Week 18 2012

Tendring Topics........on Line

 ‘The Proof of the Pudding…………’

            It was about three years ago that I decided to have a solar water heating system installed.  My bungalow has a south-sloping roof and Clacton-on-Sea has, statistically, a good deal more than an average number of hours of bright sunshine.   I was then in my late eighties and knew perfectly well that I would be unlikely to recover the capital cost of installation.  However, thanks to the present government’s fiscal policies, it seemed probable that the money saved would be greater than the interest the cost of installation was earning in a bank savings account.  In any case, again thanks to government policy, my banked savings were inexorably decreasing in value as each month passed.

            The solar water system installed was a complicated one – a development of the very primitive solar systems that I had envisaged when writing my books about domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage twenty years earlier!    An additional small hot water storage cylinder was provided in the roof space. A temperature controlled pump circulated an antifreeze solution in a closed circuit between the solar panel on the roof and the new cylinder to warm the water stored in it.  A second electronically controlled pump exchanged this solar heated water with cooler water in the main storage cylinder. The flow and return pipes between the boiler and the main cylinder remained unchanged.

            The system worked very well when it was working properly.   My monthly direct debit payments for gas and electricity dropped from over £100 to something over £70. There was a lot that could go wrong though – and did!  Faults were always promptly put right by the installers. I called them teething problems though it must be said that some of them carried on well into the system’s adolescence!!  Last year at this time, we had had a hard winter in which I had let the gas boiler run night and day for several days.  Several faults had occurred and had been rectified. My monthly payments rose to £98.  I began to ask myself if it had all been worthwhile!

           

            Providentially (though it didn’t seem like that at the time!) last summer my main hot water storage cylinder failed.   It had been in constant operation for nearly a quarter of a century.   Its heat exchanger was covered with hard water scale. The gas boiler was taking an unreasonably long time to heat the water in the cylinder. 

            One of the operatives of Solar Power Ltd. my installers, suggested that I should replace the old cylinder with one of their recently developed ‘dual action’ solar cylinders and thus greatly simplify my system.  It would, I was assured, give me trouble-free service.   It was quite simple really.  The small cylinder in the roof space and the second circulating pump were dispensed with.  The new hot water storage cylinder is rather larger than the old one and is very heavily insulated.   It has two separate heat exchangers inside; one, in the top one-third of the cylinder is connected to the flow and return pipes from the boiler.   The other, near the base of the cylinder, has flow and return pipes connected to the solar panel on the roof.  There is just one electronically controlled pump which circulates an antifreeze solution through this latter heat exchanger when the liquid circulating through the solar panel becomes hotter than the water in the storage cylinder.  

During the summer, it would be possible on sunny days to switch the boiler off and rely entirely on the solar panel and that lower heat exchanger for all domestic hot water.   Even in the winter just an hour or two of sunshine would be sufficient to preheat the water in the cylinder before it passed through the boiler. Less gas would therefore be needed to bring it to the required temperature.

            The new ‘dual action’ cylinder was installed in mid-July.  At about the same time I took advantage of a Government grant and had my roof space heavily insulated by a specialist firm.  As we moved through autumn into winter the prices of electricity and gas rose dramatically and the government cut services and benefits.  Some old – and not so old – people were faced with a stark choice; Eat or Heat!

            My new solar hot water system was working perfectly.  It had no ‘teething problems’.   I could hear its pump switch on to warm the water in the storage cylinder, as the solar panel on the roof began to heat up.  I felt that that extra insulation above my ceilings was helping to retain warmth in my bungalow.  I awaited the annual review of my E-on account with both anxiety and hope.  Had the new system plus the insulation cancelled the effect of the price increases?  Would my monthly direct debit payments stay unchanged?  Was it just possible that they would be reduced?  The proof of the pudding is in the eating!

            That proof arrived last week – a large official communication from E-on.  I opened it with some trepidation, but I need not have worried.  My hopes had been more than justified.  My account was comfortably in credit.  £74.64 would be repaid to me within the next few days and, with effect from 1^st June, my monthly direct debit payments would be reduced from £98.00 to £62.00.   Solar power plus insulation had saved money!

            My improvements had been made towards the end of July.  They had therefore been effective for only nine months (the least sunny nine months) of the year.  Next April there should, with any luck, be a further reduction.  However, as I shall be celebrating my 91st birthday in three weeks time, it would (if I were a gambling man) be unwise of me to bet too heavily on my ever seeing that reduction!

            I hope, by the way, that I am not so pleased with the success of my own efforts to reduce my energy bills as to forget that there are many old people, and many poor families, who are not able to take similar action. They really do sometimes have to choose between Eating and Heating!   I wish I could solve their problems as effectively as I have solved my own.

An Evil Empire?

          When the Leveson Enquiry first began its work, I wrote in this blog that I had little doubt that the nefarious press practices of phone and email hacking, and the even more corrupt and illegal practice of bribing and/or threatening the Police and other public officials, would be thoroughly investigated and exposed.   I thought it likely though that there would be far less investigation and exposure of an exercise of press power that affects every single one of us but is probably not even illegal.  It is the way in which those who own and control the news media influence the policies and decisions of senior politicians, thus promoting national policies to the advantage of those owners and controllers rather than that of the rest of us – the nation as a whole.

            On 25^th April Mr Rupert Murdoch, whose News International owns forty percent of Britain’s national press and has similar holdings in North America and in Australia and New Zealand., assured the Leveson Enquiry that he had never asked a favour of Mrs Thatcher or of any other British Prime Minister.  It was a claim that was dismissed by the Daily Mirror (not a Murdoch publication!) as codswallop.  I have little doubt though that the Mirror was wrong and that Rupert Murdoch’s claim was literally true.

