Tendring Topics………on Line
‘He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,
He hath put down the mighty from their seats’
These words from St. Luke's Gospel, part of the Magnificat as printed in the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer came to my mind as I read in the local press the story of the trial and conviction of Lord Hanningfield.
Regular blog readers will recall that Lord Hanningfield, then leader of Essex County Council, had been the subject of criticism in this blog long before there had been any question of his facing a criminal trial. I saw him as bombastic, arrogant, publicity seeking and dictatorial, always ready with a news conference or a photo opportunity when there was any credit to be gained from it, or when he had one of his ‘ground-breaking new initiatives’ to announce, but quite prepared to leave the spotlight to someone else when (as for instance with their record in the field of child care) the County Council was found to be failing.
He was going to ‘Save the Naze’, ‘Regenerate Jaywick (by wholesale demolition!), ‘Take over failing Post Offices’, ‘Establish an Essex Bank where Essex entrepreneurs could obtain the finance they needed’ (few applied to it and those who did found that it was less helpful than ordinary commercial banks!), establish an Essex County Council Branch in mainland China to boost the county’s exporters (whatever happened to that ground-breaking initiative, I wonder?)
He led a campaign ‘To give Essex jobs to Essex men and women’, castigating other public authorities that sometimes gave contracts to firms in Suffolk or other nearby counties. He then, ‘saved taxpayers millions of pounds’ by contracting the County Council’s IT services out to a giant international corporation with its HQ in the USA – not just ‘not in Essex’ but not even in Europe. Oh yes, of course it did mean that a few dozen Essex men and women employed at the County Hall in Chelmsford lost their jobs. You can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs!
While the County Council, under his leadership, was embarking on all these exciting activities they were, at the same time, selling off all their old people’s homes and failing their child care responsibilities. Lord Hanningfield wasn’t solely to blame. Almost equally culpable were his colleagues on the County Council, applauding and blindly following his lead.
It didn’t occur to me at that time that he might be criminally dishonest. I knew nothing about his claim for expenses as a member of the House of Lords. I did know though that he engaged in a great many very expensive activities for the County Council. There were, for instance, his globe-trotting trips – usually with top officials or favoured councillors – to China (the Olympics), India, the USA, and elsewhere, always, of course, on county council business! Were his official County Council car and driver sometimes to be seen at the House of Lords, as Colchester’s MP Bob Russell suggests? I don’t know, but I am very pleased that the Police are now examining very carefully his County Council expenses claims. The Council’s own internal audit may well have thought that it would be unwise to look too closely at the expenses claims of quite such a powerful and influential member.
Lord Hanningfield has yet to be sentenced. A lady with whom I was in conversation in my doctor’s waiting room last week, remarked, somewhat venomously, that she hoped he would be sent to jail. She was one of his Lordship’s victims – a county council employee made redundant from her job of supporting the sick and disabled. I would be satisfied if he were prepared to admit his guilt, refund the money he has obtained by fraud, and apologise. Not a bit of it though. After being found guilty Lord Hanningfield told reporters, ‘I’m devastated, but I have no regrets’. I am sure that he genuinely believes that he was too important to be expected to fill in claim forms properly, like other lesser folk. He had thought, as we know, that he was too important to be tried in an ordinary criminal court. He considered that he should have been tried, if at all, by his equals (his peers) in the House of Lords! The supreme court decided otherwise.
Before being ennobled on the recommendation of Mrs Thatcher and with the approval of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, Lord Hanningfield had been Paul White, a successful Essex pig farmer. He is a bit old to take that up again – but I expect that he has managed to put a bit aside for his old age. I hope so. He surely wouldn’t want to live on the state pension, plus whatever means-tested benefit his reduced circumstances might entitle him to claim.
NB. Lord Hanningfield’s defence included the plea that members of the House of Lords receive no salary for their services. Quite so – but they do get a tax-free ‘attendance allowance’ of £300 a day for every day that they put in an appearance there, even if they only stay for ten minutes. I reckon that that is the kind of ‘no salary’ for which many people would be happy to swap their paid employment.
Meanwhile………
I was absent from Clacton (and England) for less than a week but, quite apart from Lord Hanningfeld’s nemesis, an awful lot seems to have happened world-wide while I had my finger temporarily ‘off the pulse’.
In Libya we are being drawn inexorably towards full active participation in a civil war. Allied bombing raids are effectively preventing pro-Gaddafi forces from defeating the insurgents, but the ill-disciplined, untrained and ill-equipped forces ranged against them are equally incapable of advancing to victory.
Britain is now using Apache helicopters to give close support to ground forces opposing the Gaddafi regime. These are capable of attacking individual armoured vehicles or gun positions. The French are using their own helicopter gunships for the same purpose. In being able to engage the enemy more closely, low flying and relatively slow helicopters are themselves much more vulnerable to attack from small arms or ground-to-air missiles than are missile projectors or high altitude bombers. We must expect losses – and casualties.
