Counter Arguments

When we look at the past to think about change in the world of work the it is likely the attention is limited to a small number of heavy industries employing largely men.  These were the ones who attracted the makers of documentaries and films about social strife and politics and the dignity of labour.

Recently, the BBC ran a short series on shop work, but mostly concerned with the human interest and relative quaintness of it all.  Also, the needs and nature of this work were not the same as our conventional view of the past.  What we have lost is how large this workforce was, how structured then and its place in the communities at the time.

This was brought home to me accidentally  when events caused me to have to go into a shop other than food supplies.  Shopping is high on my personal list of ten most hated pursuits.  It was a fairly large store, on two levels, with a great many products and items.  What was striking was how few staff there were and how they worked.

It was not only counter and floor staff that were missing.  In fact the few staff that were there were expected to multi-task dealing with queries, attending to customers, being cashiers at the tills and to make decisions.  In comparison with those of the past they were expected to have capabilities in most, if not all, areas of work.

Missing were whole layers of management and supervision, office staff of various kinds, and general "hands" to move things and do other jobs.  Some now the customer deals with.  These people were not only expected to be able to do all this but if my guess is correct they would not be paid much above minimum wages and be expected to work varied hours including all day Saturday and most of Sundays.

When youngsters left school at 14 and 15, across the country and in every community many would join all the shop workers at a low level.  For them this was a desirable form of work in many ways, albeit low paid for the most part and for some with a future if all went well.

Above all it both needed discipline and attention to detail.  Some of this was instilled as part of the job but mostly these were required of new workers, their schooling and parents were supposed to have taken care of that.  Counter staff were expected to have straight backs, to look people in the eye, talk coherently, be smart in appearance and to get on with the job of serving, mark that word, serve, the customer.

A consequence of this was that in some of the media and the arts, notably films, of the period, shop work and workers generally were a target for satire.  Their status as non-manual workers, the fact that they were there to oblige people and in the larger shops and stores the structured organisations requiring order and deference made them easy targets.

Few authors paid them much attention other than as a back drop.  But in the pecking order of shops those at the top in the cities might well require a Schools Certificate of new employees, even with Matriculation, that is equal to University entrance at a time when fewer than ten per cent went on to University or one of the elite colleges.

Today, employment in shop work is very different and is marked by the absence of school leavers in many places.  One reason it is said is that UK schools no longer turn out the people able or fit to do the job properly. So for large numbers a major area of work has gone. 

The lack of employment in many areas, notably retail, is one reason that governments have been pushing up the school leaving age taking out a whole sector of the population from what was once a key employment sector.  In what is left of local shops with small staffs, many now are recruited from migrants who still have some of the relevant skills.

This discussion could go on for many words yet, but there are other things to do.  We need a new bit of furniture, so I must check it out online.  Perhaps I will pick one up from a shop, but perhaps not if I can find one at the right price.

Down The Plughole

The Prime Minister and his Deputy poodle have told us all that more effort is needed because of problems with our security systems and the management of perceived risks.  Cameron, with his rare gift for oratory and insight talks of plugging holes to make it simple for us.

This is London now and I am told that this is real data in real time.  The purpose may only be to help promote a video game for all to play, "Watch Dogs", but it gives us all a chance to see what might be seen.  How many of the populations of many countries fully realise just how much is known and accessible to anyone with the kit and the wit to use it.

My own basic assumption is that it is possible that it is more or less all there open to view from the time when computing power became substantial enough and all that goes online became there to see and analyse.  It is not the basic information often that matters, it is the analysis and the quality of it.

Between then and now, depending on what date you think for the "then" there is a critical difference.  In the past a great deal of material depended on other people's reports, opinions and perceptions.  A good deal might be known or inferred from a person's own behaviour and words, but this gave scope for misunderstanding or deception.

Today, because of the range of sources it is possible to judge people on their own actions, words and other things.  Where they shop, what they buy, who they are in contact with and a wide range of social and working activity are all there to be looked at and examined.

