Week 39.10 28th Sept. 2010

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Pope Benedict’s Visit

I thought that it was probably wise to withhold comment on the Pope’s official visit to Britain until he had safely returned to Rome. Had I dared to do so while he was still here, fate would probably have arranged some unexpected triumph or disaster!

I am very glad that his visit proved to be a great success and was marked neither by the apathy that had been prophesied by much of the press, nor by the widespread protest and outrage that had been joyfully anticipated by some of our proselytising enemies of religion. There were protestors it is true, but fewer than had been anticipated and with very diverse causes. Peter Tatchell and his disciples haven’t really all that much in common with Rev. Ian Paisley and his, nor have campaigners for women priests, abortion-on-demand enthusiasts, and victims of the appalling child abuse scandal, a great deal of common ground.

I wasn’t impressed with the argument that none of the cost of the Pope’s visit should have been met out of taxation. Remember the much greater cost of the State Visit of the King of Saudi Arabia with his enormous entourage. He is arguably the ruler of the least liberal country in the world and the one with the least respect or regard for human rights? I did resent having to help pay for his luxurious welcome.

At a meeting of ‘the big three’ during World War II when Churchill, or possibly Roosevelt, spoke of the importance of keeping the Pope ‘on side’, Stalin is said to have asked sarcastically, ‘And how many army divisions does the Pope command?’ Today, I suppose the equivalent question would be, ‘How many oil wells does the Pope control – and how many jet fighters is he prepared to buy?’

The child abuse scandal did cast a shadow over the visit. I wouldn’t wish to enter into historical or theological controversy but I do feel that the Roman Catholic rule of clerical celibacy has a lot to answer for, and not a great deal to justify its continuation. The Gospels tell us that St. Peter, the ‘rock’ on which the Universal Church of Christ was built, was a married man. A celibate priesthood was not insisted upon during the first thousand years of the Church’s history, and it is known that that some of Pope Benedict’s late-medieval predecessors, although unmarried, were hardly role models of celibacy.

Much was heard from commentators about the fact that the Pope was welcomed in Westminster Hall, where Sir Thomas More (St. Thomas More to Roman Catholics) had been condemned to be beheaded for obeying his conscience in defiance of King Henry VIII. Thomas More was by no means the only victim of 16th century intolerance. It would have been a nice gesture of reconciliation had Pope Benedict made a short pilgrimage to Oxford to spend a few minutes in silence before the Martyrs Memorial. There he could have remembered Archbishop Cranmer, Bishops Latimer and Ridley and many others who were burnt to death (a far more agonising death than beheading) for obeying their consciences in defiance of King Henry’s daughter, the staunchly Roman Catholic Queen Mary.

It would have been a salutary reminder to us all that while a conviction that God is on our side can inspire us to great heights of heroism and self-sacrifice, it can also lead us to inflict unspeakable cruelties on our fellow men and women, unless we give primacy to Jesus Christ’s golden rule ‘Treat other people exactly as you would wish them to treat you!’ Those who kill, mutilate or torture their fellow men and women never have God on their side. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it (good or bad) unto even the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me!’ said Jesus and, in teaching us to pray to ‘Our Father in Heaven….’, he acknowledged all of us to be his brethren.

Two views on ‘the deficit'

I welcomed Nick Clegg’s recent affirmation of the Coalition Government’s determination to end income tax evasion (which is illegal) and curb income tax avoidance (which sadly isn’t). These activities result in an annual loss to the exchequer of millions of pounds. They are, said Mr Clegg, as bad as benefit fraud. It could be argued that they are much worse, because serious income tax avoiders certainly don’t need the money that they avoid paying. Many are very wealthy individuals who imagine that, because of their wealth, they should be immune from nuisances like the tax demands that burden lesser folk.

Why should they help to pay for the NHS? They can have the pick of the very best surgeons if they need one. Education? They send their kids to posh private (probably called ‘public’!) schools. Police? They have their own security, and their hired guards aren’t hampered by the pettifogging rules that obstruct official police forces.

Anyway, they hire the very best lawyers and accountants to make sure that their tax avoidance is both effective and absolutely legal. Nick Clegg claimed, and I have no doubt he is right, that making sure that multi-millionaires pay minimal, if any, tax has become a lucrative industry. It certainly gives a new slant on the concept of living on immoral earnings!

I wish the government all success with its endeavours, but I’m not holding my breath. The tax avoiders can hire the very best lawyers and accountants. Can a government determined to cut public services afford to hire even better ones?

Needless to say the views of the Confederation of British Industry (“the bosses’ TUC”) are very different from Nick Clegg’s. They have their eyes on ‘benefits’. Not, of course, that they want to abolish them. Perish the thought! They do feel though that some benefits, Child Allowances and the pensioners’ Winter Fuel Allowance for instance, should be means tested so that funds can be diverted to the really needy. I hadn’t heard really needy enunciated quite so unctuously since the departure of Mrs Thatcher from the political scene!

What the CBI and the top politicians, of all parties, overlook is that there is already in force a Means Testing mechanism that assesses everybody’s income and extracts contributions in accordance with ability to pay. It is called Income Tax. It needs only to be progressively and properly graded to ensure that it demands a fair proportion of everyone’s wealth, and tightened up so as to eliminate both tax evasion and tax avoidance. Then it would claw-back unneeded universal benefit, eliminate the need for any other means testing, and ensure that we all shared fairly the burden of closing the deficit.

Beach alert as Sunshine Coast is named skin cancer hotspot

Now there’s a headline calculated to create panic in hundreds of homes! Families who spent a happy holiday here this year will be searching their backs and arms for unaccustomed moles or warts. Those who were thinking of spending a holiday in Clacton (or Brightlingsea, Walton, Frinton or Dovercourt) next year will be having second thoughts. As for us natives, we’ll be seeking urgent appointments with our doctors!

The headline was in the Coastal Daily Gazette on Monday of last week (20th Sept.) and it could hardly have given a more inaccurate impression. Mind you, another accompanying scare headline AREA IN WORST 20 FOR MALIGNANT MELANOMA (yes, it was in black capital letters!) if carefully read, suggested that the situation might not be quite as desperate as had been suggested.

‘In the worst 20?' Well, since Malignant Melanoma is usually caused by over-exposure of unprotected skin to sunshine, it would have been astonishing if East Anglia’s seaside areas had not been more prone to the condition than, for instance, London, Birmingham or Manchester – though almost certainly less prone than Spain’s Costa del Sol or the south of France, where so many Brits. head for their holidays.

In fact we are 18th – only just within the worst 20, wherein are also to be found such famous holiday towns and areas as Bournemouth, the South Devon coast and the Isle of Wight. This means that there are seventeen British holiday areas more dangerous than we are. They must surely include almost every other holiday resort in southern and eastern England.

Our incidence of malignant melanoma is higher than the national average but remember that that average is brought down by inland towns in the Midlands and North-West, better known for their high rainfall than their hours of sunshine. It is also true, and is included in the small print of the Gazette’s news story, that mortality from Melanoma in our area is below the national average thanks to early detection and good treatment.

I reckon that that Gazette headline would have been at least as accurate had it read, Essex Sunshine Coast is well down danger list for skin cancer – and local victims have better than average chance of recovery! But there, good news doesn’t make good headlines!

Tendring Careline speaks for itself on www.tendringcareline.co.uk !

It is now nine months since I signed on as one of the many clients of Tendring Careline, the telephone SOS service available throughout our district, principally to enable old and/or disabled folk like me to get instant help in an emergency. At that time I had recently had a fall. It had been out of doors and my son and daughter-in-law were with me at the time. Consequently I suffered nothing worse than a black eye and broken glasses.

It made me realize though how much worse the situation could have been had I been alone and at home. I might very well have been unable to get onto my feet again without help – and no help would have been available. I am very fortunate in having concerned and caring neighbours, but it would have been many hours before they, or anyone else, realized that anything was amiss.

