26.3.08

 

                                               

                         Tendring Topics – on line

 

                              The Date of Easter

 

            The very early arrival of Easter this year seems to have brought to many thousands of people the realisation that the date of Easter Sunday is determined each year by the date of the equinox (daylight and darkness of equal length) and the phases of the moon.

 

            I learnt this nearly eighty years ago when I was one of those angelic, rosy-cheeked little choirboys who are nowadays to be found mainly on Christmas cards. During the course of a long and tedious sermon I leafed idly through the Book of Common Prayer. Among its prefaces, I found the following under the heading 'Tables and rules for the moveable and immoveable feasts':

 

Easter-day, on which the rest depend, is always the first Sunday after the Full Moon, which happens upon, or next after the Twenty-first Day of March; and if the Full Moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter-day is the Sunday after.

 

            The Eastern Orthodox Church (in Greece, Russia and much of eastern Europe) uses much the same rules but ends up with a different date for Easter because they still use the ancient Julian calendar whereas western European Christians long ago switched to the Gregorian one.

 

            It all depended, in the first instance, on the date of the Jewish Passover.  Christians will know that Jesus shared the Passover meal with his disciples 'on the night that he was betrayed' and thereby instituted the Lords Supper, the Holy Communion Service, the Holy Eucharist, the Mass – whatever you may call it.   We are also told in the Gospels that it was, 'early in the morning, while it was yet dark, on the first day of the week' that Mary Magdalen made her pilgrimage to the sepulchre in which the body of Jesus had been laid – and found it to be empty.

 

            At the risk of being considered hopelessly heretical I have to say that I can see no really sound reason why we can't have a fixed Easter.   Few people nowadays imagine that Christ's nativity actually occurred on the 25^th December 1 BC – or was there a year Zero?   But 25^th December is the date on which, for centuries, we have celebrated it.

 

            We could equally well celebrate Christ's resurrection on the first, or perhaps the second, Sunday in April (and remember his crucifixion on the preceding Friday) every bit as solemnly and sincerely as on dates determined by the phases of the moon.

 

            Mind you, however the date was chosen – I bet the weather would still be awful!

 

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                                 A Prophecy fulfilled?

 

            In February I suggested in 'Tendring Topics – on line' that ancient folk lore forecast that because Candlemas (2^nd February) had been 'clear and bright, winter would have another flight' and that it might therefore be unwise to put the winter coat away for a while.

 

            Watching the snow falling on Easter Day and listening to the icy wind whistling round my bungalow over much of the holiday weekend, I find no satisfaction whatsoever in being able to say 'I told you so'.

 

            It seems that one thing worse than a prophecy proved false, can be a prophecy fulfilled!

 

            Having said all that though, it must be added that sunny Clacton-on-Sea and, I imagine, the rest of our stretch of the north-east Essex coast, had rather less rain, snow and sleet and rather more sunshine over the Easter holiday, than practically anywhere else in Britain

 

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                           A Story for Easter Week

 

              A few weeks ago I was again asked to record a 'Thought for the Week' for the Tendring Talking Times, the 'talking newspaper' (audio-tape) that is sent weekly free of charge to every blind and visually impaired person living within the Tendring District.  The tape that includes my 'five minute sermon' was to be distributed on Thursday of this week – Easter Week.  It occurred to me that, like my earlier 'Thought for the Week', it might be of interest to readers of 'Tendring Topics – on line'.   So, here it is:

 

Hello Friends.  Ernest Hall here with your 'Thought for the Week'.  I am, as you may remember, a Quaker and a Member of the Clacton Quaker Meeting, and am now also a communicant member of the Church of England.

 

Many years ago my wife and I would sometimes spend holidays on England's south coast.  When we did so, we never failed to visit the village of Bosham, which stands on an inlet of the sea near Chichester.

           

Bosham has a long history and part of its ancient church dates back to the earliest days of the Christian faith – to Roman times, fifteen hundred years ago. The greater part of it though, was built in the Saxon era – before the Norman Conquest.         

