Week 16.2011 19.4.2011

Tendring Topics……..on line


‘Thank Christ….for Easter!’

I don’t think that we would be particularly surprised if we saw that message on a Notice Board outside any church or place of worship this week. Yet that message, with the addition of ‘Bank Holiday’ after ‘Easter’ and accompanied by a caricature of a smiling and beckoning Christ, wearing ear phones, outside Tom Peppers pub on Clacton’s Marine Parade has caused outrage among many Christians, including the Bishop of Chelmsford.

Well, I have to confess that when I first saw it, I too felt outraged. Jesus Christ’s name was being used blasphemously and his image was being exploited to encourage irresponsible boozing! Disgraceful. But was it? A chat with friends wiser than I am and with a Christian faith firmer than mine, made me begin to think otherwise.

The poster did at least acknowledge that Jesus Christ had something to do with Easter. The further, admittedly tasteless, advertisement for a vodka drink to bring yourself back to life even suggests that the author of the advert was acquainted with the fact of Christ’s resurrection.

A couple of pages after the report of this ‘outrageous’ poster and the Christian reaction to it, the same Clacton Gazette had nine pages of Easter Extra full of adverts for Easter activities and commercial services. There were advertising features extolling the attractions of Clacton and Holland-on-Sea over the Easter holiday, the beauty of the nearby bluebell woods, and so on (I have written advertising features like that myself in my time!) but not a single word about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nor was there even a whisper of the possibility that going to church to ‘thank Christ for Easter’ was among the ‘Things to do in Clacton at Easter’.


I reckon that fundamentalist atheists like, for instance, Professor Dawkins, who are always eager to spread their unbelief, would derive far more satisfaction from those nine pages of Easter Extra that studiously avoided any connection between Easter and the Christian Faith, than from the poster that, however crudely, brought the reality and importance of the Easter story to the attention of us all.

An insult to Jesus to suggest that he had anything to do with pubs and the kind of people who use them? Hardly; tradition asserts that he was born in a stable at the back of an inn. He was, so he told us himself, accused of being ‘a glutton and a wine bibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’. The God whom Jesus revealed to us does not tell his followers to seek out and punish those who insult him. On that first Good Friday Jesus was subjected to far more abuse, insult and wanton cruelty than the rest of us have to endure in a lifetime. His reaction was to pray: ‘Forgive them Father. They don’t realize what they are doing’.

I think that Christians should thank the landlord of ‘Tom Peppers’ for having, however inadvertently, brought the true story of Easter to the front page of a local newspaper that would otherwise have ignored it.

Nursing care?

Some weeks ago I mentioned in this blog my late wife Heather’s brief and unhappy stay in the Kate Grant Ward of Clacton Hospital in 2004. She had fallen, broken a hip and had had it repaired at Colchester General Hospital. She had then been sent to Clacton Hospital for rehabilitation. I had known at about the time her ambulance would arrive there and, when it arrived, I had my introduction to the situation that prevailed there!

The ambulance driver pushed her, in a wheel chair, into the Kate Grant Ward and up to the empty bed prepared for her. There were no nurses there to receive her and get her into the bed. After waiting for about ten minutes the driver said, ‘I’m not supposed to do this, but I can’t leave her sitting in that wheel chair after that long drive. I’m going to get her onto the bed’. And so he did. He was strong and my wife was very light so it was no problem. Eventually of course a couple of nurses did turn up, very kind and helpful, and she was properly admitted.

That summed up all her subsequent treatment. The nurses were kind, hard working and thoroughly professional – but there were not enough of them. With a ward full of more-or-less immobile elderly ladies there was almost always at least one of them needing urgent attention and often more than one. The result was that it took well over an hour to get them settled at night and even longer to get them up, washed, dressed and ready to sit in their bedside chairs, in the morning. Alarm bells often went unanswered and patients were catheterised (and became permanently incontinent as a result) simply because it avoided the need to supply a bottle or bedpan, or to help the patient to the toilet. It was a great relief when I managed to persuade the Ward Sister that I was well able to care for my wife myself at home, and we bade the Kate Grant Ward farewell.

