29.2.08

                               Tendring Topics – on line

 

                                       Our Earthquake

 

Did you experience the 'earthquake', centred in Lincolnshire but felt, so it seems, through a very large area of eastern and south-eastern England during the night of 26^th February?  Its effects were pretty minimal in our area.  In Colchester, it is claimed that someone's bedside tv set moved and in Wix a pile of books is said to have fallen from a bedside table.  And that was about it – apart from a few dozen sleepy voices saying,  'It was a minor earthquake dear; nothing to worry about; now let's see if we can get back to sleep'.

           

Did I feel it?   As with so many things in my life nowadays, I'm not quite sure.  I did find myself unaccountably wide awake at one point during the night; so wide awake in fact that I knew I'd have to make myself a cup of tea and take a couple of aspirin tablets if I were to have any hope of going to sleep again.

           

For me, this is not exactly a unique experience but it isn't a particularly common one either.  As I waited for the kettle to boil I glanced at my watch and noted that it was ten past one.   It seems likely therefore, though by no means certain, that it had been the quake that woke me up.

           

A real earthquake can be a very different matter.  Grandson Chris, who teaches in earthquake-prone Taiwan, assures me that it is a terrifying experience – and one to which, however often you may experience it, you never become accustomed.  Earthquake drill is a feature of Taiwanese education, the children diving under their desks at the word of warning.

           

Real earthquakes rarely come closer to us than the Balkan peninsula in the east or the USA in the west.   However, it is worth remembering that the last recorded serious quake in Britain occurred right on the edge of the Tendring peninsula.  In 1884 – yes, a bit before even my time! – the Colchester area endured a twenty second tremor from an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, that inflicted serious damage on well over one thousand buildings.

           

We are not totally immune!

                         …………………………………….

 

                                  The Spoken Word

 

            I warmed to a letter published in the Clacton Gazette on 28^th February from a Jennifer Kersey of Frinton Road, Holland-on-Sea.  She doesn't say whether she is a Mrs or a Miss and the content of her letter suggests that she wouldn't really want to be referred to as Ms, so I am compelled, in plain Quaker fashion, to use simply Christian and surname

 

            Her letter complains about the prevalence of slovenly and sloppy speech quoting the often-overheard 'I ain't got no money' as an example, and the increasing use of Americanisms such as 'Mothers Day' instead of the English 'Mothering Sunday' and the practice of referring to and addressing groups of people as 'guys' (a word nowadays used for both men and women) instead of 'Ladies and Gentlemen', 'Boys and Girls' or, in Quaker circles at least, 'Friends'.

 

            I wholeheartedly agree with her – especially over the use of 'guys'.  This is a fairly recent innovation.  I well remember when I first heard a Blue Peter presenter urging a group of adolescent boys and girls to 'Come on you guys – have a go!'

 

            Have you watched the BBC tv series 'The Choir' about the young choir master who managed to fashion melodious choirs from the most unpromising human material?   In the first series – a year ago – he turned young people from a very ordinary North London Comprehensive School into an award winning choir, good enough to compete with the best choirs in the world in the Beijing choir Olympics! 

 

In the second series, recently transmitted, he performed the seemingly impossible task of producing a choir from a very macho boys comprehensive school in the Midlands, and training them to a level at which they could perform with choirs from all over Britain in the Royal Albert Hall.

 

            This was a much more difficult task because this was a school with a 'sporting' specialisation.  Rugby was the principal game played and there was not just indifference towards the idea of choral singing, but positive hostility.  'Boys don't sing' was the title of the series!  Not only did he win the boys over; he also managed to form a subsidiary adult choir from the staff, including the headmaster and the very tough rugger master!

 

I noticed that whenever he spoke to his chosen choir, whether it was to praise or admonish, and whether they were at their most amenable or their roughest and toughest, he always addressed them – not as 'guys' or even as 'boys' - but  as 'gentlemen'.

 

At first this seemed just plain incongruous but I believe that it was by such means as this that he managed in a few months to produce a male voice choir whose members behaved like 'gentlemen' and who, at the Royal Albert Hall, sang like a choir of angels.

 

………………………………………….

           

 

                           A Continental Sunday

           

In those now all-but-forgotten days 'before the war', newspaper articles were written and sermons preached about the vast difference between the British Sabbath and what was called the Continental Sunday.

