27th October 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

The EU isn’t some hostile foreign alliance!

          …….but sadly, that’s how some newspapers and some politicians behave as though it were.  The European Union is a political and economic association of European States that Britain joined for its own advantage.  Over its policies and activities we have as much power and influence as any other member.   What’s more, it is the only international association of which the UK is a member and of which we – the members of the public - have already been asked in a referendum whether or not we wished for membership.

            The Scots have recently been able to say whether or not they wished to be part of the United Kingdom – but neither the English, the Welsh nor the Northern Irish, nor any of our ancestors have ever been asked in a referendum whether we want to be part of it.  Probably there’s little doubt that most of us would vote ‘yes’ to continued membership – but a resounding ‘yes’ is much less certain about our continued membership of the United Nations or of NATO, or our ‘special relationship’ with the USA.  I would not have voted yes to the last two of those.  I think it’s quite likely that they have cost us more in pounds and pence (keeping that Trident submarine fleet active for instance) than the EU ever has and they have certainly cost us much more in British lives.   They have dragged us into an illegal war in Iraq that has made us thousands of implacable enemies world-wide and has certainly not made Iraq a happier, more peaceful and more tolerant country in which to live; and into an unwinnable war in Afghanistan from which we are now withdrawing if not in defeat, certainly not victoriously.  When the Falklands were invaded and we could have done with some help from the ‘allies’ we support so loyally, we received none.

            Freedom of movement of goods, capital and people was an important feature of the European Union when we joined and for some years no-one objected.  We wanted a ‘level playing field’ for our exporters and importers so there naturally had to be union-wide labour and health and safety regulation.  The membership, when the UK joined, was of nations with similar economies and public services.  There was no influx of workers into Britain from Germany, or the Netherlands or Denmark or any of the ‘old EU’ member countries.  If anything the flow of migrants was in the other direction.  The popular tv comedy series Auf Wiedersehen Pet was, at least in the first instance, about a group of British building workers who found employment in Germany.  My grandson, an international Tourism Publicity Consultant, lives in Brussels but commutes to his office in Ashford in Kent (near the Eurostar station).   His business takes him to every part of Europe and indeed the world but, thanks to Britain’s membership of the EU, travelling in most of Europe is much simpler than it once was.

Some years ago the then existing members considered making their union a united political and economic bloc capable of co-operating and where appropriate competing on equal terms with the USA and China, or expanding to include former members of the Soviet bloc like Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.  Tony Blair, then Britain’s prime minister, was one of the keenest and most determined of European leaders to draw these countries into the EU fold.  The problems that this could lead to were fairly obvious. Their economies and public services were in no way comparable with those of existing members.  The uncharitable thought crossed my mind that his enthusiasm for expansion could have been to ensure that Europe would never unite into a strong federal political force – a United States of Europe – that might not please his bosom friend across the Atlantic, George W. Bush.

            Well, the expansionists got their way, and provided Nigel Farage and his Ukippers with some ammunition, though hardly as much as they had hoped for. Do you remember the imaginary coach-loads of eager immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria who, according to the popular press, were just waiting for the gates to open so that they could flood in, swamping us poor natives and taking our homes and jobs?   Some turned up – mostly those who had jobs waiting for them, but in a trickle rather than a flood.  The swarm of migrants who now seem to be permanently camped near Calais waiting for an illegal opportunity to enter the UK are not from EU countries.

            The strange thing is that the worry about immigrants from the EU seems, at least from a casual glance, to be in inverse proportion to the number of EU immigrants in the area.  We clearly have some Polish immigrants here in Clacton because I note that there is now a shop here dealing with Polish delicacies. Perhaps if I were a Roman Catholic and going to mass at Our Lady of Light Roman Catholic church, I would meet some of them - and be pleased to do so.  As it is, I don’t think I have ever encountered a Pole in this town, though a Polish worker was one of the team from Enfield that very efficiently, insulated my roof space a year or two ago.  As a former public health inspector I have met Greek and Italian restaurant owners – but they were here before we were EU members!

            Clacton’s immigration problems are mostly home-grown and all-British. They relate to the fact that we are within easy reach of London, have generally dry weather (a help for those in b. and b. or sleeping rough!) and that cheap accommodation of a sort can usually be found on the Brooklands Estate, Jaywick or elsewhere in the area.  None of this has anything to do with the European Union – yet Essex’s seaside holiday coast is real Ukip country, with many of its residents worried to death about EU immigration and the fact that 70 percent of our laws are now ‘made in Brussels! – a blatant lie that Ukippers accept as a fact.

