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.

Week 40.10 5th October 2010

Tendring Topics………on line

North of the Border!

Although I was born in Tidworth, a small garrison town on Salisbury Plain not far from Stone Henge, and have lived for the past fifty-five years in north Essex (fifty-four of them in my present home in Clacton’s Dudley Road), I still think of myself as a ‘Suffolk man’. My parents moved to Suffolk when I was five. I went to school and to my first job in Suffolk and I served in a Suffolk Territorial Regiment in World War II. After the war I lived and worked in Suffolk from 1948 to 1955. My elder son was born in the county and when I become heated my accent becomes more and more that of a rural Suffolk ‘swede-basher’! Consequently I probably take a greater interest in what is going on across our northern border than most Tendring residents.

A few weeks ago I commented on the problems that Essex County Council was encountering in its attempt to save money on a huge scale by outsourcing all its IT services to a giant international corporation. Now I learn that Suffolk County Council is outdoing them. They are putting virtually all their services out to private tender. That really is a revolutionary move – and one that horrifies me. The chief remaining function of the Council will presumably consist of occasionally meeting to consider tenders for the running of schools and further education establishments, social services, highways including footpaths and street lighting, refuse disposal and recycling, consumer protection and so on, and on, and on! The council will, I suppose, still need to employ specialist staff to police all these functions and make sure that they are carried out efficiently – or will that be done by yet another private firm, or perhaps by ‘Big Society’ volunteers?

The idea is, of course, based on the assumption that money will be saved because private enterprise is always more efficient than the public service. It seems to have been conveniently forgotten that the current crisis was not created by any failings of the public sector but by the irresponsibility and greed of financial services – arguably the most prestigious (and certainly the best paid!) area of the private sector!

It is clear to me that private enterprise will only do those jobs more cheaply, thus simultaneously saving money for the tax payers and producing profits for its share-holders, by savage reductions in staff numbers and reducing vital services or cutting them out altogether.

When, in the local government reorganisation of the early 1970s the possibility of Tendring District and Colchester becoming part of Suffolk was under consideration, I was one of a small minority in the area who thought it would be a good idea. (Even I though had to admit it would be just a little odd to have Essex University in an adjoining county!)

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am far from being an uncritical admirer of Essex County Council. However, these moves north of the border now make me feel that by staying in Essex on that occasion we may well have had a lucky escape!

Clacton's Martello Tower

Clacton has, of course, more than one Martello Tower – but the best-known one is on the landward side of Marine Parade West, and in front of Clacton Hospital. It has had a somewhat chequered past but it now seems possible that it will have a brighter future. Tendring Council has just granted planning permission for the provision of a tearoom and a museum within the building, and a ‘petting zoo’ in the large dry moat, likely to be especially popular with young children. This enterprise, expected to be up and running for next spring, is the brain-child of Tower leaseholders Roger Ling and Rosalie Robinson in partnership with Paul Nash, owner of the aquarium on Clacton Pier. Early residents of the mini-zoo will be two alpacas, two pigmy goats and two rabbits.
Nobody except me (one of the penalties of outliving most of my contemporaries!) seems to remember that something very similar was attempted there in the past. It was while my younger grandson, now in his late twenties, was still at primary school. It must therefore have been twenty or more years ago. He, with his dad and elder brother, were staying with us on holiday – and the two boys decided to go and see the miniature zoo at the Martello Tower. They came back in some distress, complaining that the few animals that were there were badly housed and, they thought, badly neglected. Shortly after that the Martello Zoo closed.

There is little chance of the present venture meeting a similar fate. Paul Nash, who has a local record of success with the Pier’s aquarium, will care for the animals and be in charge of the petting zoo. He is reported as being delighted with the news that the scheme now has planning permission, ‘It’s fantastic news and has made me very happy. We will have a big opening, hopefully with a celebrity, and it should be a big day’.

My own most vivid memories of that Martello Tower go back to the late 1950s. When I was first appointed as a public health inspector by Clacton Urban District Council, the two existing inspectors, the council’s cleansing foreman, and I, were expected to be the part-time weather observers, each of us doing one week in four throughout the year. For this we were paid the princely sum of £20 a year, on top of our salaries. £20 was worth a good deal more then than it is now but was still a very small and very hard-earned bonus!

