March 2015

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man’

            In Shakespeare’s Hamlet that was part of the advice that Polonius, a Danish courtier, gave to his son Laertes before the latter embarked on a trip to England, then a distant perilous country, full of temptations and pitfalls for a visiting young Dane with money in his pocket. 

 If Nick Clegg had heeded that advice five years ago I think it very unlikely that his Party would now be facing the possibility of humiliation in the coming General Election.  The Liberal Democrats didn’t really have to be junior partners in a very unequal coalition.  They could have let David Cameron form a minority government promising to support it for as long as it was possible to do so without breaking pledges that they had made to the electorate.

            But he allowed the promise of the empty title of Deputy Prime Minister and two or three Ministerial jobs for a few of his lieutenants to lure him into a coalition and – very shortly afterwards – to break spectacularly the pledge he had made to the electorate  about University Tuition fees.

            Before the last General Election I don’t recall that anyone expected it to result in a hung Parliament and an unequal Conservative/Lib.Dem. coalition.  This time two other parties, the Ukippers and the Greens are serious contenders nationwide and in Scotland the Scottish National Party will almost certainly overturn Labour’s domination of the electoral scene.  Few expect either of the two main parties to achieve an overall majority in the House of Commons. If we are again to have a coalition government which parties will coalesce to form one?

            Nick Clegg appears to be confident that the Liberal-Democrats will again hold the balance and have the choice between coalition with the Conservatives or Labour.  The opinion polls suggest otherwise and so, for what it’s worth, do I.   Since the Lib-Dems, in government, broke promises that they made to the electorate before the last election why should we imagine they’ll be any different now?  I voted for them then but they certainly won’t get my vote in May.  I’m not alone!

            In Scotland the SNP has come on in leaps and bounds since the referendum.   Nicola Sturgeon, their present Leader, seems to be a worthy successor of Alex Salmond. The Tories are evidently fearful that they will have sufficient successful election candidates to join a coalition with Labour and form a government. Many Labour hopefuls fear the same. Well, they certainly brought that possibility onto themselves.  If at the time of the referendum they had been a bit less enthusiastic about preserving the United Kingdom intact there would now be no Scottish MPs at Westminster.   Both Ed Miliband and Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, have said that there will be no such coalition but, of course, politicians don’t believe other politicians’ promises any more than the rest of us do!     

            If there are a substantial number of Scottish MPs I think it likely that they’ll do what the Lib.Dems. should have done last time; support a minority government for as long as its policies are acceptable to them but try to amend or defeat them when they are not.   They won’t get any seats in the government that way but ‘What profiteth it a man (or a political party) to gain the whole world – and lose his soul?’

            A much more sinister, and I fear more likely, outcome of the General Election could be that UKIP will form a coalition with a minority Conservative government, with Nigel Farage as Deputy PM and several Ukip MPs (almost certainly our own turn-coat MP Douglas Carswell would be among them) in senior government posts. The flamboyant and charismatic Nigel Farage would soon outshine the present PM and the Chancellor in the public eye, and probably in the eyes of a substantial number of hard-line Tory MPs.  Farage’s career has, so far, mirrored that of Adolf Hitler in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s.  I fear a future in which he acquired real power.

            But it may well be that all these anxieties and hopes are groundless.  Such is our first-past-the-post electoral system that perhaps, to everyone’s surprise, either the Conservative or the Labour Party will secure a commanding majority and rule the country for the next five years.  If that is so then I can confidently predict  the future outcome:  Britain’s future will not be anything like as happy and as prosperous as supporters of the ruling party promise – but neither will it be quite as disastrous as opponents of that ruling party fear.

            In May I fully intend to vote for the Green Party candidate.  The Greens won’t form a government and it’s unlikely that they’ll be asked to take part in any coalition.  In my own Clacton-on-Sea constituency it’s very improbable that, with our present first-past-the-post electoral system, the Green Candidate will be elected.  I may help him save his deposit though (the Greens rely on the support of its thousands of members.  Unlike other parties, they have neither multimillionaires nor trade unions financing them), and nationally I will add to the number of Green voters.  ‘This above all’ I shall be being true to myself and voting for a party whose policies I wholeheartedly endorse; a party that really does want to make Britain and the world a better place for this and future generations.

