Week11 2014

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Echoes from 1982

          On 10^th July 1982, over forty years ago, bombs planted by the Provisional IRA exploded in London’s Hyde Park and Regent’s Park killing eleven soldiers, members of the Household Cavalry, and seven of their horses.  Echoes of those explosions have travelled down the years to 2014 – to make press headlines and to cast a little light on a feature of the Good Friday Agreement, that was apparently unknown to thos now responsible for governing that troubled province of the UK.

            John Downey, a former IRA member, had been arrested and was about to stand trial on suspicion of implication in those bomb outrages, but was released on the orders of the Judge when he produced a letter from the Northern Irish Constabulary assuring him that he was not ‘wanted by the police’ for any offence committed during the ‘troubles’.  At first it was suggested that this letter had been a one-off error made by the Northern Irish Police but it later became known that some 180 similar letters had been sent to other suspected republican terrorists ‘on the run’.  It was a promise amounting (at least in the recipients’ minds) to an amnesty.  It had been sent to republican suspected terrorists only and not extended either to ‘loyalists’ or to the British soldiers involved  in the ‘Bloody Sunday’ event in Londonderry.

            Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland’s First Minister, who has the almost-impossible job of holding together an uneasy power-sharing government of loyalists and republicans, claims that he had known nothing of these letters. He is said to have been ‘incandescent with rage’ when he heard of them.  He threatened to resign his post unless there was an immediate judicial enquiry into the whole matter – and David Cameron has agreed that there should be one, reporting its findings at the end of May

It has been suggested that the letters were promised to Sinn Fein by Tony Blair in order to ensure their compliance, without involving others involved in the Good Friday agreement, They were kept secret, rather like the contents of the cosy chats between Tony Blair and President Bush that took place before a majority of members of the House of Commons were deceived into endorsing the illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq.  

It could be that it was only by means of that distinctly one-sided agreement that the present uneasy peace in Northern Ireland was secured.  I ask myself though whether a good conclusion can ever be achieved by dishonest means.  Some time ago I commented in this blog that making Tony Blair the United Nation’s ‘special peace envoy’ to the Middle East was rather like making one of the Kray brothers a Chief Constable.  Nothing has since happened to alter that opinion.

‘Why don’t they eat cake?’

            If, during the final decade of the twentieth century, you had asked an acquaintance or friend their opinion of Food Banks, they would probably have thought you were deranged.  Banks deal with money, not food. We had yet to experience the brave new world of the 21^st century!   You might have received a more positive answer in the USA because Food Banks, providing basic sustenance for the hungry poor, had been established there from 1967.   They were ‘wholesalers’ rather than ‘retailers’ though – collecting and storing donated food items and sending them, in bulk, to approved charities for distribution to those in need.

            European countries, including the UK, generally had better national social services than those in the USA and the need for Food Banks didn’t arise until nearly four decades later – in 2006.  Now they are the United Kingdom’s fastest growing voluntary service, with over 400 such banks nation-wide and growing every week.  In 2013 they fed nearly 347,000 people!  The number of applicants has grown as the Government’s welfare cuts have taken effect.  To obtain help, applicants need to get a voucher from a professional such as a local authority social worker. On presenting the voucher to the food bank they are given sufficient food for three days.

           

            Most Food Banks are co-ordinated by the Trussell Trust and are associated with Christian Churches, in accordance with Jesus Christ’s declaration that we should treat other people as we ourselves would wish to be treated.  It is very heartening that the Bishops of the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church, together with the leaders of the Free Churches, are giving their enthusiastic support, while at the same time criticising government policies that have created the need for the food banks.   Some fifty percent of the food distributed is donated by members of the public.  Some is given by private enterprises such as supermarkets and many Food Banks are supported, in one way or another, by the local authority of the district in which they are situated.

                                                   

                                                         A cartoon from the ‘Observer’

           

In my own town of Clacton-on-Sea (which includes the Brooklands area of Jaywick, said to be the UK’s most deprived area) the Food Bank is run by the Salvation Army with the support of other Christian traditions in the town including, of course, Clacton Quakers of which I am a member.

