Week 40 2013

Tendring Topics………on Line

 Redundant Royals?

          I am sorry that Prince William is giving up his job as a search and rescue helicopter pilot with the RAF.  It was a thoroughly worth-while occupation and he seemed to enjoy doing it. How splendid, I thought, that a senior member of the Royal Family should be in the armed forces, but saving lives rather than threatening them. I’d have thought it was much more satisfying, and more socially useful, than trotting round the country – or the Commonwealth – cutting ribbons, shaking hands and making anodyne speeches.

            Sadly, government policy would soon have snatched that job from him even had he had wished to continue with it.  Obsessed with the doctrinaire conviction that every function carried out by a public authority will be better and more efficiently performed by private enterprise, the government is discontinuing the air-sea rescue service that has been carried out by the RAF and out-sourcing it to a private firm.

            Air-sea rescue, the Royal Mail; what next I wonder?   If the government cuts too deeply into the public services and privatises too many of their activities they could find themselves in serious trouble.   Do you remember when the private sector let us down over security at last year's Olympics or when, a few years earlier, a food-animal epidemic produced a problem the solution of which was beyond the private sector’s capability? On both occasions they urgently needed the public sector’s expertise, loyalty and co-operation. To solve a similar problem in the future they may find that there’s no public sector left on which they can fall back!

            Even Mrs Thatcher, the great evangelist of privatisation, drew the line at selling off the Queen’s head by privatising the Royal Mail.  Having passed that hurdle I’m only surprised that Messrs Cameron, Osborne and co haven’t yet had the idea of completing the job by privatising the monarchy.  News International could surely put in a successful tender.  They’d make the institution productive, profitable and cost effective – and produce satisfying dividends for their shareholders.  They’ve already had unrivalled experience of manipulating the mighty and bending the minds of top politicians.  The reign of King Rupert the First would undoubtedly be remembered as the one in which the United Kingdom really became a land fit for cosmopolitan billionaires to prosper in.

 Tough about the fate of the former Royal Family – and the rest of us!

A Freeze on Fuel Prices?

          Goodness – it was rash of Ed Miliband to promise to freeze fuel prices for a fixed period, two years in advance of the possibility of his being able to fulfil it. Despite national efforts to develop sources of sustainable energy, oil and gas originating from countries that are notoriously unstable and unreliable seem likely to be our main sources of energy for the foreseeable future.   If he should succeed, say the furious fuel companies, he is risking power failures and blackouts. Is that a forecast I wonder – or a threat?

            I warmed to the idea just a little when I learned that Lord Mandelson was strongly opposed to it.  He, you’ll recall, was one of the architects of New Labour and is remembered for his comment that he, ‘had no problem with billionaires’.  I am one of the many who think that in a country where thousands are depending on Food Banks and charitable-giving to survive, he should have a problem with them.

            A regular blog reader suggests a couple of ideas that might have gone into Ed Miliband’s speech if he really wants to prevent the poorer members of our society having to choose between eating and heating:

What would be a good and realistic thing to do is to ban energy companies from charging extra for pre-paid meters. These are almost entirely used by poor families with debt problems who live in low-cost privately rented homes, bedsits for example.  The price difference they have to endure is really quite significant. If this involved any extra cost it would be much fairer for all consumers to share it..

 A more imaginative policy would be to force energy companies to introduce a price structure in which the first xx Kilowatts were very cheap but after that the more fuel was used, the more  would be its cost per unit. This would make it possible for poor (and frugal) people to stay warm at lower cost, while those who were trying to heat six bedroomed mansions and a swimming pool would find it very expensive and be encouraged to put solar panels on the roof

Well, why not?

A Closer look at Clacton-on-Sea’s Sea Front.

          Regular readers of this blog will know that old age and arthritis have crippled me (or, to use a politically correct euphemism, ‘have severely reduced my mobility’).  Without my electric mobility scooter – my iron horse – I would be housebound.  With it I can visit local friends, go to church and to our Quaker Meeting and do my shopping.  For longer journeys I am dependent on the kindness of my family and friends to give me a lift in their cars.  I very much appreciate these occasional outings but, of course, when we reach our destination and the car is parked, I can still hobble only a few yards, leaning heavily on my stick and preferably with a supportive arm!

Pete and I (on my ‘iron pony’) on Clacton Pier        

Pete and Andy, my two always-thoughtful sons, found a solution. Pete and daughter-in-law Arlene visited me on Saturday 21^st September.  In the boot of Pete’s car was an easily-assembled mini mobility scooter – an iron pony – that he and Andy had bought for my use!  Pete drove us to Marine Parade West and parked his car with the help of my ‘blue disabled badge’.  Then, in a matter of minutes, he assembled the mini-scooter, and we set out on a journey of exploration.  We went down the slope at Pier Gap and onto the pier itself.  Riding my new steed was an exciting experience.  The controls were almost the same as those on my trusted ‘iron horse’ but everything (except of course me!) was on a much smaller scale.

