Week 40.09

Tendring Topics………on line

A Small New Friend

I have been delighted to learn, at first by text message at 5.30 a.m. a fortnight or so ago, and more recently by snail-mail, of the arrival in Zittau, Germany, of a tiny new member of the family of my friends Kornelia (Konnie) and Andreas Kulke. He is Tom Friedrich Kulke and was born on 1st September weighing, so I have been told, 3720 grammes. That is nearly three and three quarters kilos and must be round about 8 lbs. A pretty good weight, I would say.

In the picture he has closed his eyes and appears to be counting his fingers. They are all there…..all ten of them! He looks very pleased with himself, and he has reason to be, because he has been born into one of the nicest families I know. My daughter-in-law, who is not given to fulsome flattery, said of his Mum, ‘I can’t imagine her ever raising her voice in anger’. His Dad, Grandma and Auntie Ingrid, my good friend for many years now, are equally warm, generous and loving.

Below is big sister Maja, taken just a year ago on her second birthday. She is holding a greetings card from Pete, Arlene and myself and is probably thinking; ‘I can’t read German yet….and they send me a card in English!’

She tells me (through her Mum as an interpreter) that he can’t play with her yet, but he can sit on her lap. I realize that I missed a lot by not having a big sister.

The Death of a Thousand Cuts

With an election in the no-longer-distant future it is a little disquieting to find that ‘cuts’; cuts in public services, cuts in state benefits, cuts in pensions, cuts in health and education budgets, feature prominently in the pre-election speeches of leading politicians. The only cut of which we can feel there is little possibility is a cut in taxation.

It would be nice to be able to say that they aren’t necessary, but they are. The financial crisis resulted in the government having to plough millions of pounds of borrowed money into coffers that had been emptied by the folly and greed of their custodians. It has to be paid back. That, I think, is common ground. The question is, how is that burden of debt to be shared?

I would like to see, though I think it improbable that I will, the burden spread fairly across every stratum of society. Cutting the services that spell the difference between civilisation and barbarism disproportionately penalises the less well off. Cutting the national health, the education and the social services budgets doesn’t bother the wealthy in the least. They can buy their health care and the best education for their children, and they certainly never need to avail themselves of any of the social services.

They do, of course, have rather more to be stolen or vandalised than the rest of us so I don’t imagine they would be in favour of any proposed economies or down-sizing of the police force.

One substantial cut that could and should be made is disposing of, or at least declining to renew, our Trident nuclear deterrent. The ownership of nuclear weapons hasn’t yet succeeded in deterring anyone who was actually attacking us. It didn’t prevent our Turkish NATO allies from invading the Commonwealth island of Cyprus. It didn’t deter the Argentinians from invading the Falklands. It didn’t deter the Iraqis from invading Kuwait. It certainly didn’t deter the IRA or El Quaida, nor does it in any way deter the Taliban! If some other country, Iran or North Korea perhaps, should threaten ‘the west’ with nuclear weapons I am sure that there will be enough in other hands to provide Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D), which is really all that these weapons can offer. The Prime Minister is now talking about dispensing with one of our four Trident submarines. Well, I suppose that a quarter of a loaf is better than no bread……..but it’s not all that much better!

No politician has so far mentioned the dreaded word ‘taxation’ yet surely taxation will have to be increased. To make sure that its burden is evenly shared, our rulers should concentrate on income tax. I pay what is for me a substantial sum in income tax every year. I don’t enjoy doing so but I count myself lucky. The incomes of many thousands are too low to be eligible for tax. I wouldn’t want to have to live on such an income.

In considering income tax rises the Government should also raise the upper rates so that the seriously wealthy have to pay as large a proportion of their income as the rest of us. At the same time they should close securely those loopholes in the law by which clever lawyers and accountants can arrange for their wealthy masters to avoid (not, of course, evade – that is illegal!) payment of the taxes for which the rest of us are liable.

By its very nature it is only those who can afford to pay income tax have to do so. The same cannot be said about indirect taxation, now loved by both the main political parties but called ‘stealth taxes’ by the opposition.

I deeply resent when paying for a repair or improvement to my home, to have to pay a substantial sum of VAT for the privilege of having it done. I resent having a sum added to my insurance premiums (like a compulsory tip for bad service!) to pay the relatively new insurance tax. I heard it said during the Thatcher years that the great thing about indirect taxes was that they offered ‘freedom of choice’. If you didn’t buy the object or service you didn’t have to pay it.

