Week 26.08

Tendring Topics………….on Line

Gone with the Wind?

There are not very many 'flat earthers' today who insist that 'all this talk about global warming is just a scare, got up to help big business make even bigger profits out of us' or alternatively, 'to turn us into a nation of bearded, sandal wearing tree-huggers'. Most people, I think, accept the reality of the threat of global warming and the consequent need to find alternative sources of energy. They accept too that wind farms have a contribution to make to this.

However, wind farms are like sewage treatment works, abattoirs and waste recycling centres. Everyone accepts the need for them but few people want to live very near one. This sad fact of life has been illustrated locally by the fierce opposition to the provision of just five wind turbines on Earl's Hall Farm, between Clacton-on-Sea and St. Osyth.

'Too near to Homes' was the slogan of the protestors which might give the impression that the proposed turbines would be situated within a few hundred yards of local residents' dwellings. Nobody seems actually to have measured the distance but the most that the protestors' claim is that it is 'less than a mile away'. Well a mile is quite a long way. I think that in support of the small wind farm it could equally well be claimed that it would be 'almost a mile away!' I find it difficult to believe that at that distance either the sight or sound of a few wind turbines would be in any way intrusive.

I think it likely that in the distant past, those windmills that we now find to be a picturesque part of the unspoilt English countryside, were similarly condemned. Wouldn't they have 'ruined the view from her ladyship's bower', 'developed into a haunt for beggars, outlaws and vagabonds', 'provided a possible vantage point for a hostile force?' 'Why, it's little more than a bowshot from our castle walls!'

Yet another present-day objection was that the wind turbines would threaten the building of a proposed new housing estate bordering Little Clacton Road and St. John's Road because this would be 'less than a kilometre' from the turbines. Well, of course, a kilometre is only two thirds of a mile. However it has to be remembered that this estate hasn't yet been built. I understand in fact that planning permission to build it hasn't yet even been sought. If such an estate is built it will, I am sure, have far greater impact on both the environment and on the infrastructure than 'less than half a dozen' wind turbines.

I am not surprised that, after careful investigation, the council's planning officials recommended that planning permission be granted for the five wind turbines. Nor am I particularly surprised to note that permission has, in fact, been refused by the Council. Councillors like to think that they take note of local public opinion especially when it is as vociferous and well publicised as it has been in this case.

Will there be an appeal against the Council's decision? If so, the good that would result from provision of the turbines would be balanced against any possible harm that might result. I think it likely that such an appeal would succeed. I hope so.
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'The best-laid plans of mice and men ………….'

Harwich Society members were hoping for great things from their annual Redoubt Fete this year. Always held on the late spring Bank Holiday Monday it was to be an extra special fete to celebrate the historic Napoleonic era fort's bicentenary. Alas! Circumstances decreed otherwise.

Rain was forecast but the fete's organisers were not to be deterred. They ordered extra gazebos to provide shelter from any downpour than nature sent. What they hadn't reckoned on was that driving rain would be accompanied by bitter gale force winds which, as Andy Rutter records in the Harwich Society's journal Highlight, 'made it impossible to erect the gazebos at the upper level or on the hill, and also made it difficult to keep them anchored down in parts of the moat. The high winds also made it impossible to erect the bouncing castle, and other major sideshows in the moat had to be abandoned when they became waterlogged. All this resulted in a frantic relocation of as many sideshows as possible within the structure of the fort, which was both a race against the clock and very hard work'.

Lesser men and women would, I am sure, have thrown up their hands in despair and gone home. The Redoubt team are of sterner stuff and, as Andy Rutter gratefully acknowledges 'such loyalty is priceless'. They carried on regardless, and not, as it turned out completely rewardless. Visitors did come, though it was estimated that the attendance was only about a third of the normal. Immediate net profit was £800 which was certainly destined to rise as post-fete sales and credits came in.

This figure was, I have little doubt, a disappointment to the organisers of the fete and members of the Redoubt team. Others though, who recall what the weather was like on that memorable May Bank Holiday, will agree that it was a hard-earned miracle that they didn't make a loss!

I think that they deserve everybody's thanks and congratulations. Better luck next time.
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A Diamond Celebration!

The NHS celebrates its 60th birthday this year. Its proud aim, still boasted of by politicians, to 'provide a free health service to all at the point of delivery' is only partly achieved nowadays. How about dental care? How about optical care? How about the ever-rising cost of prescriptions? Aren't these an integral part of health care? Nye Bevan, to whom the NHS owes its existence, certainly thought so.