At about that time Essex County Council (never backward when it comes to self-congratulation!) were publicising what they claimed was their telephonic home-care alarm system, with a ‘special offer’ of a free service for twelve months for new clients over eighty. They could have had me in mind! I contacted County Hall Chelmsford and was a little surprised when a very friendly and helpful lady turned up in a Tendring Council van. It appeared that this ‘new’ County Council service was the tried-and-tested Tendring Careline run by the district council. I remembered having written about it in Tendring Topics ‘in print’ in the Coastal Express when it was first launched in the 1980s. It was now vastly expanded and with thousands, rather than just a few hundred, clients.

The last nine months have been fairly uneventful for me. I haven’t needed the Careline service. I have though, as requested when the system was installed, remembered to press the red button on that gadget round my neck (had I preferred it could have been on a bracelet round my wrist) once a month, to hear a cheery voice asking if I am OK – and to know that the system is working properly. Meanwhile, as I approach my ninetieth birthday, I am conscious of becoming frailer, less steady on my feet and more and more grateful for the Careline safety net. When my ‘get one free’ period ends in the New Year, I shall gladly pay my £16.80 a month (I think I’ll be VAT exempt) for continued protection and reassurance.

Now Tendring Careline has its own web site ( www.tendringcareline.co.uk ). On it you’ll find everything you need to know about the local careline service, including the answer to questions that it might not even have occurred to you to ask! I was very pleased to note that under ‘Testimonials’ there is a very long extract from the blog that I posted onto this website when I first had the Careline installed. Today, I wouldn’t change a word of it!

If either you, or friends or relatives, are old, living alone and vulnerable, do click on that website and find out what Tendring Careline has to offer. Sign on with Tendring Careline and you’ll sleep more easily for knowing that, whatever happens, there’s a friendly voice on hand offering practical help and reassurance.

Week 38.10 21st Sept. 2010

Tendring Topics……on line

An Outbreak of Truth – and Common Sense!

Yes, there does seem to have been a worrying outbreak of truth and common sense recently. There is no cause for alarm though. It is probably just a mild attack that won’t spread and from which we can hope for a complete recovery.

Here are a few of the more distressing symptoms: The Governor of the Bank of England, addressing the members of the Trades Union Congress (whom The Sun could have told him were ‘a bunch of loony lefties’) confessed that the current financial crisis was not, as had previously been thought, all the fault of the previous government; nor even that of work-shy receivers of benefit and public services. The causes were the greed and incompetence of ‘the financial sector’, bankers like himself. The members of the TUC were, he went on to say, ‘right to be angry’. Fortunately he refrained from suggesting ways in which those who were responsible for the crisis might be made to pay their share of the cost of its remedy, thus easing the burden of those who were innocent. That would have suggested that his condition was terminal!

Nor was the Bank of England’s Governor alone in showing worrying symptoms. The East Anglian Daily Times, is a very good and reliable regional newspaper. I always enjoy reading it and have recently greatly appreciated its ‘readers letters page’. Its core readership consists of comfortably off residents of small towns and rural communities in Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex. It would, I think, be fair to describe its political position as ‘centrist’ though with a tendency to veer to the right. It has certainly never before, to my knowledge, strayed to the left of that centre line.

Yet below is an extract from a leading article on Tuesday 14th September, below a less-than-snappy headline Greed is not good:

‘Some people appear oblivious to reality and devoid of common sense. Many FTSE 100 firms have cut costs because of the recession – a euphemism that invariably means staff have been axed. Yet executive bonuses are close to pre-financial crisis levels. Average bonuses for directors equated with 100 percent of salary. That displays no sign of empathy with those less fortunate…………

…………It is an affront to their fellow men when those who enjoy comfortable lives abuse their positions. Let’s hope that, one day, they realize it and act rather less selfishly.

. Not exactly a rabble-rousing call to ‘Raise the red flag and man the barricades!’ but, for the East Anglian Daily Times, a worrying lurch to the Left.

So much for Truth; how about Common Sense?

Well, if Honesty is the Best Policy (though it is rather sad if that is the only reason for adopting it!) it follows that the pursuit of Truth must be Common Sense. What I actually had in mind though was that the question of whether or how we should replace Britain’s Trident independent nuclear deterrent may possibly be left until after the next General Election*. To renew it would cost billions of pounds at a time when we are told we must save every penny. I hope that, by the time of the next election a comfortable majority of voters will have realized that Trident isn’t independent (can you imagine it being used, or even used as a threat, without the approval of the USA?) and it hasn’t yet deterred anybody.

It didn’t deter Turkey from invading Cyprus, Israel from invading Lebanon, Georgia from invading South Ossetia, and Russia responding by invading Georgia. It didn’t deter the USA and its allies from invading Grenada, Argentina from invading the Falklands, or Iraq from invading Kuwait. Its use against a non-nuclear state is unthinkable and its use against a nuclear one would result in Mutually Assured Destruction. How appropriate that the acronym for such a policy is MAD!

The armed forces, like every other field of human activity, have to face cuts. Considering all that members of the present government have said about their predecessors starving troops in Afghanistan of necessary equipment, they can hardly look in that direction for savings. It has been suggested that the building of two new aircraft carriers might be cancelled. I hope not – not because to do so would deprive an impoverished area of Scotland of much-needed jobs – but because the giant craft are pieces of ‘defence equipment’ the use of which is not limited to the killing of our fellow men and women.

Aircraft carriers, and the aircraft they carry can be, and have been, used for the relief of man-made and natural humanitarian disasters. They can carry vast quantities of badly needed relief and reconstruction supplies and can be used to evacuate threatened civilian populations. They are the very last items of war equipment that should be considered for sacrifice.

*This now seems to be in doubt. An official spokesman says that it has already been decided ‘in principle’ to renew the Trident programme. Others seem less certain. We’ll just have to wait and see.

A real cause for concern

I have just watched on tv the ‘distribution’ of desperately needed food to a starving community in flood stricken Pakistan. I have put ‘distribution’ in quotes because it was, in fact, a riot demonstrating a practical application of Darwin’s theory of the ‘survival of the fittest’ . Those who were fittest and strongest grabbed the food that they and their families needed. The weakest went hungry – and are destined to become even weaker! Long before the truck was emptied, the driver for his own safety and that of his helpers, drove away – with the truck still full of food-grabbing rioters!

It was an incident that underlines the need for ‘the West’ to do much, much more, not only to provide more help for Pakistan but to ensure that aid is distributed fairly and competently. The situation is dangerous, not just for the people of Pakistan but for all of us. How long do you suppose it will take Taliban fanatics to persuade a starving population that all their troubles, the deluge and its aftermath, are God’s punishment for their government’s support of the infidel British and Americans? The remedy, they will urge, is in their own hands!

Don’t forget that Pakistan is a country that has nuclear weapons and, thanks to unstinting military aid from the west, the means to use them. I reckon that the fact that both India and Pakistan and, not too far away, Israel, actually possess nuclear weapons is something that should be giving us many more sleepless nights than the fear that Iran may, just possibly, be trying to acquire them!

It seems but yesterday………

And, in reality, it wasn’t very long ago, that Clacton’s Pier Avenue had its layout altered, its pavements widened and re-laid, and was provided with new vandal-resistant street furniture. There was also the famous or infamous town centre water feature, about which I wrote – over-optimistically it seems! – last week.

I think that we Clactonians have now accustomed ourselves to the new town centre. As a mobility scooter user (and there are nowadays quite a few of us!) I very much appreciate the wide, smooth-surfaced, footpaths.

Work in progress in Pier Avenue (Sept. 2010)

Now though, believe it or not, they’re at it again! Tendring District and Essex County Councils are spending £325,000 narrowing the seaward section of Pier Avenue to a single lane, widening footpaths, improving street lights and CCTV, and planting trees.

