I owe the readers of the Barnet Eye an apology

 In yesterdays blog I implied I was calm, rational person, who does not lose his rag. I did believe this to be true when I wrote it. However subsequent events yesterday demonstrated to me that I am not quite as calm and reasoned as I made out. Let me explain.

When I left work, I went to my gym at Virgin Active. I parked at the side of the building and was checking a whatsapp message, before going in, when I noticed a teenager boy walking a young dog. This caught my eye, as the dog looked like a very young version of our 15 year old fox red Labrador cross Bruno. Bruno is a much loved family member and whenever I see a similar dog, it always catches my eye.

As I watched, thinking "what a beautiful young dog" the dog decided that it wanted to sniff the wall. The teenager started to drag it. He then turned around and kicked the dog. I was completely unprepared to witness this act of violence. A red mist descended and I jumped out of the car and started yelling at the teenager. He clearly hadn't realised he was being observed and started to say "sorry, sorry". I then shouted "that is a beautiful dog, you should consider yourself lucky to have it, I saw which house you came out of and if I ever see you mistreat an animal again, I will call the police".  By this time the teenager was briskly running down the road. I was absolutely furious. 

In hindsight, I am glad there was a fence and a small embankment between us, as I'd have probably physically engaged him. As we all know such things can go horribly wrong. There were several staff of the gym, having a cigarette nearby, who heard the shouting. They did not see the incident. I explained to them why and they seemed shocked.

When I was 33 years old, I engaged in anger management sessions. I was conscious that on occasion, I had lost the plot and sought the need to control myself. One of the things that I was told, which gave me little solace is that in chaotic situations, it is hard to manage how you behave. The key strand is to avoid situations where you are likely to be triggered. The incident that made me seek counselling was when I was the victim of an unprovoked attack in the toilet of a pub. Someone randomly punched me in the face, whilst I was at a urinal. My reponse was very violent and it was pure luck that the assailant was not badly injured or killed. The counsellor advised that in such a situation, it is very hard to adopt any strategy, especially as you're subject to a sudden, unexpected violent attack.

Since that time, I've not experienced 'red mist' until yesterday.  I think having two rescue dogs, who were both badly treated and are extremely nervous and damaged by abuse has made me very sensitive about mistreatment of animals. Fortunately, there was no physical element to the confrontation, but I did realise I'd lost the plot. It has left me feeling vulnerable and unsettled. As I noted yesterday, I am too old for such activities. 

I suppose that getting so triggered every 30 years means I'll be 93 next time I lose the plot.

I may be old, I may be past it, but I am not a quitter!

As the shop has been quiet this morning, I've spent it with a guitr strumming through "When I'm 64" by The Beatles. I'm 64 in August, we will be playing a birthday bash on the 23rd August at The Dublin Castle to celebrate and I am considering putting a Ska version of the Beatles classic together for it.  I find it slightly incongruous. My Dad was 64 in 1981. I was nineteen and he seemed ancient. At the time, we didn't really get on at all. I was what might be described as difficult, and I think he was suffering from PTSD. He was a tough nut. Been in the Australian army and airforce in WW2. Flew bombers for the RAF, got shot down over Romania and taken prisoner of war. He was man who wasn't afraid of a punch up. When I was 19 we were having one particularly bad row and he punched me in the mouth. To my amazement, it didn't knock me over, despite the fact that he'd caught me properly. I don't know who was more shocked, him or me. I just stood there and said "You are too old for fighting, but if you try that again, I'll hit you back". I fully expected him to launch into me, but he just stood there looking forlorn. He realised I was right. I was working on a building site at the time and I was extremely fit. We had a set of weights and I trained every day and was playing football. The sands of time had caught up with him. His anger subsided and he actually never lost his temper with me again. 

When I calmed down, I felt really bad about what had happened. I loved my Dad, I hadn't wanted to humiliate him in the way I had. He was a proud man and I genuinely don't think he'd ever been in such a situation in his life. Five years later, we had a proper night out. I apologised to him for what I said. His response surprised me. He said that he admired the way dealt with it. He admitted it was a wake up call. He was too old for fighting and scrapping. It had been a rude awakening, but he said that perhaps it was better that way than with some violent stranger. Now I am the same age. I've never really been one for fighting and scrapping, I wasn't in the military and I have always been of the opinion that staying calm and trying to talk my way out of difficult situations is better. That's not to say I've not lost it on occasions, but I've always been far more reticient about putting my fists up than my Dad was. But the sands of time are running out. 

How much more fit, healthy life is left for me? How much longer will I be able to live life in the way I want. On Saturday, I had a day out watching Charlton play Wrexham. It started in the pub, progressed to the football and then for a curry via the pub again. It was wonderful, but there may well come a day where the sands of time make it too difficult. I've had health challenges over the last decade and a half, that are pretty typical for men my age. Prostate problems, ankle and knee problems. A career as a Gigolo went out of the window with the prostatectomy and I physically can't play football anymore.  I can still play the guitar and sing with my band though. In factthe band is in rude good health at the moment!

