Week 45 2013

Tendring Topics………..on line

'.........and from the easy speeches that comfort cruel men'

              As far as I know G.K.Chesterton, Edwardian author and poet and creator of the Father Brown detective stories, wrote only one hymn.  In it he asks for divine deliverance from, 'Lies of tongue and pen, and from the easy speeches that comfort cruel men'.

           At the end of the political party conference season an angry blog reader wrote bitterly to me about the way various groups had been singled out and falsely demonised at one of the conferences, as responsible for  all our economic woes - the long-term unemployed, the allegedly not-so-disabled, occupiers of under-occupied social housing, people living on ‘benefit, young people neither at school nor in work, illegal immigrants, legal EU immigrants, and so on……and on. 

            More recently we’ve had another scapegoat to explain whose fault it is that it’s so difficult to make an appointment to see your family doctor, why hospital wards are understaffed and why accident and emergency patients, needing immediate attention, sometimes may have to wait for hours to get attention.  It’s nothing to do with hospitals having had to downsize their nursing and medical staff to meet government economic targets.  Of course it isn’t!  It’s all those foreigners – health tourists – who come to Britain with the sole purpose of exploiting our free National Health Service. They go home directly they’ve had expensive treatment that we have paid for with our taxes.

            An official government report claimed that the NHS is spending up to £2 billion a year on ‘foreign visitors and short-term migrants’ and £300 million of that figure is spent on ‘health tourists’.  Health Minister Jeremy Hunt said that we couldn’t afford to run an ‘international health service’ and that less than 50 percent of chargeable foreign nationals are identified.  Funny thing – like most old people I’ve spent quite a lot of time in doctors’ and hospital waiting rooms in the past year or so, and the only obvious ‘foreigners’ I’ve encountered (and have been pleased to see!) have been the foreign doctors who make up for the fact that we’re no longer training enough professionals each year for those jobs.

            Needless to say Clacton’s Europhobic and climate-change-denying MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, has leapt onto the populist bandwagon.  Having read reports in the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph that ‘an EU study has found that 600,000 unemployed migrants are living in Britain at a cost of £1.5 billion to the NHS alone’, he claimed that ‘a wave of benefit migrants….a tsunami of economic refugees’ are causing a huge burden on the NHS.

            None of the allegations are true.  Evidence from the London School of Tropical Medicine and the University of York, quoting research commissioned by  the government itself, showed that, contrary to Jeremy Hunt’s claims, twice as many foreign visitors pay to use the NHS as exploit free health care and that the UK is a net exporter of patients seeking treatment.    Jonathan Portes of the National Institute of Social and Economic Research claims that evidence shows that EU migrants, like migrants in general, on average pay in more than they take out.

            You’d never dream, from the allegations of the Health Minister and a sycophantic press that British visitors to mainland Europe (health tourists?)  enjoy exactly the same privileges when visiting other EU countries as other EU citizens enjoy in Britain.  During the past seven years I have visited mainland Europe on nine or ten occasions, staying for several days in Belgium and in Germany and visiting five other countries that are members of the EU, and one non-EU country. Always in my wallet I have carried my small plastic European Health Insurance Card (they’re free, and you can get an application form for one from any post office) that throughout the EU entitles me to exactly the same medical treatment as any citizen of the country I am in.

            I am fortunate in that I have never needed to use that card, but its possession has allowed me to visit countries in mainland Europe without taking out the very expensive (at my age!) health insurance that would be prudent if I were visiting the USA or any other Non-EU country.  Nor should it be assumed that health provision in other European countries is necessarily inferior to that in our own.  My grandson Nick,  founder and Managing Director of an international tourism publicity consultancy, spends a great deal of time in Brussels.  He has used the Belgian health service on a number of occasions and he tells me that, although different, it is in no way inferior to ours.

            Access to the whole of Europe’s health services is, of course, one of the privileges we would automatically lose if, in any future referendum, a majority of us were stupid enough to vote to leave the European Union.

‘Fair’s Fair!’ – but what is ‘Fair’?

          I never for one moment imagined that in any confrontation between our elected Members of Parliament and representatives of the energy suppliers I would find myself agreeing with an argument of the energy suppliers.  I do believe though that one of their contentions – that the cost of the government’s ‘green energy’ measures should be drawn from general taxation, rather than from the fuel bills of energy users – is wise and reasonable.

            I would however urge that it should be funded from income tax rather than from VAT and customs duties on alcohol, tobacco, petrol and the like. VAT, customs duties and fuel bill add-ons are ‘indirect taxes’ which take no account of ability to pay.  The multi-millionaire filling the tank of his Rolls Royce (or getting his chauffeur to do it!) pays exactly the same price and the same amount of tax for his petrol as the agricultural labourer filling that of his battered second-hand Ford.  Obviously that tax is a far greater proportion of the farm labourer’s income than is that of the multi-millionaire.  Income tax is a ‘direct tax’ that does something to restore that balance – and could do much more if the tax was really calculated as a fixed proportion of every adult’s income.

            There are clearly two opposing views of what is and what is not ‘fair’.  The Chancellor and his supporters consider that it is ‘fair’ for everyone, rich and poor alike to pay more-or-less the same amount towards the provision of services for the whole community such as the NHS, Social Security, policing, refuse collection and so on.  Indirect taxes help to secure this. ‘The rich man in his castle’ pays in VAT exactly the same amount as ‘the poor man at his gate’ for his purchase of goods or services, or in excise duty when he fills his car or buys himself ‘a pint or a wee dram’.  Thus the  chancellor and those who agree with him are able to claim with absolute sincerity that the tax system is fair and that ‘we are all in this together’.

            I believe that our contribution towards services that benefit the whole community should not be regarded as an imposition, but paid with patriotic pride as our annual fee for the privilege of  British citizenship.  This annual payment, the equivalent of today's 'income tax', should be levied on every British adult, rich or poor as a percentage of his or her gross annual income (before any of it can be diverted to 'charitable trusts' or off-shore tax havens!)   The percentage required would be calculated annually.  I can only guess what it would be but I’d be surprised if would be much in excess of 25 percent.   Only thus would we become a ‘fair’ community in which every paid-up citizen had a financial stake. Then we would truly be able to say that, We’re all in this together!’

The Great Storm!

            A remarkable feature of the storm that lashed southern and central England on Monday morning 28^th October was the accuracy with which it had been forecast by the Meteorological Office.  For almost a week we had been told of its approach, the time of its arrival and its predicted path across the southern half of our country.  We were advised about the amount of damage likely to be sustained, the possibility of local flooding,  trees being uprooted, structural damage and interruption of electricity supplies, road traffic and rail services.  The forecasts were correct in every respect. Possibly because of that, only four deaths attributable to the storm were reported nationally. In Clacton-on-Sea trees were uprooted and there was some structural damage to property but – as usually happens – we suffered rather less than most of southern England.          

The Helter-Skelter – before the storm.

The most spectacular – and nationally reported – damage that we sustained was to Clacton Pier where the Helter Skelter was blown over and severely damaged.  Once before, in 1956, a similar storm had uprooted trees, damaged buildings, blown the Helter Skelter into the sea and sunk pleasure boats moored off the beach.  I remember it particularly because at that time the Council’s public health inspectors, of whom I was one, were responsible for recording and reporting details of each day’s weather to the Met. Office – and preparing a brief local weather forecast to be displayed early each morning on a notice board near Pier Gap  and the memorial garden. Any member of the public sufficiently determined and physically strong enough to struggle against the howling gale to the notice board on that particular morning would have read ‘Sunny intervals, risk of rain at times, breezy’

           

             

           

           

Week 40 2013

Tendring Topics………on Line

 Redundant Royals?

          I am sorry that Prince William is giving up his job as a search and rescue helicopter pilot with the RAF.  It was a thoroughly worth-while occupation and he seemed to enjoy doing it. How splendid, I thought, that a senior member of the Royal Family should be in the armed forces, but saving lives rather than threatening them. I’d have thought it was much more satisfying, and more socially useful, than trotting round the country – or the Commonwealth – cutting ribbons, shaking hands and making anodyne speeches.

            Sadly, government policy would soon have snatched that job from him even had he had wished to continue with it.  Obsessed with the doctrinaire conviction that every function carried out by a public authority will be better and more efficiently performed by private enterprise, the government is discontinuing the air-sea rescue service that has been carried out by the RAF and out-sourcing it to a private firm.

            Air-sea rescue, the Royal Mail; what next I wonder?   If the government cuts too deeply into the public services and privatises too many of their activities they could find themselves in serious trouble.   Do you remember when the private sector let us down over security at last year's Olympics or when, a few years earlier, a food-animal epidemic produced a problem the solution of which was beyond the private sector’s capability? On both occasions they urgently needed the public sector’s expertise, loyalty and co-operation. To solve a similar problem in the future they may find that there’s no public sector left on which they can fall back!

