Tendring Topics…….on line
The World’s most polluted spot!
A
few weeks ago I quoted, at some length, my elder son’s concerns about air
pollution, particularly in London . Now air pollution – from motor vehicles – has
become a matter of national concern. Even towns in our largely agricultural
East Anglian Region are seriously affected.
It has, so it is reported, become almost as serious a killer as tobacco
smoking. Last year in the UK air
pollution was responsible for nearly 20,000 preventable deaths. In some towns pedestrians are being advised
to walk along the footpaths as far as possible away from the carriageway, not
because of the danger of being struck by a vehicle mounting the pavement – but
because a distance of even a few feet further away from the vehicle exhausts can reduce
the risk of lung damage.
Where,
do you think, is the most polluted air in the whole world? My guess would have been somewhere in Beijing – or possibly in Rio de
Janeiro or Chicago . I’d have been wrong. It is, in fact, London ’s Oxford Street – the home of Harrods and
of other quality retailers where the seriously rich do their shopping. In Oxford
Street the high-rise (by British standards)
buildings create an artificial canyon to retain the polluted air while
continual starting and stopping of the diesel engines of buses and taxis
inexorably add to the pollution.
The
first reaction of Mayor Boris Johnson was to question the findings of the
scientists who had revealed that Oxford
Street ’s air was the most polluted on earth. He now accepts the report’s validity – but
hasn’t so far done anything about it.
Sadly, it’s one of those issues like climate change. Hardly anyone now doubts that climate change
is taking place, and scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that it is
largely a result of human activity - but to take effective action would cost
money, and possibly lose votes! So would
taking effective action against vehicular air pollution.
In
our free market society where everything and almost everybody has a price,
short-term profit will always triumph over long-term benefit. So polluting motor vehicles will not be
banned from city centres in the near (or middle-distant) future, and we’ll
carry on – and speed up - fracking!
The Consequences
On
Monday 8th December the local Daily
Gazette had the front-page headline We’ve got to build 21,000 homes by
2032. The headline didn’t relate
to the Gazette’s complete circulation area but
simply to the borough of Colchester . The adjacent authority of Tendring District – comprising the
coastal towns of Clacton-on-Sea (where I live) Brightlingsea,
Walton-on-the-Naze, Frinton-on-Sea, Dovercourt and Harwich and the rural
hinterland of the Tendring Peninsula, has a similarly ambitious building
programme with one substantial housing estate to be built immediately adjacent
to the boundary with Colchester.
Wonderful
news for those of the homeless who are willing and able to buy their own
homes. I suspect though that very few of
those dwellings will be ‘social housing’ – owned by the local authority or a
Housing Association and available for letting at a reasonable rent. Good news too for workers in the building
industry who will have the promise of work for nearly two decades – and I have
little doubt that the major supermarket chains will increase their stake in the
area, providing new branch retail outlets to meet almost every need of the new home buyers and their families.
But
it will only be almost every need. We have so far heard nothing of the provision
of other essential services that do not yield an early profit for the provider,
such as education and the Health Service.
21,000 new homes in Colchester and a
similar number in the Tending district suggest that there may be as many as
30,000 extra children all needing education in the next decade and a half. Are there any plans to build new schools for
them?
As
for the health services in the Clacton/Colchester area; the currently available
services are already proving woefully inadequate for the existing population. They are quite incapable of
dealing with perhaps an influx of perhaps 60,000 new residents. Colchester
General Hospital Essex
County Hospital
In
the ‘front line’ of our health services are the many medical practices
throughout the district. It seems that
the situation is much more serious in Clacton, Frinton and Walton than it is in
Colchester .
I have been with the same medical practice in Clacton
since my family and I moved here in 1956.
There were then two doctors (both Scots and astonishingly similar to the
Dr Finlay and Dr Cameron of tv’s Dr.
Finlay’s Casebook!). Since those
days the practice has doubled the size of its premises and had many changes of
doctors. I have been very pleased and happy with the service that my family and
I have received from them. They have
seen my two sons through their childhood illnesses. They cared for my wife who had recurring
ill-health. I particularly appreciated
the doctor who called every day as my wife’s life was ending, and (against the
advice of the district nurse) supported my determination to keep her at home
and to care for her to the end. They
have patiently and professionally looked after me through the health problems
of old age.