The householder faced with water pouring through a hole in his roof doesn’t have a great deal of choice about getting it repaired. Neither does the motorist, or the cyclist, who relies on his machine to get to work, have much choice about taking it to the garage or work shop when something goes wrong.

I have heard many explanations of the cause of today’s economic situation. One thing is certain; it wasn’t caused by the indolence or cupidity of the poor. Yet I suspect that it will be the poor who will have to suffer most before the situation improves. Last week, in my references to songs popular with the troops in World War II, I didn’t mention ‘She was poor, but she was honest, Victim of a rich man’s whim,’ a long and lugubrious Victorian ballad of which few of us knew all the verses. We all knew the last one though, and sang it with gusto;

It’s the rich wot gets the pleasure,
It’s the poor wot gets the blame.
It’s the same, the ‘ole world over,
Isn’t it a bloomin’ shame!

And so it still is!

The Cost of University Education

Did you hear the spokesmen for the CBI (Confederation of British Industry – the voice of the employers) giving us, on tv, their views on University Education? They are quite straight-forward……tuition fees should go up, student loans should be subject to interest, and there should be fewer and smaller financial grants for students.

It always gets under my skin when I hear the middle aged, be they politicians or captains of industry, urging that heavier financial burdens should be placed on students’ shoulders, or even that the existing ones should be maintained. Those who are themselves graduates, know perfectly well that when they were students there were no tuition fees and there were generous though means-tested maintenance grants for those who needed them.

‘Pull the ladder away Jack ….I’ve reached the top!’ seems to be their motto!

There were, of course, a lot fewer university students in their day, so the burden of their tuition and maintenance was more easily coped with. I think that reduction of the number of these students might help provide a solution. The suggestion that fifty percent of school leavers should go to University has always seems to me to absurd.

Why, I wonder, is intellectual attainment treated so very differently from its physical counterpart? No one expects half of us, or very many people at all, to merit training to Olympic or international standards, in any athletic or team sport. Only the very best of the best need apply, and nobody thinks that that is unreasonable. To suggest anything similar for university selection would be to invite denunciations of blatant elitism! It really is possible to have a satisfying and well-rewarded career, and to live a happy and fulfilled life, without being able to write B.A or B.Sc. after your name. Nor, believe me, need those who can’t feel inferior.

Did you know that, every year for the past five years, no less than twenty-two students out of every one hundred selected, have ‘dropped out’ of University without ever completing their courses, despite millions of pounds having been spent by the government in attempts to retain them? These were students who should clearly never have been selected. How much money might have been saved, and how much bitter disappointment and despair might have been avoided, had their unsuitability been spotted during the selection process! Preventing the selection of potential drop-outs would subtract a worth-while sum from the total University Budget.

This is surely one avenue that should be explored before we start discouraging the applications of possibly brilliant students by burdening them with an even larger burden of debt.

An Indian Summer

We are experiencing an Indian Summer as I type these words. Whether it will still be with us when in a few days, I post them onto my blog, remains to be seen.

I had always imagined that the expression had been brought to England by returning Sahibs and Memsahibs, not to mention common squaddies, from the Indian subcontinent. Some years ago though, visiting friends from rural New York State assured my wife and I that it had American, and more sinister, origins.

Early settlers in New England had built wooden defensive stockades round their settlements, cut down the trees and cleared the undergrowth for a few hundred yards from the stockades.

Warm sunny days in late September and early October brought heavy morning mists over the forests of North America. Native Indians, tomahawks and scalping knives at the ready, could creep under cover of the mist right up to the stockade…and be up and over it before the alarm could be raised. In those days it wasn’t a case of ‘Don’t throw away the sun cream and the eye shades’, but ‘make sure your musket is ready’ when there was an Indian Summer……….. or should we perhaps now, in the interests of political correctness, rename it ‘A Native American Summer’?

Week 39.09

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Unhealthy Tendring – are we oldies to blame again?

Not so long ago it was we oldies who were ‘skewing’ the statistics of educational achievement in the Tendring District. We hadn’t the paper educational qualifications of the younger generation (not even a couple of GCSEs at ‘E’ level!) and we were making the rest of the population appear more ignorant than they were. Be that as it may, I’d back an average team of over sixties to beat any similar team of teenagers-to-thirties in any General Knowledge quiz that wasn’t concerned solely with sport, pop music or ‘celebrities’!

