Week 10 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

Birds of a Feather………

          HRH the Prince of Wales referred to them as ‘headless chicken’. Writing recently in the Church Times (not a publication likely to be accused of sensationalism or scare mongering)  Paul Vallely, Senior Research Fellow at the Brooks World Poverty Institute at Manchester University, prefers to call climate change deniers 'ostriches'. That’s rather more appropriate because ostriches are popularly believed to bury their heads in the sand rather than observe, and do something about, scary things going on around them.

            Paul Vallely quotes a geography professor who told him that if the floods and gales of this winter are the beginning of climate change (and most intelligent observers are now convinced that they are) then there is nothing that we can do about it.  What seems to us now to be ‘extreme weather’ will be the norm for at least twenty years.  However he tempered that apocalyptic message by adding that ‘all we can do now is to stop it getting worse’.

            ‘Climate change deniers’, says Paul Vallely, ‘always insist that you cannot prove a causal link between one spell of extreme weather and global warming. That is true, just as you cannot link one specific cigarette to a smoker’s developing lung cancer.  Trends though, are another matter’.

            Lord Stone, a punctilious and naturally cautious man with a great concern for academic accuracy, is a friend and former colleague of Paul Vallely.  He wrote a seminal report on climate change in 2006 and recently noted that four of the five wettest years ever recorded in the UK have occurred since 2,000 – and so have the seven warmest!  Elsewhere in the world Australia has just had its hottest year on record. North America has been gripped by a polar vortex.  Bangladesh has had two ‘once-in-lifetime’ cyclones in three years.  The Philippines have had their worst-ever cyclone.

            It might have been thought that global warming would make the weather warmer here in Britain.  That though, is not the case.  Scientists warned years ago that the first change the UK could expect would be more rain and wind, since a warmer atmosphere holds more water and energy, meaning more floods – and thus it has happened!

            Looking back, Lord Stern says that his verdict back in 2006 should have been harsher than it was.  ‘Since then, annual greenhouse-gas emissions have increased steeply, and some of the impacts, such as the decline of Arctic sea ice, have started to happen much more quickly’

            Paul Vallely notes that recently our Prime Minister advised the folk of flood-stricken Upton-on-Severn to speak to ‘the man upstairs’ about the floods.  Paul comments that prayer is not a sufficient answer and that, as his grandmother used to say, God helps those who help themselves.   To expect God miraculously to remedy the harm that we humans have done to our environment is almost as stupid as believing that the floods are God’s punishment for our approving same-sex marriages!

            The God in whom I believe, created the Universe and everything in it using evolution and natural selection as his tools.  That God is present, both throughout the Universe and as an 'inward light' within the souls of every man, woman and child in the world.  He listens to and answers our prayers but, as St. Theresa has declared, ‘In this world God has no hands but ours to do his work; no feet but ours to run his errands’ and he (I could with equal accuracy have said ‘she’ or ‘it’) has given us free will.

            We humans have chosen to follow the paths of greed, covetousness and relentless competition with each other for wealth and worldly possessions, rather than those of co-operation, compassion and sharing the earth’s riches with our fellow men and women. We have squandered the world’s finite resources and as greenhouse gases accelerate climate change, we are rendering our planet uninhabitable.  God does not punish us for folly and selfishness. We punish ourselves.

            Here is the final paragraph of Paul Vallely’s article:   If what we are seeing around us is the result of a two-degree rise in global temperatures, what can we expect from the four degrees rise that many scientists say is inevitable unless we cut carbon emissions?  Lord Stern suggests mass migrations, conflict and war.  The last time the global temperature was five degrees different from today, the earth was gripped by an ice age.  We cannot say that we have not been warned

……..flock together.

            

            I have been following the reports of the trial of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson – both were senior employees of Ruper Murdoch's News International  and both were close friends and confidantes of Prime Ministers and other top politicians of both the main political parties. Andy Coulson was for some time David Cameron’s personal spin doctor.  Now they are both on trial in connection with alleged phone hacking and attempts to pervert the course of justice while they were employed by News International.  I was particularly interested to note that Tony Blair, former Prime Minister and creator of New Labour had offered Rebekah Brooks his support and told her that he would similarly help and advise Rupert Murdoch, who owns and heads News International.

           

          Pioneers of the Labour Party – Keir Hardie, George Lansbury, Sir Stafford Cripps, Clem Attlee, Jenny Lee and Nye Bevan must surely be turning in their graves. Rupert Murdoch, his  lieutenants, and his News International stand for everything that the Labour Movement was created to oppose.

  

 The Ukrainian Tragedy

 Seventy years ago – when I was a PoW at a small Arbeitskommando (working camp) in Eastern Germany we regularly worked and (when we had learned a little basic German) chatted with civilian fellow-workers who were clearly not German and who wore a distinguishing badge OST sewn onto their jackets. We soon learned that the OST was short for Ostarbeiter (worker from the east) and that they were conscripted ‘slave workers’ from German occupied areas of Russia and the Ukraine.

There were men and women. We got to know them very well both as fellow forced-workers and as friends. There is nothing like having a common enemy to bring people together, and all we foreign conscripted workers, PoWs and civilians, were good friends.  Much more recently I have learned about the rift between western and eastern Ukraine. Is the Ukrainian language very different from Russian?  That's certainly not the impression that I gained - but perhaps the Ukrainians that I knew all came from the Eastern Ukraine.  They were certainly friendly enough with their Russian fellow 'Ostarbeiters'.  In Russian ‘Ukraine’ means ‘the Outlands’, a province in the south of the former Tsarist Empire acting as a buffer zone against the always threatening Turks.

