Tendring Topics…….on Line
'In Flanders' fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row…..'
So wrote the Canadian World War I poet, Lieut. Col. Dr John McCrae, who was himself to lie beneath one of those crosses before that war came to an end.
On Remembrance Sunday I always ask myself whether to go to our quiet Quaker Meeting for Worship at 10.30 a.m. or to the open-air service of remembrance at Clacton's War memorial. I served in the army throughout World War II for seven years of my adolescence and early adulthood and I lost good friends in combat, and many more in captivity in North Africa, Italy and Germany.
I find myself deeply moved by the sounding of the Last Post and by the words of Laurence Binyon, always read at Remembrance Services:
They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,
We shall remember them.
However I expect that I shall finally decide to remember them, as I have done in the past, in the silence of the Quaker Meeting rather than at a semi-military parade. I always buy and wear a poppy, primarily to show that I haven't forgotten those in my Suffolk Territorial Regiment who never returned to see again those well-loved rivers and cornfields, villages and towns of East Anglia; also though, to support the Earl Haig fund for wounded and disabled service men and women that is the destination of money raised by poppy sales. They too are the victims of humankind's thirst for war and violence.
A number of folk whom I admire and respect will be wearing a white instead of a red poppy to signify their devotion to the cause of peace. At one time in the past, my wife Heather and I each wore both a red and a white one. We too considered ourselves to be peaceniks and had imagined that sales from white poppies supported civilians wounded in conflict, in the same way that red poppy sales support wounded service personnel. We learned that that is not so. Proceeds go towards supporting the cause of peace; a thoroughly worthy objective and one that we supported in other ways throughout the year. We did not think though that it was comparable with supporting injured victims of war. So we reverted to wearing a red poppy only.
I have been very angry when, in the past, I have listened to sermons in which Remembrance Day has been used as a pretext for encouraging recruitment in the forces. I don't care for it being used for peace propaganda either. I just want to remember with sadness my friends and to give some thought to the hundreds of thousands of other young lives of every nation on earth that have been squandered on the world's battlefields during the past century, and are still being squandered today.
I think it a great pity that another day hasn't been set aside internationally to remember the civilian dead of two world wars and of subsequent conflicts, in the same way that we remember service personnel on Remembrance Sunday. Then, if the proceeds of the sales of white poppies were going to the support of civilian victims I'd be happy to buy and wear one.
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Recycling again!
Sorry to raise the subject of recycling yet again but it really is an important issue for us all. I'm not a great believer in breast-beating and apologies for mistakes that have been made in the past. Hindsight is a faculty with which we are all well endowed! I am appalled though by the thought of the colossal waste in which we once all indulged without giving it a thought; the acres of paper and cardboard, the mountains of used tin cans, plastic containers, glass bottles and jars, that could have been reused or recycled, but were incinerated or put into landfill instead.
I hope that last week's recycling campaign in Clacton, may have had some effect, even though I think that it was largely preaching to the converted. Perhaps the fact that more recycling can bring cash benefits, as is made clear by a news story in the current Clacton Gazette, may encourage some.
Recycling, it appears, costs the Tendring District something like £1.2 million a year. However, for every tonne of waste that is diverted from landfill to recycling the County Council repays £50.82. From April 1st to 7th October this year this sum totalled £444,512 so Tendring Council is well on the way to recovering some £900,000 (the better part of a million!) by the end of the financial year.
The recent well-publicised story of the material that was put out for recycling in our district but ended up on a rubbish tip in India, has certainly dampened local recycling enthusiasm. Are we all wasting our time and energy just to make profits for some unscrupulous contractor?
These doubts can best be countered by greater openness about what does happen to all that material once it has been bagged or boxed and put out for collection. Why can't we have a well illustrated article, or series of articles on the subject in 'Tendring Matters', the Council's occasional newsletter, and in the columns of the Clacton Gazette, the Coast Gazette and the East Anglian Daily Times. Perhaps BBC tv's Look East could be interested too.
Too boring? I don't think so. I don't believe that there is such a thing as a boring subject, just boring speakers, writers or presenters.