            Ukippers have convinced themselves that if there is a simple IN or OUT referendum  on EU membership, there will be an overwhelming OUT majority.   They may well be surprised at the result.  I voted NO to EU membership in that earlier referendum because I had a romantic notion that the Commonwealth could be moulded into a viable political and economic unit.  It was a stupid idea that I have outgrown.  In any future referendum I shall vote for continued membership, hoping that the EU will become more politically and economically united and that there will be fewer UK opt-outs.

Nor would I be alone. Recent MORI and Ugov public opinion polls, publicised in the London Evening Standard, indicate that nationwide, despite the rise of Ukip and although there is a big worry about immigration, a comfortable majority favour retaining EU membership and that this majority is even larger in the London area.

A Boost for the Ukippers

          The shock was considerable.  The timing calculated to bring maximum joy into the hearts of Nigel Farage and his motley band of followers.  If I were a believer in ‘conspiracies’ I’d be considering the possibility that an under-cover Ukipper had   penetrated the inner defences of Brussels and, just when Europhiles were rejoicing at opinion polls showing that most Brits would prefer to stay within the EU, arranged for ’Brussels’ to send the UK a peremptory demand for the almost immediate payment of the eye-watering sum of £1.7 billion pounds!  And, adding insult to injury, they were proposing to give substantial cash hand-outs to France and Germany.

            Rarely has there been such agreement between British political leaders.   They were unanimous.  We weren’t going to pay it and we asked our Prime Minister to make that clear to other European leaders.  No one, it seems, even considered the fact that the criteria that decided whether EU members were to get a hand out or a demand had been agreed by our representative as well as that of other members. Nor was much said about other countries who had received demands that seemed at least as ridiculous as ours.  The Netherlands is probably as well able to pay as we are, but are scarcely likely to be any more eager than us to do so.  How about Greece?  We haven’t heard much about the Greeks recently but not long ago many of them were literally starving.  Then there was Cyprus and the Irish Republic. All three have received similar demands and all three are poverty-stricken compared with either France or Germany.

            The decision to demand payment from us is at least partly because of our much-trumpeted economic recovery and growth. It had been more than expected.   The anger of the public, reflected in that of the top politicians, has been strengthened by the fact that very few of us have noticed any improvement whatsoever in our daily lives as a result of George Osborne’s economic triumph.  Inflation is low but wage rises are even lower – in the case of thousands of public servants – non-existent.  Due to ridiculously low interest rates, thousands of life savings, mine included, are steadily losing their value in Bank or Building Society savings accounts.

            Only the very wealthy have benefited from that recovery and there has, so far, been no sign of that wealth ‘trickling down’ to the rest of us.  I have no doubt that somehow some kind of an agreement will be reached in connection with the EU’s wealth redistribution.  I wish I felt equally sure that the anomaly that working people on low wages pay a much bigger proportion of their income to the government in taxes, VAT and customs duties than the bankers with their telephone number salaries and bonuses, the big property owners, financial fiddlers and tax evaders, will also be put right.

Blog readers

     Only last week I wrote that I would not, in the future, be able to write so long a blog, nor would I be able to publish it every Monday - yet here I am, with a blog that is every bit as long as usual, and is published on Monday morning!

      I did say though that I would write and publish it 'as and when' the situation might demand.  Last week there were two news items in quick succession that seemed to me to demand immediate comment; the two pro-EU opinion polls, and the demand from the EU that the UK should pay up £1.7 billion pounds -  so I duly commented.  I could have published my comments on Saturday 25th October, but decided to wait to see if there were any new developments over the weekend.

         Next week?  Who knows?

           

      

Week 21 2012 24.5.2012

Tendring Topics......on Line

 ‘Where the body is………

           ……..There the vultures are gathered together’; so says St. Matthew’s Gospel – and the vultures are certainly gathering round Greece’s moribund economy.  While top politicians from other, more fortunate (so far!), European countries, deplore the reluctance of the ordinary people of Greece to accept austerity measures that result in 25 percent unemployment, abject poverty and semi-starvation for millions, and early death for babies and old people at the very bottom of the Greek social ladder, others are making a fortune out of their poverty

             Ordinary Greeks see nothing of the millions of Euros generously donated by other European countries to ‘bail them out’.  Most of that money goes straight back in interest payments to the European and trans-Atlantic money lenders whose loans got them into their current position.  These bail-outs are not even ‘buying the Greeks time’. They are just lending them a little more time in which to make the money changers even richer. I am once again reminded of a satirical poem by writer G.K. Chesterton about a Mr Higgins, who ‘drives a weary quill – to lend the poor that funny cash that makes them poorer still!’