            Mr Murdoch wouldn’t condescend to ask a favour of any politician. Why on earth should he?  He doesn’t seek their favour.  They seek his.  Tony Blair created New Labour, reversing everything for which the pioneers of the Labour Movement had fought, to gain the approval of Mr Murdoch and the electoral support of the Sun.  David Cameron, while still in opposition, interrupted a family holiday in Turkey to fly to Rupert Murdoch on his private yacht on the Mediterranean.  In office he consulted with him and his lieutenants again and again, inviting him to the back door of 10 Downing Street to escape the notice of the non-Murdoch press.   Cameron appointed Andy Coulson, former News of the World Editor, to be his personal spin doctor and pursued a neighbourly relationship with Rebekah Brooks, Murdoch’s ‘right hand woman’.  Rupert Murdoch doesn’t need politicians’ favours.   They need his!

            Murdoch has never concealed the fact that he owns and controls newspapers to promote political causes - unfettered free enterprise and extreme Euroscepticism!  Politicians who support those causes can expect the support of the Murdoch press empire – those who don’t can expect derision!   When, after a Tory electoral victory, the Sun claimed ‘It was us what done it!’ it was no idle boast.

            If we really want a free and independent press (independent of ‘big business’ as well as of the state) we will make certain that it is impossible for a substantial section of it to come under the control of one individual, particularly not someone who is a foreign national, has his home and principal interests outside the United Kingdom, and owes and acknowledges no loyalty to our country, its culture, and its traditions.

 ‘I don’t believe it!’

            My nature is, I think, to be somewhat credulous and unsuspicious; the uncharitable might say ‘gullible’.  I tend to believe what I have been told until I have good reason to do otherwise.  On balance, I prefer, very occasionally, to be deceived, rather than to suspect wrongly that someone is deceiving me.  There are limits to my credulity though. I find that these days those limits are constantly being overstepped by politicians and others in the media spotlight.

            Take, for instance, the case of Mr Jeremy Hunt, Culture Minister.   Mr Hunt took over from Lib.Dem. Vince Cable the decision about the ownership of the residual BSkyB shares when Mr Cable was trapped into remarking that he had declared war on Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire was eager to acquire BSkyB in its entirety.  Mr Hunt was on record as an admirer of News International, so David Cameron obviously felt that he could be depended upon to make an absolutely impartial judgement and arrive at the decision everybody (well, everybody whose opinion mattered) wanted!

            Adam Smith, Mr Hunt’s principal adviser, seems to have imagined that our Government was the political wing of News International (it was a mistake anyone might have made!) and carried on a considerable email correspondence with News International on that assumption.  What I find difficult to believe is that, considering the nature of the ‘advice’ that Mr Hunt must have been receiving from his adviser, he still had no doubt that he would  be able to make an impartial judgement on the disposal of those BSkyB shares.  I am reminded of the story of the judge in America’s ‘wild west’ who told a captured bandit, ‘We’ll give you a fair trial – and then we’ll hang you!’  

              There is little doubt in my mind that the acquisition of the whole of BSkyB by News International would have gone ahead ‘on the nod’ had not the extent of News International’s phone hacking activities come to light at a crucial moment – and Rupert Murdoch had decided that it would be politic to withdraw his bid for those shares rather than to risk its being refused on the grounds that News International was an unsuitable organisation.

That brings me to the other news story that has stretched my credulity beyond its limits.  I just cannot believe that Rupert Murdoch, the astute news media superman, who prided himself on keeping a tight rein on all his enterprises, on both sides of the Atlantic and in the Antipodes, could possibly have allowed himself to become a victim of a conspiracy of his underlings to prevent his learning about the wide-spread phone and email hacking that had become the practice in at least part of his British media domains.  He was, so he claimed, a victim of that conspiracy and not its source.

            As Victor Meldrew, anti-hero of One Foot in the Grave, used to proclaim on our tv screens, ‘I  don’t believe it!’

‘The Cruellest Month!’

          T.S. Eliot begins his poem ‘The waste land’ with the remark that ‘April is the cruellest month’.   April 2012 certainly was that for our Prime Minister and the coalition government.  A unpopular Budget benefitting millionaires was followed by a scathing comment from one of his own Conservative MPs that he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer were ‘two arrogant rich boys who don’t know the price of milk’

Then there were those emails to which I have referred above – and Lord Leveson’s disinclination to stray into the Prime Minister’s domain and decide whether or not Jeremy Hunt had breached ‘the Ministerial Code’.   Almost at the end of the month came the pronouncement of Scotland’s Roman Catholic Cardinal Archbishop that the government’s policies were benefitting the rich at the expense of the poor.  On the same day came the official revelation that the richest of rich Britons had become even richer!   The rest of us don’t need official confirmation to know that we have become poorer!

This week are the local government elections.  The Prime Minister must surely be praying that the electorate will concentrate on local issues!

           

           

           

           

Week 17 2012

Tendring Topics.......on Line

Tendring District’s Recycling Scheme.

          I thought that I was being fairly critical of Tendring District’s changed recyclables collection scheme in last week’s blog.  It seemed clear to me that, had sufficient thought been given to the matter, they would surely never have provided unlidded red boxes for the reception of paper and cardboard.  I also felt that the amount of food waste from old people like me, living alone, would hardly be worth the trouble and expense of collection.

I thought that the scheme could be improved at minimal trouble and expense simply by swapping the purposes of the two collection boxes and using the green box, with lid, for paper and cardboard and the red box which has no lid, for plastic bottles and food cans of all kinds.

Compared with ‘letters to the editor’ in the current Clacton Gazette, and comments on the Gazette’s website last week, my blog amounted to virtually unstinted praise!  I hadn’t realized, for instance, that for larger families, neither the red nor the green box is sufficiently large to hold a fortnight’s recycled items.  In the past we have been able to put any excess into a white plastic bag, place it on top of the green box, and it would be taken away with the box’s contents.  That isn’t allowed under the new scheme. Anything in such a bag will simply go into landfill.

Also now going into landfill are the plastics that once were collected for recycling but are to be collected no longer for that purpose; plastic bags of all kinds, and pots used for containing yoghurt, cream and spreads, for example.