Nevertheless I still believe that there is a great deal for which to give thanks and celebrate. My wife was one of its first beneficiaries. She was diagnosed with pulmonary and laryngeal TB in 1948, the year in which the NHS was born. As a result she was admitted with minimal delay to what was then the British Legion Sanatorium at Nayland from which (after having major surgery at Papworth) she was discharged two years later with the disease defeated. For many years I am glad to say that I myself had little need of the NHS' services though it was good to know that they were there for me. However, old age brings its problems and I find myself seeing my doctor fairly regularly and occasionally consulting this, that or the other specialist. Always I have found both courtesy and competence and have never had to wait too long for an appointment with whomever I had to see.

I am highly suspicious though of the way in which the NHS has been developing in recent years. I distrust the PFI and LIFT schemes that have given private enterprise a foothold in health care management. The limitations of such schemes have, I think, become all too obvious in our area. I am convinced too, that putting hospital cleaning out to contract has been a major factor in the development of such hospital acquired infections as MRSI and C-Difficile.

I can claim to have had experience both of the private and the public sectors and I have not found the private sector to be invariably more go-ahead, more innovative, more efficient and more courteous than the public. Nor is it less prone to fraud and corruption. I have found that in both sectors 'small' is likely to be 'best'. Large public authorities and large business corporations may have greater resources and be able to offer more varied services than smaller ones but if you want to find someone who will actually take an interest in your problem, it is in a small unit, whether of the public or the private sector, that you'll be most likely to find that person.
And that, I think, is what most of us want when we need medical care or advice.
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Making a Splash!

Like any other large organisation the NHS has its bureaucratic failures, a particularly idiotic example of which, just beyond the boundary of the Tendring District, came to light this week.

Rowhedge, on the south side of the River Colne a few miles downstream from Colchester, has its own pharmaceutical dispensary at the doctor's surgery in Rectory Road. This facility, much appreciated by patients, is permitted only because there isn't an independent pharmacy dispensing drugs within a distance of 1.6 kilometres.

Soon however there probably will be. A commercial pharmacy is proposed for a site only a few hundred yards away. The only trouble is that it is to be provided in Wivenhoe…. and the turbid tidal waters of the River Colne lie between the two communities. The nearest crossing is some three miles away!

Surely this shouldn't have to lead to the closure of the Rowhedge pharmacy. Two Rowhedge ladies, Mrs Jo Brennan, aged 68 and Mrs Elizabeth Trellis aged 74, are determined that it will not! They are registering their protest at the possible closure by a well-publicised swim across the Colne that was scheduled to take place yesterday, Thursday 26th June at 6.00 p.m. Local people were invited to join them in the river and/or by signing an appropriate petition against the threatened closure.

Bureaucracy, this time from the Environment Agency, has warned them against such a swim; the water will contain (fully treated) sewage effluent, there could be hidden dangers beneath the waters, strong currents, extreme cold, risk of Weil's Disease. What, no piranha? no crocodiles?

The two ladies are undeterred. After completing a trial run a few days ago, they told a reporter from the East Anglian Daily Times: 'We really want to fight for something that is working really well. We want to encourage people to come along and cheer us on'.

I hope that they completed their swim without any of the threatened dire effects and that they succeed in their campaign. Surely all that is required is for the rule about 1.6 Km proximity from the nearest commercial pharmacy to be qualified by adding 'by the shortest practicable route'.
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New Millennium New-Speak

I am constantly surprised by the fact that although nowadays, one can hear what would once have been regarded as the very vilest of bad language used casually on radio, tv and in the street, in some respects New Millennium Man (and Woman) is, by my mid-twentieth century standards, remarkably mealy mouthed.

Without my glasses I am quite unable to read even the largest print and, as a result of age and arthritis, I am unable to walk either far or fast without an aid. I think though that folk would be really shocked if anybody described me as being 'old, crippled and half blind'. Someone, I am sure, would hasten to assure me that I was, of course, a 'senior citizen with somewhat impaired vision and limited mobility'. When I first heard the expression 'learning difficulties' I really thought it included people like myself who would have problems with differential calculus and the like!

