Week 19 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line          

‘Call the Midwife!’

          Clacton isn’t a town noted for its political activists and its violent (or even non-violent) marches and demonstrations. It is astonishing therefore that there were two protest marches, for the same cause, one on Saturday 26^th April and one on the following day. The cause was the hospital authority’s decision to close the Maternity Units in the Clacton-on-Sea and in Harwich and to concentrate maternity services in Colchester.   The reason is not because of shortage of midwives or other staff in either Clacton or Harwich – but because of a shortage of midwives in Colchester!   They need Clacton’s and Harwich’s midwives to make up the numbers.

            This is said to be a ‘temporary arrangement’ but we suspicious Clactonians suspect that it’s one of those ‘temporary arrangements’ that go on for longer than expected – until, in fact, everyone comes to accept them and it is then decided to make them permanent. `

            No-one likes to see a local service closed down and local people compelled to go further to a larger more distant centre, but the nature of the maternity service and the geographical situation of both Clacton and Harwich make it doubly undesirable in our Tendring district. A glance at a large-scale map of south-eastern East Anglia will make it clear that the Tendring peninsula is almost-an-island bounded by the estuaries of the rivers Stour and Colne, a relatively narrow isthmus extending from Colchester to Manningtree, and a wide length of coastline with the port of Harwich/Parkeston and the popular holiday seaside resorts of Dovercourt, Walton-on-the-Naze, Frinton-on-Sea, Holland-on-Sea, Clacton-on-Sea, Jaywick Sands, St Osyth and Brightingsea.

            The only road access is through that Colchester/Manningtree isthmus from which highways fan out to serve resorts which attract motorists from London, the Midlands and the whole of East Anglia to their safe, sandy beaches, seaside holiday attractions – and the lowest average annual rainfall in the United Kingdom!  It follows that throughout all the summer and at weekends in the spring and autumn (particularly bank holiday weekends) those roads are often clogged up with holiday traffic, sometimes reduced to a snail’s pace by sheer numbers, or by the occasional road accident.

            Tough on the mother in labour, perhaps with her first baby, stuck in a traffic jam somewhere between Clacton – or Harwich – and Colchester!  I don’t suppose that the time-and-motion experts who calculated that under ‘normal circumstances’ neither journey should take much more than half an hour, even thought about that.  Babies in a hurry to be born know nothing about normal circumstances, holiday traffic or traffic jams.

            I’m not surprised that Clactonians have protested, marched and demonstrated against this stupid and thoughtless decision of the hospital authorities.  Why though were there two almost identical marches with two lots of protesters?   The Saturday march was the Conservative march, organised and led by Conervative Tendring District Council.  The Sunday march was the Labour march and was organised by the local Labour Party and led by the prospective Labour candidate Tim Young..  The closure of Clacton and Harwich’s maternity units is not a political issue.  Gilbert and Sullivan wrote in one of their comic operas ‘Every little man-child that is born alive is either a little Liberal or a little Conservative’.  Luckily they don’t know that and, luckily or not, nowadays it isn’t only male babies involved, nor is it limited to just two parties.

            I think it a great pity that the two main parties hadn’t got together for a united protest march, thus demonstrating that compassion and common sense aren’t the sole prerogative of one party, and that they can unite when the occasion demands it.  They might have persuaded some of the others to join in – the Lib-Dems, the Greens and the Ukippers (I’m sure they’re convinced that it’s all the fault of ‘Brussels’) might well have joined them!

Those Market Forces

            I don’t like living in a society with an economy reliant on Market Forces.  I believe   that co-operation is better than competition, that we shouldn’t all be trying to get as much as we can for as little as we can get away with, and that we shouldn’t need to follow the advice to ‘shop around’ and change our power supplier, our banker, our savings account, whenever it may seem that it would pay us to do so. Old people - and there are a lot of us in this area - don't like unnecessary change. The cheapest is rarely the best and the supplier or the banker may change his charges as soon as you put your phone down. In the 17^th and 18^th century Quaker businessmen – grocers, brewers, bankers, manufacturers – made their fortunes by declining to yield to market forces.  They bought in or made the products they sold, added just sufficient to make themselves a reasonable living and stuck to that price and to that quality of goods.  Quaker businesses may not always have sold the cheapest goods but customers could be quite sure that they hadn’t been watered down or adulterated, that the price wouldn’t be put up if there were to be a sudden shortage and  that there would be no hidden ‘extra charges’.   That policy benefited both the buyer and the seller.