 A number of correspondents had realized, as I had, that paper left in an open red box would blow out and litter the streets.   An official Council spokesman said that to provide a lid for each red box  would have cost £1 a lid, and that householders could use the lids from the green boxes (they can’t, they don’t fit!) or place the waste food container on top of the paper and cardboard.  If waste paper does blow about the streets, ‘it will be cleaned up’.

 Among the many letters published in the Clacton Gazette is, inevitably I suppose, one from a reader who sees the malign hand of ‘Brussels’ behind the Council’s scheme.  S.H.Wells of Holland-on-Sea writes

‘I have a suspicion that Tendring Council’s revised waste collection measures have less to do with “helping the environment” than with the EU landfill tax.

After all, a major percentage of the world is covered by water and the theory that man has anything to do with the changing cycles of the climate has never been proven.

But the tax is very real.  It varies from country to country but in the UK since 2010, it has been 51 Euros per tonne – currently about £42.

 

 If that is the idea, then a majority of Gazette readers think it is doomed to failure.  Two thirds of those polled believe that there will be more, rather than less, refuse destined for landfill as a result of the new scheme!

I am glad that I am not still Tendring Council’s Public Relations Officer.  Putting a ‘positive spin’ on the current situation would be well beyond my capabilities!    I reckon too, that the members of the ruling majority group on the Council are glad that, unlike in Colchester, none of their number has to seek re-election early next month!

A spokesman for the Council says that the scheme will be kept under review and the views of residents taken into account.  I think that that means they’ll keep their heads down and hope the scheme will be working properly and to everyone’s satisfaction, by the time of the next Council election.   I wouldn’t bet on it!

Oh for the days when decisions like major changes to a recycling collection system that was at least working, would have been thoroughly debated in an appropriate committee, before being debated again by the full Council – rather than being decided by a tiny Politburo and presented to the Council as something which all members of the ruling party are expected to support!  In those days the whole plan would have been discussed in the press and by the public before a final decision was taken and a new system was imposed on the public.

‘You can’t have your cake…..and eat it!’

            This seems to be yet another piece of folk wisdom of which the Government is blissfully unaware.   They are very concerned about truancy from school.  In my childhood, certainly in the ‘aspiring working class’ circles in which I moved, truancy was a very rare phenomenon.  None of us dared to take a day off school unless we could be sure of being able to take with us the next day a note from mum or dad explaining that on the previous day we had been too ill to attend.

            If, due to mumps, chicken pox or some other childhood ailment we were absent for two days or more, the school would expect a parental letter of explanation to arrive promptly by post (very, very few of us were ‘on the phone’ in those days).  Parents and children alike dreaded a visit from ‘the School Board Man’ that would follow any unexplained absence. The fact that the actual extent of this official’s powers were unknown added to the fear of his visit, as did the fact that his visit would be noted and regarded as a mark of shame by all the neighbours.  ‘Them at no 27 – them that’s so ‘igh and mighty; I know for a fact that they ‘ad a visit from the School Board Man yest’y afternoon. What d’ya think of that?’

            Nowadays we are all aware that the Education Welfare Officer (the successor to the School Board Man) has very limited powers and that when he called he would very likely find no-one at home. What’s more no-one would care. Parents and children are no longer terrified of an official visitor – nor are nosy neighbours interested.   Truancy flourishes.

         

          Someone at Whitehall had a brilliant idea.   Stop the child allowance of persistent truants at source!   That’ll bring the parents to heel.  That’ll make those neglectful and non-caring mums and dads make sure that their kids go to school every day.

            However, the same Whitehall geniuses expect us all, singles, mums and dads and childless couples, to be in productive work. They overlook the fact that for many there is no productive, or even unproductive, work for them to do.  They also overlook the fact that where both a husband and a wife, or a single parent, are expected to be at work at 8.30 or even 9.00 it is impossible for or them to be certain that their child or children actually go to school.  They may make sure that they’re up, dressed, breakfasted and ready, but there is no way they can be sure that those children go through the school gates. 

             

            Similarly there’s no way that working parents, returning home at about 6.00 pm can control what their kids are up to between leaving school a couple of hours earlier and their arrival on the scene.  No wonder we have truancy.  No wonder we have street gangs and juvenile crime.  No wonder we have teenage pregnancies – ‘Let’s go upstairs to my bedroom.  Mum and dad won’t be home for at least another hour!’

            It seems to me that modern society has stark choices about its future direction.

Carry on in the way that has become popular since the avaricious eighties – husband and wife both hard at work (when they can get it!) to maintain mortgage payments or HP debt, children coming home from school to an empty house, growing youth crime, teenage pregnancies, juvenile drug and alcohol abuse, and a violent gang culture.    The alternative is  revert to pre-1980 (pre-Mrs Thatcher) values, recognising that growing children need a parent to be present when they set off for school and when they come home in the afternoon; and appreciating that bringing up a child or children in a  loving caring and comfortable home is a satisfying, fulfilling and socially-valuable career. Building Societies and banks should revert to the practice of relating the size of their loan to the income of just one of the couple seeking to buy a property, instead of the sum of the incomes of the both.  

            We would need to recognise that home ownership need not be everybody’s goal and that there is no shame in living in a rented home, even if it is Council or Housing Association owned.  Social housing should be for those who need it – not just for those who can’t possibly afford anything else.

            That way, I’m afraid, we would have fewer aspiring home owners and fewer thrusting young entrepreneurs. We would probably lose a few potentially brilliant female scientists, lawyers, doctors and (dare I say it?) priests – though it could be the house-husband as easily as the housewife, who elects to stay at home and bring up the children.   On the plus side we would have fewer unsustainable debts, fewer mortgage defaulters, fewer broken homes, less youth crime, fewer teenage pregnancies, less antisocial behaviour and fewer schoolboy and schoolgirl truants destined to become illiterate, innumerate and antisocial adults!

