Week11 2014

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Echoes from 1982

          On 10^th July 1982, over forty years ago, bombs planted by the Provisional IRA exploded in London’s Hyde Park and Regent’s Park killing eleven soldiers, members of the Household Cavalry, and seven of their horses.  Echoes of those explosions have travelled down the years to 2014 – to make press headlines and to cast a little light on a feature of the Good Friday Agreement, that was apparently unknown to thos now responsible for governing that troubled province of the UK.

            John Downey, a former IRA member, had been arrested and was about to stand trial on suspicion of implication in those bomb outrages, but was released on the orders of the Judge when he produced a letter from the Northern Irish Constabulary assuring him that he was not ‘wanted by the police’ for any offence committed during the ‘troubles’.  At first it was suggested that this letter had been a one-off error made by the Northern Irish Police but it later became known that some 180 similar letters had been sent to other suspected republican terrorists ‘on the run’.  It was a promise amounting (at least in the recipients’ minds) to an amnesty.  It had been sent to republican suspected terrorists only and not extended either to ‘loyalists’ or to the British soldiers involved  in the ‘Bloody Sunday’ event in Londonderry.

            Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland’s First Minister, who has the almost-impossible job of holding together an uneasy power-sharing government of loyalists and republicans, claims that he had known nothing of these letters. He is said to have been ‘incandescent with rage’ when he heard of them.  He threatened to resign his post unless there was an immediate judicial enquiry into the whole matter – and David Cameron has agreed that there should be one, reporting its findings at the end of May

It has been suggested that the letters were promised to Sinn Fein by Tony Blair in order to ensure their compliance, without involving others involved in the Good Friday agreement, They were kept secret, rather like the contents of the cosy chats between Tony Blair and President Bush that took place before a majority of members of the House of Commons were deceived into endorsing the illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq.  

It could be that it was only by means of that distinctly one-sided agreement that the present uneasy peace in Northern Ireland was secured.  I ask myself though whether a good conclusion can ever be achieved by dishonest means.  Some time ago I commented in this blog that making Tony Blair the United Nation’s ‘special peace envoy’ to the Middle East was rather like making one of the Kray brothers a Chief Constable.  Nothing has since happened to alter that opinion.

‘Why don’t they eat cake?’

            If, during the final decade of the twentieth century, you had asked an acquaintance or friend their opinion of Food Banks, they would probably have thought you were deranged.  Banks deal with money, not food. We had yet to experience the brave new world of the 21^st century!   You might have received a more positive answer in the USA because Food Banks, providing basic sustenance for the hungry poor, had been established there from 1967.   They were ‘wholesalers’ rather than ‘retailers’ though – collecting and storing donated food items and sending them, in bulk, to approved charities for distribution to those in need.

            European countries, including the UK, generally had better national social services than those in the USA and the need for Food Banks didn’t arise until nearly four decades later – in 2006.  Now they are the United Kingdom’s fastest growing voluntary service, with over 400 such banks nation-wide and growing every week.  In 2013 they fed nearly 347,000 people!  The number of applicants has grown as the Government’s welfare cuts have taken effect.  To obtain help, applicants need to get a voucher from a professional such as a local authority social worker. On presenting the voucher to the food bank they are given sufficient food for three days.

           

            Most Food Banks are co-ordinated by the Trussell Trust and are associated with Christian Churches, in accordance with Jesus Christ’s declaration that we should treat other people as we ourselves would wish to be treated.  It is very heartening that the Bishops of the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church, together with the leaders of the Free Churches, are giving their enthusiastic support, while at the same time criticising government policies that have created the need for the food banks.   Some fifty percent of the food distributed is donated by members of the public.  Some is given by private enterprises such as supermarkets and many Food Banks are supported, in one way or another, by the local authority of the district in which they are situated.

                                                   

                                                         A cartoon from the ‘Observer’

           

In my own town of Clacton-on-Sea (which includes the Brooklands area of Jaywick, said to be the UK’s most deprived area) the Food Bank is run by the Salvation Army with the support of other Christian traditions in the town including, of course, Clacton Quakers of which I am a member.

