Week 35 2010 6.9.2011

Tendring Topics………on Line

‘In the bleak midwinter…….’ Do we Heat or Eat?

I had thought that I might have been exaggerating just a little when I suggested a few weeks ago that during the coming winter many poorer families could well be facing a stark choice of ‘heat or eat’. I now believe that this gloomy prediction may prove to have been all too accurate. Since I wrote those words there has been an enormous surge in the price of gas and electricity and the cost of food has continued to increase. Inflation, particularly of the items that all of us need to purchase regularly, is now at more than double the government’s declared target, and increases in pensions and benefits are calculated by a method that no longer reflects accurately the increase in human need.

Our weather is notoriously fickle. During the past two weeks there have been days of wall-to-wall sunshine and others on which I have seriously thought of switching on my central heating! One thing is certain. Winter is coming. Like the last two winters, it could well be a long and hard one.


Dudley Road, Clacton, January 2011. It could have been much worse!

  There is not a great deal that we can do about government policy and even less that can be done about the weather! Most of us though can do something to counter the worst effects of both. When my family and I first moved into our bungalow in Clacton’s Dudley Road in 1956, space heating was by open fires in the kitchen and sitting room. Water was heated from a back boiler to the kitchen fire with flow and return pipes directly connected to an unlagged hot water storage cylinder in the airing cupboard. The bungalow was cold and draughty. During cold weather in the winter it had definite ‘no go’ areas.

Over the years (we had a car-loan from the council and a mortgage to repay, and two small sons to bring up!) my wife and I made improvements, all without any grants or subsidies whatsoever. A porch for the front door and, years later, an extension at the rear of the bungalow, helped with the draughts. After the back boiler, and, a few years later its successor, corroded and leaked, I had the ‘direct’ hot water system replaced by an ‘indirect’ one, but it was not until after my retirement from the Council in 1980 that we had a thermostatically-controlled gas-fired central heating system installed, with a gas fire and back boiler replacing the open fire.

We were early converts to the idea of cavity wall infilling and had ours infilled by Rentokil with their Rockwool system in the early 1970s. We had double-glazing provided throughout, and I clambered up into the roof space (I certainly couldn’t do that nowadays!) and laid a fibreglass mat between the rafters to reduce loss of heat through the ceilings. It had taken us a long time, but by the early1980s - and for the last twenty-five years of my wife’s life – there were no ‘no go’ areas in the winter and our bungalow was pretty comfortable all the year round!

Heather and I with our two sons outside our bungalow in 1947. The windows are not double-glazed and the porch not filled in


Sadly, my wife (and everything that had seemed to give my life a purpose) died in July 2006. With steadily diminishing strength and energy, but with the never-failing support of family, friends and neighbours, I have since kept myself fully occupied.





Nearly three years ago I decided to have a solar panel installed in my south-facing roof, harnessing solar power to augment my gas-fired boiler for water heating. It worked well, markedly reducing my fuel bills.

My solar panel.  My mobility scooter (iron horse) is in the driveway.

Just a month or so ago (in July 2011) my hot water storage cylinder (which had scaled up in over thirty years of continuous use) failed. I seized the opportunity to update my solar water heating system. It is now simpler and, I think, even more effective. I look forward to lower fuel bills despite the price increases. I would probably have to live to well over a hundred to recover, in money saved, the capital cost of the solar installation. However I have no doubt whatsoever that what I am saving is much more than the meagre interest I would have received on that sum had it remained in a Halifax Saving Account. I have added to the value of my home, made a minute contribution towards ‘saving the planet’ and, what’s more, I don’t have to pay income tax on the money I have saved , as I certainly would have had to on the bank interest!

All of the above – the porch and the rear extension, the cavity wall infilling, the double glazing, the roof space insulation, the solar water heating system – were done without any support from the government or the council.

The Government is currently paying the full cost of home insulation for the over-seventies including, for instance, increasing the thickness of loft insulation to a level considerably greater than I had installed. I decided to take advantage of this free service. The roof space was surveyed, the installers came by appointment a few weeks later. They did the job in about three hours without causing me any inconvenience, and departed without leaving any mess whatsoever behind them. If you think you may be entitled to free, or reduced price insulation, do enquire about it (the Council, or Age Concern should be able to suggest an approved firm). It really is worthwhile.