Many 'Ostarbeiters', Russians and Ukrainians alike, had seen their parents and their village elders killed in cold blood by German SS units.  Some, particularly the girls, had themselves had horrific experiences before being rounded up and deported to Germany.  They were invariably friendly, cheerful and patient.  Many of them were genuinely interested in our lives in Britain.   Daily we heard the thunder of gunfire from the Eastern Front grow louder and louder as the Soviet Armies advanced through Poland and into Germany.   We learned a few words and phrases in Russian from our Ukrainian and Russian friends and fellow-workers. These proved immensely valuable to me when the war came to an end and a mate and I were hitch-hiking our way through Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia on our way home to England!

Now the children and grandchildren of those warm-hearted and friendly young men and women have been killing each other in the streets of Kiev and other Ukrainian cities, and all the major powers can do is ‘take sides’ – the Russian Government supporting the ousted Ukrainian President, and the UK, USA and EU supporting the rebels (just as in the Syrian blood-bath!)  At the heart of the quarrel between the two Ukrainian factions seems to be whether Ukraine should seek the friendship and support of the EU or of Russia. 

 For goodness sake!   The cold war is over and the ‘iron curtain’ drawn aside.  Is it really impossible for Ukraine to enjoy the friendship of both – and to enter into military alliance with neither;  perhaps even to serve as a friendly bridge between us and our Russian former allies?   Have we forgotten already the contribution that the Soviet Army (mostly Russians and Ukrainians) made towards the defeat of the Nazis?  Winston Churchill said that it was the Red Army that ‘tore the guts out of the Nazi War Machine’ and I have no doubt at all that had it not been for their efforts and their sacrifice (8 million dead!) I would, at the best, have remained a prisoner for at least another two or three years. It is much more likely though that I would never have come home at all. I now have good friends in Germany and, in particular, in the small town where I spent the last eighteen months of World War II as a PoW – but I have always remembered with gratitude those to whom I owe my life and my liberty.

Late News

I wrote the above three days ago (on 28th February) and things have moved swiftly since then. Russian troops have moved into the Crimea where they appear to have been welcomed by the civilian population. They have, in effect, confined troops of the interim Ukrainian Government to their own bases.  I can only hope and pray that the world's rulers will keep their heads cool and their eyes on world peace rather than on scoring points or losing 'face'.  Is it not just possible that the presence of a considerable Russian force in  the Crimean peninsula will deter the current provisional government from attempting to force their ideas and their culture on their compatriots in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, thus provoking another civil conflict?

I do find the holier-than-thou attitude of the government of the USA somewhat surprising.  Some of us still remember the USA's backing of the disastrous 'Bay of Pigs' attempted invasion of Cuba, the USA's illegal blockade of Cuban ports endangering international shipping and - almost exactly thirty years ago - the completely unprovoked USA led invasion of the  Caribbean island of Grenada  for no purpose other than regime change.  This was condemned by the United Nations General Assembly as an act of unprovoked aggression though the UK's government, then headed by 'iron lady' Margaret Thatcher was strangely silent, despite the fact that Grenada was then part of the British Commonwealth and its head of state was our Queen.

‘First cast the plank out of your own eye, and you will see more clearly how to deal with the mote in the eye of your brother’   St. Matthew Chapter 7 verse 5

 

             

           

           

Week 25 2012 21.6.2012

Tendring Topics......on Line

 'Just good Friends!'

The Leveson enquiry rumbles on.   On Tuesday evening (12^th June), as I write this, we have just heard the report of Sir John Major’s appearance at the enquiry.  His evidence had the ring of truth and sincerity about it.  He recorded relevant events (and the result of offending the ruler of the Murdoch Empire) as he recalled them, without hesitation or prevarication.  He told us that for days after incurring the Murdoch displeasure, he had read in the press every day, things that he had not done and things that he had never said

            Let me now write a word or two in defence of Rupert Murdoch!   His statement, under oath, that he had never asked any Prime Minister to do anything, is said to have been contradicted by Sir John’s statement that he had wanted the government to change its policy toward Europe.  The two statements are surely not contradictory.  Mr Murdoch didn’t ask the Prime Minister to change his attitude towards Europe – he simply told him that unless the government changed its policy, the newspapers under his control would switch their support from his party to their opponents. The government didn’t change its policy – and the support of the Murdoch press did change from Conservative to New Labour.  Mr Murdoch keeps his promises. 

            No-one seems to have commented on the impertinence of a foreign media tycoon attempting to persuade a British Prime Minister to change British foreign policy. Imagine the outrage there would have been in Mr Murdoch’s flagship newspaper the Sun if such an attempt had been made by a Russian oligarch or an oil-rich Middle Eastern Sheikh rather than an American multimillionaire! 

            Everybody concerned goes to great lengths to deny that there had been any sort of conspiracy or agreement to grant favours to the Murdoch Empire in exchange for press support.  I don’t suppose for a moment that there has been.  All that happened was that Rupert Murdoch, his family and his senior managers went out of their way to make friends with our Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer and other leading members of the government.  It helped, of course, that Mrs Rebekah Brooks News Corporation’s Chief Executive and her husband, were actually neighbours of the Prime Minister.  He and his wife, together with other top politicians, were invited to a Christmas Party and to other social events. The Prime Minister was encouraged to practise his equestrian skills on Mrs Brooks’ horse – which turned out to be ‘on loan’ from the Metropolitan Police!  The Prime Minister and members of the Murdoch inner circle became good friends. That was all there was to it.  But, of course, one of the characteristics of good friends is the way in which (without having to be asked) they help each other in every way that they can. I don't imagine that media millionaires and top politicians have much difficulty in finding ways of demonstrating their loyal friendship.   ‘If you sup with the devil you need a long spoon’, says the proverb.  At neither 10, nor 11 Downing Street, nor at Chequers were any of the spoons nearly long enough!

14.6.12  The evidence given today by David Cameron to the Leveson Enquiry confirms the accuracy of my conjectures above – except that the friendship between the PM and Mrs Brooks was rather closer than I had imagined.

