Week 17 2013

Tendring Topics……….on Line

A Very Public Funeral

          ‘Speak no ill of the dead’, my mother used to say.  De mortuis nil nisi bonum, (of the dead say nothing but good) means much the same thing for those who wish to display their knowledge of Latin.  It has probably been this thought that has made me refrain from comment about the death of Baroness Thatcher and about her very public (and very expensive) funeral last Wednesday (17^th April)

            I’m certainly not going to add to the fulsome praise that has been lavished upon her during the past two weeks (you’d never dream that it was not Dennis Skinner, George Galloway, Glenda Jackson  or their like who put an end to her political career, but grandees of her own party!) but, on the other hand, I wouldn’t wish to descend to personal abuse or even personal criticism.  She was a very able and remarkable woman of strong and determined views and, as the UKs first woman Prime Minister, she set an example that all of her successors have tried to follow.  The fact that I consider her views mistaken and her example a bad one is beside the point.   I did warm to her just a little in the distress she displayed when her son Mark (now, thanks to mum, Sir Mark Thatcher Bart.) was missing for a few days in the Sahara desert while taking part in a motor rally.

            I have never for one moment hesitated to comment on and criticise the policies that she pursued so relentlessly. Only the week before her death, when I was unaware that she was even seriously ill, I wrote in this blog at some length about the ethics of compelling local authorities to sell off at bargain-basement prices houses that their predecessors had provided for the benefit of the people of their areas.  And I outlined the malign results countrywide of this successful attempt to widen political support.

            I have commented critically on her attitude towards European Union, her mass privatisations of public services, her widening the gap between the richest and the poorest in our society, her close association with Rupert Murdoch, a foreign media millionaire, in his conflict with British Trade Unions,  her friendship with General Pinochet, Chile's brutal fascist dictator, and her connivance with his escape from justice.

            One cannot but admire her resolution in recovering the Falklands after the Argentine invasion. However it should be remembered that she was the head of a government that had left the islands defenceless against such an attack, the last vestige of a British naval presence having been removed shortly before the invasion.  Patrolling Trident submarines (our ‘ultimate deterrent’) had not the slightest effect upon the Argentines, as they have had no deterrent effect upon any act of aggression that has occurred since World War II.  Might not the permanent presence in Port Stanley of an adequate British garrison been a more effective deterrent and possibly have saved a great deal of money and many British and Argentine lives?   

            Shakespeare got it right when he put into Mark Anthony’s mouth, ‘The evil that men do lives after them.  The good is oft interred with their bones’.  It doesn’t apply only to men.

The County Council Elections

Broken and dangerous paving stones in Agincourt Road, Clacton-on-Sea  

I have written several times in this blog about the dire state of Clacton’s pavements.   There are broken and uneven paving stones and kerbs in street after street away from the actual town centre.   They shake up the ancient bones of mobility scooter users like me.  They’re a danger to all pedestrians after dark and they’re a peril to those with impaired vision at any time of the day or night.

            I last wrote about them only six or eight weeks ago and was astonished, and very pleased a fortnight later to see the County Council’s contractors hard at work in Clacton’s Old Road near the Waterglade business park repairing one of the stretches of footpath about which I had complained.   Since then I have spotted other footpaths being repaired and have noticed that at least some of the potholes in the middle of roads, that had existed for years, have been filled in.

  

The relaid footpath in Clacton's Old Road.
             

Why, I wondered, is all this happening just now?  Had the county council (who are the highway authority) suddenly discovered a few thousand pounds that they hadn’t known they possessed?  All became clear when I realized that there is to be a County Council election on 2nd May.  Existing members of the County Council  had no doubt urged their contractors to get on with the job in the hope of encouraging residents to use their votes for candidates of their party.  I'm afraid they realized the importance of those repairs a bit too late to attract my vote.

         I certainly intend to use that vote in the County Council election  So far I have had election literature from the Labour, Conservative and 'Tendring First' candidates.  I understand that UKIP are contesting every county council seat in Essex.  I certainly won't vote for their candidate and, although I have nothing against the Conservative Candidate, I can't possibly vote for a member of the political group who elected and supported Lord Hanningfield as County Council Leader, who have neglected the maintenance of Clacton's roads and footpaths, who have closed, despite wide public protest, a recycling and refuse site in St. Osyth, resulting in fly tipping and congestion in Clacton's Rush Green Road site, and more recently have first closed Colchester High Street to traffic and then, just when members of the public were getting used to the closure, cancelled it - presumably because they could see it was losing them votes.   

'LEADER SLAMS BISHOP REMARKS'

          The above announcement, accompanied by a picture of the Rt Rev Stephen Cottrell, Bishop of Chelmsford (a diocese that includes Clacton-on-Sea and the Tendring District) greeted readers of the Clacton Gazette last week.  The ‘Leader’ of the headline is Councillor Peter Halliday, recently elected as political ‘Leader’ of the Tendring District Council.  Another smaller headline declared Church told not to interfere as benefits reforms hit Clacton hardest.   What, I wondered, could the Bishop possibly have said to upset the Council’s leader?  Had he insulted the Council in some way or made light of our current economic problems?  

