National Service for Retirees

 

Teaching respect for Nature

An interesting article by Rachel Cunliffe in last week’s New Statesman caught my attention with its sub-title, ‘Could national service for retirees be the answer to generational inequality?’ I thought that this approach to considering ageing was a refreshing change from the everlasting, ‘What can we do to help the aged?’

There has indeed been a steady increase in life expectancy in recent decades. In 1999, around one in six people in the UK were 65 years and over, [15.8%] and this had increased to around one in five people by 2019, [18.5%]. The Office for National Statistics has projected that this figure could rise to one in four people in the UK [23%] by 2039. However, there has not been a corresponding increase in healthy life expectancy at birth. The Darzi report [the Independent Investigation of the NHS in England] suggested that our ageing population is the most significant driver of increased healthcare needs while this is compounded by a reduction in public funding for                                                                                        social care despite demand. SO, with the over 65s consuming more of the civic healthcare cake, as it were, perhaps it is past time to discuss payback!

How to fish.

This background information while offering much scope for research on improving healthy life expectancy, does not detract from the fact that there are millions of retirees in the UK who are healthy enough and [from my own observations] enthusiastic enough to give more to civic society. At the same time, there is widespread generational inequality as the younger generation endures eye-watering levels of rents, rising living costs and a steadily climbing higher education economic outlay. Parental wealth is often tied to home ownership, and this provides a significant advantage for young people from wealthier backgrounds and, to an extent, limits the upward mobility of the less fortunate. The fact that ‘twas ever thus’ does not detract from the serious extent of both inter-generational wealth inequality and Government policy which ‘gives’ generously to the over 65s [the famous triple-lock] partly funded, at least, by younger taxpayers. The public sector debt which seems to increase inexorably, will be tackled /endured/inherited by the younger generation! Meanwhile, it is incredibly difficult for the Government to reform benefits for the elderly, say like the triple-lock; witness the uproar over its attempts to reframe the winter fuel allowance!

Teaching calligraphy.

And so, to the idea of a National Service for the over 65s. Apparently this has been already advocated in Germany by Marcel Fratzscher of the DIW [the German Institute for Economic Research] who advocates first a non-intergenerational gesture with the emphasis on less re-distribution of wealth from young to old, and more on re-distribution from rich to poor within the baby boomer generation. And an even more eye-catching idea is his proposal for a year of mandatory social service for all recent elderly retirees. He points to the worker shortage in Germany and other European countries including the U.K. in sectors particularly important to/for the elderly. Here the gaps in personnel could be filled by elderly volunteers; after all, it is older people who are at least partly responsible for these manpower shortages now, by having reduced family size in earlier times. He suggests that this idea promotes solidarity between the generations because economic and demographic trends have advantaged the so-called ‘baby boomers’ while the prospects of the present younger generation have dramatically diverged from those who enjoyed earlier civic and social advantages.

How to ride a bike.

Looking around, one can see grandparents stepping in when needed; baby-sitting; looking after schoolchildren in the hours before parents finish work; funding school trips; providing holidays and covering for parents when needed, in parts of the main school holidays. But these are not mandatory, and we are not all grandparents! A compulsory first year of retirement when people are usually fit enough in their mid-sixties, could soon settle into part of the accepted pattern of life and does seem attractive. One can see a whole little industry developing here, with official volunteer lists of sufficiently qualified and willing gardeners; decorators; admin assistants in clinics and hospitals; school readers [translated as volunteers timetabled to go into schools to hear children read or improve their reading]; sports assistants; scientists; the list could go on. This is an idea to improve and assist civic cohesion with the responsibility to tackle demographic challenges on the whole range of society rather than on the younger generation who have inherited the problem. It also goes without saying, that a job done well, for which a person has volunteered, does give a warm glow of satisfaction to the do-gooder!

Listening to Grandpa.

Armed and ready for tidying up!

Nana's Memories of WW2 for Eloise

 

 The following memories of a small child during WW2, have been gathered because my young grand-niece, Eloise, asked to interview me about my recall, for a school project. The language below is aimed at a child's understanding of a strange situation, hence the occasional explanations of wartime life.

