Week 39 2011 4.10.2011

Tendring Topics…….on line


The Financial Crisis – a Point of View


I have never pretended to understand either the national or the international financial crisis. What worries me is my suspicion that none of our top politicians, nor our financial experts (none of whom forecast the bursting of the housing boom bubble in 2008) understand it either.

Below is part of an email that I have received from a regular blog reader and occasional correspondent whose judgement and opinions I have come to trust. He is neither a young wild-eyed revolutionary nor an old has-been like myself. He is, in fact a successful entrepreneur in late middle age, with a wide experience in both the public and the private sectors. He is the founder and Managing Director of an IT consultancy known and respected nation-wide, and is a member of the Institute of Directors. He has written to me about the economic situation.

Apparently Ed Miliband is promising to use the money that will come from the eventual sale of the Nationalised Banks to pay off the deficit, whereas Nick Clegg and David Cameron both have plans to give it away in some form. Ed Miliband is right to say that. I am absolutely horrified that anyone has suggested otherwise. First of all we (very unwisely) bail out these banks instead of telling the investors they have lost their money. Then we have a horrendous five years of cuts to services, benefits, public sector salaries and pensions to pay for the deficit created; then I suppose, when the deficit is paid off, and the state “rolled back” to the size Cameron thought it should always have been, they are just going to have some pre-election giveaway with the surplus cash!! It will be blatantly stealing from one section of the community to reward the rest and buy the votes of the majority. This so immoral and outrageous, I cannot believe that Cameron and Clegg could sink so low.


This whole thing is getting absolutely ridiculous. I was reading this morning (in the Observer) about the terrible hardship they are forcing on the people of Greece, who have lost 50% of their spending power, now have 15% unemployment, and a suicide rate that has rocketed. People are raiding bins in the evening for food and there is just no end in sight for them, just more and more misery. And all of this is so that French and German Banks (that is actually the investors in French and German Banks) don’t lose any money. But now the “good news”, is that the politicians are talking of setting up a £1.5 trillion rescue fund, paid for by Eurozone tax payers, to bail out, yet again, the banks and offer Greeks the “kindness” of defaulting on 50% of their debt.


I am almost reaching the point of hoping for a major financial meltdown, in the hope that it will serve as the catalyst to sweep away these self-serving politicians, unelected financial gurus and incompetent civil servants in central banks and treasuries. Then people who just want to make money by working, not gambling or cheating, can get on with their lives.


I am glad that he is only almost hoping for financial meltdown. I very much fear that, much as the idea appeals, sacking our current governing hierarchy could create a power vacuum waiting to be filled by a thrusting and charismatic young politician promising to sweep away the worn-out ideas of the past and to lead a proud and united nation to a shiny new promised land…….. someone, for instance, like the young Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin or Benito Mussolini!


A Terrible Dilemma

Nothing that has happened in Afghanistan inclines me to change my opinion, first expressed several years ago, that in that country we with NATO, are engaged in a war that we cannot hope to win. Twice during the 19th Century we attempted to defeat the Afghans – and failed. Towards the end of the 20th Century the Soviet Union made a similar attempt – and failed. We, the British and Americans, helped to bring the Taliban to power by our support for the ‘gallant mojihadin’ in defeating them – and we therefore bear some responsibility for the Taliban’s excesses. Do you believe that life in Afghanistan was worse under the Soviet puppet government than under its successors? I certainly don’t.

Now, after a decade of war, the Taliban are still well able to mount successful attacks on targets in the very centre of Kabul, the capital. In an attempt to find a face-saving exit strategy we decided to negotiate with ‘the moderate Taliban’. The Taliban’s peace negotiators duly turned up but with explosives in their turbans. They blew to smithereens both themselves and those with whom it was hoped they would negotiate. It is not in the nature of members of the Taliban to be ‘moderate’ – and they have no doubt that death occurring while killing ‘infidels and apostates’ will ensure them a place in Heaven. Scarcely a week passes without news of another British soldier killed by a sniper or an improvised explosive device (it may well have been a member of the CIA or of our ‘special forces’ who showed the Mojihadin how to make them – for use against the Russians of course)

Every instinct within me urges that we should get our forces out of that benighted country before more British blood is shed. Perhaps the Taliban would mellow. After all, civilisation as we know it was expected to collapse if the Viet Cong triumphed in Vietnam. Thank goodness that we then had a Prime Minister who declined to get us involved. The Viet Cong did triumph. The world didn’t come to an end and Vietnam is now a popular holiday destination for both British and Americans.

