Week 49.09

Tendring Topics……..on Line

‘These Mechanical Beasts…..these Carbuncles…..these Monsters!’

These are the words of Tendring District Councillor Peter Halliday published on the readers’ letters page of the local Daily Gazette. The object of his wrath is, as you may have guessed, the five wind turbines that are to be built off St. John’s Road, between Clacton and St. Osyth. After a full public local enquiry in which the objectors had every opportunity to state their case Tendring Council’s decision to refuse this development was overturned by the government inspector.

Mr Halliday says that it became clear to him that this would be the outcome of the enquiry, ‘When the Environment Minister told the Labour Party Conference that local Conservative councils refusing such applications would see their decisions overturned by Government Inspectors’. I had realized it well before that. Regular readers of this blog may remember my comment, at the time, on the Council’s decision to refuse the development, against the advice of their own professional planners, for no reason other than that of well-orchestrated very local protests.
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I forecast with confidence that the developers would appeal, that there would be a full and expensive (for us council-tax payers) public enquiry, and that the Council’s refusal would be overturned. But there, I have probably had a rather longer experience of local government and of public enquiries than has Councillor Halliday.

The sole objection to the development was, as far as I know, the one plastered on all the objectors’ posters and banners ‘Too near to Homes!’ The Council’s Planning Officers, who were on the spot, and the Government’s inspector who visited the site, clearly thought otherwise.

There was no possible risk of physical danger from the turbines. Almost a mile away from homes, they would surely be inaudible. Unlike the hideous electricity pylons that stride across the English countryside, there has never been any suggestion that living in their proximity can endanger either child or adult health.

The sole objection was their appearance. They would obviously affect the view. The same objection could be made though wherever wind turbines are provided in a rural or semi-rural area ……..and if the turbines were to be sited anywhere but in such an area then they might truly be ‘too near to homes’.

Needless to say our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, like Mr Halliday, is outraged by the inspector’s decision. He, together with two or three correspondents to the local press, is convinced that no climatic change is taking place or, if it is taking place, that it’s a natural phenomenon and nothing to do with human activity. It must be very comforting to watch on tv the human misery created by horrific floods in Cumbria, for the second time in just a few years and worse than anything ever experienced in the past, and to be able to say, ‘Ah well, very sad……but of course it’s an “Act of God”, nothing whatsoever to do with us and our activities!’

Iraq

The long-awaited public enquiry into the events preceding the war in Iraq, the conduct of that war, and its aftermath has only been hearing witnesses for two or three days. Already though, it has become clear that the reasons for our joining the USA in invading Iraq were far different from those we were told at the time.

The invasion took place in the aftermath of ‘nine eleven’ and it was claimed that Iraq was a sponsor of the kind of international terrorism that was responsible for that event. This claim, it has been revealed, was held by the United States’ Government but was never really believed in Britain.

‘Nine eleven’ had its genesis within the frontiers of Afghanistan and of ‘the west’s’ allies in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, rather than in either Iraq or Iran.

Then we were told that the Iraqi government possessed cunningly concealed ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that posed a threat to the whole of the Middle East and to ourselves. The United Nations’ Weapons Inspectors had found no evidence of these before the allied invasion and none have been found since. It has now been revealed that there had never been any really convincing evidence that they existed.

It seems that the real motive of the Anglo-American Alliance had always been ‘regime change’ rather than either retribution for ‘nine eleven’ or the eradication of unspeakably terrible weaponry. Saddam Hussein was a cruel dictator whom ‘the west’ had failed to topple after the Kuwait War. This was the time to make a thorough job of it. It now seems that, even if this very dubious excuse for war were considered to be valid, conflict could still have been avoided. Our former Ambassador to the USA has told the enquiry that pressure on Iraq was prompting rebellion and that, very shortly, the regime would have collapsed from internal pressure. Tens of thousands of lives may have been destroyed for want of a little patience!

That same former ambassador also told the enquiry about the friendly meeting between our Prime Minister and the American President at the latter’s ranch in Texas. The two of them had a cosy chat from which everyone else was excluded. No one knows what was discussed or what agreements may have been reached. It had been noticeable though that from that moment the Prime Minister’s attitude towards Iraq hardened. He began to talk both about possible war and about regime change. He was singing from the George W. Bush hymn-sheet!

I have been surprised by the amount of deception and chicanery that has been openly revealed in just the first few days of the enquiry. Whatever, I wonder, can possibly be in the evidence that – the press tells us – the Prime Minister has insisted must be revealed to the enquiry only in secret!

Crisis at the Top

Can it, I wonder, possibly be true that Tendring Council’s top three officials (each of them said to be enjoying a salary of over £100,000 a year) are facing redundancy and that councillors are thinking of replacing them with a new, lower budget ‘management board’?

If so it is interesting to speculate on the deliberations that preceded that decision. It must surely have been made by a group of influential councillors meeting in what would once have been described as ‘a small smoke-filled room’. Contrary to popular belief it is quite possible to sack a top official. I have a fairly recent memory of a Clerk of the Council (the less-well-paid equivalent of a Chief Executive prior to local government reorganisation in 1974) of the former Clacton UDC resigning his post after having been strongly encouraged to do so. To make the three at the top redundant does seem a little unusual.

The difference between local government in my day (admittedly over thirty years ago!) and life at the town hall today, was brought home to me by the composition of the triumvirate that comprises a management board of Tendring Council’s top, and most highly paid, officials. They are the Chief Executive, the Deputy Chief Executive and the Assistant Chief Executive, each of them I have no doubt, an expert in cost-effective ‘administration’ and ‘the management of human resources’.

In ‘the bad old days’, The Town Clerk, or Clerk of the Council, was ‘the first among equals’ of a number of Council Chief Officers, each of whom managed his or her own department and reported regularly to a Committee concerned with that department’s sphere of work. There would be the Council’s Treasurer, the Engineer and Surveyor and the Medical Officer of Health. Larger authorities might have an independent Housing Manager and the Chief Sanitary Inspector (later Chief Public Health Inspector) would sometimes be regarded as a separate Chief Officer.

The idea that there should be a Deputy and an Assistant Town Clerk who outranked, and were on a higher salary scale, than those professional heads of departments, would have been received with incredulity and derision, as would the suggestion that there should be a Chief Officers’ ‘Management Board’. It is true that, after the reorganisation of 1974 there was a ‘management team’, consisting of heads of departments, who met regularly to discuss common interests. Heads of departments though made their own reports and recommendations to their committees and the committees discussed them and made their recommendations to the whole council.

The present system of ‘professional managers’, exercising authority over professional doctors, accountants, architects and surveyors, appears to be part of a package that included the abolition of the committee system and its replacement by one aping party political government in Westminster. We now have a powerful officers’ ‘management board’ making recommendations to ‘Portfolio holders’ (local cabinet ministers!) who make decisions that would previously have been the responsibility of committees. At intervals the full Council meets and members of the majority party are expected to support loyally policies decided by that small ‘Cabinet’ of portfolio holders.

It is a system that may make for greater speed and efficiency (though I haven’t seen much evidence of this in Tendring) but it is a negation of representative local democracy.

Some Modern Art

I am not a great enthusiast for all-things-modern. It has sometimes seemed to me that there is a late twentieth century/early twenty-first century enthusiasm for ugliness…..in art, in architecture, in music and in poetry. Not all my family are so unenlightened. My younger son Andy and his wife Marilyn are enthusiastic Friends of the National Gallery. They share my liking for much of the art of the past, but also appreciate the work of contemporary artists. Possibly in an attempt to educate me in the finer things of life, they have recently sent me photos of an example of the work of Anish Kapoor CBE, Royal Academician, whose work has been acclaimed and exhibited world-wide.

Above - Sculpture by Anish Kapoor displayed outide National Gallery.

