Week 30 2012

Tendring Topics........on line

 Once again – Public Sector to the Rescue!

   Why on earth, I wonder, is the present government so obsessed with the idea that ‘the private sector’ can always perform more economically and efficiently than ‘the public sector’?  Public authorities, they believe, should no longer actually provide the services for which they are responsible (refuse collection and disposal, maintenance of public buildings, parks and recreational facilities, care of the disabled and elderly, highway maintenance, catering and routine cleaning of schools and hospitals to name but a few)  but merely ‘facilitate’ them. All these services must be put out to competitive tender and given to the contractor who undertakes to perform them at the lowest cost.

The government is continually trying to extend the field of the private sector further (into the provision of health, policing and educational services, for instance) and to reduce that of public authorities.

This devalues or undervalues the loyalty that long-serving staff feel towards an employer who treats them fairly and respects their expertise and experience. It undervalues too the pride that permanent employees take in making sure that their canteen or staff restaurant provides the very best meals in the most welcoming atmosphere, that their ward is the cleanest and neatest in the hospital, that their park is always safe and welcoming to visitors, or that the service that they render the public is the very best of which they are capable.

The prime motive of private contractors is not to give the best possible service but to maximise profits by giving as little as they can get away with, for as much as they can get. Cost effectiveness, profitability, productivity, the three persone of Mammon’s unholy trinity, are the only criteria of the market place – and of the economic jungle.

            Over and over again we have seen the results of this.   Private enterprise has failed to set or mark examination papers efficiently or in the time required.  Private contractors have failed to pay out badly needed grants on time.  Public money poured into banks has been squandered, and call centres have been located in distant lands and staffed with people who can barely speak English – for no other reason than that their labour is cheap and they are prepared to put up with appalling living and working conditions.  The private sector was unable to cope with the effects of the nation-wide foot-and-mouth disease epidemic.   The public sector (the army) was called in to help clear up the mess.

            The latest example of this, and the one with the potential to produce the most catastrophic results, is of G4S the private contractors employed to ensure security at the 2012 Olympic Games that are about to begin.  Many people, it seems, had been well aware of the inadequacies of this private organisation but the Home Secretary remained blissfully ignorant until the last moment.  Then, just days before the Olympic Games were due to begin, she called on the public sector – war-weary troops from a government-depleted army many of whom were denied their well-earned leave  - to step into the breach and, as Houseman put it in quite a different context, 'save the sum of things for pay’.  For army pay, of course, not for the millions of pounds that private sector entrepreneurs G4S had been expecting.

            In Manchester and other urban areas accommodating Olympic athletes or otherwise associated with the Olympics, where G4S claimed to have recruited and trained sufficient private security staff, only a fraction of those needed reported for duty when required*.   Their place too has had to be taken by the public sector, by already hard-pressed police officers (also from government-depleted forces) working overtime to remedy private sector failure.

There are already plans to privatise some aspects of police work.  No-one, as far as I know, has yet thought of privatising the armed forces. It wouldn’t surprise me though to learn that there are those who are wondering if re-introducing 17^th century style privateering might prove to be a cost-effective way of strengthening our government-depleted Royal Navy!

*It was interesting to hear Jeremy Hunt, Culture Secretary and Minister in charge of the Olympics, making excuses for G4S on tv. He didn’t feel that there was anything particularly surprising or specially reprehensible in a private contractor promising a hundred trained operatives when required and then supplying only twenty or thirty.  This was, of course, the same Jeremy Hunt who hadn't noticed that his principal adviser was virtually on kissing terms with News International.

Preventing an Olympic terrorist attack!

          A warship in the Thames, anti-aircraft defences on the flat roofs of high buildings in the vicinity of the stadium, fighter aircraft patrolling the skies, thousands of troops on patrol – I am not at all sure that if I lived in London, particularly in the stadium area, I would be sleeping more easily in my bed in the knowledge of all the precautions against terrorist attack that are being taken.

            We are told that if an unknown plane approached the Olympic zone and refused to obey orders to change course ‘lethal force’ would be used against it; it would be either shot down or blown up.  And what, one wonders, would happen to the bits of the suspect plane?  We haven’t yet, as far as I know, perfected a means of vaporising them so we can only assume that they would fall on the buildings and people below, also possibly with lethal force!

             I think that if I were the commander of a terrorist gang, intent on having maximum ill-effect at the time of the Olympic Games, I’d give East London and all other Olympic venues a complete miss.   I would think that, with all eyes and all counter-terrorism measures concentrated on the games, this would be the best moment to strike at  quite different but prestigious targets in East Anglia, the Midlands or the North.