My sister, Esme, and I in our front garden
Possibly taken in 1938/9

My family lived in a little semi-detached house on Lindhurst Lane in Mansfield in Nottinghamshire in the 1930s and 1940s. There were quite a few houses, mostly quite big, on either side of the lane, which was rutted and rough, then became rural, with just countryside around. In WW2, a barricade was built across Lindhurst Lane “to stop the Germans.” It had a small gap between a huge block of stone/brick, about 8/9 feet tall, to permit cyclists, pedestrians and tractors through to continue their journeys but there was no way for any car or lorry or tractor to go through. Quite often, my sister, Esme, and I would climb up on to the top of the barricade and pretend it was a stage where we would give a concert consisting mainly of us singing and dancing! We were also the audience.

 On the ‘top field’ near our house was an American army camp. One of the cooks used to steal tins of food, put them in a sack, 

Four American soldiers, WW2.

 and bring them to give to us at night, from time to time. I have no idea why; perhaps he had met my father in a pub somewhere, though wartime food was short for ordinary people and there was lots of food in the American camp!  Quite often, individual American soldiers would walk past our gate, and I used to run to the gate and shout, “Got any gum, chum?” which an American soldier had taught me to say! Quite often, they would stop and give me a stick of chewing gum wrapped in silver paper! And sometimes, a little piece of chocolate which I loved as we never had any! One Christmas we received a food parcel from America, from a soldier’s family who had heard of the food shortages in Britain. We were thrilled to see tinned fruit cake, tinned butter and tinned cheese for the first time.

Evacuees begin their journey to safety

Next-door to us for a year an evacuee was living with the family there though she wasn’t related to them. I think her family lived in London where there was a lot of bombing and she was one of thousands of children taken from their families and ‘evacuated’. [That is, she went to live without her parents, with people she didn’t know, who lived in a safer part of England] She was called Lally, and she and I became great friends. She left after about a year and I missed her a lot!!

 Buildings were not allowed to show any light through the windows at night. There were inspectors called Wardens who would knock on your front door if even a little chink of light was showing to demand you put out your light immediately. People did as they were told about the chinks of lights showing as they didn’t want to help the German aeroplanes know where they were!

This looks exactly like the ration books we had.

We had ration books, one each, and we couldn’t buy any food without coupons being clipped from our books. Several items such as tinned goods, dried fruit, cereals, sweets and biscuits were rationed using a ponts system. Each person was only allowed a very small amount of meat and sausages each week. Priority allowances of milk and eggs were given to those most in need, including small children and expectant mothers.  Not all food was rationed. Bread was never rationed during the war but strangely, became rationed in 1946, a year after the war had ended! All food rationing stopped in 1954, nine years after the end of WW2 when I was 20!!  Fruit and vegetables were never rationed but were often in short supply especially tomatoes, onions and fruit from overseas like bananas. My little sister Heather was born in 1940, and she saw her first banana when she was five; she tried to eat it without peeling it as she didn’t know what to do!

As shortages increased, long queues became commonplace. Often, a person could reach the front of a long queue only to find out that the item they had been waiting for had just run out! There were no supermarkets then, just specialist shops like bakers, grocers and butchers. The Government encouraged people to grow vegetables in their own gardens or allotments, and often areas in parks were made into communal vegetable plots! The Government publicised this as Dig for Victory!!

Small evacuee, already missing Mummy.

 

Queues, often for food,, were an everyday feature of life during the war.

Other items which were rationed during the war were petrol in 1939, clothes in 1941and soap in 1942. So, by the time I was eight, people could only buy very few clothes, so my mother used to knit a lot; she seemed to specialise in multi-patterned cardigans and jumpers and the knitting patterns were called ‘Fair-isle’; these were very complicated with differently coloured wools sort of woven together on the reverse side of the garment. My mother was skilled at this and sometimes knitted an occasional garment for a neighbour who would pay her. My mother taught me to knit when I was about six and I do remember knitting for my new baby sister, Heather, a little clover pink cardigan with blue aeroplanes flying around the bottom edge! I remember Mum showing it to people and saying I had made it which I had though I didn’t knit the little blue aeroplanes which decorated it; Mum did! All my clothes were passed down to my sisters as I grew out of them! This included underwear. Besides the usual vest and knickers, in winter we also wore what was called a ‘liberty bodice’, a thick, quite stiff, white, extra sleeveless layer over the vest.

