Week 38.08

                            Tendring Topics…on Line

 

Who is Conning Whom?

 

            A few weeks ago in a somewhat one-sided conversation with a local taxi-driver I was assured that greenhouse gases, carbon footprints and all the rest of it had nothing whatsoever to do with any climatic change that might be taking place.  There have, he told me, always been cycles of hot and cold, wet and dry in the world and there always would be.  There was nothing that we could do about it. 

 

            There was no point whatsoever in, for instance, carefully sorting out our recyclable rubbish from the rest of it.  It wouldn't be recycled anyway. Nor was there any point in using long-life electricity bulbs, cycling or walking instead of using motor transport, or doing any other of the things we are constantly urged to do by 'save the planet' enthusiasts. Anyone who imagined otherwise was a victim of a world-wide confidence trick

 

            The conversation was one-sided because I was, unusually for me, rendered speechless.  I really hadn't imagined that, on this side of the Atlantic Ocean at any rate, there was anyone left who believed as he did.  I didn't argue because I don't believe that anyone is ever converted by an ill-tempered argument, and I'm afraid that that particular argument would have become ill-tempered!

 

            Yet, thinking about it afterwards, I realize that there must be quite a lot of people who share those views, even if they are not usually prepared to air them quite so readily.  Walk down any residential road in Clacton on 'dustbin day' and you'll see that there is no shortage of homes outside which are several black sacks full of refuse, but no sign of a full 'green box' or other container full of newspapers, tin cans and plastics for recycling.  There may be a few people who are too feeble or disabled to separate their refuse from recyclables but I am sure that they are only a very few.

 

            What a boost such people, whether they really believe as my taxi driver did or are just too indolent to bother, must have received from one of the news stories on tv and in the press week or so ago!    Salvageable waste, identified as having been put out for recycling by a householder in Walton-on-the-Naze in our own Tendring District, had been found dumped on waste-land in India of all places!  'Proof positive', they must have said, that the Council didn't bother to sort out the salvageable from the non-salvageable waste. They now found it cheaper to export it all to India (with all the extra carbon emissions that that must have involved!) than either to recycle it or dispose of it in an approved tip in the UK.

 

            Of course, it didn't happen like that at all.  Tendring Council doesn't directly either collect or dispose of either household refuse or recyclables.  They employ  private contractors to do the collecting. Disposal is a responsibility of the County Council who again pass on the recyclables to private contractors to deal with.  I feel sure that those items turned up in India through some bizarre mischance.  It surely can't be cheaper to transport either rubbish or recyclables half way round the world before dumping them!

 

            None of which exempts either the district or, in particular, the county council from all responsibility.  It is up to public authorities to make sure that materials handed over to private contractors are dealt with lawfully and properly.

 

            When a particular public service is put out to competitive tender, the public authority invariably chooses the lowest tender.  Their auditors would expect a very good reason for their doing otherwise.  I hope though that they always remember that the contractor submitting the lowest tender is the one with the biggest incentive to skimp the work to save money.  Those of us who are conscientious enough to separate out our recyclables painstakingly every week, deserve to have the results of our efforts equally painstakingly supervised to their conclusion.

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No Prosecutions?

 

            I was astonished when I read in the local press a few weeks ago that during the preceding twelve months Tendring Council there had been no prosecutions of fly-tippers by Tendring Council.  Surely it had been less than a month earlier that we had heard the unlikely news that our MP had been accused of fly tipping and had been offered the choice between accepting a fixed penalty fine or being prosecuted.  Could it possibly be that he had been right after all, and that he had been victimised for political reasons?

 

            It seems not.   Alresford Parish Council had been as astonished as I had at the news that, as far as fly-tipping was concerned, there had been a prosecution-free year.

Their astonishment was compounded by the fact that one of their members, Councillor Mrs Linda Belgrave and two other people, one of whom was a police officer, had witnessed the dumping of two shopping trolleys.  Their report, backed by photographs, had been sent to the Council but they had been informed that no further action was to be taken and that the person concerned would not be prosecuted.

 

            A statement made by a spokesman for the council gave a not-altogether-convincing explanation.   He claimed that it was not true that the Council was doing nothing about fly tipping.  Over the past two years there had, in fact, been about twelve prosecutions but it was not possible to distinguish which were for leaving litter and which for fly-tipping.  Furthermore, fixed penalty notices had been served on people accused.  Many of those receiving them either persuaded the Council that they had no case to answer (as our MP had done) or admitted their guilt by paying the fixed penalty.  In either event there would have been no prosecution.

 

            Considering the amount of litter and fly-tipped rubbish that is observable in only a brief drive or cycle ride through any part of our district, twelve prosecutions in two years (one every two months!) seems a very small number; even if there were a considerable number of offenders who, more-or-less-legally, succeeded in getting 'off the hook'.