It had been years since any one of the three of us had had a chance to explore the pier thoroughly – although we had received very enthusiastic reports from the younger guests at my birthday celebration in May. They had visited the pier after the celebratory lunch.  We were pleased and just a little surprised, to see that there were plenty of visitors of all ages enjoying themselves despite the fact that schools had re-opened and we were nearing the end of September.  There was plenty of noise and bustle.  Pete said it reminded him of the pier iu Clacton’s glory days in the ‘60s and ‘70s when Clacton had thronged with visitors during the holiday period.  He was particularly pleased to see the Steel Stella, the Helter Skelter and the Dodgems, as well as other newer rides.  We went to the end of the pier and surveyed the wind-farm, and the restaurant with its huge glass windows looking out over the ocean.

          

On Clacton Pier - Steel Stella and Helter Skelter

          Having explored the pier we thought that we’d take a  stroll along the lower prom towards the Martello Tower and the Coaches Car Park.  I can’t remember when I had last made that once-familiar journey.  Looking back, Pete was particularly pleased to see the silhouette of the pier with its Steel Stella, Helter Skelter and other buildings, looking exactly as he remembered the pier of his childhood.  Along the prom he and Arlene were impressed with the new brightly coloured beach huts and the lively (graffiti style) mural decorations on the nearby wall.

 

Brightly coloured beach hut and wall painting

. We walked back (well, I rode my iron pony of course) through the cliff-top gardens.  My visitors and I were exhausted but we had enjoyed ourselves.  Despite all the bad press reports and the whingeing letters in the local papers, Clacton-on-Sea has all that is needed for a bright future – sandy and safe beaches, a reborn and prospering pier, colourful cliff-top gardens, and a rainfall and sunshine record as good as  any holiday resort in the UK – and much better than most!  Tendring Council’s top priority should be to make that known to the world!

I am now looking forward to a visit from son Andy and daughter-in-law Marilyn on 12th October. Perhaps my new 'iron pony' will have another outing!

          

Week 7 2013

Tendring Topics.....on line

‘Minute Particulars’

          .

William Blake, author of the poem and hymn Jerusalem remarked that those who wish to do good to their fellow men and women should do so ‘in minute particulars’.  Blake had no time at all for those with grandiose schemes for all mankind

.In Old Road a few hundred yards from the entrance to Morrison’sSupermarket. I took this photograph eighteen months ago. Nothing has been done since


I am not at all sure that Blake was right about that.   There certainly are times when it is necessary to take the longer and wider view. However I think of his words when I hear top politicians announcing reconstruction of the motorway network and the building of new railway lines that will make it possible for us to save an hour on the journey from London to Glasgow, while at the same time local roads and streets are potholed, and the pavements that we use every day are cracking and crumbling beneath our feet.

 They certainly are here in Clacton-on-Sea and I don’t suppose for a moment that the situation is materially different in many other towns   Outrage expressed in the correspondence columns of local newspapers as cars were damaged and accidents caused by potholed roads, has led to at least the worst of the potholes being filled and repaired by the County Council, though many still remain.

            The same cannot be said for the pavements.  Those, like me, who rely on an electric mobility scooter to go shopping, visit friends and, in Clacton  to visit the sea-front and the cliff gardens when the weather is warm and sunny, are acutely conscious of the state of the town’s pavements. Our ancient bones are jolted by every broken  paving stone and uneven surface. These are also a danger to all pedestrians after dark and to those with impaired vision at any time.

In Agincourt Road, not far from my home.  The uneven and broken paving stones are an obvious danger to pedestrians after dark and to those with impaired vision at any time.

In the town centre – in Pier Avenue and Station Road – the pavements have fairly recently been re-laid. They are safe for pedestrians and are a pleasure for us motor-scooterists to drive over.  Move into Old Road, just yards from the town centre or any of our urban side roads and you will find a very different situation.  These two pictures, taken of paths that I traverse regularly, tell their own story.

            I very much hope that no-one trips, falls and is seriously injured by these broken and neglected footpaths.   If anyone does, I suggest that they contact one of the no-win no-fee lawyers who advertise on daytime commercial tv and press for maximum compensation – not just for themselves but to encourage the County Council to give the repair of these broken down and dangerous pavements the priority that this service, for which we pay in our Council Tax, deserves.

Sacred (sea) Cows

            Since 1980 Britain’s armed forces have been involved in the Falklands War against Argentina, two Gulf Wars (the second involving the invasion and occupation of Iraq),  military actions in Sierra Leone and in Kosovo, a still on-going war in Afghanistan, a successful action against the Gaddafi regime in Libya, and peripheral (so far) action in support of the French in Mali.  The Army, the Navy and the RAF have all been involved in these actions that have cost millions of pounds and hundreds of British lives.

            There is no certainty that there won’t be similar calls on the armed forces in the near future.  We can certainly not claim to have been victorious in Afghanistan, Much of Libya appears to be a no-go area for Britons despite our active support for the successful revolutionary cause there.  Already our involvement in Mali has developed from the loan of a couple of cargo planes to help with the French intervention, to providing ground troops to help train the Malian Army. Is that to be the extent of Britain’s involvement – I wonder?   In Syria we are giving humanitarian and diplomatic support to the rebel forces (including fanatical jihadist fighters who are threatening us elsewhere!) trying to overthrow the existing government while  Foreign Minister William Hague  makes belligerent noises from the sidelines.  Oh yes – and in the background there is Iran which may or may not be developing nuclear weapons and which may be involved in armed conflict with Israel (which everybody pretends not to know does possess nuclear weapons!) at any moment.