           

On the Continent of Europe, we were told, people made their confession on Friday and then (presumably after a sinless Saturday) attended Mass early on Sunday morning.   They then had the temerity to enjoy themselves for the rest of the day.

 

In Britain, on the other hand, Sunday was a solemn all-day affair.  Shops, cinemas, theatres and other places of entertainment were closed.  Pub opening hours were severely restricted.  There were no football matches.  It was a day for long country walks or cycle rides, a good book and family board (but not card!) games.

 

 My parents were loyal Anglicans and regularly went to church on Sunday mornings and evenings.  They were by no means either fundamentalist or puritanical, but they did make it clear that there were some activities – noisy, violent or boisterous ones for example – that simply 'weren't done' on a Sunday.  I remember once, in all seriousness, asking my Mum what happened when 'Bonfire night' (5^th November) fell on a Sunday. 'It is held on the Saturday, of course', came the immediate reply.

           

In Britain now, of course, the Keep Sunday Special Brigade (of whom I was an ineffectual member!) has been totally defeated.  From many points of view, Sunday is no different from any other day.  Shop opening hours are restricted – for sales. However they may be open all day for 'browsing' – a loophole in the law of especial value to garden centres and furniture stores. Many pubs are open and full of customers throughout Sunday afternoons. Places of public entertainment are open and important football matches are played before cheering crowds.   Lorries and delivery vans thunder along our highways.  Religious broadcasting, which once occupied a high proportion of tv and radio Sunday time, now claims an ever-diminishing amount – and even that is resented by the ever more clamorous secularisation lobby.

           

It used to be claimed that one of the benefits of Sunday opening was that 'the whole family would be able to go along together to the garden centre or furniture store'.  And so they now can, except of course, those of its members who are among the growing army of people required to keep everything going on a Sunday!

 

And the Continental Sunday?   I had an unexpected opportunity to experience one on 24^th February.   To celebrate daughter-in-law Arlene's recent birthday and his own appointment to a job with the European Travel Agency in Brussels, much-travelled grandson Nick arranged to take Pete and Arlene, Zoe the dog (complete with newly issued dog-passport) and me across the Channel for a day in France.

 

            Driving off the ferry at Calais we headed south to Rheims where a warm, sunny day was forecast.  And so it proved to be.  We lunched at leisure at a pavement café (another 'first' for me), had a look round the town centre and visited the magnificent Cathedral.  I can't help thinking that even Richard Dawkins would have been moved by those soaring stone Gothic arches, the magnificent stained glass windows, and the quiet side chapels, lit only by the flames of the votive candles of the faithful.  Thinking of generation after generation of worshippers kneeling before those shrines gives new meaning to the creedal affirmation of belief  'in the communion of saints'.  I lit a candle and murmured a prayer in compensation for my absence that day from both church and Quaker meeting!

 

            There was no charge for entrance to the Cathedral, nor were we pressed for a financial contribution to the building's upkeep.  Many of the people walking round that day were non-Roman Catholic visitors like ourselves but I was struck by the reverential atmosphere that all helped to preserve.

           

Outside too, in the town, the only crowds were in the immediate vicinity of the town centre and the Cathedral.  There were plenty of busy cafes and restaurants there, but the only shops that we saw open were tobacconists and confectioners, offering in addition, picture postcards and souvenirs for tourists.  There were no noisy motor- cyclists, no 'boy racers' with car windows open and radios blaring 'rap' or 'rock', no all-pervading aroma of fried onions from burger bars or other 'fast food joints'.

 

Yes – the 'Continental Sunday' that we observed in Rheims brought back to me those well-remembered  'British Sabbaths' of 'before the war'!

 

…………………………………..

22.2.08

Tendring Topics On line

A Load of Rubbish!

Tending District Council and the Essex County Council, like all other authorities dependent on land-fill for waste becoming scarcer and more distant and, more immediately, the government is imposing a substantial financial penalty on local authorities using this method of disposal.

One way to reduce the amount of rubbish going into landfill is, of course, to increase the amount that is recycled. In this field I think that, with a couple of reservations, Tendring District Council deserves credit.

