Most of my working life was spent trying to get fairness and justice for others. Ordinary people who were in a David and Goliath struggle. In these last few years it is now me in that David sling shot position.
I tried to right wrongs, and today in England's green and not so pleasant land, there are a lot of things wrong, like litter, energy waste, a tardiness to incorporate alternative energy sources, and a great waste of experience and education by this country. Strong stuff, but it is no wonder people just rely on the state and drift along. Why should they bother when the country, government and society does not bother about it's citizens. The Government pump billions of pounds into a black hole of banking institutions and watch from the balcony playing a fiddle as countless companies go bankrupt with no support from government or the banks. So the unemployed swell in numbers me included.
Today I go to Job Centre Minus to sign on again. £73 a week. They will say have you worked - No, are you looking for work - yes, I will say have you got any jobs , they will say no. I have argued 3 times about sending me on a Career Development Course which places the individual in a job at the end, by fine tuning skills that are transferable. All this funded by EU grants. I am waiting to hear, after trying all manner of routes to by pass Job Centre Minus who are an obstacle to progression. I even wrote to my MP, but that was a waste of time too. At the Government's Job Centre Minus they fail to put people back to work, as I sit there my bum hardly makes an impression in the seat, my question and answer period with an officer laughingly called an advisor, last for about 60 seconds. This is what is has come to after a couple of yearss working through private employment agancies as a lorry driver, apart from the year I worked fixed term to introduce the smoking controls in public places. So to resort to being a Job Centre Minus statistic is a true last resort.
I have sort advice from other non government organisations like Next Step and Jobsmaites. They have warned me about age discimination, so on my CV 30 years plus of dealing with the public, is not a selling point - delete 30 years. So sad.
It is a far cry from when I left school. I was still working at my Friday night Saturday job in Woolworths Harlesden on the delicatessen counter. I had a Lambretta TV175, £££, no tax as a student, and a job which was a source of girlfreinds too. I was ok. BUT, the Youth Employment Bureau thought otherwise. They told me off in their Pound Lane Offices. I told them I looked in the newspapers and applied for jobs, I had 3 A levels and 11 O levels. Not good enough. Go for these 6 jobs. OK.
Well the highest paid was in what was to become Trading Standards but in those days was still Weights & Measures, working for a local council but run by the Board of Trade. £19 a week, trainee assistant, checking up on factories and shops, sounded good to me.
It was a mile and a half to work. I started by going on the bus. I even made a girlfriend at the bus stop, a hairdresser, very pretty, lasted a week.
I had to drive a van when we checked petrol forecourts and factories, One inspector 2 assistants. Sometimes I drove the inspectors cars when just 2 went to check retailers. I still lived with Mum in Essex Road, but we worked in Ealing, Brent and Harrow, so we travelled to the edge of London and the countryside like Elstree and Stanmore. It was interetsing stuff. One of the best jobs was acting like a customer. I would go into a shop and buy something, then we would check it for correct weight and price back at the car parked round the corner. I often caught the shops. I had some knack of pretence innocence. So much so that Harry Stanton said once " Bloody hell, every time you go into a shop I get another case". Good old red faced, grey haired Harry, he never got promoted. He looked like an old Colonel Blimp, a Knight of St Columbus, got drunk every lunch time, so to keep death off the roads the assistant would drive in the afternoon. Else if he drove we would be swerving in a silver grey Singer Vogue Estate with the rotund Harry clutching the steering wheel but leaning on the curves with the wheel, TT Isle of Man style, pass the roseary beads Harry !!!
We had ex Kenya inspectors too. They were ex British Colonials, fluent in Swahili which came in handy in Southall, as the African Asians were being booted out of Africa to land at Heathrow Airport.
The Trade Descriptions Act November 14th 1968 changed the job overnight. Lots of people telephoned to complain for the first time. The car had broken down, the artist impression hotel in the holiday brochure had not been built in time, the special offers were over priced. The Harold Wilson Labour Government tried to protect the consumer, whereas today it is left to Brussels. We had counter inflation measures to stop traders making instant profit as they did in 1971 with decimalisation. Then a pint of Watneys Red Barrel went up overnight from one shilling and ten pence to twelve and a half p = to 2 shillings and sixpence in old money. Old Money that had served the anglo saxons well, so it was an excuse to profit and inflate prices. Lessons were learned and I was so good at getting prices down, I took over all the counter inflation complaints in 1973. One extremely camp gay ladies hairdresser in Ealing said to me after I had taken the red pen to his price list on the introduction of VAT.......... *Oooooooooo you are ruthless, you have taken me to the cleaners".