            The need for Food Banks has increased as the Chancellor’s attacks on the meagre incomes of the poor have begun to bite, though the government insists that this increase is simply because ‘scroungers’ have discovered in them a source of free food and that ‘there is no robust evidence of a link between the increase in demand for Food Banks and the welfare reforms’. It has even been suggested that some recipients of food parcels have sold on their contents!   How robust, I wonder, does evidence have to be to convince those who don't wish to be persuaded.  The fact that food parcels are dispensed only to those presenting a voucher from a welfare professional, is surely a deterrent to ‘frivolous and fraudulent applicants’.

            I have just watched a very striking programme on the tv about Food Banks and the valuable service they provide.  To provide ‘balance’ a number of denigrators of Food Banks were interviewed, including former Cabinet Minister Edwina Curry.  I’d be very surprised if any one of them has ever felt the pangs of real hunger.  Some of their comments made Marie Antoinette’s alleged suggestion that if the poor of Paris couldn’t get bread ‘they should eat cake’ seem positively liberal and benign! 

The Price of Postage Stamps

Like me, you may have thought that that massive increase in the cost of sending mail that we endured last year (First Class minimum postage 60p, Second Class 50p!) was the last we’d have to put up with for a year or two; especially as privatisation, which took place just a couple of months ago, was supposed to be going to be giving us a better, more efficient, service.

We were wrong.  Postage charges are going up again - from 1^st April which is not an inappropriate date!   First class stamps are to go up to 62p (an increase of 3.3 percent) from that date, and second class ones from 50 to 53p (an increase of 6 percent).   I’m glad that I bought enough of those attractive Madonna and Child Christmas stamps to see me through several months of the new financial year.  They’ll prove to have been quite an investment, though nothing like that of the investors who bought shares in Royal Mail at the ridiculously low price of 330p a share.  They have seen their investment almost double to £6.00 a share since they made their purchase.

It is easy to forget that whenever a public service is privatised its main purpose changes from serving the public to satisfying the shareholders!

Spring is here!

A fortnight ago I published a picture with my blog, of a few daffodils around the eating apple tree in my garden, just coming into bloom in late February.  Now in early March, as you can see, they are all in full bloom. 

 Spring 2014 really is here!  

 These daffodils have a special significance for me.  From the kitchen window of our bungalow, my wife Heather watched them grow, bloom and wither, year after year, It was where those daffodils bloom that, nearly eight years ago, I scattered her ashes after sixty years of happy marriage. I hope that when the time comes my ashes too may be scattered there.

 

 

         

Week 21.10

Tendring Topics………on Line

‘The year’s at the spring……

……..and the day’s at the morn’, just as Robert Browning declared in Pippa Passes. And, as I write that is exactly as it is. For the past few days we have been free of that arctic north wind. The sun has shone, temperatures have risen and the forecasters suggest that the situation won’t change too much for at least the remainder of the week*.

Spring really is here – and I am particularly full of its joys because I have just celebrated, very happily, my eighty-ninth birthday and I am now in my ninetieth year! This might not seem much of an occasion for celebration. I am very conscious of failing eyesight and hearing, and of short-term memory loss. Walking is difficult, and I have my share of aches and pains.

The rear view of my bungalow in May
with my eating-apple tree in full blossom.

However, my New Year resolution for 2009 was, as the children’s hymn says, ‘to count my blessings, count them one by one’, and – with one or two regrettable lapses – I have tried to do that ever since.

I really do have a great many blessings to count. I live in the comfortable bungalow that has been my home for the past fifty-four years. I have no debts and an adequate income. I have an electric mobility scooter that saves me from being housebound and enables me to get to the church services and Quaker Meeting that have become an increasingly important part of my life. I no longer enjoy reading as I once did, but I can enjoy tv, radio, DVDs and video tapes; and I have stored in my still-functioning long-term memory great tracts of poetry and prose some of it dating back to my infancy.

I am very fortunate in being still able, with the aid of my lap-top, to exercise and enjoy the one real skill that I have ever possessed, that of stringing words together into a readable narrative. I have recently self-published Zittau….and I, an account of my relationship with that small German town where I was once a POW but in which I now have good friends. I have just completed, for the interest of my sons, grandchildren and great-grandchildren (if any!), my autobiography and, of course, I write and publish this blog week after week.