            Despite all this the Government is including the armed forces in its austerity programme.  Currently the UK has no aircraft carriers (a ‘weapon of war’ that could have humanitarian uses) and battle-weary soldiers returning from Afghanistan are as likely as not to receive their redundancy notices as they ‘Stand Easy!’ and ‘Fall Out!’ after their triumphal homecoming parade!

            The Trident nuclear submarine fleet has escaped the cuts that affect every other area of the armed forces.  These are the United Kingdom’s own weapons of mass destruction; our own Sacred (sea) Cows!  They alone have been spared the cuts and – as it happens – they alone have not been involved in any way in the wars and rumours of wars that have cost so many British lives and so many billions of pounds during the past three decades.

            Trident submarines, roaming the world’s oceans carrying their deadly arsenal, have prevented no act of aggression or terrorist act – and have cost no Middle Eastern or African Dictator  a moment’s peaceful sleep.  They are our ultimate deterrent – but they deterred neither the invasion of the Falklands by Argentina, nor that of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.   They didn’t prevent ‘nine eleven’ nor did they prevent the bomb outrages in London.  They inspire no terror in the hearts of the members of the Taliban.  They didn’t bother Colonel Gaddafi and they don’t worry either side in the civil war in Syria. This week they failed to deter North Koreans from testing their nuclear weapon!  They are, in fact, completely useless as a deterrent or as a weapon.   A deterrent only deters when the perpetrator of aggression believes that there in a serious chance of its being used.  They, and our government, are well aware that to release a nuclear weapon, whether by design or accident, could produce a chain reaction that would destroy countless millions of us and poison our world for centuries to come.  We hope that  they are not quite stupid enough to do that – Let us hope that nuclear weapons never fall into the hands of those, in Pakistan for instance, who are.

            I would like to see the day, prophesied nearly two centuries ago by Alfred Lord Tennyson, When the war drums throb no more, and the battle flags are furled, in the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World, but you don’t have to be a pacifist, a member of CND, or any kind of ban-the-bomb enthusiast, to see that preserving this useless and ridiculously expensive service in a violent world and in the midst of a programme of extreme austerity is utmost folly.

            Perhaps this is beginning to be realized.   Writing in The Friend, a Quaker weekly journal, Ken Veitch a Cheshire Quaker, says that ‘Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury, has stated that Britain does not need to replace the Trident missile fleet with ‘like for like’ nuclear submarines that will cost the country billions of pounds at a time of national  austerity.’   He adds that senior officers in the army and air force have denounced Trident as an unaffordable irrelevance to the UK’s real security needs.  Opinion polls reveal that in the UK as a whole, over fifty percent of we Brits are opposed to Trident and that in Scotland, where the submarines are based, over seventy percent are opposed.

            ‘The cost of upgrading Trident has been put at about £97 billion for its projected life to the 2060s.  This would be a clear breach of the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and would be likely to encourage other nations to base their ‘security’ on nuclear weaponry.

            Mohammed El Baradie, former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency commented that, ‘It is very hard to preach the virtues of non-smoking when you have a cigarette dangling from your lips and are about to buy a new pack’

It's a small, and very strange, world! 

This photo of mine, of a cable car making an ascent to the summit of the Muttersberg just outside Bludenz in Vorarlberg, Austria's western-most province, brought back memories of a happy camping holiday spent there many years ago. It was in 1971 and, for the first time, I was able to share driving the family car (a Ford Cortina Estate) with elder son Pete.

We set up our tents, a large frame tent for Heather and myself and for family meals, and a smaller sleeping tent for Pete and Andy our then-teenage sons, in the Grosswalsertal and drove out every day to explore the mountains and lakes of western Austria.

The cable car to the summit of the Muttersberg was, as you can see, quite small.  It accommodated ourselves and a very similar German family, mum and dad about the age of Heather and myself, with two children a year or two younger than our two sons.

Our camp in Vorarlberg, The car infront of our tent. The boys tent is the small one on the right

When I commented on the father's excellent command of English he explained that he had been a PoW in England for three years during World War II and had worked on a farm the whole time, learning English as he did so.   I replied that I too had been a prisoner of war for three years but had spent 18 months locked up in a large prisoner of war concentration camp in Italy and only eighteen months in a working camp in Germany.  Hence my German was far less fluent than his English.

I then asked what  ex-PoWs always ask a fellow former war prisoner, 'Where were you captured?'      He replied 'Tobruk', adding, in case I had never heard of the place 'that's in North Africa'.    I knew it all too well.   I had myself been captured there in June 1942 when Tobruk had fallen to the German Afrikakorps.  He had been captured towards the end of the same year after the defeat of the German and Italian armies at El Alamein. We had undoubtedly both taken part, on opposite sides, in the many tank-and-artillery engagements that had taken place in the desert to the south and west of Tobruk during the spring of that year.