            The need for Food Banks has increased as the Chancellor’s attacks on the meagre incomes of the poor have begun to bite, though the government insists that this increase is simply because ‘scroungers’ have discovered in them a source of free food and that ‘there is no robust evidence of a link between the increase in demand for Food Banks and the welfare reforms’. It has even been suggested that some recipients of food parcels have sold on their contents!   How robust, I wonder, does evidence have to be to convince those who don't wish to be persuaded.  The fact that food parcels are dispensed only to those presenting a voucher from a welfare professional, is surely a deterrent to ‘frivolous and fraudulent applicants’.

            I have just watched a very striking programme on the tv about Food Banks and the valuable service they provide.  To provide ‘balance’ a number of denigrators of Food Banks were interviewed, including former Cabinet Minister Edwina Curry.  I’d be very surprised if any one of them has ever felt the pangs of real hunger.  Some of their comments made Marie Antoinette’s alleged suggestion that if the poor of Paris couldn’t get bread ‘they should eat cake’ seem positively liberal and benign! 

The Price of Postage Stamps

Like me, you may have thought that that massive increase in the cost of sending mail that we endured last year (First Class minimum postage 60p, Second Class 50p!) was the last we’d have to put up with for a year or two; especially as privatisation, which took place just a couple of months ago, was supposed to be going to be giving us a better, more efficient, service.

We were wrong.  Postage charges are going up again - from 1^st April which is not an inappropriate date!   First class stamps are to go up to 62p (an increase of 3.3 percent) from that date, and second class ones from 50 to 53p (an increase of 6 percent).   I’m glad that I bought enough of those attractive Madonna and Child Christmas stamps to see me through several months of the new financial year.  They’ll prove to have been quite an investment, though nothing like that of the investors who bought shares in Royal Mail at the ridiculously low price of 330p a share.  They have seen their investment almost double to £6.00 a share since they made their purchase.

It is easy to forget that whenever a public service is privatised its main purpose changes from serving the public to satisfying the shareholders!

Spring is here!

A fortnight ago I published a picture with my blog, of a few daffodils around the eating apple tree in my garden, just coming into bloom in late February.  Now in early March, as you can see, they are all in full bloom. 

 Spring 2014 really is here!  

 These daffodils have a special significance for me.  From the kitchen window of our bungalow, my wife Heather watched them grow, bloom and wither, year after year, It was where those daffodils bloom that, nearly eight years ago, I scattered her ashes after sixty years of happy marriage. I hope that when the time comes my ashes too may be scattered there.

 

 

         

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 30 2012

Tendring Topics........on line

 Once again – Public Sector to the Rescue!

   Why on earth, I wonder, is the present government so obsessed with the idea that ‘the private sector’ can always perform more economically and efficiently than ‘the public sector’?  Public authorities, they believe, should no longer actually provide the services for which they are responsible (refuse collection and disposal, maintenance of public buildings, parks and recreational facilities, care of the disabled and elderly, highway maintenance, catering and routine cleaning of schools and hospitals to name but a few)  but merely ‘facilitate’ them. All these services must be put out to competitive tender and given to the contractor who undertakes to perform them at the lowest cost.

The government is continually trying to extend the field of the private sector further (into the provision of health, policing and educational services, for instance) and to reduce that of public authorities.

This devalues or undervalues the loyalty that long-serving staff feel towards an employer who treats them fairly and respects their expertise and experience. It undervalues too the pride that permanent employees take in making sure that their canteen or staff restaurant provides the very best meals in the most welcoming atmosphere, that their ward is the cleanest and neatest in the hospital, that their park is always safe and welcoming to visitors, or that the service that they render the public is the very best of which they are capable.

The prime motive of private contractors is not to give the best possible service but to maximise profits by giving as little as they can get away with, for as much as they can get. Cost effectiveness, profitability, productivity, the three persone of Mammon’s unholy trinity, are the only criteria of the market place – and of the economic jungle.