And the band. We will be releasing our new single on Sunday 15th March, along with our new video. Unlike footballers, it seems to me musicians become better with age. Your tastes broaden and your influences widen. You become more open to change. A couple of times recently, mates of my age have said "aren't you a bit old for all that sort of stuff?". My answer is that if we were no good, then yes, but I think the band is better than ever. We are taking more chances. We are doing things I wouldn't consider when I was 21 and the band were in the prime of our first bloom. Our new album will contain the first track ever performed by The False Dots at our first rehearsal, a track called Wrong. We dropped it as we "thought it was rubbish". I played the band a version at a rehearsal in 2024 and we decided to do a version for fun, with Tom, our trumpet player singing. Strangely it sounds like it was written yesterday and is more relevant than ever.

Our next sinngle is another song of that vintage, albeit with a massive makeover. It is now more of a Ska song than the Damnedesque punk thrash I envisaged. Big Hairy Spider was a song I wrote, about a nightmare I had, about a rather pretty girl who lived up the road from me when I was a teenager. I think I'd been reading a House of Horror comic story about a beautiful seductress, who was actually a spider. My the songwriting partner rejected it on the grounds that it was 'pitifully bad'. It went into the unused song file (there may be 200 songs in there). When I was cleaning out papers, I read it and thought "Hey that would work brilliantly". It also gave me the opportunity to create a cartoon video using AI. I've shown this to a few friends and they think it is pretty good. I used a proper professional AI tool and there is a proper story.

One of the thing that really puzzles me is that people of my age typically have time and disposable money, but the music industry has no real interest in us. I actually think my bands appeal is far wider, as evidenced by the audiences at our shows, but the industry is missing a trick. For me it is a joy to play with young bands and also to see their audience reactions to us. There is a young band called No Diea playing with us at our next gig at The Dublin Castle. Their stuff reminds me a bit of the stuff we did when we first played "Wrong" in 1979! CLICK HERE TO HAVE A LISTEN TO NO IDEA. 

When it comes down to it, I've realised I may be old, I may be past it, but I am not a quitter! I'll keep going until I can't. We learn, we change, we adapt, but so long as we're having fun, we get by. I started with a difficult memory of my father. I'll end it with what he told me to draw a line under the incident. He said that it made him confront something that had been with him since the circumstances in which he'd been shot down. He felt a degree of anger and guilt that he'd never really come to terms with about the death of his rear gunner Spud Murphy, who died when they were shot down. He told me he'd realised he had to stop being angry and enjoy life. He couldn't change the past and he couldn't control the future, so he had to live in the present and enjoy it. He said to me "You are too young to understand this, but when your my age you will". 

The Sunday Reflection #78 - Fairness and why can't people just say sorry when they are wrong

Have you ever wondered how much trouble and strife in the world could have been avoided if people were mature enough to apologise when they are in the wrong and have caused upset? There is a matter I can't discuss here, it has caused a huge ruction and a lot of aggro for me. It is incredibly frustrating, because the truth of the matter is that a simple apology when it became clear that there was a problem would have completely diffused the matter and the last five months of my life would have been far more pleasant. I find myself in the middle and ever more frustrated as I watch a situation deteriorate before my eyes. 

How many times in life have we heard the words "it's not fair". In truth of all the words in the English language 'fairness' is the least understood. Rooted in the Old English fæġernes (beauty, pleasantness) and fæger (agreeable, suitable), it evolved from meaning physically "beautiful" or "light-colored" to describing "morally right" and even-handed conduct by the mid-15th century. Generally most of us first said the words "it's not fair" when we were three or four and mummy wouldn't give us another sweetie or let us watch the telly past bed time. Usually it is the injustice that as a three year old we get sent to bed at 6pm when our five year old sibling can stay up to 7pm. As a frazzled parent, you tend to realise that dealing with three year olds is a thankless task. Nothing is fair and they are only sorry when it secures an advantage "Say sorry to your brother or we are not going to the sweet shop". 

When dealing with adults, we have the forlorn hope that they will be a bit more rational and equitable. We hope that they will recognise that being even handed means taking account of both sides and trying to reach common ground. In truth, the fairest solutions are ones where no one is happy but everyone can live with it. When people have disputes, I am shocked at how often the source of many serious problems are the most trivial of reasons, which seem to escalate relentlessly. Some minor perceived slight often results in a festering dislike, which sometimes escalates into all manner of silliness, 

Settlement of disputes involves meeting in the middle and trying to find a way forward rather than endlessly reviewing old disputes and trying to ascertain who is to blame. It means apologising even when you think the other person has a degree if culpability. It means acknowledging that your own behaviour may not have helped the situation. It means being mature enough to realise that settling an argument imperfectly is better than enlessly arguing and fighting. And most of all it means recognising that in wars, even victors suffer. Sadly many people rather narcissistically don't realise that carrying on silly disputes often hurts their friends as much as their enemies. 

Sensible people can 'agree to differ". 

The Saturday List #376 - My top ten best moments from school

 A mate said to me recently that all I ever do on the blog is moan about my time at school. They said "Did you actually enjoy any of it?". There were a few moments I recall. Here they are

1. Making a cotton reel crocodile in the 'baby class'. When I was at St Vincents, reception was called the baby class. The teacher was Sister Rosalie, who everyone thought was the 'nice nun'. She was always nice, never clobbered us and organised fun activities. The best one was making a cotton reel crocodile.

2. Catching Tadpoles at Darlands Lake. In Junior 2, we had Miss MacDonald. She was very pretty and very nice. I liked her. I can remember one spring, she took us down to the nearby Darlands Lake. At the time there was a boating lodge there. We caught Tadpoles and did a nature survey. I have loved the place ever since.

3. Arctic Roll. I used to quite like most of the dinners and puddings. My favourite, and I think this was a pretty universal choice amongst our school mates was the Arctic Roll. Whenever this was the pudding, we all felt like we'd won the lottery.

4. Football practice on a Sunday Afternoon at St Vincents. This was organised by Brother Jerry from St Josephs college. Dad would drive me up in his car, then we'd go for ice creams at Tonibell afterwards. Sadly, I was rubbish at football, but that never deterred me! As I was born in August, I was the smallest, weakest boy in the year. By the time I was 15, I became a big lump and a half decent defender. I think being small made me a bit fierce and this was well suited to industrial defending. I used to love that.

5. Scratching my name into the bricks at St Vincents on the last day at the school. It was a work of art, I think it's still there, even theough the school is now houses,

6. Margate. I don't have too many great memories of FCHS, which I joined in 1973. There were a couple of great moments. One was our trip to Margate. We absolutely ran riot, but it was an amazing day and going to Dreamland was fun. Our class was banned from any such trips again. But it was brilliant

7. Pine cones. Another great moment was when our class, form 4B stormed class 4H and pelted them with pine cones we'd collected during dinner break. There was bad feeling between our two classes. They were tougher, we were cleverer and we had a far higher number of troublemakers. It was a glorious feeling. We timed it so that their form teacher would arrive to take the dinner register as we left, meaning they couldn't follow us out. I suffered for it later when ambushed, but it was worth it.

8. In 1978, I joined Orange Hill Senior High School. I had a lot of fun there. I can well remember the first lesson I attended, a biology O Level class. I'd been at a boys school for five years and all of a sudden I was surrounded by pretty girls. It was wonderful. I felt like I'd been in prison and I'd just been let out.

9. Millport. We had a week long biology field trip to Millport, an island near Glasgow. It was amazing. We had to do a project, I chose to do one to see whether baby eels were attracted to fresh water. It involved a set up with a large section of gurrering in the science lab. Millport was owned by Westfield College and had well equipped facilities. I got a C+ for it. About three years later, my biology teacher saw me and apologised. He'd read an article in a science mag and some professor had won an award for a similar experiment. He said I should've got an A +. He said he hadn't taken me seriously, because I was a bit of a joker. He was a great bloke and gave me a brilliant job reference though.

10. From Jazz to Punk. Mr White, the deputy headmaster, asked me to do a presentation on how Jazz influenced Punk, as part of the celebrations for his retirement. He was a Jazz nut. It was the moment I realised that I had won the respect of my teachers at Orange Hill. I was quite shocked. It went really well. 

My take on the Gorton & Denton By Election

What does the Gorton & Denton By Election really tell us, well here is the result, but what does it really tell us.

Gorton & Denton By-Election Result:

🌍 GRN: 40.6% (+27.4)
➡️ RFM: 28.7% (+14.6)
🌹 LAB: 25.4% (-25.4)
🌳 CON: 1.9% (-6.0)
🔶 LDM: 1.8% (-2.0)
🎩 MRP: 0.4%
☑️ ADV: 0.4%
🇪🇺 REU: 0.3%
🗽 LBT: 0.1%
🔴 SDP: 0.1%
⚒️ CLG: 0.1%

Green GAIN from Labour.
Changes w/ GE2024.

— Election Maps UK (@ElectionMapsUK) February 27, 2026

Turnout 47.6%

Lets start by a look at the General Election.

