Wired for Sound* or Thank you so much Youngest Daughter and the NHS.

I've lived with hearing difficulties all my life - mine and others'. My father had reduced hearing and received a pension due to the fact that a land mine explosion had caused damage to his hearing in one ear, a serious occupational disability in a journalist in the 1950s and 1960s [he died in 1967] My maternal grandmother who lived with my parents was very deaf and although supplied with an NHS hearing aid in the 1970s found it impossible to use as it magnified all sound and she could not 'weed out' what she needed to hear. My mother lost her hearing gradually until she was almost profoundly deaf but refused to acknowledge it. This was frustrating to others to say the least so when my hearing started to deteriorate about 30 years ago I was completely up front about it rather than let others think I was merely ignoring them!

We all deal with problems in different ways. I used to laugh mistakes off but my hearing problems escalated and I found that too often when I had to ask others to repeat things I was getting the dreaded 'Oh it doesn't matter' brush off. Hilarious [to me] misunderstandings in conversations increased like the time I thought Other Half was talking about 'burglars' when he was actually discussing 'burgers' which never the less caused annoyance with others during conversations. I would often laugh along with others rather than ask for a joke to be repeated and if somewhere in a crowd with lots of background noise [in a pub say, or more likely for me on a demo] I knew I would miss more of most conversations than I would hear. I tried to train the grandchildren to only speak to me from in front, a certain amount of lip reading being used I suppose. However there were times that I did get upset [although trying to never show it] when it was assumed that I was being rude or stupid, f'r instance because I didn't move quickly enough/at all when people behind said 'excuse me'. If you can't hear someone you shouldn't be accused of ignoring them. We hearing impaired don't look any different although there were times I felt like sporting an ear trumpet to prove a point!

The lovely author David Lodge has written a novel - based on his own experiences with hearing loss - Deaf Sentence . When I first read it I could identify with so many of the problems Lodge's hero undergoes and which Lodge illustrates - often amusingly - in his narrative. But I also found it heart breaking because it shows how other characters get impatient with the fictional, deaf character, something with which so many of us having the same problems have to contend.

I haven't ignored asking the medical profession for help all these years. And I don't feel badly treated. My problems gradually worsened over more than thirty years. Twenty years ago I was told there was nothing that could be done.  Ten years ago it was suggested to me that really the problems were not that bad and I could possibly be making a fuss about very little, although it wasn't me who was getting impatient with my hearing but those around me!!

And if I really think about it I realise over the last five or six years things worsened. I have had to have the sub titles on the TV all the time. And of course the thing with hearing loss is that one just does not know what one doesn't hear! Its only when talking about conversations held previously that one realises one hasn't heard whole chunks - or has misheard as in the burger/burglar incident above.

Youngest Daughter has been trying to get me to the Hearing Clinic for some time. I honestly thought she would be disappointed because nothing could be done and as I could manage reasonably well I was lucky anyway. But last week saw me sitting in a little booth in the local hospital pressing a button when I heard the 'beep'. and to my complete amazement less than one and a half hours later I was walking back to the car with digital hearing aids in both ears. Hearing sounds unheard for years like traffic noises, birds singing and begging my husband not to shout at me.

I couldn't stop grinning. Cooking dinner at home I kept breaking off to tell my friends on facebook that 'knives and forks are noisy' and 'now that I can hear the vegetables cooking perhaps my cooking will improve' [it didn't] The next day we visited Youngest Daughter and family and I could hear the little noises that her one week old baby was making - hadn't heard them two days before. Suddenly her 23 month old daughter was talking more clearly. My son-in-law said he couldn't get over talking to me in a normal tone of voice, never having known me without having to talk carefully to me!

So many things make noises I didn't know about. I can hear if someone standing behind me says something. My husband keeps telling me in shops when it is my turn to go to the till - he's not used to my being able to hear my name/number being called! Hearing myself sing was a terrible shock, I knew I was dreadful, but that bad?

