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| Just as I imagined Dick all those years ago |
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| And there's Dan Dare with the evil Mekon |
As I have pondered my coming birthday I reflected on one of
my earliest memories. I would have been about seven at the time and a set of
initials flashed across my mind as I remembered - “UCLA”. My mind went back to
this much simpler time long before the internet, social media, online and WiFi
were ever imagined. UCLA in my
childhood – the late 40s and early 50s - stood for United Co-operative Laundries Association except to my eyes as a 6 or 7 year old it
didn’t. Instead it stood, I believed, for “You
(U) Can Lose Anything”! Let me explain. The little terraced house that
I grew up in had no hot water, no bathroom, no central heating just one coal
fireplace in the front room, no modern labour saving machines. It was two
downstairs rooms, two bedrooms and an outside lavatory. There was only one sink
- in the kitchen - and one cold tap. Life was not easy. In the kitchen was a
clothes rack suspended from the ceiling. You could raise and lower the rack by
a rope. Damp washing constantly hung there drying by the heat of the oven as
tea was cooked. We were not well off and it must have been incredibly difficult
and soul destroying trying to keep the house clean and clothes washed in such a
situation. My mother seemed always to be washing clothes in the kitchen sink,
these would be squeezed in the mangle, which was kept in the tiny back yard,
and then, if the weather was good, hung on the washing. Winter rain
meant that they more often than not were hung in front of the fire and
eventuality put on the kitchen rack. We were not well off but my mother
obviously decided that it was simply too difficult to wash and dry sheets in
this situation so every fortnight she would send the bed sheets to the laundry
– the UCLA. The laundry man – I can picture and hear him now, his fair hair
smoothed down with Brylcream and a leather money bag slung around his neck – would collect the sheets, all parcelled up
in brown paper, on Monday night at about 7 o’clock. At the same time he would
return the freshly laundered sheets ready to go on the beds. You could set the
time of his arrival – always about three or four minutes to seven – just as my
mother and I listened to “Dick Barton,
Special Agent” on the radio. The programme was, I think, on two or three
nights a week – a fifteen minute slot 6.45 – 7.00 pm. In later years it was “Dan Dare”- Pilot of the Future” – that
grabbed my interest – but both series were the same; Dick Barton ensured the
streets were safe from the bad guys and Dan Dare and his pal Digby each week saved
the world from the evil intentions of the Mekon and his fellow aliens.
Each week the UCLA man would come into our little front room and, as he collected the laundry, laughingly tell me (as the Dick Barton tale came to its climax and Dick was in some precarious life or death situation) that this time my hero was dead for sure – the baddies would get him there would be no more episodes after tonight! I soon realised that this was all a bit of fun and that Dick Barton and his friends Jock and Snowy would always get out of the danger they were in and get their man but each week I looked forward to laughing with the laundry man and telling him how wrong he was. One week, I remember, I asked him a question:“What does UCLA mean”? – it was printed on the label put on the parcel and on the little book in which he recorded what he had collected and returned as my mother paid the few pennies for her laundry being done. Quick as a flash he replied: “It stands for “You Can Lose Anything” . At first I believed him – I was after all only about seven - but then I could see that both he and my mother were grinning and I knew that something was wrong – I had been fooled! For weeks they led me on – I knowing that they were joking but unsure how or what the letters could mean – after all, to my young mind, it made sense, You Can Lose Anything might very well apply to a laundry were you send your clothes and then they get lost!
