Week18.10

Tendring Topics…..on Line

My Chinese Readers!

A week or so ago I was very pleased to realize that a number of comments had been made by readers of recent Tendring Topics…..on Line blogs, and had been published on the blogspot. It was nice to know that I had at least one reader sufficiently interested to comment on what I had written. I was still pleased, though totally bewildered, to discover that these comments were written in Chinese!

Most messages written in any European language will contain at least one or two words with a meaning that can be guessed. It is thus often possible to discover at least the subject of the message. Chinese though! I hadn’t a clue, but I sent an urgent SOS to grandson Chris, living and working in Taiwan, for his help.

Chris speaks Mandarin and understands the spoken language fluently, but has only a limited knowledge of written Chinese. Fortunately his girlfriend Ariel can read it – but she is a lot less than fluent in English! Together, they believe they have solved the mystery of my Chinese correspondence, and have translated four of the messages into English.

Chris and Ariel in Taipei, capital of Taiwan

They first of all discovered that the messages had come from a number of Chinese, not just one, as I had imagined. They think that the reason that I have received them is that hundreds of thousands of Chinese have recently acquired computers and have access to the internet for the first time. A great many of them are eager to learn English, and are searching the world-wide-web for sites that will enable them to practise reading grammatical every-day English, and perhaps to imitate a good English writing style. Having found such a site they mark it with the comment, in Chinese for the benefit of their compatriots, that that particular site is interesting and the material worth reading.

This theory is reinforced by the fact that two of the messages are to the effect that this site ( www.ernesthall.net or www.ernesthall.blogspot.com ) is interesting and worthwhile. Well, who am I to say that my blog doesn’t provide a good source of well-written and (usually) grammatically correct English, and an insight into the interests of people in this corner of the UK?

A third message comes from someone who had clearly read my comments on secondary education in Clacton-on-Sea. He, or of course she, says The purpose of education is to create a well-rounded, freethinking adult and not a mere store of information. I wonder if that came from a Chinese schoolteacher? I agree, but I would add, or a mere unit of human resources prepared for the labour market. I do however also believe that a foundation of accurate information is needed on which to build that well-rounded freethinking adult.

The fourth message? Oh, that was an example of Chinese ‘spam’. Readers were directed to a website where they would be able chat to young ladies of dubious virtue!

I look forward to hearing again from the first three of my Chinese correspondents. If they are learning English perhaps they’ll try to send a message in that language. I would like to be able to read it too!

Forty years on!

Below is a copy of the cover of the recently published illustrated history of ‘The Harwich Society’, written by Elizabeth A. Kemp-Luck M.A. With 94 x A4 sized pages, lavishly illustrated with fifty photographs it covers every aspect and every decade of the first forty years of what must surely be among the most successful of East Anglia’s Amenity Societies.

Created by sixty local enthusiasts at a public meeting in February 1969, it now has over 1,000 members, a number of them scattered ‘afar and asunder,’ just as the Harrow School Song, ‘Forty Years On’ predicts.

The forty years of the Society’s existence have been years of success, which have changed the face of Harwich, preserving much of the town’s past that would otherwise have been lost forever in the name of progress.

I remember (it must have been in the mid-seventies) an occasion when one of Harwich’s representatives on Tendring Council, who was less than enthusiastic about the Society’s conservationist activities, remarked that if you dared to stand still for more that five minutes in Harwich, you’d be liable to have a conservation notice pinned onto you!

Among the Society’s notable successes have been the restoration and re-opening of the Electric Cinema, one of Britain’s oldest purpose-built cinemas, the establishment of the Ha’penny Pier Visitors Centre, the Lifeboat Museum and Maritime Museum, and the restoration of the Beacon Hill Fort and the Napoleonic era Redoubt.

It was the last of these that particularly interested me and led to my becoming a (very inactive) member of the Society. Charlie Gilbert, the father of my sadly missed late wife Heather, had been a Harwich boy. His father John Gilbert, Heather’s paternal grandfather, had been a fireman on the ill-fated SS Berlin that went down off the Hook of Holland in 1907. As a child Heather spent many happy holidays in Dovercourt with her cousins Roger and Joan.

Nine-year-old (or thereabouts) Heather Gilbert on Dovercourt Beach in the early 1930s.

Roger, grown up of course by 1968, was an early member of the Harwich Society. He was deeply involved in the recovery and restoration of a 9in, 12ton cannon found buried in the Redoubt’s dry moat. A striking photograph in ‘The Harwich Society’ shows it being winched from its resting place.

It was then, as the text goes on to say, ‘mounted on a purpose built carriage in Cook Street and is now known as the Gilbert Gun, named in memory of Roger Gilbert, the deputy group leader, who was much involved in the recovery of the gun'.
How proud Roger’s dad, Bill Gilbert, and his uncle (my father-in-law) would have been to know that their family name had been perpetuated in this way in their hometown.

I was a gunner in a 6in howitzer battery, in World War II and have looked over the Gilbert Gun with a certain professional interest. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted the job of feeding that huge 9in diameter iron monster its diet of cannon balls!

'The Harwich Society' history is a thoroughly good read for anyone with an interest in Harwich or who is thinking of launching an amenity society in his or her own area. It is, quite obviously, an ideal gift for Harwich exiles living elsewhere in the UK or further afield.