 

            Is the 'fixed penalty' high enough I wonder?   Unless it is appreciably higher than the legal cost of getting rid of the unwanted material the unscrupulous offender, bearing in mind that he is very unlikely to be caught anyway, would be likely to consider the very occasional 'fixed penalty' as a justifiable business expense.

 

 

'Our' Wind-Farm is on its Way!

 

            It must have been at least ten years ago that we Clactonians were first told that we were to have an off-shore Wind-Farm?  There were, as might have been expected, dire warnings from objectors about its visual and aural impact and its effect on wild life and shipping.  Those of us though who, even then, appreciated the urgency of finding an infinitely renewable source of energy that would free us from dependence on the world's diminishing (and polluting) coal and oil resources, were delighted.

 

            In Tendring Topics (in print) I amused myself by looking forward to the day, fifty or sixty years ahead, when ancient Clactonians would relate to their grandchildren how they remembered the days before Clacton had a wind-farm.  Then, they would tell them, there had been no four-times-daily sight-seeing trips 'round the turbines'. Nor had there been any of the already-becoming-traditional weather lore:  'When wind-farm's showing clear and bright, 'twill rain again afore 'tis night!' and so on. 

 

Installers were to be a subsidiary of an enormous Trans-Atlantic Consortium.  There was an impressive exhibition at the West Cliff Theatre.  Construction would begin any day soon.  It didn't. The giant consortium ran into serious financial difficulties.  We were at first assured that these didn't affect our subsidiary, but perhaps they did.  Hope was deferred, and deferred again….and then again.

 

            At about that my wife became increasingly disabled and I was progressively less and less interested in anything that was taking place anywhere other than under my own roof.   When I surfaced again, just over two years ago, off-shore wind farms were being developed all round our coasts, but Clacton's had vanished without trace! 

 

            Then, quite suddenly it seemed, there came another promise of a 48 turbine wind-farm on the Gunfleet Sands off Clacton's shore.  This time though the developers were a European firm from a country that takes the threat of global warming seriously. They were Dong Energy of Denmark, a company with thirty years experience of the installation and maintenance of wind turbines off the shores of mainland Europe and of Great Britain.

 

            Dong did its research, made its plans with a straightforward time-table and published them. As I had confidently expected, they have so far stuck to that timetable.  The on-shore work has, as I write, been completed and the installation of the 48 monopiles and their transition pieces, which together provide the foundations and base of the turbines is taking place.  These monopiles are cylinders up to 40 metres long and weighing 230 tonnes each.  They are driven 40 metres into the sea bed by means of a hydraulic hammer, the process taking between two to four hours for each one.   The transition pieces, each weighing 230 tonnes and 23 metres tall are positioned on top of the monopiles.   They are painted yellow to make them more easily visible to shipping.

 

            Also before the end of this year, the off-shore substation will be installed and the laying of the off-shore cable, connecting the substation to the shore, will begin.

            Next year will come the installation of the turbines.   Each turbine weighs a total of 800 tonnes and will be brought in component form by barge direct from Esbjerg in Denmark.  It is expected that turbine assembly and installation will begin next spring.  As each group of turbines is completed they will be commissioned and brought into operation. It is expected that the as-yet-incomplete wind farm will increasingly be feeding electricity into the national grid from next summer until sometime in 2010 when the installation will be complete.

 

            While installation is in progress there will, in the interests of safety, be a 500 metre no-go zone round the perimeter of the wind farm.  However, once it is complete both fishing and leisure craft will be permitted to approach and pass freely through the wind farm site.

 

            Then perhaps, Clactonians will see the 'four-times daily sight-seeing trips' forecast in 'Tendring Topics (in Print)' many years earlier, to an installation that, it is expected, will produce enough 'clean' electricity to supply the needs of 120,000 British homes! 

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A Civic Welcome!

 

            Next week, as I explained in last week's blog, I hope to be in Germany and will be unable to post my usual 'Tendring Topics…on Line'.

 

            I am very much looking forward to my visit but the prospect is becoming daily more and more alarming!  I had thought that I would be asked to do no more than attend the ecumenical meditation on the Zittau 'Lenten Veil', listen to some of my own words (translated into German) being read to the congregation, and perhaps to say a few words of appreciation and thanks at the end.

 

            A couple of days ago however, I received an invitation to visit the Town Hall at 9.30 a.m. on 24^th September, to be received and welcomed by the Oberbürgermeister (the Mayor)!   I'll let you know how I get on

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Relative Values

 

            As I write major banks are collapsing or threatened with collapse, tens of thousands of us are struggling to pay ever-rising fuel and food bills, thousands are threatened with unemployment and homelessness.

 

            Yet, at the same time, there are others who are able and willing to spend millions upon millions of pounds at an auction of modern art on items that to my, admittedly untutored, eyes appear to be not just rubbish but for the most part spectacularly ugly rubbish.

           

            No wonder that I often feel like a time traveller from the 1950s who has unaccountably found himself in the twenty-first century, and isn't really at home there!

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