THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

Couldn't say Kev, I never asked! I just took the money and ran. The 15 years I was paying £15 a month included the high rates that occurred at about that time. The way I looked at it £15 a month wasn't a bad rent for a good house a barn and seven acres!

[Big Kev]

Couldn't say Kev, I never asked! I just took the money and ran. The 15 years I was paying £15 a month included the high rates that occurred at about that time. The way I looked at it £15 a month wasn't a bad rent for a good house a barn and seven acres!

No worries, I could work it out but I'd have to sit and think about it

[Stanley]

Don't bother Kev. I didn't at the time. I just worked all the hours that God sent and gave Vera all the money. She was better at managing than I was and I think I got 5/- a week for my fags...... Those were the days, I had a secure job even though it was lousy pay. All I had to do was keep my nose firmly on the grindstone! How different things are today!

[Tizer]

Mrs Tiz is better at managing money than I am because she's more motivated to do it and even enjoys the task. Her dad made his children keep a record of spending and this experience seems to stay with people and provide them with a good foundation in financial affairs as an adult. We used to know a man who'd been company secretary for a well-known publishing firm and had been with Jardine Matheson in Hong Kong. He had been brought up with a `pocket book' to keep track of his money and believed it was that the set him on his career. In contrast, there's news today that 1.7 million people in the UK don't have a bank account. Some of them may just want to avoid banks (you can't blame them!) but most will have missed out on the experience of parents using a bank account and never learning about how to take care of their money.

[plaques]

I was told a story about a quite wealthy man who's wife was constantly buying presents for the grandchildren by simply writing a cheque without thinking of the real cost. His solution was not to stop her but handed over a bundle of monopoly money and said "each time you write a cheque take the equivalent of funny money and throw it in the bin." There was a dramatic reduction in spending.

[Stanley]

Quite a few of my friends are wealthy. In conversations with them we have always agreed that it is easier to rear sensible kids if you are poor because they understand from an early age that money is tricky stuff and needs managing.

[Tizer]

Although Mrs Tiz manages money well her `little sister' is the opposite and can't resist spending. We worry about how she'll cope when she retires and has to live on her pension.

[Stanley]

As my granny used to say; "You must cut your coat to suit your cloth".

[Tizer]

There are tens of thousands of people who are reaching the point where they will be asked to pay off their interest-only mortgage but haven't provided themselves with a source of funds to so so. Some have already got there and are being pursued by the banks. They think that they can simply ask the bank to extend the mortgage but the banks are refusing to so and want the cash instead.

[Stanley]

You are right Tiz. We recently had an example of this in that a member of the family was forced by circumstances connected with Janet's death to ask her mortgage holder to allow her to pay interest only until the probate process is completed. Luckily she had enough evidence to persuade them that this was the most sensible course but it is obvious that there is a deep aversion to the model in the system.

[Tizer]

Paying death duties is affecting a larger number of people now that many own their homes. The tax man is inflexible and wants the money immediately even though it might take a year or more to sell a house and raise the funds. This system needs an overhaul too.

[Stanley]

Our negotiations with HMRC are ongoing and very complicated. If we were an off shore evader they would leave us alone.....

[Stanley]

I'm a bit gloomy perhaps this morning but surveying the piste I have to conclude that everything is more complicated today and I don't see any evidence of people being happier. That's it.....

[Tizer]

You're not alone, Stanley. Most people are feeling a bit confused and depressed by all the Brexit and Trump shenanigans, not to mention the now usual general bad behaviour of companies and the slide towards a new credit crunch. The man on the Clapham omnibus is not fooled by the optimistic pronouncements of the government, he knows what's going on around him and feels its effects.

[Stanley]

Thanks for that Tiz. It's reassuring to know that it's not just me that is becoming a pessimistic old git!
I can't remember anything anywhere near this level of public angst even in the darkest days of the war.

[Tizer]

This should cheer you up, it made me laugh. It's a cartoon from a promo leaflet for the Oldie magazine...

[Stanley]

Too close to the truth to be funny!

[Stanley]

I've put a pic of the Barlick special constables in 1916 up in Forgotten Corners. A surprising number of them considering it was wartime. Perhaps a consequence of 'doing your bit'.
I think back to my childhood and the bobby on the beat was a common sight both by day and by night. During the blackout they helped the wardens enforce the regulations but their main task was enforcing the law. They kept a very careful eye on us kids and often curbed our mostly innocent activities. They all had capes slung over one shoulder if it looked like rain and always at night. Much later I found that many weighted the hem of the cape with lead which made it a very easily accessible and effective weapon! At night they tended to patrol in pairs and were often joined by the Beat Inspector who always carried a longer night stick. You were never far from a booby. The only concession to modernity was that in towns there were police telephone boxes scattered about which had a direct line to the station so they could report in and call for assistance if necessary.



This was the pattern used in Stockport. The Tardis of Dr Who is a larger version used in larger cities. The phone could be used by the public.

[Stanley]

The police look so young these days.....

[Stanley]

I watched a film last night about the Kellogg factory in Manchester producing a million cartons of corn flakes a day. The warehouse is completely automated and the workforce to handle all this production is four men and a fitter working with the robots.
This is modern industry and the casualties are the thousands of jobs that are lost in the search for more efficiency. Trevor Grice, the CEO of Renolds PLC once told me that if he found a machine that eliminated three or four jobs he bought it. This will only get worse and I wonder many a time where it will end. It is the reason why so many people are regarded as 'employed' today but have what I call 'nowt jobs' that don't pay a living wage. Things have certainly changed and for the worse.

[Stanley]

In my experience, a lot of people who go on about 'The Dignity of Labour' have never raised a sweat in their life but it can't be gainsaid that even the poorest labouring job used to give a living wage and dignity to the the worker knowing that he was supporting his family by his own efforts. I can remember that even in the hardest days working cruel hours for 3/6 an hour (17.5p) that thought used to keep me going when I was on the tramp. I was doing a useful job, had security and was happy. That seems to me to have completely vanished today. In addition, on that low wage I had bought a big house and seven acres of land! We laughed when Harold Macmillan told us we had never had it so good but he might have had a point.

[chinatyke]

We laughed when Harold Macmillan told us we had never had it so good but he might have had a point.

Similarly, if you look at kids today you could say "they have never had it so good" and so I guess that would apply to the society in which they live. For example, how much easier would your 'tramping' days have been if you had a mobile phone, sat-nav, comfortable truck with proper sleeper cab, power-assisted everything, motorways, a minimum wage rate and controlled maximum hours? The youngsters today don't know how lucky they are. Now I'm sounding like an old man...

[Stanley]

You are of course right in theory China but what I had in those days was absolute freedom from interference and security. I loved it and looking back it was all valuable experience, I learned so much about everything! That's something today's youngsters haven't got. I don't think I have ever known such a manipulated or controlled society. I was as happy as a pig in shit, in control and knew exactly what I was doing. How many kids today have that? It really was the Open Road then.

[Stanley]

Even in those days there was an attempt by employers to try to assert some control over their drivers by fitting a simple recorder that reacted to vibrations and recorded them on a wax coated disc that was driven by a clock mechanism. In theory this recorded the hours that the truck was actually moving but they were relatively easy to falsify. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the recorder, it may come back to me.....

[Bodger]

A driver i knew when he stopped for a pint or two had a brick that he put on the accelerator to keep the recorder recording