Week 9.10

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Thirty Years On

During March 1980, just thirty years ago, I took early retirement from the post of Public Relations Officer to the Tendring District Council, severing a service to local government that had begun way back in 1937 at the age of 16. I hadn’t intended to retire early, but a proposed reorganisation by the Council’s new Chief Executive (Mr Richard Painter) devalued my services to a degree that I couldn’t accept without losing my self-respect.

On the day I left the Council’s service we had a splendid unofficial party in my office. I bought the drinks, my colleagues the food! My colleagues gave me a ‘professional’ tripod for my camera and life membership of NALGO – now UNISON. The official farewell from the Council (see above) took place a few weeks later. The Chairman of the Council (Mr Fred Good of Harwich), a councillor whom I had always liked and respected, presented me on behalf of the Council, with a pair of Greenkat Binoculars and Heather with a bouquet of flowers.

At the time early retirement had seemed a complete disaster. The press constantly tells us how good public service pensions can be, but mine amounted to just half my far-from-generous salary (I was never one of those ‘highly paid officials’ one reads about!), and I wouldn’t be entitled to my state pension for over six years.

Like many of the apparent disasters that have overtaken me in my life, my early retirement turned out to be one of the best things that have ever happened to me. I immediately obtained a part-time job as an advertising feature writer with what was then Essex County Newspapers (they evidently felt that since, as PRO, I had managed to ‘sell’ Tendring Council, I could sell anything!) and another part-time job as advertising feature writer to a regional magazine Look East, devoted to promoting East Anglian enterprise. I was also invited to write a weekly comment column Tendring Topics in the Coastal Express, a task that I carried out for twenty-three years and am continuing, on line, in this blog!

I became a part-time lecturer and publicity consultant for the Further Education Colleges in Thorpe-le-Soken and Frinton, I wrote half a dozen or more commercially successful books on domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage, as well as the plumbing sections of a number of diy manuals, together with a great many feature articles on local government, environmental health, do-it-yourself plumbing, camping, caravanning, continental travel and so on, for specialist and general interest publications. It was nice to discover that my services were appreciated in the commercial world if not in that of Tendring Council’s Chief Executive!

I have sometimes wondered if Mr Richard Painter, who didn’t stay very long with Tendring Council after my departure, ever realized how much I had benefited from his insulting assessment of my duties.

A Perennial Problem…..and possible Solution

Britain is said to be a nation of dog-lovers – but that love is by no means either unconditional or universal. Nobody likes walking on dog-fouled pavements. Today there does seem to be less of that particular nuisance in Clacton’s streets than there was when I was personally involved with the problem as a Public Health Inspector and later as Tendring’s first Public Relations Officer.

Exercising dogs on some of Tendring’s beaches is prohibited, and they’re not welcomed in other recreational areas. Elsewhere in any town, they are expected to be ‘under control’ – on a lead at all times. Where, say exasperated dog-owners, can we exercise our beloved four-legged-friends freely? A solution may have been found in Ipswich which (despite the fact that I have lived in Clacton over three times as long as I ever lived there!) I still think of as my ‘home town’.

A correspondent to the East Anglian Daily Times writes:

While visiting friends in the vicinity of Ipswich’s Britannia Road, they suggested that I visit the dog park with my dogs and take theirs as well.

This turned out to be a most worth-while visit, as next to the fenced off playground for all the different ages of children with different sports facilities for each, was an enclosed area for dogs and their owners to come at any time of the day or evening.

This area was perfect for the dogs and their owners, where they could let their dogs off their leads to run free. They couldn’t escape so both they and their owners could relax, the owners sitting on the benches provided. There was a paved path round a grass area, complete with water bowls and dog bins.

The owners enjoyed the company of other dog lovers while the dogs ran free and played with each other. I have to say there is almost never any dog mess about; no doubt the owners want to keep it that way.

It sounds idyllic though the image of a number of dogs playing happily and quietly together does strain my credulity just a little. I certainly feel though that it is an experiment that deserves further investigation.

First Class Travel

A recent edition of the Daily Gazette carried a picture of Colchester’s Lib.Dem MP, Bob Russell, travelling up to London in a 1st Class carriage; the implication being that he should have travelled 2nd Class.

During my almost-seven-years with the then-new Tendring District Council my status was just high enough to qualify me for 1st Class travel on the very rare occasions that I had to go up to London on official business. I had never before in my life travelled first class, though in my days as a POW I had considerable experience of cattle truck travel!

