Week 29.10

Tendring Topics………on line

Dispensing with the Bureaucrats?

Under the new coalition government the NHS, so they say, is to experience the biggest shake-up of its history. Power, and the cash that goes with it, is to be taken from the Primary Care Trusts and handed over to the Medical Practices in their areas. They will decide which consultants we may need to see, and when. They will organise minor operations and through them, patients will be able to say which hospitals they wish to go to and who will operate upon them. Thousands of NHS managers will be sacked. It is envisaged that two or more practices may get together in some cases, to ensure that they give the most efficient and comprehensive service possible.

Wonderful! But who, in each medical practice will make the thousands of decisions that have to be made, and who will make sure that the actions that result from those decisions actually take place.

The doctors? Well, there are of course lots of decisions that individual doctors have to make and some that will probably have to be made by general agreement among the doctors of the practice. They can’t spend too much time in discussion and debate though – at least I hope they can’t. We need them in their consulting rooms and by our bedsides, diagnosing our ailments and trying to cure or alleviate them!

Most up-to-date practices, employing several medical practitioners and nurses, will already have a practice manager. There will also be a number of clerical and administrative staff to make appointments, man the telephones and the reception desk, type letters, keep accounts and undertake the multifarious tasks that exist in any busy enterprise. With more responsibilities, more of these will be needed. There will need to be a deputy and perhaps one or more assistant managers. They’ll require professional accountants to supervise the practice’s finances. More clerical and junior administrative staff will be required to service the professionals.

There is, I fear, a real danger that we shall be sacking dozens of managers and chief executives of Primary Care Trusts and getting rid of their bureaucratic retinues only to replace them with hundreds of rather-less-well-paid managers and chief executives of independent medical practices and combined practices. They’ll need their own, admittedly smaller, retinues. In the twenty-first century not even the smallest organisation can hope to survive without the skills of at least some of those often denigrated bureaucrats!

I wonder if the new streamlined Health Service will really prove to be more efficient, more cost effective and more customer-friendly than its predecessor?

‘More than the Prime Minister!’

It is strange how the Prime Minister is used as a sort of benchmark of annual income. Any public servant with an income in excess of £200,000 is described in terms of shock and horror, to be, ‘earning more than the Prime Minister!’

I may have done it myself. If so I apologise, because it isn’t really a fair comparison. The Prime Minister’s salary, although enormous by the standards of most of us, is quite modest compared with those of quite a few of our fellow countrymen and women. The Prime Minister’s job does carry a few pretty valuable perks though. There are, for instance, two fully staffed palatial homes, one in central London and the other in its own grounds in the lovely English countryside. On retirement, or on being evicted by the electorate, he or she, as well as enjoying a comfortable pension, can reckon on earning many thousands of pounds from writing memoirs and from lecturing and after-dinner speaking. Company directorates and consultancies are theirs for the asking and they might even get a part-time job as a special envoy for NATO or the UN!

The latest subject of press ‘more than the Prime Minister’ outrage, is the head of an inner city (London) school, whose total income last year was described in some newspapers as over £200,000 and in at least one other as £270,000.
A class of eight year olds at an Ipswich primary school in 1930. I am the
anxious little boy with glasses by the headmaster’s right knee! What an easy
and rewarding job teaching must have been when kids were obedient and
attentive, parents were respectful and co-operative – and there was always
the cane to reinforce the headmaster’s authority!

It appears that the Head Teacher’s actual salary from his Education Authority was £80,000 a year; a lot of money by my standards but, I understand, not at all unreasonable for a hard-working educationalist who has successfully ‘turned round’ an inner city school full of tough inner-city pupils! Most of the rest of his income was derived as awards for that or similar achievements from educational trusts. That said, it does seem that he was rewarded from at least two separate sources for the same, admittedly valuable, work and £200,000 is surely an absurdly high sum.

Nevertheless I felt some sympathy with an email correspondent to BBC tv’s ‘Breakfast’ programme who said, ‘Why pick on the salary of a hard-working and successful head teacher to compare with that of the Prime Minister. What about the incomes of top footballers?’

What indeed? And what about the salaries and continuing bonuses of the bankers whose irresponsibility and incompetence triggered the current financial crisis? What about the wealthy stock holders who use their resources to buy football teams and players, and own luxury yachts in which to entertain compliant members of the Government and the Opposition. It is they who should be targeted by the national dailies; but then, of course, they probably own most of them!

A properly graded income tax, clawing back more than fifty percent of income in excess of, say, £200,000; coupled with measures to curb income tax avoidance, would surely relieve all these people, including the affluent head teacher, of some of their superfluous wealth. It would also do just a little to ease the burden of debt repayment, and help to persuade us that the government is determined that the weight of that burden is shared fairly among us all.

Poverty Kills

I don’t think that anyone in this country, probably not anyone in Europe, need these days die of malnutrition. There’s little doubt though that poverty can undermine our health and impoverish and shorten our lives. Affluence on the other hand, can enrich and lengthen them.

This has been demonstrated by a government study called Health Profiles that provided a study of the quality of life of residents in Colchester and in the Tendring District. Colchester’s St. Andrew’s, St.Anne’s and New Town wards include some of the poorest people in the UK. As a result life expectancy in Colchester generally is 73 years for men and 81 for women. Move a few miles out though to rather-more-affluent Lexden, Wivenhoe, Dedham and Langham and men can expect to live to 80 and women to 84.

Similar results were shown in the Tendring District. In Jaywick and in Clacton’s Pier Ward male life expectancy is below 74 years compared with 81 years in posh Frinton-on-Sea.

Other visible results of the effects of deprivation on our lives are the fact that in both Tendring and Colchester there are more-than-average numbers of pregnant smokers, the number of cases of diabetes diagnosed is among the highest in England, ever more children are found to be obese when starting school, and educational achievement of Tendring pupils is among the lowest in the country.

I don’t live in one of Clacton’s more favoured areas. I once heard Dudley Road referred to by a Planning Official as ‘working class residential’, which I am happy enough to accept. Goodness knows my wife and I did have a struggle when, with two young children and a mortgage, we moved here fifty-four years ago! I don’t think that we ever considered ourselves to be ‘deprived’ though.

Our two sons both did very well at both primary and secondary school and our elder son progressed to Cambridge where he obtained a good degree. Both have professional qualifications and have held responsible and satisfying jobs throughout their working lives; hardly low achievers!