Left - Detail from above

Well, it certainly isn’t ugly. It’s new and refreshing. It’s beautiful in fact. But still (put it down to my advanced age) it’s not really my cup of tea!

Week 8. 09

Tendring Topics……on line

Primitive Art

My elder son and daughter-in-law, taking a short break in the Caribbean from Britain’s climatic and economic winter have sent me this photo from St. Kitts. It is a centuries old rock drawing by a Carib Indian, one of the aboriginal inhabitants of the island most of whom were exterminated between the 16th and 19th centuries by English and/or French settlers in a practical demonstration of the ‘unfettered natural selection’ that I referred to in last week’s blog.

The drawing seems to me to have similarities in style to examples of Australian aboriginal art that I have seen reproduced, and even to that of the 3,000 year old Uffington White Horse, carved into the turf of the Berkshire Downs. Perhaps it is due to my own age that I much prefer it to some of the examples of modern ‘art’ with which we have become familiar.

What does it represent? To me, it suggests a St.Kitts cricket enthusiast who has taken his daughter to a local derby, perhaps between St. Kitts and nearby Nevis. The captain of the home team has just hit the ball for six and completed the first century of the match! Of course I know that it couldn’t possibly have been that ……perhaps some equivalent local contest? I hope that it wasn’t a bloodthirsty one!

Whatever its origins, it is an artwork that has been an object of curiosity, interest and amusement for many generations of passers-by. How many people do you suppose considered Jaywick's £40,000 piece of modern art (now, I believe dismantled) worth even a second glance?

Pictures - above left, rock drawing on St. Kitts.
Right - £40,000 worth of modern art in Jaywick.

Care Homes…..like Prisons? Why not like Hotels?

No-one would accuse Lord Hanningfield, Essex County Council’s leader, of shrinking away from controversy. He thrives on it! There was the ‘Home Rule for Essex’ comment, that we were hastily assured was ‘only joking’. There were the promises to purchase failing post offices (one promise of which I thoroughly approved) and of ‘Essex contracts for Essex firms’. Then there were the ideas of the County Council updating the A12 if the government failed to do so, of financial relief for hard-up pensioners and for service-men and women’s families, and of a County Council Bank to help cash-strapped Essex firms. There was also the assurance that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he knew that a ‘silent majority’ wanted two Colchester schools to be closed and their pupils bussed elsewhere across the town. And, of course, we mustn’t forget the putting out to competitive tender of virtually the whole of the county council’s services.

Now he has ventured into another field, one in which, thanks to the date on my birth certificate, I have rather more experience than he has. Lord Hanningfield knows what old people want and, he says none of us, ‘want to go into a care home … it’s like prison. They want to stay in their own homes. As soon as we abolish care homes the better and people can stay in their own homes with care and support. We are not doing it to save money. It’s more expensive to keep them in their own homes, but it’s what people want. They want to remain in their own home with their own possessions’.

Many of us, probably most of us, certainly do want to stay in our own homes for as long as we can. I certainly do….but then I have a comfortable, relatively modern home, and have no serious financial worries. I have plenty of interests (this blog for instance!), a loving family, good friends and neighbours. My strength and mobility are increasingly limited but I can afford to have others do tasks, in the home and the garden for instance, that are now beyond me. As far as mobility is concerned I can walk but not far and not fast. However, for journeys in and about Clacton I have a mobility scooter. For longer journeys I can use public transport (free or at concessionary rates), hire a taxi or enjoy a lift from a friend or relative. Of course I want and fully intend to stay at home. I hope to end my days here.

November 1957. Heather and I with our two young sons outside our bungalow in Clacton's Dudley Road. We had moved in just over a year earlier and I am still living here. Heather's life ended in this bungalow in July 2006 and I hope that my life will end here too.

It wouldn’t need a very big change in my circumstances though to make me feel differently. Supposing my financial circumstances changed so that meeting regular bills became a constant worry, or my health or sight failed so that I could no longer pursue my interests or get out of the house. I don’t really think that I would then want to stay house-bound in this bungalow, relying on meals-on-wheels, regular visits from carers and occasional visits from neighbours, friends and relatives. The last of these would begin to dry up as, inevitably, I became more and more irritable, impatient and bad-tempered. Then I really would feel imprisoned…..and in solitary confinement!

In such a situation I might well crave to be free of responsibilities, and welcome the company of other people in a good care home. Certainly none of the measures on which the County Council is spending £4 million (which include alarms and health monitors or sensors which would detect a fall, fire or gas) would make me want to stay at home.

Perhaps it is true that more and more of us old people will want to remain in our own homes longer and will be able to do so. Even so, we may well still need at least as many care homes as we have now because, as we are constantly being told, there are more and more of us every year. There will certainly always be a demand for some care homes and these should be a lot less like prisons and much more like good residential hotels. It is toward that end that Lord Hanningfield should be devoting some of his unbounded energy and enthusiasm. Some part at least of that £4 million should be spent on bringing any of the care homes that that the County Council hasn’t yet sold off, up to hotel standard.

Incidentally, I wonder if when they sell off those homes to private enterprise, they mention to the purchasers that they are ‘like prisons’?

Juvenile Precocity!

Even case-hardened tv commentators seemed to have been shocked at the news that a thirteen year old boy and a fifteen year old girl had just become parents; the latest incident in the continuing saga that has already made ‘England’s green and pleasant land’ the teenage pregnancy capital of Europe!

The totally predictable answer to this problem from ‘progressive’ educationalists is even more and even earlier sex-education………..despite the fact that, in the between-the-wars years, when schools offered no sex education whatsoever, a schoolgirl pregnancy was a very, very rare occurrence.

No, I wouldn’t really want to go back to those days. Nor can I pretend that I do know the answer to juvenile pregnancies. I am sure though that it doesn’t lie in more sex education.

‘Ah’, say the educationalists, ‘but we need to teach children about relationships, not just about the anatomy and physiology of sex’. That, I think, is something that just can’t be done. You can teach the practicalities of sex, warn of the dangers and instruct in the techniques of ‘safe sex’ and contraception. Curious and adventurous children will think it all sounds very interesting and exciting. Risky too; but then they have been warned about the dangers and how to avoid them. ‘At school they’re always telling us to find things out for ourselves. Let’s get on with it!’.

So much for the practicalities, but the nature of a loving relationship capable of lasting a lifetime has to be discovered by each individual – and it can only be discovered at the right age. I don’t believe that it can be taught to anyone, least of all to pre-teenage and early-teenage boys and girls. Their minds are most unlikely to have developed to a point at which they are capable of appreciating what it means.

It is, in fact, the kind of appreciation that continues to develop throughout life. A few lines from a pre-war song come to my mind. The first line was, I think; 'At seventeen, he falls in love quite madly, with eyes of the deepest blue' and the last lines, the most important ones, were 'But when he thinks he’s past love, it is then he meets his last love, and he loves her as he never loved before'. The really fortunate ones are those of us whose last love is the same as our first.

That is the kind of relationship of which Shakespeare wrote: 'Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bended sickle’s compass come. Love alters not with his brief hours or weeks, but sticks it out even to the edge of doom’.

I defy anyone to teach that kind of relationship.

As for what to do about teenage pregnancies, I think that we might try rediscovering moral values and stop blurring the difference between good and evil, between right and wrong. Some things that we are very much inclined to do (an earlier generation would have said ‘tempted’ to do) are not just foolish, irresponsible and dangerous but wrong. Among them are precocious sexual activity, promiscuity and what, in our old-fashioned mid-twentieth century way we used to describe as ‘getting a girl into trouble’!

Nowadays many people may contemptuously reject as childish superstition the idea that there is a God 'to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid', to whom we will one day have to answer for all that we have thought, said and done ...........but in an earlier and 'less enlightened' age it was certainly a thought that tended to modify adolescent behaviour!