Anyway I did travel 1st Class for the Council on one or two occasions*. It meant that I could read the relevant papers on my way there and back and that I didn’t arrive at Liverpool Street or back in Clacton, already exhausted. It was certainly worth it to me and I hope that it may have been to the Council. In these days of lap-tops and mobile phones I can see that 1st Class travel could have other advantages for ‘official’ travellers.

Thus, while I am appalled by many of the extravagant claims for expenses made by some MPs (including my own), I don’t grudge any of them 1st Class travel between London and their constituencies. They are entitled to this privilege and I am sure that most of them have a far better reason for taking advantage of it than MP Sir Nicholas Winterton who, when asked why he chose 1st Class rather than 2nd, replied that ‘you get a totally different type of people’. I bet he doesn’t mind accepting the votes of ‘the other type’, even if he doesn’t care to travel with them!

*Some blog readers will recall that, last July, I travelled 1st Class between Brussels and Dresden. Once again it was well worth it – all the more so because my grandson had bought the tickets for specific trains, well in advance. We thus managed to travel 1st Class at 2nd Class prices! The picture above shows me travelling 1st Class and in unaccustomed luxury on the Deutsch Eisenbahn.

Crematorium Services

Last week in this blog I commented fairly light-heartedly on the fact that Colchester’s burial and crematorium services were in difficulties because there simply hadn’t been enough local deaths, and indignantly on a suggestion that farming the services out to a private firm would solve the Council’s problems.

This week though, I have been giving some thought to our own, Tendring District's cremation service. We have a first-class crematorium a little over 20 years old, on the outskirts of Weeley,standing in a peaceful, spacious and well-kept garden that, remote from the district’s cemeteries, has nothing about it of the inevitably melancholy atmosphere of a burial ground.

Since its opening in 1986 I have attended a great many funeral services there. I have said my final farewell to former colleagues and acquaintances for whose passing I felt no more than mild sadness, to dear friends whose deaths caused me great distress and, nearly four years ago now, to my own dear wife who had shared my life for sixty years and whom I shall never cease to mourn.

A feature of every single one of those funerals has been that of anxious haste. The crematorium authorities permit only 30 minutes per funeral, and that includes the mourners filing in and sitting down, and their departure. In effect, that means that the funeral service itself can last little more than twenty minutes and that as one group of mourners leave another group is preparing to enter. Twenty minutes may well have been fine when the greater part of most funeral services took place in a church or chapel, coming to the crematorium only for the brief committal. This is much less likely to happen today.

The whole operation has an unfortunate resemblance to an industrial assembly line. This isn’t the fault of the Crematorium staff. My experience suggests that they are unfailingly helpful and understanding. It is simply that our Crematorium is usually operating at maximum capacity.

A week ago, a kind friend drove me to the funeral of another dear friend at Ipswich Crematorium. Here the atmosphere was very different. We arrived half an hour early and, to my surprise, were able to take our seats in the crematorium chapel (appreciably larger than that at Weeley) right away. I was glad that we were early because my friend had clearly been well loved by a great many people. Every seat was soon occupied and there were people standing at the back. The service was unhurried, reverent and, I am sure, helpful to my friend’s bereaved husband and other close relatives. There were two hymns and two personal testimonies to my friend’s life as well as a Bible reading and a contribution from the officiating clergyman. At the close of the service it took some time for us all to file from the well-filled chapel. I estimate that that one funeral must have occupied the chapel for at least an hour and a half.

How was it done? Well, Ipswich has two crematoria both on the same site, each with its own chapel, waiting room and toilet facilities. Perhaps, I thought, Ipswich has a much bigger population than we have. I looked it up on ‘the web’. The population of Ipswich is 128,000, that of the Tendring District 138,000 and that of Colchester 156,000. It is, of course, likely that Ipswich’s crematoria also serve the surrounding countryside as Colchester’s crematorium did before we had our own facility at Weeley.

That said, I still think that the Tendring District Council needs to consider the provision of a second crematorium if we are to make our final farewells to our loved spouses, relatives and friends with the dignity and solemnity that the occasions deserve.

Week 8.10

Tendring Topics…….on Line

‘If winter comes…….