             Punishing the Charities

            The Chancellor of the Exchequer has, so he says, been shocked to discover what most of us have known or, at least suspected, for years; that many of the seriously wealthy contrive to pay less in taxation than we less affluent mortals!  Having made this ground-breaking discovery; how extraordinary that he should take measures that are more likely to impoverish a number of worthy charities than to cause serious inconvenience to the wealthy.

            It couldn’t, I suppose, be a deliberate ploy to persuade us that if we attempt to make the rich pay their fair share into the nation’s exchequer it is the poor who will suffer?

            I could see how the state would lose revenue as a result of large donations to charity but I have to confess that I couldn’t see what the generous donor would gain from his or her action – except perhaps a few ‘brownie points’ to present at the Pearly Gates when the time comes.

            Paul Vallely, writing in last week’s Church Times enlightened me.  ‘If a basic-rate taxpayer gives £1 to charity, the state gives 25p in Gift Aid to that charity. But if a higher-rate tax payer gives £1, the state gives 25p to the charity, but another 15p or 25p to the wealthy donor in extra tax relief.  So top philanthropists don’t just get a knighthood, or dinner with the Prime Minister, or an art gallery named after them. They also get money back’.  He also points out that some charities to which we taxpayers are thus compelled to give that Gift Aid are not ones that most of us would think of as being desperate for a few extra quid – Eton College for instance!

            Paul Vallely suggests that before targeting charitable giving, the Chancellor might try cracking down on some of the  other scams – off-shore accounts, turning income to capital gains, setting up companies to rent their own homes from themselves – by means of which the wealthy avoid paying tax like the rest of us!

           

Week 16 2012 19.4.2012

Tendring Topics......on Line 

Recycling

            Recycling has, for many years, been one of my enthusiasms.  At one time I had three compost bins in which I converted every scrap of kitchen and garden waste into compost. I had a shredder that made my tree and shrub prunings compostable. Seaweed harvested from Clacton’s beaches enriched the contents of my bins! Some of my used newspapers, soaked in water, I would use to line trenches destined to be filled with compost and grow sweet peas or runner beans or courgettes. I was very proud of the results!

            Sadly, my gardening days came to an end but I was pleased when Tendring Council introduced its recycling collection service.  I conscientiously sort out my newspapers, magazines, circulars, plastic bottles and empty food and drink cans, put them in the green box that the council provided and put it, together with the black plastic bag containing non-recyclable refuse, at the entrance to my driveway on the appropriate day of every week.

            Had I been asked how the service could be improved I would have suggested including glass bottles and jars to the recyclables. There are a number of bottle banks in the area (I am fortunate in having one less than a quarter of a mile away) but jars and bottles are heavy and bulky for a pedestrian or cyclist to carry and using a car to make the journey surely defeats the purpose of the exercise.  I take my bottles and jars on my mobility scooter when I have to make an occasional visit to Magdalen Green Post Office, very near the bottle bank.

            Tendring Council launched last week its new and improved recyclables collection scheme.  Its purpose is to separate papers and card from potentially contaminating plastic milk and household domestic cleaning bottles, and to add the collection of food waste (leftovers, vegetable peelings and so on).  For this last purpose householders are provided with two containers – a small plastic ‘caddy’ to keep in the kitchen for the immediate reception of waste, and a larger storage bin, with hinged lid, to be kept outside and to receive the contents of the caddy.   The larger of these bins will be emptied every week into the collecting vehicle and should be put out on the boundary of the property, at the same time as the black plastic bag containing non-recyclable refuse,

            Every household has also been issued with a red salvage box.  This is to be used, with the green box we already possess, to separate the recyclable materials.  The red box is to be used for paper and cardboard only and the green one for metal cans of all descriptions and plastic bottles (milk bottles and bottles used for bleach and other household cleaning materials – not for yoghurt pots or containers used for margarine, cheese or other spreads, and salad vegetables or fruit)  The filled red box and the filled green box are to be put out for the collectors on alternate weeks and we have all been given a little calendar showing clearly which box is to be collected each week.

            Thus, if everything goes according to plan, on ‘collection day’ outside each house there will be the  black plastic sack containing unrecyclable refuse, a green storage bin with a hinged lid for food and kitchen waste and either a red or a green box with the other recyclables.

            It will rarely be exactly like that.  I realize that, living on my own, eating frozen or ready-prepared food, and preparing no more than I need for each meal, I have very little kitchen and food waste. A few teabags, half a dozen egg shells and two or three banana skins are likely to comprise my weekly harvest! There must be other ’live-aloners’ in a similar position. Some householders, I have little doubt, will ignore the entire scheme.  They will never use their plethora of boxes and will simply leave outside all their refuse, unsorted, in two or more black plastic sacks!

            The scheme is a bit complicated, but most of us I think, will try to co-operate.  I can see one snag (presumably the result of the Council’s spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar!) that may cause a serious problem.  Our existing green boxes have lids.  The new red boxes do not.  The red boxes are used for paper and cardboard. Many householders will  keep these boxes outside and put cardboard and unwanted paper in them throughout the fortnight.  We all put out our refuse and recyclables for collection at least an hour or so before the collectors arrive. There will thus be plenty of time for high winds to scatter loose paper from the open red boxes, or for heavy rain to to  reduce paper and cardboard in them to a soggy mass!

            There is one simple and straight-forward solution that would not cost the Council a penny.  Swap the purposes of the two boxes, using the green one for paper and cardboard, and the red one for cans and plastic bottles.  The lid would protect paper and cardboard in the green box from wind and rain while the weather would have little effect on bottles and cans in the open red box.

            I wonder if the Council will be prepared to admit that they got it wrong – and will put it right.

 "Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens."

When, many years ago, I was a POW in a small working camp in Germany, we had a tear-off calendar in our ‘barrack room’ with a ‘thought for the day’, in German of course, for each day.  The quotation above, from the German poet Schiller is one of two or three of them that I have remembered to this day.   It means ‘Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain’.

