Week 3 18.1.11

Tendring Topics…….on Line

The Cost of Disillusion

As we move into the second decade of the third millennium, I don’t remember ever before experiencing such general disillusion with all politicians and with all political parties, as there is today.

The Conservative-dominated coalition leaps in impetuously to right wrongs, redistribute power, build a fairer society – and ends up either bogged down (rather like the French cavalry at Agincourt!) or producing the direct opposite of their stated intention. They were going to save millions of pounds by getting rid of all the Quangos, until they discovered that for the most part Quangos were doing a worthwhile job. The most that could be done was merge some of them or pass their functions on to some other body.

They were going to abolish the bureaucratic NHS Primary Care Authorities and hand their responsibilities over to ‘the doctors’ in their areas. But ‘the doctors’ have plenty to do caring for the sick. They don’t want to take on the administrative tasks of the PCAs. They are combining into area consortia, creating little bureaucracies of their own.

They were going to stem the great flow of overseas immigrants – but farmers and others couldn’t function without the foreign workers prepared to undertake tasks that no Brit cared to do. They were going to reduce the power of the government and hand it over to ‘local communities’. They haven’t handed over a single function of central government but they have taken power away from local authorities – the elected representatives of local communities!

They were going to curb the power of the bankers – especially those whose irresponsibility and incompetence had been the immediate cause of our financial woes, who had been saved from bankruptcy with our money, but who were proposing to continue handing themselves five-figure bonuses. If only the government had been prepared to back up fiery words with effective action! The confrontation between bankers and the government was reminiscent of the medieval struggles between church and state – except that the conflict is now between the representatives of the British people and the High Priests of Mammon. The struggle isn’t quite over as I write these words but, whatever face-saving words may be used to make defeat sound like victory, I have little doubt that it will be Mammon who will come out on top.

The Lib-Dems? They had to pay too higher price to become junior partners in a coalition government. Instinctively ‘green’ and ‘Europhile’, they find themselves allied with Climate Change denying Europhobes like our (Clacton) MP, and compelled to support policies to which, up to the day of the election, they were strongly opposed. Student fees, for example, and control orders for suspected terrorists. Poor old Vince Cable was humiliated for saying, in what he had imagined was a private conversation, that he had ‘declared war on Rupert Murdoch’ (well, It was certainly time someone did!). He was replaced by someone whose impartiality had been demonstrated by unequivocal support for the Murdoch media empire!

Altogether I can see little hope of either coalition partner changing ‘The good old law, the ancient plan, that he shall take who hath the power – and he shall keep who can!’

As for the Labour Opposition – I think that Ed Milliband is probably doing his best to breathe new life into his Party. However, I can’t forget that under New Labour the yawning gap between the incomes of the rich and poor widened; we were dragged into two unwinnable wars by blindly following the most reactionary American president in living memory; the infamous ‘Right to Buy’ legislation that had turned urban municipal housing into slums and destroyed rural communities, remained on the statute book; while New Labour’s leaders took their holidays in the palatial residences of their multimillionaire friends! No wonder Lord Mandelson, who – with Mr Osborne, our present Tory Chancellor – had enjoyed the hospitality of a millionaire friend on his luxury yacht, told the press that he ‘had no problem with billionaires!’

I very much fear that the time is ripe for the emergence on the scene of a young, energetic and charismatic politician, with brawny and heavy-booted supporters, who will promise to get rid of venial and self-serving politicians, and the ‘alien riffraff taking our jobs and threatening our culture’, cut our ties with Europe, establish comradely links with Sarah Palin’s ‘Tea-Party’ warriors in the USA, and lead Britain on a new path – toward the kind of future that would have brought joy to the hearts of Hitler and Mussolini! We must be thankful that so far at least, neither the BNP nor UKIP have leaders of that malignant quality.

Footnote – The clear winner of the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election was disillusion. 48 percent of the electorate voted. This means that those who didn’t vote (52 percent) were in a majority. Your guess about the motives of those who did vote is as good as mine. I think it likely though that a great many of the votes secured by the winning candidate were cast against the coalition partners rather than for New Labour.

Disaster strikes Ipswich?

