Week 17/08

                               Tendring Topics -  on line

 

Hard-up Tendring

 

            It must have come as something of a shock to affluent residents of Frinton and to the 'county or professional folk' living in or around the villages in our rural areas, to learn from the daily 'Coast Gazette' on Monday 21^st April, that their desirable residences or stately homes were situated in the most deprived local government district in Essex.  Whether they would have felt better for knowing that without their presence in the area we would have been even higher up the 'most deprived district' table is open to question.

 

            This assessment comes from the Government's recently published 'English Indices of Deprivation'.  This shows Tendring as being 103^rd out of the 353 most deprived areas in the UK compared, for instance with Colchester as the 224^th and Chelmsford the 312^th.  Outside our county, Ipswich, which I still think of as my hometown despite having lived in Clacton for over half a century, is even higher up the list than us, at 99^th!  This is definitely one of those tables in which it is better to be nearer the bottom than the top!

 

            This revelation suggests that Tendring's (and Ipswich's) residents have a more-than-average interest in the current debate about the abolition of the lowest band of income tax simultaneously with the reduction in the general rate in the pound of this tax.  I had hardly expected the government to reinforce quite so blatantly the point I have tried to make in earlier blogs, that our whole social and economic system is geared to ensure that the less money you have, the less you're likely to get and the more you will  to have to pay for almost anything that you need. 

 

            It seems though that this latest act of robbing the poor to help the rich (Robin Hood in reverse!) has proved too much for the heirs of Wat Tyler and John Ball, the Chartists, the Tolpuddle Martyrs and the Jarrow Hunger-Marchers.  A rebellion among New-Labour's own supporters that could be neither stifled nor quelled has forced concessions from the Government for at least some of those seriously affected by the Budget.  The exact nature of these concessions has yet to be revealed but their promise has been enough to deflect a back bench revolt.  I wish that I could feel that this partial U-turn has been prompted by a late realization that a grave injustice had been done to vulnerable people – and not simply because it is hoped that the change of policy will minimise electoral disadvantage!

 

            One thing that strikes me about the whole business is how little Members of Parliament seem able to anticipate the consequences of their actions.  The proposals that have caused the uproar were clearly set out in the Budget that was debated by the whole House.  Yet there was little evidence of outrage from members until the beginning of the new financial year when the Budget's measures began to take effect. Then, of course, MPs began to receive anguished letters from their constituents and realized that there was more to supporting or opposing the Government's policy than cleverly scoring political debating points.  Real hardship was being caused to real people – real people moreover who had votes!

 

            I'm glad that those who will be most seriously affected by the Budget seem likely to receive at least some kind of compensation. I doubt if I personally would have been very much affected one way or the other.  My income isn't above that magic level of £18,000 a year at which one could expect to benefit from the income tax changes.  On the other hand, it isn't so far below it that I would have been likely to suffer from any small increase in taxation. I have no debts, my mortgage has long since been paid off, I have no dependents, and I don't have to meet the cost of getting to and from work every day. Also of course, one of the decidedly mixed blessings of being nearer 90 than 80 is the steadily decreasing number of opportunities there are to spend money on 'selfish pleasures!'  Nowadays I don't have to think too much about 'resisting temptation'.  Temptation has lost interest in me!

 

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                 St. George's Day – and other Anniversaries

 

            Robert Browning wrote, in a poem that every school child learns (or did learn in my day!) 'Oh, to be in England, now that April's there'. Chaucer considered that April was a good month to venture out on pilgrimage and it must surely have been in that month that the author of the Biblical 'Song of Songs' declared, 'Rise up, my love, my fair one and come away.  For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.  The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land'.

 

            It's true that the author of the 'Song of Songs' didn't live in southern East Anglia and that in the Middle East the departure of winter and arrival of spring is possibly a little more dependable than it is here.  However, fickle as it may have been this year, April, with its rapidly changing weather patterns, its occasional warm sunshine and heavy showers, is surely the most English of months.  It is wholly appropriate therefore that today (yes, 'I'm typing these words on 23^rd April') should be the festival of England's patron saint – the day on which we don't have to think of ourselves as being primarily part of a Special Relationship or of Nato or the EU or even of the United Kingdom but, just for twenty-four hours, we can be – as our first Queen Elizabeth put it - 'mere English'.