            Over and over again we have seen the results of this.   Private enterprise has failed to set or mark examination papers efficiently or in the time required.  Private contractors have failed to pay out badly needed grants on time.  Public money poured into banks has been squandered, and call centres have been located in distant lands and staffed with people who can barely speak English – for no other reason than that their labour is cheap and they are prepared to put up with appalling living and working conditions.  The private sector was unable to cope with the effects of the nation-wide foot-and-mouth disease epidemic.   The public sector (the army) was called in to help clear up the mess.

            The latest example of this, and the one with the potential to produce the most catastrophic results, is of G4S the private contractors employed to ensure security at the 2012 Olympic Games that are about to begin.  Many people, it seems, had been well aware of the inadequacies of this private organisation but the Home Secretary remained blissfully ignorant until the last moment.  Then, just days before the Olympic Games were due to begin, she called on the public sector – war-weary troops from a government-depleted army many of whom were denied their well-earned leave  - to step into the breach and, as Houseman put it in quite a different context, 'save the sum of things for pay’.  For army pay, of course, not for the millions of pounds that private sector entrepreneurs G4S had been expecting.

            In Manchester and other urban areas accommodating Olympic athletes or otherwise associated with the Olympics, where G4S claimed to have recruited and trained sufficient private security staff, only a fraction of those needed reported for duty when required*.   Their place too has had to be taken by the public sector, by already hard-pressed police officers (also from government-depleted forces) working overtime to remedy private sector failure.

There are already plans to privatise some aspects of police work.  No-one, as far as I know, has yet thought of privatising the armed forces. It wouldn’t surprise me though to learn that there are those who are wondering if re-introducing 17^th century style privateering might prove to be a cost-effective way of strengthening our government-depleted Royal Navy!

*It was interesting to hear Jeremy Hunt, Culture Secretary and Minister in charge of the Olympics, making excuses for G4S on tv. He didn’t feel that there was anything particularly surprising or specially reprehensible in a private contractor promising a hundred trained operatives when required and then supplying only twenty or thirty.  This was, of course, the same Jeremy Hunt who hadn't noticed that his principal adviser was virtually on kissing terms with News International.

Preventing an Olympic terrorist attack!

          A warship in the Thames, anti-aircraft defences on the flat roofs of high buildings in the vicinity of the stadium, fighter aircraft patrolling the skies, thousands of troops on patrol – I am not at all sure that if I lived in London, particularly in the stadium area, I would be sleeping more easily in my bed in the knowledge of all the precautions against terrorist attack that are being taken.

            We are told that if an unknown plane approached the Olympic zone and refused to obey orders to change course ‘lethal force’ would be used against it; it would be either shot down or blown up.  And what, one wonders, would happen to the bits of the suspect plane?  We haven’t yet, as far as I know, perfected a means of vaporising them so we can only assume that they would fall on the buildings and people below, also possibly with lethal force!

             I think that if I were the commander of a terrorist gang, intent on having maximum ill-effect at the time of the Olympic Games, I’d give East London and all other Olympic venues a complete miss.   I would think that, with all eyes and all counter-terrorism measures concentrated on the games, this would be the best moment to strike at  quite different but prestigious targets in East Anglia, the Midlands or the North.

 Britain’s railway termini and airports, armed forces bases and depots, and our power stations might well be considered vulnerable.  I hope therefore that, in the concern about the protection of the Olympic Stadium and facilities in London, the defences of these possible targets have not been forgotten.

The Chilcot Enquiry

             The Leveson Enquiry, the revelations of jiggery pokery (I don’t recall ever before using that expression in a blog, but I can’t think of a better one!) in the world of finance, and the failures of G4S, have all but driven the Chilcot Enquiry out of our minds.   This, you’ll recall, was into the causes and conduct of the Iraq War and its aftermath, and ran from 2009 till February 2011.   I understand that the Chilcot Committee’s report is now almost complete and that it runs to two million words.  For those like me who can’t even imagine what two million words look like, it is roughly twice as long at Tolstoy’s mammoth historical novel War and Peace!

            It had been confidently expected that the report would be published this summer. We now learn though that this will be delayed for at least a year because of a dispute about the inclusion of just a few thousand words!  It is unfortunate that these are the words that many of us are particularly eager to read.