Now we’re affecting the district’s health statistics. You may think, as I do, that the Tendring District and, in particular the holiday coast, is an exceptionally healthy area in which to live. There is little industrial pollution, weather conditions are rarely if ever extreme. We have the lowest average rainfall in England, and fresh air blowing in continuously from the sea. Clacton’s holiday publicity used to claim ‘Champagne air, Rainfall rare’. For what more could one ask?

However, a report by the British Heart Foundation reveals that more people in the Tendring District die of heart attacks than in any other part of Essex. Every year an average of 320 people in the district die following a heart attack. Neighbouring Colchester does better than us with only 203 deaths from the same cause each year.

Dr Nick Robinson, consultant cardiologist for the Essex Cardiac and Stroke Network is reported as saying, ‘Compared to other areas of Essex, Tendring has a much older population and heart attacks are more common in older people. The other reason is, that Tendring is more deprived than other areas of Essex, in terms of income and education’. Education again!……..Dr Robinson seems convinced that it is we poverty-stricken, uneducated and ignorant old pensioners who are casting a shadow over the County’s health statistics. In that connection may an ignorant old octogenarian point out that ‘compared with’ rather than ‘compared to’ is correct English usage

I hope that Dr Robinson will give the matter a little further thought. Has he, for instance, ever wondered why the Tendring District has a much older population than other parts of Essex. Couldn’t it be because we are a lot healthier than other areas? We natives (as a resident for fifty-four years I surely count as one) live longer because of that, and people from elsewhere, shrewd enough to know a good thing when they see one, move here because they believe that living in the Tendring District will probably ensure them a longer and healthier retirement.

No-one, as Dr Robinson has surely noticed, lives for ever. Tendring folk tend to die of heart attacks in their old age because previously they have successfully avoided or resisted other, often much more unpleasant, causes of death. I can imagine many worse ways of departing this life than having one’s heart stop beating while dozing in a favourite armchair. Yes, I’m well aware that not all heart attacks are like that……but we can always hope!

Is Tendring, as Dr Robinson also suggests, ‘more deprived than other areas of Essex?’ Remarks like that make me wonder if he has ever actually been here. There certainly are areas of deprivation in our district, as in any area of comparable size. I don’t think though that a visitor, driving through our countryside and our town centres, feels that he is passing through scenes of poverty and deprivation.

Less than a fortnight ago my son and daughter-in-law from Enfield, visiting me here is Clacton, remarked how prosperous and ‘regenerated’ Clacton was beginning to look, compared with some other areas with which they were familiar.

Possibly, because of the high proportion of pensioners who live here, our average income is below the national, or even the county average. The incomes of most pensioners are quite low. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re all living in desperate poverty. Some undoubtedly are, and I wouldn’t for one moment make light of their difficulties. They need every penny of help that they can get.

It should be remembered though, that living comfortably within one’s means depends upon outgoings as well as income. Many of us have long ago paid off our mortgages. We have no dependents and no debts. We don’t have to pay for NHS prescriptions, for bus journeys or for tv licences. Once we have made it to eighty we don’t even have to pay for our passports for travel abroad – a concession for which I have been very grateful. The fact that our actual income may be low doesn’t necessarily mean that we have a struggle for survival.

I suggest that the average age at death would be a much more reliable indicator of the general health of a district than which of a number of natural causes was most frequently responsible. None of us can hope to evade for ever the attentions of the grim reaper. I think though that in the Tendring District we manage to avoid him for rather longer than most.

I’d like Dr Robinson to come to the Tendring peninsula and have a look round. If he’s hoping for a happy and healthy professional life followed by a long and comfortable retirement, he could do a lot worse than settle here.

No more doctors’ catchment areas?

There are not all that many areas of policy in which all three main political parties find themselves in agreement. One, it appears, is that doctors’ catchment areas should be abolished, and that we should all have freedom to make our own choice of the medical practice with which we wish to be registered, no matter where it may be.

It sounds a splendid idea and there seems little doubt that it will become law in the near future. How will it work though? Do you remember when they abolished catchment areas for secondary schools and said that all parents would have the right to send their children to the school of their own choice? Those schools that were considered to be ‘good’ were quickly over-subscribed and others (like Bishop’s Park College in Clacton) that were seen as being less good, were left seriously short of pupils.

The final result was that parents lost the valuable right that they had once had, of automatic admission to their nearest comprehensive school. It was head teachers of good schools, rather than parents, who were able to do the picking and choosing. Freedom to choose whichever medical practice patients prefer could lead to a similar situation.

