THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

One of the predominant trends since the war has been the search for 'greater efficiency', in other words getting the most out of the workers. It started with McKinsey and time and motion study, inspectors with stop watches and clip boards watching processes and working out ways to make them faster. Then after WW2 we got 'just in time' which started in Japan and rapidly spread to the west when management saw the possibilities.
I remember Trevor Grice, the CEO of Renolds once telling me that if he saw a machine that could eliminate two or three workers he bought it immediately. This attitude became the norm and the consequence was that thousands of low-skilled labouring jobs which once allowed the least fortunate in society to have paid work and dignity were eliminated. Gone were the street sweepers and length men in local government. Trenches in roads were dug by machine instead of a gang of labourers with picks and shovels. Even the high skill machinists were de-skilled by the advent of automation. Production line methods meant that each worker did only one job all day. Then we saw the advent of robots which took over whole processes, they never got tired or made mistakes and could work 24X7.
We now have intelligent machines taking over, 'artificial intelligence' and increased use of computerisation is starting to erode the middle rank jobs and even some management. Think of a modern warehouse or 'Fulfilment Centre' staffed entirely by robots. Even road transport is moving to eliminate the drivers. These displaced workers are soaked up at lower wages by the service industries and the gig economy where cheap labour is most profitable and this is the reason why such a high proportion of families in work are actually below the poverty line and getting into debt.
I remember a very famous statement by the manager of a big US car company commenting that the trouble with robots was that they didn't buy cars. He was spot on and that's why we now have falling sales and rising levels of debt.
Can anyone see where all this 'progress' will take us? It seems to me that it starts with the migration of wealth uphill to the top 1% and eventually a two tier system that is so unbalanced it becomes unstable. After that, the deluge. If anyone has a different idea I'd be pleased to entertain it.

[Whyperion]

If you think of the likes of Food Banks, there is nothing new, we take the Jewish Bibilical instruction not to take the margins/edges of the fields and leave them for those without land or income to harvest and winnow, additionally from that which was harvested (fruits or grains), aside from the 10% to run the political and medical systems ( funny how NI contributions are about 10% of earnings ) - (pre King rule - the Judges appear to be effectively Lay Magistrates and all other decisions were within a Priest Class), contributions to 'The Poor' were voluntary but encouraged (Islam also picked up these requirements and Sikhs share with all those in want). Some of the driving replacements are because it has been found that despite under or unemployment companies cannot get the (Suitable or reliable) staff - though to some extent the wage has never been much, if at all, above minimum wage levels despite the value of the equipment- never mind the load- they are responsible for each day.

[plaques]

( funny how NI contributions are about 10% of earnings )

The first insurance schemes were introduced by Churchill on very limited types of industry and set at about 2 old pennies (1%) of earnings. From this self paid insurance the payouts for unemployment gradually reduced and then stopped altogether after a limited period. I don't believe there was any biblical comparison at this time and I doubt if the was any altruistic intent where people with good salaries paid into a common fund to help the needy.

[Stanley]

Quite right P, the improvements to welfare by both the Liberals and Tories was forced by the fact that what they were replacing was the the totally inadequate system of the Poor Law, Parish relief and the workhouse. This had become a political embarrassment and was being highlighted by the rise of the Labour Party and its forerunners from the end of the 19th century onwards. Casting an eye sideways at the problems in Russia scared the living daylights out of them.

[Stanley]

One of the things I have noted both from my reading and also from life experience is the way that, during times of conflict, the common soldiers were very popular. Read up 'Jingoism' during the Boer war and 'Homes fit for heroes' after the great War. Look also at Kipling's famous poem about Johnny Atkins.
Some things never change, when the UK trembled under the prospect of an invasion by Polish plumbers the role of the Poles in helping us in WW2 was entirely forgotten. People like Thatcher stood on the steps of Downing Street and bigged up the soldiery but then closed down the specialised military hospitals that cared for the injured. Today we have constant reports about veterans suffering from PTSD and the number of them who suffer a decline and even imprisonment. Do we never learn?
I've bumped Stanislaw Bajkowski's story. I did a series of articles in the BET about it and in consequence I am in good standing with the local Polish Community!