The much-hated gas mask

In the early days of the war, which began in September 1939 when I was five, like all schoolchildren, I had a little gas mask which I hated because when I put it on over my head to cover my face, it smelled strange, and I felt I couldn’t breathe properly. I had to take it to school every day, and we used to
practice putting it on and off quite often in class. Also at school, once a week I think {but not sure!] we used to line up and walk from school, over the nearby allotments to the nearest air raid shelter. We all hated the shelter because it was dark, dank and smelly but we had to sit there until the ‘All clear’ sounded. This was a sort of siren playing a special tune to show us that there was no longer any danger from German bombs, then we lined up again and couldn’t wait to get back to school!

WW2 ended in Europe on May 8th, 1945, three  months before 

V.E. Day street party in Nottingham

I was 11. There was a super street party for children on Woodland Drive, off Lindhurst Lane where we lived, to celebrate that the war was over, and absolutely everyone went. I do remember being amazed at just how much food was there. Sometimes one of the Mums would shout at one of the dads to stop eating the children’s food! There was a second, similar, street party for children soon after August 15th, 1945, when the war with Japan finally ended, with all the kids in the area sitting at this long, long table in the street eating sandwiches and jelly!  My mother said I must wear my new school blazer as I had passed the 11+ and was due to go to the Brunt’s Grammar School in Mansfield in September and she wanted everyone to know! I had a long photo of all the kids at each party but both seem to have disappeared!

The Holocaust. Nazis set out to kill all European Jews

It was around this time that I saw, in the Daily Herald newspaper that came every day, pictures of Jews in Europe, millions of whom had been killed by the Nazis. There were also stories and pictures of the war in my Arthur Mee’s Children’s Newspaper which my mother bought for me every week during the war. The newspaper pictures showed concentration camps where millions of Jews had been imprisoned and tortured then killed. The surviving Jews were often so very thin that they were like living skeletons and these photos were very frightening for me at the time. We all thought how wicked the Germans were.

European Jews en route to extermination camps.

Freddie Flintoff

 

Freddie Flintoff

Freddie with some of his cricketing boys

Arising out of the previous blog to this, on cricket and white working-class boys, I became really interested in the class implications of cricket which I had rarely thought about before. From there, I wandered into Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams where this famous cricketer and TV presenter worked with a series of youngsters, boys and eventually, girls, from deprived backgrounds, none of whom was in the least interested in learning to play cricket, and most of whom had never heard of him. However, even I had heard of him: Andrew Flintoff, an accomplished cricketer and a bit of a Jack-the-lad in earlier days; always called Freddie since school days, on account of the similarity between his name and the cartoon character, Freddie Flintstone. After watching Field of Dreams and admiring his real skill and concern in managing and befriending teenage boys and girls whose lives he changed completely, I too became a Freddie-follower, perfectly understanding the comment of one of the teenage girls Freddie was desperately trying to understand and cricket-train. She said, “I do understand now why my Mum fancies Freddie.” I ended up fancying Freddie too but also admiring his serious intent and empathy, often masked by insouciance! 

Since then, I have read a lot about him on various websites and in commentaries. I was astonished to learn that he has suffered from bulimia and watched a powerful and unflinching documentary, he made 

In his early career when he was 'a big lad' he was 
'fat-shamed' in the media which led to his self-loathing
and shame and ultimately, bulimia.

in 2020, entitled Freddie Flintoff: Living with Bulimia which outlined his personal journey into this eating disorder which he kept secret for over 20 years. At the end of the documentary, Flintoff said he would like to seek treatment for his bulimia, which he has never done previously despite the long period he had been struggling with it. The film certainly made me understand the mental anguish and the mood swings of a world controlled by bulimia.

Among many TV shows in which he has appeared, in January 2012 he produced a documentary entitled, Freddie Flintoff: Hidden Side of Sport, about his, and other sports stars’, experience of suffering clinical depression. He spoke candidly in moving interviews about the serious effects of depression, confronting his own issues as Captain of England under pressure at the top of his game. He also testified to the stigma attached to men talking about depression in the face of an often-unforgiving and mystified public. Between these two programmes, in 2012 another documentary, Flintoff: From Lord’s to the Ring, followed the cricketer over three episodes in which he explored a possible career as a professional boxer under the guidance of trainers Barry McGuigan and his son, Shane McGuigan. In fact, he only had one professional match in November 2012, which he won on points after which, mercifully, Flintoff chose cricket!

HIs one professional match.