The idea seems to be that regular commuters might well prefer to have a doctor near their place of work rather than near their home. Nobody though, spends all their time at work, and very few people spend more time there than at home. Nor can we always choose the times that we need to see a doctor. A medical practice near the place of employment would be very handy for routine visits like blood pressure checks and ‘flu jabs, but how about more serious problems?

Supposing you work ‘in the city’ and commute there from Colchester, or Frinton or Clacton every day. You’re registered with a medical practice somewhere near Liverpool Street. I assume there is one in that area. One morning you wake up after a bad night’s sleep with stomach pains that could just be the temporary result of over-indulgence……but might not be? What would you do? Catch the 8.10 or whatever as usual, and hope that it will either get better or that you will be able to get to the surgery before it gets much worse? Or ring the surgery and ask for a home visit? It’s only seventy miles away after all!

I have an idea that giving patients ‘freedom of choice’ will turn out to be one of those well-intentioned ideas that ultimately have the opposite effect from that intended.

Successes in the Anglia in Bloom Competition

The annual Anglia in Bloom competition has surely been one of the most beneficial influences on the East Anglian countryside and townscape life in recent years. It ensures that our towns and villages get an annual floral facelift, and encourages both local co-operation and healthy competition. Chairman of the Judges, George Dawson, said, ‘The competition is not just about flowers. Many different categories are looked at including environmental quality, community involvement, biodiversity and the involvement of young people……….when everyone is involved the rewards are tremendous’.

I was glad to see that competitors in our Tendring District received their fair share of those rewards. Frinton once again set an example, gaining a gold award and top spot in the small town (2,500 to 6,000 residents) category. Brightlingsea achieved a gold award in their (6,000 to 12,000 residents) category but yielded the top place to Halstead. Clacton, a little disappointingly, missed the top award but did receive a silver in the coastal town category.

I was pleased that Kirby won a bronze award in the large village category, and more than pleased to learn that much-maligned Jaywick received a similar award in the small town group (Lord Hanningfield please note!)

Surely though, the children of Clacton’s Holland Park Primary School, and their parents, must have been the very proudest participants in our district. They were selected for having the best project in the Anglia region for children under twelve.

Congratulations to all those mentioned. I’m sure that we’ll do even better next year!

Songs of World War II

How refreshing that the wartime album of, now a nonagenarian, Vera Lynne, recently proved to be ‘top of the pops’! It is nice to know that there is still a demand for melodies that don’t assault the ear drums, and lyrics that can be heard, understood and don’t insult the intelligence.

No-one, whether in the forces or on the home front during World War II, will fail to remember having their hearts cheered during those dark days by her voice singing ‘We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when’ or ‘There’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover’. They brought a message of hope to folk who were desperately wondering whether, in this world, they would ever meet again someone they loved, and whether anything but warplanes would ever again be seen in the skies over the Kent coast.

She and her songs were loved by members of the forces. It must be said though that hers were not the songs that we sung as we marched or drove along Libyan or Egyptian desert tracks, or off duty in the canteen back in England.

I don’t, of course know what went on in the officers’ or even the sergeants’ mess, but we common squaddies favoured songs that were either quite unprintable – the unexpurgated version of ‘Bless ‘em all’, and ‘When this (censored) war is over’ sung to the tune of a popular hymn, or songs that were sickly sentimental, all about childhood sweethearts and silver-haired old mums waiting at home. ‘There’s an old mill by the stream, Nellie Dean, Where we used to sit and dream, Nellie Dean’, was, I remember, particularly popular with those who had had a drink or three!

An exception was the one song that became equally popular with the rank and file of both opposing armies in North Africa and, I think, had the most memorable melody of any song that came out of World War II. I first heard ‘Lili Marlene’ sung by captured German troops after we had taken Wadi Halfaya (Hellfire Pass) and Bardia just after Christmas 1941…….six months before the debacle of Tobruk, when most of us became prisoners! It had been broadcast by the German Forces broadcasting network in occupied Belgrade and had been an instant success.

It had a melody that stuck in the mind (it’s going through mine as I type these words!). We tried to put some English words to it, and I think that the Italians tried the same. Eventually, of course, there was an English version ‘Vor der Kaserne, bei dem grossen Tor’ became, ‘Underneath the lamp-light, by the barrack gate’. Its title was, of course, as easily pronounced in English as in German. It was added to Vera Lynne’s repertoire and became, as far as I know, the only song of World War II that was popular with both those in khaki and those in field-grey.

Tendring Topics……on line

The County Council…again!