Copies can be obtained from Andy Rutter at 5 Church Street. Harwich, CO12 3DR at £9.50 or £11.00 by post. If you would like to find out more about the Harwich Society, access:

http://www.harwich-society.co.uk/

Indecision!

I once saw Shakespeare’s greatest play, Hamlet, described as the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind. In that respect, though probably no other, I find myself closely resembling the eponymous hero of that Shakespearean masterpiece.

I am writing these words on Tuesday 27th April. The General Election is only nine days away. I am a postal voter and received my ballot paper and instructions on filling it in, yesterday. I can vote right away. I shall certainly do so and post off the envelope containing my vote, within the next day or two but I still haven’t quite made up my mind about the name against which I shall mark my cross.

My strong inclination is to vote for the Liberal-Democrat candidate. This is not because I have been bewitched by Nick Clegg’s honeyed tongue during the tv election debates. It is simply because Lib.Dem. policies nationwide support political ideas that I have held for many years. I believe that Britain could and should become a fairer society, both economically and politically. The gulf between the very rich and the very poor should be narrowed. Nobody should need to be hungry, homeless or deprived of health care. Everybody’s vote should count – even in ‘safe’ Labour, Conservative or Lib.Dem. held constituencies.

I believe that we should strengthen our ties with Europe, even if that means weakening those with the USA. I believe that climate change is a very real danger world-wide, created or at the very least exacerbated by humankind’s activities, and that we should take urgent action to counter this change.

I believe that the Trident submarine fleet is an almost unbelievable waste of money and resources.

These are all Lib.Dem. policies. Why then am I hesitant to vote for them?

Simply because under our absurd first-pass-the-post voting system, voting for the candidate whose policies I really favour would possibly have the effect of making the re-election of a right-wing, climate-change-denying Europhobe more certain. Perhaps I should vote tactically for the Labour Candidate as being the lesser evil. This really could affect the outcome of the election?

Another quote from Hamlet (who says that Shakespeare isn’t relevant today!) comes to my mind. ‘This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou can’st not then be false to any man’.

I shall certainly have filled in and sent off that ballot paper by the time you read these words. I think though that I may keep to myself the name against which I will have marked my cross. I have an uncomfortable feeling that I shall later regret my decision, no matter what it may be!

PS (on Tuesday 4th May) I have completed my ballot paper and posted it off. In the end I followed the Shakespearean advice above!

Week 17.10

Tendring Topics……….on Line

A Once-sleeping Volcano

That Icelandic volcano with an unpronounceable name, situated hundreds of miles north-west of the British Isles and mainland Europe, achieved something that had proved well beyond the power of either Hitler’s Luftwaffe or the murderous fanatics of Al Quaida. It grounded the whole of Britain’s Royal Air Force and civil aircraft fleet and the equivalent air fleets of the greater part of the rest of Europe. It demonstrated conclusively how puny is all the might and all the technology of humankind in the face of forces that nature is capable of unleashing.

As recently as a century ago, that volcanic eruption would have caused no concern to anyone in the British Isles or on mainland Europe. It would have attracted little, if any, attention beyond its immediate vicinity in Iceland. Its devastating effects in 2010 result entirely from mankind’s reliance upon the technological advances made in the latter half of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first.

It has been the plight of the thousands of holidaymakers and would-be holidaymakers unable to get to their destinations that has caught the public’s attention. The effect on trade and commerce worldwide has been at least as important though. Rapid airborne travel and transport were among the greatest achievements of the late twentieth century. Now, we find that we simply can’t manage without them.

The crisis might perhaps have been expected to have instilled into us humans a certain degree of humility, possibly even a renewed realization that, ‘The fear (or awe) of the Lord, is the beginning of wisdom’.

But it hasn’t, has it? In our litigious society the first reaction is to look round for someone to blame, someone from whom we can claim compensation. General Election campaigns are in full swing. Party organisers immediately seek ways in which electoral advantage – a few thousand extra votes – can be squeezed from the situation.

Why isn’t the government taking immediate steps to help those stranded Brits to get home? asked the tabloids. When a warship was deployed to help, an armada of rescue boats was urged by the press. We were given visions of a new Dunkirk with stranded Britons being snatched from European beaches. Meanwhile a retired Colonel Blimp wrote to one of the papers to thunder that this wasn’t a proper use of the Royal Navy. I could imagine him pontificating in his club, ‘Dammit man, this could be just the time that the Ruskies decide to attack!’

Perhaps the scientific advisers were over-cautious. As an occasional air traveller (though I think that my flying days are now over) I am glad that they were. It is much better that they should be over-cautious than that they should not be cautious enough. The unnecessary grounding of aircraft is regrettable; but not half as regrettable as allowing them to fly prematurely……and having them crash! Imagine what the headlines would have been like then!

Let us be thankful that Europe has survived a major crisis without, as far as I know, the loss of a single life. That surely is a matter for congratulation and celebration. Compensation for the airlines for the millions of pounds they claim to have lost? Much more deserving are the stranded passengers who have had to spend the last few hundred pounds in their bank accounts trying to get home, and who in some cases were denied the support from their airline to which they were legally entitled.

