Scrap Book Project – Newspapers and Paper Rounds

Inside the Scrap Book are some loose pages from old newspapers that Dad kept because they recorded big events – the Manchester United Munich air crash, Assassination of Kennedy and the death of Winston Churchill and looking at these reminded me of my first ever job as a paper boy!

As a young teenager I used to receive a little bit of pocket money every week from my dad but the only way to make more cash was to have a paper-round.  I had three, a morning round, an evening round and a Sunday round.  It taught me strength of character, resilience to weather conditions and I have memories of getting wet, miserable, cold and hungry.

In the late 1960s  I had my first paper round and earned fifteen shillings (.75p) a week in return for getting up at six o’clock, six days a week, whatever the weather to lug a bag of newspapers around the village before going to school.  The papers were carried in a big canvas bag and as I was only small the newsagent had to tie a knot in the strap so that it didn’t drag on the floor.

It was a dirty job because before modern computerised production the papers were printed using real ink and it used to rub off easily all over your hands and then transferred to anything you touched as well.  Thursday was a bad day because of the Radio and TV Times magazines but Friday was by far the worst because the addition of the Rugby Advertiser more than doubled the weight of the bag.  Saturday was pay day so after finishing the round it was back to the shop to pick up a ten shilling note and two half crowns and I felt really well off for a few hours at least.

Letter boxes were a real problem and I can remember wondering why they were all different inconvenient shapes and sizes.  My least favourite were the vertical ones with a sharp spring because getting newspapers through them was a real challenge.  The ones low down almost at ground level were also a pain and the high level ones presented a real problem for a little lad like me.  The best letter boxes were on the Featherbed Lane Council estate because they were exactly in the middle of the door where they should be and big enough to deliver a Sunday newspaper without having to split it up into sections.  I rather fancied delivering the newspapers in the way they did in American TV shows by cycling along and without stopping just launching the thing into the front garden but I guess whilst this might have been suitable in sunny Florida or California lobbing it onto a damp front lawn in the UK would not have been so acceptable.

Later I had a Sunday round as well and that paid fifteen shillings just for the one day but that stared an hour later so that thankfully meant a bit of a lie in.  Towards the end of the decade I needed more money so at one point I even had an evening round as well.  This meant delivering the Coventry Evening Telegraph and the Leicester Mercury and being a Leicester lad I always reserved my best service for those that took the Mercury.

One of the occupational hazards of being a paper boy was dogs, and as I have explained before I really don’t like dogs!  One I can remember used to scare me witless when it would jump at the letterbox and pull the newspaper through whilst I was delivering it.  One day, taking my dad’s advice,  I hung on to the other end and the dog shredded the outer pages.  I think it must have got a kick up the backside or half rations of Pedigree Chum for a fortnight because it didn’t do it again for a while.

I would be surprised if Sunday paper rounds exist anymore because to deliver to fifty houses or so would need a dumper truck to replace the old canvas bag on account of the size of the newspapers and the weight of all of the colour supplements.

The paper round was important because towards the end of my career I used to assist the newsagent, Mr Darlaston, to sort out the rounds and this taught me new skills that I was able to put to good use later in life when it was my job at the council to organise the refuse collection rounds.

The Privatisation of Public Services

On 11^th February 1975 the Conservative Party choose Margaret Thatcher as their new leader and when she eventually became the first woman Prime Minister the country was engulfed in a wave of right wing extremism that as usual picked on local government for a real good kicking.

In the 1980s and 1990s because Margaret Thatcher thought that the private sector was, by definition, much more competent and efficient in these matters than the public sector and local authorities were required to offer certain services for open competition under what was called ‘Compulsory Competitive Tendering’.  If only she had known the truth – ‘Compusory Competitive Thieving’ would have been a more appropriate project title!

Rubbish collection was one of these services and so that the waste management companies could cope with all the new work and local authorities couldn’t cheat, the Government set out a phased three year programme and one by one local authority services were thrown into a private sector pond full of hungry piranha ready to strip the flesh off of public services, cynically reduce service standards and hopefully get fat at the council tax payer’s expense. As soon as the waste management companies spotted a contract they took a liking to they would express an interest, obtain the tender documents and specifications and go to work sharpening their pencils.