Admirable, perhaps – but aren’t we supposed to be at the very beginning of a financial crisis in which we have all been warned to expect cuts in or the abandonment of essential public services, never mind new projects that are, at best, of dubious benefit.

If the two councils really have over a quarter of a million pounds ‘in the kitty’ that simply must be spent on Clacton’s highways, I would have thought a better objective for their prodigality would have been the repair of the broken, uneven and dangerous-to-pedestrians footpaths in many parts of the town.


Right - footpath in Clacton's Anchor Road (Sept. 2010)

Twice the Prime Minister’s pay packet!

Once again we find the Prime Minister’s salary used as a benchmark for wealth. Joanna Killian, Essex County Council’s Chief Executive, is said to have a salary of £285,000 a year, almost double his! Ms Killian, who has held the post with the County Council since 2006, was also appointed Chief Executive to Brentwood Borough Council a year later. That £285,000 must be the salary for both jobs. She surely can't be drawing another six figure salary from Brentwood!

It seems too that she is a firm believer in ‘no expense spared’. In 2009 she used a council credit card to pay for a staff member, who had been struck down with food poisoning at an office event, to take a room at Claridges Hotel in Mayfair. She also spent £270 on champagne for two officials from Kent County Council who had helped with an Essex project and £55 (just small change really!) on flowers for another colleague.

I am not all that interested in comparing her salary with that of the Prime Minister. He does, after all, enjoy other worthwhile perks. I wonder how it compares with other professionally qualified colleagues at County Hall. They all, I am sure, do difficult and important jobs serving the public. They couldn’t do her job – but then I’d be very surprised if she could do theirs. One of the reasons why there is such an enormous gap between the highest and the lowest paid employees of the council is the practice of paying staff percentage pay increases. This enables top earners to claim, ‘I had just the same pay increase as my secretary and my PA’, while pocketing thousands of pounds more. With every national percentage pay increase the gap between the highest and the lowest widens. As I have pointed out before in this blog, five percent of not-very-much is very little. Even one percent of a six-figure salary can be a considerable sum.

One thing that I find really extraordinary is that Ms Killian should simultaneously be chief executive of Essex County Council and of Brentwood Borough Council. When I was appointed Clacton’s Housing Manager and again when I became Tendring Council’s PRO (both infinitely less important and infinitely less well paid than a CEO!) it was stressed that I should devote all my time to my work and could not take any other paid employment. I had to get the Council’s permission to pursue my freelance writing, which was by that time earning me a few hundred pounds a year. They agreed when I explained that my writing was a hobby and that, unlike most hobbies that cost money to pursue, mine actually made a little money. They would certainly never have agreed to my taking on a part-time job with another authority!

Quite apart from the principle involved there must surely have sometimes been a conflict of interest. In my experience County Councils and their constituent District and borough Councils don’t always agree.

Mind you, I had been astonished – a few weeks ago - when I learned that the wife of the County Council’s Head of Communications (now on leave of absence) was a senior officer in the same department (she has now resigned). Essex County Council is clearly a law unto itself in these matters!

Week No. 37.10 14th Sept. 2010

Tendring Topics…….on line

Prophetic Topics?

Hardly; the fact that likely future events mentioned in this blog often actually occur a week or so later, doesn’t mean that I have the gift of second sight. It is simply that the probable result of some political actions is blindingly obvious to anyone endowed with common sense, devoid of party dogma and immune to the headlines of the popular press.

I wrote, some time ago, that since much of the private sector depends upon the public sector for its work, savage cuts in the public sector were likely to affect private firms before their public authority customers. And so it has. Recently I learned that 5,000 small private firms, contractors of services to local authorities, were already in financial difficulties. The private and public sectors were, I said, like conjoined twins – whatever, good or bad, is done to one of them will inevitably affect the other.

That was just small contractors. Now we learn that the division of the giant building maintenance organisation Connaught, that deals with the upkeep of social housing countrywide, is in financial trouble with thousands of job losses. That is just the immediate result of the cuts. The other, and less easily remedied, effect will be neglected repair and regular maintenance and the descent of social housing into irredeemable slums.

On a recent tv news programme the presenter asked randomly selected members of the public if they would prefer the government to try to reduce ‘the deficit’ by cutting benefits, or services. Most, no doubt inspired by press headlines about ‘benefit cheats’, unhesitatingly replied ‘benefits’ – until they were reminded that ‘benefits’ included child allowances, rent and tax rebates, retirement pensions, free tv licences, bus passes, winter fuel allowance and so on. Many of those interviewed imagined that ‘benefits’ just meant large sums of money paid to ‘other people’ the majority whom were layabouts and/or cheats.

A very great many people (I am among them) are in receipt of some kind of benefit. It can’t be too strongly stressed that, just as the vast majority of young people are not violent drunken hooligans, and the vast majority of Muslims have no sympathy whatsoever with terrorists, the vast majority of people in receipt of benefit are not cheats.

What should have been asked was, would you prefer the government to reduce the deficit by cutting benefits and services to the public, or by modest increases in direct taxes such as income tax, inheritance tax and capital gains tax?

Cutting services, reducing benefits and increasing indirect taxes like VAT and excise duties on such items as tobacco, alcohol and petrol, disproportionately penalise the poor. Income tax rises would affect a wide swathe of society from some with relatively low incomes (they would certainly affect me!) to the seriously wealthy. They would claw back some of the ‘benefits’ from those who didn’t need them and – by their very nature – they are only demanded from those who are able to pay them.

Funny thing, the idea of an extra penny in the pound on the standard rate of income tax, which would reduce no one to penury but would raise a great deal of money, appears not even to have been considered.

I would find it easier to accept all this stuff from the present Chancellor about belt tightening, what the country can and cannot afford, and how we all shall have to suffer, if I could only forget that, just a year or two ago he and Lord Mandelson (then a Labour Government Minister) were together enjoying the hospitality of a multi-millionaire on his luxury yacht. I wonder how much discomfort, never mind suffering, their then host will have to suffer?

Clacton’s Water Feature is back

Recently I expressed my regret at the fact that Clacton’s much criticised and crisis-ridden water feature seemed to have been turned off forever. It had had a short ‘normal’ life during which it had brightened up the town centre. On warm days adventurous children had plunged through its jets to the entertainment of passers by. Sadly though, it appeared that by doing so they were risking their health and safety. The feature didn’t have an adequate water purification plant. Goodness knows what dire pollution may not have been introduced into the ever-circulating water by stray cats, dogs and passing seagulls!


Last summer it made a brief appearance behind a steel fence, intended to protect those of the younger generation from their own bravado. It was anything but an asset to the town centre. Amid universal derision the fence was removed and the jets switched off. This year the Council brought cutting-edge electronic wizardry to its aid. There was no fence. The water feature was switched on - but if any one, adult or child, approached too close to the jets, they faded and died. Sadly, some of the younger generation discovered a blind spot in the defences and a way through the metaphorical minefield. Once again they endangered their health by venturing through the jets. The feature was again switched off. This time I feared, for good.

I’m glad to say that, by means beyond my understanding, the blind spot no longer exists. The path through the minefield has been successfully blocked. The jets of the water feature have been restored. Unless there has been another catastrophe since I took this photo (on 9th Sept.), they are happily jetting away now!
Power to the People!

Last week in this blog I commented on what seemed to me to be two totally outrageous ideas suggested by the Policy Exchange ‘think tank’ to alleviate Britain’s housing crisis. They involved bribing members of rural communities to vote against their own instincts in proposed referenda on whether or not development should take place in their villages; and seizing the thousands of homes provided and run by Housing Associations, using their rent to build more houses for sale.

I said that although I understood Policy Exchange to be an organisation close to the government, I felt sure that both David Cameron and Nick Clegg had more common sense and integrity than to think seriously about adopting either of these (currently criminal!) ideas. Now……..I am beginning to wonder.