A fortnight ago though, I read an article in The Friend, a Quaker weekly journal, that told me that for Afghan women in particular, the departure of NATO forces would be unlikely to bring a ‘happy ending’. The article illustrates the author’s contention that, ‘In some cultures contempt for women is deeply endemic and extreme violence may be used against them with complete impunity’. One such culture existed in Afghanistan during the reign of the Taliban, and may well lie just below the surface today. An extreme example of that contempt was the treatment of a ‘woman’ accused of adultery in Somalia in 2008, in an area of the country controlled by the African equivalent of the Taliban. Her execution by stoning was staged as an entertainment in a football stadium before a crowd of over a thousand. She cried and begged for her life as she was buried in the ground up to her neck prior to the stoning. Amnesty International’s investigators discovered that this judicially murdered ‘adulteress' was a thirteen-year-old child who had been sadistically tortured and brutally gang-raped by the Somali military. The men who perpetuated this nauseating atrocity completely absolved themselves from any culpability. They had, so they claimed, simply obeyed ‘The Law of God’ - thereby adding a most appalling blasphemy to their catalogue of infamy!

It is known that such ‘entertainments’ as this – together with a bloodbath of those who collaborated with the puppet government – followed the departure of the Soviet Army from Afghanistan. I very much fear that within months of NATO’s departure the Taliban will again be in control. Those who collaborated with ‘the West’ could expect to be treated much as were those who did so with the USSR. As for women and girls – the very best that they could hope for would be a return to virtual slavery and an end of any hopes of an education and rewarding career.

Should we abandon those whom we have made our friends, as the USSR did theirs in Afghanistan and as the USA did theirs in Vietnam? Or should we continue indefinitely to wage a war of attrition, patching up the wounded, honouring the fallen as their bodies are returned to this country – and hoping for a miracle? I just don’t know the answer to this terrible dilemma.

A depressing experience

For some years Churches together in Clacton, particularly the Salvation Army and the Baptists, have – as part of their Christian witness – been taking practical steps to alleviate the plight of people in our area who are homeless or badly housed. At the end of September they arranged for the Tendring Council official responsible for dealing with the homeless to explain the current situation to concerned members of individual churches. I attended both as a Quaker and because of professional knowledge and experience, both as a Public Health Inspector and a Housing Manager in this field (albeit between 40 and 50 years in the past!) I was very pleased that there were three other Quakers as the meeting despite the fact that we have fewer members than any other church in our area.

It was a thoroughly depressing experience. The situation certainly hasn’t improved in the past half-century and in many ways it seems to be appreciably worse.

As well as the Tendring Council official’s talk there was a fairly general discussion among those present, among whom was a district councillor and representatives of housing charities. I can’t, I am afraid, recall with certainty who said what but the following statements – that I felt revealed appalling circumstances – were made and remained unchallenged:

There were houses in our district in multiple occupation (several families and/or individuals renting ‘furnished rooms’ in one house) served by a single toilet that was out of order. If an attempt were made to force the landlord to make the toilet serviceable he would refuse to do so and would evict all the tenants, making them homeless. In my days as a Health Inspector a threat of this kind would have been ignored, notice served on the landlord and legal proceedings taken against him if he failed to comply. The chances are that his threat would have been a bluff (the landlord wouldn’t really want to lose his rent income). In any case though, since this was in the days when Councils were encouraged to build houses for letting and most had large housing estates, the chances are that they would have been able to find accommodation for any displaced tenants within a few weeks.

Serious overcrowding no longer qualifies housing applicants for urgent consideration. The whole purpose of the housing legislation enacted at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century was to alleviate the overcrowding that was recognised as a major cause of the epidemics common at that time. In my day we took overcrowding very seriously, helping – as promptly as we could – families found to be overcrowded and prosecuting those who deliberately overcrowded their properties.

Any homeless single person with a child applying for accommodation could expect the child to be taken immediately into care. I thought that the BBC’s tv docudrama ‘Cathy come home’ (remember that?) helped to put an end to that practice years ago. I found it quite appalling. If true it explains the determination of some vulnerable people never to seek help from Social Services. It may be that there are occasions when taking a child into care is the best answer to a particular problem. Surely though, in the vast majority of cases, every effort should made to find accommodation for the adult and child together.

I think that what was revealed at that meeting would have had the public health, housing and social service pioneers of the 19th and 20th centuries, (Sir Edwin Chadwick, George Peabody, George Cadbury, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Fry and so on), turning in their graves.

A Prophecy fulfilled!

I generally refer to the weather with extreme caution in this blog. I know from experience that hardly have I posted such a comment than there is likely to be a sudden and dramatic change in the weather that makes nonsense of it. Yes – I do know that I could retrieve my blog and edit it after posting but that, I feel, would be cheating!

However, a few weeks ago, criticising Tendring Council’s decision to end the holiday season and close at least some of their holiday services on 31st August, I remarked that the weather at the beginning of September was disappointing but that towards the end of the month, and even into October, there might well be a heat wave.

I hardly thought that that tentative prophecy would fulfilled quite as convincingly as it has been. I shall be surprised if the first weekend of October hasn’t brought scores of visitors to our sunshine coast for a day or two of wall-to-wall sunshine and, before autumn really sets in, a satisfying draught of 'the last of the summer wine'.

Thanks to cheese-paring Tendring Council and its Tourism boss, they’ll have found that there are no beach patrols and that many of the Tourist enquiry offices closed weeks ago for the winter!