 

            It must be said that there was nothing very 'English' about St George.  He was, by all accounts, a Greek legionary in the Roman army, born in what is now Turkey, who was martyred in Palestine during a period of Christian persecution under the Emperor Diocletian.  However, I have often thought that, as with many saints and other famous people, the legend is ultimately of no less importance than historical fact.  My abiding image of St George is of a gallant knight boldly slaying an evil dragon - and there is no shortage of dragons (the dragons of greed, selfishness, hatred, fear, injustice, poverty and ignorance) to combat both in the world and in England today. 

 

            'I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, till I have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land'.  Goodness, I keep forgetting that I'm really too old these days even for mental fight!

 

            It is surely also appropriate that Shakespeare, the writer whose works most clearly typify England (and are known and revered in every corner of the civilised world) was born on 23^rd April and, so it is believed, also died on that day.

 

 23^rd April has also been a significant date in my own life.   It was 62 years ago today that, after seven years in uniform, I was finally discharged from H.M. Forces – and was married (to the girl I had met seven years earlier – on the day that World War II began) just four days later, on 27^th April.  It was also exactly 29 years ago today that my younger son Andy and daughter-in-law Marilyn, were married.

 

            G.K.Chesterton, early twentieth century poet, essayist and author of the 'Father Brown' detective stories was an enthusiast for St. George and for the observation of his feast day.  However, a satirical poem of his entitled 'Empire Day' (for which he felt a good deal less enthusiastic) began:

 

                  The Day of St George is a musty affair

That Russians and Greeks are permitted to share.

 

- and I, for one, am happy enough to share it with them.  It is certainly a day that, for personal as well as patriotic reasons, I am unlikely ever to forget.

 

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More Privatisation by Stealth?

 

            What are we to make of the revelation, headlined on the front page of yesterday's (St. George's Day's) Clacton Gazette, of the creation of a limited company, Tendring Regeneration Ltd., financed by £1.26 million pounds of taxpayers' money (our money!) to launch regeneration projects throughout the Tendring District?

 

            It is, in fact, difficult to make anything very much of it because although the first meeting of its Board of Directors took place on Tuesday of this week (22^nd April), this meeting, unlike those of the Tendring Council and its Committees, was held in private.  It seems that a number of Tendring Councillors, including some who are members of the ruling 'majority group' had no idea that it was taking place.

 

I had imagined that we had elected the members of the council to deal with any regeneration that our district needs.  Surely they, and their fairly-generously-paid senior officers are capable of formulating and discussing such schemes in the open. It would be nice too if we residents had an opportunity to say what we think of these schemes before they start to swallow our money.

 

            Mind you, the new company won't be actually doing a great deal of regenerating for the moment.  First, so David Lines, Council leader and a Director of Tendring Regeneration Ltd. is reported as saying 'the company will set about fundraising to make sure it will be able to continue its existence, before identifying regeneration projects to work on'.  They hope to start work on regeneration projects in the autumn.

 

            Councillor – and Director – David Lines says that company law compels the Board meetings to be held in private. 'The fail-safe is an annual report back to the council, talking about finances and particular projects, showing the progress made and the targets'.   I don't think that if Tendring Council decided to hold all future council and committee meetings in private – but promised that they would produce a report on their activities at the end of the year, the press and the public would consider it to be much of a 'fail-safe'!     

 

            The new regeneration company sounds to me suspiciously like 'Realise Health Ltd' that has now taken over the provision and management of new hospitals and health care within the Colchester and Tendring Districts. If you want to  assess their performance – just pop over to Dovercourt and check on the structure and catering facilities of the Fryatt Memorial Hospital!

 

            I hope that I won't wake up one morning to find that Tendring Regeneration Ltd is busily 'regenerating' my corner of Clacton.  I have an idea that I, and probably most of my neighbours, would much prefer it to remain as it is.

 

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A Welcome U-turn?

 

            One of the most difficult things for any public authority to say is:  'Sorry – we may have got it wrong.  We'll look at it again'.  Private firms don't find saying those words all that easy either!

