Week 26.10

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘Non Angli, sed Angeli’

‘Not Angles but Angels’. These are said to have been the punning words of Pope Gregory the Great when in 573 A.D., before his elevation to the Papacy, he enquired about the origins of some young blue-eyed and fair haired slaves in a Roman slave market*. He had been told that they were called Angles and came from a remote heathen country called England on the very edge of the known world. It was an incident that is said to have led to his sending Augustine across Europe and the English Channel to convert the English to the Christian Faith.

Had political correctness been a fad of 6th Century Rome as it is of 21st Century Britain, he would have been instantly urged. ‘Please don’t call them “angels”. There are none in their religion and it will give them ideas above their station in life. In any case, quite a few of our keenest customers are non-Christian. Calling those slaves angels will bring down their price!’

These were some of the thoughts that went through my head when I read in the Gazette that a Charity called Whisperers, that tries to console and support the grieving parents of stillborn babies, had been chided by Colchester General Hospital for referring to these babies as ‘new little angels’.

Jenny Collins, senior midwife at the hospital is reported as saying, ‘We are not happy about the use of the word “angel” on a card giving information about Whisperers, because we suspect that it has the potential to offend some parents at what is an extraordinarily difficult and sensitive time for them. Not all religions believe in angels and secular people certainly do not’.

I can’t claim to be knowledgeable about ‘all religions’, but I do know that angels feature in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths and what little I know of Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs suggests to me that they wouldn’t in the least mind still-born children being referred to as ‘new little angels’. Nor I think, would any of the many ‘secular people’ of my acquaintance.

A few people (not necessarily those obsessed with ‘political correctness’) may quibble about the use of the word ‘angel’ for the souls of the departed. Angels, they may inform us, are God’s messengers and are a quite separate creation.

However, the man who was to become Pope Gregory the Great used the word loosely in the sixth century to describe Anglo-Saxon slaves. In the nineteenth century Cardinal John Henry Newman used the word in much the same sense as Whisperers do today, in the last two lines of his hymn, ‘Lead kindly light’

Then, with the dawn, those angel faces smile,
That I have loved long since – and lost the while.

With such distinguished examples, Christians at least can surely not object to the word being used to bring some comfort to bereaved parents whose grief and loss are really beyond consolation. I think that it is patronising and impertinent to assume knowledge of what will, and will not, give offence to other people.

*No, I don’t know why Pope Gregory and, for many centuries, Christians of every tradition, tolerated the institution of slavery. Jesus Christ condemned it when he said (Matthew 7.12) that the whole of the moral teaching of the Old Testament, “The Law and the Prophets”, could be summed up as “Treat other people exactly as you yourself would wish to be treated” – a little piece of fundamental Christian faith and practice that clearly rules out slave trading and slave owning.

We don’t yet know the half of it!

My idea of a ‘good’ budget is one that tends to narrow the gap between the richest and poorest in our nation. A ‘bad’ budget is one that widens it. It follows that it is a long time since I saw a good budget.

Nor is the present one an exception, though it has some good points. I am sorry that my former colleagues in the public service are having to pay for the economic crisis with a two-year pay freeze (in a time of continuing inflation this amounts to a pay cut, as David Cameron when pressed, was forced to agree) while others, whose folly and incompetence triggered the crisis, continue to enjoy huge salaries and bonuses.

There’s a rather harsh Spanish proverb that asserts, “Take what you want”, says God. “Take it…..and pay for it!” True enough - the trouble is that it is rarely those who take who have to pay!

I am glad that public servants earning less than £21,000 a year are exempt from the freeze and that they are to receive a flat rate increase of £250 a year. I think that we have to get away from the pattern of percentage increases. These can give the impression that the Chief Executive and the lower ranks of an organisation are having identical pay increases while, in fact, they are wildly different. Inevitably every across-the-board percentage pay rise, increases the gap between the highest and the lowest paid. Eventually, as we have seen, it results in some top officials enjoying a higher salary than the Prime Minister!

I am glad that the threshold of income tax liability has been raised (even though, as an over-65 year old, it doesn’t benefit me!) so that many people on low pay will be exempt from paying income tax in the future. However, it doesn’t do anything for those whose incomes were so low that they weren’t liable to pay tax anyway. We’ll all be affected by the increase in VAT to 20 percent. I remember Mrs Thatcher assuring us that VAT was one of the fairest taxes because it was the same for everybody and one had the choice of paying it or not. I don’t think that the householder with a leaky roof or the motorist who needs an urgent repair to his car to get to work, has much choice in the matter.

