week 12/10

Tendring Topics……on Line

An Easter Message – from Network Rail

The Government, so it is said, is urging us to get out of our cars (no, not me personally; I haven’t got one!) and onto public transport. By so doing we’ll be easing traffic congestion on the roads, reducing petrol consumption and doing our bit to ‘save the planet’.

Occasions in the year when large numbers of us are inclined to travel at the same time, are our public holidays. We don’t have as many as most of our fellow Europeans. Perhaps because of that, we tend to make the most of them – to get away from our town or suburban homes, see friends or relatives and perhaps visit the sea or the countryside.

Two of these holidays are really special – Christmas and Easter. For one thing, both have more than one day of holiday. Both are major Christian Festivals though sadly the ‘Christian’ dimension is now only a minority interest. At Christmas time families of every faith and of none like to get together – and families are much more far-flung than once they were. Easter is the first holiday of the spring. It is a time to get out into the country and enjoy nature as it wakes from its winter sleep, or perhaps to visit the seaside for the first time in the year.

It might have been thought that our railways would have seized the opportunities these universal breaks present. It was, after all, the railways that first made travel possible for ordinary people. I am sure that there was a time when that was precisely what the railways did. In the past the LNER (remember them? The London and North-Eastern Railway) put on extra trains into London and other big cities at Christmas to facilitate family reunions, and provided ‘special offer’ excursion trains at Easter, Whitsun and the August Bank Holiday to take passengers on day trips or for the weekend to holiday resorts like Clacton, Frinton and Walton. I have lived in Clacton long enough to remember crowded trains pulling into Clacton Station on Saturdays, and the local children with their home-made barrows supplementing their pocket money by transporting holiday-makers’ luggage to their boarding houses or perhaps to Butlins Holiday Camp.

Is that what Network Rail and the various railway companies created by privatisation, do today? Not a bit of it. The closure of Liverpool Street Station from Christmas Eve till after the New Year has become as much part of Christmas as Santa Claus, roast turkey and Christmas crackers. We count ourselves lucky if ‘due to unforeseen circumstances’ the closure doesn’t extend days into the New Year.

This year the coming of Easter was welcomed in the Daily Gazette with the headline Easter closures and strike threat spell rail chaos. ‘Work to replace overhead power lines between Liverpool Street and Romford on Easter weekend will cause disruption across the whole of Essex’. There is also a strike threat over plans by Network Rail to axe up to 1,500 jobs and change working practices! Private enterprise and ‘throwing the railway service out to healthy competition’ has certainly made a difference!

We can look forward to the usual Bank Holiday chaos as special buses replacing disrupted rail services join the thousands of motorists taking to the roads over the East Holiday.

Remember the slogan 'Let the train, take the strain?' Perhaps it’s time to add 'But the road must carry the load!'

Essex County Council – an unwieldy and extravagant giant

I have just received my Council Tax Bill for the coming year. I expect that everyone resident in the Tendring District will get theirs during the next day or two. I really can’t complain. I pay my Council Tax by direct debit, in ten instalments. During the next financial year, after the first payment the remaining nine will be just £1 more each month than I have been paying during 2008/2009.

I note that of my total annual charge of £1123.66, Essex County Council gets £845.25, Tendring District Council £105.38, Special Expenses (I’ve no idea what that means) £18.61, the Essex Fire Authority £51.66 and the Essex Police Authority £102.76. On the whole I think that we get value for money from Tendring’s share and I don’t complain about the needs of the Fire and Police Authorities.

I do question the County Council’s £845.25 though – nearly three times as much as the sum of the requirements of the other authorities. I heard Lord Hanningfield, the County Council’s former leader, claim (as he was leaving court where he had been charged with fiddling his expenses) that he had given 40 years of his life to the public service and had saved the County Council ‘millions of pounds’.

If that claim is anywhere near the truth it makes one wonder what the County’s cash demands would have been like without his Lordship’s hand on the tiller!

A ‘Freedom of Information’ request by The Daily Gazette has produced some interesting statistics about the County Council’s staffing and expenditure over the past few years. I knew, of course, that Essex County Council was a gargantuan organisation and, I suppose, the biggest employer in the county. I was nevertheless surprised to learn that in 2005/2006 they employed no less than 38,589 staff either full-time or part-time. The majority of these were in the field of education but there were still 11,669 non-school staff. By 2008/2009 though, the total number had fallen to 37,764 and non-school staff to 10,0069.

You may think this kind of downsizing explains the millions of pounds Lord Hanningfield claims that he and his colleagues have saved. You would be wrong. During the same period, total spending on staff – in schools, at the County Hall and in other offices – rose from £880 million to £997 million.

But that is not the end of the story.

In addition to paying almost a billion pounds to their own employees, the County Council also paid £25.3 million to outside ‘consultants’ last year. This compares with the £14.4 million that they had paid out in this way in 2005/2006.


There are, of course, occasions when any local authority may have to spend a few thousand, perhaps a few tens of thousands, on outside consultants with the expertise to deal with one-off problems beyond the capacity of its own staff. With an authority the size and population of Essex, I suppose that the reasonable expenditure on such expertise might run to a few hundred thousands.

But £25 million spent in a year by an authority that is already spending almost a billion a year on the wages and salaries its own staff? I’d have thought that the £14.4 million paid to consultants in 2005/2006 was well over the top. I’m lost for words (which doesn’t often happen!) to describe last year’s £25 million!

The County Council has clearly become a huge, unwieldy and extravagant tier of administration that should be dismembered and replaced by smaller more local local authorities. I wish Colchester’s MP, Bob Russell, every success in his campaign to secure unitary status for Colchester. I’d like to see similar campaigns in the Tendring District and every other district and borough council in our county.

A Thought for the Thoughtless

In last week’s blog I mentioned motorists who park their cars over dropped kerbs or partly on footpaths, as being among the problems faced by mobility scooterists and by those who push prams or wheelchairs. Scarcely had I posted it on the web when I learned of Brightlingsea’s Considerate Parking Initiative that appears to be dealing with that particular problem. What’s more it is doing so without the kind of heavy-handed officiousness that can be guaranteed to create resentment and antagonism.

Recognising that those who park badly do so from thoughtlessness rather than from malice, drivers of badly parked vehicles are given written notice that they are causing a problem. Ian Taylor, a Tendring Council parking services official involved with the scheme, is quoted in the Clacton Gazette as saying, ‘We are specifically looking at anti-social parking, which doesn’t necessarily contravene any regulations but annoys and upsets people………We want drivers to stop and think about where they are leaving their vehicles and what effect it can have on those around them’.

It especially targets parking in front of dropped kerbs, at junctions and on pavements and grass verges. Street wardens and some council officers issue the notices. These may be followed up by a visit to the offender’s home. Photos are also taken so that persistent offenders can be identified. The scheme has worked in Brightlingsea and is to be introduced in Harwich and Manningtree next month. I hope that the needs of Clacton haven’t been overlooked!

At the risk of seeming preachy, I cannot do other than to point out that the real answer to this, as it is to so many other problems arising from human behaviour, lies in advice given some two thousand years ago, when road transport consisted largely of ox-carts, pack horses, and chariots: ‘Treat other people as you would like them to treat you

How much indignation and anger would be averted if all of us – motorists, cyclists, mobility scooterists and pedestrians always tried to obey that rule.

There are Six of them – and all of them are Great!

I was an ‘only child’, with neither brother nor sister. However an unexpected blessing resulting from my sixty-year long marriage to Heather was the acquisition of a sister-in-law, a fine nephew, and four lovely nieces – all much kinder and nicer to me than a mere ‘uncle-by-marriage’ has any right to expect.

They in their turn have given me five great-nieces and a great-nephew in whom I take pride and interest – and whose birthdays I make every effort never to forget!

Here they are – all together to celebrate two important ones.



Nicola (‘Nikki’) first on the left, had just celebrated her 18th birthday and her cousin Catherine (‘Cat’), fourth from the left, her 16th. Clinging to Nikki is her five year old cousin Rosie. Between Rosie and Cat, is Cat’s twelve year old brother Adam. On the right of the picture, Rosie’s seven-year-old sister Millie is in the arms of Nikki’s sister Tania. Tania, of whom we’re all very proud, is a second year medical student. It astonishes me to realize that she will be twenty-one later this year. It seems such a little while ago that her Mum and Dad brought her to Clacton as a tiny baby to introduce Heather and I to our very first great niece!

They are five great nieces and a great nephew!

Week 39.09

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Unhealthy Tendring – are we oldies to blame again?

Not so long ago it was we oldies who were ‘skewing’ the statistics of educational achievement in the Tendring District. We hadn’t the paper educational qualifications of the younger generation (not even a couple of GCSEs at ‘E’ level!) and we were making the rest of the population appear more ignorant than they were. Be that as it may, I’d back an average team of over sixties to beat any similar team of teenagers-to-thirties in any General Knowledge quiz that wasn’t concerned solely with sport, pop music or ‘celebrities’!