           

Some well-known historical characters have worshipped there – as well as unknown multitudes of humble peasants and craftsmen, merchants and tradesmen, domestic servants and seafarers.

           

Bosham had been the family home of King Harold, slain at the Battle of Hastings.  He is depicted at prayer in the church, its chancel arch clearly recognisable, on the famous Bayeux Tapestry.

           

Before King Harold, King Canute and his family had lived there.   It has been suggested that it was at Bosham that Canute demonstrated to his flattering courtiers that neither he, nor any other man, could stem the course of the tide.  I can well believe that it was.   On one occasion I parked my motor caravan on firm and dry sand several hundred yards from the water's edge.  Leaving my wife for an after-lunch rest, I strolled off to explore the village.  Returning after about three quarters of an hour, I found my wife marooned in the van, which was now surrounded by the rising tide!  The water rose to the van's hub-caps before it, very slowly, subsided.  Fortunately it was a still day with scarcely a ripple on the surface of the water.

           

It was said that King Canute had had a well-loved twelve year old daughter who had been accidentally drowned in the mill-stream that still runs through the village. She had, tradition asserted, been buried in the nave of the village church.

           

There was no written record whatsoever of this, but the story persisted in the village from generation to generation throughout the centuries.  In the middle of the 19^th century – some eight hundred years later - the then-vicar decided that he would test the truth of this persistent legend.   Some building repair work was being carried out on the church at the time, and the vicar asked the builders to excavate the nave.  Precisely at the spot where it had always been claimed that Canute's daughter had been buried, the builders found an early eleventh century stone coffin containing the skeleton of a twelve year old child.

           

The skeleton was reverently reburied and later the children of the parish raised the money for the provision of a stone memorial plaque for the little Anglo/Danish princess, complete with the image of a Danish raven, which remains there today.

           

You may well be wondering by this time, 'What on earth has this story of a thousand year old tragedy to do with us today?'    

           

Just this – it seems that today's unbelievers, unlike the few that I can remember from fifty years or more ago, seem to feel that they have a mission – I almost said a sacred mission – to spread their lack of faith; to attack every manifestation of Christianity, and to try to undermine the faith of the rest of us.

                       

They are opposed to the provision of faith schools and are envious of their success; they would like to see such programmes as Songs of Praise and Thought for the Day banished from tv and radio; they would like to see Christmas replaced by a God-free 'mid-winter festival' and they endeavour to popularise the use of CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before Common Era) instead of AD (Anno Domini or 'Year of our Lord') and BC (Before Christ) to qualify the number of a year.

           

Attempts to undermine our faith are particularly evident, I think, around the time of the great Christian festivals of Christmas and, of course, Easter the greatest of all, that we celebrated last weekend.

           

The Gospel accounts can't be believed, they suggest, because they weren't written down until a few decades after the events that they describe.  However, they were written down and widely circulated well within the memory of many very diverse people who had witnessed them.  The writers of the Gospels were clearly four men of very different character and background, and the small differences of fact and of emphasis between their accounts, themselves carry what J.B. Phillips, Biblical scholar and translator describes as 'the ring of truth'.

 

I have an idea – please forgive me if I am wrong – that recipients of the 'Tendring Talking Times' know better than most of us that truth isn't limited to what appears on a printed page.

           

Those who are still in doubt should consider the story of King Canute's daughter, the account of whose death and burial survived accurately and intact, without ever having been written down, not for just two or three decades – but for eight centuries.

           

As this is still Easter Week perhaps I may conclude with the salutation that is used on their Easter morning between members of the Eastern Orthodox Church  from the Isles of Greece to Archangel in the Arctic and from Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea to Vladivostok on Russia's Pacific coast.  The greeting is, 'Christ is risen!' and the response, 'He is risen indeed!'    With that salutation Friends, I will leave you.

 

            May God bless you all. 

 

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20.03.08

                               Tendring Topics – on line

 

                                         Good Friday

 

            A friend of mine recently recounted the reaction of her granddaughter – in her twenties and brought up in a different country and culture – on first seeing a crucifix, bearing an almost-life-size figure of the suffering Christ, outside a church.  'That's horrible!' she said, turning away in shock.

