Week 37 2013

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Syria – Pope Francis’ plea to all humanity.

The following message from Pope Francis, addressed to all humanity, believers and nonbelievers alike, was sent to all Roman Catholic Churches throughout the world declaring 7^th September to be a day of fasting and prayer for peace in Syria, for Roman Catholics worldwide.  ‘Churches Together’ in Clacton circulated the message to all the town’s Christian churches.  It was read and welcomed at our Quaker Meeting for Worship on Sunday 8^th September, and Syria was indeed especially in our thoughts and prayers  on that morning, and has been subsequently.

           

I appeal strongly for peace, an appeal which arises from deep within me.

How much suffering, how much devastation, how much pain has the use of arms carried in its wake in that martyred country, especially among civilians and the unarmed!  Never has the use of violence brought peace in its wake. War begets war, violence begets violence.

I make a forceful and urgent call to the entire Catholic Church, and also to every Christian of other confessions, as well as to followers of every religion  and to those brothers and sisters who do not believe: peace is a good which overcomes every barrier, because it belongs to all of humanity!

I repeat forcefully: it is neither a culture of confrontation nor a culture of conflict which builds harmony within and between peoples, but rather a culture of encounter and a culture of dialogue; this is the only way to peace.  To this end, brothers and sisters, I have decided to proclaim for the whole Church on 7 September next, a day of fasting and prayer for peace in Syria, the Middle East, and throughout the world.

On 7 September, in Saint Peter’s Square, here, from 19:00 until 24:00, we will gather in prayer and in a spirit of penance, invoking God’s great gift of peace upon the beloved nation of Syria and upon each situation of conflict and violence around the world.

Humanity needs to see these gestures of peace and to hear words of hope and peace!

I ask all the local churches, in addition to fasting, that they gather to pray for this intention.

Pope Francis,

           

Changing the Image.

          Clacton has had some pretty bad publicity recently.  Readers of the sensational press may know it as the town that reverses the national, and indeed the Essex, trend of steadily reducing rates of crime!  Robberies have increased here of late and there have been one or two well publicised murders, including one of an off-duty policeman.  It is also a town to which economic migrants make their way with the result that its centre is a ‘benefits ghetto’. Clacton-on-Sea (with Hastings and Blackpool) is one of those run-down seaside resorts that the government is trying hard to revive, and and the Brooklands Estate in Jaywick, its western suburb, is officially the United Kingdom’s most deprived area.   It conjures up an image of a town to be avoided at all costs, full of thieves and beggars, where the natives are probably surly and rude, the shops that are still open are the prey of thieves and vandals, and from which visitors are lucky to escape with their goods intact, perhaps even lucky to escape with their lives!

            We natives and the thousands of people who actually visit our town every year know that Clacton  isn’t in reality a bit like that.  We know that Clacton is one of the most attractive towns in south-east England in which to live or to visit.  My childhood home was in Ipswich and I used to look forward to occasional trips (Sunday school outings and the like!) to Clacton’s pier and sandy beaches as the highlight of my summer holidays in the late 1920s and the ‘30s.  I have lived here, in the same bungalow in Clacton’s Dudley Road since 1956.  I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

            For bathers or paddlers Clacton’s beaches are sandy and gently sloping – far better and safer for instance than those at either Hastings or Brighton or, in the other direction, Felixstowe. There are beautiful cliff-top gardens and a range of lively attractions on the pier – and there’s certainly no shortage of cafés, restaurants and seaside pubs.  Clacton is now the only holiday resort on the East Anglian Coast that has an annual air show.  It brings thousands of visitors to the town’.  It is likely that not one of them will have seen any evidence of either deprivation or criminal activity.

            Clacton, and the nearby resorts of Dovercourt, Frinton, Walton-on-the-Naze and Brightlingsea are also blest with the lowest average rainfall in the United Kingdom.   The actual driest spot in the whole country is said to be the historic village of St. Osyth about three miles as the crow flies from my front door!  When I was a keen gardener that was a somewhat mixed blessing but nowadays I’m happy to enjoy the summer sunshine as I listen to the low hum of the solar-activated electric pump supplying me with free hot water from the solar panel on my bungalow’s roof!