My wife’s experience pales into insignificance compared with that reported of Carol Carr of Dovercourt. She is a sufferer from Multiple Schlerosis and has paralysis down one side of her body. She was admitted to Colchester General Hospital with a persistent urinary tract infection. A report in the local Daily Gazette records that, ‘Her husband Dennis said she was left initially without food and drink for eight hours while waiting in the admissions area. Once properly admitted to hospital, he claims his wife was left lying in her own faeces for more than six hours’.


Mr Carr says, ‘The conditions in that hospital were atrocious. My wife’s carer and myself found ourselves having to do stuff for elderly patients. Bells were going off and being ignored. It’s so infuriating to sit there and watch this going on. To have it happen to a member of your own family is appalling……..there are good people there, good nurses. But they just don’t have sufficient staff’.


Mr and Mrs Carr have made an official complaint that is being looked into as a matter of urgency by the hospital authorities. Whatever the outcome of that enquiry though it is obvious to me though that there is an acute shortage of nurses ‘in the front line’, a shortage that I had noted in Clacton seven years earlier

And now it seems, Government cuts mean that there will be even less of them!

My own ‘Close encounter’ with the NHS


I was sorry to hear of Mrs Carr’s experience of the NHS and of Colchester General Hospital because, almost at the same time perhaps, I was having a wholly different and, for the most part, wholly positive experience of both.

I had been seeing my own doctor about what seemed to be a problem with my digestive system for a week or so. Then I had a very troubled night, perspiring freely and shivering at the same time. In the morning I was still trembling and shaking. Had I not been living alone I might have decided otherwise but I thought that by dialling 999 I would at least get the immediate attention of a paramedic.

And so I did. A pleasant and helpful young man turned up and examined me. He was very concerned to find that my blood pressure which, when taken on one arm was wildly different from one taken on the other. He seemed to think that that was a sign of imminent peril. He phoned for an ambulance and helped me to get dressed, urging me to do everything very, very slowly and carefully.

He must I think, have conveyed his worries about my condition to Colchester General Hospital, because when I got there I was dealt with instantly with no waiting at all. For the next hour my body wasn’t my own. A nurse helped me into one of those awful hospital gowns, I gave blood and urine samples for examination. In a hospital ‘cot’, I was electrocardiographed, my chest and my abdomen were X-rayed separately and, as I was stretched out on an ‘operating’ table, my stomach was prodded and very thoroughly examined by the Registrar.

Back in my ‘cot’, I was pushed into a cubicle to await my fate. After, I suppose, about three quarters of an hour the Registrar (a helpful and friendly young woman) turned up. She told me that those tests had revealed that I had a very severe urinary infection. It could be successfully treated with antibiotics and I could take them as satisfactorily at home as in hospital. I could get dressed and go home.

As I was about to ask her how I was going to get home, the curtain to the cubicle was pulled aside, and in walked my younger son Andy who lives in Enfield.  A friendly neighbour had spotted me being carried off in an ambulance and had phoned him. He had driven down right away and had turned up just in time to drive me home in comfort.

No negative experiences at all? Well, just one. It sounds pretty trivial now – but it didn’t at the time. While waiting in the cubicle I developed an urge to visit the toilet. There seemed to be no way of summoning a nurse so, in desperation, I told someone passing outside the cubicle of my need and asked them if they could ask a nurse to give me urgent attention. I had hoped, I suppose, that the nurse would let down the side of my ‘cot’ so that I could get out, and direct me to the nearest toilet. With my stick I would have been well able to get there on my own.

