Week 15.10

Tendring Topics……on Line

The General Election!

I suppose that we all look forward to the forthcoming General Election in different ways; some with eager anticipation, some with anxiety, some – I have little doubt – with boredom. I, for instance, have realized with very mixed feelings that it is likely to be the very last General Election in which I shall vote. Just twelve days after it takes place I shall celebrate my 89th birthday and will therefore enter my 90th year. No member of my family has, as far as I know, ever made it to 90 and I hardly expect to be the first to do so.

Since it is likely to be my last opportunity to influence the future of my fellow-countrymen and women, I had better get my comments, and my voting intentions, right! I certainly do intend to vote. I am now able to do so by post. It is unlikely therefore that any circumstances (other, of course, than a fatal accident) will prevent me.

Our sitting MP is Douglas Carswell, Conservative. At 38 he is the youngest of our five candidates and has the very slender majority of 920. However, since the last election, constituency boundary changes have removed Harwich from what used to be the ‘Harwich Constituency’. This is considered to have been to the Conservative advantage. According to the Daily Gazette, Ladbrokes, the bookmakers, give odds of 100 to 1 on his re-election.

Which is a pity, because although I’m not yet quite sure for whom I will vote, I am quite sure that my cross will not go against his name. This isn’t because he is a Tory (if Ken Clarke were standing in this constituency I would probably vote for him) but because he has made it clear that he is strongly opposed to my own views on issues that I believe transcend Party Politics.

I, for instance, have no doubt whatsoever that potentially catastrophic climate change is taking place, and that this is to a very large extent due to human activity. I have backed my conviction by having a solar water heating system installed in my home – and I am already experiencing the benefit in reduced fuel bills. On this issue I am on the same side as David Cameron, the Conservative Leader – but not on the same side as Douglas Carswell. He is convinced that any climatic change that may be taking place is a natural phenomenon and nothing to do with the actions of humankind. It follows that the development of alternative sources of energy is a waste of time and money.

Similarly, I believe that Britain’s best future lies within a more closely integrated, more democratically governed Europe in which British voters would have a powerful influence. I believe that together with our fellow-Europeans we could become a powerful economic and political force that could co-operate, or where necessary compete, on equal terms with the USA and the emerging powers of the Far East. Alone, we would be destined to become a non-voting protectorate of the USA. Douglas Carswell is described in the Daily Gazette as ‘fervently anti-Europe’. The fact that UKIP is not contesting his seat surely speaks for itself.

Anything else? Douglas Carswell was contemptuously critical of the Tendring First (‘anything but Conservative’) coalition that administered the Tendring District until last year, describing them as ‘incapable of running a bath’ at a time when, according to the Government’s Audit Commission, they were the best run council in Essex and among the best in Britain. This does rather suggest that he may allow his political convictions to cloud his judgement. Tendring First may find some consolation in that he is also a strong critic of the BBC! I expect he prefers the news and views of The Sun!

Oh yes, and he is very proud of having been a leader of the pack that brought down the former Speaker of the House of Commons in connection with the expenses scandal. That Speaker was, however ill advisedly, trying to preserve the honour of the House of Commons by concealing the cupidity and extravagance of its members. The expenses claims of Mr Carswell, one of those members, although unquestionably honest, were sufficiently extravagant to attract the somewhat amused attention of the press.

Who else quite certainly won’t be receiving my vote? Well, there’s Jim Taylor, the British National Party Candidate. I really didn’t spend seven years of my life in the army playing a tiny role in the destruction of Nazism and Fascism in Europe, to vote for their equivalent in England. I am tempted to say that at 72 (he’s the oldest candidate in the field) Jim Taylor is old enough to know better. However, he isn’t old enough to remember Hitler transforming a tiny, and apparently harmless, nationalist party into a threat to the whole world. I am.

Neither shall I be voting for Chris Southall, the Green Party Candidate. This isn’t because I don’t agree with most of his aims, but simply because he hasn’t the least chance of being elected. With our present electoral system a vote for him would be a wasted vote – and at my age I can’t afford to waste the miniscule fragment of political power that I possess.

That leaves me with Michael Green, the Lib. Dem. Candidate, and Ivan Henderson, the Labour Candidate and our former MP, who was narrowly ousted by Douglas Carswell at the last General Election. I am torn between them.