 Britain’s railway termini and airports, armed forces bases and depots, and our power stations might well be considered vulnerable.  I hope therefore that, in the concern about the protection of the Olympic Stadium and facilities in London, the defences of these possible targets have not been forgotten.

The Chilcot Enquiry

             The Leveson Enquiry, the revelations of jiggery pokery (I don’t recall ever before using that expression in a blog, but I can’t think of a better one!) in the world of finance, and the failures of G4S, have all but driven the Chilcot Enquiry out of our minds.   This, you’ll recall, was into the causes and conduct of the Iraq War and its aftermath, and ran from 2009 till February 2011.   I understand that the Chilcot Committee’s report is now almost complete and that it runs to two million words.  For those like me who can’t even imagine what two million words look like, it is roughly twice as long at Tolstoy’s mammoth historical novel War and Peace!

            It had been confidently expected that the report would be published this summer. We now learn though that this will be delayed for at least a year because of a dispute about the inclusion of just a few thousand words!  It is unfortunate that these are the words that many of us are particularly eager to read.

            I am not greatly interested in the conduct of the war or even about the mismanagement of its aftermath.   I do know that Saddam Hussein was a cruel and autocratic dictator with many innocent deaths on his conscience.  I am  quite sure though that he had no time at all for Al Qaeda, nor had they any time for him.  Consequently he had played no part whatsoever in the 9/11 terror attacks on the USA.

            Furthermore I was sure that at the time of our invasion of Iraq he had no weapons of mass destruction, and I am convinced that Tony Blair and George Bush Junior were well aware of this too. Yet a majority of MPs and a large section of the national press were persuaded to support the invasion on the grounds that Iraq was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks on the USA and that Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction that threatened Britain.

            How did this mass deception happen?   It resulted in thousands of deaths and many thousands more damaged lives, the almost total destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, a boost in the recruitment of volunteers for terrorist organisations, and the beginning of ethnic and sectarian acts of terror and violence that still continue  (to this very week in fact!)

            I think it likely that emails and recorded conversations between the American President, George W. Bush and Tony Blair the British Prime Minister during the weeks immediately prior to the invasion may help to throw light on the matter.   A record of these exists and has been seen by the Chilcot Enquiry Committee.  It had been intended to publish them with the final report – but the all-powerful Cabinet Office has objected. It is thought that public access to those emails and the records of those conversations might harm USA/UK relations and inhibit the future sharing of intelligence information.  Tough luck!   If USA/UK good relations depend upon the British electorate continuing in ignorance of a conspiracy of deception, then those good relations are hardly worth having.  Nor is it of any value to us to be permitted to share lies and carefully selected half-truths.

            If for no other reason that Tony Blair is now our ‘special peace envoy’ in the Middle East (it was rather like making one of the Kray brothers a Chief Constable!) we are surely entitled to know what he was discussing with George Bush immediately before he persuaded a majority of MPs to support the invasion of Iraq in our name.

Week 30. 10

Tendring Topics……on Line

‘£1.2 million to Save the Naze for 50 years’

In the interests of accuracy, the above headline from the Coastal Daily Gazette
ought really to be ‘£l.2 million to postpone the loss of part of the Naze for 50 years’. A fortnight ago, commenting on the fact that, despite savage cuts elsewhere, the funding for both the Crag Walk at Walton’s Naze and the redevelopment of Clacton’s Pier Avenue was said to be safe, I pointed out that desirable as the construction of the Crag Walk might be, it certainly wouldn’t Save the Naze.

In earlier blogs I have explained that the erosion of the cliffs of the Naze arises primarily from surface water penetrating the subsoil and the stratum of permeable red crag beneath it. Then as it drains away over the impermeable layer of clay beneath them, it destabilises these upper strata, causing the cliff edge to break away and fall onto the beach below. The sea washes away the fallen material, and the process continues. It will continue to do this until the subsoil and the red crag stratum are properly drained and a revetment is provided at the foot of the Naze cliffs for the whole of their length.

A scheme to do this was prepared by the Tendring District Council soon after it took over the whole of the Tendring District in 1974. After a Public Enquiry it was approved by the Government’s inspector but was then vetoed by the government on economic grounds. ‘The time wasn’t right’. I don’t think it ever will be!