 

            Tendring Council therefore are to be congratulated on having done just that with regard to the bus passes recently issued to over 30,000 pensioners in our district.  These passes now give free travel on any regular bus service in England but, on weekdays, they are valid only after 9.30 a.m. – not after 9.00 a.m. as the previous passes had been.

 

            This has provoked fierce protest, particularly from pensioners who had regular early hospital or doctor's appointments, those who needed to get to Colchester early because it would be just the first stage of their journey elsewhere – to Ipswich for instance - and those who saw half-empty buses in use on our roads between 9.00 a.m. and 9.30.              

 

            Now the Council has promised to reconsider their decision and hope that it may be possible to restore the original starting time.  I hope so too.

 

It should, mind you, be born in mind that while 9.30 a.m. was a silly starting time in our district it wasn't necessarily so elsewhere.   In London and – I have no doubt – other big cities, many employers have staggered the hours of work of their staff to try to ease the crush and congestion during the 'rush hour'.  On my occasional visits to the capital I have seen many buses crowded and with 'standing room only' at any time up to 9.30 a.m. as they transport people to work. Under those circumstances it would, I think, surely be unreasonable for pensioners to add to the congestion by expecting free travel.

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Week 16.08

                             Tendring Topics – on line

 

White Elephant into Silk Purse?

 

            Last week I recorded the transformation in our area of the 'sows ears' of refuse tips into the 'silk purses' of recreation grounds, country parks and industrial estates.  Is it just possible that a similar miracle can transform a local 'white elephant'  into a job-creating, regeneration-inducing 'silk purse' for Clacton?

 

            That is what is promised with the projected transformation by the Ascott Group, of the former Woolwich call centre in Jackson Road, Clacton into a 57 room Travelodge Hotel, plus flats, a restaurant, a bar, and shops.  The total proposed investment is said to be in the region of £13 million and would be expected to result in the creation of nearly 50 jobs as well as revitalising that particular corner of Clacton's town centre

 

It all sounds too good to be true – and I can only hope that it isn't! 

 

The trouble is that Clacton has seen  too many similarly splendid schemes that have foundered after getting past the 'Our artist's impression' stage.   Do you remember the redevelopment that was going to transform the High Street, the High Street Car Park and the western side of Carnarvon Road between the Public Library and the High Street traffic lights?   It was considered so certain that for several years an artist's impression of the transformed area was included in Clacton Council's and later Tendring District Council's holiday guide.

 

In 1973, the year before Clacton was to be merged into the new Tendring District, I was Clacton's Housing Manager.   I urged that the new Council's Housing Department should be allowed to remain at Westleigh House in Carnarvon Road where Clacton Council tenants knew they could pay their rents and both tenants and applicants for housing knew they could call to make enquiries.   'Impossible', I was told.  Westleigh House was destined to be demolished under the redevelopment scheme.

 

I notice that Westleigh House is still there and is still used as Council Offices (though not by the Housing Department) and that the artist's impression of the new development has long since been banished from the Holiday Guide.

 

Then, of course, there was the wonderful Theme Park that was to be built on the former site of Butlin's Holiday Camp.  For a short while local councillors of all parties vied with each other in their claims that it was they who had persuaded the developers to come to Clacton.  I had retired from the Council by that time and was a full-time freelance writer including, among other things, writing advertising features for Essex County Newspapers. In this connection I interviewed the management of the new 'Theme Park' and I now blush to think of the glowing report about it that I made!

 

It was, in fact, hopelessly under-capitalised and rapidly degenerated into a rather expensive amusement park before folding altogether. 

 

Then again, for decades hotels all along Clacton's sea front have been closing and being replaced by flats.  Is there any reason to suppose that a new hotel, situated away from the sea front in arguably a less attractive position, will fare any differently?  Perhaps there is.  I certainly hope so.

 

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                                     Two Centenaries

Five Bob a Week!

 

            Two centenaries occur this year that are of interest to me. The first is the anniversary of the introduction of 'Old Age Pensions' in August 1908.

 

            Did you know that, prior to 1908, people without savings (which meant virtually all 'working class' people) had two options when they became too old and feeble to work.  They might be supported by the generosity of their families – or they could spend their final years in the workhouse – and in those days conditions in workhouses were a good deal more unpleasant than in today's prisons!