Under the heading Filmography, there is an astonishing list, almost endless, of the various shows and presentations in which Freddie has appeared from 2005. As I do not have a TV set and watch only
selected stuff on my iPad, I have never come across Freddie in the multitude of shows in which he has appeared, and I am even more amazed that the teenagers he was working with recently had never seen the famous Flintoff, although, clearly, their Mums had.

Freddie’s cricketing career has been stellar; he was one of the sport’s leading all-rounders, a fast bowler, middle-order batsman and slip fielder, consistently rated by the ICC as being among the top international all-rounders. He served as both captain and vice-captain of the England team and the list of his titles such as the Ashes Man of the Series is long and exhaustive on Wikipedia! Along his illustrious journey, he was awarded the Honorary Freedom of Preston, his hometown [2006] and in 2011 an Honorary Fellowship of the Preston-based Myerscough College. He also managed to produce six books along the way!

Consoling Lee, Edgbaston, 2005 Ashes

After his second retirement in 2015, Freddie has been involved with numerous projects, designing his own fashion range; winning the first series of the Australian version of ‘I’m A Celebrity…. Get Me Out of Here! ; becoming part of Sky One’s sports-based comedy panel show, A League of Their Own; and being a successful and popular presenter of the BBC One car show, Top Gear in 2019, remaining until he sustained serious injuries resulting from an accident during filming in late 2022 after which it took around a painful, difficult year for him to regain his relatively normal mental and physical health although he still bears the visible facial scars and suffered nightmares, flashbacks and anxiety for a long time.

It is so good to see a professionally successful cricketer with the humanity and vision to find youngsters, mainly from working-class, deprived backgrounds, introduce them to cricket then mould them into effective cricket teams which he helps train and promote. Freddie Flintoff, a complex man, manages to make the working-class kids in his cricketing orbit feel good about themselves; introduces them to learning and practising competitive and co-operative skills in a game they grow to love; and thus, generally moves them on and up into healthier, happier lives. This is a multi-talented man!

During the India tour with his boys' team in 2024

.

Batting on a Sticky Wicket

 

 

Minto in action! He is a left-arm seamer.

I happened to read a piece recently about James Minto, a 17-year-old who was named last week as a member of England’s Under-19 cricket squad to play India this week. He is from Norton, a market town in Stockton-on-Tees where the cricket club is twinned with the local miners’ Welfare Institute. He grew up in a single parent family with his mother, Jemma, and his two brothers but his mother recently died so that James is now also the family breadwinner.

Durham's team in play.

Minto is short but strong with his strength developed from his active interest in boxing. In cricketing terms, he is a left-arm seamer already capable of bowling speeds of 85/87 mph and a left-hand bat who opens the batting in club cricket. Last year, he became Durham’s youngest first-class debutant at 16. He is the youngest to take five wickets in one match for the club and made 67 as a ‘nightwatchman’ opening in a championship match against Nottinghamshire this season to make him the club’s youngest first-class cricketer to score half a century. His own personal story is remarkable but wider than that, he is a perfect representative to illustrate what one county, Durham, is doing to address professional cricket’s perennial class problem by working with the British white working-class community that overwhelmingly makes up the demographic of the North-East and is often the most overlooked part of society.

Village cricket, 1687 painting.

It is worth a brief detour here to look at the history of cricket in class terms which have been seminal in their important long-term effect on today’s world of cricket. In its early origins in the 17/18th centuries, cricket began as a simple ‘bat and ball’ folk game for rural folk and working people in the southeast of England. The game eventually developed into the sport of cricket which engaged the interest and patronage of aristocrats and other wealthy men, and their gambling on matches helped to formalise the game, leading to many upper-class gents playing cricket themselves. This development solidified a lasting social division between the gentry who played as amateurs and the working-class professionals who were paid to play. In effect, the

Evolution of the cricket bat over 400 years.

deep-seated English class hierarchy was reinforced, defining this cricketing ‘gentlemen and players’ era for over 300 years. ‘Gentlemen’ were amateurs [lovers of the game], typically aristos and upper-class sporty men who played for fun and leisure, while ‘Players’ were working-class men who played for a living. This strong class divide widened systemically into a North-South cultural split with League cricket in the industrial north seen as a working-class, professional, competitive enterprise. In contrast, club cricket in the suburban  south was rather more middle-class and amateur, a                                                                                      somewhat more up-market and less competitive                                                                                          social affair.