Many comfortably off folk (The ‘Middle England’ about whom the Express and Mail are always so concerned) will suffer as a result of cuts in means test related benefits, and some will be affected by the increase in Capital Gains Tax. I see little sign of the seriously wealthy (the owners of football clubs, luxury yachts and second homes in the Caribbean) being seriously, or even modestly, inconvenienced by the budget.

I am getting a little tired of hearing David Cameron and Nick Clegg saying how sorry they were to have to increase VAT and cut benefits but ‘there simply wasn’t an alternative’. Really? When they hadn’t considered the possibility of a modest one or two pence increase on income tax, and no one is even allowed to think about axing the vastly expensive and totally useless Trident Submarine programme.

And – there’s more to come. We don’t yet know the half of it. Every government department except Health and Overseas Development is to cut its budget by 25 percent – a quarter. We shall know the effect of this in October. It doesn’t take a clairvoyant to see an autumn and a winter of discontent looming ahead.

Does this mean that Nick Clegg and his colleagues have betrayed the electors by joining in coalition with the Conservatives? Perhaps, but without them things could have been even worse. At least the desires of right-wing Climate Change Denying Europhobes (like our MP) have been curbed. And does anyone really imagine that the income tax threshold would have been raised, that there would have been any rise at all in Capital Gains Tax, and that ‘Middle England’ would have been in any way discomforted, had it not been for the influence of Nick Clegg and his not-so-merry men.

Was it worth it? We’ll just have to wait and see.

A blog reader’s comment.

I wouldn’t pretend to be able to assess the effects of the Budget, and of cuts yet to come, on the national economy. However, here is the opinion of a regular blog reader who is much more knowledgeable in this field than I am – and who has an enterprise of his own, serving the public sector, likely to be directly affected.

'I am very concerned that the 25 percent cuts will make it impossible to win new business for the next five years. Perhaps even worse, this level of cuts – coupled with the same sentiment elsewhere in Europe – may cause negative growth, reducing tax receipts, and prompting another round of spending cuts and a vicious spiral downwards. I think they have taken a huge gamble, and that a more cautious approach would actually have been safer'.

Carry on working!

I took early retirement from Tendring Council shortly before my fifty-ninth birthday in 1980. I had no intention of sitting back and enjoying inactivity (for one thing, I couldn’t have afforded to!) but immediately embarked on a new career as a freelance writer. I wrote advertising features for Essex County Newspapers (now Newsquest Ltd) and for twenty-three years contributed a comment column Tendring Topics to their free newspaper Coastal Express. The column was the predecessor of this blog, Tendring Topics……on line.

My retirement presentation (Left to right) myself, Heather, Councillor Fred Good, Chairman of the Council.

I also wrote half a dozen commercially successful books on domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage, provided the plumbing section of a number of nationally sold DIY Manuals, and wrote a regular feature on the subject for Do-it-yourself Magazine, as well as answering readers’ queries on the same subject.

For years my wife Heather and I had recouped part of the cost of the camping holidays we had enjoyed every year by writing articles about them, with photographic illustrations, for the camping and caravanning press. In retirement we exchanged our frame tent for a motor caravan and continued with this practice.

I worked hard throughout and beyond the first twenty years of my retirement, perfecting my writing skills and effectively supplementing my pension. My wife Heather was a partner in everything I did. We both enjoyed every minute of it.

Myself, aged about 70, surrounded by my books and with a copy of the ‘Coastal Express' by my left wrist. This was before I had been introduced to the joys of computing, and I am using a Brother electronic typewriter.

It might be thought that I would therefore be wholeheartedly in favour of a later retirement age. I had carried on in paid employment (though very little pay as my output dwindled!) until I was over eighty. At sixty-five I must have been in my prime.

Quite so, but I retired voluntarily to do what I had really wanted to do throughout my life. I certainly wouldn’t have wished to carry on beyond 65 doing any of the jobs (public health inspection, housing management, public relations!) that I had done for the Council. I think that folk should have the option of carrying on working after 65 but that they shouldn’t be compelled to do so unless of course, they are incompetent as well as old!

The government is eager to get people capable of working, out of benefit and into paid work. They would, so it seems, like to do much the same with us pensioners. At the same time their policies ensure that there are fewer and fewer jobs for any of us to do.

During World War II there was a widely used propaganda poster announcing in large letters: From the Home Secretary: Three words to the whole nation: ‘ GO TO IT!’ To which an irreverent reply was, ‘OK – but where the ‘ell is it?’

