Week 22.10

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Beyond belief! ……..well, almost.

Britain is in the midst of a financial crisis. The one thing that can be predicted with absolute certainty is that there will be savage cuts in the public services. There is to be a total pay freeze in the public sector, and an investigation into the mammoth salaries and bonuses paid to those at the top in both the Civil Service and the Local Government Service. The Government itself has set a good example by cutting (not just freezing) the salaries of its own members and urging them to use public transport instead of official chauffeur-driven cars. Quite right too!

Staff of Essex County Council are bracing themselves for cuts in their numbers and changes in their conditions of service. Their trade union UNISON claims to have seen a document that suggests the axing of 85 jobs, a two year pay freeze, reduction in working hours by one or two hours a week, and stopping sick pay for the first three days of absence from work.

Surely, you will probably have been thinking, County Council members must be planning to introduce a similar regime of austerity for themselves. Their subsidised canteen, for example, has been criticised by at least one of their own members, and they have become well known for sending their members and top officials on expensive jaunts abroad. Their former Leader is alleged to have fiddled his expenses as a member of the House of Lords. He is, of course, presumed innocent until proved guilty. It will be to everyone’s advantage when the matter is settled in court. It might though have been expected that his colleagues would have wished to demonstrate their own integrity and devotion to the public service by reducing their cash allowances.

Essex Councillors Cut Own Pay before Cutting Services! would have made a refreshing and inspiring headline in the local press. In your dreams! What actually appeared (Daily Gazette 21.5.10) was Councillors vote to increase their own allowances.

The allowances of ordinary County Councillors, with no special extra responsibilities, are to rise by 6.1 percent to £11,500 a year. The County Council Leader gets £53,500 and his eight ‘County Cabinet’ members around £27,000 each. County Councillors also get the use of a Blackberry mobile phone and are paid generous allowances for meals and overnight accommodation when travelling on Council business.

There are, I am sure, still a great many public-spirited councillors at every level of local government whose motivation is a genuine desire to serve the communities in which they live.

However, generous ‘allowances’, and rule by a well-paid Leader and his ‘Cabinet’, open the door to a new breed of professional local politician. Soon ‘seeking a career in local government’ won’t necessarily mean getting a humble job at the Town Hall and laboriously working your way up. It could mean being a political activist and getting elected to a (preferably large) local council. That route to the top won’t demand the possession of any particular qualifications, skills or experience. It would help though to have sharp elbows and a thick skin.

It would also mean that you could keep your day job, and you wouldn’t have to get your hands dirty – at least, not in a literal sense.

Who suffers from the cuts?

There is to be a seven percent cut in local government spending. A good job too, you may think, if it’s going to cut some of those top executive salaries and curb the ‘allowances and expenses’ of self-serving councillors.

I’d be wholeheartedly in support if I really though that those would be the main victims of the cuts. I fear that they won’t be. During the Thatcher/Blair years (I now find it difficult to tell them apart!) local authorities were compelled to disband their ‘direct labour teams’ and put most of their front-line public services out to competitive tender. Thus, there’s really no such thing these days as a ‘council dustman’, ‘a council street sweeper’, or a ‘council gardener’. These services, together with office cleaning, catering, building maintenance and, in some areas social care, are contracted out to private firms that naturally enough, expect to make a profit from them.

Also, of course, there are the really big local authority contracts with private firms for – for instance – building or renovating schools, road construction and maintenance, old people’s homes, municipal swimming pools, car parks, adult education facilities, sports and recreation centres, and other public buildings. Essex County Council recently congratulated itself on cutting down its own staff by completing a multi-million pound contract with an international IT firm. Local authorities provide most of the services that make the difference between civilisation and barbarism, and they employ scores of private firms to carry out these responsibilities.

I have recently heard economic ‘experts’ on tv, discussing whether or not the ‘private sector’ would be able to find employment for the many people likely to lose their public sector jobs because of enforced economies. Cuts in local government spending, as well as reducing or eliminating vital services to the general public and, in particular, to the old, the poor and the otherwise disadvantaged, will probably result in many more job losses in ‘the private sector’ than among actual council staff.