Sorry, I don’t particularly enjoy writing about Lord Hanningfield and his colleagues on the Essex County Council. The trouble is that the things that they do, and the things that they leave undone, simply demand comment. They are not of course, exactly shrinking violets themselves. Rarely a day, and surely never a week, passes without there being a press report of the county council’s political leader pontificating about this, that or the other matter.

Last week it was their plans to breathe new life into the Tendring District’s holiday coast…..and to uproot a few hundred of its residents in the process. A week or two earlier it had been about their ambitions to take over the functions of the East of England Development Agency and other similar quangos. Before that had been the floating of the Essex Bank, a county council brain-child that would help struggling Essex businesses with the loans they needed to expand their services, or perhaps simply to keep them afloat. They are, of course, already running (and far be it from me to criticise this particular activity) failing post offices. There was also talk of their running a public relations service, but that idea seems to have fallen by the wayside.

What has always seemed surprising to me is that while they are keen on running things that are not really their concern (the renaissance of the Tendring Holiday Coast, for instance, is primarily a matter for the Tendring District Council) they seem equally keen to shed their responsibility for matters that really are their concern.

They do, for instance, have a responsibility for the welfare of the old and have chosen to sell off all their residential homes for the elderly. The reason? Because it is better to support old people in their own homes. That, it is claimed, is what old people want. This is one field in which I am better qualified to speak than Lord Hanningfield. Many old people, including myself, do wish to remain in their own homes for as long as they can. They welcome any support that they can get. Others, overcome perhaps with loneliness, loss of sight or of mobility, do crave company and on-the-spot help. They would appreciate the chance to move into a residential or care home.

In a single issue of a Daily Gazette last week there were two examples of the way in which the County Council’s efforts to become a ‘Jack of all trades’ show indications of their being ‘masters on none’. A year or so ago the County Council was severely criticised for their child welfare and protection services. It was even suggested that they were comparable with those of the now-notorious London Borough of Haringey. It might have been expected that they would have made absolutely certain that they were beyond criticism in the future. It appears that they didn’t.

The Gazette reported that they had been severely criticised by High Court Judge Belinda Bucknell QC, for their failure to support a 13 year old boy and his 11 year old sister, who were caring for their wheelchair bound father suffering from a degenerative illness. The Council’s lawyers were told, ‘I take a pretty firm view of the way in which your clients have behaved. They (the two children) needed a modest intervention from your clients, but did not get it. There have been serious failings to comply with court orders’. I was surprised to note that the County Council’s comment on this came, not from its usually voluble leader, but from his deputy.

The other headline related to the famous Bank of Essex set up by the County Council amid a blaze of publicity seven or eight months ago. It cost £450,000 (not far short of half a million!) to set up and in the first six months of its operation it approved just twenty loans totalling just £400,000…. £50,000 less than its set-up cost!

Never mind; county councillors have now voted them an extra £200,000 ‘to make sure it is the appropriate way to manage risk’. I’m not at all sure what that means but let’s hope it works. It is, of course, our money with which the county council is being so generous!

Keep your receipts!

I was glad to hear on the tv news that, despite the recession, Morrison’s Supermarkets had made a healthy profit last year. They’re only ten minutes away from my home by mobility scooter and, because it has limited carrying capacity, I probably go there at least three times a week.. I know and often exchange a friendly few words with the checkout ladies and the forecourt assistants. They are all very likeable and helpful people.

The service has definitely improved since they took over from Safeway. In the old days, for instance, the bins and shelves in the ‘produce’ or greengrocery section often weren’t filled for early shoppers. Nowadays, without fail, they’re ready from opening time. Many of their ‘own brand’ products too aren’t just ‘the best buy’ but positively ‘the best product’ – not quite the same thing.

Like all retailers they have problems with shoplifters and, as I almost discovered to my cost, their staff are pretty vigilant!

For several months I have not needed to use even one of their plastic bags. I prefer to load my purchases directly from the trolley to the front basket or rear bag of my scooter. That saves time at the checkout, and enables me to pack in my own time, making sure that heavier items are at the bottom of my bag and easily damaged ones (soft fruit and vegetables and eggs, for example) are on top. Also, I’m doing my bit for the environment, though I wouldn’t pretend that that is my first consideration.

