Week 44a.08

                             Tendring Topics – on Line

 

Helping the Homeless

 

            Christmas is less than eight weeks away and already the Christmas catalogues, and Christmas appeals from all sorts of worthy charities, are dropping on my doormat almost daily.  Clacton is to have its decorative street lights.  There are special offers in all the supermarkets.  Santa Claus is on his way and it's tempting to say, 'God's in his Heaven and all's right with the world!

 

But, of course it isn't! Britain, and so it seems the rest of the world, is in the midst of a financial crisis.  What is going to happen during the next few months is anybody's guess but one thing is certain.  There will be many more homeless people and homeless families as the year comes to an end than there were at the end of 2007.  This makes Christmas, which has at its very heart the story of a temporarily homeless mother-to-be and her husband, particularly poignant this year. For the new homeless 'the Festive Season' will be far from Merry!

 

Both I, and my two sons, have been involved in public housing administration and have seen the demoralising misery that homelessness can bring; the loss of hope, the break-up of families, sometimes vain recourse to the bottle or to drugs to ease the pain. 

 

Heather and I always supported to the best of our ability Quaker Homeless Action, a Quaker Charity that doesn't spend time, energy and money on persuading local authorities and housing associations to provide more affordable homes.  It goes to the heart of the matter, working with homeless people, helping them into new homes where possible and striving to make their lives less miserable while they are without a home.  It provides a 'Quaker Open Christmas' in London for those actually living 'on the street'.  As well as giving them a few days' warmth, comfort and Christmas fare, it points them toward the public and voluntary services that may provide a more permanent solution to their problems.  Throughout the year it helps to fund voluntary agencies nationwide that offer similar help and support to local homeless people.

 

When Heather died in 2006 I asked that there should be only family flowers at her funeral but said that she would have been pleased if friends and relatives made donations to Quaker Homeless Action in her memory.  There was a magnificently generous response and over £800 was raised by that means.

 

This year I have made another quite different effort to help QHA.  Over the years Heather and I wrote together a number of 'Nativity Monologues' by people mentioned in the Gospels as having been involved in Christ's nativity and infancy, together with a number of imaginary  'witnesses' whom we thought might well have been there. We wrote them primarily for use at our annual Quaker Meetings for Carols but they have been used in at least two other Clacton Churches and at  ecumenical events.  Three of them were published in Christmas issues of 'The Friend' a Quaker Weekly Journal.

 

This year I have gathered these monologues together and had them printed and published as 'In the Beginning……' (Ten witnesses recall the Nativity')  I am selling these at £5 each for Quaker Homeless Action.  I have already raised over £200 by this means but would like to make the sum much, much more.

 

I am, of course, prejudiced but I think that the many people who already have a copy have found it to be an entertaining read.  Have you ever wondered how Jesus' grandparents must have felt when they discovered that their teenage daughter was pregnant, and that the father wasn't her highly respectable boy-friend? How a professional guide and bodyguard of the Magi would have regarded his 'wise' clients when they were unwise enough to tell Herod that they had come along to pay homage to a new king in his little kingdom; and how a worldly-wise but warm hearted Innkeeper's wife might have found a way of helping a couple in a desperate plight even though there was 'no room at the inn'?  In writing the monologues Heather and I used modern language to bring to life the character of each 'witness'.  We assumed that, whatever else may have changed, human nature is much the same now as it was 2,000 years ago.

 

You already possess a copy?  'In the Beginning……', fits comfortably into a C5 envelope and would make an original and welcome alternative to the Pictorial Calendar that you were thinking of sending that distant friend or relative this Christmas. They'll probably already have one or two of those!  Think about it.

 

If you'd like a copy send a crossed cheque for £5 made out to Quaker Homeless Action to me, Ernest Hall at 88 Dudley Road, Clacton-on-Sea, CO15 3DJ and you will receive, post free, a copy of 'In the Beginning….' if not 'by return of post' at least within two or three days.

 

I have written the above after a great deal of hesitation because I do value the good will of all who read this blog.  I know very well that many readers have limited means and have other equally deserving causes to which they must and should contribute.  If you're one of those please ignore this appeal.  It wasn't intended for you.

 

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 Preaching to the Converted

 

            During the past few weeks there have been reports of Clacton householders summoning the Police on seeing total strangers inspecting the contents of the green boxes that they put out for the collection of recyclable refuse. The 'snoopers' were suspected of being identity thieves searching for bank statements and so on among discarded papers.  They were, in fact, carrying out a survey on behalf of the County Council in preparation for a forthcoming publicity and advice campaign.