 

            And so it is – and so it is meant to be.   It is salutary that, from time to time, we should be reminded of the cruelty that humans are capable of inflicting upon each other. The title that Jesus most frequently bestowed upon himself was 'The Son of Man' and his followers believed, and still believe, that he was suffering on behalf of the whole human race.

 

            I don't think that I am particularly squeamish.  I have seen violent death on the battlefield and while I was a prisoner of war, and have on occasion narrowly missed it myself.  Possibly more to the point I have, as a food inspector, examined for fitness for human food, the heads, carcasses and entrails of just-slaughtered cattle, sheep and pigs – still warm from the slaughter-man's knife!

 

            I am blest though (or possibly cursed) with a vivid imagination.   I can imagine the unbearable agony of being nailed naked to a cross, unable to breathe, unable even to brush a fly from my tortured face, in agonising pain and all-consuming thirst.  Those three hours on that first Good Friday (short by crucifixion standards) must have seemed like three centuries.  And this, of course, was a standard Roman punishment.

 

            Nor, by the standards of the day, were the Romans exceptionally cruel.  We learn from the New Testament that among Jesus' own people, the prescribed punishment for 'a woman taken in adultery' was stoning to death.  Yes, I can imagine what that must have been like too.  Nor of course were our own ancestors any better.  Any Roman soldier who had the misfortune to fall into their hands suffered torture and a death that I prefer not to think about.  What I find intolerable is not so much the agonisingly painful death of the victims but the fact that that pain was inflicted deliberately, in cold blood, by their fellow men, who then watched – and possibly enjoyed watching – the suffering that they had imposed.

 

And so it has been through the ages. Christians were no less (though probably no more) guilty than others. Almost two centuries ago Lord Byron wrote:

 

Christians have burnt each-other, quite persuaded,

That all the apostles would have done as they did.

 

A poet of World War I (my word, that war produced some bitter poetry!) wrote:

 

After two thousand years of mass,

We've got as far as poison gas.

 

Yet, throughout those centuries of cruelty – and despite some of the activities of its own hierarchy – the Universal Church of Christ continued to preserve and venerate the record in the Gospels, of the life and teaching of Jesus, a life and teaching totally at variance with everything that was going on in the world. 'Treat other people as you would like them to treat you …. Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who treat you badly ……Forgive your brother, not seven times, nor seventy times, but as often as he wrongs you……You cannot serve God and Mammon'.

 

Nowadays in Britain and mainland Europe at least, the days of witch hunting, heretic burning, public floggings and hangings are over. Torture is outlawed and there is no longer a death penalty. Still though, there is a great deal of suffering – much of it due to the selfishness, greed, fear or indifference of ourselves and our fellow men and women.

 

We still need to look on that suffering face of Christ and heed the leadings of his true light within ourselves, which draw us towards love, forgiveness and the service of others.

 

Christians at least have the consolation of knowing in their hearts that good will triumph over evil in the end, and that every sad Good Friday will be followed by a glorious Easter Day.

 

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                           A Small Local Problem

 

            As a regular shopper at Morrison's, my nearest supermarket, I have noted with interest the controversy about the 'taxi rank' in Old Road, which often expands along the road and into the service entrance of the Waterglade retail park.

 

            I can see that it is sometimes a danger and an obstruction to other traffic but I can also sympathise with the shoppers who have hired a taxi and certainly don't want to have to cross Old Road into Rosemary Road to unload their shopping from the trolley – and then walk back, crossing the main road again, to return the trolley.

 

            One thing that strikes me is that those parked taxis aren't a 'taxi rank' at all.  A taxi rank is surely an orderly queue of 'vacant' taxis waiting for a hirer.  Those waiting in Old Road, outside the Waterglade shopping park, are not vacant.  They have been hired by a shopper who is, while they wait, trundling his or her trolley round the supermarket aisles.  They will return, load their goods onto the taxi they have hired, and depart in it to their homes.

 

            Why do these taxis have to wait outside the Waterglade car park?