How extraordinary that this friendly middle-aged stranger and I should thirty years earlier have been in a distant barren and inhospitable land alien to both of us, where we had been trying (fortunately unsuccessfully) to kill each-other!

It really is a small - and very strange - world! 

Tendring Topics…..on line

Helping the Old and Disabled
Flatford Mill, once the home and birthplace of landscape painter John Constable, has been one of my favourite destinations for over seventy-five years! In my mid-teens I was an enthusiastic fresh-water angler. Usually I exercised my skills on the River Gipping, near to my Ipswich home. Occasionally though, taking a packed lunch from my mum, I would cycle along the London Road to East Bergholt and on to Flatford, to see what the Stour had to offer. The headmaster of the Northgate School, my Ipswich Secondary School, was strongly opposed to last minute swotting for exams. Accordingly he established a tradition that all candidates for the Matric (the national school leaving examination, usually taken at 16) cycled to Flatford for the day before the exams started (we were all cyclists in those days) and spent it on the river in hired skiffs.


In adult life, although I no longer fished, I found Flatford Mill as attractive as ever, and drove there on a number of occasions with friends and family, sometimes again hiring a skiff for a leisurely row up-river to Dedham. In recent years, I have had to rely on others to provide transport. Both my sons have driven me there on a number of occasions, reviving old memories.

Progressively limited mobility has meant that I can no longer stride over that wooden bridge and stroll along the river bank from which I had, years before, cast my fishing line. I can now do little more than walk, unsteadily and with the aid of a stick, from the disabled car park to the riverside restaurant for refreshment, and back to the car park again. On our most recent visit though we spotted, standing near to the restaurant, an electric mobility scooter with a notice announcing that its use was free, ‘enquire at the Bridge Cottage Shop’.

I have been using a mobility scooter (my ‘iron horse’) for years. My son enquired, and a friendly and helpful young lady showed me how the controls worked – not quite like mine but easy enough to use. She asked me a few questions, watched me do a short test drive (to make sure that I wasn’t going to drive straight into the river!) and entrusted me with the key!

The range of the mobility scooter is a little limited. The wooden bridge giving access to the Essex bank of the river is, for instance, out of bounds. However one can drive along the lane behind Bridge Cottage and the restaurant and shop, to Willy Lott’s Cottage and to Flatford Mill itself. Because maximum speed of the scooter is that of a comfortable walking pace, accompanying friends and relatives have no difficulty keeping up with it. The Mill has for some years accommodated a ‘field studies’ education centre where my then fifteen-year-old elder son once spent a week with a school party during his final years at Clacton County High School.

From the Mill it is possible to go on a pleasant circular route through the countryside, returning to the Mill and eventually to Bridge Cottage, where the mobility scooter is returned to its owners.

I think that, combined with the nearby car park for disabled drivers or their passengers, and the adjacent disabled toilet, it provides a valuable service for no-longer-agile visitors that deserves all the publicity it can get. Not many beauty spots and tourist destinations do as much.

Flatford Mill, viewed from the Essex bank of the Stour

‘Thanks be to God!’
On Tuesday of last week (12th October) when I posted the predecessor of this blog on the internet, the release of the thirty-three entombed Chilean miners was imminently expected. Originally it had been thought that the relief shaft through which they were to be lifted to freedom wouldn’t be completed till Christmas. Progress though, had been much better than expected. By 12th October (over two months ahead of schedule!), the relief shaft had reached the man-made cavern in which the miners were confined. A rescue capsule had been designed and manufactured and the liberation of the miners, one at a time, might possibly begin within hours. I had been delighted but had decided not to refer to it in my blog. There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip! I had seen too many unforeseen last-minute disasters!

I woke up soon after 4.00 a.m. on the 13th. It was long before I needed to get up but I knew from experience that there would be no more sleep for me. I wondered what was happening in Chile. There was bound to be something on BBC World News. I switched on my bedside radio to learn that the first trapped miner had already been brought to the surface. The second was on his way! And so it continued all day – a smooth, perfectly organised rescue operation. The target had been one rescue an hour, but this was exceeded. It took less than twenty-four hours for every one of those thirty-three miners to be snatched from what had seemed likely to be their grave.

I watched much of the rescue on tv. It was a wonderful to see the tearful joy on the freed miners’ faces, and on those of their parents, wives or girlfriends, and their little sons or daughters, as they were reunited after weeks of fear-filled separation. Some of the freed miners knelt on the ground and crossed themselves, thanking God for their deliverance. ‘How ridiculous to credit God with this rescue!’ must have thought the disciples of antifaith zealot Richard Dawkins. ‘It obviously owed everything to the skill and determination of we humans, and nothing whatsoever to the imaginary world of the supernatural!

Really? Then who, or what, was it that had persuaded those humans to devote hundreds of thousands of pounds, the experience and skills of an army of rescue workers, and weeks of potentially profitable time, to the rescue of just thirty-three poor Chilean miners? It certainly wasn’t fundamentalist Darwinism. Those miners had lost the possibility of contributing to the infinitely slow evolutionary process of perfecting the human gene – the sole ‘purpose’ of our existence. Put their loss down to experience and get on with living.