            My vote will not be wasted!

           

A Spendthrift’s Charter?

            I have sometimes wondered if the present government likes having a large proportion of the UKs population in debt.  Perhaps it makes the failure of their policies to reduce the national debt substantially, seem less important.  There are student loans, for instance;. I understand that increases in tuition fees result in some students leaving their colleges with a debt burden of as much as £40,000!  Then, of course, the Government’s obsession with home ownership has made sure that thousands of home buyers will owe thousands of pounds to banks or building societies for the whole of their working lifetimes..

            The latest encouragement to financial irresponsibility is making it possible for those who put aside a percentage of their income every month to provide themselves with a pension on retirement, can now withdraw the money at any time from their ‘pension pot’ and use it as they think best.  The hope is presumably that they will re-invest the money to enrich themselves and to help keep the wheels of industry turning.

            It will surprise me if at least some of those pension investors, with the opportunity to get a considerable sum of money into their bank accounts will say, ‘Blow provision for retirement.  Let’s go on a cruise to the Bahamas.  We’ll worry about “tomorrow” when it comes1’

            I’m glad that I was never able to withdraw cash from the ‘pension pot’ into which I paid 6 percent of my salary for most of my working life.  I wouldn’t have squandered it on a spending spree but, when my wife was diagnosed with pulmonary and laryngial TB, I’d have been sorely tempted to withdraw any money I had saved in the hope of buying her better, speedier treatment.   Perhaps (or perhaps not!) in that way I might have bought my wife a speedier recovery; might even have spared her the major surgery that saved her life but left her with a permanent disability.

            There’s no ‘perhaps’ though about the fact that, without an adequate pension, our sixties and seventies would have been much less comfortable, less worry-free and much less pleasurable.  And now that I am in my nineties and have been a widower for nearly nine years, I would be a poverty-stricken housebound cripple without the pension that has provided me with a warm and comfortable home and, among many other things, my mobility scooter and the lap-top on which I am writing these words. Thanks to that pension I am able to remember generously the birthdays of my young great-nieces and great nephew (I have yet to acquire any great grand-children), and to offer visiting family and friends hospitality in a local licensed restaurant!  As some-one once remarked, 'money can't buy happiness, but it can help you to be miserable in comfort!'

 I daren’t think how miserable and bad tempered I’d be without all those things!  I’d advise anybody – ‘However much you may be tempted never imperil your retirement pension. You will live to regret having done so.  It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll make your fortune by gambling on the Stock Exchange – and even less likely that you’ll make it on the National Lottery!’

The Budget

Regular blog readers will know that my idea of a good Budget is one that narrows the yawning gap between the incomes of the very richest and the very poorest people in the UK.   A bad Budget is one that widens that gap.  It follows that it is a long, long time since I have experienced a good Budget and that the one revealed by George Osborne on 18^th March was more blatantly robbing the poor and enriching the wealthy than most.

The threshold of income at which tax becomes liable has been raised.  That means that some low-paid workers will no longer have to pay tax and that every single payer of income tax (including the very wealthy) will benefit.  Those who won’t benefit are the really poor, whose incomes are too low to be taxable.  They will, of course, continue to pay indirect taxes such as VAT and excise duties like those on petrol, alcohol and tobacco.   But that’s not all – the level of liability to pay the higher rate of income tax has also been raised, even higher.  Thus those whom most of us would consider to be very wealthy will receive a double hand-out. Meanwhile, there are to be even more cuts in the  funding of benefits and of public services, which will most  affect the very poor.

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of the news reports was that I didn’t hear a word of protest from Ed Miliband about this particular aspect of the Budget.

Week 3 18.1.11

Tendring Topics…….on Line

The Cost of Disillusion

As we move into the second decade of the third millennium, I don’t remember ever before experiencing such general disillusion with all politicians and with all political parties, as there is today.