Clacton’s Parliamentary Hopefuls

The final day for the receipt of candidatures for the Clacton-on-Sea Constituency revealed that there are two new contestants in the field, both standing as ‘Independent’. They’re not actually all that ‘new’. There’s Terry Allen of Frinton-on-Sea, a former leader of Tendring Council and founder-member of ‘Tendring First’, who lost his Council seat in the 2007 local elections. His policies, I quote the Clacton Gazette are ‘to bring health, fire and police services under more local control, boost vocational education, give better equipment to frontline troops, hold a referendum on Europe and introduce a quota system for immigration’.

Hardly, I would have thought, sufficiently different from the policies of our sitting Conservative MP (or even of the BNP candidate) to make it worth hazarding the £500 deposit. Still, it was his £500, not mine.

Then there’s Clactonian Chris Humphrey, whom I have known from a long time ago but who seems to have dropped out of my orbit (or perhaps it’s just that I’ve dropped out of his) in recent years. I knew him as a very earnest and well-meaning young man – well he was young when I first knew him – with very strong views on a number of subjects. I hope he’ll reveal his current election manifesto soon. There’s one thing of which I’m pretty certain. It won’t be a carbon copy of that of any other candidate!

I have little doubt that both these Independent candidates will lose their deposits. I wish them all success though – any votes that they may attract are likely to be at the expense of candidates whom I would not wish to see elected.

‘Get Nick Clegg!’

This was clearly the message that went out to the editors of most of the popular press when, last week, a surge of support for the Lib.Dems. became apparent from opinion poll after opinion poll. Needless to say, the party’s opponents didn’t imagine for one moment that this could be because an increasing number of people had become aware of the Liberal Democrat Party’s policies and decided that they much preferred them to those of New Labour and of the Tories.

Of course not! Political leaders and national newspaper proprietors don’t really believe that we electors are capable of that much rational thought. It must surely have been because we had all been bewitched by Nick Clegg’s performance in that first televised debate between the party leaders. He had skilfully learned all the ‘tricks of the trade’, the right body language, the most effective facial expressions, the telling phrase – and, of course he was young, handsome and clever. Goodness, was it imagined that David Cameron and Gordon Brown had not also had the very best and most experienced tutors to coach them in the best way to present themselves on tv? Wasn’t David Cameron at least equally young, handsome and clever? I don’t think that Gordon Brown would claim the first two of those attributes but he could surely claim to look more mature and experienced than his rivals.

So – Nick Clegg had to be smeared. The fruit of the muck-raking that ensued appeared on the front pages of most of the dailies last Thursday, 22nd April. ‘Four years ago Nick Clegg said this, or that ……and eight years ago wrote this, that and the other’. Then, of course, there had been money paid into his account. No need to mention that it had promptly been paid out again! I was reminded of a rather cruel little rhyme about my own former profession:

It’s true, you cannot bribe or twist,
Thank Heaven, the British journalist.
Considering what the chap will do
Unbribed, there’s no occasion to.

They were at it again after the second debate. I felt that there was little to choose between the performances of the three candidates on this occasion. At one stage I was quite impressed by Gordon Brown. Certainly Nick Clegg didn’t suffer the humiliation joyfully predicted by some of his opponents. I think that Sun’s headline celebrating David Cameron’s ‘triumph’ must have been written before the debate.

And why not? Few Sun readers will have watched the debate and few will read much more than the headlines before hastening on to the sports news, the celebrity gossip and the glamour photo-shots.

Once again – Andy changes the subject!

Many years ago, it must have been in the early 1980s, I drove to Chelmsford to gather material for an advertising feature on Ridley’s, the brewers, for one of the Essex County Newspaper’s publications.

I was welcomed by the Managing Director, a Mr Ridley (I don’t remember his first name) with whom I had made an appointment. I was shown over the brewery and given a brief account of the brewing processes. We then repaired to his office for a cup of tea and a chat. I soon had sufficient material from which to produce what I hoped would be an interesting, informative and readable 1,000 words about our county’s own brewery and own beer.

During our chat I commented that I had noticed that the label on all bottles of Ridley’s ale have a head-and-shoulders picture of a man wearing the ‘Tudor style’ cap that I had seen on many a tv documentary and costume drama. Could it possibly be a picture of Nicholas Ridley, the Bishop of London who, together with his fellow Bishop, Hugh Latimer, had been burnt at the stake during the reign of Queen Mary I, elder daughter of Henry VIII? It was indeed, said my host, adding that his family were the direct descendants of the martyred Bishop.

This distinguished historical connection certainly added a little colour and interest to my article. I have no idea whether or not it had any effect on the sales of Ridley’s ale.
My memories of this little incident in my writing career came flooding back when I received another emailed photograph from my younger son and daughter-in-law Andy and Marilyn. They had been visiting Oxford and sent me a picture of the Martyrs Memorial erected on the spot where, on 16th October 1555, Bishops Latimer and Ridley had been cruelly burnt to death. It was on the same spot that, five months later, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, and author of the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, suffered the same horrendous fate.

The Tudors – Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I were the best educated and most cultured rulers that England had ever seen. I am not sure that they don’t remain to this day our best-educated and most cultured monarchs. It was a religious age in which the Bible was translated into half a dozen European languages and was studied meticulously by both the royal rulers and their advisers. A biblical justification for Henry VIII’s annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon had been found in an obscure passage in the Old Testament Book of Leviticus!

Yet, despite the learning, despite the religious belief, acts of the most appalling cruelty took place – often in the name of religion - in their reigns.

