I travelled back in time ... and am very glad we've moved on

Remember I told you I was reading P D James the other week? I do like a good detective story and coupled with that she's a brilliant writer. Anyway, I was thrilled this week to discover there is a new TV series called Dalgleish, based on some of her novels.

Hold the Front Page!

Exciting news! Forget Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime and all those swanky, cash rich American streaming services, I've discovered something even better. It's called Channel 5 and it's free with your existing TV Licence. Didn't know it existed.

It does, and it was there, people, that I discovered Dalgleish. Bertie Carvel (who I saw in Matilda a long time ago and had pigeon holed as a comedy actor) plays the sombre, haunted detective. He's does an exceedingly good job. The series is set in the seventies, but that's not the only reason I felt as though I was travelling back in time.

TV Adverts.

I suspect there is a way to pay someone to make them go away but I haven't figured that out yet and I don't pay for this service anywhere else so I'm not about to start now. Which meant that to devour a whole episode of Dalgleish I also had to sit through about 28 minutes of TV adverts.

The good news is that the ad men have obviously got the message. You've never seen such a diverse group of people popping up on all the Christmas ads. Except the Aldi one (I think it's Aldi) where the ad men were obviously so worried about upsetting a minority group of one sort or another that they've gone bananas. Literally. Their ad has a banana dressed up as Scrooge singing a song about kindness. Really.

Funnily enough, though, there is one ad which remains resolutely in the 1970s. It's the one for a Flash mop which, naturally, has a white 40 year old woman dancing around the kitchen singing about how happy she is to be able to use the mop to make her floor sparkle. I kid you not.

A Geography Lesson

My daughter is (allegedly) studying geography in Manchester. It's a very strange subject if you ask me. One day you can be learning about gender politics and the next you're explaining how an oxbow lake is created. In my day, I'm sure it was just about learning capital cities, flags, which countries are in what continent and the like.

Facts such as what constitutes "the North."

Now, I know some readers will argue (rightly) that the North starts at Sheffield. Others will say that's nonsense, it begins at Middlesborough and I'm sure those from Newcastle would draw the line just below the Tyne. Anyway, I think we can all agree that it does NOT include Birmingham. Birmingham, my friends, is in the MIDLANDS.

The North

It was during the 1980s that the railway line from Doncaster to London was electrified. Travel times to the capital were reduced to 90 minutes. The upshot of this, as far as I can recall, was that house prices in Doncaster went through the roof. Nothing to do with jobs and prosperity in Doncaster, all to do with the fact that you could live there and work in London.

I started work at the end of the 80s and was based in Leeds for much of the next decade. Doncaster to London was a breeze but Leeds to Manchester, Bradford to Sheffield, Sheffield to York, York to Manchester. Forget it.

There was a quaint little rail line that went through the pennines, stopping where ever it could, with two or three carriages taking people from Sheffield to Manchester but it took a very long time and was very very crowded. It's still there. And is still the only way of travelling between these two great cities on public transport.

So we were all quite excited when Boris & his mates promised to improve things. To put some steam into the Northern Powerhouse. Sadly, it turns out steam will have to do, literally, because the Eastern leg of HS2 is stopping at Birmingham. Don't worry, though, because they might get Leeds a tram.

Yorkshire

Back in the 70s you could only play for Yorkshire at cricket if you were born in the county. So you can imagine what the team looked like. In fact this rule was only changed in 1992 - can you believe it - when the men in charge obviously realised there were, literally, onto a loser. It now appears that whilst they changed the rules, they didn't do anything to change their underlying beliefs, attitudes and prejudices.

Sorry. All they had to do was put their hands up and apologise. When Azeem Rafiq originally made his complaint, back in 2018, the right thing to do was to investigate (not a very difficult thing to do by the sound of it given all the other examples of racism coming to light now), apologise and figure out how to change things.

But no. The arrogance of the men in charge meant they didn't do that. Lucky for us, I guess, as their behaviour has been laid bare and brought shame on the lot of them. I still haven't heard a whole lot of "sorry"s though.

Mind your Ps and Qs

Speaking of which, I felt very sorry this week for poor Dr Catherine Mann of the Bank of England. She made the mistake of voicing a personal opinion that women who continue to work mainly from home could find their careers suffer compared to male counterparts who are willing and able to get back to the office.

Any sane person (in my obviously sane opinion) would say, "Mmm, that's very interesting and if you think about it she's probably got a point, so what are we going to do about it?" Instead, social media was full of women (and a few men) calling her out for betraying her sex. Or do I mean gender.

I've written about this elsewhere so I won't repeat the argument but in my view it's less about where you work than what you do when you get there. Some face time with colleagues and clients is going to be better than none at all and if you follow the money, make sure you're valuable and make damn sure that the people who matter know you're valuable your career should be fine.

Note to Catherine

Please can you focus on your day job. I'm worried about inflation and I think the Bank of England is dragging its heels on interest rates.

I'm reading: The Promise by Damon Galgut. Won the Booker prize. Rightly. Magnificent.

I'm watching: I've told you this. Were you not paying attention? Lots of adverts & a bit of Dalgleish

I'm listening to: Adele's new album. Not because I've bought it but my daughter has and she's home for "reading" week so I'm assuming it will be aired at some point.