Candidate                  Party                      Votes     Share         Change 

Andrew Gwynne       Labour                   18,555     50.8%     -16.5% 

Lee Moffitt                Reform UK              5,142     14.1%        9.2% 

Amanda Gardner       Green Party              4,810     13.2%     10.6% 

Amir Burney             Workers Party           3,766     10.3%     10.3% 

Ruth Welsh                Conservative            2,888        7.9%     -11.0% 

John Reid                   Liberal Democrat    1,399        3.8%     -2.0%

Turnout 47%

It is interesting that despite all of the hype, the turnout was about the same. If you look at the combined vote of the right, Reform and Tories, it has gone up from 22% to 28%. Although on paper this looks good for Reform, a sensible analysis would conclude that as the seat was formerly Labour, many sat on their hands. I suspect the same is true of many Labour voters this time. Most people agree that Andy Burnham would have won, given his profile and his lack of association with Starmer. To my eyes, the Green vote is as much two fingers up to Starmer as it was an endorsement of the Greens. That is not to belittle a great performance by them. It is clear that left of centre voters rather like their approach. Policies such as "don't dump shit in our waterways" is a no-brainer winner. Reform shot themselves in the foot putting up a very iffy candidate. Was he really the best they can manage? If he is, then they are doomed. 

I suspect Starmer is privately rather chuffed. His nightmare is a mass defection of working class support to Reform. What we are seeing is that Reform are not winning elections. They do OK in the polls, but people vote for whoever is best placed to clobber them. I suspect that Starmer will take a bloody nose from the Greens, if it means Burnham is kept out and Reform humiliated. We are still very mid term and I'd have been amazed if voters hadn't spanked Starmer. In truth, when Burnham was stopped, I expected Labour to be single digits. Governments always get kicked in the nuts when they are performing badly mid term. Sadly, I suspect that Starmer will be more than happy with getting 25%. 

It is interesting watching the bleating of Reform. It is odd how they don't like the fact that they can't win real elections. 

Do you ever wish Sir Keir Starmer would be more like Donald Trump?

 A rather interesting thought occurred to me today, as I was sitting in the lobby of the blood test department, reading the paper this morning. The front page of The Guardian had a headline that Democrats were condemning the 'State of the Union' speech, stating that it was a 'work of fiction'. I always rather enjoy Thursday's Guardian, as John Crace, who writes the Parliamentary sketch is a brilliant writer. There is little in the Guardian I actually find readable these days, but Crace is one of the reasons I still read the paper. In the last paragraph, he recounts that Starmer skewered Kemi Badenoch, with the killer line "You are just an irrelevance". I pondered on this and a rather odd thought came to me. Had Donald Trump uttered those words to Kamala Harris or Hillary Clinton in a Presidential debate, the liberal left would have been up in arms, and citing it as proof of Trump's misogyny. When Starmer utters it, the Guardian simply assumes he's right. In my mind, I started to imagine Donald Trump uttering those words. They would roll off his tongue far more easily than Starmers. 

In my bored day dream, I started to wonder, maybe Sir Keir Starmer is more like Donald Trump than we care to realise. Mayve what Starmer needs is to unleash his inner Donald Trump. The more I thought about it, the more similarities I started to see. They both thought it was an excellent idea that Peter Mandelson was ambassador to the USA. They both are out of step with the party they joined, both being far to the right of the machine they inherited (the Labour membership loved Jeremy Corbyn and many think Starmer too right wing). Both won big at the last election, with seemingly unassailable victories. 

But the differences are far more marked. Trump has used his mandate to do the things he believes America needs to be great again. It is a matter of opinion as to whether he is right, but whatever he does or doesn't do, we all know that he believes he has the answers and his agenda is the right one. Sir Keir Starmer doesn't even know what his own agenda and mandate is. With his majority, he could have bulldozed through a whole raft of populist measures that would have cemented Labour as the party of the people (something it has always pretended to be). What did he do? Put the boot into pensioners, whilst sucking up to the rich and powerful. He could have gone after multi national corporations that make billions in the UK and pay little tax, to fund a whole swathe of programmes of national regeneration. If he clobbered Amazon for £10 billion, butr said "Listen mate, your vans use the roads that we are fixing the pot holes in with the money", he'd have been highly popular and even Amazon may grudgingly admitted that it was a good idea, as their vehicles would ultimately require less maintenace. Multinationals like to have bases in the UK as English is the worlds business language, so a few quid from them to improve schools, universities and colleges would be an excellent idea, one they would ultimately benefit from. 

We may hate Trump and his tarriff scheme, but he has found a way to fix the US budget deficit. I'd love to see Starmer have the balls and do something similar here. Not in an American way, but in a way that would benefit the whole country. Starmer has a maassive majority, but he is a coward, so he is squandering the opportunity. I'd hate to have a Trump style leader in the UK, but I would like to see Starmer have the guts to pick fights with vested interests in the way Trump has. 