Some Depressing Headlines

Quite apart from the political and economic situation (in which I hope I can see a few glimmers of light), two news stories of the past week have made particularly depressing reading. The first was the revelation by the News of the World, that for a substantial fee, the Duchess of York had been prepared to ‘open doors’ to give someone she believed was a businessman, access to her estranged husband the Duke, who holds an influential post in the field of exports. What’s more, she was revealed as a pretty ruthless businesswoman herself, driving a hard bargain and demanding a sum of money that, to most of us, seemed astronomical.

I’m not sure which aspect of this sorry affair is the more distasteful; the behaviour of the Duchess, or the duplicity of the ‘investigative journalist’ who trapped her into revealing this behaviour, and secretly filmed her as she did so. It is surely outrageous that an employee of a newspaper should act as an agent provocateur, encouraging anyone (duchess or dish-washer) into folly and indiscretion, and recording it for all the world to see and hear.

A visitor from another planet, learning about this incident, would draw two conclusions. Firstly that all humans, even those apparently wealthy and with exalted titles, can be bought if they’re offered enough money. Secondly, that no human, however plausible, should ever be trusted.

The other story that I found extremely depressing was that of the two little boys, ten years old at the time of the incident, who were convicted of the attempted rape of an eight-year-old girl. If the three children involved had not already been robbed of their childhood innocence by the pressures of the world around them, the process will certainly have been completed by their verbal examination and cross-examination in the Old Bailey of all places.

Children can be guilty of acts of extreme cruelty and wickedness, but it is absurd to suggest that this case is comparable with the horrific murder of James Bulger or the dreadful torture of two boys near Doncaster in April last year. There has been no report of the victim in this case having suffered severe physical injury or of her running home to her mother in pain and distress. We don’t yet know what punishment will be inflicted on the two boys. Surely though they should not be stigmatised for life as ‘sex offenders’ for what may have been little more than a precocious experiment.

In my childhood and youth in the 1930s, society was much more determined to dampen the sexual precocity of the young than it is today. Most children went to ‘all girls’ or ‘all boys’ schools from the age of seven onwards. The idea of distributing contraceptives to teenagers and advising on their use would have been regarded with horror. I think though that the thought of dragging pre-adolescent children through the adult criminal courts for sexual experimentation would have been regarded with almost equal horror. Had such incidents occurred (and I suppose that they must have), those involved would have been given a good smacking by their parents and a closer eye would have been kept on their future activities. However medieval and inadequate that remedy may sound to third millennial ears I’m sure that it would have done far less long-term damage than our ‘enlightened’ twenty-first century solution.

The Changing Clacton Scene

Clacton had appeared to come fairly lightly out of the economic recession. The empty space created by the closure of Woolworth was filled by the ‘99p Store’. The closed Co-op Departmental Store in Station Road was replaced by Vergo, selling much the same range of clothing and household goods as the Co-op, and taking on the entire Co-op Staff. Our town centre was mercifully free of the gaps and the boarded-up shop premises that we saw on tv news programmes from elsewhere. Clacton had a good 2009 Holiday Season. The weather, while not the barbecue summer promised, was better than that of the previous two summers. The rising Euro and falling Pound encouraged stay-at-home holidays. Holiday camps, hotels and boarding houses were well booked and the tills of town centre retailers rang merrily throughout the summer.

It came as a blow to many disabled and elderly people when Shopmobility, a local charity that had provided electric mobility scooters to those who needed them for their shopping expeditions, closed down on 31st December. Five months later the premises are still unused. Now Vergo is closing down and the Clacton Branch of Rayner Dispensing Opticians, at the junction of Beach Road and High Street has also closed. Their nearest branch is now in Harwich. This affected me as Rayner had supported my failing eyesight for many years! Rayner and Vergo – two new unsightly gaps in Clacton’s town centre, both adding to the number of local unemployed.

There are a few more cheering signs. The service Shopmobility provided has been replaced to some extent by Marks Mobility of Holland-on-Sea opening a branch in the landward end of Pier Avenue, near to the Wellesley Road junction. Marks Mobility sells and services new and used mobility scooters and stocks a wide range of other equipment (wheelchairs, walking frames, scooter accessories, specialised footwear and so on) for the sickroom and for elderly and disabled people. A mobility scooter user myself, with increasing disability, I have found its services invaluable.

