Week 49.09

Tendring Topics……..on Line

‘These Mechanical Beasts…..these Carbuncles…..these Monsters!’

These are the words of Tendring District Councillor Peter Halliday published on the readers’ letters page of the local Daily Gazette. The object of his wrath is, as you may have guessed, the five wind turbines that are to be built off St. John’s Road, between Clacton and St. Osyth. After a full public local enquiry in which the objectors had every opportunity to state their case Tendring Council’s decision to refuse this development was overturned by the government inspector.

Mr Halliday says that it became clear to him that this would be the outcome of the enquiry, ‘When the Environment Minister told the Labour Party Conference that local Conservative councils refusing such applications would see their decisions overturned by Government Inspectors’. I had realized it well before that. Regular readers of this blog may remember my comment, at the time, on the Council’s decision to refuse the development, against the advice of their own professional planners, for no reason other than that of well-orchestrated very local protests.
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I forecast with confidence that the developers would appeal, that there would be a full and expensive (for us council-tax payers) public enquiry, and that the Council’s refusal would be overturned. But there, I have probably had a rather longer experience of local government and of public enquiries than has Councillor Halliday.

The sole objection to the development was, as far as I know, the one plastered on all the objectors’ posters and banners ‘Too near to Homes!’ The Council’s Planning Officers, who were on the spot, and the Government’s inspector who visited the site, clearly thought otherwise.

There was no possible risk of physical danger from the turbines. Almost a mile away from homes, they would surely be inaudible. Unlike the hideous electricity pylons that stride across the English countryside, there has never been any suggestion that living in their proximity can endanger either child or adult health.

The sole objection was their appearance. They would obviously affect the view. The same objection could be made though wherever wind turbines are provided in a rural or semi-rural area ……..and if the turbines were to be sited anywhere but in such an area then they might truly be ‘too near to homes’.

Needless to say our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, like Mr Halliday, is outraged by the inspector’s decision. He, together with two or three correspondents to the local press, is convinced that no climatic change is taking place or, if it is taking place, that it’s a natural phenomenon and nothing to do with human activity. It must be very comforting to watch on tv the human misery created by horrific floods in Cumbria, for the second time in just a few years and worse than anything ever experienced in the past, and to be able to say, ‘Ah well, very sad……but of course it’s an “Act of God”, nothing whatsoever to do with us and our activities!’

Iraq

The long-awaited public enquiry into the events preceding the war in Iraq, the conduct of that war, and its aftermath has only been hearing witnesses for two or three days. Already though, it has become clear that the reasons for our joining the USA in invading Iraq were far different from those we were told at the time.

The invasion took place in the aftermath of ‘nine eleven’ and it was claimed that Iraq was a sponsor of the kind of international terrorism that was responsible for that event. This claim, it has been revealed, was held by the United States’ Government but was never really believed in Britain.

‘Nine eleven’ had its genesis within the frontiers of Afghanistan and of ‘the west’s’ allies in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, rather than in either Iraq or Iran.

Then we were told that the Iraqi government possessed cunningly concealed ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that posed a threat to the whole of the Middle East and to ourselves. The United Nations’ Weapons Inspectors had found no evidence of these before the allied invasion and none have been found since. It has now been revealed that there had never been any really convincing evidence that they existed.

It seems that the real motive of the Anglo-American Alliance had always been ‘regime change’ rather than either retribution for ‘nine eleven’ or the eradication of unspeakably terrible weaponry. Saddam Hussein was a cruel dictator whom ‘the west’ had failed to topple after the Kuwait War. This was the time to make a thorough job of it. It now seems that, even if this very dubious excuse for war were considered to be valid, conflict could still have been avoided. Our former Ambassador to the USA has told the enquiry that pressure on Iraq was prompting rebellion and that, very shortly, the regime would have collapsed from internal pressure. Tens of thousands of lives may have been destroyed for want of a little patience!

That same former ambassador also told the enquiry about the friendly meeting between our Prime Minister and the American President at the latter’s ranch in Texas. The two of them had a cosy chat from which everyone else was excluded. No one knows what was discussed or what agreements may have been reached. It had been noticeable though that from that moment the Prime Minister’s attitude towards Iraq hardened. He began to talk both about possible war and about regime change. He was singing from the George W. Bush hymn-sheet!

