Week 46 2011 22.11.2011

Tendring Topics…….on line


‘Sing, Choirs of Angels’

Have you watched that extraordinary choirmaster Gareth Malone on tv, creating award-winning choirs from the most unpromising material? We first saw him produce a choir  from a very ordinary comprehensive school that proved itself capable of competing internationally in Beijing,. Then came a choir from a tough rugger-playing school where pupils and staff were convinced that singing was a leisure occupation for girls only. He persuaded not only the pupils but the very macho sports master, to take part. The climax was a performance at the Albert Hall!

Next he produced a choir from the residents in a new town on London’s outskirts populated by folk from London’s East End. I am quite sure that not one of his choristers had previously had even a passing acquaintance with Latin or Greek.. Yet the climax of Gareth’s efforts saw them singing the Agnus Dei (O Lamb of God) prayer extremely creditably in Latin at St. Alban’s (I think) Cathedral.

His latest exploit has been to produce a choir in a small garrison town from the wives and girlfriends left behind there while the troops were doing a six months stint in Afghanistan. Once again he worked a miracle and created a choir that performed in the open air in Plymouth for Armed Forces Day and at the Albert Hall for the British Legion’s Festival of Remembrance. While doing so he managed to weld these waiting-and-worrying women into a close self-supportive community.

Those programmes, transmitted over the Remembrance Day period, brought vividly to my mind the anxiety that mothers, wives and girlfriends must have experienced during World War II. We temporary soldiers went overseas, not for a fixed period of six months but ‘for the duration’. There was no home leave from North Africa or the Far East. Separated wives today know where their husbands are serving and roughly what they are doing. There is postal and internet communication and there are regular phone calls. Our wives, mothers and girlfriends didn’t even know for sure in which country we were serving. Our mail was addressed to Middle East Forces. When I was captured with the fall of Tobruk to the Germans, my mother was simply informed that I was ‘missing’. She imagined the worst (I realize that I am very like her in some respects!) and it was several weeks before she learned from a friendly Roman Catholic neighbour that my name had been among those broadcast over the Vatican Radio as being a Prisoner of War in Italy.

Our wives and girlfriends weren’t able just to wait and worry. They were part of the conflict. My girlfriend Heather Gilbert worked in central London (near the British Museum) in the office of a printer. One morning she arrived at the office to find that it had disappeared. There had been a overnight air raid and it was now just a pile of rubble. Nor did Ilford, where she lived with her parents, escape the Luftwaffe’s attention. She lived through the blitz, the pilotless ‘doodlebugs’ and the V2 rocket attacks. Her life in the early 1940s was scarcely less perilous than my own.

 

I once again thought how extremely fortunate I had been, not only to return home safely in 1945 (one in seven of the young men who volunteered with me in 1939 never came home) but in finding my girlfriend there, waiting for me. We were not married nor were we even engaged, but she had waited patiently for a reunion that might never have taken place. This photograph, taken when she was nineteen and sent to me in Germany while I was a PoW there, makes it obvious that she would have had no problem in finding a different boyfriend with a more predictable future had she wished to do so. I was particularly pleased to note that she was wearing the miniature Royal Artillery badge brooch that I had given her when we had said goodbye!

After my return to England I had to spend almost another year in the Army. We were married just four days after I had shed my khaki uniform for good!

That was another big difference between us and the soldiers and their wives of today. They are professional soldiers, who chose the life and everything that goes with it. We were citizen soldiers, civilians in uniform, who had volunteered for the army because our country was threatened by Nazism and Fascism, evils that we believed could only be eradicated by force of arms. We were not prepared stand by and let others get on with it. When it was over though, we couldn’t wait to get back into civvies!

We served the guns and did our duty as soldiers but most of us detested the spit-and-polish, the parades, the rifle drill and the barked orders that are an inescapable part of army life. We had a word for it that I prefer not to repeat in this blog.

Those of ‘The fallen’ whom I knew best shared my distaste. It is for that reason that I have reservations about attending British Legion ceremonies of remembrance. I don’t care for the quasi military berets worn by many Legionnaires, the clipped words of command, the ceremonial raising and lowering of the flags. I do appreciate the two minutes shared silence though and – irrationally perhaps – I am always deeply moved by the sounding of the Last Post before the silence and of Reveille with its message of hope, at its end.

The Murdoch Empire

Hardly had the enquiry into the dubious activities of our national press opened than there were fresh revelations. Phone hacking was by no means limited to the News of the World. It would have been astonishing if it had been. I confidently expect to hear more scandalous revelations – phone hacking, surveillance of celebrities to the point of harassment, bribery of the police and threats to whistle-blowers.

What concerns me most will probably not even get a mention. It is certainly not illegal and I really don’t see any way in which it could easily be made so. Yet it surely poses a real threat to our national sovereignty; a far more dangerous threat than that posed by ‘Brussels’, the pet hate of the Europhobes!

It is the way in which millionaire newspaper owners can influence and bend our political leaders to their will. Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron all made a point of friendship with Rupert Murdoch, head of News International. I have no doubt at all that Tony Blair created ‘New Labour’ to obtain the approval of the News International Empire and thus to gain the support of the Sun. Thus he could, and did, make his ‘reformed’ Party ‘electable’ – though, in my opinion, not worth electing! I have no idea to what extent the other Prime Ministers may have changed their Party’s policies to bring them in line with Mr Murdoch’s ideas – but I am sure that they certainly wouldn’t have taken any steps that they knew might antagonise him. It is worth noting that the takeover of the whole of BSkyB by News International was destined to be approved on the nod – until the phone hacking story broke.

If we are to have a truly free press then we must somehow deprive wealthy and powerful men and women of their power to influence the will of the electorate. There is nothing new about this malign influence. Who can say how much damage to our preparedness to resist Hitler was done by the confident Daily Express headline in 1938 and early 1939, ‘There will be no war this year – or next year either!’ I was reminded of this a week or so ago when I watched on tv a wartime cinema classic, 'In which we Serve'.   As a British vessel sank under submarine attack, a copy of the Daily Express with that infamous headline came floating by!
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In particular, I believe that we must never allow the British press, a powerful moulder of public opinion, to be controlled by those who are not British citizens and owe no loyalty to our country. This, I believe, should apply to American billionaires as much as to Russian oligarchs!

Black Clouds and Silver Linings!

Very often in my life, circumstances that have seemed to be totally disastrous have turned out instead to be well-disguised blessings. As a POW in Italy in 1943 I well remember my dismay and dejection when, after the collapse of the Italian Fascist government and the surrender of its successor to the Allies, German tanks surrounded our POW camp. We found ourselves locked into cattle trucks (just like the transports to the death camps!) on our way to further captivity in Germany.

To my surprise I found that at a small working camp in Germany conditions were far better than they had been in a large PoW camp in Italy. That was not everyone’s experience but it was mine. What is more, my quite unknowing and involuntary role as a PoW, in the ‘rescue’ of a nearly six centuries old priceless linen artefact (Zittau’s ‘Lenten Veil’) has assured me a welcome in the town where I was once a prisoner, and has provided me with an interest and a purpose in my old age.

I was bitterly disappointed when, as Clacton’s Housing Manager, I failed to secure the post of Director of Housing to the new Tendring District after 1974’s local government reorganisation. However, because of my experience as a spare-time writer and public speaker, I was appointed as the new authority’s first Public Relations Officer – an even more satisfying, though less well paid, job. I was again very apprehensive when, after seven years service as PRO, an internal reorganisation introduced by the Council’s new Chief Executive, meant that if I were to retain my self-respect I had no option but to seek early retirement. I knew that my wife and I would have had to struggle to survive on my far from gold-plated pension, and at 59 I was too old to find other congenial employment. My early  retirement though, led to a far more satisfying second career as a freelance author and journalist, a profession that I was to follow for over twenty more years!