 What goes around, comes around

          It isn’t very often that I find myself in complete agreement with a pronouncement of a member of the government.   Whether, had I been a teacher and facing yet another change of official policy, I’d have felt exactly the same is doubtful.  However, as I am just a more-or-less disinterested by-stander I warm to the idea that children in primary schools should be taught more things ‘by rote’ and that teachers should pay more attention to grammar and spelling.  That’s how it was done in my day!

A class of 8/9 year olds in 1930 at the Ipswich primary school where I learned ‘my tables’. I am the anxious little boy with glasses at the headmaster’s right knee.

           

Arithmetic, the foundation stone of Mathematics, was never my best or favourite subject at school.  Yet to this day if someone says to me ‘what’s seven times eight’ or ‘nine times six?’ the answers (56 and 54 respectively) come unbidden to my tongue.  This facility comes from my chanting, over and over again, with a whole class of some 40 eight year olds, the ‘times tables’. It is an ability that has been useful on occasion. Even more importantly, chanting those tables provided a learning discipline – the realisation that before learning can become enjoyable, there is hard and boring work to be done in establishing its foundation.

            Similarly History (to choose a subject at which I was good and in which I am still interested) is often said to have been ‘in the bad old days’ (my schooldays!) just a case of learning by rote a list of dates and notable events.  There was a lot more to it than that.  The fact remains though that until you have at least a rough idea of the sequence of events in British and world history you can’t hope to see the way in which, over the centuries, one event has led to the next.  Unless you know that the Roman invaders, about 2,000 years ago were followed by the Anglo Saxons and the Vikings and, about 1,000 years ago, by the Normans, followed by the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance; the Protestant Reformation, Thomas Cranmer, Shakespeare, Milton, Christopher Wren, and Isaac Newton   (Oh yes and, really much less importantly, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Cromwell and so on) you’ll never understand how today’s political and economic world evolved – and is still evolving.  Once you have acquired – by rote, by constant repetition and by boring hard work – that skeleton of events, you can start putting the flesh on it and begin to enjoy reading history.

            Being encouraged to learn poetry ‘by heart’ (rather than by rote!) in my primary school years, gave me the ability to store in my head a very considerable collection of poetry, ranging from extracts from the King James Bible,  through some of of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the work of the great poets of the 18^th and 19^th Centuries, and more recent ones like Houseman, Belloc, Kipling and Betjeman, to modern less-than-prim-and-proper limericks.  This mental anthology has been a source of immense pleasure and satisfaction to me in the past and (though I may nowadays forget what happened yesterday – or an hour ago!) it remains in my memory and continues to give me pleasure and satisfaction today.

            I remember being told at school that although we had special English classes, every lesson was in fact an English lesson.  No matter how thoroughly a pupil may have mastered, for instance, a Chemical, Physical or Biological principle, that knowledge is incomplete unless it is accompanied by the ability to pass it on to someone else in clear and lucid English.  That means in grammatically correct and correctly spelled English prose, and legible handwriting.  In those days, that was what teachers and examiners demanded, not because they were fussy and pedantic, but because in later life it would be what other people including employers, would expect

       
           One proposed alteration to the curriculum that is definitely an improvement on that of my childhood and youth is compulsory introduction to a foreign language at primary school. I had no acquaintance whatsoever with a foreign language until I was introduced to French at the age of ten at my secondary school.  That, I think, was much too late.  I was taught French for six years and still only managed to scrape a ‘pass’ mark in the school leaving exam.  Where a school is really determined that its pupils will emerge from their education with a thorough command of a language (Welsh in all schools in the Principality and Hebrew in Jewish schools for instance) that language is taught from ‘infants’ level.  

            I wish the Education Secretary success with his proposed reforms.  It remains to be seen whether or not he’ll be able to introduce them without the firm discipline that was enforced in schools in my day*, and the then taken-for-granted co-operation and compliance of most parents.

*Take another look at that picture from my childhood. It’s clear that, especially in the presence of the headmaster, not one of us dared to step an inch out of line!

A timely reminder

            A timely reminder that it isn’t only the present Prime Minister and top members of the Conservative Party who stand accused of inappropriate fraternisation with Rupert Murdoch and his entourage, has come with the publication of an autobiographical record based on the diaries of Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair’s chief spin-doctor. This reveals the closeness of Tony Blair to Rupert Murdoch, ruler of News International, the international news media empire. 

            Mr Campbell reveals that in the week prior to Britain’s declaration of support for the American-led invasion of Iraq Rupert Murdoch phoned Tony Blair on three occasions to urge him to declare his support without delay.   How extraordinary that an American multimillionaire and newspaper tycoon, owing no loyalty whatsoever to our Queen and Country, should have immediate access to a British Prime Minister in order to exert influence on a matter of foreign policy!   This was the Prime Minister who allowed parliament to be deceived about Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’* and about the presence and influence of Al Qaeda in that country; the same Prime Minister who ignored the million British citizens who marched through London registering their strong opposition to the invasion of Iraq and the further millions who supported them

Perhaps we need an enquiry into the behaviour of top politicians quite as much as we needed an enquiry into the behaviour of the press!

*It should be noted that Alistair Campbell, whose autobiographical publication has revealed these phone calls, was himself complicit in the compilation of the ‘Dodgy Dossier’ on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction  that contributed to the deception of parliament and of many members of the public.

Those WMDs!

            Writing the above reminded me that it was several days – perhaps several weeks – before Iraq was invaded that I realized it was most unlikely that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction (even ‘battlefield’ ones) at his disposal, and equally unlikely that Tony Blair and George Bush were unaware of this.

            I am not a great admirer of either of those gentlemen. I can’t believe though that they were so stupid or so irresponsible as to order the inevitably rather slow build-up of invasion forces in Kuwait just across Iraq’s border, if they had thought there was the slightest possibility of their being destroyed when, just before the invasion was launched, Saddam Hussein ‘pressed the button’ and unleashed his Weapons of Mass Destruction upon them.