 

            No wonder they had large families in the first few years of the twentieth century!  The more children you had the better was the chance that one or two of them would be able to spare a shilling or two a week to help Mum and or Dad in their old age.  My mother, for instance, born in an agricultural cottage in 1888, had five brothers and four sisters.  It was very noticeable that not one of them had a large family and several of their offspring – including myself – were 'only children'.

 

            In 1908 the situation changed for ever.  A non-contributory pension of five shillings (25p) a week at 70 became the right of every man or woman who needed it.  Yes, it was means tested but, as Cliff Horne of the Eastern Region North Pensioners' Association points out in an article in the East Anglian Daily Times it established that the state had a responsibility for providing a pension in old age. What's more, five shillings a week, believe it or not, represented about 25 percent of average earnings at that time whereas today's state pension is worth only 14.70 percent of average earnings.

 

            Yes, it does seem incredible but there has been quite a lot of inflation since 1908.   If you have ever read Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford (as distinct from watching the tv series) you'll also know that wages – particularly agricultural wages (and there were many more agricultural workers in those days than there are today) at the beginning of the 20^th Century were abysmally low.

 

A Long Weekend?

 

            The other centenary?   Oh yes, it was that of the Territoral Army.  My own military career was totally undistinguished (after seven years I was discharged from the army with the same rank that I had on enlistment; gunner!), and I have long since embraced the Quaker testimony against all war and violence. 

 

However, I did hear the centenary discussed on the BBC tv's Breakfast programme on 15^th April.  There was, I discovered, still enough of the 'old soldier' left in me for my hackles to rise when, during the course of an interview with a member of today's TA – just back from a few months in Afghanistan (I wouldn't for one moment suggest that that was anything other than very unpleasant and very dangerous) – I heard members of the old Territorial Army patronisingly referred to as 'weekend warriors'.

 

            I volunteered for the TA, in a flush of patriotic and anti-Nazi fervour, in the early months of 1939 at the age of 17.  I joined a local Artillery Regiment for no other reason than that their drill nights didn't coincide with my 'night-school' (evening classes we'd call them today) nights.   I was called up for full-time service on 2^nd September 1939, the day before Britain declared war on Germany.  My regiment served as part of Britain's anti-invasion defences until July 1941 when we embarked on a troopship bound for the Middle East.

 

            Throughout the winter, spring and early summer of 1941/1942 we were in almost continuous action in what was then referred to in the News Bulletins as 'the Western Desert' – the area extending westwards into Libya from the Egyptian frontier.  Among our successes were the capture of Bardia and of the strongly defended Wadi Halfaya ('Hellfire Pass').  We were however part of the garrison of Tobruk when it was overwhelmed by Rommel's Afrikakorps on 21^st June 1942.  I spent the remainder of the war in Europe as a POW first in Italy and later in Germany

 

            I freed myself (with a great deal of help from the Soviet Army!) on 8th May 1945 and arrived back home in Ipswich just ten days later – on my 24^th birthday!  I was however destined to spend another eleven months in the army before eventual discharge on 23^rd April 1946.

 

            It was a long time ago.  I have since spent happy holidays in Italy and Germany and have German friends whose friendship I value no less than my English ones.

 

            However it still irks me to hear my comrades of the 67^th Medium Regiment RA (TA) – about 100 (out of 700 to 800) of whom never returned to England – patronisingly referred to as 'weekend warriors'.   September 1939 till April 1946 was quite a long weekend!

 

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Privatisation by Stealth?

 

            Yesterday I read in the daily Coast Gazette that Colchester Liberal Democrat MP Bob Russell had strongly opposed plans for a private medical treatment centre to be provided within a new Community Hospital to be built in Rayne Road, Braintree.  I'm glad that at least one Essex MP has had the common sense and courage to protest at what he described as a 'direct attack' on the NHS.

 

            This morning (17^th April) I heard a New-Labour Health Minister again extolling the virtues of the multi-purpose medical centres – packed with consultants and provided with all the latest space-age equipment – that he believes are destined to replace those old-fashioned medical practices.   Some of these, he mentioned in passing, may well be owned and managed by private firms.