What a pity those royal studies hadn’t concentrated on the New Testament, in particular on the Sermon on the Mount. In it, the founder of the faith in defence of which they claimed they were consigning their fellow men and women to the flames, had said: Treat other people exactly as you would like to be treated yourself. This summarises the whole of the Law of God. I don’t think that there is any possible interpretation of those words that would justify making a bonfire of a fellow human, whatever his or her offence.

How different the Tudor period could have been, and how different our own could be too, if only more people heeded that commandment!

Thanks very much Andy and Marilyn for a timely reminder that, great as our problems may be today, many of our forebears faced even bigger ones in the past.

Week 16.10

Tendring Topics……on line

‘Lies, dam’ Lies……and Percentages!’

William Connor, who, under the pseudonym Cassandra, wrote a perceptive and hard-hitting column in the Daily Mirror in the years before, and immediately after World War II, once illustrated the deceptiveness of percentages with the story of an elderly hen, which in the course of one year produced just one egg. The following year she excelled herself, producing two eggs. In a time of food shortages her owner was therefore able to boast that by careful husbandry and efficient fowl management, he had been able to increase egg production by no less than one hundred percent over a period of twelve months.

Cassandra was making the point that even a large percentage of what is very small isn’t very much, while quite a small percentage of a large amount is likely to be rather a lot.

I thought of that highly productive hen when I read the headline about Chief Executives of Hospital Trusts getting a pay increase twice as great as those of hospital nurses. Most of us probably have only the vaguest idea of what either chief executives or nurses earn except that we know instinctively that the former are, by ordinary people’s standards, very well off and that the latter are not. We may have imagined that the Chief Executives were getting an extra £1,000 a year and the nurses only £500, and that would have seemed clearly unfair.

Perhaps it would have been – but it would have been a model of justice and equity compared with what had actually happened. The pay increases both these groups received were, in fact, percentage increases. The Chief Executives had received an increase of over 6 percent of their very large salaries and the nurses only about 3 percent of their much smaller ones. The actual salaries of both these groups vary widely but a Chief Executive of a Hospital Trust would be unlikely to be in receipt of a salary of less than £150,000 a year. Six percent of this sum is about £9,500, a pretty hefty pay rise for anyone in a time of financial stringency. A fully qualified nurse with several years experience and a measure of seniority might expect to earn about £20,000 a year. Three percent of this amounts to £600 – a great deal less than half the rise of the Chief Executives.

Compared with many of our fellow countrymen and women, nurses are by no means ‘poor’. Nor, by the standards of the super-rich, are Hospital Chief Executives particularly wealthy. However the ever-widening gap between the pay of the two groups, both working within the same public service, typifies the yawning gap between the rich and the poor in Britain today.

It is a gap that must be closed if we are to mend the ‘broken society’ of which David Cameron, possibly our future Prime Minister, warns us.

Those Manifestos

The three major political parties have published, and publicised, their manifestos – what they would hope to do if they should win the election.



The New Labour manifesto was as one might expect from a party that has been in power for over a decade; solemn, dependable – just a little boring. Its message seemed to be; ‘These are difficult times. A steady hand is needed at the wheel. We haven’t done too badly so far. You’d be wise to give us another term in office. Yes – we know you are disillusioned with politicians – but better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. Let ‘middle England’ note that we’re leaving income tax alone. There’s nothing remotely revolutionary about us’.

It could have been a Conservative manifesto in the pre-Thatcher years. I think that if the electorate wants conservative policies, as may well be the case, they’ll most likely vote Conservative. Nothing that New Labour can do or say will ever win the hearts and minds of the leader writers of The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express and The Daily Telegraph. Why bother to try?

I was pleased to hear Gordon Brown’s admission that as the financial crisis was developing he should have been less kind to the banks. Regular readers (I feel sure that there are a few!) of this blog may recall that I remarked a few weeks ago that just as Ramsey Macdonald had been ‘dazzled by duchesses’, so the leaders of New Labour had been ‘blinded by billionaires’. It was nice to receive confirmation of this.

The Conservative manifesto was quite different, anything but ‘conservative’ in fact. I wonder if the two main parties have ever considered exchanging their names? ‘Power to the people!’ really is a strong message. It reminded me eerily of Lenin’s clarion call when in 1917 he arrived in St. Petersburg, home from exile; ‘All power to the workers and soldiers councils – the dictatorship of the working people!’ We all know where that led.

Communities, David Cameron said, should be allowed to run their own schools and their own local services. There should be local referendums on controversial issues. They should be able to veto Council Tax rises and sack their local MP if he wasn’t performing to their satisfaction. How, I wonder, would communities do any of these things? We don’t live in the small Greek city-states of classical times where everybody (who wasn’t a slave) could have his say and be listened to. Our communities consist of thousands, often tens of thousands, of people. At least a thousand parents have a direct personal interest in the average comprehensive secondary school.

Such ‘communities’ are rarely, if ever, unanimous in either their likes or dislikes. They would surely have to select representatives to organise and carry out their wishes. It can hardly have escaped the notice of the leaders of the Conservative Party that there is already machinery in place to do just that. It is called local government – a local government that, since World War II has been systematically robbed of its powers of independent action by successive Labour and Conservative Governments. Nowadays, local authorities have become little more than local agents for carrying out central government’s policies.