The Conservative-dominated coalition leaps in impetuously to right wrongs, redistribute power, build a fairer society – and ends up either bogged down (rather like the French cavalry at Agincourt!) or producing the direct opposite of their stated intention. They were going to save millions of pounds by getting rid of all the Quangos, until they discovered that for the most part Quangos were doing a worthwhile job. The most that could be done was merge some of them or pass their functions on to some other body.

They were going to abolish the bureaucratic NHS Primary Care Authorities and hand their responsibilities over to ‘the doctors’ in their areas. But ‘the doctors’ have plenty to do caring for the sick. They don’t want to take on the administrative tasks of the PCAs. They are combining into area consortia, creating little bureaucracies of their own.

They were going to stem the great flow of overseas immigrants – but farmers and others couldn’t function without the foreign workers prepared to undertake tasks that no Brit cared to do. They were going to reduce the power of the government and hand it over to ‘local communities’. They haven’t handed over a single function of central government but they have taken power away from local authorities – the elected representatives of local communities!

They were going to curb the power of the bankers – especially those whose irresponsibility and incompetence had been the immediate cause of our financial woes, who had been saved from bankruptcy with our money, but who were proposing to continue handing themselves five-figure bonuses. If only the government had been prepared to back up fiery words with effective action! The confrontation between bankers and the government was reminiscent of the medieval struggles between church and state – except that the conflict is now between the representatives of the British people and the High Priests of Mammon. The struggle isn’t quite over as I write these words but, whatever face-saving words may be used to make defeat sound like victory, I have little doubt that it will be Mammon who will come out on top.

The Lib-Dems? They had to pay too higher price to become junior partners in a coalition government. Instinctively ‘green’ and ‘Europhile’, they find themselves allied with Climate Change denying Europhobes like our (Clacton) MP, and compelled to support policies to which, up to the day of the election, they were strongly opposed. Student fees, for example, and control orders for suspected terrorists. Poor old Vince Cable was humiliated for saying, in what he had imagined was a private conversation, that he had ‘declared war on Rupert Murdoch’ (well, It was certainly time someone did!). He was replaced by someone whose impartiality had been demonstrated by unequivocal support for the Murdoch media empire!

Altogether I can see little hope of either coalition partner changing ‘The good old law, the ancient plan, that he shall take who hath the power – and he shall keep who can!’

As for the Labour Opposition – I think that Ed Milliband is probably doing his best to breathe new life into his Party. However, I can’t forget that under New Labour the yawning gap between the incomes of the rich and poor widened; we were dragged into two unwinnable wars by blindly following the most reactionary American president in living memory; the infamous ‘Right to Buy’ legislation that had turned urban municipal housing into slums and destroyed rural communities, remained on the statute book; while New Labour’s leaders took their holidays in the palatial residences of their multimillionaire friends! No wonder Lord Mandelson, who – with Mr Osborne, our present Tory Chancellor – had enjoyed the hospitality of a millionaire friend on his luxury yacht, told the press that he ‘had no problem with billionaires!’

I very much fear that the time is ripe for the emergence on the scene of a young, energetic and charismatic politician, with brawny and heavy-booted supporters, who will promise to get rid of venial and self-serving politicians, and the ‘alien riffraff taking our jobs and threatening our culture’, cut our ties with Europe, establish comradely links with Sarah Palin’s ‘Tea-Party’ warriors in the USA, and lead Britain on a new path – toward the kind of future that would have brought joy to the hearts of Hitler and Mussolini! We must be thankful that so far at least, neither the BNP nor UKIP have leaders of that malignant quality.

Footnote – The clear winner of the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election was disillusion. 48 percent of the electorate voted. This means that those who didn’t vote (52 percent) were in a majority. Your guess about the motives of those who did vote is as good as mine. I think it likely though that a great many of the votes secured by the winning candidate were cast against the coalition partners rather than for New Labour.

Disaster strikes Ipswich?

As I switched my tv set on a few mornings ago, the news reader was saying ‘…and Ipswich has been inundated, with 2,000 families rendered homeless’.