 

            I am sure that if any customer of Morrisons, or of any other business on the Waterglade shopping park, were posh enough to have their own liveried chauffeur they would instruct him to park the Rolls or the Daimler (or whatever) on the car park and to wait there while they transacted their business.

 

            Surely, the hirer of a taxi is – while using that taxi – in exactly the same position?    Why then doesn't the taxi driver take his vehicle into the car park and park there while his hirer gets on with the shopping – just as any other motorist does?

 

            The limited space in Old Road could then be used for what it presumably was intended – a 'taxi rank' for the use of taxis for hire.   I doubt if it would then get much use.

 

            Perhaps there is some perfectly sound reason why this can't be done – but I can't see it.

 

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                    'It's the rich wot gets the pleasure –

 

            It's the poor wot gets the blame'.    Thus go the first two lines of the final verse of a long and lugubrious ballad which begins, 'She was poor, but she was honest……' which may be remembered by some of my generation, especially those who served in the armed forces in World War II!  It might perhaps have been more accurate if the second line had been 'It's the poor wot 'as to pay'.  That's what actually happens.

 

             Those familiar with the New Testament will recall that the poverty-stricken widow who put 'a mite' (the smallest unit of coinage at the time) into the Temple Treasury was giving more generously than the wealthy Pharisee who donated the first century equivalent of a handful of fivers.   He, no doubt, gave very generously and very sensibly all that he could afford – but she gave 'all that she had'.

 

            That poor widow did this voluntarily. Today, there's nothing voluntary about the generous contribution that those who are euphemistically described as 'under-privileged', make to the government in tax and to the suppliers of the necessities of modern life.  Everything conspires to ensure that the less well-off you are, the larger will be the proportion of your meagre income that you'll have to part with in taxation and the general payment of bills.  In many cases those on low incomes not only have to pay a larger proportion of those incomes for the things they need, but more in actual cash.

 

            Everyone knows that buying food in small quantities is much more expensive than in large ones.  Yet that is what people with the least money in their pockets find themselves compelled to do.  The comfortably off can make fewer visits to the shops, buy larger quantities of food and put what isn't needed for immediate consumption into the fridge or freezer.

 

Not for the penniless are direct debit arrangements and on-line payments .  For gas and electricity, for instance, the seriously hard up have to resort to pre-payment meters - by far the most expensive way of paying.

 

            Faced with the breakdown of a cooker, fridge, vacuum cleaner or any other modern necessity, those without money problems can simply use their cheque book or credit card to buy a replacement, possibly cheaply 'on line'.  Those who can't do that can, if their credit rating is good, find a solution in HP – and perhaps end up by paying twice the purchase price.  If their credit rating isn't good, they either go without or – worst solution of all - borrow from a 'loan shark' and find themselves in debt for ever.

 

            Similarly, with government taxation, the switch in the 1980s from reliance on direct taxation (income tax) to indirect taxation (VAT, duties on alcoholic drinks, tobacco, cars and petrol for instance) shifted the burden of taxation from the wealthier to the poorer. The VAT or duty paid on any purchased item or service is the same for the less-well-off as for the wealthy, but is a far higher proportion of their total income.    

 

              I have heard it said by politicians, that the great thing about indirect taxation is that payment is a matter of personal choice.  You don't have to buy the goods or services on which it is levied.  Those who are dependent upon a car – or a bicycle – to get them to work, don't have a lot of choice about getting it repaired or replaced.  When tiles have blown off the roof and water is pouring into a bedroom there's not a great deal of decision-making to be done about calling in a builder!  

           

              In the same way if someone who is wealthy falls foul of the law, the chances are that they can laugh off a £50 or even a £500 fine.  The same sum could cripple a less affluent offender.   A few years ago, the government of the time tried to even things up a little by taking into account the income of the offender as well as the gravity of the offence. The scheme was dropped when there was outrage in the tabloid press about different fines being imposed for identical offences.

 

            No, I don't know the complete answer to this problem.  A properly graded income tax system would make a difference.  So might the development of universally available credit union facilities.   It would be a step in the right direction if it were to be generally accepted that the problem exists and political parties resolved, in one way or another, to solve it.