Can spring be far behind?’ This was the rhetorical question with which Shelley ended his ‘Ode to the West Wind’. The answer surely is ‘I suppose not’. In 2010 though, it is not an affirmation that I can make with conviction. I was surely tempting fate when, a fortnight ago in this blog, I drew attention to the fact that the weather on Candlemas (2nd February) was ‘dull with rain’ and that weather folklore insisted that ‘winter had gone and would not come again’.

Hardly had I posted that blog on ‘the web’ before the temperature dropped like a stone and we woke up to see once again a sprinkling of snow on our gardens and on the roads and pavements. It didn’t last. Since then, although we have had some sunny days, the temperatures have hovered around freezing point day and night and the threat of snow has refused to go away. There is another piece of weather folklore (there is something to suit every situation!) that certainly has been all too accurate. ‘As the days grow longer, the cold gets stronger’.

The days are, at least, getting longer. It is now light at 7.00 a.m. and darkness doesn’t begin to fall until after 5.00 p.m. I am an early riser, particularly on Sundays when I usually go to the 8.00 a.m. service at St. James’ Church. Backing my mobility scooter out of the shed in the dark at 7.00 a.m. and, muffled up in winter coat with fur hat and sheepskin gloves, driving on it through Clacton’s almost deserted streets in semi-darkness at 7.30, was a less-than-cheering experience.

What’s more, I notice that (whatever may have happened to the green shoots of economic recovery!) the green shoots of daffodils are appearing round the apple tree in my garden and there are two or three snowdrops in flower. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, was on 17th February and Easter is now less than six weeks away. Be it never so tardy, spring really is on the way!

You can just see the daffodil shoots at the foot of my apple tree and, to their left, you can just see two or three snowdrops. Photo taken on 12th February.

Save our Circus!

‘Save our Circus’, is a slogan that nowadays, could usually be guaranteed to raise the ire of Animal Rights activists. When used in Colchester though, it has nothing to do with performing animals and everything to do with the preservation and exploitation of a unique archaeological discovery in ‘England’s oldest recorded town’.

Archaeological excavations in 2004 and 2005 revealed a Roman ‘circus’ or chariot-racing track within the area of the garrison, south of the town centre and outside the town wall but. This is the only such reminder of the four hundred years of Roman occupation that has been found in Britain and is therefore of unique archaeological and general interest.

The circus’s starting gates are buried within the garden of the now-derelict Victorian Sergeants’ Mess. This belongs to a property developer who had intended to build flats on the site. He is however, prepared to sell it to the Colchester Archaeological Trust for £200,000. The original deadline for this sale was the end of January but this deadline has been extended to the end of this month.

The idea is that the starting gate area should be properly excavated, preserved and opened up to the public under a protective covering, and that there should be a heritage centre provided where there could be a plan of the original circus, a description of its use and, of course, information about other historical and archaeological sites (the Balkerne Gate, the Castle, the Town Wall, the Siege House and so on) in and around the town. By mid-February the appeal was only £27,000 short of its target and several more fund-raising events were planned. I have every hope that the appeal will succeed.

I certainly hope so. It is a splendid idea and a very worthwhile cause. I have often thought that more should be done to exploit the tourist potential of northeast Essex and the Stour Valley as a European Tourist Region. Colchester, with its Roman and Boudiccan archaeological heritage and its reminders of the English Civil War, is a natural centre for the region. Within half an hour’s drive is the ‘Constable country’ of Dedham Vale with the unforgettable villages of Dedham and East Bergholt (with Flatford Mill). Next there’s the beautiful tidal Stour beginning at Manningtree, England’s smallest town, and terminating at historic Harwich. Then on round the Tendring Coast, with its high sunshine records and low rainfall. Dovercourt, Walton-on-the-Naze, Frinton, Clacton-on-Sea, St. Osyth and Brightlingsea, each has its own unique character and atmosphere. Together they offer everything that could be asked from a seaside holiday.

I believe that the local authorities from that area should get together to publicise the attractions of the whole area as the ideal holiday destination from the rest of Great Britain and from the European mainland.

We oldies again!

Yes, we oldies are getting the blame again. On his death-bed King Charles II is said to have apologised for being, ‘an unconscionably long time dying’ - and it seems that that is just what we octogenarians and nonagenarians are doing. The Daily Gazette reports that, Colchester’s cemetery and crematorium are facing financial problems because, so the council claims, 'fewer people are dying’.