For those who know how to, what to and are able to pull the information together we are all condemned, not just out of our own mouths but in much of the detail of our lives and activity.  A philosopher might have said a man is what he eats, but certainly you cannot escape the contents of your supermarket trolley or the contents of your freezer.  As for the wilder shores of social media and hasty mailing, never mind comments or casual contacts you are banged to rights from your own evidence.

In the recent long trial of newspaper people hacking around for stories "Private Eye" this week has a telling comment.  It seems that one of the innocent's claims that they were not aware of all that was going on was accepted by the jury.  But the person in question it is said regularly changed their Blackberries and other devices after only short periods of use.

It is a strange world we have where people routinely accept and use substantial amounts of data gained not only from the recent past but in real time and are subject to extensive coverage of their activities while in Parliament we are told that complex laws and the rest are needed for basic state security.

Our notions about privacy and being protected from enquiry in fact are very recent.  In the past privacy was very rarely an option for anyone.  So all our new technology is not just taking us into an unwanted future.

It could be restoring us to the past.  Now where did I put my glasses?

Losing The Past

Those who follow the Dilbert cartoons will know that the world of software engineering is a strange and mysterious one where the precept "if something can go wrong it will go wrong" rules, as well as unintended consequences and the disasters implicit in complexity.

It is not just the engineers, too often their managers are little aware of exactly what they do, and sometimes why, and can entertain fanciful ideas of what is possible or worse what would be nice to have but does not make sense in terms of what is wanted.

One gross example of this occurred a few weeks ago on the Find My Past web site, one of the major subscription ancestry sites used by a great many searchers of family and people.  The managers ditched a serviceable old fashioned, relatively easy to use, search system for a flashy whizz bang complicated one that had one major fault.

This was that it became almost impossible to search the records in any way that made sense and a task that once took minutes or even seconds became hours and days and even then with little hope.

The complaints came from both ordinary people wanting a straightforward service and experienced genealogists who knew how to research from the days when it was necessary to go to the original documents.

A TV programme which makes use of this site, with others, is the BBC "Who Do You think You Are" taking a quick look at part of the family history of well known people.  The older episodes that have gone to the "Yesterday" channel on satellite are sponsored there by Find My Past.

There has been a distinct shift in interest from the older series to the newer.  One is that while the older ones allowed a major British interest with linked events of history, the newer ones are more concerned with the human interest angles matched with a far greater emphasis on diversity in the more immediate past.  One very curious story has emerged from this.

It is that Michael Parkinson, the veteran Yorkshire personality presenter and Cherie Blair, formerly Booth, a Scouser from Liverpool and long suffering spouse of Tony Blair were removed from the "possibles" because it was said the researchers could not find anything of interest relevant to the programme.

This is utter rubbish.  Given a name, a place and a date and some idea of family and status it is possible for any historian worth their salt to find something and a tale to tell about perhaps the family, the place or the historical situation they were in.  Been there done that and many times.

It may be that the budget for the programmes no longer allows for the degree or quality of research but means that they have to go for the easy options.  It may mean that they have preconceived ideas of what they want to find.  It could be that neither of them are "diverse" enough although we are all diverse if you track back a few generations.

Tantalising, though, is the thought that the research that was done turned up things that either the BBC or the subjects or both did not want to deal with.  Whatever could it be?  The   mind both boggles and runs free around all the routine possibilities.

There are people or groups you do not want to be connected to.  There are things that are very different from your sense of identity. Not least are events or occasions where you do not want to be on the "wrong" side; could Cherie have had a forebear who was one of the Yeomanry militia at the time of the "Peterloo" tragedy in 1819, see Wikipedia and others?

For Parkinson, the blunt working class Yorkshire man from Cudworth by Barnsley, my money is on someone who was perhaps exotic but may have been the gateway ancestor to a long pedigree among the upper classes, one way or another.