 

The verse that I quoted in my first paragraph concludes:

 

It's the same the 'ole world over,

Isn't it a bloomin' shame?

 

Yes – I think that it is.

 

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                                    Postscript

 

            The day after I wrote the above words, the first two items on the early morning news reports on radio and tv, were of thousands of homebuyers in danger of being rendered homeless because of inability to meet their mortgage commitments – and of a  £24 million divorce settlement which the recipient, although 'not complaining', felt was inadequate.  Her daughter who was awarded a separate £35,000 a year (for doing nothing) would, so she said, have to travel second class! 

 

Freedom of the press, radio and tv, does ensure that we all have a pretty good idea 'how the other half lives'!

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14.3.08

                           Tendring Topics – on line

 

                              Into Public Ownership

 

            A cheering piece of news that made the headlines at the end of last week was that Essex County Council is to take over the ownership and management of some of our county's branch post-offices that would otherwise have been doomed to closure.

 

            This is obviously good news for the many people living in their neighbourhood, for whom a threatened vital service will be saved.  It is, I believe, also good news for local democracy.  As well as providing existing post office services, County Council run offices will provide local bases – easily accessible to the public – where the public will be able to make contact with a County Council that to many of us has seemed distant and impersonal.

 

            Is a local authority capable of running efficiently a business such as a post office?   

 

            I began my local government career in Ipswich Corporation's Public Health department in 1937.  Ipswich was then what is now called a 'Unitary Authority' – responsible for all local government services within the borough boundary.  Then it was called a County Borough Council and, in addition to all the activities now undertaken by both County and District Councils, the Council ran its own gas, electricity, water, sewerage and sewage treatment services and its own municipal transport service.  Its Public Health Department, in which I was a tiny and insignificant cog, ran the town's school medical and dental service, maternity and child welfare, midwifery and tuberculosis services.

 

            Within the Public Health Department Building in Ipswich's Elm Street were housed the Sanitary Inspectors, Food Inspectors and Shops Inspector plus a TB Clinic, a Maternity and Child Welfare Clinic, and a School and Dental Clinic.   Each of these three clinics had its own Assistant Medical Officer in charge.  I remember that I found it amusing that the Maternity and Child Welfare Officer was a Dr Jolly, while the School Medical Officer was a Dr Gaye!   In those days, of course, 'gay' and 'jolly' were more or less synonymous.  The former word had none of its current meaning.

 

            Presiding over all was the august figure of the Medical Officer of Health who had his own large office and secretary and his own bacteriological laboratory.

 

            The Medical Officer of Health and the Public Health Department were also in charge of the town's Maternity Home, General Hospital and Isolation (infectious diseases) Hospital.

 

            The Council's very considerable workforce was not, in those days, headed by a 'Chief Executive' together with  'Directors' of this, that or the other service.  There was just the Town Clerk, the Medical Officer of Health, the Borough Surveyor, the Borough Treasurer, the Housing Manager, the Chief Education Officer and so on; not particularly honorific titles but, my word, they were men before whom lesser beings (and I was one of the least of the lesser!) quailed.

 

            Did the Council run all those services efficiently and economically?  Well, I was in my late teens, not the most civically conscious age group – but I certainly don't recall the constant complaints that we hear about public services today, and there was never any suggestion that they would be better run by a national organisation or by commercial firms.

 

 The Council's hospitals didn't have the wonderful electronic equipment, the modern drugs and antibiotics that we have today.  Patients with Scarlet fever, Diphtheria, Poliomyelitis and Puerperal Pyrexia (childbed fever) were admitted to our Isolation Hospital and occasionally died of those diseases – I never heard though of anyone contracting another infection while in hospital, and possibly dying of it.  If someone had mentioned MRSA, I would have thought that it meant Member of the Royal Society of something or other!

 

At that time, incidentally, the County Borough of Ipswich had a population in the vicinity of 100,000 –  some 50,000 fewer than that of the Tendring District today!