Most important of all, I am upheld by the love of a great many friends and relations who have meant so much to me since the loss, after sixty years of marriage, of my dear wife Heather. For my birthday I received over thirty messages of love and friendship in birthday cards, letters, emails and text messages. During our marriage, possibly because of Heather’s always fragile health, I felt little need for friends, though Heather had a great many, with most of whom she kept in touch by correspondence. It is since her life came to an end that I have known the real value of friendship with the sort of friend who can always be depended upon. Such friendships, together with the love and support of every member of my extended family, have really been my greatest blessing.

Heather and I, aged 65 and 67

St. Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians says that there are three things that endure for all eternity, Faith, Hope and Love. My faith is weak and full of doubt. I have never lacked love though, and I am sustained by the fervent hope that some time, perhaps in the not-too-distant future, Heather and I will be reunited in another better world beyond time and space.

So far thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent till
The night has gone.
Then with the dawn, that angel face will smile
That I have loved long since, and lost the while.

I am sure that the late Cardinal Newman would forgive me my tiny alteration to the penultimate line of his hymn, ‘Lead Kindly Light’.

* That was last week!

Back to Politics!

Reading about our new Coalition Government’s immediate programme made me think about some of its predecessor’s acts and omissions.

Who would have thought that after 13 years’ rule of a Political Party that was formed for no other purpose than to further the interests of ordinary working people, it would be left to their Conservative-led opponents and successors to call time on the ever-spiralling salaries and bonuses of top civil servants and local government officers, and to realize that there must be a reasonable relationship between the incomes of the highest and the lowest paid of any organisation?

Who too, would have imagined that that same New-Labour Government would in 2008, almost simultaneously abolish the 10p income tax rate which had helped the low paid, and reduce the Capital Gains Tax from 40 percent to 18 percent, putting more cash into the pockets of the already wealthy?

The same government encouraged twenty-four hour drinking, planned further airport expansion, wanted to introduce identity cards and blindly followed the most reactionary American President in recent history into an illegal war in Iraq and an unwinnable conflict in Afghanistan.

That government made no attempt to redress two of the most obviously unfair and inept actions of their Conservative predecessors – the severing of the link between average earnings and state pensions, and the ‘right to buy’ legislation that compelled and still compels local authorities to sell at bargain basement prices, homes provided by their predecessors to facilitate slum clearance and prevent overcrowding. It was legislation that destroyed scores of rural communities, increased homelessness and contributed to the soaring house price inflation of the turn of the millennium, thus playing a part in the creation of the current financial crisis.

When, way back in the 16th Century Archbishop Thomas Cranmer wrote the words of the general confession for use in Anglican Morning and Evening Prayer, he might almost have had that future New-Labour Government in mind:

‘We have done those things that we ought not to have done and have left undone those things that we ought to have done, and there is no health in us

Coming home to roost?

Do you remember the excitement a year or so ago when Essex County Council announced that it was setting up its own bank? It was at the height of the world financial crisis. Struggling Essex businesses were finding it almost impossible to get loans. Some promising firms were facng failure. Mass unemployment threatened.

‘Knight-in-shining-armour’ Lord Hanningfield rode in to the rescue. The County Council, he told us, would under his far-sighted leadership set up its own bank. £50 million (of our money!) would be made available, offering quick loans to up-and-coming but still struggling Essex businesses. It was a new bright idea that earned universal press headlines and almost universal praise.

I was doubtful, and said so in this column. This was not because I knew anything at all about Banking. I didn't and don’t. However I did know that Essex County Council had been taken to task for failings in its child protection service and that its other statutory services had been judged by the Audit Commission to be no more than ‘adequate’. Was it likely, I thought, that an authority that had not made a striking success of duties with which it is charged by law, would succeed in a field in which it had no previous experience whatsoever? I also wondered whether eligibility for a loan might depend upon acquaintance with influential councillors rather than on need and suitability.

Lord Hanningfield gave his interviews and his photo opportunities, and made his statements. The press published their headlines and departed to pastures new. The Bank of Essex was left to its own devices……..and flopped.