That Martello Tower was the Council’s Weather Station. A ‘Stevenson’s Screen’ housing wet and dry, and maximum and minimum thermometers, was installed within a low fence on the grassy slope between the tower and Marine Parade West – near the top and just to the left of the path in my photograph above. A rain gauge was provided on the miniature golf course that in those days existed between the Martello Tower and the Hospital. On the roof of the Tower was a sunshine recorder. This consisted of a glass sphere, 4 or 5 inches in diameter (rather like a fortune teller’s ‘crystal ball’) contained within a framework holding a specially treated strip of cardboard, marked out in hours and minutes. As the sun moved across the sky the glass sphere acted as a magnifying lens, concentrating the sun’s rays onto the card, the progress of a burn-mark on the card giving an accurate record of the hours and minutes of sunshine.

Every evening at 6.00 p.m., Christmas Day and other public holidays alike, the weather observer on duty had to cross the drawbridge, unlock the door to the tower, climb the internal stone steps to the roof (there was no coastguard station there in those days) and change that cardboard sunshine record. It was a pleasant enough job on a summer’s evening but in December or January, by the light of an electric torch, in a howling gale and with rain or snow blowing in the air, it was not a job for the frail, the imaginative or the claustrophobic. It was all too easy to imagine that the ghost of one of the Duke of Wellington's 'redcoats' was watching from the shadows, deciding whether or not this intruder was one of Napoleon’s spies, intent on mischief!

‘All is safely gathered in……

……….e’re the winter storms begin’, says the well-known harvest hymn and most Christian churches will have celebrated their harvest thanksgiving services during the past few weeks.

During my childhood when ‘going to church on Sunday’ was rather more usual than it is today, churches would be packed for the evening ‘Harvest Festival’ service even if on most other Sunday evenings there were plenty of empty pews. We sang the well-loved harvest hymns We plough the fields and scatter…, Come, ye faithful people, come….., All things bright and beautiful….. and, in prayer, we would thank God for his bounty. Keen gardeners among the congregation (my father among them) would have vied with each other to grow enormous potatoes, vegetable marrows and pumpkins, long and perfectly formed runner beans, succulent cabbages and cauliflower, rosy apples and other garden produce with which to adorn the church on that occasion. These offerings were subsequently all passed on to local children’s homes or to hospitals in the area where they were much appreciated.

It is a practice that continues today as these pictures taken in St. James' Parish Church in Clacton last Sunday (3rd October), the day of the church's Harvest festival, demonstrate.

It is surely a good thing for Christians to gather together once a year to thank God for the harvest – and to give some of our surplus to those who need it. We become so used to buying all our food from the nearest supermarket that we tend to forget that everything that we eat and drink comes ultimately from the soil. We have lost the certain knowledge of former years that when a harvest failed, hunger, hardship and death followed. Then, our forebears knew all too well how much reason they had to be thankful when the harvest had been a bountiful one.

In some parts of the world a failed harvest is as devastating today as it was to our forefathers. In today’s global economy widespread crop failure affects us all, even if only by worldwide higher prices. This year climatic change has brought drought and bush fires to the Russian steppe, aborting or destroying crops and compelling the Russian government to embargo grain exports to ensure that there was sufficient left to feed its own people.

That same inexorable climatic change, largely the result of humankind’s own activities (even if our MP thinks otherwise!) has brought about devastating floods in Pakistan, drowning crops over thousands of acres of farm land and resulting in widespread homelessness, sickness and death. It will take all our efforts for several years to help the victims and restore normality – and who can be sure that there will not be equally devastating floods again next year?

Meanwhile, a short distance from the devastated areas a man-made catastrophe rumbles on in neighbouring Afghanistan and threatens to spread beyond that country’s borders. Every week brings its toll of British and American casualties, and every week innocent civilians are killed as our forces strive to destroy an elusive and unidentifiable enemy.

If only all the money, the resources and the energy that is devoted to death and destruction there, could be redirected to the succour of suffering humanity! Just think of the difference that those helicopters, the military transport and the thousands of fit, young, able-bodied young men and women (not to mention the ingenuity and energy expended in making and planting ‘improvised explosive devices’ and creating ambushes!) could make if they were redirected to Pakistan and used to save lives instead of to take them, to rebuild homes instead of destroy them!

Then we really would begin to see the fulfilment of the prayer that, even in this secular society, is uttered daily by the many thousands of faithful Christians:

‘Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven’