It is surprising how little those involved actually spoke about their experiences.

The bits I do know.

Paternal grandfather serving in one of the “pals” regiments was gassed on the Somme, he recovered but was never a well man, died of multiple cancers aged 61, his brother was killed in the same attack.

Dad signed up before war broke out, but was seriously injured while training in an incident, which killed 6 others and left a fair number with bad injuries.
Declared unfit to serve shortly after, but Dad was young and fit and made a much better recovery than expected, but was totally deaf in one ear and only about 50% in the other.

The services didn’t want him, so he took a job driving for an agricultural produce merchant and joined the AFS.

With Liverpool relatively close he spent some time there during the raids, was on the attempted rescue when a shelter took a direct hit, (that incident he never spoke about) although civilian the crews did relief duty on local airfields and interestingly on a nearby decoy airfield. His comment on that was a wry grin as he said it could get interesting if an enemy bomber was decoyed and attacked, the fire service’s job was to tear around the patch and light fires were bombs had dropped or been strafed, with a good chance of another attack following up.

From the BBC article:

“the number of foreign-born residents in England and Whales has risen by nearly three million since 2001 to 7.5 million, the 2011 census reports”

.

How many people live in WHALES then, never tried it myself, yes we need some sort of immigration control, but “Labour importing voters” purlease, spare me from deluded Tory obsessives.

I second that. The unions of the day had a lot to answer for. You only have to look at the British car manufacturing industries of the sixties and seventies, just riddled with strikes and walk-outs which in turn led to shoddy workmanship and a complete lack of pride in the work place and its products.

Rob

Thanks to full employment the unions had acquired a position of strength, but management was still living in the past, manufacturers still thought they could turn out any old rubbish and still sell, they still thought that workers should know “their” place.

The establishment and authorities were very slow to realise that after WW2 things had changed dramatically, working people were not going to be put back in their box as happened after WW1 and treated badly.

The car industry was highlighted as a bad case of union destruction, the car industry was it it’s own worst enemy in the production methods used, the failure to keep up to speed with developments, the classic is of course BMC, BLMC, British Leyland or which ever name it resided under at the time.

This company for many years produced car bodies under the name of Pressed Steel Fisher (I think), with my Dad delivering to one of the factories there, I saw new car bodies stacked up outside going rusty before they were taken into the final assembly, there were literally hundreds of rusty new car bodies going into the factory to be assembled and painted over and we wondered why our cars rotted so damn quick.

Leyland Motors a major truck and bus producer, just carried on building the same old trucks with the same old engines and gearboxes, never noticing that competitors were developing their own equipment, taken totally unaware when the invasion of Volvo and Scania trucks among others arrived and destroyed their business.

Our problems are the same now as then, failure to develop the best ideas, or develop existing equipment, it’s easy in some circles to blame the unions for our decline, but incompetent management played a much bigger part, we lost trade not just to cheaper labour but more to inferior products.

The public sector needs a serious overall. It’s become bloated, a beaurocratic nightmare that is perpetually seeking more money. There are thousands of civil servants on top draw salaries that seem to contribute very little other than forming committees.

Surprisingly I do agree with all of that, please explain then why the present collection of old school “chums” are busily attacking front line staff both in numbers and pay.

I thought according to many, Labour were the party of too many chiefs and not enough indians, this bunch are absolutely ace at finding useless nonessential jobs for a select few, then trying to cut the wages of those who actually do the work.

A common misconception.

http://www.ukip.org/content/ukip-policies/2553-what-we-stand-for

Disregarding my earlier tongue in the cheek post. UKIP would be the only party I would or could vote for if I did vote. Labour is a lost cause, the Liberals are finished and offer nothing anyway and the Tories are no longer conservative.

The Tories are no longer Conservative?, the present gang are the archetypal nasty party in full flow once again.

Thoe only thing in their tiny little brains is to attack public sector and workers at any and every opportunity, then have the crust to whinge when for instance the NHS is struggling to maintain a quality service.

Their response is then to give private sector more and more public money to take on public sector work but using anyone to do the job, provided they work for buttons.

I notice Osborne’s gift to build more schools etc, reality this is to build more “free” schools which are selective and not free.

For all their faults Labour is by far the best option, problem is if Osborne’s left in charge of the nation’s finances, there really will be nothing left, but more debt, less jobs, more unemployed or underemployed, even those working will not be earning a living wage.

Labour were too little too late on getting to grips with immigration, but all this bunch of clowns have managed is a reduction in foreign students attending universities in this country, yes there were some dubious universities, but most were fee paying students taking genuine courses.

I gave up politics when Margaret Thatcher resigned.

I almost gave up hope while she was still in power.

An admirable wish list, but can we have a Buccaneer doing what a Buccaneer does best.

Love to see again a Buccaneer at about hedge height trailing an environmentally friendly smoke trail, or let’s be greedy, all three from Brunty beating up the unwary.

I’m not sure that immigration is a root cause for the poor being ‘under the thumb’; often the UK unemployed will not do the lowly jobs immigrants ‘take’.

Immigration or immigrant workers as such are not the problem, the problem stems from “gangmaster” type labour force, which exploits both immigrants and local labour.

Even among those who comply with the rules, around where I live many of the farms look like 4th rate caravan sites with workers housed in old static vans or living 9 or more workers in an average 3 bed house. All paying rent and or transport charges to their employer, any local worker applying to any of these companies hasn’t a hope in hell of getting a job.

At times I wonder if some of the employers make their money from their business or as a landlord.