            Even Mrs Thatcher, the great evangelist of privatisation, drew the line at selling off the Queen’s head by privatising the Royal Mail.  Having passed that hurdle I’m only surprised that Messrs Cameron, Osborne and co haven’t yet had the idea of completing the job by privatising the monarchy.  News International could surely put in a successful tender.  They’d make the institution productive, profitable and cost effective – and produce satisfying dividends for their shareholders.  They’ve already had unrivalled experience of manipulating the mighty and bending the minds of top politicians.  The reign of King Rupert the First would undoubtedly be remembered as the one in which the United Kingdom really became a land fit for cosmopolitan billionaires to prosper in.

 Tough about the fate of the former Royal Family – and the rest of us!

A Freeze on Fuel Prices?

          Goodness – it was rash of Ed Miliband to promise to freeze fuel prices for a fixed period, two years in advance of the possibility of his being able to fulfil it. Despite national efforts to develop sources of sustainable energy, oil and gas originating from countries that are notoriously unstable and unreliable seem likely to be our main sources of energy for the foreseeable future.   If he should succeed, say the furious fuel companies, he is risking power failures and blackouts. Is that a forecast I wonder – or a threat?

            I warmed to the idea just a little when I learned that Lord Mandelson was strongly opposed to it.  He, you’ll recall, was one of the architects of New Labour and is remembered for his comment that he, ‘had no problem with billionaires’.  I am one of the many who think that in a country where thousands are depending on Food Banks and charitable-giving to survive, he should have a problem with them.

            A regular blog reader suggests a couple of ideas that might have gone into Ed Miliband’s speech if he really wants to prevent the poorer members of our society having to choose between eating and heating:

What would be a good and realistic thing to do is to ban energy companies from charging extra for pre-paid meters. These are almost entirely used by poor families with debt problems who live in low-cost privately rented homes, bedsits for example.  The price difference they have to endure is really quite significant. If this involved any extra cost it would be much fairer for all consumers to share it..

 A more imaginative policy would be to force energy companies to introduce a price structure in which the first xx Kilowatts were very cheap but after that the more fuel was used, the more  would be its cost per unit. This would make it possible for poor (and frugal) people to stay warm at lower cost, while those who were trying to heat six bedroomed mansions and a swimming pool would find it very expensive and be encouraged to put solar panels on the roof

Well, why not?

A Closer look at Clacton-on-Sea’s Sea Front.

          Regular readers of this blog will know that old age and arthritis have crippled me (or, to use a politically correct euphemism, ‘have severely reduced my mobility’).  Without my electric mobility scooter – my iron horse – I would be housebound.  With it I can visit local friends, go to church and to our Quaker Meeting and do my shopping.  For longer journeys I am dependent on the kindness of my family and friends to give me a lift in their cars.  I very much appreciate these occasional outings but, of course, when we reach our destination and the car is parked, I can still hobble only a few yards, leaning heavily on my stick and preferably with a supportive arm!

Pete and I (on my ‘iron pony’) on Clacton Pier        

Pete and Andy, my two always-thoughtful sons, found a solution. Pete and daughter-in-law Arlene visited me on Saturday 21^st September.  In the boot of Pete’s car was an easily-assembled mini mobility scooter – an iron pony – that he and Andy had bought for my use!  Pete drove us to Marine Parade West and parked his car with the help of my ‘blue disabled badge’.  Then, in a matter of minutes, he assembled the mini-scooter, and we set out on a journey of exploration.  We went down the slope at Pier Gap and onto the pier itself.  Riding my new steed was an exciting experience.  The controls were almost the same as those on my trusted ‘iron horse’ but everything (except of course me!) was on a much smaller scale.

It had been years since any one of the three of us had had a chance to explore the pier thoroughly – although we had received very enthusiastic reports from the younger guests at my birthday celebration in May. They had visited the pier after the celebratory lunch.  We were pleased and just a little surprised, to see that there were plenty of visitors of all ages enjoying themselves despite the fact that schools had re-opened and we were nearing the end of September.  There was plenty of noise and bustle.  Pete said it reminded him of the pier iu Clacton’s glory days in the ‘60s and ‘70s when Clacton had thronged with visitors during the holiday period.  He was particularly pleased to see the Steel Stella, the Helter Skelter and the Dodgems, as well as other newer rides.  We went to the end of the pier and surveyed the wind-farm, and the restaurant with its huge glass windows looking out over the ocean.