No-one can see what the future holds, but I now have up-to-date space and water heating systems, infilled cavity walls, double glazing and a heavily insulated roof space. My mobility scooter (my iron horse) has an all-weather canopy. It is therefore confined to ‘its stable’ (leaving me housebound) only by falling and laying snow.

I am able to face the winter of my ninety-first year with quiet confidence.

 Is your County Council really necessary?

 I was directly involved in the local government service for something like forty years. It was only fairly recently though that I fully appreciated that three quarters of my council tax payments were going straight to an authority based in Chelmsford in which I had no confidence whatsoever. I came to the conclusion that county councils were a layer of local government that we could well do without, and that among the first to disappear should be our own Essex County Council. While loudly blowing its own trumpet (‘Essex works!’) and embarking on such extramural activities as funding influential councillors’ world-wide jet travel ‘on‘County Council business’, taking over failing post offices, launching its own bank, and establishing a branch office in mainland China (some corner of a foreign field that is for ever Essex?) it was selling off its old people’s homes and failing in its statutory duty of child care.

 I didn’t, and don’t, believe that there is a single function of the Essex County Council that couldn’t be better performed by the county’s borough and district councils.

 I was heartened to see that a former Lib.Dem. Tendring Councillor Mrs Sue Shearing, has come to the same conclusion. She believes that Tendring Council should become a unitary authority, responsible for all local government services in our area. She is reported as saying that this would be, ‘a fantastic idea. It would benefit the whole district. Wouldn’t that truly be localism, as the government is pushing nationally ……….. local councillors know their areas and are passionate about them’.

 Mrs Shearing’s damascene moment came when she realized that the County Council had paid its Chief Executive Ms. Joanna Killian more than £5,500 per week last year, despite her generous acceptance of a ‘pay cut’ that had miraculously left her better off! Those who like to have a yardstick to compare incomes may care to know that that it would be possible to hire two Prime Ministers for that amount! She also realized that the County Council receives 74 percent of the money that she pays to Tendring District Council in Council Tax. Tendring retains 10 percent of it and the remaining 16 percent goes to the fire and police services.

 ‘Surely’, she says, ‘The time has come to rid ourselves of this burden and allow councils, like Tendring, to keep the money they collect and run the district in a much less grandiose way.

 Mr Neil Stock, Tendring Council leader, is dismissive of the suggestion. Mrs Shearing, he said, was five years too late with the idea. He is reported as saying, ‘It was tried with others and one or two unitary authorities were created, but it was not very popular’.

 Well, it certainly wasn’t very popular with the County Council, or with Whitehall bureaucrats, who much prefer having to deal with one large authority rather than half a dozen smaller ones. I don’t think though, that Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock would describe their unitary status, and consequent independence of County Council control, as ‘not very popular’!

 I wish Mrs Shearing every success with her campaign but fear that it is doomed to failure. She should not, I think, pin too much hope on the government’s support of ‘localism’. Despite their verbal enthusiasm for giving power to local people I can’t think of a single example of a government or a county council service being handed down to a truly local authority. I can think of a number of instances of elected local authorities being divested of powers and responsibilities that they once had. These were either retained by central government or handed over to unelected groups or individuals directly funded by government.

 The recipients of this largesse would be wise to remember that, ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune!’

 The Voice of the Voter

 Whenever I pick up a local paper, be it the Clacton Gazette, the Daily Gazette or the East Anglian Daily Times, after a quick glance at the front page headlines, I go straight to Readers’ Letters. These, whether they are simply restating the obvious, are controversial, or are just plain stupid, express the strongly-felt opinions of real people, not those who – as I did in the past – write for a living. What is more, it is usually the case that for every reader who feels strongly enough to write to the newspaper, and who write sufficiently coherently for the editor to publish the letter, there are likely to be dozens, perhaps scores, of others who feel just as strongly but who would describe themselves as ‘not much of a letter writer’, or feel that they have better things to do with their time.

