Week 13 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

‘The paths of glory………’

          Last week in this blog I discussed the approaching referendum on the future of Scotland.  All residents in Scotland over the age of sixteen (now that is a revolutionary change in electoral law!) will be given the opportunity to declare whether they want their country to remain part of the United Kingdom or become an independent sovereign nation-state.  The UK government has stated that the majority decision will be accepted and acted upon, whatever it may be.

            Just over a week ago a rather similar referendum was taking place in the Crimea about the future of that peninsula.  Crimea is a federal state of the Ukraine and voters were invited to declare whether they wished to remain part of the Ukraine or to become part of the Russian Federation.  That was certainly not an option that they were given in 1954 when Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet Government had decided, presumably on the grounds of administrative convenience, that Crimea would no longer be part of Russia as it had been from the days of the Tsar, but of the Ukraine.  It had made little difference then, because both Russia and the Ukraine were constituent republics of the USSR.

             The referendum has been declared by Barak Obama to be ‘illegal’ (it may have been 'invalid', but how can establishing whether voters would prefer to be Russian or Ukrainian possibly be against any law?), William Hague, our verbally belligerent Foreign Minister described it as ‘a travesty of democracy’, and our Prime Minister has declared colourfully, but with no evidence whatsoever, that the result was obtained 'under the barrel of a Kalashnikov!'  I have seen no reports of ballot-rigging, multiple voting, or bullying of potential voters, as there have been after elections in Afghanistan and countries in the Middle East and Africa. We can be quite sure that any such reports would have been given full publicity by the Russo-sceptic press. The pro-Russian majority of 96 percent established what had already been made obvious  The way in which the Crimeans had welcomed Russian troops and had voluntarily displayed Russian flags; provided ample evidence that the population of Crimea preferred a future with Russia rather than Ukraine.    Since ethnic Russians are said to comprise only some 58 percent of the population of Crimea, that enormous majority suggests that quite a few ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars also voted for the Russian option.

            It would be that sort of majority we would expect to get if the inhabitants of Gibraltar were asked if they wanted to be citizens of the United Kingdom or of Spain  – and for much the same reason.

            Russia’s subsequent ‘annexation’ of the Ukraine has been described as an illegal ‘land-grab’. Perhaps it was, but it was surely unique in the fact that the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the land that was ‘grabbed’ had wanted it to happen. It has also been unique in the fact that so far (even, it seems, after the forceful Russian take-over of the Ukrainian naval base reported this, Monday 24th March morning)  has been achieved with remarkably little bloodshed – less bloodshed, in fact, than in the violent demonstrations in Kiev that had preceded the Russian action.

            I recall that when it was decided to support the separatists in Kosovo (where I doubt very much if a referendum would have revealed over 90 percent of inhabitants wanted to break away from Serbia) the campaign included the RAF's bombardment of Serbia’s capital, the City of Belgrade.  When the UK government, after deceiving parliament and the British public about Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’, decided to join the USA in enforcing a regime-change in Iraq, the campaign began by inducing ‘shock and awe’ with terror air-raids on Baghdad.  As a direct result of that illegal invasion thousands of innocent lives were lost. Iraq is still a divided country in which terrorism flourishes; the same terrorism that perpetrated 9/11 and had been unknown in Iraq prior to our invasion.  I really don’t think that Crimea faces a remotely similar future.   I have referred in earlier blogs to the USA’s illegal blockade of Cuban ports, the use of chemical weapons in the Vietnam War and the totally unprovoked invasion of Grenada in the West Indies (then part of the British Commonwealth!)

            No doubt Russia has broken international rules by recovering its lost Crimean province without having first attempted negotiation, but ‘Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone!’

            I was not impressed with Vladimir Putin’s triumphal announcement of Russia’s recovery of Crimea in the Russian Parliament. Painstakingly staged, it resembled too closely George Bush’s premature announcement of victory in Iraq from the bridge of a US aircraft carrier.  All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Successful leaders surround themselves with flatterers who feed their egos and lead them on into folly. To suggest that Putin is another Stalin is ridiculous, but I do think that he may see himself as ‘Vladimir the Great’, a worthy successor of the Romanov Tsars.