Nationally, sad to say, we seem to have lately been experiencing a reverse effect – directly a promised silver lining appears on the horizon a big black cloud pops up in front of it! That Royal Wedding for instance at the end of April; it was supposed to be going to bring us wealth from visitors to Britain eager to share in the pomp and ceremony of the occasion, and extra economic activity from the sale of souvenirs and the like. To untutored minds like mine that all sounded very reasonable. Ultimately though, the Royal Wedding was one of the causes put forward by the government as a reason for a disappointing economic performance during that period. Could it have been because it involved an extra public holiday when those fortunate enough to have jobs stopped their feverish ‘wealth creation’ for an extra twenty-four hours? Next year’s Olympic Games were also supposed to be bringing a great influx of visitors eager to spend their money in Britain. Perhaps they will – eventually. Right now though, 2012’s bookings for holiday and tourist accommodation are fewer than those for previous years. Potential visitors prefer to avoid the Olympics crush!

Locally, Tendring Council’s ‘Tourism boss’ (Councillor Mayzes) seems determined to wreck Tendring District’s development as a leading holiday resort area.

Our Coastal Academy School Governors were astute enough, during the school holiday period, to secure the interest of the Caravan and Camping Club of Great Britain, the largest and most prestigious holiday leisure club in the UK. For the first time ever, their members held a brief rally on the school’s spacious playing fields, patronising local businesses and clearing up the site meticulously on their departure. Was Councillor Mayzes delighted? Not a bit of it. He was furious that caravans should violate ‘a school playground’ (some playground!) and sought to invoke the planning laws to prevent it happening! Then again, after a largely disappointing summer season, we had a couple of weeks of ‘Indian summer’ towards the end of September and into October. Our holiday coast enjoyed a belated boom as visitors poured in from Colchester, Ipswich and London to enjoy the last of the late summer sunshine. What did they find? No safety patrols on the beaches and Tourist Enquiry offices closed. Tendring’s ‘Tourism Boss’ had decided that the summer season had ended on 31 August and (no doubt congratulating himself of having saved the council a few pounds) had closed these facilities down.

Christmas is coming – a time when many retail businesses in Clacton hope to make sufficient profit to help them through to the holiday season again. Don’t tell me that the Government is going to blame the Christmas and New Year holidays if there is disappointing economic activity in that period!

The Government has already blamed their predecessors for our financial predicament. They have blamed the EU and, in particular, the Eurozone. They have blamed ‘Public Sector’ pensions and they have blamed ‘benefit cheats’. Could they be about to add Santa Claus to the list?

Week 45 2011 15.11.2011

Tendring Topics……..on Line

‘The road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions!’

A well-meaning piece of advice given on the BBC tv’s breakfast programme this (7th November) morning threatens to upset the equilibrium of scores of  old people this Christmas and lead to many doctors’ phone-lines being jammed by anxious well-meaning callers in the New Year.

It seems that the early symptoms of dementia in the elderly are being missed and a great many of them are failing to get treatment and support that could help them endure their affliction and slow down (but not halt or reverse!) its progress. It was suggested that those who are seeing an elderly friend or relative this Christmas should look out for these symptoms and get in touch with his or her doctor to let them know.

The symptoms to look for are loss of short-term memory, anxiety, occasional confusion, and personality changes. It is, so we were told, all too easy to put these symptoms down to ‘old age’ when there may well be a more sinister reason. Well, I suppose that there could be, but I reckon that old age does have similar indications of its own for which there may be no other cause

None of us lasts for ever. Our bodies and our brains experience wear and tear as we get older. The results of this show themselves as ‘symptoms’ of what I believe is probably a natural progression for which the only remedy is to die young! There are, of course, lots of things that – with the help of medical science and possibly social services – enable us to make the best of it.

I no longer describe myself ageing or elderly. I am unequivocally old. No other member of my family has, as far as I know, ever made it to 90. I am in a position to confirm that old age is not ‘all beer and skittles. I am glad to say though that it isn’t either– at least isn’t yet – the extreme old age referred to by Shakespeare as ‘Last age of all is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything’*. Mind you, without modern dentures, two cataract operations and two pairs of spectacles, hearing aids, on line access to my friends and relatives, and an electric mobility scooter to give me independent mobility, my condition might be approaching that. Much as we oldies sometimes complain about aspects of life in the 21st century, there’s no doubt that modern technology has made old age and disability a great deal more tolerable!

Yes – I do have an increasingly failing short-term memory (though I can remember, word for word, poems and short pieces of prose learned long ago!). I am absent minded, and any deviation from normality does make me anxious. I don’t think that my personality has changed much but perhaps I am not the best person to judge that!

I shall be visiting friends and relatives over Christmas. I know them all well enough to be confident that no one will be writing in a little note-book that ‘the poor old chap was anxious about leaving his bungalow empty for a couple of days’ and ‘He forgot to bring his reading glasses, fell asleep in his chair after Christmas Dinner and told us a story that I’m sure I’ve heard half a dozen times before’, all ready to be reported to my doctor in the New Year!

*From Jacques’ ‘all the world’s a stage…..’ speech in ‘As you like it’.

Age and Income Inequality

The fact that we are all living longer and those lucky enough to have a job are expected to work longer, has given extra urgency to the world wide demand for a more equal distribution of the world’s wealth.

A recent article in the Financial Times comments on a report by Sir Michael Marmot, professor of University College, London and former Chairman of the British Medical Association. Sir Michael forecasts that due to the inequality of health standards between rich and poor, two thirds of today’s population will not reach the new retirement age of 68 without chronic and debilitating illness. His report, based on the 2001 census reveals that the average difference in ‘disability-free life expectancy’ between people living in rich areas and those in poor areas is 17 years!

A blog reader points out that throughout Europe and North America we don’t have enough jobs for young people. We in the UK have 20 percent youth unemployment while in Spain no less than half of its young people are unemployed. Meanwhile the compulsory retirement age in Britain is being raised from 65 to 68 and old people are expected to work longer.

The reader asks, ‘How can it possibly be better for our economy to leave the strongest, fittest, child-rearing generation out of work while older people, many of whom are overweight, arthritic and suffering from mental exhaustion, are forced to carry on working?’ It is true that I was working – and earning – till I reached my eighties, but it was at freelance writing that I enjoyed, and from which I could take a break whenever I chose.

Have we already forgotten that a very high proportion of the rioters and arsonists of last August were unemployed young people. Satan will find mischief still for idle hands to do!

Signs of the times

There have been three items of news during the past few weeks that I have found profoundly depressing. They seem to me to exemplify everything that is wrong with Britain today. The first was the news that in a time of cuts in public services mainly affecting the poor, growing unemployment in both the public and private sectors and frozen or reduced salaries or wages for most people, the directors and chief executives of Britain’s most profitable enterprises have been awarding themselves salary increases of up to 50% - and 50% of a salary already nudging a million a year is a very large sum indeed!

I don’t know how they have the gall to accept it – but they have. I heard one of them interviewed on tv say that if an attempt were to be made to limit the salaries of top earners, they would all disappear to the USA or Asia. I’d say ‘Let them go – and the sooner the better!’ If, to stay afloat, Britain needs the support of those who have no interest in life beyond making money – then Britain deserves to sink.

Those who make such threats will be among the first to accuse public servants of holding the country to ransom when, very shortly, they go on strike because their jobs are imperil, their wages have been frozen, their savings are diminishing as inflation outstrips interest on savings accounts, and they are going to have to wait longer and pay more for their – in most cases – very modest pensions.