            One lucky recipient of cash from the all-but-bankrupt Greek government is Mr Kenneth Dart whose family fortune was established from the manufacture and sale of the ubiquitous plastic cup.   Mr Dart is an American citizen who has lived on Cayman Islands for years.  The Cayman Islands are a tax-free British possession in the Caribbean Sea much favoured by multi-millionaires who prefer not to hand over even a small amount of their wealth to the taxman.  Mr Dart’s very considerable fortune has recently been augmented by a cheque for 400 million Euros (£320 million pounds sterling) from the Greek Government.  They bought him off while they still had a few millions with which to do so.

            I don’t pretend to know how to solve ‘the Western World’s’ financial crisis.  It seems to me to result largely from fear of what may happen.  The most inconsequential events can make ‘the markets’ go up or down.  I am reminded of the way in which our Prime Minister and his government managed to create a nation-wide fuel crisis simply by suggesting that there might be a strike of tanker drivers.  In fact, we now know that that particular fear was completely unjustified.   Conciliatory talks were going on even as the Prime Minister was stimulating panic buying. There has since been a settlement agreed by both sides in the dispute.  There was and is no strike!

            I don’t know of a better way to organise our financial affairs more fairly and more efficiently than our current deeply flawed free-market/capitalist system – but am quite sure that there is one. I am equally sure that those very wealthy and very influential people who are doing quite nicely out of the present system will fiercely resist any attempt to change it.

Old Before their Time?

          It has sometimes seemed to me that in my childhood and youth most of us were expected to grow up and take on adult responsibilities at a much earlier age than is the custom today.  Most kids left school at fourteen, found themselves a job in a shop or factory or, in rural areas, on the land, and began to contribute to the family income.   My wife and I were members of a privileged minority who stayed at school until we were sixteen and, for the most part, secured white collar jobs in local offices.  I found a job in the General Office of Ipswich’s Public Health Department.  My future wife, when she left school at sixteen, worked in the London office of Unwin Brothers, printers.

            We both expected to hand over the greater part of our pay to our Mums. As a Junior Clerk/Student Sanitary Inspector my pay was seventeen shillings and sixpence a week (about 80p, though with a purchasing power far greater than that today!)  I handed over ten shillings (50p) of it to my Mum, and kept the remaining seven-and-sixpence.  It was expected though that I would save at least two shillings and sixpence of that ‘for the future’.  By the time we were twenty we all expected to be self-supporting and most of us confidently expected to be able to marry and start a family in our early twenties.  When, at eighteen I was called up into the Army, my Mum and Dad received a generous ‘billeting allowance’ for providing bed-and-breakfast and, with my two shillings a day army pay, I was better off financially than I had ever been! Nowadays all kids have to stay at school until they are sixteen and a very considerable number stay till they are eighteen and then carry on in further education for a number of years. Some are dependent upon their parents till well into their twenties.

            Although economically children today grow up much more slowly than we did, emotionally, physically and – in particular – sexually they are expected to develop and mature at lightning speed.  ‘Sex’, a mystery to us till we were into our teens and it forced itself upon us, is now taught in primary school.  Contraception (something I had never even heard of till well into my teens!) is taught to mixed classes. ‘Progressive opinion’ is that it should be taught at an ever earlier age.  The press, tv and radio are flooded with sexual images and suggestions. Teenage sex and teenage pregnancies are taken for granted by the press and by tv scriptwriters.  I remember an episode of Waterloo Road, well before the 9.00 pm watershed, in which a sixteen year old lad, after a night of passion with a female classmate of the same age, was commended as being ‘responsible’ when he urged her to take a ‘morning after’ pill.

 Little girls are eager to ‘grow up’ and become attractive to the opposite sex. Fashion and cosmetic retailers pander to this urge.  It is little wonder that unhappy and disturbed children become prey to those who flatter them, ply them with gifts (and booze and drugs) and groom them for their own purposes.  As a regular blog reader colourfully put it, ‘Schoolgirls dress as prostitutes and prostitutes dress as schoolgirls!’.  I used to think that children of my generation were expected to grow up too quickly and that we were robbed of the best part of our youth by the war.  We were certainly not robbed of our childhood quite so blatantly, and with quite such potentially dreadful consequences, as are the children of today.    