During its operation it has made a mere ten loans, totalling £29,000. What’s more, those who have applied for loans have experienced just the same long delays that they did with commercial banks. I suppose that we may console ourselves with the thought that not much of that £50 million has been put at risk.

The ‘Daily Gazette’ comments, ‘The Essex County Council Bank was supposed to be a different animal from other banks. If it cannot fulfil that remit, then it is time to shut up shop, as it looks increasingly like a folly’.

I wonder how the County Council’s other ground-breaking schemes are fairing? There was the County Council branch office, deep within the People’s Republic of China, that was going to find export markets for Essex firms, and there was the idea of putting most of the County Council’s statutory services out to private tender. I hope that Walton’s Naze Protection Society has received and safely banked the money promised by the County Council for their ‘Crag Walk’.

Empire Day!

I shall hope to publish this blog on the web during the evening of Tuesday, 25th May. I wonder how many – if any – of its readers remember that 24th May used to be called Empire Day. It was one of the days, including the Christian Festivals of Easter, Whitsun and Christmas, of national celebration that punctuated each year in the decades prior to World War II.

At my primary school on Empire Day we would march round the playground and salute the flag (yes, we really did!) and the glories of the Empire would be extolled by the Headmaster at morning assembly. At my all-boys secondary school, celebration was a little more subdued. The Union Flag would, of course, be flown. There would be a special prayer for the Empire and its people at assembly and we would sing Kipling’s Recessional – ‘God of our fathers, known of old…..’ We certainly didn’t realize how prophetic the line ‘Our faded pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre’ would prove to be! At some time during the day we would be addressed by a visiting speaker from the Bahamas, Bechuanaland, Bombay or some other far-flung outpost. He or she (it was once a very sun-tanned lady!)who would show us all the red on the map distinguishing the Empire on which ‘the sun never sets’ and tell us about the splendid careers in the Colonies awaiting young fellows seeking adventure!

If anyone had told us that before the end of the century the Empire would have disappeared, and that most people would think that that was a good thing, we would have been sure that they were crazy.

Well, it has disappeared and I don’t suppose that many people are very sorry. On the other hand, I don’t think that we need to be too apologetic. There have been plenty of worse Empires and I reckon that in several former parts of ours many of the inhabitants lived happier, more peaceful lives under British rule than they do today. We relinquished our control without too much acrimony and without too much bloodshed – which is more than can be said for most other Empires.

I doubt if I’m the only octogenarian who feels just a little nostalgia for those self-confident and self-congratulatory Empire Days of the past!

Week 8.10

Tendring Topics…….on Line

‘If winter comes…….

Can spring be far behind?’ This was the rhetorical question with which Shelley ended his ‘Ode to the West Wind’. The answer surely is ‘I suppose not’. In 2010 though, it is not an affirmation that I can make with conviction. I was surely tempting fate when, a fortnight ago in this blog, I drew attention to the fact that the weather on Candlemas (2nd February) was ‘dull with rain’ and that weather folklore insisted that ‘winter had gone and would not come again’.

Hardly had I posted that blog on ‘the web’ before the temperature dropped like a stone and we woke up to see once again a sprinkling of snow on our gardens and on the roads and pavements. It didn’t last. Since then, although we have had some sunny days, the temperatures have hovered around freezing point day and night and the threat of snow has refused to go away. There is another piece of weather folklore (there is something to suit every situation!) that certainly has been all too accurate. ‘As the days grow longer, the cold gets stronger’.

The days are, at least, getting longer. It is now light at 7.00 a.m. and darkness doesn’t begin to fall until after 5.00 p.m. I am an early riser, particularly on Sundays when I usually go to the 8.00 a.m. service at St. James’ Church. Backing my mobility scooter out of the shed in the dark at 7.00 a.m. and, muffled up in winter coat with fur hat and sheepskin gloves, driving on it through Clacton’s almost deserted streets in semi-darkness at 7.30, was a less-than-cheering experience.

What’s more, I notice that (whatever may have happened to the green shoots of economic recovery!) the green shoots of daffodils are appearing round the apple tree in my garden and there are two or three snowdrops in flower. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, was on 17th February and Easter is now less than six weeks away. Be it never so tardy, spring really is on the way!