The latest example of this reluctance to call a spade a spade is in a questionnaire that I (and I imagine every other Essex resident) have been asked to complete about my use of transport. I am asked to fill in my name, address and 'gender'. Now I was educated to believe that 'gender' was a grammatical expression relating to nouns and pronouns. They could be masculine, feminine or neuter. The gender of nouns was loosely connected with the sex of the object but only loosely. Our French master at school used to delight in telling us that the French word for 'recruit', as in a 'new recruit in the army' was in fact 'feminine', although, at that time, he would certainly have been of male sex. Later I discovered that the German words for girl, young lady and Miss, are not feminine as one might have expected, but neuter.

Have we really so changed the meaning of the word 'sex' that it is considered improper to use it to mean 'either a man or a woman'? I shall cross out 'gender' on my questionnaire and replace it with 'sex'. I hope that I won't be prosecuted for sending rude words through the post!
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week 25.08

                           Tendring Topics .....on Line

 

                                  Failing Schools

 

    I'm sure that it must have come as something of a shock to most Clactonians to learn that two out of our three secondary schools were among 600 nationwide that were threatened with closure because of GCSE results that didn't reach the government's minimum standards.

 

    We knew that the new Bishops Park College had been put into special measures by Ofsted in November but understood that good progress had since been made.  I am sure that I must have been one of many who were astonished to discover that Colbayns High School was also on the 'black list'.  Colbayns High School Head Teacher, Nick Pavitt, had after all, been seconded to Bishops Park for three days a week to try to help them out of their troubles.  It seems though that he had problems of his own.

 

    Mr Pavitt claims that the government's target was a figure 'plucked from the air' and that it failed to recognise the individual circumstances of each school.  Perhaps so,but is the government's target all that unreasonable?

 

    Warning of possible closure was given to all schools where less that thirty percent of pupils attained GCSE passes between levels A and C in five subjects.  These had to include Maths and English.  In other words the government suggests that after five years of secondary education, at least three out of every ten pupils should be thoroughly numerate, literate in their own native language and not totally ignorant of the world around them.  'Plucked from the air' it may have been, but it is a target that is straight forward, easily understood and doesn't seem to me to demand an absurdly high standard.

 

    The government's communication was too, only a warning of possible closure.  I imagine that there would be careful consideration of the individual circumstances of each school before any drastic action was taken.

 

    I certainly would never make light of the problems that some teachers have to face.  During term time children spend about six hours of each day in school.  The remaining eighteen hours (and twentyfour hours a day at weekends and out of term time) are spent either with their families or outside 'with their mates'.   Children who receive little or no encouragement at home and who hear 'book learning' constantly denigrated by their friends, are unlikely to shine at school.

 

    One suggestion to help the situation was to effect a merger of the two schools.  All the parents of children attending them were invited to write in giving their opinion of the idea, or to attend a public meeting at which it would be discussed.  At Colbayns High School there are currently 1,350 pupils.  Just eleven parrents wrote in and seven attended the meeting.  At Bishops Park College there are 554 pupils.  Fourteen parents wrote in and three attended the meeting.

 

    How would you interpret that result?  Apathy, lack of interest in their children's education, inability to see how a merger could affect the situation one way or another, conviction that the governors of each school had already made up their minds anyway, are all possibilities that came to my mind.  However it became clear that there was yet another way in which the result (or lack of result) could be interpreted!

 

    After a joint meeting of the governors on Thursday 12th June Mr Pavitt told the press, 'Governors reviewed the responses from parents in the light of the total number of students on roll, and judged that the overwhelming majority of parents were content to trust the governing bodies of both schools to make the right decision to secure the future of secondary education in West Clacton'.  Now that's what I call really looking on the bright side!

 

    With this assurance that the parents were wholeheartedly behind them, the governors agreed to form a federation of the two schools in a bid to drive up standards.  Staff and students will continue to work and study at their present schools but will have opportunities to work in both.  Work will now begin on appointing the twenty people who will mak up the new governing body with representatives of all concerned groups.  One of the new governing body's first tasks will be to decide on the leadership and management arrangments at the schools.

 

    Somehow I feel that it is going to take more than the appointment of a new governing body and the juggling of leadership nd management arrangements to push up those GCSE results next year.  I wish the new governors (and the teachers and children involved!) the very best of luck.  I think that they are going to need it!

 

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          Following in Robin Hood's and William Tell's footsteps!

 

    Will we Clactonians have our own representative among the competitors at the 21012 Olympics?  Fifteen years old Colbayns High School Pupil Jodie Barnes certainly intends that we will!