A dire calamity!

Oh dear! England lost that knock-out match against Germany, and our World Cup Dreams have, once again, been shattered. It's true that the England team’s earlier performances in the World Cup matches - draws with the USA and Algeria and a one-goal win against tiny Slovenia – hadn’t inspired much confidence. Hopes had been raised though and I am sorry they have been shattered. Yes, I know that it’s only a game and doesn’t really matter. Thousands think that it does though, and I’m sorry about their disappointment.

Week 25.10

Tendring Topics…….on Line

World Cup Fever

It isn’t very often that I read a newspaper article that I wish I had written myself. This was certainly the case though when I read in the Coastal Daily Gazette a feature article by Assistant Editor James Wills (one-time editor of the Clacton Gazette) expressing forcefully his views on the current World Cup Fever.

James Wills, who says that he is a football fan himself, writes that ‘England has already descended into some sort of mass hysteria – the symptoms of which are a desire to become temporarily patriotic, drink copious amounts of booze, and for men to thump their chests chanting “EN-GER-LUND”

‘During the 2006 World Cup, Home Office data showed on average there was a 25 percent rise in domestic violence reports on the days of England games, with one in four offenders being found to be under the influence of alcohol. ‘What a brilliant testament to our nation – watch the game, get drunk and slap your partner’.

Joining in (and no doubt hoping to cash in on!) the mass hysteria are major companies like Nike and Adidas, Mercedes (despite being a German firm!) and supermarkets, who simultaneously campaign for the introduction of higher prices for alcohol, and desperately promote ‘World Cup booze specials!'

‘Do people really have an insatiable desire to eat Pringles’, asks Mr Wills, ‘because they have changed their name to Pringooooals to flog a football promotion? Perhaps we are missing out and we should change the name of the paper to the ‘Goal-chester Gazette’.

He goes on to say that, ‘We can forget the fact, reported on Wednesday, that one in eight children under five in Niger is likely to die of starvation in the next four weeks, because we are more concerned about Lesley King’s knee injury……..Closer to home Colchester MP Bob Russell has been campaigning in the Commons about child poverty. Apparently the UK has one of the worst levels of child poverty in the developed world and one of the worst in Europe, below Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. But who cares about that? We rank above them in the Fifa football ratings. EN-GER-LUND!

‘The country may be in the middle of an economic public debt crisis, but we can still afford to pay our Italian manager £6 million a year. ENG-ER-LUND!

(I hadn’t realized that that was the England Manager’s salary – and we worry because a handful of civil servants and top council officials receive about £200,000 - more than the Prime Minister!)

James Wills concludes, ‘I sincerely hope that we do win, just because it will bring an end to those appalling ’46 years of hurt’ clichés. The fact is that we haven’t won since 1966 because we weren’t good enough, which is only right and proper because, as our economy, transport infrastructure and almost everything proves, not being good enough is what we are world beaters at. EN-GER-LUND!

There’s nothing much that I can add to that. I thought that I was pretty good at vituperative prose but I take off my hat to Mr. Wills!

The first time that I heard ‘England’ used in that way with three syllables, was under very different circumstances. It was in January 1942 and the German and Italian garrison of Wadi Halfaya (Hellfire Pass) on the Egyptian/Libyan border had just surrendered to us. A group of disconsolate German prisoners were trying to keep up their spirits by singing the German submariners ‘anthem’ with its rousing chorus.

Und jetzt wir fahren! Und jetzt wir fahren!
Wir fahren gegen EN-GER-LAND!

(Now we’re marching! Now we’re marching!
We’re marching against EN-GER-LAND!

Six months later I was a POW myself and knew exactly how those German prisoners had been feeling. Today, as I survey the St. George’s flags displayed wherever I go, listen to the breathless tones of the sports commentators, and reflect on the fact that, in the midst of a financial crisis affecting us all, thousands can spare the time and the money to watch football games half a world away from home, I know just how James Wills was feeling as he wrote that article. For goodness sake, football is only a game!

Whose oil spill? Whose fault?

In last week’s blog I made the point that BP, responsible for the oil leak currently threatening the Gulf Coast of the USA, is only nominally a British firm. A substantial proportion of its shares are owned in the USA and elsewhere.

A recent article in The Independent revealed that not only are a large number of shares held in the USA but that many members of the American Congress, including those leading the enquiry into the disaster, are substantial share holders. Between them, they own $14.5 million of stock in the oil and gas industry, among which are at least $400,000 shares (probably more!) in the three companies involved in the oil spill – BP, Transocean and Anadarko Petroleum.