          

On Clacton Pier - Steel Stella and Helter Skelter

          Having explored the pier we thought that we’d take a  stroll along the lower prom towards the Martello Tower and the Coaches Car Park.  I can’t remember when I had last made that once-familiar journey.  Looking back, Pete was particularly pleased to see the silhouette of the pier with its Steel Stella, Helter Skelter and other buildings, looking exactly as he remembered the pier of his childhood.  Along the prom he and Arlene were impressed with the new brightly coloured beach huts and the lively (graffiti style) mural decorations on the nearby wall.

 

Brightly coloured beach hut and wall painting

. We walked back (well, I rode my iron pony of course) through the cliff-top gardens.  My visitors and I were exhausted but we had enjoyed ourselves.  Despite all the bad press reports and the whingeing letters in the local papers, Clacton-on-Sea has all that is needed for a bright future – sandy and safe beaches, a reborn and prospering pier, colourful cliff-top gardens, and a rainfall and sunshine record as good as  any holiday resort in the UK – and much better than most!  Tendring Council’s top priority should be to make that known to the world!

I am now looking forward to a visit from son Andy and daughter-in-law Marilyn on 12th October. Perhaps my new 'iron pony' will have another outing!

          

Week 24 2011 14.6.11

Tendring Topics………on Line


The Future of Education?

Two hundred primary schools, that have consistently failed to bring their pupils to a satisfactory educational level, particularly in English and Mathematics, are to be abolished and merged with successfully performing schools in their areas, to form new academies. This will sever their connection with and reliance upon their current Education Authority (usually the County Council). Head teachers will have autonomous powers to hire and fire teachers, to adjust the curriculum and even to alter school hours where they consider it desirable.

Academy status has previously been given only to secondary schools but primary schools are now to be included in the programme.

All of this, Education Minister Mr Michael Gove told us in a tv news bulletin, was to free head teachers from the control of the ‘pen-pushers of the Education Authority’ (his phrase not mine!) and give them the independence that they need to bring our primary schools up to the standard of our European partners.

They also have to strive to change the attitude of teachers, pupils and pupils’ parents to make them appreciate the value of education and to feel pride in their school and in the educational progress of its pupils. New academies are given extra funds to further those objectives. When in Clacton,. two existing comprehensive schools were merged to form the new Coastal Academy, every child in both schools was provided with a smart new and distinctive school uniform and sports gear. The school also had sufficient funding to enable the giving of awards (incentives? bribes?) to pupils who attended school regularly and behaved themselves when they got there.

I wholly applaud the idea of bringing our schools up to European standards, I warmed to Mr Gove’s obvious enthusiasm for the project and I hope it will be successful.

I do question though its compatibility with the Government’s avowed intention of ‘power to the people’, of taking power away from central government and handing it to local communities. State primary schools are currently under the control of County Councils. They are not exactly ‘local’ and I would have thought that a move towards ‘localisation’ would have been to transfer them to district and borough councils most of whose members would then at least know where they are! Local people, the electorate, would have had an opportunity of expressing their opinion as to whether or not they are well run at local elections.

But no, they are to be handed over to Head Teachers, professionally qualified and no doubt, in most cases, well able to run them efficiently. They are not in any way answerable to local people though. They will not be entirely unrestrained. They have been given autonomy and central government funding in order to bring their pupils up to the required standard. If they fail to do that they will soon find that he who pays the piper calls the tune. They will have been freed from the control of the pen-pushers of the Education Authority only to find themselves controlled by the even more remote pen-pushers of central government.




Ingrid with 13 year old Jenny

 Education on the Continent

 Mr Vole’s suggestion that education on the European mainland is better than it is in Britain may well have infuriated supporters of UKIP and readers of the Daily Express!   Readers of this blog may gain a taste of the standrad of continental education from the extracts below from an essay written by Jenny, an Austrian girl of 13. She visited England (and Clacton!) for the first time last November, with her godmother Ingrid, a good friend of mine,

Her English is by no means perfect and there are a few factual errors. The restaurant where we lunched was, in fact, the Kingscliff Hotel at Holland-on-Sea. Jenny clearly misheard Harrods as ‘Herod’s’ and imagined that ‘seagulls’ was an abbreviation of ‘Sea eagles’. Her home is hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean and it was probably the first time she had encountered those large and always hungry birds. Pete, Arlene and Nick, whom Jenny met on the last day of her visit, are of course my elder son, daughter-in-law and younger grandson. Nick isn’t ‘studying’ in Brussels. He lives and works there.