 

            All of which, like the PFI and LIFT schemes that are nowadays providing and managing our hospitals and clinics, can only be seen as further attempts to give private enterprise control of the National Health service.

 

            We have seen some of the effects of that policy in the structural and design problems revealed at Dovercourt's  Fryatt Memorial Hospital after less than two years of operation – and in the intended site of the Super Health Centre with which private enterprise proposed to replace the existing medical provision in Great Clacton and Holland-on-Sea.

 

            I understand that the new Norwich University Hospital – built under the PFI (private finance initiative) – hasn't been without its 'teething problems' either!

 

I wonder how many Labour Party members realized that in getting rid of 'Clause 4' of the Labour Party's constitution they were not just voting out the  ridiculous idea that all Britain's economic problems could be solved by public ownership of every human activity.  They were also voting in the at least equally absurd idea that every public service would function better if it were owned and managed by private companies governed by market forces.

 

Discussing this privatisation by stealth in an earlier blog I said that I thought that Keir Hardie and George Lansbury, pioneers of the Labour Movement must be turning in their graves.  I wonder what Liberal Lord Beveridge, who first envisaged the Welfare State and Socialist Nye Bevan, creator of the NHS, would have thought of it all?

 

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Week 15/'08

                             Tendring Topics – on line

 

Dovercourt's Fryatt Hospital – Again!

 

            Steven Henderson, Chairman of Harwich Town Council, says that many local residents have been feeling let down by the failure of the local Primary Care Trust with regard to the Fryatt Hospital and Mayflower Medical Centre in Main Road, Dovercourt.  These facilities were opened in September 2006. They had been long-awaited but were now falling far short of hopes and expectations.

 

            Mr Henderson said, 'As soon as the hospital was built the floors started to bubble up everywhere and now need to be replaced.  They also built a kitchen that's not fit for service, so meals have to be transferred from Colchester to Harwich'.

 

            Oh dear!  If only Councillor Henderson had been a reader of 'Tendring Topics – on line' he'd have known (see blog posted on 2.2.08) that the Tendring Primary Care Trust was not responsible for the construction of the Fryatt Hospital. Nor are they responsible for its maintenance.  The 'construction and management of new facilities for the delivery of health care' throughout the Tendring and Colchester Districts are now, thanks to the Government's LIFT (Local Improvement Finance Trust) initiative, the responsibility of a Limited Company called Realise Health Ltd in which the Colchester and Tendring PCTs are partners (I suspect junior partners!), with the Mill Group and Partnerships for Health.

 

            LIFT and the not-dissimilar PFI (private finance initiative) schemes are intended to bring the rigours of the market place and the hard realities of private enterprise and private finance into public service areas previously dominated by 'fuddy-duddy public servants, well-meaning amateurs and woolly minded do-gooders'.

 

            At Harwich's Fryatt Hospital, completed and officially opened less than two years ago, the results of this bold effort to drag public services into the 21st century can be seen by all!   I notice that Realise Health Ltd., prominent enough at the time of the official opening, is currently keeping well in the background now that chickens are coming home to roost!  It was a PCT spokeswoman who announced that the Trust was working 'with Realise Health' to replace 30 to 40 percent of the flooring.  It might have been imagined that 'Realise Health' were independent consultants with no responsibility whatsoever for the hospital's present state.

 

            'Once a timetable has been agreed we expect it to be completed and the hospital fully operational within three to six months' she said. Then, perhaps as an afterthought, she added, 'Kitchens at the Fryatt Hospital also need work to bring them up to standard, and we are planning to do this once the flooring issues have been resolved. In the meantime, food will continue to be brought in from Colchester General Hospital, which is a perfectly acceptable process and does not affect the quality of food the patients receive'.  Well, that's reassuring.  It almost, but not quite, makes you wonder if there was any need to provide the Fryatt with a kitchen at all!

 

 It would also have been nice if the spokesperson had told us who had been responsible for laying floors that, according to Councillor Henderson, failed almost immediately, and who had planned and supervised the installation of a kitchen that was incapable of fulfilling its purpose.

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                            Ultra-violet Light – and Ozone.

 

            Further official warnings about the dangers of 'acquiring a tan' by means of a sun-bed, remind me that very different attitudes from those that prevail today existed 'between-the-wars' towards a great many matters concerning personal health.