I have been surprised by the amount of deception and chicanery that has been openly revealed in just the first few days of the enquiry. Whatever, I wonder, can possibly be in the evidence that – the press tells us – the Prime Minister has insisted must be revealed to the enquiry only in secret!

Crisis at the Top

Can it, I wonder, possibly be true that Tendring Council’s top three officials (each of them said to be enjoying a salary of over £100,000 a year) are facing redundancy and that councillors are thinking of replacing them with a new, lower budget ‘management board’?

If so it is interesting to speculate on the deliberations that preceded that decision. It must surely have been made by a group of influential councillors meeting in what would once have been described as ‘a small smoke-filled room’. Contrary to popular belief it is quite possible to sack a top official. I have a fairly recent memory of a Clerk of the Council (the less-well-paid equivalent of a Chief Executive prior to local government reorganisation in 1974) of the former Clacton UDC resigning his post after having been strongly encouraged to do so. To make the three at the top redundant does seem a little unusual.

The difference between local government in my day (admittedly over thirty years ago!) and life at the town hall today, was brought home to me by the composition of the triumvirate that comprises a management board of Tendring Council’s top, and most highly paid, officials. They are the Chief Executive, the Deputy Chief Executive and the Assistant Chief Executive, each of them I have no doubt, an expert in cost-effective ‘administration’ and ‘the management of human resources’.

In ‘the bad old days’, The Town Clerk, or Clerk of the Council, was ‘the first among equals’ of a number of Council Chief Officers, each of whom managed his or her own department and reported regularly to a Committee concerned with that department’s sphere of work. There would be the Council’s Treasurer, the Engineer and Surveyor and the Medical Officer of Health. Larger authorities might have an independent Housing Manager and the Chief Sanitary Inspector (later Chief Public Health Inspector) would sometimes be regarded as a separate Chief Officer.

The idea that there should be a Deputy and an Assistant Town Clerk who outranked, and were on a higher salary scale, than those professional heads of departments, would have been received with incredulity and derision, as would the suggestion that there should be a Chief Officers’ ‘Management Board’. It is true that, after the reorganisation of 1974 there was a ‘management team’, consisting of heads of departments, who met regularly to discuss common interests. Heads of departments though made their own reports and recommendations to their committees and the committees discussed them and made their recommendations to the whole council.

The present system of ‘professional managers’, exercising authority over professional doctors, accountants, architects and surveyors, appears to be part of a package that included the abolition of the committee system and its replacement by one aping party political government in Westminster. We now have a powerful officers’ ‘management board’ making recommendations to ‘Portfolio holders’ (local cabinet ministers!) who make decisions that would previously have been the responsibility of committees. At intervals the full Council meets and members of the majority party are expected to support loyally policies decided by that small ‘Cabinet’ of portfolio holders.

It is a system that may make for greater speed and efficiency (though I haven’t seen much evidence of this in Tendring) but it is a negation of representative local democracy.

Some Modern Art

I am not a great enthusiast for all-things-modern. It has sometimes seemed to me that there is a late twentieth century/early twenty-first century enthusiasm for ugliness…..in art, in architecture, in music and in poetry. Not all my family are so unenlightened. My younger son Andy and his wife Marilyn are enthusiastic Friends of the National Gallery. They share my liking for much of the art of the past, but also appreciate the work of contemporary artists. Possibly in an attempt to educate me in the finer things of life, they have recently sent me photos of an example of the work of Anish Kapoor CBE, Royal Academician, whose work has been acclaimed and exhibited world-wide.

Above - Sculpture by Anish Kapoor displayed outide National Gallery.

Left - Detail from above

Well, it certainly isn’t ugly. It’s new and refreshing. It’s beautiful in fact. But still (put it down to my advanced age) it’s not really my cup of tea!

Week 48.09

Tendring Topics……….on Line

Apologies all round!

I am sure that the Australian Government was right to apologise to all those who, as children, had been transported from Britain in the middle of the last century with the promise of a ‘new life down-under’. They were to discover that all their links with home had been severed and that for many of them, the promised new life would be one of exploitation and drudgery. It was surely a shameful episode in Australia’s history – as there have been shameful episodes in the history of all nations.

