less straight back into the economy. If you give a £1 to a rich person, chances are they will trouser it and find a way of sitting on it for years. On this basis, working people are even more economically vital than wealthy people it would seem. Makes me wonder how many bankers spent their ill-gotten gains in the country in which they obtained them once the world was suddenly their oyster and they could go anywhere and do anything.

A colleague of mine who also enjoyed those heady teen days where you could walk out of one week-end shop job straight into another - if you decided you fancied shoes over greeting cards for example - now despairs of her teen son finding his first shop job as there just isn't anything for him to cut his teeth on to prepare him for adult life and give him the buzz and self-esteem of his first wage packet. He has applied to more than 30 and had only one scant interview with no contact afterwards. The new Asda Living store received over 70 applications for every part-time job it offered. Even adults now struggle to get more than part-time jobs in shops and often have two or three on the go to make ends meet - exhausting and stressful in the extreme - plus they lose out on the perks that their forebears used to enjoy in more secure days, such as Christmas bonuses and promotion to supervisory and managerial roles. The stores in turn lose out on staff continuity and loyalty - which naturally impacts on customer service and satisfaction and the once-happy and secure feel of a store.

No question shops are suffering in the face of internet and out of town shopping, but they do need to sell what people want and be innovative in what they do. Any store which comes up with classic good quality clothing and shoes which actually fit, are comfortable and look good will win my custom, e-bay or not, but so many shops like Next have just lost their way and spend far too much time pandering to the teen market who can no longer obtain shop jobs to finance their purchases than they do catering for older customers who might actually be able to afford what they sell, albeit on an irregular basis in my case.

Automatic tills will not be enough to save them, and are yet another turn-off for customers like me. though I have even heard teenagers opine they don't like them. Quite right too. Why should they harbour any affection for the thief of their start in the world of work, a rite of passage the rest of us once took for granted.

The joy is being extracted out of the shopping experience which used to be a tactile and sentient business - you felt and tried on the clothes, you chatted to the staff. The more dehumanised this element becomes the more terrestrial high street stores lose their advantage over internet shopping.

Is this what any of us want? I don't remember voting for it.

The Wool Shop

I cannot now remember what my father was doing in a wool shop as it was not his natural habitat. I can only imagine my mother must have sent him there with a sample of wool to procure some further balls for whatever she was knitting that winter in 1976.

There my four year old sister and I stood in the middle of the shop taking the shelves laden with row upon row of pastel merchandise in and straining to peer over the wood and glass counter, dressed identically in mauve crocheted jumpers with matching belts and check trousers, courtesy of our grandmother, although there were two years between us and we were by no means identical. The shopowner beamed broadly at the two little girls in front of her, bingo wings resting on the counter.

'Are yous luk-in' forrward to Farther Christmas coming?' she asked.

We began to nod enthusiastically, before our father injected in his English accent.

'They don't believe in that nonsense!'

The provincial Ulsterwoman regarded us pityingly, then shifted uncomfortably, evidently out of her depth.

'They're atheists.' my father added for good measure.

The Ulsterwoman looked even more alarmed as she hastily took the sample from his hand and rummaged for some matching wool, wrapping a couple of balls in some brown paper a little more carelessly than was her habit and ringing them up, evidently anxious not to prolong the conversation, though he probably got an advert in for veganism as was his wont in any conversation involving an unconverted stranger before the door jangled our exit.

I didn't really pay much attention to the rest of their exchange as my six year old mind was busy mulling over what an atheist was and why my father had said we were one. Part of me felt a bit put out that he had replied on our behalves. He hadn't asked me what I was, or my sister, though my capacity for theological debate and consideration of the smorgasbord of my religious options was probably somewhat limited in those days.

Not that living in Northern Ireland didn't simplify matters substantially. There were Protestants and there were Catholics. The Protestants had shorter school assemblies but the Catholics were better-looking, with fewer spots and braces and rosy cheeks and glossy locks, so there were advantages to both camps.

It is the wool shop which stands out in my mind as the first moment I began to question things, become the pain-in-the-posterior child of the constant refrain; 'But why?'