Then there were the pictures of long queues waiting up for hours to be the first to buy the very latest, most realistic and most violent and bloody video game on the market coupled with the news that creating the make-believe world of video games is one of Britain’s most successful industries. And to think that the writers of popular fiction used to be accused of encouraging ‘escapism’!

And the last item! It occurred on a day when the financial foundations of the world were shaking; on which we learned that an unknown number of terrorists may have entered the country because the Home Secretary had lost control of part of her Whitehall ‘empire’, and on which there appeared to be a real risk of the UK being dragged by its ‘special relationship’ into yet another Middle East conflict, this time against Iran. Not one of these matters was the lead story of BBC Breakfast, the first BBC News Bulletin of the day. Oh no – the first story was breathtaking news about who had actually administered the final lethal dose of a drug to an American Pop Star with a questionable life style who was already drugged up to the eyeballs. I had felt just a tiny amount of sympathy for the doctor who, it appears, was responsible – until I learned that he had been receiving a salary of 95,000 dollars a month as the pop-star’s medical attendant. That was in a country where, despite the efforts of its present President, millions live in poverty and thousands of the poor can afford no medical care of any kind!

A Damascene Moment!

This afternoon, as I was preparing a packet to send to send off to Germany by post, I had a vision of the future. Quite suddenly, I realized what global capitalism was all about, what was meant by preparing Britain to compete in a global market place – and the inevitable result of trying to do so.

My little ‘honorary’ German niece Maja had recently celebrated her fifth birthday. One of my British real nieces had thought that she would like to give the child a belated birthday present. She gave me a charming child’s shoulder and hand bag to send to her. I duly bought an appropriately sized padded envelope/bag at the Post Office and, with the help of Google Translate, wrote a suitable message in German to enclose with the present. I addressed it and took it to the Post Office for despatch.

It was as I sealed up the envelope that I had my epiphany (sorry about my Biblical vocabulary. It seems to go naturally with the nature of my vision). There was the envelope, bulging with its contents, with Royal Mail stamped proudly upon it, together with Maja’s address, an airmail label and – in small print in the corner - Made in China!

All became clear. Of course there are firms in Britain that could have manufactured and supplied comparable, perhaps better, padded envelopes. However, free competition and the global market insisted that even such a very British institution as the Royal Mail has to accept the lowest tender. A firm in China could manufacture them and transport them halfway round the world, just a little cheaper than any manufacturer in Britain, or in Europe, could manage to make them.

How then must Britain, or indeed any other European country, prepare itself to compete in the wonderful new Global Market, so beloved by both the Conservatives and New Labour? The only way that I can see is by reducing British wages to below the level of those of the factory workers of China and India, and increasing their hours of work, cutting public services, social housing and public transport to the level in those countries and by regarding the poor, the disabled and the homeless with the indifference that many in those countries regard them. ‘They’ve got families to support them haven’t they? Everybody knows that the poor breed like rabbits!’

Who knows, if we do it thoroughly enough we may one day be able to turn England’s green and pleasant land into a brave new world capable of obtaining contracts with the Chinese Mail Service to supply them with padded postal packets! Even then, of course, there’s still the chance that some country in Africa or South America will manage to undercut all of us.

It makes me wish that I were young enough and fit enough to join the protesters at St. Paul’s Cathedral!

Week 44 15.11.11

Tendring Topics……..on Line


‘We will remember them!’

Next Friday, 11th November, is what we once called call Armistice Day, the anniversary of the day on which at 11.00 a.m. (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month) in 1918, the guns of World War I fell silent and the daily carnage on the Western Front ceased. Next Sunday will be Remembrance Day on which Remembrance Services and Parades will be held throughout the UK. The fallen of two world wars, of the Falklands, of Iraq and Afghanistan will be honoured with a two minutes silence, the sounding of the Last Post and the recitation of a verse from Laurence Binyon’s poem '’To the Fallen’:

                                                             They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old,

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
We will remember them!............We will remember them!

In Clacton (and I have no doubt in many other towns and villages) the British Legion continues also to commemorate the war dead on that original Armistice anniversary, 11th November at 11.00 a.m. on the Town Square.

I too have war dead to remember – 100 out of an artillery regiment of about 700. Some were killed in battle, others died in PoW camps in Italy or Germany. Fifty young men of about my age were killed by ‘friendly fire’. They were drowned in November 1942 when the Italian steamer that was transporting them to a PoW Camp in Italy, was torpedoed and sunk by a British submarine. One other, whose death I personally remember, was a young man accidentally killed while working as a PoW on the railway sidings of Zittau. I was less than three feet away from him at the time. It could have been me. The fifty have no grave save the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The one who died on the railway sidings was given a German military funeral. We, his fellow PoWs, slow-marched to the cemetery, We threw sprigs of yew onto his coffin in the open grave. A firing squad from the local Wehrmacht barracks then smartly ‘presented arms’ and fired a volley over the grave. It was a salute from those who were no longer his enemies. I think that we all found it a very moving occasion.

I am not a member of the British Legion but next Friday I intend to climb onto my mobility scooter (my iron horse) and make my way down to the Town Square where I shall stand in silence, observe the two minutes silence and listen, probably on the brink of tears, to the sounding of ‘The last Post’.

‘Wear your poppy with pride!’ says the British Legion. I shall wear mine with sorrow – and perhaps just a little bitterness – at the loss of young lives and good friends,

Is the Pope, ‘Some kind of a Commie’?

Surely not – but recent pronouncements from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and statements from the Pope himself have made right-wing American Republicans (supporters of Sarah Palin’s Tea Party Movement and the like) think that he, and the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, may be heading in that direction.

Writing in the Church Times, Paul Vallely, associate editor of The Independent, says that the Pope’s opposition to abortion and gay marriage had made right wing Republicans imagine that the Pope, ‘was one of us’. To discover that he took a radical stance on economics came as an unpleasant shock.

The Pontifical Council, supporting the aims of the hundreds of thousands of people world-wide (not just the handful camped outside St Pauls Cathedral) protesting against the inequalities and injustices arising from unfettered Capitalism, called for a more ethical approach to finance, the redistribution of wealth, an end to rampant speculation, the establishment of a global central bank to which national banks would have to cede power. This statement, says, Paul Vallely has been branded quasi-Marxist on Wall Street! The Pope himself calls ‘for everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural moral values at the basis of social coexistence’.

Paul Vallely says that this call is valid and timely. He adds that those who say it is impossible to constrain a free market are as wrong as those who say that if we don’t sell our arms to oppressive regimes, someone else will. ‘The continued ruthless arrogance of the bankers, who with their effective state guarantee against failure, are still paying themselves obscene bonuses, shows that the system has learned nothing’.

I am reminded of a time (I can’t be sure whether it was in the 1930s before World War II or in the early 1950s after it) a number of prominent Anglican clergy were both very High Church and very left-wing. It was said of them as a jibe that the Church of England was The Conservative Party at Prayer – except, of course, for the Anglo-Catholics, who were the Communist Party at Mass!’

Nowadays, I think that throughout the Christian Church – Roman Catholic, Anglican, Non-conformist and Quaker, there is a growing realization of the evils of our current economic system (the Rule of Mammon) together with a firm rejection of Marxism as a possible remedy for them. A poster displayed by the St. Paul’s protesters reads WHAT WOULD JESUS SAY? I think it possible that he would say, as he said 2,000 years ago: 'Treat other people exactly as you would like them to treat you. This sums up the whole of the moral teaching of the Scriptures.

If we all, as individuals, as communities and as nations, really strove to obey that commandment, there would be no wars, no arms trade, no inequalities and injustices – and no budget deficit!


They’re at it again!