 For that reason I was delighted to find that in the latest Clacton Gazette (1st Sept. 2011) there were no less than three readers’ letters echoing my comments in last week’s blog about Tendring Council’s Tourism boss Stephen Mayzes’ extraordinary outburst against the Coastal Academy for letting the school’s playing field for a fortnight during the school holidays to the highly respectable Camping and Caravanning Club of Great Britain for a rally of the club’s members.

 One of the letters is from Michael Weighell, a Governor of the Academy, one from Ms. Janet Hayes of the Grove, Clacton and the other from B. Nicholson of Douglas Road, Clacton who remarks that ‘Also, the site was left clean and tidy and not in need of cleaning up at the rate-payers’ expense’ thus confirming the accuracy of the prediction I had made in my blog the previous week.

 I think that Mr Mayzes owes an abject apology to the Coastal Academy, The half-million members of the Camping and Caravanning Club, and to the officials of the Council’s Planning Department, whose time he has wasted!

Week 31.09

Tendring Topics…….on line

Floral Clacton-on-Sea

We Clactonians have had reason to be proud of our cliff-top gardens for many years. Throughout the time that I was employed first by Clacton Council and latterly by Tendring District Council, they were the responsibility of the Council’s Parks and Gardens Department. The Department had its own nursery that supplied all the Council’s horticultural and arboreal needs. The gardening staff planted and maintained the Council’s cliff-top and other gardens, provided cut flowers and potted plants and shrubs when required, and regularly competed successfully in the Tendring Hundred Farmers’ Show and in the Essex Show.

I became closely involved with the department in the 1970s when, under the leadership of Councillor Malcolm Holloway, the Council’s Trees Working Party carried out several very successful tree planting and tree maintenance campaigns. At that time the Council had a separate tree nursery in Thorpe-le-Soken where tree whips were grown into young trees for planting out. The head of the department, the Council’s own gardening expert, was always available for consultation and advice.

Now, of course, maintenance of public gardens, like most other public services, is contracted out. In this instance at least, the contractors have maintained the former standards. I was glad to know that the excellence of the gardens has now been officially recognised and rewarded with the presentation of a ‘Green Flag’ award. I hope we’ll have equal success with the Britain in Bloom Competition.

My wife Heather, at the beginning of the New Millennium

The Memorial Garden in particular, has special memories for me. Seven or eight years ago, when my wife was still able to walk with the aid of a four-wheeled shopping trolley (a ‘sholley’), I would often drive her on warm sunny days to Marine Parade West. There, courtesy of her ‘blue badge’ I parked a few hundred yards from Pier Gap. With the sholley we then walked back, through the cliff-top gardens as far as the Memorial Garden. There we would sit on one of the benches and enjoy the flowers and the general atmosphere of peace and tranquillity for half an hour or so before returning to the car. It was at home, several hours after such an excursion, that my wife fell and broke a hip. Sadly, throughout the remaining two years of her life, she was never able to walk independently again.

Since then I have been driven along Marine Parade, past the cliff-top gardens, many times, but last week with my mobility scooter I decided to visit them again at my leisure. On that scooter I realize that I am much more aware of my surroundings than I had ever been in a car, or even on a bicycle. It was a sunny morning and I enjoyed the hanging containers of colourful growing flowers on the pavement railings at the junction of Pier Avenue and Rosemary Road. I fully appreciated the young street trees and the wide smooth pavements on the newly-laid-out town centre.

Still quite early in the morning, the Memorial Garden was even more colourful and peaceful than I had remembered it. I drove on, past the Japanese Garden, the dry Mediterranean Garden and the 1920s Garden. I enjoyed them all, though I didn’t quite spot the connection between the 1920s (a decade that I can just remember!) and the last of these.

My expedition ended with a leisurely cup of coffee at the café near the Martello Public House, with its views of the sea and of the wind turbines being constructed off-shore. I used to park my car near there when Heather fancied a walk along the lower prom. It had been a personal pilgrimage that I can well imagine being equally enjoyed by visitors to our town……particularly perhaps those who, like me, are well past their youth!

‘If winter comes, can spring be far behind?’

