This Blog is not an Official U3A Committee Publication. It is written solely by me and the opinions expressed are therefore not necessarily those of the committee, nor is it restricted solely to U3A matters. However I write it primarily to progress my job as Groups' coordinator by publicising and giving a flavour of the Swansea U3A activities, particularly this year's new groups. Keeping my readership content is a prime objective.
I like to think this Blog has been an important step change on inevitably less frequent and expensive postal mailing shots. To date I have been reliant on the Internet addresses that I have been able to collect personally, starting with about 30 obtained trawling around the conveners at the Open Day in the Dolphin to about 120 in January. I have now received the full set of email addresses held by the U3A for the purpose of passing information to members. This means that future Blog Update email messages will in future go to around 250 members, out of a total membership of 650, a proportion I am sure will increase rapidly as broadband becomes every one's communication medium of choice.
I take that release of addresses as a vote of confidence. Although I do mass mailings the email addresses of recipients does not appear on them, unless by error - just one mistake so far in over 50 mailings.
TAI CHI
This is clearly going to rival JIVE and MOTO as the best supported new Groups, since no less than twenty three members turned up for the inaugural session last Friday. I personally expect an increase in numbers as word spreads of just how successful that session was, and how suitable Tai Chi is for our age group. In addition to which 30 members signed the original list and some would undoubtedly have been put off by the snowy weather. Thanks go to Bob Hughes who received the original contact from Mike Hart and rapidly turned it into action. He has also provided the pictures.
Mike Hart demonstrated that he is a skilled teacher of the discipline but also that he conducts the sessions in the pleasant, relaxed, way which is the hallmark of the U3A Groups. He had offered to do the first six sessions for free, but being aware that teaching Tai Chi is his living and clearly wanting it to remain a U3A Group activity, we are proposing to do only the first two sessions at £1.50 but thereafter to raise the subscription to £3 a session so that we are in position to offer him payment.
Group charges are an issue because, whilst many of us can easily afford the charges, we have also to think of those who live on standard pensions. Charges mount up for active participants, a consideration I have heard expressed on several occasions. We will reassess once we have a better idea of the numbers attending on a regular basis.
ITALIAN and READING 4 will share the Craft Room at Hazel court on Monday 9 February.
The Italian class starts at 10am and would welcome additional members. We are conscious there is a difference in levels, but we are determined to make the class suitable for keen beginners, which was not done at the last session with Carolina, whilst providing an opportunity for those of us who studied the language in the past to strengthen our knowledge of the basics. The Convenor is Pat Carpenter 519997
The Reading group start at 10.30am. The books being discussed are Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks and No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay. Any particularly interested should attend as a taster but we appreciate demand may be high enough to justify setting up yet another reading group. The Convenor is Dorothy Little on 511127
CREATIVE WRITING 2 also meets at Hazel Court on Monday 9 February but at 10.15 and in the Exercise Room. In future it will revert to Tuesday meeting at Hazel Court in the Craft Room.
POLITICS and CITIZENSHIP meet in the West Cross Community Centre at 2.00pm on Tuesday 10 February to follow up on their fascinating guided visits to the Jewish Synagogue and the Muslim Mosque, and to discuss the political changes to be expected in the USA now that Barack Obama has taken over as President.
CHESS
The next meeting will be the following Monday 16 February at 10am in the Craft Room in Hazel Court. I mention this today because Joan and I would welcome new members of any standard from absolute beginners to skilled players. Indeed we need increased support or we will lose our fine tutor Ken Huntley. I hope some will be forthcoming from the vastly extended circulation of this blog.
WEDNESDAY LECTURES
Esther Searle writes to remind me that the Grove is not available for the lectures on 11 Feb, 26 Feb and 11 March, all of which will be held in the ground floor Faraday Lecture Theatre in the Engineering Block.
She also informs me that Ian Masters cannot come on 18 Feb but that his colleague Miles Willis, from the Marine Energy Task Group for Wales, will substitute. There will however be a change of title and the paper will be more general in nature.