My wife had more than her share of ill-health, partly, I think, as a result of deprivation during World War II when she lived and worked in London through the Blitz. Nevertheless she lived till the age of 82 and, as regular blog readers will know, I am 89. I could perhaps hardly be described as ‘still going strong’ but I am quite definitely ‘still going’ and hope to keep going for a little while yet.

I am not the most observant of persons but my neighbours all appear to be pretty healthy and showing little sign of deprivation. It appears that our ‘working class residential’ road may offer as beneficial an environment as Colchester’s posh suburbs and Frinton’s tree-lined and leafy avenues.

Minimum Wage-Earners?

A couple of weeks ago I referred in this blog to the £91,000 a year that husband and wife team Neil Stock and his wife Sarah Candy were managing to earn from their spare-time voluntary work in Local Government and with the NHS. Ms Candy is a cabinet member of both the Essex County Council and the Tendring District Council, and Mr Stock is leader of Tendring District Council. Ms Candy is also a non-executive member of the Northe East Essex Primary Care Trust.

From their Great Bromley home, the husband and wife team also run a very successful mail order fashion and haberdashery enterprise.

Mr Stock, in explanation, told a Gazette reporter that he and his wife worked incredibly hard for long hours. The £91,000, he said, ‘might not equate to the minimum wage, the number of hours we put in’.

A blog reader, who is better at sums than I am, tells me that worrying about that possibility should not keep them awake at night. She has calculated that if both of them were on the minimum wage and worked a 20 hour day each, they would between them earn rather less than half that £91,000 in a year. They wouldn’t, of course have much time for socialising, running the business that is their ‘day job,’ or indeed for eating and sleeping, but they would make something in the region of £40,000.

The fact that Mr Stock could have imagined, even for a moment, that £91,000 might not equate to the minimum wage, demonstrates how very little well-heeled members of the District and County Councils understand about the problems of the low-paid electors whom they claim to represent.

Week 28.10

Tendring Topics…….on line

Tommy Fritz

A month or two ago I opened this Blog with a calendar picture of my honorary German niece Maja, three year old daughter of my good friends Andreas and Konnie Kulke of Zittau. Now, in July my calendar picture is of her little brother and my honorary nephew, Tomas Friedrich, who is just coming up to his first birthday.

I was fascinated by the names that his Mum and Dad had chosen for him. They seem to me to be symbolic of Anglo-German friendship, not at the level of top politicians and bemedalled Generals but of ordinary folk. The diminutive form of Tomas is, of course, Tommy, which is what the Germans always called British soldiers during two world wars. The diminutive of Friedrich is Fritz, which is how we often referred to German soldiers during those wars.

This picture of a happy, smiling Tommy Fritz brought to my mind the strictly unofficial Christmas Truce between front-line soldiers of the opposing armies on the Western Front in 1914. This had been graphically illustrated in the stage production of the satirical Musical ‘Oh what a lovely war’ to which my son Andy and daughter-in-law Marilyn had taken me during my visit to Sheffield a few months ago.

Satire often exaggerates to make its point. On this occasion though the truce was, if anything, understated. History records that on some sections of the line, German and British troops fraternised not just for an hour or two on Christmas Eve but for several days, until a furious High Command realized that there was every risk of ordinary soldiers discovering that their opponents were not all bloodthirsty monsters, but for the most part, quite ordinary chaps like themselves.

If only Fritz and Tommy, joined by Ivan and Pierre, had been able to follow their own instincts during that first wartime ‘season of goodwill’, instead of being subject to the fears and ambitions of far-from-the-battlefield Kings, Emperors and Presidents, millions of lives would have been spared and World War I really could have been a ‘War to end all Wars’.

When I was at school in the 1930s, 4th August 1914 was the date on which ‘History’ ended and ‘Current Affairs’ began! History was my favourite subject and we studied in some detail ‘The Causes of World War I’. Admittedly it was a long time ago, but do you know I can’t now think of a single one of those ‘causes’ that was worth the loss of a single British, German, French or Russian life!

Mind you, the carve-up of Europe, the continuation of the allied blockade on Germany till well after the Armistice, and the crippling and humiliating terms of the Treaty of Versailles, provided a fertile field for the development of ‘The causes of World War II!’

Public Service Pensions

Public Service Pensions have come under increasing attention lately. Due to the obstinate determination of us oldies to live longer and longer lives, they are costing more and more money. These pensions are, it was claimed on a BBC news bulletin this (7th July) morning for the most part ‘unfunded’ so that their cost is having to come directly out of our taxes.

Well, part of my income does come from a very welcome public service pension. I am also a payer of income tax and, like everyone else in the UK, of VAT. It might be said then that I have a double interest in the matter.

It may be that Public Service Pensions are for the most part (more than 50 percent of them) unfunded. Mine isn’t though – nor are the pensions of the thousands of other retired local government employees who currently survive on them. From the age of 18, I paid 6 percent of my salary monthly into a compulsory superannuation scheme. My employer paid another agreed sum and the money was invested (one hopes wisely!) to ensure an adequate pension on retirement. I made these contributions for 35 years. I hope that no one will grudge me the fact that my army service from 1939 till 1946, during which I made no payments, counted towards my pension.

On retirement I was, and still am, paid a pension each month of forty-eightieths (one half) of my final salary. I would be the first to admit, though without any great feeling of shame, that because I have outlived most of my contemporaries, I have enjoyed my pension for rather longer than most, and have done very well out of the superannuation scheme. However my good fortune has been balanced by the fact that during my years as Tendring Council’s PRO, two of the Council’s Chief Officers, the Chief Executive and the Treasurer, died in office several years before they would have been due for retirement (contrary to popular belief, life at the Town Hall can be very stressful!)

Their salaries, and their superannuation contributions had been a great deal higher than mine. They paid a large sum into the fund and drew not a penny out of it. Several other of my colleagues died within two or three years of retirement and must therefore have delivered a net profit to the fund.

Has the money that I and my various employers have paid into the fund, been responsibly and profitably invested? My final and current Superannuation Authority is the Essex County Council. Remembering their Iceland Investments, their jetting top councillors and officials half-way round the world, their branch office in mainland China, their expensive tv advertising and their Bank of Essex (in which hardly anybody was interested), they are not a body to which I would voluntarily have entrusted a single penny of my money.

However, as both a pensioner and a taxpayer, I’ll just have to hope for the best.

