Tendring Topics – on Line
Prophetic Topics?
The way in which issues that I touch on, sometimes quite lightly, in this on-line column tend to become matters of national concern overnight, is really quite disconcerting. For the last two weeks I have expressed concern about the binge-drinking British culture and the violence and socially destructive behaviour of some of our young people. Now all the newspapers and health pundits are becoming positively hysterical about both issues; and two particularly unpleasant acts of violence by youth on youth were reported in the news media during the past few days.
But that's not all. Way back in February I suggested that the indications were that there would be a big increase in the number of people rendered homeless during the current year. A few days ago, under the headline 'Queue for homes set to get longer', the Coast Gazette' reported that within two years there could be as many as five million of us Britons on waiting lists for social housing. 'Almost half of councils say that they already cannot cope with the increasing demand for housing association accommodation, as the number waiting for it has grown from one million in 2001 to over one and a half million last year. Hundreds of thousands more are expected to join them by 2010 as a result of high house prices, fewer mortgages and a slowdown in house building'.
Everybody seems to agree with my prognosis, but I see little chance of my suggested remedy being put into effect; repealing council tenants' 'right to buy' legislation and encouraging local authorities to build homes for letting, as they had done for a century before the 'avaricious '80s'. During those hundred years, Britain's worst slums were demolished and overcrowding in Britain's homes drastically reduced and kept under control.
Nor do I see much chance of the government switching the burden of taxation from indirect taxation (VAT, duties on fuel, tobacco, alcohol and so on) to direct taxation (income tax and death duties). Now the cost of motoring, an immediate result of indirect taxation, is rocketing and nation-wide protests are threatened. The increase in the cost of motoring might be justified if the revenue were used to bring down the cost of rail fares, but not a bit of it. Rail fares are rocketing at the same time!
Last week I had my hot water/central heating boiler serviced and a faulty ball-valve replaced. The total cost was £115. I paid that cheerfully, but I did resent the extra £20.13 that I then had to pay to the government as VAT for the privilege of having essential maintenance carried out on my home!
I don't enjoy paying income tax but, unlike VAT and other indirect taxes, it is based on my ability to pay. I am very fortunate in having an income high enough to be liable for tax. Thousands are not so lucky. What's more, my tax is deducted directly from my pension. I never see it, so I never miss it. Neither of these factors is true of VAT and Customs duties.
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Regenerating Tendring
I was quite pleased to see that at least some of Tendring's Councillors, and the local press, share my scepticism about the value of the private company that the Council has created (with our money!) to further the Tendring District's 'regeneration'. As one of the councillors pertinently asked; 'Why can't the council's own regeneration department do it?'
One reason that has been offered is that much of the hoped-for finance for regeneration will come from grants from Quangos. These, so it is claimed, are only available to private companies. I can see why a private company would be able to attract investment (i.e. borrow money) from sources that would be barred to a local authority. Limited companies can take risks with other people's money that councils can't. The Company may of course, make a profit from that investment. If they do everybody will be happy. If they fail, the directors can walk away from the debt with the minimum of inconvenience to themselves – though, of course, failure can spell ruin to those who are owed money.
But why on earth should Quangos (quasi-autonomous-non-governmental organisations), or anyone else, prefer to give money to a private company rather than to a democratically elected local authority?
So far it seems, the whole of the new company's capital (provided by the council!) is being invested in staff. 'But of course', will say the private enterprise enthusiasts, 'they won't be fuddy-duddy council bureaucrats but thrusting, go-ahead entrepreneurs'.
Perhaps. I am reminded though of a comment made by a cynical colleague of mine when, many years ago now, Tendring Council was proposing to employ a new official to undertake much the same duties as those of the Regeneration Company today: 'They'd be wise to hold interviews for the job at the municipal swimming pool', said my colleague, 'If the candidates can't walk on water they'll be unlikely to be able to meet the Council's expectations!'
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No room (without a drugs test) at the Inn?
I was fascinated to read in the Clacton Gazette that the landlords of three well-known Clacton pubs had agreed to co-operate with the Police in a trial scheme involving testing their customers for drug use. Somehow I couldn't imagine any of the pub landlords that we meet in 'The Bill' or 'Holby Blue' being quite so obliging!
Police officers set up screening equipment at the entrances of the Moon and Starfish, Crab and Pumpkin and Tom Pepper s. They then, as a condition of entrance, asked incoming customers to submit to having swabs taken from their hands, from which the screening equipment could detect recent contact with such drugs as heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, amphetamine or cannabis.
