Tendring Topics…….on line

Home Rule for Essex?

To be fair, Essex County Council’s leader, Lord Hanningfield isn’t quite demanding that. He did once in the past though….and then hastily assured us that he was ‘only joking’. Now though, he would like to see the billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money entrusted to quangos, to be made accountable to Essex County Council. He would also like, within the county, to have power to decide who should receive benefits such as Jobseekers’ Allowance and Income Support, and how much recipients should receive.

He would like the county council to be allowed to hold referendums on local issues, and to negotiate and then enforce a set of standards with such quangos as the East of England Development Agency, Arts Council East, Natural England and English Heritage. If they failed to meet these standards the county council would then be able either take on their jobs itself or find someone else to do it.

We do have a strange county council. They have sold off their old people’s homes, are eager to turn their schools into privately funded ‘academies’, and to put out to tender practically all the other services for which they are statutorily responsible. Yet, at the same time, they are taking over failing post offices (that’s one action of which I whole-heartedly approve!), running a bank and suggesting the provision of a county-wide public relations service. Now they want to become involved with the Social Security Benefit System and are casting envious eyes on the functions of the quangos?

Do they really want to run all these things, I wonder? Or do they simply wish to have the power to sell them off (like their old people’s homes) to the highest bidder?

The fact that Lord Hanningfield and his colleagues were recently returned to the County Hall with an increased majority confirms a conviction that I have held for some time. Most of the ever-fewer number of people who bother to vote in local elections don’t vote positively to get their representative elected…..but negatively to keep out of the Council Chamber those whom they trust even less or dislike even more!

With one statement reported as having been made by Lord Hanningfield I do whole-heartedly agree; ‘As things currently stand, the political system in England is far too centralised’. I’d add that the same applies to Essex, one of England’s largest counties. I believe that most of the County Council’s services could be run more efficiently and much more democratically by individual district and borough councils. The few that need overall strategic planning, together with many functions currently performed by central government, and least some of those of the Quangos on which Lord Hanningfield has set his sights, would be better performed by a larger East-of-England elected authority covering the whole of the Greater East Anglia Region.

Something to think about!

Once or twice a year I am asked to provide a ‘Thought for the Week’ (a kind of five-minute sermon) for inclusion in the Tendring Talking Times, the free weekly ‘talking newspaper’ sent to blind and visually impaired people within the Tendring District. I felt that one I recorded a few weeks ago might be of wider interest – so here it is, in its entirety. I don’t know if the ‘on tape’ version has yet been distributed.

Hello Friends. Ernest Hall here, with your thought for the week. You may remember that I am a Quaker and am also a member of the Church of England.

A visitor from another world, surveying religious practices on planet Earth, might be forgiven for concluding that of all the world religions, Christianity is the soft option. Think about it. There are no dietary restrictions. There is no rigid dress code. Any kind of dress or state of undress that is socially and legally acceptable in a public place, is likely to be acceptable in any place of Christian worship. Men, women and children are permitted, indeed are encouraged, to worship together. Christians, men or women, who marry someone of another faith, abandon their Christian faith, or are foolish enough to convert to another faith, suffer no temporal penalty. Those who attempted to exact such a penalty would themselves be liable to prosecution.

Initiation into full church membership may range from nothing at all, as with the Quakers, to brief total immersion as with some Protestant Evangelical traditions. For most it involves no more than a ceremony involving sprinkling of water on the forehead either in infancy or later in life.

Yes, the visitor from some distant galaxy might well conclude that Christianity is the soft option. But would he be right? I think not.

The late Archbishop William Temple once said that Christianity is the most materialist of the world’s religions. It doesn’t just require us to give thanks, praise and sacrifice to our Heavenly Father – or to follow a rigid dietary, dress or even moral code. Our religion is one of faith-in-action. We are expected to do God’s will as it is revealed to us in the example and teaching of Jesus.

The man who built his house upon a rock is compared by Jesus, not with a man of faith and nothing else, but with those who heard his words and acted upon them. Jesus said that not all who called upon him ‘Lord! Lord!’ would enter into his Kingdom but those who do the will of his Father, and our Father, in Heaven.

Jesus told us that the whole of the moral teaching of the Old Testament is summed up in the two commandments ‘Love God with every atom of your being. Love your neighbour as you love yourself’. In the Sermon on the Mount he clarified that second commandment telling his listeners, and through them telling us, that we should always treat other people in the same way that we ourselves would wish to be treated.