 Faithful Shepherds of their Flocks

            2012 is proving a fateful year for Clacton’s Christian communities.  Rev Anthony Spooner (‘Father Anthony’ to his flock) of St James Anglican Church has already retired and Rev. Chris Wood of Christ Church, URC Church, is leaving this summer to take his ministry to Stowmarket and neighbourhood  (the part of Suffolk with which I am most familiar!).  The Vicar of St. Paul’s  Anglican Church is also leaving as, so I understand, is the current Minister of Trinity Methodist Church and the local Minister (Commanding Officer?) of the Salvation Army.

            I am sure that every one of them will be greatly missed.  I shall particularly miss Father Anthony of St James’ and Rev. Chris Wood of Christ Church, both of whom – I hope I can say without presumption – have become personal friends.  I first attended a Sunday 8.00 am Holy Communion service at St James twenty or more years ago.  I had been brought up as a High Church Anglican but had lost my Christian faith completely. However I had slowly recovered it in the silent Meetings for Worship of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), of which I  had been a member for over forty years.   Sometimes though, I yearned for the sonorous words of the three centuries old Anglican ‘Book of Common Prayer’; hence, my attendance at St James’ that morning.

The rather splendid interior of St. James’    

I wasn’t disappointed - but I was very pleasantly surprised when Father Anthony, who knew me as a Quaker but knew nothing of my Anglican background, invited me to take the consecrated bread and wine of Holy Communion with the members of his congregation.  Subsequently I was a very occasional attender at that early service, and after my wife’s death in 2006 I became a regular attender.  About six months later I revived and renewed my membership of the Church of England (strictly speaking I had never left it!) and am now in dual membership of St. James' Church and Clacton local Quaker Meeting..  I find that the liturgical and sacramental nature of the 8.00 am Mass (that’s what we members of St. James’ prefer to call it), and the silent waiting on God that is the basis of the Quaker Worship in which I take part at 10.30 am, complement each-other perfectly.  Always I have found Father Anthony friendly and welcoming.  We certainly don’t agree about everything  (I don't for instance, share his deeply held objection to the ordination of women to the priesthood, and I am quite sure that my blog – of which he is a regular reader – must sometimes raise his eyebrows!) but I don’t think that that has dimmed our feeling of friendship.  He has a great respect for the Quakers and has occasionally joined us at Meeting for Worship. Then, of course, he becomes for an hour, simply ‘our Friend Anthony Spooner’.  Rev Chris Wood also has a high regard for Quakers.  A recent leading article in his church newsletter about Quaker values and practice brought a blush to my cheek – I would like to think that we always live up to his expectations!  He too, has occasionally attended Quaker Meetings for Worship and I was very pleased and deeply moved when, in July 2006, both he and Father Anthony attended the Memorial Meeting for Worship held at the Quaker Meeting House, to give thanks for the Grace of God made evident in the life of our late Friend Heather Hall.

       

                                                 Clacton Quaker Meeting house

I  have another personal reason for feeling warmly towards Chris Wood and his congregation.   Before his appointment and occasionally when, after his appointment, he was unable to be available at Christ Church, I was sometimes asked to lead the worship there.  It involved choosing the scripture readings and the hymns, leading the prayers, saying a few cheery words to the children (up to about a dozen of them!) before they departed to their Sunday School, and then preaching a sermon which, so the Church Secretary informed me, was expected to last for at least 25 minutes. It was a form of worship that was quite different both from that of the Church of England or of the Quakers, but I was prepared to do my best.  No one yawned or fell asleep, no-one stalked out of the church in a righteous huff – and I was invited to return and lead the worship again.  I can’t have been a total disaster.

Christ Church URC Church, Clacton

I enjoyed being ‘the Rev.’ for an hour – but it was exhausting and I certainly admire the stamina of those like Chris who have to do it as just one of their regular weekly tasks!  Nowadays a friend and I regularly attend the short service of ‘Celtic Prayer’ held every Thursday morning, and followed by ‘a cup of coffee, a bun and a chat’ in the church hall afterwards.  It is gratifying to find that a few of the older church members remember my  under-studying for Chris in the past. We also attend a brief mid-week mass held at St. James’ on Wednesday mornings.  This too is followed by tea or coffee, biscuits and a chat in the church hall.  The form of worship at St. James’ could hardly be more different from that at Christ Church URC – yet one thing that the members of their congregations have in common is the sincerity of the welcome given to strangers in their midst and the general atmosphere of warmth and friendliness that prevails in their presence.

            I have no doubt that much of this is the result of the encouragement and example of their spiritual leaders. My friend and I wish both Father Anthony and Rev Chris Wood happiness and fulfilment in whatever the future may hold for them