The only kid I knew who eventually came to develop a bit of a faith as an act of rebellion. I remember watching wistfully as immaculately-dressed old ladies in tweed suits and wool berets pootled past our gate in apple green Morris Minors towards the village church bells that called them melodiously each Sunday, before sitting in the family Renault 12 in my coat until my bemused mother found me sometime later trying to figure out how to start it without a key with the request. 'Mummy. Can we go to church?'

Notwithstanding, it took me a long time to find better answers to the school bullies who slagged me off as an 'effing who-er' (whatever that was) one day and an 'effing virgin' (whatever that was) the next, and tested me with penetrating ecumenical questions such as 'Who made you?'

'Erm, my mum' I would mumble, as the first thing which came into my pea brain.

'Yurrr maaaa?' they cried incredulously before falling about in fits of snorting as a prelude to showing their god what they thought of my mother's efforts at creation via a good kicking.

Over the years it dawned on me that our father's idea of religion was to live forever through the vegan diet, so religion and spirituality were an irrelevance to him, and should naturally be to the fruit of his loins also. Whenever someone we knew died it was always the fault of their 'rotten diet' and my father would rant and rave about it for a while, pitying their ignorance, particularly when his otherwise-intelligent colleague and talented watercolourist friend Frank Shepherd foolishly succumbed to the effects of pipe smoking in his 50s.

Grandpa Ernest (also a pipe smoker) fared somewhat better until felled by a ruptured stomach at 87 and was duly subjected to a Humanist funeral whether he had wanted one or not, as flat as any delivered by a half-hearted CofE official who had never met him either.

As for me, I drifted through various phases of hanging out with young Christians who pretended to be my friends until they realised I was merely Chris-curious and probably never going to be uncritical enough of badly-written Christian rock music (or indeed any other element which bothered me) to join their ranks, to then flirt with Spiritualism, Quakerism and Catholicism in turn before settling on a kind of cherry-pick deal where I would be interested only in the best bits of religion, the Saints, the angels, the miracles. All that doom and gloom stuff from a God seemingly as egocentric and judgemental as his flawed human creations just wasn't for me.

Knit your own flock has always seemed more appealing...

Has Cheltenham Literary Festival Sold Out?

For the past twelve years, the highlight of my literary calendar has been either to watch or participate (depending on how brave I'm feeling) in Cheltenham Literary Festival's famous poetry slam. Aside from catching up with and watching the creme de la creme of performance poets in action from around the country once a year, it was wonderful to imbibe the decadent atmosphere of Britain's oldest literary festival (founded 1949) based in Cheltenham's stunning Town Hall. This is the main Hall where the slam used to be held, often attracting a near-full house, almost unparalleled in the poetry world!

It is now held in a white plastic tent out the back minus the Stroud School of Samba entering the Hall in Hawaiian shirts on stilts at the end to get everyone dancing, in favour of minor politicians gracing the hall pretending to be anything to do with literature.

The enthusiastic, bright-eyed student volunteers who used to flit around in their Festival T-shirts guiding visitors where they needed to go were nowhere to be seen, seemingly replaced by unsmiling besuited bouncer types with ear mics who look like they'd rather be anywhere else manning the doors.

This year I arrived at the foyer anxious to collect my pre-booked tickets only to find the front of the town hall deserted and the ticket booths closed! Queries eventually led me to one tent after another out the back of the town hall until at the 5th one, on another town green nearly a mile away (and staffed by five surly individuals apparently twiddling their thumbs), finally yielded my tickets with the lame excuse they didn't have 'an agreement' to use the Town Hall ticket booth facilities! How on earth did anyone arriving only a few minutes before an event or with a disability manage to get their tickets, I asked? They shrugged.

My companion and I consumed a reasonably edible snack in the town hall cafe under the incongruous white energy saving bulbs, where once the historic room had been bathed in more apt and attractive candlelight effect.

The poetry slam itself, once we'd negotiated hundreds of yards of confusing plastic tentature out the back was sold out as ever, and as an evening was still well worth attending, if lacking some of its former sparkly atmosphere. However the punters were not impressed to be told they could not bring their drinks in, despite the plastic beakers and the bar staff telling them otherwise! One poor man had to glug the £9 worth of beer he had just bought in the bar with the assurance that he could take it in, in less than five minutes before showtime. Yet none of us in the queue was aware of any previous beer incident which should have led to such draconian rules.