As I switched my tv set on a few mornings ago, the news reader was saying ‘…and Ipswich has been inundated, with 2,000 families rendered homeless’.

I wasn’t at my brightest at that time but it was amazing how many thoughts flashed through my mind in what was probably less than half a minute. I was back in memory to January 1939. Heavy snow and prolonged frost had been succeeded by a rapid thaw with torrential rain. The Gipping Valley had been inundated. The wooden road bridge at Sproughton, a few miles up stream from Ipswich, had been swept away. My family’s home was safe enough but there was severe flooding of low-lying streets in parts of the town. Was this scene from the past being re-enacted with even more flooding than before?

Of course not. I had momentarily forgotten that there is another Ipswich, in Queensland, Australia, not far from Brisbane. That was the town that was under water. It was, in fact, part of an inundated area in north-eastern Australia larger than the combined areas of France and Germany!

Australia is part of the Commonwealth with which we have historical and cultural ties. Some of us have friends and/or relations there. It is hardly surprising that it has been the flooding there that has received most British news media coverage. It is though by no means the only part of the world to have endured almost identical disaster. Sri Lanka and Brazil suffered far more human casualties than Australia and although the flood waters have now receded in Pakistan, the havoc that they wrought remains – and is likely to remain for months, perhaps years, to come.

This is no coincidence. Although the Meteorologists, wary of making a false prediction, say that it is too early to be certain of the cause of these floods, it seems to me to be evident that global warming is responsible. The vast expanse and volume of water in the southern oceans (Atlantic, Pacific, Indian) has warmed up, resulting in more evaporation and a moisture-filled lower atmosphere. At the same time adjacent land masses – South America, Australia, the Indian sub-Continent – have warmed up even more. The warm air above these land masses, rises and is replaced by moisture-filled air from the ocean. As this moisture-filled air cools, particularly when flowing over mountains, the water vapour precipitates as torrential, and potentially devastating rain. It is what happens already in the southern Asian Monsoon.

Climate change deniers delighted in telling us that the bitterly cold weather we experienced in November and December proved beyond doubt that Global warming was a myth, propagated by scaremongers. On the contrary, our icy weather may well have been a result of world-wide warming. We know that the polar ice-caps are melting. Tens of thousands of gallons of fresh water, only just above freezing point, are being precipitated into the North Atlantic daily. I don’t know whether, as some believe, this is affecting the flow of the Gulf Stream on which North-Western Europe’s normally equable climate depends. I am quite sure though that it must have a cooling affect on the waters of the North Atlantic, thus making our winters colder.

I think it likely that weather in Britain will become more extreme. At least until all the polar ice cap disappears, our will winters continue to become colder. Our summers will be cool and cloudy while the prevailing wind direction remains from the west or south-west. When it changes to coming from an easterly or south-easterly direction it will, perhaps only briefly, become abnormally hot.

Unless or until we take Climatic Change seriously that is the future to which we can look forward.

Double Opportunity for Harwich

Last year Tendring Council failed to secure a government grant for Harwich because Essex was considered to be too prosperous a county. Perhaps, overall, it is, but the Tendring District certainly has areas of severe deprivation, parts of Harwich, Clacton and Jaywick among them.

Harwich at least, could have a brighter future. The Council has launched a £5 million bid to attract the wind farm industry to the town. The idea is to build a skills and business centre to support an ever-growing industry. The ultimate aim is to make Harwich a major centre for the maintenance and manufacture of Wind Turbines. The historic port is internationally known as a staging post between England and the Continent and is well placed to serve the now-established wind farm offshore at Clacton and the developing farms both to the north, in the Thames estuary and off the coast of Kent. Councillor Neil Stock, the Council’s leader, says that such a development could result in up to 40,000 jobs and add hundreds of millions of pounds to Harwich’s economy.

The home. in Kings Head Street, of Christopher Jones, master of The Mayflower

To turn this dream into a reality the Council is again applying for a grant – this time from a £1.5 billion regeneration fund established by the government to help areas hit by public service cuts. Mr Stock says that this time they are quietly optimistic as they prepare a compelling case for a grant.

