2nd June 2015

Tendring Topics………on line

Dwellers in ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’?

The NHS.

          I sometimes wonder if I live in the same world as today’s top politicians.  Here in Clacton-on-Sea there is an acute shortage of general medical practitioners (family doctors).   I have been served by the same medical practice since my family and I moved to Clacton in 1956 fifty-eight years ago.  In those distant days there were just two doctors. They were Dr Craig and Dr Geddes, both Scotsmen and not dissimilar to the Dr Cameron and Dr Finlay of the tv soap ‘Dr Finlay’s casebook’.  They behaved similarly too.   I remember several occasions when one or other of them visited my home late at night or early in the morning when one of my two then-young sons, or my wife or I, needed urgent medical attention.   There were no appointments.  Patients just turned up at the surgery.  They might have a longish wait to see a doctor but see one of the two doctors they always did.  And that doctor was always familiar with their medical history and could refresh his memory from written notes.

            Lots of changes have taken place since 1956.  Clacton has almost doubled in size and my doctors’ surgery, now renamed a ‘medical centre’ has doubled in size too. There are several practice nurses and a practice manager.  Both Dr Craig and Dr Geddes died many years ago.  At one point there were as many as six medical practitioners, two of them women.  There were, I think, appointments but most people just turned up at the medical centre and saw either their preferred doctor or whichever doctor was available.

            Now, there are only three doctors and one of them is only part-time.  They see patients only by appointment and it’s very difficult to make an appointment. ‘Phone just after 8.00 am’, you’ll be told by the receptionist – but the line is always engaged.  By the time you manage to get through all the doctors are booked.  I have found from experience that the only way I can make almost sure of seeing the doctor of my choice is to turn up at the medical centre fifteen minutes before they open at 8.00 am and ask the receptionist for an appointment then.  There’s usually a queue so I may need to get there before 7.45 am to be at the right end of that queue!   As I am now 94 I rarely bother!  The service provided for patients by our local doctors (the ‘front line’ of the NHS) is clearly not nearly as good as it was as recently as five years ago.   If it were much better than it had been when the coalition government took over, I am quite sure that it would be trumpeted as one of the government’s successes.  As it is, I’m not quite so partisan as to proclaim that ‘It’s all the government’s fault’.  I don’t suppose that it is – but the government, with its continual ‘targets’ and its reorganisation of the NHS so as to increase the field of local GP responsibility, has certainly played a major role in this deterioration.

            We need to attract many more qualified doctors to the Tendring Area – and this can’t be done just by offering them more money.  For goodness sake – our coast has the lowest annual rainfall in the British Isles and more than the average amount of sunshine.   It’s a lovely place to bring up children (my late wife and I have done it and I write from personal experience!) and it’s only about an hour and a half from London by road or rail.  It really shouldn’t be difficult to attract young doctors here.

            Is the new all-Conservative government taking any steps to encourage this?  Not as far as I know but, of course, they’ve only been in office a few weeks.  During those few weeks though, Prime Minister David Cameron has found time to promise that within a couple of years we should be able to consult a doctor any day of the week and all hours of the day!  Can David Cameron really inhabit the world that I do?  I, and I suspect a great many other local people, would be happier if he were to concentrate his efforts on the – surely much more easily achieved – objective of making it possible for us to see the doctor of our choice between 8.00 am and 5.00 pm on Monday through to Friday in every week!  That surely shouldn’t be too much to ask

 Home Ownership

            So the Government plans to go ahead with its determination to ‘buy votes with other people’s money’ by extending their ‘right to buy’ scheme from council house tenants to the tenants of housing associations.  They justify this by the alleged fact that 86 percent of the public have aspirations (that’s the OK word just now) to become homeowners.  Presumably this claim follows a public opinion poll on the subject conducted among those not owning or buying their own home.  If they were just asked Would you like to own your own home? I’d have expected that even more than 86 percent would have answered positively.  No-one particularly likes paying rent, having to observe tenancy rules and never knowing when and why they may be given notice to quit.  Neither do adults, particularly with young children, like being homeless or having to share with ‘mum and dad’.   Of course they’d much prefer having their own home.

            But that’s not what they are being offered.  What they are being offered is the possibility of home ownership (you’re not ‘the owner’ till you hold the deeds of the home) after repaying a large loan month by month over a period of twenty years or more.  During that period you’ll be responsible for paying council tax and for carrying out all repairs and internal and external decoration.  If you default in making those regular monthly payments (and who knows what’s going to happen in twenty years?) you’ll run the risk of homelessness for yourself and family, and the loss of much – even perhaps all – of the money you’ve already paid. That prospect might, I think, considerably reduce the number of potential home buyers on whose aspirations the government claims to base its policies.

            As a former local government Housing Manager I have always objected to council tenants being treated as second class citizens.  But I don’t think they should be given special privileges or financial benefits either.  Most Council tenants were happy to remain as tenants until the possibility of buying their homes ‘on the cheap’ was offered them. Under former governments they enjoyed payable rents, security and reasonable tenancy conditions.  All structural repairs and maintenance was the council’s responsibility. I am sure that Housing Association tenants are the same.