That quotation came into my mind when, a fortnight ago, I commented in this blog on the Prime Minister’s and Cabinet Office Minister’s success in turning the mole-hill of a possible future strike of petrol lorry drivers into a mountain of chaos, bad temper and potential danger when they advised motorists to keep their vehicles topped up with petrol and the Cabinet Office Minister suggested keeping a jerrican or two of petrol in reserve in the garage!  One of their cabinet colleagues had the effrontery to say later that as a result of their advice to motorists we were better prepared for any possible strike than we had been!

A regular correspondent points out that if there had been an imminent strike, the advice would have been every bit as idiotic and even more reprehensible.  If we are ever faced with a petrol shortage he hopes that someone in authority will strongly advise ‘don’t dash out and top up your petrol tank’.  If everyone panic-buys the situation will become infinitely worse.   Think of ways you can use less petrol or avoid using it altogether.  Walk the children to school instead of driving them.  It’s healthier anyway.   Where you can, walk or cycle to your work or other destination. Share your vehicle with others. Use public transport.  Consider, as we were all asked to consider during World War II, ‘Is your journey really necessary?’

That way there should be sufficient petrol for essential services – fire and ambulance for example – and for essential journeys by the rest of us. But I suppose no-one can expect politicians, who rarely open their mouths without considering whether what they are about to say will gain votes or lose them, to give sensible advice like that.

   At the time of the politician-induced crisis I was amused by a report in a National newspaper of a pub with a sign outside ‘Beer Shortage – come in and panic-buy!’

         

Health and Safety

          We have all become accustomed to idiotic restrictions like schools forbidding children from playing conkers, popular play equipment being removed from children’s playgounds and so on, being imposed in the interests of ‘health and safety’. Adults lives too are likely to be similarly plagued. I have heard that there are offices where employees are forbidden to hang their coats over the backs of their chairs because someone had once tripped and fallen over just such a coat!

            Much the same motive lies behind the dire warning enclosed with some proprietary packets of sleeping pills; ‘These may cause drowsiness’.  I wonder that no-one has yet thought of fencing off the sea.  Even those who escape drowning may get their feet wet and develop pneumonia!

            The cause of all this pernicious interference with everyone’s daily life is not, as you may imagine, some overzealous bureaucrat in Whitehall (or possibly in Brussels) who devotes his life to creating regulations that make everyone else’s life miserable.   On the contrary it is a product of free enterprise, of the market place and of the carefully fostered conviction that there is no such thing as a genuine accident – every unpleasant thing that happens to anyone is the result of someone else’s carelessness or neglect, and that someone must be made to pay for it.

            Conkers are forbidden in some school playgrounds because there is a remote possibility that one of the conkers might fly off its restraining string and injure a participant or onlooker.  Sue the school for failing to exercise adequate control in the playground!  A child falls off a recreation ground slide or swing and twists an ankle.  Sue the Council for installing dangerous equipment! A motorist takes a couple of pain-killers and crashes his car.  Was he warned that the pills could cause drowsiness? No? then sue the drug company or the pharmacist who sold them!

 Don’t look in Whitehall or in Brussels for those responsible for attempting to eliminate every possible peril (and several that one might have thought impossible) from modern life.  Just switch on your tv set and watch daytime commercial tv for an hour or so.   You won’t have long to wait for a benign character to appear on the screen telling you that if you have been involved in an accident and it isn’t your fault, the chances are that you’ll be entitled to compensation. Get in touch forthwith with this, that or the other firm of solicitors.  They’re specialists and they’ll get you every penny of the compensation to which you are entitled.  It’s no win, no fee, and the ‘other lot’ will have to pay all legal costs!

            It isn’t the bureaucrats, or even the politicians, who have created and fostered the excesses of ‘Health and Safety’.  It is our own compensation culture and the legal vultures who make their own fortunes out of it.

The Local Elections

          Tendring District residents will not have a vote in the forthcoming local council elections because we elect the members of our council all together in a local general election.  It is electors in areas where a third of the members of their Council are elected annually who will be exercising their right to vote early next month.

            Needless to say the national party leaders are having their say, often with old, stale platitudes that we have heard a dozen times before. I am a little tired of David Cameron’s explanation of all that is wrong with Britain today as the result of ‘The financial mess that we inherited from the previous Labour Government’, especially when no less an authority than the Governor of the Bank of England has made clear again and again that the cause of that financial mess was the greed and incompetence of the bankers – to a man (and woman) enthusiastic supporters of Mr Cameron’s party.

            I am very interested in the steady progress of the Green Party.  They already have a majority of voters in Brighton and it wouldn’t need a very big electoral swing in their direction to give them a majority in Norwich and elsewhere.   I note that that among their policies, ranking equally with what we generally think of as ‘Green’ issues, is the urgent need to narrow the enormous gap between the incomes of Britain’s wealthiest and its poorest citizens.

            Regular blog readers will know that this is a cause that has my unqualified support.  Last week I suggested that the time might be right to launch a new political party with that specific aim.  I suggested that it might be called The New Levellers but a blog reader in whose judgement I have the greatest confidence suggests The Equality Party.  I would be perfectly happy with that. In the meantime; I would unhesitatingly support any party working towards narrowing that ever-widening gap, the cause of so many of our nation’s ills.

            For that reason I wish every success to Green local government candidates throughout the land!

           

  

              

           

Week 15 2012 12.4.2012

Tendring Topics .......on line

 ‘The New Levellers’?

            The overwhelming victory of the RESPECT Party in the Bradford by-election must have come as a shock to the leaders of all three of Britain’s main political parties.  Labour, of course, will have been  particularly dismayed because they had regarded Bradford as a safe seat and had been looking forward to humiliating the Conservative and Liberal Parties after an unpopular millionaire-friendly coalition government budget and the scandal of cash-for-cosy-dinner-parties at 10 Downing Street! 

            In the event the result reflected nation-wide disillusion with both the government and the opposition.   For some time I have feared that this disillusion, which I certainly share, would lead to the emergence of a charismatic ultra-nationalist, ultra right-wing leader (probably with support from the ‘tea party’ fanatics in the USA) who would promise to restore Britain’s ‘greatness’ and lead us instead – as Hitler led the Germans – to utter disaster.  Fortunately, there is no sign of the emergence of such a leader in the ranks of either the BNP or UKIP, the parties whose members would be most likely to give him or, of course her, their support.