I very much hope they succeed, not only for Harwich but for the future of Western Europe. Quite apart from the need for sources of reliable renewable energy to combat climate change, we have to realize that the world’s reserves of oil and gas are finite. Alternative energy sources must be found well before they run out, or become so difficult to secure that they become prohibitively expensive.

In the meantime are you happy about the fact that most of our oil comes from the always volatile Middle East and our gas from reservoirs in Siberia?

The 2012 Olympics may well give Harwich another economic opportunity. The port is already well-known on the Continent as a gateway into Britain. It could become Britain’s main staging post to the Olympics. From the town there are direct rail and road routes to the Olympics stadium at Stratford, avoiding the need to pass through London. I hope that our Tourist Authorities will publicise that fact among our mainland neighbours and EU partners, and make sure that there is adequate first class hotel accommodation for those who wish to use our area either as a staging post or a base.

Harwich’s historic ‘Three Cups’ Inn. Lord Nelson and Emma, Lady Hamilton are said to have stayed there and in the 14th Century, Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer are said to have obtained horses here before going on to defeat her husband King Edward II. Has Harwich a bright future as well as a colourful past?

Week 12.09

Tendring Topics……on Line

A Second Career

My elder grandson Chris whom, a month or two ago, I announced with some pride had been designated ‘Teacher of the Year’ in Taipei, Taiwan, had never intended to be a teacher. He was an art graduate and had studied his subject in Boston, USA, and in London. After graduation he had hoped to obtain a post as an editorial illustrator. These were few and far between and he decided to fill in time and to see a bit more of the world by teaching English, first in main-land China and subsequently in Taiwan. It was just a ‘fill-in’ job; he didn’t for a moment expect that he would enjoy doing it.

But he did. And he found that he was very good at it. Before leaving England he had had a Taiwanese girl friend and had learnt a little Mandarin. He built on that and within a few months was speaking it fluently and making progress with the incredibly difficult Chinese written language. He teaches both little children (four years old upwards) and mature students and finds both groups responsive and eager to learn. He likes living in Taiwan, has a pleasant apartment, a very attractive girlfriend, and satisfaction in his work. How many people in their late twenties can say as much?

He hasn’t forgotten his art though and uses his skills as a teaching aid. After the death of my wife Heather, nearly three years ago now, I gathered together short passages of verse and prose that she had written down in half a dozen notebooks throughout the greater part of her adult lifetime, and had them printed and published as Heather’s Treasure. I needed a picture to go on the first page and asked him if he would prepare for me a line drawing of his Grandma, using a photo of her in her mid-sixties as a reference. He was happy to do so……see below:
I was very pleased indeed with it and used it as planned. Remembering how pleased I had been, he gave me, as a surprise present the following Christmas, another drawing that he had made of his Grandma as the fifteen year old schoolgirl she had been when I first met her on 3rd September 1939.

Once again he had used an old photograph as a reference and I found the result emotionally overwhelming. His drawing brought memories flooding back to me in a way that the photograph could never have done. Both the original drawings (A4 size) are now framed and proudly on display.

Three or four months ago, during the course of an email correspondence, I asked him if he might possibly find the time to do a companion drawing of myself to accompany them. I suggested as a reference a photo that had been taken in Wenceslas Square, Prague on my visit there with his Dad and brother the previous year.

Knowing how busy Chris always is I then pushed the matter to the back of my mind. I was therefore both surprised and delighted when, a fortnight ago at the family get-together in Brussels, he handed me the finished drawing. I can’t say how pleased I am with it. I’m no art expert (you probably knew that already from my comments about ‘modern art’!) but I feel that, if anything, his techniques have improved over the three drawings and that the last one is even better than its predecessors.

Perhaps in Chris’ experience there is a lesson for other graduates who are finding it difficult to get the job they want in the current economic climate. Don’t be too proud, or too diffident, to take work in another field if you can get it. You’ll gain experience and other skills. You may find that you’re enjoying the ‘stand-in’ job……..and you may still get opportunities to use your university studies to advantage.

A ‘Mayflower’ Replica for Harwich?

Would a full-size (110ft long and 25ft tall) replica of ‘The Mayflower’, that transported ‘the Pilgrim Fathers’ to North America in the early 17th Century attract sufficient visitors to Harwich to justify its estimated cost of £4 million (give or take a few hundred thousand!) A consortium of local businessmen thinks that it would. They are actively pursuing funding for the project that would, it is estimated, take between eighteen months and three years to complete. It would, they believe, bring throngs of visitors to the town and be good both for trade and for tourism.

My first thoughts were almost equally enthusiastic. In my mind I pictured the cloned ‘Mayflower’ moored in Harwich Harbour, looking just as the original vessel did when she took those 17th century emigrants across the Atlantic. Visitors would be invited to inspect the cramped living and sleeping quarters of the passengers and crew, and imagine themselves on board during a mid-Atlantic storm!

Access could be through a well-planned ‘visitors’ centre’ on the quay (I’m sure that room could be found for it) which would have a colourful display relating to the voyage of the ‘Mayflower’ and its passengers, and information about the other places of historical and cultural interest in Harwich and in the Stour Valley. Visitors from the USA’s northern states, for example, would have their attention drawn to Dedham, with its close links with Dedham Mass. and its splendid Sherman House, ancestral home of the celebrated Civil War general. Tickets of admission to the Mayflower, souvenirs, memorabilia and literature would, of course, be available for sale.

Second thoughts though have introduced doubts into my mind. Would it, in fact, attract throngs of visitors? It would certainly be of great interest to citizens of the USA and to many folk from other parts of Britain. I doubt though if many visitors from mainland Europe, from China or Japan or, indeed, from Latin America, would be very interested. While on holiday on the Continent would you go out of your way to visit the replica of a ship that took early Spanish emigrants to Mexico, Portuguese settlers to Brazil or French colonists to Canada? I hardly think so.

I wonder what percentage of visitors to Harwich does come from the USA? The replica of the ‘Mayflower’ would certainly increase that percentage but I wonder if the increase would be sufficient to justify the production of a replica. Other magnets for Trans-Atlantic tourists are Stratford-on-Avon and Plymouth, the latter being more closely associated in the public mind with the Pilgrim Fathers than Harwich is. Sadly, from a London base, Harwich is in the opposite direction!

I still very much like the idea of a replica ‘Mayflower’ being permanently on display in Harwich and wish the project all success. I am just a little doubtful though as to whether or not it could prove to be a commercial success.

Charitable Giving

If I had responded positively to every appeal from thoroughly deserving charities that I have received during the past few months, either my largesse would have had to have been spread so thinly that it would have hardly covered the postage costs of sending me each appeal, or I would have been so impoverished that I would now need to send out begging letters myself!
No, these nine appeals, all from thoroughly deserving charities, didn't all arrive on my doormat at the same time. They were delivered over a period of ten days. There's no delivery on Sunday so that was an average of one appeal a day!

I am sure that I am not alone in being unable to respond to every appeal that comes through my post box. I do give regularly, and as generously as I can, to three or four national and local charities. I also have a ‘Quaker Peace and Service' collecting box into which I put a few coins from time to time. They add up to a worthwhile sum by the end of the year.

Charities have been hit even harder than the rest of us by the current economic depression and seem to have redoubled their appeals in recent weeks. Some of them employ tactics that antagonise and may, I think, in the long run do them more harm than good.

I don’t like the ones that try to hold our attention by including a somewhat spurious questionnaire with their appeal, together with a ball-point pen for its completion. Worse are those who include a small gift; a bracelet, a few greetings cards, address labels, or a shopping bag; sprats aimed at catching mackerel!

These gifts I either use or pass on to a friend, feeling a little guilty as I do so. Very occasionally, when it seems to be for a particularly worthy cause, their sprat does net a very small mackerel from me, even though I know that this will result in my receiving regular heart-rending appeals from that charity for evermore!

Then there are the Charities which tape two or three small coins to their letters of appeal, calculating that even the most Scrooge-like of us would feel guilty about pocketing a few coppers from an obviously hard-up charity. They’re quite right too. I couldn’t do it. However I don’t feel any guilt about putting those few coins into my Quaker Peace and Service collection box, telling myself as I do so, that it is just a case of one very worthy charity helping out another equally worthy one!

Week 5.09

Tendring Topics……on Line

The Harwich Society.....Forty Years on!