They have maintained weekly collections of refuse and have now introduced weekly on-the-same-day collections of recyclables. Many authorities have, as we have heard on tv and radio, gone over to fortnightly collections. I remember being assured by a national authority on environmental health that the reason that refuse should always be collected at least weekly is that the shortest span of the housefly's life cycle from egg to adult fly is, in warm sunny weather, seven days. Admittedly that assurance was given over 50 years ago, but I doubt very much if the housefly has changed its breeding habits in the past half century.

The Council has also issued us all with not-very-commodious green boxes into which to put our recyclable items for collection. I could have done with a bigger box, and I expect many other householders are the same. However, we can always put the excess in cardboard boxes or white or transparent plastic bags – and I understand that an extra green box can be obtained on request from the Council's Environmental Health Department.

My reservations? The biggest one is the Council's failure to include glass bottles and jars among the items that can be recycled. We can, so they say, take them to the nearest bottle bank. Bottles and jars are heavy and bulky. It would be all but impossible to take them to a bottle bank on foot, and difficult, possibly dangerous, to do so on a bicycle. It is OK with a car, of course, but it seems likely that making a special journey in a car to and from a bottle bank would cancel out any environmental benefit from the recycled glass.

Would we be better off with two or more wheelie bins each, rather than the existing 'black plastic sack' system – one wheelie bin for the landfill rubbish – and the other one or two for recyclables? The amount of landfill rubbish that I put out each week would barely cover the bottom of a wheelie bin! They would certainly look neater though than the piles of filled plastic bags that we see obstructing the footpath on collection day – and they would be less subject to the depredations of cats, seagulls and – perhaps – rats.

I think also, that the Council might do more to encourage those householders who never separate and put out their recyclables, to do so. It surely wouldn't be too difficult for someone to accompany the refuse collectors for a day or two. It would be found that some householders put out several black bags for landfill week after week, but never put out their green box or other receptacle with recyclables.

Some may have a reasonable excuse for this. Others certainly do not. Efforts could surely be made, first by persuasion and later, if necessary, by the application of sanctions on persistent defaulters, to get them to emulate their more civic-minded neighbours.

………………………………

'Got a blade?'

In the 1930s, the heroes of books and films popular with boys were often pugnacious characters who achieved their ends largely by violent means. 'Bulldog Drummond', for instance; he was an ex-service man of World War I (officer and gentleman, of course!) who specialised in foiling the machinations of international villains and their glamorous mistresses (always unaccountably referred to as 'adventuresses') and, also of course the plans of those 'beastly Bolsheviks'

Unlike James Bond (in some ways his modern counterpart), he rarely used weapons. He had, readers gathered, enormous fists and could be depended upon to deliver a crippling 'straight left' or shrewd 'right hook' to his opponents before the latter had the chance to draw his automatic or (especially he were a foreigner) his knife from its cunning concealment.

True Brits never, ever, used knives in their fights. Knives were used by 'dirty dagoes, rotten reds' and the like. We fought 'cleanly with our fists'.

From being an avid reader, I soon grew to dislike most things that Bulldog Drummond stood for. I have to say though that I much prefer his attitude to knives as weapons, to the one that seems to be current among some young people today. Few days go by without a report of an adult, or another child, being wounded or killed by a knife-wielding juvenile.

I applaud the government's efforts to stamp out knife crime, particularly among the young. No, I'm not another example of an old man having it in for young people. Young villains have to be discouraged from becoming old villains, who are even worse.

I was particularly interested by the government's discovery, which I hope will be widely publicised, that carrying a knife 'for defence' actually increases, instead of reduces, the risk of attack. It is easy to see how this happens. Two fifteen year olds who dislike each other, both know that the other carries a knife 'for defence'. They quarrel, possibly come to blows and then one of them remembers the sage old advice:

Twice armed is he who hath his quarrel just –

But three times he who gets his blow in fust!

He draws his knife – and tragedy (totally unpremeditated) ensues.

I wonder if the government's advisers have ever considered the possibility that the same principle may apply, not only in the playground, but also in international affairs?

Imagine two world powers with differing ideologies, full of mutual distrust, and both armed with nuclear weapons, purely 'for defensive purposes'. A dispute arises, perhaps over a badly needed resource in short supply (water, food, fuel oil – there are endless possibilities). As the situation worsens, one of the two powers becomes convinced that the other, who claims to have nuclear weapons purely for defence, is about to carry out a nuclear attack. The only option is to launch a 'pre-emptive strike'. The missiles reach their targets with dire effect, but not before the other power has had a chance to launch a counter-attack in kind.

Quite likely the originally feared nuclear attack would have been no more real than Saddam Hussein's fabled 'weapons of mass destruction'.

The result would be real enough! - not just the injury or death of one or more children but mass slaughter of innocent men, women and children on a scale previously unknown: Mutually Assured Destruction – M.A.D.

Never was there a more appropriate acronym!

………………………………………

16.2.08

Tendring Topics on Line

 

'Delivering Health Care!'

 

            The first item of news on BBCtv's Breakfast programme on Saturday 16^th February was one that I found chilling.

            A New-Labour Health Minister had pronounced that the day of the medical practice was fast disappearing.  It would, he forecast, be replaced by the provision of new and exciting 'Multiclinics' from which a team of doctors, armed with the very latest diagnostic, surgical and therapeutic equipment would 'deliver our health care'.  All this would, no doubt, be provided and managed by private firms co-operating closely with the local primary care authorities.

            Just, in fact, like the organisation that I mentioned on this blog a few weeks ago; the one that is proposing to provide a single up-to-the-minute Medical Centre (aka Multiclinic) to serve the sick and disabled of Holland-on-Sea and Great Clacton, to be situated midway between them and equally inconvenient for both!

            There are, I think, very few solitary 'Doc. Martin's' these days, struggling along completely on their own.  No wonder he's so bad tempered!  In the 52 years that I have been attending the same medical practice in Clacton (I ought really to get a long-service medal!) I have seen it grow from two struggling Scottish doctors (not unlike Dr. Cameron and Dr Finlay!) to a group practice of six doctors – four men and two women – working from enlarged and well-equipped premises well within the range of my iron horse (mobility scooter).

            I usually see the doctor who was so supportive of my wife, as her life was coming to an end. She paid a home visit on each one of those few terrible, but very precious, final days and bolstered my determination (which might otherwise have weakened) to nurse my wife at home to the end and allow her to depart from me peacefully, in her sleep, in her own bed, in her own home.

            I am usually able to see that very caring doctor but if I felt that I needed urgent attention, and she wasn't available, I would be happy to see any of the other doctors. I know nearly all of them and, of  course, they have my medical records immediately to hand.

            This surely is the way forward for general medical practice – the gradual growth and evolution of existing medical practices, serving a particular community, into economically viable units without the organisation or supervision of outside 'management experts' who are not, after all, giving their expertise to the NHS for nothing!

……………………………..

           

Third Millennium Newspeak!

            Quoting the Minister's remark about 'the delivery of health care' and finding myself writing about medical practices becoming 'viable economic units' (I wish I could think of an equally succinct alternative!) made me realize how much I dislike what, with due acknowledgement to George Orwell's '1984', I think of as Third Millennium Newspeak.

            It began, I think, in the 'avaricious '80s' when it first became fashionable to regard every human institution as a market stall, and every human activity as a commercial transaction.  Economic pundits on tv or radio would knowledgeably speak of 'Great Britain plc'. Public authorities and large private institutions no longer employed staff managers or even personnel officers but Directors of Human Resources.  Employees became Human Resource Units, ultimately no-doubt to be dehumanised a little further into HRUs!

            Market Forces Rule! OK?

            In my youth we had industry, commerce and public service.  Industry meant manufacturing things – anything from ocean liners to frying pans.  Commerce meant selling things, money lending and financial services generally.  Public Service meant  - well, public service.

            Nowadays everything is 'an industry'.  We have a 'Tourist Industry', a 'Banking Industry', an 'Entertainment Industry', and a 'Hospitality Industry' (anything from posh hotels to seedy escort agencies!).  There are many more.

            I suspect that in the unlikely event of a fluent Newspeaker finding himself in a Church (or Quaker Meeting House) on a Sunday morning he would describe what was going on around him as 'providing some input for the Faith industry'.

……………………………………

 

Renewable Energy

 

            From July 2004 until July 2006 I never looked at either a national or a local newspaper.  I feel sure that I must have heard the occasional news bulletin on tv or radio but I certainly never listened to one.  There could have been an earthquake, a tsunami, a revolution or a foreign invasion but unless it directly affected my corner of Clacton, I would have known about it only if a friend or relative made a point of telling me.