            The sale to Housing Association tenants of their homes at discounted prices is  still only one of the 'intentions' of the government.  I think that they may find themselves facing a few expensive legal challenges on the way to its fulfilment.  To David Cameron and his pals in Westminster, Housing Associations and local authorities are much the same thing.  They both owned lots of rented houses in which not-well-off people enjoyed secure tenancies ‘for life’ or at least for as long as they paid their rent and observed their not-usually-very-onerous tenancy conditions.  Both provided ‘social housing’ which they had a responsibility to keep ‘fit for habitation’ and neither made a substantial profit from their house ownership.

            In fact there is one crucial difference between Council Houses and those owned by Housing Associations.   Council Houses were built with public money – from the rates and from central government grants.  It could be claimed that a more than usually stupid government had every right to require local authorities to sell them off at bargain-basement prices.  A similar case can not be made for the compulsory sale of Housing Association property. Those homes were not provided from the rates and taxes of earlier, more responsible, governments and local councils.  They were provided by charitable giving, mainly from the generosity of very wealthy and benevolent 19^th century business men, for the purpose of providing the ‘working classes’ with comfortable, secure and healthy homes at affordable rents.

            George Cadbury and George Peabody must be among many wealthy Victorian philanthropists who are turning in their graves at the thought that, for electoral advantage, the homes that they provided for the poor may be compulsorily sold off at bargain basement prices.  They probably would have had sufficient foresight to see that such homes would eventually fall into the hands of profiteering landlords – and be let at ridiculously high rents to tenants who would only be able to pay them by means of Housing Benefit from their local authority!

            If, of course, it is found that the government can legally compel Housing Associations to sell off their properties with a substantial discount, there can be no reason why they should not extend the ‘right to buy’ to many thousands of tenants who are charged unreasonably high rents, have no security of tenure, and who fear that asking the landlord to carry out repairs will only lead to their losing their homes.  They are the tenants of private landlords.  Surely the ‘right to buy at a discount’ should be extended to them to them before it is offered to Housing Association tenants who are already satisfactorily housed?

27th February 2015

Tendring Topics……on line

Is our economy safe in their hands?

            One of the main points of the Conservative Party’s election campaign is that the country’s economy is safe in their hands.  Vote for any party other than the Conservatives, they say, and you’ll have Ed Miliband as Prime Minister. Our economy – your money – is safe with David Cameron.   Well, I’m not all that keen on Ed Miliband but I really don’t think his economic policies are materially different from those of David Cameron.  It doesn’t seem to occur to either of them (or perhaps they’re both too scared of well-off voters to mention it) that cutting essential public services is neither the only nor the best way of reducing that deficit. 

The deficit is the difference between the government’s income and its expenditure.  Why not try increasing its income?   A penny on income tax would hurt no-one (even with the skewed-in-favour-of-the-wealthy income tax system we have today) and would have an instant effect on the deficit.  Instead David Cameron is talking about cutting income tax!  Both he and the Liberal Democrats are convinced that they’re doing a tremendous service to the poor by raising the level at which income becomes liable, thereby taking some low-paid workers out of the income tax system altogether.  Sometimes they say, ‘Out of the tax system altogether’, as though income tax were the only tax we all pay.

In fact, by raising the  threshold at which income tax becomes payable, they are helping everyone who pays income tax – but they are not in the least helping those whose income is already too low to be subject to taxation.

 One way in which the Government has wasted our money is in the maintenance of our Trident Nuclear Submarine ‘independent Nuclear Deterrent’.  It is not independent (can you imagine us using it – or even threatening to use it – without the OK of Washington?) and it hasn’t deterred any of the many acts of aggression that have occurred in the post-war years.  When the Falklands were invaded by Argentina neither our ‘nuclear deterrent’ nor our ‘special relationship’ with the USA were the least help to us.  Nor does everyone think that the lavish cost of an all-but-a-state-funeral of a politician who deeply divided the country and whose flagship ‘right to buy’ legislation is responsible for our current housing crisis, was money well spent.

Perhaps though the most absurd and obviously crazy way in which the Conservative dominated coalition government has frittered away our money has been the replacement of area Police Committees with directly elected ‘Police and Crime Commissioners’ with power to appoint and sack Chief Constables and to determine the general direction of police work though operational control remains, thank goodness, with the Chief Constables.   The former Police Committees were, so the coalition claimed, ‘undemocratic’.   How can one man or woman, elected by a tiny fragment of the total electorate, possibly be ‘more democratic’ than a committee, at least some members of which had been elected locally?

The obvious way to make the police answerable to the local public was to make them the responsibility of the local county or unitary authority council. They would elect some of their members to serve on a ‘Police and Crime Committee’ with the same responsibilities as those of Police and Crime Commissioners.  These police committees would be more representative of their whole area than any single individual could hope to be.  They’d also be much better able to co-ordinate police activities with those of other local or regional services such as education, social services, highways, and parks and gardens, for which the County Council or Unitary Authority is responsible.  What’s more, they’d cost less, which I would have thought would have been a prime consideration of our Prime Minister and Chancellor.

You’ll recall that the public showed its contempt for the whole idea of directly elected Commissioners (an idea imported from the USA) by failing to turn up at the polling booths.  Nationwide the percentage of those bothering to register their vote was the lowest recorded in any election – and Essex set a splendid example by having the lowest turn-out of the lot!

Of course there has always been the possibility that those of us who were convinced that the appointment of Police and Crime Commissioners was a costly mistake were quite wrong. There could have been a dramatic fall in crime and rise in the detection rate, and we might have all been sleeping easier in our beds in the knowledge that we had a Commissioner looking after our interests.  Essex’s own Commissioner – Nick Alston - seemed a pleasant enough chap.  Perhaps he could work miracles.

