by David Jones

People whose lives appear to revolve around a football team can be rather tiresome at times. You know the sort – they never stop talking about Spurs, Manchester United, Chelsea etc etc. Get a life, I say.

I’ve never been that interested in football. I didn’t even know which teams were in the FA Cup final. This day of days in the footballing calendar is usually my excuse to mow the lawn, only this year I couldn’t because it was waterlogged.

This does not mean, however, that I have no interest in the fortunes of Gillingham FC, not least because a successful football club has all sorts of positive spin-offs for a local newspaper.

Even I know that Andy Hessenthaler is no longer the Gills’ manager following the club’s failure to gain promotion or even make the League Two play-offs in two successive years.

One thing struck me in all the coverage of Hess’s downfall –the marked absence of the “S word.”

I thought football managers who are shown the door by the club chairman had been sacked.

But not Hess, apparently. He was asked “to step down,” had his “contract terminated” or even “relieved of his management duties.” But not sacked.

In all the coverage, the only reference I could find to “sacked”came from chairman Paul Scally himself but even then only in general terms.

“Sacked” is a harsh word and in many walks of life people go to great lengths to avoid using it. But rarely in the world of football. So it appears the affable Hess is being treated as a special case by all concerned.

Clearly, it was a tough decision for chairman Paul Scally to end Hessenthaler’s managerial reign, or whichever euphemism you care to choose.

The proof of his admiration for the man is evidenced by the fact that he has offered him another role overseeing everything connected with football at Priestfield – except being the manager, that is.

Playing second fiddle to a new manager will be hard for Hess, but nevertheless he has decided to accept the new job.

Maybe Mr Hessenthaler was just too nice an individual be “sacked,” so everyone has gone to great lengths to find alternative words.

But then what do I know about football?

by Peter Cook

Divide and rule is an old strategy. And now they’re using it to try and drive a wedge between the young and the old.

You’ve heard the arguments – the baby boom generation got free university education, we could buy our houses when prices were low and mortgages easily available, we cashed in on the property boom, our pensions are bleeding the country white etc etc.

Before young people fall for all this they need to wise up to a few things.

Not all of us went to university. Most of us left school in our teens and have worked hard and paid taxes ever since.

OK, houses were more affordable when we were growing up. But you lived in them and many of you will get the benefit when we quit this mortal coil. Our generation grew up in rented houses. No legacy there.

Many of you are still living in the houses we bought, rent free, using all the facilities and contributing nothing. Some of us left home at 16.

We don’t all draw fat final salary pensions. Some of us had to pay into private pension schemes for years, only to find the value plummeted just as we were about to reap the benefits.

So let’s not fall for this damaging slander that the baby boomers are the cause of the current financial difficulties. It’s just the politicians deflecting blame from their own pathetic efforts.

Let’s unite to fight them and not allow ourselves to be drive apart.

by Alan Watkins

I was manhandled the other day – and I don’t mean by a crowd of ruffians looking to spill blood.

It was (how can I put it delicately?) intimate. I was ordered to loosen my trousers and remove my belt.

A man then approached me with his hands encased in rubber gloves.

As I stood there he slid his hands over my body touching places where no man should ever touch another man.

What was so embarrassing was it was in full view of crowds of others, and he did it as he idly chatted to someone over my shoulder.

It was degrading – as bad as those classroom inspections of pubescent youths by the school nurse.

She was checking that things that should have dropped had descended, and that things that should stay where they were did so (to our intense embarrassment whether or not it did).

At least we boys knew each other and together changed once a week into PE kit.

Meanwhile, that casual groping passed without a thank you, an apology or an embarrassed smile.

This is how we send people on their way from Heathrow Airport.

Who are these people that think… no, know ….they can invade your privacy with impunity? They are state officials.

I had passed with flying colours – or so I thought. But no.

Having failed to find any unspecified misdemeanour, I had to have my overnight bag inspected.

That went through a scanner – and was stopped. It went through a second time. Then it was placed in a growing number of bags in the middle of the search area.

I was told to wait “over there”. At first I recalled teachers’ punishment of classroom misbehaviour.

There was no explanation. It was my bag. I was therefore at fault (or at least suspected of some unstated failing).

I stood clutching my trousers, still segregated from my belt. “You’ll be some time,” I was told.

I thought I would get a cup of tea. I couldn’t. My cash and cards were with my belt, bag and dignity – in sight but out of reach.

This is Britain 2012 – tourist attractor to the masses, Olympic venue, Diamond Jubilee celebrator, Dickensian destination, the world’s CCTV spy centre, and now – grope capital of the world.

My encounter with twanging gloves, “please relax, sir” and legalised public molestation was at Heathrow Terminal 5.

I was off on what we press boys call “an educational.” It was certainly that.

Scanned, intimidated, intimated bags opened for the whole world to see, your underwear, medication, reading material (not dubious), cash, cards, socks, razor and spare shirt emptied out and carefully examined, then wiped with some secret marker before being scanned yet again.

The whole world watched as men and women took it in turns to be treated in this way.

With me were a mum, dad and increasingly frustrated toddler in a pushchair (was that chair a cover for something unacceptable to our government?), an Indian businessman on his way to the States, a Scots businessman in transit (and about to miss his connecting flight), an Indian lady, another young woman from South America who for reasons best known to herself seemed surprised and suspicious that a tall man should want to handle her underwear.

For me it went on for an hour – well, apart from wanting some breakfast I had nothing else to do, other than worry that I would miss my flight.

Finally, they found something in my bag that was unacceptable to old Hope and Glory.

It was a partly-used tube of petroleum jelly used to stop those parts rubbing together that intimate searches sometimes cause to perspire.

“This is more than 150 ml,” I was told.

“So?”

“You can’t take it through.”

That was it. Banned, barred and confiscated without another word.

I had placed it in the obligatory plastic bag to be seen, but not touched.

And for an hour I had been among literally hundreds who last week, in some cases spent three hours being harassed by security officials at Terminal Five.

I know because I saw it on the TV in Spain. It made the BBC World and Sky international services.

Ahh, Britain, Fortress Britain. What a joyful welcome (and farewell) we shall offer our guests here to spend tens of billions of pounds this summer.

The memories of gum-chewing, gun-totting, underwear sorting and crutch-invading Brits.

Come on, you visitors – you’re welcome to Britain in 2012.

This week I heard my wife yell “What a bunch of morons.” She is not normally given to such outbursts. Well, not that often, unless I’ve burnt the dinner.

This is what caused her to lose her cool. She dropped an envelope with the word “Credit” written on the front, and containing a cheque and a paying-in slip through the letterbox of her local bank. She has done this on many occasions when she is unable to call in during the working day.

Four days later the cheque had not been credited to her account, because no one knew what the word “credit” meant.

My wife discovered they had sent off the envelope, unopened, to a mysterious place called a “processing centre,” where in all likelihood it will have disappeared without trace.

What followed was a catalogue of incompetence, as she dealt with various idiots in call centres, who appeared barely capable of knowing what day it was, let alone what their own bank’s practices were.

Promised phone calls to “sort it” were not made and it was left to my wife to go on the offensive to get sense out of someone, anyone.

I was never a big fan of old style bank managers, in the Capt Mainwaring style, because they devoted most of their time and energy to the customers with the bulging bank accounts.

Now we have gone too far in the other direction, where the “managers” –  ie anyone who has been there six months longer than anyone else – are youths or girls barely out of their teens who have no power to do anything other than say “Good morning.”

It is virtually impossible to speak to anyone in your local branch by phone unless you first run the gauntlet of the dreaded call centre. Even the “local” numbers listed in the phone directory against each Kent branch of my wife’s bank are a sham.

Phone any one of them and you end up, not talking to someone in your local High Street, but, you’ve guessed it, some anonymous individual called Gary or Tracey in a call centre. You feel as if you are swimming against a strong tide. I know many people who have far worse horror stories to tell.

My wife is not alone in her experience.

A month or two back, I also dropped an envelope through my bank’s letterbox (not the same bank) but that, too, was not credited to my account although four or five days had passed. I made a personal visit and was told: “There is absolutely no trace of your envelope and cheque ever being delivered here,” the inference being that it was me who had made the mistake.

Two days later, the cheque which had never arrived was credited to my account!

Codgers wouldn’t be Codgers unless we could complain that “Fings Ain’t Wot They Used To Be” but banks provide the classic illustration of the way in which we are going backwards in so many areas of life today.

by Peter Cook

by Alan Watkins

What is stopping Medway  becoming a city? It’s the 20th biggest conurbation in the country and outside of the capital the biggest in the South East.

It is striving to improve – and hasn’t done badly with four universities, a fine campus and a new bus station. It has support in the community.

At 6/1, it was also second favourite (behind Reading) so someone fancied us. So why were we overlooked?

It could be the cavalier way that Rochester lost its city status, not once but twice (Whitehall has a long memory).

Maybe it had something to do with all the other events in 2012 and we’ve got enough to be getting on with.

There’s 200 years of the Sappers, 200 years of Charlie D, two annual festivals in honour of him and the Diamond Jubilee.

Charlie is that hirsute Victorian author and ex-news hack who wasn’t born here, spent much of his life in Pompey and Broadstairs (when he wasn’t hopping into his mistress’s bed) and died in Gravesham. Medway adopted him, but the government robbed him of his last wish, and buried him in a congested corner of Westminster instead of Rochester Cathedral where he really wanted to lie in eternal rest.

Someone worked out most of his famous scenes were set in Rochester (must have been a council researcher). We’ve bid for the City of Medway three times.

The point now is to start asking why a town like St Asaph (population 3,400) should get the title while 250,000 of us have no idea where it is.

And before any clever Welsh geographer mutters Denbighshire, that’s a county with the same size population as the district of Gillingham, Medway (93,000).

I hope the councillors are now re-examining their laid-back approach to the city bid, and comparing their lack of effort with the energy of the other contestants. Maybe Chelmsford will throw the bouquet our way next time.

It won’t make much difference: the next English city will probably be in the west, and most likely in the north-west.

I suspect the Rochester supporters will have had a collective smirk.

Right, back to the drawing board ...

by David Jones

Welcome to Luton Arches, the gateway to Chatham, or should that be the cesspit at the start of the High Street?

by Peter Cook

The defining principle of work is that you get paid for it. If you don’t, it’s either charity, self-sacrifice or slavery.

All these schemes to “break the cycle of unemployment” by getting people to carry out unpaid work like stacking shelves, are meaningless, if that essential ingredient of a wage is not included.

What do politicians think unemployed people do all day? Lounge around in bed watching the Jeremy Kyle Show?

Most people want to work. But the reason they want to work is that it gives them the independence, self respect and freedom of choice that goes with earning a living wage.

When I had my business I reluctantly took on a work experience lad from a local school for a fortnight.

This lad was brilliant. When he’d done the things I asked him he found other tasks for himself. I would have taken him on permanently if that had been possible.

At the end of his fortnight I handed over an envelope with a couple of banknotes in it. “Oh no,” he said. “We’re not allowed to accept money.”

“Listen,” I said. “If you don’t get paid, you haven’t had work experience. Getting paid is the whole point of it. If people don’t get paid, how can they live? How can they pay their rent, their mortgages, their food bills, their travel expenses, or stand a round down the pub?”

If you don’t have a decent wage at the end of the month, then you rely on others for the necessities of life. That might be the state, your family or your friends. It’s not a healthy way to be. You lose self respect and it saps your self confidence.

I’ve had a job of sorts since I was 10. It started with a butcher’s round – 8s. 6d. for a hard Saturday afternoon’s work. Then, in addition, I got a morning paper round. In the school holidays I did farm work and at weekends I milked cows.

So what do I want a medal? No. I got my reward. It was cash which enabled me to do all sorts of other things I would otherwise not be able to afford.

Only once did I get a handout from the state. It was after I had left school and been fired from my first job for complete and total incompetence. A nice lady asked me if I minded factory work. I was glad of anything.

She then reached into a drawer and found 16s., which she gave me to tide me over. I went up the pub and blew the lot.

I then spent six months doing the mind numbingly tedious job of keeping peas cascading through a hopper into a water flow, so they could be floated off to the canning factory.

On occasions the boredom of this was relieved by being allowed to pour baked beans through an electric mincing machine so they could be used for baby foods. I could get overtime by sitting by a conveyor belt and picking out bad peas as a river of green went unremittingly by. But at least I was being paid at the end of each week.

I would hate to be applying for jobs now. In my day you just wrote a letter, they interviewed you, and you were either chosen or not. Bosses relied on their judgement.

The last time I applied for a job, the process of filling in an endless and pointless on-line application form sent me almost catatonic with fatigue and boredom.

But I have wandered off the point. The only real way to break the cycle of unemployment is to create jobs. It shouldn’t be hard. There’s plenty needs doing.

When people have jobs they contribute to the economy, rather than becoming a drain on it. That way we can get growth and start to reduce the deficit.

by Alan Watkins

The other day was my eldest son’s birthday. His son, Max, was born just over a month before, while his daughter celebrated her third birthday yesterday.

If that wasn’t enough for the family’s birthday card-buyers, Gramps celebrated his 65th birthday with a trip to Wales.

It is a long time since I have been down the Valleys. They don’t change very much.

Most of the slag heaps have gone. You can actually see how green was the valley that Richard Llewellyn immortalised.

The docks have been transformed in a way that leaves me speechless – and must frustrate the Medway councillors who expected similar glory at Chatham Maritime.

It was where my grandfather occasionally visited as a merchant seaman and 40 years on I went in search of scrapheaps to photograph.

Half a century later, there is a Welsh Assembly in Cardiff Docks, copper-clad and more glittery than the University of Kent building. The Welsh, Irish, Scots, Manxmen, Channel Islanders all have their own parliaments, but the English are still ruled by a mixture of Welsh, Irish, Scots…you already had the picture, probably. 

Chatham Maritime as the government’s mindbenders chose to rename the naval dockyard has a handful of shops, the obligatory iconic building (which actually does look like the artist’s impression we dubbed the Two Towers), half a dozen good restaurants, a housing estate, a new school with old problems, a working dock that could be swept away for more dormitory dwellings if its owner gets its way, and a splendid historic dockyard.

Oh yes, and Gun Wharf. Nearly 30 years after the dockyard closed, there are still large tracts of waste land waiting for someone, anyone, to build on it.

The dream is becoming a nightmare, and the quality jobs explosion that we expected? – it seems unlikely ever to come.

When you visit Chatham Maritime you are rarely stopped from entering any of its eateries.

At Cardiff Bay (the twee name dreamed up for the transformed Tiger Bay) there must be 150 restaurants and cafes vying for custom. They don’t take bookings on Thursdays, Fridays or Saturdays – the queues of hungry customers waiting for an empty table prove that marketing ploy is unnecessary.

Back here, the other day I was asked where I could recommend for a small group to go for a quiet drink and a bar snack. I’m still trying to find an answer in Medway.