Week 31.08

                           Tendring Topics………on Line

 

Pensioners' Bus Passes

 

            I am glad that Tendring Council has decided to bring forward the period during which pensioners' free bus passes are valid, from 9.30 a.m. to 9.00 a.m.   I don't think that it will make as much difference to the buses as some people seem to imagine.  For those of us who have an early appointment at a doctor's surgery or a hospital outpatients' department, or who need to catch a connection to some destination out of our area, that extra half hour will be all-important.

 

            That certainly won't apply to many pensioners at any one time though.  Most, especially those who are on holiday in our area, will be quite content with a later start except on rare occasions. Will the bus service then be overwhelmed?  The prospect of hordes of elderly strangers from London, Birmingham, Manchester and goodness knows what other part of the UK, cramming our buses and forcing us natives to walk or wait for the next bus, is one that haunts the dreams of some correspondents to the local press.

 

            If it does happen then it is really up to the bus companies to put on more buses.  They are, I am quite sure, adequately compensated by central and local government for dealing with the added use that the free passes bring.  Those free passes make it possible for them to continue to send buses along routes that would otherwise be unprofitable. 

 

            It must be remembered too, that the flow of elderly people using buses in areas other than their own isn't entirely one-way.  I have held a bus pass for two years and had never used it.  My mobility scooter is sufficient for strictly local journeys and if the weather or other circumstances prevents its use I have always been able to depend on a relative or friend with a car, a local taxi service, or, for longer journeys, the railway.

 

            This year, the third year, I had intended to cancel my bus pass until I learned that the new passes could be used on regular bus services anywhere in England.   I decided that I would stick to mine.  It might prove to be useful!

 

            And so it did!  Last weekend  (25^th to 28^th July) I spent with my son and his family.  They now live in a part of London very difficult to reach by 'the underground' (it involves three changes of train and long subterranean walks to find the right platform!) or a very expensive taxi ride.  It is however relatively easy by bus.

 

             It's not a journey that I would have dreamed of attempting on my own.  However my daughter-in-law is a very caring and efficient guide. Under her watchful eye I climbed on board and showed my Tendring bus pass to the driver.  He took just one glance and waved me on.  

 

            Until that moment I hadn't really been quite sure that it would work.  But it did!  I'd urge all people living in our area to apply for a bus pass if they're entitled to one.  Like me, they may never use it on home territory but they may be very glad of it when they take a holiday break elsewhere!

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                        Holidays – and the 'Credit Crunch'

 

            The weather over the Easter and Late Spring Bank Holidays effectively dampened (quite literally!) hopes of a profitable summer season for the resorts on our Essex Holiday Coast.   I could well imagine folk who had snatched a short break at the end of May in Clacton, Frinton, Dovercourt or Brightlingsea and had been welcomed by biting wind and driving rain, thinking again about a longer holiday here later in the year.

 

            Has the credit crunch, the steady rise in air fares and rising prices on the Continent halted, or even reversed, the trend?   It seems that it may have done so.  Just a week or so ago local holiday camps, hotels and boarding houses were reporting an increase in bookings.  Clacton thronged with visitors during the first weekend of the school holidays (which also just happened to be the first weekend of really warm and sunny weather!) and our roads, and the access roads to the town, were certainly jammed with their cars.

 

            We also hear that budget airlines, which depend for their success on a huge holiday exodus to 'somewhere where the sun always shines', are experiencing financial difficulties.  On the other hand BBC tv researchers found a substantial number of couples and families who, so it seemed, would rather starve than forego that sun-baked, alcohol-fuelled fortnight on the Costa del Sol or wherever.

 

            Our political leaders are certainly setting a good example with the Prime Minister holidaying in Southwold and the leader of the opposition in the west-country.  That really is better than taking over the second (or possibly the third) home of a friendly foreign billionaire.   Mind you, they'd both have done better to come to our holiday coast.  We could promise better weather than either Southwold or 'all points west'.  For several years my wife and I holidayed with our motor caravan in Devon.  Yes, it was lovely and we thoroughly enjoyed the change.  However an East Anglian 'expatriate' then running a service station near Newton Abbot assured me, as I filled up in the pouring rain; 'Come to sunny Devon……It rains six days out of seven!'

 

            One thing that has surprised me has been to hear tv commentators speaking of the increase in families taking camping holidays as though this involved real deprivation and was the last resort of the poverty-stricken.  My wife and I, with our two sons while they were children, took touring camping holidays, at first under canvas but latterly with a motor-caravan, from the late 1950s to the 1990s.  We camped from Lands End to John o' Groats in Great Britain.  On the Continent we pitched our tents, or parked our van, in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein and the former Yugoslavia.  Camping made it possible to get off the tourist trail and visit areas where foreign visitors were rarities.

 

            I suppose that at first we did choose camping because it was all that we could afford. It wasn't long though before we knew that we would never want any other kind of holiday.  I can do it no longer but I'm glad that others 'carry on camping!'

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'Everybody out!'

 

            When I retired from Tendring Council's service in 1980, one of the parting gifts that my colleagues gave me was life membership of what was then NALGO (the National and Local Government Officers' Association).  NALGO was subsequently absorbed into UNISON and today I still carry a UNISON membership card in my wallet.

 

            I therefore take a mild fraternal interest in UNISON's activities, especially when they relate to the staff of local authorities.  I couldn't for instance do other than sympathise with the objectives of the recent 48 hour strike of some local government workers.  A pay rise of below the rate of inflation is, in effect, a pay cut.  As we all know, price inflation continues to go up, up and up.

 

            On the other hand I thoroughly dislike the inconvenience and hardship that strikes almost always inflict on innocent members of the public.

 

            I thought that Tendring UNISON members showed a great deal of the true spirit of public service by making their protest in a way that caused minimal, if any, inconvenience to the public.   They displayed their solidarity with UNISON's cause by picketing Council offices – but they did so in the lunch hour when they wouldn't have been on duty anyway.   They also, of course, avoided losing two days pay which, since many of them are on or only just above, the minimum pay rate, they could ill afford.  I wish that I thought that such moderate and considerate protests were as likely to achieve results as full blooded 'Everybody out!' strikes.

 

            Public servants can, as the government points out, only be paid more, by cutting services already cut to the bone, or by increasing taxation.  And the tax-paying public feels that it has paid enough.

 

            I think that members of the public would pay their taxes and public servants would accept below-inflation pay rises more willingly, if they could feel that Britain's financial burden was being borne equally by all Britain's residents.   I have pointed out before in this blog that it is those on the lowest incomes who have to pay the greater proportion of those incomes in taxation and in the purchase of essential commodities like gas, electricity and water.  Our whole economy and taxation system is geared towards making the rich even richer and the poor even poorer.

 

            Low paid public servants endure pay cuts while heads of public corporations walk away from their failures with 'golden handshakes' of hundreds of thousands of pounds.   The really super-rich, be they native born or foreign émigrés, are asked for a much smaller proportion of their incomes in taxation than the rest of us – and they can and do employ the very best lawyers and accountants to make that little even less!

 

            I don't suggest that they should be reduced to penury but there must surely be some way of making them feel just a little, if not of the pain, at least of the discomfort of the rest of us; perhaps to the extent of being compelled to sell just one of their overseas residences, downsize to a slightly smaller yacht, or to be content with he ownership of a First Division, rather than a Premier League Football Team!

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