The more the Government insists that its aim is to divest central government of power and responsibility and to pass these over to ‘local communities’, the more its actions have the precise opposite effect. I wouldn’t suggest that this is necessarily always a bad thing. We are all keen on local people deciding local issues - until it affects us personally! However, when one street has a fortnightly refuse collection and the adjoining one, that happens to be within the area of a different local authority, has a weekly one, it is hardly surprising that the residents in the former street begin to complain about a ‘post-code lottery’!


The extent to which adults receiving social care are expected to contribute to its cost, is currently decided by the local welfare authority, usually the County Council or Unitary Authority where there is one. The Government is said to be considering making these charges uniform throughout the country and imposing a cap, possibly at about £30,000, on the total sum that recipients can be required to pay. Thus, folk needing expensive care who have to sell a home that they have bought with a lifetime of hard work and saving, would be able to retain at least a proportion of the fruit of their labours. It seems eminently sensible and humane that this should apply nationwide.


Very different, I think, is the government’s determination to dictate the conditions of the tenancy of Social Housing, the erosion of Local Authority control over primary and secondary education (nominally to give them more independence but actually they’ll be controlled by Whitehall, who will hold the purse-strings), and the weakening of local planning control leaving, as a correspondent to the Clacton Gazette put it, local communities with the power to say YES but not to say NO!


The latest field into which the Central Government’s ‘Nanny knows best dear’ policy has strayed, is that of Child Adoption. This, like adult social care, is currently the responsibility of the County Council or, where there is one, of the Unitary Authority. The Government believes that adopting a child should take no more than 12 months and has decided to name and shame authorities who consistently take a good deal longer than that to arrange this.

Two authorities that have earned the government’s disapproval are the London Boroughs of Hackney and Brent. I know nothing about Brent but both my sons worked at one time in Hackney’s Housing Department and one of them lived in the Borough. I do know therefore, if only at second-hand, a little about that corner of London’s East End.

I know for instance that it probably has as thorough a racial, cultural and religious mix as any in England. The political correctness of social workers who block the adoption of a black or mixed race children by a loving all-white families has been much derided. It is, of course, absurd to refuse adoption simply on the grounds of skin colour. I could well understand though, objection to the adoption into a practising Christian family of a child of Muslim or Jewish parents. I would be sorry to see the adoption of a child from a Christian background (whatever might be the colour of the child’s skin) into a devout Muslim family or, for that matter, into a family of proselytising atheists – disciples of Professor Dawkins.

Ultimately, of course, adoption – or refusal – should be made in the interests of the child, not of the prospective parents, or of the local authority - or even of a government at Westminster eager to be able to claim credit for speeding things up. A wise decision cannot and should not be hurried.

‘A child is for Life – not just for Christmas!’ Rather than naming and shaming local authorities who take their time about making adoption decisions, they should name and shame those where, due to hasty action, there has been the greatest number of failed adoptions within five years of them taking place.

Week 43 1.11.2011

Tendring Topics…….on Line


‘You read it first….here!’

That may not be quite true. The idea of narrowing the gap between rich and poor has been around a long time and blog readers may well have seen and been attracted to the idea long before I became an enthusiast. Many years ago though, when I was writing Tendring Topics (in print) in the Coastal Express, I recall saying that my idea of a good Budget was one that narrowed that gap and a bad Budget was one that widened it. It follows that I have seen many more bad budgets, even during the reign of New Labour (now there’s something for which Ed Miliband should have apologised!), than I have seen good ones.

Over the years I have changed or modified my views on a great many issues, but the desirability of levelling incomes throughout the United Kingdom is a cause from which I have never wavered. For a long time I seemed to be one of a tiny minority, but within the past few weeks tens of thousands world-wide have shown their support in the only way open to them – in mass demonstrations. They started in Greece and Spain but have spread throughout the world, one of the largest and most vociferous taking place in New York, the very heart of the capitalist world. There have been few or none in Scandinavia – a prosperous corner of northern Europe where that gap between rich and poor is already narrow. We have had them in Britain too, and very peaceful and well mannered they have so far been. Their best-known manifestation has been the tented camp at the entrance of St Paul’s Cathedral. A headline in the Daily Mail announced the ‘The portrait of a very middle class protest: A poet, a mother and even an extra from Downton….just who is at the Tent City demo?’ Goodness, was the voice of Middle England going soft on Loony Lefties?

Daily Mail aficionados will have been reassured by Richard Littlejohn’s feature in the inside pages. It began in unwontedly conciliatory mood, ‘It would be understandable if the crowd demonstrating outside St. Paul’s was comprised of self-employed small businessmen and women’, but went on, ‘Predictably, though, it was the usual gormless rent-a-mob you always find on these anti-globalisation demos – Toytown Trots from Mickey Mouse Universities, social workers, lecturers, full-time mature students and Swampy wannabes’. He seems to have visited a different demo from whoever wrote the news story!

Mr Littlejohn’s most offensive rant was reserved for a member of the clergy, ‘None of these demos is ever complete without a daft vicar from central casting. Playing the Derek Nimmo character on this occasion was Rev Giles Fraser, who asked the police to move off the steps of St Paul’s and declared his support for the protesters’.

George Bernard Shaw once remarked that the Daily Mirror was for those who couldn’t read, and the Daily Mail for those who couldn’t think. That was before Mr Littlejohn’s time. The Sun may have replaced the Mirror as the choice of the illiterate but it’s nice to know though that at least one pre-war British tradition is unchanged!

Later News

I am very sorry that, as a result of the demo outside St Paul’s, the cathedral has closed to the public. I suppose that the Health and Safety reason must be that the presence of the demonstrators, even if they tried to co-operate, could prevent fire or other emergency workers gaining ready access to the building in an emergency, and could hinder a rapid evacuation if required.


I am sorry not only because I think it wrong for the public to be prevented from attending any place of worship, but because I support the cause of the demonstrators. Preventing free access to the Cathedral is unnecessarily alienating folk who might otherwise be expected to support those protesting against the rule of Mammon.

Since writing the above, the Cathedral has been at least partially opened to the public and the Cathedral Authorities and the Bishop of London are holding discussions.  I do hope that it isn't all going 'to end in tears' - or in violence. 

The Money-Lenders


Everyone tends to watch more daytime television after retirement than they ever did while going out to work. I am no exception. Six or seven years ago it seemed to me that daytime commercial tv was largely financed by ambulance chasing ‘no win, no fee’ lawyers, and by financiers eager to lend large sums of money to folk who, in their own interest, should never be allowed to borrow it! ‘Never mind’, the adverts insisted, 'if you’re old, haven’t got a job, have a low credit rating or have been refused a loan elsewhere, we may be able to help you.'


Times have changed. No longer do we see the adverts from those benevolent moneylenders eager, so it seemed, to throw good money after bad. Nowadays they offer only relatively small ‘payday’ loans. It is all so simple and straightforward. You are getting along nicely until, half way through the month, there’s a sudden crisis; a problem with the laptop, a leaky pipe or water storage tank, a blocked drain, an unexpected – and important – visitor. It is a crisis that can easily be solved with two or three hundred pounds but, alas, you’ve only just got enough money to last until payday, still a fortnight away.

An easy-to-arrange payday loan will see you through! £300? – no problem; it’ll added to your bank account within the hour. You’ll know how much interest you have to pay right away. It will seem quite a small sum though, expressed as an annual rate of interest, it could be very large indeed. Payday comes, you repay the £300 plus interest, and all is well.

Except, of course, that you had needed the whole of your month’s pay for the rent or the mortgage, the fuel bill and the food bill for that month – and you have just got rid of £300 plus a bit extra, of it. The solution? You could apply for another payday loan, perhaps from a different lender, - and another, and another! Of course, if you have a few hundred in a savings account, you can pay off your debt and that’s that. But if you had a few hundred in the bank you wouldn’t have needed to borrow in the first place. It seems that the only people who can safely apply for a payday loan are those who don’t really need one!