Comment on the Crisis

I have been astonished at some of the more extraordinary inequities of the response to our country’s financial crisis. No doubt the redevelopment of Clacton’s Pier Avenue is a good idea, despite the fact that the dust has hardly settled on its last redevelopment. The proposed Crag Walk on Walton’s Naze Cliffs is a good idea too though it certainly isn’t, in the long run, going to Save the Naze!

It does seem strange that the funding for these two developments is said to be safe while, at the same time, scores of jobs are to be lost, vital municipal work is to be curtailed or abandoned, pensions threatened and the school building programme axed.

The last of these economies has particularly incensed my elder son Pete. I thought that blog readers might be interested in extracts from a letter that he has written to his Lib.Dem. MP, Lynn Feathestone.

After acknowledging the fact that Liberal Democrats in the coalition government had undoubtedly had a modifying effect on the Budget, he goes on to say:

I believe that there is a large and burning issue, which both Labour and the Coalition have failed to address. This is the identification of the architects of this crisis and ensuring that they pay in full for the damage done to the economy and to millions of hard working citizens.

However, it is beyond argument that school children are not in any way responsible. Many are now to have their education damaged by inadequate school buildings for the remainder of their education. This is surely a cut too far which moves the debate from an issue of pragmatism to one of morality. If axing the school rebuilding programme is to be the benchmark for all future decisions, then there surely can be no justification for almost any other capital project. Even though I am a supporter of Crossrail, High Speed 2 and the Manchester Metro, I cannot even begin to see the justification for continuing with any of these things, while neglecting the welfare of our children.

This is not an opinion born out of self-interest. I fully understand that Haringey is not affected by this decision. My children have anyway grown up and left school – and left the country – and I am not employed in any way in the construction industry. I am, in fact, a regular train user, but would willingly endure uncomfortable or slower journeys if it meant that money would be released for more important issues.

I realize too, that this is not your area of decision making, but I would have hoped that your sense of integrity would be such that this decision of your Government would force you to reconsider your position within it.

Peter Hall,
Managing Director,
HUB Solutions

I can only say that I am glad and proud that my sons like, I hope, their Dad, find it impossible to remain silent in the face of injustice, even where they are not personally affected.

Pete in the Scottish Highlands, while visiting HUB Solutions' Scottish branch in Glasgow

Don’t forget your ears!

I’m not really a great one for giving health-and-safety warnings to other people. I’m all too conscious of the fact that in the past I have ignored, or been unaware of, a great many of the perils to which we are constantly having our attention drawn today and, with just one exception, I seem to have got away with it. My ears, about which I can’t recall hearing any specific warnings, are that exception.

Some three years ago I realized that I was developing small sore patches at the top of my left ear, which would scab over but never actually heal. They weren’t painful but were beginning to leak and stain my pillowcase at night. It wasn’t a major problem, but I did mention it casually to my doctor when I next saw her.

She took an immediate interest, referring me to the ‘plastic surgeon’ who examined it carefully and told me that it was a form of cancer and that he would arrange for the affected part of my ear to be excised. And so he did. The operation took place in the Day Surgery Unit of Colchester General Hospital. It was performed almost painlessly under local anaesthetic; the lady surgeon chattering away happily as she performed her butchery. All was well until a month or so ago when I noticed the same problem affecting my right ear. I saw the plastic surgeon again last week (on 8th July) and I’m to have another similar op., this time at Chelmsford, during the course of the next week or two. ‘Your right ear will then match the other one!’ said the Consultant cheerfully!

It’s not life threatening (at 89, how much life have I got left to be threatened anyway?) but I’d prefer not to have it. So, take my tip; when you’re going out into the garden to do some digging, weeding or pruning in the sunshine, or are about to relax on a sunny beach, do remember to apply the sun-cream and don’t forget your ears!

Week 27.10

Tendring Topics…….on line

The Dedham Vale Hopper

The Dedham Vale Hopper sounds as though it might be a seriously endangered species, found only on the Suffolk/Essex border. In fact though it is a new, very promising, development that could indirectly benefit the whole of our area. I have long thought that our Tendring Holiday Coast, historic Colchester, and the lovely Constable country of Dedham Vale complement each other as a holiday and touring destination and that what benefits one will ultimately be to the advantage of the other two.

The Hopper is a sight-seeing bus that, on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays throughout the summer, is running on a circuit from Manningtree railway station through Flatford, East Bergholt, Stratford St. Mary, Dedham, lawford and back to Manningtree. It sets off hourly from Manningtree station from 9.40 a.m., the final tour of the day starting at 5.25 p.m.

















Left - Bridge Cottage, Flatford. Right - Flatford Mill

This service began on Saturday 3rd July and will continue until Sunday 26th September. It has been designed to connect with rail services from Liverpool Street Station to Manningtree and is also accessible by rail from Norwich, Ipswich, Colchester and Harwich.

As an added incentive it is to be free for the first four weeks of its operation. That, I think, takes us to the end of July. From then on it will cost just £2 for a day ticket that will allow passengers to hop on or off the bus (hence the ‘Hopper’!) anywhere along the route.

Of special interest to American visitors is Sherman House, Dedham, ancestral home of General Sherman of ‘Marching through Georgia’ fame in the American Civil War.

The project is being funded by the National Lottery, the National Trust, and the Dedham Vale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the Stour Valley Countryside Project. It is being run by the Hadleigh community bus service and funding is assured until 2012. Adrian Clarke of the National Trust, is quoted as saying; ‘We are delighted to be supporting the Hopper Bus service. We want to encourage people to visit this beautiful area in a sustainable, environmentally-friendly way’.


I wish the Dedham Vale Hopper project the success that it deserves. The auspices are good. A pilot scheme undertake in 2005 proved very successful.


I hesitate to mention the weather in this blog because the last time I did so the wind promptly swung round to the north and the temperature dropped ten degrees!

The Cathedral-like interior of Dedham’s parish church.


However, as I write it does seem possible that we may expect a summer with plenty of warm, sunny weather, interspersed with heavy, perhaps thundery, showers. It could be – in fact has been – a lot worse!

Professional Politicians

A month or so ago I forecast in this column the future development of a breed of professional local politicians, managing to acquire a comfortable income by serving as elected members on local authorities and other public bodies. I hardly expected confirmation of this forecast to present itself either quite so quickly or quite so near to home.