The Crag Walk Scheme may prevent (postpone would be a better word) the erosion of 110 metres of the cliff immediately in front of the Naze Tower. 1,200 tons of bedding rock and 13,305 tons of armour stone are to be used to protect that length of cliff. They will also provide the foundation of the Crag Walk, which will form a viewing platform in front of the fossil-rich red crag cliffs.

I wouldn’t care to predict whether this work will endure for 50 years or for a longer or shorter time. It is obvious to me though that the sea will continue to nibble away at the cliff on each side of the protected area. This will, after a few years become a roughly 150 yards wide projecting peninsula or salient. A feature of a salient, as old soldiers will confirm, is that the enemy can attack it from both sides as well as from the front – and there is no enemy more implacable than the sea!

In any case, will the proposed crag walk really attract the anticipated ‘wave of tourists’? I‘m a bit doubtful. The cliffs are indeed ‘fossil rich’. I remember many years ago, my two then pre-teenage sons arriving home from cycle excursions to Walton with fossil shells in their pockets and red sandstone dust inextricably permeating their clothes and their hair. I think it unlikely though that those fossils will be visible from the Crag Walk viewing platform and I hardly imagine that visitors will be encouraged to attack the cliff face with clasp knives or similar implements to find them.

Lies, dam’ lies……and Prime Ministerial Pronouncements!

For several weeks we hadn’t heard very much from the Chilcot Enquiry into the Iraq war. There simply hadn’t been any revelations of the kind that make front-page news.

Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller, a grande dame if there ever was one, and Head of MI5 before and during the Iraq War, certainly put that right. Her evidence to the Enquiry was in complete contradiction of statements made by Prime Minister Tony Blair and, of course, his American puppet-master George W. Bush junior.

They, for instance, claimed that Iraq was involved with al-Qaida and thus, indirectly, with the ‘nine-eleven’ outrage. Lady Manningham-Buller said in evidence, ‘There was no credible evidence to support that connection and that was the judgement, I may say, of the CIA’

On weapons of mass destruction, Mr Blair assured the House of Commons that our Intelligence Service had concluded that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons, that he had military plans for the use of these weapons which could be activated within 45 minutes, and that he was actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability. Lady Manningham-Buller said ‘We regarded the direct threat from Iraq as low….we didn’t believe Saddam Hussein had the capability to do anything in the UK. And ‘We were asked to put low-grade, small intelligence into it (the report later known as ‘the dodgy dossier’) and we refused because we didn’t think it was reliable (So had MI5 not refused to publish questionable material, the dodgy dossier would have been even dodgier!)

Mr Blair claimed that as a result of the war ‘I believe we are safer, more secure, that Iraq is better, that our security is better, I believe we are. The world is safer as a result'. He denied repeatedly that the war had acted as a stimulus to the recruitment of terrorists.

Lady Manningham-Butler told the Enquiry, ‘our involvement in Iraq radicalised a generation of young people, who saw it and our involvement in Afghanistan, as an attack on Islam. We in MI5 were swamped with intelligence on a broad scale that was pretty well more than we could cope with in terms of plots, leads to plots and things we needed to pursue. We gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad, so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not able to before’. Perhaps the most telling evidence that the danger of terrorism in the UK had increased with the onset of the Iraq war (and that Tony Blair was well aware of this) is that in 2003 Lady Manningham-Butler found it necessary to ask the Prime Minister for a doubling of MI5’s Budget, and the Prime Minister agreed!

I am more than ever proud that my two sons and my grandchildren, with their wives and girlfriends, were among the nearly a million protesters who marched - in vain - through London on the eve of the war, while New Labour MPs trooped like sheep into the ‘Aye Lobby’ to endorse it. Nor can today’s Conservatives congratulate themselves. With one or two honourable exceptions they too supported a course of action that was justified only by deceit, deception and downright lies, that cost, and is still costing, tens of thousands of lives. ‘A plague o’ both your houses!’


Repealing ‘The right to buy’

There was what I believe to have been a highly significant news item on BBC tv’s Breakfast programme this (21st July) morning that the BBC clearly didn’t consider sufficiently important to be repeated on the 6.00 pm national news bulletin. I am sure though that it must have been on the Welsh Regional News.

This was that the Welsh Assembly had passed a law, that was to be given the Queen’s assent at once, permitting Welsh local authorities to rescind the requirements of the ‘Right to Buy’ Act passed by the Thatcher Government in 1980. This Act might more accurately have been described as the ‘Compel to Sell Act’. It compelled local authorities to sell to sitting tenants, at a fraction of their market price, houses that had been built by their far-sighted predecessors to facilitate slum clearance, alleviate overcrowding and generally improve the housing of the working classes.