Learning that millions and millions of bail-out euros are being poured into the Greek economy while, at the same time, unemployment in Greece gets steadily worse, hundreds of thousands of Greeks are reduced to abject poverty, some scavenging restaurant kitchen waste to find thrown-out food to feed their families, made me realize that on a much bigger scale, Greece is in the same position as those domestic borrowers who need a little financial help just till payday.

Not a single euro of those millions of the bailout money extracted from the wallets, handbags and bank accounts of ordinary working people throughout Europe, goes to help the Greeks. Every single cent goes straight back to the French and German bankers who made the loans, and thence into the pockets of their shareholders. When Ireland had similar, though mercifully smaller, problems, British taxpayers made a very considerable contribution to bail out the Irish Republic. This was not out of friendship and fellow feeling for our Irish neighbours, but simply because it had been British banks that had made rash loans to Irish enterprises. It was British bankers and their shareholders, not the Irish, who benefited from our apparent benevolence.

Our contribution to these bank bailouts together with the cost of wars in Iraq and Afganistan and of our support for the revolution in Libya, make a very considerable contribution to the size of the budget deficit for which the Government prefers to blame their New Labour predecessors.

A puzzled viewer wrote to the BBC recently pointing out that when a ‘rogue trader’ speculated with money with which he had been entrusted and lost it, he was arrested and prosecuted and punished. However, when banks do much the same thing with money with which they have been entrusted – nobody is prosecuted and punished. Instead we have to bail them out!

Under-occupied Properties?


A few weeks ago I commented in this blog on the bright idea of regenerating Brooklands Estate, Jaywick by encouraging retired folk to move into the township’s properties, described as ‘rabbit hutches’ and quite unsuitable for families but fine for elderly retired singles or couples. I thought that it was a stupid and insulting suggestion, and said so.

Now a similar idea has surfaced and appears to have gained some credence. It has been noted that some such elderly couples and singles (often widows or widowers like me) selfishly continue to occupy three-bed-roomed properties after their children have grown up and left home, thus denying bedrooms to the needy. They should be encouraged (no-one has yet suggested compulsion!) to move into one-bed-roomed homes, quite adequate and much more appropriate to their needs.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to anybody that when grown-up offspring leave home they usually do so to get married (or these days, I suppose, to find a partner!) and start a family. Most of them from time to time come back, with their families, to visit Grandpa and Grandma. Are they really to be told on these occasions that as their ageing parents are now living in a one-bedroom flat (a kind of ‘pending file’ as they await the grim reaper!) they’ll have to find themselves an hotel or bed and breakfast accommodation when they visit for more than a day?


88 Dudley Road, Clacton. New Years's Day 1979


My wife and I certainly welcomed and accommodated our sons and families when they visited us for the weekend or longer. Nowadays, old and living alone, I can cope only with ‘day’ visitors. However the smaller former bedroom of my small – but three bedroomed – bungalow is now my ‘office’ where at a desk, surrounded by a printer, a scanner and book-cases, I am writing this blog.

The other ‘spare’ bedroom is now a store-room, used for the storage of items which – if I were still capable of climbing a ladder – would be up in the roof space. There is no inducement that would make me voluntarily leave the home in which I have lived for sixty-five years, in which five years ago my wife’s life came to an end, and in which I hope that my life too will end.

I suggest that before looking for unused bedrooms, those who are keen to remedy the housing shortage look for all the empty houses, the second and holiday homes unused or used only occasionally. In 1947, when I was undergoing my practical training as a Sanitary Inspector (nowadays they are Environmental Health Officers!) in Battersea, we would look out for empty houses and report them to the Council’s legal department with a view to commandeering them to solve an even worse housing situation than exists today.

That surely would be a possibility worth exploring. Empty houses are rather easier to spot than empty bedrooms!

Degrees of Wickedness


It was quite wrong to kill Colonel Gaddafi after his capture. That is unquestionable. However I don’t feel that his murder, carried out it seems by a young irregular soldier just after the heat of battle, was quite as wicked as:

The massacre, again by anti-Gaddafi militia, of 50 pro-Gaddafi fighters whose bodies were found in Sirte with their hands tied behind their back.

The deliberate killing rather than capture, of Osama Bin Laden. 

The computer assisted assassination, by unmanned ‘drone’ aircraft controlled from a base thousands of miles away, of individuals believed to be leaders of Al Q’aida.

There must have been sighs of relief in Whitehall when, thanks to Colonel Gaddafi’s murder, it was realized that there would now be no risk of the former Libyan leader making public exactly how much help his torturers and death squads had received from MI6 and its political masters in the days when Tony Blair and Gaddafi had been photographed warmly embracing each other.

Week 42 2011 25.10.2011

Tendring Topics…….on Line


‘Oh no – not again!’




Pete with his dog Zoe in the Scottish Highlands

 I reckon that that is what Ms Lynne Featherstone Lib.Dem MP (and coalition government member) says when she sees another letter from my son Pete. He is one of her constituents and voted for her in the General Election hoping that, by so doing, he would help bring in a Liberal Democrat Government under its new dynamic leader Nick Klegg.

Instead, he was rewarded with a coalition in which the Conservatives are the dominant party but in which Ms Featherstone secured a government (though not a cabinet) post. Since then, as our country has gone steadily down hill, Pete has written to her on a number of occasions reminding her of the Lib.Dems’ broken promises.

This time as you’ll see, he has written her a letter of congratulation though, since it is congratulating her on opposing a suggestion that could become government policy, it is possible that they are congratulations she’d prefer not to receive. Here is the letter:

Dear Lynne,


Having voted for you at the last election, I have since been critical of the Coalition and your role in it.


I therefore thought I should express my appreciation and total agreement with your stand – as reported in today’s Observer – that you are totally opposed to proposals, outlined in a White Paper which originate from Adrian Beecroft, venture capitalist reporting directly to the Prime Minister, that flexible arrangements over maternity and paternity leave should be shelved, and even that maternity pay should be scrapped altogether.


I am a small business owner, employing seven staff, one, of whom has just returned from maternity leave, another is about to go on maternity leave. I have had good notice and found it possible to provide for these upheavals. I am very conscious that balancing work and family responsibilities and budgeting for child care is a very big issue for my staff. If reasonable provisions were not available, they would not be able to cope, and might have to leave employment altogether, leaving me with a much larger problem. The business has been negatively affected by “the cuts”, and no elimination of red-tape, or freeing up bank lending, will undo the damage caused by the impoverishment of our customers. This must be true of so many small businesses at the present time.


I am dismayed that you appear to be surprised that such proposals are being made to and have the ear of the Prime Minister.


The same faction of our society has eloquently proposed in recent weeks, that the 50p tax (for people earning over £150K pa) should be scrapped to improve competitiveness and create jobs, while the minimum wage (for people earning £12K pa) should also be scrapped (lowered) for the same reason. It is becoming clear, that the more the economic problems bite (the root causes of which no one on the Left or the Right cares to address), the more the Right Wing will seek solutions from extreme policies which are essentially designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. I believe the day will come when people of conscience within the Liberal Democrat Party will be unable to support such polices and the Coalition will cease to exist.


Peter Hall



Heather - as Andy and Pete knew her

 I couldn’t have put it better myself! From time to time both my sons, by their actions and attitudes, make it clear that they haven’t discarded the Quaker values (though they’re by no means exclusive to Quakers) that my wife Heather and I had tried to instil in them in their childhood. Their Mum – who had much more to do with it than I had – would have been very proud of them.






Another 'Bridge too far'?