Councillor Tim Young, who is responsible for the provision of burial and cremation facilities in Colchester is reported as saying, ‘Staff have told me they think it is partly down to the introduction of the winter fuel allowance. Usually in a cold winter like this here would be more deaths, but that has not been the case’.

Oh dear! We have clearly been ignoring the advice given one of the ‘commandments’ in 19th Century poet Arthur Hugh Clough’s satirical poem, The Latest Decalogue:

Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive
Officiously to keep alive.

Colchester Council’s answer to this stubbornness on the part of the elderly, has been to make a modest increase of between one and three percent in cemetery and cremation charges. The opposition Conservative Group has a more radical solution in mind. They would hand over the running of the cemetery to a private company to save money.

I wonder how that would work? The usual commercial inducements ('Buy one, get one free') hardly apply.


The provision of the means of interment or cremation is a service entrusted to local authorities as representatives of their communities. It is the final service that they can render to their citizens. The idea of passing that service on to a commercial enterprise that will hope to make a profit from it and, simultaneously and miraculously, 'save money' for the Council is one that I find extremely distasteful; a 'vote loser' if there ever was one!

Time ('like an ever-rolling stream') will eventually solve Colchester’s problem. All that is needed on the part of the authorities is the exercise of a little patience. Nobody escapes the attention of the grim reaper forever. As Shakespeare put it:

Golden boys and girls all must
Like chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

So must I, and so must even the most resilient of OAPs!

Some good ideas

It is surprising how often Conservative Leader David Cameron seems to strike the right key with my sensibilities yet somehow fails to produce quite the right note.

I am, for instance, totally in agreement with his contention that children these days are being robbed of their childhood but (apart from the absurd conviction that more and ever-earlier sex education will reduce the number of schoolgirl pregnancies) I don’t really think that schools are mainly responsible for this. I would blame tv programmes, in particular tv advertising viewed in the home, and the break-up of ‘normal’ family life resulting from both parents being at work all day and returning home too tired to spend leisure time with their children.

The Conservative suggestion that Head Teachers rather than Education Authorities should be responsible for deciding what advertising and sponsorships should be permitted in schools is a ridiculous one. There is just a chance that a responsible education authority may make wise and disinterested judgements on this issue. A Head Teacher, desperately needing some item of educational equipment obtainable by giving way to commercial interests, would be much more likely to yield to temptation. The best answer would be to make a universal prohibition of any form of advertising or sponsorship within school premises.

Then there’s David Cameron’s idea of turning public services into co-operative ventures, managed and run by those who are engaged in them. It sounds a good idea to me – but why limit it to public services. The extremely successful John Lewis Partnership shows that the idea is at least equally, perhaps even more, appropriate for private enterprise.

I believe that the big mistake made by the Labour Government that I helped into power in 1945, was their belief that public ownership of the means of production and distribution could only be achieved by the creation of vast nationalised corporations, mimicking instead of replacing those of the commercial world.

They might have been more successful had they proceeded more slowly, accepting that public ownership could be achieved by municipalisation rather than nationalisation (many local authorities were successfully running hospitals, public transport, water supply, gas and electricity services before World War II) and by the creation of employee co-operatives and partnerships.

Such a policy would have been unlikely to create an earthly paradise. It would however undoubtedly have narrowed the currently ever-widening gap between the richest and the poorest of our society that is responsible for many of today’s ills. Had Cadbury’s been an employee partnership (an outcome that I am sure its founder would have welcomed) it would never have been taken over by a foreign enterprise having no interest in its British employees. Nor, if Press and tv were run by such partnerships, would it be possible for foreign business tycoons, who do not share our history, culture and moral values, and do not pay our taxes, to own and control the sources of information and the means of popular persuasion in this country.

Week 7.10

Tendring Topics……….on Line

Saving the Naze?

‘Crumbling cliffs and tower saved’, announced a headline in the Clacton Gazette on 11th February. It related, of course, to Walton’s crumbling Naze cliffs which recede year by year. A silent witness to the progress of the erosion is the concrete defensive ‘pillbox’ now yards from the foot of the cliffs. This had been built on the cliff-top as part of Britain’s defences against invasion during World War II

The news story below the headline made it clear that the salvation of the cliffs and Naze Tower, a Grade II Listed Building and a well-known local landmark, hadn’t yet occurred. Moreover the work to be undertaken will, in fact, protect only a 110-metre stretch of the cliff immediately in front of the Tower.