I wasn’t at my brightest at that time but it was amazing how many thoughts flashed through my mind in what was probably less than half a minute. I was back in memory to January 1939. Heavy snow and prolonged frost had been succeeded by a rapid thaw with torrential rain. The Gipping Valley had been inundated. The wooden road bridge at Sproughton, a few miles up stream from Ipswich, had been swept away. My family’s home was safe enough but there was severe flooding of low-lying streets in parts of the town. Was this scene from the past being re-enacted with even more flooding than before?

Of course not. I had momentarily forgotten that there is another Ipswich, in Queensland, Australia, not far from Brisbane. That was the town that was under water. It was, in fact, part of an inundated area in north-eastern Australia larger than the combined areas of France and Germany!

Australia is part of the Commonwealth with which we have historical and cultural ties. Some of us have friends and/or relations there. It is hardly surprising that it has been the flooding there that has received most British news media coverage. It is though by no means the only part of the world to have endured almost identical disaster. Sri Lanka and Brazil suffered far more human casualties than Australia and although the flood waters have now receded in Pakistan, the havoc that they wrought remains – and is likely to remain for months, perhaps years, to come.

This is no coincidence. Although the Meteorologists, wary of making a false prediction, say that it is too early to be certain of the cause of these floods, it seems to me to be evident that global warming is responsible. The vast expanse and volume of water in the southern oceans (Atlantic, Pacific, Indian) has warmed up, resulting in more evaporation and a moisture-filled lower atmosphere. At the same time adjacent land masses – South America, Australia, the Indian sub-Continent – have warmed up even more. The warm air above these land masses, rises and is replaced by moisture-filled air from the ocean. As this moisture-filled air cools, particularly when flowing over mountains, the water vapour precipitates as torrential, and potentially devastating rain. It is what happens already in the southern Asian Monsoon.

Climate change deniers delighted in telling us that the bitterly cold weather we experienced in November and December proved beyond doubt that Global warming was a myth, propagated by scaremongers. On the contrary, our icy weather may well have been a result of world-wide warming. We know that the polar ice-caps are melting. Tens of thousands of gallons of fresh water, only just above freezing point, are being precipitated into the North Atlantic daily. I don’t know whether, as some believe, this is affecting the flow of the Gulf Stream on which North-Western Europe’s normally equable climate depends. I am quite sure though that it must have a cooling affect on the waters of the North Atlantic, thus making our winters colder.

I think it likely that weather in Britain will become more extreme. At least until all the polar ice cap disappears, our will winters continue to become colder. Our summers will be cool and cloudy while the prevailing wind direction remains from the west or south-west. When it changes to coming from an easterly or south-easterly direction it will, perhaps only briefly, become abnormally hot.

Unless or until we take Climatic Change seriously that is the future to which we can look forward.

Double Opportunity for Harwich

Last year Tendring Council failed to secure a government grant for Harwich because Essex was considered to be too prosperous a county. Perhaps, overall, it is, but the Tendring District certainly has areas of severe deprivation, parts of Harwich, Clacton and Jaywick among them.

Harwich at least, could have a brighter future. The Council has launched a £5 million bid to attract the wind farm industry to the town. The idea is to build a skills and business centre to support an ever-growing industry. The ultimate aim is to make Harwich a major centre for the maintenance and manufacture of Wind Turbines. The historic port is internationally known as a staging post between England and the Continent and is well placed to serve the now-established wind farm offshore at Clacton and the developing farms both to the north, in the Thames estuary and off the coast of Kent. Councillor Neil Stock, the Council’s leader, says that such a development could result in up to 40,000 jobs and add hundreds of millions of pounds to Harwich’s economy.

The home. in Kings Head Street, of Christopher Jones, master of The Mayflower

To turn this dream into a reality the Council is again applying for a grant – this time from a £1.5 billion regeneration fund established by the government to help areas hit by public service cuts. Mr Stock says that this time they are quietly optimistic as they prepare a compelling case for a grant.

I very much hope they succeed, not only for Harwich but for the future of Western Europe. Quite apart from the need for sources of reliable renewable energy to combat climate change, we have to realize that the world’s reserves of oil and gas are finite. Alternative energy sources must be found well before they run out, or become so difficult to secure that they become prohibitively expensive.

In the meantime are you happy about the fact that most of our oil comes from the always volatile Middle East and our gas from reservoirs in Siberia?

