Week 25.09

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Jaywick's Brooklands Estate……. a Centre for the Arts?

On the face of it, the idea is ridiculous. Jaywick is said to be the third most deprived council ward in the country. Where are the two even less privileged ones, I wonder? Driving along the road behind the sea wall and glancing down those roads, little more than wide alleyways all named after famous makes of car, gives an impression of deprivation, squalor and ugliness, rather than of beauty or indeed of anything that might attract the attention of an artist.

Yet it seems that there are those who are determined to make Brooklands a great centre for the visual arts. Up to date their efforts have hardly been outstandingly successful. Last year we had that extraordinary timber 'sculpture' by Nathan Coley that looked to me like an unfinished poultry shed. Although costing £40,000, it was (fortunately perhaps) only a temporary structure. I had quite imagined that the timber was to go up in smoke and flame on 5th November, but not so. It is coming back to Jaywick as seating. That sounds like a good idea, provided of course that nobody decides that the seats must be fashioned into modern art….instead of being simply objects to be sat on.

Not that Nathan Coley's masterpiece was without its fans. For those who think that all publicity is good publicity, it succeeded brilliantly. Jaywick's work of art certainly captured the attention of the news media!

Now though, we have a new and different art project in sight. £60,000 is to be spent on developing Brooklands Gardens into 'a creativity centre; a focal point for artistic endeavour'. How exactly this is to be done has yet to be revealed, but work is expected to begin in October of this year and to take about six months to complete.

It seems that this £60,000 is a windfall grant specifically earmarked for arts and heritage. There's no hope of its being diverted to the provision of things that Brooklands Estate really needs, such as properly surfaced roads and street lighting. If it were not spent in Jaywick it would have to be spent on a similar project elsewhere.

That being the case, I think that Jaywick residents should welcome it. It can't possibly do any harm. Its creation will undoubtedly provide badly needed work for a few, and it may, just possibly, bring some welcome visitors to Jaywick.


The money is being dispensed by Essex County Council. Essex County Council is also the highways and street lighting authority. Perhaps Lord Hanningfield, the County Council's by-no-means-publicity-shy leader might be persuaded to come along to inspect the work (whatever it is) in progress. The opportunity could then be taken to invite him to stroll along some of those unpaved, unlit, and often under water, avenues. Perhaps he would decline to do so. Either way it would make a good story on tv and in the press.


Who is to run elections?

Shock horror headlines on the front page of the Clacton Gazette on 11th June announced the startling news that 68 members of Tendring Council's staff had been employed as Presiding Officers, Poll Clerks and as vote counters in the previous week's county and European elections. They were paid for this work on top of their salaries and they weren't even expected to take a day off their holiday entitlement.

What's more, that didn't just happen in our own district but nationwide. Matthew Elliot, chief executive of the Taxpayers Alliance in London said, 'It's shocking that council employees receive their full salary for days when they were working in the polling booths. They were handsomely rewarded for their election work, so effectively taxpayers have been paying twice. Their job is to serve the local community, they were not able to fulfil that duty when they were working somewhere else and should have taken a day's leave'.

Well, if that is considered shocking by members of the Taxpayers Alliance they must have a very low shock threshold. They overlook the fact that working on the election is serving the local community and that the hours of work at a polling station are from 6.30 a.m. till 10.00 p.m. for poll clerks and rather longer for presiding officers. That is a thirteen and a half hour day with no lunch break – almost twice the seven-hour day of most office workers. 'The count' can take all night, especially if it is a close-run thing and there are one or more recounts. I have done all three jobs, presiding officer, poll clerk and vote counter, in my time. Once I remember, for a parish council election in a remote rural parish I was the Acting Returning Officer, announcing the result to a 'cheering crowd' of at least half a dozen voters. Believe me, I earned that extra money!

The work doesn't have to be done by council officials and I recall one election (I think it was while I was working with the former Tendring Rural District Council) that took place in school holiday time, and most of the jobs were given to teachers. Presiding officers, poll clerks and counters need not be either Einsteins or saints, but they do need to have had a certain amount of office experience, together with intelligence and integrity. The Returning Officer, who is responsible for the proper running of the election, is always a senior local government officer and wisely picks his electoral staff from among those he knows are capable of performing their duties honestly and efficiently.