Policy Exchange’s report has evidently reached Whitehall. This morning on tv I heard a government spokesman explain that among the problems afflicting would-be developers were long delays in the current planning procedures. They would prepare and submit their plans for housing estates, supermarkets and so on. The district or borough council concerned would consider these plans. They might be passed, passed subject to conditions, or rejected. If they were rejected or it was considered that the conditions were unreasonable, the Developer could appeal – Central Government would become involved and the procedure might drag on for months.

This, as the spokesman said, was clearly unsatisfactory. It might have thought that a government devoted to ‘giving power to local communities’ would decide that, to speed up the process, there should be no appeal for most proposed developments. The decision of the democratically elected district council, taken in consultation with the parish or town council where there was one, should be final. I say most proposed developments because if it were a universal rule, there would be no refuse disposal plant, no sewage works, no penal institutions and no provision for ‘travellers’ anywhere. These are developments that most of us agree are essential but none of us want in our backyards!

That was not the solution favoured by the government spokesman. He suggested that decisions should be passed to local communities and decided by a public referendum, adding that it might be possible to provide ‘inducements’ for the local community to accept the development! His words could have, and possibly did, come straight from the Policy Exchange report.

As it happens just such a development as the government spokesman had in mind is being considered within the Tendring District at this moment.

The owners of St Osyth Priory, a historic stately home in a picturesque and historic village had, to the villagers’ consternation, proposed the building of 200 homes on their land. They were to be part of a scheme needed to raise millions of pounds to restore the Estate. Even more recently that number has been doubled, increasing the number of proposed new houses to 400 This, say the villagers, would increase the number of homes in the village by 50 percent, totally altering the community’s character!

I was particularly interested in this proposed development because in 1974, in the immediate wake of the local government reorganisation of that year, Mr Colin Bellows, the then-new Tendring District Council’s Engineer and Surveyor and I, as Public Relations Officer had visited every town and parish council in the district to familiarise their members with the responsibilities of those local councils under the new Act of Parliament.

I spoke about the newly formed District Council, serving the whole of the Tendring Peninsula, and its relationship with parish and town councils. Mr Bellows explained the new planning laws. These for the first time gave such councils the power to examine and comment on the plans of any proposed new development in their area, before the Tendring Council, as Planning Authority, made its decision.

It was thirty-five years ago and there is only one of those meetings that remains in my memory. It was in the village hall in St. Osyth. An elderly parish councillor had stood up and expressed his regret that we had wasted our time coming to see them. ‘St. Osyth’, he said, ‘already has all the development that is needed and the parish council is opposed to any more whatsoever’.

It seems that that old gentleman’s spirit lives on today. An unofficial poll of local residents taken by the Save our St. Osyth Group after the earlier proposal to build just 200 new homes, revealed that 90 percent of villagers objected to the scheme. Now that the proposed number of homes has been doubled, I would expect there to be even more objectors.

I reckon that it would take a pretty hefty inducement to make that lot change their minds!

The Paradox of Life

The September issue of the Southern East Anglian Area Quakers’ newsletter contains quotations from ‘The Mahabharata’ on life’s paradoxes. Reality, the quotations insist, is composed of opposites. To assert the one is to assert its opposite as well.

Here are a few examples: The paradox of having is that the more one has the greater is one’s discontent. There is a paradox of limits – one becomes aware of one’s limits only by transgressing them; there is no known way by which one can know one’s own limits in advance and The paradox of the self is that without the other, the self would be inconceivable.

These made me remember some paradoxical thoughts on happiness that have developed in my mind over what is now a very long life.

Those who spend their lives seeking their own happiness are destined never to find it.

We realize how happy we have been only when we are happy no longer.

It is our happiest memories that are most likely to bring us to tears

Week 36.10 7th Sept. 2010

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Policy Options!

Probably you have never heard of ‘Policy Exchange’. They’re one of those mysterious ‘think tanks’ that spend their time considering Government future policy. When the Prime Minister or any other member of the Cabinet comes up as, often they do, with ‘a brilliant new idea’ to solve this that or the other national problem the chances are that the idea will have originated in one such ‘think tank’. I am told that Policy Exchange is very influential and close to the present coalition government.

I hope that I’m wrong about that, because to solve the national housing problem to which I referred a few weeks ago, they have come up with two of the most outrageous ideas that I have ever heard. Should these ideas ever became official policy I would expect the collapse of the government to follow. If Nick Clegg and his Lib.Dem. colleagues were prepared to endorse them, they could surely say farewell to any remaining shred of credibility.

Britain, so Policy Exchange rightly claims, needs many more affordable homes to house those who need them and to help bring down the prices of existing housing stock. They don’t, of course, suggest the repeal of 'right to buy' legislation and the encouragement of local authorities to build homes for letting. They believe that local authority reluctance to give planning permission for new homes in their areas is a major cause of the problem.

Their report suggests that the power to grant or refuse planning permission for the building of new housing estates should be withdrawn from the local authorities. Instead, it should be decided by referendum of the community where the development will take place – a simple majority of the vote deciding yes or no. Those with knowledge of these matters may find this an astonishing suggestion. Experience suggests that village communities are much more likely to refuse planning permission for new housing estates in their area, than a borough or district council whose members have to consider the interests of the entire district.

Policy Exchange has a brilliant idea though. They believe that such local resistance could be overcome by the offer of cash incentives to local people by the developer. ‘If a village decided to increase in size from 2,000 to 3,000 households there could easily be a £10,000 cash payment to every householder in the village!’

Alex Morton, the former civil servant who prepared the ‘Policy Exchange’ report, says that such payments shouldn’t be regarded as bribes – the money might perhaps be used to provide a park or similar amenity. Yes, I suppose that it might – and pigs might fly! Who needs a park in a rural village? If villagers are to be persuaded to vote against their natural instincts, they’ll each want their own bribe, cash-in-hand, at the close of poll!

I wonder if Mr Morton has considered the possibility of leaving matters as they are and bribing the existing councillors instead. That, I think might well prove more cost effective and wouldn’t be all that much more outrageous! Yes, I know it would be illegal as things stand. It would though, be a government-backed scheme – and hasn’t the government promised to sweep away pettifogging regulations that impede progress?

But that’s only the half of it!

Modestly, Policy Exchange doesn’t suggest that that one ‘big idea’ would solve all Britain’s Housing problems. They have another one – surely a real clincher!

Such houses as Councils still have left in their ownership should not, when they become available for letting, go to those in greatest need. They, for some reason, are not considered to be quite so needy, or perhaps not so deserving, as others. Any such tenancies should, first of all go to the severely disabled. That sounds fine – except that the severely disabled housing applicants whom, as Housing Manager, I have rehoused (I wonder if Mr Morton has ever actually met any?) wouldn’t consider it much of a privilege to have first call on the tenancy of a third storey flat, or a house with an upstairs bathroom!

When the severely disabled have been satisfactorily disposed of, tenancies should be allocated to those housing applicants who have been waiting the longest or who have the greatest local connections (I hope he means 'associations' and not 'influence'). There’s no mention of the local authorities that actually own these properties, having any say in this allocation. Perhaps, as part of the ‘power to the people’ that David Cameron is so keen on, all Council owned housing would, in the future, be controlled directly by central government.

Policy Exchange clearly thinks so because they also suggest that all Housing Association stock should be handed to the government and could then be sold off to tenants who wanted to buy. New houses would be built by issuing bonds to be repaid out of rent. This would enable 100,000 extra homes to be built and the Treasury would make £2.64 billion a year from house sales.