 

            One reason for this was that I had a developing cataract that made reading all but impossible but the overriding cause was the fact that during those two years I was the sole carer of my then almost totally disabled wife. It was a 24/7/52 job that left me with neither the time nor the inclination to do, or to think about, anything else. It was by no means a wholly unhappy time but it was one in which I knew virtually nothing about what was happening outside my home.

 

            Sadly, I lost my wife – after 60 years of marriage – on 12^th July 2006.  I slowly returned to the 'real world', had my cataract dealt with and looked around me.  I felt rather like a modern Rip Van Winkel.   Things had changed while I had been voluntarily incarcerated.  Prominent local people, with whom I had been acquainted, had died.   I had given up driving but had a shock when I discovered that the one-way traffic flow in Clacton's Rosemary Road had been reversed.   In early 2004 we had, I felt quite sure, been confidently looking forward to the provision – within months – of an offshore wind-farm on the Gunfleet Sands, four or five miles off Clacton's beach.

 

 Long before it became a popular cause I had been warning in my Tendring Topics (in print) column of the inevitable results of global warming and had urged the speedy development of clean and renewable sources of energy.  It had surely been not long before my world had been turned upside down in 2004 that I had attended an exhibition in the West Cliff Theatre mounted by the developers of the wind-farm.  Now, its provision seemed to have receded into the far distance.

 

            It seems though, that the distance into which it had receded wasn't quite as far as I had feared.  I am delighted to learn that a Danish Company, Dong Energy Renewables, which has already provided two wind-farms off the British coast, is beginning the installation of a thirty turbine wind farm on the Gunfleet sands almost immediately.

 

            There was an exhibition featuring the wind-farm development at Holland Public Hall on Friday 15^th February – no doubt very similar to the one that I had seen at the West Cliff Theatre a few years earlier.

 

            This time there seems to be a firm timetable for the installation.  The onshore work at Holland Haven where the supply cables will be brought ashore and thence to the existing electricity substation at Cooks Green.  Offshore work will begin in September and it is expected that the turbines will be installed and in use by next spring. 

 

            I am very pleased that this time the installers are a Danish Company. Denmark has unrivalled experience in the provision of wind-farms round its own shores. The Danes are fellow Europeans with a reputation for reliability. And, of course, many of us – particularly here in Eastern England – have Danish ancestors.

……………………………….

 

10.2.08

 

Tendring Topics (on line)

 

Sharia Law and the Archbishop

 

I am always a little uneasy when I find myself in agreement with the headline writers of the national press.  Could there be some valid and telling point that I have missed or failed to take into consideration?   However – if I'm to be honest – I have to say that, when I first read the Archbishop of Canterbury's reported comments about some parts of Sharia law being introduced into the United Kingdom, my  reaction wasn't very different from those of the newspaper headlines.

 

My shock was all the greater because I had hitherto considered all earlier reported pronouncements of the Archbishop to be very wise and far-sighted.

 

One thing that seems to have been overlooked amid all the tumult, is that British law already makes provision for the consciences of religious minorities – a circumstance that has been achieved over many centuries and by the blood of untold numbers of martyrs.

 

   The days when we burned errant Archbishops at the stake, when alleged witches were hanged, when Jews were persecuted and when those whose religious views differed from those of the majority could, at the very best, expect to languish in gaol for years, have thank God, long since gone.

 

We Quakers, for instance, are legally permitted to conduct our weddings in our own way, without the presence of either an ordained priest or minister or a government registrar. Many sincere Christians including Quakers, as well as agnostics, object to swearing oaths on the Bible in Court.  Jesus Christ, after all, said 'Swear not at all – but let your yea be yea and your nay be nay', which seems pretty unequivocal to me.  In court we are now allowed to make an affirmation rather than swear an oath.  Quakers are not alone in their testimony against all war and violence. This is accepted by law in the provision made for conscientious objection to military service. 

 

Other minorities are permitted to slaughter sheep and cattle for food in a way that would be illegal for the rest of us and to perform a ritual surgical operation on male infants that would otherwise be permitted only for a medical reason and by a qualified surgeon.

 

Perhaps in other fields there may be a demand for similar exemptions.  If a convincing case were to be made for them I am sure that Parliament would consider it.  It seems possible, from the Archbishop's later statement, that that was what he had meant.  I very much hope so – and wish that he had chosen his words a little more carefully.  But then, I am sure that he wishes that too!

 

The repercussions of the Archbishop's remarks have made me realize the need for leaders of every Christian tradition and indeed of every faith in this country to urge governments in every land in the world to grant and ensure the same rights for religious minorities (in many countries it will be a Christian minority) that adherents of every religion and every faith tradition enjoy in the United Kingdom:  the right to worship without fear or hindrance; the right to build their own places of worship;  the right to instruct children in their faith, to proselytise and to make and accept converts to their faith;  the right of any individual to change his or her faith without persecution or any temporal penalty.

 

I hope that our Government and the European Union would wholeheartedly support such a campaign – even in countries on which we are dependent for oil or with which we have lucrative arms contracts!

 

………………………………………

 

 

8.02.08

                     Tendring Topics (on line)

 

Where has all the Leisure gone?

 

            At the end of the 1960s, Clacton Council authorised my attendance, for two years, at a training course for 'Further Education Teachers' culminating in the City and Guilds of London qualifying examination.   It was held at the Further Education Centre, then at Green Lodge in Clacton's Old Road, and it involved my attendance there for half a day a week during term time.

           

It was thought that it would help me with the Environmental Health Education work and, in particular, the food hygiene education of local food handlers, in which as a public health inspector I had become increasingly involved.

           

I was one male among 30 ladies – most of whom were aspiring teachers of such skills as dress-making, keep-fit, home cooking, lace making, conversational French and the like.   Only a handful, of which I was one, stayed the course and passed the exam in the end.

           

The late 1960s, early 1970s, marked the dawning of the electronic age. I remember so well our earnest young tutor lecturing us about how important our jobs in further education were going to become in the coming years.  He enthused about the new technology that allowed robotic machines to manufacture cars and other complex items without the aid of human hands; the wonderful computers in the course of development that would eliminate hours of laborious accounting and clerical work and, of course, the teaching aids – video and audio tape recorders, closed circuit tv and so on – that would lighten the burden of the teacher. All of this, he confidently forecast, would hasten the speedy arrival of a new age of leisure, in which no-one would have to work more than two or three hours a day for perhaps a four-day week!

           

We teachers of further education would, he said, have the challenging but rewarding task of teaching our fellow men and women how to use all that unaccustomed leisure time pleasurably and profitably.  There could, he assured us, be no more important job in the new electronic age.

           

Well – the new electronic age arrived all right, complete with developments that I don't think even our starry-eyed young tutor had thought of.  What there isn't any sign of though, is all that promised leisure!  

           

It's quite the reverse, in fact.  Sundays are no longer the almost universal day of rest that they once were.  Early closing days – introduced to ensure that shop assistants had at least one afternoon off per week – are no more.  In many workplaces the leisurely 'lunch hour' has disappeared.  It is not unusual, I'm told, for staff to snatch a hurried sandwich lunch – with coffee from a machine – while sitting in front of the very computer that was supposed to release them from drudgery!

           

Everybody nowadays takes it for granted that, at least until the first child arrives, both husbands and wives will remain in full-time employment.  When that  child does arrive, the young mother anxiously seeks out child care arrangements so that she can resume employment as soon as possible.

           

The government threatens the disabled with loss of their disability pay unless they actively seek out such work as they are capable of doing.  Those who happen to live in Council accommodation are now threatened with the additional penalty of loss of their tenancy if they fail to do this.  I wouldn't have thought that that was legally possible – but there, politicians make the laws and I suppose that politicians can change them.

           

What has happened to all that promised leisure?  I suppose that one factor is that our aspirations have changed.  Every household nowadays, if it's to 'keep up with the Joneses' needs at least one car (preferably two) standing in the driveway, at least one overseas holiday a year, a tv, dvd player and a music centre, freezer, refrigerator, micro-wave cooker, automatic washing machine and dishwasher, the latest vacuum cleaner and possibly floor polisher. Gadgetry that it had been thought would release the housewife from domestic drudgery merely makes it possible for her to be enlisted as a wage-slave!  Then all members of the family will expect to have their own mobile phone and digital camera, plus very likely, their own laptop and, for the kids, a tv set in each bedroom!