 

    Jodie not only lives in Clacton but in the same road as myself.   She is a teenager who doesn't 'hang around' with her pals every evening and weekend, bored out of her miond and moaning that 'there's nothing for young people to do in Clacton'.  Sadly, her father David, well-known locally as an expert darts player and as the proprietor of a stall in Clacton's Covered Market, died last November of a brain tumour at the age of 56.  Less than a year earlier Jodie had taken up archery with the Priory Bowmen in St.Osyth and had already progressed to a point at which she was representing our county in competitions.  Before her Dad's death she was sufficiently confident of her ability with a bow to be able to promise him that she would compete in the 2012 Olympics in his memory.

 

    Jodie is determined to honour that promise.  She has since gone on from strength to strength, travelling round England to compete and coming in first in a number of junior competitions.  Currently she is twentieth in all England and is still gaining experience and perfecting her archery skills.  Jodie's Mum told a Gazette reporter that Jodie's determination in the field of archery is having an effect elsewhere in her life. She is now achieving straight 'A' s for her school work.

 

    My own loss (almost two years ago now but it seems like last week) makes me better able to understand the gaping hole in Jodie's life that has been left by her father's death, and to understand how purposeful activity can help to fill that hole.

 

    As a fellow Clactonian and indeed almost-a-neighbour, Jodie certainly has my very best wishes.  I hope that she makes it to the 2012 Olympics though, as that is the year in which the ninety-first anniversary of my birthday will occur, it isn't really very likely that I'll still be around to cheer her on.

 

    Hopeful Olympic competitors face spiralling expenses for travel and equipment.  Right now Jodie is seeking sponsorship to help meet these costs.   If you are acquainted with any local millionaires eager to dispel the still-popular image of th empty-headed 'Essex girl', please suggest to them that Jodie would be a thoroughly worthy and appreciative recipient of any 'few thousand pounds' that they may have to spare.  In fact, of course, she'd be grateful for any donations, however small.  As the well-known tv advert assures us, 'every little helps'.  Anyone who would like to help should phone Priory Bowmen on 01255 428191.

 

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                                 The Lisbon Treaty

 

    I was not one of those who joined with members of UKIP, readers of 'The Sun' and others, in jumping for joy at the fact that, in a referendum, the Irish had rejected the Lisbon Treart on he European Union.

 

    Yes, I know that the EU as it exists today is a clumsy, thoroughly undemocratic hotchpotch of countries all trying to squeeze their own national advantage from the rest of us.  How odd then, that the newspapers, politicians and political groups who have most eagerly drawn our attention to these defects, should now be applauding the defeat of a treaty that was ettmpting to remove them and to introduce some order and efficiency into European affairs.

 

    perhaps though it isn't quite so odd when we consider that many of those who are so happy with the result of the Irish referendum don't really want the EU to be reformed.  They'd like to see it abolished!  Some have a romantic idea that in a world dominated by superpower politics the UK (which they think of as consisting only of England) can stand alone. Come the three corners of the world in arms and we shall shock them, if England to herself remain but true', may have been a viable policy in Shakespeare's day but it certainly isn't today.

 

    Others may perceive the EU as a barrier to Britain's even closer association with the USA, perhaps one day becoming part of a new union renamed United States of Atlantica!   It is not an idea that appeals to me.

 

    I personally hold the currently unpopular view that Britain's future lies, and should lie, in closer economic, political and cultural union with our continental neighbours in a reformed and democratised European Union; a union in which the unelected European Commission has rather less power and the democratically elected European parliament rather more.; one in which the extent and limitation of every member's national sovereignty is clearly defined; and in which the perceived national interest of one country (even if that country were the UK) could not for ever impede the progress of the remainder.

 

    It is, I believe, only in such a union, in which the UK would play an active, sometimes leading, part, that we could acquire the political and economic strength to to co-operate (and sometimes no doubt, compete) on equal terms with the world's currently single superpower and with the emerging superpowers of China and India.

 

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                                   Afghanistan

 

        Way back in February I expressed the opinion that the fanatical terrorists who are now fighting a bloody war of attrition against our forces in Afghanistan are the same 'gallant mojihadin' who were lauded (and covertly supported) by our press and politicians in the 1980s for resisting Soviet occupation in much the same way.

 

    'Afghantsi', shown on 'More-4' at 10.00 p.m. on Tuesday 17th June was an extraordinary documentary in which during the final years of that occupation, a British tv film crew managed to film and obtain astonishingly frank interviews with Soviet soldiers at their base camp in Kabul, in a Kabul military hospital and, most surprising of all, at a lonely outpost halfway up a bleak mountain.

