Thoughts of a carer

  Much is made in the media that we’re ‘not building enough houses’. Politicians like saying they will build more. The problem with this approach - like with HGV drivers - is that there is a finite pool of competent resources with which to plan and build those homes (or drive those lorries). If you try to speed things up by allocating more resources you risk bringing in less competent individuals, reducing the quality of your final product (houses, or HGVs on the roads of the UK). I’ve lived in a new-build home for the last eight and a half years. It was built by Martin Grant Homes, a small builder who - according to its websit e - tries to focus on ‘quality and attention to detail’. If other builders are worse at attention to detail we are already building millions of substandard homes; building more, more quickly, will only make matters worse. I thought it might be helpful to record a TripAdvisor-type of review of my home and a customer’s view of Martin Grant Homes. So here it is...

On Friday 24th September there was a debate in Parliament on ‘Baby Loss Awareness’. Losing a child around the time of birth must be one of the most traumatic experiences humans undergo. It happened to some former next-door-but-one neighbours of mine,  perhaps fifteen years ago. I attended the funeral, and I’ll never forget the sight of the tiny, white coffin being carried into the service by the father. I’ll be honest, I haven’t read reports of the debate that Friday. I suspect it was the usual political nonsense, perhaps with a nod towards the seriousness of the topic. It's quite possible that ‘poverty’ was attributed by some as being a likely cause. Sadly, some years after that sad funeral, I learned a little as to why that may, and may not, have been the whole story.                                    ...

  Over forty years ago I left University and entered the job market. I was actually rather surprised to land a job at the Central Electricity Generating Board, at its London HQ, working among a team of statisticians supporting the endeavours of others in the industry, which was, of course, very scientifically oriented. The teams we worked with were based in laboratories or design units, all involved in projects that related to our quite limited range of responsibilities - electricity generation and high-voltage network management. This was before the age of ‘mission statements’, but it was post-1970s energy crises, and ‘security of supply’ was considered the top priority. The problem is, power stations have a limited life - maybe thirty or forty years. It takes a long time to build them - particularly the large ones, far longer than a parliamentary session, and in more recent years our politicians have preferred to put off big decisions like building new power generating capacity r...

 Social care has been in the news recently. As someone who at least likes to think he has some experience of the sector, I've taken an interest. Much of what has been rumoured has not impressed me; it seems as if those in charge have little understanding of the way the front-line social care system works, or of how 'service users' feel.  I've sent a couple of emails to my MP outlining my concerns. 3 September 2021 at 08:43 To: "FULLER, Richard" <richard.fuller.mp@parliament.uk> Good morning Richard Did you see last night's ITN News at Ten? They led with a story about the problems facing care agencies, and thepeople who use their services. Staff are deserting the sector in droves, meaning that some people who need help areunable to get it. Viv, my partner, would not be alive today if it had not been for the help she and I received from Sagecare Biggleswadewhen the NHS failed to correctly diagnose her hydrocephalus in 2017. It's possible that her c...

A few years ago, when I worked in an office, we once briefly discussed pensions. I was staggered that all of the new recruits - clever graduates in their mid twenties - had chosen not to pay into the company pension scheme; they felt they had other priorities, and that they would be able to save for a pension later in life. Anyone in that position now should read the following and perhaps consider where they might be in forty or more years time. + + + This morning I was updating a spreadsheet I keep on Viv's and my pensions. I like to update it every year, tracking our finances and at least making an attempt to work out how long it is that our savings might last. It's something that I think many of us are recommended to do, especially those of us that don't get substantial final salary pensions. To produce such a plan you need to make some assumptions about your financial needs in the future; you need to think about how your lives may change, whether both of you will live i...

In the 1980s I worked in an office on the South Bank, over the road from what is now the Tate Modern. Around the corner there was a depot of the London Borough of Southwark's street maintenance team, and it seemed at the time that some of their workers used to practice road repairs outside our office building, for it was always being dug up.  I remember well the discussions amongst us engineers, scientists and statisticians, wondering for how long the pneumatic drills were going to continue.  'They must have a new batch of recruits', I remember a manager saying in September one year, about the time milkround recruits were joining us. 'It may seem ridiculous that workers are paid to dig holes and then fill them in, but that's how they train'. No one was quite sure whether he was taking the mickey or had inside knowledge of Southwark council (who, at the time, were very left-wing and regularly mocked in the press), but he was making a good point.  Workers need to ...