           

Other factors have been the rocketing inflation of house prices and the perceived need of every young couple, and young man or woman living alone, to 'get onto the house ownership ladder', plus, of course, the fact that many of us are deeply in taken-for-granted debt on a scale that would have been unthinkable back in the early '70s.

           

That young tutor was fifteen or twenty years younger than me.  He may well  have recently retired. I wonder if he is now seeking a part-time job to supplement his pension?

……………………………………………

 

Candlemas

     On Saturday morning, 2^nd February, BBCtv's 'Breakfast' programme transported viewers across the Atlantic to tell us about a piece of New England folk lore.  Today, we were told, was Ground Hog Day.   This is the day on which the 'ground hog' (American for badger, I think) emerges from hibernation, creeps out of his burrow, and looks around.

            New England is generally snow-covered at this time of the year.  If the ground hog can see his shadow on the snow (in other words if he notes that the sun is shining) he knows that winter isn't over.  He creeps back into his burrow and resumes his hibernation.  If, on the other hand he can't see his shadow, I assume that he yawns, stretches and begins to snuffle around.

            There was really no need to transport us quite so far, even if it was only in cyberspace, for a long range weather forecast of this kind.

            In 'old England' 2^nd February has long been known as Candlemas. Before the Reformation it was the day on which the parish priest would bless all the candles that were to be used in the church throughout the coming year.  He would seize the opportunity to remind his flock that Jesus Christ was the 'true light' who enlightens everyone in the world and that he was 'made flesh and dwelt among us' some fifteen hundred years (or whatever) earlier.  Nowadays on that date the Church remembers the presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple at Jerusalem. As in New England it is also a day on which it is possible to know if the long winter is coming to an end.

            Our folklore proclaims:  'If Candlemas be clear and bright, winter will have another flight; If Candlemas be dull with rain, winter has passed and will not come again'.   It is surprising how often this prophecy is fulfilled.

            Probably the accelerating progress of global warming will have upset whatever weather cycle produced this piece of folk wisdom.

            However – this year you may remember Saturday 2^nd February as having been bitterly cold but, at least here in sunny Clacton-on-Sea, with wall to wall sunshine throughout most of the hours of daylight.   I don't think that I shall be putting my winter overcoat away just yet!

…………………………..

 

 

                                                                        

2.2.08

Tendring Topics

 

Does the LIFT work?

 

            Who do you imagine has overall responsibility for the 'construction and management of new facilities for the delivery of health care', in Colchester and the Tendring District?

            No, it isn't, as you may imagine, the NHS.  They merely pay for it.  Responsibility now rests with a limited company called Realise Health Ltd established by a partnership between the Colchester and Tendring Primary Care Trusts with the Mill Group, and Partnerships for Health, set up under the Government's LIFT (Local Improvement Finance Trust) initiative.

            The first two projects undertaken by Realise Health Ltd were Harwich's new Fryatt Hospital and Dovercourt Care Centre, and the new Primary Care Centre in Colchester.   I don't know how Colchester's Primary Care Centre is getting along but the Fryatt Hospital has made the regional news bulletins on radio and tv by having buckling floors, ill-fitting doors and, so it was alleged on tv, a kitchen unsuitable for use, within just over two years of its official opening.

            Among their future projects, so the company's web site proclaims, is the provision of the Great Clacton and Holland Primary Care Centre.  Readers of the web site unacquainted with local geography might well imagine that Great Clacton and Holland were immediately adjoining communities and that the Primary Care centre was going to be equally convenient for residents of both of them.  They do not adjoin and the best that can be said for the chosen site off Clacton's Valley Road is that it is equally inconvenient for them both.  It is situated on an industrial estate with not a single human habitation within easy walking distance!  The only possible way the sick and disabled of both Great Clacton and Holland-on-Sea will be able to visit it will be by mechanical transport – a private car? A taxi? A special bus service perhaps?   Hardly a good idea from the point of view of global warming – or that of the interests of folk needing medical care!

            The published CVs of the Directors of  Realise Health Care Ltd reveal an impressive record of achievement in finance, in the management of major building and engineering projects, and in marketing.  None of them though appears to have had experience in the front line (or even back at the base!) of the practicalities of the provision of health or welfare care.

