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!