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!