It seems that local husband and wife team Neil Stock and Sarah Candy net total allowances of £91,000 a year for their roles on Tendring District Council, the Essex County Council and the North East Essex NHS. That, of course, is just their spare-time voluntary work. Their ‘day job’ is running a very successful mail-order fashion and haberdashery enterprise from their Little Bromley home, with customers world-wide.

Mrs Candy is the biggest contributor to this successful husband-and-wife partnership. Last year she earned more than £46,000 from Essex County Council as Cabinet Member for children’s services plus £15,500 for her position as Cabinet member for Planning with Tendring District Council and more than £5,000 as a non-executive director at North East Essex Primary Care Trust. I hope that the meeting times of these three bodies never coincide! Mr Stock meanwhile, collects £25,000 as Leader of Tendring District Council.

Mr Stock is reported as saying, ‘We are both incredibly busy people who do an incredible amount of work. It might not even equate to the minimum wage, the number of hours we put in’. The ‘incredible’ was of course his word, not that of the Gazette interviewer. If they really are doing so much work that their income doesn’t equate to the minimum wage they are both heading for a serious breakdown and I feel very sorry for them.

With another comment made by Mr Stock I whole-heartedly agree. He said that there should be a national debate over whether councillors needed to become full-time professionals because of the workload, which he blamed on the Labour Government, for introducing cabinet-style local government. One thing is certain. I am sure that a local authorities don’t need top officials on salaries in the region of £200,000 a year and council members on ‘allowances’ amounting to tens of thousands.

During my time as Tendring Council’s Public Relations Officer I helped to entertain a journalist from Virginia, USA, who was studying public administration in the UK. He admired practically everything he saw. I showed him over Clacton’s Percy King Council Housing Estate (I had fairly recently bade it farewell as Housing Manager). It was at that time virtually vandal-free and well kept and he was full of praise. It was, he assured me, very different from public housing in the States.

His particular admiration though was for our elected councillors who, at that time, were only refunded out-of-pocket expenses for their services. I sat with him in the Public Gallery through one or two pretty boring Committee Meetings. He was astonished at the service they rendered for no personal reward and for nothing more than a desire to serve the public. In the States, he told me, people serve on public bodies only to advance themselves or to further their family’s interests.

I reckon that if he came back now he’d feel more at home!

Penal Reform

I have always entertained a warm feeling for now-Justice-Minister Ken Clarke. He is a colourful, larger-than-life character who, unlike most top politicians, would probably be a welcome and entertaining companion on a long train journey. I don’t agree with many of his ideas but he does have in my opinion very sound view on European integration and has, so it now appears, astonishingly progressive views on Penal Reform.

He is surely the very last person likely to be accused of being a head-in-the-clouds, woolly minded, bleeding-heart do-gooder. Yet, in direct contradiction to one of his predecessors, Michael Howard, who evoked a standing ovation at a Tory Conference by proclaiming that ‘Prison works!’ Ken Clarke declares unequivocally that it doesn’t.

Britain’s grossly overcrowded prisons are, he says, wastefully expensive human warehouses from which well over half the inmates offend again within months of their release. We must, he says, reduce the prison population, concentrating on reform and rehabilitation rather than punishment. There should be fewer custodial sentences and more sentences to service in the community. Firms and charitable organisations should be offered cash incentives to help with the rehabilitation of discharged prisoners.

I wish him every success in his endeavours. It will probably earn him insults from The Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Express and rather more measured disapproval from The Daily Telegraph. However his views on Europe have no doubt already accustomed him to that.

Dire warnings!

The River Gipping at Sproughton Mill – in the 1930s an ideal spot for angling, and for swimming!

Directly we have a spell of warm weather we have dire warnings from Health and Safety experts, about the perils of bathing in rivers and lakes, no matter how inviting the water may look on a very hot day. The water will be colder and deeper than you think and there may well be hidden obstacles that endanger life and limb. Even if you are a strong swimmer, confine your activities to public baths or swimming pools. Such warnings always revive memories of my childhood and youth spent on the outskirts of Ipswich, where my friends and I received no such warnings – and probably wouldn’t have heeded them if we had!

My home was within easy walk, and even easier cycle ride, of the River Gipping, not one of England’s greatest waterways but one of which I have many fond memories. Along its banks I spent many happy leisure hours as a boy. From about the age of fifteen I was a keen angler, the terror of the roach, perch and pike that lurked in its depths. From an even earlier age (I was a competent swimmer before I was ten) my friends and I would enjoy a swim in its waters on hot summer days. Ipswich was well provided with municipal swimming pools but our parents had to watch every penny and could ill afford frequent requests for the 'threepence or sixpence' entrance charge. The river was free, and much more fun. Possibly because we learned from the experience of other older kids of the potential dangers, I don’t recall any serious accidents and certainly no drownings. Perhaps we were just lucky.

Heather and I in September 1939

It was by the Gipping’s tree-shaded stream that I did my ‘courting’ during the first fortnight of World War II. Pupils from Wanstead County High School had been evacuated to Ipswich. They were, I think, sent there by mistake as they remained only two weeks. Among those evacuees was fifth-former Heather Gilbert, then not quite sixteen. I was a just-eighteen-year old soldier, newly called up with the Territorials. Heather and I met, were attracted to each other and enjoyed a few precious days and evenings together. It was the very beginning of a relationship that ended only with Heather’s death in 2006, sixty-seven years later and after sixty happy years of marriage.

Cheer up. It ny never happen!

As I write these words the immdiate future of this blog is in doubt. My broadband internet service is provided by BT. Currently there is an industrial dispute and I understand that there could be a strike, threatening my email and www service, as soon as next Monday (12th July).

I would, I hope, continue to write these blogs (at my age I don't like to make firm promises!) but would be unable to post them onto the internet until the strike was over.

Pious Victorians used to add the letters DV (the initials of the Latin for 'God willing') to any written promise. Perhaps I should do the same to my assurance that Normal Service would be resumed as soon as possible!

Still, as we used to say in the Army, 'Cheer up. It may never happen!'

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.

Week 25.10

Tendring Topics…….on Line

World Cup Fever

It isn’t very often that I read a newspaper article that I wish I had written myself. This was certainly the case though when I read in the Coastal Daily Gazette a feature article by Assistant Editor James Wills (one-time editor of the Clacton Gazette) expressing forcefully his views on the current World Cup Fever.