Headlines in the local Daily Gazette suggest that he can’t; It’s official……crime is rising in Essex.   In fact, that is only partly true.  The number of domestic abuse cases rose from 9,222 to 10,825 in 2013 and there was 35 percent rise in prosecutions against Class A drug dealers. The solved crime rate fell to 27.63 percent.   On the other hand there was an 11.6 percent drop in the number of burglaries and there were 900 fewer incidents of rural crime.

 While the government exercises tight control of the purse strings there is little that either the Crime Commissioner or a Police Committee can do to reduce crime.  Mark Smith, chairman of the Essex Police Federation is quite sure that the politicians are to blame:

 It is quite clear that what we are being told by the politicians is not true.  They say crime is down.  It is not and we are not even recording new crimes like cyber crime and ‘grooming’.

We have already had cuts of £72.5 million and have heard that in the next five years we are going to have to save another £80 million. We will probably lose 200 officers this year, so we will have gone down from 3,600 to 3,000. In five years there will only be about 2,000 if the cuts go ahead.

I’m not a great Ed Miliband fan and intend to vote Green in the General Election. However I’d support Ed Miliband’s promise that a future Labour Government would put more coppers on the beat and pay for the change by scrapping those expensive and largely impotent Police and Crime Commissioners.

Yet another NHS reorganisation?

In this blog I have again and again criticised the action of successive governments – both Conservative and Labour – of stripping local authorities of the powers and responsibilities that were theirs in the 1930s.   When in 1937 and aged sixteen, I stepped onto the very lowest rung of the staff ladder of Ipswich Corporation’s Public Health Department in 1937 the Department was responsible for a General Hospital, an Isolation Hospital (infectious diseases like diphtheria and scarlet fever were much more common, and deadlier, in those days), a Maternity Home and a Tuberculosis Sanatorium. The department was also responsible for the domiciliary midwives and district nurses and the school medical service, as well as the environmental health services for which it is responsible today.  There may well have been other services of which I was not aware.  I was very young, on the very lowest staff level – and my local government career was interrupted after just two years by the outbreak of World War II!

After the war I was older and, I hope, wiser than I had been.  I was one of the returning servicemen who voted for Clem Attlee’s Labour Government – but I was a little dismayed when all those local health and medical services were taken over by the NHS.  However I thought that the advantages of a truly National Health Service outweighed the disadvantages, and – until the last year or so – I have had no reason to think otherwise.   I wasn’t impressed with the Government’s last NHS reorganisation.  It sounds wonderful to make GPs responsible for all their patients needs – seeing a consultant, getting a bed in a hospital and so on.  But GPs are fully occupied examining patients, treating them and passing them on to consultants when necessary.  They really didn’t have the time for administrative work.   I wrote in this blog that they were getting rid of one layer of bureaucracy and replacing it with dozens of smaller layers as GP practices took on extra staff or formed consortiums to deal with this work.  Now it seems the Government is really trying to localise the Health Service in at least one part of the UK.  They are making the local authorities that comprise Greater Manchester a single comprehensive Health and Welfare Authority, responsible for both Health and Social Services.  It sounds a brilliant idea but there are several matters on which I’d like further clarification.

The government will fund this new authority.  This government isn’t famous for its lavish support of public services.  Will there be adequate funding?

He who pays the piper calls the tune.  Are we quite sure that this new authority will not find itself directly under the thumb of bureaucrats in Whitehall?

Just now the new authority will be under democratic control by elected councillors.  But I understand that within a few years the area will have an all-powerful ‘Mayor’.  Will a Mancunian equivalent of Boris Johnson dictate Health Service policy?

   Services inside the new authorities’ area will inevitably be different (not necessarily either better or worse) that those outside.  What will happen when someone complains that ‘That woman over the road got into hospital immediately.  I’ve been told I’ll have  to wait two months – it’s just a post code lottery?'

      

           

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 22 2012 31.5.2012

Tendring Topic.......on Line

Recycling

           Tendring Council has a major problem in attempting to reconcile a sceptical public to a recyclable refuse collection scheme that was introduced after little if any consultation and is proving to be almost unbelievably unpopular. For week after week the correspondence pages of the weekly Clacton Gazette and its sister weekly the Frinton and Walton Gazette have been filled with letters overwhelmingly critical of the new scheme.  This correspondence has overflowed into the corresponding pages of the daily Gazette, which covers the Colchester area as well as the Tendring District.

            When the scheme was first introduced, my own principal criticism was of the fact that no lid had been provided for the red plastic boxes intended for the reception of paper and cardboard for recycling.  I pointed out that rain falling while the filled boxes awaited collection would reduce the contents to a soggy mess, while high winds would be likely to scatter the contents far and wide.  I understand that that particular defect is to be remedied and that we will all receive lids (costing the council £1 per lid!) for those red boxes.  

            I fear that it is a concession that may prove to be too little and too late. Our existing green boxes (that we have been using for all recyclables), are now to be used only for plastic bottles (please remove caps and stoppers before putting in box!) and metal cans of all kind.  All other plastics, including those that have been collected for recycling in the past, are now to be put into the black plastic sacks for unrecyclable refuse destined for land-fill. The red and green boxes have to be put out for collection on alternate weeks, and we have been issued with a chart showing which week for each colour box.  In the past, if we had more recyclable material than would go into our green box, we were able to put it in a white or transparent plastic bag and put it on top of the filled green box for collection.  That is no longer possible.  Any overflow has to go into landfill.