Nor was it the service of Mammon, the third millennium’s most popular god. Mammon’s three abiding virtues are Productivity, Profitability and Cost Effectiveness (and the greatest of these is Cost Effectiveness!) Never was there a less cost effective exercise than that of bringing those Chilean miners – thirty-three low value human resource units - to safety.

I suggest that it was what we Quakers describe as ‘the promptings of love and truth in our hearts’ (sometimes called ‘that of God’ or ‘the Inward Light of Christ’), God’s gift to every man, woman and child in the world. It was this that had inspired and urged on those untiring rescuers and those who had organised and funded their efforts. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done these things unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done them unto me!’

Centuries ago, St Theresa had said, ‘In this world God has no hands but ours to do his bidding, no feet but ours to run his errands’

Of course the miners were right to thank God for his goodness. So should we all.

‘The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. The answer is blowin’ in the wind’

That answer, provided by Bob Dylan in a famous ‘protest’ song of the early 1960s is certainly part of the answer to the solution of Britain’s energy problems. It could also help solve some of Tendring District’s economic and employment problems.

Tendring Council is bidding, against competition from Germany, the Netherlands and other parts of the UK, for Harwich to be developed as a ‘wind farm port’, building and maintaining the hundreds of wind farms already built, in the process of being built, or planned for the future along England’s east coast.

Council leader Neil Stock is reported as saying that the potential is enormous. ‘It’s a real opportunity for the town and would bring in skilled jobs to revitalise what is a struggling area…..we are talking hundreds of jobs and, with the boost to the economy, it would mean thousands’.

In Harwich’s favour would be the fact that it is already an internationally known port, and its central and easily accessible position convenient for the Continent, with a major wind farm offshore at Clacton, and positioned midway between the wind turbines off the Kent coast, and those off the coast of north-east England. It could be developed where a new container port had been proposed at Bathside Bay. Mr Stock said that the current economic climate meant that that container port couldn’t have been provided ‘for at least a generation’.

INTend, Tendring Council’s private enterprise regeneration agency, has been given the job of turning those ambitious hopes into reality – a brilliant opportunity to prove to its critics (including me!) that it really can earn its keep.

The Council’s bid has the backing of Harwich and North Essex MP Bernard Jenkins. Perhaps it is just as well that Harwich is no longer within the constituency of Richard Carswell – Clacton’s climate-change-denying MP. I fear that he might have been unable to show much enthusiasm for the development of an alternative source of energy.

Week 11.10

Tendring Topics…….on line

We Mobility-Scooterists are in trouble again!

Ought mobility scooter users face a test before being allowed out onto the pavements on their iron steeds? Ought our mobility scooters to be – like cars – compulsorily registered and insured against third party injuries? These are said to be measures that the government is considering. We in the Tendring District have particular reason to be interested in this since we are said to have the highest proportion of disabled people in Essex. Also, according to the Daily Gazette, our district ‘has witnessed a growing number of accidents involving motor scooters in recent years’.

Have we though? The only evidence the Gazette produces to support this claim is that in 2005 a woman scooter user suffered fatal injuries when her scooter was in collision with a car in Clacton’s Marine Parade East, and in 2006 an 80 year old woman from Walton called for a change in the law after she was hit by a scooter and a Walton toddler ‘was dragged under the wheels of one’ (considering the size of scooter wheels that takes a bit of imagining!). Also in 2006, Tendring Council considered banning scooters from cliff paths and seafront promenades, after a woman on a scooter suffered fatal injuries when she accidentally drove her vehicle off the prom.

If one swallow doesn’t make a summer, four accidents involving mobility scooters that took place between four and five years ago, hardly make a cause for serious public concern today. How many accidents involving cars, commercial vehicles, motorcycles and pushbikes have taken place in our area since 2005? Considerably more, I fancy, than the four in which mobility scooters were involved. We don’t even know in how many, if any, of those four accidents the user of the mobility scooter was to blame.

Having said that, I can’t bring myself to go all the way with Gordon Beare of the Tendring Pensioners’ Action Group who claims that the idea of the test is ‘an outrageous suggestion……..I’m certainly against having to take a test. I’m sure there would be a charge for it, which many elderly people can’t afford’.

I have been a scooter user rather longer than Gordon Beare, and I am not quite so sure. Driving a mobility scooter, crossing busy roads with it and behaving correctly towards other road and pavement users isn’t quite as simple as those who have never tried it might think. Mobility scooters go faster than the average pedestrian (not many people can walk at 4 mph) and they have very powerful motors. It was at least a fortnight after purchase before I felt sufficiently confident on mine to venture into the town centre. I think that some kind of a test might be a good idea. It is unlikely that the test would be free but then mobility scooters aren’t exactly cheap either. Surely most people who could afford to buy one would also manage to find the extra pound or two for the test.

As for registration and third party insurance; registration needn’t cost anything and most responsible scooter users already have third party insurance. I certainly wouldn’t be happy without mine. The low premiums charged testify to the small number of claims that are actually made.