James Wills, who says that he is a football fan himself, writes that ‘England has already descended into some sort of mass hysteria – the symptoms of which are a desire to become temporarily patriotic, drink copious amounts of booze, and for men to thump their chests chanting “EN-GER-LUND”

‘During the 2006 World Cup, Home Office data showed on average there was a 25 percent rise in domestic violence reports on the days of England games, with one in four offenders being found to be under the influence of alcohol. ‘What a brilliant testament to our nation – watch the game, get drunk and slap your partner’.

Joining in (and no doubt hoping to cash in on!) the mass hysteria are major companies like Nike and Adidas, Mercedes (despite being a German firm!) and supermarkets, who simultaneously campaign for the introduction of higher prices for alcohol, and desperately promote ‘World Cup booze specials!'

‘Do people really have an insatiable desire to eat Pringles’, asks Mr Wills, ‘because they have changed their name to Pringooooals to flog a football promotion? Perhaps we are missing out and we should change the name of the paper to the ‘Goal-chester Gazette’.

He goes on to say that, ‘We can forget the fact, reported on Wednesday, that one in eight children under five in Niger is likely to die of starvation in the next four weeks, because we are more concerned about Lesley King’s knee injury……..Closer to home Colchester MP Bob Russell has been campaigning in the Commons about child poverty. Apparently the UK has one of the worst levels of child poverty in the developed world and one of the worst in Europe, below Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. But who cares about that? We rank above them in the Fifa football ratings. EN-GER-LUND!

‘The country may be in the middle of an economic public debt crisis, but we can still afford to pay our Italian manager £6 million a year. ENG-ER-LUND!

(I hadn’t realized that that was the England Manager’s salary – and we worry because a handful of civil servants and top council officials receive about £200,000 - more than the Prime Minister!)

James Wills concludes, ‘I sincerely hope that we do win, just because it will bring an end to those appalling ’46 years of hurt’ clichés. The fact is that we haven’t won since 1966 because we weren’t good enough, which is only right and proper because, as our economy, transport infrastructure and almost everything proves, not being good enough is what we are world beaters at. EN-GER-LUND!

There’s nothing much that I can add to that. I thought that I was pretty good at vituperative prose but I take off my hat to Mr. Wills!

The first time that I heard ‘England’ used in that way with three syllables, was under very different circumstances. It was in January 1942 and the German and Italian garrison of Wadi Halfaya (Hellfire Pass) on the Egyptian/Libyan border had just surrendered to us. A group of disconsolate German prisoners were trying to keep up their spirits by singing the German submariners ‘anthem’ with its rousing chorus.

Und jetzt wir fahren! Und jetzt wir fahren!
Wir fahren gegen EN-GER-LAND!

(Now we’re marching! Now we’re marching!
We’re marching against EN-GER-LAND!

Six months later I was a POW myself and knew exactly how those German prisoners had been feeling. Today, as I survey the St. George’s flags displayed wherever I go, listen to the breathless tones of the sports commentators, and reflect on the fact that, in the midst of a financial crisis affecting us all, thousands can spare the time and the money to watch football games half a world away from home, I know just how James Wills was feeling as he wrote that article. For goodness sake, football is only a game!

Whose oil spill? Whose fault?

In last week’s blog I made the point that BP, responsible for the oil leak currently threatening the Gulf Coast of the USA, is only nominally a British firm. A substantial proportion of its shares are owned in the USA and elsewhere.

A recent article in The Independent revealed that not only are a large number of shares held in the USA but that many members of the American Congress, including those leading the enquiry into the disaster, are substantial share holders. Between them, they own $14.5 million of stock in the oil and gas industry, among which are at least $400,000 shares (probably more!) in the three companies involved in the oil spill – BP, Transocean and Anadarko Petroleum.

Fred Upton, top Republican on the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, has nearly $100,000 invested in BP, Senator John Kerry, who sits on the Senate Commerce Committee, has assets totalling at least $6 million in a dozen oil concerns, including BP and Royal Dutch Oil, while his wife Teresa has in trust up to $750,000 of BP stock. The House Republican leader John Boehner, holds BP stock worth $50,000!

Research (via Google) reveals some interesting facts about the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and about the oil well that it was tapping.

The oil well is at a depth of 35,000 feet, and is the deepest well of its kind ever discovered! It is 5,000 feet deeper than the design specification of the oilrig.

An enquiry into the cause of the disaster is in progress. I think it very unlikely that it was the result of a deliberate act of malice, or the carelessness, stupidity or laziness of the rig’s crew. Knowing that they were working at or beyond the rig’s recommended capacity, they would surely have been taking extra, meticulous care.

Perhaps, in order to save time and money, ‘management’ decided to cut corners and ignore precautions that should have been taken. It is possible that drilling at that extreme depth should not have been undertaken at all, or undertaken only with specialist equipment that just wasn’t available on the site.

It must never be forgotten that the prime purpose of any private enterprise is not to serve the public or improve the environment, but to enrich the bank accounts of the shareholders. Delays cost money, specialist equipment costs money. It could be that the current catastrophe arose from an unwise desire to serve what seemed to be the best interests of BP’s shareholders, including of course, those among them who are members of the US Congress.

Among the Cleanest?

I am an enthusiast for the Tendring District. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else and I recommend it for holidays to my friends both in this country and overseas. Our seaside resorts have their own unique qualities that complement each other, offering everything that most people seek on holiday. In addition they are conveniently close to historic Colchester and to the lovely ‘Constable country’ of the Stour Valley.

I am sure that our beaches thoroughly deserve the European Blue Flags of excellence that they have been awarded and I wasn’t a bit surprised to learn that Clacton-on-Sea had been rated among England’s top ten holiday resorts.

I must say though that my loyalty and credulity were strained to the utmost by the report that our Sunshine Coast had been rated within the top ten cleanest places in the country, coming ninth and being beaten in our region only by Maldon, which came sixth. My reaction was not dissimilar to that of Anne Harper, who has run a ladies wear shop in Jackson Road for forty years. She is reported as saying, ‘If we are ninth, God only knows what the rest of the country is like……..The other day when I came in to work, there were cans and pizza boxes in the street – it was absolutely filthy. If there are almost 350 areas worse than us I really do despair’

I sometimes find drink cans and plastic ‘fast food’ containers (often still half-full!) casually dropped over my front garden fence and, driving along the footpath of St. Osyth Road on my mobility scooter I all-too-often have to negotiate my way through broken glass that threatens my scooter’s tyres.