 

    I can't do better than to quote from the Radio Times review:  'The soldiers explain, sadly and quietly, how they feel deceived by their government, how they soon learnt that the war was unwinnable (after every operation, the number of people against us would increase) and how deeply the violence had affected them.  Even more powerfully, soldiers and their families mourn those who fell.  rarely have the mind-numbing futility and countles individual tragedies of war been more lucidly presented'.   Those young conscripts reminded me so much of the young men I lived and fought with in North Africa in 1941 and '42, and how much the grief of their loving parents reminds me of the grief of British parents that I now see all too frequently on tv, as they are told opf he loss of their son (and now there is a daughter) in Afghanistan.

 

    One revelation that particularly shocked me as  former prisoner of war was the grisly and agonising fate of any Soviet soldier who fell alive into Afghan hands.  I won't repeat the sickening details but I could well understand why these young soldiers said that they always saved one grenade for hemselves if they could see they were about to be taken prisoner.

 

    I hope that 'Afghantsi will be repeated on a more popular tv channel at a slightly earlier time - though definitely after the 9.00 p.m. watershed..

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Week 24.08

                       Tendring Topics……..on Line

 

                      The Developing Housing Crisis

 

            As house prices fall and estate agents find properties increasingly difficult to sell, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of home buyers (the national press continues to describe them incorrectly as home owners) are finding themselves in a state of negative equity. The debt that they owe on their homes is now greater than the value of those homes on the market.   It is an unenviable position, and one that was all-too-common in the early 1990s.  We had imagined though that it was a condition that had been banished and would never recur.

 

            Last year at this time the value of homes seemed destined to rise indefinitely, well above the general level of inflation.  By the end of the year house inflation had fallen to about, or a little below, that general level.  The experts assured us that that was it.  The housing market might temporarily flatten but that it would pick up again.  There was really no risk of house prices actually falling.

 

            But they have.  I reckon that my modest bungalow is probably worth between £10,000 and £20,000 less than it was a year ago.  This thought hasn't cost me a solitary night's sleep.   My mortgage debt has long since been repaid.

 

            It would have been very different though had I been one of a young couple trying to 'get our feet on the property ladder', who had secured a 100 percent mortgage on the property at its 2006 or 2007 value, and had then incurred further HP debt in order to furnish it!

 

            'Never mind about negative equity', said a 'financial expert' on the BBC's tv 'Breakfast programme' this morning (10^th June).  The market will pick up again. Keep on making your mortgage repayments and you'll still, as in the best fairy stories, 'live happily ever after'!

 

            The tiny little snag in this re-assurance lies in the 'keep on making your mortgage repayments'.  Despite falls in the bank rate in recent months, mortgage repayments have remained static or have even increased.  Now the 'experts' predict rises in the bank rate!

 

            Meanwhile, the price of virtually everything else has gone up and is still going up.  Motoring costs, energy prices, food prices, rail and airfares have all increased, usually not by just the odd penny but by considerable sums.  Incomes (certainly the incomes of wage earners and pensioners) have failed to keep up with inflation.

 

It doesn't need a crystal ball or a degree in economics to be able to forecast that during the coming months many hard-working and conscientious people will be unable to keep up their mortgage repayments and, as a consequence, will lose their homes.  What's more, thanks to the policies of successive governments of both main political parties, it is very unlikely that more than a small minority of them will fall into the safety net of council or housing association accommodation.

 

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The moving finger………….

 

            'You can't put the clock back!' is one of the responses often made to those who, like me, sometimes deplore the processes of 'modernisation and rationalisation'.  This thought is expressed very tellingly in well-known lines from Suffolk poet Edward Fitzgerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

 

The moving finger writes and, having writ,

Moves on.  Not all thy piety, nor all thy wit

Can lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

 

            Sadly, that is all too true.  However, by considering the successes as well as the mistakes that have been made in the past, it is often possible to entice that moving finger to move on to a new clean page on which only the successes will be repeated.

 

  The processes of health-care modernisation in the NHS led to ever larger hospitals. This, in its turn, led to the abolition of the office of Matron. Sisters and  Staff Nurses in charge of wards became 'Ward Managers'.  Overall control of nursing and medical care began to come within the orbit of lay administrative staff.  Cleaning throughout hospitals was undertaken by contract cleaners selected by choosing the commercial firm submitting the lowest tender for carrying out the work.