A great many tenants, naturally enough, took advantage of this generous offer made at other people’s expense. Many elderly folk were helped to ‘own their own homes’ by sons or daughters hoping to benefit under their wills and thus find their own way to home ownership. After ten years (when you’re my age you realize what a short period that is!) the home, bought on the cheap, could be sold at the market price. With, in the ‘80s and ‘90s, constantly rising house prices, this offered a quick way to a fortune.

The best homes were quickly sold off, many in attractive locations, as second homes or as rural bases from which comfortably-off commuters could get to their city offices each day. House prices rose. Banks were happy to finance the purchase of Council Houses, often to those who could ill-afford the repayments. Unsold Council properties degenerated into slums. Homes in rural villages were unaffordable to working people. Since there were now no Council houses to let, many young families whose ancestors had been villagers for generations were compelled to emigrate from the country to the city.

Repealing right to buy is an obviously needed reform that no government has had the courage to make. Thank goodness the Welsh Assembly has taken the first step in the right direction. I hope that others will follow.

A Matter of History

Can David Cameron, our Prime Minister, really have said publicly that in 1940, we British were the junior partners of the USA in the war against Hitler?

What do they teach the kids at Eton these days? Throughout 1940, and for almost the whole of 1941, the USA was neutral, and there were powerful voices in the States urging that it should remain so. It was a country with large ethnic Irish and German populations. While I am quite sure that the overwhelming majority of them had no time at all for Hitler and the Nazis, neither did they feel any great urge to support Britain. As Winston Churchill said, from the time of the fall of France in the spring of 1940, until June 1941, ‘We stood alone’ against the Nazis.

Called up with the Territorial Army at the beginning of September 1939, the Medium Artillery Battery of which I was a member was dug in, heavily camouflaged, near the village of Elmdon in north-west Essex throughout the anxious Battle of Britain summer of 1940. Our 6in howitzers were kept in constant readiness to shell Duxford Aerodrome and blow it to smithereens immediately German airborne troops swarmed in - an event that was expected hourly.

Britain and the Commonwealth stood alone until 21st June 1941 when Hitler’s forces invaded the Soviet Union and we acquired our first powerful ally. On 7th December of the same year the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and the USA declared war on Japan. Hitler then declared war on the USA in support of his Japanese ally. Would the USA have declared war on Germany at that time had Hitler not moved first? Probably not; there was no treaty obligation to do so. Powerful, and not unreasonable, voices within the USA would undoubtedly have claimed that the American first priority was to defeat the Japanese. They would not have wished to enter an alliance that included the USSR and they would have pointed out to Anglophiles that, in concentrating on Japan, they were supporting the British by easing the Japanese pressure on our forces in India and the Indo-Chinese peninsula. Once they had defeated the Japanese, there would be plenty of time to consider whether or not to confront Hitler.

Hitler made up their minds for them!

In 1941, Hitler’s failure to learn the lessons of history led him to two decisions that made Germany's defeat a certainty. He invaded Russia, ignoring the lessons of Napoleon’s catastrophic experience when he had attempted the same thing in 1812. Then he declared war on the USA, ignoring the much more recent lesson of the effect of the late entry of the USA into World War I, which tipped the balance on the western front decisively in favour of the French and British allies.

Has our Prime Minister forgotten (or perhaps has never learned) the lessons of the fairly recent history of Afghanistan and the Indian sub-Continent? In the 19th Century there was an ignominious defeat of our first attempt (1839 – ’42) to occupy Afghanistan and add it to our Empire, and a not very glorious withdrawal after the second (1878 – 1880). A much more recent attempt on the same lines by the Soviet Union was similarly defeated. On that occasion, today’s Taliban insurgents (then hailed by us as gallant freedom-loving Mojihadin) had enjoyed the covert help of the British and American governments.

There have been four occasions (one very recent) during the present campaign on which members of the Afghan armed forces being trained by British or American troops, have murdered their trainers and fled to join the Taliban. These incidents should surely make us ask whether there may be lessons to be learnt from the Indian Mutiny of 1857/58? Then, native troops whose discipline and loyalty had seemed beyond question, had turned on their British officers, slaughtering them and their families before going on to incite other garrisons to mutiny. Thanks to their British army training, they enjoyed considerable success before the Mutiny was, very bloodily, put down.

There really are lessons to be learned from history, for those who don't imagine that they already 'know it all'!