 

            In those days exposure to sunshine was reckoned to be an unreservedly good and healthy thing.  Folk applied sun cream before sunbathing, not because the sun's rays were considered to be in any way dangerous but simply to avoid painful burns. 

 

Ultra-violet light was regarded as especially beneficial.  Ipswich's Northgate Secondary Schools for boys and girls, of which I was among the first intake, were completed and opened in 1931. At the time they were at the very cutting edge of modern school architecture, with enormous windows on the sunny side of each classroom with, so it was said, special glass that let the life-giving ultra violet rays through.  I am inclined to think that perfectly ordinary glass was, in fact, used.  The windows certainly let the sunlight pour in though – making schoolwork all but impossible on sunny days.

 

            I left school in 1937 to work in Ipswich Corporation's Public Health Department.  Among the health services provided at the Department's Elm Street headquarters was artificial sunray treatment for young children.  I remember one day having to take a message to the nurse in charge of this operation.  I opened the door of the treatment room to be temporarily blinded by the dazzling light of an enormous sunlamp under which about twenty scantily clad but goggle-wearing toddlers were disporting themselves.

 

            Perhaps, at that time, that wasn't quite the silly and potentially dangerous idea that it seems to us today.  In the '20s and '30s many children in urban areas did suffer from sunlight deprivation as a result of the permanent fog of smoke from industrial processes and coal fires that then hung over most cities.  Sunray treatment undoubtedly played a part in the virtual elimination of childhood rickets during those years.  Also, of course, the natural light from the sun was probably rather less lethal than it is today.   It was before the serious depletion of the ozone layer, high in the stratosphere, which filters out much of the damaging ultra violet light.

 

            Which reminds me that in those days we regarded ozone very differently from the way we do today.  Most of us had an idea that ozone was a kind of 'super-charged' oxygen.  Oxygen, we knew, was essential to life so it followed that ozone had to be specially beneficial.  The air around the coast was supposed to be particularly rich in this life-giving stuff – a notion that seaside resorts did nothing to dispel!

 

            Strolling behind any holidaying or 'weekending' family walking from the railway station to the sea (remember, this was in the 'bad old days' before Beeching, when a railway network covered virtually the whole of England and there was a reliable train service even at weekends and during public holidays!) you would hear the father of the family say, 'Stop a moment and take a deep breath.  You can smell the ozone blowing in from the sea.  Isn't it wonderful?'

 

            It's true that we had a Science Master at school who assured us that ozone was an odourless but poisonous gas and that the smell that was noticeable as we approached the sea was that of decomposing seaweed.   No-one took any notice of him though!

 

            Perhaps this idea too, may not have been quite as silly as it now seems.   Whatever may have been the source of the distinctive seaside smell there is no doubt that breathing the clean, if sometimes chilly, air that blows in off the sea was and is beneficial to lungs that have grown accustomed to air polluted by vehicle exhaust fumes. I am told that in the immediate post-war years a publicity slogan used to attract visitors to Clacton was 'Champagne air – Rainfall rare!'   No-one in the late '40s and early '50s ever became drunk on that notionally intoxicating air.  Similarly there were no fatal casualties from the notionally 'ozone' charged air of the '20s and '30s!

 

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                            'Sow's Ear' into 'Silk Purse'?

 

            Landfill, once regarded as a cheap and simple means of refuse disposal, has fallen out of favour these days.  We are fast running out of both suitable and unsuitable sites and it is wasteful of potentially valuable salvageable resources.  Now, to encourage recycling and conserve the land, the Government imposes a charge on local authorities for every ton of rubbish disposed of in this way.  It is no longer economically viable.

 

It is worth remembering that in the past, especially where there were disused sand or gravel pits scarring the landscape, landfill – or as we then called it – 'controlled tipping' often served a very useful purpose.

 

When, over half a century ago, my family and I moved into the bungalow in Clacton's Dudley Road in which I still live today there was a pit of this kind just a few hundred yards away.  It was called 'Smith's pit' and was in the rear of dwellings on the southern side of St Osyth Road.  A German bomber had crashed into it during World War II.  Since then it had been very slowly accumulating fly-tipped rubbish - old mattresses, rusting metal water tanks, dead cats and the like.