Quite early in the saga of the former Defence Secretary Liam Fox, there was mention of a Charity called Atlantic Bridge, claimed to have been created to further the ‘special relationship’ between the USA and the UK. The British end of the bridge, so it was said, had been run from Liam Fox’s official office – but was so no longer.

I found that Atlantic Bridge’s web site was temporarily closed. It did however yield the information that it was an organisation that had the aim of bringing ‘conservatives’ from the UK and USA together to discuss policy and other mutual interests. Remembering that Amnesty International had been refused Charity status because of its political associations, it seemed strange that this obviously political organisation should have been successful. It also seemed strange that an obviously ‘political’ organisation should have been run from a Government, rather than a Party, office.

I then heard William Hague, our Foreign Secretary, interviewed on BBC Radio 4. Asked about the Atlantic Bridge he said that he believed it to be a means of exchanging ideas between the UK and people of every shade of opinion in the USA – that was surely a good thing. And so, I suppose it could have been – had it been true.

I dug a little deeper (how did we manage before Google?) and found out a great deal more. The founder and chairman of Atlantic Bridge had been none other than our former Defence Secretary, Liam Fox. Its Chief Executive, and its only paid employee, was Adam Werrity. It had an Advisory Council consisting of William Hague, George Osborne, Chris Grayley and Michael Gove. A great many other leading Conservative politicians had been closely associated with it. Could William Hague, a member of the Advisory Council, really have been unaware of the Bridge’s real nature? It seems hardly likely.

Perhaps even more disquieting, I discovered that Ms Gaby Bertin, David Cameron’s Press Secretary, had worked for Atlantic Bridge and, until Adam Werritty had taken her place, had been its sole employee on this side of the Atlantic.

Finally, I learned that only last month the Charities Commission had declared the Atlantic Bridge to be a wholly political organisation (goodness knows why they had taken so long to discover that!) and stripped it of its charitable status. I wonder if the Government, keen as they are on hunting down benefit cheats and tax dodgers, will pursue those who – for a number of years – have fraudulently claimed tax relief and other benefits by virtue of this false claim to charitable status?

I find the thought that Atlantic Bridge may have been providing the members of the most bigoted and bellicose faction of the USA easy access to the very heart of British government, extremely disquieting. Have some of our top politicians forgotten that, despite a shared language and some common objectives, the USA is a foreign country with interests that do not necessarily coincide with those of the United Kingdom?


And there’s UKIP – and our own MP – worrying themselves to death about the EU robbing us of our sovereignty!

A Damp Squib!

Some people, I have little doubt, had great hopes about the meeting of our Prime Minister with the representatives of the UKs gas and electricity suppliers. He was the champion of Middle England – a twenty-first century Cromwell. He had tackled the red-tape-bound bureaucrats of Britain’s town and county halls. Now he was going to take on and tame the lords of the power supplies. Reductions in fuel bills were confidently expected

Judging from the results of the confrontation, his performance resembled more closely that of the timid policeman in Doc Martin than that of the iron man of the 17th century.

Clearly he was persuaded that the suppliers were without blame for the massive above-inflation increases in the price of gas and electricity. It is up to us consumers to put up with them and make the best of them. We must, as Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit might have put it, stand on our own two feet or perhaps to leap onto our bikes and find our own solution.

First, we must shop around to make sure that we are on the fuel tariff that is best for us. There are only six main fuel suppliers so that shouldn’t be too difficult. Except of course, for the hard-up single mum or the pensioner who doesn’t own a laptop and certainly wouldn’t know how to use one. I’d be very surprised anyway if there is very much difference between suppliers’ tariffs. I use E-on myself because they have an arrangement with Age UK that gives me substantial benefits in frosty weather. Perhaps – for all I know – other suppliers do the same.

In any case, many of us oldies simply don’t like ‘shopping around or haggling’. We feel that there is a right price and that is the price that we should be charged. It was because folk came to realize that they would never overcharge and would never haggle, that such 19th Century Quaker enterprises as Cadbury and Fry (not to mention Trumans and Charringtons!) thrived and prospered.

The other thing that we consumers are advised to do is to conserve the heat that we have purchased so expensively. To be fair to the government, they do have very worthwhile schemes to help pensioners and others to prevent heat loss from their homes by insulating the roof space and infilling cavity walls. My wife and I had our cavity walls infilled at our own expense many years ago, but I have found free improved roof space insulation to be well worth having. Also, it is suggested, we should use our heating sparingly and economically.

All very sensible advice, but it hardly needed a conference of the Prime Minister and the bosses of the energy companies to produce it. I would have been happy to pass on all those ideas to David Cameron had cared to give me a ring – and so would thousands of other people!

A Cheerful Note on which to end




Doesn't she look happy!

 This hasn’t been the cheeriest of blogs, so here is a photograph that warmed my heart when I received it from friends of mine in Germany. Their little daughter Maja (my ‘honorary German niece’) celebrated her fifth birthday during September. Here she is on that auspicious occasion:

I won’t live to see it, but I hope most sincerely that by the time she is in her mid-teens, she and my great-grandchildren, if any, will be living in a truly united Europe in which the most easterly part of Germany where she lives will seem no more remote and ‘foreign’ to East Anglians than the Lake District or the coves of Cornwall do to us today. May you have many, many more very happy birthdays Maja, my dear child!

Doesn't she look happy!

Week 41 2011 18.10.2011

Tendring Topics……..on line


A trip into the Past

They don’t possess a Tardis or a Wellsian ‘Time Machine’. Nevertheless, my younger son and daughter-in-law took me for a trip into the distant and the not-so-distant past last week. Andy and Marilyn, whose home is in Enfield, are regular visitors. We usually lunch at the Bowling Green in Weeley and visit one of Tendring’s coastal resorts or inland beauty spots. This time though they were coming earlier than usual and had asked me if there was anywhere further afield that I would like to visit. I thought that I would like to go to Sutton Hoo near Woodbridge where there was the site of a seventh century Anglo-Saxon Ship Burial that had been excavated and had revealed a great deal about the lives and culture of our early ancestors.

So – to Sutton Hoo we had driven. To get there we had to bypass or drive through Ipswich. We took the opportunity of visiting the place where Heather and I had spent part of our early married life in the late 1940s and early ‘50s. Still further back in time, we visited places where I had spent my childhood and adolescence eighty years ago.

First we found the bungalow, just off the Norwich Road in Barham, where Heather and I had had our first real home and where our older son, Andy’s brother Pete had been born in 1953. It had been one of four one-storied buildings that had formerly been an isolation hospital and had been converted into homes for members of Gipping Rural District Council’s staff. Our bedroom, where Pete was born, was the room on the right of the picture. The middle section had been the quite large kitchen. On summer days Pete would be in his pram on the lawn just outside while Heather worked in the kitchen. Just below the sash windows, one of which would be wide open, we would place a low stool so that Heather could step out of the window and be with the pram in a second!

Driving back into Ipswich we passed the spot, in Bramford Road where when I was about ten, climbing a tree in search of bird eggs I had fallen (served me right!) and grabbed a piece of barbed wire as I fell. The scar is on my right hand to this day! The house to which Andy and Pete’s mum, then a schoolgirl of 15, had been evacuated, just before the outbreak of war in September 1939, and where I had first met her, had been demolished and replaced with a modern home. We passed the church that I had attended and had been first a choirboy and then a server, and drove to Valley Road, along which I had cycled to and from the Northgate School for six years.

On to Sutton Hoo, a couple of miles from Woodbridge, on a hillside overlooking the river Deben. It didn’t disappoint. There had in fact been two ship burials as well as many other interments on the site in the first half of the seventh century A.D. This was before the conversion of East Anglia to Christianity though the faith was gaining ground in Enland. The occupants of the ship graves had been military men, perhaps royal, of great power and wealth.