The 2012 Olympics may well give Harwich another economic opportunity. The port is already well-known on the Continent as a gateway into Britain. It could become Britain’s main staging post to the Olympics. From the town there are direct rail and road routes to the Olympics stadium at Stratford, avoiding the need to pass through London. I hope that our Tourist Authorities will publicise that fact among our mainland neighbours and EU partners, and make sure that there is adequate first class hotel accommodation for those who wish to use our area either as a staging post or a base.

Harwich’s historic ‘Three Cups’ Inn. Lord Nelson and Emma, Lady Hamilton are said to have stayed there and in the 14th Century, Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer are said to have obtained horses here before going on to defeat her husband King Edward II. Has Harwich a bright future as well as a colourful past?

Week 20.10

Tendring Topics……..on Line

We can’t have Democracy ‘on the cheap’

Events since the general election have been so newsworthy and have moved so swiftly that shameful situations that arose during that election appear to have been all-but-forgotten. Have we all, except for those directly involved, forgotten that scores of our fellow citizens were denied their right to vote for no other reason than that the local authorities whose duty it is the organise the poll hadn’t made adequate provision for the numbers who turned up at the polling stations on election day?

For years those concerned with the democratic electoral process have bemoaned the apathy of the public and the low turnout at elections. This time, crowds did turn out to vote and, in at least two large cities, they were turned away!

During some three decades of local government service I have, on occasion, performed every task there is, in both local and national elections. I have helped prepare the electoral register. I have counted the votes and have acted as both a poll clerk and as a presiding officer at a polling station. I have even, on just one occasion, performed as Acting Returning Officer, announcing the result of a parish council election to a ‘cheering crowd’ of perhaps half a dozen passers-by! Never once was any registered elector denied the right to vote. Nor did I ever hear of such a thing happening elsewhere.

What was so different about the election of 2010? Simply, I think, that economy has become local authorities’ top priority; cost effectiveness and productivity their main objectives. During previous elections it had been noted that there had been occasions during the day when presiding officer and poll clerks had been idle, perhaps for as long as an hour at a time! Dozens of ballot papers had been unused; wasted manpower! Wasted paper!

The techniques of direction of human resources (we used to call it ‘personnel management’) will have been brought into operation. Take the average number of voters voting at each polling station. Reduce these figures by the expected number of postal voters. Add say ten percent to allow for emergencies. Calculate how long it takes the average elector to register his or her vote and you can calculate the cost- effective requirement of human resources (presiding officers and poll clerks) at each polling station. A similar calculation will reveal how many voting papers should be needed at each station.

Such calculations are valueless because electors are humans, not machines – nor even sheep. The number of people turning out to vote depends upon the weather, the local and national news headlines on Election Day, and on such local issues as the threatened closure of a school or hospital. Polling is not spread evenly throughout the day. Last minute decisions bring in voters at the last minute. There is usually a surge during the final hours of polling.

We need to decide whether our top priority is a cost-effective election, or one that truly reveals the will of the electorate. It is unlikely that we can have both.

Hung Parliaments, Coalition Governments

Today we have a ‘hung parliament’ and a coalition government. I think that we shall be better governed as a result, just as I thought (and the national Audit Commission agreed with me) that Tendring District Council performed better with the Tendring First coalition administration than under single-party – any single-party – rule. During the general election campaign, most of the national press and a great many of the contending politicians assured us that ‘hung parliaments’ and coalition governments were a recipe for national disaster.

One of the comments on government that I have heard most frequently in recent years from ordinary people (as distinct from political zealots) is, ‘Why on earth can’t those politicians stop slanging each other off, and get together to solve the nation’s problems’. How could that possibly happen except in a coalition government?

It is, in fact, precisely what politicians do when they are convinced that our country is in real and immediate peril. Have we so soon forgotten the coalition government, headed by Conservative Winston Churchill with Labour Clement Attlee as his deputy that we had in World War II; Britain’s ‘finest hour’? There were, of course, strong, decisive one-party governments existing at that time – in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy for instance!

