Week 14 2012 5.4.2012

Tendring Topics.......on Line

     Happy Easter!

          I wish a very Happy Easter holiday to all readers of this blog.  If it remains true to form the Clacton Gazette when it is distributed (the day after the publication of this blog) will include an exciting list of things to do during the Easter Holiday.  Again, if true to past form, these will not include going to church, chapel or meeting house to give thanks for the events, some 2,000 years ago, that make Easter the most important of the year’s Christian festivals.

            I see Jesus Christ’s resurrection on that first Easter morning as God’s demonstration of the ultimate triumph of good over evil, of light over darkness.   There are those who claim to try to follow Christ’s teaching and example but can’t accept the fact of the resurrection.  Believe me, had there been no resurrection we would know nothing of his teaching and example.  Jesus of Nazareth would have been just another failed prophet (there have been plenty of them!) who came to an unpleasant end sooner than most.  He would not have been mentioned, even as a footnote, in the history of the Roman Empire and of humankind.

            So, break new ground.  Go to a place of worship and give thanks for the spring flowers, for a future of hope for us all, and for what Eleanor Farjeon refers to in her poem (and hymn) Morning has broken as, ‘God’s recreation of each new day’. In Clacton I have a personal acquaintance of St James Church of England Church, Christ Church United Reformed Church and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) – three very different Christian traditions but each offering visitors and newcomers a warm and friendly welcome.  I am sure that all the other Christian churches in our town and district do the same.

            Although  ‘going to church’ is not likely to be listed among things to do during the Easter Holiday, there will be a list of local churches further on in the Clacton (or Frinton and Walton) Gazette giving their locations and the times of their Easter services.  Why not look in on one of them? You never know – you might enjoy it, make new friends and begin to look at life in a new and more hopeful way.

            ‘Local’ Control over Town and Country Planning?

          Speed seems to be a first priority of our present government.  All child adoptions, they say, should be settled within two years.  I expect that two years is plenty of time in which to investigate and approve (or refuse) most adoptions – but speed shouldn’t be the primary consideration.  Bearing in mind that one third of adoptions fail, it is surely more important to reduce that failure rate than to hurry things along, even if the investigation takes a few months longer.

            Now there’s planning law.  Legislation is in place to speed up the granting of planning permission and allow the developers to build badly needed homes where they are needed.  The most controversial part of the legislation is the assertion that the scales should be weighted on the side of the developer with the presumption that future development will be permitted.  This, the government claims, is handing power to the local community!

            It is surely doing the reverse.  Most local communities are bitterly opposed to large housing, commercial or industrial development taking place in their areas. Round the parish pump ‘nimby’ rules!  We have an example of that in the Tendring District.  Residents oppose large-scale housing development in the village of St Osyth because, they say, it would change totally the character of the village.  Similarly residents in the area between Clacton-on-Sea and St. Osyth bitterly (and wrongly in my opinion) oppose the installation of wind turbines in their neighbourhood.

            In Northamptonshire local communities, district councils and the county council were strongly opposed to their area being used for the disposal of nuclear waste.   This unanimous local objection was simply ignored by central government which approved the project.

            I am sure that there are occasions when regional or national considerations must over-ride local concerns.  If local communities were always assured of having the last word on planning and development there would be no sewage treatment works, no recycling centres, no refuse incinerators or controlled refuse tips, no abattoirs, no power stations, no on-shore wind turbines, no large housing estates and probably no crematoria! Sometimes it is, and will be, necessary to over-rule the wishes of local people in the regional or national interest.  When this has to be done, for goodness sake let it be done honestly – not in the midst of a smokescreen of propaganda about the ‘empowerment of local communities!’

A cautionary verse

            Writing about speeding up planning decisions brought to my mind a poem by  poet laureate the late Sir John Betjeman, about an unconventional means of speeding up the approval of development plans.  It’s called Executive. Below are a few lines from the end of the poem.  A particularly obnoxious young man is discussing a source of his conspicuous wealth.  He explains:

I do some mild developing, the kind of thing I need

Is a little country market town that’s rather gone to seed.

A luncheon and a drink or two, a little savoir faire,

Will fix the Planning Officer, the Town Clerk and the Mayor.

And if some conservationists should try to interfere,

A ‘dangerous structure’ notice from the Borough Engineer

Will settle any buildings that are getting in the way –

The modern style sir, with respect, has really come to stay.

            References to the Town Clerk and the Borough Engineer make it clear that the situation in the poem was the one existing before the local government reorganisation of 1974.   The poem is still relevant today though – and its relevance is a great deal wider than the development of gone-to-seed little country market towns.