We also now have two extra smaller green plastic boxes with hinged lids for kitchen and food waste.  This is a service said to have been introduced by popular demand – well, I didn’t demand it, neither did anyone I know!   The smaller box or ‘caddy’ is to be kept in the kitchen to be emptied when full into the larger one kept outside.  This has to be put out every week, with the black plastic bag and either the red or the green box, by the property boundary for collection.   I do try to co-operate.  Every week on the appropriate day my kitchen waste (in my case mostly tea bags, egg shells, banana skins and a few lettuce leaves), and either my green or my red box, and my black bag of unrecyclable waste, are ready for collection.  I find though that at age 91, I just can’t carry them to the boundary of my property. I know that the Council would arrange for them to be collected from by my back door if asked but, as the collectors arrive in my street shortly after 7.00 am, that would mean leaving my side gate open all night; something that I am not inclined to do.  However, I am very fortunate in having a neighbour who is prepared to take my boxes and black plastic sack out for me, and bring the empties back again.  Others are not so lucky!       Complying with the Council’s instructions and putting out the appropriate boxes on the right day is a bit complicated and time-consuming, but it can be done.  The scheme could work if sufficient householders were prepared to co-operate.  My observations suggest that this isn’t happening.

            There have always been some, probably a minority, of householders who have failed to support the Council’s recycling efforts.  They have put out several filled black plastic sacks every week but never a green box with recyclable waste.  I believe that minority has now expanded into a considerable majority.  Driving, in my mobility scooter up and down part of my road before and after collection, left me feeling that out of some 40 households, only ten or a dozen were fully co-operating with the Council's scheme.

          I can’t imagine how members of the Council will attempt to remedy the situation when they meet in emergency session to consider it. Attempt to bluff it out, hoping like Mr Micawber that ‘something will turn up’? Revert to the old system?  Abandon the food waste scheme and replace it with a glass collection that at least wouldn’t need a special vehicle?  One thing that they really must strive to do is regain the trust and confidence of the public, because without public support any voluntary recyclables collection scheme is doomed to failure.  The stick? The carrot?  I am not at all sure that either is available for use.  I await developments – and our next local government election – with interest!  

A Little Ray of Sunshine!

          In the midst of a double page in the Gazette for 25^th May, filled with the problems of Tendring’s Refuse and Recyclables collection scheme, is a picture of broadly smiling Councillor Nick Turner, Tendring Council's 'cabinet minister' for Public Health, with the announcement that the ‘new scheme will save taxpayers more than £450,000 a year as well as increasing recycling rates by approximately 5 percent in the first year of operation’.  He adds that, ’80 percent of residents are recycling’ and, ‘The new service is still being rolled out in some parts of the district but we are extremely pleased with the results so far and I thank everyone who is taking part.  Tendring Council is collecting, on average, ten tonnes of food waste per round each week from the eight rounds.  If this continues, the council will far exceed its estimate of 2,600 tonnes a year’.

            Isn’t that heartening news?  I wonder what all those bitter letters of complaint were about, why the council is going to the trouble and expense of getting and delivering lids to the red boxes, and is holding a special council meeting to discuss the problem.  ’80 percent of residents are recycling?’ It is clear that Councillor Turner doesn’t live in the same road as me.   I am beginning to wonder if he lives on the same planet!

The Art of Parenting

          I think that Prime Minister David Cameron was probably right when he suggested that ‘bad parenting’ played a part in the creation of those riots last summer  (though I believe, nothing like as large a part as poverty and long-term unemployment).  I have reservations though about the suggestion that parenting classes for expectant and new mums and dads will solve the problem.  They’ll be useful, of course.  Goodness knows some young mums and dads need them badly. I fear though that it may well be those who refuse to attend them! I doubt in any case if they’ll play a significant part in preventing future antisocial behaviour, vandalism and truancy.  Only time will tell.

Ipswich’s Public Health Department where I worked from 1937 to 1939.  The photo was taken some twenty years ago when most of the Health Department’s functions had been taken over by the NHS. The building remained unchanged.        

There is, of course, nothing new in teaching expectant mums and dads about parenting young children and steering them through the first few perilous years of their lives. Before World War II Ipswich’s Public Health Department, where I was a very junior employee from 1937 till 1939, housed a Maternity and Child Welfare Clinic and a School Clinic as well as Sanitary Inspectors (they’re now called Environmental Health Officers) Health Visitors, district nurses, school nurses and midwives.   Both of those clinics were presided over by a doctor experienced in that particular field of medicine, while the whole organisation was headed by the Medical Officer of Health, another highly qualified and widely experienced doctor.  

            The Maternity and Child Welfare Clinic looked after expectant mums and young children below school age, advising and helping.   The Midwives visited the expectant mums in their own homes giving advice and support on a one-to-one basis. In those days most births took place in the mother’s own home.  After the baby’s birth and the immediate post-natal period, the Health Visitor took over, visiting regular and keeping an eye on the progress of the child and the competence of the young mum. 

The joy of parenthood.  My wife Heather, with our firstborn son in 1953.         