BRIDGE
Thanks to Chairman Bob for the photographs of this seemingly happy group! The regular readers will have read of my particular aversion to this game - but it certainly adds to the diversity of offerings from the Swansea U3A Groups and I welcome that above all.
ARMCHAIR TRAVEL
Last Friday Tony Searle took us round Southern Peru, featuring Macchu Picchu especially but also the Nazca Lines and the Amazon basin on the east of the Andes. The next talk will be given by Joan on our independent travel by colourful 'chicken buses' across Guatemala, though this will not be until April since the March meeting has been cancelled.
CONCERT GOERS - ELGAR VIOLIN CONCERTO
Over twenty turned up on an unpleasant afternoon for the meeting organised by Cecily last Monday in the Council Chamber of what was County Hall. We got a thorough and very enjoyable insight to this work with musical illustrations on his viola by Dr Bernard Kane from Cardiff. The remaining talks will be split between him and Clive John.
In the event the actual concert was poorly attended largely because of the weather conditions, though there was plenty of representation of the U3A. The concert itself by the National Orchestra of Wales was a big success with some wonderful violin playing by James Ehnes. I thoroughly enjoyed the work which, being musically more challenging than the Mendelssohn symphony which preceded it, held my rapt attention throughout.
JAZZLANDS the night before featured Dave Cottle's excellent house trio with Mark Bassey on trombone and Simon Savage on saxophone playing in the cool relaxed jazz style associated with the (USA) West Coast in 50's and 60's. It was an excellent evening which I enjoyed rather more than the bigger names a week earlier and it cost only £8, with a 25% reduction for members.
However I write about it now not because of the music but because of the inspiration of seeing someone overcome adversity. Thalidomide had left Mark Bassey without forearms or fingers and just one vestigial thumb. It wasn't immediately obvious as he was playing superbly, but Joan noticed first as he flicked with great precision through the pile of sheet music on his stand using his thumb and a steel hook on his right hand, which we assume he was also manipulating. Next we noticed the hook on his trombone hand which was clipped on to control the slide. Joan wondered if there was any other instrument he could have played.
For the encore he gave us an unexpected answer, the keyboards. He adjusted the hook on his right hand so that he could play chords with two notes (thumb and hook), he unscrewed the hook from his left arm, then pulled off the wooden forearm extension, which made it possible to play trombone, and proceeded to play single notes of melody with the ungainly stump. He chose Cjam Blues, the Duke Ellington tune, probably to avoid having to cope with black notes. Being a talented jazzman his timing was perfect and he wisely adopted the style of Thelonius Monk, who frequently played his strange harmonies with incredible spacing between notes. Anyone interested in the style should play his classic recording of his own tune Bags Groove made in the 50's with Miles Davies. Meanwhile Dave Cottle picked up Mark's trombone to complete the group (his party trick is to play jazz keyboard chords with his left hand and jazz trumpet with his right). I doubt that I have ever witnessed everyone on stage and audience grinning uncontrollably like Cheshire Cats. It was a truly uplifting display - and good lesson in simple modern jazz.
Incidentally this Wednesday 11 February at 8.30pm they are featuring another hugely talented five piece group called Protect the Beat, led by Derek Nash (Jools Holland's saxophonist) and the second appearance in two weeks of Jim Mullen on guitar. They are expecting a big audience with probably a greater thn usual appeal for students, so thet advise early arrival. Entrance £12.
MUMBLES MOVIES
Member Laurence Hopes writes to say he will be showing 7.45pm Friday 27 February Very Annie Mary, a humorous look at life in South Wales, at Ostreme Hall. He advertises it as an alternative to the wall to wall Rugby for St David's weekend. Starring Mumbles actress Joanna Page, alias Stacey in TV's Gavin and Stacey.