Perhaps whoever decided that we were in the top ten made his or her inspection shortly after the streets had been cleaned. I have been impressed with the Council’s street cleaning service. It is good to see a man with a brush at work rather than a street sweeping vehicle that doesn’t touch the footpaths and, because of parked cars, can’t get to the gutters where drink cans, crisp packets and fast food containers tend to gravitate. Usually though, it doesn’t take long for litter to accumulate again!

Outrageous? Heroic?

Possibly neither. He may have simply been very uncomfortable!

I am referring to the football fan, who ‘burst into the changing room and confronted the English players’ after their less-than-brilliant World Cup performance against Algeria.

It could be that angry confrontation was the very last thing on his mind. He claims that was in urgent need of the toilet and had simply lost his way.

As Esther Rantzen used to say, ‘That’s life!’ Perhaps we should be thankful for the fact that there’s rather more bathos in the world than either heroism or outrage!

Apologies still needed!

I am glad that our Prime Minister made a full and unequivocal apology for the events in Londonderry on 'Bloody Sunday', 1972. The killing of unarmed civilians was inexcusable, even allowing for the fact that there was a 'shooting war' in progress at the time and that the British troops had been ordered into Londonderry's Bogside, a 'no go' area for troops where those who entered could routinely expect to be fired on by IRA snipers. Once firing begins it is difficult to know who is firing at whom and I have no doubt that some soldiers genuinely believed themselves to be under attack. Nevertheless the incident was an appalling tragedy and a blot on the record of the regiment involved.

I note that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness both accepted and welcomed David Cameron's apology. Perhaps, in turn, they might care to make a similarly uneqivocal apology for the hundreds of equally innocent civilians killed by the IRA at that time. There is little doubt that they were far more personally associated with those killings than David Cameron was with those on Bloody Sunday.

A fateful day.

I hope to post this blog tomorrow evening (22nd June). By the time you read it you will know the terms of the Chancellor’s emergency budget – and how they will affect you and your family.. I shall be looking to see if it really will cause pain to all of us as promised, or whether – as usual - the seriously wealthy will escape without even minor discomfort.

Hot on the heels of the Budget will come the make-or-break England v. Slovenia football match on Wednesday that will determine whether England's team goes on to the next round of the World Cup contest or returns to the UK in ignominy. Surely we’re not going to suffer ‘a double whammy’?

It looks as though I shall have plenty on which to comment next week!

Week 24.10

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘The most unkindest cut of all’

The phrase above is an example of tautology that no schoolboy or girl in my day could have hoped to get away with. Shakespeare could though. By using it in Mark Antony’s funeral speech for Julius Caesar, he effectively emphasises Antony’s abhorrence of the part that Brutus, Caesar’s friend, had played in his assassination.

Some may feel the same way about the Lib Dems in the current government coalition being prepared to endorse cuts in expenditure that, only a few weeks ago, they were claiming would harm the progress of economic recovery. We still don’t know exactly where those cuts are to fall but we have been told that they will be deep and savage; that their effects will be felt for generations to come – and that they will affect us all.

It is upon the accuracy of that final phrase that we may judge whether or not Lib Dem co-operation with the Conservatives is a betrayal of their own principles. Throughout the election campaign Lib.Dem emphasis was on fairness in politics and in economics. Central and local government services are generally aimed at supporting the less advantaged and poorer members of society – people who can’t afford to buy the goods and services that are considered essential in a civilised society. Cuts in those services are most likely likely to penalise the poor, the old and the disabled disproportionately and unfairly. It isn’t they whose greed and profligacy have brought about the financial crisis.

So far there has been little or no official mention of tax rises, surely the most obvious means of increasing national at the expense of individual wealth. VAT, which had been reduced in an effort to stimulate the economy, has been restored to its former level. Probably it will rise further. That too though, will disproportionately penalise the less affluent. Don’t tell me that the seriously wealthy find the VAT on the servicing of the Bentley or Rolls that takes them to the races or the hunt, as much a financial burden as the building worker finds the servicing of the second-hand Ford that he needs to get to work each day.

One of the more idiotic promises made by New-Labour in their attempt to stave off electoral defeat was not to interfere with the income tax system. They had promised it before and had broken that promise by introducing a 50 percent tax band for part of the income of high earners. It was one of the few really sensible things that they did, but they destroyed its full effect by giving a year’s notice of its introduction. There was plenty of time for the smart lawyers and accountants of the wealthy to devise schemes of avoidance (not of evasion of course, that would have been illegal!)

Income tax is the one tax levied strictly in accordance with the ability of the taxpayer to pay. Those who have very low incomes don’t have to pay it at all. Those with higher incomes pay a small amount, and those with still higher incomes pay more. I believe that it is here that taxation can fairly be increased – but that there should be more carefully graduated tax bands and the highest rate (it is only on part of the income remember) should be above fifty percent. Furthermore, real efforts should be made to plug the loopholes in the tax system that make it possible for the wealthy to avoid much of the income tax that the rest of us have to pay.

Yes, it would evoke indignation among the self-appointed champions of ‘Middle England’ – but it is only when we see outrage in the columns of the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph that we will know that the pain of Britain’s economic recovery is being evenly shared!

I am, of course old, increasingly disabled, and reliant on public services that I shall hate to see reduced or abolished. However, I am also an income tax payer and consider myself very fortunate in having an income high enough for me to be liable for it. I wouldn’t enjoy having to pay an extra penny or so in the pound in tax, but I would prefer it to having to pay an extra few pounds to the government in VAT on the cost of essential repairs or maintenance to my home.

‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new’

So says the dying King Arthur, in Tennyson’s ‘Mort d’Arthur’. It is a process that continues today and we oldies usually fiercely resist it. We all feel that we have experienced more than enough change in our lifetimes. We certainly don’t want to see any more of it!

In the immediate aftermath of local government reorganisation in 1974, Mr Colin Bellows, Tendring Council’s Engineer and Surveyor, and I, as Public Relations Officer, visited every town and parish council in the new district to explain and answer questions about the effects of the changes in local administration. In particular Mr Bellows explained that for the first time, parish and town councils would have the right to comment on planning applications and proposed developments in their area.

I well remember one elderly St. Osyth parish councillor, who rose to tell us that, as far as planning was concerned, ours was a wasted visit. In St. Osyth, he said, they had all the development that they needed and were opposed to any further building.