            Perhaps, in the twenty-first century, knowledge and experience of the management of material and human resources and of their financing, is considered more important than detailed knowledge of the use that is made of those resources.

I would have thought though that that would have included a knowledge of where not  to provide a facility for use by the sick and disabled, and how to build a structure that doesn't develop major structural faults within a little over two years.

            It was interesting to hear on 'Look East' (BBCtv) our Conservative MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, questioning the value of the whole system of LIFT and PFI (private finance initiative) under which the Fryatt, and other hospitals and public buildings have been built and are managed in recent years.   These schemes, which give commercial enterprises an interest in vital public services, were, of course, welcomed – indeed created – by the New Labour government.

            I suspect that the pioneers of the Labour Movement – Keir Hardie, George Lansbury and their contemporaries – must be turning in their graves.

……………………………………….

 

                     The Price of Fitness

             When deciding the charges that it will make for the provision of a service to members of the public, any commercial firm will try to maximise its profits by setting those charges at the highest level that sufficient of its customers are prepared to pay – but, quite obviously, not so high that a rival can undercut them.

            The aim of a public authority should surely be quite different.  It should consider any subsidy that it considers reasonable to make from national or local taxation and then set the charges at the very lowest rate at which it can continue to offer the service.

            I wonder if Tendring Council really followed this principal in setting the new charges for their 'Lifestyles Fitness Suite' (a posh name for a gym!) at the Clacton Leisure Centre.   It is true that the suite recently had a revamp at the staggering cost of £2.77 million.  Did the existing customers – on whom the gym has depended for its existence in the past – really want a revamp on this scale, or was it done in the hope of attracting another lot of overweight, and well-heeled, customers from 'out there somewhere?'

            The switch from a £21 a month contract to £35 (without the use of sauna and solarium) quoted in the Clacton Gazette does seem staggering to me.  I take the point that there are lower fees for those on means-tested benefit but I have little doubt that there is a biggish income gap between those whose income is low enough to attract benefit and those who are sufficiently well off to be able comfortably to afford the new charges.

            It is claimed that 220 customers have already signed the new contracts.  On the other hand a similar number have already signed the petition protesting and, no doubt, both numbers will continue to rise.

            How committed are the protestors to their cause?  I think it likely that the Fitness Suite needs its customers even more than its customers need the Fitness Suite.  A boycott of the new Suite by the members of the 'Fighting for Fair Fees' Group (if there are sufficient of them and they are sufficiently resolute) accompanied by low-key and – of course – peaceful continuous picketing, might well have more effect on the Council than any number of signatures on a petition

…………………………….

 

'It seems but yesterday………'

 

            One of the odder effects of old age (my old age anyway) is the way in which time gone by concertinas.   Events that, on reflection I know took place fifteen or twenty years ago - seem to be no more than a year or so in the past.

 

            When, for instance, we read in the press the depressingly frequent reports of yet more British soldiers killed by Taliban fanatics among the mountains and on the plains of Afghanistan it seems to me but yesterday that the press, the politicians and many members of the public were applauding and covertly supporting the killing of similar soldiers, by much the same fanatics in those same places.

 

            Then, of course, the press didn't refer to the killers as the fanatical Taliban but as gallant Mojihadin ('holy warriors') and their victims weren't 'our boys' but members of the Soviet armed forces.  Believe me, Russian and Ukrainian young women feel the pain of widowhood every bit as much as their British counterparts.  Nor do their children suffer less as orphans than ours, or their parents and grandparents grieve less for the loss of their sons or grandsons.  Pain and loss know nothing of national, ethnic or ideological boundaries.

 

            Although, to us, our forces and their purposes seem fundamentally different from those of the former Soviet Union, I doubt very much if they appear so to the 'Holy Warriors' of Afghanistan.  Both our forces and those of the Soviets, were armies of foreigners and of infidels.  Both were intent on undermining centuries of Afghan tradition by, for instance, attempting to break the power of the local war lords,  stopping the cultivation of opium poppies, educating girls and boys equally, permitting women to 'dress immodestly' and 'behave like men', and preventing such divinely ordained punishments as the stoning to death of women for adultery and the exaction of the death penalty for 'apostasy'.

 

            From that viewpoint I doubt if there is much discernable difference between our Union Flag, and the Soviet Red Flag with its hammer and sickle.              

……………………………………..