(Just imagine the, quite justifiable, outrage there would have been if it had been suggested that a Labour government might seize all privately owned tenanted homes – and use their rent to build new Council houses! ‘Neo-Stalinist snatch of our homes’ would have been among the more moderate headlines in the popular Press)

The present financial crisis was triggered by the folly and cupidity of leading bankers, first in the USA and later in the UK and elsewhere. There is a certain irony in the fact that among the victims of the proposed act of highway robbery would be the Peabody Housing Trust, which currently provides homes for some 50,000 Londoners. The Trust was founded in 1862 by George Peabody, an American Merchant Banker who settled in England and whose philanthropy, particularly in the field of public housing, earned him a burial in St. Paul’s Cathedral. I hope that the Cathedral’s foundations are sound, because he’ll be turning in his grave!

No, it hasn’t happened yet, and probably won’t happen. Surely Messrs Cameron and Clegg have sufficient sense - and integrity - not to pursue that course.. It is worrying though, to know that this is the kind of poisonous drivel that is being dripped into their ears!

A New (mini) Supermarket

I was sorry to see the closure and demolition of The Black Bull in Clacton’s St Osyth Road. It was my ‘local’. I had watched it being built, I had had an occasional meal there, either alone or with a companion or companions (at one time they did a very good lunch, with an adequate menu and very competitive prices). Occasionally too, I had strolled down there in the evening for a nightcap and a friendly chat. Such conversations had sometimes been the genesis of items in Tendring Topics (in print!) that I wrote for the Coastal Express for twenty-three years.

I would have thought that, with competent management and some professional publicity, it could have continued to serve the neighbourhood in which I live for many years.

However, it was not to be. I watched its conversion into a Tesco Express mini-supermarket without enthusiasm – though I had to concede that it seemed that an imaginative and attractive conversion was in progress, and the builders were certainly getting on with the job.

Well, as those who live in my neck of the woods know, it is now open. I paid my first visit there last week and must say, a little reluctantly perhaps, that I think it is going to be an asset to the neighbourhood. It is bright and welcoming, well-laid out inside and, considering its size, carries a very wide range of stock. Not, of course, such a wide range as Morrisons where I expect I shall continue to do my main shopping – but very useful for a quick foray, perhaps after normal closing hours or for items forgotten on the shopping list!

It has a ‘self-service’ check-out that I found a little daunting. However, a friendly assistant operated it for me and promised that, if I dropped in when they were a bit less busy, he would introduce me to its mysteries.

It is not far from my home and well within what was once my ‘walking distance’. Now though, I am glad to be able to park my mobility scooter (I like to think of it as 'tethering my iron horse') immediately outside its entrance. And, of course, it is ‘open all hours’. Not quite all – but 6.00 am till 11.00 p.m. should meet most people’s needs!

‘No new thing under the sun’

A few weeks ago the Government’s Housing Minister suggested, as his own brilliant new ideas, facilitating exchanges of tenancy between council tenants in different parts of the country and encouraging – or forcing – tenants to move into less roomy accommodation when their families grew up and left home. These measures, he thought, would reduce ‘waiting lists’ for council tenancies and generally help the housing situation.

I pointed out in this blog that in Clacton, and no doubt elsewhere, both those policies were pursued in the 1970s, though without either the element of compulsion, or the extra layer of bureaucracy involved in setting up a national exchange agency. My personal experience was, of course, BC (before computers) and thoroughly out of date. My idea of advertising a desire to exchange was limited to the local press and cards in tobacconist’s windows. Now, I am told, there has for some time been a web site with no other purpose. I didn’t know that. Nor, it seems, did the Housing Minister.

Staff of Public Libraries feel particularly vulnerable to Government cuts. Most of them have experienced a marked reduction in public use in recent years. Moreover they mainly serve leisure and cultural interests. We haven’t yet quite reached the state of mind of the late Air-Marshal Hermann Göring ‘When I hear the word “culture” I reach for my revolver’, but in the brave new economic world of the 21st century, activities that aren’t ‘wealth creative’ can hardly expect generous government support. And, of course, those that are, don’t need it!

We have a Culture Minister (in George Orwell’s 1984, there was probably a Minister of Freedom!) but I suspect that Ed Vaisey’s main job is to find ‘efficiency savings’ that will reduce spending on matters as non-creative as leisure and as ephemeral as culture. Recently I understand, he has been explaining how money can be saved by improving online library services. He has also been extolling ‘the scope for savings in reducing the number of library authorities through voluntary alliances’.

It might have been imagined that he had been inspired by just such a voluntary alliance as What’s in London Libraries? (WiLL) which had been running since 2003 in the London area. Using WiLL, readers were able to search, on line, the catalogues of all 33 London Boroughs' Public Library Services. Having located the book or books they wanted to borrow, they could do so through the inter-library loan service, thus saving both time and money.

If WiLL was Mr Vaizey’s inspiration it can be so no longer. The web site is no longer available. Queries to London Libraries, the body set up to create and run WiLL produce the following message: ‘Due to financial constraints WiLL has now been discontinued. To access individual authorities’ library catalogues please visit their respective websites’. Who, one wonders, imposed the financial restraints?

So much for encouraging voluntary alliances and on line services!

Week 35.10 31st August 2010

Tendring Topics………on Line

An Expensive Mistake

I always felt that Tendring District Council’s previous Tendring First administration performed pretty well on the whole. I have no doubt that its members had the well-being of the district and its inhabitants as their first concern. They were acknowledged by the Government’s Audit Commission to be ‘the best’ local authority in Essex, far outshining the County Council despite the latter’s constant self-congratulation.

They made one or two silly mistakes though. One of the most disastrous was
INTEND, the private company set up to perform the miracle of ‘regenerating’ the Tendring District. I imagine that its name was considered to be clever play on words. All it did for me was to remind me that ‘The road to Hell is paved with good intentions’. The sole reason for its existence was the idea that, as a private company, it would have access to funds that were not available to a public authority. Why should it? I can’t think of any grants that a private company could apply for to which a public authority has no access.

Nor, I think, are there any such loans. I would have expected a private company to have more, not less, difficulty in raising loans at a reasonable interest rate. If I were in the money-lending business I’d certainly prefer to lend to a public authority. The directors of limited liability companies can declare themselves bankrupt and walk away from their debts. With a local council there might be bureaucratic delays, but payment will always be made in the end. Since INTEND has been established, it has identified areas of the Tendring District where regeneration is badly needed and suggested how this might be done – and that’s about it. Lots of local residents could have done that for free. It cost the Council £1.26 million!

Now, it seems, even Councillor David Lines, leader of Tendring First and former director and chairman of the company, has conceded that the whole enterprise may have been an expensive mistake. We all make mistakes but it is refreshing to hear someone prominent in public life admit that he may have been wrong! I don’t believe that there is anything that INTEND has done, or indeed could have done, that couldn’t be done at least as efficiently and cost effectively by the Council itself and its own staff.

There is an ingrained popular belief, fostered by the popular press, that ‘the private sector’ is always more go-ahead, more efficient and more cost-effective than the public sector. The public sector is populated by desk-bound bureaucrats, swathed in red tape, who spend their days sending each other memoranda suggesting ways in which enterprise can be frustrated and hopes dashed. The private sector on the other hand comprises groundbreaking scientists, thrusting entrepreneurs and eager hard-working factory workers all intent on making us wealthier, and the world a happier place to live in.

I have worked in both the public and the private sectors and I know that this simply isn’t true. Where public sector work is farmed out to the private sector (marking national school examinations and paying student grants come instantly to my mind) it has, as often as not, failed dismally. The public sector, providing schools, hospitals, emergency services, the highways, street lighting, law and order, parks and gardens, cemeteries and crematoria, public health, housing standards, clean air, safe food and drink, is responsible for all the services that make for civilised life. The private and the public sectors both have an important role in modern society. It is, I believe, a serious mistake to suggest that one is more important than the other or that one should be sacrificed for the sake of the other.

I told you so!