Recently, having completed my shopping, I was pushing the loaded trolley through the supermarket’s exit door with one hand and, with the other, idly screwing up my till receipt, while I looked for a litterbin in which to deposit it. Luckily, as it turned out, there wasn’t a bin immediately in sight. Before I reached my mobility scooter a polite but firm voice asked, ‘May I see your receipt, sir?’ A new, uniformed security guard was eyeing me suspiciously. ‘Certainly’, I said, ‘If you care to unscrew it. I was about to chuck it away’. He flattened the somewhat-worse-for-wear piece of paper, perused it carefully, and handed it back to me. ‘I asked for it, sir’ he said ‘because you hadn’t got a shopping bag’

I think that that security guard should probably be commended for his vigilance. It certainly hadn’t occurred to me that the absence of a bag could mean the presence of a shoplifter. It was lucky that I hadn’t disposed of the receipt. I couldn’t have confirmed my story by taken the guard back to the checkout lady. As she was checking out my purchases, one of her colleagues was putting up a notice. ‘This till is closing – please go to another!’

I doubt very much if Morrison’s would have prosecuted me….but I bet that for ever after that security guard would have thought. ‘I must watch that old chap in the future. He got away with it that time. It’s his age of course. He probably really thought that he had paid. I hope that I never get like that!’

Having fun?

Who, I wonder, decides on the increasing number of ‘national’ days or weeks in which we are asked to give special thought to causes as varied as giving up smoking, the needs of neglected children, homeless pensioners, those with various forms of disability or who are otherwise disadvantaged, and so on.

I suspect that they are often simply invented by the Charities or other organisations involved, and are then publicised among the rest of us, often with minimal success.

Did you, for instance, know that last week (the week ending 12th September) was National Sexual Health Week? I learned about it only because of the apparently bizarre, but possibly very sensible, decision of the North East Essex chlamydia screening service to launch the week on the Monday, with a stand at Funderworld, a funfair off Colchester’s Avenue of Remembrance. Jayne Overett, screening service manager, is reported as saying that the service is always looking for fresh opportunities to encourage young people to test for what is a highly prevalent sexual infection in the 15 to 25 year old age group. ‘The funfair is very popular with this age group, so we are hoping younger visitors will fit us in between some of the more thrilling rides’.

Chlamydia wasn’t one of the unpleasant infections about which we were regularly warned in the Army. Since I understand though that it can cause infertility and life-threatening complications for pregnant women, I hope that the message was received and acted upon by those who needed it. I don’t suppose that it was accompanied by a reminder that one certain way of reducing risk to one’s sexual health was to refrain from promiscuity?

Dire warnings about sexually transmitted disease at a funfair! Is it surprising that I sometimes feel like a time-traveller, a mid-twentieth century man, who unaccountably finds himself in the 21st century……and isn’t really at home there?

It must be said though that I do appreciate, and take advantage of, many features of the twenty-first century that certainly weren’t available in the twentieth; a warm, comfortable and draught-free home, a mobile phone, the email and internet service generally, an electric mobility scooter, relatively cheap overseas travel! Being a time-traveller is not all loss!

Congratulations!

I began this blog with criticism of Essex County Council. I am ending it by congratulating them on their having got together with the publishers of the East Anglian Daily Times to sponsor the first ever Essex Tourist Awards. There were eleven categories and it would be nice to say that attractions on our holiday coast led the field in several, or even one, of them. They didn’t. The Tendring District feature that did best was, unsurprisingly perhaps, the Beth Chatto Gardens in Elmstead. They came second only to the Layer Marney Tower as the county’s best small attraction. I would have hoped that Clacton’s cliff-top gardens and Harwich’s historic Redoubt might have received at least an honourable mention.

Our neighbour Colchester did very well indeed though. Colchester’s zoo came ahead of Southend’s Adventure Island as the best large attraction, and was also the ‘Sustainable Tourism’ winner. Colchester Castle won the best Festival or Event of the year award with its Guardians to the King – Terracotta figures from Ancient China exhibition, miniature figures from the Xuzhou Museum in China’s Jinangsu Province, which was there from July to November. During the visit of my grandson Chris and his Taiwanese girlfriend Ariel in September we all looked in at that exhibition. Chris and Ariel were, of course, the only members of our party who could read the captions!
At Colchester Castle for the ‘Guardians of the King’ exhibition of miniature terracotta figures from ancient China. My grandson Chris took the picture and was amused when I told him that it made a refreshing change for me to be photographed in the company of something even older than myself.

Perhaps Tendring has something to learn from Saffron Walden, the Best Tourist Information Centre of the Year, or from Colchester’s Tourist Information Centre, also highly commended I hope that we will do better next year!

Week37.09

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Problems with ‘the natives’!