            Oscar Wilde once defined a cynic as someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.  The ethics of the market place have made us a nation of cynics.   We’re interested only in prices.  The only ‘value’ market traders recognise is the highest price that goods or services can command at any given time ‘in the open market’.   A diamond ring commands a higher price than a shovel (though there are situations in which a shovel could save your life and a diamond ring would have no value whatsoever), and a merchant banker (a money lender) can demand a higher price for his services than a brain surgeon!

            Market prices depend upon supply and demand.  Increase the demand for any desirable product without increasing its supply will raise that product’s price as surely as night follows day. 

            It was this axiom that made me predict confidently in this blog that the government’s help to buy scheme for would-be house buyers would have the effect of raising house prices.  You will recall that a major factor in the creation of the financial crisis from which we hope we are now emerging, was the unwise lending of large sums of money for the purchase of homes.  Because there were not enough homes for hopeful would-be purchasers to buy, the price went up…and up, until it toppled over.

            Many house-buyers had taken on a debt they couldn’t hope to pay off.  Hundreds were rendered homeless and lenders were left with bad debts that could have rendered them bankrupt had the government not bailed them out – with our money!

            Determined not to make the same mistake again, banks and building societies increased the deposit they required from would-be buyers to as much as 25 percent of the price of the property, effectively putting home ownership out of the reach of most first-time buyers.  However David Cameron and George Osborne, determined to pursue the chimera of ‘a nation of home-owners’ introduced their ‘help to buy’ scheme which offered an additional loan to help with that deposit so that the initial sum required by the house-purchaser would be no more than 5 percent of the price of the property.

            This has had two totally predictable effects. Demand for homes once more greatly exceeds supply and – as I had foreseen – house prices are again rising well ahead of general inflation.  The other effect is that the government has, by guaranteeing most of the required deposit, taken on a debt that the professional money lenders had thought was too risky – and, without consulting the electorate – has done so with taxpayers’ money!   This has clearly worried the professionals and they are now asking would-be borrowers a series of very intrusive questions before they will arrange a mortgage. ‘How much do they spend on holidays, on dining out, on alcohol, on entertaining, on children’s education and other financial commitments, and how they would manage their mortgage repayments if – or rather when - interest rates rise?

            The best response?  It’s surely to accept that home ownership is not everybody’s obvious choice.  Repeal the ‘Right to Buy’ legislation and encourage local authorities to build homes for letting as they did for a century before the advent of Margaret Thatcher – and allow those same authorities to allocate those homes as they think best.  In a word; to restore some of the democratic local decision making that is an important aspect of the ‘localism’ to which the government pays lip-service but has been systematically destroying since taking office.

Week 51 2013

Tendring Topics……on line

Sauce for the goose – workhouse gruel for the gander!

            It was ironic that the news that members of parliament were to get an eleven percent rise in their salaries after the next general election, broke on the same day that we learned that thirteen million of our fellow countrymen and women are living in poverty.  What’s more most of them aren’t skivers and layabouts who enjoy living on state benefits, nor even honest willing-to-work unemployed people making every effort to get a job.  Over 50 percent, something like six million people who are officially ‘in poverty’ are also in work.  Some of them are in part time jobs, others on zero time contracts that mean they are expected to be constantly available for work but their ‘employers’ are under no obligation to provide it for them or to pay them a ‘retainer’ for time when they are through no fault of their own, idle.  Yet others are on the minimum wage with no possibility of an increase and no other source of income.

            It would be nice to think that the government that is eager to keep its promise that no-one on benefit must be better off than those working, would take steps to raise the income of those six million people ‘the working poor’.  I fear though that they are rather more likely to fulfil their promise by cutting benefits even further.  Perhaps it’s all part of a long-term strategy.  There’s no hope of Britain competing effectively on a global market until our workers are content with the wages paid for the same jobs in Bangladesh, India and Brazil – and prepared to put up with the same standard of health care, housing and transport as exists in those countries.

