Week 5 2011 1st Feb. 2011

Tendring Topics…..on Line

A Matter of History

It came as something of a shock to hear the newsreader on tv refer to the contender for film honours ‘The King’s Speech’ as ‘a historical drama’. ‘Historical’ means to me crinolines and toppers, or doublets and hose, not events that happened in my lifetime and that I can personally remember. I well recall the constitutional crisis that ended with King Edward VIII abdicating the throne so that he could marry Mrs. Wallis Simpson; not least because the divorce that left Mrs Simpson free to marry was settled in a court in my hometown of Ipswich. The King’s younger brother took his place.

I was a pupil at the Northgate School at the time and we were all given ‘time off’ to cycle down to the Cornhill and, in front of the Town Hall, hear Ipswich’s Mayor proclaim the former Duke of York to be our new monarch, King George VI. Two years later, joining the Territorial Army at the age of 17, I took an oath, ‘to defend his Majesty King George VI, and all his lawful heirs and successors, according to the conditions of my service’.

It was, I think, generally known at the time that the new King had an impediment in his speech that he was struggling to overcome. I have a vague memory of hearing him on the radio (only we called it ‘the wireless’ in those days!) not long after his accession and thinking that his speech wasn’t at all bad. Had I not heard that he had an impediment I might not even have noticed it. He certainly never shirked his duty of public speaking. One well-remembered radio speech was his Christmas broadcast in 1939, made when Britain had been at war for just three months.

On that occasion he quoted from ‘God knows’ a poem by Edwardian poet and scholar Minnie Louise Hoskins:

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown’, and he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way’.

Not, I think, a bad message for a nation embarked on the second world war of the twentieth century. It is also a message (just look at it!) that contains plenty of those words, beginning with a consonant, that those with speech impediments find so difficult. I think that George VI was a man thrust into a position that he hadn’t wanted and for which he hadn’t been prepared, at one of the darkest periods of British history – and that he filled that position with distinction.

Although I suppose that my egalitarian political views could be described as ‘well left of centre’, I have never been a Republican, and think that there is a lot to be said for having a Head of State who is free of all political party entanglements. How else can that be achieved except by a hereditary, constitutional monarchy? Yes, I would prefer ours to follow the Scandinavian model – but that’s another matter!

‘Naught for your Comfort’

As we come to the beginning of the second month of 2011, the pain of the government’s savage cuts to the public services is beginning to be felt locally. A recent issue of the daily Coastal Gazette has as its lead story the outrage of Tendring Beach Hut owners (in Clacton, Frinton, Walton, Dovercourt and Brightlingsea) at an increase in the annual charge for their hut sites of four percent for Tendring District residents and of eight percent for outsiders.

The most enormous increase though is on the one-off fee payable to the Council when a beach hut changes ownership. This leaps from a not-inconsiderable £75.29 to a staggering £360 – an increase of 378 percent!

These increases, hut owners say, will kill the tourist trade. And so they may – but they are only among the circumstances that will damage the holiday and tourist trade. The increase in rail fares and the unprecedented increase in the cost of petrol and diesel, will make visiting our holiday coast increasingly expensive. At the very least it will mean that when visitors get here they will have less to spend on meals, drinks, accommodation and seaside entertainment that is also inevitably becoming more and more expensive.

A recent correspondent to the weekly Clacton Gazette couldn’t understand why people were making such a fuss about a 2.5 percent increase in VAT. Food isn’t subject to this tax, he pointed out, and it simply meant that an object that pre-increase had cost £1 would now cost £1 and two-point-five pence, surely a price rise that everyone will be able to manage.

Perhaps so, though these days there isn’t much that you can buy for £1! It would certainly make expensive items even more expensive. It has to be remembered too that although food and some other items are VAT free, they still have to be brought to the supermarket, outfitter or departmental store that sells them. Soaring fuel prices (including both petrol duty and VAT!) and the rising cost of spare parts and maintenance will mean that prices of VAT-free as well as VAT-liable items will rise. Purchasers of VAT-liable items will be doubly penalised.

The issue of the Coastal Gazette that carries the story of the disgruntled beach hut owners also tells its readers that Tendring Council is all set to cut £100,000 from its grants to voluntary organisations and charities. John Walton, Chairman of the Jaywick Community Forum is reported as saying ‘The implications of these cuts in the deprived area we operate in are enormous’. Ian Archibald, from the Tendring Furniture Scheme (a voluntary organisation supplying donated used furniture to needy home-makers) said that the cutting of voluntary services would see people ending up in hospital or in prison, and the total overall cost would be likely to be higher. No wonder the government is officially urging us all to give more to charity. They know that their cuts to local government finances are indirectly depriving charities and voluntary organisations from carrying out vital work in their local areas.

There will be more bad news to come. We haven’t yet heard how meals-on-wheels and other social services to the old and disabled will be affected. I am only thankful that, so far at least, I haven’t needed those services.

If only there were news from other economic areas to give us a glimmer of hope. There isn’t. Unemployment, especially youth and graduate unemployment, is rising while – at the same time – the government is making it easier for those over 65 to ‘carry on working’, and is trying to get the disabled off benefit and back into work. Inflation is rising towards 5 percent and the Bank of England is – so far at least – reluctant to raise interest rates (their usual solution) because of the effect that this would have on economic growth. Meanwhile wage settlements, where there are any, are below the level of inflation so that all of us are, in effect, worse off.

Finally we learn that the economy, that had been confidently expected to continue to grow, if at a reduced rate, had in fact shrunk during the closing months of 2010, raising once more the spectre of a ‘double dip’ recession. Messrs Cameron and Osborne assure us that this was due to the appalling weather at the end of the year. Perhaps - but independent observers are a little sceptical of this explanation.

I am beginning to feel that our national politicians, on both sides of ‘the House’, have little idea of the full nature, extent and effect of the current economic situation and no clear idea at all about how best to remedy it! I am reminded of a couple of lines from G.K. Chesterton’s Ballad of the White Horse about the struggle of King Alfred and his army against the Danish invaders over a thousand years ago.

I tell you naught for your comfort. Nay, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet, and the sea rises higher.

There is little consolation in the fact that The Ballad of the White Horse has a happy ending!

Our Middle East Peace Envoy

This week I have read with interest a report by Symon Hill in ‘The Friend’, a Quaker Weekly Journal, about Tony Blair’s (our Middle East Peace Envoy) second appearance before the Chilcot Inquiry about the causes and conduct of the Iraq War.

Roderick Lyme, described by Symon Hill as ‘the panel’s most combative member’ said that the way in which the decision was made to invade Iraq was crucially important to many of those who declared in the run-up to the invasion that it was ‘not in my name’. I am proud to be able to say that among them – and among the million who marched protest in vain in early 2003 - were my two sons, daughters-in-law and grandsons!

Quoting cabinet minutes Mr Lyme said that despite the fact that Tony Blair had assured President Bush that Britain was prepared for war, there had been no ‘substantive discussion’ about Iraq between April and September 2002. ‘At what point were you actually asking the cabinet to make decisions?’ Incredibly the answer was that the ministers knew military action was being considered due to stories in the media. Asked if it would have been better to include more ministers in decision-making, Mr Blair replied ‘It would not have made a great deal of difference. I had the right people there’. Well, of course. He had appointed them and could have dismissed them had they proved ‘unreliable’! No, he hadn’t told George Bush that he had received formal advice that the invasion would be illegal. ‘It would have started raising doubts about whether we were really with them.’

Symon Hill says that the members of the panel were far more confrontational this time than they had been at the earlier hearing. Nevertheless, the protestors present weren’t satisfied. Tony Blair should stand trial for war crimes, they said.

Hadn’t they grasped the essential principle of international affairs – that the only top people who have to face war crimes tribunals are those of the losing side. If it were otherwise there would never be any wars – and we couldn’t have that, could we? It would ruin our flourishing arms trade!

‘Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven’!

Regular blog readers will recall that last year my good friends Kornelia and Andreas Kulke of Zittau (the small German town where I was once a PoW but have now found warmth and friendship) sent me a personalised pictorial calendar with a photo of their two lovely children on each page. Hung up in my kitchen/living room, it was a calendar to which my eyes have been drawn every day; a sure antidote for depression induced by gloomy news headlines and bulletins!

Now, thanks again to Konni and Andreas, the 2011 edition of that same calendar has taken its place. The two children (my honorary German nephew and niece!) are a year older. Little Maja will be five towards the end of September this year and her young brother Tom will be two at the beginning of the same month.

Aren’t they cheering and inspiring? It must have been of children like these that Jesus told his disciples, ‘Allow the little children to come to me. Don’t forbid them; for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven’.