I was qualified by now, it took 4 years to pass a Government Professional series of exams on law and technology. I used to get lots of stories that I could dine out on. Only because I seemed to have a knack of finding trouble. My jealous counterparts would say I was a trouble maker, a maverick, a loose canon. I would counter and say I knew exactly where I was aiming. I did not need artificial targets. I did not want to tick boxes. My self motivation was about deterrence, and making the place fairer for all, a level playing field , where cheats did not prosper. Hard sometimes when you are in your early twenties and the only thing younger than you is a Page 3 girl in the Sun.
Coal men were always on the fiddle. We would roam the streets in residential areas in a specially equipped van with a big sliding scale in the back. Sacks of coal would be weighed and often they were well short of the cwt. So the lorry would be escorted back to the yard it had come from and the whole load reweighed.
One day in Northolt, I was still a trainee with John Taylor who had just passed. We used to go to day release college together. He had married his child hood sweet heart. He went on to be the Chief Officer in later years, never working outside Brent. We got on professionally, but I cannnot say we liked each other. So one day Mr Burns the coal man is in Carr Road Northolt delivering, his bags turn out to be light. Taylor tells him to go back to Charringtons in Neasden by that bridge I walked over after my tonsils were removed 17 years before. Burns tries to make a run for it, he drives a huge detour up through Harrow, even Stanmore, with me in a Comma Van at the wheel pinned behind him, even when he goes through red lights, even crossing the North Circular. Then in the yard after this chase, he stops on the weighbridge, goes into revers and before I can select reverse he has rammed us. The whole front of the cab is now in bits all around me. The steering column saved me, Taylor had leeped over the passenger seat into the back. The van was a write off, no windsreen, no doors, no grill. Burns sped off, the engine was still running on the Comma because the passengers sat on it, so I sped off after him, Sweaney eat your heart out. Bits of metal and glass fell off as I drove with the wind in my face. Burns jumped up on the back of his lorry tipping the sacks destroying the evidence. I drove back to the offices to get Masters the manager, he sat in the remnants of a passenger seat, and barked at Burns that he was fired Alan Sugar style.
In truth cases like this were unusual but the outcome was always the same, crime paid, the offender walked away from court laughing, the do gooder Magistrates were hopelessly out of touch. It was also safe not risk. If the first offender was fined £25 then the rest, all that day were fined the same, regardless of what they did.
For those sort of reasons, when I found myself on the front pages or the TV screen because of my job, I generally told it as it was, popular with some but deeply and jealously unpopular with others. Later I would make the transition and become an investigative journalist and the outcome would be more significant than the law of our land. Public shame would achieve more than judicial sentencing, alas.
Cynical yes, the life made you like it. I would catch all the west end hotels for short measure drinks and overcharging. I would catch all the petrol attendants in the west end for fraud. In certain trades conning the customer was trade practice. Management never wondered why their lowly paid staff would turn up for work in a brand new sports car !!!
One Fine Fare manager in Northwood Hills, had the old prices on the shelves and the special offers in the window and in the Daily Mirror advertisement. The result, the sales till staff overcharged everyone. He was petrified when I turned up, sometimes the job had that effect when they had something more to hide than their brown underwear. I think I got 3 cases that day on just routine visits, no complaints from the unknowing public that I was duty bound to protect. I got out of the van with Dave Smith and thought those punnets of strawberries were never 8 ozs. Guess what they weren't. One Greengrocer Case. Next Fine Fare, where the manager later had a heart attack (3 weeks later) and died. The Supermarket bosses were cruel to their staff if Trading Standards caught them out. Next a car dealer turning the mileage and therefore the history of the vehicle back on the odometer. One Christmas time, a Butcher's turkeys in the window were all £2 over priced. Because of the scale of the problem, a queue developed of his customers even queuing down the road. One customer mouthed off at me, saying leave the butcher alone, he had been a customer for 25 years it was the butcher down the road I should be checking up on. I could not tell this guy the truth. The Butcher, under caution, his excuse was "trade practice".
That was the day in the life of...........not every day, but not an untypical day. It was rare to find no trouble to deal with, not to make , but to deal with.
Of course all the troubles had to be written up. At least we had typists in those days to write up our reports, at least we had a team to go out with and do the job. Nowadays like most jobs its one man bands, no help, no corroboration. In fact if I knew at 18, what I know now, I would have never joined the service. Since the Thatcher years it has been decimated. More statutes given by Parliament to police and less manpower and financial budgets. Consumer protection these days is caveat emptor, buyer beware, and self assistance for the majority of the time. That is ok as quality of the product has improved, but the standard of service and the desire to make a fast buck remains the same as it always was. Other things like education and social work takes presidence, and the consumer has to watch out for himself more and more, but still pay his taxes.
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