Then again, The Black Bull, a relatively recently built pub in St Osyth Road, which has stood empty and abandoned for many months is being converted into a Tesco Express store. This may not be good news for other convenience stores in the area but I have no doubt that it will sometimes prove useful for nearby residents (like myself!) Yet another new service will be a new coffee-shop, one of a nation-wide chain, that is to open shortly near the new Travelodge Hotel in Jackson Road.

Work in progress on converting the former 'Black Bull' into a Tesco Express Store.

Perhaps the positive signs are beginning to catch up with the negative ones. I certainly hope so.

Week 21.10

Tendring Topics………on Line

‘The year’s at the spring……

……..and the day’s at the morn’, just as Robert Browning declared in Pippa Passes. And, as I write that is exactly as it is. For the past few days we have been free of that arctic north wind. The sun has shone, temperatures have risen and the forecasters suggest that the situation won’t change too much for at least the remainder of the week*.

Spring really is here – and I am particularly full of its joys because I have just celebrated, very happily, my eighty-ninth birthday and I am now in my ninetieth year! This might not seem much of an occasion for celebration. I am very conscious of failing eyesight and hearing, and of short-term memory loss. Walking is difficult, and I have my share of aches and pains.

The rear view of my bungalow in May
with my eating-apple tree in full blossom.

However, my New Year resolution for 2009 was, as the children’s hymn says, ‘to count my blessings, count them one by one’, and – with one or two regrettable lapses – I have tried to do that ever since.

I really do have a great many blessings to count. I live in the comfortable bungalow that has been my home for the past fifty-four years. I have no debts and an adequate income. I have an electric mobility scooter that saves me from being housebound and enables me to get to the church services and Quaker Meeting that have become an increasingly important part of my life. I no longer enjoy reading as I once did, but I can enjoy tv, radio, DVDs and video tapes; and I have stored in my still-functioning long-term memory great tracts of poetry and prose some of it dating back to my infancy.

I am very fortunate in being still able, with the aid of my lap-top, to exercise and enjoy the one real skill that I have ever possessed, that of stringing words together into a readable narrative. I have recently self-published Zittau….and I, an account of my relationship with that small German town where I was once a POW but in which I now have good friends. I have just completed, for the interest of my sons, grandchildren and great-grandchildren (if any!), my autobiography and, of course, I write and publish this blog week after week.

Most important of all, I am upheld by the love of a great many friends and relations who have meant so much to me since the loss, after sixty years of marriage, of my dear wife Heather. For my birthday I received over thirty messages of love and friendship in birthday cards, letters, emails and text messages. During our marriage, possibly because of Heather’s always fragile health, I felt little need for friends, though Heather had a great many, with most of whom she kept in touch by correspondence. It is since her life came to an end that I have known the real value of friendship with the sort of friend who can always be depended upon. Such friendships, together with the love and support of every member of my extended family, have really been my greatest blessing.

Heather and I, aged 65 and 67

St. Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians says that there are three things that endure for all eternity, Faith, Hope and Love. My faith is weak and full of doubt. I have never lacked love though, and I am sustained by the fervent hope that some time, perhaps in the not-too-distant future, Heather and I will be reunited in another better world beyond time and space.

So far thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent till
The night has gone.
Then with the dawn, that angel face will smile
That I have loved long since, and lost the while.

I am sure that the late Cardinal Newman would forgive me my tiny alteration to the penultimate line of his hymn, ‘Lead Kindly Light’.

* That was last week!

Back to Politics!

Reading about our new Coalition Government’s immediate programme made me think about some of its predecessor’s acts and omissions.

Who would have thought that after 13 years’ rule of a Political Party that was formed for no other purpose than to further the interests of ordinary working people, it would be left to their Conservative-led opponents and successors to call time on the ever-spiralling salaries and bonuses of top civil servants and local government officers, and to realize that there must be a reasonable relationship between the incomes of the highest and the lowest paid of any organisation?