What actually happened was that, after another seemingly interminable wait, a nurse walked in with one of those (paper maché ?) hospital urine bottles, thrust it over the part of my anatomy that needed it, and walked out again. It was, I suppose, an adequate response, but hardly the one for which I had hoped. However, I came to no harm and it did confirm my conviction that many more nurses are needed ‘on the front line!’

The World’s Best! – and it’s all free?


Politicians, of all political persuasions, constantly assure us that they are determined that our Health Service should remain ‘the best in the world’ and will continue to be ‘free at the point of delivery’. If they say it often enough without thinking about it, they’ll probably believe it themselves!

It certainly isn’t free at the point of delivery – unless you consider that dentistry, optical services and actually obtaining the drugs that the doctor prescribes are not part of the Health Service. I don’t have to pay for prescribed medicines because of my age. Many others are also exempt for one reason or another but for those who have to pay (as I did before I reached retirement age) the charge is now over £7.00 per item!

Is our Health Service ‘the best in the world’? I had always imagined that it was at least among the top half dozen. Lately though I have begun to wonder. My grandson, who lives and works in Brussels (The rule that gives all EU citizens the right to live and work anywhere with the EU doesn’t just benefit those who want to come to England!) is very enthusiastic about the service that he enjoys in Belgium.
 And why do so many people needing hip replacement and similar surgery opt to go to France or elsewhere to have it done?

Infant mortality, including the incidence of stillbirths, is generally reckoned to be a pretty good indicator of the general health of a community. I was shocked to learn that Britain has more stillbirths per every one-thousand births than practically any other developed country in the world.

There can be few situations more heart-rending than the birth of a stillborn child. The birth has been anticipated for months – pram, cot, baby clothes have all been lovingly prepared. Messages of congratulation have been arriving – and the baby dies before birth. I am sure that only those who have had the experience can imagine the disappointment, despair and desolation of the bereaved mum and dad. If there were only one, per million live births, it would be one too many.

I don’t know why we have more stillbirths than almost every other developed country but, if I were a betting man, I would be prepared to wager that those countries with a lower stillbirth rate than us, have:

(a) A much narrower gap between the incomes of their poorest and wealthiest citizens than we have.
(b) Many more trained, qualified and working nurses and midwives per head of the population than we have.

Week 26.10

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘Non Angli, sed Angeli’

‘Not Angles but Angels’. These are said to have been the punning words of Pope Gregory the Great when in 573 A.D., before his elevation to the Papacy, he enquired about the origins of some young blue-eyed and fair haired slaves in a Roman slave market*. He had been told that they were called Angles and came from a remote heathen country called England on the very edge of the known world. It was an incident that is said to have led to his sending Augustine across Europe and the English Channel to convert the English to the Christian Faith.

Had political correctness been a fad of 6th Century Rome as it is of 21st Century Britain, he would have been instantly urged. ‘Please don’t call them “angels”. There are none in their religion and it will give them ideas above their station in life. In any case, quite a few of our keenest customers are non-Christian. Calling those slaves angels will bring down their price!’

These were some of the thoughts that went through my head when I read in the Gazette that a Charity called Whisperers, that tries to console and support the grieving parents of stillborn babies, had been chided by Colchester General Hospital for referring to these babies as ‘new little angels’.

Jenny Collins, senior midwife at the hospital is reported as saying, ‘We are not happy about the use of the word “angel” on a card giving information about Whisperers, because we suspect that it has the potential to offend some parents at what is an extraordinarily difficult and sensitive time for them. Not all religions believe in angels and secular people certainly do not’.

I can’t claim to be knowledgeable about ‘all religions’, but I do know that angels feature in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths and what little I know of Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs suggests to me that they wouldn’t in the least mind still-born children being referred to as ‘new little angels’. Nor I think, would any of the many ‘secular people’ of my acquaintance.

A few people (not necessarily those obsessed with ‘political correctness’) may quibble about the use of the word ‘angel’ for the souls of the departed. Angels, they may inform us, are God’s messengers and are a quite separate creation.