Fred Upton, top Republican on the Energy and Environment Subcommittee, has nearly $100,000 invested in BP, Senator John Kerry, who sits on the Senate Commerce Committee, has assets totalling at least $6 million in a dozen oil concerns, including BP and Royal Dutch Oil, while his wife Teresa has in trust up to $750,000 of BP stock. The House Republican leader John Boehner, holds BP stock worth $50,000!

Research (via Google) reveals some interesting facts about the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and about the oil well that it was tapping.

The oil well is at a depth of 35,000 feet, and is the deepest well of its kind ever discovered! It is 5,000 feet deeper than the design specification of the oilrig.

An enquiry into the cause of the disaster is in progress. I think it very unlikely that it was the result of a deliberate act of malice, or the carelessness, stupidity or laziness of the rig’s crew. Knowing that they were working at or beyond the rig’s recommended capacity, they would surely have been taking extra, meticulous care.

Perhaps, in order to save time and money, ‘management’ decided to cut corners and ignore precautions that should have been taken. It is possible that drilling at that extreme depth should not have been undertaken at all, or undertaken only with specialist equipment that just wasn’t available on the site.

It must never be forgotten that the prime purpose of any private enterprise is not to serve the public or improve the environment, but to enrich the bank accounts of the shareholders. Delays cost money, specialist equipment costs money. It could be that the current catastrophe arose from an unwise desire to serve what seemed to be the best interests of BP’s shareholders, including of course, those among them who are members of the US Congress.

Among the Cleanest?

I am an enthusiast for the Tendring District. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else and I recommend it for holidays to my friends both in this country and overseas. Our seaside resorts have their own unique qualities that complement each other, offering everything that most people seek on holiday. In addition they are conveniently close to historic Colchester and to the lovely ‘Constable country’ of the Stour Valley.

I am sure that our beaches thoroughly deserve the European Blue Flags of excellence that they have been awarded and I wasn’t a bit surprised to learn that Clacton-on-Sea had been rated among England’s top ten holiday resorts.

I must say though that my loyalty and credulity were strained to the utmost by the report that our Sunshine Coast had been rated within the top ten cleanest places in the country, coming ninth and being beaten in our region only by Maldon, which came sixth. My reaction was not dissimilar to that of Anne Harper, who has run a ladies wear shop in Jackson Road for forty years. She is reported as saying, ‘If we are ninth, God only knows what the rest of the country is like……..The other day when I came in to work, there were cans and pizza boxes in the street – it was absolutely filthy. If there are almost 350 areas worse than us I really do despair’

I sometimes find drink cans and plastic ‘fast food’ containers (often still half-full!) casually dropped over my front garden fence and, driving along the footpath of St. Osyth Road on my mobility scooter I all-too-often have to negotiate my way through broken glass that threatens my scooter’s tyres.

Perhaps whoever decided that we were in the top ten made his or her inspection shortly after the streets had been cleaned. I have been impressed with the Council’s street cleaning service. It is good to see a man with a brush at work rather than a street sweeping vehicle that doesn’t touch the footpaths and, because of parked cars, can’t get to the gutters where drink cans, crisp packets and fast food containers tend to gravitate. Usually though, it doesn’t take long for litter to accumulate again!

Outrageous? Heroic?

Possibly neither. He may have simply been very uncomfortable!

I am referring to the football fan, who ‘burst into the changing room and confronted the English players’ after their less-than-brilliant World Cup performance against Algeria.

It could be that angry confrontation was the very last thing on his mind. He claims that was in urgent need of the toilet and had simply lost his way.

As Esther Rantzen used to say, ‘That’s life!’ Perhaps we should be thankful for the fact that there’s rather more bathos in the world than either heroism or outrage!

Apologies still needed!

I am glad that our Prime Minister made a full and unequivocal apology for the events in Londonderry on 'Bloody Sunday', 1972. The killing of unarmed civilians was inexcusable, even allowing for the fact that there was a 'shooting war' in progress at the time and that the British troops had been ordered into Londonderry's Bogside, a 'no go' area for troops where those who entered could routinely expect to be fired on by IRA snipers. Once firing begins it is difficult to know who is firing at whom and I have no doubt that some soldiers genuinely believed themselves to be under attack. Nevertheless the incident was an appalling tragedy and a blot on the record of the regiment involved.