You can just see the daffodil shoots at the foot of my apple tree and, to their left, you can just see two or three snowdrops. Photo taken on 12th February.

Save our Circus!

‘Save our Circus’, is a slogan that nowadays, could usually be guaranteed to raise the ire of Animal Rights activists. When used in Colchester though, it has nothing to do with performing animals and everything to do with the preservation and exploitation of a unique archaeological discovery in ‘England’s oldest recorded town’.

Archaeological excavations in 2004 and 2005 revealed a Roman ‘circus’ or chariot-racing track within the area of the garrison, south of the town centre and outside the town wall but. This is the only such reminder of the four hundred years of Roman occupation that has been found in Britain and is therefore of unique archaeological and general interest.

The circus’s starting gates are buried within the garden of the now-derelict Victorian Sergeants’ Mess. This belongs to a property developer who had intended to build flats on the site. He is however, prepared to sell it to the Colchester Archaeological Trust for £200,000. The original deadline for this sale was the end of January but this deadline has been extended to the end of this month.

The idea is that the starting gate area should be properly excavated, preserved and opened up to the public under a protective covering, and that there should be a heritage centre provided where there could be a plan of the original circus, a description of its use and, of course, information about other historical and archaeological sites (the Balkerne Gate, the Castle, the Town Wall, the Siege House and so on) in and around the town. By mid-February the appeal was only £27,000 short of its target and several more fund-raising events were planned. I have every hope that the appeal will succeed.

I certainly hope so. It is a splendid idea and a very worthwhile cause. I have often thought that more should be done to exploit the tourist potential of northeast Essex and the Stour Valley as a European Tourist Region. Colchester, with its Roman and Boudiccan archaeological heritage and its reminders of the English Civil War, is a natural centre for the region. Within half an hour’s drive is the ‘Constable country’ of Dedham Vale with the unforgettable villages of Dedham and East Bergholt (with Flatford Mill). Next there’s the beautiful tidal Stour beginning at Manningtree, England’s smallest town, and terminating at historic Harwich. Then on round the Tendring Coast, with its high sunshine records and low rainfall. Dovercourt, Walton-on-the-Naze, Frinton, Clacton-on-Sea, St. Osyth and Brightlingsea, each has its own unique character and atmosphere. Together they offer everything that could be asked from a seaside holiday.

I believe that the local authorities from that area should get together to publicise the attractions of the whole area as the ideal holiday destination from the rest of Great Britain and from the European mainland.

We oldies again!

Yes, we oldies are getting the blame again. On his death-bed King Charles II is said to have apologised for being, ‘an unconscionably long time dying’ - and it seems that that is just what we octogenarians and nonagenarians are doing. The Daily Gazette reports that, Colchester’s cemetery and crematorium are facing financial problems because, so the council claims, 'fewer people are dying’.

Councillor Tim Young, who is responsible for the provision of burial and cremation facilities in Colchester is reported as saying, ‘Staff have told me they think it is partly down to the introduction of the winter fuel allowance. Usually in a cold winter like this here would be more deaths, but that has not been the case’.

Oh dear! We have clearly been ignoring the advice given one of the ‘commandments’ in 19th Century poet Arthur Hugh Clough’s satirical poem, The Latest Decalogue:

Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive
Officiously to keep alive.

Colchester Council’s answer to this stubbornness on the part of the elderly, has been to make a modest increase of between one and three percent in cemetery and cremation charges. The opposition Conservative Group has a more radical solution in mind. They would hand over the running of the cemetery to a private company to save money.

I wonder how that would work? The usual commercial inducements ('Buy one, get one free') hardly apply.


The provision of the means of interment or cremation is a service entrusted to local authorities as representatives of their communities. It is the final service that they can render to their citizens. The idea of passing that service on to a commercial enterprise that will hope to make a profit from it and, simultaneously and miraculously, 'save money' for the Council is one that I find extremely distasteful; a 'vote loser' if there ever was one!

Time ('like an ever-rolling stream') will eventually solve Colchester’s problem. All that is needed on the part of the authorities is the exercise of a little patience. Nobody escapes the attention of the grim reaper forever. As Shakespeare put it:

Golden boys and girls all must
Like chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

So must I, and so must even the most resilient of OAPs!

