Chinese Whispers



Bernard: Why?
Me: Centuries of oppression.
Bernard: I have no further questions.















4 thoughts on “Chinese Whispers

  1. David Scoins February 15, 2017 / 9:49 am

    Very good. Enjoyed this. I was repeatedly struck while there by the Chinese knowlede of the ‘Glorious Revolution’, which had passed me by completely. Perhaps it made good internal propaganda? Conversation at band last night showed a majority born after John Lennon was killed, making the Beatles on a par with Khachaturian, who we also played. Now there’s an idea I hadn’t quite grasped; did his death perhaps define the start of an age (killing famous non-political people)? What an awful definition of the modern era. Almost as bad as this current post-truth thing – what means anything has currency, even if blatantly untrue.

    Such as the idiotic not-news that pensioners receive more than low-paid workers. Especially if they’re still in work. (i) then they are not retired; a couple in which one is retirred and one not is not a ‘retired couple’ [we fit that descriptor too]. If neither work, that might be ‘retired’. (ii) there is a horrid implication that retired people should be poor, with which I take extreme exception. Considering the large sums of money and the significant effort I put into having a pension (and or funds for that purpose) throughout my working career, I continue to feel seriously let down by those arrangements. The employment pension(s) have produced dramatically less than was predicted and, particularly given that the employER’s contribution is significant, has performed dreadfully in comparison to AVCs and other attempts to save. I have, indeed, done better with the stuff outside employment pension in both absolute terms and in relative terms (i.e. made better gains with less money). What is awful is that I used less money than my employee contributions; which means that if I had stepped outside the pension arrangements entirely, I’d have been better off. Which is wrong at so many levels we want to use the word ‘corrupt’.

    Running through the reports I was listening to (as I drove to and from Manchester) were several implied attitudes, some of which I agreed with but for most of which the opposite was true. (iii) absolutely everybody is incompetent at arranging a pension pot. Well, there is some evidence to support that, but we claim to be a country whose principal asset is financial management, so does that not tell us all something a bit scary? (iv) the current employed population will not have a pension as good as this. Why, I ask? Is it not in their interests to work on having a good pension arrangement, retirement or whatever term we want to use to describe later life? Was this perhaps a reference to State pension? Well, I thought not, since much of the ‘they’ve never had it so good’ stuff was referring to workplace pension benefits (what are they?). (v) “you won’t retire until you’re 75”. Oh, crap: define retirement, please (and make it something that works, like a state of not-working, or doing less than hours of work per year). This is then an issue about life-style. If I can claim (accurately) to average 50 hours per week across my working life (55+ as a teacher), then was this a good thing? Where was the quality of life in that? If I had done 2/3 of that, another person would have had a job. (vi) in a climate in which we are slowly recognising how many jobs will simply vanish due to automation, the prospect of actually having (meaningful) employment looks to me as no longer quite as likely. The list of jobs which will survive is growing and shrinking; it is changing as we discover what might be removed from the workplace. For example, I think teaching should have been automated long ago, but the emphasis is now more upon acquisition of social skills than it is knowledge. I would strongly agree that education needs to move to include (in a ‘not only but also’ way) use of information – finding it, showing that it is valid for purpose, using it, acquiring an ‘answer’ and showing that this is an appropriate answer. The social skills issue I can agree with (or not, I could argue either side), but implies that a large proportion of future work will centre around this – the service industry gone mad, is how I see this.

    I may have to write a webpage about this. At the mo’ I feel too full of invective. At a personal level, if T had not run off to Oz, we’d be okay to poor, financially. I’d have retired from PMC with a pension pot amounting to £15k/yr and the other investments I’d hidden around that she took no interest in [“there’s my money and there’s our money”]. We would perhaps have been forced to move to something smaller or change countries to afford the lifestyle we wanted (or said we did). More likely to have pushed for far more self-sufficiency, but would have been rescued by HIS’ inheritance. Instead, I have lost at least £250k in divorce (through capital sharing and its lack of growth in the meantime) but gained more than that by (i) China, obviously (ii) HIS, obviously, but didn’t need that nor had I relied upon it (iii) Cynthia, less obviously, who will earn for 30 years and look after me when infirm (that is the deal as I understand it). Mind, the gain from her earnings is really only a stop on other spending; there is no surplus there. A challenge to overcome (or a concept to revise on my side).

    Feel a visit coming on? #29 has a For Sale sign in front of it. The agent’s valuation makes zero allowance for the solar panels (webpage written but not published), so my take on this is that we will lose about £15k (£k15?) in selling the house, maybe more. C is dithering about staying at Manchester (within 3 weeks of the ‘definite’ statement that moving was not going to happen), so at the very moment the plan is to move into one property in Stockport and, when she’s done with dithering, we will move to something a bit better (bigger, something I can put some tlc into). Which perhaps means she will scupper much of that and want to move towards London. I am not happy about several aspects of this, as you can all to easily imagine. But it isn’t boring. Meanwhile I need to shed stuff (put stuff in shed, throw it away, lose it somehow).



  2. janeishly April 3, 2018 / 7:02 pm

    OK, so the depth of the previous comment now makes me feel slightly embarrassed that the thing I really want to say, having read all this wonderfulness, is YES! You have the Pratchett top two exactly as I’d have put them, even down to the fact that you describe Night Watch as his best but not quite as good as Thud.

    But obviously not embarrassed enough to not write it.

    • literacystrumpet April 3, 2018 / 9:55 pm

      So glad I am not the only one to think so, Jane! Also, the previous comment is mostly my father thinking aloud; he lived in China for eight years and thus has more to say on the subject than one might expect.

      • janeishly April 3, 2018 / 10:53 pm

        That explains the erudite nature of the comment!

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