            He has promised ‘to put the glory back into Russia’. I can only hope and pray that the eight million Russian dead of World War II remind him that the paths of glory lead but to the grave.  The rest of the world's leaders, every one of whom is too young to have personal memories of World War II, also need to remember it.

The Budget

          I once would have described myself as a ‘democratic socialist’. I was for a short while a member of the Labour Party and was, in fact, accepted as a Labour candidate for a county council election.  How glad I am now that I withdrew my candidature, believing that I could do more for the causes that I support in my weekly Tendring Topics column in a local newspaper, than in the Council Chamber at Chelmsford, where I’d have been expected to toe the party line.

            One of those causes (regular blog readers will probably be all too familiar with some of the others!) arises from my conviction that many, perhaps most, of Britain’s problems arise from the enormous and ever-widening gap between the richest and the poorest in our society.  To the New Labour Party’s shame that gap widened during their ten years in office and has continued to widen ever since.   I think that I am well qualified to comment on this subject because my own income and possessions are sufficient for my life style. At 92 the opportunities for extravagant living become somewhat limited! I have no desire for more than I already possess – and I certainly wouldn’t be happy with much less.  I now describe myself, not as a socialist but as an egalitarian and I don’t much concern myself with how greater equality could best be achieved. In some fields public ownership (either national or local) would probably be the best way forward, but co-operative ownership and employer/employee partnerships may also have a valuable part to play.  I support – very modestly – the Equality Trust www.equalitytrust.org.uk  that works toward that end.

 My idea of a ‘good Budget’ is one that narrows the gap between rich and poor and a ‘bad Budget’ is one that widens it.  It follows that it is many years since I have seen a ‘good Budget’ and I despair of ever seeing one produced either by our present government or any currently conceivable successor.

Both parties in the coalition government are eager to claim the credit for taking ‘millions of low paid workers out of the tax system altogether’ by raising the personal allowance (the level at which income tax becomes payable) from £10,000 to £10,500 a year.  It does, of course, help low earners but it also helps everyone who pays income tax (including me!) right up to those on £100,000 or more a year.  What’s more it perpetuates the false idea that there’s a hard-working group of ‘tax payers’ whose labours subsidise an underclass of non-taxpayers.  It’s not true.   The non income-tax payer pays tax (VAT) every time he has his car, or his bike or his house repaired.  He pays tax every time he buys himself a pint, fills up the petrol tank of his car or motor bike, or is foolish enough to buy a lottery ticket or scratch card, to put a few bob on a horse, or to play commercial bingo!   He probably pays a higher proportion of his income in tax than bankers or stock brokers with their inflated salaries and bonuses! 

Regular blog readers will know that I believe that every adult citizen, from the poorest to the wealthiest, should pay the same percentage of his or her gross income in income tax as their annual membership fee as a citizen of the UK – and that those who go abroad to escape that responsibility should automatically forfeit that citizenship.

A somewhat controversial feature of the budget would permit those who are saving for a pension on retirement to withdraw all or part of that ‘pension pot’ without financial penalty, at any time.  Fears have been expressed that ‘live-for-the-day’ fifty-year olds might draw out the lot and spend it all on a cruise to the Caribbean or a glorious boozy party, rather than leave it to  mature for a meagre pension that they may never live to enjoy!  I think there’s a much greater danger that responsible middle-aged people faced with a domestic crisis, might draw out a smallish sum from the ‘pension pot’ to deal with it, rather than go to a payday loan firm – or a loan shark.  No-one would criticise them for doing so -  but it wouldn’t take many such crises to empty that ‘pot’! 