Restore to local authorities just some of the powers that they had between the wars and, knowing that their votes could actually make a difference, many more people would bother to vote in local elections. Local Councils would become truly representative of the local communities that they serve, and David Cameron’s call for ‘power to the people’ could be realized.

Just as a footnote it must be added that the power that the Conservatives propose to give to ‘the people’ does have its limits. They’d be able to veto Council Tax rises and hold referendums on local issues – but there’s no word of their having power to veto VAT rises, or rises in alcohol, tobacco or petrol duties, or to hold a referendum on whether or not we need Trident submarines.

The Liberal Democrat Manifesto is, as I had expected, the one that I find most attractive. It promises reform of the tax system to narrow the yawning gap between rich and poor (something that this blog has urged since its advent), an improved education system (The other two parties haven’t been very successful. Perhaps the Lib’Dems. could do better) and generally ‘clean up’ politics (that certainly needs doing). The Lib.Dems. claim to have costed their proposals most meticulously. I would certainly pay less income tax if their proposal to make the first £10,000 of income free of tax were to be put into effect, but I am not totally convinced that it would be a good idea.

The Famous Debate

Did you ‘help to make history’ by watching on tv the first-ever pre-election debate by the leaders of the three main parties, one of whom is, of course, still the Prime Minister?

It wasn’t as formal and boring as I had feared it might be. Nor did any of the participants give an embarrassingly poor performance. David Cameron and Gordon Brown interrupted each other once or twice. The former was a little flushed at one stage and the latter once looked distinctly cross. Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat, stayed aloof from the squabbling and I thought that he came out the best, an opinion that seems to be shared by most relatively neutral observers.

He, of course, had an advantage in that his Party, not having been in Government, couldn’t be blamed for any of the catastrophic blunders made by the other parties in the past few decades. Had they held office they might well have made their own mistakes (I never was a fan of Paddy Ashdown!) but, since they didn’t, they enjoy the benefit of the doubt.

I can’t forget that the Conservatives, when in power, severed the link between pensions and the average wage, and gave council tenants the right to buy their homes at a fraction of their true value. ‘Buying votes with other people’s money’, as a cynical colleague of mine described it. They didn’t, of course, even consider giving a similar right to private tenants. They wouldn’t have wished to offend private landlords, many of who were their generous supporters.

New Labour, in power for 13 years, had redressed neither of those wrongs – and had deceived Parliament into voting for the illegal invasion of Iraq!

I am increasingly sorry that Tendring’s Liberal Democrats were apparently unable to find a well-known local candidate to contest the Clacton seat. This time, he or she really would surely have been ‘in with a chance’!

Fed up with politics? Here’s something quite different.

Where do you suppose this photograph was taken? Somewhere in the Middle East? Or possibly in a mosque in one of the more multicultural parts of a big British city – London or Birmingham perhaps?

It is certainly in London, but it dates from the height of Victorian imperial power (long before the capital became multicultural) and is to be found in a palatial upper middle class home in Kensington.

It is, in fact, in Leighton House, the former home of the late Lord Frederic Leighton, whose life, from 1830 to 1896, spanned the greater part of Queen Victoria’s reign. The photograph was sent to me by Andy and Marilyn, my art-loving younger son and daughter-in-law, who visited Leighton House (now a museum) in connection with this interest.

Lord Frederic was himself a celebrated painter. He was once President of the Royal Academy, and was made first a knight, then a baronet and finally a baron by Queen Victoria. There could hardly have been a greater contrast between the decoration in the picture above and his own work. He was in the Pre-Raphaelite tradition and specialised in biblical and classical scenes, exhibiting special skill in his depiction of the human form. Two pictures of his that I have just seen thanks to Google, were familiar to me. They were Moses surveying the Promised Land and The Artist’s Honeymoon. I think that I may have seen reproductions of both as book illustrations but I had had no idea who had painted them.

I reckon that the Middle Eastern style of the decoration of part of his Lordship’s palatial home may have been intended to remind him of a happy holiday spent in Cairo or Damascus – the wealthy Victorian art connoisseur’s equivalent of the ‘holiday snaps’ of my generation, the ‘holiday video’ I suppose, of today.

Oh, one other piece of trivia about Lord Leighton, that might prove useful in a rather intellectual pub quiz, was that he occupied the most short-lived barony in British history. The day after Queen Victoria had made him Baron Leighton he died of a heart attack. He had no male heirs so the Barony died with him, having been in existence just twenty-four hours!

Thanks Andy and Marilyn, for giving us something else to think about!

Week 15.10

Tendring Topics……on Line

The General Election!

I suppose that we all look forward to the forthcoming General Election in different ways; some with eager anticipation, some with anxiety, some – I have little doubt – with boredom. I, for instance, have realized with very mixed feelings that it is likely to be the very last General Election in which I shall vote. Just twelve days after it takes place I shall celebrate my 89th birthday and will therefore enter my 90th year. No member of my family has, as far as I know, ever made it to 90 and I hardly expect to be the first to do so.

Since it is likely to be my last opportunity to influence the future of my fellow-countrymen and women, I had better get my comments, and my voting intentions, right! I certainly do intend to vote. I am now able to do so by post. It is unlikely therefore that any circumstances (other, of course, than a fatal accident) will prevent me.