However, the man who was to become Pope Gregory the Great used the word loosely in the sixth century to describe Anglo-Saxon slaves. In the nineteenth century Cardinal John Henry Newman used the word in much the same sense as Whisperers do today, in the last two lines of his hymn, ‘Lead kindly light’

Then, with the dawn, those angel faces smile,
That I have loved long since – and lost the while.

With such distinguished examples, Christians at least can surely not object to the word being used to bring some comfort to bereaved parents whose grief and loss are really beyond consolation. I think that it is patronising and impertinent to assume knowledge of what will, and will not, give offence to other people.

*No, I don’t know why Pope Gregory and, for many centuries, Christians of every tradition, tolerated the institution of slavery. Jesus Christ condemned it when he said (Matthew 7.12) that the whole of the moral teaching of the Old Testament, “The Law and the Prophets”, could be summed up as “Treat other people exactly as you yourself would wish to be treated” – a little piece of fundamental Christian faith and practice that clearly rules out slave trading and slave owning.

We don’t yet know the half of it!

My idea of a ‘good’ budget is one that tends to narrow the gap between the richest and poorest in our nation. A ‘bad’ budget is one that widens it. It follows that it is a long time since I saw a good budget.

Nor is the present one an exception, though it has some good points. I am sorry that my former colleagues in the public service are having to pay for the economic crisis with a two-year pay freeze (in a time of continuing inflation this amounts to a pay cut, as David Cameron when pressed, was forced to agree) while others, whose folly and incompetence triggered the crisis, continue to enjoy huge salaries and bonuses.

There’s a rather harsh Spanish proverb that asserts, “Take what you want”, says God. “Take it…..and pay for it!” True enough - the trouble is that it is rarely those who take who have to pay!

I am glad that public servants earning less than £21,000 a year are exempt from the freeze and that they are to receive a flat rate increase of £250 a year. I think that we have to get away from the pattern of percentage increases. These can give the impression that the Chief Executive and the lower ranks of an organisation are having identical pay increases while, in fact, they are wildly different. Inevitably every across-the-board percentage pay rise, increases the gap between the highest and the lowest paid. Eventually, as we have seen, it results in some top officials enjoying a higher salary than the Prime Minister!

I am glad that the threshold of income tax liability has been raised (even though, as an over-65 year old, it doesn’t benefit me!) so that many people on low pay will be exempt from paying income tax in the future. However, it doesn’t do anything for those whose incomes were so low that they weren’t liable to pay tax anyway. We’ll all be affected by the increase in VAT to 20 percent. I remember Mrs Thatcher assuring us that VAT was one of the fairest taxes because it was the same for everybody and one had the choice of paying it or not. I don’t think that the householder with a leaky roof or the motorist who needs an urgent repair to his car to get to work, has much choice in the matter.

Many comfortably off folk (The ‘Middle England’ about whom the Express and Mail are always so concerned) will suffer as a result of cuts in means test related benefits, and some will be affected by the increase in Capital Gains Tax. I see little sign of the seriously wealthy (the owners of football clubs, luxury yachts and second homes in the Caribbean) being seriously, or even modestly, inconvenienced by the budget.

I am getting a little tired of hearing David Cameron and Nick Clegg saying how sorry they were to have to increase VAT and cut benefits but ‘there simply wasn’t an alternative’. Really? When they hadn’t considered the possibility of a modest one or two pence increase on income tax, and no one is even allowed to think about axing the vastly expensive and totally useless Trident Submarine programme.

And – there’s more to come. We don’t yet know the half of it. Every government department except Health and Overseas Development is to cut its budget by 25 percent – a quarter. We shall know the effect of this in October. It doesn’t take a clairvoyant to see an autumn and a winter of discontent looming ahead.