            You will note, for instance, that there is no suggestion of bribery and corruption; no question of money or the promise of money changing hands.  It is just ‘a luncheon and a drink or two, a little savoir faire’ – straightforward friendliness and hospitality to which surely no-one could take exception. It achieves its purpose though of mellowing the Council’s decision-makers and making them more receptive of their host’s proposals.

            It is precisely that kind of ‘nudge in the right direction’ that millionaires hope to achieve when they gain friendly access to top members of government and (just to be on the safe side) of the opposition, or offer them hospitality in their country mansions or on their luxury yachts.  No-one would be so crass as to make an overt threat or offer a bribe.   I think it likely though that those multi-millionaires manage to make it clear how sorry they would be if circumstances compelled them to take their wealth elsewhere, and those who control the news media discreetly draw attention to their ability to influence the minds of voters!

Local thoughts

             When I hear of highway problems I don’t immediately think of congested motorways with mile-long queues of cars progressing at a snail’s pace along crowded motorways in the ‘rush hour’  Nor do I think of single carriageway A or B roads, full of blind bends, with motorists and – in particular motorcyclists – using them as though they were race tracks.

            No, I think of the deep pothole in the road near my bungalow in Clacton-on-Sea, and other deep potholes in and around the town.  They have already been there for two winters, getting a little deeper and a little wider as each month passes.  I’d like to see them filled in at least before the onset of yet another winter.

            I’d like too, to see Clacton’s outlying street pavements relaid so that they are as safe to walk on or ride over on a mobility scooter as those recently laid in the seaward end of Pier Avenue and Station Road.  Move just a few hundred yards from those favoured town-centre spots and you’ll find broken and uneven paving that must be a potential minefield for folk with impaired vision and are a source of extreme discomfort to mobility scooterists like me.    Believe me, no-one rides on (or should it be ‘drives’?) a mobility scooter for pleasure. Our ‘iron steeds’ react to every fault or unevenness in the pavement’s surface and transmit that reaction to our spines!  Not one of us who uses a mobility scooter would want to be without it.  Without mine I would be completely housebound.  They are though, strictly a means of getting from one place to another.  They’re not for joy riding or sight-seeing!

            Our Highway Authority, responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of both our carriageways and our footpaths, is the Essex County Council. A fortnight ago I said in this blog that ‘Essex works’ as far as getting me a hand-rail was concerned.  I wish that I could say the same about the performance of their highway responsibilities.

 A Catastrophic  Blunder

          I find it difficult to believe that any group of politicians could have been so totally stupid as to act in the way that members of our government have in connection with the fuel crisis - a fuel crisis that they have managed to transform from a mole hill into a mountain!

            A majority of members of the Unite Union had voted for strike action if negotiations (not about pay but largely about health and safety considerations) with the employers failed to come to a satisfactory conclusion.  Those negotiations had barely begun.  There was as yet no strike and there was at least a reasonable possibility that there would not be one.

            Yet our Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office Minister both assumed that there would be a strike – probably over Easter.   They urged motorists to keep their tanks topped up with petrol at all times and the Cabinet Office Minister added the potentially lethal idea of keeping a jerrican or two filled with petrol in the garage.   Neither of these gentlemen would have been likely to handle the petrol themselves.  They’d simply say to the chauffeur, ‘Oh Smith (or Jones or whatever) make sure that there’s enough petrol in the garage to see us through any crisis’.  They possibly regarded regulations relating to petrol storage as pettifogging rules (probably emanating from Brussels) impeding enterprise and wealth creation.  The result was totally predictable – long bad-tempered queues at every petrol station, pumps running dry and life-threatening accidents from the illegal storage of petrol indoors or in the garage! 

I just wonder if the Government’s catastrophic over-reaction to the possibility of a strike was a deliberate attempt to divert public interest and anger from the millionaire-friendly budget and the scandal of super-wealthy business men buying social access to the Prime Minister to the Unite Union and its contribution to the Labour Party’s finances?  If so, it was a ploy that went disastrously wrong.

Birth of a New Word

            In the Egyptian/Libyan desert in the winter of 1941/1942 the British 8^th Army, of which I was an insignificant member, transported petrol in flimsy rectangular pressed steel containers that were difficult to carry, easily damaged and often leaked.  The German army opposing us used substantial reusable steel containers, virtually damage and leak proof, with useful handles and a convenient size and shape to carry. Any that were captured were eagerly used by the British unit that then possessed them to replace their own pathetic containers.

            Someone back at the base in Cairo decided that this practice should be regularised.  An order was issued to all units of the 8^th Army.  ‘Captured German petrol containers will henceforth be referred to as Jerrycans*’.

            And a new word was born into the English language!

*That was the original spelling.  It has since evolved into Jerricans.