Rog T's cancer blog - The awful truth that you probably don't want to hear

 It's coming up to that time again. Tomorrow I go for my six monthly PSA test. It has been 2.5 years since my radical prostatectomy and all of the tests have been clear since then. Most of the time I don't think about cancer returning, but between now and when I get the result, it will loom large in my thoughts. I have spoken to plenty of other people who have been through a brush with cancer and have come through the other side and they all tell you that this is a very unpleasant period. I have no idea if I will ever not need PSA tests. At the moment I have one every six months. I'd gladly never have another one, but I don't want the b****rd disease to get me so if this is the price, then so be it.

I realised recently that there are four stages of having cancer, each has its challenges, The stage where you blissfully don't know you've got it. The stage where you are told you have it, but you know you have it, but are waiting to see what happens next. The stage where they are treating it or you are recovering from treatment and the stage where you are told that you are as OK as they can ever tell you. If I am still clear in August, I will move to the fourth stage, if tomorrow or August's test brings bad news, I will be back to stage two or three. For me, the waiting and seeing lasted from 2011 to 2015 and again from 2016 to 2024. It was easy to get lulled into a false sense of security. When the PSA starts going up again for prostate cancer sufferers, it is truly awful. When we await the result, it is like peaking into the windows of Hell.

I don't deal with this period particularly well. I am very snappy. I snapped at my wife for no real reason a couple of times today. Something I rarely do. I couldn't really understand why, until I started to write this blog. In truth I just want it all out of the way. The awful truth for anyone who has 'had a brush with cancer' is that this s**t will be a part of your life from now on. Maybe I am just weak and stupid and don't cope with such things very well, but its a quarter past eight in the evening and all I want to do is go to sleep and pretend it isn't happening. 

And the silly thing is that there is almost certainly nothing wrong with me. You may wonder why I am sharing this today. Well I was having a chat with a mate a week or so ago, who was going through a similar thing and I realised that on this horrible roller coaster ride at the worlds worst theme park, cancer valley, there are many nuanced ways in which you suffer. For me, cancer has become more of a mental health issue than a physical one. I am not afriad to say that and if you are feeling stressed, you are not alone.

And if you are just a bit curious, here is a little song and video I made about my experience having a prostatectomy. For 50 weeks of the year, I am fine. That is the upside, but until I get my test results, I am feeling rather anxious. 

Workplace blog #1 - The best and the worst boss I've ever had!

What is the worst boss you can have? One who belittles you, embarrasses you,  sets you almost impossible tasks, puts you in the path of physical harm for fun, berates you, swears at you and makes you feel useless.

What is the perfect boss? To me it is the one who you learn most from, who makes you up your game, makes you approach every task from the perspective of being a problem that you can solve, if you approach it correctly. One who when they are no longer your boss, you feel that you can rise to any challenge.

Let me tell you about the worst boss I ever had. He was called Micky. I worked for him for a couple of years on and off after I left school. I worked as a painter and decorator for Micky. He was Hungarian. He was a refugee who had come over after the Hungarian uprising against the Soviet Union. He would entertain us with stories of Russians he'd murdered as they approached Budapest. How they only ran when they ran out of bullets, or their machine gungs became too hot to fire. He told us how, when he arrived ithe UK, he was paid by the UK Secret services to dispose of people. He explained, they would be paid cash and ask no questions. I have no idea if it is true, but he said they employed people like him, as they could claim that it wasn't the UK murdering people. He also got work redecorating places where people had been murdered and a mess had been made. I had no reason to doubt him. His mates would laugh about some situations, which were truly stomach churning. Initially he worked in a restaurant and would hide weapons in the fridge. 

When I first worked for him, I was 18 and I finished when I was 20. Micky delighted in humiliating me. Even if it would cost him money, he would set traps, that meant I injured myself. On building sites, he'd get me to do dangerous tasks, with no safety gear and scream at me when I screwed up. If I was painting a window frame too slowly, he'd swear at me and call me "f*****ng Picasso". When I had a haircut for a gig with my band, it was "f*****ng Lochinvar". When I nearly cut my finger off with a Stanley knife it was "Are you a f*****ng girl, but some masking tape on it and get back to work". When I refused to help him nail a pigs head to the door of a local Rabbi's house, who had refused to pay him for work, he sacked me and called me a "Jew Lover". Micky liked the Nazi's, because they had been anti Soviet. He wasn't anti semitic, and worked for most of the Rabbi's in Golders Green, but if you didn't pay Micky, he'd take a terrible revenge. I heard from one of his other guys that after the Pigs head incident, the Rabbi paid and got him to do more work. To Micky, it was simply business and he would do what he needed to to get results. When I worked for him, I hated him most of the time. He would not let me drink tea, insisting I drank Nescafe Gold Blend coffee, as he said the smell of tea made him feel sick. He'd encourage his mates to nick my sandwiches, which only stopped when I put a disgusting filling in one. Another of his mates used to physically bully me. That stopped when he surprised me by punching me in the back of the head. I punched him, knocking him clean out, resulting in him falling down the stairs and being off work for a week. Micky thought it was hilarious and the bullying stopped. There was a French guy who also worked for Micky. I got off lighty compared to him. Micky didn't like the French at all.