I am fully in agreement with Gordon Beare on one point – the unpredictable and thoughtless behaviour of some other road users can present mobility scooter users with problems. I am particularly wary of pedestrians walking down the middle of the pavement towards me, engrossed in conversation on a mobile phone. They’re clearly not looking where they are going and depend on pedestrians coming towards them stepping aside at the last moment. That is something a scooter user can’t do! I have even seen someone tapping in a text message while striding blindly along the footpath.

Other ‘hates’ that one develops when driving (or should it be ‘riding’) a mobility scooter are the motorists who leave their cars right across the dropped kerbs that we rely on when crossing a road, and those (commercial vehicle drivers are major offenders) who park partly on the footpath, leaving just sufficient room for a fairly slim pedestrian to squeeze through. Motor scooters and, I imagine, those pushing prams or wheel chairs simply can’t get past.

These are a minority though. I have found most motorists, and most pedestrians, to be courteous and considerate. We scooter users must remember that we take up rather more room, and move faster, than pedestrians. It is up to us to cause as little inconvenience as possible to others, to give way on narrow or partially obstructed footpaths, and never to forget to smile, to say please or thank you, and to apologise whenever an apology is due.

Could do better……much better!

What on earth has happened to Clacton’s secondary schools?

Only last week in this blog I commented on the fact that Bishops Gate College and Colbayns High School during 2008/2009, the last academic year of their existence, had the highest truancy rates of any school in Essex! Their general progress showed much to be desired and they have been amalgamated as The Coastal Academy in an attempt to save them from failure. Only time will tell whether or not this move will prove to have been successful.

Two ‘likely lads’! Pete and Andy, the Hall brothers in 1966. Both were pupils at Clacton County High School in the ‘60s and early '70s

At least, I thought, Clacton County High School remains a centre of secondary educational excellence. I hadn’t realized how much that school has changed since the 1970s! Then both my sons were pupils. They were among many who were a credit to the school, and have since
pursued profitable and socially useful careers. In his final year, my elder son was one of four sixth form students who were offered and took up places at Cambridge University. Many others went to other Universities.

Now it seems that Clacton County High School is also in trouble. Following an Ofsted inspection last November, the school was criticised for having inadequate teaching and falling GCSE grades. The report said that its leadership team had not recognised significant weaknesses in the way that it dealt with bad behaviour, and with pupils having learning difficulties. Student attendance was too low and GCSE maths results were consistently below average. Some pupils and parents had also complained that the school’s disciplinary policy was unfair. The Governors were criticised for not questioning high exclusion figures.

I must say that I have some sympathy with the Head-teacher Mr Jeff Brindle in connection with the exclusion of pupils whose behaviour disrupts the education of others. What other effective disciplinary measures are available to head teachers these days? I wonder to which schools Mr Brindle is referring when he claims that his exclusion figures were still ‘lower than other local schools’. Could it be Colbayns and Bishops Gate?

It is amazing how eager those in public office (whether they are MPs referring to their expenses claims or school governors discussing adverse Ofsted reports) are to put unpleasant facts behind them and ‘look to the future!’ My former colleague Bert Foster, now Chairman of the CCHS Governors, says, ‘What is important now is the interests of our students. We intend to move forward, put this report behind us, and build on the many strengths the school has’.

I think that the Governors and Head Teacher should not put that report behind them, but keep it in front of them – as a reminder that they must do a great deal better in the future. I don’t envy Clacton parents with ten-year old sons and daughters about to begin their secondary education.

Another, ‘Modest proposal……..’

Those readers of The Times who are well past the first flush of youth may have been shocked to read an article in which novelist Martin Amis (son of Sir Kingsley Amis) shared with readers his solution to the ‘problem’ presented by our ageing population.

He suggested that we deal with this ‘ticking demographic timebomb’ by providing euthanasia booths on every street corner. If we fail to do this, he suggests, ‘There’ll be a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants, cafes and shops. I can imagine a sort of civil war between the old and the young in 10 or 15 years time’.

Possession of a very fertile and active imagination is, I am sure, on the CV of every successful author. The article was surely a satirical one, in the same vein (and as deliberately tasteless!) as the famous ‘Modest proposal…’ of Dean Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels. In it he appeared to suggest infanticide and cannibalism as a solution to many of society’s problems. Some of his contemporaries imagined that he actually meant it!

It is to be hoped that Martin Amis’ intention was satirical, because a search on Google Chrome reveals that he is himself 60 years old. If there were to be a civil war between young and old in fifteen or twenty years time he could expect to be in the front line – and on what he would now consider to be ‘the wrong side!

A few months ago we were celebrating the life and work of Charles Darwin. Martin Amis’ article is of value in that it graphically illustrates what I think of as ‘Fundamentalist Darwinism’; the conviction that the survival of the fittest is the primary law of nature and that the sole purpose on earth of every living creature (including every man and woman) is the perpetuation of its species. The old, the disabled, the infertile and the impotent have no evolutionary purpose. Therefore they have no place in Darwinism’s ultimate Brave New World. ‘Away with them, to the guillotine, the gas chambers, or the euthanasia booths!’

The Fateful 6th May

It is now almost certain (if not entirely ‘beyond reasonable doubt’) that the General Election will be held on Thursday 6th May. What is even more certain is that its highlight will be a carefully staged and televised debate between the leaders of the three main political parties.