           

            Clacton Council took it over and filled it by means of the controlled tipping of household waste - 6ft deep layers of refuse were compacted and covered with a 1ft layer of soil which was again compacted before a further layer of refuse was added.

Smith's Pit is now the site of Clacton's small but busy Ford Road Industrial Estate – named incidentally, not after the motor manufacturer, but after Ben Ford, a Clacton  Labour Councillor and later an M.P., who was almost-a-neighbour of mine in Dudley Road. 

 

            Then there was Rush Green Tip where, thanks to controlled tipping, there is now the Clacton Town Football Field, a recreation ground and the County Council's Civic Amenity recycling centre.

 

            Latest to join the ranks of the conversions of Rubbish Dump to Civic Amenity is the former Martin's Farm tip in St. Osyth (just off the 'back road' from Clacton to Colchester.)  For many years used for landfill waste disposal, this 60 acre site, with views over Brightlingsea and St. Osyth Creek, has been developed during the past eight years as a sanctuary for wildlife and is now nearing the completion of its transformation into the Tendring District's largest country park.  

 

            Essex County Council, owners of the site, are organising an open day there on Saturday 31^st May, between 10.30 a.m. and 4.00 p.m.  Community groups and organisations are invited to take part.  St Osyth Primary School and the Essex County Council's recycling publicity bus are already booked, and John White, St. Osyth Parish Council Chairman, invites any group wishing to take part to contact either the Parish or the County Council.  'It will be a good opportunity for people to show us their ideas for Martin's Farm and to let people know what is on offer.  This is the first country park in Tendring of this scale and size'.

 

            Who says, 'You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear'?

 

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4.04.08

                               Tendring Topics – on line

 

                                 A Harwich Bicentenary

 

            Have you visited the Harwich Redoubt?   It is a circular fort, surrounded by a dry moat and set on a hilltop just to your right as you drive along the main road from Dovercourt into Harwich. An article by Charles Trollope in the current issue of Highlight, the journal of the Harwich Society, explains that it is the best preserved of three similar fortresses built in the early years of the nineteenth century as part of the Martello chain of forts which extend along the coast of south-east England from Aldeburgh in Suffolk to Seaford in East Sussex

 

            This defensive chain was first envisaged in 1805 when fears of a Napoleonic invasion – which may have been assuaged in October by Nelson's defeat of the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar – were revived in December by Napoleon's decisive victory over the combined Russian and Austrian armies at Austerlitz. 

           

It was in 1808 that building work on Harwich's Redoubt was completed though it had yet to be armed, garrisoned and its associated earthworks completed.

 

It is this year therefore that the Harwich Society will be celebrating the Redoubt's bicentenary.  Their members transformed the Redoubt from the dilapidated ruin set in a dry moat full of debris and rubbish that it had become, to the splendid memorial of the age of Nelson and Wellington, and their great foe Napoleon Bonaparte, that it is today.  My family and I have a special interest in it as my late wife's cousin, Roger Gilbert, had been very actively involved in the restoration work.  A cannon, salvaged from the debris in the moat, was mounted in one of the emplacements on the gun deck and was named  The Gilbert Gun, in his memory.

 

An annual event that has now become an established tradition is the Redoubt Fête, always held on the late spring Bank Holiday Monday (the last Monday in May) each year.  I never failed to mention this event in 'Tendring Topics – in print' and I attended it whenever I was able to do so.  Now, I fear, Harwich is well beyond the range of my iron horse (my mobility scooter), which is a great pity because, writing in the spring edition of Highlight, organiser Andy Rutter says that – in honour of the bicentenary - this year's fête will be a very special one.  

 

I shall also have to miss the 'grand Napoleonic Re-enactment Weekend' at the beginning of July.  Andy Rutter says that 'those who have been to our earlier re-enactment weekends will need no convincing on how realistic they are, especially the final battle.  Children love it'.  It sounds very exciting – though I doubt if it was quite as much fun for those who actually had to take part in the bloody conflicts of the Napoleonic wars!  Remember Byron's words recalling the aftermath of Waterloo – 'rider and horse, a friend, a foe, in one red burial blent'.