1875 notice outlining protocol for both teams.
Note the difference in tone between  advice for Gentlemen and Players.

 The modern paucity of white working-class participation in today’s professional cricket has produced what amounts to systemic barriers which have increasingly priced out white working-class communities from the professional game. The current situation sees cricket’s professional elite significantly over-represented by privately educated players, a situation largely either accepted as normal, or unnoticed, by the public. A personal aside which illustrates the usual working-class attitude to cricket over thirty years ago. In the Seventies, when I was Head of House in a huge comprehensive school, there came the annual Summer inter-house games matches watched by the entire school over several sunny days [in memory] The July afternoon of my first year there when we had, with considerable difficulty, managed to field an entire house cricket team from reluctant boys in a House of approximately 300 boys and girls, the absence rate of possible spectators was in the region of 75% and the following day saw the explanation from numerous miscreants that nobody was interested in cricket anyway; it was a ‘posh’ game best avoided.

Advertisement in The Yorkshire Post 28th August 1875.

Key Factors aggravating this decline of white working-class participation in cricket, and it must be noted, also Asian boys too, are:

1.      Low-income families cannot afford equipment, with basics like decent cricket bats and helmets, out of reach for many. Limited access to transport to attend training or matches is also a handicap.

2.      The loss of traditional industries in coal and steel have decimated working-class communities and, with it, their local cricket clubs often affiliated to the Miners’ Welfare Club for instance.

3.      Many local authority recreational grounds and school playing fields have been sold off, limiting access to all sports.

 Cricket is especially popular among Asian communities

4.      Meanwhile, independent school pupil numbers have increased and these elite institutions have the resources to invest in cricketing facilities and, importantly, in high quality coaching which effectively establishes an available direct route for their pupils to professional level.  

5.      The move of major cricket matches to pay-per-view television has dramatically reduced the sport’s visibility in working-class communities and this lack of exposure to high-class cricket reduces the likelihood of a new generation of ‘have a go’ enthusiasts.

Potential Consequences and Initiatives:

Minto in play as batsman and ...

The relatively low level of white working-class participation in cricket affects more than just the demographics; it impacts the talent pool and the social cohesion of the game.  Cricket is also very popular indeed among British Asians but players from these groups, both Asian and white, are much less likely to make it professionally. Given the considerable popularity of the game in both communities, it is unlikely that lack of potential talent is a factor. To counter this trend, efforts are underway to make the sport more widely accessible and there are some initiatives which focus on democratising access and nurturing talent from all backgrounds. Grassroots programmes in community and youth groups are now supported by the ECB and the England and Wales Cricket Board, and efforts to engage diverse communities are being made by bodies like the South Asian Cricket Academy while the African-Caribbean Engagement Programme [ACE] is directing efforts to bring more players from under-represented ethnic groups into cricket.  Other encouraging developments include Warwickshire County Club which is committed to finding contingency finance within its own budget to grant aid to all club youngsters in need, while the Brian Johnston Memorial Trust supports talented individuals who need financial assistance to play at club cricket level.

..... as bowler

 

Charterhouse School where cricket appeared
on the syllabus in 1859 and the Summer Term
is known as the Cricket Quarter.

     CRICKETING NOTES for the uninitiated.                                  

Downe House, an independent girls' school where cricket
is both popular and competitively successful.

 Left arm seamer is a cricketer who bowls with their left arm, using the seam of the ball to make it bounce or move in the air, often in a way that swings into right-handed batsmen or away from left-handed batters.

Nightwatchman is a lower-order batsman, usually a bowler, who comes in to bat instead of a more skillful batsman near the end of a day’s play to protect the latter’s wicket.

Debutant is a person who is making a first appearance in a particular capacity, such as a sportsperson playing in his first game of cricket for a team.

Batting on a Sticky Wicket is a metaphor used to describe a difficult circumstance which needs careful management. It originated as a cricketing expression to describe a damp and soft wicket.

Training session at South Shields Cricket Club.
Girls increasingly play cricket in a range 
of schools 



Post Script

For an additional introduction to this subject, potential enthusiasts should view the inspiring Freddie Flintoff's Field of Dreams. Freddie achieves remarkable cricketing success with really diffcult, damaged working class young people most of whom have never seen a cricket match and have zero interest in playing.