That occasion came back into my mind when I read in the Coastal Daily Gazette the headline FEARS OVER IN-VOGUE ISLAND followed by a report about ‘Historic Oyster Sheds’ having to make way for a Seafood Restaurant. It seems that Mersea Island has become fashionable and that the site currently occupied by old Oyster Sheds would be ideal for a restaurant to serve the needs of an increasing number of ‘dining-out’ visitors.

Destroying another piece of England’s cultural heritage? Hardly; the pictures of the sheds in the Gazette suggest that they are very ordinary wooden structures, partly built on stilts, which no longer serve any useful purpose. Unless steps are taken to conserve them they will undoubtedly ‘die of natural causes’ during the next decade or two. Their only remarkable feature is the fact that they are 140 years old. Surely we don’t believe that everything over a century old merits conservation. I’d have thought that photographs and a description of their purpose would be quite adequate for anyone researching the island’s history.

I hope that permission is granted for their replacement by a seafood restaurant. I hope also that the restaurant proves to be a great success and helps to bring prosperity to Mersea. It too though can expect to have only a limited lifespan. I have little doubt that before this century is out, it will have been replaced by whatever is the fashionable fad of the late twenty-first century. No doubt its passing will, in its turn, evoke protests from elderly residents at the loss of something that, as it mellowed over the decades, had become a part of the island’s history! ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new’.

Now it’s the turn of Walton-on-the-Naze!

Only last week we had news of a multi-million pound scheme to regenerate Clacton-on-Sea. Now we have a similar scheme, drawn up by consultants BNP Paribas for neighbouring Walton-on-the-Naze. Costing £100,000, the report suggests, among other things, turning the dilapidated Walton Mere into a boating lake and water sports centre, redeveloping the Martello Caravan Park for 250 new homes and 50 new holiday homes, plus an hotel and retail space. It also recommends that The Pier and Pier Hotel should be made ‘more attractive’ and that an ‘urban beach’ should be created next to the Columbine Centre for such activities as Beach Volleyball and rock climbing.

This last proposal caught my attention because it was suggested to me some years ago that, with our broad sandy beaches and low rainfall, our Essex Sunshine Coast had everything that was needed for Beach Volleyball, and that Tendring Council should have leapt onto the band-wagon while enthusiasm for the sport was developing. I don’t think that the suggestion was made with the idea of an artificially created ‘urban beach’ in mind. That would surely be like providing an indoor dry ski slope in the midst of the Swiss Alps!

In view of the national financial situation there is really very little possibility of the scheme being brought to fruition in the near, or even the more distant, future. Was the £100,000 spent on its commissioning, and whatever was spent on commissioning the similar scheme for Clacton, justified?

I am the last person who would suggest that local authorities should never seek the services of outside consultants. My elder son is the founder and Managing Director of an IT Consultancy, HUBSolutions Ltd. ( http://www.hubsolutions.co.uk/ ), developing computer software used by progressive public authorities throughout England and Scotland to reduce or eliminate ‘paper work’, thus enabling public service professionals (police officers, social workers, health visitors, environmental health officers and so on) to get on with the work for which they are qualified..

However I don’t really think that (perhaps with the exception of the ‘urban beach!’) there is any idea in BNP Paribas report that couldn’t have been produced by Tendring District Councillors or their staff. That money would have been better spent carrying out some modest practical improvements rather than on the preparation of an ambitious and expensive wish-list.

‘Stand up for Britain!’

That was a recent message to the Prime Minister, urged in a headline in the popular press.

Who, you may have wondered, was currently threatening our sacred sovereignty? It must surely have been ‘Brussels’; journalistic shorthand for everything that newspaper proprietors most hate about the European Union ………. or could the Press simply have been urging the PM to support England in the World Cup?

Neither was right. On this occasion it was a much less predictable villain – the USA or, in particular its President. ‘Mind you’, I expect it was being said in indignant editorial conferences, ‘I always did say that that Obama was a dangerous leftie, not a bit like good old George Bush!’
It seems that the great American public had become aware that BP, whose oil was still gushing (though not quite so profusely as a week or so ago) into the Gulf of Mexico and threatening the whole of the south coast of the USA, was short for British Petroleum. This realisation had threatened to trigger the biggest outburst of anti-British feeling since the days of the Boston tea-party. President Obama had even suggested that BP should suspend paying dividends to its shareholders until it had compensated the tens of thousands of US citizens whose lives and livelihoods had been ruined by the leaking oil! ‘My goodness! The man’s not just a leftie. He’s some kind of a commie!’

How strange that British newspapers and politicians who hadn’t raised an eyebrow over our country being led by the USA into two foreign wars costing millions of pounds and hundreds of British lives, should get so upset over dividend payments! I wonder how we would have reacted had a similar catastrophe, arising from the activities of a US enterprise in the English Channel, threatened England's south coast?

In fact, of course, BP isn’t really a British enterprise, or at least only part of it is. I heard on the radio this morning (12 June) that 40 percent of BP shares are in British ownership and 30 percent in that of the USA. Suspension of the payment of dividends will affect investors in the USA as well as in the UK.

Neither Britain nor the USA (nor even the EU!) is responsible for the present catastrophe. Responsibility lies with world-wide uncontrolled, or inadequately controlled, striving for ever more material wealth; taking short cuts and ignoring ‘pettifogging regulations and precautions dreamed up by desk-bound bureaucrats.’ Those pettifogging regulations were put in place precisely to prevent the occurrence of such disasters.

In an earlier age it might have been described as the worship of the false god Mammon, to whom the whole of the USA's Gulf Coast is currently being sacrificed!

Week 23.09

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

Clacton-on-Sea’s Future?

If there’s one lesson that I have learnt from decades of reading local and national newspapers, it is that “artists’ impressions” of proposed future developments rarely if ever resemble the completed job. Usually this turns out to be a disappointment. The completed development lacks attractive features – trees and shrubs, a water feature perhaps - that were shown in the ‘impression’ but were cut out on grounds of economy while the building work was in progress.

It isn’t very often that I look at an ‘artist’s impression’ and hope that it won’t prove to be an accurate prophecy. However that is precisely what I thought when I saw the picture above on the front page of the Coastal Daily Gazette of Tuesday 1st June. It is part of the vision of award-winning couple Wayne and Gerardine Hemingway who have been commissioned by Tendring Council to help bring Clacton-on-Sea ‘back to its former glory’. Wayne and Gerardine have recently masterminded the regeneration of Boscombe on the south coast that has undergone an £11 million makeover and been named as regeneration project of the year.