 

 All of this led, as might have been expected, to disaster. Patients admitted to hospital for the treatment of one illness acquired another, MRSA or C.Difficile, horrible hospital infections that had never been heard of in the 'bad old days' and which were often more lethal than the condition that had brought the patient into hospital in the first place.

 

It is to the credit of the rulers of the NHS that they looked back into the past and decided to bring back the Matron; the 'Sergeant-major' figure who had once patrolled the wards, encouraging and admonishing sisters and nurses, and being no less firm with the medical staff.  Matrons had insisted on absolute cleanliness and absolute adherence to rules introduced for the welfare of patients. Within the hospital's corridors and wards Matron's word was law.

 

Nowadays, of course, it is realized that no one person could possibly fulfil the role of Matron in an entire hospital.  'Modern Matrons' have the care of a number of wards but they otherwise function exactly as the old-fashioned Matrons did.  They are the scourge of second-rate nursing performance, the friend of nurses struggling to cope, the voice of the nursing staff to the hospital management and an example and inspiration for all involved in health care.

 

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. In our area the appointment of 'Modern-Matrons' is already proving its value.   The Colchester hospitals' target for MRSA in the month of April was no more than one case, and it was just one case that they had.  The target for C.Difficile was no more than thirteen cases and they had only seven.

 

I reckon that there is one further 'backward' step that could be taken to get rid of these modern diseases altogether.  Let hospitals once again appoint and manage their own cleaning staff. They would be part of the team caring for the patients, who could be expected to take a personal pride in the wards for which they were responsible, and who would be able to look forward to a secure future in the NHS.  Further, I would suggest that the 'Modern matrons', in charge of the wards for which the cleaners will be responsible should be authorised to hire and, occasionally no doubt, to fire them.

 

That would give the 'moving finger' a brand new page, not unlike some pages of the now-distant past, on which to perform.

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Should Taxis be Exempt?

 

There can be few Clactonians who are unaware that the busiest part of Pier Avenue, arguably our busiest shopping spot, has been somewhat half-heartedly pedestrianised.   Vehicles, except for commercial delivery vehicles and buses picking up or putting down passengers, are prohibited from entering between the hours of 10.00 a.m. and 4.00 p.m.

 

Should taxis enjoy the same exemption as buses? Naturally enough, taxi drivers think so.   They point out that their function is much the same as that of buses and claim that many disabled people are debarred from shopping in that part of Pier Avenue because of the restriction.  Hundreds of local people have signed a petition supporting them, though it must be said that not everyone signing a petition thrust in front of them necessarily gives the matter serious thought before doing so.

 

I'm not totally convinced by the taxi drivers' case. As far as disabled people are concerned, perhaps it might be possible to exempt taxis carrying passengers with a blue badge (the blue badge can be used by disabled passengers in taxis as in private cars); but if they were exempted, why not exempt blue badge users in private cars? Why not, in fact, simply remove the restriction altogether? 

 

It should also be remembered that the ban on cars and taxis is not absolute.  All vehicles are permitted in any part of Pier Avenue before 10.00 a.m. and after 4.00 p.m.    That gives an hour's shopping time every morning and at least another hour every afternoon.  My mobility scooter is restricted to pavement use and is unaffected by the ban.  However, looking back over recent months I realize that, from choice, I have done most, if not all, of my shopping in Pier Avenue before 10.00 a.m.  This might be inconvenient for some people but could hardly involve real hardship or deprivation.

 

As a 'motorised pedestrian' I appreciate that more-or-less traffic-free thoroughfare and the ability to cross it in safety. I am sure that many other pedestrians (and even motorists are pedestrians sometimes!) appreciate it too.

 

I'd leave things as they are.

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A Cash Reward? – for Endangering Future Generations!

 

I was fascinated by the news that local authorities are to be offered a cash incentive (some might call it a bribe), by the government to permit the disposal by burial of nuclear waste within their area.  It is nice to know that local government still has the power to say firmly 'no thank you!' because that, I am quite sure, is what they should do.

 

I wrote 'disposal' in the paragraph above but it isn't really disposal at all.  It is, of course, what is confidently believed to be 'safe storage' until the time, if ever, that  a means of actually disposing safely of nuclear waste has been discovered.

 

I am quite prepared to believe that what is proposed will do no harm to us.  It would be most unlikely to harm our children, our grandchildren or even our great grandchildren.  Nuclear waste though remains lethal for countless generations ahead.