I don’t think Mr Osborne and his colleagues realize how their policies have brought so many families to the edge of a financial precipice – and how little it could take to render them jobless,  homeless and relying on the local food bank for their survival.  But then I don’t suppose that the members of a government of millionaires who spend much of their time with fellow-millionaires can be expected to know much about the struggles and the anxieties of the less well off.

week 18.09

Tendring Topics……….on Line

A different glimpse of Jaywick

Where do you suppose these photographs were taken? Somewhere among Frinton’s leafy avenues perhaps…….in one of the posher parts of Clacton, possibly near the seafront in the Gardens Area ……or perhaps in some rural commuter haven near Colchester

Not a bit of it. They were taken in less-than-posh Jaywick, described as one of England’s most deprived areas, better known for squalor and ugliness than for beauty, where even a work of art, commissioned for £40,000, turns out to be at best a joke and at worst an insult. Mind you, this plot hasn’t always looked as it does on these pictures. It was a piece of waste land, adjacent to the home of my friends Rodney and Janet Thomas of Jaywick’s Crossley Avenue, which encapsulated the popular view of Jaywick! It was a depository for broken down furniture and every kind of odorous and unsavoury rubbish! It was when their pet cat proudly brought home the bodies of two adult and six baby rats that Janet and Rodney decided to do something about it.
The result is as you can see……a work of horticultural art, not produced on commission, for a large cash prize, or even for honour and glory, but simply out of the goodness of their hearts to improve the environment in which they live. Janet, as a Quaker and Clerk of our Clacton Quaker Meeting, would possibly say that it was in response to the leading of the Inward Light that is the heritage of every man, woman and child in the world. Still unmistakeably Jaywick - but not Jaywick as it exists in the popular imagination

Nobody’s Darling!

On Budget Days I always remember my mother’s contention: Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he will not be disappointed. Mr Darling’s (what a very inappropriate name for a Chancellor!) Budget was just a little different. This time nobody was expecting any good news. The world financial crisis made sure of that. It was really just a case of who would suffer most and how soon?

I judge Budgets as good or bad by whether they narrow or broaden the gap between the wealthy and the poor. It follows that it has been many years since we had what I consider to be a ‘good’ one. For as long as New Labour honoured its absurd promise never to raise the upper band of income tax, and continued with the previous government’s policy of reducing direct taxation (income, capital gains and inheritance tax) and increasing indirect taxation such as VAT and duties on petrol, alcohol and tobacco, there was no hope of the situation changing for the better.

My spirits were raised, very slightly, when I heard that the top rate of income tax was to be raised from a maximum of 40 percent, to 50 percent for incomes over £150 thousand a year. This seemed to be a move in the right direction. However its impact is reduced by the fact that it will not come into force until April of next year. The lawyers, accountants and financial advisers of the seriously rich therefore have plenty of time in which to work out clever schemes of tax avoidance. These are of course, quite different from the illegal tax evasion, sometimes practised by lesser folk.

It must be remembered too that that 50 percent isn’t half a millionaire’s income. It is only a half of that part of his or her income above £150 thousand a year. The new tax isn’t going to send anyone to the bread line or the soup kitchen!

I heard a financial ‘expert’ on tv claim that raising the income tax of the better off was simply removing the incentive that kept them working hard for us all. How strange that the wealthy have to be persuaded to work with cash incentives whereas the poor are compelled to work by threatening to cut their benefits!

Anyway, unlike the small minority affected by the new upper rate of income tax, motorists, smokers and drinkers won’t have a year’s grace to stock up with their supplies at the former lower rate. They’re going to have to make their contribution to national recovery right away.

Is offering £2,000 toward the cost of a new car to those prepared to have their old bangers crushed, a good idea? It is claimed to work in Germany but, as so often happens, our scheme is half-hearted by comparison with theirs and therefore that much less likely to succeed. In any case, brought up as I was in an environment in which very penny counted and we had no alternative but ‘to make do and mend’, I view with deep distrust the idea of deliberately scrapping an old car that may be perfectly serviceable for a shiny new one.