But in many ways, Micky was also the best boss I had. All of the belitlling of my work made me up my game and work quickly, which meant I earned more money. All of the setting of traps when assigning work, made me think about what I was doing and take nothing for granted. The bullying taught me to stand up for myself. I learned to always have eyes in the back of my head. The insults made me resiliant. I never lose my temper at work, even when faced with the most obnoxious of behaviour. I came to respect Micky, he'd come with nothing and made a lot of money. But the biggest lesson was in the ten minute tea breaks, where I was forced to drink Gold Blend. Micky would feed us rolls made with Hungarian salami "the best salami, not like that Italian s**t". Micky read the papers every day and listened to the news on the world service. He'd give us a monolgue on the news of the day. It was 1981-83, the cold war was still going on. He predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. He explained that when he took his family to the USA, he realised that the USSR simply could not compete and it was slowly falling to bits. He explained that none of Russia's Warsaw pact allies would fight for them. When they invaded Hungary, the Poles accompanying the Russians were not given bullets, as the Russians feared they'd join with the Hungarians. He emphasised that every time we go to the shops, every choice we make in buying products is supporting someone. He would only buy products that aligned with his world view. He refused to put a penny in the pockets of anyone he felt were not aligned with his views. 

When I knocked his mate out, his only comment was "I thought you were a girl" and he used to tease his made that he'd been beaten up by a girl. After I was sacked, he told a mate who worked for him "I had to sack him, he was catching on too fast". Micky didn't want workers who thought for themselves too much. I couldn't understand why he picked fights and sacked good people. I came to realise that it was all about control. Once you started to question him, he felt undermined. If he was undermined, he couldn't keep the jobs running on schedule. Many of his Hungarian mates were alcoholics with severe PTSD and some were clearly psychotic. If he let his guard down for a second, they would cause mayhem.He simply wasn't suited to managing people like me in what we now consider a reasonable manner, but I can honestly say that it gave me nearly all the tools I need to be successful in life.

Years after, I met his son by chance. His son was four years old when Micky died. He had been told stories of how heroic Micky was, how he was perfect in every way. Micky's wife presumably either never saw the side we saw, or didn't pass it on. I told a couple of the more tame anecdotes and realised his son was deeply shocked by them. He hadn't realised what Micky had done to get himself on his feet in the UK, when he arrived as a refugee. He'd just assumed he was a successful immigrant businessman.

It was not a pleasant experience working for Micky, but it was a massive education. The best side of it was that he made me realise that you had to rise to the challenge and think. The abuse and the bullying was unpleasant, but of all things he said, the most important was one sentance "We are all only here to make money, so stop f*****ng around". That is the essence of running a successful business.Micky would say that to staff. To customers he'd say "I only have two rules in business, one is that I do the best job and the second is that you pay me what you are supposed to. If you understand that we will be friends". When it came to business, you wanted to be Micky's friend. 

Such jobs no longer exist. I don't suppose many of todays British teenagers would last five minutes with Micky. I am not entirely sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing.

******

This is the first in a series of blogs detailing my experiences working in various industries etc, over the course of my long career. I thought I'd start with the most extreme example

The Sunday Refection #77 - Why I won't be giving up lying for Lent!

 Like many of this series of blogs, the seeds were sown at mass this morning. If you are not familiar with sich things, this is the first Sunday of Lent. Normally, I give up something for Lent, but as I was away I completely forgot to make a 'lentern resolution'. Often they involve giving up items of food or booze. To be honest, with all the lunacy in the world right now, I could not cope with the idea of 40 days without a drink. I normally don't drink 3 days a week, the days I do, I tend to enjoy it. As for food. Generally I give up something I like that is not particularly healthy, but I am eating too much of. Since I had cancer, I am pretty sensible. I toyed with the idea of giving up cheese, but I don't eat that much of it most of the time. So what could I do? I had a wonderful idea at Mass. I'd give up telling porkies! Now I like to think of myself as a pretty honest and straightforward person, I don't con or rob anyone. But I do on occasion tell the odd white lie. Yesterday, I went to see Luton Town play Burton Albion FC, with a mate I've not seen for a few months. A group of us went out in Bedford then Luton. I bailed out relatively early. I wanted to watch Man City Vs Newcastle and we'd been drinking since 11.30am.