           

              

Week 47 2011 29.11.2011

Tendring Topics……on line

'What goes around, comes around'

            There was a time – I remember it well – when the maximum loan for house purchase that Building Society and Bank Managers would approve for house purchase depended upon the income of the main wage earner in the applicant’s family.  That was in the days before it was assumed that both members of the marriage or other partnership would continue in full-time work even after a baby or babies arrived.   Then, provided one of the couple, usually the male, had a steady job they could buy their new home with a twenty or twenty-five years mortgage and a deposit of ten percent of the total cost.  If the local authority were prepared to act as guarantor and the applicant’s job seemed very secure, then a five percent deposit might be acceptable.

            When, way back it 1956, my wife Heather and I bought our bungalow in Clacton (the one in which I am writing these words) we had thought we could manage the monthly mortgage payments on the kind of home that we needed (I had just been appointed Additional Public Health Inspector by Clacton Urban District Council).  Raising the deposit though was a major obstacle.  We had been married for ten years but during that time Heather had suffered a life-threatening illness and had had a crippling operation.  We had two young children, and a loan to repay on the car I needed for my work.  My pay had been adequate but we had virtually no savings.   The Council was prepared to act as guarantor and we had only to raise five percent of the value of the bungalow.  It seems a totally piffling sum now but we were able to raise it only by selling Heather’s solitaire diamond engagement ring that I had bought eleven years earlier with a considerable proportion of the army back pay I had accumulated as a prisoner of war.

            There came a housing shortage.  It was destined to be made much worse by Mrs Thatcher’s ‘right to buy’ legislation that, within a short space of time, markedly reduced the amount of social housing available for letting.  With rents prohibitively high in the private sector, young couples yearned to get their feet on the first rung of the home ownership ladder.

            It was a time of low unemployment and relative prosperity.  Married women, including young mothers, carried on working, leaving their children in day care.    Banks relaxed their rules and made loans based on the total income of the applicants – not just that of the highest earner.  Many more became eligible for mortgages.  But, of course, there was no commensurate increase in the number of homes available for purchase.  The price of houses began to rise, and rise – and rocket!   The housing boom had begun.  Soon house price inflation soared well above general rise in prices.

             Banks competed with each-other in making tempting offers to would-be buyers.  Ninety-five percent mortgages became commonplace.  Soon there were one hundred percent, and eventually one hundred and ten percent loans to help prospective house buyers with their legal costs and their removal and furnishing expenses!

            It couldn’t, and didn’t last.  The bubble burst.  Home buyers (they had imagined they were ‘home owners’ but they weren’t!) or their partners lost their jobs and half their incomes.  They couldn’t keep up the mortgage payments and either sold their homes at a loss, or were dispossessed by the Bank. House prices plummeted. The homes thus recovered by the Banks were often worth only a fraction of the sums originally loaned on them.  Some Banks would have been declared bankrupt had they not been bailed out by us taxpayers.     

            Right now we have stagnation.  Few new houses are being built.  Skilled and experienced building workers – bricklayers, plumbers, electricians – are unemployed.  Many people are homeless or inadequately housed. There is an acute housing shortage and there is nothing like sufficient social housing available for rent.

            There is, of course, an obvious solution – repeal the ‘right to buy’ legislation and encourage local authorities and Housing Associations to build housing for letting, fund them adequately and leave them to solve the housing problem in their own areas – as they did successfully for a century before the advent of Mrs Thatcher’s Conservatism and its pale-pink New Labour shadow.  That would have been true ‘localism’.

            Is that what the Coalition Government is going to do?   Not likely; they are going to encourage remaining council tenants to buy their own homes with discounts as high as 50 percent (well, it isn’t their money they’re giving away!) and guarantee,  with taxpayers’ money, part of the mortgage on  homes newly built for sale at affordable prices.    This, it is hoped, will encourage Banks to reduce the level of that difficult deposit and bring home-purchase within the scope of ordinary people again. This, so they declare, will stimulate the building trade and thus get the general economy moving.  I hope that it will!  It seems to me though to be offering to bail out the banks before they are even in trouble, and bringing us back to a situation similar to that at the beginning of the house price boom.

‘Ere the winter storms begin’

          The harvest hymn tells us that, ‘All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin’.   And so it should be – but those of us who live in towns know that bringing in the harvest is not the only task that needs to be performed before the winter storms, the ice and perhaps the snow are with us again. Among them are repair of the damage done to our roads and footpaths by the last two hard winters.