Of course, I understand I am not completely 'normal' and there will be areas that cannot ever be completely compensated. But thank you so much to my Youngest Daughter for persevering in telling me [and making sure I could hear!] that I should go again to see what had been discovered in the world of audiology therapy and thank you too to the National Health Service who have given me this wonderful gift of two tiny digital hearing aids, which even match the colour of my hair!

A few helpful links:

NHS Choices: Hearing impairment 

Action on Hearing Loss [formerly RNID: Royal National Institute for the Deaf]

* Cliff Richard sang  Wired For Sound written by ROBERTSON/TARNEY


The photograph above is of an antique ear trumpet c1850 property of the Science Museum

I Was There*

I was not going to blog about the legacy of Margaret Thatcher, the effects of Thatcherism, whether or not she should have so much money spent on her funeral by us [the taxpayers] etc etc. There are so many doing a better job than me on that. I don't want to go to parties that are celebrating her death, I actually find them bad taste but I also find the amount being spent of her funeral and eulogising her wonderful 'reign' bad taste too. But these past few days of dodging obituary type programmes and discussions [I didn't even survive the first question of Question Time on BBC1, Thursday Evening because responses from the panel and the audience, all shades of political viewpoints were beginning to grate on me]

But suddenly I can't keep quiet. You see, I was there. A lady never tells her age but I am not a lady and I am 63 this year. I remember the UK pre-Thatcher, during the Thatcher years and post-Thatcher years. And I listen to all these commentators telling us what it was like - and it really wasn't.

Sure there was industrial unrest in the UK in the late 1970s. And in Germany and in France. Just as a f'r instance, in Germany there were two steel strikes in 1978 alone over working hours, holiday entitlements and pay; again in France in the late 1970s steel workers held strikes which often became violent. The difference between France and Germany and the UK at the time I thought was a  matter of self denigration - our news bulletins were full of how bad things were in the UK [I was living temporarily in W.Germany, as it was in 1978/79, but travelling frequently back to the UK. I watched German TV and listened to BBC radio 4] but never seemed to mention the industrial unrest in other European Countries. German news used to show a lot about the industrial unrest in the UK [usually courtesy of the BBC or ITV ] and very little about their own industrial unrest.

I remember Margaret Thatcher's government being elected in 1979. I remember the fear as mortgage rates started to rise almost immediately. We returned to the UK in the knowledge that we couldn't afford to pay the mortgage on our house and thinking we would have to sell. Many other people were in the same position as us but were unable to sell their properties, upon which they could not now afford the mortgage repayments. Equally they could not sell as new buyers could not afford to buy with the new mortgage rates and the housing market became stagnant. Building society repossessions became common place.

Over on the social housing scene, Thatcher's determination to sell off the council housing stock as quickly as possible seemed odd. Whether or not that was a good thing is a debatable question. But the effects of it live on. New owners of their properites, ex-tenants found that when - often due to 'the Thatcher effect' - their jobs disappeared, they could not move easily to another area for work as they now owned property which they could not sell in the stagnant housing market. So Norman Tebbit's 'Get On Yer Bike' speech as it became known was even more of an insult to those unemployed. I heard a Tory grandee on the radio in the past few days saying that tenants who became home owners took more pride in their homes. What an insult to all those who had lovingly looked after their homes for all the years that they had rented them, one of the reasons they wished to buy them after all!

The legacy of selling off all those houses lives on. Councils were not allowed to use monies collected for rebuilding replacement stock. So nearly forty years on there are long housing lists, especially of the larger 'family' houses, the least desirable dwellings being those remaining which were not bought and are often now in poor repair. Additionally nearly a third of the housing stock bought are now in the hands of private landlords who are renting them out at exhorbitant rents often to tenants who are assisted by social services to pay the rent. The so-called 'bedroom tax' which 'demands' those in social housing [or having assistance with rent in private rental properties] considered to have excess bedrooms move to smaller properties is unworkable because there is insufficient social housing stock, anyway.