Some good ideas

It is surprising how often Conservative Leader David Cameron seems to strike the right key with my sensibilities yet somehow fails to produce quite the right note.

I am, for instance, totally in agreement with his contention that children these days are being robbed of their childhood but (apart from the absurd conviction that more and ever-earlier sex education will reduce the number of schoolgirl pregnancies) I don’t really think that schools are mainly responsible for this. I would blame tv programmes, in particular tv advertising viewed in the home, and the break-up of ‘normal’ family life resulting from both parents being at work all day and returning home too tired to spend leisure time with their children.

The Conservative suggestion that Head Teachers rather than Education Authorities should be responsible for deciding what advertising and sponsorships should be permitted in schools is a ridiculous one. There is just a chance that a responsible education authority may make wise and disinterested judgements on this issue. A Head Teacher, desperately needing some item of educational equipment obtainable by giving way to commercial interests, would be much more likely to yield to temptation. The best answer would be to make a universal prohibition of any form of advertising or sponsorship within school premises.

Then there’s David Cameron’s idea of turning public services into co-operative ventures, managed and run by those who are engaged in them. It sounds a good idea to me – but why limit it to public services. The extremely successful John Lewis Partnership shows that the idea is at least equally, perhaps even more, appropriate for private enterprise.

I believe that the big mistake made by the Labour Government that I helped into power in 1945, was their belief that public ownership of the means of production and distribution could only be achieved by the creation of vast nationalised corporations, mimicking instead of replacing those of the commercial world.

They might have been more successful had they proceeded more slowly, accepting that public ownership could be achieved by municipalisation rather than nationalisation (many local authorities were successfully running hospitals, public transport, water supply, gas and electricity services before World War II) and by the creation of employee co-operatives and partnerships.

Such a policy would have been unlikely to create an earthly paradise. It would however undoubtedly have narrowed the currently ever-widening gap between the richest and the poorest of our society that is responsible for many of today’s ills. Had Cadbury’s been an employee partnership (an outcome that I am sure its founder would have welcomed) it would never have been taken over by a foreign enterprise having no interest in its British employees. Nor, if Press and tv were run by such partnerships, would it be possible for foreign business tycoons, who do not share our history, culture and moral values, and do not pay our taxes, to own and control the sources of information and the means of popular persuasion in this country.

Week 13.09

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘The Year’s at the Spring….

…………and the day’s at the morn.
The lark’s on the wing, and the snail’s on the thorn.
Morning’s at seven, the hillside’s dew-pearled.
God’s in his Heaven; all’s right with the World’

So sang Pippa, in Browning’s poem ‘Pippa Passes’, on a very similar morning and at much the same time as that on which I am typing these words. It would be a gross exaggeration to suggest that all is right with today’s world, and I hope and believe that God isn’t confined to ‘his Heaven’ but is also present and active in his Creation.

Otherwise, I fully endorse Pippa’s sentiments. Even a world-weary old man like me feels a lift in his heart on such a morning, especially when looking out of the kitchen window I see the daffodils, golden in the early sunshine, blooming round the apple tree in my garden. Mind you the scene also brings back memories of the many, many similar spring mornings on which I looked out of that window at those same golden daffodils with Heather, my wife for sixty years, who is sadly no longer with me.

Wind-farm Progress

On recent visits to Clacton both my sons and daughters-in-law have driven along the sea front to see any signs of the developing wind-farm. There hasn’t really been a great deal to be seen. Some kind of structure was just visible and one or more craft near it were the only evidence that anything was taking place.

All that is due to change within the next few weeks. The Danish construction company’s heavy lift ship Titan 2 is getting ready for service at Harwich and will very shortly sail out to the Gunfleet Sands to erect the first turbine. Six of these have already arrived from Denmark and are to be erected on the foundations that have been prepared for them during the past six months.

The turbines will be commissioned in phases as they are erected and the electric cables between each turbine and the off-shore substation laid. It is expected that the first group will be fully operational before the end of the summer. The work of installation will continue until its completion some time next year. When the wind-farm is complete it is expected that it will generate 172 megawatts, enough electricity to meet the needs of 120,000 homes ….the equivalent of 90 percent of the homes in Colchester and the Tendring District.

