Week 41.09

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Footing the Bill

There’s a short poem by A.E.Housman that includes the following lines:

The candles burn their sockets,
The blinds let through the day,
The young man feels his pockets
And wonders what’s to pay.

Well, there’s little doubt about what’s to pay (to the nearest two or three billion pounds) for the long night of greed and extravagance that led to the economic crisis from which we hope we’re emerging. Now we are learning who is going to have to pay it and how it is to be extracted from pockets, wallets and handbags.

Two measures that the Conservatives are proposing to introduce if or when they become the ruling Party, caught my eye. They propose to put up the age at which the government retirement pension will be payable from 65 to 66, and to comb through those who are surviving on disability benefit, weeding out those who are capable of doing any kind of paid work. The money saved will be used for the training of the long-term unemployed. Needless to say they promise a much better and more effective means of training than that provided by the present government!

I wish them all success, though it will be several years before the change in the retirement age brings any reward. As for weeding out those falsely claiming disability benefit, I suspect that when it comes actually to identifying them, there will be far fewer than is imagined. The fact that social security and disability scroungers regularly make headlines in the tabloids doesn’t necessarily mean there are lots of them.

These measures may or may not bring in the anticipated savings but one thing that they will most certainly do is increase the number of people looking for jobs. Isn’t the number of unemployed in Britain – still steadily rising – already worrying enough? And what on earth is the point of introducing expensive schemes to train unemployed folk for non-existent jobs.

Both the main political parties intend to freeze public sector pay, though in different ways. The Conservatives propose to exempt those with salaries below £18,000 a year, while New Labour has its eyes on only the really well-off ones; judges, NHS top administrators, local authority Chief Executives and so on. As a former public servant whose job today must surely be worth more than £18,000 a year, I suppose that I ought to warm to the New Labour proposals.

However, these proposals are for 2011/2012 still two years away. History suggests that today’s depression may be followed by run-away inflation; certainly not a good time in which to try to impose a pay freeze.

Why penalise those in the public sector to remedy ills that, whatever else may be said about them, originated squarely as a result the failures of private enterprise? The simplest and fairest way to deal with national debt is by means of a properly graduated income tax, so that all those who can afford to do so, pay a similar proportion of their incomes towards national recovery. This is a solution that no politician so far has had the courage to suggest!

‘We’re all in this together’, says the Shadow Chancellor. All of us? Cuts in public services, later age of entitlement to the state pension, weeding out social security and invalidity benefit scroungers, freezing Public Sector pay? I have yet to hear of a single suggested measure that will cause even the least inconvenience to the seriously wealthy; the sort of people, for instance, who own and control national newspapers, or own luxurious private yachts like the one in which both the Shadow Chancellor and the Government’s Business Secretary were happy to accept hospitality just a few months ago.

Blame the BBC!

The BBC is almost as popular a scapegoat as ‘The EU’, or ‘Brussels’. Last week the Daily Gazette carried a news story with the headline, ‘Council hits back at BBC’. It had been suggested in a BBC Essex talk programme that Essex County Council had used taxpayers’ money unwisely in having spent £79,000 on food and drink.

The period over which that sum had been spent wasn’t included in the newspaper report but if, in fact, it was in one financial year, then the criticism surely does seem justified. In response, Nicola Spicer, county council spokesperson said that the £79,000 spent on food covers some of the authority’s 38,000 staff and councillors. Really? That makes the miraculous ‘feeding of the 5,000’ seem positively easy! However, we are surely entitled to ask exactly how many of the councillors and staff qualify for free or subsidised meals….and why?

Hitting back at BBC Essex, Ms Spicer went on to say that ‘Since 2004 BBC Essex has spent £10,610 on food and meals publicly funded via the licence fee. BBC Essex employs some 35 fuand control national newspapersll time members of staff’. £10,610 over five years doesn’t sound all that excessive to me and BBC Essex points out that this sum includes all food for production purposes such as travelling on BBC business, and also includes refreshments for guests on the station.

I must say that when, some years ago, I was interviewed by BBC Radio Essex in connection with a recently published plumbing book of mine, I didn’t feel that the cup of tea and couple of biscuits that I was given were particularly lavish hospitality. A year or two earlier, in ITV’s Regional HQ in Norwich for a similar interview, I had been offered a large scotch!