Nobody could accuse Lord Hanningfield and his colleagues on Essex County Council of being timid and unimaginative. Quite suddenly (I suppose that it couldn’t be anything to do with the recent change in the political complexion of Tendring Council?) they have decided to make our holiday coast, ‘as important as it was in the 1950s and ‘60s. Let’s take Tendring back as a place that people want to go to for a day, a weekend or even longer’.

They have certainly come up with some big ideas: a new Marina for Harwich and a second one (why not while we’re about it?) in either the Brightlingsea or Manningtree areas; cash for Walton’s Naze Tower walkway; more attractions in Harwich for cruise visitors, and a major redevelopment in Jaywick. How, you may wonder; is it all to be paid for? That is certainly the question that would have been asked by Lord Hanningfield and his colleagues had the proposals been the brainchild of their political opponents.

The answer, it seems, lies in hopes of funding by the Government, from the usually derided European Union, and from such groups as the East of England Development Agency. But Lord Hanningfield is also reported as saying that the county council is prepared to dip into its own pocket to help make big changes, ‘Essex County Council has got to bite the bullet and so we are going to invest money and do it ourselves’. It should, of course, be remembered that it is our council tax that fills the County Council’s ‘own pocket’. If any ‘bullet biting’ has to be done it will be us who will have to do it!

Jaywick’s residents were cheered to hear that dealing with their problems was to be a priority. It will be recalled that Jaywick has the dubious distinction of being the third most deprived community in England. For years its residents have been pleading for paved streets, better street lighting and better policing. His Lordship’s words though, were just a little chilling, ‘While it (Jaywick) is there it casts a shadow over the whole area’.

His proposals go far beyond mere paving and lighting. He sees a glowing future for a Jaywick restored as a seasonal tourist area. A centre for the arts has already been promised. Now the county council would like to see beach huts and summer chalets for holiday makers, more amusements, possibly a big dipper, perhaps even a theme park.

It is impossible not to warm to this vision of a Jaywick transformed into the brightest jewel of the Essex holiday coast. There’s just one little snag though. It is the one that was encountered in the 18th and 19th centuries by pioneers bringing the joys of western civilisation to the Scottish Highlands, to the North American ‘ Wild West’, and to Australia and New Zealand. What on earth is to be done about the natives, and their clustered and unacceptably primitive homes? Residents of Jaywick’s Brooklands Estate, who had naively imagined that any improvements to their neighbourhood would be primarily for their benefit, have had a rude shock. They, it seems, are a major part of the problem. There really is no place for the chalets of Brooklands and their occupants in this vision of a New Jaywick Sands, Clacton-on-Sea’s reborn and desirable holiday suburb.

A big dipper for Jaywick? Surely Lord Hanningfield’s imagination can do better than that! Why not a Jaywick Wheel, rivalling that of Sheffield (illustrated) and the London Eye? Just imagine the breathtaking view from the top!

Genocide and/or forcible dispossession, the historically preferred solutions to ‘the native problem’, are no longer acceptable. ‘The County Council’, says its leader, ‘was working with Tendring Council and housing associations to create more affordable housing within Tendring to encourage people to move away’. I wish them joy. I wonder if the wizards of County Hall are aware that, almost half a century ago, the former Clacton Urban District Council tried and failed to find a legal final solution to ‘The Brooklands problem’.




















This picture and the one below, show the transformation of a piece of wasteland in Jaywick by my friends Janet and Rodney Thomas. They demonstrate what can be achieved with very little money but a great deal of determination and hard work.

It was in the ‘60s that Clacton UDC declared Brooklands to be a ‘Clearance Area’ under the slum clearance provisions of the Housing Act 1936. The whole area was to be cleared and redeveloped. The council would have rehoused the occupants (this was in the days when councils were encouraged to build houses for letting!). Property owners would have been compensated. They however, were fiercely opposed to the plan. There was an appeal and a public enquiry. The appeal succeeded. Brooklands remained and still remains largely unchanged.

Today’s property owners, many of them owner/occupiers are no less determined than those of the ‘60s . John Walton, chairman of the Jaywick Forum, told a reporter, ‘People love where they are. Most of the people down there, the owner-occupiers, have made little palaces of their places’. A possible, rather expensive, solution to the problem is suggested by the quoted words of Mick Masterson, a Brooklands resident; ‘I have got a billion-dollar view. Most people are thirty feet from the beach. What would encourage them to move apart from a lot of money?’

One thing is apparent to me. Essex County Council doesn’t want Brooklands to be improved. They want it cleared. I think that Brooklands residents can bid farewell to their hopes of properly surfaced roads and street lighting.