The work referred to is the creation of a ‘Crag Walk’, a tourist attraction and educational project that will include a rock revetment to protect the foot of the eroding cliffs and a new walkway that will incorporate a viewing platform from which the fossil-rich red crag cliffs can be inspected. The project will cost £1.2 million and the Gazette’s report follows the news that a grant of £500,000 from Essex County Council will bring the funding to that figure. Tendring District Council have contributed £520,000 from a £1 million grant in connection with the Government’s Coastal Pathfinder scheme and the Naze Protection Society has itself raised £230,000.

I have no doubt that it is a worthwhile scheme but it surely hardly deserves quite the enthusiastic reception it is receiving from Naze Protection supporters. It does not protect the whole of the Naze and it will only temporarily (though perhaps for a number of years) protect any part of it. A truly long-term solution can only be found by dealing with the seepage of rainwater through the subsoil and the stratum of permeable red crag, to the clay bed below it. This currently flows over the surface of that clay to escape at the foot of the cliff. It thus makes the crag above it unstable. The surface of the cliff crumbles and falls – and the sea washes the debris away.

In the very first years of Tendring Council’s existence following the reorganisation of 1974, the Council’s Engineer and Surveyor’s Department worked out a solution to this problem. This was the subject of a Public Enquiry. The Government inspector approved the scheme which was then shelved because of ‘lack of funds’. I pointed this out in my very first Tendring Topics in print, in 1980.

When the Crag Walk Project is completed the cliffs each side of the project will continue to erode. The protected section of the Naze will become a salient under constant threat from the sea. Eventually, possibly after many years, the sea will win. As King Canute demonstrated to his flattering courtiers a thousand years ago, no man can halt the flow of time or tide.

Not quite ‘proportional representation’ – but very welcome!

The passage through the House of Commons of the very first step towards a much-needed reform of our electoral system hasn’t attracted a great deal of attention from the national press – possibly because, with a general election only weeks away, it is quite likely that it will come to nothing.

At the moment we have a ‘first past the post’ voting system. The candidate who gets the greatest number of votes is elected. This is fine when there are just two candidates. However, when there are a number of them (as there often are these days) it is quite possible for the candidate elected under this system to have less than half the total votes cast. This means that, whoever else electors may have wanted, the majority of them didn’t want the candidate who has been declared the winner!

Under this system it is also quite possible, and has happened twice in recent years, for the Party that secures the most parliamentary seats, and therefore forms the government, not to be the one that secures the greatest number of votes throughout the whole country.

What is proposed is an ‘alternative vote’. Ballot papers would be exactly the same as at present but voters would be able to express their preference by putting 1, 2 or 3, indicating first, second and third choice against the candidates names.

When the votes are counted, the ‘first choices’ are first counted. If more than fifty percent of those who voted made any one of the candidates their first choice, then that is the end of the matter. That candidate is elected. If no-one has secured more than half of the ‘first choices’, then the second choices are counted and added to the ‘first choice’ totals. This will almost certainly produce a candidate with more than fifty percent of the vote. If it does not, then the ‘third choices’ can also be counted and added to the total. The candidate with more than fifty percent of the total votes counted will then be declared the winner.

This isn’t true ‘proportional representation’. It would still be possible for a party of government to have less than half the total vote. It would mean though that individual members of parliament couldn’t be elected on a minority vote and, unlike some forms of truly proportional representation, it would mean that those electors who chose to do so, could vote for the candidate rather than his or her party.

Gordon Brown’s opponents say that he has put the suggestion forward now ‘for political reasons’. It might make people who were wavering between Labour and Liberal Democrat, vote Labour. If there were to be a ‘hung parliament’ after the election it might persuade the Lib. Dems. to form a coalition with Labour rather than with the Conservatives.

Of course Mr Brown has put the idea forward for ‘political reasons’. That’s what politicians do. That doesn’t mean that it is a bad idea though. I think that, in the interest of democracy, it is a good, if not the very best, solution

The proposal that has successfully survived its first reading in the House of Commons is not that such a system should be introduced, but that the idea of its introduction should be presented to the electorate in a referendum.

Those who think that having a strong and decisive government is more important than having a truly representative one, would no doubt vote NO in such a referendum. Me? The reigns of Mrs Margaret Thatcher and of Mr Tony Blair have taken away my appetite for strong government. I would vote YES.