ENGINEERING
I found huge ironies in the presentation by our President Professor Richard Davies last Wednesday. In his presentation engineering headed the list of the subjects which lead to the best career prospects, both in terms of salary and vacancies. Indeed he made clear the large demand for graduates of all numerate disciplines including Mathematics, Accountancy and Economics. He rated only Law in the same category of opportunity from what we used to call the Arts subjects.
Yet if my knowledge is still current then engineering is now amongst the least demanding university courses in which to enrol because the demand from potential students is simply insufficient. I am surprised to hear that in de-industrialised Britain there is unsatified demand from the workplace. At which point I should declare that he and I both started life as engineering graduates. The irony here is that now the poorest qualified students end up on the best career paths - that portends ill for the British economy.
When I left Imperial College in the mid fifties British engineering was still world class. If I talk specifically of the electrical industry, I know best, then think of the world ranking firms which have disappeared, British Thompson Houston (BTH) in Rugby where I spent my first summer vacation, or English Electric in Stafford, Rugby and Kidsgrove where I worked before coming to Wales, Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) and Metro Vick in Manchester, General Electric Company (GEC) in Birmingham, and many other medium sized and small companies.
I went for interviews at factories around the country and found little sign the firms had thought how best to use graduates. They offered the standard £550/annum to enrol on a 2 year graduate apprenticeship. Then Canadian Westinghouse came to college to interview and offered me their standard rate, more than three times the salary, to go on a well thought out one year graduate training. Hence I emigrated to Canada. A decade later that minute trickle became a flood to the USA and was head-line news as The Brain Drain.
When I returned in the early 60's those world names were still around, but not for long. British engineering firms were not performing well and accountants were taking the senior positions in industry. In particular Arnold Weinstock of GEC was bent on consolidating and asset stripping the electrical industry. One by one those firms disappeared as separate entities and he built up a huge firm and huge cash fund. What's left of them is now largely under French control in Alstom and Alcatel. The one British engineering company of that era, Rolls Royce (aero engines not cars), to hold on to top world rating was managed throughout by engineers. Though even they had to be rescued by government due to the huge investment needed to built their revolutionary and world beating RB211 engine.
By 1966 I came to work on the automation and computer control of the steel industry, mainly at Port Talbot. I was convinced that the British trained graduate engineers of my day given the opportunity to express themselves were first class - a confidence that never failed me - and we were able to design build and program very large and reliable control and instrumentation systems across the works from large British designed and manufactured sub systems. Computers from Ferranti with every single word of software written to purpose by a small in-house team at Port Talbot, one of the world's very first colour CRT based monitors from Serck and later using colour VDUs from Microvitec, Instrument and Control interfaces from GEC 'Media' and Transmitton giving way to the first digital three term controllers from Turnbull Control Systems and then GEC PLCs. All bolted together (as the jargon has it) by racks of purpose designed serial line communication electronics units from the Swansea based firm Digitrol.
At that stage Britain was still at the forefront of so called 'real time' computing, following on the lead gained in the war at Bletchley Park with the world's first electronic computer called Collossus. Firms like Ferranti, Marconi, English Electric and AEI designed and manufactured computers and software suited to industrial applications. Two decades later all those firms had virtually disappeared swamped by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) who set about designing high quality but slashed costs by selling and manufacturing in bulk. ICT and Lyons however were already dwarfed by the IBM 360 from the USA in the commercial end of computing (largely payroll at that time). Both American firms used secrecy to make their systems less approachable and more complicated than they need be, a policy pursued by MicroSoft to this day.
So what chance now to build a successful industrial economy with today's lower grade engineering graduates? Not so bad to be starting afresh so long as they concentrate on innovation and this time drive it through to really productive industry.
But it is not a question of numeracy or innovation alone, it is what that intelligence is directed towards that counts. Think who created the problems of Asset Stripping, Excessive Leverage (debt), ever more sophisticated International Tax Avoidance, Packaging Debt (including 'toxic' sub prime mortgages) so it could not be valued properly - but it could be sold across the globe. The Credit Crunch in short. These operators didn't lack numeracy.
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