[plaques]

One of the strange things that came to mind was the 'Click, Clack' tin lids. Why I should be thinking of this I don't Know.

.

.At about 2 inches diameter this was the type of lid you pressed the centre to open and squeezed the sides to close but better still it made quite a decent clicking noise on each action. Ideal for annoying grown ups with. Having said all that I can't think when I came across them or which tin or container they were used on.

[Stanley]

They were a standard closure on large tins of motor oil at one time and some oil drums.

[Stanley]

I was thinking about politics this morning and remembered a comment by Oscar Wilde about men who understand cost but have no concept of value. We have touched on the matter of the treatment of Prisoners of War at times on the site and one of the overwhelming facts is the contrast between how we treated them as opposed to the Axis Powers. This resulted in something of value but not capable of being costed, the good will that those men took back with them to post war Germany. The effects of things like that fade very slowly and I was thinking this morning that there must be many families in the EU where the glow of those memories persists but is being undermined by modern politicians who are obsessed with things like economics and that mythical beast, sovereignty. Unquantifiable concepts like this are so important but are totally ignored. The folk memory is amazingly retentive, think of the memories in Labour Party history of Churchill sending the troops into Taff Vale to break the railway strike or Iraqis who still remember us bombing villages in what was then Mesopotamia to facilitate tax collection in the 1930s. It works for positive memories as well and I regret the store of goodwill in today's Germany that we are squandering though ignorance.

[Tizer]

We were talking last night about the current rise in xenophobia in Britain and how it was decreasing in our earlier years. That got us onto the fact that we have had many friends and colleagues who were foreign and lived overseas or were British but of foreign origin. This was especially so because of us being so deeply engaged in science. For a start there has always been great comradeship among scientists of all nations, not just in the big international projects but at all levels. Also Britain had an influx of scientists from elsewhere in Europe after WW2. In my early days of science these men and women were well represented among the `elders of science' and a significant proportion were also Jewish. I played an active part in the Society of Chemical Industry and spent much of that time in groups with a high proportion of these `incomers'; they were always keen to help younger scientists and to actively debate wide ranging interests as well as science.

Our 14-year-old relative who lives nearby and has just achieved her Duke of Edinburgh award has been on two trips to Germany this year, one a school exchange visit and the other a `cultural immersion' course. I wish more youngsters could make these trips and we might then have less xenophobia.

[plaques]

think of the memories in Labour Party history of Churchill sending the troops into Taff Vale to break the railway strike

Wasn't it Tonypandy where Churchill as Home Minister after some dithering sent a detachment of Lancashire Fusiliers into the valley to end the coal miners strike the cavalry having been put on hold in Ponypridd. Taff Vale and the railway strike is better known for the Unions losing a court case in which they became liable to pay compensation to the railway owners etc: Either way it was common at that time to recruit from other authorities plus militia and then if this wasn't enough to the Home Office for military support.

[Stanley]

You're quite right P. I was confusing the two disputes, Tonypandy was the one that Churchill overreacted to. Thanks for putting me right, I was relying on that most fickle of helpers, my memory!



This was another famous incident of troops being regarded as a possible reinforcement of public order, tanks parked in the Gallowgate Meat Market when the government sent troops into Clydeside to respond to Manny Shinwell and 'Red Clydeside' in 1919. They were afraid that revolution might spread throughout Europe after the 1919 rising in Russia.
It makes you wonder what the reaction would be today if there was public disorder and I fear we may be about to find out.....

[Tizer]

Following my post above about knowing many scientists who came to Britain during or after the war I remembered one who was a PhD student alongside me when I was a postdoc at Bristol in the 1970s. His parents were Czech and I think his father probably died in WW2. His mother lived in London and I gave him a lift in my car several times on weekends to visit her. He invited me in to meet her and I was impressed by how she had surrounded herself with memories of her homeland. They were not well off and the student had funded himself through university by selling his big, old stamp collection. I wondered how well he'd managed in his career afterwards...so I looked up his name through the web. It was pleasing to find this...