The way in which the debate is to be held and the propaganda that is already preceding it make it even clearer to me that on polling day we will not be expected to choose between different sets of policies (there is not a great deal of real difference between them anyway) or even between political parties, but between three individuals; which one ‘comes over’ best on the small screen! If his party has a substantial majority the winner can expect to be able to exercise dictatorial power for the next five years, since all the rewards (for party loyalty) and all the penalties (for what would be seen as disloyalty) will be in his hands.

It seems to be assumed that a ‘hung parliament’ in which neither of the two largest parties have an overall majority, would be a national disaster. It would mean we couldn’t have a strong government. My experience of strong governments suggests to me that it would be the best possible outcome of the election.

If we hadn’t had a strong government in the 1980s and early ‘90s, we wouldn’t have had the almost universally detested Poll Tax (They really should have known better. An attempt to impose a similar tax in the 14th century had triggered the Peasants Revolt!) If we hadn’t had a strong government in the first decade of the third millennium, we wouldn’t have embarked on a bloody and illegal war in Iraq.

Were there good things that happened under those two governments that wouldn’t have happened if we had had a hung parliament? I suppose that there must have been. Off hand, I can’t think of any though!

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Christmas is coming!

Christmas is coming……..and as sure as that there will be Carols from Kings and the Queen’s televised Christmas message, there will come a headline-grabbing little lecture calculated to dampen down and spoil the faith and joy of others. Sadly, it is often delivered by a no doubt well-meaning cleric.

This year, it is the Bishop of Croydon (did you know that there was one?) who, it seems, dislikes our traditional Christmas carols. Many of these, he says are the product of Victorian sentimentality and nothing to do with God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ. Particularly the subjects of Episcopal displeasure are two of the best known and, I think, most loved of carols; ‘Away in a Manger’ and ‘O come, all ye faithful’.

The lines in ‘Away in a manger’ to which the Bishop takes exception are, ‘The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes’. The point is presumably that the Church has always taught that Jesus was wholly human as well as wholly divine and that, as a human baby, he would have woken up crying. Perhaps …. .but if a baby is warm, full of milk and comfortable, and wakes to hear the gentle lowing of cattle, he may well remain silent on waking. Perhaps the Bishop has had an unfortunate experience of parenthood, but human babies really don’t cry all the time.

There are actually two lines of that carol that do make me feel uneasy. ‘I love thee, Lord Jesus look down from the sky, and stay by my side until morning is nigh’. I tell myself though that it is a carol intended for children. It is difficult enough for an adult to understand that Jesus can be ever-present while being outside time and space as we know them. ‘Above the sky’, is however a metaphor easily understood by children.

‘O come all ye faithful’ with its echoes of the Nicene Creed is surely the most magnificent of all the carols, and the one with which every carol service should end. The Bishop says it should be ‘O come all ye faithless’. I think he means that our message should be to those outside the Church. And so it should be, all through the year. Surely though, on the anniversary of the day that ‘the Word was made flesh’, if on no other, the faithful are allowed to be ‘joyful and triumphant’!

There are plenty of other hymns that do have lines that set my teeth on edge. How about ‘sufficient is thine arm alone and our defence is sure’, sung with gusto at an Army Church Parade, 'Take my silver and my gold, not a mite will I withhold’, sung by a comfortably-off middle-class congregation and ‘The vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus his pardon receives'? Surely there must be contrition as well as belief. St. James in his Epistle says ‘the devils also believe – and tremble!’

Lord Bishop, do have a look through the rest of the hymnbook by all means, but please leave our Christmas carols alone!

A Fateful Decision

I was delighted when Barak Obama was elected as President of the US. I hope that it wasn’t simply because he wasn’t George W. Bush. It was obvious though that he was going to have a fight on his hands in a country where any good work carried out by a public authority is liable to be denounced as ‘communism’!

Since his election he hasn’t disappointed, and he has certainly had to fight every inch of the way. He has, for instance, made it clear that (unlike George W. Bush – not to mention our own MP, Mr Douglas Carswell!) Mr Obama does accept the threat from global warming and humankind’s responsibility for this danger. He is, in fact, attending the Conference of World Leaders and leading scientists that opened in Copenhagen this week to discuss climate change and how best to combat it.

He has ordered the dismantling of the rocket sites in central Europe that the Russians regarded as a threat (well, wouldn’t the Americans have regarded Russian, or Chinese rockets sited in Canada or Mexico as something of a threat?). At home he is desperately trying, despite ferocious opposition, to ensure proper health care for the millions of US citizens who simply can’t afford adequate insurance cover.

Is he making another wise decision in deciding to send another 30,000 US troops to Aghanistan, or is it one that he will regret for the rest of his political life? The time that he took to consider this issue suggests that he is well aware of the possibility of disaster. Generals commanding armies stalemated by their enemies are always confident that, if only they had more troops and equipment, they could make one final push and sweep on to victory. They are not always right though!