The staggering burden of national debt? The figures involved are so enormous as to be beyond my comprehension. In this blog I have consistently warned against incurring personal and family debt beyond the capacity to repay. I don’t believe, as a former prime minister claimed to, that managing the national finances is just the same as managing the household ones but on a larger scale. Neither can I believe though that a course of action that has proved to be disastrous to tens of thousands of individuals and households, can possibly be beneficial to a community or a nation.

Late News

The Post-Budget headlines of one national newspaper warned us that the new tax on the small minority of us whose taxable income exceeds £150,000 a year will drive many brilliant entrepreneurs from the City of London to other lands where they can accumulate wealth without having to contribute some of it to the communities in which they live and work.

Since these ‘economic refugees’ will undoubtedly include some of those whose greed and irresponsibility triggered the current economic situation I’m not quite sure whether that is a threat or a promise!

‘Cry God for Harry, England and St George!’

Thus, according to Shakespeare in his play Henry V, the eponymous hero ended the rallying speech in which he urged his possibly less-than-enthusiastic troops ‘once more into the breach’ at the siege of Harfleur. It is sad that in England, St. George, our patron saint, receives nothing like the regard that is accorded to his counterparts in Ireland, Scotland and Wales, particularly since he shares 23rd April with the birthday of William Shakespeare, our greatest national poet, whose work is revered world-wide. Imagine the celebration there would be in Glasgow if St. Andrew’s Day and Burns Night coincided!

23rd April 2009. St. George’s Red Cross Flag flies from the flagpole outside Clacton Town Hall and two miniature versions fly from the Tendring Helpline car parked opposite on the left.

A possible reason for English lack of enthusiasm for our patron saint is that we know so little for certain about him. Tradition suggests that he was a very appropriate patron for a multi-ethnic country like ours. He was probably of Greek origin, born in what is now Turkey. He was a legionary in the Imperial Roman Army and was martyred in Palestine early in the fourth century A.D. during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. His legendary slaying of a ferocious dragon and the rescue of a fair maiden from its clutches is said to have taken place in Libya. He had certainly never heard of England (there was no country of that name in the fourth century) though he may well have heard of Britain as a damp, windy and inhospitable island on the extreme edge of the Empire.

There must have been something very special about him though, since he is the patron saint of Portugal as well as of England and is also much revered in eastern Christendom, particularly in Greece and Russia. He was an early Christian martyr and has inspired thousands of Englishmen and women over the centuries. Even the mythical image of St. George as a knight in shining armour slaying the dragon has its value as a metaphor of the courageous soldier of Christ struggling against, and overcoming, the forces of evil.

A New Renal Unit for Clacton

I didn’t think that the former Eastern Electricity site in Clacton’s Kennedy Road was at all a good idea as the proposed site of an up-to-the-minute comprehensive Medical Centre replacing existing doctors’ surgeries in both Great Clacton and Holland-on-Sea. It may well though be eminently suitable for a badly needed haemodialysis unit to meet the needs of the many Tendring District patients with kidney problems who currently have to travel three times a week to Colchester for their dialysis treatment.

It is a development that will certainly interest my granddaughter, who has recently been appointed as Social Worker with the Renal Unit of a large Sheffield Hospital.

As well as helping Clactonian renal sufferers, an eleven-station unit in Clacton with the capacity to treat up to sixty-six patients will help to take the pressure off the Colchester renal unit. Seventy percent of those treated at this twenty-station unit, opened in June 2006, come from the Tendring District, in or around Clacton.

If planning permission is granted, as it surely will be, and all goes according to plan (which is perhaps a little less certain!) the new unit, with a convenient ambulance drop-off point and ample parking, should be operational by next spring.

I have seen it suggested that it might make Clacton a more attractive holiday destination for kidney sufferers from elsewhere, offering ‘Sun, Sea, Sand and Dialysis’!

Perhaps; but without wishing to be too locally xenophobic, I hope that we’ll make sure that it meets local needs before offering its services nationwide.
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