 

I shall look forward with interest to hearing of future developments – and will pass them on to blog readers.

 

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                                      Percentages are Deceptive

 

            William Connor who, under the pseudonym Cassandra wrote a hard-hitting comment column in the Daily Mirror in the pre-war and immediately post-war years once illustrated the deceptiveness of percentages by pointing out that if his elderly hen laid one egg only in one year and managed to produce two in the year following, he would be able to claim an annual 100 percent increase in egg production.  This he suggested was an example of the way in which percentages could be manipulated by politicians and others to camouflage the truth.

 

I thought of this example when I read in the Evening Gazette, under a smiling photograph of John Hawkins, Tendring Council's Chief Executive Office, the claim that he had 'received the same rise' as the rest of the Council's staff.   And, so he had – they had all received a 2.45 percent increase.

 

             Mr Hawkins' pay increase of 2.45 percent was however on a salary scale ranging from £110,000 to £119,000 a year.  It therefore amounted to between £2,600 and £3,000 a year.  I doubt if those on a salary of – say - £15,000 \a year and for whom a 2.45 percent increase meant a pay rise of £367.50, felt that they had received 'just the same rise' as the Chief Executive!

 

 Even a very large percentage increase of very little is not very much, and a very small percentage of a large amount can be quite a lot!

 

Across-the-board percentage salary increases inevitably widen the gap between the hard-up and the very-comfortably-off.  It is an ever-widening gap that, I believe, is responsible for much of the malaise in our society today.

 

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An Expensive Jaunt

 

            It isn't very often that the Clacton Gazette devotes something like one third of a 'news page' and the whole of its comment column to a matter that doesn't directly involve Clacton or the Tendring District.

 

Few though would criticise the Gazette's use of its space to publicise the County Council's expenditure of £61,000 on sending nine of its members on a mission 'to forge links with businesses in Virginia' -  yes, that's right, Virginia USA!  The 'links forging' business was the travellers' justification for their journey.  The purpose of the visit was to celebrate the 400^th anniversary of the founding of the Colony by Harwich seafarer Captain Christopher Newport.  This was surely a use – or misuse – of public funds that was of interest to every Essex taxpayer.

           

It's true that they hadn't intended to spend quite as much as that (the original cheaper flight was cancelled) and they hope to recover some of our money.  I'm not holding my breath though.

 

It is quite refreshing to note that it was an 'All Party' expedition so at least no-one is likely to be able to make much political capital out of it. Among the travellers was the Conservative Council Leader Lord Hanningfield (recently returned from a trip to India 'on Council business'!) and   Labour Group Leader Paul Kirkman.  Mr Kirkman is reported as having said, 'If we can introduce businesses to one another across the Atlantic then it is worthwhile'.

 

I couldn't disagree more.  Essex private businesses are well able to advertise (and pay to advertise) their own services on both sides of the Atlantic and should be encouraged to do so.   It isn't for our political representatives to do their job for them – and to use our money for that purpose.

 

I have since learned that Harwich's Town Mayor Mr Dave McLeod, with members of the Harwich Society, visited Virginia at the same time. They too - and with a great deal more justification - wanted to pay tribute to the achievements of their former fellow-townsman. Did that mean that yet more public money was spent on this trans-Atlantic celebration?  Not a single penny – the Mayor and his companions paid their own expenses!

 

If County Council members must travel abroad for inspiration at public expense, they would do better to visit our EU partners in mainland Europe.  There they would find that the services with which they should be concerned – not-very-exciting things like social services, provision and maintenance of highways, education, public transport, refuse disposal and the recycling of salvageable waste, the conservation of energy and the use of non-polluting energy resources and so on, and on – are often superior both to our own and to those in the USA.  They might, if they are prepared to learn, actually benefit from a visit to our European friends and neighbours – and, it doesn't cost £61,000, or anything like it, to pop across the Channel or the North Sea.

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                                             Postscript

 

It was fascinating to watch Lord Hanningfield, on 'Look East' BBCtv on Monday evening, 1^st April (what an appropriate date!) sagely discussing whether or not County and District Councils would be able to afford the new pensioners' bus passes which permit free off-peak bus travel on any regular bus service in England.  'These journeys have to be paid for', his Lordship gravely informed us.

 

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