I certainly prefer the policies of the Lib.Dem. Party to those of New Labour. They have an uncompromisingly positive attitude toward the European Union. They accept the need for urgent action to combat climate change, they believe firmly in electoral reform and they hope to reduce the gap between the richest and poorest in our society. They opposed our involvement in the invasion of Iraq. These are all policies that I wholeheartedly support. Michael Green should surely be my preferred candidate.

And so he would be if I thought that he had the slightest chance of winning the parliamentary seat. But I really don’t think that he has. Those policies that attract me to the Lib.Dems. are by no means universally popular. Michael Green has no roots in our area and is virtually unknown. Ladbrokes assess his chances of winning at 100 to 1 against and I fear that they are probably right.

Ivan Henderson, on the other hand, was born and bred on the Tendring Peninsula. He was our MP for 13 years and I think that even his opponents would concede that he was a good MP, always seeking what was best for his constituency (it was, after all, his home!) and his constituents. If he doesn’t wholeheartedly support some of those policies that I think are important, at least he doesn’t actively oppose any of them.

He is the one candidate other than Douglas Carswell, whom Ladbrokes give a small chance of winning. They assess him at 16 to 1 against, but those odds could be greatly shortened if folk like myself, whose natural inclination is to vote Lib.Dem or Green, decided to support him.

Do you really want change, as David Cameron keeps insisting? If so, your best chance of getting it in this Clacton-on-Sea Constituency may well be to vote for Ivan Henderson. I haven’t yet fully made up my mind. Possibly I won’t do so until it is time for me to make that cross on the ballot paper and slip it into the post.

Too many deaths?

Only a few weeks ago I commented on the fact that despite a hard winter that could generally have been depended upon to carry off a reasonable number of us old folks, there hadn’t been sufficient deaths to keep Colchester’s cemetery and crematorium staff gainfully occupied. It had therefore proved necessary to raise the charges for cremations and interments. A member of the council’s staff had blamed this sad circumstance on the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance.

I recall that I counselled patience. Not even the toughest old pensioner lasts forever.

Now it seems, the reverse is happening. The number of deaths in Essex dealt with by the Coroner’s courts is proving more than the management can cope with. Dr Peter Dean, the county’s coroner, recently told BBC Radio 4’s Between ourselves’ programme, that because the process of arranging post mortem examinations and releasing bodies has slowed down, funerals have recently been delayed and family viewings of bodies cancelled. These circumstances have arisen only since the management of the Coroner’s services were transferred from the Police to Essex County Council in 2006. Dr Dean had warned at the time of the probable consequences of the change.

I found the response of John Jowers, the Essex County Councillor who is responsible for these matters, very disturbing. He is reported as saying that the new system, introduced by the County Council, was saving taxpayers money. ‘We have to do as good a job as we can within the financial constraints and if things are going wrong, we have to look very closely and see what we can do about it. It wasn’t an easy decision, but you need to make it as easy as possible for everyone in Essex to get to. We have to cut a coat according to the cloth really’.

That somewhat incoherent statement appears to mean: ‘Sorry, we simply haven’t had enough money to do the job properly. We’ll just have to see if we can do better within the present financial limits’.

This comes strangely from a leading member of a Council that spends tens of thousands of pounds on jetting leading councillors and top officials round the world (America, India, China) on the county’s business, has set up a branch in mainland China, launched a bank in the UK, subsidised a ‘members and officers’ canteen’, and bought expensive advertising space on tv assuring the viewing public that ‘Essex Works!’

You’d have thought they would have been able to find a few extra thousands to ensure that the county’s dead and their relatives were treated with efficiency, courtesy and respect.

A Tax Break for Married Couples?

It would be a bit tough on us widows and widowers – two may not be able to live as cheaply as one, but a couple’s cost-of-living isn’t twice as much as a single’s.

That isn’t really the point though. I reckon that any politician who promises that any group of people will be better off after the next budget (or the one after that) is either making false promises or proposing to rob the rest of us. The most that, in honesty and fairness, should be offered is that some groups – those who are already on the poverty line, for instance – can expect to suffer rather less extra pain than the rest of us.