During the past 40 years or so, a huge numbers of people in the poorer nations have been paid not much for doing a lot, while in the developed world many people have been paid a lot for doing not much.

And that, dear readers, is why there is now an irrevocable shift in the world’s economic order.

Those in the UK will be aware of the scores of thousands of jobs in the public sector, created by Labour and Conservative governments, which are not in the slightest bit productive. Many, but by no means all, are necessary to make our society run more smoothly, to help the disadvantaged, to regulate, to administer, to advise.

The private sector is also teeming with well paid overstaffed functions which produce little of value at one end of the scale, and hugely overpaid executives and directors at the other.

The service industries are particularly good at paying their staff a lot of money by providing services that might add value, but produce little that has a tangible long term worth.

In private and public sectors, the pay and conditions have been protected first by trade unions and later by the collective greed of workers and bosses scratching each others’ backs, unified by the shallow values of the baby boomers. Lots of people shouting ‘Me, Me, Me!’ soon becomes ‘Us, Us, Us!’.

Until only a short time ago, our pay increased every year, bonuses went up, pensions rose and our working life reduced.  As we live longer, our retirement extends and with it the time greater numbers of people are being paid for doing nothing.

We are now facing the consequences of an economy which has for decades been based on unproductive overpaid employment as our population grows increasingly old.

Meanwhile in countries such as India, China, Brazil, Vietnam, Korea, and increasingly in Africa and South America, vast and growing numbers of people have been working very hard from an early age until they expire making goods or harvesting food or extracting raw materials, all of which are sold for a profit. Their pay has been low, and kept low – talk of workers’ rights getting you imprisoned or laughed at.

In the UK, the increased income was used to borrow to buy property on the erroneous assumption that this would permanently gain in value. With our property as a safety net, we cheerfully got further in debt to buy more goods and foodstuffs, most of them made and grown by the millions upon millions of people in the by now fast developing world.

And so those countries grew richer as we got more in debt. That debt couldn’t be sustained once the property edifice started to shake and values dropped. Banks had huge books of toxic debt, interbank lending ceased and overstretched banks had to be bailed out by the government.

In many other developed states without a solid manufacturing base and without a well developed service sector, the situation is worse. In the southern European countries productivity per head is falling from a low figure, pensions are over generous, retirement age is in the 50s, working hours are low, unemployment high and tax payments a small proportion of what they should be.

Contradictions within the EU mean that a common currency is untenable; Germany will be able to make the financial rules, and enforce the austerity measures for a two tier Europe.

The electorates in these countries won’t like being told to accept reduced hand outs, pensions, to work longer and harder, but fundamental economic decisions won’t be influenced by the ballot box as much as by the markets and credit rating companies.

Funding the bail out of bankrupt economies are those countries in the developing world who have become very rich as money has flowed into their treasuries from the developed nations. China, India and the emerging economic countries will get us out of this mess, because it’s in their interest to do so, but the rules will be forever changed.

So the world is now one where in the west our lives are less influenced by democratic decisions than by the bond markets; Germany has gained economic and political hegemony in much of Europe, and countries such as China and India are more powerful than the UK, France, Italy, Spain and before long the US.

It was never supposed to be like this, but we had better realise that the old order, shaped by statesmen and industrialists after the second world war, has changed forever.

Things have progressed and in the right direction. I have spoken at length to an officer within the education service at Lambeth, and he likes the IPHOS idea.

The idea is that children nominate an older and computer illiterate or unconfident family member who they will mentor to be more computer confident and competent through the medium of putting their life stories and family histories in their Lifeboxes within My Last Song.

This will enable more older people to go online with confidence, thus fulfilling one of the goals of Race Online 2012, of which My Last Song is a partner organisation.

Older people are obviously a target group, and if My Last Song can help more of them to understand the benefits of going online and have the ability to go online, then it’s a win win situation.

I also think one of the advantages will be the telling of family history by older relatives to their younger family members, and then the capturing of it within the Lifebox, secure for future generations to access to get an accurate insight into their departed loved one’s life and times.

Encouragingly, the Department for Education sent me a positive email wishing me success with the venture and crucially providing the names and contact details of Heads of Children’s Services in every local authority.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting to hear from my old school friend who is Cabinet member for Education, Children and Families at Barnet Council who was also enthusiastic about the proposal when I discussed it with him a few weeks ago.