Supposing the Taleban are defeated and their fighters simply disappear from the scene? No doubt their leaders are well known and may well be captured or killed. There must be hundreds of rank and file though. Most of them could just disappear among the Indian sub-continent's teeming millions and concentrate on terrorist acts there and elsewhere. They could, of course, reappear in Afghanistan when the Brits and Americans decided that they had won and withdrew their troops.

We are desperately trying to transform the Afghan government’s army into a force that can stand up to and defeat the Taleban without our help. Are we absolutely sure that they will want to? We gave covert financial and practical support to the ‘gallant Mojihadin’ in their guerrilla war against the Soviets only to see them transform themselves into ‘fanatical insurgents’, every bit as determined to get rid of us as they were the Russians. The western trained Afghan policeman who turned his weapon against his trainers, and the Muslim medical officer, who in the USA, is accused of suddenly murdering his comrades, could be straws in the wind.

Why are our forces in Afghanistan? Is it to introduce the Afghans to the joys of freedom and democracy; to encourage the education of girls and to ensure justice for women; to encourage religious tolerance? Hardly. It is surely to protect ‘the West’ from terrorist attacks like those in New York, London and Madrid.

I think it likely that the best way to do that might be to withdraw our troops completely from every Muslim country. That is what both extremist and moderate Muslims would like us to do. It would, at a stroke, remove a factor that turns ‘moderates’ into ‘extremists’ and feeds Al Quaida with a constant trickle of enthusiastic recruits. It would release NATO troops for their job of defending the peace of Britain and Mainland Europe.

A Question of Mobility

I have remarked before that although I feel far from comfortable with the zeitgeist of the 21st century, I am more than thankful for the many twenty-first century blessings that help to make life worth living, even in old age. None of my family lives very near and I would have little contact with them were it not for the telephone (particularly perhaps the mobile phone), my laptop and the Internet. And, of course, my sons living in London both have fast cars with which they come to see me regularly. Failing eyesight makes me less inclined to read than I once was (though oddly enough, using my laptop doesn’t seem to tire my eyes!) but radio, television, a video tape recorder and a DVD Player make good the deficiency

I think though, that the modern convenience that makes the biggest difference in my life is my electric mobility scooter, my ‘iron horse’. Luckily I have a shed large enough to house it, to which a kind neighbour has taken an electricity supply so that I am able to keep its batteries charged. I use it almost every day…..for shopping, for going to the Post Office, to Church and to the Quaker Meeting, for keeping doctor’s or optician’s appointments, for visiting friends and, on occasion, for going to the seafront for a breath of fresh air.

As the months pass I find myself less and less able to walk. Were it not for my ‘iron horse’ I would be totally housebound, able to leave home only with a taxi or when someone was able to give me a lift in his or her car. My electric scooter gives me freedom and mobility. It is the possession that I would be least willing to give up.

For all of those reasons I was totally shocked when I read in the Clacton Gazette that lack of funding is compelling Clacton and Tendring Shopmobility, a charity that has served local elderly and disabled local people for over a decade and a half, to close down for good on New Year’s Eve.

Shopmobility, based in Clacton’s Pier Avenue, rents out mobility scooters to those who need them for short periods at cut-price rates. It has provided a first class service to people like myself who are unable to purchase a scooter of their own (they are quite expensive!) or who would have nowhere to store it if they did purchase one. Last year they rented out scooters no less than 4,000 times and their membership almost trebled!

Shopmobility is staffed by volunteers but it does cost £45,000 a year to run. Earlier this year its management applied for lottery funding which would have secured its future for five years, but they were unsuccessful. Nor would Tendring Council help them despite the fact that the charity expects to be in a position to support itself within two years.

Shopmobility’s manager, Julie Hewes-Gardner, says, ‘People are distraught. Many will now be housebound. They won’t be able to get out to the shops and banks, or to socialise’.

I wonder on what Tendring Council is spending our money that is more important than brightening the lives of some of Clacton’s least privileged and most vulnerable residents? It is tempting to denounce them as Scrooges but that is hardly fair on Ebenezer Scrooge. He did, you’ll recall, mend his ways just in time for Christmas. There’s little sign of the Council doing anything of the sort.

Bankers’ Bonuses

Those with brilliant brains at the top of the Banking World will, so they say, desert us and sell their brilliance elsewhere if they do not receive their accustomed astronomical ‘bonuses’ on top of their already more-than-generous salaries.

I think that the instant reaction of most ordinary people is ‘let them go – and good riddance. If they are that brilliant, how is it that we had to bail them out with millions of pounds of our money?’

I think though that the threat raises a more fundamental issue. Most people whose work demands skill and experience, work primarily because they enjoy exercising those qualities. The only skill that I have ever possessed is that of stringing words together to produce the kind of material that I hope others enjoy reading. It was very nice when I was paid for doing so. Nowadays, I am not. My income is however sufficient for my quite-modest needs and I exercise my writing skills, in producing this weekly blog for instance, because doing so gives me satisfaction and pleasure.

Can it be that those whose skill lies in the manipulation of finance, come to believe that this is life’s only reality, and that work has no purpose or meaning beyond the acquisition of more and more money, from whatever source it may come? If so, I feel truly sorry for them. Despite their great wealth they are poverty-stricken indeed!