Fencing off the sea!

I’m not surprised that residents in Brightlingsea are up in arms at Tendring Council’s fencing off part of Brightlingsea’s promenade for health and safety reasons. I am glad that the Council has decided to have second thoughts about it.

It is said that a fatality that occurred some years ago when an elderly woman’s mobility scooter rolled over the edge on a seafront path in Holland-on-Sea, is one of the factors that have led to this fencing. Gordon Beare, founder and organiser of the Tendring Pensioners’ Action Group is a mobility scooter user himself. He is reported as saying he believed that railings were a good idea. ‘Many elderly people can have simple accidents on their scooters, so anything that will make sure a scooter can’t go into the water is a good idea’. Well, I too use a mobility scooter and wouldn’t wish to be without it. It could be dangerous, even fatal, to drive too close to the kerb (the pavement edge) of the footpath of a busy street. I think that most of us are wise and careful enough to keep away from the edge of the promenade.

A year or two ago, I watched a family disembarking from their car on the Naze at Walton and preparing for a picnic. The adults failed to notice that a two or three year old toddler, rejoicing in his freedom from adult attention, was making a beeline for the cliff top. Fortunately an onlooker spotted the child’s danger, intercepted him and brought him back to his parents. Instead of apologising for their own lack of attention their reaction was, ‘You’d really think that they’d have those cliffs fenced off!’

Where will it end? Ought we perhaps to erect fences along our beaches just above high tide mark because someone might wander into the sea and drown?

I don’t blame local authorities, or even the Health and Safety Executive for this absurd determination to make every human activity totally risk-free. Responsibility lies with our own ‘compensation culture’, the idea that every single mishap is ‘somebody’s fault’ and that ‘somebody’ must be made to pay!

It is a culture that is nourished and perpetuated by the ‘ambulance chasing, no-win, no-fee, lawyers’, whose adverts holding the promise of hundreds or thousands of pounds of compensation, help to keep commercial daytime tv on its feet!

A Fateful Anniversary

I am writing these words on St. Valentine’s Day. It is the sixty-fifth anniversary of my learning of an event that has affected me for the remainder of my life. At first it reinforced the Agnosticism that I held at that time. Three years later though it was one of the factors that led my wife and I to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The date was 14th February 1945. It was then that I learned of the horrifying firebomb raids on the city of Dresden, that had been carried out by the RAF during the night, and that the U.S. Air Force was continuing throughout that day.

I was a British prisoner of war at a working camp in Zittau, a small German town situated some sixty miles east of Dresden at the point where today the German, Czech and Polish frontiers coincide. Throughout the bitterly cold winter of 1944/’45, we had heard the sound of gunfire in the east increase from a distant murmur to a continuous and ever louder rumble.

By early February (after the failure of the last-ditch German winter offensive in the Ardennes) everyone in Zittau – we, our guards, the many foreign ‘slave workers’, and the German population knew that the war would be over in months, if not weeks.

The trickle of refugees fleeing before the inexorably advancing Soviet Army had grown to a flood. There were old men (younger ones had all been called up into the army), women and children, some babes in arms. Most were, of course, Germans but there were among them allied prisoners of war on a forced march away from the front line and possible liberation. There were Russian, Ukrainian and Polish ‘slave workers’, and there were abject and defeated units of Nazi Germany’s allies, Hungarians Bulgarians, and renegade Cossacks. Some had all their worldly goods piled onto ox-drawn carts, a few had lorries driven by ‘Holzgas’ (a gas – carbon monoxide perhaps? – produced by the slow and partial combustion of wood chippings). Many just trudged through the snow with their belongings on their backs or piled into small hand-carts.

They were heading for Dresden where the German Red Cross would take charge and distribute them among the few remaining parts of Germany that were relatively ‘safe’. By the 13th February some 300,000 refugees were crowded into the city.

That was the night that the RAF struck, creating firestorms that flattened fifteen square miles of the centre of Dresden and killed an estimated 25,000 people, overwhelmingly civilian, and many of them women and children. The grandfather of one of my current friends in Zittau was among the victims. He was a frail old man who escaped the flames to spend a bitterly cold February night in the open. He wouldn’t have counted as a casualty of the raid as he died a week later, of pneumonia!