'Nothing but the night'?

‘Oh no – not another sermon!’ Well, perhaps; it’s just that a news item on the tv last week caught my attention. The government, it was claimed, had relaxed Britain’s licensing laws in the hope it would promote the Continental practice of the moderate social use of alcohol with meals, and thus discourage binge-drinking. It has worked in reverse. We haven’t stopped binge-drinking but Continentals are beginning to take it up. It is already a serious problem among young people in Italy. I’d be surprised if Italy is the only country affected.

In the 1930s regular binge-drinking (drinking for no other purpose than that of getting drunk) was a relatively rare practice engaged in mainly by sad and lonely middle-aged or elderly alcoholics. It was certainly not a regular Saturday night social activity of teenagers and young adults.

What has happened to public attitudes during the past seventy-plus years to make such a difference? I think that a major factor has been loss of faith and hope. In the 1930s practically all of us believed in at least something, and looked toward the future with hope and confidence.

In this country most of us, deep down, accepted the truth of one or other of the traditions of the Christian faith. Many didn’t go to church but church-going was recognised as a natural and normal thing to do. Thanks to universal education with regular ‘Scripture’ lessons, we all had at least a sketchy acquaintance with the contents of the Bible and the basic teachings of Christianity.

We all hoped and believed that, as a result of scientific progress and the processes of parliamentary democracy, life would get steadily better for us all. Most had little doubt that another and better life awaited us beyond the grave. Throughout my teenage years I met only one person who wasn’t at least nominally a Christian; and who proclaimed himself to be an atheist, with no belief whatsoever in a spiritual dimension to our existence, or in an afterlife. He was a classmate and a good friend of mine (with whom I had heated arguments!) at Ipswich’s Northgate School. Atheist he may have been but it would have been quite wrong to describe him as a non-believer. He had a fundamentalist belief in the infallibility of Marxist materialism and a most fervent hope that its propagation would, sooner rather than later, bring us all to an earthly Paradise.

In those days all of us had at least a measure of faith and hope. For some the faith was in things of the spirit; others in the development of scientific knowledge or in political and economic theory. Some hoped for a Paradise beyond the grave and others for one on earth. Me? Oh, I wanted the best of both worlds. As a teenager I was a convinced Anglo-Catholic but I also believed profoundly that we could, by political means, 'build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land’, and that we should strive to do so. Did not members of every Christian denomination pray, ‘Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’?

Today, communism is ‘the god that failed’. Sadly in my opinion, democratic socialism is dying too…..perhaps it is due for rebirth! There are no Utopians. Scientific progress seems as likely to lead to disaster as to a better world. How long is it since any science-fiction writer envisaged a future that was anything but a nightmare? The only political groups that are consistently gaining strength are the extreme nationalist and xenophobic ones. Fortunately they are still very small. The Christian tradition that is most flourishing is a charismatic and fundamentalist evangelicalism, for which, try as I might, I cannot feel much enthusiasm.

Generally, I think that the prevailing spirit of the age is of disillusion, disbelief and distrust of all political, religious and scientific leaders. There is a taken-for-granted conviction that ‘those of us who live in the real world’ know that it, and the whole universe, is the product of mere chance (a cosmic accident!) and the world’s multifarious life forms simply the result of blind evolution. Nothing has ‘a purpose’ beyond that of perpetuating its species. Every species though…. and the world….and the universe, is ultimately destined for extinction. Fear, greed and the gratification of the senses are humankind’s only motivations. ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’ And death isn’t, of course, eternal life or even eternal rest, but obliteration, total extinction. It will be as if we had never existed. Edward Fitzgerald summarised this nihilistic non-credo in his translation of ‘The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’:

Alike for those who for ‘the day’ prepare.
And those who unto a ‘tomorrow’ stare.
The muezzin from the tower of darkness cries,
‘Fools! Your reward is neither here nor there.

as did A.E. Housman in the second and final verse of his short poem, 'The hollow fires burn out to black, the lamps are guttering low.........'


Never fear lad, nought’s to dread.
Look neither left nor right.
In all the endless road you tread,
There’s nothing but the night!

It is hardly surprising that young people regularly try to blot out the total futility of their existence with drugs and/or by drinking themselves into insensibility. If I shared their disbelief and lack of hope, I’d do the same.

St Paul told the people of Corinth that there were three great abiding virtues; faith, hope and love……and that the greatest of these was love. So it is, but it is also true that a society without faith and hope is heading for disaster.