            I am not greatly interested in the conduct of the war or even about the mismanagement of its aftermath.   I do know that Saddam Hussein was a cruel and autocratic dictator with many innocent deaths on his conscience.  I am  quite sure though that he had no time at all for Al Qaeda, nor had they any time for him.  Consequently he had played no part whatsoever in the 9/11 terror attacks on the USA.

            Furthermore I was sure that at the time of our invasion of Iraq he had no weapons of mass destruction, and I am convinced that Tony Blair and George Bush Junior were well aware of this too. Yet a majority of MPs and a large section of the national press were persuaded to support the invasion on the grounds that Iraq was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks on the USA and that Saddam Hussein did have weapons of mass destruction that threatened Britain.

            How did this mass deception happen?   It resulted in thousands of deaths and many thousands more damaged lives, the almost total destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, a boost in the recruitment of volunteers for terrorist organisations, and the beginning of ethnic and sectarian acts of terror and violence that still continue  (to this very week in fact!)

            I think it likely that emails and recorded conversations between the American President, George W. Bush and Tony Blair the British Prime Minister during the weeks immediately prior to the invasion may help to throw light on the matter.   A record of these exists and has been seen by the Chilcot Enquiry Committee.  It had been intended to publish them with the final report – but the all-powerful Cabinet Office has objected. It is thought that public access to those emails and the records of those conversations might harm USA/UK relations and inhibit the future sharing of intelligence information.  Tough luck!   If USA/UK good relations depend upon the British electorate continuing in ignorance of a conspiracy of deception, then those good relations are hardly worth having.  Nor is it of any value to us to be permitted to share lies and carefully selected half-truths.

            If for no other reason that Tony Blair is now our ‘special peace envoy’ in the Middle East (it was rather like making one of the Kray brothers a Chief Constable!) we are surely entitled to know what he was discussing with George Bush immediately before he persuaded a majority of MPs to support the invasion of Iraq in our name.

Week 13 2012 5.4.2012

Tendring Topics.......on line

The Budget – it’s getting personal!

            When the popular press has scare headlines about the ‘squeezed middle class’ they are not usually referring to people like me.  Their idea of ‘middle class’ means someone in a desirable residence in a leafy suburb, with two new cars in the drive and kids away from home in a posh boarding school!

            I therefore had something of a shock to discover that the Granny Tax in the Chancellor’s Budget which penalises grey-haired ‘Middle England’ seemed to be aimed point-blank at me! Not all of us oldies are affected.  Quite a lot of pensioners don’t have an income high enough to make them liable to pay income tax at all.   Others with an annual income in excess of £25,000 a year don’t qualify for age allowance.  But, as a spokesperson for Saga (specialising in services to the elderly) pointed out, anyone over 65 with an income between £11,000 and £25,000 a year does stand to lose something in the region of £80 a year as a result of the freezing of the age related income tax allowance.  I am definitely in that category.

            That, of course, is not the only blow that the policies of the present government have dealt us oldies.   Many of us have our life’s savings entrusted to the Bank or Building Society that, many years ago, had provided the mortgage with which we purchased our homes.   Thanks to artificially low interest rates, the interest on those savings (especially when income tax has been deducted!) is less than the rate of inflation.  In effect, our savings are diminishing in value.  Then too, public services on which many old people rely such as meals on wheels, social support services and so on are either cut or prohibitively expensive.  Charities, that once provided services to the old, have had their grants reduced or withdrawn altogether.

            Perhaps it is worth mentioning too that the ‘big increase’ that pensioners will receive next month that the Chancellor suggests will more than compensate for the ‘granny tax’ is simply the automatic rise resulting from high inflation last October. It compensates (six months late) for the rise in the cost of living at that time.