I note that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness both accepted and welcomed David Cameron's apology. Perhaps, in turn, they might care to make a similarly uneqivocal apology for the hundreds of equally innocent civilians killed by the IRA at that time. There is little doubt that they were far more personally associated with those killings than David Cameron was with those on Bloody Sunday.

A fateful day.

I hope to post this blog tomorrow evening (22nd June). By the time you read it you will know the terms of the Chancellor’s emergency budget – and how they will affect you and your family.. I shall be looking to see if it really will cause pain to all of us as promised, or whether – as usual - the seriously wealthy will escape without even minor discomfort.

Hot on the heels of the Budget will come the make-or-break England v. Slovenia football match on Wednesday that will determine whether England's team goes on to the next round of the World Cup contest or returns to the UK in ignominy. Surely we’re not going to suffer ‘a double whammy’?

It looks as though I shall have plenty on which to comment next week!

Week 24.10

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘The most unkindest cut of all’

The phrase above is an example of tautology that no schoolboy or girl in my day could have hoped to get away with. Shakespeare could though. By using it in Mark Antony’s funeral speech for Julius Caesar, he effectively emphasises Antony’s abhorrence of the part that Brutus, Caesar’s friend, had played in his assassination.

Some may feel the same way about the Lib Dems in the current government coalition being prepared to endorse cuts in expenditure that, only a few weeks ago, they were claiming would harm the progress of economic recovery. We still don’t know exactly where those cuts are to fall but we have been told that they will be deep and savage; that their effects will be felt for generations to come – and that they will affect us all.

It is upon the accuracy of that final phrase that we may judge whether or not Lib Dem co-operation with the Conservatives is a betrayal of their own principles. Throughout the election campaign Lib.Dem emphasis was on fairness in politics and in economics. Central and local government services are generally aimed at supporting the less advantaged and poorer members of society – people who can’t afford to buy the goods and services that are considered essential in a civilised society. Cuts in those services are most likely likely to penalise the poor, the old and the disabled disproportionately and unfairly. It isn’t they whose greed and profligacy have brought about the financial crisis.

So far there has been little or no official mention of tax rises, surely the most obvious means of increasing national at the expense of individual wealth. VAT, which had been reduced in an effort to stimulate the economy, has been restored to its former level. Probably it will rise further. That too though, will disproportionately penalise the less affluent. Don’t tell me that the seriously wealthy find the VAT on the servicing of the Bentley or Rolls that takes them to the races or the hunt, as much a financial burden as the building worker finds the servicing of the second-hand Ford that he needs to get to work each day.

One of the more idiotic promises made by New-Labour in their attempt to stave off electoral defeat was not to interfere with the income tax system. They had promised it before and had broken that promise by introducing a 50 percent tax band for part of the income of high earners. It was one of the few really sensible things that they did, but they destroyed its full effect by giving a year’s notice of its introduction. There was plenty of time for the smart lawyers and accountants of the wealthy to devise schemes of avoidance (not of evasion of course, that would have been illegal!)

Income tax is the one tax levied strictly in accordance with the ability of the taxpayer to pay. Those who have very low incomes don’t have to pay it at all. Those with higher incomes pay a small amount, and those with still higher incomes pay more. I believe that it is here that taxation can fairly be increased – but that there should be more carefully graduated tax bands and the highest rate (it is only on part of the income remember) should be above fifty percent. Furthermore, real efforts should be made to plug the loopholes in the tax system that make it possible for the wealthy to avoid much of the income tax that the rest of us have to pay.

Yes, it would evoke indignation among the self-appointed champions of ‘Middle England’ – but it is only when we see outrage in the columns of the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph that we will know that the pain of Britain’s economic recovery is being evenly shared!

I am, of course old, increasingly disabled, and reliant on public services that I shall hate to see reduced or abolished. However, I am also an income tax payer and consider myself very fortunate in having an income high enough for me to be liable for it. I wouldn’t enjoy having to pay an extra penny or so in the pound in tax, but I would prefer it to having to pay an extra few pounds to the government in VAT on the cost of essential repairs or maintenance to my home.

‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new’

So says the dying King Arthur, in Tennyson’s ‘Mort d’Arthur’. It is a process that continues today and we oldies usually fiercely resist it. We all feel that we have experienced more than enough change in our lifetimes. We certainly don’t want to see any more of it!

In the immediate aftermath of local government reorganisation in 1974, Mr Colin Bellows, Tendring Council’s Engineer and Surveyor, and I, as Public Relations Officer, visited every town and parish council in the new district to explain and answer questions about the effects of the changes in local administration. In particular Mr Bellows explained that for the first time, parish and town councils would have the right to comment on planning applications and proposed developments in their area.