            It really didn’t take either ‘rocket science’ or secret sources of information to work that out!

           

                               

Week 20 2012 17.5.2012

Tendring Topics.......on Line

 Standing back…….and starting again!

          Everyone, I feel sure, is familiar with the story of the London police officer who, asked the best way to get to a destination on the other side of the capital, replied, ‘Well, if I wanted to get there I wouldn’t start from here!’   I think that neither the government, nor the main opposition, know how best to reach the country’s destination (a growing economy and a major reduction of the gap between national income and national expenditure) because their policies are based on false assumptions.  They need to stop tweaking at this or that detail, stop drawing attention to their opponents’ mistakes, and take a fresh look at the problem.

            What, for instance, is the point in the Queen’s speech to Parliament about supporting hard working families, when we know perfectly well that thousands of people, particularly young people, would desperately like to be hard at work.    Thanks largely to the government’s policies, they are jobless and unable to find work to do?  What is the point of congratulating oneself on having taken thousands of people ‘out of income tax liability altogether’ when there are thousands of others who would love to have incomes large enough to be liable for income tax?  What is the point of assuring us that ‘we’re all in this together’ when we know perfectly well that the government’s policies are impoverishing most of the population while permitting a very wealthy minority to get even wealthier?

            You may feel that our economy presents problems of such complexity that their solution is beyond the capacity of us ordinary mortals and is best left for the country’s most brilliant financial brains to solve. Perhaps, but it was  the best financial brains in the country that got us into this mess – and it could be that it is common sense and  natural justice that will get us out of it*. It doesn’t take a financial wizard to realize that there are two possible ways of reducing the gap between national income and expenditure; by cutting back on national expenditure or by increasing national income by means of taxation – or perhaps by a judicious mixture of both.   At the same time there is a desperate need to encourage the growth of the economy; to get the builders, the manufacturers and the retailers busy and productive again.   We need to reduce the number of unemployed, get people working again, off benefit (not by penalising them but by removing their need) and paying taxes again.

             The Government seems to believe that cutting back on national expenditure, cutting public services rather than increased taxation, is the answer.  Expansion of the private sector will, they think, compensate for inevitable job losses in the public sector.  No-one will miss all those bureaucrats who will lose their ‘well-paid jobs and gold-plated pensions’.  But ‘bureaucrats’ are only a small minority of public service employees.  These include doctors, nurses, other health workers, police officers, fire fighters, prison staff, teachers, university professors and scientists.

            Nor was it ever likely that the ‘private sector’ would provide work for those losing their jobs in the public service.   A substantial section of the ‘private sector’ depends for its livelihood on public service contracts.  Cutting public service expenditure means cutting back on those contracts too.  Building contractors, building and maintaining schools, hospitals and other public buildings are particularly hard hit.

            Public service cuts increase the number of unemployed who no longer contribute to the Treasury through taxation, and who become eligible for job seekers’ allowance and other state benefits. Their poverty means that they reduce their expenditure, hitting the retail businesses that had relied on their custom. Their lack of work adds to rather than reduces the gap between national expenditure and national income!   Meanwhile reduction of public services mean badly maintained highways, badly policed localities, an increase in crime rates, in vandalism and other antisocial behaviour, the evolution of what once were well-run council housing estates into unredeemable slums, and the gradual deterioration of the civilised environment in which the private sector is able to flourish.

             Where the government has increased taxes to help to narrow the deficit they have concentrated on indirect taxation – increased VAT and increased duty on petrol, alcohol and tobacco.  These penalise the less-well-off disproportionately and deal yet another blow to hard-pressed retailers!

            I think that we need to stand back, survey the situation – and then start again. To get the economy going I would suggest cutting the rate of VAT and cutting the duty on petrol and diesel oil. I no longer drive but the price of fuel oil, used for both long and short haul transport, affects the price of everything in the shops and of virtually every human activity. VAT is similar.  It is much more to the point to raise the income of poor and middle-class folk than to benefit the very wealthy.  We won’t use any increase in disposable income to buy a yacht, or a Premier League football club, or a palatial home on the shores of the Mediterranean.  We’ll use it to for shopping expeditions into the High Street, for maintenance to keep the family car on the road, or for giving our homes a fresh coat of paint.  Thus will the wheels of industry and commerce again begin to turn.

            I think too that taxation should play a much bigger part in reducing that deficit  – but it should be  fair taxation, based on no other factor than ability to pay.  I don’t believe it was a great achievement for the recent budget to have raised the lower limit of income tax liability to ‘take thousands of people out of the system altogether’

            I believe, on the contrary, that everyone with an income however small should repay a proportion of that income in tax.   Then everyone in the country would be able to claim a stake in the country’s common wealth.  Everyone, from the lowest to the very highest, should be required to pay that same proportion of his or her income.  The proportion would vary from year to year, according to the country’s needs.  For the very poor that proportion would be a very small sum indeed, for the very wealthy it would be a large sum – but for no-one  would it be a sum beyond his or her ability to pay.

            There should be no loopholes for tax avoidance or tax evasion.  That proportionate income tax would be the first call on everyone’s income.  Paying it should be a matter of duty and a matter of pride.  What the taxpayer did with the remainder of his or her income would be up to them – give some of it to charity, put it in an offshore account, buy a football club – it would all be nothing to do with the rest of us.  But we all, multi-millionaire, farm labourer, refuse-collector would be able to claim.  ‘This is my country – and every year I renew my claim on its ownership when I pay my income tax!’

            It won’t happen.  Human selfishness and human greed, from which few of us can claim to be wholly free, will make sure of that.  Still – a very old man can surely be allowed to dream!