 

            If today's senior local government officers are of the calibre of their predecessors in the 1930s (and with the salaries that some of them are getting they certainly ought to be!) they should manage to run a few post offices without too much trouble.

 

            I'm not a bit surprised to hear on the tv news that many other authorities (including the Welsh Assembly!) are thinking of following Essex County Council's example and taking over their otherwise-doomed sub-post offices.

 

            If local government's takeover of local post offices is a success, as I think and hope it will be, it may well teach political leaders valuable lessons.  New-Labour enthusiasts are proud of having eliminated the notion, enshrined in 'Clause 4', that public ownership provides a solution to all human problems.  They now need to appreciate that handing over every public service to private enterprise and market forces doesn't offer a universal panacea either

 

            Old-Labour remnants should note that the creation of giant nationalised corporations – as in the late 1940s and early '50s - is neither the only, nor the best, means of taking essential services into public ownership and democratic control.

 

            Could it be that our Conservative controlled County Council has suddenly 'seen the light' and been converted to the idea of public ownership of public services?  Hardly, I fear.  At the same time as they are planning to take over threatened post offices they are considering selling off to private enterprise their few remaining care homes and day centres for the elderly!

 

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                                   Quakers – and Iraq

 

            Thursday of next week, Thursday 20^th March – appropriately, the eve of Good Friday, when Christians remember the cruel death of Jesus Christ upon the cross – is the 5^th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

           

             British Quakers, in the light of their three hundred year old testimony against all war and violence, had been among the million plus people who had demonstrated in London during the previous month against a war that many of us believed would be  illegal, immoral and unjustified.  Heather and I were immensely proud of the fact that that our two sons, and their families, were there.

 

            Five years have passed.   Over a million people are dead and some four million have been rendered homeless.  The war continues and violence has failed to bring peace.

 

            Quakers will mark the anniversary with renewed determination to seek a peaceful end to the conflict.  On 19^th March, the day before the fifth anniversary of the invasion, Quakers will join the 'Christian Peace Witness for Iraq' in remembering the suffering of the Iraqi people, in praying for forgiveness and healing, and in committing themselves to action for peace and justice for the people of Iraq and their neighbours.

 

            Kat Barton of Quaker Peace and Social Witness says, 'Our Peace Testimony underpins all our work.  It leads Quakers to work together at local, national and international level to transform the structures and cultures that lead to violence.  In regions of conflict such as, for instance, Northern Uganda, we work to reintegrate child soldiers back into their communities.   In this country we campaign nationally for disarmament and we work locally to stop violence in our schools'.

 

            I have no doubt at all that Clacton Quakers and indeed, Quakers in local Meetings throughout the United Kingdom, will endorse the words and actions of their National Peace and Social Witness Committee.

 

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                                         The Budget

 

            The Budget?   Well, there isn't really much to be said, is there?

 

            I'm not so churlish as not to be grateful for an extra £100 heating allowance next winter – if I live that long!  I'm glad too, to see that fuel-guzzling cars are to be penalised.   I doubt very much if the increased taxes on alcohol will do a great deal to curb binge drinking.

 

            I would like to see a budget that reduces the ever-widening gap between the incomes of the very rich and the poor.  I shall be surprised if fiddling with family tax credits and child allowances does the trick.  What is needed is for New-Labour to rescind, or forget, that promise never to restructure the income tax system.

 

            We need a properly graduated income tax system; one that ensures that the wealthy pay a proportion of their income in direct taxation that brings them into something approaching parity with the proportion of theirs that lower income earners find themselves paying in indirect taxes. Taxes such as VAT and petrol, alcohol and tobacco duties are paid equally by rich and poor alike – but they take a far larger bite out of small incomes.

           

            Yes, I do pay income tax – and I don't enjoy paying it. I do realize though that it is the only form of taxation that takes into account ability to pay – and that I'm very fortunate to have an income high enough to be liable for tax.  Thousands haven't!

 

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              Dream Scheme for Clacton – or Nightmare?