It is difficult for me to realize that the Harwich Society, surely one of the most active and prestigious organisations of its kind in East Anglia, is only forty years old. I am sure that the handful of enthusiasts who launched the Society at a public meeting in the town on 7th February 1969 didn’t, in their wildest dreams, imagine that four decades later their fledgling society would have over a thousand members, many living far from Harwich, and would have a record of solid achievement upon which the present membership fully intends to build.
A few yards from the waterfront is the home of Christopher Jones, Master of 'The Mayflower' on which the Pilgrim Fathers of the USA sailed across the Atlantic

The photos on this page were taken by me in the 1980s. I was then writing a number of articles for the New England Senior Citizen (‘on your trip to England don’t fail to visit Harwich, home of the Mayflower’ and so on) thus giving a tiny boost to our tourist trade and putting a few welcome dollars into my bank account!

At that time the Harwich Society had been in existence little more than a decade but was already making its presence strongly felt. An article in the current issue of Highlight, the Society's quarterly journal, refers to a photograph in a 1976 issue of the Harwich and Dovercourt Standard depicting ‘the Electric Palace looking forlorn and dilapidated. The entrance is boarded up, the plasterwork disintegrating’. The Palace was, in fact, threatened with demolition but, thanks largely to the efforts of the Harwich Society, the Electric Palace, one of England’s oldest purpose-built cinemas, was saved, restored to its former glory and is still a valuable centre of entertainment in the town. My photo shows the then-recently-restored cinema.

This mural, the first of its kind, depicting something of Harwich’s history, had been sponsored by the Harwich Society and painted by the pupils of Harwich School.

Another major project that by the 1980s was well under way was the restoration of Harwich’s Redoubt, a fort constructed to defend Harwich Harbour from Napoleonic invasion in the first decade of the 19th century. It is now one of the town’s most valued assets and the venue of an annual Spring Bank Holiday fête that year after year helps to meet the cost of its upkeep. Heather (formerly Heather Gilbert), my late wife, had a family interest in Harwich and in the restoration of the Redoubt. Her grandfather had been one of the crew of the ill-fated SS Berlin. Its loss at the Hook of Holland in February 1907, left her grandmother a widow with three orphaned children one of whom was the twelve year old boy destined to be Heather’s father. Heather’s cousin Roger Gilbert was a keen member of the small group of Redoubt Volunteers who undertook the mammoth task of clearing the dry moat of nearly two centuries-worth of discarded rubbish!

A brief history of Harwich, also in the current issue of Highlight explains why it is that historic Harwich doesn’t get a mention in William the Conqueror’s Doomsday Book, while its apparently-more-modern sister town of Dovercourt does.

It appears that the outlet to the sea of the rivers Orwell and Stour used to be further north than it now is and was roughly where Felixstowe Pier stands today. The rivers broke through to the sea on their present course at the beginning of the twelfth century and a few decades later the importance of the settlement of Herewyk strategically situated on a promontory on the southern side of the newly formed estuary was realized. It developed into the Borough and Port of Harwich, which was to play an important role in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the settlement of North America, the Dutch wars, the Napoleonic wars and two world wars.
Harwich's unique treadwheel crane, originally used for loading and unloading cargoes. The crane is owned by the Tendring District Council but the Harwich Society keeps a watchful eye on it and informs the Council when the crane needs maintenance or other attention

Developments in Clacton

I have to admit that when I first heard that the disused former insurance offices on the western side of Clacton’s Jackson Road were to be converted into a Travelodge Hotel and a number of flats, I was sceptical. During the half century that I have lived in the town I have seen hotel after hotel along the seafront converted into apartments. Why on earth should a new hotel, away from the sea front, succeed where they had failed?

However, when I mentioned the development to members of my family, all of whom are much more accustomed to staying in hotels than I am, I was told that it would very likely prove to be a success. What Clacton needed, they assured me, was an up-to-the-minute hotel (not a late Victorian one more or less adapted to modern needs) that offered reasonably priced short stay accommodation. Travelodge, and most of them seemed to have stayed in a Travelodge Hotel at one time or another, was just what the town needed.