In justification of the raid it has been claimed that no-one could be sure the war was nearly over, and that Dresden was a legitimate target as it contained factories supporting the Nazi war effort. It was also an important communications centre. However factories, a large railway station and an important river bridge, on the outskirts of the town were left unscathed while the bombers concentrated on the heavily populated city centre.

I have no doubt that the raids on Dresden were totally unjustified acts of terror which, had they been perpetrated by our opponents, would have been regarded as war crimes. Could they perhaps, have been an early gambit in the Cold War, carried out to impress the Soviet Army, which we knew would be there within weeks, with the strength of British and American Air Power?

‘The Nazis did worse things’. I know they did. Is that really an excuse for us?

Week 6.10

Tendring Topics………on line

Weather Folklore

Red sky in the morning,
Shepherd’s warning!

So says one of the best-known pieces of weather folklore. A red sky just before sunrise is a presage of strong wind or rain before night. This certainly proved to be true when a few weeks ago, I took this before-dawn photograph from the back door of my home in Clacton’s Dudley Road.

The second couplet of that particular piece of folklore, Red sky at night, Shepherd’s delight, I have found to be rather less reliable. A beautiful red sunset may be followed by a glorious windless and sunny day – but it may not be.

Another piece of thoroughly unreliable weather folklore is the prophecy that the weather on St. Swithin’s day (15th July) determines whether or not the next forty days will be wet or dry. It is true though that at about that time of the year we often do have long spells of either very wet or very dry weather.

Tuesday of last week (2rd February) was Candlemas Day, when the Church remembers the presentation of Christ in the Temple and celebrates his role as the Light of the World. Prior to the Reformation it was the practice on that day to bless all the candles to be used in the church during the year. I believe that the custom is continued in the Roman Catholic Church.

It is a day also associated with weather folklore that seems to come true rather more often than not.

If Candlemas be clear and bright,
Winter will have another flight.
If Candlemas be dull, with rain,
Winter has gone and will not come again.

This year, if you remember, Candlemas was ‘dull with rain’ for most of the day though there was a brief period of brightness mid-morning. I hope that the worst of the winter really is over – but I won’t be putting my winter overcoat and fur (synthetic of course!) hat away just yet!

Prince of Peace…..Weapons of War!

Among the recorded sayings of China’s former leader Chairman Mao Tse Tung, was that ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’. Who am I to say that he was wrong about this? Guns and political power can certainly make a deadly combination – as the current Public Enquiry into the causes, conduct and aftermath of the war in Iraq is making abundantly clear.

A cause that I am quite sure is not best served by weapons of death of any kind, is the Christian Faith. As a Christian Quaker I believe that Jesus Christ meant what he said when he told us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, do good to those who despitefully use us. He set an example that Christians should strive to follow – though few of us completely succeed. Furthermore I believe the everyone in the world, fanatical terrorists as well as men and women of peace, is endowed with Christ’s inward light, the instinct within us all that urges us towards love, compassion and forgiveness. Whatever the cause, it is not for us to snuff out that light in a fellow human, however much it may have become dimmed by bigotry, greed, superstition or fear. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done these things (good or bad) unto one of my brethren, ye have done them unto me’.

I was shocked therefore to learn that each rifle of the latest consignment for our troops in Afghanistan has inscribed upon it a reference to a New Testament text. An example quoted in the national press is JN8:12 referring the user to Verse 12 of Chapter 8 of St. John’s Gospel, within which Jesus proclaims, ‘I am the Light of the World. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’. United States firm Trijicon, said to have been founded by a devout Christian, manufactures the rifles. I find this message, engraved on what is a weapon of death, to be profoundly offensive, even blasphemous. I had a similar though I think lesser, shock when many years ago I discovered that in World War II every German soldier had ‘Gott mit uns’ (God is with us) engraved on the buckle of his uniform belt.

You may (or may not) be astonished to learn that this offensive aspect of the engraving is not the one that is bothering our politicians and the national press. Their worry is that a reference to a New Testament text might be used by the Taliban to persuade waverers that the allied forces in Afghanistan are engaged in a Crusade to convert them to Christianity. As the Taliban and Al Quaida are already trying to persuade Afghans that they themselves are engaged in a Holy War (a Jihad) to drive the infidels from the sacred soil of their country, that would hardly seem necessary.

In any case Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, who is usually prompt in telling us of anything that might offend his co-religionists, says that he regards the inscriptions as ‘fairly harmless’.