On the train home, I realised I'd not been showing my beloved wife enough appreciation. So I stopped by at M&S and got her a bunch of flowers and some nice food and cooked her a nice dinner, before the match started. I got the inevitable question "How much did you have to drink?". My answer "Not that much, we didn't have one at the match". The second part was true, but the first part? Well we had two in Bedford, then got the train to Luton and had three. Aftre the match, we went back to the pub and had another one, then went to the pub over the road and had another two. That is eight  pints, albiet over about seven hours. By most people's standards it is quite a lot. It occurred to me I'd mislead her as I didn't want a bent ear. 

As I contemplated this at mass, I felt a tad guilty. I had mislead her as I didn't want my ear bent. HAd \i told her, it wouldn't have made any difference and I'd have had a bent ear, but it would have little effect on anything. Next time I go out with my mates, the number of pints I drink won't be reduced as the result of her ire. Today I won't be drinking. Sunday is often a day I abstain, usually as it is the day when I can ensure I do my three days non drinking. This week, as I was away, it will just be two. In Portugal with Boz, I drank far more than I should, but it was great to catch up and didn't interfere with our work. Boz likes to start around noon. I got up every day at 8am and took his dogs for a two mile walk up a mountain.

Anyway, as I sat in mass, I thought "Yes I should give up lying". The first reading was all about the Serpent tempting Eve to eat the apple in the garden of Eden and the gospel was about the Devil tempting Jesus in the desert. I have trouble with both stories. The apple story ends with Adam and Eve eating the apple and realising the horrible reality of existence. My personal view is that it is not a true story, rather a parable with a deeper meaning. In many ways the story is the same as Pandora's box or even the rhyme of Humpty Dumpty. The message is that if you seek the truth, what you find may well be the most terrible thing in the world. The current situation with Prince Andrew/Epstein is rather like that. I think we all preferred it when he was gamourous war hero, who dated porn stars and was one of the good guys. The fact that he's seedy, money grabbing fool, who enjoys parties at the residence of people trafficking paedophile is pretty awful. But it is the truth. It always was the truth.

Which comes back to me. Is Mrs T happier knowing that I had 8 pints yesterday or not? Would she be happy if I told her thr truth when she asks if her bum looks big in a pair of jeans she likes. Incidentally, I've always found the "does my bum look big" question a ridiculous one. Surely the question should be do I look nice, as on occasion a female will look very fetching when her bum looks big in something.  I am not brave enough to say what I think and to be quite honest my view has always been she looks beautiful in just about anything or nothing. I care vary little about the wrapping paper, as it were. 

And then there is work. I run a music studio. Bands, often young ones often ask my opinion of their music. Often it is rubbish. Now if I say "Blimey, it's awful" who does that serve. Often the reason it is awful is because they are young, inexperienced and tpo busy enjoying being in a band to listen properly. Again they've asked the wrong question. The question should be, what do you think we could do to improve the track. Oddly the answer is usually the same. Make sure you are in time and in tune. Make sure that the good things in the music are let breath. Make sure you can hear the vocals and work out what the key hooks are. Often when such things are broken down, there are many great elements that are being swamped through inexperience. 

And then there is just the fact that upsetting people, when you don't need to is not what good people do. A mate of mine was telling me that his mum had alzheimers and she wasvery confused. She was saying long dead people had visited her, She often told stories of being whisked away in helicopters. None of it was true. He'd been advised to come to terms with her reality and just go along with it. Telling her that Uncle Jack was dead would just upset her.  I sanyone's best interests really best served. 

Which takes me back to Adam and Eve and the apple. It seems to me that they were happy living in a world of illusion, where everyting was peaches and cream. The truth just made us all miserable. All I really concluded was that I'd make a very poor theologian. 

Back on track! What have I missed

 The more sharp eyed readers will have noticed a relative lack of activity on the Barnet Eye over the last week. There is a very good reason for this, I've not been being lazy. I've been in Portugal with my good mate, music maestro Boz Boorer mixing the brand new album by The False Dots. Boz lives in Monchique in Portugal, up a mountain. It is the perfect location to get totally immersed in mixing an album. This is pretty much all I did for four days!  

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All of my creative energy was pretty much used up on the job at hand, and I didn't want to start getting sidetracked. It was nice being in the sunshine, away from the everyday distractions and the news. I deliberately avoided the news etc. 

I travelled back yesterday, got a takeaway curry then got home watched the news and BBC QT. Blimey.....

My first thought was I wished I'd stayed up the mointain! I'll give a short round up of what caught my eye.

The Artist formerly known a Prince Andrew. What on Earth can anyone say. I did a quick google to see how much he'd earned as a Royal from the Taxpayer (well it says from the Queen, but we all know where the cash really comes from "Total Official Funding: Over his roughly 40-year career as a working royal, he received an estimated £13 million (roughly $17.5 million) in public and royal-household funding.". For most people I know that would be plenty. He got free housing and accomodation. I recall his wedding well. I was workin in an office on Buckingham Palace Road. The Police and SAS used it as a hub, as the top two floors were empty. At the time he was a National Hero, a helicopter pilot from The Falklands. He was marrying Sarah Ferguson. She wasn't a beauty in the classic sense. I actually thought "He's a decent boke, clearly values personality over looks". He was a handsome Prince and I assumed he could have his pick of attractive young ladies. I recall a mate of mine saying "what's wrongw ith him marrying her?" I said "maybe he wants someone who will be a life partner and be on the same wavelength as him"..I suspect I was right, but not in the way I thought. In many ways, his life is a modern day Shakespearean tragedy. All Prince Andrew ever had to do was not be a complete twats and we'd have forgiven him anything. 

I got an inkling what he was actually like 20 years or so ago. A friend was having a 40th Birthday party at a club in Notting Hill Gate. Prince Andrew was at a party downstairs. He got very drunk and abusive and a couple of friends, witnessed him throw a tantrum. We can all have bad days, but what I heard was that this was the norm, not the exception. With every revealation, it becomes worse. Being involved with a dodgy paedophile is never good. Supplying one with dodgy information, so he can make millions is even worse. I have always been a republican. I said that out of respect for her Majesty The Queen, any decision on their future could wait. Butthe horrific truth is that had The King fallen off his horse in 1969 and killed himself, Andrew would be the King. Andrew has done more to undermine the Royals than every UK republican in the last 100 years. But the horrific truth is that The Queen, Charles, the lot of them all knew what he was like. 

Reform. Last night I watched BBC QT. WTF is going on at the BBC. They had Tories, Labour and Reform in QT last night. Where were the Lib Dems and the Greens? The bloke who was their spokesman was Robert Jenrick. A bloke who was a Tory until he decided that Reform had better career prospects. A man with no principles and no honour. Reform have more MP's who defected from the Tories than were elected. The truth is that the country is in a mess because of 14 years of Tory misrule. Jenrick was a big part of that. The only vaguely compelling argument for Reform was that they were untainted by the failure of Tory and Labour governments. Taking the worst of the Tory Party is IMHO a massive mistake.I have an aversion to people like Jenrick, but to me he came across as smug and irritating. A man who stabs all his former mates in the back to further his career is no good at all. 

Immigration. Journalist Jon Sopel made a fascinating revealation last night.  Net immigration to the UK is at a record low. I googled it and it appears to be true. Jon Sopel explained that if current trends continue, the UK may not actually be aable to function as a working economy in ten years. There simply won't be enough people to do all the key jobs. It would be the biggest irony of all, if Reform win in 2029 and have to increase immigration to stop an economic collapse. I need to do a lot more research to properly understand this, but should be the biggest story, as the wellbeing of the economy affects us all. No one seems to know.

Arsenal. This is one story I did know about. I always follow the football result. At Xmas, it looked like Arsenal were romping to the league title. Now they are having a serious wobble, dropping points to a team that had a single digit points tally with twelve games to go. I know, only too well, that you can't celebrate until the trophies are in the cupboard. It is clear that the Arsenal we are seeing in Februrary are a very different beast to the one we saw in December. Winning the Premiership is hard. Pressure is a funny thing and football puts pressure on teams like no other sport. When Wolves scored the equaliser, every Arsenal fan would have felt sick in their stomach. As to how the players felt. Ifyou want to be Champions, you need to pick yourself up and go again. I have seen many Arsenal fans starting to question Arteta. Careful what you wish for. You are still top of the league and it is still in your hands. I hope you lose, as a Mancheser City fan, but Arteta has done an amazing job and anyone who thinks that he's the wrong man should look at their nearest neighbours or City's. If you press the panic button every time things go badly, you end up in a mess. I actually quite like Arteta, tribal allegiances aside. He is a pragmatic manager, who gets results. He sometimes gets criticised for being over cautious, but he has to work with what he has got. Arsenal have far less resources than Mancheste United, but look at the difference in points. It is not Arteta's fault that he is competing against the best manager on the planet, with owners with the deepest pockets. Arsenal fans will hate me for saying this, but for Arsenal to win the league, CIty have to have an off season. And when I say a season, I mean 38 games. City have not been brilliant thus far, but they have a track record of doing the business when it matters. 

And finally....

It's Friday, so as is the tradition in Barnet blogs, here is a Friday joke. This made me laugh, which is probably a terrible indictment on me!

Always check the height of a ceiling fan when carrying a toddler on your shoulders.

Don't ask me how I know this.

— Robert Wilkinson (@robertwlk) February 14, 2026

Have a great weekend