             I can’t feel any enthusiasm for George Galloway and his RESPECT Party who had such a remarkable victory in Bradford.  I may be misjudging them but they seem to me to be remarkably like the reverse side of the British National Party coin!  I would feel even less enthusiasm for a RESPECT government than I do for our present government of millionaires for millionaires.

            Surely now though, in this time of disillusion, there could be  potential success for a new Political Party that would be neither  ‘left’ nor ‘right’; one that would serve the interests of the whole community, ensuring that in good times or bad, we were truly ‘all in it together’.  The principles of such a Party have, as I pointed out in this blog a fortnight ago, been endorsed by the leaders of all three of the existing main political parties, but have been quickly forgotten when they had the opportunity to put them into practice.

             I am, of course, referring to the principles and objectives of The Equality Trust (www.equalitytrust.org.uk); principles and objectives that I realize I have supported and promoted for many years.  I would though have had difficulty in explaining exactly why I did so until I read The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, first published by Allen Lane in 2009 but now, in paperback and with additional material, by Penguin books.   Richard and Kate, both University Professors, have established from existing national statistics that among the developed nations, those with the smallest gap between the incomes of the wealthiest and the poorest members of their communities are better off in every respect (life expectancy, infant mortality, criminality, education, marriage breakdown, teenage pregnancy, anti-social behaviour) than those with the larger and the largest gap.

            It is not only the poorest members of society who benefit from greater equality.   The benefits are noted throughout the social strata, by rich and poor alike.  We would all feel the benefit of living in a society in which there were no abjectly poor and no super-rich.  This applies not only to sovereign nations but, in federal societies like the USA, to individual States.

             

It was equality of this kind that the members of the world-wide ‘Occupy’ movement, who camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral and demonstrated (until brutally broken up!) in Wall Street, New York and in Moscow’s Red Square, were seeking.  I believe that attempting to achieve equality by influencing the politicians of existing parties is doomed to failure.  They are all receptive of the idea, until the opportunity arises for them put words into action. They then all find themselves blinded by billionaires!

            The time is surely ripe for the formation of a new political Party with the over-riding objective of levelling incomes.  It could expect to recruit disillusioned supporters from all the main political parties.  It certainly wouldn’t be short of idealism and intellectual weight and it could, I hope, to draw on the courage and determination of supporters of the Occupy movement.  It might perhaps be called The New Levellers or the NLP, a tribute to the original Levellers of the 17^th century, and a promise that its policies, practices and funding would be ‘on the level’, dependent on the contributions of its members and supporters, and subservient neither to millionaire donors nor to the Unions.

Oh dear, daydreaming about a possible political party that doesn’t, and probably never will, exist is surely an indication of advanced senility!  I had even found myself wishing that I were half a century younger so that I could be an active member of that exciting (but sadly imaginary) new Political Party!

Who owns our water?

          I am writing these words on 5^th April, the day on which a hosepipe ban came into force for almost the whole of southern and eastern England – except for the Tendring District, England’s driest area!

            Needless to say the hosepipe ban and the maximum penalty of £1,000 for flouting it has been the subject of much public debate on radio and tv today.  Much of the argument related to whether or not one should report an errant neighbour who was ignoring the ban and using a hose to water his lawn or flower beds.  There was discussion too about the fate of garden centres and their suppliers and of professional gardeners in a drought-stricken southern and eastern England.

            Several viewers and listeners  suggested that before the water companies imposed restrictions on householders and forced those dependent on water for their work out of  business, they should do a lot more to stem the thousands of gallons of water that flow away to waste every day from leaky mains supply pipes and from delays in dealing with burst pipes.

            During the discussion it emerged that less water is wasted from Germany’s water mains than from those of any other country in Europe*.   This, it was claimed, is at least partly because water supply in Germany is a local authority responsibility, as it once was in Britain.  Immediately on spotting a leak householders phone the Mayor or their local councillor to inform him or her in no uncertain terms that if that leak isn’t dealt with promptly they needn’t count on a vote from this taxpayer at the next local election!  Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has been compared with Margaret Thatcher.  She may be equally bossy – but, unlike her British counterpart, she clearly has had enough common sense to realize that vital public services like water supply need to be under local democratic control.

            Our water supplies are no longer, as they once were, under such control but are the responsibility of private companies whose first responsibility is not to the public but to the shareholders.  It simply isn’t cost effective to deal with every leak the moment it is reported, and cost-effectiveness, together with productivity and profitability form Mammon’s Unholy Trinity. In an unfettered market economy, Mammon Rules – OK!

*The European country that wastes most water through leaky mains is Bulgaria.  So, while our record is awful compared with that of Germany, it’s quite good compared with Bulgaria.  That, I am sure, is something of which David Cameron and co are proud!

The Preston Passion

            Did you watch The Preston Passion on BBC1 on Good Friday?  It was transmitted from 12 noon till 1.00 pm, hardly the best time to transmit a programme that demanded the whole of every viewer’s attention.   I recorded it and watched it in the evening. I expect that many others did the same.

            There was colourful dance routine in which scores of ordinary Preston citizens took part, the enthusiastic singing of well-known and well-loved Easter hymns and three pre-recorded playlets illustrating aspects of Christ’s Passion in a Preston setting and taking place in the mid-nineteenth century, during World War I and in the present day.

            During a strike at a Preston cotton mill in the 1840s an innocent man was brought before the Mayor, as Chief Magistrate, for summary punishment and as an example to others.  The Mayor, like Pontius Pilate, hesitated and then gave way – washing his hands as did Pilate after he had condemned Jesus to crucifixion.