`...has degrees in in Geology, Micropaleontology from London University (QMC) & a PhD in Organic Geochemistry from the School of Chemistry, Bristol University, UK. His postdoctoral work at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne was concerned with hydrous pyrolysis of kerogen analysis using Ocean Drilling Project samples. He has worked in the oil service industry as a petroleum geochemist at Core Labs Singapore & Indonesia & as an inorganic geochemist at Halliburton recently, working on the mineralogy of unconventional reservoirs. He also worked at Texas A & M (GERG) as an associate research scientist mapping the oils of the Gulf of Mexico. He has more than 40 publications & has been working for more than 10 years on solutions for ameliorating climate change.'

All this has reminded me of a scientist who came to Britain in much earlier times, to Leeds in 1887 - the oils & fats scientist Professor Julius Lewkowitsch. LINK He moved to Manchester and then London, married an English lady and had a daughter, Elsa, born in 1903. He died in 1913. In the late 1970s I would see Elsa stilling attending some of the lectures of the SCI Oils & Fats Group in London. She too had a career as a scientist LINK . She died in 1980 and I was responsible for using her bequest to fund the Society of Chemical Industry's biennial Julius Lewkowitsch Memorial Lecture in memory of her father.

[Stanley]

Nice post Tiz. I wrote a piece about our debt to immigrants yesterday for the BET.
Something that struck me yesterday for the first time was that the sending of troops and tanks to Glasgow in 1919 was almost a re-run of the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 (LINK). It's the 200th anniversary next week. That was, like Glasgow, a response to a large public demonstration at a time when the government feared revolution. In that case it was the French Revolution that was the trigger. I have also just realised that Glasgow in 1919 was near enough the centenary of Peterloo. (LINK).
As David would say, spooky!

[Stanley]

One of the biggest changes we have seen is how people get their news. I can remember the time before computers when the only source was printed newspapers. There must have been thousands of 'newsagents', the name says it all. They are now an extinct species as news moves online to electronic media. I used to get the Guardian every day and the Observer at weekend and read them from cover to cover. As the price slowly rose I became aware that I was spending over £7 a week on papers and decided that apart from the Radio Times, it had to stop. The RT was ditched as well when the price rose to £3 a week. I can't remember the last time I bought a newspaper apart from my weekly copy of the BET. If I am a representative sample, no wonder the printed news sector is in deep trouble.

[Stanley]

I am often surprised how, when I mention a famous product from the past and have a furtle on tinternetwebthingy I find that it is still being made. I wonder if they are exactly the same products or simply a brand name being re-used? We trusted brand names in those days but never really considered the power of them. Today I see statements like 'The Beckham Brand'. Modern advertisers are obsessed with brands and from what I hear about modern kids, one of the biggest problems parents face is pester power being used by kids who have to have the latest hot brand to avoid ridicule in the playground.
This all came to mind when I happened to see five minutes of a programme called Shop Well For Less on TV. It concerned advice to a young couple who are having difficulty saving up enough money for their wedding.... What astounded me was the fact that the young lady spends an average of £100 a week on designer clothes and never wears the same outfit twice. The advice given to her was not to get real but to consider using white tee shirts to change the appearance of each day's outfit.
Incredible! Are there really people like that out there? I didn't wait to see more, I went over to another channel.....

[Tizer]

They'll have to save up for a long time...I read recently that the average cost of a wedding in the UK is now £30,000! Just think what that money could be used for by the young couple instead of the wedding. We were married in a registry office!

[Stanley]

I agree Tiz. When Vera and I married in 1959 we had a church wedding and a reception at the Coronation. Bunty charged me 7/6 a head for a turkey dinner for 100 guests with one complimentary drink. Those were the days! There are no known photographs of the event..... I suppose the whole exercise cost about 15 weeks wages, £150. That would be about £6,000 in today's money.
What strikes me about that is that today I couldn't afford it. We must be worse off now than we were then and modern couples would think what we had was totally inadequate. Changing times......

[chinatyke]

They'll have to save up for a long time...I read recently that the average cost of a wedding in the UK is now £30,000! Just think what that money could be used for by the young couple instead of the wedding. We were married in a registry office!

A week ago my son got married in Sweden. It was a proper white wedding in a church with a reception afterwards and the weather and the day were perfect. Cost was less than £5000. I think the people who spend 30K on a ceremony are crazy.