In the interval the town hall bar closed altogether just as the throng went to refresh their glasses, with the promise that more bar staff would be put on at the outside drinks tent. They weren't and at least half of the long queue eventually gave up as the (extended) break ran out! Needless to say there was no time to browse the book tent either. To add insult to injury the door heavy demanded to see our tickets again before returning for the second half, leading to major delays when some realised they had left their tickets in the venue or even thrown them in the nearest bin, never dreaming they would be asked to produce them for the second half of a literary event which made little sense if you hadn't seen the first half!

Worse was to follow at the end of the evening when the event finished and at a mere 10.30pm, we found both the outdoor Portacabin loos closed and then turned back to the Town Hall to find that closed as well! Only a near-riot by the audience coming out forced a member of staff to open the back door with the extraordinary excuse that she didn't know there was still an event going on! My companion asked her did she not read their own Festival programme? Then that she should visit Edinburgh Festival to see how a much larger event is properly run!

After all that, the facilities turned out to be filthy on only the second day of the Literary Festival with not even a free Sunday Times newspaper on the splendid marble centrepiece as one left as some minor recompense for a much-marred evening.

Neither of us could believe how shambolic and badly-run the festival was and how badly-treated the punters were, being shooed around like cattle rather than human beings. The programme boasts of 500 events in ten days, which made me wonder if the whole shebang has grown far too big for its boots at the expense of quality. And they certainly don't seem to be courting any repeat business with their idea of customer service. Even locally, I for one attend far fewer events at my local Literary Festival than I used to. I remember the days when I would actually book a few days off work to go to up to half a dozen events until inflated ticket prices and corporatism turned me off.

Apparently authors are beginning to ask for payment as a massaged ego, a few bottles of vino and a couple of dozen book sales no longer cuts it for them when they see festival organisors raking in vast sums of money while they get little or nothing out of the ticket sales.

Quite so. If creeping corporatism has to be endured, then that entails professionalism for the authors and higher (not lower) customer service expectations for the punters too.

One thing's for sure. Long gone are the days when a poet like yours truly could hang out in the same green room as Jools Holland at Cheltenham, and until 1am.

Everyone's a NIMBY when it's THEIR back yard!

Having ripped out the hearts of our towns and cities with unsympathetic and ill-considered planning, roads and out-of-town shopping developments, often outmoded within a few short years, and often leading to social isolation and social problems in addition to lack of joined-up transport and facility-provision for citizens, the planners of the latter half of the 20th Century and the first part of the 21st Century have amply demonstrated they are not to be trusted with their piecemeal and profit-led ways of deciding what is best for us, let alone making irreversible decisions about the future of this country. Nor is the 'market' to be trusted as any arbiter of taste or 'stakeholder' in and visionary for the long-term.

Planners in conjunction with private developers are now leaning on the government to speed up the planning process, lessen their contributions to local communities in return for being allowed to build in them and water down Green Belt legislation in the questionable name of 'sustainable and affordable housing' and easing the housing 'crisis', hot on the heels of whole swathes of the Victorian north being bulldozed under the misnomer of the 'Pathfinder' Scheme several years ago in favour of unaffordable blocks of characterless apartments. You may recall the famous documentary of several years ago illustrating that a typical Liverpool 1880s terrace (only a street away from John Lennon's childhood home) could be refurbished with all mod-cons for as little as £20k to provide genuinely family-friendly and affordable regeneration WITH the character that 75% of the population profess to love, rather than a small-windowed overpriced human battery-chicken style apartment that they struggle to get their furniture into. All this even without getting the 100% VAT-free perk enjoyed by new-builds but not, for some bizarre reason, restoration projects.

Suffice to say that very few new schemes proposed are genuinely affordable and sustainable, not least considering the carbon footprint required to construct them and the fact that few modern buildings have an anticipated shelf-life of longer than 55 years. However once a piece of land has been built on, it seldom if ever reverts back to greenfield, but is ever after branded 'brownfield', so even though we might feel grateful that few of todays' carbuncles will still be standing 55 years from now, they will most certainly be replaced by other carbuncles.