Excavations had been carried out throughout the 1930s but it was not until July 1939 (I well remember that feverish last summer of peace!) that the real treasures were found. I quote the official guidebook:

‘They included silver bowls and spoons, fragments of clothes and textiles, weapons, armour, buckets, chains, cauldrons, fine Celtic enamels and many other wonderful things. Most impressive were the many large gold ornaments of early Anglo-Saxon workmanship, elaborately inlaid with bright red garnets. These, finer than anything else of their kind, came from the ground as bright as the day they were buried. It was among the richest graves ever excavated in Europe’

Much of the treasure is now safely in the British Museum where Andy and Marilyn visited it that same weekend and sent me back this picture of an excavated warrior’s helmet. We found the museum on the site of great interest. Exhibits included a reproduction of the burial chamber, examples of the treasures found and a model of part of the structure of the ships, which were 27 metres long, clinker built, with boards carefully shaped and held together with iron rivets.

You may be wondering how I managed to get round the museum and the quite large Sutton Hoo site. I could I suppose have managed to walk round the museum, but it would have exhausted me. Andy though was good enough to push me round in one of the wheelchairs freely available for visitors. I certainly enjoyed the visit more that I would have had I tried to walk. As for getting round the site – there are three electric mobility scooters, just like my own familiar and friendly ‘iron horse’. These have to be – and mine was – booked in advance. There is also a welcoming licensed buffet restaurant on the site where we were able to obtain a more-than-adequate lunch and, before we drove back to Clacton, a welcome cup of tea. It had been a very enjoyable excursion into my own past and the past of the English people. Perhaps there had been rather more light and colour in those dark ages than we may have imagined.


Myself at Sutton Hoo - burial mound in the background



A Piece of Good News
It is pleasant to be able to record a little good economic news in our Tendring District, in contrast to the gloom that seems to deepen by the hour!

In the face of strong competition from other European enterprises a Brightlingsea boat-building firm, CWind, secured the contract from Siemens, the giant Munich based global engineering corporation, to build three specialised catamarans to work on the London Array offshore wind farm being built in the Thames estuary.

The first of these catamarans CWind Alliance has now been completed, launched, and is off to work. Its equipment includes an amphibious rescue pod, capable of carrying out rescues on sand.

Cwind first came to the attention of Siemens London Array project manager when he had worked with them on the Gunfleet Sands wind-farm off Clacton-on-Sea. There he had had been impressed by the company’s approach and attitude. He said, ‘It’s important for us to have confidence in the skippers, their crew and the quality of the vessels’.

At a recent international conference held in Clacton to discuss the regeneration of deprived areas like Jaywick’s Brooklands Estate, it was suggested that servicing the growing number of off-shore wind farms could be our area’s best hope of reviving its economic prospects. CWind has clearly shown the way.

A Public Correspondence

Several weeks ago I mentioned in this blog that when picking up a local or national newspaper, after a quick glance at the front page headlines, I go straight to the Readers’ Letters. Whether wise, misguided or just plain stupid, each one expresses ideas about which someone feels sufficiently strongly to ‘write to the paper about it’. It is a pretty safe bet that for every letter written and published there will be dozens? hundreds? thousands? of other people who feel exactly the same way as the writer.

A regular contributor to the local daily Gazette is a David Brown who, possibly inspired by the Daily Mail, the Daily Express – or even by the expressed views of our own Clacton MP – attributes most of the United Kingdom’s ills to our folly, as he sees it, in joining the European Union and remaining in it. I always read his letters with horrified fascination.

His latest (though I am sure not his last) contribution to the Gazette’s letters page described the Euro as a ‘car crash’ and said how grateful we should all be to the Eurosceptics who kept the UK out of the Eurozone.

I was pleased to see a prompt reply from Roy Procter of Thorpe-le-Soken, a fellow Quaker who is much more knowledgeable about financial matters than I can ever hope to be. It must be said though, that one doesn’t have to be an economics whiz kid to follow the points that he made.

His letter was sadly abridged, no doubt unavoidably, by the Gazette subeditor and thereby lost some of its impact. I thought that blog readers might like to see the original unabridged and unexpurgated version, so here it is:
.
David Brown (Letters 3/10/2011) describes the Euro as a 'car crash' and how good it is that the Eurosceptics kept us out- I suggest he should look a bit further than the Daily Mail's leaders for his information - In 1999 a Euro would have cost 64p, in 2003 70p, in 2007, 69p and today 86p.- how exactly is increasing its value against other currencies (and not just Sterling) a 'car crash'?


Those in the Eurozone can trade with each other without paying the banks an extra percentage to simply pay bills and tourists can get at their own money in a large area for free.


The Euro would be even stronger with UK participation, and UK businesses and tourists would pay less in fees to the bankers - so the losers would be banks and the city, and the gainers - everyone else. How is that a bad idea?

I hope that Roy is right.  I note that despite the gloomy predictions, the Euro continues to maintain its value against the pound.  Of one thing I am certain.  The United Kingdom's best future lies with the European Vision rather than the American Dream!

Cause – and Effect


There were two apparently unconnected news stories on BBC Breakfast tv this (14th Oct.) morning, that I believe have a close association. The first was the shocking revelation that nationwide young children are being tricked, bullied or blackmailed into the hands of criminal gangs whose members sexually abuse them and/or force them into prostitution. Sometimes the victims are first ‘groomed’ with generous hospitality and lavish gifts, and then kept in subjection by blackmail or by threats of physical violence to themselves or members of their families.

The other piece of news was that, in the future, part of the child benefit of single mums will no longer be paid once their youngest child reaches five years – the age for starting school. It will be assumed that they will then be in a position to get a job to supplement their incomes. Only oldies like me will remember with nostalgia the time when it was usual for the man-of-the-house (he was always, of course, a husband in those distant days!) to be the breadwinner and for his wife to be the home-maker and primary child carer.  The few 'single mums' in those days were most likely to be widows.  Nowadays women with partners are expected to go out to work and, according to their financial circumstances, either help pay the rent or the mortage and help feed and clothe the family or, for the better off – make possible the second car, the yacht and the annual holiday in Bermuda. Those without partners are deprived of their benefit to force them into work.

In the ‘bad old days’ when at least one parent reckoned to know where the children were after school, there was far less risk of teenagers joining criminal gangs or of young and innocent children being trapped, groomed and abused by them.

Week 40 2011 18.10.2011

Tendring Topics……on line


The European Travel Commission’s new Acting Director!




 Jo. AKA Ms Josephine Hall M.A., B.Sc





Chris is nominated Teacher of the Year


















All three of my grandchildren are sources of great pride and satisfaction to me. There is Jo, my only granddaughter who is both an M.A. and a B.Sc. and has a socially valuable job as Social Worker with the Renal Unit of a large Sheffield Hospital   Then there is Chris, her cousin and my elder grandson. He graduated in art but has found his vocation as a teacher of English to both children and adults in Taiwan.. A couple of years ago he was nominated ‘Teacher of the Year’ by the educational enterprise that employs him.