Our sitting MP is Douglas Carswell, Conservative. At 38 he is the youngest of our five candidates and has the very slender majority of 920. However, since the last election, constituency boundary changes have removed Harwich from what used to be the ‘Harwich Constituency’. This is considered to have been to the Conservative advantage. According to the Daily Gazette, Ladbrokes, the bookmakers, give odds of 100 to 1 on his re-election.

Which is a pity, because although I’m not yet quite sure for whom I will vote, I am quite sure that my cross will not go against his name. This isn’t because he is a Tory (if Ken Clarke were standing in this constituency I would probably vote for him) but because he has made it clear that he is strongly opposed to my own views on issues that I believe transcend Party Politics.

I, for instance, have no doubt whatsoever that potentially catastrophic climate change is taking place, and that this is to a very large extent due to human activity. I have backed my conviction by having a solar water heating system installed in my home – and I am already experiencing the benefit in reduced fuel bills. On this issue I am on the same side as David Cameron, the Conservative Leader – but not on the same side as Douglas Carswell. He is convinced that any climatic change that may be taking place is a natural phenomenon and nothing to do with the actions of humankind. It follows that the development of alternative sources of energy is a waste of time and money.

Similarly, I believe that Britain’s best future lies within a more closely integrated, more democratically governed Europe in which British voters would have a powerful influence. I believe that together with our fellow-Europeans we could become a powerful economic and political force that could co-operate, or where necessary compete, on equal terms with the USA and the emerging powers of the Far East. Alone, we would be destined to become a non-voting protectorate of the USA. Douglas Carswell is described in the Daily Gazette as ‘fervently anti-Europe’. The fact that UKIP is not contesting his seat surely speaks for itself.

Anything else? Douglas Carswell was contemptuously critical of the Tendring First (‘anything but Conservative’) coalition that administered the Tendring District until last year, describing them as ‘incapable of running a bath’ at a time when, according to the Government’s Audit Commission, they were the best run council in Essex and among the best in Britain. This does rather suggest that he may allow his political convictions to cloud his judgement. Tendring First may find some consolation in that he is also a strong critic of the BBC! I expect he prefers the news and views of The Sun!

Oh yes, and he is very proud of having been a leader of the pack that brought down the former Speaker of the House of Commons in connection with the expenses scandal. That Speaker was, however ill advisedly, trying to preserve the honour of the House of Commons by concealing the cupidity and extravagance of its members. The expenses claims of Mr Carswell, one of those members, although unquestionably honest, were sufficiently extravagant to attract the somewhat amused attention of the press.

Who else quite certainly won’t be receiving my vote? Well, there’s Jim Taylor, the British National Party Candidate. I really didn’t spend seven years of my life in the army playing a tiny role in the destruction of Nazism and Fascism in Europe, to vote for their equivalent in England. I am tempted to say that at 72 (he’s the oldest candidate in the field) Jim Taylor is old enough to know better. However, he isn’t old enough to remember Hitler transforming a tiny, and apparently harmless, nationalist party into a threat to the whole world. I am.

Neither shall I be voting for Chris Southall, the Green Party Candidate. This isn’t because I don’t agree with most of his aims, but simply because he hasn’t the least chance of being elected. With our present electoral system a vote for him would be a wasted vote – and at my age I can’t afford to waste the miniscule fragment of political power that I possess.

That leaves me with Michael Green, the Lib. Dem. Candidate, and Ivan Henderson, the Labour Candidate and our former MP, who was narrowly ousted by Douglas Carswell at the last General Election. I am torn between them.

I certainly prefer the policies of the Lib.Dem. Party to those of New Labour. They have an uncompromisingly positive attitude toward the European Union. They accept the need for urgent action to combat climate change, they believe firmly in electoral reform and they hope to reduce the gap between the richest and poorest in our society. They opposed our involvement in the invasion of Iraq. These are all policies that I wholeheartedly support. Michael Green should surely be my preferred candidate.

And so he would be if I thought that he had the slightest chance of winning the parliamentary seat. But I really don’t think that he has. Those policies that attract me to the Lib.Dems. are by no means universally popular. Michael Green has no roots in our area and is virtually unknown. Ladbrokes assess his chances of winning at 100 to 1 against and I fear that they are probably right.

Ivan Henderson, on the other hand, was born and bred on the Tendring Peninsula. He was our MP for 13 years and I think that even his opponents would concede that he was a good MP, always seeking what was best for his constituency (it was, after all, his home!) and his constituents. If he doesn’t wholeheartedly support some of those policies that I think are important, at least he doesn’t actively oppose any of them.

He is the one candidate other than Douglas Carswell, whom Ladbrokes give a small chance of winning. They assess him at 16 to 1 against, but those odds could be greatly shortened if folk like myself, whose natural inclination is to vote Lib.Dem or Green, decided to support him.

Do you really want change, as David Cameron keeps insisting? If so, your best chance of getting it in this Clacton-on-Sea Constituency may well be to vote for Ivan Henderson. I haven’t yet fully made up my mind. Possibly I won’t do so until it is time for me to make that cross on the ballot paper and slip it into the post.

Too many deaths?

Only a few weeks ago I commented on the fact that despite a hard winter that could generally have been depended upon to carry off a reasonable number of us old folks, there hadn’t been sufficient deaths to keep Colchester’s cemetery and crematorium staff gainfully occupied. It had therefore proved necessary to raise the charges for cremations and interments. A member of the council’s staff had blamed this sad circumstance on the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance.