And there was the great nationalised industries sell off. I heard someone say how awful the gas board was pre privatisation. I honestly don't remember this. If something went wrong, one called the local gas board, got an appointment and a fitter turned up and fixed it. Now it is just as long winded to get an appointment, a contractor turns up, nothing to do with the company who supplies one's gas, doesn't finish the job or has to get someone else in or doesn't know what has to be done and if one is dissatisfied with the work done there is no way of identifying who did it [no fitter's number as in days of yore!] and the someone on the end of the 'phone can't help and it all starts again. Fuel costs keep rising, yet we are told that the foreign company which is now our 'service provider' has made a profit again. But it might be cheaper to find another service provider........ That is of course if one doesn't mind risking being charged by two companies because the first can't understand that in fact one has moved to the second, or not having fuel at all because the second forgot to do the handover thing..... Not that I am bitter of course...

Mrs Thatcher's determination to beat the Unions into the ground resulted in the decimation of the Coal and Manufacturing Industries. Others have written far more coherently on this. But my take on especially the Coal Industry is this. During the Coal Strike in 1984 some said Maggie was getting her own back on the Coal Industry for their part in the downfall of the Heath Government of 1974. I always felt she was getting her own back for the General Strike of 1926.

'Care in the Community' was introduced in the Thatcher Years. We were told that it was better for those, many who had lived for most of their lives in hospitals for those with learning difficulties, who had become institutionalised and were used to being given medicine and not take responsibility for that medication to now live on their own. Often in bedsits with no-one to ensure that they took their medication at the right times if at all. Unsurprisingly, although supposedly they were nominally supervised by the already hard pressed social services many began to slip the net. Many began to wander the streets and were plainly distressed but if taken into hospitals or police stations there were no psychiatric beds for them. The buildings which had previously housed them had been sold off and demolished or redeveloped. Some one somewhere was making a lot of money whilst it seemed that a lot of people who should be caared for were living in doorways or in 'cardboard cities'.

The Falklands war. What can I say. In 1982 a very small percentage of the population knew where the Falkland Islands were. When the Royal Navy repeatedly warned the Government that John Nott's [Defence Secretary] plan in 1981 that the HMS Endurance was to be withdrawn from its naval presence in the South Atlantic [Britain's only naval presence moreover] was a strong suggestion to the Argentinians that Britain was preparing to withdraw its defence of the Falklands land and territories.

When Argentinian forces invaded the Falklands in April 1982 the fervour of the patriotism that hit the UK was frightening to a pacifist like me. The flag waving and war mongering was immense and the waving off of 'our boys' to a place which so few could have pointed out on a map was worrying. Some of us felt that Maggie T was revelling in it. Her daily speeches, toning her voice, hair and outfit to suit the gravity of the news, her rabble rousing - ugggghhh. Her jubilation when the Belgrano was sunk - incidentally it was steaming away from the Falklands and after a peace plan had been suggested - was repugnant especially as 323 lives were lost.

You see, I remember what it was like in the 1960s and 1970s to leave school and know that there would be a job waiting. Maybe not the job one wanted, but a job that gave one self worth and the hope to be able to change in the future. I don't remember seeing people sleeping in doorways until the 1980s after 'Care in the Community' came into being. I remember the jingoistic fervour of the call to arms of the Falklands War and the return of the badly injured and burnt from the HMS Sheffield. I saw the faces of those in the manufacturing and coal industries who felt they had lost their pride and dignity by being thrown on the scrap heap to appease the right wing ideology of the Thatcher years. I remember how the nationalised industries worked before they were privatised and to be honest having a choice of providers has not improved the services.

I could say so much more. I will not be celebrating the death of an old lady. At the same time please do not expect me to agree with glorification of her life. I feel she led her government in many bad actions and we still have to put those right.


Video of Glenda Jackson's speech about the Thatcher years in the House of Commons debate about the life and death of Lady Thatcher on Wednesday 1oth April.

*With apologies to Max Boyce who was singing about something far more important than politics - Welsh rugby.