Aside from the original intention of providing a 'green lung' around each city, town and village following the success of the first 'garden cities' and recognition of the human need to have green spaces, here are the officially-stated aims of green belts, instigated nationwide in 1955, but still as relevant today;

• To check the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas
• To prevent neighbouring towns from merging into one another
• To assist in safeguarding the countryside from encroachment
• To preserve the setting and special character of historic towns
• To assist in urban regeneration, by encouraging the recycling of derelict and other urban land.

Once an area of land has been defined as green belt, opportunities and benefits include:

• Providing opportunities for access to the open countryside for the urban population
• Providing opportunities for outdoor sport and outdoor recreation near urban areas
• The retention of attractive landscapes and the enhancement of landscapes, near to where people live
• Improvement of damaged and derelict land around towns
• The securing of nature conservation interests.
• The retention of land in agricultural, forestry and related use.

Not exactly people-hostile aims, as the developers are trying to infer, I think you will agree.

From a personal perspective I firmly believe that human beings have an innate need to be surrounded by beauty, both architectural and natural. There is a reason you do not observe coach parties of tourists flocking to Luton for example. They are simply not attracted to it. Bar the freak characterful building which has managed to dodge the wrecking ball, it is ugly and even repulsive to them as a tourist or holiday destination. Most people who live in such a town or visit it do so because they have either family or business in the area or because it is a bit cheaper to live there than the town or city they commute to for work from there. If they want to see beauty they visit Bath or Buxton or a University town, or a seaside resort, or maybe a tiny tucked away village which has hardly changed since the advent of electricity.

Just as I want to see the nationwide provision of consistent high-quality palliative care for all, sooner than see 'right to die' legislation passed for those with serious illnesses, I would rather see legislation passed to order all empty homes, derelict buildings and sites be brought back into use before planners are allowed to run amok with their schemes all over our green spaces and special places.

The government might also like to consider imposing sensible immigration measures in line with their European neighbours among other measures to reduce housing pressure such as encouraging the elderly to trade down in property size and more companionship and sharing of living spaces by those of all generations, not to mention high taxes on 'second homes' which could be used to finance such initiatives. Fewer people living alone would also help that other social ill, loneliness, which has been linked to depression and all manner of other mental and physical health issues.

To my mind, this whole issue about the future of building is almost public referendum territory, so many of us does it potentially affect. To which end, please sign the government's Rethink Proposed Planning Reform petition here if you agree.

Meantime...

Glossary:

NIMBY: Not In My Back Yard - a prejudice which MPs and local councilors are quick to accuse ordinary citizens of every time they object to a new development, but which they themselves are the first to turn into the moment there is any new building threat within a mile of their own homes.
SUSTAINABLE - a somewhat meaningless term since ALL new-builds now have to comply with strict regulations re insulation and energy-loss prevention measures, if not quite incorporate a wind turbine on the roof. Moreover, 'sustainable' does not seem to take into account the carbon footprint required to construct the property, utilise that piece of land for the purpose, particularly if formerly greenfield, and the short lifespan of the property anticipated (55 years)
AFFORDABLE - anything more than the 1970s/80s calculation of three and a half times an individual's/couple's salary or swallowing more than 33.5% of their monthly income in household outgoings. In other words the vast majority of housing which is not a caravan or canal boat is decidedly NOT affordable to most and may well be unsustainable, resulting in breadline or debt-laden living and eventual repossession. Though this doesn't bother the banks, as having made a tidy profit out of the first unfortunate home owners, they can simply put the property up for auction and move onto the next.
REGENERATION - Demolition of or stripping out of anything historic or characterful to make way for quick-buck, cram-them-in, neo-Brutalism.
HOUSING CRISIS - the building industry is not making enough money.

On a less cynical note, the 'housing crisis' does not account for a great many properties which exist, but which few people can afford to buy and empty properties for which there is currently no proper legislation in place to bring into use, if only temporarily (some properties in the first category being too expensive for anyone to afford can end up languishing empty for months and even years, as the owners wait for the market to 'pick up').

