A FUNNY thing happened as I was walking down the Charlton Road.

I was just getting close to the hospital and chanced to see wedged in the hedge, a flash of green thin card. Curiosity got the better of me and had to investigate. Oh, what a delight. It was a young person’s revision notes, re one of my interest areas ‘Statistics and Probabilities’, and the notes referred to a relatively advanced understanding.

I only hope that whoever drafted the notes, their loss did not affect their exam performance.

What delighted me most is it nailed the lie that our young people are all about social media, and the latest ephemeral trends, with an accompanying shunning of anything difficult.

I had this reinforced on Thursday 28 June, when as a committee member of a joint branch of two premier global professional bodies, our young person’s rep, a young lady instead of pubbing and clubbing to celebrate her successful end of university year, chose to attend our committee meeting at the Lloyds Building at Southampton University, Boldrewood Campus as representative of our young professional people.

I juxtaposition this with correspondence I’ve had with TVBC, both executive and councillors; the logistic equation developed 136 years before TVBC was formed, has been declared a ‘political equation’ and even with the input of the head of methodology of the Department of Communities and Local Government won’t apologise even when they know they were wrong, and they’ve never been able to articulate why it’s ‘political’.

Now let’s turn to membership of professional bodies such as the one I sit on as a branch committee member; yes, like my old firm, TVBC pay subscription fees for eligible staff to maintain membership fees and that’s good.

But, regarding their professional staff ’s relationship with their fellow members not employed by TVBC, the policy is, and I quote: “We have no policy of professional recognition of non-TVBC staff.” From my experience both councillors and TVBC staff, really don’t like the idea of professionals in the town, outside their own incestuous organisation. Let me advise them. Even the tax man recognises me. He gives me tax relief on my annual subscription.

So, returning to the young person, who’s revision notes I have in safe keeping. Stick at it stay with the ‘STEM’* specialisation and you, likely as not, will be globally welcome everywhere other than in the TVBC area, unless of course you have the patronage of a TVBC councillor or TVBC staff member.

Roderick D Pond FRSA, Eng Tech, MSOE, MIPlantE, MIMarEST MRINA, St Birstan Gardens, Andover

*STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.