Now we’re affecting the district’s health statistics. You may think, as I do, that the Tendring District and, in particular the holiday coast, is an exceptionally healthy area in which to live. There is little industrial pollution, weather conditions are rarely if ever extreme. We have the lowest average rainfall in England, and fresh air blowing in continuously from the sea. Clacton’s holiday publicity used to claim ‘Champagne air, Rainfall rare’. For what more could one ask?

However, a report by the British Heart Foundation reveals that more people in the Tendring District die of heart attacks than in any other part of Essex. Every year an average of 320 people in the district die following a heart attack. Neighbouring Colchester does better than us with only 203 deaths from the same cause each year.

Dr Nick Robinson, consultant cardiologist for the Essex Cardiac and Stroke Network is reported as saying, ‘Compared to other areas of Essex, Tendring has a much older population and heart attacks are more common in older people. The other reason is, that Tendring is more deprived than other areas of Essex, in terms of income and education’. Education again!……..Dr Robinson seems convinced that it is we poverty-stricken, uneducated and ignorant old pensioners who are casting a shadow over the County’s health statistics. In that connection may an ignorant old octogenarian point out that ‘compared with’ rather than ‘compared to’ is correct English usage

I hope that Dr Robinson will give the matter a little further thought. Has he, for instance, ever wondered why the Tendring District has a much older population than other parts of Essex. Couldn’t it be because we are a lot healthier than other areas? We natives (as a resident for fifty-four years I surely count as one) live longer because of that, and people from elsewhere, shrewd enough to know a good thing when they see one, move here because they believe that living in the Tendring District will probably ensure them a longer and healthier retirement.

No-one, as Dr Robinson has surely noticed, lives for ever. Tendring folk tend to die of heart attacks in their old age because previously they have successfully avoided or resisted other, often much more unpleasant, causes of death. I can imagine many worse ways of departing this life than having one’s heart stop beating while dozing in a favourite armchair. Yes, I’m well aware that not all heart attacks are like that……but we can always hope!

Is Tendring, as Dr Robinson also suggests, ‘more deprived than other areas of Essex?’ Remarks like that make me wonder if he has ever actually been here. There certainly are areas of deprivation in our district, as in any area of comparable size. I don’t think though that a visitor, driving through our countryside and our town centres, feels that he is passing through scenes of poverty and deprivation.

Less than a fortnight ago my son and daughter-in-law from Enfield, visiting me here is Clacton, remarked how prosperous and ‘regenerated’ Clacton was beginning to look, compared with some other areas with which they were familiar.

Possibly, because of the high proportion of pensioners who live here, our average income is below the national, or even the county average. The incomes of most pensioners are quite low. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re all living in desperate poverty. Some undoubtedly are, and I wouldn’t for one moment make light of their difficulties. They need every penny of help that they can get.

It should be remembered though, that living comfortably within one’s means depends upon outgoings as well as income. Many of us have long ago paid off our mortgages. We have no dependents and no debts. We don’t have to pay for NHS prescriptions, for bus journeys or for tv licences. Once we have made it to eighty we don’t even have to pay for our passports for travel abroad – a concession for which I have been very grateful. The fact that our actual income may be low doesn’t necessarily mean that we have a struggle for survival.

I suggest that the average age at death would be a much more reliable indicator of the general health of a district than which of a number of natural causes was most frequently responsible. None of us can hope to evade for ever the attentions of the grim reaper. I think though that in the Tendring District we manage to avoid him for rather longer than most.

I’d like Dr Robinson to come to the Tendring peninsula and have a look round. If he’s hoping for a happy and healthy professional life followed by a long and comfortable retirement, he could do a lot worse than settle here.

No more doctors’ catchment areas?

There are not all that many areas of policy in which all three main political parties find themselves in agreement. One, it appears, is that doctors’ catchment areas should be abolished, and that we should all have freedom to make our own choice of the medical practice with which we wish to be registered, no matter where it may be.

It sounds a splendid idea and there seems little doubt that it will become law in the near future. How will it work though? Do you remember when they abolished catchment areas for secondary schools and said that all parents would have the right to send their children to the school of their own choice? Those schools that were considered to be ‘good’ were quickly over-subscribed and others (like Bishop’s Park College in Clacton) that were seen as being less good, were left seriously short of pupils.

The final result was that parents lost the valuable right that they had once had, of automatic admission to their nearest comprehensive school. It was head teachers of good schools, rather than parents, who were able to do the picking and choosing. Freedom to choose whichever medical practice patients prefer could lead to a similar situation.