This was never a scientific process and the first thing the tendering manager did was to get up early one Monday morning and sit outside the council depot and count the dustcarts and the number of men in them as they left to go to work.  And that was about all there was to it and half an hour later over a bacon butty and a cup of tea he would write this down on the back of a fag packet and by mid morning he would have a price in his head.  Nothing else in his head, just the price!  Sometimes, if he was being especially thorough, he would go back on Tuesday morning just to check his calculations but this would be quite unusual.

The tendering manager at Cory Environmental was a man called Tony Palmer and for Tony arriving at the tender price was gloriously simple.  If the Council had ten refuse collection rounds, the company would do it with nine, and just in case the Council could do it for nine then they would do it with eight so that would immediately undercut the Council price by 20%.  Just to make absolutely certain they would find out how much a refuse collector was paid each week and then they would reduce that by 20% as well.  If the Council had three mechanics to keep the fleet running they would do it with two and so on and so on. There was no way these boys could fail to win tenders!

I worked for the private sector waste management companies for ten years between 1990 and 2000 and then thankfully was able to return to local government where services are provided properly through direct delivery so imagine my horror when ‘son of Thatcher’ David Cameron became Conservative Prime Minister in 2010 and has embarked on a similar dismantling of public services and twenty years after my first painful experience in the incompetent world of the private sector I find myself facing the same prospect all over again.

Paper Rounds

As a young teenager I used to receive a little bit of pocket money from my dad every week but the only way to make more cash was to have a paper-round.  I had three, a morning round, an evening round and a Sunday round.  It taught me strength of character, resilience to weather conditions and I have memories of getting wet, miserable, cold and hungry.

In the late 1960s  I had my first paper round and earned fifteen shillings (.75p) a week in return for getting up at six o’clock, six days a week, whatever the weather to lug a bag of newspapers around the village before going to school.  The papers were carried in a big canvas bag and as I was only small the newsagent had to tie a knot in the strap so that it didn’t drag on the floor.  It was a dirty job because before modern computerised production the papers were printed using real ink and it used to rub off easily all over your hands and then transferred to anything you touched as well.  Thursday was a bad day because of the Radio and TV Times magazines but Friday was by far the worst because the addition of the Rugby Advertiser more than doubled the weight of the bag.  Saturday was pay day so after finishing the round it was back to the shop to pick up a ten shilling note and two half crowns and I felt really well off for a few hours at least.

Letter boxes were a real problem and I can remember wondering why they were all different inconvenient shapes and sizes.  My least favourite were the vertical ones with a sharp spring because getting newspapers through them was a real challenge.  The ones low down almost at ground level were also a pain and the high level ones presented a real problem for a little lad like me.  The best letter boxes were on the Featherbed Lane Council estate because they were exactly in the middle of the door where they should be and big enough to deliver a Sunday newspaper without having to split it up into sections.  I rather fancied delivering the newspapers in the way they did in American TV shows by cycling along and without stopping just launching the thing into the front garden but I guess whilst this might have been suitable in sunny Florida or California lobbing it onto a damp front lawn in the UK would not have been so acceptable.

Later I had a Sunday round as well and that paid fifteen shillings for the one day but that stared an hour later so that thankfully meant a bit of a lie in.  Towards the end of the decade I needed more money so at one point I even had an evening round as well.  This meant delivering the Coventry Evening Telegraph and the Leicester Mercury and being a Leicester lad I always reserved my best service for those that took the Mercury.

One of the occupational hazards of being a paper boy was dogs, and as I have explained before I really don’t like dogs!  One I can remember used to scare me witless when it would jump at the letterbox and pull the newspaper through whilst I was delivering it.  One day, taking my dad’d advice,  I hung on to the other end and the dog shredded the outer pages.  I think it must have got a kick up the backside or something because it didn’t do it again for a while. 

I would be surprised if Sunday paper rounds exist anymore because to deliver to fifty houses or so would need a dumper truck to replace the old canvas bag on account of the size of the newspapers and the weight of all of the colour supplements.

The paper round was important because towards the end of my career I used to assist the newsagent, Mr Darlaston, to sort out the rounds and this taught me new skills that I was able to put to good use later in life when it was my job at the council to organise the refuse collection rounds.