Police-Sergeant Richard Wardleworth was reported as saying that some traces of drugs were picked up but, when searched, no drugs were found on the people concerned, so no action was taken. He added, 'We didn't make any arrests but there were some groups of people who saw what we were doing and refused to go into the pub; that was very telling.'
'Telling' indeed – but what did it tell? I'm not familiar with Tom Peppers but I have been in the Moon and Starfish recently for lunch on a couple of occasions and, in the past, particularly when I was freelancing for Essex County Newspapers, I would occasionally pop into the Crab and Pumpkin (almost opposite the 'Gazette' office) for a lunch-time drink and a chat with a friend or colleague.
I have never in my life taken illegal drugs (as a matter of fact I have never in my life even been offered any!) and I have no reason whatsoever for wishing to avoid the Police. Nevertheless if, with a friend, I were heading for a local hostelry for refreshment and saw a posse of police at the door stopping and interviewing everyone who entered, I think that I too would prefer to head elsewhere. What, I wonder, would that tell Sergeant Wardleworth about me?
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What about the Weather?
In Britain, whatever else may fail the weather can always be depended upon to give us something to talk about!
What a year it has been. The abnormal is becoming the norm! It was certainly the most miserable Easter that I can ever remember – and I can remember quite a few chilly and damp ones in the past. The May Day Bank Holiday, celebrated five days after Mayday this year, was warm and sunny, absolutely perfect, as was the week following. I had the good fortune to have a celebratory birthday break in Brussels the following weekend. We enjoyed a few days of soaring temperatures, cloudless skies and light southerly breezes. In Brussels and in Luxemburg my son and daughter-in-law, my grandson and I enjoyed all our meals each day in outdoor cafés.
The rot set in almost as soon as I set foot again on English soil. There was a chilly wind when we landed at Dover and it was chillier still the next day when I got back to Clacton. The weather steadily deteriorated, reaching a climax on the Spring Bank Holiday Monday with howling gales and steady, drenching rain. The following Thursday the Clacton Gazette's front page headline was A TOTAL WASHOUT ….beaches left deserted as storm blows. No-one could have put it better.
It is interesting to reflect that if, instead of celebrating the secular Late Spring Public Holiday on the last Monday in May, we had continued to stick to the old Whitsun or Pentecost moveable feast of the Christian Church, we would have enjoyed it a fortnight earlier in the glorious sunshine that we experienced in Belgium, where they still kept the old Whitsun date.
No, those who like myself, are dismayed by the tide of secularism that threatens to engulf us, cannot use the weather in our defence of the traditional. As I have already noted, during the great Christian feast of Easter the weather was awful – and it hadn't been that much better at Christmas either!
What will the summer bring? I think that the wise will keep both their sun-cream and their winter woollies handy. They may well need both.
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The Scourge of the BBC
Did you watch the drama/documentary about Mrs Mary Whitehouse on BBC2 at 9.0 p.m. on the evening of the 28th May? I think that the former scourge of the BBC would have been very pleased, and probably very surprised, at the even-handed and sympathetic treatment she received from those whom she had so fiercely criticised. She certainly appeared in a more favourable light than the BBC's Director General whom she regarded, not without reason it seems, as her arch-enemy.
I was never a great admirer of Mrs Whitehouse. It seemed to me that she was a little too ready to criticise the BBC and not half critical enough of ITV.
It must be said though that her direst prophecies have been fulfilled. We are an increasingly violent society. Despite comprehensive sex education at schools (or just possibly because of it!) we have more and more teenage pregnancies, and sexually transmitted diseases are on the increase. Walk behind any group of children, of any age above about eight and of either or mixed sex, and you may well hear language that would have raised eyebrows in a well-run barrack room sixty years ago.
Radio and tv (not just BBC radio and tv) must bear some of the responsibility for this but they are not alone. At the root of the problem is the fact that we have, with the laudable intention of fitting in to a multi-faith society and showing respect for other cultures and traditions, ceased to promote the 'Christian values' that Mrs Whitehouse struggled so hard to preserve; and haven't found anything worthwhile with which to replace them.
Do we really believe, as we seem to, in a kind of fundamentalist Darwinism which takes it for granted that life has no purpose beyond the propagation of the species and the satisfying of the senses; that there is no ultimate power to whom we must all eventually answer; and that if one or more of our pleasurable activities has an undesirable reaction (an unwanted baby, an unpleasant disease, an economic or environmental effect) we must immediately seek a means of getting rid of that unfortunate side effect so that we don't even have to consider the possibility of foregoing that dangerous, but pleasurable, activity?
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