Who too, would have imagined that that same New-Labour Government would in 2008, almost simultaneously abolish the 10p income tax rate which had helped the low paid, and reduce the Capital Gains Tax from 40 percent to 18 percent, putting more cash into the pockets of the already wealthy?

The same government encouraged twenty-four hour drinking, planned further airport expansion, wanted to introduce identity cards and blindly followed the most reactionary American President in recent history into an illegal war in Iraq and an unwinnable conflict in Afghanistan.

That government made no attempt to redress two of the most obviously unfair and inept actions of their Conservative predecessors – the severing of the link between average earnings and state pensions, and the ‘right to buy’ legislation that compelled and still compels local authorities to sell at bargain basement prices, homes provided by their predecessors to facilitate slum clearance and prevent overcrowding. It was legislation that destroyed scores of rural communities, increased homelessness and contributed to the soaring house price inflation of the turn of the millennium, thus playing a part in the creation of the current financial crisis.

When, way back in the 16th Century Archbishop Thomas Cranmer wrote the words of the general confession for use in Anglican Morning and Evening Prayer, he might almost have had that future New-Labour Government in mind:

‘We have done those things that we ought not to have done and have left undone those things that we ought to have done, and there is no health in us

Coming home to roost?

Do you remember the excitement a year or so ago when Essex County Council announced that it was setting up its own bank? It was at the height of the world financial crisis. Struggling Essex businesses were finding it almost impossible to get loans. Some promising firms were facng failure. Mass unemployment threatened.

‘Knight-in-shining-armour’ Lord Hanningfield rode in to the rescue. The County Council, he told us, would under his far-sighted leadership set up its own bank. £50 million (of our money!) would be made available, offering quick loans to up-and-coming but still struggling Essex businesses. It was a new bright idea that earned universal press headlines and almost universal praise.

I was doubtful, and said so in this column. This was not because I knew anything at all about Banking. I didn't and don’t. However I did know that Essex County Council had been taken to task for failings in its child protection service and that its other statutory services had been judged by the Audit Commission to be no more than ‘adequate’. Was it likely, I thought, that an authority that had not made a striking success of duties with which it is charged by law, would succeed in a field in which it had no previous experience whatsoever? I also wondered whether eligibility for a loan might depend upon acquaintance with influential councillors rather than on need and suitability.

Lord Hanningfield gave his interviews and his photo opportunities, and made his statements. The press published their headlines and departed to pastures new. The Bank of Essex was left to its own devices……..and flopped.

During its operation it has made a mere ten loans, totalling £29,000. What’s more, those who have applied for loans have experienced just the same long delays that they did with commercial banks. I suppose that we may console ourselves with the thought that not much of that £50 million has been put at risk.

The ‘Daily Gazette’ comments, ‘The Essex County Council Bank was supposed to be a different animal from other banks. If it cannot fulfil that remit, then it is time to shut up shop, as it looks increasingly like a folly’.

I wonder how the County Council’s other ground-breaking schemes are fairing? There was the County Council branch office, deep within the People’s Republic of China, that was going to find export markets for Essex firms, and there was the idea of putting most of the County Council’s statutory services out to private tender. I hope that Walton’s Naze Protection Society has received and safely banked the money promised by the County Council for their ‘Crag Walk’.

Empire Day!

I shall hope to publish this blog on the web during the evening of Tuesday, 25th May. I wonder how many – if any – of its readers remember that 24th May used to be called Empire Day. It was one of the days, including the Christian Festivals of Easter, Whitsun and Christmas, of national celebration that punctuated each year in the decades prior to World War II.

At my primary school on Empire Day we would march round the playground and salute the flag (yes, we really did!) and the glories of the Empire would be extolled by the Headmaster at morning assembly. At my all-boys secondary school, celebration was a little more subdued. The Union Flag would, of course, be flown. There would be a special prayer for the Empire and its people at assembly and we would sing Kipling’s Recessional – ‘God of our fathers, known of old…..’ We certainly didn’t realize how prophetic the line ‘Our faded pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre’ would prove to be! At some time during the day we would be addressed by a visiting speaker from the Bahamas, Bechuanaland, Bombay or some other far-flung outpost. He or she (it was once a very sun-tanned lady!)who would show us all the red on the map distinguishing the Empire on which ‘the sun never sets’ and tell us about the splendid careers in the Colonies awaiting young fellows seeking adventure!

If anyone had told us that before the end of the century the Empire would have disappeared, and that most people would think that that was a good thing, we would have been sure that they were crazy.

Well, it has disappeared and I don’t suppose that many people are very sorry. On the other hand, I don’t think that we need to be too apologetic. There have been plenty of worse Empires and I reckon that in several former parts of ours many of the inhabitants lived happier, more peaceful lives under British rule than they do today. We relinquished our control without too much acrimony and without too much bloodshed – which is more than can be said for most other Empires.

I doubt if I’m the only octogenarian who feels just a little nostalgia for those self-confident and self-congratulatory Empire Days of the past!

Week 20.10

Tendring Topics……..on Line

We can’t have Democracy ‘on the cheap’

Events since the general election have been so newsworthy and have moved so swiftly that shameful situations that arose during that election appear to have been all-but-forgotten. Have we all, except for those directly involved, forgotten that scores of our fellow citizens were denied their right to vote for no other reason than that the local authorities whose duty it is the organise the poll hadn’t made adequate provision for the numbers who turned up at the polling stations on election day?

For years those concerned with the democratic electoral process have bemoaned the apathy of the public and the low turnout at elections. This time, crowds did turn out to vote and, in at least two large cities, they were turned away!

During some three decades of local government service I have, on occasion, performed every task there is, in both local and national elections. I have helped prepare the electoral register. I have counted the votes and have acted as both a poll clerk and as a presiding officer at a polling station. I have even, on just one occasion, performed as Acting Returning Officer, announcing the result of a parish council election to a ‘cheering crowd’ of perhaps half a dozen passers-by! Never once was any registered elector denied the right to vote. Nor did I ever hear of such a thing happening elsewhere.

What was so different about the election of 2010? Simply, I think, that economy has become local authorities’ top priority; cost effectiveness and productivity their main objectives. During previous elections it had been noted that there had been occasions during the day when presiding officer and poll clerks had been idle, perhaps for as long as an hour at a time! Dozens of ballot papers had been unused; wasted manpower! Wasted paper!

The techniques of direction of human resources (we used to call it ‘personnel management’) will have been brought into operation. Take the average number of voters voting at each polling station. Reduce these figures by the expected number of postal voters. Add say ten percent to allow for emergencies. Calculate how long it takes the average elector to register his or her vote and you can calculate the cost- effective requirement of human resources (presiding officers and poll clerks) at each polling station. A similar calculation will reveal how many voting papers should be needed at each station.

Such calculations are valueless because electors are humans, not machines – nor even sheep. The number of people turning out to vote depends upon the weather, the local and national news headlines on Election Day, and on such local issues as the threatened closure of a school or hospital. Polling is not spread evenly throughout the day. Last minute decisions bring in voters at the last minute. There is usually a surge during the final hours of polling.

We need to decide whether our top priority is a cost-effective election, or one that truly reveals the will of the electorate. It is unlikely that we can have both.

Hung Parliaments, Coalition Governments

Today we have a ‘hung parliament’ and a coalition government. I think that we shall be better governed as a result, just as I thought (and the national Audit Commission agreed with me) that Tendring District Council performed better with the Tendring First coalition administration than under single-party – any single-party – rule. During the general election campaign, most of the national press and a great many of the contending politicians assured us that ‘hung parliaments’ and coalition governments were a recipe for national disaster.

One of the comments on government that I have heard most frequently in recent years from ordinary people (as distinct from political zealots) is, ‘Why on earth can’t those politicians stop slanging each other off, and get together to solve the nation’s problems’. How could that possibly happen except in a coalition government?

It is, in fact, precisely what politicians do when they are convinced that our country is in real and immediate peril. Have we so soon forgotten the coalition government, headed by Conservative Winston Churchill with Labour Clement Attlee as his deputy that we had in World War II; Britain’s ‘finest hour’? There were, of course, strong, decisive one-party governments existing at that time – in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy for instance!