Did you realize that modern Germany, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries, probably the most stable and prosperous countries in Europe, customarily have coalition governments? Greece, Portugal and Spain, like us, struggle along with single-party ones – and are in an even worse financial muddle than we are!

Recently I watched a tv programme about New Zealand’s political system. There, it seems, they replaced their archaic and discredited first-past-the-post electoral system with proportional representation in 1996. Since then they have had nothing but coalition governments. Throughout that time they have surely set an example of stability and civilised democracy to the whole of the southern hemisphere.

Proportional representation works! Coalition government works! Don’t let self-interested politicians who would like a free hand to carry out their own hare-brained schemes (like introducing poll tax! like invading Iraq!) persuade you otherwise

How about the current Conservative/Lib.Dem Coalition?

I wish it well – though it is a somewhat unexpected marriage of convenience. In so far as ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ still have any meaning in politics the Liberal Democrats were to the ‘Left’ of the Labour Party, which has moved steadily towards the ‘Right’ since World War II. It is fair to add though that David Cameron’s views seem well to the ‘Left’ of a great many Conservatives – of our own Clacton MP for instance.

David Cameron is said to be a great admirer of Benjamin Disraeli (founder of the modern Conservative Party) who, in his early years at least, had some very radical ideas. His description of the squalor and poverty of the working classes in his political novel ‘Sybil, or the Two Nations’ bears remarkable similarities to that in ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844’ by Frederic Engels, friend and collaborator of Karl Marx. Both books were published in 1845. The secondary title of Disraeli’s novel is the origin of the phrase ‘One Nation Conservatism’ meaning a Conservatism that hopes to appeal to every class in our Society. Some years ago I was amused to hear a very right-wing Tory announce that he was a ‘one nation Conservative’ because he was opposed to Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalism!

I had hoped to see a rather stronger Lib.Dem Party emerge from the election so that they could have retained more of their policies (their opposition to Trident for example) in any coalition that they entered. I had feared though that the Conservatives would have an overall majority. I think that most ordinary people will welcome the new coalition government, while watching it somewhat warily.

Strongest opposition is likely come from the right. I can’t imagine the ‘Withdraw from the European Union now! Stop all immigration now! Stop all this alternative energy nonsense! Britain for the true Brits! Brigade being satisfied with what they’ll get. I certainly hope that they won’t be.

I don’t imagine that they’re very happy about Ken Clarke, a Tory Europhile, being made Lord Chancellor. Nor will they be happy about the number of Lib.Dems becoming Ministers and Cabinet Members. It must be remembered that for every Lib.Dem who gets such an office, there will be an ambitious Conservative MP who had been considering it to be his (or her) job.

The watchword of Lord Asquith, a Liberal Prime Minister of the past, was ‘Wait and see’. I am content to follow that advice.

A Weekend ‘up North’

On Friday, 7th May, while the results of the previous day’s General Election were still unfolding, Andy and Marilyn, my younger son and daughter-in-law whisked me away to Sheffield to spend a politics-free few days with my grand-daughter Jo and her partner Siobhan. It was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend.

We went to Sheffield’s Lyceum Theatre, a beautifully restored (though I thought the seats needed a little extra padding!) ‘Old-time music hall’ type theatre, to see the musical ‘Oh what a lovely war!’ a sometimes savagely satirical musical on the theme of World War I. I had seen the film version many years earlier, but on the stage the proximity of the action (in the theatre steel helmeted German soldiers walked through the audience to meet the British squaddies in no-mans-land for the unofficial Christmas truce of 1914) gave an added immediacy to the performance.

Andy and Marilyn at a restaurant in Eyam

On Sunday we visited Eyam. The Derbyshire village where, when stricken by plague in the 17th Century, the villagers cut themselves off from the rest of the world. While village folk died all round them they remained in isolation to prevent the plague from spreading further.

We also visited the Parish Church of St John the Baptist in Tideswell, which has been called ‘The Cathedral of the Peak’. It certainly is a remarkable church, dating from the 14th Century, with a magnificent stained-glass windows, choir stalls embellished with figures carved by Suffolk craftsmen in 1800, and some very noteworthy tombs.