I am not quite so happy about the forecast that our Prime Minister would also apologise for the same episode ‘sometime in the New Year’. The essence of a sincere apology is that it should be spontaneous and made as soon after the offence as possible. I don’t think either that our guilt is in quite the same category as that of the Australians. It was shameful that the children were cut off from all contact with friends and relatives, in some instances being wrongly informed that their parents had died. Our government should too have followed up the fate of the transported children. That surely would have been a useful task for the ‘Intelligence Services’ to undertake!

I think it likely that most, if not all, of those in Britain who organised the transports really did believe that these children were being given the chance of a better life. Had those ‘disadvantaged children’ remained in England their lives might well not have been materially different from that in Australia. If you have watched the first episode of Andrew Marr’s 'Making of Modern Britain' you’ll know that, for the poor, life in Edwardian Britain was by no means a bowl of cherries!

I can testify that it wasn’t in the 1930s either. At 49 my father, a Territorial Army Permanent Staff Instructor was made redundant (though in those days it was just called ‘getting the sack’) in 1931 when the TA was downsized, rationalised or whatever it was then called. His former commanding officer found him a very poorly paid job with his veterinary practice. That, with the small pension that he received for his 21 years service (non-commissioned of course) in ‘the Regulars’, kept our heads just above the poverty line. The ‘20s and ‘30s, when most of those exiled children were growing up, were years of mass unemployment, of the hunger marches, the Means Test…..and the rise of political extremism.

There had been other, very successful migrations to ‘the colonies’. In the early 1900s an uncle and an aunt of mine, both then teenagers, had emigrated quite separately from Britain to Canada ‘for a new life’. Had they remained in England, the destiny for my uncle would have been that of farm labourer and for my aunt domestic service. In the event they certainly prospered better in the New World than their siblings did in England. My uncle, after serving in the Canadian Army in World War I, became a prosperous farmer. My aunt had a happy marriage and was a comfortably off widow at the end of her life.

The 21st Century seems to have become an age of apology. The Archbishop of Canterbury has, quite absurdly in my opinion, apologised for the Church’s initial reaction to Darwinism. The Australian government has apologised to the Aborigines. Our government has apologised for the slave trade. Yes, of course it was shameful and appalling – but, while they are at it, shouldn’t they also be apologising to Britain’s working people for the appalling working and living conditions they endured during the industrial revolution in this country. Freedom is always to be preferred to slavery, but I have no doubt that at least some African slaves in the New World, were better housed and fed than many ‘free’ British factory labourers. The slave-owner had a vested interest in keeping ‘his property’, alive and fit enough to work. The British factory owner could always tell his wage slaves: ‘There are plenty more where you came from’.

That was when Thomas Hood had put into the mouth of his overworked and underpaid seamstress in ‘The Song of the Shirt’.

Oh, to be a slave, along with the barbarous Turk,
(Where a woman has never a soul to save)
If this be Christian work!

It is in any case impossible to judge those who lived in the 19th or early 20th century by the standards of the 21st. They did lots of things and had lots of attitudes that we today find profoundly shocking. Believe me, they would be at least equally shocked and disgusted by attitudes and actions that we consider acceptable or even admirable today. My own formative years were in the mid-twentieth century so I don’t have to read that in history books. I know!

Nor do I think that there is anything very meaningful in apologising for the actions of ones predecessors. To say that you profoundly regret what they did is one thing. To make an apology is another. That implies an admission of guilt, something that only those who are guilty need feel. Politicians in particular, should limit their apologising to their own errors and misjudgements. Most of them would find that that gave them plenty of scope for contrition, without their having to worry about the sins of past generations

Out of Sight……….Out of mind.

Bradwell’s now-closed nuclear power station is not actually quite out of our sight. From the sea front in Jaywick or St. Osyth its unlovely buildings can be seen in the distance across the wide Colne estuary. It cost millions of pounds to build and it leaves behind a poisonous residue that will take millennia to decompose. Its useful life though spanned only a few decades. I well remember its being built and, of course, we all remember its being closed down – an event at which many of us breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Now though, it seems likely that another nuclear power station will be built on the site, which is one of thirty-one that the government considers to be suitable for that purpose.

I have no doubt at all that additional and alternative sources of energy are urgently needed if we are to halt the inexorable progress of climate change, and to cope with the demands of industry and our ever-growing population. I don’t believe though that nuclear energy is the only or best alternative and, even if it were, that Bradwell would be a suitable site for a nuclear power station.

Nuclear energy production is vastly expensive, highly dangerous and leaves a residue that remains lethal for millennia. No one has yet discovered any way of detoxifying it or even of storing it safely. Wherever in the world and however deeply you may bury it, it is impossible to find a spot where you can say with certainty that the buried materials won’t be disturbed by natural disaster or the folly of humankind during the next – say 2,000 years.

Why is Bradwell a particularly unsuitable site? Apart from accidents due to human error (remember Windscale, remember Chernobyl!) the biggest threats to nuclear power stations come from terrorists and from natural flooding. Rising sea levels and the extreme weather conditions that can be expected as a result of climatic change increase the risk of flooding. As was demonstrated in 1953 the flat Essex coastal plain (nowhere many feet above sea level) is particularly at risk from flooding from the sea.

The Essex coast with its inlets from the sea, and many sparsely populated coastal areas could also be particularly vulnerable to a well-funded, well-planned and resolute terrorist attack launched from an apparently harmless private yacht or fishing vessel moored off-shore. How good would the defences of a nuclear power station at Bradwell be against a suicidal and well-armed landing party? The ease with which determined anti-nuclear campaigners have managed to gain access to such power stations for propaganda purposes, suggests to me that they would be unlikely to be adequate.

The government has indicated that the planning processes may be streamlined to ensure the rapid approval of the new proposed power stations. That means that our right to protest will be limited. Bradwell is, as the crow flies or the nuclear fallout cloud drifts, just a few miles to the windward of Clacton. I hope therefore that our protests will be at least as well orchestrated and well publicised as those made recently about the proposed provision of a few perfectly harmless on-shore wind turbines!

Our MP

Our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, certainly has a knack for getting himself into the news. When the MPs expenses scandal first broke he was a leader of the pack demanding the resignation of the speaker. His image as a latter-day St. George was slightly dimmed by the, mostly good-humoured, amusement that was evoked by the revelation that his own expenses had included a ‘love seat’ settee for his second home.

Last week in this blog I commented on his independent spirit in going it alone, against majority political and scientific opinion, in declaring his conviction that concern about mankind’s role in the climatic change that is painfully obviously going on all around us, is ‘all hot air’.

This week a letter from a Dave Bolton of Park Road, Clacton, in the Clacton and Frinton Gazette reveals that on 5th November Mr Carswell broadcast on the BBC World Service his intention of campaigning for a referendum on the UK remaining part of the European Union, despite David Cameron' assurance that such a referendum would be pointless.

He argued that the former referendum was now invalid because those ‘over 52 years of age’ (either he, Mr Bolton, or the Gazette subeditor, must have got that wrong; he surely meant under 52) had not had a chance to choose through the ballot box. Mr Bolton points out that neither had those under 52 seen the devastation caused by a European war, the prevention of which was one of the purposes of the formation of the Union. It has certainly achieved that. War between members of the EU is now surely quite unimaginable.

Mr Carswell might have also pointed out that many of those who voted in that now-distant referendum may well have changed their minds since then. I certainly have. I voted NO to what was then the EEC on that occasion, but would most certainly vote YES to membership (preferably of a more closely integrated EU) in any future referendum.

Global Warming is just hot air, the slightly tarnished sword of righteousness against self-seeking MPs, a new referendum on EU-membership……! I wonder if Mr Carswell has ever considered the possibility that he might be a member of the wrong political party? Careerwise, this could be a good time to switch. I have just heard on BBC evening news that UKIP is looking for a dynamic new leader.

Two Postscripts

Last week in this blog I expressed my contempt for the Sun newspaper’s blatant exploitation of the grief and anger that had prompted Mrs Janes, the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan, to complain about her name being wrongly spelt in a letter of condolence sent her by the Prime Minister. My younger son tells me that, on its website, the Sun also spelt her name wrongly in exactly the same way as the Prime Minister! The Sun celebrated its fortieth birthday last week. I suppose we may hope that one day it will grow up.

My suggestion that there should be a White Poppy Day, on which white poppies (sold in aid of civilian victims of war) might be worn world-wide on an internationally agreed date of remembrance and repentance for the civilian victims of war in every time and place, also provoked comment. I was reminded that white poppies, sold by the Peace Pledge Union, are already worn by many people on and around Remembrance Sunday as a sign of their commitment to peace.

The commitment to world peace of my wife and myself was, I think, no less than theirs. For several years we each wore a white poppy as well as a red one under the impression that the proceeds from their sale went to some charity supporting wounded civilians. They don’t. They go to the Peace Pledge Union, a worthy cause and one that I support in other ways. On Remembrance Day though, I want to remember my fallen comrades. I don’t like its use (as has happened in the past!) for recruitment to the armed forces – but I don’t like its use for peace propaganda either!

Week 47.09

Tendring Topics……..on line

In Defence of the Government!

I’m by no means a blind supporter of the government. However, I’m not a blind and unthinking opponent either. I think that during the past week or two, the government, and the Prime Minister in particular, have twice been subject to quite unjustifiable criticism.

First, there was ex-chief drugs adviser, Professor David Nutt, who resigned in a well-publicised huff when his advice wasn’t followed to the letter. Cannabis, he insisted, was less dangerous than either tobacco or alcohol and its use, if not exactly encouraged, should be regarded tolerantly. If either tobacco or alcohol were newly invented I have little doubt that they would be treated as dangerous drugs…..but they’re not. Alcohol has been with us from the beginning of time. I am told that there is no human society so primitive as to have failed to find a way of producing it!

Tobacco has been in use in Europe since it was brought back from America in the 16th Century. It is only relatively recently that we have realized quite how dangerous it is. Since then successive governments have done their very best, short of actually banning it, to discourage its use.

The function of a scientific adviser is to advise. It is the elected politicians who have to make the decisions and they are, quite rightly, guided by other considerations than purely scientific ones. Politics, it has been said, is the art of the possible. A columnist in the East Anglian Daily Times recently wrote that he had three friends ‘with adult sons with schizophrenia after teenage kicks with cannabis. One has been in a psychiatric hospital for twenty years, another is periodically sectioned (once after having set fire to the family home) and the third lives with his parents on a strict regime of medication’. Try telling those parents that cannabis is less dangerous than this that or the other substance that is freely available!

The other occasion has been the vilification that Gordon Brown has received because of a couple of human errors in a letter of condolence to the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan. I was amazed and rather touched to learn that the Prime Minister sends individual hand-written letters to the next-of-kin of such victims of the war. Did Tony Blair? Did Margaret Thatcher?

The mother in question was a Mrs Janes. I’d be very surprised if this lady’s name isn’t fairly frequently misspelled, either because it has been misheard or, with typed correspondence, because the ‘m’ key has been tapped by accident instead of the ‘n’. As for the letter having a hand-written correction – I’d have taken that as evidence that it was actually hand-written by the Prime Minister, and not some clever facsimile produced by the wonders of modern technology!

I certainly wouldn’t criticise Mrs Janes for complaining. Had I been in her position I’d have been so full of grief and anger that I’d have raged at anyone who had the misfortune to cross my path. What was beneath contempt was the Sun’s exploitation of Mrs Janes’ grief and anger for its own miserable propaganda purposes!

A Correspondent in Mexico

Many regular readers of this blog will already know that I have a Flickr site www.flickr.com/photos/ernestbythesea on which there are over 300 of my photographs, many family pictures but others of general and historical interest. This has brought me some interesting correspondents, including two Canadian distant cousins whom I hadn’t known existed, and a fundamentalist and ‘far-right’ Baptist truck-driver from America’s ‘deep south’ with whom I have had interesting (if inconclusive!) theological and political discussions.

The latest, and among the most interesting, of my email correspondents has been a lady from Mexico City, seeking permission to use one of my Flickr photos. She is Giulianna Laurent and is obviously deeply involved with the museum of Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City. This is what she wrote:

‘Memoria y Tolerancia (Memory and Tolerance) is a non-profit organisation with the mission to promote tolerance through the historical remembrance of genocides (Holocaust, Armenia, Guatemala, Former Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Rwanda and Darfur).

From its inception, Memoria y Tolerancia projected a museum and educational center in Mexico City, keeping in mind that the best tools for the creation of awareness are learning and education.

I am working in the Yugoslavia permanent exhibition of the museum and I saw a picture of Bosnia posted on your page that we’ll like to expose.

The picture is the following:
http//www.flickr.com/photos/ernestbythesea/418109226/

I want to ask your permission to use the picture only inside the museum. If you agree please let me know. Thanks, Giulianna Laurent, Memoria y Tolerancia A.C.

Below is the picture that Giulianna wanted to use:

It is of the old Turkish pack-horse bridge in Mostar, Bosnia, and was taken during Heather’s and my visit there with our motor-caravan in 1980. It was the year of Marshal Tito’s death and Yugoslavia was still one country, to all appearances a happily multi-ethnic and multifaith one. When we took the picture, young Bosnians were demonstrating their machismo by diving from the apex of the bridge into the fast-flowing water of the river below!

Within a year or two of our visit the bridge had been destroyed by artillery bombardment during Yugoslavia’s bloody civil war. The Serbs are usually depicted as the villains in that conflict, but the destruction of the bridge, and the violent deaths of hundreds of men, women and children in the Mostar area was the result of conflict between Croats and Muslims (Serbs and/or Croats whose ancestors had converted to Islam during the many years of Turkish occupation).

The museum of Memoria y Tolerancia in Mexico City is furthering a cause that I would wish to support. I willingly gave permission for the picture to be used in any way that Giulianna wished, and told her that I would like to hear more about the museum’s progress. In expressing her thanks she attached a photo of it. Here it is. It is certainly impressive!

In a further email I drew her attention to this blog-spot. I felt that last week’s blog, in which I suggested a world-wide ‘White Poppy Day’ in which the millions of civilian victims of conflict could be remembered, and funds raised for the support of survivors, might be of interest to her and her colleagues

It’s not what you say…..it’s the way that you say it,

That’s what causes offence. This thought, hardly a new one, came back to me with extra force recently.

Have you been watching Andrew Marr’s Making of Modern Britain? In the first episode, dealing with the Edwardian age and Edwardian moral values, Andrew Marr recounted the occasion on which Marie Lloyd, a very popular Music Hall performer, was questioned by MPs about the bawdiness and explicit sexual content of some of the songs for which she was well-known.

Marie Lloyd gave a little demonstration. With a straight face and the demeanour of a vicar’s daughter singing at an evening gathering of her father’s parishioners, she sang to the committee a couple of her most popular songs full of outrageous double entendre. Not an eyebrow was raised.

She then sang ‘Come into the garden, Maud’, a romantic poem by eminent Victorian poet Alfred Lord Tennyson that had been set to music. It was a song with which members of the committee would all have been familiar. They may well have heard their own daughters or wives sing it to their guests after dinner. Marie Lloyd though, sang it with winks, gestures and knowing smiles that had the worthy MPs writhing with embarrassment. It’s not what she sang but the way that she sang it!

It made me think of once-harmless words that are now banned because they might possibly cause offence. Newcomers to Essex Police, for instance, have recently been advised that they should never use ‘black’ in a negative context such as ‘black mark’, ‘black sheep’, ‘blacken’ someone’s character, for instance, though ‘blackboard’ and ‘black and white’ referring to newsprint, are OK.

I would ask the (I feel fairly confident) white people who make these rules if they take offence when a government report is said to be a ‘whitewash’, when someone is described as ‘showing the white flag’ or of being ‘white with fear’, or indeed with the Biblical reference to hypocrites as 'whited sepulcres' If not, isn’t it patronising and insulting, racist even, to assume that someone with a skin colour different from their own must necessarily be more ready to take offence?

What the world of 2009 badly needs is courtesy (it used to be called ‘common politeness’) in our dealings with one another, whatever may be our skin colour. Political correctness is a very, very poor substitute.

A well-deserved honour

I was very pleased to learn that Clacton’s seafront gardens and west greensward have been awarded the Green Flag of excellence by the Keep Britain Tidy organisation. The gardens had been demonstrated to be welcoming, healthy, safe, secure and well-managed. It took me back to the days when Tendring had its own direct labour gardening department that regularly displayed, and won the top prizes, at county and district agricultural and horticultural shows.
Clacton-on-Sea's clifftop Memorial Garden

Late News – from Mexico City!

As I was about to post this blog I received a further email from my new friend in Mexico City who is deeply involved with the nearing-completion Museum of Memoria y Tolerancia there. Here is what she writes:

Hello Ernest,

I have read your blog and your proposal about the white poppy. I think it is a great idea and it will make an awareness in all civilian people about the innocence of the victims. Through which organisation do you propose that the money will be given to civilian victims??

The museum includes a part called ‘Tolerance’ where we invite the visitor to question the value of tolerance and diversity. I think it will be a good idea to promote your white poppy project there. I will let you know when the museum opens, it will be around June 2010 to see what we can do.

Kind regards,

Giulianna

I have to confess that I hadn’t even thought of the distribution of the proceeds. I suppose probably the Red Cross/Red Crescent. Then there is Christian Aid – if they could get together with equivalent organisations of other world faiths.

Week 46.09

Tendring Topics………on Line

Why not a White Poppy Day for the Civilian Dead?

Last Sunday we especially remembered the servicemen and women slain in World Wars I and II and in subsequent and continuing conflicts.

In World War II at least, and probably in other more recent conflicts, the number of civilian dead greatly outnumbered the casualties in the armed forces. We have, it is true, a day (27th January) on which the victims of the Nazi Holocaust are remembered, another on 11th September for the victims of ‘nine-eleven’, and yet another (6th August) on which many remember those who were vaporised when the first very nuclear weapon was dropped on Hiroshima. Although we worry desperately about ‘rogue nations’ or terrorists gaining control of ‘weapons of mass destruction’, it is worth remembering that the only countries that have so far actually used such weapons are Britain and America!

The Soviet Poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s best-known poem Babiy Yar, about the ravine near Kiev where a notorious massacre of Ukrainian Jews took place during the German occupation, begins, ‘Over Babiy Yar there are no memorials’.

Much the same could be said about the civilian dead of Coventry, of London’s East End, and of other British cities during the Blitz, not forgetting the tens of thousands killed in British and American air raids on Berlin, Hamburg and (quite inexcusably in my opinion) on Dresden at a time when the end of the war in Europe was clearly in sight? And, of course, the estimated one million civilians who lost their lives during the German siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and the comparable loss of life in Warsaw, Stalingrad (now Volgagrad) and other towns and villages throughout Poland, Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine? Nor must we forget the many thousands of civilians who have died and are still dying as a result of conflicts in Africa.

I believe that there is a strong case for an International Day of Remembrance of the Civilian Dead in every country and in every conflict. Almost every country in the world has at least some civilian war dead to remember and mourn, and there are very few countries that have no responsibility for the civilian dead of others.

It could be a day to remember the victims of Dresden and Hamburg, as well as those of Coventry, Warsaw and Leningrad; of Lebanon and Gaza as well as of the Holocaust; of Serbs in Bosnia under Croatia’s puppet Fascist regime during World War II, as well as of Muslims during the more recent conflict; of the civilian victims of Japan in mainland Asia during World War II as well as those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and of course, the victims of ‘nine-eleven’ and of terror bombings throughout the world.

For almost all of us it could be a day of national repentance as well as of mourning. It could also be a day on which we all wore an appropriate emblem (perhaps a white poppy) as a symbol of our determination never, ever, to let it happen again. These emblems could be sold worldwide to help the all-too-many civilian victims of national, tribal or sectarian violence in the world today.

‘Global Warming is just hot air’, claims our MP

Nobody could possibly accuse our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, of allowing himself to be swept along with the tide of public opinion, or even of following blindly the leadership of his own political party.

Like me, he has a blog on the internet and doesn’t hesitate to use it to promote currently unpopular causes about which he feels strongly. A subject on which we both have strong views is global warming. The difference between us is that I am convinced that global warming is a rapidly accelerating threat to humankind and that our own human activities are hastening it. In this I am for once with the overwhelming majority of informed political and scientific opinion. Mr Carswell, on the other hand, is gallantly swimming against the tide in declaring, ‘I have thought long and hard about it and in my view, the climate is not changing because of human activity’.

What a pity Mr Carswell didn’t announce this revelation in time to stop the world’s leaders and most of their leading scientists journeying to Copenhagen to discuss what our MP knows to be ‘just hot air’.

Mr Carswell believes too that this ‘dangerous obsession with climate change’ is costing us money. It has, he says, already led to an increase of 25 percent in our electricity bills and this is expected to rise to 60 percent in five years time. Funny that, because my combined gas and electricity direct debit payments have recently been almost halved, partly as a result of my heeding warnings of climate change and having had solar water-heating panels installed on my roof.

Solar Panels being installed on the roof of my bungalow earlier this year. I do try to practise what I preach!

Even if it could be proved conclusively that no global warming is taking place, or that, if it is taking place, it is not as a result of human activity, there would still be an energy crisis. We would still have an urgent need to end our dependence on fossil fuels, to conserve all the energy that we can, and to find and develop more and more renewable sources of energy.

Fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas, were all created millions of years ago from the luxuriant vegetation of long-prehistoric periods in the world’s history. There developed vast reservoirs of all these materials below the earth’s surface. Vast, but not infinitely vast! Nor are they renewable. As a result of the accelerating industrialisation that has taken place worldwide over the past century and a half, reserves of coal, oil and natural gas are rapidly diminishing. As they diminish market forces decree that they become ever more expensive. Future generations will not have the easy option of fossil fuel to warm their homes, light their streets and power their factories!

Not even Mr Carswell and the Australian geologist Ian Plimer, who shares his view that climatic change is not taking place as a result of human activity, can possibly imagine that the depletion of the world’s natural resources (coal, oil and gas) has been caused other than by energy-hungry humanity

North Sea Gas is already running out. The USA, whose reserves of oil were once considered to be almost inexhaustible, is now an importer. What’s more, the oil supplies on which we heavily depend come from the notoriously volatile and unstable Middle East, and our gas supply from Siberia. Is Mr Carswell happy that his (I am sure very comfortable) first and second homes depend for their warmth, lighting and power on oil from Saudi Arabia or the Persian Gulf, and gas from Russia. The Russians, recent converts to capitalism, have learned quickly how to use market forces to their own advantage. And why not? All’s fair in the global market place. Those who need a commodity in short supply must expect to pay its price to those who, for the moment at least, have it in abundance.

So if, as Mr Carswell believes, talk of man-made global warming is just ‘hot air’ humanity’s predicament is no less serious. We still need those wind turbines, solar panels, tidal and wave energy generators and, indeed, any other source of renewable sustainable energy that we can discover and develop, together with every means of recycling and conserving energy that we can find. That is, of course, if we have a vision that extends beyond the next Public Opinion Poll or the next General Election.

REAL Christmas Stamps

How refreshing to find that this year the Post Office has rediscovered the fact that Christmas is a Christian Festival and has given us (well, perhaps ‘given’ isn’t quite the right word) unmistakeably Christian Christmas Postage Stamps.

Last year, you may remember, customers at Post Offices who simply asked for Christmas Stamps were handed somewhat garish stamps with Pantomime Characters printed on them. I remember that the one used for correspondence with mainland Europe had a picture of Captain Hook. It occurred to me that in a thousand Continental homes, recipients of mail from England will have been asking, ‘Why on earth have the mad English put a one-armed pirate on their Christmas stamps this year?’

There were a limited number of ‘religious’ Christmas stamps available, if you specially asked for them. The first and second-class stamps both bore different, and very attractive, pictures of the Virgin and Child. I bought quite a lot of both and have used them throughout the year as an unobtrusive affirmation of Christian Faith. I think that I may have just one or two left.

This year things are very different. Those charming 1st and 2nd class Virgin and Child stamps are again available if you want them. The ‘ordinary’ Christmas stamps though are reproductions of detail from the stained glass windows of a village church in Norfolk.

1st Class is another picture of the Virgin and Child, 2nd Class is a pre-Raphaelitish angel with a medieval mandolin (or is it a harp?) accompanying an angelic choir) and the 56p (European) one, depicts an elderly haloed man – possibly St. Joseph looking down at the Christ-child in the manger?

No doubt similar stamps are available in other denominations but those are the ones in which I was interested, and I didn’t feel justified in holding up the Post Office queue while I viewed the others! The 1st Class stamp could certainly be used as an afirmation of faith on all personal mail throughout the year.

This year’s stamps will clearly please all Christians. Will those of other faiths or none resent them? I don’t see why they should. There will, I am sure, be plenty of stamps and books of stamps bearing the usual ‘Queen’s head’ picture. No one who doesn’t wish to do so need use an overtly ‘Christian’ stamp.