Did you realize that modern Germany, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries, probably the most stable and prosperous countries in Europe, customarily have coalition governments? Greece, Portugal and Spain, like us, struggle along with single-party ones – and are in an even worse financial muddle than we are!

Recently I watched a tv programme about New Zealand’s political system. There, it seems, they replaced their archaic and discredited first-past-the-post electoral system with proportional representation in 1996. Since then they have had nothing but coalition governments. Throughout that time they have surely set an example of stability and civilised democracy to the whole of the southern hemisphere.

Proportional representation works! Coalition government works! Don’t let self-interested politicians who would like a free hand to carry out their own hare-brained schemes (like introducing poll tax! like invading Iraq!) persuade you otherwise

How about the current Conservative/Lib.Dem Coalition?

I wish it well – though it is a somewhat unexpected marriage of convenience. In so far as ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ still have any meaning in politics the Liberal Democrats were to the ‘Left’ of the Labour Party, which has moved steadily towards the ‘Right’ since World War II. It is fair to add though that David Cameron’s views seem well to the ‘Left’ of a great many Conservatives – of our own Clacton MP for instance.

David Cameron is said to be a great admirer of Benjamin Disraeli (founder of the modern Conservative Party) who, in his early years at least, had some very radical ideas. His description of the squalor and poverty of the working classes in his political novel ‘Sybil, or the Two Nations’ bears remarkable similarities to that in ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844’ by Frederic Engels, friend and collaborator of Karl Marx. Both books were published in 1845. The secondary title of Disraeli’s novel is the origin of the phrase ‘One Nation Conservatism’ meaning a Conservatism that hopes to appeal to every class in our Society. Some years ago I was amused to hear a very right-wing Tory announce that he was a ‘one nation Conservative’ because he was opposed to Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalism!

I had hoped to see a rather stronger Lib.Dem Party emerge from the election so that they could have retained more of their policies (their opposition to Trident for example) in any coalition that they entered. I had feared though that the Conservatives would have an overall majority. I think that most ordinary people will welcome the new coalition government, while watching it somewhat warily.

Strongest opposition is likely come from the right. I can’t imagine the ‘Withdraw from the European Union now! Stop all immigration now! Stop all this alternative energy nonsense! Britain for the true Brits! Brigade being satisfied with what they’ll get. I certainly hope that they won’t be.

I don’t imagine that they’re very happy about Ken Clarke, a Tory Europhile, being made Lord Chancellor. Nor will they be happy about the number of Lib.Dems becoming Ministers and Cabinet Members. It must be remembered that for every Lib.Dem who gets such an office, there will be an ambitious Conservative MP who had been considering it to be his (or her) job.

The watchword of Lord Asquith, a Liberal Prime Minister of the past, was ‘Wait and see’. I am content to follow that advice.

A Weekend ‘up North’

On Friday, 7th May, while the results of the previous day’s General Election were still unfolding, Andy and Marilyn, my younger son and daughter-in-law whisked me away to Sheffield to spend a politics-free few days with my grand-daughter Jo and her partner Siobhan. It was a thoroughly enjoyable weekend.

We went to Sheffield’s Lyceum Theatre, a beautifully restored (though I thought the seats needed a little extra padding!) ‘Old-time music hall’ type theatre, to see the musical ‘Oh what a lovely war!’ a sometimes savagely satirical musical on the theme of World War I. I had seen the film version many years earlier, but on the stage the proximity of the action (in the theatre steel helmeted German soldiers walked through the audience to meet the British squaddies in no-mans-land for the unofficial Christmas truce of 1914) gave an added immediacy to the performance.

Andy and Marilyn at a restaurant in Eyam

On Sunday we visited Eyam. The Derbyshire village where, when stricken by plague in the 17th Century, the villagers cut themselves off from the rest of the world. While village folk died all round them they remained in isolation to prevent the plague from spreading further.

We also visited the Parish Church of St John the Baptist in Tideswell, which has been called ‘The Cathedral of the Peak’. It certainly is a remarkable church, dating from the 14th Century, with a magnificent stained-glass windows, choir stalls embellished with figures carved by Suffolk craftsmen in 1800, and some very noteworthy tombs.

