Mike Priestley: Who's Counting?

There were important decisions to be made, certainly. Did you serve an apprenticeship, starting on low wages but guaranteeing yourself steady work at good pay later? Did you go for big money now, but risk finding yourself in a dead end?

Did you further your education at university or college and aim to be a high-flier? Did you settle for something steady in the Civil Service, or working for the Council, or in a bank, building society or insurance company?

Jobs for life, those were - until the goalposts were moved as the 1970s shifted into the 1980s and 1990s and the great shake-outs affected every area of the working world.

The golden generation has been left decidedly tarnished. It is middle-aged men who have been worst affected by the changes in employment patterns. Around a third of those aged between 50 and 64 are now without a job, according to a new report from researchers as Sheffield Hallam University.

Some of them are quite comfortably off, having turned the disappearance of their job into early retirement. Their mortgages are paid off. Their children have left home. They've had to adapt to the reduced income provided by their occupational pension, but they get by and have enough money for treats - although they worry a lot about what will happen to them if they become infirm as they grow older, and wonder if they should be denying themselves all luxuries and saving their cash to pay for a care home.

But the majority, according to this report, are spared that sort of agonising. No treats for them. No savings either in many cases, either because they never earned enough to save much or because they spent what they earned in the mistaken belief that the good times would go on forever. Their present is dismal and their future prospects no better.

They're working-class people, scraping along on benefits in a world which no longer has any work for them. They've not volunteered for early retirement. They've been thrown on to the scrap heap.

There are plenty of jobs, but the majority of them are in the service sector and reserved for youngsters and women.

Three fifths of jobless middle-aged men fall into this category. Their plight is largely ignored because, unlike young men, they don't create an obvious social problem.

They don't become drug addicts, muggers, vandals or burglars. They don't riot. So there is no pressing need for the Government to do much about them.

What the answer is, I don't know - other than a massive retraining programme and a change in employers' attitudes. But I do know what the answer isn't. It's to do what some politicians and pension-fund managers keep suggesting and push the retirement age on to 70.

In the circumstances, that's nonsense!

I Don't Believe It!

Litter is one subject which seems to cause more grumbles than any other. Latest reader to rail against it is MRS F SMITH, who writes from Heaton.

She asks: "How is it that people no longer have any pride either in their dress or their environment? The other week I had occasion to visit a shop in Oak Lane. On the corner of Oak Lane and St Mary's Road, the green area outside the premises of John H Raby, auctioneer, was heavily littered. Also, the pavements outside the Netto supermarkets in Lilycroft Road, Bradford, and Bradford Road, Keighley, are an absolute disgrace, with food littering the street. Keighley is the worst offender."

Why do people make that sort of mess, eh? There's no need to drop things on the pavement or on grass verges when there are usually plenty of litter bins around. We've turned into a sloppy, scruffy society in recent years.

But some of us refuse to go along with it, don't we, Mrs Smith? Keep flying the flag for tidiness, both personally and publicly. That's the Mildew way.

ERIC FIRTH has more far-reaching concerns. Writing from Wilsden, he asks: "Is there a secret sinister Government/Brussels plot to do away with England and the English? Consider the evidence. The Scots and Welsh have been given their own national parliament or assembly. The Scots and Welsh football and rugby teams stand to their own national songs. And this year's Miss World had a Miss Scotland and a Miss Wales.

"The English have no national parliament. We share one. Our sports teams stand to the UK anthem. And the Miss World has no Miss England, only a Miss UK.

"We must not let our politicians drag us further into Europe without the security of our own national parliament. Beat loud the drum in Plymouth. If our £ goes, we go."

Well, that's a stirring rallying call, Mr Firth. Thanks for your contribution to this week's bag of grumbles.

And now, the last word in the ongoing debate about parking outside other people's houses. It comes from JOHN WILSON, of Wilsons Solicitors, Farsley, who trained as a lawyer in a local authority and consequently had to deal with a lot of inquiries about this problem. This is what he says.

"When people talk about 'private roads' they often get confused because there is an important distinction to be made between who is entitled to use a road on the one hand and who has to stump up for repairs on the other. It is perfectly possible, and not all that infrequent, for the same road to be public in the first sense but private in the other.

"If a road is a public right of way, then the public are entitled to use it, even if it is a private road in the other sense. The fact that the people who live on the road have a half-width of it in their deeds (as they often do) does not alter this fact; the ownership of the road is subject to the public right of passage, not the other way round. So the public can drive along it and park on it, within reason (and subject to any yellow lines, of course).

"In the present state of the law, a resident is not entitled to reserve the pavement outside his house for his exclusive use. So he cannot normally complain if someone else parks there.

"Of course if the road is not a public right of way, then the public have no rights at all. They are trespassers if they use it. Neighbours probably do have rights through, and these will be very likely set out in the deeds.

"Pavement parking is most definitely illegal in any circumstances, even if it is outside your own house."

So now we know. Thanks for that expert's view, Mr Wilson. It will help my correspondent at Queensbury sort out the rights and wrong of her problem, although I suspect it won't bring it any nearer a solution.

If you have a gripe about anything, drop a line to me, Hector Mildew, c/o Newsroom, T&A, Hall Ings, Bradford BD1 1JR, email me or leave any messages for me with Mike Priestley on (44) 0 1274 729511.

Yours Expectantly,

Hector Mildew

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