            The overwhelming grief of the mother of Jesus and of his other women disciples was portrayed by Preston women waiting at the railway station for their sons to return from the horrors of the trenches in World War I – and learning that they would never come home again. An example of willing self-sacrifice was demonstrated by a pre-teens Preston girl who sacrificed herself, and her meagre savings, to support her sick mother and to make sure that her siblings didn’t go hungry.

            It was all very moving and very worthwhile.  Perhaps it was right that the viewing public should be spared a depiction of the full horror of a 1^st Century Roman crucifixion; the stripping and flogging, the mockery and deliberate humiliation, and the long, slow and agonising death of the victim, nailed to the cross.  Goodness knows there have, even in recent years, been torture chambers in which untold horrors have been inflicted on our fellow men and women. If there are any today they are kept secret. I was about to write that there is – happily – no present day equivalent of public torture and execution providing an entertainment for some and a warning to others.

            It wouldn’t be quite true though.  The public stoning to death of women accused of adultery (I haven’t heard of male adulterers facing the same fate, but perhaps they do) is surely comparable with crucifixion.  The victim is buried to the waist and stones hurled at her until one merciful stone ends her tortured life.  This was the practice in Afghanistan under Taliban rule and is still the practice in some other parts of the world today.  Like crucifixion itself though, it is something that we prefer not to think about and not to see on our tv screens.

            God sees it though – and weeps, both for the suffering of his human children and for their wanton cruelty to each other.  ‘Inasmuch as ye have done these things unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done them unto me’, said Jesus Christ.

A Question of Priorities

          Have you been watching any of the many tv programmes inspired by the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912?  I have found Len Goodman’s commentary particularly gripping.  He, it appears, had been a welder in Harland and Wolff’s Belfast dockyard before embarking on his career as a dancer.

            A feature of the Titanic story that I found fascinating was the imaginative and single-minded way in which  the White Star Line had served the interests of its shareholders and done its best, in the face of disaster, to save the company.  It would surely have brought joy to the hearts of our present Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

          Having spared no expense to ensure that 1st Class passengers would have every luxury to which they could possibly have become accustomed,  how wise it must have seemed  to save money by  having less than half the number of lifeboats that would have been required to accommodate all the passengers and crew. They would never be required.  The Titanic had been declared to be ‘unsinkable’ but having a few lifeboats visible to all on board would surely reassure even the most nervous passenger.

            Then there was the ground-breaking decision to sack all surviving crew members with effect from the moment when the Titanic disappeared beneath the waves.  It would really have been absurd to continue to pay members of a crew whose sole raison d’être lay at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean!  It was no concern of the White Star Line that surviving crew members would find themselves unemployed and penniless in New York. There were surely charities to deal with that sort of thing. It makes our present government’s actions to make it easier for an employer to sack employees seem positively philanthropic.

            

         

         

           

              

Week 14 2012 5.4.2012

Tendring Topics.......on Line

     Happy Easter!

          I wish a very Happy Easter holiday to all readers of this blog.  If it remains true to form the Clacton Gazette when it is distributed (the day after the publication of this blog) will include an exciting list of things to do during the Easter Holiday.  Again, if true to past form, these will not include going to church, chapel or meeting house to give thanks for the events, some 2,000 years ago, that make Easter the most important of the year’s Christian festivals.

            I see Jesus Christ’s resurrection on that first Easter morning as God’s demonstration of the ultimate triumph of good over evil, of light over darkness.   There are those who claim to try to follow Christ’s teaching and example but can’t accept the fact of the resurrection.  Believe me, had there been no resurrection we would know nothing of his teaching and example.  Jesus of Nazareth would have been just another failed prophet (there have been plenty of them!) who came to an unpleasant end sooner than most.  He would not have been mentioned, even as a footnote, in the history of the Roman Empire and of humankind.

            So, break new ground.  Go to a place of worship and give thanks for the spring flowers, for a future of hope for us all, and for what Eleanor Farjeon refers to in her poem (and hymn) Morning has broken as, ‘God’s recreation of each new day’. In Clacton I have a personal acquaintance of St James Church of England Church, Christ Church United Reformed Church and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) – three very different Christian traditions but each offering visitors and newcomers a warm and friendly welcome.  I am sure that all the other Christian churches in our town and district do the same.

            Although  ‘going to church’ is not likely to be listed among things to do during the Easter Holiday, there will be a list of local churches further on in the Clacton (or Frinton and Walton) Gazette giving their locations and the times of their Easter services.  Why not look in on one of them? You never know – you might enjoy it, make new friends and begin to look at life in a new and more hopeful way.

            ‘Local’ Control over Town and Country Planning?

          Speed seems to be a first priority of our present government.  All child adoptions, they say, should be settled within two years.  I expect that two years is plenty of time in which to investigate and approve (or refuse) most adoptions – but speed shouldn’t be the primary consideration.  Bearing in mind that one third of adoptions fail, it is surely more important to reduce that failure rate than to hurry things along, even if the investigation takes a few months longer.

            Now there’s planning law.  Legislation is in place to speed up the granting of planning permission and allow the developers to build badly needed homes where they are needed.  The most controversial part of the legislation is the assertion that the scales should be weighted on the side of the developer with the presumption that future development will be permitted.  This, the government claims, is handing power to the local community!

            It is surely doing the reverse.  Most local communities are bitterly opposed to large housing, commercial or industrial development taking place in their areas. Round the parish pump ‘nimby’ rules!  We have an example of that in the Tendring District.  Residents oppose large-scale housing development in the village of St Osyth because, they say, it would change totally the character of the village.  Similarly residents in the area between Clacton-on-Sea and St. Osyth bitterly (and wrongly in my opinion) oppose the installation of wind turbines in their neighbourhood.

            In Northamptonshire local communities, district councils and the county council were strongly opposed to their area being used for the disposal of nuclear waste.   This unanimous local objection was simply ignored by central government which approved the project.