One placed squarely in the middle of the chancel was that of a locally very important person indeed. Sir Sampson Meverill, who died in 1462, had been a famous warrior in the Hundred Years War against France. Known to have been in battle against Joan of Arc he was probably one of the ‘ band of brothers’ who fought with King Henry V at Agincourt.

Siobhan (left) and Jo

One of the carvings by Suffolk Craftsmen, on the choir stalls

I found the life of Bishop Robert Pursglove, whose burial Brass is to be found outside the Sanctuary, of particular interest. I'm inclined to think that it is only folk of my generation who are likely to be familiar with the ballad of the Vicar of Bray – to be found in every Community Singing songbook in the ‘20s and ‘30s. He was a 17th Century vicar who had changed his faith a number of times, to match the faith of succeding rulers. The chorus went:

And this is the law that I’ll maintain until my dying day sir
That whatsoever king may reign I’ll be the Vicar of Bray sir!

Bishop Pursglove seems to have been an earlier Episcopal equivalent of that vicar. Originally a priest of the old Undivided and Unreformed Church, in 1538 at the age of 38, as Suffragen Bishop of Hull and Prior of Gisbourne, he embraced the Reformed Faith and assisted Henry VIII in his dissolution of some of the northern monasteries. For this he was awarded a pension. He continued in office from 1548 to 1552 under the strongly reformist King Edward VI. When Henry VIII’s fanatically Roman Catholic daughter Mary came to the throne, he had no intention of following his fellow-bishops Latimer and Ridley, and Archbishop Cranmer to martyrdom (and who can blame him!) He reverted to his former unreformed (Roman Catholic) faith and continued to prosper. When Elizabeth came to the throne in 1552 he decided that to revert again to the Reformed Church would be a change too far. He retired, using his considerable wealth to found Grammar Schools in Tideswell and Gisbourne. His brass memorial shows him in all his pre-Reformation Eucharistic Vestments, with his Bishop’s mitre and staff.

week 19.10

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Maja – in May

I mentioned in January that one of my most welcome Christmas presents had been a pictorial calendar from my friends, Andreas and Konnie Kulke of Zittau. They had provided and pasted in the photographs that illustrated it. All were pictures of their then three-year-old daughter Maja and/or her little brother Tom, born last September .

I have a particularly attractive picture to look at this month. It is of little Maja happily getting ready for bed and clutching her well-loved teddy bear. The teddy bear is a friend of mine too. I bought him as a gift for Maja, at the International Rail Terminal at St Pancras last July, while I was waiting to catch my Eurostar train to Brussels the first lap of my journey to Maja’s home in Germany’s most easterly town. It was to be my third and almost certainly last visit to Zittau. since World War II.

The teddy bear is wearing the uniform of a Yeoman of the Guard of the Tower of London (the beefeaters) and Maja decided that his name was Bobby.


What would be your immediate thought if you saw the newspaper headline above? It was in the Daily Gazette on Wednesday 28th April. Perhaps you did see it, so you’ll know the answer to that question.

Could it be that I was the only Gazette reader who didn’t instantly understand what the headline writer was trying to say? Quite possibly; because I have realized for some time that if it is possible to read more than one meaning into any written statement I will unfailingly go for the wrong one. Perhaps that is why I have had a modest success at writing books about domestic hot and cold water supply and waste drainage for ordinary householders. I knew how easily I could misunderstand written instructions or descriptions – so I made certain that my narrative couldn’t possibly be misconstrued.

Be that as it may, I have to confess that when I first read that headline I had an immediate mental image of perhaps two or more intrepid members of the clergy, wearing their customary dark grey suits and clerical collars and armed with furled umbrellas, leading a fearless commando of repentant burglars and pickpockets in a daring raid over the rooftops to ‘take out’ a high rise centre of sin and iniquity.

It was a momentary vision only. Then I realized that ‘lead’ in this context was a noun and not a verb and that it rhymed with ‘fed’ and not ‘feed’. The humdrum and rather depressing true meaning of the headline became obvious. No wonder non-natives complain that English is a difficult language to learn.

7.00 pm 11th May 2010. It’s all over – except that it isn’t, quite!