            Clacton does have problems due to the closure in recent years of businesses employing local people (Butlins Holiday Camp, the Empire Synthetic Rubber Company in Clacton and BX Plastics in nearby Manningtree for instance) and the arrival of ‘economic refugees’ from London driven here by the soaring rental charged for  even the most basic homes in the capital. This, coupled with the government’s ‘bedroom tax’ and ‘benefit ceiling’, makes it impossible for low earners to live in London. Our relatively close proximity to the capital, that encourages Londoners to come here  for sun, sea and fun, also means that others can come here seeking cheap housing accommodation in substandard properties intended for summer holiday use only, or in former holiday guest houses converted into single room ‘lodgings’ for the poor.

            What Clacton really needs is some positive publicity, aimed at instilling in the mind of the public Clacton as a very desirable holiday and day-trip destination and a wonderful town to live in – which it is. It is sad that over the years the Tendring District Council has systematically nibbled away at Clacton Publicity in order to save money, cut the Council Tax, and please the government.

            In the late 1950s and 1960s when I was a Public Health Inspector, Clacton council had a weather observation centre with its main feature an enclosure on the green in front of the Martello Tower near Clacton Hospital.  There was a ‘Stevenson Screen’ within the enclosure with maximum and minimum, and dry and wet bulb thermometers.  In the grass nearby was a rain gauge and on the roof of the Martello Tower was a sunshine recorder giving the number of hours of bright sunshine every day.

            We three Public Health Inspectors and the Council’s cleansing superintendent  took turns, one week on, three weeks off, at recording the readings evening and morning for 365 days of the year, and phoning the figures on in the evening to an anonymous voice at the Air Ministry.   Most national dailies carry a list of weather reports from holiday resorts each day.  A typical Clacton report in July would be ten hours of sunshine, clear skies, no rainfall and a maximum temperature of 75 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade.  Not a lot, but it must have built up in many readers’ minds the fact that Clacton was a holiday destination with low rainfall and lots of sunshine.

            Nowadays you’ll look in vain for a Clacton weather report in the press.  Similarly, Clacton was very proud, and with reason, of its parks and gardens department responsible for those lovely cliff-top gardens.   The department used to exhibit in all the agricultural shows in East Anglia – and come away with the top prizes.  But that was another piece of positive publicity that got the axe soon after local government reorganisation in 1974 when Clacton Council ceased to exist and was merged with Frinton-and-Walton, Brightlingsea, Harwich and Tendring Rural District into the new Tendring District Council

            My elder son Pete, who founded his own IT consultancy serving local and other public authorities nationwide and who is a member by invitation of the Institute of Directors, feels that his home town should ‘blow its own trumpet’ a lot more loudly and a lot more widely. He says that there were once adverts for Clacton in the London ‘Evening Standard’ and on Stratford Railway Station.   The Evening Standard is now a free newspaper with a much bigger circulation than before and Stratford is an international interchange and ten times busier than in the past – but neither carries Clacton Adverts!  He urges that we should aim at the mainland European market. ‘You know from your own recent experience’ he emailed me, ‘what a good impression Clacton made on two German teenage girls who had never previously seen the sea’

            He also thinks that Clacton-on-Sea has great unrealised potential as a commuter town.  He says that, ‘Enfield Council actually pay the rail company to run extra trains, stopping at minor stations. Tendring Council could do the reverse to produce the same effect.  Why don’t they negotiate with the Railway Company for some express trains to stop only at Colchester and Clacton.  This would reduce journey time to just over an hour with which commuters would be happy.  Then get a developer to build some luxury apartments within walking distance of both the station and the beach.  People commuting to the city have money to spend and they would spend it in local restaurants and fashion shops if they were up to standard.

            Well, the government is handing a few million pounds to deprived seaside resorts like Clacton, Blackpool and Hastings. Tendring’s Council Leader Peter Halliday says he is going to do his hardest to get Clacton its fair share.  And, if they get it, what will the Council spend it on?   They could do a lot worse than follow some of the suggestions above to restore Clacton-on-Sea’s image to the one it enjoyed in the not-so-distant past.

Week 40.10 5th October 2010

Tendring Topics………on line

North of the Border!

