What can you see

I have just had my second cataract operation!  Many thanks to the NHS free and smoothly done BUT I am now long-sighted.

After spending 60 years of my life as a short-sighted geek type person I now have long vision,  It changed your life and takes some getting used to. Until now the first thing I did when I woke up was to put my glasses on, this was essential to wandering round the house and finding things, so my glasses were sort of permanently attached.

 Now I don't need them for doing daily things BUT I do need them to read, this makes life very confusing, go into the kitchen but can't read the recipe but can find the right pot and turn on the oven! I now no the confusion of those who having had good eyesight all their lives suddenly find they can't read, it al very disorienting.

The other thing I now do is to be sitting there reading and get up, forgetting to take off my reading glasses, now the whole world looks odd and makes you feel sick.

I suppose I will have to get varifocal type glasses again but cannot do that till I have been discharged from the hospital. But I have made that appointment for a day I am in London so now I have to try to change it!

The things that bug me!

 Three things today have got up my goat,  here they are in order of hearing them

  Mr Hester about why bakers really do deserve their bonuses. When questioned he couldn't answer the question as to why someone paid over a million a year can't do his job properly without bonuses. It would be OK to pay someone a modest bonus for doing something exceptional but as  a matter of course it seems to me wrong. Perhaps there should be a new system of pay for academics, every time a paper is published they get a bonus, or perhaps every time they give a lecture. Perhaps school teachers should get a bonus if they actually teach a class. not just going into school but spending time with 25 kids.

  What is true is that for most people not doing their job properly means getting the sack doing their job properly means they are kept on. If these bankers and business men with their fat bonuses are so valuable why don't they let their workers decide on the bonus rather than their mates.

  Mr Hester also said in the interview on Radio $ that he wasn't a banker before he took on the job, does that mean anyone could do the job, if you don't need to be a banker to run a bank then it is clearly an unskilled job.  He also claims that you can't get top quality staff without paying bonuses, so presumably the heads of RBS were not getting bonuses before the crash!

  My other thought on this topic was the purchase of ABN was one of the causes of their problems. RBS were in a  bidding war with Barclays, it is not public how much  Barclay's were willing to pay but if they had won the auction would Barclays now be owned by the taxpayer and "Sir" Fred Goodwin would still be "Sir" and an hero?

  Leading on from bonuses to Harry Redknapp, how did the jury find him not guilty. It amazes me that he got a bonus for selling Peter Crouch, did the performance of the club improve as a result of that deal. Or, more likely, that knowing he would get a bonus for selling a player his own personal self-interest would come before the interests of the club. He also admitted he got the money and told a reporter that it was a bonus. He claims, presumably advised by a well-paid professional liar, called a barrister, to say he was lying to the reporter.

  It is quite clear that you can't believe a word Harry Redknapp says, followed by his claim that is was all his accountants work and he didn't know what was going on. It would be fun to know what went on in the jury room, oh he such a character we can't find him guilty,

  Then on to the third item which was all about phone hacking! All these people who just wanted justice done BUT have settled out of court so that NO criminal proceedings can take place. So the rich and powerful can avoid criminal proceedings by paying people off. The most shameful ones are the politicians, who seem to prefer to take money than see criminals prosecuted, doesn't this just make a mockery of their claim to be supporters of the law. So the shareholders of News International are a few hundred thousands worse off but I am sure it is all allowed as a business expense.

Some Random Thought from the news

Hi

This is going to have three parts about the odd things I read or hear in the news.

The first is really to do with management but about schools. Recently the Tories said that they want to give Heads more power. I wonder why? Do they think that it is bad teachers that make bad schools? It is true that a bad teacher can slow you up, if they are subject teachers they can ruin that subject for you. If they are a class teacher they can make a year miserable BUT they don't make a school bad unless most of the teachers are bad.

However a bad head can ruin a school and so the whole of your education. So why give them more power, so they can do even more damage. That is not the thinking, what is behind this management idea is that managers, that is heads, are all good and it is only the workers, that is the teachers, who make things hard for the bosses. It is is a sloppy and easy attitude that those inpower blame their juniors when things go wrong but what to claim success as their own.

If we want to improve education management we need robust structures in place that stop bah heads ruining schools, not spend all our time worrying about bad teachers. getting rid of one bad head will be more useful that getting rid of forty bad teachers.

The other recent headline has been about the so-called "death tax". Personally I am happy with this idea but their is much emotion attached to the concept, even by people who would call themselves rational. Peter Wilby wrote a good article in the Guardian about it on Tuesday, which I recommend. This is a theme I have returned to before, why do we value property so highly, he argues that for many people they have invested their lives in their house & garden. Thus it becomes much more than a house or a property but a representative of their life and what they are and have been. But this leaves us with a difficult decision, whan someone has put their life into a house and then reach the situation that their income no longer supports this life style why should the rest of us pay for it.

As I have argued before, and will probably argue again, it seems unreasonable that someone owning a propert worth a quarter of a million pounds should be treated as poor. If they sell and rent they will be seen as rich, we have to think very clearly to see how to resolve the issue. One p[ossibility is that an costs become a charge on the property BUT that is seen as a "death tax". The alternative is a tax on the living, surely the former is better. It is clear taht as people live longer the costs of maintaining older people will get higher. One argument is that people should work for longer. As someone who is approaching 70 it is not clear to me that I could hold down a full-time job. I know that there are many examples but very few of them actually work full-time at a job where someone else tells them when to work. I can still work quite hard for periods, but if I had to go and work all day every day that is all I would be able to do.

I promised three parts and I like to keep my promises as well as my threats. It has always been true that society values the rich and if someone has made a lot of money then they have some talent for making money. It makes them in no way a better person or someone whose advice on anything other than making money valuable as of right. If we take the example of Mr Hands a rich private equity financier., who has decided it would be better to be resident of the Channel Islands and not see his wife or kids than to pay tax. He sounds a rather unpleasant character whose advice on anything other than tax evasion would be of little value.

As a teenager I had plenty of diputes with my father, which teenage son doesn't. With age my admiration for my father grew and I realised what a good man he was. But he spent most of his life being poor. But as a man and a thinker better than most. He had a hard life with no opportunities for an education. Not a man with the talents to make him rich but able and talented at a time when someone from his background had little chance to make the most of his abilities.

So should we admire the rich, certainly not those who have inherited ut and dome nothing with it. Take Mr Cameron what has he done but swan around pretending he cares. Yes he cares about the NHS because it has touched his life but the rest he has no understanding. It strikes me that to be a credible politician someone has to understand the needs of those whose position in life you have never experienced. It is interesting that many who have recently been sacked have suddenly discovered how mean the benefit system really is. And that it is just layabouts who lose their jobs.