One placed squarely in the middle of the chancel was that of a locally very important person indeed. Sir Sampson Meverill, who died in 1462, had been a famous warrior in the Hundred Years War against France. Known to have been in battle against Joan of Arc he was probably one of the ‘ band of brothers’ who fought with King Henry V at Agincourt.

Siobhan (left) and Jo

One of the carvings by Suffolk Craftsmen, on the choir stalls

I found the life of Bishop Robert Pursglove, whose burial Brass is to be found outside the Sanctuary, of particular interest. I'm inclined to think that it is only folk of my generation who are likely to be familiar with the ballad of the Vicar of Bray – to be found in every Community Singing songbook in the ‘20s and ‘30s. He was a 17th Century vicar who had changed his faith a number of times, to match the faith of succeding rulers. The chorus went:

And this is the law that I’ll maintain until my dying day sir
That whatsoever king may reign I’ll be the Vicar of Bray sir!

Bishop Pursglove seems to have been an earlier Episcopal equivalent of that vicar. Originally a priest of the old Undivided and Unreformed Church, in 1538 at the age of 38, as Suffragen Bishop of Hull and Prior of Gisbourne, he embraced the Reformed Faith and assisted Henry VIII in his dissolution of some of the northern monasteries. For this he was awarded a pension. He continued in office from 1548 to 1552 under the strongly reformist King Edward VI. When Henry VIII’s fanatically Roman Catholic daughter Mary came to the throne, he had no intention of following his fellow-bishops Latimer and Ridley, and Archbishop Cranmer to martyrdom (and who can blame him!) He reverted to his former unreformed (Roman Catholic) faith and continued to prosper. When Elizabeth came to the throne in 1552 he decided that to revert again to the Reformed Church would be a change too far. He retired, using his considerable wealth to found Grammar Schools in Tideswell and Gisbourne. His brass memorial shows him in all his pre-Reformation Eucharistic Vestments, with his Bishop’s mitre and staff.

week 19.10

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Maja – in May

I mentioned in January that one of my most welcome Christmas presents had been a pictorial calendar from my friends, Andreas and Konnie Kulke of Zittau. They had provided and pasted in the photographs that illustrated it. All were pictures of their then three-year-old daughter Maja and/or her little brother Tom, born last September .

I have a particularly attractive picture to look at this month. It is of little Maja happily getting ready for bed and clutching her well-loved teddy bear. The teddy bear is a friend of mine too. I bought him as a gift for Maja, at the International Rail Terminal at St Pancras last July, while I was waiting to catch my Eurostar train to Brussels the first lap of my journey to Maja’s home in Germany’s most easterly town. It was to be my third and almost certainly last visit to Zittau. since World War II.

The teddy bear is wearing the uniform of a Yeoman of the Guard of the Tower of London (the beefeaters) and Maja decided that his name was Bobby.


What would be your immediate thought if you saw the newspaper headline above? It was in the Daily Gazette on Wednesday 28th April. Perhaps you did see it, so you’ll know the answer to that question.

Could it be that I was the only Gazette reader who didn’t instantly understand what the headline writer was trying to say? Quite possibly; because I have realized for some time that if it is possible to read more than one meaning into any written statement I will unfailingly go for the wrong one. Perhaps that is why I have had a modest success at writing books about domestic hot and cold water supply and waste drainage for ordinary householders. I knew how easily I could misunderstand written instructions or descriptions – so I made certain that my narrative couldn’t possibly be misconstrued.

Be that as it may, I have to confess that when I first read that headline I had an immediate mental image of perhaps two or more intrepid members of the clergy, wearing their customary dark grey suits and clerical collars and armed with furled umbrellas, leading a fearless commando of repentant burglars and pickpockets in a daring raid over the rooftops to ‘take out’ a high rise centre of sin and iniquity.

It was a momentary vision only. Then I realized that ‘lead’ in this context was a noun and not a verb and that it rhymed with ‘fed’ and not ‘feed’. The humdrum and rather depressing true meaning of the headline became obvious. No wonder non-natives complain that English is a difficult language to learn.

7.00 pm 11th May 2010. It’s all over – except that it isn’t, quite!