*I have just heard on the news (11.5.2012) that the financial experts employed by one of the USA’s largest and most prestigious banks – surely the very best of the very best, have managed to lose two billion dollars.  It doesn’t inspire  confidence in the wisdom and skill of ‘financial experts’!

The Enormity of the Problem!

          A week or two ago I mentioned in this blog that The Times ‘Rich List’, then just published, made it clear that while most of us have become poorer in the past year, the seriously wealthy have become even wealthier.  I mentioned it again above – but I hadn’t really appreciated the scale of the problem until I was referred to a blog of Michael Meacher MP that I wholeheartedly commend to readers.  You can find it as I did by means of a somewhat complex link: http://www.michaelmeacher.info/weblog/2012/04/britains-1000-richest-persons-made-gains-of-155bn-in-last-3-years/   or you can type ‘Michael Meacher MP’ into Google and you’ll quickly find it there.

                However It definitely comes into the category of ‘things I wish I had written’ and I am sure that Mr Meacher won’t mind my quoting this particular blog in its entirety below:

Times Rich List, published today and compulsory reading for anybody who wants to understand Britain’s power structure today, holds three extremely significant conclusions.   One is that the 1,000 richest persons in the UK have increased their wealth by so much in the last 3 years – £155bn – that they themselves alone could pay off the entire UK budget deficit and still leave themselves with £30bn to spare which should be enough to keep the wolf from the door.   The second, even more staggering, is that whilst the rest of the country is being crippled by the biggest public expenditure and benefits squeeze for a century, these 1,000 persons, containing many of the bankers and hedge fund and private equity operators who caused the financial crash in the first place, have not been made subject to any tax payback whatever commensurate to their gains.   This is truly a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

The third is that despite the biggest slump for nearly a century, the slowest and most anaemic recovery, and prolonged austerity stretching to a decade or more, this ultra-rich clique are now sitting on wealth even greater than what they had amassed at the height of the boom just before the crash.   Their combined wealth is now estimated at more than £414bn, equivalent to more than a third of Britain’s entire GDP.    They include 77 billionaires and 23 others whose wealth exceeds £750m.  

Despite these massive repositories of wealth, these are some of the very people to whom Osborne gifted £3bn in his recent budget by cutting the 50p tax rate.   That measure alone gave 40,000 UK millionaires an extra average £14,000 a week, at the same time as those on very low incomes in receipt of working tax credits who couldn’t find an employer to increase their hours of work from 16 to  24 a week were being deprived in the same budget of £77 a week, around a third of their income, through their tax credits being withdrawn.

In 1997 the wealth of the richest 1,000 amounted to £99bn.   The increase in their wealth over the last 15 years has therefore been £315bn.   If this increase in wealth were subject to capital gains tax at the current 28% rate, it would yield £88bn, and that alone would pay off more than 70% of the total budget deficit.   However Osborne seems to share the notorious view of the New York heiress, Leonora Helmsley: “taxes are only for the little people”. 

Thanks Mr Meacher.  There’s really nothing I could possibly add to that.

‘With LOL (lots of love) from…….

Somehow that doesn’t seem quite the way in which we expect our Prime Minister to end text messages to the head in the UK of an international media organisation with its headquarters in a foreign country, even if that head is a highly intelligent, very astute and very personable business woman.

            Nor do we really expect present and past  prime ministers and other leading politicians to bid fond and regretful farewells to that same lady when, as a result of a phone hacking scandal, she gives up her job.

            Everything that we are hearing at the Leveson Enquiry confirms my recently expressed opinion that Rupert Murdoch and his entourage have never bothered to seek favours from our top politicians.  They just sat back and waited for our politicians to come seeking their favour.  And when they lose that favour, as Prime Minister Gordon Brown did, how very cross and petulant (according to Rebekah Brooks) they become!

            How demeaning!  How shaming!    We’re told in the Scriptures that it profits a man nothing to gain the whole world if, in doing so, he loses his soul.  But to lose it for the sake of a few favourable headlines in The Sun - really!

         

           

             

            

Week 28 19.7.2011

Tendring Topics……..on Line


The next instalment!


When I wrote last week that ‘I couldn’t wait’ for the next instalment of the current riveting Decline and Fall (well, not quite that yet!) of the Murdoch Media Empire I had no idea that I wouldn’t have to! Hardly had my blog been posted than we learned that Rupert Murdoch had withdrawn his application for control of the whole of B-Sky-B, because of the strength of the opposition.

I take just a little pride in the fact that – some time before it became fashionable to criticise the News International Empire and its ruler – I had formed a tiny part of that opposition by sending an email to the proper authority. I knew nothing then of the hacking of the mobile phones of the bereaved or the bribery of the Police. I just thought it wrong that a rootless cosmopolitan, who owed Britain no loyalty and whose home was not in this country, should be in control of news media capable of swaying the results of British elections. That surely was reason enough for opposing the takeover.

It was not an empty boast when Murdoch’s Sun announced ‘It was us wot done it’ after a Thatcher election victory. The same could have been said after Tony Blair had betrayed the principles of his predecessors and swung New Labour far enough to the right to gain Rupert Murdoch’s approval. Many tabloid readers, whose interest rarely strays beyond the headlines (except of course in pursuit of the salacious detail of the latest celebrity scandal) actually believe what those big black headlines say and vote as they indicate.

In the heady atmosphere of last week’s denunciations of News International and all its works it is difficult to remember that it wasn’t all that long ago that Lib.Dem. Government Minister Vince Cable was stripped of some of his authority for saying; in what he had thought was a private conversation, that he had ‘declared war on Rupert Murdoch’ (you may recall that in this blog I remarked that it was time someone did!) His successor had proved his suitability by his public declaration of admiration for News International and its boss!