[Stanley]

And that's an average China. It's the people that spend on the upper end in Millions who really have a problem...

[PanBiker]

We got wed in December 1976 at Carleton Church, it was very cold with a hard frost which started late November. Sally had lots of cousins in the village along with her sister Julia and best friend Helen so she had seven bridesmaids, she made all their dresses as well as her own wedding dress and a miniature one for her page girl, her niece Sharon, my nephew Darren, my brothers lad was page boy. Lots of girls at West Road during the Autumn coming for measuring and trying on.

My made to measure light grey pinstripe three piece suit cost me about £100.00 from the tailors in Skipton, had to go three times for fitting. We paid £24.00 for the bells to be rung before and after the service. It cost me a few quid to get out of the churchyard after the service as the village kids tie the gates and hold you to ransom unless you pay them to let you out, £5.00 I think the rate was. Reception was a buffet spread at the Devonshire Hotel in Skipton and was the biggest cost, can't remember how much but certainly not in the thousands. Sally's Uncle Bill, (ex RAF Spitfire Pilot) complete with immaculate white handlebar moustache entertained on the piano. We snook away late afternoon, came home, I picked up a hire car from Marsdens on Kelbrook Road and we went down to the Spread Eagle at Sawley for a meal. No honeymoon, we had a house to finish doing up!

[chinatyke]

No honeymoon, we had a house to finish doing up!

Very sensible. My latest wife cost 9rmb (about 56 pence at that time) for the civil service and we had a restaurant meal for 4 people afterwards. Mind you, she's cost me a bit since then.

[Stanley]

"My latest wife cost 9rmb " Interesting way of putting it China....
I don't know what the state of the wicket is now but in 1959 I was surprised when I realised how many conventions/traditions were associated with weddings. My mother in law the late Mary Agnes was incensed when she found that Vera and I had gone shopping together to buy the wedding dress. The woman in the shop was equally surprised and then aghast when I asked for a discount on the dress. I think it cost £40.



Janet wearing it in 1977, the first time it had been out of the wardrobe since 1959!

I also got flak for refusing to buy a new pair of shoes, they were only five years old, but after the service one farmer congratulated me on the fact that I had polished the instep of the sole.....

[Tizer]

School leavers' parents now spend large amounts of money on the pupils' lavish `proms' outfits. Even primary school leavers are getting into expensive stuff. I found a thread on Mumsnet where they were complaining of being asked to pay £75 per child towards a party for the kids.

[Stanley]

I've seen pics of primary school kids in gowns and mortar boards and it makes you wonder at the mentality of the parents. See THIS BBC report five years ago about the practice even reaching leaving nursery school.
I must be a dinosaur because I even object to academic gowns made of shiny man-made fibre which seems to be the standard now. I remember being with Bob Bliss in the robing room before a Commencement ceremony in St Louis. I pointed out to him that his doctoral robe had a big tear in it and he told me it was his father's and if it was good enough for him it was all right by him.
This was the occasion when a man with an entourage approached me and shook my hand. I asked him who he was and his jaw dropped. It turned out he was Brian Mulroney, PM of Canada at one time who retired in disgrace after losing a landslide election. A lady behind him laughed and Bob told me later it was his wife..... Bob thought it was hilarious and said it reminded him of the series of cartoons in Punch about 'The Man Who....'. These showed notable instances of faux pas. Later, Mulroney made a speech which went down like a lead balloon.....

[Stanley]

I am constantly amazed by the levels of information that are available to us today. One of my Grand Daughters flies in to Manchester today. I have just looked on Wendy's recommended flight tracker and learned that they were a bit late leaving Dubai but she is now flying over the Persian Gulf in an Airbus 380 and is due to arrive in Manchester at 11:51.
Apart from the fact that 70 years ago I couldn't have conceived of this level of travel, if anyone had told me that I could actually watch the radar image of her progress in real time it would have been unbelievable. I'm glad I haven't lost my sense of wonder at this modern access and it strikes me that the young today cannot have any concept of this and can't share in my wonder at this miracle. To them it must be no more than they expect.
It's magic!
Later at 07:00, she's over northern Iraq heading towards Istanbul.