So, it looks as if there could be two pilot projects in very different London boroughs launched in the autumn from which we can learn good practice before inviting schools throughout the country to participate.

Hopefully this will be in time for Race Online 2012′s Get Online Week, starting 18 October.

I can report progress on the intergenerational communications scheme I wrote about two weeks ago.

Well, for a start it is now called the Interfamily Personal History Online Scheme, or IPHOS for short.

More importantly, two weeks ago I sent an outline proposal to the Schools Minister, Nick Gibb, and also to a civil servant at the Department For Education.   As the scheme, sorry IPHOS, is to get school children to improve their older relatives’ computer confidence and competence, the minister and department responsible for schools seemed good places to start.

Well, this morning I got a call from the civil servant who said he liked the scheme.

He cautioned that the minister would probably decide that the proposal was too ‘hands on’ to deal with, and that instead I should talk to local authorities as these were responsible for the day to day educational activities of schools within their areas.

Rather than ‘cold call’ local councils, I thought I would see what endorsement or support I could get from Race Online 2012, whose purpose is to get as many people in the UK online and computer competent by the end of 2012 as possible.

Race Online 2012 is headed by Martha Lane Fox, so any backing the scheme (alright, IPHOS) gets from that organisation will receive the necessary publicity.

So I have just sent them an email asking what level of support I can expect from them.

I have adapted IPHOS to include a ‘deliverable’ whereby children who nominate an older relative to populate their Lifebox with their life histories and details about their friends and relatives will tell their classes about the interesting personal histories they have helped capture online.

This must appeal to teachers, families and pupils alike for it will enable children to tell each other in an ordered way their families’ histories thereby encouraging an interest in social history and an appreciation of their older relatives’ lives and times.

IPHOS might, of course, be one of hundreds of schemes with nice acronyms that never see the light of day, but I’m hopeful it might be a runner given the input of the DoE official and hopefully the backing of Race Online 2012.

Now I also need the support of a computer supplier or retailer such as Sony, Dell, Toshiba, Acer, HP, Currys or Comet and IPHOS will have some ‘traction’ as the marketeers like to say.

I will keep you posted.

My Last Song has signed up to Race Online 2012, the Government backed initiative to get as much of the adult population of the UK online by the end of 2012 as possible.

One of the target groups is older people, and so My Last Song was welcomed as a Race Online partner organisation because the website will encourage older people to be more computer literate and able to benefit from going online for information, for company, for support and for greater independence.

The problem is reaching those older people who have very low computer skills or don’t have access to a computer and therefore won’t have the opportunity to go online.

To solve this problem, I have come up with a proposed intergenerational communication initiative.  It is focussed on the benefits offered by the Lifebox within My Last Song to older people to whom it is an area to store their funeral wishes, letters of wishes and other details required by their executors and close family members when they die or are terminally ill.

The Lifebox also encourages people to store their memories, their life stories, their achievements, details of their friends and families, their hobbies and their images so that future generations have an accurate insight of their life and times.

This is a valuable way of recording family history which otherwise is likely to be lost.

Very few families these days sit down around the dinner table or in front of the fire and listen to older members relate the details and achievements of their lives and the lives of their older relatives.

So, to take the place of this intergenerational passing down of family history, I am proposing a scheme whereby children between six and 12 nominate an older member or members of their family who aren’t computer competent or haven’t got access to their own computers who they will coach and encourage to fill their Lifeboxes.

In the process, they will learn about the life and times of the older family members, and also know where this information is stored so it can be accessed by future generations.

I will be putting more substance on the proposal and then contact the Department for Education in an attempt to get this off the ground.

It will undoubtedly be supported by Race Online 2012. However, the kind of backing that would be more useful is that of a retailer or supplier of PCs.  So, if the likes of Currys, Comet, Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Acer, IBM, HP stumble across this blog and the proposal sounds interesting, please get in contact.

My efforts at getting a worthwhile intergenerational communications initiative off the ground will be chronicled with, I hope, an outcome that has benefits for several thousand older people, their young family members, future social historians, the suppliers of PCs and, of course, My Last Song.