Despite the errors, I understood exactly what she meant and, at the end of each paragraph I was eager to read the next one. That is surely the test of good writing. How many British thirteen year olds could do as well – in a foreign language? I think that some would find difficulty in writing such a narrative in their native tongue.

My journey to England

(Saturday)
Phew, I’m tired …
It was 3 am o’ clock and I had to get up. We took grandpa’s car, because it is driven very rarely and my dad thought the ride to the airport is a good opportunity.
We had to pick up Ingrid in Bayreuth, when we arrived in Bayreuth I realized, I had forgotten my passport. It was terrible, because it was my fault. We had to drive to Immenreuth to pick up my passport. I was afraid, we won’t catch our flight. I ran into the house and took my passport. We droved to Nürnberg, but the time were short and we had grandpa’s car so we can’t drive so fast because my dad didn’t know the car very well . . .
But we were lucky, we came to the airport in the last minute.
We sat in the plane to Zürich, it was a good flight………..
……………………………
…. when we arrived in London we had problems, because of the ‘check out’ the man ask in witch ratio Ingrid had to me, Ingrid said that I’m her goddaughter. The man said that Ingrid isn’t allowed to travel with me and he wanted to see a letter from my parents that I can travel with Ingrid. We hadn’t a letter so he said ‘give me the number of your mother so I can call her to be sure that you can travel with your godmother’.
We gave him the number but Ingrid said that my mom can’t speak English very well. . .
The man said ‘ I see you two are close together so you can go but the next time you travel together you have a letter from your parents IN ENGLISH’…………………

………………..We went by train to Ray, it was evening when we arrived in Ipswich. I was very tired because of the strenuous day.

(Sunday)
We could sleep as long as we wanted and then we had such a good English breakfast, it was wonderful……………

(On the Tuesday Ingrid took Jenny to meet friends of hers in Oxford)

………………….On Tuesday morning we went to Ursula Kneissel and on the way we saw a very funny house with a fish in the roof, it was really impressive.
Ursula Kneissel was a very nice person who told some very interesting things about her live especially about her childhood. In the afternoon we went to a church in Oxford with a big bell. After that we visit the Oxford University and the Library. But than we had to take a bus to London and we went to a big shopping street in witch we couldn’t stay long, unfortunately. Ingrid and I went to a big building ‘HERODS’ it was a big shopping paradise but so expensive ... a jacked for nearly 1200 pound it was unbelievable. We went to the station and drove to Ipswich.

(On the Thursday)

We went to Clacton on sea to visit Ernest Hall. He collects us at the station with his ‘iron horse’ and we visit the Clacton Pier to drink a coffee. After the coffee we fed the seaeagles. Then we walked to Ernest’s house, on the way we went past some houses and in one house there were some very cute cats and two dogs.

Jenny took this photo of Ingrid and I at the Kingscliff Hotel

Ernest called a taxi and we drove to a very fine restaurant called ‘ Holland on sea’ we had a very nice lunch and after that we drove with the taxi to Ernest’s house again, we were even at his house a little bit and then Ernest called a taxi and we were taken to the station………………………..

(On the Saturday)

The last day . . . I was sad because it was such a great journey.  Ray drove with us to London. We crossed the tower bride. It is a fantastic bridge I like it so much. We drove to the London eye and we got a very good parking maybe one hundred meters away from the London eye……………. we had a breath breaking view out of the London eye. After that we drove to Pete and Arlene. Nick was there too, he’s studying in Brussels. We had lunch in a little cafe behind a shop. My salad was very delicious!
But then we had to drive to Heathrow and we had to say good bye.
When we checked in I termed that I haven’t a souvenir for my best friend Sonja... so I bought some overpriced cookies and a nice magnet.
Then we flew to Zürich and then to Nürmberg………….Maria collects us at the station in Bayreuth. At 12 o’clock I was in the bed.

Finally I want to say THANK YOU to everybody especially Ray and Ingrid.
It was an unforgettable journey and I met some nice people.