Of course, by the time you read this blog, it may be. Today the political situation is changing almost minute by minute.

An unusual feature of the general election that we have just endured is that it disappointed almost everybody. The Conservatives surely hoped that Labour support would crumble and that David Cameron would make a swift and easy passage to No. 10 Downing Street. Labour supporters believed that public fear of swingeing Conservative cuts would enable their Party to cling to power, though probably with a reduced majority. Those of us who voted Lib.Dem, buoyed by the opinion polls, thought that our Party would have sufficient seats in Parliament to be able to negotiate with either of the other two Parties from a position of power.

None of that happened. No Party secured an overall majority. To some extent the Liberal Democrats are in a strong negotiating position. This is weakened though by the fact that they actually have fewer seats than before, and that the total number of Labour and Lib.Dem. MPs, although greater than the number of Conservatives, doesn’t add up to that elusive overall majority.

The Lib.Dems. and Conservatives are discussing possible co-operation, it seems with success. I didn’t see how they could realistically form a coalition government unless the Lib.Dems were prepared to discard some of their cherished policies; in particular, their attitude to the European Union, their insistence upon electoral reform, including some form of proportional representation, and their intention to use the taxation system to create a fairer society. Retaining them would make coalition with the Conservatives impossible. Dropping them would surely enrage many loyal supporters. It now (6.30 pm on 11.5.10!) appears that they have squared that particular circle!

They might have agreed to co-operation short of a coalition, in return for some compromises on the part of the Lib.Dems. This solution at one time seemed to me the most likely outcome.

While negotiations between the Conservatives and Lib.Dems were still ongoing we learned that serious talks are also taking place between the Lib.Dems. and Labour. Presumably to facilitate these talks, Gordon Brown was stepping down as Labour Party Leader. Were these talks serious I wonder, or could Nick Clegg be playing ‘hard to get’ and encouraging the Conservatives to think again about some of his demands that they are finding difficult to accept?

The one permutation that has not, as far as I know, been considered is that of co-operation, perhaps a coalition, between New Labour and the Conservatives. Why not? There is less difference between New Labour and Conservative policies than there is between both of those policies and those of the Lib.Dems. Both Parties offer much the same solutions to the nation’s ills, differences being in emphasis and timing rather than substance. David Cameron wants ‘change’ but only a change of government – not a change in the voting system, the economic system, foreign and defence policies, and policy towards the rest of Europe. I reckon that if the Conservatives and New Labourites could forget some of the nasty things they have said about each other in recent weeks, they’d get along famously.

The Daily Gazette reports that our re-elected MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, doesn’t think that the Conservatives should seek Lib.Dem co-operation but should go it alone, forming a minority government. Well, that is at least an honest and straightforward solution. Since no one can possibly be eager to experience another election in the near future, such an administration might last longer than appears likely at first glance. Before forcing a vote of ‘no confidence’ the opposition would probably wait until the government had pushed through enough unpopular (though quite likely essential) measures to ensure that it didn’t get re-elected! That’s politics for you!

It now seems likely though that some time later this evening, we shall be told that agreement has been reached between the Conservatives and the Lib.Dems and that a formal coalition government will be formed. If this is true (there could be yet another surprise awaiting us!) I look forward to learning the details and will no doubt comment on them next week.


Look on the Bright Side!

Do you remember Pollyanna, that fictional little American girl who, even in the direst situations, was always able to find ‘something about which to be glad?’ Earlier I said that almost everybody had been disappointed by the outcome of the recent General Election. I certainly was. What, I wondered, would Pollyanna have discovered that should have gladdened my heart?

There were one or two things. I was very glad that Bob Russell, Colchester’s Lib.Dem. MP, had not only held his parliamentary seat but had increased his majority. I was glad too that the very first Green Party MP had been elected to the House of Commons to represent the Pavilion Ward of Brighton. Conversely, I was delighted that not a single UKIP or BNP candidate had been elected though, of course, a number of MPs (including our own in Clacton) were not opposed by UKIP as it was considered that they shared UKIP’s Europhobia.

No, the General Election was generally very disappointing – but it wasn’t all loss! I am sure that Pollyanna would have been very glad about that!