Does this mean that Nick Clegg and his colleagues have betrayed the electors by joining in coalition with the Conservatives? Perhaps, but without them things could have been even worse. At least the desires of right-wing Climate Change Denying Europhobes (like our MP) have been curbed. And does anyone really imagine that the income tax threshold would have been raised, that there would have been any rise at all in Capital Gains Tax, and that ‘Middle England’ would have been in any way discomforted, had it not been for the influence of Nick Clegg and his not-so-merry men.

Was it worth it? We’ll just have to wait and see.

A blog reader’s comment.

I wouldn’t pretend to be able to assess the effects of the Budget, and of cuts yet to come, on the national economy. However, here is the opinion of a regular blog reader who is much more knowledgeable in this field than I am – and who has an enterprise of his own, serving the public sector, likely to be directly affected.

'I am very concerned that the 25 percent cuts will make it impossible to win new business for the next five years. Perhaps even worse, this level of cuts – coupled with the same sentiment elsewhere in Europe – may cause negative growth, reducing tax receipts, and prompting another round of spending cuts and a vicious spiral downwards. I think they have taken a huge gamble, and that a more cautious approach would actually have been safer'.

Carry on working!

I took early retirement from Tendring Council shortly before my fifty-ninth birthday in 1980. I had no intention of sitting back and enjoying inactivity (for one thing, I couldn’t have afforded to!) but immediately embarked on a new career as a freelance writer. I wrote advertising features for Essex County Newspapers (now Newsquest Ltd) and for twenty-three years contributed a comment column Tendring Topics to their free newspaper Coastal Express. The column was the predecessor of this blog, Tendring Topics……on line.

My retirement presentation (Left to right) myself, Heather, Councillor Fred Good, Chairman of the Council.

I also wrote half a dozen commercially successful books on domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage, provided the plumbing section of a number of nationally sold DIY Manuals, and wrote a regular feature on the subject for Do-it-yourself Magazine, as well as answering readers’ queries on the same subject.

For years my wife Heather and I had recouped part of the cost of the camping holidays we had enjoyed every year by writing articles about them, with photographic illustrations, for the camping and caravanning press. In retirement we exchanged our frame tent for a motor caravan and continued with this practice.

I worked hard throughout and beyond the first twenty years of my retirement, perfecting my writing skills and effectively supplementing my pension. My wife Heather was a partner in everything I did. We both enjoyed every minute of it.

Myself, aged about 70, surrounded by my books and with a copy of the ‘Coastal Express' by my left wrist. This was before I had been introduced to the joys of computing, and I am using a Brother electronic typewriter.

It might be thought that I would therefore be wholeheartedly in favour of a later retirement age. I had carried on in paid employment (though very little pay as my output dwindled!) until I was over eighty. At sixty-five I must have been in my prime.

Quite so, but I retired voluntarily to do what I had really wanted to do throughout my life. I certainly wouldn’t have wished to carry on beyond 65 doing any of the jobs (public health inspection, housing management, public relations!) that I had done for the Council. I think that folk should have the option of carrying on working after 65 but that they shouldn’t be compelled to do so unless of course, they are incompetent as well as old!

The government is eager to get people capable of working, out of benefit and into paid work. They would, so it seems, like to do much the same with us pensioners. At the same time their policies ensure that there are fewer and fewer jobs for any of us to do.

During World War II there was a widely used propaganda poster announcing in large letters: From the Home Secretary: Three words to the whole nation: ‘ GO TO IT!’ To which an irreverent reply was, ‘OK – but where the ‘ell is it?’

A dire calamity!

Oh dear! England lost that knock-out match against Germany, and our World Cup Dreams have, once again, been shattered. It's true that the England team’s earlier performances in the World Cup matches - draws with the USA and Algeria and a one-goal win against tiny Slovenia – hadn’t inspired much confidence. Hopes had been raised though and I am sorry they have been shattered. Yes, I know that it’s only a game and doesn’t really matter. Thousands think that it does though, and I’m sorry about their disappointment.