*The carbuncle featured at the top of this post is even worse than it looks as it actually blocks a spectacular sea and cliff view at the far end of the Hastings sea front - a view which should have enjoyed legal protection from such.*

Hal Holbrook, a real celebrity

One of the worst aspects of this age of celebrity is that the real celebrities seldom get written about any more, not least if they are also over 60 and male, let alone feature on the front covers of celebrity magazines side by side with the upcoming talent, to give upcoming talent something to aspire to!

Hal Holbrook has been a huge favourite of mine since early childhood for his sheer character, dignity and presence. Casting agents obviously noticed it too as his long film career has seen him cast as everything from Abraham Lincoln to fictitious presidents, military leaders, priests and judges, many paragons of everything good embodying the Stars and Stripes, some not so! (sic the corrupt Lieutenant Briggs in Magnum Force). He has also done his fair share of Shakespeare and other theatre.

Meanwhile he has simultaneously spent more than 60 years touring his very own award-winning one man show, 'Mark Twain Tonight!' as a remarkably convincing Mark Twain, though he has ruefully commented that he has needed less and less make-up as he has gotten older! This show is all the more remarkable as Mr Holbrook has painstakingly memorised pretty well every word Mark Twain ever wrote and introduces random selections in every show so that no two shows are ever the same (unless of course he cheated by reincarnating from the real Mark Twain; and watching Mr Holbrooks' performance, you can entirely believe this might be the case!) The show remains a hot ticket to this day, even though several young pretenders have tried to steal Mr Hobrook's thunder with their own versions.

Above is an extract from his famous 1966 recording watched by over 30 million people. I have the full video and it is among my most treasured possessions.

Not a bad litany of achievement for the son of a railroad hobo and I am delighted to note that Mr Holbrook has finally got round to penning his autobiography which will be out next month. I am sure it will be infinitely more fascinating than Jordan's!

A thoughtful interview with him here of the depth and seriousness we sadly now lack on British television.

The Great Bread and Circus Cut-Off

I've often wondered if and when every citizen in the country being financially squeezed, cut and taxed from every direction under the current government, except for the 1% superwealthy in secret charge of it all allowed to dodge taxes offshore and preserve and enhance their wealth in every which way (if Michael Moore is to be believed in 'Capitalism - A Love Story'), would lead to civil unrest.

However I hesitate to dignify the current riots as any kind of 'civil war' as they are so random as to cause little but bafflement amidst the general national alarm, not being directed at the obvious targets responsible for our nations' dire state such as the banks, the rip-off energy and petroleum companies and of course the government for treating the country like some giant train set they can play with, trying various things just 'to see what happens' and how far they can push us all before we retaliate, but evidently counting on terminal national apathy until now.

And as so many media pundits have pointed out, the rioters are largely formed of the dispossessed and the disenfranchised on the fringes of society, those who have seldom if ever held down jobs, have an average reading age of around 8, but in possession of computers and mobile phones and the ability to co-ordinate their mayhem via social networking sites. Many of these people are also dab hands at ultraviolent street war games on their X-boxes, so why not take it to the next level and give street fighting and cop killing a go for real?

Since pre-Victorian times, British society has recognised the need for the poor to be granted a certain quotient of bread and circuses if they are to placidly accept their lot, toe the line and be governed, if not granting them an actual 'Welfare State' until 1948 as national reward for WWII victory.

Now benefit cuts have started to bite as many begin realising they will not be able to continue to enjoy their 'bread and circus' quotient without turning to crime to finance it. Nor are they being offered the support, training or jobs they have been directed to obtain to replace their benefits, so what are they to do other than panic?

And let's face it, perfectly job-ready and job-functional individuals are being flung out of their jobs in ever increasing numbers, often without sufficient support and employment opportunities in their own right, possibly to end up joining the rioters, so what chance do the disenfranchised have?

It is a shame the lessons of history are so easily forgotten by governments, even if they live on as gene memories in the populace.

No doubt the army will be drafted in soon with their water cannon and other tactics.

Whatever happened to the dignity of the Jarrow hunger marchers of 1936?
The current rioters will not garner a fraction of the sympathy expressed by the nation towards the Jarrow marchers, even if it did take WWII a few years later to really change workers' lives for the better and see the introduction of a Welfare State intended to make sure no one ever need starve again.

It's Lonely At The Top of The Food Chain

Whenever I've felt lonely in my life I've always consoled myself with Quentin Crisp's maxim: 'There's no such thing as loneliness, merely people who do not know how to spend their time alone.' Or masked my condition with my own homespun quip: 'It's lonely at the top of the food chain!'

For the past nearly ten years, I have kept myself so busy that any time alone, let alone time enough to grow lonely has become a luxury. Recently owing to various events in my life, I've finally had enough time to find I seem have joined a zeitgeist of people writing about loneliness and being alone, albeit hopefully not for too long.

In a recent blog hit - 'The Plankton' - a woman writes about 'being at the bottom of the sexual food chain' just because she is over 45, though to my mind having read her blog, she is more likely to be alone because she swears too much and has branded herself into a corner. Notwithstanding, she comes across as no less picky than the average 25 year old, despite her perceived diminished status, as it can't just be any old man she hooks up with but the 'right man'.

Sure there are shallow and immature men in the world, but how many can live up to the pressure and expectations of having to be the 'right man' and fit in with a woman's body clock as well as being just a nice, functional man whom one gets on with?

A young female lawyer, Emily White, has also recently written a book about her years of loneliness where her work life couldn't have been busier in stark contrast to the weekends which seem to rather unfathomably have been a black hole of emptiness for her.

Loneliness and social isolation have for several years been recognised as a state with serious health implications for the elderly who, depending on their level of health, do not always have the same choices and opportunities for getting out and interacting as the younger and healthier, and for whom grown-up children do not always demonstrate the same love and dutifulness as previous generations.

In the next ten years, single-person households which currently make up 30% of all households (or 6.5 million) are set to rise by another 2 million, with the bulk of these made up by females under 35, though elderly single households are also on the rise, an environmental disaster when people can't or won't share resources as well as one leading to all the fallout social isolation can bring.

Watch any episode of 'The Real Filthfighters' and they are stripping out and fumigating at least one house or flat where someone has died on their own and not been found for weeks, whether a drug addict or an elderly person who could no longer manage.

So has anyone in good health and under pensionable age got the right to feel so sorry for themselves in an age where we have never enjoyed more social mobility, more opportunities to try different hobbies, careers and classes, more travel, mobile phones, the internet and all its dating and social networking sites?

If it is merely a matter of learning better social skills and self-presentation, surely there's classes for that too. Or failing that, tutorials we can download from the internet, not to mention all the therapists and life coaches we can shake a stick at?

And do any of us have the right to expect our own exclusive (not to mention perfect) human being to address our loneliness for us, if that is what we are waiting/hoping for? And don't we have to be fit to offer a decent exchange in return rather than a depressed, tranquilised, self-pitying or drunken mess?

All this unhealthy self-absorption has also resulted in a dramatic decline in charity volunteering, one of the very activities said to diminish depression and feelings of isolation, though it is also said that turning our back on faith of any hue is also a major contributory factor, adding to the spiritual 'what's the point?' void within.

Before Princess Diana's tragic death, most of the nation retained at least a semblance of the famous British 'stiff upper lip', but now it seems entirely permissable to walk around with a wobbly one and very little self-restraint on the emotional front. But has all this openness really sorted many out or made them feel any less lonely? Or just more desperate-sounding and liable to push away that which we we might most seek even further?

One of the things which astonished me most about mobile phones when they became widespread is how many friends everyone suddenly seemed to have and whom they evidently couldn't live without speaking to at least several times a day! Not least when my own level of friends and frequency with which I talked on the phone with them remained roughly the same.

When all is said and done though, I have been no less guilty than anyone else of shocking levels of 'poor me' at various times in my life, much though I try to rise above it and often succeed, to the point I know it can be done, not least by a veritable youngster blessed with good health and reasonable sanity.

The painting at the top of this posting is by Coventry artist David Hale who has suffered from depression and alcoholism for many years. I consider it one of his most startling and poignant pieces of work.