Saturday 7 June 2008

Intellectual Property Office How they stole my Trade Mark-My history. 2

So you can better understand my story you need to know what makes me tick. I'm now going on 68, and I can be described as a miserable old git. The television guys have nothing on me, mainly because they haven't done much in life except ponce around in the entertainment industry. Had they spent time out in the real World and travelled extensively thus seeing how the rest of the World lives and what life is really all about, they may have done more justice to their amusing ramblings.
I never really lived a normal life like most Brits of my time. I was born in Palestine and lived in a hostile environment from the beginning. My Father was in the Palestine Police. I came to live in the UK in 1947 and as my parents were from Liverpool that's were I ended up. Liverpool after the war was a total shithole to live in too, with lots of extremely poor people that had been bombed out of their houses. Work was hard to find, so my Father had a job to even get work and as he was too old at 30 to be able to join the Brit police he ended up in a succession of crap poorly paid jobs. I suppose you could say that here was an early example in my life of incompetent civil servants/politicians who had made up this ridiculous rule that at 30 you were past being able to join the Police. Here was my Father who had spent 12 years in the Palestine Police gaining far more experience than a policeman got in the UK. He was an Inspector in the Haifa CID and all that counted for nothing.
So as a family we suffered for years with little money and as a kid I never had much at all. Certainly when you look at what kids get these days, they are mainly spoilt brats. We lived in a large newish Council estate on the outskirts of Liverpool at Speke, in a small 2 bed flat along with many other hard as nails and poor scousers. However in those days council estates never suffered from the goings on of today and one thing that my general lot of that time taught me was how to look after myself. It also taught me that if I wanted anything, I had to work for it and from an early age I had many jobs in order to raise the money for toys, a bike, holidays, clothes going to the pictures (which I practically lived in). So I quickly learnt the value of money. I had paper round jobs ( I used to deliver the papers to the house Paul McCartney lived in, which was on the same road as my home) I caddied at the local golf courses, helped my Grandad in his nursery, and cycled 12 miles to get there. In the summer it was picking spuds and working on the Birds Eye pea farm, nearby.
At the same time I had to buckle down to studying to pass the exam to go to Grammar School which I passed. Life for me was a long round of hard work and it did me no harm and the ethic stuck with me all my life. It also taught me the value of money, and I was never a spendthrift. So in later life I would be very protective of what I owned and worked hard for, and wobetide anyone who tried to steal off me what I had worked hard for.
When I was 17 I had to make the decision of what I wanted to do with my life. I had built up a desire for years to become a pilot in the RAF and I vowed that I may try to join as a pilot. However for some reason I first decided to try being an officer in the Merchant Navy, and I suppose this was brought about by the fact that I like to travel and had spent a lot of time cycling to many places away from Liverpool. Plus Liverpool had a tradition of the sea and I loved all those big ships I saw in the Mersey. I duly joined a small shipping line soon after leaving school as a Deck Officer Midshipman. Actually my very first job while I decided what to do was working for an insurance company in the iconic Liver Building on the waterfront. Then it was off to sea in my fancy uniform and white hat.
We did the Med run calling at various ports on the way out, dropping off all sorts of goods, then calling at Haifa when empty ( which was good, seeing as I had been born there and was able to visit the house I had been brought up in).We would fill up with Jaffa oranges to take back to the Pool. It sounds exciting but I found it rather boring after a year and decided that a small ship was not for me, for life. Now was the time to try for the RAF and I found myself doing a pilots selection course at RAF Hornchurch on the outskirts of London. It took a week and at the end I had my first experience of how the British class system worked, something which had not touched my life at all, 'til then. Of course how was a scouser with that awful accent going to be accepted to be an officer in Her Majesties RAF?? Out of an intake of about 50 lads, only two toffey noses got in. Forget the fact I had 6 GCE's all with good marks and never failed any of the medical tests. I think this shattering experience coloured my thinking about the British class system and the so called "Upper Classes" of Britain.
Soon after, I decided to join the RAF as a peasant erk, as they called the working classes in the "lower ranks! My thinking was if the MN was not for me and I wasn't good enough to be a pilot,(in their eyes) I still wanted to travel and seek adventure. Maybe I should follow my Father and join the Colonial Police. In the fifties we still had an Empire and I could end up anywhere. Trouble was they would not take applications to join until you were 21 years old, so I had to pass away three years. I decided to join the RAF Police and so get a bit of travel in and some police experience. After Police training I was posted to Cyprus in 1958 on active service, as the insurrections were going full blast then. I spent two and a half years there and that toughened me up no end.
At this point of my life story I will say that if I were to describe in full the rest of my life, it would take as long as the main story which I want to bring to your attention. So this groundwork I hope will show you how I began life and possibly show you what kind of person I had grown to be due to the circumstances of my life in the formative years. Hardworking, embued with a sense of self disipline, valued money, loved travel, excitement and adventure. I also was very good with my hands and had a natural ability with mechanical things.
So from herein I will list in chronological order what I did next in my life to the point where I reached the beginnings of this story I want to tell you about, concerning what civil servants did to ruin the latter aprt of my working life and my retirement.
1958 to 1965 I served in the RAF in Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, Aden, Libya, Trucial Oman States, Bahrain, and Kuwait, and in the UK.
1965. Started artificial Xmas tree business, which was successful but had to give up after a successful Xmas of 65, due to needing working capital which I could not get from good old British Banks.
1966. Started fitted furniture/decorating business in London until August when I left the UK.
1966 (August) Drove overland through Europe, Jugoslavia, Romania,Bulgaria,Turkey,Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Malaya, Singapore and onto Darwin, Australia. Worked in the bush laying railway track for a month to replenish my money and get to Sydney.
1966 to Nov 1969 Worked in Sydney and Perth as a driving instructor plus a year as a manager of a car radio business.
1969 Dec. Worked in London as a car salesman then manager until Sept 1970 when I handed notice in.
1970 to 1978. Started a leather goods manufacturing and sales business. Making hippy belts,bags, watchstraps etc all heavily embossed and hand dyed. Sold them in the street markets of London. Then in 1974 I got two shops in Folkestone and in 1976 I moved the business to Bournemouth. During this period I got interested in Classic Sportscars and started to restore them as a hobby.
1978 Sold leather business and moved to Los Angeles and bought a British Car business. Selling, servicing and restoring all makes of Brit cars.
1979 (Dec) Moved to Sydney and for a short time restored some Brit sportscars and then bought a Boat building business which I ran until April 1985, when I returned to the UK.
1985 September I started a business in Bournemouth making Replica Cobras, fully built and as kits for self assembly. This is the point at where my problems with politicians and their brown nosed civil servants started. Not straight away but as time went on my problems with them got worse.

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