When the terms of the Coalition Government’s Emergency Budget were first announced my immediate reaction was that, as usual, the really poor, dependent on Government services, would be hardest hit. The comfortable off and the wealthy would suffer less and the seriously rich wouldn’t experience the least inconvenience. This, I thought, would become even more obvious in the autumn when the cuts would really begin to bite.

The prestigious Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) is Britain’s leading impartial authority on financial matters. It has no association with any political party or movement. I was glad to discover that its professional assessment of the Budget and its likely effects is much the same as my thoroughly inexpert one. The poor will pay a higher proportion of their income than the wealthy toward reducing the deficit, and the lower the income the higher that proportion will be.

Needless to say the Government doesn’t agree. As David Cameron was on holiday in Cornwall it was left to his deputy, Nick Clegg to refute the IFS assessment. I can’t believe that he enjoyed doing so and his argument certainly failed to impress. He claimed that the IFS gave a one-sided assessment of the situation. They didn’t take into account the effect that the Budget would have on getting people off benefit and into paid work, and therefore improving their situation. I suppose that that argument might have had a little validity if there were work waiting for those who came off benefit. But there isn’t – and the employment situation is destined to worsen as the cuts in public services really come into effect. A news bulletin recently reported that 5,000 small private enterprises were already failing because they relied for their survival on contracts with local authorities.

The hope that the private sector will be able to offer employment to the thousands likely to lose their jobs in the public sector is a vain one. Cut public sector finance to the bone and the first to suffer will be their private sector contractors. Public and private sectors are inextricably linked. They are like conjoined twins? Anything, positive or negative, that you do to one will inevitably affect the other.

What is going on at County Hall?

A few weeks ago I commented in this blog about the County Council’s plan to make £300 million of efficiency savings by 2013. This was to be achieved by ‘buying better’ (£150 million), by ‘working with partners’ (£25 million), ‘sharing and trading services (£10 million), ‘working smarter’ (£85 million) and 'thinking ahead on IT '(£40 million).

Crucial to this ambitious programme (which seemed to me more like a wish list than a plan of action) was a multi-million pound deal with international computer and software giant IBM, with its headquarters in the USA and its tentacles worldwide. Lord Hanningfield who, a few weeks earlier had been demanding that Essex jobs should go to Essex men and women, announced this deal for which he claimed personal credit, not long before his retirement from the Leadership of the County Council.

Effects so far have been the axing of 275 line manager posts at County Hall and a rise in the sum paid out to 'outside consultancies’ from £14.4 million in 2005/6 to £25.3 million in 2008/9. I look forward to learning how much the County Council paid out for these consultancies in 2009/10 – and how much saving has so far been accomplished to justify this outlay.

In charge of the transformation scheme, and on a six figure salary, has been Chief Information Officer Mark Briggs, an IT whiz kid who is claimed to have had experience in updating software at 300 council sites and in the USA, his wife Victoria, also an IT expert, was Project Manager, Solutions Development Executive and Senior Programme Officer. (Isn’t it just a little unusual for a wife to hold a senior position – or is it three senior positions? - in a local government department of which her husband is head?) Another senior member of the team was Gareth Allen, Chief Software Architect.

Now it seems that the whole programme – and the County Council’s hopes of saving £300 million – may be in jeopardy. Mrs Briggs resigned her post (or posts) in July after only two years service, and both Mark Briggs and Gareth Allen are believed to have been relieved of their duties and are on indefinite leave. An anonymous inside source is reported to have told the Coastal Daily Gazette that Mr Briggs ‘was escorted out of County Hall last month’.

A County Council spokesman said, ‘Essex County Council does not comment on individual staffing matters. In line with best practice guidelines, we use a leave of absence as part of our resolution procedures’.

No doubt all will ultimately be revealed. In the meantime I shall be ruefully reflecting on the fact that it is that lot at the County Hall who receive by far the greatest share of the Council Tax we pay each year. What a pity all this didn’t emerge before the County Council elections.

An ‘insider’s’ knowledge

Unlike the Gazette, I don’t have an anonymous source within the County Hall. I do though have a very knowledgeable and experienced inside source of information about local authority ‘outsourcing’ IT services.

He says that typically the Managers and Councillors of an authority are approached by the ‘outsourcers’ salesmen and, ‘are first wound up over the cost of the impending need ‘to refresh’ all their PCs, Servers and Software. Then they are offered a deal that really only spreads the cost of this over the full period of the contract, instead of as a one-off expense. Under the deal offered by the ‘outsourcer’ the Council has to define all its IT needs at the start. The answer to these is priced very competitively, probably at less than the running cost of the existing in-house team.

However the contract, which typically is quite long (seven years for instance) specifies that all additional IT needs must be met by the contractor at an additional price. Because of the speed of progress in IT development, it is a very safe bet that over a seven year period lots of new IT needs will surface, and will be charged at a premium rate in a non-competitive way. This means that the outsourcer makes a huge profit from the additional hardware and systems.

Users also discover that while their previous IT department was flexible and tried to be helpful, the new company (which may be operating a help desk from a call centre in Scotland or the like) will do exactly what is in the contract. Anything else is chargeable. The new supplier is likely to be totally rule-bound (often by the ‘good practice’ that the Council thought was a good thing to build into the contract!) and as a result quite unhelpful, whereas the previous in-house team will have been pragmatic, putting the needs of the council and its staff first.

Strategically, Councils who outsource in this way lose completely their own IT expertise and have no choice but to renew the contract when it ends. There may be a rollover clause to re-award it or it may have to go out to tender again. If it does the incumbent will be at a huge advantage and very likely to get it again.

Of course, the County Council's outsourcer may not be like that at all. Let’s hope that its quite different from some of its competitors, because the funds that the County Council is using for this experiment in outsourcing came from our pockets, handbags and bank accounts.

It is beginning to look though Lord Hanningfield’s coup may not have beensuch a triumph after all. The saved £300 million seems to be receding further and further into the distance!

Week 34.10 24th August 2010

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Mammon’s Servants?

A month or two ago I expressed my disquiet at the fact that at Clacton’s new Coastal Academy pupils were being offered material prizes, not for outstanding work or extramural activities, but for simply turning up at school on time most days, attending classes and generally behaving themselves. I contrasted that attitude with the situation in developing countries, where education is so valued that children will walk barefoot for miles to sit on mud floors and attend to every word that their teachers utter.

Today’s adult world offers children a thoroughly bad example. Bankers, for example, who receive what most of us would consider to be an extremely handsome salary, have to be offered even more handsome annual bonuses if they are not to up sticks and exercise their talents elsewhere. The same threat is made if it is suggested that their salaries and bonuses might be subject to special taxation. They are, of course, among the first and loudest of the patriots who accuse public service workers of ‘holding the country to ransom’ when they strike for a pound or two extra pay!

It might have been thought that the public service at least would have been free of this extra-payment-for-doing-the-job-properly culture. Not so – top Civil Servants also get ‘performance bonuses’, and the plague has now spread to local government. A few weeks ago I mentioned that at a time of savage cuts in services and an income freeze on rank and file staff, the members of the Essex County Council had awarded themselves increased ‘allowances’ and had also paid out handsome cash bonuses to a favoured few top officials!

The practice has now spread to Tendring District Council. It appears that in addition to the Chief Executive, his Deputy and his Assistant (the Council’s three highest paid officials) there are four departmental chiefs, on salaries of £65,000 a year, who are designated as ‘Performance Champions’. Nigel Brown, Council Spokesman (once my job but I’m glad I haven’t got it now!) explained to the Gazette that the authority’s constitution authorises the Chief Executive to appoint four designated heads of service as ‘Performance Champions’, with a range of additional responsibilities. They may be granted an ‘enhancement in salary’ (a bonus in plain English) not exceeding twenty percent of their salary and for not more than three years. This year they are each getting £13,000 despite a general Council wage and recruitment freeze. What is it for? Making some of their colleagues redundant perhaps?