He had, as might have been expected, done nothing of the sort.  The Bishop had expressed concern at the revelation in a recent report, that poor residents in the Tendring District are likely to feel the impact of the government’s welfare reforms more than those of most other districts.   It might have been expected that that would be a concern shared by Tendring Council and its political leader.   It appeared that working-age benefit claimants in Tendring will lose £620 a year by 2014/15 because of the reforms.  Those in the City of London will lose an average of just £180.

The Rt Rev Stephen Cottrell is quoted as saying that he wanted to voice his concern about the injustice that had been revealed.   ‘Although some reform of the welfare system is necessary, I cannot turn a blind eye to the injustice that it is the poorest people in our poorest communities who will be paying the price of the current welfare reforms.  Of course benefits should not be paid to those who don’t need them or to anyone who is claiming them falsely.  But in a time of austerity there is actually a greater need to support the poor and to ensure that everyone in society bears the costs  of any reductions, especially those who are better able to afford it’.  That sounds eminently reasonable to me, especially in the light of recent figures showing that 3,480 people in Tendring are claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance – 4.5 percent of the working-age population.

But Mr Halliday will have none of it. ‘Are these people the poorest in society or are the poorest people those who are going to work, being paid the minimum wage and just managing to keep their heads above water?’, he asks rhetorically..  Perhaps the Bishop would arrange for Mr Halliday’s local parish priest to take him to one side and explain the ways in which those people being paid the minimum wage are also penalised by the so-called reforms.  Perhaps too, Mr Halliday will tell those 3,480 unemployed local residents where they can find work – at even the minimum wage.

Peter Halliday says, ‘I’m concerned at the level of interference by the church about changes to welfare and this government’s policies.  Some of the actions of his own organisation need to be sorted out before worrying about what other people are doing’.   A spokesman for the Diocese of Chelmsford gave some examples of the way in which Britain’s Christian Churches ‘interfere’ in the lives of their disadvantaged fellow citizens; ‘Churches are communities made up of people who care for one another.  They set up support groups for people affected by problems so that they can share their experiences and address the challenges they are facing together.  They help people who are struggling with debt, they work with charities to help people who are worried about losing their homes, and they are involved in setting up and running food banks’.

Mr Halliday might care to find out what local churches are doing in Clacton and in the Tendring District generally - and perhaps join in.   He’ll find there’s plenty of work to be done but it differs from that of district councillors in that there’s no payment made for simply turning up at meetings – and volunteers for church activities can rarely claim even their out-of-pocket expenses. 

‘He called for his Fiddlers three’

         There is, of course, a kind of fiddling that doesn't involve the use of a violin! Nowadays, I suppose, Colchester’s legendary Old King Cole would have called for his financial advisers. There have always been people who enriched themselves unscrupulously but I believe that the situation worsened during the avaricious 1980s when Mrs Thatcher was PM.   That was the decade in which the market philosophy of ‘get as much as you can for as little as you can get away with’ really took hold.  Everything – and everyone had a price - and the Daily Telegraph (surely reckoned to be one of our more responsible broadsheets) published a  leading article ‘A Defence of Greed’.

            We hear, and read in sections of the popular press, a great deal about benefit fraudsters and those who use state ‘benefits’, not just as temporary help in an emergency, but as a preferred lifestyle.  It’s a pretty uncomfortable and squalid lifestyle though and I don’t believe as many embrace it from choice as some sections of the press and some politicians would like us to believe.

 Nor is it only the poor who are on the fiddle.  We haven’t forgotten the many ‘honourable members’ of the House of Commons and at least one ‘noble Lord’ who, despite receiving what most of us would regard as generous salaries, claimed fraudulent expenses.  A very few were prosecuted and gaoled but many got away with paying back the money that they had fraudulently claimed.  I have just read in the daily Gazette a report about our very own Lord Hanningfield (who did serve a very brief gaol sentence for his fraud).  In the first eight months of his return to the House of Lords after early discharge from gaol, this convicted criminal has claimed £21,000 for attendance and £1,736 in travel expenses for his attendance there - but there is no record of his having said a word or asked a single question  in the ‘Upper House’.  Nor is there any question of his having once again broken the law. He could certainly teach a lesson or two to small-scale benefit cheats!

            Then, of course, there are the seriously wealthy cosmopolitans with their tax havens, their charitable trusts and their phony charities. They keep a whole financial industry profitably engaged in advising them on avoiding the taxation that should be the responsibility and privilege of everyone who enjoys British citizenship, is permitted to reside here permanently, or who operates a business enterprise within our shores.

            Catch the little fish with their benefit fraud by all means – but don’t forget the big ones with their stashed-away millions, and their armies of ‘professional fiddlers’. They may be more difficult to hook, gaffe and land but they'll prove to be a far more profitable catch!