 

             I can't pretend that I'm deeply impressed with the scheme for the regeneration of Clacton envisaged by BDP Architects for the Interaction Partnership, and described in a Clacton Gazette headline as 'Dream scheme for town'.

 

            The proposals for the pier particularly interest me.   The artist's impression shows a museum, a restaurant/café, an 'ecological ride' and an aquarium, at the landward end.  A covered walkway leads to the pier head where there will be cafes and a viewing platform (with 'a small display wind turbine') from which it will be possible to view 'the London array (341 turbines 12 miles off the Clacton coast)'.

 

            Well, I can imagine that a sedate old gentleman (like me perhaps?) might enjoy a peaceful and instructive afternoon on the pier as envisaged by the scheme.

Somehow though I can't quite see it attracting the festive holiday-making crowds who visit the present facilities. These are described – a little disparagingly I thought – as 'a pub, amusement arcades and a small fun fair'.

 

            The viewing platform?  I, like most people, know perfectly well what a wind turbine looks like so I wouldn't really need that 'small display wind turbine'.  Readers of this blog will know that I am already a wind turbine enthusiast. I don't see them as eyesores and I am quite pleased to think that we are destined to have many more of them, both onshore and offshore.   However, I can't imagine that the prospect of viewing them en masse is ever likely to become a great tourist attraction.

 

            Possibly the other ideas, for the railway station, the town centre and the sea front deserve closer scrutiny.   One thing though that I am quite sure Clacton doesn't need is 'an American-style seafront shopping mall' along the promenade!

 

            Bognor, so we are told, had the benefit of a similar regeneration scheme eight years ago.   I have been tempted – but, with great strength of mind, have resisted the temptation – to quote what are said to have been the late King George V's alliterative last words!

 

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7.3.08

                               Tendring Topics – on Line

 

'Green' Tendring

 

            A few weeks ago I said in this column that, with one or two reservations, I thought that Tendring Council deserved congratulations on the success of their service for the collection of recyclable waste.   It seems that I am not alone in this assessment.

 

            Figures recently released reveal that the authority in Essex with the best recycling record over the past year was Braintree, which recycled 23.4 per cent of its refuse, with Tendring second at 22.9 per cent.  We certainly did a lot better than our county town of Chelmsford where only 16.2 per cent was recycled, or neighbouring Colchester (once leaders in the field) whose figure was 18.5 per cent.

 

            Worst authority in the south-east was Dover with a mere 11.7 per cent and the best was Chichester with 32.6 per cent.

 

            Congratulations to Chichester – though I have to say that I had never hitherto thought of that historic Sussex town as being in the south-east.  I suppose it all depends on where one is standing.  I once recall hearing two Geordies from Newscastle indignantly disputing Mancunians' right to describe themselves as being from 'oop North'!

 

            I think that our Council could overtake Braintree and, who knows, perhaps catch up with Chichester, if they were to adopt my two suggestions, made in this blog a few weeks ago, of adding glass bottles and jars to their weekly collection – and targeting those householders who, week after week, put out several black bags for collection; but never a green box or a clear plastic sack.

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Up go Prices – Pensions way behind!

 

            I pay all my regular bills by direct debit.  That way, I can't fall deeply into debt as a result of forgetfulness, and my bills get paid even if I'm ill or absent from home at the time that payment is due.  It is a facility that I greatly appreciate and – at this time of the year - I also appreciate the fact that the Council collects its Council Tax in ten instalments rather than twelve.  Freedom from Council Tax in February and March is always very welcome!

 

            From time to time, of course, the monthly direct debit payments are increased or, just occasionally, decreased according to circumstances.

 

            My water payments, my payments for gas and electricity, and my payments for my phone and internet connection have all recently been increased well above the level of inflation.  I awaited my Council Tax assessment with a certain amount of apprehension

 

When it arrived I read it with some relief.   I live in a modest bungalow in what I once heard described in Tendring's Council Chamber as 'a working class residential area'.  My council 'tax band' reflects that, and I learn that my monthly payments for the next financial year will rise modestly from £77 to £81 (this does, of course, include a 'single person discount').   Well, it's an increase above the notional level of inflation – but certainly not so dramatically above it as those for water, energy and phone-and-internet. 