Although I was born in Tidworth, a small garrison town on Salisbury Plain not far from Stone Henge, and have lived for the past fifty-five years in north Essex (fifty-four of them in my present home in Clacton’s Dudley Road), I still think of myself as a ‘Suffolk man’. My parents moved to Suffolk when I was five. I went to school and to my first job in Suffolk and I served in a Suffolk Territorial Regiment in World War II. After the war I lived and worked in Suffolk from 1948 to 1955. My elder son was born in the county and when I become heated my accent becomes more and more that of a rural Suffolk ‘swede-basher’! Consequently I probably take a greater interest in what is going on across our northern border than most Tendring residents.

A few weeks ago I commented on the problems that Essex County Council was encountering in its attempt to save money on a huge scale by outsourcing all its IT services to a giant international corporation. Now I learn that Suffolk County Council is outdoing them. They are putting virtually all their services out to private tender. That really is a revolutionary move – and one that horrifies me. The chief remaining function of the Council will presumably consist of occasionally meeting to consider tenders for the running of schools and further education establishments, social services, highways including footpaths and street lighting, refuse disposal and recycling, consumer protection and so on, and on, and on! The council will, I suppose, still need to employ specialist staff to police all these functions and make sure that they are carried out efficiently – or will that be done by yet another private firm, or perhaps by ‘Big Society’ volunteers?

The idea is, of course, based on the assumption that money will be saved because private enterprise is always more efficient than the public service. It seems to have been conveniently forgotten that the current crisis was not created by any failings of the public sector but by the irresponsibility and greed of financial services – arguably the most prestigious (and certainly the best paid!) area of the private sector!

It is clear to me that private enterprise will only do those jobs more cheaply, thus simultaneously saving money for the tax payers and producing profits for its share-holders, by savage reductions in staff numbers and reducing vital services or cutting them out altogether.

When, in the local government reorganisation of the early 1970s the possibility of Tendring District and Colchester becoming part of Suffolk was under consideration, I was one of a small minority in the area who thought it would be a good idea. (Even I though had to admit it would be just a little odd to have Essex University in an adjoining county!)

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am far from being an uncritical admirer of Essex County Council. However, these moves north of the border now make me feel that by staying in Essex on that occasion we may well have had a lucky escape!

Clacton's Martello Tower

Clacton has, of course, more than one Martello Tower – but the best-known one is on the landward side of Marine Parade West, and in front of Clacton Hospital. It has had a somewhat chequered past but it now seems possible that it will have a brighter future. Tendring Council has just granted planning permission for the provision of a tearoom and a museum within the building, and a ‘petting zoo’ in the large dry moat, likely to be especially popular with young children. This enterprise, expected to be up and running for next spring, is the brain-child of Tower leaseholders Roger Ling and Rosalie Robinson in partnership with Paul Nash, owner of the aquarium on Clacton Pier. Early residents of the mini-zoo will be two alpacas, two pigmy goats and two rabbits.
Nobody except me (one of the penalties of outliving most of my contemporaries!) seems to remember that something very similar was attempted there in the past. It was while my younger grandson, now in his late twenties, was still at primary school. It must therefore have been twenty or more years ago. He, with his dad and elder brother, were staying with us on holiday – and the two boys decided to go and see the miniature zoo at the Martello Tower. They came back in some distress, complaining that the few animals that were there were badly housed and, they thought, badly neglected. Shortly after that the Martello Zoo closed.

There is little chance of the present venture meeting a similar fate. Paul Nash, who has a local record of success with the Pier’s aquarium, will care for the animals and be in charge of the petting zoo. He is reported as being delighted with the news that the scheme now has planning permission, ‘It’s fantastic news and has made me very happy. We will have a big opening, hopefully with a celebrity, and it should be a big day’.

My own most vivid memories of that Martello Tower go back to the late 1950s. When I was first appointed as a public health inspector by Clacton Urban District Council, the two existing inspectors, the council’s cleansing foreman, and I, were expected to be the part-time weather observers, each of us doing one week in four throughout the year. For this we were paid the princely sum of £20 a year, on top of our salaries. £20 was worth a good deal more then than it is now but was still a very small and very hard-earned bonus!