One swallow doesn’t make a summer……..and one would have to be very bold indeed to claim that there are local signs of spring in the current national and international economic winter.

It cannot be denied though that Clacton’s outlook is a lot brighter today than it was just a few months ago. It is good to note the continuing activity out to sea. During my recent visit to the sea front I noted sixteen completed wind turbines. By the time you read this there may well be more. Things are definitely on course for the completed wind farm to be in operation early in the New Year. This may not have much, or even any, effect on Clacton’s current economic future but, together with many other similar enterprises, it does help to ensure that our town has a future!

More to the immediate point is the fact that a large retail premises in the town centre that has been looking for an occupier for several months has found one. Another, threatened with closure, is continuing in business with the same staff but in different ownership.

The former Woolworth’s store with its commanding frontages on both Pier Avenue and West Avenue has been taken over by the ‘99p Store’; not quite ‘Bond Street’ perhaps but then few of Clacton’s residents and, I think, even fewer of our holiday visitors are potential Bond Street shoppers!

I think that the 99p Store is a direct and worthy successor of the Woolworth’s that I remember from pre-World War II days. Their boast then was ‘nothing over sixpence’.

Venturing into the crowded 99p Store on its opening day I was reminded of going into ‘Woolies’ in Carr Street, Ipswich at the age of ten or eleven, with a tanner (that’s what we used to call a sixpence) in my pocket and thinking to myself that I could, if I wished, buy anything at all that was on display! Sixpence in ‘old money’ is two-and-a-half pence in ‘new’, but I reckon that its purchasing power in the 1930s couldn’t have been very different from that of a pound today.

The other threatened town centre business was the Co-op Department Store in the busiest part of Station Road. This has been taken over by the Vergo organisation, a national retail chain that seems likely to offer a similar range of goods to the Co-op. The really great thing about the Vergo takeover is that they are continuing to employ the whole of the existing Co-op staff.

These developments, taken in conjunction with the modernisation and added features of the Pier, and the imminent completion of the Travelodge Hotel in Jackson Road surely mean that, in Clacton at least, an economic spring may be on the way!

Bishops Park College – the Good News, and the Bad

There was good and bad news about Clacton’s Bishops Park College last week. Bishops Park, you’ll recall, is Clacton’s latest and most modern Secondary School, best known for the fact that a number of determined local parents are teaching their children themselves at their own expense, rather than send them there. Next month the Government is expected to rubber stamp a plan to amalgamate it with Clacton’s Colbayns High School as ‘The Clacton Coastal Academy’.

The good news is that Bishops Park, which had been listed as a ‘failing school’ by Ofsted, was last week taken out of special measures and will therefore be on equal terms with Colbayns as it takes its place in the new Academy.

Then too, a new uniform has been designed for the Coastal Academy in black, blue and gold; a black blazer with a light blue trim and the school logo (designed by Nikki Light, a learning support assistant) on the breast pocket to be worn by both boys and girls. Under it girls will wear a white open-necked shirt and boys a similar shirt but with a light-blue and gold striped tie. All year 7 to 11 students will, so the Clacton Gazette report says, be given a new Academy blazer together with two new white shirts, and a tie for the boys, as well as the new sports kit. Academies clearly expect to be funded more generously than ordinary local authority schools!

I wonder if dissident parents will decide to send their kids to the newly created academy?

And the bad news? Just that I was shocked to read in the Daily Gazette last Friday (24th July) that a gang of fifteen teenagers had beaten an autistic fourteen year old boy into unconsciousness, leaving him with severe facial injuries and stamp marks on his back. Another teenager, with whom he had been having an argument, had used his mobile phone ‘to call for back-up’ from his gang members!

What has it got to do with Clacton Coast Academy? Simply that the attack took place at the Pudney Woods Playing Field off St Johns Road, which means that the majority, if not all, the assailants were likely to have been pupils or former pupils of either Bishops Park College or Colbayns High School.

Furthermore the victim’s dad told reporters that his son had been ‘tormented by his peers, who took advantage of his autism, ever since he moved into a new class at Bishops Gate College last September’.

I hope that the new Academy will include in its curriculum the teaching of what I am old-fashioned enough to think of as ‘Christian values.’