Each [Wo]man's Death Diminishes Me*

The Photograph above is of Margaret Thatcher leaving Downing Street for the last 
time after resigning as Prime Minister, 28th November 1990

Its been a funny old day. Had to be up early and looking tidy because a friend who is also an electrician came to rewire the house. So appearing intelligent first thing on a Monday morning after a week of driving all around the South of England to be with Youngest Daughter who was giving birth to Youngest Granddaughter was a bit of a strain. And then when said electrician cut his head open on our garage door, I couldn't find the first aid kit which was still packed away in one of the many bags which had travelled with us to Somerset the week before last - when we were with Middle Son and Eldest Grandson - and this was a bit of a panic.... The blood drips along the hall on the new wooden flooring was an interesting contrast to the unfinished decor.

However the tenor of the day changed just before lunch when the news broke that Lady Thatcher had died. Two thoughts raced through my mind in quick succession - 'Can I get it onto Twitter before anyone else?' [No - on my timeline @PoliticalScrapbook beat me, just] and 'this is going to mean days of media frenzy basically sanctifying Maggie'. And that has started already.

I am always sad to hear of a passing into the next world, sad for the family and friends left behind. I don't think I could ever imagine saying that I felt glad someone had died*. But  a passing does not mean that the deceased automatically becomes a Saint. Nor does it mean that if one did not like the person in this life, one has to like them now. Yet it seems as if since the news of Lady Thatcher's passing was announced it has become de rigeur to say only nice things about her life and career. She did some remarkable things including first British woman Prime Minister and longest serving Prime Minister in the 20th century. Politically she had many friends and admirers and many political opposers and even enemies. Many would applaud her premiership, others like me would view it as the beginning of a decline in the living standards of the working classes and the strength of the Welfare State from which the country still desperately needs to recover.

I don't need to rehearse all the actions of Prime Minister Thatcher which I deplored. That will be done by many over the next few days, just as many will say why they think she was a good PM. But the electorate and the media have a short memory. I remember how the Conservative party hounded her out of Downing Street when they thought she was no longer a good bet to win them the next election. More than a few are probably singing a different song tonight, now that she is gone for good. I hope she sleeps gently in the next life but sadly am afraid that when she realises how badly her actions spoilt the lives of so many, she may not.

And finally, when Margaret Thatcher stood on the steps of Downing Street and mis- quoted the prayer of Saint Francis of Assissi at the beginning of her first term in Downing Street, I wish she had said and meant the words in the English Version of the Prayer:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive.

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

The Heading of this blog is taken from:

*No Man Is An Island

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee. 

John Donne

Goodbye Labour Party

Ken Loach's new film, The Spirit of '45 , is part of a clarion call for a new party of the left. Here is my tribute!

Goodbye Labour Party

I have come to say goodbye, Labour Party

It's no use to ask me why, Labour Party

There's a murmur in the air, 

You can hear it everywhere,

It's the time to do and dare, Labour Party.

So if you hear the sound of feet, Labour Party,

Sounding through the Country's streets, Labour Party,

It's the tramp of Socialists' bred 

With their flags of oh so red,

Saying goodbye to all of you, Labour Party.

Goodbye Labour I must leave you, 

Though it breaks my heart to go,

Something tells me I am needed at the front bench 'gainst the foe,

See - the ranks of red are marching and I can no longer tarry,

Hark - I hear the clarion calling, goodbye Labour Party.

[sang to 'Goodbye Dolly Gray]

And it really does break my heart to go. 

Please read this Guardian article by Ken Loach, Kate Hudson and Gilbert Achcar  here. The photo is taken from this article.

G.S.O.H

 

GSOH noun n

Definition : written abbreviation for good sense of humour: used in newspapers and magazine advertisements by people looking for a new friend or sexual partner

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/gsoh

 

 

I have always considered myself to have a good sense of humour. Actually if I am completely honest, maybe it is a little bit left of field and when my giggles become uncontrollable I tend to hide. However this week has tested me a little.