            I am sure that there are occasions when regional or national considerations must over-ride local concerns.  If local communities were always assured of having the last word on planning and development there would be no sewage treatment works, no recycling centres, no refuse incinerators or controlled refuse tips, no abattoirs, no power stations, no on-shore wind turbines, no large housing estates and probably no crematoria! Sometimes it is, and will be, necessary to over-rule the wishes of local people in the regional or national interest.  When this has to be done, for goodness sake let it be done honestly – not in the midst of a smokescreen of propaganda about the ‘empowerment of local communities!’

A cautionary verse

            Writing about speeding up planning decisions brought to my mind a poem by  poet laureate the late Sir John Betjeman, about an unconventional means of speeding up the approval of development plans.  It’s called Executive. Below are a few lines from the end of the poem.  A particularly obnoxious young man is discussing a source of his conspicuous wealth.  He explains:

I do some mild developing, the kind of thing I need

Is a little country market town that’s rather gone to seed.

A luncheon and a drink or two, a little savoir faire,

Will fix the Planning Officer, the Town Clerk and the Mayor.

And if some conservationists should try to interfere,

A ‘dangerous structure’ notice from the Borough Engineer

Will settle any buildings that are getting in the way –

The modern style sir, with respect, has really come to stay.

            References to the Town Clerk and the Borough Engineer make it clear that the situation in the poem was the one existing before the local government reorganisation of 1974.   The poem is still relevant today though – and its relevance is a great deal wider than the development of gone-to-seed little country market towns.

            You will note, for instance, that there is no suggestion of bribery and corruption; no question of money or the promise of money changing hands.  It is just ‘a luncheon and a drink or two, a little savoir faire’ – straightforward friendliness and hospitality to which surely no-one could take exception. It achieves its purpose though of mellowing the Council’s decision-makers and making them more receptive of their host’s proposals.

            It is precisely that kind of ‘nudge in the right direction’ that millionaires hope to achieve when they gain friendly access to top members of government and (just to be on the safe side) of the opposition, or offer them hospitality in their country mansions or on their luxury yachts.  No-one would be so crass as to make an overt threat or offer a bribe.   I think it likely though that those multi-millionaires manage to make it clear how sorry they would be if circumstances compelled them to take their wealth elsewhere, and those who control the news media discreetly draw attention to their ability to influence the minds of voters!

Local thoughts

             When I hear of highway problems I don’t immediately think of congested motorways with mile-long queues of cars progressing at a snail’s pace along crowded motorways in the ‘rush hour’  Nor do I think of single carriageway A or B roads, full of blind bends, with motorists and – in particular motorcyclists – using them as though they were race tracks.

            No, I think of the deep pothole in the road near my bungalow in Clacton-on-Sea, and other deep potholes in and around the town.  They have already been there for two winters, getting a little deeper and a little wider as each month passes.  I’d like to see them filled in at least before the onset of yet another winter.

            I’d like too, to see Clacton’s outlying street pavements relaid so that they are as safe to walk on or ride over on a mobility scooter as those recently laid in the seaward end of Pier Avenue and Station Road.  Move just a few hundred yards from those favoured town-centre spots and you’ll find broken and uneven paving that must be a potential minefield for folk with impaired vision and are a source of extreme discomfort to mobility scooterists like me.    Believe me, no-one rides on (or should it be ‘drives’?) a mobility scooter for pleasure. Our ‘iron steeds’ react to every fault or unevenness in the pavement’s surface and transmit that reaction to our spines!  Not one of us who uses a mobility scooter would want to be without it.  Without mine I would be completely housebound.  They are though, strictly a means of getting from one place to another.  They’re not for joy riding or sight-seeing!

            Our Highway Authority, responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of both our carriageways and our footpaths, is the Essex County Council. A fortnight ago I said in this blog that ‘Essex works’ as far as getting me a hand-rail was concerned.  I wish that I could say the same about the performance of their highway responsibilities.

 A Catastrophic  Blunder

          I find it difficult to believe that any group of politicians could have been so totally stupid as to act in the way that members of our government have in connection with the fuel crisis - a fuel crisis that they have managed to transform from a mole hill into a mountain!

            A majority of members of the Unite Union had voted for strike action if negotiations (not about pay but largely about health and safety considerations) with the employers failed to come to a satisfactory conclusion.  Those negotiations had barely begun.  There was as yet no strike and there was at least a reasonable possibility that there would not be one.

            Yet our Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office Minister both assumed that there would be a strike – probably over Easter.   They urged motorists to keep their tanks topped up with petrol at all times and the Cabinet Office Minister added the potentially lethal idea of keeping a jerrican or two filled with petrol in the garage.   Neither of these gentlemen would have been likely to handle the petrol themselves.  They’d simply say to the chauffeur, ‘Oh Smith (or Jones or whatever) make sure that there’s enough petrol in the garage to see us through any crisis’.  They possibly regarded regulations relating to petrol storage as pettifogging rules (probably emanating from Brussels) impeding enterprise and wealth creation.  The result was totally predictable – long bad-tempered queues at every petrol station, pumps running dry and life-threatening accidents from the illegal storage of petrol indoors or in the garage! 

I just wonder if the Government’s catastrophic over-reaction to the possibility of a strike was a deliberate attempt to divert public interest and anger from the millionaire-friendly budget and the scandal of super-wealthy business men buying social access to the Prime Minister to the Unite Union and its contribution to the Labour Party’s finances?  If so, it was a ploy that went disastrously wrong.

Birth of a New Word

            In the Egyptian/Libyan desert in the winter of 1941/1942 the British 8^th Army, of which I was an insignificant member, transported petrol in flimsy rectangular pressed steel containers that were difficult to carry, easily damaged and often leaked.  The German army opposing us used substantial reusable steel containers, virtually damage and leak proof, with useful handles and a convenient size and shape to carry. Any that were captured were eagerly used by the British unit that then possessed them to replace their own pathetic containers.

            Someone back at the base in Cairo decided that this practice should be regularised.  An order was issued to all units of the 8^th Army.  ‘Captured German petrol containers will henceforth be referred to as Jerrycans*’.

            And a new word was born into the English language!

*That was the original spelling.  It has since evolved into Jerricans.