            I don’t want to exaggerate the effect that the ‘granny tax’ will have on me personally.  I shall weather that particular storm without too much trouble.  A loss of £80 a year isn’t going to break either my bank account or my heart!  My income is likely to remain sufficient for my needs (the scope for extravagant living is a bit limited when one gets to ninety!) and I have sufficient savings to cope with any probable calamity. If I thought that the money saved by freezing my age-related benefit would go towards helping those in much greater need and narrowing the income gap between the rich and the poor, I would part with that £80 – or more - gladly.

            What I do bitterly resent is the fact that savings made by the government from this ‘granny tax’ and from other ‘economies’ affecting the old, the sick and the disabled, are helping to make possible the reduction of the highest rate of income tax levied on those with a taxable income in excess of £150,000 a year, from £50% to 45%!  The utter rubbish spoken in justification of this indefensible tax reduction, benefiting only the seriously rich, is almost beyond belief! 

            ‘The 50% tax deters entrepreneurs from establishing new small businesses in the UK’    How many new small businesses do you know that pay over £150,000 a year to their founder or any member of his or her staff?  

             ‘The new 45% rate of tax will bring in more money than the 50% rate because people resent having to pay half their income in taxes. They won’t feel the same resentment about paying 45%.

            First – and this is a point that needs to be made abundantly clear – even if the highest rate of tax were 60% or 70%, no-one would be expected to pay anything like half their income in taxes.  The highest rate of tax is levied only on taxable income in excess of £150,000 a year!  In any case, does the Government really imagine that those who have successfully avoided paying tax at the 50% rate are going to repent and pay up promptly when the rate is lowered to 45%?   That really is Cloud Cuckoo Land!

So many people currently find ways of avoiding paying that 50% tax rate that it costs more to collect than it’s worth.

That’s like saying ‘It is so difficult and so expensive to prosecute fraudsters that we’d better stop trying to do so’.  If people manage to avoid paying some or all of the tax due, the government should plug those loopholes that make this possible!   Oh dear – I have just learned that our Prime Minister’s father-in-law is the proud owner of a Scottish island worth £2 million, registered in the West Indies for tax purposes. I do see the family difficulties!

            The Government claims that the Budget is ‘fair’ and taxes the wealthy while improving the lot of the working poor.  It taxes the wealthy?   Well, there is increased stamp duty when a palatial home changes hands.   How often to you suppose a Highclere Castle  (better known nowadays as Downton Abbey),  a £2 million pound Scottish island, or similar property, changes ownership?  The only other promised measure that could possibly cause the seriously wealthy even the least inconvenience is the attempt to close one or two of the tax avoidance loopholes.  That is something that should have been done years ago!

            It is easy to forget that we have a coalition government of Conservatives and Lib. Dems.   The name of the latter party derives from the coming together of the Liberals and the Social Democrats.  Perhaps they should now be renamed  Lib.Dem.Con.   No, the Con wouldn’t be short for Conservatives but for Conned – because ‘conned’ is what the thousands (including myself!) who voted for them in the last General Election have been.

 ‘Privatise! Privatise! – everything beneath the skies!

            That wasn’t one of the slogans of the Conservative Party, and it certainly wasn’t of the Liberal Democrats during the last General Election.  It could well have been though, because the one consistent thread of policy that has been followed by the coalition government has been to penalise the public sector of the economy and to privatise as many of its functions as is humanly possible – some might claim further than is humanly possible!

            Privatisation of large areas of the NHS and of the public sector has already been perpetrated by previous Conservative and New Labour governments.   Many local services previously carried out by democratically elected authorities – water supply, sewerage and sewage treatment, maintenance of publicly owned buildings,  refuse collection and street cleaning, maintenance of parks and gardens – are now undertaken by private contractors.  Contract cleaners are responsible for cleaning of hospital wards and corridors, instead of directly employed cleaners under the eagle eyes of ward sisters and Hospital Matrons.  It is no coincidence that it is only since this happened that patients admitted to hospital to be cured of illness find themselves at risk of contracting new infections there!

 Members of the Labour Party who voted for the removal of Clause 4 from the party’s constitution may have imagined that they were merely asserting that not every service and every industry needed to be nationalised.  They weren’t.  They were opening the door for every industry and service to be privatised!  New Labour was every bit as bad as its opponents in that respect.