I well remember one elderly St. Osyth parish councillor, who rose to tell us that, as far as planning was concerned, ours was a wasted visit. In St. Osyth, he said, they had all the development that they needed and were opposed to any further building.

That occasion came back into my mind when I read in the Coastal Daily Gazette the headline FEARS OVER IN-VOGUE ISLAND followed by a report about ‘Historic Oyster Sheds’ having to make way for a Seafood Restaurant. It seems that Mersea Island has become fashionable and that the site currently occupied by old Oyster Sheds would be ideal for a restaurant to serve the needs of an increasing number of ‘dining-out’ visitors.

Destroying another piece of England’s cultural heritage? Hardly; the pictures of the sheds in the Gazette suggest that they are very ordinary wooden structures, partly built on stilts, which no longer serve any useful purpose. Unless steps are taken to conserve them they will undoubtedly ‘die of natural causes’ during the next decade or two. Their only remarkable feature is the fact that they are 140 years old. Surely we don’t believe that everything over a century old merits conservation. I’d have thought that photographs and a description of their purpose would be quite adequate for anyone researching the island’s history.

I hope that permission is granted for their replacement by a seafood restaurant. I hope also that the restaurant proves to be a great success and helps to bring prosperity to Mersea. It too though can expect to have only a limited lifespan. I have little doubt that before this century is out, it will have been replaced by whatever is the fashionable fad of the late twenty-first century. No doubt its passing will, in its turn, evoke protests from elderly residents at the loss of something that, as it mellowed over the decades, had become a part of the island’s history! ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new’.

Now it’s the turn of Walton-on-the-Naze!

Only last week we had news of a multi-million pound scheme to regenerate Clacton-on-Sea. Now we have a similar scheme, drawn up by consultants BNP Paribas for neighbouring Walton-on-the-Naze. Costing £100,000, the report suggests, among other things, turning the dilapidated Walton Mere into a boating lake and water sports centre, redeveloping the Martello Caravan Park for 250 new homes and 50 new holiday homes, plus an hotel and retail space. It also recommends that The Pier and Pier Hotel should be made ‘more attractive’ and that an ‘urban beach’ should be created next to the Columbine Centre for such activities as Beach Volleyball and rock climbing.

This last proposal caught my attention because it was suggested to me some years ago that, with our broad sandy beaches and low rainfall, our Essex Sunshine Coast had everything that was needed for Beach Volleyball, and that Tendring Council should have leapt onto the band-wagon while enthusiasm for the sport was developing. I don’t think that the suggestion was made with the idea of an artificially created ‘urban beach’ in mind. That would surely be like providing an indoor dry ski slope in the midst of the Swiss Alps!

In view of the national financial situation there is really very little possibility of the scheme being brought to fruition in the near, or even the more distant, future. Was the £100,000 spent on its commissioning, and whatever was spent on commissioning the similar scheme for Clacton, justified?

I am the last person who would suggest that local authorities should never seek the services of outside consultants. My elder son is the founder and Managing Director of an IT Consultancy, HUBSolutions Ltd. ( http://www.hubsolutions.co.uk/ ), developing computer software used by progressive public authorities throughout England and Scotland to reduce or eliminate ‘paper work’, thus enabling public service professionals (police officers, social workers, health visitors, environmental health officers and so on) to get on with the work for which they are qualified..

However I don’t really think that (perhaps with the exception of the ‘urban beach!’) there is any idea in BNP Paribas report that couldn’t have been produced by Tendring District Councillors or their staff. That money would have been better spent carrying out some modest practical improvements rather than on the preparation of an ambitious and expensive wish-list.

‘Stand up for Britain!’

That was a recent message to the Prime Minister, urged in a headline in the popular press.

Who, you may have wondered, was currently threatening our sacred sovereignty? It must surely have been ‘Brussels’; journalistic shorthand for everything that newspaper proprietors most hate about the European Union ………. or could the Press simply have been urging the PM to support England in the World Cup?