In ‘hitting back at the BBC’ the County Council had, in any case, selected the wrong target. The BBC had merely been the vehicle for criticism made by one of the Council’s own members, who is also a member of the ruling Conservative Party. It was my own representative (though not my choice!) on the County Council who should have been the object of their wrath. While it was BBC Essex that the County Council attacked, it had been County Councillor Stephen Mayzes of Flatford Drive, Clacton-on-Sea (representing Clacton North) who had been the whistle-blower. In a radio interview he had had the temerity to criticise his colleagues for spending that £79,000 of taxpayers’ money on food and drink! I bet that he received a few sour looks in the ‘Members only Restaurant’ (that's where nearly £65,000 of that £79,000 went!) where county councillors recharge their batteries after coping with the exhausting task of deciding how to spend our money.

Lord Hanningfield……..again!

I can see that for as long as the much-travelled Lord Hanningfield remains the political leader of Essex County Council, it is unlikely that Tendring Topics…..on line will be short of material for comment. It seems but yesterday that he was facing criticism for taking a cross-party group of county councillors on an expensive outing to the USA, not long after he had returned from another trip abroad to India. The event on the other side of the Atlantic had clearly related to Harwich and it might have been thought that the modest Harwich delegation (members of which had paid their own fares) provided ample British representation.

His total claim for expenses during the last financial year included £7,141 for travel and accommodation on a trip to China for the Beijing Olympics. He didn’t, of course, travel alone. With him was Councillor Stephen Castle, ‘County Portfolio Holder for the 2012 Olympics’ and four council officials. This jaunt cost us in total over £32,000.

Its purpose was ‘preparation for hosting the mountain biking event in Essex’ at the Olympics in London in 2012 (I still find it difficult to take seriously the idea of an international ‘mountain biking event’ taking place in one of England’s flattest counties!) As well as these preparations, the visiting group encouraged competing countries to set up camp in Essex during the games, and built business, educational and cultural links with the area. Goodness! they can hardly have found the time to watch any of the games!

Lord Hanningfield also claimed a further £930 for attending an exhibition and conference in the Chinese province of Jingsu, with which Essex has ties, and a further £2,205 to allow him to join a group of Essex business men visiting India in February of this year. That, of course, was all on top of the £59,011 that he claimed in expenses as a councillor and leader of the Council. To be fair to Lord Hanningfield, he wasn’t the sole claimant for expenses. The 75 councillors claimed in total £1,584,085 between them…..slightly up on the previous year’s figure of £1,547,341.

One of my most vivid memories of Lord Hanningfield’s fairly regular appearances on tv was hearing him solemnly discussing the difficulty of funding pensioners’ bus passes. ‘Journeys cost money’, he declared….and he certainly should know!

A Suggestion for a Future Chancellor.

If many, or indeed any, other local authorities spend an annual sum similar to that of Essex County Council on overseas travel for councillors and/or officials, a worthwhile amount could be saved by banning (or at least submitting to searching scrutiny) all such travel at public expense in the future.

Going down?

My wife Heather and I were always grateful for, and appreciative of, the primary education that both our sons received at Clacton’s Alton Park Junior School in the 1960s. Head teacher at the time was Mr Cordwell, whom I am sure many now-middle-aged Clactonians will remember with respect and affection. Heather and I had no doubt that Alton Park was the best Junior School in Clacton and we considered ourselves to be very fortunate that it should also be the nearest school to our home.

This was, of course, in the ‘bad old days’ of the eleven-plus examination. We had no doubt that it was the professionalism and discipline that they had encountered at Alton Park that had resulted in both our sons gaining places in Clacton County High School, and had laid the educational foundation on which, later in their lives, both were to build satisfying, successful and socially useful careers.

All that, of course, was some forty-five years ago. Things have changed, at Alton Park School as elsewhere.

I have just read in the Clacton Gazette that Alton Park Junior School has been on the way down. An earlier Ofsted Report had rated the school at ‘good’. Had there been such a report in 1960 I think it would surely have been ‘outstanding’ – but then perhaps I’m biased! The current report just rates the school as ‘satisfactory’.

The inspectors weren’t happy about how pupils with poor motivation and difficulty in managing their behaviour were dealt with, and found the level of attendance unsatisfactory. Poorly motivated children who can’t manage their own behaviour affect the progress of other pupils. (Isn’t it the task of the school, rather than that of children, to ‘manage’ behaviour?) I am sure that if that, or persistent truancy, had been a problem way back in the early sixties, Heather and I would have heard all about it.

The report wasn’t all bad. The school’s care of children ‘with special needs' was considered outstandingly good and sports and music classes were both praised.

The inspector conceded that measures had been put in place to remedy the school’s defects and that these hadn’t yet had time to take effect. I sincerely hope that they will prove effective and that the next Ofsted report is a more favourable one.

It is very clear to me though that the school has changed a great deal in the past four and a half decades. But then so has society generally. Is it the teaching, the way the children have been brought up, or the general attitude of other children and of the adults with whom they come into contact, that is responsible?