Luckily there are news stories and video clips to remind us of the not-very-distant past. I learned, for instance, that David Cameron and family spent some happy hours with Rebekah Brooks and her millionaire husband last Christmas. Then again, I have watched video clips of both Tony Blair and David Cameron (though not at the same time!) bestowing platonic kisses on the expectant cheek of the auburn-haired beauty who was News International’s Chief Executive at the time but is so no longer.

It is true, of course, that members of the upper classes bestow kisses upon their friends rather more freely than do we common folk. I feel though that the Christmas get-together and those tokens of affection suggest a rather greater degree of mutual regard than Ed Miliband’s appreciation of Rupert Murdoch’s canapés at a recent reception, an indiscretion of which the Labour Leader has been accused by an opponent!

Now Mrs Brooks (who resigned – a little belatedly – from the post of Chief Executive on 15th July) and father and son Rupert and James Murdoch have been invited to the House of Commons next Tuesday 19th July to answer MPs questions and, if they wish, to tell their side of the story. Mrs Brooks accepted the invitation at once. The two Murdochs at first demurred (James would have liked to attend but had a prior engagement!) but after they had had summonses served on them they both agreed to turn up. As I write these words (Thursday 14th July) there are still five days to go. Anything can – and probably will – happen in that time. However, at the moment I am looking forward to hearing what, if anything, they have to say next Tuesday!

Meanwhile questions are being asked in the USA (some by right-wing Republicans, Rupert Murdoch’s natural allies), and the FBI are said to be on the warpath. Both in Rupert Murdoch’s adopted American homeland and in Australia land of his birth, there is concern about the conduct of his newspapers and their staff. Could it be that we really are seeing the beginning of the end of an evil Media Empire?

‘Those who sup with the devil need a long spoon’……


………….is a little piece of folk wisdom that both policemen and politicians would be well-advised to heed. I am writing these words on Monday 18th July and hope to post them as a blog tomorrow. If there is a briber it follows that there must also be someone who accepted a bribe. The spotlight has widened to include the Police. Perhaps it is destined to widen further!

A great deal has happened. Rebekah Brooks has been arrested, interrogated for about twelve hours, and released on bail. Sir Paul Stephenson, head of the London Metropolitan Police Force has resigned. I hope that the timing of Mrs Brooks’ arrest wasn’t prompted by a desire of the Police to limit the questions that she will be prepared to answer when she faces the Parliamentary Committee tomorrow afternoon.

Britain’s most senior Police Officer has told us that he considered that his only possible honourable course of action, after he had taken on a former Deputy Editor of the News of the World as a freelance consultant, was resignation. What, one may well ask, would be the appropriate honourable course of action for a Prime Minister who, despite having been warned, took on a former Editor of that same newspaper as his Head of Communications – and, of course, was on very friendly terms with yet another former Editor of the News of the World who had subsequently been promoted to Chief Executive of the Media Group that owned it?

Would you credit it?


Lord Hanningfield (or Paul White as he was before being ennobled on Mrs Thatcher’s recommendation) is now serving a nine months prison sentence for fraudulently claiming expenses to which he was not entitled, in connection with his membership of the House of Lords.. The Police are currently investigating the expenses that he claimed as Leader of the Essex County Council and it has emerged that concerns were expressed as far back as 2007 about his use of a taxpayer-funded credit card on which he was spending about £5,200 a month for what he claimed – and self-certified! – were legitimate expenses for his work as council leader.

These, according to a report in the local daily Gazette, included entertainment and subsistence expenses, as well as dining, and House of Lords bar bills. ‘First class rail tickets, flights and hotel bills were also put on the card, although some were paid directly by the council!’


The current leader of the county council, Mr Peter Martin, who says that he has never used his own corporate credit card, told the Gazette ‘There were concerns over expenses in 2008 and 2009. Officers had talks with Lord Hanningfield and meetings about receipts. But when the Crown Prosecution Service indicated in July 2009 that it was investigating Lord Hanningfield, we were advised by our legal team and police that we should not take any action which could prejudice the case’.

County councillors and top officials alike must have received that advice with a collective sigh of relief!

Until last week Lord Hanningfield was still receiving his ‘members allowance’ of £11,500, because he has not resigned his membership of the Essex County Council, and is appealing against his conviction,. Under pressure from Bob Russell, Colchester’s outspoken Lib.Dem. MP, this allowance has now been stopped. It had been pointed out to the council that they have power to suspend payment when a councillor is not able to perform his or her duties.

In a leading article the Gazette points out that an office worker at County Hall who had stolen £50 cash would have been swiftly dealt with ‘but no-one, it appears, wanted to tackle the Council Leader…………surely at least one of Essex’s highly paid officials should have mustered the courage to question him’.


Perhaps so – but Lord Hanningfield had an overwhelming personality and was reputed to be something of a bully. It would need absolute certainty of the facts, and more-than-average determination and courage, to tackle the man who could have destroyed the accuser’s whole future career. Chiding even the most senior official for hesitating to confront him would have been a bit like telling the ill-fated Anne Boleyn in 1536 that she really should have been firmer with her husband!

Childbirth – best ‘at home’ or ‘away’

Let’s think about something a little less sordid! The current debate about whether home births, hospital births or midwife-run ‘birthing centre births’ are best, has brought back vivid memories to me.

In the autumn of 1948 when we had been married for just two years, my wife Heather was diagnosed as suffering from pulmonary and laryngeal TB. She spent the next two years in what was then Nayland British Legion Sanatorium, punctuated by six weeks in Papworth Hospital where she underwent major surgery, the removal of eight ribs on the left side to collapse the left lung permanently and give it a chance to heal. It worked – though the operation weakened her and limited her activities for the rest of her life. She was discharged as ‘cured’ in time for Christmas 1950.

We had never intended to be a childless couple but it was to be two more years before our doctor felt that Heather was strong enough to bear a baby. By January of 1953 we knew that one was on the way. It was an anxious time for me (I’m an incurable worrier!) but Heather was supremely confident that all would be well. She was also quite determined that she would breast-feed her baby.

We decided that the baby would best be born in a Maternity Home and began to make arrangements. When Heather recounted her medical history the nurse taking the details said, reassuringly. ‘Well, under your circumstances you certainly won’t be expected to bother with this breast-feeding business. Directly baby is born we’ll get it thoroughly used to a bottle for you’. ‘Really’, said Heather, who could be very determined when she chose to be, ‘in that case I won’t need your services. I’ll be having my baby at home’.


And so she did. Home births were a lot more common in the early 1950s than they became in later years and luckily both the local midwife and our ‘family doctor’ supported Heather’s decision. We were living at the time in a bungalow just off the Norwich Road at Barham, two or three miles to the northwest of Ipswich. Our doctor, Dr Louise Hyder, lived on ‘the other side’ of the town – near where Ipswich Hospital is now situated. I was able to take Heather to see her regularly during her pregnancy and, despite the distance, the doctor managed to be present at the birth. Just as well – because there were complications that were dealt with promptly and efficiently.



A Joyful Heather - and son!

 Heather had a son – whom she did breast-feed. Two and a half years later, when our second child was expected, we didn’t even consider the possibility of a hospital birth. Heather had another fine son, born at home, whom she fed in the same way. I remember that I wrote and sold to Better Health (a health education monthly) a photographically illustrated article entitled Why bother with a bottle, about proceeding from breast to glass or cup, without an intervening feeding bottle!

That was our experience. It was fine for us but, quite obviously, it wouldn’t be right for everybody. I do think though that all women should have the option and not be bullied or made to feel guilty wherever they may prefer to give birth.


Two fine sons



Week 27.2011 12.7.2011

Tendring Topics………on Line


The End of the World? Not quite; just its bad ‘News’!


The only thing that surprises me about the phone-hacking scandal that led to the closure of the News of the World are the depths to which this revolting publication appears to have sunk. Could they really have hacked into the mobile phone of an abducted and (as we now know) murdered child, read the texts on it and then deleted some of them, leaving space for more? Surely even they must have realized that they were raising false hopes that the child was still alive and capable of using her phone. They were also, of course, confusing the Police and hindering their investigation. Perhaps they were well aware of this, but confident that they’d never be found out, just didn’t care.

As the days passed we learned of ever more outrages committed by Mr Rupert Murdoch’s news-vultures, as they rummaged for tasty morsels among the entrails of other people’s grief. This didn’t surprise me. The News of the World has for many years been prepared to go to any lengths (perhaps I should have said ‘any depths’) to get a sensational and scurrilous news story. I became aware of this personally in the late 1970s. The News of the World had been an early acquisition of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and had been under his control for a decade.

My wife Heather and I had always tried to instil a social conscience and what we thought of as ‘Quaker values’ into our two sons. We were, I think, successful in this - even though we didn’t manage to turn them into regular ‘go-to-Meeting’ Quakers! Thus it was that one of them, living and working in a London suburb, volunteered to give some of his time (and much of his sleep!) as a volunteer at Centrepoint, the Central London Shelter for homeless young people. He told us some heart-rending but uplifting stories of 16 to 21 year olds who had made their way there, had been given emergency shelter and helped to find a more permanent home and begin a new life. It was a charity that subsequently attracted the interest of Princess Diana and her two sons, Princes William and Harry.

While our son was helping there, a News of the World snooper (I suppose that he would have called himself an investigative journalist!) pretended that he was homeless and was welcomed; thereby taking a place that could have helped a truly homeless young person! He discovered that circumstances sometimes made it necessary for homeless boys and girls to sleep in the same room, though obviously in separate bunks. His sensational story, suggesting that Centrepoint was little more than a Charity-run brothel, discouraged and disheartened volunteers and donors – and probably resulted in some homeless young people preferring to take their chance in shop doorways and bus shelters! I am glad to say that Centrepoint recovered from the scandal and went on from strength to strength.

I am equally glad that the News of the World hasn’t make a similar recovery from the scandal that engulfed it, even though I suspect that it has been sacrificed in the greater interests of the Murdoch Empire, and that it will before long re-appear with a different title, but much the same ethics. I only hope that no-one suggests that its closure means that ‘a line has been drawn under the matter’. On the contrary, the public enquiries already set in place should be pursued with increased rigour. They should be conducted by a judge, and witnesses required to give evidence under oath, so that those who lie can be prosecuted for perjury. Serious consideration should also be given to the ownership of newspapers and radio and tv stations that can sway public opinion and win or lose British elections.

I have found degrading in the extreme, the spectacle of British Prime Ministers (Mrs Thatcher, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron – they’ve all done it) humbly seeking the favourable attention of a foreign newspaper proprietor!

I abhor petty nationalism and I hope that no one would accuse me of being xenophobic. I do feel very strongly though that British news media should always be under widely distributed British ownership and control. Popular newspapers or tv stations, controlled by those who do not share our history, and our cultural and moral values, can do far more harm to the British ethos than many thousands of the immigrant Poles, Slovaks and other East Europeans that UKIP and BNP supporters and their like worry so much about.

Mrs Rebekah Brooks


Mrs Rebekah Brooks is a colourful figure at the very centre of the scandal that led to the demise of the News of the World. A friend of the Cameron family (yes, our Prime Minister and his family) and promoted to Chief Executive of News International, she was that scurrilous Sunday newspaper’s editor at the time that the alleged phone hacking and bribery of police officers was taking place. The editor of any newspaper or magazine is ultimately responsible for the publication’s content and for the behaviour of its reporters, journalists and other staff. It is with the editor that, as they say in Mr Rupert Murdoch’s adopted homeland, ‘the buck stops’.