If they were to turn up in fashionable 18th Century society or even at the Court of King Charles II it is quite possible depending on the throw of the genetic dice.  The reason is a simple one.

We each have two parents, who each have two parents etc. etc.  Six generations back the potential total becomes sixty four in that generation, perhaps discounted for a marriage of cousins or two and then keeps doubling with marginal discounts each generation back.

This is a lot of people not confined to one place, one class, one faith or one extended family, anything can turn up as it does.  It is easy to see why either of them would prefer to avoid one part or other becoming public property.

At one time doing this was expensive and difficult, web services like Find My Past made it much easier.  But the software engineers or their managers suddenly made it difficult again.

Given that government these days is based on software and computing it is little wonder that the managers, that is the ministers, have reduced us to a State impossible either to govern or to  work out what on earth is really going on.

The Stars In Your Eyes

What is it in the human brain that makes it bereft of common sense, normal reactions or indeed much balance when it comes to famous or prominent people?

I have seen strong men who were against class, monarchy, wealth, authority and rest, hard left and proud of it go glassy eyed and wobbly at the knees at the thought of meeting a star of a major TV programme.

One lady, another determined type, none shall pass might well have been her motto, was affected in the same way by actors playing star roles in her favourite soap.  When I suggested that they were prone to quite ordinary human frailties I got it well and truly in the neck.

What was really worrying about this was that they reflected to a great extent the reactions of large numbers of people.  More so was that the lady not only identified with the characters but came to regard them as somehow higher and extraordinary beings as apart and above the rest of us.

After commercial TV began in competition with the BBC monopoly in the late 1950's, the BBC ratings soon dropped like a stone and it became the minority TV channel of two by a good margin.  Worse was that many viewers regarded themselves as either "ITV" or "BBC" and many of the former resented the License Fee as an unwanted tax.

So the 1960's and later became a battleground for viewers.  Critical to this was to capture the prime time evening viewing.  This was done by putting on highly popular programmes with people promoted as major stars and personalities that became required viewing to be able to converse etc. with other people.

To this end the BBC were granted a second channel, BBC2, into which was shunted the cultural, minority and bettering the masses items leaving prime time clear for the Corporation to take on ITV head to head in the race to the bottom.

Therefore all we had in the UK was a two and a half channel service so one effect was to make the leading performers in effect Chosen People in the eyes, affections and interest of the masses.

Inevitably, it took in the other media as the print part had to defer to it for sales, especially as ITV was a direct competitor for crucial advertising revenue.

Consequently, from about 1960 to the 1990's, allowing for the fourth channel of the 1980's, there was a generation of TV viewers in thrall to a limited number of performers.  It really was a devil's pact.  The TV channels needed performers to pull in the viewers, the performers needed TV to make it to fame and fortune.

One way or another it ran across most forms of TV.  There were the newsreaders, the sports commentators, and experts as well as the actors and other artistes and performers.  For pop music TV coverage could rocket you up the charts, for the TV managements the kings and queens of pop were essential to the ratings.

For the BBC this was survival and the license fee.  For ITV it was the advertising revenue and spin offs.  Inevitably, this became enmeshed with politics and other things. 

In the UK it became all very close and together because of the London effect, even allowing for some regional activity in the case of ITV.  We all knew who the Chosen People were and they knew that they were Chosen.

Some ran into trouble, often for tax evasion, but did not suffer much for it.  A few mingled with criminals, others lived complicated lives, many gambled heavily and more drank heavily.

They were readily forgiven their sins because they were Chosen and didn't we all have our faults?  The detail was never clear and a lot went on unmentioned or ignored or keep quiet.

The Chosen people needed TV, the TV needed Chosen people, the elite needed TV and public confidence in it and TV needed the elite to maintain and bolster the duopoly and avoid the kind of competition and diversity that was developing in other countries.

There is not a great deal that is new about this.  But the difference in the TV age was the immediacy of impact in every home and at hours to suit the viewers.  Suddenly, just about every home and other places had TV and it was TV that delivered the information, comment, analysis if any and the stories of the day and the rest.

It would be possible to go down through history and show examples of human attachments to princes, prelates, preachers, orators, famous people and leaders of the past.  There are some sorry tales.  One is The Divine Right of Kings at one extreme, others the horrors of the Roman arenas and many more.

We only have to look at the various cults of leadership around the world in the 20th Century alone to tell us that the human race is a ship of fools and easily deluded and led.  So what is now emerging from the past should tell us a great deal.

But will we learn from it?

Avez Vous Un Cuppa?

Quite apart from the rest of it, the Tour de France is in Yorkshire this weekend, which entails extended TV viewing of places we know well.  Did I really do that there back in the late 1950's?  Never mind the decades living there.

Also widely reported is the surviving Monty Python team doing it for the last time.  Perhaps one should not try to go back, too much has happened in too many ways.

This three minutes of satire is one specially remembered, if only for the intellectuals and southerners who journeyed to Barnsley at the time in search of something never to be found.  As I tried to explain to them it was all the subsidence, going back to the monks of the Middle Ages, that was the problem.

One can only hope that a few airings might be given to the commercial break for PG Tips Tea starring Cyril the Cyclist, a chimpanzee, taking part in the Tour.  Cyril had a broad Yorkshire accent, I think dubbed, but you never know.

It is here and lasts only a few seconds and the punch line comes after the plug for the tea and has a charm of its own.

In the 1970's the idea that Yorkshire might have much to do with the Tour de France was one of those surreal comic notions that gained a lot of laughs and helped the sales.  One felt it a duty to buy the tea because it was fun.

It seems that one of the German cyclists, Kittel, has complained that the Yorkshire roads are dangerous.  Given some of the roads used by the Tour this is amazing, he says the dry stone walls along narrow roads are a problem.

He may not be aware that the problem for dry stone walls is Yorkshiremen falling off their cycles and knocking them down with their heads.

They're a hard lot in Yorkshire.

Putting Off The Evil Day

In Past Horizons there is a vivid article on the subject of the wearing of amulets in the shape of Mjollnir, The Hammer of Thor as a protection against the vicissitudes of life.

As few schoolboys know these days, this is an ancient god of the northern peoples who had a bad temper and went in for thunder, lightning and sundry geophysical events. Wrath, vengeance and energy policy were his speciality.  He was happy to biff any passing giant who upset him.

But after a long flirtation with Christianity and related faiths we now worship celebrities and media personalities.  This is much easier and all we are asked to do is believe, reward them with vast riches and ask no questions.

We are all going to need amulets of a kind soon if a much longer and detailed piece from Energy Matters is correct on the subject of when the lights might go out in the UK. 

Serial short term thinking, hard lobbying by corporate subsidy seekers, shoddy research and thinking and Euro regulation has left us with margins that are too tight for security of supply in the near future.

This is the short item about the archaeology.

This is the hefty item an analysis in detail on the subject of our energy supplies.  CCGTs are Combined Cycle Gas Turbines.

The conclusions are:

The complete unsuitability of CCGTs for the only remaining task they will have in the UK, as so much more wind power becomes installed, is not yet publicly recognised, although there can be no doubt that the generators understand this well enough.

The absence of a willingness to invest in new CCGTs is not just because of the uncertainties of the Electricity Market Reform but is driven by the realisation that CCGTs cannot operate profitably in the market being created by so much wind power having priority on the system.

The high likelihood of a pending, forced write-down of the 30 GW of the UK’s CCGT capacity, with a replacement value in excess of £20 billion that must be spent by 2020 in order to “keep the lights on” when the wind is not blowing, needs the most urgent public recognition.

Technical solutions that are better suited to high wind penetration are being developed but do not yet exist[29]. However, the need for the early replacement of most of the incumbent 30 GW CCGT fleet will produce another financial shock in the market for which neither UK policy makers nor are the public properly prepared.