Although by 1953, when my first son was born, the NHS – not the local authority – was responsible for all those functions, the situation was not greatly different.  My wife, who had opted to have her baby at home (this was by then less common than it had been) received regular visits from the midwife before, during and for a week or so after, the birth.  Then the Health Visitor took over but she soon came to the conclusion that we were unlikely to prove to be ‘problem parents’.  One local government service that was available – when the UK was still struggling with debt incurred in World War II but which the country ‘just can’t afford’ now – was that of a ‘home help’.  Because of my wife’s medical history (she had had pulmonary and laryngeal TB and had survived crippling major surgery) she was accorded, free of charge, a home help, a friendly lady who came to us once a week to help with the household chores.  My wife and I didn’t go to parenting classes but, looking at my two sons today and remembering their childhood and adolescence, I think that we must have been reasonably competent parents.

            In any case, I don’t believe that the kind of parental neglect that leads to antisocial behaviour and, in extreme cases, to riots, does have its roots in those early days that are the subject of parenting classes.  It is much more socially important during the child’s and adolescent’s schooldays.   Those are the years when the absence of a loving and caring parents at home to welcome, support and generally take an interest in them really can affect their whole future.

            During my schooldays in the 1920s and 1930s my Mum was always at home when I returned from school, always eager to find out what I had been doing and to encourage me to get on with my homework.  If I went out in the evening she wanted to know where I was off to and with whom.  It never occurred to me not to tell her!  I always came home lunchtime (though we called it dinner time!) and so did my Dad.  Our meals were family meals.  I had a three mile cycle ride home from my secondary school, but we did have a two-hour mid-day break and, although there were cheap school meals available, I preferred my Mum’s cooking.

            So did my sons!  They too, came home to dinner every day and I was fortunate in always being employed near enough to my home to make it possible for me to come home too.  My wife never worked outside the home after we were married.  This was partly because of her frail physical condition but also because she found home-making and bringing up a family a satisfying full-time occupation.

            Nowadays that seems to be unthinkable.  Women ‘liberated from the kitchen sink’ are enslaved by the cash till, the restaurant kitchen or the shop or factory floor. During pregnancy they remain at work till the last minute and resume work directly they can find an affordable child minding service. Many children say goodbye to their parents soon after 8.00 am and don’t see them again till 6.00 pm or later. As a result many couples may be better off financially than either my parents or my wife and I ever were.  They may be able to get ‘their feet on the home ownership ladder’, have a second car in the garage and take an annual holiday on the shores of the Caribbean or the Mediterranean.  But they cannot give their developing children the care and attention that they (and the society into which they will grow up) need.  It is a form of child neglect that results in gang culture, antisocial behaviour, teenage pregnancies and petty crime. I don’t believe that parenting classes, however good, can ever compensate for a parent who isn’t there when needed. 

  

Week 12 2012 22..2012

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

 That ‘Special Relationship’

            Benjamin Disraeli, founder of the modern Conservative Party, was a very shrewd observer of his fellow men and women.  ‘Everybody,’ he once remarked, ‘likes flattery – and with Royalty one should lay it on with a trowel. Today, even in a country like ours with a constitutional monarchy, top politicians have largely taken the place held by royalty in Disraeli’s Victorian age.

            How very heart-warming was the welcome given by the USA to David Cameron and his wife! And how inspiring were the speeches made by the two leaders! Our relationship with the USA, over whose policies we have no influence whatsoever (why should we?) is obviously much more important to our Prime Minister than our membership of the European Union whose policies we can help to shape.

            ‘Britain and the USA have stood together and bled together’, it was said.   Sometimes we certainly have, though not always (in 1810 for instance!) on the same side.   On the basis of lies (Saddam Hussein had ‘weapons of mass destruction that were threatening us …….Iraq was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attack on the USA’) Tony Blair, our then Prime Minister, persuaded Parliament to ignore the million-plus British protesters (I’m proud that my sons and their families  were among them) who believed otherwise. Parliament voted for an illegal war that cost Britain millions of pounds and hundreds of lives. 

            The war in Afghanistan was a little more justifiable.  I have no doubt that the Taliban Government was sheltering El Qaida and similar terrorist organisations threatening ‘the West’.  That is why other NATO countries joined in.  However El Qaida has now simply moved its bases across the border into the tribal areas of Pakistan, and to the Yemen and East Africa.

             

            Those were the times when Britain’s special relationship led us to the support of the USA.  There was one occasion on which it didn’t.  Prime Minister Harold Wilson did not send troops to ‘stand and bleed’ beside the American troops in Vietnam fighting the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong rebels, as Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair undoubtedly would have.  Does anyone in Britain today regret that the United Kingdom was not part of the USA’s war which ended in defeat and ignominious withdrawal – or the fact that there are no British names on Vietnamese war memorials?

            Incidentally, we were told at the time of the Vietnam War that if the Vietcong won it would be the end of civilisation as we knew it.  Stalinism would prevail over the Far East.  Well – the Vietcong did win.  I really have no idea what kind of government there now is in Vietnam.  I do know though that Vietnam has become a popular holiday destination for western tourists who, despite the lasting damage done by the USA, are made welcome.

            How about the USA’s response in Britain’s hours of need?   They didn’t help in any way when in 1974 Turkey invaded Cyprus, then part of the Commonwealth. In the 1980s they actually organised and took part in the invasion of Grenada, another Commonwealth country in the West Indies; an illegal act of aggression that was condemned by the United Nations.   They didn’t help when Argentina flagrantly invaded the Falklands – an occasion when American intervention really would have made a difference.  The USA’s mining of the approaches to Cuban ports in the furtherance of an illegal blockade, endangered British shipping.  During Britain’s struggle with the IRA, United States law-courts repeatedly refused to extradite IRA terrorists – even those who had been convicted but had escaped – to face British justice.