Neither was right. On this occasion it was a much less predictable villain – the USA or, in particular its President. ‘Mind you’, I expect it was being said in indignant editorial conferences, ‘I always did say that that Obama was a dangerous leftie, not a bit like good old George Bush!’
It seems that the great American public had become aware that BP, whose oil was still gushing (though not quite so profusely as a week or so ago) into the Gulf of Mexico and threatening the whole of the south coast of the USA, was short for British Petroleum. This realisation had threatened to trigger the biggest outburst of anti-British feeling since the days of the Boston tea-party. President Obama had even suggested that BP should suspend paying dividends to its shareholders until it had compensated the tens of thousands of US citizens whose lives and livelihoods had been ruined by the leaking oil! ‘My goodness! The man’s not just a leftie. He’s some kind of a commie!’

How strange that British newspapers and politicians who hadn’t raised an eyebrow over our country being led by the USA into two foreign wars costing millions of pounds and hundreds of British lives, should get so upset over dividend payments! I wonder how we would have reacted had a similar catastrophe, arising from the activities of a US enterprise in the English Channel, threatened England's south coast?

In fact, of course, BP isn’t really a British enterprise, or at least only part of it is. I heard on the radio this morning (12 June) that 40 percent of BP shares are in British ownership and 30 percent in that of the USA. Suspension of the payment of dividends will affect investors in the USA as well as in the UK.

Neither Britain nor the USA (nor even the EU!) is responsible for the present catastrophe. Responsibility lies with world-wide uncontrolled, or inadequately controlled, striving for ever more material wealth; taking short cuts and ignoring ‘pettifogging regulations and precautions dreamed up by desk-bound bureaucrats.’ Those pettifogging regulations were put in place precisely to prevent the occurrence of such disasters.

In an earlier age it might have been described as the worship of the false god Mammon, to whom the whole of the USA's Gulf Coast is currently being sacrificed!

Week 23.09

Tendring Topics ........on line

Clacton-on-Sea’s Future?

If there’s one lesson that I have learnt from decades of reading local and national newspapers, it is that “artists’ impressions” of proposed future developments rarely if ever resemble the completed job. Usually this turns out to be a disappointment. The completed development lacks attractive features – trees and shrubs, a water feature perhaps - that were shown in the ‘impression’ but were cut out on grounds of economy while the building work was in progress.

It isn’t very often that I look at an ‘artist’s impression’ and hope that it won’t prove to be an accurate prophecy. However that is precisely what I thought when I saw the picture above on the front page of the Coastal Daily Gazette of Tuesday 1st June. It is part of the vision of award-winning couple Wayne and Gerardine Hemingway who have been commissioned by Tendring Council to help bring Clacton-on-Sea ‘back to its former glory’. Wayne and Gerardine have recently masterminded the regeneration of Boscombe on the south coast that has undergone an £11 million makeover and been named as regeneration project of the year.

I hope that this picture isn’t typical of their ideas because I just don’t like it. In the foreground is a cliff-top restaurant fronted by decking on which there are some tables and chairs with a couple enjoying a coffee. Children with balloons are playing on the decking and a young woman is pointing to the pier and to the beach below.

The Pier today - view from the east cliff

The pier doesn’t look greatly different from now except that there are some green trees (presumably in containers). There is no sign of a helter-skelter, roller coaster or similar traditional ‘ride’. There are some mysterious white buildings at the pier-head that look as though they are the products of the same school of architecture as that of the ‘acclaimed international artist’ who recently built a fortunately short-lived work of art, resembling an oversized and unfinished poultry shed, in Jaywick.

The beach (normally Clacton’s busiest!) is almost deserted except for a dozen deck-chairs that appear to have been have been hastily abandoned – a seaside version of the Mary Celeste perhaps? There is also a young couple looking out to sea. Could they be watching the pirate vessel that kidnapped the other beach users (or perhaps the sea monster that gobbled them up!) disappear over the horizon?

No, it’s not an ‘artist’s impression’ that fills me with hope for Clacton’s future.

Is regeneration really necessary?

Anyway, does Clacton-on-Sea, or the Tendring District, really need to be regenerated at a cost of millions of pounds? Certainly bits of it need serious attention but I think that the holiday resorts of the ‘Essex Sunshine Coast’ are doing pretty well as they are.

Our coastal towns are relatively small ones. The largest is Clacton-on-Sea with a current population of about 53,000. It is absurd to imagine that we can have all the same facilities as, for example, Southend (population 160,000), Blackpool (142,000) and Brighton (156,000). We don’t have their financial resources but we do have other natural attractions that those towns lack.