Of course, by the time you read this blog, it may be. Today the political situation is changing almost minute by minute.

An unusual feature of the general election that we have just endured is that it disappointed almost everybody. The Conservatives surely hoped that Labour support would crumble and that David Cameron would make a swift and easy passage to No. 10 Downing Street. Labour supporters believed that public fear of swingeing Conservative cuts would enable their Party to cling to power, though probably with a reduced majority. Those of us who voted Lib.Dem, buoyed by the opinion polls, thought that our Party would have sufficient seats in Parliament to be able to negotiate with either of the other two Parties from a position of power.

None of that happened. No Party secured an overall majority. To some extent the Liberal Democrats are in a strong negotiating position. This is weakened though by the fact that they actually have fewer seats than before, and that the total number of Labour and Lib.Dem. MPs, although greater than the number of Conservatives, doesn’t add up to that elusive overall majority.

The Lib.Dems. and Conservatives are discussing possible co-operation, it seems with success. I didn’t see how they could realistically form a coalition government unless the Lib.Dems were prepared to discard some of their cherished policies; in particular, their attitude to the European Union, their insistence upon electoral reform, including some form of proportional representation, and their intention to use the taxation system to create a fairer society. Retaining them would make coalition with the Conservatives impossible. Dropping them would surely enrage many loyal supporters. It now (6.30 pm on 11.5.10!) appears that they have squared that particular circle!

They might have agreed to co-operation short of a coalition, in return for some compromises on the part of the Lib.Dems. This solution at one time seemed to me the most likely outcome.

While negotiations between the Conservatives and Lib.Dems were still ongoing we learned that serious talks are also taking place between the Lib.Dems. and Labour. Presumably to facilitate these talks, Gordon Brown was stepping down as Labour Party Leader. Were these talks serious I wonder, or could Nick Clegg be playing ‘hard to get’ and encouraging the Conservatives to think again about some of his demands that they are finding difficult to accept?

The one permutation that has not, as far as I know, been considered is that of co-operation, perhaps a coalition, between New Labour and the Conservatives. Why not? There is less difference between New Labour and Conservative policies than there is between both of those policies and those of the Lib.Dems. Both Parties offer much the same solutions to the nation’s ills, differences being in emphasis and timing rather than substance. David Cameron wants ‘change’ but only a change of government – not a change in the voting system, the economic system, foreign and defence policies, and policy towards the rest of Europe. I reckon that if the Conservatives and New Labourites could forget some of the nasty things they have said about each other in recent weeks, they’d get along famously.

The Daily Gazette reports that our re-elected MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, doesn’t think that the Conservatives should seek Lib.Dem co-operation but should go it alone, forming a minority government. Well, that is at least an honest and straightforward solution. Since no one can possibly be eager to experience another election in the near future, such an administration might last longer than appears likely at first glance. Before forcing a vote of ‘no confidence’ the opposition would probably wait until the government had pushed through enough unpopular (though quite likely essential) measures to ensure that it didn’t get re-elected! That’s politics for you!

It now seems likely though that some time later this evening, we shall be told that agreement has been reached between the Conservatives and the Lib.Dems and that a formal coalition government will be formed. If this is true (there could be yet another surprise awaiting us!) I look forward to learning the details and will no doubt comment on them next week.


Look on the Bright Side!

Do you remember Pollyanna, that fictional little American girl who, even in the direst situations, was always able to find ‘something about which to be glad?’ Earlier I said that almost everybody had been disappointed by the outcome of the recent General Election. I certainly was. What, I wondered, would Pollyanna have discovered that should have gladdened my heart?

There were one or two things. I was very glad that Bob Russell, Colchester’s Lib.Dem. MP, had not only held his parliamentary seat but had increased his majority. I was glad too that the very first Green Party MP had been elected to the House of Commons to represent the Pavilion Ward of Brighton. Conversely, I was delighted that not a single UKIP or BNP candidate had been elected though, of course, a number of MPs (including our own in Clacton) were not opposed by UKIP as it was considered that they shared UKIP’s Europhobia.

No, the General Election was generally very disappointing – but it wasn’t all loss! I am sure that Pollyanna would have been very glad about that!