 

Humour can be very subjective. Add in the written sort and any mischief from the media and it can become tricky. Jonathan Swift found this in 1729 when he published his satirical pamphlet A Modest Proposal . Originally headed

 

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick 

 

it was intended to shock those outside Ireland, by use of the Juvenalian Satirical essay style, into an awareness of the terrible living conditions of the poor in Ireland at the time. Yet there are still to this day those who upon reading it for the first time take it at face value and believe that Swift really meant that the poor should practise cannibalism! And in places on the world wide web the odd out of context quote from the pamphlet can be found to prove this. Something which I find rather funny.

 

Earlier this week there was rather a kerfuffle when the media became aware of a lecture given by the novelist Hilary Mantel some time ago. This lecture - it is really necessary to read the whole thing - was published in the London Review of Books and Mantel - a historian as well as a novelist - discusses how the public have perceived Royalty, and perhaps more importantly been led to perceive Royalty since the Middle Ages. And inevitably present day Royals, in the person of the Duchess of Cambridge, became part of the discussion. 

 

So this meant that present day media - also part of Mantel's discussion - found a nice 'quote' to take out of context and slammed the author for her 'spitefulness' against the Duchess. Even David Cameron and Ed Milliband commented, proving that their advisors hadn't read the whole piece either. My sense of humour was sadly lacking as I found nothing funny in this mass attack on a stimulating lecture by a good writer. GSOH bypass on my part, obviously.

 

But the same media, a couple of days later presented another Royal, praising his sense of humour. Yes dear old Prince Phillip. Who made a 'joke' to a Filipino nurse at a hospital he was visiting that her county 'must be half empty – you're all here running the NHS'. I found this unfunny and racist. GSOH bypass again and it was suggested on facebook that I didn't have a sense of humour when I commented in answer to someone else thus.

 

So it seems as if the World has Turned Upside Down, humour-wise anyway. That phrase is from a Civil War ballad. Which included Royalty in a big way too.

And now for the only joke I can ever remember: What do you call three holes in the ground? Well, well, well. Photo courtesy of Is sense of humour quantifiable? http://sciencefocus.com/qa/sense-humour-quantifiable%E2%80%A8

 

 

 

 

 

 

Its the Same with Capitalism All Over

 

 

Its the same with Capitalism all over
Its the Poor what gets the blame......
Its the Rich what gets the profit
 Its always the c****** same

[with apologies to the old music hall song]

 

 

I am feeling pretty annoyed actually. I am having trouble dredging up my sense of humour. Normally I can laugh even at my political opponents and their weird, not to say mad, ideas. But this weekend it seems as if there has been a united front to blame the poor [aka working classes, unemployed, benefit claimants and disabled]

 

Purveyors of spin seem to have been working flat out. We had the head of Iceland blaming schools, hospitals etc demands for cheap meals for the use of horsemeat in their economy meals [see photo and link above, thank you to Politics UK facebook page for this] [I seem to remember that such institutions are mandated by government to tender for cheapest prices. A discussion for another day, obviously]

 

Iain Duncan-Smith appearing on the Andrew Marr show yesterday changed a discussion on whether or not Job seekers 'forced' to work for nothing but their job seekers allowance in various 'work experience' placements should in fact receive more than the job seeker allowance into a discussion on whether Graduates feel that working in a supermarket stacking shelves is beneath them. It follows a High Court ruling on the case of Cait Reilly. Anyone following the case of Cait Reilly will know that was not the argument and the link in this paragraph leads to info for those who have not followed it. But Duncan-Smith was neatly attempting to deflect attention from the ruling of the High Court Judge and the thinking behind the whole 'work experience' issue.

 

Boris Johnson decided to weigh in with a plea for those in the underprivileged class who may be in line for paying mansion tax. In his column in The Telegraph last week, he described the tax as 'nihilistic class war' and said it would prevent these poor home owners from carrying out necessary repairs thus:

 

If you see one of those damp patches appear on the ceiling – about the size and colour of a poppadom – you should just lie back and watch it grow. If the floorboards yawn open, just cover the gap with cardboard. Never mind the state of the downstairs lavatory. A faint aroma of ammonia never hurt anyone. Drip from the ceiling? Shove a bucket under it.
 