Large sections of the NHS are to be ‘opened up to competition’. Ways of privatising the Royal Mail are being explored.  Many Police functions are to be taken over by private firms and now there is talk of highway maintenance being farmed out to private enterprise.

I wonder they haven’t gone even further. I am surprised they haven’t thought of inviting the gangs of juveniles who have been causing so much concern, to submit tenders for front line police duties?  ‘Set a thief to catch a thief’.  I understand that when the Kray brothers ruled London’s East End there were, at least, no other criminal gangs operating in their area! It surely shouldn’t need much re-training to transform a member of a ‘protection racket’ to a useful member of a ‘protection service’!   Yes, I know that that’s a daft idea – but not much dafter than some of the privatisations that are already in action or in the pipeline.   There is one thing that is certain when any service is privatised.  As well as paying the wages and buying or hiring all the equipment required, the contractor has to make a profit sufficient to keep his shareholders happy. That – not the quality of service to the public – will be his first concern.

The Equality Trust

          It was probably as long as twenty years ago that, at about this time of the year,  I wrote in Tendring Topics (in print) that my idea of a good national Budget was one that narrowed the gap between the very poor and the very rich.  It followed that it had been a long time since I had seen a good budget and I could see little possibility of one in the near future.  Gloomy as I was at that time, I hadn’t seriously imagined that after a decade of New Labour rule the gap would be wider than ever before – and that a leading member of the government would announce that he ‘had no problem with billionaires!’

            It seemed obvious to me that a more equal society was also a better one but I would have had difficulty finding firm evidence to justify that conviction.  It was not until The Spirit Level* was published in 2009 that authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett demonstrated beyond doubt that more equal societies were happier societies than unequal ones in every respect, and that the benefits of greater equality were enjoyed by those on higher as well as those on lower incomes.  Years of research into already published statistics of 23 developed countries made it clear that life expectancy was longer, that teenage births, obesity, mental illness, homicides, imprisonment rates, infant mortality rates and general mistrust were all lower, educational standards were higher and there was greater social mobility, in more equal societies than in ones with a wide gap between the poor and the wealthy.

             I was not alone in being persuaded.   In a speech at the end of 2009, David Cameron who was yet to become our Prime Minister, said that The Spirit Level showed that, ‘among the richest countries, it’s the more unequal ones that do worse according to almost every quality of life indicator……per capita GDP is much less significant for a country’s life expectancy, crime levels, literacy and health, than the size of the gap between the richest and the poorest in the population…..We all know, in our hearts, that as long as there is deep poverty living systematically side by side with great riches, we all remain the poorer for it’.  In September 2010, Ed Miliband said ‘the countries that are healthier, happier, more secure are the more equal countries.  The gap between rich and poor doesn’t just harm the poor, it harms us all’.  Vince Cable and Lynne Featherstone (my elder son’s MP), leading Lib.Dems. in the coalition Government, have both pledged themselves to reducing inequalities.

            It seems extraordinary that there should be such unanimity among our political leaders about our country’s ills and their cause - and so little inclination among any of them to work towards a remedy.  Greed and the desire for power (what an earlier generation might have called the worship of Mammon!) have so far proved more powerful than good intentions. Easter is almost upon us. One of the lessons of Easter is surely that ultimately good will triumph over evil.  We can all make our tiny contribution toward that end!

            Politicians need a great ground-swell of public opinion to spur them on their way.  We can add to that groundswell! The Equality Trust is a voluntary organisation set up to further the peaceful evolution of our country to greater equality and thus to benefit us all.  If you’d like to know more or (even better!) make your own small contribution towards the development of a fairer and more equal society, contact the Equality Trust web site at www.equalitytrust.org.uk .

And – a final thought! 

I’ll probably have further comment about Political Party funding next week. For now I’ll just say that the risk of super-wealthy individuals exercising undue influence on political leaders would be markedly reduced if the aims of the Equality Trust were achieved and there were no desperately poor or super-wealthy individuals!

   

*Now published in paperback by Penguin at £10.99, with additional material answering critics of the first edition.