From a roar to a whimper

Over the last week or so we've learned that thousands of employees in the City of London - workers in banks and other financial services - are set to receive bonuses of £1 million or more out of the profits their organisations have made.

That's on top of the ludicrous sums paid to captains of industry and commerce who net more in a year than entire extended families lower down the scale can garner in a lifetime of combined toil.

Then there are the generous new pensions that MPs have voted themselves, effectively brandishing a couple of contemptuous digits at those among their constituents who have seen their modest pension expectations shrink and in some cases vanish entirely. Coming on top of revelations of their fat expenses claims, it can't have done much for the public's esteem for the people they elect (and pay generously) to represent them.

And now we learn that leading civil servants are to able to pick up pensions of around £75,000 a year, which is rather more than three times the average salary in this part of the world.

What's it all about? It's annoying enough that it's happening but very depressing that no voices seem to raised in protest. Are we all so intent on looking over our terrified shoulders in response to the various scare scenarios the politicians and their tame experts keep presenting us with as diversions? Are we so distracted with the serious matters of life such as who'll get voted off the X-Factor this weekend or whether David Platt in Corrie is about to turn into an axe murderer?

We've become an apathetic nation. In times gone by there would have been marches in the streets against such blatant, shameless inequalities.

Where are the marchers now? If the way we were misled into the disastrous (for everyone) invasion of Iraq can't provoke the Great British Public into storming Westminster, what chance of a mass reaction against the disgustingly high salaries, bonuses and pensions being handed to those in the public sector who we pay out of our taxes?

What chance of a roar of disapproval for those in the private sector who reap their outrageous rewards by arranging deals and takeovers which make their companies vast profits, and save their clients huge amounts in taxes, while throwing British workers on to the scrapheap?

Something catastrophic happened to the spirit of the British people more than 20 years ago. I suspect it was seeing the miners destroyed so ruthlessly by the Thatcher Government and their once-proud communities fall victim to despair, decay and vandalism that convinced many people that protest was futile. If the miners couldn't beat the system, who can?

Keep your head down, take the knocks and try not to think of all the wrong things that are happening. That became the order of the day, and it's grown into a national habit - encouraged by a government which knows that while super-casinos, on-line gambling and all-day drinking might well destroy many lives and families they're a significant means of keeping the population's minds occupied.

Doesn't it make you angry?

Perhaps not.

A box of tricks...

My moan about the variable performance of digital TV as viewed via a Freeview box prompted reader John Wilson to point out that although the plan is to switch off analogue transmissions by about 2010, it's surprisingly hard to get hold of a digital TV as opposed to one that needs a digibox.

"Even the bigger and posher ones seem mostly analogue," he writes. "Why are they selling so many TVs that are going to be useless soon? Is it because they want to sell us the digiboxes too?" I'd complained in my piece about sound and vision not always being synchronised on digital channels (something which I've since been advised can be corrected by flicking over to another channel then flicking back).

Mr Wilson writes: "I have noticed that if the signal is weak, digital TV tends to just pack in altogether, whereas with analogue you would at least get some sort of snowy picture."

They've a way to go to get it right, haven't they? Meanwhile, another reader told me he'd discovered, virtually by accident, that the signal was poorest when the cable from his aerial was taped to the pole supporting the aerial. So he untaped it, taped a length of plastic tubing to the aerial, and then taped the cable to the far side of that.

With pole and cable separated from each other, the signal was perfect. The only snag is that you need to go up on the roof to do it!

Is the game up?

I hesitate to sound like one of those relics from our political yesterdays, an old-fashioned class warrior, but isn't it deeply disturbing and downright infuriating the way the gulf between the fat cats and the rest is widening so rapidly in this country?

Over the last week or so we've learned that thousands of employees in the City of London - workers in banks and other financial services - are set to receive bonuses of £1 million or more out of the profits their organisations have made.

That's on top of the ludicrous sums paid to captains of industry and commerce who net more in a year than entire extended families lower down the scale can garner in a lifetime of combined toil.

Then there are the generous new pensions that MPs have voted themselves, effectively brandishing a couple of contemptuous digits at those among their constituents who have seen their modest pension expectations shrink and in some cases vanish entirely. Coming on top of revelations of their fat expenses claims, it can't have done much for the public's esteem for the people they elect (and pay generously) to represent them.

And now we learn that leading civil servants are to able to pick up pensions of around £75,000 a year, which is rather more than three times the average salary in this part of the world.

What's it all about? It's annoying enough that it's happening but very depressing that no voices seem to raised in protest. Are we all so intent on looking over our terrified shoulders in response to the various scare scenarios the politicians and their tame experts keep presenting us with as diversions? Are we so distracted with the serious matters of life such as who'll get voted off the X-Factor this weekend or whether David Platt in Corrie is about to turn into an axe murderer?

We've become an apathetic nation. In times gone by there would have been marches in the streets against such blatant, shameless inequalities.

Where are the marchers now? If the way we were misled into the disastrous (for everyone) invasion of Iraq can't provoke the Great British Public into storming Westminster, what chance of a mass reaction against the disgustingly high salaries, bonuses and pensions being handed to those in the public sector who we pay out of our taxes?

What chance of a roar of disapproval for those in the private sector who reap their outrageous rewards by arranging deals and takeovers which make their companies vast profits, and save their clients huge amounts in taxes, while throwing British workers on to the scrapheap?

Something catastrophic happened to the spirit of the British people more than 20 years ago. I suspect it was seeing the miners destroyed so ruthlessly by the Thatcher Government and their once-proud communities fall victim to despair, decay and vandalism that convinced many people that protest was futile. If the miners couldn't beat the system, who can?

Keep your head down, take the knocks and try not to think of all the wrong things that are happening. That became the order of the day, and it's grown into a national habit - encouraged by a government which knows that while super-casinos, on-line gambling and all-day drinking might well destroy many lives and families they're a significant means of keeping the population's minds occupied.

Doesn't it make you angry?

Perhaps not.

A box of tricks...

My moan about the variable performance of digital TV as viewed via a Freeview box prompted reader John Wilson to point out that although the plan is to switch off analogue transmissions by about 2010, it's surprisingly hard to get hold of a digital TV as opposed to one that needs a digibox.

"Even the bigger and posher ones seem mostly analogue," he writes. "Why are they selling so many TVs that are going to be useless soon? Is it because they want to sell us the digiboxes too?" I'd complained in my piece about sound and vision not always being synchronised on digital channels (something which I've since been advised can be corrected by flicking over to another channel then flicking back).

Mr Wilson writes: "I have noticed that if the signal is weak, digital TV tends to just pack in altogether, whereas with analogue you would at least get some sort of snowy picture."

They've a way to go to get it right, haven't they? Meanwhile, another reader told me he'd discovered, virtually by accident, that the signal was poorest when the cable from his aerial was taped to the pole supporting the aerial. So he untaped it, taped a length of plastic tubing to the aerial, and then taped the cable to the far side of that.

With pole and cable separated from each other, the signal was perfect. The only snag is that you need to go up on the roof to do it!