Jordan Banjo, on I am a Celebrity.

I am sitting going through all the emails related to the business deal done last year that went awry and watching Jordan Banjo on TV. He comes across as a nice guy.  And I am sure he is, but I am interested in the things that he has said about his Dad.  And having done business with a relative of his have found it all a bit surreal.   Rather a lot of anger coming up at times.

Good news bad news.

Bloody Ex

Bloody Angry Now Judge Organised

Good Energy Otherwise Real Girl Is Aware

Pension Problems Possibly Pierced

Coping Computer Constraints

Happy Hopes Hijacked.

Bloody bloody EX.

Sports criminology

A big congrats to big brother, Nic Groombridge, on the publication of his book Sports Criminology.  Super proud of your intelligence and achievements.  http://policypress.co.uk/sports-criminology

Plucked by a musical memory.

I believe in nothing anymore,  there is just the anger. In my head today I have ranted and yet I bet if I try and put it on paper about how it feels to trust someone, something - let it into one's heart and head, well I will try

I have been watching the powerful series Undercover - very powerful, also set in familiar territory physically speaking but there was a moment in it when she accuses her ex husband of raping her because the man she gave consent to is not the man he is.  Well I think a lot of us know how that feels, when it turns out that the person we thought was everything turns out to be not just a liar, sadly that often goees with the territory of love,  but a liar with a plan,  someone who worms into your being, gets to know you, your family, you hopes, your dreams who uses that information and uses, that knowledge. A liar who sits with you as you watch your father die and who gives his sympathy and holds you as you cry but then who lifts that man's memory and pockets it in his new dress suit, a new lady on his arm.   A hundred shares go around the world, come into my facebook and out again and immediately the share button sends pictures for prayers, pictures for hopes, pictures for the dying, the victims of the unjust but I cannot get a message out there at all.  There are people who know this man, people who know what he has truly done, but these people have been told, forget him forget the damage he has done, the money you have lost move on. But the only person who moves on is him, to his next victim and the next victim and the next victim.  And do you know how that makes me feel.  So angry,

So please please please women who know where he is, women who have been his victim, who have been plucked by the musical instrument,  please please report it.  Report it, report it and then the police may do something.

This is not something I did to myself, but something someone deliberately did to me and then when I try to speak out about it, someone who tries to silence me.  Well today I just feel too sad and angry to be silent.

Nothing that he did, but just a trigger that brings it back.

You and Yours Guide to help avoid being scammed.

It is now over a year since I first started being embroiled and groomed by the man I believe conned me. Even though I know I have lost money when I see him or think of him, I almost cannot believe it happened to me, I still somehow want what he told me to be true.   And if what I hear is true the man concerned is back in action so shortly another woman could be in the same position as me, trying to make sense of how she gave money to someone who on the face of it could absolutely be trusted but in the end turned out to be a very clever manipulater.

So this You and Yours guide to scams is very very helpful: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zxq8frd


My "scammer" seemed to be honest, god fearing, wealthy, a member of a good family.  I felt valued when I told him about some of the things that had happened in me in life.  It felt lovely to share and he used that information to get to me.  The police do want to speak with him to hear his side of the story or to charge him if the evidence from a range of women stacks up against him. So as well as looking for his address still, if anyone thinks they too may have been scammed by the same man I think scammed me, I would like to hear from them as working together may also be a way to close the door on fraud.

Education and Retirement: An Enquiry into the Relevance of Education to the Enjoyment of Leisure in Later Life

So it is almost 6 months since I tried to type up Dad's interview that I conducted about 2007. Somehow grief, loosing money to some bloke, and loosing patience with work seem to have taken over - I seem to spend my days trying to get the police to chase up on fraud and me trying to work out why everything re work has gone pear shape.  So just keeping going has seemed the priority but today I decided a bit more effort was required to update the story.  So this chunk of work is connected to Brian Groombridge's  book about Education and Retirement.



So that actually brings us back to the beginning of your story, because in a way, I was quite interested that you've written even as a young man you were interested in education for older people, so the obvious question is, can you give me a portrait of you as a young man, because of course I do not know that person.

That's a good question and I 'm not sure I'm capable of answering but I will at least explain to you specifically why I came to write the book published in 1960 when you know I was born in 1926 so I was still a relatively young man.  I cannot take the credit for that. I was working then for the National Institute of Adult Education as it was then called.   It is now called the National Institute of Adult and Continuining Education. Anyway it was N.I.A.E or the Institute as we used to call it, the boss of that was a wonderful man called Edward Hutchinson, one of the two or three people who have inspired me in the course of my life.  He was in very close contact with an extraordinary man, who ran the organisation then known as the National Older People's Council, but then later known as Age Concern, and now known as Age UK, and that man was amazing because he had foreseen the demographic change that was going to come over this country. He saw it way ahead of time consequently when I was asked to write the book Education and Retirement, although it was the first book on this subject published in this country it was not the first book on this subject published in English because the Americans, for some reason, were in fact 10 to 20 years ahead of us, so that in academic circles in the United States you had actually people who were Social Gerontologists,  specialising in the possibilities of continuing education even as you grew older and the Americans, forgive my little diversion, but just to show, for every 10yeras I think it was in the States had a White House even to do with adult education. They were way ahead of us politically.   

Unfortunately, and I have this on good authority, unfortunately my book was so - not because of anything to do with me, but because of the credit of the man |I am referring to, it was so ahead of its time that the book never really had the influence that it needed to have. There were a few people who caught up with it and were therefore to some extent  inspired and informed by it but if you ask most people when do you think people in this country became aware of the education possibilities of being old they will probably think two to three years after my book was published. I am not complaining, I am just explaining how the thing..  Sometimes an idea the zeigeist has to catch up.  I think the zeitgeist did have to catch up. I didn't play a very strong part in converting the spirit of the age into intergenerational awareness of demographic shift because the marvellous thing is, not only has democracy changed but the belief in older people's learning capacity has changed because it is within my memory, and a lot of people much younger than me will remember that people used to talk about, "you're too old, too old, you are past it, mate." you know and a to be quite frank a lot of men died within a year or so of retirement. So what do we owe that to, we owe it to all sorts of things.  In my case, and I think I am very typical, it has to do with 1) changed attitudes towards yourself, but 2) let's hear it. pharmaceuticals, there are now drugs that you can take, and I take 4 a day, which did not exist at one time and that drug helps me protect myself from having first degree heart boom, boom,boom. Yeah, I am not tell you isn't if wonderful I am important enough to live a long time, no, no I am telling you I've got an optimistic temperament.   which is relevant and I take 4 tablets a day thank you very much pharmaceuticals.