Solar Heating Progress

It is good to see a ‘green’ project being pursued with vigour and, despite the vagaries of wind and weather, adhering to a timetable laid down many months ago.

I wish that I could feel quite the same of progress toward the installation of a solar powered water heating system for my bungalow, which should reduce markedly my own dependence upon gas for water heating (but see Late News on the Solar Front at the end of this item) It got off to a splendid start. Little more than a week after I had made my first tentative enquiry Sunmaster Solar Energy Systems’ surveyor had inspected my bungalow, made notes of my bungalow’s requirements and had confirmed my own belief that the solar heating installation would prove to be a pretty straight-forward job. Scarcely more than a week after that I had a phone call to inform me that the next day would see the fitting of the solar heating panels on my roof. This would be followed by a date on which the internal plumbing alterations and the connection of the solar heating system to the existing hot water supply system would take place.

Exactly as promised two very pleasant young men arrived with their van and did the necessary work on the roof of my bungalow quickly and efficiently. They fitted two solar panels, together with two much smaller panels one on each side of them. The purpose of these (photo-electric cells?) is to drive the pump that will circulate the antifreeze solution through the two solar panels and thence through my hot water system. The system will thus operate independently of the bungalow’s electricity supply.

The solar panels go up on my roof

The two young men told me that the remainder of the operation was usually carried out about a week after their visit. They advised me to phone Sunmaster Solar Energy Systems if I hadn’t heard from them by that time.

The roof job completed. To the left of the solar panels you can see the photo-electric cell operating the pump. My mobility scooter ('iron horse') complete with all-weather canopy, is in the foreground.

I didn’t hear from them and on 17th March I phoned as advised and asked when the job would be completed. The reply was unsettling. There was a component needed for my particular hot water system that they hadn’t yet been able to get hold of. They weren’t yet able to tell me when they’d be able to complete the job. Yes, they thought that it would be before Easter ….but couldn’t give a firm promise.

The claim that my system needed some unique component didn’t accord either with the assurance of the firm’s own surveyor that it would be a perfectly straightforward job, or with my own assessment of the situation.

It is a week later, and I have just phoned the firm again. This time I did at least learn which component it is that they're waiting for...........and it now makes sense. When the system is in operation water will be heated by the sun's radiation in a series of copper tubes within the glass-fronted solar panels on the roof. These will be connected to heat exchanging tubes within a heavily insulated copper cylinder in my roof space, thus heating the water in that cylinder.

The cold water supply to the hot water system will be connected to this cylinder instead of to the main storage cylinder below and a connecting pipe from the upper cylinder to the main one below will take its place. Thus all water flowing into the main storage cylinder will be pre-heated from the upper solar heated cylinder. In the winter it will supplement the boiler as a source of heat for hot water supply. In the summer it may well replace it altogether.

The missing component is, in fact, the special upper cylinder to be heated by the solar panels.

This is, of course, absolutely vital to the system and I am persuaded that the installers are doing their best to expedite its delivery. I shall just have to be patient. Sadly, I fear that those who know me best would not include patience among my most conspicuous characteristics!

Late News on the Solar Front!

I won't need to exercise my limited supply of patience after all. I wrote the above this morning (24th March) and at 3.45 p.m. this afternoon I received a phone call to say that the special cylinder had now arrived and that they would be calling on me tomorrow morning between 9.00 a.m. and 11.00 a.m., to complete the installation! I am more than pleased and hope that next week I'll be able to give you a glowing report of the system's installation and early functioning.

Golden (and diamond-studded!) Handshakes

When I referred a few weeks to Sir Fred Goodwin’s walking away from the ruins of the Royal Bank of Scotland, at the age of fifty, with a pension of nearly three quarters of a million pounds a year I really didn’t think that that was the last we would hear of the matter. Surely, I thought, either he will see the reason for the public outrage and relinquish at least part of that enormous pension, or the government will find some way of relieving him of it.

Well, I was right about our not having heard the last of the matter but quite wrong about Sir Fred losing any part of his pension either compulsorily or voluntarily. The latest news that we have heard about this sorry affair is that in addition to his almost three quarters of a million a year pension (well over £1,500 a day!!), he has received a lump sum payment of £3 million!