If that is the Council’s Constitution it is high time that it was amended. An unnamed ‘Council insider’ is reported as having told the Gazette: ‘It seems wrong. They are already well paid and are getting a payment which seems to be made behind people’s backs, especially when others may lose their jobs. Surely they should already be performance champions if they are heads of their service’.

Do ‘top people’ have to be bribed, as well as paid, to give of their best these days? I would have hoped that the satisfaction that comes with a good job well done would have been a sufficient incentive.

Pakistan’s Floods…..and other Charities

Worldwide, the response to the appeal for aid for the victims of Pakistan’s catastrophic floods has, so we are told, been disappointing. Among the reasons suggested for this are appeal fatigue, Pakistan’s perceived association with Islamic terrorism, and a suspicion that Pakistan is a country in which money donated to help the many would be in danger of being siphoned off to further enrich the few. I think that ‘appeal fatigue’ is probably the nearest to the truth. The fact is that there have simply been too many natural and man-made disasters in the past few years; earthquakes, tsunamis, civil wars, floods, mudslides, avalanches – there has been no end to them. Some of them are on going. Haiti is going to need charitable aid for years to come. There is no sign of an end to the humanitarian crises in the Sudan, in central Africa and in the Gaza strip.

Meanwhile, the appeals for Charities nearer home continue to land on our doormats, getting ever more desperate as the world-wide financial crisis reduces their income, and support once regularly received from central and local government dries up. Christian Aid, Oxfam, Cafod, War on Want, The Red Cross, The Salvation Army, charities supporting the very young, the very old, the chronically ill, the dying, the blind, the deaf, the disabled, the homeless, alcoholics, drug abuse victims, ex-service men and women, the RSPCA, the NSPCC, the PDSA, the Lifeboats, the Air Ambulances, the hospitals, the Hospices and so on, and on, and on.

They’re all thoroughly deserving but none of us can hope to support more than a handful of them. All are no doubt hoping for a multi-millionaire patron (the British Legion must be delighted to have found one in Tony Blair!) but all of them know that it is from the masses of generous ordinary people that their continuing support comes. It really isn’t surprising that some people have found that Pakistan is ‘an appeal too far’. Nevertheless the response from the British Government and the British people has surely been generous. We are said to have funded, either officially or through charities, a quarter of the aid that has so far reached the stricken area.

I have wondered why we haven’t heard of a few millions being donated from Pakistan’s wealthy co-religionists in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States – the purchasers of racehorses, country estates and football teams in this country. And isn’t it surprising that Pakistan’s government should have found the millions required to manufacture, develop and maintain a nuclear arsenal but has apparently been unable to prepare adequately for devastating floods – a much more likely peril than nuclear attack. But, of course, that was not a matter about which the unfortunate flood victims were consulted - and if we ever suffer a natural disaster and need international support, the same will be said about us.

Late News - I am pleased to learn that the Pakistan Flood Disaster Appeal is gathering pace and that useful sums of money are now being received. Like Haiti though, it is going to take years to bring Pakistan back to ‘normal’. While it is very unlikely that Haiti will suffer another equally devastating earthquake in the near future, there is no reason at all why Pakistan should not experience a similar inundation next year – or the year after. We really must do something about world climatic change, even if it does upset our local MP and his supporters!

A letter to the Press

I am, let me confess it, an opinionated old man – and I don’t keep my opinions to myself! As well as writing this blog every week, I sometimes find myself writing letters to the Readers’ Letters Pages of the press. Local blog readers may have noticed my occasional contributions to the Daily Coastal Gazette and the Clacton Gazette.

On Wednesday of last week (18th August) the East Anglian Daily Times published one of my letters. It was in response to a correspondent who, while admitting that he wasn’t around at the time, wrote about the relationship between Britain and the USA in World War II. Well, I had been around at the time. I agreed with much of what he said but felt that he had an exaggerated idea of the number of British girls, and married women, who succumbed to the charms of American Servicemen, forgetting their boyfriends or husbands in the forces overseas.

Some, of course, did. Many more though certainly did not. Among them was my girlfriend Heather Gilbert, whom I had met as a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl on the day Britain declared war on Germany. She loyally waited for me for the four years that I was overseas, including three as a POW in Italy and Germany, despite the fact that we were not engaged and had no more than a verbal ‘understanding’, and that there was no certainty about when, if ever, I would be home again. With my letter I attached a photograph of Heather in 1942, aged nineteen, to make the point that she would have had no problem finding another boyfriend, American or British, had she wished to do so. The photo had been sent to me at my work camp in Germany and I had been particularly pleased to see that in her lapel she was wearing the miniature Royal Artillery cap-badge brooch that I had given her when we had said goodbye.

In my letter I also mentioned that I had been a member of the 67th Medium Regiment RA, an East Suffolk Territorial Regiment that had been successfully in action in the Egypt/Libya frontier area from November 1941 till June 1942 when we had been part of the Tobruk garrison overwhelmed by the tanks of Rommel’s Afrikakorps.

Within twenty-four hours the letter produced surprising results. There was a phone call from a relative of a former member of the 67th who was researching the regiment’s history. There was another phone call from a former member of the regiment who, like myself, was nearly ninety! We hadn’t known each other. He had been at regimental HQ and I had been a member of a gun team, but it was good to have a chat about old times. We’ll be in touch again.

There was a totally unexpected letter from another nearly nonagenarian whom I had known well as a boy in Ipswich but hadn’t seen or spoken to for some seventy-five years! He was living within half a mile of his childhood home and was anxious to renew contact.

I was most pleased though – and emotionally overwhelmed – by the postcard below from a Mrs Henderson of Norwich. I only wish that she had let me have either her postal address or phone number, so that I could have thanked her, and told her how much her message had meant to me.

Heather would, of course, have been delighted but also totally astonished. She never spent a great deal of time or money on her appearance. The only ‘make-up’ that she ever used was a little face powder if she thought that she had a shiny nose. She very rarely visited a hairdresser and would certainly never have dreamed of going to a manicurist or a ‘beauty parlour'. She made certain that she was always neatly dressed and prepared for any occasion and any company. While she wasn’t as self-sufficient as the Amish teenage girls recently featured on Channel 4 tv, she was an expert with a sewing machine and with needle and thread. That photo was taken in 1942, in the height of World War II and of the blitz, when she was working in central London and living with her parents in the often-bombed suburbs.

She retained her beauty (and her loyal and loving nature) into old age. I was very proud of her though I fear that, as with so many things in this life, I didn’t fully realize how much she meant to me until I lost her after sixty years of marriage. Thank you, Mrs Henderson, for seeing how beautiful she was – and for telling me so.

Week 33.10 17 August 2010

Tendring Topics……..on line

A ‘Big Society………'

……..or just another Confidence Trick? I am referring to our Prime Minister, David Cameron’s idea of a major redistribution of power from its present base in central and local government, to ‘the community’. When I first heard of it I had an eerie feeling of déja vu. Somewhere, at some time, I had heard it all before.

Then it came to me. During the ‘50s and ‘60s I had encountered some extraordinarily nice people who had assured me that an earthly paradise would only be achieved when the state ‘had withered away’ and society was organised in small self-sufficient communities, each managing its own affairs. These friends of mine tended to be bearded, bespectacled and sandal-wearing. The males usually wore corduroy trousers, jeans not yet having achieved their popularity, and the females, flowing and colourful print dresses. They were strict vegetarians, readers of The Guardian and the New Statesman (both of which they criticised for being too pro-establishment) and they described themselves as Tolstoyan Anarchists.

Charming and friendly as they were, they were surely not the kind of people whose ideas – even half a century later – would be likely to inspire a leader of the Conservative Party.