I hope that this picture isn’t typical of their ideas because I just don’t like it. In the foreground is a cliff-top restaurant fronted by decking on which there are some tables and chairs with a couple enjoying a coffee. Children with balloons are playing on the decking and a young woman is pointing to the pier and to the beach below.

The Pier today - view from the east cliff

The pier doesn’t look greatly different from now except that there are some green trees (presumably in containers). There is no sign of a helter-skelter, roller coaster or similar traditional ‘ride’. There are some mysterious white buildings at the pier-head that look as though they are the products of the same school of architecture as that of the ‘acclaimed international artist’ who recently built a fortunately short-lived work of art, resembling an oversized and unfinished poultry shed, in Jaywick.

The beach (normally Clacton’s busiest!) is almost deserted except for a dozen deck-chairs that appear to have been have been hastily abandoned – a seaside version of the Mary Celeste perhaps? There is also a young couple looking out to sea. Could they be watching the pirate vessel that kidnapped the other beach users (or perhaps the sea monster that gobbled them up!) disappear over the horizon?

No, it’s not an ‘artist’s impression’ that fills me with hope for Clacton’s future.

Is regeneration really necessary?

Anyway, does Clacton-on-Sea, or the Tendring District, really need to be regenerated at a cost of millions of pounds? Certainly bits of it need serious attention but I think that the holiday resorts of the ‘Essex Sunshine Coast’ are doing pretty well as they are.

Our coastal towns are relatively small ones. The largest is Clacton-on-Sea with a current population of about 53,000. It is absurd to imagine that we can have all the same facilities as, for example, Southend (population 160,000), Blackpool (142,000) and Brighton (156,000). We don’t have their financial resources but we do have other natural attractions that those towns lack.

A correspondent to the Clacton Gazette of 3rd June complains that it is absurd that Clacton should be named as one of Britain’s ‘top ten’ resorts when Blackpool is not. She has just returned from the Midlands where nobody has even heard of Clacton while Blackpool is well known. I have never been to Blackpool (though I have heard of it!) but I learn from Google that it has an average annual rainfall of 872 mm and 143 rainy days. The comparable figures for our Essex Sunshine Coast resorts are less than half of those. That could possibly contribute to Clacton-on-Sea’s inclusion in the top ten and Blackpool’s omission. We natives don’t always appreciate our good fortune in living in the driest part of the United Kingdom!

I do know both Brighton and Southend from personal experience. Neither have anything comparable with our miles of safe, gently sloping sandy beaches, extending from Walton-on-the-Naze round to Frinton, Holland-on-Sea, Clacton and Jaywick. Two friends of mine from a small town in eastern Germany (where quite a few folk have heard of Clacton-on-Sea because I have told them!) were able to visit us last year and were captivated by those beaches and by Clacton’s new-look town centre, so often criticised by some hard-to-please Clactonians.

Not only is Clacton numbered in the top ten of holiday-friendly resorts but we have three European Blue Flags and these certainly aren’t given away like confetti. They have to be earned, and they have been earned by beaches in Dovercourt, Brightlingsea and Clacton. Last year Clacton was also deservedly awarded a ‘green flag’ for the excellence of its public gardens and there is every reason to hope that this will be awarded again this year.

What better place is there to bring up children than beside the seaside in Clacton?

It is, of course, no good attracting visitors to our coastal resorts if they find getting here to be a tedious and frustrating business. Every bank holiday weekend, and warm and sunny weekends in the summer, finds the access roads jammed with traffic as Londoners and folk from Suffolk who (unlike, it seems, those in the Midlands!) have heard of Clacton, come to to visit us.

What we do badly need is a cheap, reliable rail service, operating throughout weekends as well as weekdays, bringing in visitors from Ipswich and from London and Chelmsford. It surely should be possible to arrange excursion trains from Ipswich to Clacton and Walton without passengers needing to change trains at Colchester. During my Ipswich childhood and youth I remember how much we preferred Clacton’s sandy beaches to the stony ones of easier-to-get-to Felixstowe, where there always seemed to be a bitter wind blowing in off the sea!

Probably the whole discussion is academic. In the present economic climate, do we really think that millions of pounds are likely to be available for an ambitious regeneration programme?

Just now though I wish though that some local residents weren’t quite so eager to denigrate Clacton-on-Sea in the correspondence columns of the local press. I’m not really quite a native, but I have spent fifty-five happy years here and I certainly wouldn’t wish to live anywhere else.

Brooklands Estate, Jaywick

While I don’t think that Tendring District as a whole, or even Clacton-on-Sea needs regenerating, parts of the district do need radical attention.

There’s Jaywick’s Brooklands Estate for instance, continually declared to be the third most deprived area in Britain. Where are the two worse areas, I wonder? Brooklands is only a relatively small part of the civil parish of Jaywick but it is in a mess and no one seems to know quite what to do about it, or how to do it.

There is not much doubt that Essex County Council would like to see it flattened and redeveloped with ‘desirable residences’, appropriate businesses and seaside attractions. Existing residents would be rehoused ‘elsewhere’. The former Clacton Urban District tried that in the 1960s by declaring it a ‘clearance area’ under the Housing Act 1936. They failed. A public enquiry ruled against the Council.

Needless to say the existing residents, particularly responsible ones who have worked hard to make their seaside homes attractive and habitable, fiercely oppose this solution. They just want the existing roads on the estate to be properly paved, lighted and drained. Sadly, this wouldn’t solve the Brooklands problem either. There would remain a great many properties that were built for summer holiday use only. They were never intended for all-the-year residence and their owners can’t or won’t improve them. Cheap to-buy-or-rent substandard homes tend to attract (or perhaps to create) problem householders.

I can’t see any quick and easy way to regenerate Brooklands. I don’t think for one moment that trying to turn it into a regional art centre will do the trick. Attempts to do so would probably prove as expensive, and as subject to derision, as Colchester’s still-uncompleted Visual Arts Facility (VAF)!

Perhaps the answer is to be patient and deal with it a little at a time. Tendring Council could surely seek the demolition or compulsory purchase of individual properties judged to be unfit for human habitation and incapable of being rendered fit at reasonable expense. Demolish the worst properties and rehouse the occupants one at a time, slowly clearing an area large enough to be redeveloped while leaving intact dwellings that have been improved and brought up to an acceptable standard.

Yes, it would take a long time – but hardly longer than the half-century or more that the problem has existed with virtually nothing being done about it.