The idea seems to be that regular commuters might well prefer to have a doctor near their place of work rather than near their home. Nobody though, spends all their time at work, and very few people spend more time there than at home. Nor can we always choose the times that we need to see a doctor. A medical practice near the place of employment would be very handy for routine visits like blood pressure checks and ‘flu jabs, but how about more serious problems?

Supposing you work ‘in the city’ and commute there from Colchester, or Frinton or Clacton every day. You’re registered with a medical practice somewhere near Liverpool Street. I assume there is one in that area. One morning you wake up after a bad night’s sleep with stomach pains that could just be the temporary result of over-indulgence……but might not be? What would you do? Catch the 8.10 or whatever as usual, and hope that it will either get better or that you will be able to get to the surgery before it gets much worse? Or ring the surgery and ask for a home visit? It’s only seventy miles away after all!

I have an idea that giving patients ‘freedom of choice’ will turn out to be one of those well-intentioned ideas that ultimately have the opposite effect from that intended.

Successes in the Anglia in Bloom Competition

The annual Anglia in Bloom competition has surely been one of the most beneficial influences on the East Anglian countryside and townscape life in recent years. It ensures that our towns and villages get an annual floral facelift, and encourages both local co-operation and healthy competition. Chairman of the Judges, George Dawson, said, ‘The competition is not just about flowers. Many different categories are looked at including environmental quality, community involvement, biodiversity and the involvement of young people……….when everyone is involved the rewards are tremendous’.

I was glad to see that competitors in our Tendring District received their fair share of those rewards. Frinton once again set an example, gaining a gold award and top spot in the small town (2,500 to 6,000 residents) category. Brightlingsea achieved a gold award in their (6,000 to 12,000 residents) category but yielded the top place to Halstead. Clacton, a little disappointingly, missed the top award but did receive a silver in the coastal town category.

I was pleased that Kirby won a bronze award in the large village category, and more than pleased to learn that much-maligned Jaywick received a similar award in the small town group (Lord Hanningfield please note!)

Surely though, the children of Clacton’s Holland Park Primary School, and their parents, must have been the very proudest participants in our district. They were selected for having the best project in the Anglia region for children under twelve.

Congratulations to all those mentioned. I’m sure that we’ll do even better next year!

Songs of World War II

How refreshing that the wartime album of, now a nonagenarian, Vera Lynne, recently proved to be ‘top of the pops’! It is nice to know that there is still a demand for melodies that don’t assault the ear drums, and lyrics that can be heard, understood and don’t insult the intelligence.

No-one, whether in the forces or on the home front during World War II, will fail to remember having their hearts cheered during those dark days by her voice singing ‘We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when’ or ‘There’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover’. They brought a message of hope to folk who were desperately wondering whether, in this world, they would ever meet again someone they loved, and whether anything but warplanes would ever again be seen in the skies over the Kent coast.

She and her songs were loved by members of the forces. It must be said though that hers were not the songs that we sung as we marched or drove along Libyan or Egyptian desert tracks, or off duty in the canteen back in England.

I don’t, of course know what went on in the officers’ or even the sergeants’ mess, but we common squaddies favoured songs that were either quite unprintable – the unexpurgated version of ‘Bless ‘em all’, and ‘When this (censored) war is over’ sung to the tune of a popular hymn, or songs that were sickly sentimental, all about childhood sweethearts and silver-haired old mums waiting at home. ‘There’s an old mill by the stream, Nellie Dean, Where we used to sit and dream, Nellie Dean’, was, I remember, particularly popular with those who had had a drink or three!

An exception was the one song that became equally popular with the rank and file of both opposing armies in North Africa and, I think, had the most memorable melody of any song that came out of World War II. I first heard ‘Lili Marlene’ sung by captured German troops after we had taken Wadi Halfaya (Hellfire Pass) and Bardia just after Christmas 1941…….six months before the debacle of Tobruk, when most of us became prisoners! It had been broadcast by the German Forces broadcasting network in occupied Belgrade and had been an instant success.

It had a melody that stuck in the mind (it’s going through mine as I type these words!). We tried to put some English words to it, and I think that the Italians tried the same. Eventually, of course, there was an English version ‘Vor der Kaserne, bei dem grossen Tor’ became, ‘Underneath the lamp-light, by the barrack gate’. Its title was, of course, as easily pronounced in English as in German. It was added to Vera Lynne’s repertoire and became, as far as I know, the only song of World War II that was popular with both those in khaki and those in field-grey.