For example; we are told that there is no need to separate our recyclables. Just put the lot, paper, cardboard, tins and plastic into the box and put it out for collection. Fine, but someone has to sort it. I'd like to know where, when and how it is done, and see pictures of the conveyor belt (or whatever) and of those who do the sorting. Then each kind of recyclable, tin cans for instance, could be followed though to its final metamorphosis as a tractor, an ambulance… or just more tin cans! I believe that these are subjects that lend themselves to a number of features that would interest, and I hope reassure, Tendring's sceptical householders.
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'More blessed is it to give……..'
We hear a great deal these days about children being bribed (OK, given cash incentives if you prefer!) to do things that in my childhood we all took for granted: turning up regularly and punctually to school for instance, refraining from antisocial behaviour, eating healthy food. Perhaps in my day we behaved ourselves because we knew that we would be punished if we didn't. We certainly didn't expect to be rewarded for behaving 'normally'.
It came as a very pleasant surprise therefore to hear, on the BBC tv 'Breakfast' programme, of a primary school in Ayrshire in Scotland where the incentive offered to children for eating 'healthy' school meals is not something for themselves but for less fortunate children overseas. For every school meal that is eaten a child receives a number of points. These are translated into cash that is used to provide meals, or school equipment, for children in the third world.
It was really heart-warming to hear these little Scottish children describe their school meals as 'verry tasty' and to see their obvious pleasure at the thought that they were helping someone less fortunate than themselves. No wonder Jesus Christ said of a little child, 'of such is the Kingdom of Heaven'.
These days it takes a good deal to bring a smile to my face on a chilly, damp and dark Monday morning in November. That news item managed it.
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The American Election
No, I'm afraid that you can't get away from it, even in Tendring Topics…on line. Even a committed Europhile like myself has to admit that the result of the Presidential election will affect us all. As I write these words, on Tuesday evening, it will be another twelve hours at least before we can have any sure idea of the victor.
One thing we can be sure of, and thankful for. It will see the end of a regime whose disastrous foreign policy has led our Government blindly into two unwinnable wars. It is a regime that has exacerbated the international terrorism that it claims to be fighting, has striven to delay and dilute every international effort aimed at combating global warming, and has presided over an economic system that has led the world into its current financial chaos.
Have you watched the tv images of Americans voting? The long slow-moving queues snaking towards polling stations remind me of those in a third world country enjoying a free election for the first time after years of oppression. Some of those shuffling forward in the queues spoke of having to wait six, seven, even eight hours to vote.
It might have been thought that a country in which both candidates have, quite literally, spent millions of dollars on their election campaigns would be able to afford a polling system that enabled everyone who is entitled to vote to do so quickly and efficiently.
I notice, by the way, that no American that anyone in this country has ever heard of, (no film star, actor, pop-singer, top politician, industrial or commercial tycoon) is ever interviewed after being spotted in one of those slowly moving queues. Do American celebrities enjoy special voting privileges? Perhaps though, they don't bother to vote, confident that their chequebooks can attain their aims much more effectively than any mark on a ballot
…….and the Outcome!
I didn't stay up all night to learn the election result but I did switch on to BBC radio's World Service whenever I woke up. The first time was half an hour after midnight, by which time nothing much had happened. Then again at 3.00 a.m. when the election was definitely going in Obama's favour but the outcome was still uncertain, and finally at 5.00 a.m. when the result was known.
No, I didn't turn over and go back to sleep again. Despite my disillusion with all politicians. I found myself much too excited to do so. It was obvious to me that Obama's victory would be welcomed in virtually every country in the world. 'Uncle Sam' would no longer be seen world-wide as a bullying self-righteous monster with a bible in one hand and a gun in the other, and his female equivalent as a gun-toting, moose-shooting, pit bull-terrier with lipstick.
Will Barak Obama really make real progress towards peace in the Middle East and elsewhere? Will he really take the steps that are urgently needed to halt the accelerating progress of global warming? Will he really endeavour to spread America's great wealth a little more evenly over all its people and, in doing so, encourage our politicians to do the same?
I am sure that he would like to do all these things. I hope that he fully realizes the strength of the forces ( fabulously wealthy individuals, giant international corporations, arms manufacturers and traders) that will be determined to stop him.
For a few years after World War II I fondly imagined that mankind, by the exercise of reason alone, could create an earthly Paradise of peace and plenty for all. I am now quite sure that we can't and that we won't. I think it just possible though that men and women like Barak Obama can lead us a few faltering steps in the right direction.
I do hope that I'm not going to live to experience yet another disillusion!
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