That was about half the actual essay. I have left the less-than-perfect grammar and spelling exactly as Jenny wrote it. What did you think of it?

Week 23.09

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

Clacton-on-Sea’s Future?

If there’s one lesson that I have learnt from decades of reading local and national newspapers, it is that “artists’ impressions” of proposed future developments rarely if ever resemble the completed job. Usually this turns out to be a disappointment. The completed development lacks attractive features – trees and shrubs, a water feature perhaps - that were shown in the ‘impression’ but were cut out on grounds of economy while the building work was in progress.

It isn’t very often that I look at an ‘artist’s impression’ and hope that it won’t prove to be an accurate prophecy. However that is precisely what I thought when I saw the picture above on the front page of the Coastal Daily Gazette of Tuesday 1st June. It is part of the vision of award-winning couple Wayne and Gerardine Hemingway who have been commissioned by Tendring Council to help bring Clacton-on-Sea ‘back to its former glory’. Wayne and Gerardine have recently masterminded the regeneration of Boscombe on the south coast that has undergone an £11 million makeover and been named as regeneration project of the year.

I hope that this picture isn’t typical of their ideas because I just don’t like it. In the foreground is a cliff-top restaurant fronted by decking on which there are some tables and chairs with a couple enjoying a coffee. Children with balloons are playing on the decking and a young woman is pointing to the pier and to the beach below.

The Pier today - view from the east cliff

The pier doesn’t look greatly different from now except that there are some green trees (presumably in containers). There is no sign of a helter-skelter, roller coaster or similar traditional ‘ride’. There are some mysterious white buildings at the pier-head that look as though they are the products of the same school of architecture as that of the ‘acclaimed international artist’ who recently built a fortunately short-lived work of art, resembling an oversized and unfinished poultry shed, in Jaywick.

The beach (normally Clacton’s busiest!) is almost deserted except for a dozen deck-chairs that appear to have been have been hastily abandoned – a seaside version of the Mary Celeste perhaps? There is also a young couple looking out to sea. Could they be watching the pirate vessel that kidnapped the other beach users (or perhaps the sea monster that gobbled them up!) disappear over the horizon?

No, it’s not an ‘artist’s impression’ that fills me with hope for Clacton’s future.

Is regeneration really necessary?

Anyway, does Clacton-on-Sea, or the Tendring District, really need to be regenerated at a cost of millions of pounds? Certainly bits of it need serious attention but I think that the holiday resorts of the ‘Essex Sunshine Coast’ are doing pretty well as they are.

Our coastal towns are relatively small ones. The largest is Clacton-on-Sea with a current population of about 53,000. It is absurd to imagine that we can have all the same facilities as, for example, Southend (population 160,000), Blackpool (142,000) and Brighton (156,000). We don’t have their financial resources but we do have other natural attractions that those towns lack.

A correspondent to the Clacton Gazette of 3rd June complains that it is absurd that Clacton should be named as one of Britain’s ‘top ten’ resorts when Blackpool is not. She has just returned from the Midlands where nobody has even heard of Clacton while Blackpool is well known. I have never been to Blackpool (though I have heard of it!) but I learn from Google that it has an average annual rainfall of 872 mm and 143 rainy days. The comparable figures for our Essex Sunshine Coast resorts are less than half of those. That could possibly contribute to Clacton-on-Sea’s inclusion in the top ten and Blackpool’s omission. We natives don’t always appreciate our good fortune in living in the driest part of the United Kingdom!

I do know both Brighton and Southend from personal experience. Neither have anything comparable with our miles of safe, gently sloping sandy beaches, extending from Walton-on-the-Naze round to Frinton, Holland-on-Sea, Clacton and Jaywick. Two friends of mine from a small town in eastern Germany (where quite a few folk have heard of Clacton-on-Sea because I have told them!) were able to visit us last year and were captivated by those beaches and by Clacton’s new-look town centre, so often criticised by some hard-to-please Clactonians.

Not only is Clacton numbered in the top ten of holiday-friendly resorts but we have three European Blue Flags and these certainly aren’t given away like confetti. They have to be earned, and they have been earned by beaches in Dovercourt, Brightlingsea and Clacton. Last year Clacton was also deservedly awarded a ‘green flag’ for the excellence of its public gardens and there is every reason to hope that this will be awarded again this year.

What better place is there to bring up children than beside the seaside in Clacton?