A correspondent to the Clacton Gazette of 3rd June complains that it is absurd that Clacton should be named as one of Britain’s ‘top ten’ resorts when Blackpool is not. She has just returned from the Midlands where nobody has even heard of Clacton while Blackpool is well known. I have never been to Blackpool (though I have heard of it!) but I learn from Google that it has an average annual rainfall of 872 mm and 143 rainy days. The comparable figures for our Essex Sunshine Coast resorts are less than half of those. That could possibly contribute to Clacton-on-Sea’s inclusion in the top ten and Blackpool’s omission. We natives don’t always appreciate our good fortune in living in the driest part of the United Kingdom!

I do know both Brighton and Southend from personal experience. Neither have anything comparable with our miles of safe, gently sloping sandy beaches, extending from Walton-on-the-Naze round to Frinton, Holland-on-Sea, Clacton and Jaywick. Two friends of mine from a small town in eastern Germany (where quite a few folk have heard of Clacton-on-Sea because I have told them!) were able to visit us last year and were captivated by those beaches and by Clacton’s new-look town centre, so often criticised by some hard-to-please Clactonians.

Not only is Clacton numbered in the top ten of holiday-friendly resorts but we have three European Blue Flags and these certainly aren’t given away like confetti. They have to be earned, and they have been earned by beaches in Dovercourt, Brightlingsea and Clacton. Last year Clacton was also deservedly awarded a ‘green flag’ for the excellence of its public gardens and there is every reason to hope that this will be awarded again this year.

What better place is there to bring up children than beside the seaside in Clacton?

It is, of course, no good attracting visitors to our coastal resorts if they find getting here to be a tedious and frustrating business. Every bank holiday weekend, and warm and sunny weekends in the summer, finds the access roads jammed with traffic as Londoners and folk from Suffolk who (unlike, it seems, those in the Midlands!) have heard of Clacton, come to to visit us.

What we do badly need is a cheap, reliable rail service, operating throughout weekends as well as weekdays, bringing in visitors from Ipswich and from London and Chelmsford. It surely should be possible to arrange excursion trains from Ipswich to Clacton and Walton without passengers needing to change trains at Colchester. During my Ipswich childhood and youth I remember how much we preferred Clacton’s sandy beaches to the stony ones of easier-to-get-to Felixstowe, where there always seemed to be a bitter wind blowing in off the sea!

Probably the whole discussion is academic. In the present economic climate, do we really think that millions of pounds are likely to be available for an ambitious regeneration programme?

Just now though I wish though that some local residents weren’t quite so eager to denigrate Clacton-on-Sea in the correspondence columns of the local press. I’m not really quite a native, but I have spent fifty-five happy years here and I certainly wouldn’t wish to live anywhere else.

Brooklands Estate, Jaywick

While I don’t think that Tendring District as a whole, or even Clacton-on-Sea needs regenerating, parts of the district do need radical attention.

There’s Jaywick’s Brooklands Estate for instance, continually declared to be the third most deprived area in Britain. Where are the two worse areas, I wonder? Brooklands is only a relatively small part of the civil parish of Jaywick but it is in a mess and no one seems to know quite what to do about it, or how to do it.

There is not much doubt that Essex County Council would like to see it flattened and redeveloped with ‘desirable residences’, appropriate businesses and seaside attractions. Existing residents would be rehoused ‘elsewhere’. The former Clacton Urban District tried that in the 1960s by declaring it a ‘clearance area’ under the Housing Act 1936. They failed. A public enquiry ruled against the Council.

Needless to say the existing residents, particularly responsible ones who have worked hard to make their seaside homes attractive and habitable, fiercely oppose this solution. They just want the existing roads on the estate to be properly paved, lighted and drained. Sadly, this wouldn’t solve the Brooklands problem either. There would remain a great many properties that were built for summer holiday use only. They were never intended for all-the-year residence and their owners can’t or won’t improve them. Cheap to-buy-or-rent substandard homes tend to attract (or perhaps to create) problem householders.

I can’t see any quick and easy way to regenerate Brooklands. I don’t think for one moment that trying to turn it into a regional art centre will do the trick. Attempts to do so would probably prove as expensive, and as subject to derision, as Colchester’s still-uncompleted Visual Arts Facility (VAF)!

Perhaps the answer is to be patient and deal with it a little at a time. Tendring Council could surely seek the demolition or compulsory purchase of individual properties judged to be unfit for human habitation and incapable of being rendered fit at reasonable expense. Demolish the worst properties and rehouse the occupants one at a time, slowly clearing an area large enough to be redeveloped while leaving intact dwellings that have been improved and brought up to an acceptable standard.

Yes, it would take a long time – but hardly longer than the half-century or more that the problem has existed with virtually nothing being done about it.