Rather an insult to other London citizens who are living in less sumptous properties or worrying about being hit with the bedroom tax. [Surely that is more a case for 'nihilistic class war? And isn't 'nihilist class' an oxymoron?] And whilst we are on the subject of bedroom tax, if one is living in an overcrowded property, could one claim a rebate of rent, a sort of anti-bedroom tax? Just wondering.

 

BTW the last line of the bowdlerised verse at the head of the blog has a word beginning with 'c' which has been censored. If you watch the wonderful Stella  with Ruth Jones on Sky TV, it is Rhiannon's favourite word!

 

Bad mood expunged. Now to do some c***ing housework.

Richard the Third or why I won't curtsey to the Royal Family

Our house has 'gone Richard the Third mad'. I admit to my geekiness and my countdown on Monday morning until the time when the results of the tests on the skeleton discovered in the car park in    Leicester would be announced was really quite sad. But when I posted about this on Facebook I was gratified to find that a great many others were joining me in my geekiness and were equally excited.

Even Other Half and his comrades who were at Transport House on Monday were apparently checking their 'phones every few minutes to find out the latest news.

So given that we all like and mystery and a solution, why all the excitement? Well a 500 year old gap between mystery and solution of the question 'Was Richard really a hunchback?' is obviously a starter although the far more important 'Did he really kill/order the murder of the 'little princes'?' obviously cannot be solved via the discovery of his skeleton and until the invention of a time travel machine I don't suppose it ever will. But for me, I think the discovery signifies more than that.

Go back nearly 450 years and what did Kingship really mean? It meant that the strongest in battle achieved the crown, basically. OK, so there had to be the implied inheritance issues that B descended from A, or A's father or whomever - but when the cards were down it became a question of who could get the most followers on their side [sounds a bit like the battle for a political party leadership today, doesn't it]

And on the inheritance issue - well legitimaticy and kinship needn't stand in one's way. Richard the third wanted to succeed to the throne of his brother Edward the Fourth on his death, he didn't let obstacles like their brothers and sisters born in between them stand in their way. No - he just declared them illegitimate - thus accusing his mother as being serially unfaithful to their father [although funnily enough  true to their father when Richard - the youngest of the family - was conceived] And the fact that Edward the Fourth had children to suceed him didn't deter Richard either. He just declared the marriage between Edward and the children's mother invalid - thus the children became illegitimate too and fortuitously the new heir was Richard.

The boys were probably murdered just to make sure that support could not be raised in their names and the discovery of two skeletons of young boys in the Tower of London in 1674 seems to confirm this.

Richard was King for two years before being killed at Bosworth Field in 1485 and Henry the Seventh aceeding to the throne and founding the Tudor dynasty.

Perhaps this very potted version of the way we have planted the seeds of our present royal family tree explains why I don't actually subscribe to the whole 'Aren't they wonderful' point of view. Simply because someone managed to raise more followers than someone else and was thus able to kill that someone else and declare himself king [Henry the Seventh] doesn't make him a God inspired better than the common man type of bloke. It actually just makes him a bit like the type of man who ruled the East End in the 1950s and 1960s. [If you tell anyone I said that I could end up in the Tower of London. So be careful] And his descendants, although very rich and having interesting ancestors - should we have to curtsey to them? I think not.

And it also doesn't explain why I was so excited on Monday morning. Maybe because I love mysteries and history. Or just because I am truly a geek. You decide. Meanwhile I will be watching Shakespeare's Richard the Third and reading Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time  Whatever the rights and wrongs of Richard the Third, he inspired some great literature and non-fiction books!

This blog is dedicated to Dick, who was the first one to crack the Richard the Third rhyming slang joke.....

Above: The earliest surviving portrait of Richard (c. 1520, after a lost original), formerly belonging to the Paston family  (Society of Antiquaries, London)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Richard_III_earliest_surviving_portrait.jpg