As for its location? It isn't very far from the busiest part of the sea front and, if it were hoping to attract customers all the year round and not just at the summer season, there might be a positive advantage in being near the town centre but a little way back from the sea front.

It may be that with the falling value of the pound making holidays abroad ever more expensive, Clacton-on-Sea will see something of a revival this year if only the weather is kind. If so, the new Travelodge Hotel should be able to profit from it. Work is already in hand as you can see in this picture taken last week. The contractors hope to have it completed and ready for occupation in time for the 2009 holiday season.

An even more ambitious plan, which it is hoped will come into fruition by the spring of next year is the proposal by Primero Management to demolish the Comfort Inn on Clacton’s Marine Parade West and replace it with a 61 room hotel, a roof-top restaurant and other facilities. These would include a sixteen-lane bowling alley, basement parking spaces and children’s party suites.

The proposed bowling alley has sparked protests from existing owners of amusement facilities in the town who in 2003 had been granted planning permission for the provision of a nine-lane bowling alley in Clacton’s Pier Pavilion. The new development would, they say, undermine their plans for the future and they are urging to Council to refuse planning permission.

However, they have done nothing to further their plans for five years. Primero, on the other hand, is proposing to start work on their project in May of this year and to have the new hotel and its ancillaries open and ready for use in March 2010. The Council if they are wise will remember that, ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!’ and grant Primero their planning permission.

Congratulations!

I think that we residents of the Tendring District (well, most of us anyway) are entitled to feel pretty pleased with ourselves about the efforts that we have made to separate our recyclable refuse from our landfill waste and to put them out separately for collection each week. We produce the least landfill waste per head of any district or borough council in Essex and we come only sixteenth from the top in the whole of England! The national average for the year 2007/2008 was 450 kilogrammes per head. The very lowest was Hyndburn in Lancashire with 300 kgs while we in Tendring come fairly closely behind with 330 kgs per head.

I said that most rather than all of us should be feeling pleased with ourselves because a stroll down any residential road on collection day will find some houses with several black bags filled with landfill waste put out for the refuse collectors, but no sign of a Council-supplied green box or any other container filled with recyclables.

I think that the Council needs to make a note of these addresses and write to, or call on, the occupiers to stress the importance of recycling and to try to persuade them to mend their ways. If friendly persuasion doesn’t do the trick I think that, in fairness to the rest of us, the Council should see what coercive measures may be available to them.

A Town Hall Bank?

On Radio 4’s Moneybox programme last Saturday (24th January) there was discussion of the problems of perfectly sound businesses that now find themselves unable to obtain the credit that they need from their usual commercial Bank. Should Local Authorities take over some of the responsibilities of these Banks in fields where they are clearly failing? Both Essex County Council and Birmingham Council are, it seems, eager to pioneer Town Hall (or County Hall) banking.

Essex County Council’s leader Lord Hanningfield, never one to hide his light under a bushel, was very keen on the idea. There were, he said, many businesses within our county which were failing simply because commercial banks were unwilling to advance loans that in the past they would have offered without hesitation. The County Council could and would step in and save them.

I am sure that they could and think it quite possible that they will. Regular readers of Tendring Topics…..on line will know that I am usually strongly in favour of public services being carried out by public enterprise rather than by private firms motivated by market forces and the profit motive. Also, of course, local authorities are better able than nationally owned commercial banks to assess the local financial climate and the credibility of a local firm.

However, our County Council is the one that early last year sent some of its members on an expensive jaunt to the USA to help drum up orders for Essex firms. How many orders, I wonder, came to Essex as a result? It is the same council that is causing outrage in Colchester about its proposal to close two schools and spread their pupils among the others. It is also the council that recently put virtually the whole of its services out to private tender, sold off its old people’s care homes, and received a report on the quality of its child care provision ranking it not much higher than that of the now notorious Haringey! None of which inspires me with a great deal of confidence.

Essex County Council also receives and spends the greater part of the money that I, and all other Tendring householders, pay in Council tax. Tendring District Council is often strongly criticised in the correspondence columns of the Clacton Gazette. On the whole though, I’d feel happier trusting my money to their care than to that of their counterparts at County Hall in Chelmsford.

I hope that local authority banking is tried out, and proves to be a great success, in Birmingham!