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| Early evening listening from the 1950s |
Each week the UCLA man would come into our little front room and, as he collected the laundry, laughingly tell me (as the Dick Barton tale came to its climax and Dick was in some precarious life or death situation) that this time my hero was dead for sure – the baddies would get him there would be no more episodes after tonight! I soon realised that this was all a bit of fun and that Dick Barton and his friends Jock and Snowy would always get out of the danger they were in and get their man but each week I looked forward to laughing with the laundry man and telling him how wrong he was. One week, I remember, I asked him a question:“What does UCLA mean”? – it was printed on the label put on the parcel and on the little book in which he recorded what he had collected and returned as my mother paid the few pennies for her laundry being done. Quick as a flash he replied: “It stands for “You Can Lose Anything” . At first I believed him – I was after all only about seven - but then I could see that both he and my mother were grinning and I knew that something was wrong – I had been fooled! For weeks they led me on – I knowing that they were joking but unsure how or what the letters could mean – after all, to my young mind, it made sense, You Can Lose Anything might very well apply to a laundry were you send your clothes and then they get lost!
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| The UCLA in Manchester - presumably where mother's sheets went each fortnight |
I mention this long past tale as some sort of illustration
of how much simpler and unassuming life was in bygone days and, now, looking back, how naive we all now seemed. And as I thought
about that little piece of my past and the meaning of UCLA I reflected on
another abbreviation that has been much in the news in recent days - HSBC. In
the last week or two the media has been filled with exposés and speculation
about the mighty HSBC banking group and the Swiss arm of that organisation with
its secret accounts, alleged tax avoidance strategies and tales of the great, good and not so good
who secrete their wealth there or maybe even used the bank’s dubious systems to
launder illegally obtained money. It is a most unseemly tale of dubious
practice, greed and dishonesty that goes right to the very top of the banking and "establishment" tree. Indeed even the CEO of HSBC, Stuart Gulliver, was using these Swiss
accounts to secrete away millions of
pounds of his own money to allegedly avoid tax – so not only was he in charge
of a global banking empire that stands accused of shady, possibly illegal
practices he was also allegedly using it to line his own pockets. Mr Gulliver,
of course, denies any wrong doing and says everything he did was above board,
but at the same time he offers his “sincerest
apologies” and goes on to say: “I would say that a number of us, myself
included, think that the practices at the Swiss private bank in the past are a
source of shame and reputational damage to HSBC”. I’m sure that Mr
Gulliver would disagree with me here but from where I stand there seems to be
mixed messages coming out! In Shakespeare’s words (almost!) I fear that the gentleman doth protest too
much. In short Mr Gulliver was caught with his trousers down!
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| HSBC - a greasy plateful - maybe not what the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation had in mind - but what they eventually got when computers spilled the beans! |
As I have followed the story my mind wondered back about 20
years to a school playground. At that time I had child in my class whose parent
worked in the accounts department at the Midland Bank here in the UK. The
Midland Bank was a long established and well thought of bank but in the get
rich quick, deregulated and global world market place unleashed by Ronald
Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the late 80s, the Midland was swallowed up as
part of HSBC – the Hong Kong and Shanghai
Banking Corporation. The child excitedly told me one day as we walked
around the playground together that his dad now had a new job at HSBC. “Do you know what HSBC stands for, Mr Beale?” the ten year old asked me. I didn’t and with
a smile he said “Ham Sausage and Bacon Cob
– my dad told me”. We laughed but a few weeks later when I met dad at a
parents’ evening I commented on dad’s new employment. Dad frowned – “I’ve handed in my notice” he said, “I
have a new job to go to. The bank has been taken over by a bunch of cowboys,
anything goes now – wouldn’t even buy a ham sandwich from them!” HSBC – “Ham Sausage and Bacon Cob” –
maybe the writing was already on the wall twenty plus years ago.
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| The dubious Swiss office of HSBC - they claim that the sheer complexity of the modern banking world is a factor in the problems at HSBC. Sounds like a lame excuse to me! Would Dick Barton have accepted that plea from some villain - "Sorry Guv. it was all so complicated that I didn't know what I was doing when I stashed away all those illegal millions! |
In this more complicated world in which we live, far removed
from the world into which I was born, it might be argued that there has been an
apparent demise of what I will loosely call “the old standards”. If there has I
am not sure that it is due to any great deterioration of behaviour, outlook,
morals or thinking on the part of mankind but rather a reflection of the fast
changing and uncertain word in which we live. Look back at old films and read
old newspaper reports and we seemed so innocent in years gone by with many more
(at least on the surface) “certainties” . In bygone years people knew their
place, accepted things at face value much more readily than today, we largely had
“jobs for life” and took pleasure in more simple things – for these were all
that were available. I vividly remember as a child going, on a summer weekend
evening, with my mother and dad down to the end of the main road near where we
lived and sitting on the bench there – simply watching the traffic going past.
Of course, as a ten year old I found it boring but it never occurred to me that
it was unusual – people did things like that in that not too distant past; my
parents didn’t have the money to go out for meals or to own a car of their own,
TV was in its infancy – so this was an acceptable pastime. But today is different; the world is
filled with distractions and allurements – and, yes, temptations. I have
absolutely no doubt that if a modern day time machine could suddenly transport
someone from, say, the year of my birth 1945 to the present day then he or she
would make very similar decisions and mistakes to those that we today make.
People of the past were not, I believe, inherently more virtuous – they simply
didn’t have the opportunity to access the sorts of situations that appertain
today. When the laundry man called at our house in the early 1950s my mother
paid him in real money, he would call each week, a relationship of trust and
expectation was part of the arrangement. Today, we need never meet another
person in order to live our lives: I can order all my shopping with the click
of a computer mouse, pay all my bills in the same way, exist almost entirely
without having to handle a single coin of my salary or pension for it is all
done digitally and by plastic card. I can transfer amounts of money from one
bank account into another, without ever seeing that money and without visiting
the bank. And at a global level companies like HSBC can manipulate huge amounts
of money that can affect the smooth running of the world’s commerce and society
(as in the financial crash of 2008) again at the click of a computer mouse.
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| Where have all the people gone who used to talk, smile, explain, sympathise,understand, assist - now we relate to binary code? Are we in danger of losing our very humanity? |
Against this background today is a minefield of temptation
and opportunity where much of the human aspects of society and commerce has
been removed in favour of digital connections and binary code. For every great
virtue of the wonders of the internet there are many, many down sides. I would not like to be growing up in today’s
world with its mixed messages, its uncertainties, its rush and push and its
breath taking capacity for rapid change where mere humans, it increasingly
seems to me, are swept along in a torrent of 24 hour news, internet, fast food
and fast living. But despite the problems and anxieties it is a society and a
whirlwind ride that we ignore at our peril - we might not like it but we have to be part of it. As the world becomes increasingly
computer dependent those without access to this digital world – either through
choice or circumstance – are increasingly denied its benefits, be they senior
citizens who might not be able to access the best deal on their insurance or
their energy bill, be they young working families for whom ordering the week’s
groceries on line would be an immeasurable help or be they young people increasingly
being denied the access to the vast wealth of knowledge and skills that are
there at the click of a mouse. Pat and I
have just returned from a couple of weeks in the Canary Islands – we booked
online, printed out tickets and boarding cards online, booked our airport car parking online,
selected our seats on line – and all at discounted prices because we were
online. And when we got to the hotel, we commented that each night as we sat in
the hotel bar everyone was reading their ebooks or using their tablet computers
and the like. WiFi is no longer an optional extra but an essential part of
human life – and those without access or desire will without doubt be
increasingly disenfranchised. And we all now accept that within a few months or certainly years things will have changed again as technology takes us somewhere else and provided new opportunities - Apple or Samsung or Microsoft will have brought out some new gadget or system that will mean that what we do and how we live today will suddenly look very old hat.Within this fast moving and uncertain chaos
people are tossed around like flotsam and jetsam clinging to whatever small
certainties they can find for it is for certain, one can’t stand
still. To do so is to be an ostrich burying its head in the sand – and as the
world crashes ever onwards those who won’t or can’t run with the herd will
increasingly fall behind and be increasingly disadvantaged.
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| Mmmm! The pitfalls of the modern world. Computers hide misdoings with a click on the mouse but boy, when they give up their secrets everyone runs for cover - their misdoings exposed for all to see. |
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