Contrary to popular belief, most local government employees are not in receipt of enormous salaries. They do not enjoy the bonuses and the perks that go with many similar jobs in private enterprise. I know that, in my time, I was always grateful for the few extra pounds than an election job brought in. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't have minded losing a day's holiday entitlement, though I would probably have resented the council requiring it. I always kept two or three days in reserve in case of a domestic crisis.

Today, retired, I am a council-tax payer and an income-tax payer……..and I don't grudge today's council staff the extra money that some of them get when an election comes round.

Towards a United Europe

A fortnight ago I posted on this blog the copy of a letter that my elder son had written to the Prime Minister on the subject of MPs false claims for 'expenses'. I was astonished at the feed-back that I received. That letter really seemed to strike a chord with blog readers.

There is, I fear, unlikely to be similar enthusiasm this week about a letter that I wrote to the 'postbag' of the Daily Gazette and that was published by the Gazette last Friday, 12th June. I haven't always been a Europhile. I once had a romantic idea that an effective political and economic unit could be forged out of the Commonwealth. It was in that hope that I voted NO in that famous referendum on membership

That idea, never very likely, is now quite clearly impossible. Since I voted NO in that referendum I have seen the disastrous results of our country slavishly supporting American foreign and defence policy and following American economic examples. I made many visits to mainland Europe in the '60s and '70s and have returned there several times during the past three years. I have seen the tremendous progress that has been made during the past three decades and, though I hate having to say so, how many things are now done better there than they are here.


I now firmly believe that Britain's best future lies within a united and integrated Europe. How can we hope to achieve a 'level playing field' for the sale of our goods and services in Europe without Europe-wide legislation? How can we hope to make our voice heard on vital issues like the climatic change without the amplification offered by a United Europe? I think that we need a new national cross-party pressure group to promote European integration.

Here anyway is a copy of my letter published in the Daily Gazette in response to their editorial comments a few days earlier:

I can't agree that the votes of the Europhobes indicated that they were 'interested in Europe'. I suggest that it meant the reverse! Two parties that are interested in a United Europe, the Lib.Dems and the Greens, also did well in the elections.

In Colchester, the Lib-Dems' successes were not 'bucking the trend' as your headline on Gazette Letters (June 9) suggests. Nationwide, they increased their share of the popular vote, while the share of both Conservatives and Labour fell.

It is time that those of us who believe that Britain's best future lies in playing an active part in a politically and economically united Europe, spoke up as enthusiastically (I won't say as stridently!) as those who oppose it. It is not a case of 'Europe and us'. Geographically, historically and culturally we are part of Europe and it is in ever-closer fellowship with the mainland Europeans that our destiny lies.

I know that we 'stood alone' in 1940 (I should know, I was there – and in khaki!) but we might not have done so for long had Hitler not made the fatal errors of invading the Soviet Union and declaring war on the USA.

In today's world we cannot stand alone. We can only co-operate and, on occasion, compete with today's superpowers, China and the USA, and those of tomorrow, Russia and India, on equal terms, as part of a truly united Europe in which we are playing a leading role.

The alternative is to become a satellite, a protectorate, of the USA.

Is that what we really want?

A Truly British Invention

I was very pleased to hear recently on the tv news that the Hovercraft, a truly British invention, was celebrating its fiftieth birthday, that hovercraft are still being manufactured and that there is a steady demand for them.

Summer 1971 – our hovercraft arrives on the beach at Calais to take us home.
In the 1970s my family and I took a number of camping holidays in Switzerland, Austria and the Italian Alps (living in the flattest part of England we always headed for the mountains!). We crossed the Channel from Ramsgate to Calais by the HOVERLLOYD hovercraft service. We found it fast, efficient and comfortable…though I do remember one return crossing when the huge hovercraft was tossed about like a cork on a heavy swell!


The service was discontinued and I had imagined that it was because they were found to be uneconomic or unseaworthy. It appears that this is not the case. Smaller hovercraft…..the only form of transport that can travel at speed over sea, land and marsh are still in demand both by the armed forces and by those exploring or developing areas remote from civilisation. The heavy car and passenger carrying hovercraft are no longer manufactured because there isn't sufficient demand to justify their manufacture. I suppose that the Channel Tunnel will have dealt them a final blow!


Anyway, I wish this British invention 'Many Happy returns of the Day'!