That Martello Tower was the Council’s Weather Station. A ‘Stevenson’s Screen’ housing wet and dry, and maximum and minimum thermometers, was installed within a low fence on the grassy slope between the tower and Marine Parade West – near the top and just to the left of the path in my photograph above. A rain gauge was provided on the miniature golf course that in those days existed between the Martello Tower and the Hospital. On the roof of the Tower was a sunshine recorder. This consisted of a glass sphere, 4 or 5 inches in diameter (rather like a fortune teller’s ‘crystal ball’) contained within a framework holding a specially treated strip of cardboard, marked out in hours and minutes. As the sun moved across the sky the glass sphere acted as a magnifying lens, concentrating the sun’s rays onto the card, the progress of a burn-mark on the card giving an accurate record of the hours and minutes of sunshine.

Every evening at 6.00 p.m., Christmas Day and other public holidays alike, the weather observer on duty had to cross the drawbridge, unlock the door to the tower, climb the internal stone steps to the roof (there was no coastguard station there in those days) and change that cardboard sunshine record. It was a pleasant enough job on a summer’s evening but in December or January, by the light of an electric torch, in a howling gale and with rain or snow blowing in the air, it was not a job for the frail, the imaginative or the claustrophobic. It was all too easy to imagine that the ghost of one of the Duke of Wellington's 'redcoats' was watching from the shadows, deciding whether or not this intruder was one of Napoleon’s spies, intent on mischief!

‘All is safely gathered in……

……….e’re the winter storms begin’, says the well-known harvest hymn and most Christian churches will have celebrated their harvest thanksgiving services during the past few weeks.

During my childhood when ‘going to church on Sunday’ was rather more usual than it is today, churches would be packed for the evening ‘Harvest Festival’ service even if on most other Sunday evenings there were plenty of empty pews. We sang the well-loved harvest hymns We plough the fields and scatter…, Come, ye faithful people, come….., All things bright and beautiful….. and, in prayer, we would thank God for his bounty. Keen gardeners among the congregation (my father among them) would have vied with each other to grow enormous potatoes, vegetable marrows and pumpkins, long and perfectly formed runner beans, succulent cabbages and cauliflower, rosy apples and other garden produce with which to adorn the church on that occasion. These offerings were subsequently all passed on to local children’s homes or to hospitals in the area where they were much appreciated.

It is a practice that continues today as these pictures taken in St. James' Parish Church in Clacton last Sunday (3rd October), the day of the church's Harvest festival, demonstrate.

It is surely a good thing for Christians to gather together once a year to thank God for the harvest – and to give some of our surplus to those who need it. We become so used to buying all our food from the nearest supermarket that we tend to forget that everything that we eat and drink comes ultimately from the soil. We have lost the certain knowledge of former years that when a harvest failed, hunger, hardship and death followed. Then, our forebears knew all too well how much reason they had to be thankful when the harvest had been a bountiful one.

In some parts of the world a failed harvest is as devastating today as it was to our forefathers. In today’s global economy widespread crop failure affects us all, even if only by worldwide higher prices. This year climatic change has brought drought and bush fires to the Russian steppe, aborting or destroying crops and compelling the Russian government to embargo grain exports to ensure that there was sufficient left to feed its own people.

That same inexorable climatic change, largely the result of humankind’s own activities (even if our MP thinks otherwise!) has brought about devastating floods in Pakistan, drowning crops over thousands of acres of farm land and resulting in widespread homelessness, sickness and death. It will take all our efforts for several years to help the victims and restore normality – and who can be sure that there will not be equally devastating floods again next year?

Meanwhile, a short distance from the devastated areas a man-made catastrophe rumbles on in neighbouring Afghanistan and threatens to spread beyond that country’s borders. Every week brings its toll of British and American casualties, and every week innocent civilians are killed as our forces strive to destroy an elusive and unidentifiable enemy.

If only all the money, the resources and the energy that is devoted to death and destruction there, could be redirected to the succour of suffering humanity! Just think of the difference that those helicopters, the military transport and the thousands of fit, young, able-bodied young men and women (not to mention the ingenuity and energy expended in making and planting ‘improvised explosive devices’ and creating ambushes!) could make if they were redirected to Pakistan and used to save lives instead of to take them, to rebuild homes instead of destroy them!

Then we really would begin to see the fulfilment of the prayer that, even in this secular society, is uttered daily by the many thousands of faithful Christians:

‘Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven’