I believe, unsurprisingly, that many of the old ways were best.
Strangely these thoughts came about because I had purchased freezer bags which I discovered to be half the weight of the previous ones, and slightly dearer. Everything today is subject to unheralded change which is frustrating, and in some cases frightening. My early life was like a ride on a big dipper, it had incredible highs and desperate lows, but it was not of the common run. From as far as I can remember right up until the end of WW2, peoples lives were generally ordained by their social standing, their education and their location. Most had a rough idea of what the future held because it would probably follow the route of their forebears. In their intimate lives there was relatively little change, little ambition and the prospects were meagre. They purchased their staples from the same shops that their grandparents had, and there had been little change in all that time in the price and quality. There were a few millionaires, but nobody thought about them, when the weekly basic wage was £3 a week to feed a husband and wife and several children, the gap was too large to be imagined, and there I think lies the problem of today, everyone would like to be a millionaire, and how they achieve it is not too important. It doesn’t seem to matter that the supporters of football clubs are being taken to the cleaners for their entertainment, and the kit for their children, as long as the footballers are getting seven figure sums every year. How can you possibly spend millions every year? If you can’t, do you need it?
Millions are spent every week in the hope of a lucky win, people win millions on a simple quiz show, directors who have made a total disaster of the finances of their company are given a seven figure golden handshake instead of being shown the door. When you read of a Prime Minister who owns two multi-million properties, and is reaping a vast income, while the rest of the country is suffering financially, and in the deaths of some of its young, from his faulty decisions, it becomes evident that society has totally changed. Without restraint there are those, right across the board and around the world, who have been playing Monopoly with our personal finances, to the point where we have no security. These are the outcome of unbridled greed, megalomania and a disregard for probity, all of which is now creeping like a fungus into our daily lives, where products and services are modified to cut costs, without warning of the change, and what we are getting is neither what we used to get nor what we expected to get. We can no longer rely on our government, it makes one statement one day and changes it the next, our media are fined millions for malfeasance, we are taxed in so many different ways that it is impossible to decide what percentage of our income is taken, and we are also fined at every opportunity for the mildest discrepancy.
I believe that the old ways were not the worst ways, and in my next article I propose to demonstrate that Local Government may have had its weaknesses, but it was a hell of a sight better than what we’ve got today.