Unquote.

Does anyone know where I can buy an amulet of Mjollnir, I feel an El Nino or two coming on?

Electric Shocks For All

Today the Labour Party came up with its latest grand idea for policies to feature in the election campaign.  Ed Miliband was in Leeds telling an audience suffering an enthusiasm deficit that there would be new economic powerhouses, some of which would be local councils brought together to shape their futures.

The memories came flooding back about all the power houses of the past.  The oldest were all those fervent documentaries about how electrical power would be provided nationwide from the 1930's and 1940's.  So many of them had striking pictures of the applications of various forms of power in technology.

To modern audiences they look antique, even quaint.  The 1950's films of housewives' first experiences with modern kitchens seem almost ludicrous.  Again, visions of power and use were routine in government propaganda.  No party conference was without grand speeches on energy power and the new world to come.

Except it wasn't quite a new world.  Somehow or other, the old world in the form of the structure of industry, trade and many other things would continue in a happier world.  The new world was a sort of bolted on higher standard of living and consumption thing to employ and cater for the younger generations.

The electricity would largely be fuelled by coal with some by other means, so would the gas.  Large gangs of men would still be needed to move goods or do the manual work.  Road transport would expand but be the junior partner to rail.  Air would be the expensive and elite end.  This could go on.

One memory is a Conservative Party Conference at Blackpool, in Lancashire when RA Butler gave a speech on policy some fifty odd years ago.  He made firm promises that the Lancashire Cotton Industry would enjoy full government support and would have a bright future.  In all this were the promises of cheaper, reliable and better power supplies.

It would only be a few years later when Ed and Dave Miliband would be sitting at the knee of their father, Ralph Miliband, the Marxist academic, enthralled by his magic tales of the wonders of Stalin's Electrification of the Soviet Union, which had set an example for all mankind.

It was claptrap of all this kind that formed the mindset of politicians dealing with many issues.  The Power Thing as a critical force was a mystic belief that coloured anything and everything they attempted to do.

So when the Conservative Heath reorganised local government in the early 1970's we were inflicted with a bright new dawn.  It was a set up that was remarkably similar to the one now being proposed by Miliband.  In the radical reshaping that took place on layer in some areas were the Metropolitan Counties.

Broadly, these were the same areas that are suggested for the creation of new "powerhouses" of grouped councils and the concept was bandied about in the early talk of how they would invigorate, stimulate and all that the local economies.

What did we get, the elected members were all the old war horses of local politics delighted to have a brand new, bigger and better gravy train and there was a lot of gravy to be had.  New large departments were staffed up on high salaries.  There was a business or development department notably lacking in real business experience.

In some of these new councils the members were those with experience of new planning and development under the guidance of one of the masters of the era, John Poulson who also finished up in Leeds, sadly in Armley Gaol for corruption.  You may guess where the great majority of the money available went.

At first, until reined in as the rates bills to local businesses went up to catastrophic levels, these councils were some of the biggest pork barrels in the UK.  There major interest was propping up or helping old declining industries and their affiliates in activities that clearly had no future, only delaying its impact.

Otherwise they were open for business to all the lobbyists, racketeers, confidence men and the rest.  This was the 1970's and these men had no idea about the real new forces. products and technologies that were being established, notably in IT, computing and business machinery and the rest.

They were shielded from much of the ordinary or real politics that went on because the lower level Metropolitan Boroughs dealt with Education, Social Services, Leisure and such like with parallel Area Health Authorities for the National Health Service.

The trouble was that they were embedded into the Labour Party at the time because of the political complexion of those industrial districts.  It was not until the era of Mrs. Thatcher that they were abolished and few other than those at their cash tills regretted their going.

For our politicians looking for the answers to the problems of the now and how to proceed to a sounder and better balance future the restoration of the Metropolitan Counties in one form or another is one of the worst things they could do.

It is not simply more tax and spend it is probably one of the most inefficient and damaging ways to do it.