Well, here are a couple of local examples of road and footpath disrepair that need urgent attention.  They are by no means the only examples of highway neglect in Clacton and they are almost certainly not the worst, but they are examples that I see regularly.  The footpath is beside Old Road and is regularly used by pedestrians (and mobility scooterists) on their way to Morrison’ supermarket.  It is a positive danger to those unsteady on their feet or with impaired sight, and a source of bone-shaking discomfort to scooterists.  I speak from personal experience!

            The pothole is in Beaconsfield Road, near its junction with Skelmersdale Road.  If it doesn’t receive attention it will get much worse, and more dangerous, in the coming winter.  Unspectacular work like this is far more worth-while than, for instance, the wholesale reconstruction of the seaward end of Pier Avenue last winter – when the dust had scarcely settled on the precious reconstruction!

The ever widening incomes gap!

          At last – the gaping chasm between the incomes of the poorest and the wealthiest of us has received the attention of an official investigation and is being brought to the attention of the government.  It seems that the average income of the staff of a top FTSE100 company is £20,000 a year (for many people even that is wealth beyond the dreams of avarice!) while the incomes of Directors and Chief Executives of these companies is – wait for it! – more than three and a half million pounds a year.

            A CBI spokesman explained to us on TV this morning why nothing could – or should – be done about this.  It’s all because of that wonderful Global Market. Profit-making enterprises throughout the world need the very best brains to make them even more profitable.  They are prepared to pay the best salaries, bonuses and other perks, to get them.   If we lesser mortals were to attempt to limit the number of millions our top people receive (I can’t bring myself to write ‘earn’) they would simply up sticks and move elsewhere.  How very convenient, for some, it is to have an economic system that demands that the pay of workers gets ever lower so that we can be competitive in the global market, while that of their bosses has to get ever higher, for exactly the same reason!

Despite the obvious absurdity of this situation and world wide protests about its manifest unfairness and injustice, the Global Market is welcomed by all three of our main political parties!

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

            The government’s policy of cuts in public services and benefits, and of tax increases (in VAT and similar indirect or ‘stealth’ taxes) that particularly affect the less-well-off are really beginning to bite.  The provident, who have ‘nest eggs’ in savings accounts with banks and building societies are worse hit than the extravagant.  Their savings decrease in value as inflation outstrips the meagre interest that they earn.  Some  have lost their homes, many more have lost their jobs and practically all of us are beginning to lose hope.

            There would be one very simple and straightforward way of restoring our faith in the Coalition Government’s handling of the economic crisis and persuading us that the sacrifices we all (except the seriously wealthy) are having to make, have been worthwhile. Why not – perhaps quarterly or half-yearly – reveal by how many (surely millions) of pounds the deficit has been reduced during that period?  Then we would know whether or not the gain had been worth the pain.  As a former public relations officer I am astonished that this isn’t already happening.  Could it be that there has been no decrease?  Perhaps there has even been  an increase in that worrying deficit; one that even the most accomplished spin doctor would have difficulty in attributing to the previous Labour Government, or to ‘Brussels’, or to whom or whatever is the latest popular scapegoat.   

            That is very possible.  The cynical may see it as a reason why no such disclosure has been made.  A blog reader points out that the government, in formulating its financial strategy must have been expecting the national economy to show modest (perhaps 2 percent) growth.   This would have been expected to bring a reduction in the number of benefit claimants, together with increased revenue from corporation tax, income tax and VAT.  In fact the government’s austerity policy has killed economic growth, increased unemployment and suppressed demand.

            It is an unfortunate fact that we have to rely on their political opponent’s estimates of the effects that their policies, and those of their rivals, would have on the deficit.

            The Conservatives claim that Labour’s policy of reversing ‘the cuts’ to stimulate the economy, would increase the deficit by £85 billion a year by the end of the present Parliament.  They may well be quite right.

            Labour has considered Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts from November 2010 together with the latest estimates from independent forecasters, They predict that the coalition government’s borrowing could rise by £11 billion more than planned this year, £22 billion next year, £34 billion in 2013 – ’14, and £42 billion in 2014-’15.

            Voters at the next election will, it seems, have a clear choice.  Vote Conservative, cut even deeper, and increase the deficit, or Vote Labour, reverse the cuts and – though in a slightly different way – do the same thing!

            Well, it isn’t all that likely that I shall still be around for the next General Election to have to make a decision! 

An Affront – or a Lucky Escape?

          A couple of weeks ago members of Tendring Council, together with the local press, were full of indignation at the fact that Tendring was the one district in Essex through which the Olympic Torch  would not be carried next year as it makes its tortuous journey to the Olympic Stadium at Stratford.

            Now I learn that the passage of the torch through Colchester on July 6^th   is expected to cost the district council £30,000 in road closures, crowd control and street cleaning.  Our omission from the route may have been a blow to our local pride but I reckon that in every other respect it was a lucky escape!