.

18^th May, 1941. My twentieth birthday and, watched by a hungry dog, I am taking a break from sentry duty. 

The UK had been at war for over eighteen months.

France had fallen.  The USA and the USSR were both still neutral.

 Britain and the Commonwealth stood alone against Hitler    

The Americans came into World War II to save to us from defeat?  That really is a myth than needs to be debunked.  The USA, like the Soviet Union, came into the war only when they themselves were attacked.  In 1941 the Japanese attacked the American fleet in Pearl Harbour.  The USA declared war on Japan. Hitler, in accordance with Germany’s treaty obligations, immediately declared war on the USA.  We shall never know whether, had Hitler not made that fatal mistake, the USA would have engaged Hitler at that time.  Perhaps, wisely from their point of view, they would have said they would deal with the Japanese threat and leave the UK, the Commonwealth and the Soviet Union to deal with the Nazis.

            Right now, I believe that David Cameron is being softened up to support (or at least not to oppose) the USA and Israel in a ‘pre-emptive’ strike on Iran’s nuclear installations, because of their conviction that Iran is building a nuclear weapon.  I wonder if the intelligence sources that have led to this conviction are the same as those that, just a few years ago, confidently asserted that Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction’.

           

            I fear that, thanks to the flattering star-spangled manner of his reception in the USA, David Cameron may have already pledged his unquestioning support.

Tendring is doubly fortunate!

          The village of St. Osyth, just two or three miles from Clacton-on-Sea is said to be the driest spot in the United Kingdom.  It follows that the Tendring peninsula’s  coastal towns from Harwich to Brightlingsea are the British holiday resorts in which visitors are least likely to have their holiday ruined by rain.

            During the 1970s when I was the Tendring District Council’s Public Relations and Press Officer, I used to make the most of this fact.  Our rainfall, I would say, was comparable with that of the fringes of southern Africa’s Kalahari Desert!  When my family and I had moved to Clacton some two decades earlier, the then Council had the holiday publicity slogan ‘Champagne Air – Rainfall rare!’  It was hardly the most brilliant example of the use of the English language, but it made its point.

            Though, as the district’s official Spin Doctor I loved our low rainfall, as an enthusiastic amateur gardener I detested it.  Why did my garden have to be just a couple of miles, as the crow flies, from the driest spot in the United Kingdom!  No wonder that during the summer months I had to spend an hour or so every evening with the hose pipe watering my thirsty runner beans, sweet peas, tomatoes and courgettes.

            Nowadays I cultivate my garden no longer. I was still pleasantly surprised though to discover that the Tendring District – Britain’s driest area – is the one district in our region that isn’t having to endure a hose-pipe ban from the beginning of April; this despite the fact that water level in the region’s reservoirs is even lower than it was during the scorchingly hot and dry summer of 1976.

            The reason so I understand, is that Veolia East, supplier of our water, obtains it from giant natural reservoirs or aquifers deep underground.  Thus they are not so dependent on seasonal rainfall and surface reservoirs as, for instance Anglian Water,   Colchester’s supplier.

            Our supply is still finite.  We should all use water as sparingly as we can – if only to keep our water bills within the household budget!   It does mean though that I’ll be able to continue to enjoy my daily morning shower without twinges of conscience!

Will Private Enterprise ‘Breathe new life’ into the NHS’?

            Those (there must surely be some!) who are looking forward to the Government’s  NHS Reform Bill sweeping away bureaucratic cobwebs and bringing the fresh air of the private enterprise and the market place into the NHS may be interested in this story brought to light by ever-vigilant Private Eye:

            Four years ago the Camden Road Medical Centre, serving 4,700 patients in North London, was acquired by the American health giant United Health who undercut a bid by local GPs by twenty-five percent.  Within a month there were complaints about inferior service and, in particular, about the loss of two locum doctors, one of whom had been based at the practice for eighteen years.

            A year ago, quietly and without consulting or even informing patients, United Health        sold the practice franchise to a company called The Practice plc.  Now The Practice plc has failed to renew its lease on the premises that have been used by doctors for almost a century.  The Centre is closing, staff will lose their jobs and the 4,700 patients will have to find other GPs – miles away!

            It must never be forgotten that privately owned businesses are run primarily to make money for the shareholders – not for the benefit of those it claims to ‘serve’.

Salute to Slovenia!

          Since last November, when I changed the means by which I gain access to my weekly blog to Google, I have been able to keep a check on how many people view it and the countries in which it is most popular.  For some time the greatest number were in India – the United Kingdom coming a poor second!  In the New Year my Indian viewers almost disappeared but there has been a welcome increase in viewers from Britain, the USA, Germany and Russia.

            Some smaller and/or less populous countries came and went – Sri Lanka, Israel, Belgium, Australia, United Arab Emirates and so on.  One small country though remained constant.  I haven’t many Slovenian viewers – usually between six and twelve – but then it is a small country, and those viewers are loyal.  There has never, so far, been a day on which I have checked my ‘readership’ and found none at all from that small but beautiful country.

And beautiful it certainly is.  When my wife Heather and I toured what was then a united Jugoslavia in 1980 in our motor-caravan our first, and very happy, experience was of crossing the frontier from Austria into Slovenia and driving to the shores of Lake Bled where we parked our van and spent our first night .  We spent the last day and night of our tour there too.  It was there that I first tasted Slivovice!