 

I am, I have no doubt, partly responsible for some of these latter increases myself.  I don't stint on the use of water.  I keep my home (which is well insulated) comfortably warm day and night, and I don't pause and think every time I want to use the phone or access the internet.  Also, I suspect that my iron horse (mobility scooter) whose battery feeds on electricity every night, has a hearty appetite for it!

 

            I shall, I think, manage to accommodate these increases in my cost of living without too much discomfort – but then I am one of the 'lucky ones', enjoying not only a state retirement pension, that will go up by a few pounds next month, but also a modest, but index linked, pension for which I paid 6 per cent of my salary throughout my forty years in the local government service.  There are also a few perks for which veteran octogenarians like myself qualify – an increased winter fuel allowance for instance, and a free passport for those of us still capable of overseas travel.

 

            Many others are not so fortunate as I am.  It is sometimes overlooked too that those 'inflation linked' benefits, both of the state and of any private pension, are always paid at least a year late.  The not-very-generous rises in our pensions that we shall get next month were determined by the level of inflation last September, and the rises that we are currently experiencing in food, petrol, electricity, gas and the council tax won't be recognised till next September.  It will be over a year from now before our pensions reflect the effect of current price increases – and goodness knows what further increases in living costs may arise before then!

 

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'That's the way the money goes!'

 

            Tendring District Council sends out the Council Tax bills.  Tendring District Council collects the money and Tendring District Council has to prosecute those who refuse to pay.  But Tendring District Council spends only a tiny proportion of the sum collected.   That was a message that, between 1974 and 1980, when I was the council's first Public Relations Officer I tried over and over again to impress on Tendring residents.

 

            I doubt if I had much effect. When bills go up the instinctive human reaction is to blame whoever has sent them out.

 

            In the literature that comes with the Council Tax Bill (which I suspect many householders consign instantly to the waste bin) is a diagram that makes it clear that of every pound that is collected in Council Tax, just 10p goes to Tendring District Council, 9p to the Police Authority, 4p to the Fire Authority, 2p to parish and town councils, and the remaining 75p to Essex County Council who provide the really expensive services like Social Services, Education, Refuse Disposal (as distinct from collection), provision and maintenance of highways, public libraries and so on.

 

            Of the £81 that I shall be paying every month from April through to January of next year, only just over £8 will be destined for the Tendring District Council.

 

            I don't really think that that would be bad value for money even if they did no more than remove my rubbish and my recyclables every week, keep the streets clean, provide public conveniences and make sure that the food I buy in restaurants, pubs, shops and supermarkets is safe for me to eat.  They do, of course, a good deal more than that.

 

            Yes, I am well aware that most of local government finance comes in grants from central government – but I reckon that keeping local democracy ticking over is one of the least harmful things that central government does with our money.

 

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European Referendum

 

            It is really no great surprise that the House of Commons has rejected the idea of a referendum on the subject of the ratification of the new European Treaty.  No British government, with a comfortable majority and firm control over most of its MPs, will ever permit a referendum that they think it very likely they would lose.

 

            Nor was it any great surprise to me that, in doing so, they broke a promise that many people consider they had made.  Remember – just a few years ago – how they promised that they would only take part in the invasion of Iraq with United Nations' authorisation .  That was when they imagined that a comfortable majority of UN members could be persuaded, by one means or another, to 'toe the line'.  When it became abundantly clear that they couldn't, they quite suddenly realized that they 'already had that authorisation'; how very convenient!

 

            Not that I think that the ratification of the Treaty will make any discernible difference to most of us.  Failure to ratify would merely result in the EU becoming steadily more cumbersome and expensive to operate.  But perhaps that's what many Europhobes would like.  It would provide them with another stick with which to beat the idea of a united Europe.

 

            I'd like to see a referendum on whether or not we should renew our Trident missile programme.  This is not an issue that is very likely to affect, except financially, the present generation (already the next-but one after mine!), but it could be a matter of life or death to tens of thousands of this generation's grandchildren.

 

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