            That is, I think, why some politicians and newspaper proprietors are so eager to depart from the European Union and its health and safety and other Europe-wide regulations that protect working people’s safety and prevent their exploitation.  Once they’ve ‘broken off the shackles of Europe’ they’ll be free to chip away at the Public Health Acts, the Housing Acts and the Factory Acts and ‘make Britain great again’ like it was the early Victorian age when little children and women worked 12 to 14 hour days in factories and mines, for a pittance. It gave children valuable work experience and taught them the values of obedience and punctuality and was an early example of eliminating sex discrimination, until liberal do-gooders forbade it all and laid the foundations of the nanny-state! Within half a century we could restore those ‘traditional values’, effectively deter immigration, and create a truly competitive business-friendly Britain.   I thank God that I won’t live to see it!

            The eleven percent pay rise for Members of Parliament has been deplored by the leaders of all three of the main political parties (they can see there would be no votes in it!) but sadly there is, so they say, not a thing they can do about it.  They have given the power to an independent body and have no power to change it.  That, I am quite sure, is rubbish!  Parliament gave that power to an independent body and they can, if they have the will to do so, claim it back again.  There are a substantial number of existing MPs who feel they deserve every penny of that pay increase and a few, presumably in safe seats, who are prepared to say so.  One I heard trot out that old ever-ready excuse for paying ridiculously high salaries to those who are already wealthy.  ‘If you want the best candidates you have to offer them the best salaries’.  I think that that is rubbish too. MPs are already well paid, have long holidays and generous expenses (even if, due to the greed of some MPs, they now have to account for every penny of them!)  I have no doubt that some MPs do work hard, genuinely  have their constituents’ concerns at heart and earn every penny of their pay  - but so do nurses, ambulance drivers, air traffic controllers and a great many others.  We need the best postmen, the best bus drivers and the best refuse collectors.   We get them to work by threatening them with unemployment if they don’t.  Why should things be different at the other end of the salary scale?  If you offer ridiculously high salaries you don’t necessarily get the best – but you will attract those who are interested only in the salary and don’t give two hoots about how they earn it

            I was pleased to see that both Bob Russell, Lib.Dem. M.P. for Colchester and Douglas Carswell, our Clacton Conservative M.P, oppose the recommended pay rise.  Douglas Carswell described it as offensive, absurd and uncalled for.  However I don’t think that Tim Young, Clacton’s prospective Labour Candidate was very clever in suggesting that Mr Carswell should donate his pay rise to charity.  The proposed MPs’ pay rise isn’t scheduled to take place until after the next General Election.   Has Mr Young already given up hope that he will win the election and that it would therefore be he and not Mr Carswell who would have to make the decision?

               With a Prime Minister and Chancellor so enthusiastic for the free market and eager to reduce that deficit even though it means making difficult decisions, I am surprised that they haven’t thought of letting market forces decide. Try halving MPs present pay.  They‘d survive well enough on £35,000 a year (about £673 a week) plus their present generous expenses. My guess is that there would still be plenty of candidates at the next election. Predominant among them would be those who really want to serve the public and are not just in it for the prestige and the money.   

It's greed makes the world go round!’

        Boris Johnson, London’s always-in-the-headlines mayor, claimed as much in his recent Margaret Thatcher Memorial Address.  It is, he said, greed and envy that motivate those who operate successfully in the ‘free market economy’ that everyone (except perhaps a few starry eyed idealists and some closet-Marxists!) realizes is the best possible economic system for a civilised society.  We should celebrate and be grateful for those who become billionaires.  We should welcome the enormous gap between rich and poor though he did, rather reluctantly, concede that in Britain today that gap was perhaps just a shade too great. Think of the vast sums of money that the rich pay in taxes, he said, and be thankful.   I recall once again Jesus’s parable of the ‘widow’s mite’.  The wealthy Pharisees paid large sums into the Temple Treasury but those large sums were a small fraction of their total wealth.  The poor widow’s mite was everything she possessed.

           I was more impressed with an article I read recently in the Church Times, not a publication usually associated with wild and irresponsible journalism. The author claimed that if the seriously wealthy were to be content with £100,000 a year (that’s not far short of £2,000 a week) it would be possible for four million more people to enjoy a salary of £25,000.   Furthermore he stated that the top fifth of income tax payers actually pay less in total than the bottom fifth.  I believe that reducing that yawning gap between the wealthiest and the poorest in society should be a top priority  of any responsible government. Not just the poorest, but all of us, would benefit!