It certainly pays to be a top person! I have little doubt that if the irresponsibility or incompetence of any junior or middle ranking employees of the RBS had cost the bank even a few thousand pounds, they wouldn’t have been encouraged, urged or even bullied into resigning or taking early retirement. They’d have been summarily sacked!

Town Hall Jargon

I was both interested and pleased to see that the Local Government Association is campaigning to ban the use of ‘Town Hall jargon’ by local government officials. I hate it myself and hope that I never used it when I was a local government official. Words and phrases guaranteed to set my teeth on edge were ‘monies’ (instead of money), ‘human resources’ (instead of employees), ‘interface’, ‘multidisciplinary’, ‘scenario’ and ‘proactive’.

I also disliked people being asked on official forms not for their ‘sex’ but their ‘gender’. These days sexually explicit words that a generation or two ago would have resulted in the user being barred from any reputable pub, are heard daily on tv. Can we at the same time possibly have reached a stage in which ‘sex’ in its proper sense, ‘that which differentiates males from females’, has become a rude three-letter word that mustn’t on any account be used on official forms?

Among the Local Government Association’s pet hates are ‘blue sky thinking’, ‘can do culture’, ‘performance network’ and ‘lowlights’. Like me, they also include ‘interface’ among their dislikes.
‘Lowlights’, I have to say, is a word that I had never previously encountered. As the opposite of ‘highlights’ I can see that it could be quite effective. I can imagine myself using it sometime. Of the other phrases I share the LGA’s feelings but, like many of my own dislikes, I don’t think of them as being exclusively Town Hall jargon. Apart from ‘interface’ I heard none of them during my local government career and think that council officials who use them are imitating the go-ahead young men of the private sector. I can imagine them being part of the small-talk in an advertising agency, an insurance office or among ambitious young salesmen.

The late Sir John Betjeman lampooned this ‘new-speak’ in his poem The Executive, which clearly wasn’t referring to a Council official:

You ask me what it is I do. Well actually, you know
I’m partly a liaison man and partly PRO.
Essentially I integrate the current export drive
And basically I’m viable from ten o’clock till five

For vital off-the-record work (that’s talking transport-wise)
I’ve a scarlet Aston-Martin …and does she go? She flies!…….

……..and so on, in Sir John’s own special style.

A leading article in the Daily Gazette (recently the Coast Gazette and earlier the Evening Gazette) applauds the Local Government Association’s campaign. Dwellers in glass houses really should think twice though before throwing stones. It isn’t for nothing that sloppy, inaccurate and exaggerated writing is called journalese!

Post Office Local Banks?

‘What do Post Offices know about banking?’ asked a Radio 4 listener scornfully, at the suggestion that Post Offices might serve a useful role as local banks. ‘Quite a lot’, would have been my answer.

My current account has, for over half a century, been with the Co-op Bank. The nearest branch is in Colchester. However from my local (or any) Post Office I can with my debit card, draw up to £200 cash from my account at any time. I can also pay cheques into my account there and, when paying a visit to mainland Europe, can change my pounds sterling into Euros. Unspent Euros can be changed back again into pounds on my return.

Last year when I made such a trip I returned with forty Polish Zlotys and sixty Czech Krone in my wallet. My local post office couldn’t help but Clacton’s main post office in High Street instantly changed them back into pounds and pence.

The Post Office also manages savings accounts and insurances. Those, with the others I have mentioned, are I think something like three quarters of the services that ordinary people expect from a bank.

If some or all of the other services that we may seek in commercial banks were available from Post Offices, I would be very surprised if they failed to provide them at least as efficiently (and probably a lot less expensively!) than did those who have landed us in our current economic crisis.

‘A host of golden daffodils!’

These daffodils, possibly because they are on the north side of the church, are less advanced than those shown at the beginning of this blog. But this enormous host of ‘Easter Lilies’ will be a spectacular sight by the time the members of the congregation of St. James’ Church, Clacton gather for worship and thanksgiving on Easter morning! ‘Fluttering and dancing in the breeze,’ they will surely rival those in the Lake District that delighted and inspired William Wordsworth some two hundred years ago.