I recall that I counselled patience. Not even the toughest old pensioner lasts forever.

Now it seems, the reverse is happening. The number of deaths in Essex dealt with by the Coroner’s courts is proving more than the management can cope with. Dr Peter Dean, the county’s coroner, recently told BBC Radio 4’s Between ourselves’ programme, that because the process of arranging post mortem examinations and releasing bodies has slowed down, funerals have recently been delayed and family viewings of bodies cancelled. These circumstances have arisen only since the management of the Coroner’s services were transferred from the Police to Essex County Council in 2006. Dr Dean had warned at the time of the probable consequences of the change.

I found the response of John Jowers, the Essex County Councillor who is responsible for these matters, very disturbing. He is reported as saying that the new system, introduced by the County Council, was saving taxpayers money. ‘We have to do as good a job as we can within the financial constraints and if things are going wrong, we have to look very closely and see what we can do about it. It wasn’t an easy decision, but you need to make it as easy as possible for everyone in Essex to get to. We have to cut a coat according to the cloth really’.

That somewhat incoherent statement appears to mean: ‘Sorry, we simply haven’t had enough money to do the job properly. We’ll just have to see if we can do better within the present financial limits’.

This comes strangely from a leading member of a Council that spends tens of thousands of pounds on jetting leading councillors and top officials round the world (America, India, China) on the county’s business, has set up a branch in mainland China, launched a bank in the UK, subsidised a ‘members and officers’ canteen’, and bought expensive advertising space on tv assuring the viewing public that ‘Essex Works!’

You’d have thought they would have been able to find a few extra thousands to ensure that the county’s dead and their relatives were treated with efficiency, courtesy and respect.

A Tax Break for Married Couples?

It would be a bit tough on us widows and widowers – two may not be able to live as cheaply as one, but a couple’s cost-of-living isn’t twice as much as a single’s.

That isn’t really the point though. I reckon that any politician who promises that any group of people will be better off after the next budget (or the one after that) is either making false promises or proposing to rob the rest of us. The most that, in honesty and fairness, should be offered is that some groups – those who are already on the poverty line, for instance – can expect to suffer rather less extra pain than the rest of us.

Week 14.10

Tendring Topics………on Line

‘Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?’ (John 20.15)

Easter was a very special occasion this year as, unusually, the Easter of the Eastern Orthodox Churches coincided with that of the Catholic and Reformed Churches of the West. Thus every Christian Church in the world remembered the cruel death of Jesus Christ – and celebrated his glorious rising from the dead, on the same weekend.

The picture, taken in St. James’ Church Clacton on Easter morning, depicts the empty tomb and the weeping Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Christ. It is decorated with Easter flowers and flanked by two votive candles

The turning world meant that throughout Easter there was never a moment when, in churches, chapels and cathedrals, somewhere or other in the world, Christ’s resurrection and its promise of eternal life were not being remembered and celebrated. ‘The voice of prayer is never silent, nor dies the song of praise away’.

Making a (small) profit from one’s convictions!

Did you realize that on 6th April (probably the day on which I shall post this blog) postal charges will be increased? There never seems to be much publicity of these regular upward changes and it is very easy to be caught out. The price of sending a ‘normal size’ letter under 100g by first-class post goes up from 39 to 41p and by second-class post from 30 to 32p. Large letters (that includes some large greetings cards) go up from 61p to 66p first-class and from 47 to 51p second-class.

The cost of mail sent abroad goes up correspondingly. Airmail letters under 10g to anywhere in Europe rise from 56p to 60p and to the rest of the world from 62p to 67p. Full details are set out clearly in a leaflet ‘pricing made easy’ obtainable from any post office.

The price of postage stamps designated simply ‘First Class’ and ‘Second Class’ is, as the economists say, ‘buoyant’. As postal charges increase, so do their values. A ‘First Class’ stamp purchased five years or longer ago is valid today, even though today’s first class postal charge will be a great deal higher than it was when the stamp was bought.

For the past two years I have suggested at Christmas time that buying sufficient 1st Class and 2nd Class ‘religious’ Christmas stamps for use on correspondence throughout the year, is an effective and non-aggressive way of affirming our Christian faith. I do it myself. It was made easier last year by the fact that, since all the special Christmas stamps were reproductions of church stained-glass windows, they could all have been considered to be ‘religious’.

Purchasing a supply of those first and second-class stamps was also a profitable thing to do! Those who have followed my suggestion will have made a worthwhile investment! Those stamps have gone up in value by 2 pence each. I have always been a long way short of brilliant at mathematics, but I think that that means a tax-free increase in value of about six percent in the four months since their purchase. These days it would be difficult to find another investment yielding a similar short-term profit!

Expensive Executives

A few months ago I commented on a report that Tendring Council’s three most highly paid officials were facing redundancy. Although this has still not been officially confirmed, there now seems little doubt that the report was correct.

The Daily Gazette is chiefly concerned about the size of the ‘golden handshakes’ that they will receive on their departure - £200,000 between them – but it seems to me that there are other, more important, issues involved. As a former (quite lowly paid!) council official, I am astonished at the three posts that are, so we learn, the highest paid on the Council’s staff.

There’s no surprise about the Chief Executive. His reported salary of ‘over £120,000 a year’ may seem enormous to most of us but it’s little more than petty cash to the Chief Executive of Essex County Council, whose income is reported by the Taxpayers’ Alliance as being about £200,000 – more than that of the Prime Minister! But then the County Council has loads of our money to spend, and they don’t even have to go to the trouble of collecting it. That’s Tendring Council’s job.


Clacton’s Town Hall. Nerve centre of Tendring
District Council

The second most highly paid post is that of Deputy Chief Executive. Now that does seem astonishing to me bearing in mind that the Council also employs experienced professional men and women – solicitors, financial experts, engineers, surveyors, architects, environmental health experts. Surely one or two of them must be both better qualified and of greater importance to the Council than a deputy – even of someone as important as a Chief Executive. That’s strange enough, but the third man is not the Chief, nor the Deputy but the Assistant Chief Executive. He and the Deputy are both said to have salaries of over £100,000 a year.

The other matter that perplexes me is the reason for their departure. Councillor Neil Stock, the Council’s Leader, attempts to brush it off as a fairly routine matter. He is reported as saying, ‘The report is all about succession planning. When you have three senior officers nearing retirement age, you need to manage their exit. That is why this report was drawn up’.

Really? If they’re ‘nearing retirement age’ why not plan their replacement and wait till they retire before worrying about how much they are then to be paid? There will be no need for ‘negotiations’. Their ‘lump sum retirement payment’ and annual pension is laid down by national agreement. The picture of Chief Executive John Hawkins, Chief Executive, in the Gazette doesn’t suggest to me that he’ll be drawing his state pension and getting his bus pass and free tv licence in the very near future. But perhaps he’s older than he looks.

It can hardly be said that the three of them have been incompetent or disappointing in their performance in office. They were steering Tendring Council’s course during the year that the Government’s Audit Commission declared it to be the best performing Council in Essex and in the top flight of well performing Councils in England.

Could it be that that is why they have now lost favour? Were they too closely associated with the recent Tendring First administration and therefore the present rulers of Tendring (with their majority of one) wish to replace them with a person or persons more sympathetic to their philosophy?

It will be a sad day for local government when councils are not prepared to accept that their professional officers will give of their very best to their employing authority, whatever its political orientation may be. It will be an even sadder day when professional officers give them reason to believe that such doubts are justified.

‘Not from my bank account!’

Everybody knows that our country is in a financial mess. Everyone agrees that it is a mess from which we can escape only by cutting government services and/or increasing taxes. There is almost complete unanimity within the national press, the general public and politicians of all parties about this. Disagreement is about which services should suffer from the inevitable cuts, and who should bear the burden of the increased taxes. Sadly, most of us seem to think that the services on which we have come to depend should be sacrosanct and that we, and the group to which we happen to belong, should be exempt from increased taxation.

Pensioners have been among the first to complain about their ‘derisory’ pension increase this year and about the perceived threat to their winter fuel allowance. This is understandable because those pensioners who have no other source of income beyond the state pension manage to survive only with the help of the other benefits available to them.

Working people too, see their jobs and their incomes threatened. Many have had to choose between a pay cut and redundancy. Some have not had that option and have lost their jobs. Will job seekers allowances and other social security benefits be cut in the economy drive? I have no doubt that the strikes affecting rail and air travel, and threatening to spread to other fields, are less about existing pay and conditions of work than about the reorganisation, rationalisation and down-sizing that threatens all their jobs in the future.

Increases in VAT affect disproportionately those on the lowest incomes. They increase prices, fuelling inflation and holding back recovery from recession.

There has been agreement between many employers and employees about halting the planned national insurance contributions increase. The money that would have been raised by this increase could be recouped by ‘efficiency savings’ says Mr David Cameron. I’ve heard that before from other political leaders, only though, when in opposition! In any event, isn’t the current crisis one that demands both efficiency savings and increased national insurance payments?

Then there are those, usually in the upper income brackets, who see the threat of rises in income tax rates as heralding a red revolution! I was amused to see the higher rate of income tax that is being introduced this year described in a popular newspaper as ‘a direct attack on middle England’. It will require those whose incomes exceed £150,000 a year to pay in income tax 50 percent of income above that sum. ‘Middle England’ indeed! I wonder how many readers of that newspaper have incomes even approaching that?

We are continually being told that if we try to tax the seriously wealthy proportionately to the rest of us, we’ll be driving the best brains and the wealth creators out of the country. Do they mean the scientists and engineers whose work keeps our industries competitive; perhaps the surgeons who save lives daily; perhaps even the top politicians and top public servants, whose decisions and competence affect us all?

Hardly! Few of those buy national football teams, have palatial villas on the shores of the Mediterranean or entertain influential politicians in their luxury yachts! Those who might be driven away are foreign expatriates who have made millions fleecing their fellow countrymen and have come to Britain to spend them, and our own home-grown successful gamblers and money-lenders. Isn’t gambling and money-lending what the stock market and the merchant banks (whose greed and incompetence triggered this crisis in the first place) are all about?

Disillusion with politicians, a yawning gap between the incomes of the richest and poorest in our society, a perception that the wealthy and privileged are escaping the worst effects of a financial situation that is impoverishing the rest of us; these are dangerous ingredients, possibly presaging a political fundamentalism even more deadly than the religious fundamentalism by which many feel threatened today.