A single sentence in the Daily Mail’s report suggests to me that if the Press and Politicians hadn’t decided to publicise this silly business, it is likely that no one would have known about it. That sentence is, ‘The inscriptions appear in raised lettering at the end of the gunsight’s stock number’.

I haven’t always been a Christian Quaker and my views on the compatibility of Christian Faith with armed conflict haven’t always been those that I hold today.

During World War II I was a gunner in the Royal Artillery. I didn’t therefore routinely carry a rifle. We all had to learn to fire one though, and in the summer of 1940 when it was thought that a German invasion could be imminent, we were all issued with one (from which we were forbidden ever to allow ourselves to be parted!), together with fifty rounds of ammunition,

I did make sure that I was pretty familiar with mine, and was capable of using it effectively if the occasion arose. If I had happened to notice the manufacturer’s serial number it would certainly never have occurred to me that JN8.12 embossed immediately after it might be a Biblical reference………unless, of course, I had been alerted to the fact by the press and politicians.

Essex Jobs for Essex Enterprise?

Do you remember, it was only a few months ago that Lord Hanningfield, as leader of Essex Count Council, was urging Essex public authorities to choose Essex contractors to undertake their services? I remember suggesting that if Tendring District or Colchester Borough, for example, chose, without a very good reason, a tender for services from within Essex, rather than a lower one from across the border in neighbouring Suffolk, they would be in trouble with their auditors.

This advice from the County Council evidently applied only to other authorities, not themselves. More recently Lord Hanningfield has announced that he personally had negotiated a deal for a £9.4 billion contract with computer services giant IBM, a multinational IT organisation with its base in the USA and its tentacles worldwide. This, he assured us, would save the taxpayer thousands of pounds annually.

Let us hope that it does, because it has also recently been announced that the jobs of up to 275 County Council staff, Essex men and women, are to be axed either as a direct or indirect result of this deal.

I have no doubt that in the upper echelons of the County Council’s staff, there are a few faces that would never be missed. However, the inadequacies of, for instance, the Council’s child protection service, suggest that lower down the salary scales, among social workers at least, they need to be recruiting staff rather than dismissing them. No-one has yet invented a robot or computer that can knock on doors, interview householders, inspect their homes, assess the well-being of their children and their capabilities as parents, and take appropriate action.

Assuming that computerising many of the County Council’s services would be a good idea, are there really no Essex, or at least East Anglian, IT consultants who could have offered the same service as IBM, probably at a lower price?

Latest Developments

I wrote the above before the news broke that Lord Hanningfield was the one member of the House of Lords who faced prosecution in connection with the Parliamentary expenses scandal. I have decided to let the blog stand.

I have been very critical of Lord Hanningfield in the past. I have thought that many of his policies, especially his ‘ground-breaking initiatives’, were mistaken and that his style of leadership introduced an undesirable ‘cult of the personality’ into local government. However, I never, for one moment, thought of him as being dishonest, and I hope that he succeeds in clearing himself of the current accusations.

I am not going to pretend though that I am not pleased that he has laid down his leadership of the County Council. I hope that under its new leader, whoever he or she may be, the Council will spend rather less time and money on globe-trotting trips abroad for its members and senior staff, on seeking customers for Essex products in China and elsewhere, and on running banks and failing post offices (though I do think that the latter was a worthwhile exercise). This should release resources for the County's failing child protection and child care, its care of the old and disabled, education, maintenance of highways, consumer protection, refuse disposal and recycling and other responsibilities entrusted to County Councils by central government.

I hope too, that the expenses claimed by County Councillors in connection with their duties, will be investigated every bit as meticulously as those of members of parliament have been.

A Seventeenth Century Law

I find it almost unbelievable that MPs, accused of fiddling their expenses should have the effrontery to seek to avoid the judgement of the criminal courts by means of a three hundred year old law enacted for no other purpose than to ensure absolute freedom of speech for MPs within the House of Commons! Is that what they meant when they said they would be 'defending themselves robustly?'

Perhaps, as they are seeking the protection of a 17th Century law they should, if found guilty, suffer a 17th Century penalty. A few months in a cell in the Tower for instance, under the conditions of prisoners there in the sixteen hundreds, might be appropriate. Or, and this would be by far the cheapest option for we tax-payers, a few hours in the pillory in a public place within their own constituencies.