On 1st June the Daily Mirror revealed that there are now experienced British mercenaries, former SAS men, financed by our government, strengthening the insurgent forces. The government has not denied this and it therefore seems very likely that the report is correct. How long will it be, I wonder, before David Cameron and his associates will decide that in order to fulfil the United Nations’ mandate to ‘protect civilians' and to protect our own helicopter crews, there is regrettably no alternative to putting troops on the ground?
There is no sign of an end to the conflict in Afghanistan where the regular toll of British lives continues almost daily. The NATO general in command there says that it will be at least another year before we can think of beginning to withdraw troops. He’ll probably say exactly the same in twelve months time! It seems such a short while ago that Barak Obama’s generals were assuring him that they just needed another 30,000 men to secure a victory. Agreeing to that request was a decision that he may well live to regret. Of course, if the Taliban were foolish enough to engage in battle with the NATO forces they would be heavily defeated. But it isn’t that kind of a war. It is a war of ambush, of opportunist sniper attack, of booby traps, land mines, and of enemy activists infiltrating both the civilian population and the forces ranged against them. It is a war that can go on forever. It is a war that we may never completely lose – but that we can never win.
Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan when their government realized that – and a bloodbath of Soviet collaborators followed. Sooner or later our governments will realize it too. If I were an Afghan supporter of the country’s present government (or an Afghan woman enjoying a measure of freedom and independence under the current regime) I would be making plans to get out of that benighted country before it is too late!
Waiting for a Miracle?
I mentioned Holland-on-Sea’s missing beaches in this blog a few weeks ago. They are still missing and Tendring District Council seems to be viewing their loss remarkably philosophically; fatalistically in fact. The official attitude seems to be that freak weather conditions led to the sand being washed away and, in the fullness of time – Weeks? Months? Years? – weather conditions will replace the lost sand. It is, I suppose, always easy to be philosophical over other people’s problems.
In fact the weather conditions leading up to the disappearance of the sand were not particularly freakish. There had been several days of onshore winds but I have known stronger winds, and ones that blew for a longer period. I think that the explanation, offered by Mr Richard Powis’ one of the beach hut owners affected, and cogently argued in the Letters Page of the Clacton Gazette, is at least equally likely. He points out that never in living memory has the sand been so comprehensively swept away from any of our beaches (it has certainly never happened in the fifty-six years that I have lived here). In recent years though the neglect of groynes and breakwaters at right angles to the water line has allowed the existing sand to be washed away, and the construction of sea defences at Holland Haven has prevented the natural replenishment of the beach from the crumbling cliffs
I would have thought that the Council should have urgently been considering bringing in loads of sand to rebuild those sandy beaches that are among our district’s major attractions. It is a task that has been undertaken elsewhere and has proved effective.
In the meantime, and until the sand has been replaced, natural justice surely demands that hut owners should receive a rebate on the fees that they pay to the Council. As beach hut owners point out, they pay the council for the use of beach hut and if there is no beach the Council could be considered to be failing to fulfil its part of the contract.
‘Labour Rabble Rousers’
That was how Tendring Council Leader Neil Stock dismissed a lobby of about thirty people, including members of the Tendring Pensioners’ Actions Group, who were urging councillors not to support a plan to give newly appointed Chief Executive, Ian Davidson, sweeping powers which could put the jobs of as many as one third of the Council’s workforce, some two hundred employees, at risk.
I wonder if he would have been quite as contemptuous of the distinguished group of financial experts, some of whom had been recently employed by the government, who have warned David Cameron and his colleagues that their policy of cuts, and yet more cuts, is proving counter-productive. It is killing any possibility of growth in the economy, ensuring that tax revenues don’t go up and payments to the unemployed don’t go down. Probably because of a stalled economy in the USA and austerity measures in Europe, manufacturing isn’t steaming ahead as hoped, despite what amounts to a twenty-five percent devaluation of the pound.
A successful businessman and regular reader of this blog has reminded me of his forecast that this would happen. He says gloomily, ‘However I am pretty sure there won’t be a U-turn, too much political capital tied up in this, and a fundamental belief that, even if it doesn’t turn the economy round, the public sector needs to be cut down to size’, adding – even more gloomily – ‘Not that I think that Ed Milliband would have a clue what to do if he ever gets elected’.
It is not a very cheering prospect. Locally the protest lobby was in vain. In the final vote 33 councillors voted to give the Chief Executive the powers for which he had asked, 12 voted against, 4 abstained and one was absent.
Mr Davidson now has the power to agree voluntary redundancies and impose compulsory redundancies as long as he delivers the same service. He must also refer to councillors any ‘significant change’ in the way the services are delivered. These extra powers are expected to deliver £4.4 million savings over the next four years.
The proviso ‘as long as he delivers the same service’ may seem by some to be an adequate safeguard of Council services. It is hardly that. Redundancies have immediate effect. A gradually reduced or deteriorating service may not attract serious attention for days, weeks, perhaps months. And by then it will be too late.
Perhaps Mr Davidson can work miracles – but I think that it would be unwise to count on it!
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