 

Imagine how we would feel if we learned that a 'treasure trove' of highly dangerous material had been buried under our homes, having been certified 'as safe' by the very best minds of the age that designed and built Stonehenge; or of the age of William the Conqueror; or Henry VIII; or Lord Nelson and Napoleon Bonaparte; or indeed, that of the very best brains of the first half of the twentieth century.

 

Yet nuclear waste will remain lethal for a period far, far longer than the few thousand years that separate us from the Stone Age.   Who knows what earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear wars or terrorist attacks may take place in that distant future? Any one of those could uncover those buried stores and release their perilous contents.  Are we really prepared to endanger the continuance of human life on earth for the sake of present-day comfort and convenience? 

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Week 23.08

                         Tendring Topics……. on Line

 

                                 Teenage Drinking

 

            All of us these days except, I suppose, the young people immediately involved, are deeply concerned about teenage (and younger children) drinking.  Targeting pubs, and particularly, off-licences and supermarkets, is obviously a good idea. I fancy though that, probably through the collaboration of just-a-little-older kids who can legally buy alcoholic drinks, really determined thirteen or fourteen olds, with money in their pockets, will always manage to get hold of whatever drink they want.

 

Why do some kids drink themselves silly whenever they get the opportunity?

 

I think that it is almost always peer pressure that makes them start both drinking and smoking. Adolescents (I was one once!) are often desperate to be accepted as 'one of us' and, having gained acceptance, to prove that they are as good as, if not better (which sometimes means more outrageous) than everyone else.  Once started, for some people both tobacco and alcohol can be dangerously addictive. 

 

I don't think that firm coercive measures will solve the problem.  Nor am I deeply impressed with the government's latest idea of suggesting to parents that they might introduce alcohol to their children in small and manageable doses! It is all too similar to the even dafter idea that allowing pubs to stay open all day and all night would encourage moderate and responsible drinking!

 

   I don't think either that providing more youth clubs, gymnasia, and other leisure facilities will help as much as some imagine.  At the risk of being boring I have to say that in my youth we had nothing like the leisure and cultural facilities available to both young and old today.  We too had our bullies, our yobs and our hooligans – but we ourselves didn't drink (none of us could afford to for one thing!) and we despised and made fun of any drunk adult who crossed our path. 

 

            I was impressed by a report on tv of a programme developed by the West Lothian Police Authority in Scotland.  

 

            There, they are tackling individual young drinkers.  They stop groups of adolescents leaving school or college and check whether any have alcohol with them, and they pounce immediately on groups of young people drinking in public about whom complaints are received. Many, perhaps most, of these will scatter and get away.  However the Police normally manage to net one or two.  They don't 'arrest' them but they do detain them and take them back, in the police van, to the Police Station.  They then send for their parents and both parent and child are interviewed

 

            What happens next depends, of course, upon the skill of the interviewer.  In the part of the interview that was shown on tv the interviewer was trying determinedly to appeal to the 'better nature' of the young person; to what early Quakers would have unhesitatingly referred to as the 'inward light of Christ' that lies deep in the heart of every man, woman and child in the world.   'Do you see how an onlooker, seeing a group of you drinking as you were, can feel threatened?'    It evoked a hesitant 'yes' from the interviewee. 

 

Needless to say, this approach isn't always effective. At the very least though it does stop young drinkers in their tracks and makes them think, it does make sure that their parents know what is going on, and it doesn't give them a criminal record for a single act of foolishness.

 

   West Lothian Police claim that it does much more than that.  They say that, as a result of their campaign, there is 40 percent less juvenile drinking in their area.  That, I think, is a result of which to be proud.

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Communal Composting?

 

I was once an enthusiastic gardener, systematically composting all kitchen and other organic waste to feed back into the land.  I would regularly collect sackfuls of seaweed from Clacton's beaches to enrich my compost bins.  It was to this that I attributed my always successful (well, almost always successful!) sweet peas, runner beans, garden peas and courgettes.

 

Sadly age and arthritis have deprived me of my former gardening activities. Material that I would once have taken down the garden to the compost bin now goes into the black plastic bag for the council's refuse collectors.

 

If however a £1.25 million (give or take a few thousand!) scheme put forward by Tendring Council gets the go-ahead from Essex County Council, I may yet find myself saving my kitchen waste for recycling, though not in my own bins.  The Council wants to build an anaerobic digestion plant to which such waste would be taken for processing after being collected by the council as an addition to the current refuse collection and recyclable waste services.