However I have
seen the number of doctors grow from two to, at one time, six and then decline
to the three that it is today. I am
quite sure that if I had a serious medical condition one of those three doctors
would see me without delay but it is becoming increasingly difficult to get an
appointment with the doctor of my choice. They badly need at least one more –
preferably two more – doctors. They are
obviously quite incapable of dealing with an added influx of patients. It’ll be
wonderful for there to be a home for everyone who needs one – but I hope that
some thought has been given to the inevitable consequences.
The Ukraine
The
conflict in eastern Ukraine isn’t the bloodiest or the most devastating war in
today’s sad world (though it has the potential of developing into World War
III, if the world’s political leaders are even stupider than I think they are),
but it is of particular interest and concern to me. That’s because it is possible that some of those on
both sides of the conflict, could be the
grandchildren of the friendly ‘Ostarbeiters’ (men and women from Russia
and the Ukraine) who, as 'forced labourers' were often my fellow
workers when I was a prisoner of war at a small working camp in Germany from
1943 till 1945. We shared our labours
and we shared our work-breaks. Often, in broken non-grammatical German, we shared parts of our life-stories too. We were
all good friends and good comrades against our Nazi bosses.
An
uneasy cease-fire currently exists over eastern Ukraine but my interest was revived when I heard a tv commentator remark that the
ill-fated Malaysian air liner, shot down with the death of all its crew and
passengers, had been a victim of the ‘cross-fire’ between the warring factions.
‘Crossfire’? It
was surely flying several thousand feet above that! The black boxes, examined by international
experts revealed that the plane had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile but
that there was no way of telling which side had fired that missile. One thing is quite certain. Neither side deliberately shot down a
Malaysian passenger air-liner. Whoever
did so had wrongly imagined they were targeting a high level enemy bomber.
Most
people in ‘the west’ probably believe that the eastern rebels (aided and
encouraged by Russia )
were responsible. One snag about that
idea is that the rebels possessed no ground-to-air missiles or the means of
projecting them to their targets. There
were unconfirmed reports from the Kiev government that a Russian missile launcher had been seen passing
surreptitiously into Ukraine .
However, the American CIA found no evidence that Russia had been involved in the plane’s
destruction. Had there been any such evidence I have little doubt that the CIA, with very few scruples and spies in
every country, would have found it!
The rebels are also said to have delayed the
United Nations inspectors in their examination of the wreckage, mostly in
rebel-held territory. The fact is that the rebels didn’t delay the UN inspectors – it was the Kiev government’s continued shelling of the
search area that did that. The rebels
found and handed the plane’s ‘black boxes’ over to the UN authorities (they
could easily have ‘lost them’ had they thought they might establish their guilt). Immediately the ‘black boxes’ had been
despatched to Britain
for opening and examination, a spokesman for the Kiev Government announced that
they had established the rebels’ guilt.
At that stage they hadn’t even been opened! It is clear that the Kiev Government was
desperately eager to persuade the world that the rebels were guilty.
Suppose
though that that government, knowing that the rebels had no air force of their own to respond to
their continual air attacks, had expected
them to seek Russian help. They may well have possessed ground-to-air missiles, the means of firing
them, and the skill needed to do so As a
‘sovereign state’ they could purchase any weapons that they chose to, and train
their soldiers to use them. Those in
charge of their air defences might well have been ordered to look out for
high-flying Russian bomber aircraft – and have been told that any large unidentified aircraft
flying in Ukrainian air space was likely to be Russian. So – it is surely at least as likely that it
was Kiev Government forces as the the pro-Russian rebels, who brought
down that Malaysian air liner, believing it to be a Russian bomber. Their
eagerness to blame the rebels with little or no evidence, adds credence to
this idea.
Most
responsibility though for that tragic accident must surely be borne by those in Malaysia who
had routed a vulnerable passenger air liner directly over a conflict zone. Only a month or two earlier another Malaysian
air-liner had been lost without a trace – and still nothing has been discovered
about the cause of that air liner’s disappearance. Nor do we know, even approximately, where
the disappearance took place. I don’t
think that Malaysian Airlines would be my first choice were I to be considering
long-distance air travel!
For
the sake of Ukraine, of Russia ,
and of the whole world, I hope and pray that those who may be the grandchildren of my
friends from long ago, will come to an agreement acceptable by both sides, stop
killing each-other, and co-operate to maintain the peace and
increase the prosperity of the whole region. I wish them all a very Happy Christmas and a New Year of Peace and Hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment