Week 3.10

Tendring Topics…….on line

The Vandals!

I have been familiar with the effects of vandalism for many years. I have seen young, newly planted street trees broken off and destroyed, windows smashed, public toilets wrecked – apparently with a sledge hammer – beach huts and public shelters set on fire, and telephones (that could be needed for some life-threatening emergency) torn from the public phone box in which they were installed.

When I was Tendring Council’s Public Relations Officer I publicised with some enthusiasm, the council’s reward scheme for those who provided information leading to the prosecution of vandals. I made certain that the very few occasions on which this reward was paid out were well publicised. I often wondered what on earth could be the motive for vandalism. Why and how could anyone derive pleasure or satisfaction from defacing something that was beautiful, destroying or disabling something that was useful, or desecrating something that others considered to be sacred? Theft, fraud and even homicide seemed positively reasonable by comparison.

Vandalism had rarely affected me personally. In the pre-mobile phone age I had, on occasion, been annoyed when I found a public phone box out of order because of it. I had been displeased when I had found a public convenience closed for the same reason. But nothing of mine had ever been vandalised. I had no reason to suppose that I would ever be the vandals’ target.

I was wrong. A low brick wall marked the front boundary of my property in Clacton’s Dudley Road. It had been provided when the bungalow was built in 1953 (three years before Heather and I had bought it and moved in) and had been showing signs of its nearly fifty-seven years of use. The top course of brickwork had weathered and was probably due for replacement. However, it was perfectly serviceable when I departed from Clacton on Christmas Eve. When I returned home five days later, the top few courses of one section of the wall had been knocked off and were lying in my front garden.

Left – the wall as it was before Christmas. Photo taken about 18 months ago. The top course of bricks is looking distinctly weather-beaten!
.
It was no big deal; not worth claiming on the insurance. I asked a builder friend if he would fix it and he promised to do so directly the temperature dropped below freezing. Sadly, that wasn’t the end. On Sunday night, 10th January and again on Monday night, 11th January, the wall was again attacked, finally leaving barely a quarter of the original wall standing.

Its replacement is covered by my ‘Age Concern’ home insurance – which is just as well, as clearance of the site, removal of rubble and construction of a new wall or other boundary is unlikely to cost less than £1,000. As I write I am considering whether to replace it with another similar wall (which might well be subject to immediate vandal attack!) or some kind of a wooden fence. The latter, I think, might be less attractive to vandals and if any parts of it were damaged they would probably be easier to repair or replace.

Right – the wall as it was on Tuesday 12th January. The rubble had already been cleared from between the two concrete posts in the foreground

As I am claiming on my insurance policy I had to notify the police. A very pleasant young police officer visited me and, in a friendly chat, apologised for the fact that there really wasn’t much possibility that the culprits would be brought to book. I had already known that to be the case and, rather to my surprise, I realized that I didn’t particularly want them to be caught and ‘taught a lesson’. I think it likely that all they would learn from such a lesson would be to take greater care not to be caught next time.

It would be nice to be able to claim that I forgive them, as I assure God that I do every time I recite Our Lord’s Prayer (‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’). It wouldn’t be quite true though. It isn’t so much that I forgive them as that I can’t be bothered to judge them. I think that I feel quite sorry for them. What sad and empty lives must be led by young people whose pleasure in life comes from destroying, defacing, or damaging things that give other people service or pleasure. Towards what a joyless, purposeless and loveless adult life and old age they are heading!

Essex Works (wonders – thanks to other people’s efforts!)

'Essex Works' is the bold claim to be found on all Essex County Council published material. You'll see it on their leaflets and on their, quite wexpensive, tv adverts. A few weeks ago I wrote enthusiastically in this blog about Essex County Council’s ‘Telecare Home Safety Service’. This service was intended for ‘vulnerable adults who would like to feel safer, more protected and independent in their own home, particularly perhaps for ‘older, infirm or disabled people’.