That being so, it is surely extraordinary that she has made no admission of guilt or responsibility, has no intention of resigning her office and doesn’t expect News International’s ‘emperor’ to require her to do so. In this, she is clearly correct. Mr Murdoch has initiated a stringent internal enquiry into what has been going wrong with the News of the World - under the leadership of Mrs. Brooks.

This is surely rather as though Hitler having heard, for the first time, disquieting rumours about what was going on in Auschwitz, were to have put Heinrich Himmler in charge of a thorough investigation there! Why, I wonder, is Mrs Brooks so confident of her position? Why is Mr Murdoch so supportive of a senior member of his staff from whom he might have been expected to wish to dissociate himself. Could it be that she is, in some way beyond my knowledge or understanding, a keystone of News International and in a position to bring that mighty Empire tumbling in ruins about our ears?

An on-going story!

It was just before the weekend that I wrote the above – yet already the story has changed. The News of the World is no longer. Another journalist has been arrested. Rupert Murdoch has flown over from the USA to exert personal control. Mrs Brooks is no longer heading an internal investigation but is to be interviewed by the police. She is, so we are assured, not being interviewed as a suspect but as a witness.

When Andy Coulson left Lewisham Police Station after he had been helping the police with their enquiries, his remark that ‘there is a lot I would like to say, but cannot right now’, may well have sent a shiver down several well-heeled spines! In ‘Midsomer County’ it would have presaged the early departure of the speaker from this world, and yet another case for Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby!

Come to think of it, the present situation has all the ingredients of a first class tv drama – a sleazy newspaper, a cosmopolitan news media billionaire, corrupt coppers and an utterly ruthless but glamorous redhead with a fatal charm that gains her entrée to the highest circles. You really couldn’t have made it up!

I can’t wait for the next instalment!

Some News from Suffolk

Despite having lived in Essex for well over half my life, I still think of myself as being essentially ‘a Suffolk Swedebasher’. I have been interested therefore in the saga of Mrs. Andrea Hill, Suffolk County Council’s Chief Executive and one of the highest paid local government officers in the country - and that is saying quite a lot!

Appointed in 2008 on a salary of £218,000 a year, many of her colleagues had disliked what was claimed to have been her ‘domineering management style’. An Independent Enquiry into allegations of bullying, harassment and irregular expenses claims, was launched after the body of David White, the County Council’s Head of Legal Services had been found hanging in Butley Woods near Ipswich. She has been on extended leave with full pay since Easter, while this Enquiry took place.

The result has now been made known. A statement from the county council says that it is satisfied that ‘there was no evidence to support claims of bullying or harassment, or that Mrs Hill was in any way responsible for Mr White’s death. With regard to the expenses claims it had been concluded that there had been no dishonesty but that, ‘some of her claims might not have represented the best use of public money’

It was agreed that Mrs White would resign her post forthwith, with the ‘golden handshake’ of a year’s pay - £218,000. No doubt that was dictated by the terms of her contract on appointment. It isn’t too difficult though to imagine the reaction of former Suffolk County Council employees who will have received a pittance on being made redundant during her period of office.

I learn from the local Gazette that Colchester as well as Suffolk had had the benefit of Mrs Hill’s services. From 2001 until 2004 she had headed Colchester Borough Council’s Management Team, on a salary in the region of £80,000 a year, before departing ‘to fresh fields and pastures new’. In this position she is said to have initiated Colchester’s ‘Firstsite Art Gallery Project’, a frequent inspiration of angry and indignant letters in the local press. It is three years behind schedule and, says the daily Gazette, likely to end up costing £28 million!

Colchester’s outspoken Lib.Dem MP Bob Russell is quoted as saying, ‘I considered her tenure at Colchester Council to have been a disaster. Council taxpayers of Colchester will be paying for decades to come’.


A ‘Family Friendly’ Government?

That’s what they say – but the facts contradict this claim.. All the evidence suggests that the second decade of the 21st Century is a distinctly unpropitious time to be raising a family – except of course for those who, like most of the friends and relatives of our top politicians, are seriously wealthy. For them the purchase of food and other items on which most of us have to spend a large part of our total income, will only form a small fraction of their expenditure.

A report in the Church of England newspaper ‘The Church Times’ reveals that a survey for the Quaker founded Joseph Rowntree Foundation (it is circumstances like this that make me doubly happy about my dual membership!) has found that ‘Families need to earn 20 percent more this year than last year if they are to maintain an acceptable standard of living’. What is an ‘acceptable standard of living’? The Church Times says, ‘Since 2008 the JRF has gathered information about focus groups to set a benchmark for what it considers to be ‘an acceptable standard of living’. The benchmark is set at a level that rules out extravagances but allows for such items as a mobile phone and a self-catering holiday in the UK once a year. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

The JRF found that parents with two children needed to earn £18,400 each to reach that standard – a total of £36,800, both parents working full time. This compares with £28,727 a year ago. Families with just one earner need gross earnings of £31,200 and a lone parent would need to be earning £18.200 to meet the minimum acceptable standard of living. The worst hit are those claiming credits for child care, who need to meet a 24 percent shortfall to maintain their standard of living. The official cost of living rose by 4.5 percent in the year to April but the price of ‘essential items’ rose from between 4.7 and 5.7 percent in the same period because of a sharp increase in the price of food during the past year.

Author of the report, Donald Hirsch from Loughborough University says, ‘In practice, earnings have risen by less than inflation, meaning that people on low incomes are finding it substantially harder to make ends meet than a year ago.

‘The squeeze in living standards, caused by the combination of rising prices and stagnant incomes, is hitting people on low incomes hard……in particular the reduction in support for child care has made many low-earning families worse off, it has substantially reduced the incentive to work for relatively low pay, for families who need to use child care in order to do so'.


Meanwhile fuel prices have gone up yet again. Many – particularly the poorest of us – are going to face a stark choice this coming winter: Heat or Eat? They’ll be hard put to it to manage both.

 Family Friendly? I don’t think so.