That is surely quite clear and easily understood. At first glance one might think that it could be complied with fairly easily. We all know how we would like to be treated. All we have to do is treat other people in the same way. Have we done that though? Sadly not; even the disciples who heard Jesus’ words and witnessed his example failed the test. When a Samaritan village refused to offer them hospitality and drove them out, they asked Jesus to bring down fire from Heaven to destroy the offenders!

Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to those that despitefully use you’. Many of our forefathers have preferred to follow the example of those disciples rather than that of Jesus. Would medieval Christians, who condemned others to be burnt alive, really have liked to be treated in the same way? Nowadays we have nuclear weapons, cluster bombs and anti-personnel land mines. Do we really imagine that the manufacture and use of these weapons would receive the blessing of Jesus Christ, as we know him from the four Gospels?

Perhaps you are thinking, ‘It’s all very well telling us that Christianity is faith-in-action – but I am frail, disabled, old. It is as much as I can do to look after myself, never mind others’. Believe me, I understand that. I am myself in my late eighties and all too familiar with the progressive weakness and disability of old age.

Our God understands it well too. He is the God who rules the Universe but also notes the fall of the sparrow. A well-loved prayer in the Church of England Prayer Book begins; ‘Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid………..’ God knows our weaknesses and our strengths and never imposes upon us a burden that, if we seek his help, we are unable to bear.

Even the weakest and most feeble of us can greet others with a smile, be generous with words of praise and encouragement and sparing with those of complaint and condemnation, never forgetting to say 'please' and 'thank you', and always apologising when causing inconvenience to anyone else. That may well be all that God requires of us. One of our Quaker advices tells us, ‘Be ready to give help and to receive it’. I know from personal experience, that for those who were once very active, receiving may be much more difficult than giving! Above all - however much or however little you do or give, do it with love in your heart. It will then follow, as the night follows day, that your heart will also be filled with peace and joy.

Thank you for listening Friends. Goodbye and may God bless you all.

Some, reading the above, may well wonder, ‘Does he really believe all that himself?’ I can only answer that I do…most of the time. I am often assailed by doubt though or, as our Quaker ‘Advices and Queries’ put it, I consider the possibility that I may be mistaken. Do I act upon that belief? I try to, but I don’t always succeed….which is why I value the Christian doctrine of forgiveness.

What I do know, without the least shadow of doubt, is that the world would be a much happier place if more people believed it, and acted upon it.

The New ‘Levellers’

Some months ago, I mentioned in this blog having read a review of a book by two esteemed academics, promoting and justifying statistically a conviction to which I have clung instinctively throughout my life; that the happiest human societies are those with the least difference between their wealthiest and their poorest members.

The book, which I have now purchased and read, is The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, both of whom hold University Professorships, published by Allen Lane (an imprint of Penguin Books) at £20. It didn’t disappoint. Below is a quotation from Chapter 13 that expresses its whole theme.

It may seem obvious that problems associated with relative deprivation should be more common in more unequal societies. However, if you ask people why greater equality reduces these problems, much the most common answer is that it must be because more equal societies have fewer poor people. The assumption is that greater equality helps those at the bottom. As well as being only a minor part of the proper explanation, it is an assumption which reflects our failure to recognise very important processes affecting our lives and the societies we are part of. The truth is that the vast majority of the population is harmed by greater inequality.

Across whole populations, rates of mental illness are five times higher in the most unequal compared to the least unequal societies. Similarly, in more unequal societies people are five times as likely to be imprisoned, six times as likely to be clinically obese and murder rates may be many times higher. The reason why these differences are so big is, quite simply, because the effects of inequality are not confined just to the least well-off: instead they affect the vast majority of the population

This is demonstrated by statistics from the countries surveyed showing clearly the effects of inequality on virtually every aspect of human activity. Chapter headings include Community life and social relations; Mental Health and drug use; Physical health and life expectancy; Obesity; Educational performance; Teenage births; Violence, Imprisonment and Punishment; and Social Mobility.

In conclusion the authors give some thought to ways in which more egalitarian societies could be achieved without violent political upheaval. These are both convincing and encouraging, though not easily summarised. The Spirit Level is, on the whole, an optimistic book, diagnosing the ills of today’s society and suggesting possible remedies.


Everyone who is concerned about what David Cameron has described as 'our broken society' and interested in ways in which it might be mended, should borrow or buy a copy and, as it says in the Book of Common Prayer, 'read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it'.