 

            This campaign was launched on Wednesday of this week (29^th October).  Essex County Councillor Tracey Chapman, told reporters that the campaign will give residents information and encouragement to start recycling or to recycle even more. 'A team of recycling promoters will speak to residents, answer questions, address concerns and give straightforward advice and support on how to recycle more through their kerbside recycling collection'.   The event began at Coppins Hall in Maldon Way from 9.00 a.m. till 12 noon and moved on to the Welcome Centre at Pier Avenue Baptist Church from 1.00 p.m. till 4.00 p.m.

 

            I hope that the campaign is proving successful. I think it likely though that they will have been preaching mainly to the converted.  Those who believe (or prefer to believe!) that recycling is a waste of time will have stayed well away.

 

 The whole effort could surely have been organised and planned more effectively from the beginning.  To discover what people are putting into their green salvage boxes (said to have been the purpose of the 'council snoopers') it would have been better to send observers round with the recyclables collecting vehicles, to take a quick look at what is tipped out of half a dozen or so boxes in each street.  This would have given a better cross-section of the public's habits without alarming and antagonising those householders who are already taking recycling seriously.

 

            At the same time, a note could have been taken of the addresses at which no green box or plastic bag containing recyclables was to be seen but where there were quite possibly two, three or four well-filled black plastic bags of refuse.

 

            It is on the residents of those premises that the campaign's interviewers should have concentrated all the powers of persuasion that they were able to muster.   If this proved ineffective then, in fairness to those of us who are responsible citizens, the Council should consider seriously what sanctions may be available to persuade the 'non-co-operators' to change their minds.

 

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The Voice of the People?

 

            Our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell is surely treading on somewhat dangerous ground when he blames Tendring Council for preferring the advice of some 'little official' from the Health Protection Agency to that of the 'voice of the people' when they decided to close down that famous (or should it be infamous?) water feature in Clacton's town centre.

 

            I have said before in this column that Health and Safety is taken to absurd lengths these days, not least over the question of the purity of the water circulating in the water feature.  For goodness sake; the thing is there to be looked at, not to be a source of drinking water, or even for washing up the dishes.  It would seem to be almost as reasonable to worry about the purity of water standing in pools on the highway after a heavy rain!

 

            However, the Health Protection Agency is a government-appointed body and I think that the council would ignore its recommendations at their peril.  Would Mr Carswell be willing, or able, to help if the Council ignored the Agency's advice and an outbreak of Legionnaires Disease (I take it that that is what they are worried about) resulted.  It's very unlikely but not absolutely impossible.

 

            Only once has one of my relatively rare visits to that end of Pier Avenue coincided with one of the even rarer occasions on which the water feature has been in operation. Even then the water jets wavered and died while I was still trying to get my camera out of my pocket to record this rare event!

 

            When the Victorians installed a water feature they incorporated it into a piece of statuary, usually beautiful, sometimes amusing and a little risqué, like that of the rude little boy in Brussels. Our 21^st Century idea of a wonderful water feature is something that looks for all the world like a burst and furiously leaking water main!  Clacton's water feature can't even manage that!

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The Voice of the People…….again?

 

            Just four months ago Tendring Council did, as Mr Carswell suggests, heed the voice of the people (some of the people anyway) rather than their own professional experts, and will, I think, live to regret it.  Bowing to vociferous and well-organised local opposition, their Planning Committee voted unanimously against the recommendation of their Planning Officer, to reject an application for a small wind farm of just five turbines on Earls Hall Farm between Clacton and St. Osyth. 

 

'Too close to homes', was the slogan of the protestors .  The turbines would, in their words, be 'less than a mile' from occupied houses.  That could, of course, have been rephrased as 'almost a mile', which seems much further!

 

I don't believe that there would be either noise or visual nuisance from those turbines.  They are much less ugly and intrusive than, for instance, electricity pylons or many modern buildings and would, I believe, blend into the landscape within weeks. Our region, and our nation, needs all the wind power that it can get.

 

At the time I said in this blog that I thought that the developers would appeal, and would probably win. They have decided to do so. I still think that they will win and that the Council, which ultimately means us, will have to pay the costs.

 

Never let it be said though that I do nothing but criticise Tendring Council.  I think that they should be congratulated on their handling of their finances.  It isn't always realized that every local authority has to have millions of pounds available to meet current and oncoming commitments and that government guidelines require this money to be safely and profitably invested until required. Tendring Council, which has nearly £30 million, by far the greater part of which is already committed, has been focusing much more closely on its treasury activity for the past year because of the 'unprecedented and increasing volatility of the financial markets'.  As a result of this, and on the advice of their experts, they withdrew a substantial sum from an Icelandic Bank earlier this year.

 

Our MP, Mr Carswell remarked a few week ago that he didn't think Tendring Council 'was capable of running a bath'!  What a pity that other Essex local authorities, with political compositions more to Mr Carswell's liking, weren't astute enough to follow Tendring Council's example.

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