Week 4.09

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Too close for comfort!

Since I have had my mobility scooter (my ‘iron horse’) I have become more anxious about the possibility of being mugged and robbed than I once was. This is probably partly due to my age and consequent loss of physical strength, but also I think, because, seated on the scooter, I feel particularly vulnerable. I have never yet, for instance, been out on it after dark
Me, on my 'iron horse' outside my bungalow in Dudley Road during the summer. I have recently had a canopy fitted which should make me a little less vulnerable to muggers as well as to the weather.

However, although some reported muggings have taken place in the vicinity of my home, the most common time for such an attack tends to be after midnight, when the victim is on his way home from a nightclub or somewhere similar. That is not, and never has been, my scene.

That is something that couldn’t be said though about a mugging and knifing, that took place on Tuesday of last week (13th Jan.). A 47 year old man was attacked by three muggers who took from him his mobile phone and a quantity of beer, presumably in cans. They left him with a knife wound in his hand that needed hospital treatment. It is true that it didn’t take place in the hours of daylight. It was in the early evening though at about 7.15 p.m., just the time that I might venture out if there were to be some evening event that I particularly wanted to attend.

What’s more, it took place in Clacton’s Key Road within a few yards of its junction with Old Road. It’s only a few hundred yards from my home and I pass it at least twice every Sunday on my way to and from the Quaker Meeting House and on the fairly frequent occasions that I visit the computer shop, a local pharmacy or other shops in the area.

It may be that this wasn’t just a random attack by three yobs on someone who appeared to be on his own and vulnerable. Perhaps the assailants knew their victim and had some other motive than robbery for their assault. That thought would make the rest of us feel a little more secure.

However, I think that for the present I’ll stick to my resolution not to venture out after dark except, of course, as a passenger in a friend or relative’s car.
Key Road's junction with Clacton's Old Road, where the attack took place. I learn 'from a usually reliable source' (as they say!) that this is a spot where negotiations for the sale of drugs sometimes takes place. Perhaps then, the attack wasn't quite as random and purposeless as it had appeared to be.

‘Education, Education, Education!’

Education, Education, Education were claimed to be Tony Blair’s top three objectives when New Labour first took office over ten years ago. On a visit to Moscow he even managed to make the point in a soap opera on Russian tv!

I certainly wouldn’t claim that his subsequent educational policies have proved to be a dismal failure. The prowess of my three grandchildren, all three of whom have graduated during the past decade, clearly indicate otherwise. I am quite sure that it has produced a great many notable successes. There have been some sad disappointments though, well to the fore among them being Clacton’s Bishops Park College, at the ceremonial opening of which Tony Blair himself attended as a VIP guest just a few years ago.

Of the 111 pupils from this school eligible to take the GCSE examination last year only 52 percent managed to get five or more GCSE grades at or above ‘G’ level and only 8 percent managed to get these grades in five subjects including English and Mathematics. ‘G’ level, by the way, indicates a bare ‘pass’. The only other grade is ‘F’ for Failure which I am quite sure examiners are reluctant to award.. This was the lowest score of any of the hundred Essex Schools recently surveyed.

Compare this with Clacton County High School whose pass rate was 96 percent and 45 percent respectively and Tendring Technology College with a pass rate of 94 percent and 49 percent. The very best? Chelmsford County High School for Girls, Colchester County High School for Girls, and Colchester Royal Grammar School, all three with 100 percent passes in both categories.

A rather closer look at the league table reveals that 24.3 percent (almost a quarter) of Bishops Park College pupils had ‘special educational needs’ and 23.7 percent (again not far short of a quarter) of its pupils were ‘persistently absent’ from school. These figures are much, much higher than those for any other of the schools listed. It is surely obvious that Bishops Park College’s problem is not really ‘educational’ at all but ‘social’. Children need to have superhuman determination and potential to lift themselves out of an environment in which ‘book learning’ is regarded with contempt.

Mr Nick Pavitt, the head teacher who has done a very creditable job in lifting Colbayns High School out of failure and now has the responsibility for Bishops Park, claims that the school ‘is on the road to recovery’. I hope that it is, but fear it will be an uphill path, because it seems clear to me that the real problems lie not in the school but in the homes of some of the pupils.

In the meantime I can well understand the motives of those local parents who are spending their last penny in educating their children at home rather than send them to Bishops Park College, the only local secondary school in which they have been offered places. I’m only thankful that I was never called upon to make such a decision about my own sons’ education.