Many years later, after Slovenia had gained its independence, my elder son, daughter in law and younger grandson Nick also visited – in the winter – and found it, and its capital Ljubljana, to be a true winter wonderland.  Nick incidentally, became an expert on European travel and is currently Acting Executive Director of the European Travel Commission, encouraging folk from all over the world to spend their holidays in beautiful and historic Europe (see, www.visiteurope.com)

Our motor-caravan at sunset in an olive grove

            So, may I say thank you to my Slovenian viewers.  I very much hope that you will continue to find my blog interesting.  I am not sure whether or not this picture, of sunset in a lakeside olive grove, was taken in Slovenia. Then there were no national boundaries within Jugoslavia.   If not in Slovenia it was certainly taken not far away and it typifies the memories that I have of a very happy holiday; memories that are specially precious because they are of the last overseas holiday that my wife and I were to enjoy together.    

Week 16.2011 19.4.2011

Tendring Topics……..on line


‘Thank Christ….for Easter!’

I don’t think that we would be particularly surprised if we saw that message on a Notice Board outside any church or place of worship this week. Yet that message, with the addition of ‘Bank Holiday’ after ‘Easter’ and accompanied by a caricature of a smiling and beckoning Christ, wearing ear phones, outside Tom Peppers pub on Clacton’s Marine Parade has caused outrage among many Christians, including the Bishop of Chelmsford.

Well, I have to confess that when I first saw it, I too felt outraged. Jesus Christ’s name was being used blasphemously and his image was being exploited to encourage irresponsible boozing! Disgraceful. But was it? A chat with friends wiser than I am and with a Christian faith firmer than mine, made me begin to think otherwise.

The poster did at least acknowledge that Jesus Christ had something to do with Easter. The further, admittedly tasteless, advertisement for a vodka drink to bring yourself back to life even suggests that the author of the advert was acquainted with the fact of Christ’s resurrection.

A couple of pages after the report of this ‘outrageous’ poster and the Christian reaction to it, the same Clacton Gazette had nine pages of Easter Extra full of adverts for Easter activities and commercial services. There were advertising features extolling the attractions of Clacton and Holland-on-Sea over the Easter holiday, the beauty of the nearby bluebell woods, and so on (I have written advertising features like that myself in my time!) but not a single word about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nor was there even a whisper of the possibility that going to church to ‘thank Christ for Easter’ was among the ‘Things to do in Clacton at Easter’.


I reckon that fundamentalist atheists like, for instance, Professor Dawkins, who are always eager to spread their unbelief, would derive far more satisfaction from those nine pages of Easter Extra that studiously avoided any connection between Easter and the Christian Faith, than from the poster that, however crudely, brought the reality and importance of the Easter story to the attention of us all.

An insult to Jesus to suggest that he had anything to do with pubs and the kind of people who use them? Hardly; tradition asserts that he was born in a stable at the back of an inn. He was, so he told us himself, accused of being ‘a glutton and a wine bibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’. The God whom Jesus revealed to us does not tell his followers to seek out and punish those who insult him. On that first Good Friday Jesus was subjected to far more abuse, insult and wanton cruelty than the rest of us have to endure in a lifetime. His reaction was to pray: ‘Forgive them Father. They don’t realize what they are doing’.

I think that Christians should thank the landlord of ‘Tom Peppers’ for having, however inadvertently, brought the true story of Easter to the front page of a local newspaper that would otherwise have ignored it.

Nursing care?

Some weeks ago I mentioned in this blog my late wife Heather’s brief and unhappy stay in the Kate Grant Ward of Clacton Hospital in 2004. She had fallen, broken a hip and had had it repaired at Colchester General Hospital. She had then been sent to Clacton Hospital for rehabilitation. I had known at about the time her ambulance would arrive there and, when it arrived, I had my introduction to the situation that prevailed there!

The ambulance driver pushed her, in a wheel chair, into the Kate Grant Ward and up to the empty bed prepared for her. There were no nurses there to receive her and get her into the bed. After waiting for about ten minutes the driver said, ‘I’m not supposed to do this, but I can’t leave her sitting in that wheel chair after that long drive. I’m going to get her onto the bed’. And so he did. He was strong and my wife was very light so it was no problem. Eventually of course a couple of nurses did turn up, very kind and helpful, and she was properly admitted.

That summed up all her subsequent treatment. The nurses were kind, hard working and thoroughly professional – but there were not enough of them. With a ward full of more-or-less immobile elderly ladies there was almost always at least one of them needing urgent attention and often more than one. The result was that it took well over an hour to get them settled at night and even longer to get them up, washed, dressed and ready to sit in their bedside chairs, in the morning. Alarm bells often went unanswered and patients were catheterised (and became permanently incontinent as a result) simply because it avoided the need to supply a bottle or bedpan, or to help the patient to the toilet. It was a great relief when I managed to persuade the Ward Sister that I was well able to care for my wife myself at home, and we bade the Kate Grant Ward farewell.

My wife’s experience pales into insignificance compared with that reported of Carol Carr of Dovercourt. She is a sufferer from Multiple Schlerosis and has paralysis down one side of her body. She was admitted to Colchester General Hospital with a persistent urinary tract infection. A report in the local Daily Gazette records that, ‘Her husband Dennis said she was left initially without food and drink for eight hours while waiting in the admissions area. Once properly admitted to hospital, he claims his wife was left lying in her own faeces for more than six hours’.