The 'Telecare Home Safety Service' of the Essex County Council provided, according to need, a personal alarm that enabled the user to summon immediate help if he or she were suddenly ill, fell over or had some other emergency while at home or in the garden; a bogus caller button by the front door for use when a stranger tried to gain entry to the home; a smoke detector; a fall detector; a flood detector; and a ‘movement detector’ that would verify and record the presence of an intruder or alternatively detect prolonged inactivity. What was more the service required was available on twelve months free trial to those over 85.

I am less steady on my feet than I once was and, if I do fall, am unable to get up unaided. The personal alarm system would obviously provide an answer to some of my problems. At eighty-eight I possibly wouldn’t need it longer than the twelve months trial period. If I did the monthly charge of £16.47 wouldn’t make a serious impact on my financial resources. I filled it in the form, posted it off to the County Council and awaited developments.

As I waited I felt just a little remorseful about some of the less-than-kind things that I had written about the County Council and its hierarchy in this column. I had, for instance, said that I thought that the County was a stratum of local government that could well be dispensed with. I had urged that all Essex District and Borough Councils should be accorded unitary status and, within their own districts, should carry out the tasks entrusted by central government to county councils. There was every reason to believe that they would do so more economically and more effectively. Tendring Council, for instance, had been declared by the Audit Commission to be the best performing council in Essex while the County Council’s performance had been designated only as ‘adequate’.

Perhaps I had been wrong and, at least in providing the Essex Telecare Home Safety Service, the County Council was performing a valuable countywide service.

Here is the front of the brochure publicising the Essex Telecare Home Safety service

My written request was attended to with commendable speed. An appointment was made by phone and, at the time and date arranged, a very friendly and helpful lady appeared at my front door to explain and install what I understood to be the County Council’s service. It transpired though that the service had nothing whatsoever to do with the County Council. I had been a little surprised when the lady had turned up in a Tendring District Council vehicle. In conversation it soon emerged that she was, in fact, a Tendring District Council employee and that the service for which I had asked was not a new, or even an old service of the Essex County Council. It was, in fact, the long-established Tendring Careline, founded and run for at least the past twenty years, by the Tendring District Council.

It is indeed a very worthwhile service and I am glad that I have had it installed in my home. An unobtrusive ‘Lifeline Home Unit’, functioning rather like the ‘router’ of a wireless broadband installation, is connected to a power point and to a nearby telephone socket. The user is issued with a pendant having a large red activating button, that is worn round the neck at all times (after an hour or so you forget you’ve got it on). In an emergency anywhere within 50 metres of the Lifeline Unit, pressing the red button will alert the operators at base. The Unit then acts as a radio station with which you can converse and which will set into motion whatever is needed to help you.

On the very back page of the County Council’s publicity brochure all the district and borough councils are listed with a little notice stating Essex County Council – working in partnership with local service providers to support independence in your own home. Well, that’s some sort of an acknowledgement of the work of district authorities, I suppose. If you are interested though, I suggest that you phone Tendring Careline at Clacton Town Hall 01255 222727 email: careline@tendringdc.gov.uk Don’t bother with that expensive and self-satisfied ‘middle-man’ in Chelmsford.

My belief that, in Essex at least, the County Council is an extravagant, uneconomical, and unnecessary tier of local government has been reinforced!

Disaster in the Caribbean

My own worries about my garden wall, my concerns about the future of democratic government in this country, even my occasional worries about my friends and family, pale into insignificance before the appalling disaster in Haiti. How sad it is that the world’s worst natural disasters always seem to afflict the world’s very poorest communities, whose members have to struggle for survival during the best of times!

The Haiti earthquake rivals the south-east Asian tsunami in its catastrophic effects. I find the depiction of human misery, despair and desolation in tv news bulletins almost unbearable to watch. How much more shattering they must be on the spot and in reality!

Over the Christmas/New Year period I have received an unprecedented number of appeals from thoroughly deserving charities in desperate financial straits due to the recession. Most I have had no alternative but to ignore. I do intend though to give as generously as I possibly can, to either the British Red Cross Society or to Christian Aid for the Haiti Disaster Relief Fund.

I hope that all readers of this blog will be prepared to do the same.