 

A local farmer has given his consent for the plant to be built on his land and the scheme would thus have the added advantage of reducing the distances from collection to disposal point.  The process of anaerobic digestion, in which friendly bacteria (bacteria without which animal and plant life on earth could not exist), are used to speed up and control the natural processes of decomposition, speedily reducing organic waste to its chemical constituents for feeding back into the land; the very best form of recycling.  What's more, the process would take place in a completely enclosed vessel, eliminating any possibility of unpleasant smells.

 

It is estimated that, with this installation, Tendring's recycling rate would increase to 36 percent, not only well above our present rate, but well above the target of 24 percent set for us by the Department for the Environment.

 

The County Council has expressed interest in the scheme and is taking it back to its Waste Management Advisory Board for further consideration.   I hope that they'll give it their urgent consideration, and approval.   This is a scheme that will enable flat dwellers and those, like myself, who are no longer gardeners, to play a full part in slowing down the inexorable progress of global warming while, at the same time, enriching the soil of our land.  It certainly has my unequivocal support.

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                    A Straw in the Wind?

 

A few weeks ago, in this column, I remarked that it is when the electorate becomes bored and disillusioned with the traditional political parties, that we should beware the rise of a twenty-first century Anglo-Saxon version of the young Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler, promising to sweep away the tired old politics and lead us into a new all-British earthly paradise.  Remember where such a leader led the Italians and the Germans!

 

I was reminded of this warning by a letter published in last week's (29 May) Clacton Gazette.  It was from a Mr Michael Daniels of Holland-on-Sea who had moved to the Tendring District from the London area twenty-three years ago 'to escape from the ever-worsening situation of living in or close to London'.   Here he found a pleasant coastal region marred only by coming 'under the aegis of a second rate, third rate in many respects, ramshackle civic authority' under which, during the time he had been here, 'we have had to endure what we see as a clear example of ever-worsening maladministration'.  It is, he says, no surprise at all that electors stay at home and bemoan the situation rather than, 'dutifully putting a cross against the tired old candidates of the old gang'.

 

However, he bids us to be of good cheer because he can now see a 'glimmer of hope for better times…………right across these once-sceptred isles, many branches of the British National Party are springing up – we've just secured a seat on the important Greater London Assembly …………OK the BNP is newly on the ground in Tendring – no council representation as of yet, but the party is nationally on a roll, and the same applies in north-east Essex'.

 

He concludes; 'Take heart and soon you'll be hearing much more from our local patriots of the BNP – that's a promise'.

 

Well, that's something to look forward to!   Actually I have heard it all before in the mid and late 1930s, from members of the B.U.F (British Union of Fascists and National Socialists) – better known as 'Mosley's Blackshirts'.  Their leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, came to Ipswich during that period and, as a teenager, I attended a  meeting that he addressed in the Ipswich Public Hall.  The hall was packed and when he stepped onto the stage perhaps as many as twenty misguided Ipswichians leapt to their feet and gave him the outstretched arm fascist salute!

 

He was, I have to admit, a very forceful and charismatic speaker but, as we know, for all that he got nowhere.   I am very glad that, unless someone has been hiding his false light under a bushel, the BNP has so far no one of his calibre (never mind of the calibre of Mussolini or Hitler) to lead us all to disaster.

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The Elusive Apostrophe!

 

Many people, including some who could give instant answers to mathematical problems at which I would only be able to stare blankly, find it difficult to know where and when to use apostrophes.  Should these, as was suggested on a recent BBCtv 'Breakfast programme', be abolished? 

 

I don't think so.  I'm sure that no reader of Tendring Topics…..on Line  will wish me to  embark on an English grammar lesson. I hope though that the following makes clear why it is that the English language would be poorer and less versatile without it.

 

Fruit and vegetables for sale (particularly on greengrocers' pavement displays!) with names which, in the plural, end with 's´ should never have an added apostrophe either before or after the final 's'.   

 

An apostrophe should be used with its only when this word is used as an abbreviation for 'It is' as in 'It's a cold day today'.

 

            The bungalow in which I live is an old person's home because I am an old person living in it alone.   If (which Heaven forbid!) I shared it with one or more similarly elderly people it would become an old persons' home.  It could then alternatively be correctly described as an old people's home, though this has generally come to mean a home commercially provided for the residence and care of a number of old people.   Old peoples' home (with the apostrophe after the s) is incorrect and meaningless. Peoples, without any apostrophe at all, means a number of different races as, for instance, The peoples of Africa or The peoples of Asia.     

 

            Clear?   Well, in a world that I find increasingly bewildering, it's quite clear to me!

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