Nick, Chris’ brother, is the youngest of my grandchildren, but by no means the least! He has always been a great traveller and many years ago won a Guardian competition with a prize of £5,000 with which to travel cheaply all over Europe, sending a weekly report on his adventures to the Guardian Travel Supplement. This inspired him, in his last year at University to retrace my travels sixty years earlier as a POW, from Tarranto in southern Italy to a POW camp in the north of the country. Thence to a working camp (Arbeitskommando) in Germany and finally, after the war ended, through Czechoslovakia to Prague. As he did so he created a video diary that helped to earn him a good honours degree in photography at Westminster University.
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Student Nick on his travels

This experience, plus an unrivalled knowledge and experience in IT (it was he who organised the blogspot and web site on which I am publishing these words!) ensured the success of his application for the post of On Line Sales Manager, with the European Travel Commission in Brussels. The ETC is a non profit-making international organisation which encourages, co-ordinates and facilitates tourist travel to Europe from the rest of the world. Its members are the national tourist offices of 33 co-operating European states, many of them members of the European Union but others (Norway, Switzerland and Serbia for instance) that are not. ETC has an elected President (currently a German lady) and an executive committee of national representatives.
The ETCs permanent staff have a headquarters in Brussels and are headed by a Director (in effect the Chief Executive and head of paid staff). Nick’s duties as On Line Sales Manager took him all over the world. He was also personally involved in the development and launch of www.visiteurope.com ETC’s own publicity web site, invaluable for all visitors to any part of Europe.

Now Nick has risen to the very top of the organisation. Last week the President and Executive Committee confirmed his appointment as Acting Director. Nick’s achievement is all the more remarkable for the fact that the United Kingdom is not one of the thirty-three members of the ETC. Among the membership you’ll find large countries like Germany, tiny ones like San Marino and Monte Negro, island states like Cyprus, Iceland and the Irish Republic – but no United Kingdom. I suppose that if there are many British ‘Tourism bosses’ of the calibre of Tendring District’s, and many MPs as stubbornly Europhobic as Clacton’s, we shouldn’t be surprised.


Nick in Zittau with myself and our friend Ingrid Zeibig.


It does demonstrate very clearly that Nick’s promotion was owed entirely to recognition of his own merit and not as a result of pressure from national representatives. There were none. It also demonstrates that European Union rules, that permit citizens of any member state to live and work anywhere within the EU, do not work only in one direction. It is possible for a Brit with determination and the necessary skills, to find and hold down a worthwhile job on the continent.

I am proud and very pleased that a grandson of mine has done so.

Late News!


Hardly had Nick been appointed to his new post before he was required to accompany ETC's President and Vice-President to a meeting of European Union Tourism Ministers in Krakow, Poland, last Thursday (6th October). He says that he was given VIP treatment, sharing a car with the Vice President and racing through the streets of Krakow with a police escort. He had, of course. helped the ETC's President to prepare for the occasion and was very pleased to hear almost universal praise and support from the EU Ministers for the work of ETC and for the www.visiteurope.com web site. He feels that he has made a good start


Buying Votes…….with other people’s money


That was how I described the ‘Right to Buy’ legislation when it was enacted during Mrs Thatcher’s term as Prime Minister. I make no apology for doing so. It might more accurately have been described as ‘Compel to sell’ legislation, as it compelled local councils (as democratically elected as our rulers in Westminster!) to sell off to sitting tenants at bargain basement prices, council houses that had been provided and paid for by earlier generations to house the homeless, alleviate overcrowding and make possible slum clearance in their areas. The same privilege was not of course, offered to tenants of privately owned homes. Their owners were, for the most part, loyal supporters of Mrs Thatcher’s political party.

It took a few years for the baleful effects of that legislation to take full effect. Almost immediately though the best homes in the most desirable locations were sold off. Many were sold to tenants who could ill-afford the mortgage and insurance repayments, the cost of maintenance and the separate rate bills for which they became responsible. Many grown-up children of elderly parents spotted their opportunity to cash in on already steadily rising house prices. They provided the small deposit required and in some cases even offered to pay the mortgage on their parents’ home. Naturally it was understood that they would inherit it in due course.

In the ‘80s and ‘90s, while they waited to inherit and for the time to expire in which the house couldn’t be resold, house prices didn’t just rise. They rocketed. Former council houses were sold at a handsome profit. In rural areas houses that had been built to house members of village communities were snapped up as second homes or as bases from which to commute to the nearest big city. Councils were unable to build houses for affordable letting and Housing Associations were unable to satisfy the resulting need for social housing . House price inflation meant that young families, whose forebears had been part of the village community for generations, were unable to find a home. Villages ‘died’, no longer having enough daytime round-the-year residents to keep going a pub, a church, a village hall, a post office – or even a well-stocked village store.

Particularly in urban areas, council estates deprived of their former not-too-badly-off tenants, took the first step on the road towards becoming drug ridden, crime-infested slums. A further step was taken recently when the government dictated (so much for localism!) that in future, council tenancies should be short-term only. Tenants whose financial circumstances improved would be expected to buy their own homes or rent privately. I can think of no better way of ensuring that the interior of council houses are never redecorated and the gardens never cared for!

For all of the above reasons I was absolutely astonished when, in the midst of an otherwise inspiring speech at the Labour Party Conference, Ed Miliband apologised for the Labour Party’s opposition to Right to Buy, way back in the 1980s!  He should, on the contrary, have apologised for New Labour’s failure to repeal that Act and to encourage local authorities to build homes for letting in their areas, when they were in a position to. Had they done so it might have put a brake on out-of-control house price inflation and avoided today’s nation-wide housing shortage.

Now I see that David Cameron, possibly dazzled by his Party’s success in buying votes with other people’s money in the 1980s, is trying to breathe new life into Right to Buy. I think that he’ll be unsuccessful this time round. There is no longer the spiralling house price inflation that made home ownership such a profitable investment 30 years ago. The policies of his government are ensuring that the occupants of council houses are increasingly limited to the very poorest of society, those least able to aspire to ‘home ownership’. As for the equivalent of those who helped their poor old mums and dads to own their own homes in the ‘80s – with incomes failing to keep up with inflation, plus government cuts and the threat of unemployment, they are struggling to survive themselves these days. They are also well aware that eventual home ownership no longer offers the prospect of wealth-to-come that once it did.

‘Can do?’ – Yes, you can add the final straw that breaks the camel’s back

Thank goodness that the Conference season is over for another year. Most of us, I think, have really seen enough of posturing politicians!

I am not sure whether it was Ed Miliband’s apologies for New Labour policies that were right (goodness knows that there were plenty that were wrong) or David Cameron’s constant reiteration of that idiotic trans-Atlantic mantra ‘can do’, that I found the more irritating. It was because greedy, irresponsible and incompetent bankers thought that they ‘could do’ anything that they thought would make a profit, that we are in the current financial mess. They ‘did’ us! I think that our Prime Minister would do better to consider a few of the things that can’t be done either by him or any of us. It was an American President who remarked that you can fool some of the people all the time and all the people part of the time but - no matter how loudly and how often you say, ‘can do’ - you can’t fool all the people all the time.

Nor can you indefinitely assert with apparently total conviction and sincerity one thing while doing the exact opposite. In his Churchillian final speech to the Conservative conference David Cameron asserted the importance, to the individual and to the nation, of paying off debts promptly and not adding to them. Yet this is the same Prime Minister whose government is piling tens of thousands pounds worth of debt on students and saying, in mitigation, that that debt doesn’t have to be paid off for years, in fact. in many cases it may never need to be paid off. Only a few days earlier he had been encouraging council house tenants, who haven’t already done so, to incur more debt by buying their homes.

While urging that local people should make decisions about local matters Mr Cameron’s government is systematically stripping democratically elected local authorities of their powers particularly, in relation to planning matters and to the letting of their own social housing. While stripping the armed forces of both personnel and equipment and, so many believe, reducing their ability to deal with any emergency that might arise – he has declared that those enormously expensive and totally useless Trident nuclear submarines that prowl the world’s oceans are sacrosanct.

As the government continues cutting services and pursuing policies that penalise the poor, the weak and the vulnerable, while having minimal impact on the wealthy and privileged, Mr Cameron may care to reflect that among things that top politicians can do is to add the final straw that breaks the camel’s back!