Mr Carr says, ‘The conditions in that hospital were atrocious. My wife’s carer and myself found ourselves having to do stuff for elderly patients. Bells were going off and being ignored. It’s so infuriating to sit there and watch this going on. To have it happen to a member of your own family is appalling……..there are good people there, good nurses. But they just don’t have sufficient staff’.


Mr and Mrs Carr have made an official complaint that is being looked into as a matter of urgency by the hospital authorities. Whatever the outcome of that enquiry though it is obvious to me though that there is an acute shortage of nurses ‘in the front line’, a shortage that I had noted in Clacton seven years earlier

And now it seems, Government cuts mean that there will be even less of them!

My own ‘Close encounter’ with the NHS


I was sorry to hear of Mrs Carr’s experience of the NHS and of Colchester General Hospital because, almost at the same time perhaps, I was having a wholly different and, for the most part, wholly positive experience of both.

I had been seeing my own doctor about what seemed to be a problem with my digestive system for a week or so. Then I had a very troubled night, perspiring freely and shivering at the same time. In the morning I was still trembling and shaking. Had I not been living alone I might have decided otherwise but I thought that by dialling 999 I would at least get the immediate attention of a paramedic.

And so I did. A pleasant and helpful young man turned up and examined me. He was very concerned to find that my blood pressure which, when taken on one arm was wildly different from one taken on the other. He seemed to think that that was a sign of imminent peril. He phoned for an ambulance and helped me to get dressed, urging me to do everything very, very slowly and carefully.

He must I think, have conveyed his worries about my condition to Colchester General Hospital, because when I got there I was dealt with instantly with no waiting at all. For the next hour my body wasn’t my own. A nurse helped me into one of those awful hospital gowns, I gave blood and urine samples for examination. In a hospital ‘cot’, I was electrocardiographed, my chest and my abdomen were X-rayed separately and, as I was stretched out on an ‘operating’ table, my stomach was prodded and very thoroughly examined by the Registrar.

Back in my ‘cot’, I was pushed into a cubicle to await my fate. After, I suppose, about three quarters of an hour the Registrar (a helpful and friendly young woman) turned up. She told me that those tests had revealed that I had a very severe urinary infection. It could be successfully treated with antibiotics and I could take them as satisfactorily at home as in hospital. I could get dressed and go home.

As I was about to ask her how I was going to get home, the curtain to the cubicle was pulled aside, and in walked my younger son Andy who lives in Enfield.  A friendly neighbour had spotted me being carried off in an ambulance and had phoned him. He had driven down right away and had turned up just in time to drive me home in comfort.

No negative experiences at all? Well, just one. It sounds pretty trivial now – but it didn’t at the time. While waiting in the cubicle I developed an urge to visit the toilet. There seemed to be no way of summoning a nurse so, in desperation, I told someone passing outside the cubicle of my need and asked them if they could ask a nurse to give me urgent attention. I had hoped, I suppose, that the nurse would let down the side of my ‘cot’ so that I could get out, and direct me to the nearest toilet. With my stick I would have been well able to get there on my own.

What actually happened was that, after another seemingly interminable wait, a nurse walked in with one of those (paper maché ?) hospital urine bottles, thrust it over the part of my anatomy that needed it, and walked out again. It was, I suppose, an adequate response, but hardly the one for which I had hoped. However, I came to no harm and it did confirm my conviction that many more nurses are needed ‘on the front line!’

The World’s Best! – and it’s all free?


Politicians, of all political persuasions, constantly assure us that they are determined that our Health Service should remain ‘the best in the world’ and will continue to be ‘free at the point of delivery’. If they say it often enough without thinking about it, they’ll probably believe it themselves!

It certainly isn’t free at the point of delivery – unless you consider that dentistry, optical services and actually obtaining the drugs that the doctor prescribes are not part of the Health Service. I don’t have to pay for prescribed medicines because of my age. Many others are also exempt for one reason or another but for those who have to pay (as I did before I reached retirement age) the charge is now over £7.00 per item!

Is our Health Service ‘the best in the world’? I had always imagined that it was at least among the top half dozen. Lately though I have begun to wonder. My grandson, who lives and works in Brussels (The rule that gives all EU citizens the right to live and work anywhere with the EU doesn’t just benefit those who want to come to England!) is very enthusiastic about the service that he enjoys in Belgium.
 And why do so many people needing hip replacement and similar surgery opt to go to France or elsewhere to have it done?

Infant mortality, including the incidence of stillbirths, is generally reckoned to be a pretty good indicator of the general health of a community. I was shocked to learn that Britain has more stillbirths per every one-thousand births than practically any other developed country in the world.

There can be few situations more heart-rending than the birth of a stillborn child. The birth has been anticipated for months – pram, cot, baby clothes have all been lovingly prepared. Messages of congratulation have been arriving – and the baby dies before birth. I am sure that only those who have had the experience can imagine the disappointment, despair and desolation of the bereaved mum and dad. If there were only one, per million live births, it would be one too many.

I don’t know why we have more stillbirths than almost every other developed country but, if I were a betting man, I would be prepared to wager that those countries with a lower stillbirth rate than us, have:

(a) A much narrower gap between the incomes of their poorest and wealthiest citizens than we have.
(b) Many more trained, qualified and working nurses and midwives per head of the population than we have.