They hadn’t. His ideas are far less radical. Come to think of it, I can’t recall there being any reduction in the power of central government included in them – rather the reverse in fact. He is quite keen on parents and teachers running their own schools free of local government control. He proposes that if a local authority raises Council Tax above a central government dictated benchmark there could be a local referendum, the result of which would be binding on the council. He would like to see the ‘cabinet style’ administration that has been imposed on local government, replaced by the virtual dictatorship of a directly elected Mayor. Similarly, he would like to see the admittedly shadowy Police Authorities replaced by directly elected Commissioners, also elected dictators, to whom Chief Constables would be subordinate. Is that, power to the people? Hardly.

The public are also invited to let the Government know their ideas on savings and cuts that could be made. However there is no question of us having a referendum on the increase in VAT or on the value of the Trident nuclear deterrent. The idea that the system of income tax should be reviewed, with a penny or two immediately added to the standard rate, is a subject, like sex, religion and politics, that simply ‘isn’t discussed’ in polite society.

More use should be made of free volunteer labour, says Mr Cameron. Everyone has ideas about how such volunteers could best be used, invariably ways which do not affect the person making the suggestion. A number have had the idea that volunteer labour could be used to keep flower beds in parks and public gardens neat and tidy. I’d be surprised if any of those making this suggestion are council gardeners or members of their families. Nor, I think, would nurses and paramedics welcome Red Cross or St. John’s Ambulance volunteers supplementing or supplanting them in hospital wards or on NHS ambulances. What would be the reaction of postal workers to boy scouts voluntarily delivering the mail?

I rather warmed to the idea, suggested by a tv viewer, that David Cameron might like to set an example. He has, so the viewer said, ample private means (I have no idea whether or not that is the case) and could resign from his job as Prime Minister – and then take it up again as a volunteer. He would, of course, retain the perks; two comfortably furnished and staffed homes, free VIP travel and goodness knows how many free official dinners and lunches!

Think of the valuable spin-off. Every time workers – even those on the minimum wage – asked for a pay rise, they could be told, ‘Stop moaning. You’re already getting more than the Prime Minister!’


A correspondent to the East Anglian Daily Times summed up 'The Big Society' very succinctly:

'As I understand it, the aim of the big society is to get the work currently done professionally by workers in the public sector, transferred to the 'voluntary sector'. In other words, Davnick Cleggeron is asking me to volunteer in order to put one of my neighbours out of work'.

No member of the present government, or of any possible future government, can remember the 1930s. I can. Then democratically elected representatives of local communities ran services as diverse as gas, electricity and water supply, hospitals and maternity homes, domiciliary health care, schools and further education institutions, public transport, sewers and sewage treatment, highways, parks and gardens and housing estates; most of the services in fact, that make the difference between civilisation and barbarism. Through their representatives elected to county, borough and district councils, the ‘communities’ provided and controlled all those services. In those days, when local government was truly local and had a considerable measure of independence, there was no apathy at the time of the elections.

The post-war Labour Government, no doubt with the best of intentions, entrusted most of those service to giant nationalised corporations. Their Conservative successors, also well intentioned, privatised them, passing them for the most part to giant, often international, private enterprises similar to the nationalised ones they had replaced. Meanwhile local government was reorganised, drastically cutting down the number of authorities, and eliminating the local from local democracy. Subsequent measures, politicising Councils and investing them with all the worst features of parliamentary government, have all but removed the democracy!

There is, I fear, no turning back. Despite Mr Cameron’s good intentions, I can see no possibility of our recovering the community control of essential local services that once we had.

By the riverside

It must have been in the spring of 1944 that a friendly (yes, it really was friendly) football match was arranged between a team of we British prisoners of war at a working camp in the little German town of Zittau, and one of German soldiers from a nearby Wehrmacht barracks. I have always been totally useless at ball games, so I was one of the spectators, sharing the touchline with some of my fellow prisoners and off-duty German soldiers, both groups good-naturedly cheering our sides on. The match was, of course, arranged strictly unofficially. No doubt our respective governments would have preferred us to be trying to kill each other.

We lost 2 –1, which was hardly surprising as there were only 30 of us (including me!) from which to choose a team, while there were several hundred at the barracks. It was by no means a shameful defeat, as our opponents freely acknowledged.

The match was not played on a proper pitch but in a meadow beside the River Mandau, that flows from the nearby mountains through Zittau to join the rather larger River Neisse and thence to the great river Oder. There were no proper goal posts or line markings. The Mandau in Zittau was quite small but fast flowing. One of our worries during the football match was that the ball might be accidentally kicked into the stream and be carried away before it could be retrieved. During the past four years I have visited Zittau three times and have on a number of occasions crossed the Mandau. The river was unchanged but I was never quite sure where the meadow was on which that match had been played.

These memories were brought back vividly last week when one of my current friends in Zittau, the scholarly Dr Volker Dudeck, emailed to me these pictures of the raging, flooded Mandau, as it had been a few days earlier. Zittau, and of course the mountains where the Mandau and the Neisse rise, had had several days of heavy and continuous rain on an unprecedented scale. The town is near the confluence of the two rivers, and is also at the point where the frontiers of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic coincide. There has been serious flooding in all three countries. Dr Dudeck, in his latest email, tells me that the floodwaters are now subsiding, no doubt creating havoc further down the river. The local damage is being assessed. In Zittau and the three-countries area, thousands have been made homeless and there have been 10 fatalities. Nothing, of course, compared with the scale of the flood disaster in Pakistan – but to the bereaved it is little consolation to know that you are one of just ten, rather than tens of thousands.

The floods in Europe (including those in Cumbria earlier in the year), in China and on the Indian subcontinent, and the unprecedented drought, heat and bush fires in Russia are, I have little doubt, all the result of the accelerating world-wide climate change that the recent international conference in Copenhagen failed miserably to address. Dr. Dudeck writes to me sadly that,n ‘It is nature taking revenge for the sins of mankind’. Perhaps I should let him know that our recently re-elected MP is convinced that, if climate change is taking place, it is a purely natural phenomenon and not mankind’s fault. Trying to do anything about it is a waste of time and money.

It might cheer him up – but on the other hand I suppose that it might not!

Clacton’s Station Buffet

Since the sad loss of my wife four years ago I have made a number of trips to and from London by rail, making use of the discounted fares available to pensioners. They have been the first and last stages of my visits to Zittau, to Brussels to visit my grandson there, and of visits to my sons and daughters-in-law who live in the London area.

I usually arrived back in Clacton at about noon. Before finding a taxi to take me home I would pop into the Station Buffet that for many years had welcomed and served hungry, thirsty and weary travellers arriving in Clacton, and those waiting at the station for trains to arrive and depart.

It provided me with a welcome break for a drink, and a leisurely sandwich or light meal before returning to face the washing, the emails and the junk mail that I knew would be awaiting me. Refreshed, I would find my taxi, knowing that whatever else greeted me as I opened my front door, at least I wouldn’t need to make myself a mid-day meal.

It is a little doubtful if I shall be making such journeys in the future. I am beginning to find travel by rail (not so much the travel itself as the hassle before and after!) too much for me

Clacton Station Buffet – now closed

Even if I am unlikely to want to use that Station Buffet again, I am sorry to see that it is closed and that there are so far no signs of its re-opening. Vacant, it’s an ugly ‘missing tooth’ on Clacton Station and I am sure that a great many people must miss the service that, for many decades, it has rendered the travelling public.

Tendring Council claim to be eager to help aspiring local entrepreneurs. They are also eager to promote Clacton-on-Sea’s image as a friendly and welcoming holiday, residential or business destination. Somewhere ‘out there’, there must be a young and ambitious would-be restaurateur, lacking only the funds – or perhaps the self-confidence – to bring new ideas and energy to bear on again making Clacton’s Station Buffet the welcoming venue that once it was.

The Council should co-operate with Network Rail, the station’s owners, to find that young entrepreneur, and offer encouragement and practical help to harness that energy and bring those ideas into fruition..