It is, of course, no good attracting visitors to our coastal resorts if they find getting here to be a tedious and frustrating business. Every bank holiday weekend, and warm and sunny weekends in the summer, finds the access roads jammed with traffic as Londoners and folk from Suffolk who (unlike, it seems, those in the Midlands!) have heard of Clacton, come to to visit us.

What we do badly need is a cheap, reliable rail service, operating throughout weekends as well as weekdays, bringing in visitors from Ipswich and from London and Chelmsford. It surely should be possible to arrange excursion trains from Ipswich to Clacton and Walton without passengers needing to change trains at Colchester. During my Ipswich childhood and youth I remember how much we preferred Clacton’s sandy beaches to the stony ones of easier-to-get-to Felixstowe, where there always seemed to be a bitter wind blowing in off the sea!

Probably the whole discussion is academic. In the present economic climate, do we really think that millions of pounds are likely to be available for an ambitious regeneration programme?

Just now though I wish though that some local residents weren’t quite so eager to denigrate Clacton-on-Sea in the correspondence columns of the local press. I’m not really quite a native, but I have spent fifty-five happy years here and I certainly wouldn’t wish to live anywhere else.

Brooklands Estate, Jaywick

While I don’t think that Tendring District as a whole, or even Clacton-on-Sea needs regenerating, parts of the district do need radical attention.

There’s Jaywick’s Brooklands Estate for instance, continually declared to be the third most deprived area in Britain. Where are the two worse areas, I wonder? Brooklands is only a relatively small part of the civil parish of Jaywick but it is in a mess and no one seems to know quite what to do about it, or how to do it.

There is not much doubt that Essex County Council would like to see it flattened and redeveloped with ‘desirable residences’, appropriate businesses and seaside attractions. Existing residents would be rehoused ‘elsewhere’. The former Clacton Urban District tried that in the 1960s by declaring it a ‘clearance area’ under the Housing Act 1936. They failed. A public enquiry ruled against the Council.

Needless to say the existing residents, particularly responsible ones who have worked hard to make their seaside homes attractive and habitable, fiercely oppose this solution. They just want the existing roads on the estate to be properly paved, lighted and drained. Sadly, this wouldn’t solve the Brooklands problem either. There would remain a great many properties that were built for summer holiday use only. They were never intended for all-the-year residence and their owners can’t or won’t improve them. Cheap to-buy-or-rent substandard homes tend to attract (or perhaps to create) problem householders.

I can’t see any quick and easy way to regenerate Brooklands. I don’t think for one moment that trying to turn it into a regional art centre will do the trick. Attempts to do so would probably prove as expensive, and as subject to derision, as Colchester’s still-uncompleted Visual Arts Facility (VAF)!

Perhaps the answer is to be patient and deal with it a little at a time. Tendring Council could surely seek the demolition or compulsory purchase of individual properties judged to be unfit for human habitation and incapable of being rendered fit at reasonable expense. Demolish the worst properties and rehouse the occupants one at a time, slowly clearing an area large enough to be redeveloped while leaving intact dwellings that have been improved and brought up to an acceptable standard.

Yes, it would take a long time – but hardly longer than the half-century or more that the problem has existed with virtually nothing being done about it.

Week 17.09

Tendring Topics……..on Line

An Expensive Fence…..for an Expensive Fountain!

Those of us who had thought that Clacton’s town centre water feature would eventually prove to have been worthwhile had a nasty shock when it was revealed that it would be operating again this summer but with a £20,000 fence round it to keep the children out! During the very occasional warm and sunny days that we have had during which the feature was operating, the children have loved running through it and many of us adults have enjoyed watching them enjoying themselves!

I think that that water feature would make this area even more attractive.

It seems though that the children whose ‘health and safety’ is supposed to be threatened by the less-then-sterile water in the fountain are also claimed to be a major cause of its alleged pollution. Other polluting agents are said to be seagulls, pigeons and stray dogs. There’s not much that can be done about seagulls and pigeons, though I don’t think that either are very keen on being drenched. All dogs in a town centre should, in their own interest, be on a lead and under their owners’ control. Strays should be, and I think probably are, impounded.

What is there about our water feature that is so different from apparently identical ones in the centre of Sheffield and in many other British towns? Could it be that their councils had the foresight to provide them with adequate filtration and purification equipment or are they simply less obsessed with ‘health and safety’?