Our Wind-farm

Those old enough to remember the days of World War II will recall that the standard reply at the time to complaints of delays and inefficiency was; ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ More recently it used to be, ‘Well, it’s the weather has held us up’ or ‘Our suppliers have let us down’ or ‘It’s them EU regulations, you know’. Now though there’s an all-purpose excuse that is almost as good as ‘the war’; ‘Blame it on the Credit Crunch’. That covers just about anything.

It is nice to know though that there’s one important enterprise in our area that needs no excuses. The Danish Dong Organisation (I wish that they’d change their name!) gave us the time-table for the installation and commissioning of the 48 wind turbines that they are erecting on the Gunfleet Sands almost directly south of Clacton pier, well over a year ago; and they have stuck to it. They are currently driving the monopiles that support each turbine into the seabed. Seventeen of the forty-eight are already in place and they have completed their off-shore sub-station. They are confident that the wind-farm will be completed and in operation before the end of the year.

The construction has brought a little unexpected prosperity to Brightlingsea at a time when the town, like all of us these days, could do with it. Large vessels involved in the provision of the wind farm lie in Brightlingsea Creek until needed. Crews working on the project have their base in the town. They board in bed-and-breakfast accommodation and spend money in pubs, shops and restaurants.

The contractors have also been given permission to demolish a boatyard and to build a three-storey office block and warehouse in Tower Street. This will be used for the service and maintenance of the wind farm when its construction has been completed. Thus it seems that the wind-farm will be a continuing bonus for the Cinque Port Town.


Eight Hundred Years of History

Cambridge University’s celebration of the 800th anniversary of its foundation reminds me of the pride that Heather and I felt were when our elder son Pete was one of four Clacton County High School Boys to be accepted as undergraduates by the University in 1971. We both came of working class parents and considered ourselves to have been privileged in having stayed on at school till we were sixteen to take the School Leaving Exam and matric, instead of leaving school to start work at fourteen as most of our contemporaries had.

No member of either of our immediate families had ever dreamed of going to any kind of University. For our son to go to one of England’s and Europe's most historic and prestigious ones had been beyond our wildest hopes. Our pride on the day that we drove him to Cambridge and settled him into his in-college room was surpassed only by that on graduation day.

Those of course were ‘the bad old days’ when tuition was free and a living allowance, to which parents had to make a ‘parental contribution’ depending upon their means, was paid by the county council. Graduates therefore left their universities without the huge burden of debt that they carry today.


Photos: Left - Graduation Day. Right - Heather and I on the Cam during the course of a visit to Pete. This, you'll realize was in my beardless days. I wasn't too bad a hand with a punt pole! This picture reminds me that Heather and I weren't always old fogies!










Welcome Barack Obama!

I wish the new President of the USA all the luck in the world in his Presidency, and I think that he'll need it if he is to clear up the mess left by his predecessor!

Mr George W. Bush presided over, and was largely responsible for the involvement of the USA and its ever-compliant junior partner Britain, in two unwinnable wars. These have won countless new recruits for the terrorism that they are supposed to be combating. He established the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where we now know that torture has been used in questioning prisoners. He has blindly supported Israeli foreign policy, even in opposition to all his other allies. I do not believe it is just a coincidence that the Israeli campaign in Gaza ended, and the Israeli troop withdrawal began, just hours before the inauguration of a President who couldn't be depended upon to defend without question every Israeli action.

On the world stage Mr Bush effectively blighted every international attempt to slow down the pace of climatic change. I have no doubt whatsoever that this will be seen by future historians as overwhelmingly the most serious problem that faced mankind in the 21st century. By extending the boundaries of NATO and ringing Russia with missile bases (purely defensive, of course!) he has made an enemy where he might have found a friend.

At home his blind support for an unfettered free market encouraged the irresponsible lending that precipitated the financial crisis first in the USA and then throughout the world. How ironic that a committed anti-Marxist's policies should threaten to demonstrate the truth of Karl Marx's assertion that 'Capitalism carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction'.

In his Presidency Mr Barack Obama carries the hopes of millions for a better and safer world, perhaps even the one envisaged by Alfred Lord Tennyson in the nineteenth century:

Where the war-drum beats no more and the battle flags are furled, In the Parliament of man, the federation of the World.

Mr Obama has one big advantage as he begins his all-but-impossible task. He isn't George W. Bush