Sheffield’s water feature outside the Town Hall. Don’t tell me that kids never plunge through those fountains in the summer!

Has anyone thought that perhaps the sea should be fenced off in the interest of health and safety? That, after all is subject to pollution every summer from thousands of children and adults, not to mention from seagulls and fish!

Even in ‘sunny Clacton’ there are only a limited number of weeks during the year when the weather is sufficiently warm to tempt children or anyone else to plunge through that town centre water feature. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to drain off and change the water, say once a week or once a fortnight, during that period? A dilute bactericide added to the replacement water would surely keep it adequately free from harmful bacteria until the next change was due.

We’d get quite a few changes of water for that £20,000.

A Party Political Leaflet


Above is a leaflet from a prospective County Council election candidate for my part of Clacton. I hope that included in the ‘best education’ that he hopes our children will receive will be the time-honoured rule, ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’.

On the Pier

When my elder grandson Chris brought his Taiwanese girlfriend on a visit to England last year, one of the ‘thoroughly English’ things that she wanted to see was a seaside pier. Clacton Pier in early autumn, on a grey and rainy day with a brisk on-shore breeze was, I thought, thoroughly uninviting. She enjoyed herself though and, with Chris, sampled the dodgems and other rides that were in operation.

Ariel (her English name, the same as that of ‘the good fairy’ in Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’) with me on Clacton Pier

The Pier is in new ownership and if she were to pay us a visit now I think that she would find it a lot more exciting. Just a week ago the new owners (Billy and Elliot Ball) installed a 500 ft. tall helter-skelter (formerly used in a Marks and Spencer advert) which can be seen from far away along the promenade. There hasn’t been one on the pier for at least twenty years and my abiding memory of a former helter-skelter is of it having been blown into the sea during a ferocious gale in July 1956!

Messrs Ball are introducing a new policy of having a changing programme of ‘guest rides’ which will give visitors something new to try out every time they come onto the pier. Currently there is a fifty-two-seater ‘wave swinger’ situated on the very edge of the pier and swinging users out over the sea. That sounds ‘white-knuckle’ enough for me but, according to Billy Ball, it is nothing compared with one that he is currently trying to book as its successor. It is proving very popular though and is expected to stay on the pier until well into May.

The new owners have also, so far, brought in some more fairground stalls and some smaller rides for children. They are also keeping the pier open later in the evenings.

I wish Billy and Elliot Ball every success but I think that their constantly changing programme of rides may be less popular with children than with their parents. The young can be very conservative. A child who has been looking forward for a week or more to another go on a ride that he has thoroughly enjoyed, is unlikely to be very pleased to find that it has been replaced by something else!

Letting ‘the train take the strain’!

It astonishes me how often I write something that I think on reflection was probably something of an exaggeration; only too find that it was, in fact, an understatement!

Coming back from London a few days ago on an uncrowded train that had departed from Liverpool Street dead on time and promised to arrive equally punctually at Clacton Station, I wondered if perhaps I had been guilty of hyperbole in referring in this blog a few weeks earlier to ‘Britain’s abysmal public transport system’.

My feeling of guilt disappeared completely when I read a letter from Tony Baxter of the Outrack Rail Users’ Association in a recent Clacton Gazette. I quote:

Buses will replace trains between Clacton, Walton and Colchester over the weekends of April 18 - 19th, April 25 – 26th and May 2nd – 4th. Furthermore on the first two of these weekends there will be no train services south of Colchester and buses will operate from Colchester to Billericay for train connections.

Over the May Day weekend, the line will be closed between Ilford and Liverpool Street, and buses will operate between Ingatestone and Liverpool Street and between Romford and Newbury Park Underground (on the Central Line).

Please note that further weekend engineering work is planned for subsequent weekends.

Mr Baxter’s letter also tells of even more closures of the whole section of line between Walton and Thorpe-le-Soken from 18th April until 4th May inclusive, with trains being replaced by buses.

Just imagine (or perhaps you’d be wiser not to!) the congestion on the roads leading to and from London that will be created on those spring weekends, as passengers who have paid for a rail journey have to travel by bus. The inevitable discomforts and delays will be particularly bitter for us pensioners who, under other circumstances, could have made those journeys free with our bus passes.

It makes those tv adverts about the delights of a day spent in London, courtesy of National Express ring a little hollow. Perhaps we should add ‘Don’t make a fuss, there’s always a bus’, to that advertising slogan about letting the train take the strain!