Week 3 2012

Tendring Topics......on Line


War Horse

            One of the saddest things about being very old and living alone is the loss of shared pleasures that were once enjoyed; the many tv programmes that my wife Heather and I used to watch together for instance; the performance of Nutcracker at the O2 arena that she would have so much enjoyed, and my 90^th birthday celebration in Zittau. I can hardly believe that she never met the German friends who have been so much a part of my life during the past few years.  Less often something happens that I wish my mum and dad could be with me to share.   My dad, who died in November 1939, never saw a television.  He would have loved those old Westerns that keep cropping up in daytime tv.  I realize too, how much he would have enjoyed War Horse a film that I haven’t yet seen, about a horse and a young lad in World War I.  He had been there, working with horses, throughout that war!

Trooper Hall F.C. aged 18  1900

            

            My dad was born in 1882 in a little Hampshire village near Highclere Castle (better known to thousands today as Downton Abbey!)   Orphaned at an early age he appeared to be destined to be a farm labourer but – he was ‘good with horses!’  He escaped the drudgery and poverty of a life on the soil in Lark Rise to Candleford  England, by enlisting at the age of 18 into the 17^th Lancers, a very fashionable cavalry regiment with the motto Death or Glory. Less than half a century earlier it had taken part in the heroic (but idiotic!) ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ at Balaclava in the Crimea.  It is only recently that I have realized why he chose that particular regiment. It had been a Lord Carnarvon of Highclere Castle who had led that famous charge! In the 17^th Lancers he served in South Africa in the aftermath of the South African War.  I have to this day picture postcards that he sent to my Mum (they were then ‘courting’) from South Africa during that time.

Regimental Sergeant-Major Hall and family 1921

Once again the fact that he was ‘good with horses’ affected his career. He was transferred to the Royal Army Veterinary Corps where he rose steadily through the ranks.   By the time World War I broke out he had become a Sergeant and was sent almost immediately with the British Expeditionary Force to France.  In 1916 he was granted leave from ‘the Front’ to marry his fiancée Emily Clark (my Mum).                                          

          

         It took the Allied High Command a year or two to realize that World War I on the Western Front, wasn’t going to be a conflict of heroic cavalry charges but of a long and bloody struggle, with foot soldiers and artillery playing the major roles. My dad was posted to Egypt, on to Palestine and finally to Salonica in northern Greece, where British troops had originally been sent in 1915 to support the Serbs. I learn from Google that there was ferocious fighting there in the final months of the war, against Austrians and Bulgarians, with carnage comparable with that on the Western Front.  Somewhere along the line he was promoted to Warrant Officer Class 1 (Regimental Sergeant Major).  That was the rank that he held when the war ended and the rank he held when I was born in May 1921.  

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Staff-Sergeant Hall, Staff Instructor in the Territorial Army

Circa 1928

My dad completed his twenty-one years service and was discharged from the army shortly after my birth.  He made a brief return to military life in 1926 when he was appointed Permanent Staff Instructor to a veterinary unit of the Territorial Army in Ipswich – which was to become my ‘home town’. He was happy and fulfilled in this job and I was proud when as an eight or nine year old, playing with my mates near Ipswich’s  Broomhill Park, I would sometimes see him in uniform, on horseback and leading a group  of ‘weekend troopers’, as they exercised their horses and learned the correct, military way to ride. It didn’t last.  In 1931 the TA was downsized.  My dad lost his job.  He spent the final years of his life (he died of a heart attack in 1939 at the age of 57) as a clerk, dispenser, veterinary nurse and general dogsbody to a local vet who had been his commanding officer in the TA.  His meagre pay for this job, plus the small pension he had earned by his 21 years of army service, kept us just above the poverty line.

            He had six campaign medals and was particularly proud of two of them.  One was the ‘Mons Medal’ (on the left) that marked him as a member of the original Expeditionary Force sent to France in 1914 and derided by the Kaiser as ‘General French’s contemptible little army’ (its members made ‘The Old Contemptibles’ a title of pride!).  The other medal (on the right) of which he was proud was a French Medaille d’Honneur with crossed swords.  It had been accompanied by a certificate signed by the French President.  I was told, after my father’s death, that he had been presented with it by a French General ‘on the field of battle’.  One of my deepest regrets is that I never, while I had the chance, asked my father how he had earned this award.

I couldn’t have had a more loving and supportive dad. I was – and still am – very proud of him though my own life has followed a very different path from his.

MEANS TESTING

            How shaming that it should not be our elected representatives in the House of Commons, but members of the unelected and anachronistic House of Lords, who have delayed the passing of government legislation that would have cut the  benefits of thousands of disabled people!  Once again the government has chosen to select the poor and the vulnerable for sacrifice while leaving the conspicuously wealthy to enjoy their riches undisturbed.

            Means testing individual benefits is a bureaucratic, time and money-wasting exercise.  It often means that some people who need the benefit miss it because they have failed to apply or have filled in a form wrongly. Meanwhile while those determined to cheat the system can usually find a way of doing so.  It would be far better to pay out the benefit to all those eligible for it – and then claim part of it back from those who don’t need it all, through one national ‘means test’ to which every one of us is – or should be – subjected; the Income Tax system.

            This system works quite unfairly at the present time, claiming a far larger proportion of the income of the poorly paid than of the wealthy.  In fact, the larger your income the smaller proportion you are asked to pay.  Many more tax bands are needed, going well above the present upper limit of 50 percent for the highest earners. In the immediate post-war years there was, I believe, an upper limit of 90 percent – and civilisation as we know it didn’t come to an end!  It would, of course, be essential for the government to reframe existing legislation and employ its own legal and financial experts to eliminate the tax evasion and tax avoidance that currently takes from the revenue far more than ‘benefit cheats’ could ever hope to achieve.

            Think of the advantages. Currently graduate students are saddled with overwhelming debt – ‘because of the advantage that their degree gives them in the world of business’.  Believe me, the advantage of having even a first-class honours degree in astrophysics  is as nothing compared with that of having no degree at all, but a father who is head of a major business corporation!  It may be argued that their circumstances are  quite different. The advantage that the Astrophysicist obtains comes from us - as taxpayers. That of the multi-millionaire's son doesn't.  Rubbish!  The fortunes made in the private sector come from us too - not as tax-payers but as consumers..  We add to those fortunes every time we buy a packet of washing powder, a new car, a new laptop or a new push-bike.  We add to it every time we turn on a tap, switch on the gas or electricity, or begin to pay back a loan from a bank or building society.  Private fortunes grow every time the government, in our name, buys a bombing plane, a tank or a nuclear missile – or builds a new school or hospital.  A properly graded income tax would level off every kind of unfair advantage.   It would also narrow the gap between the poorest and the wealthiest in our society

            I think we should abolish every means test, and every ‘special incentive’ to help the disadvantaged, and make sure that no-one is disadvantaged, by applying that single, simple means test of a fair Income Tax Assessment, to us all.  Then, whatever crisis might arise, we really would be ‘all in it together’.

Safety in the Bathroom!

            A fortnight ago I recounted in this blog a mishap that I had while staying in an hotel over Christmas.   I slipped and fell in the bath and had to summon help by means of the alarm system in my en suite bathroom.

            The layout and facilities in that bathroom were remarkably similar to those in my own home.   I too, have an over-bath shower operated from a hot-and-cold water mixing valve within the bath.  Slipping and falling at home could potentially be much more dangerous than in a hotel.  There could be no alarm system for me to summon help and it might be many hours, perhaps days, before anyone was aware of my plight!

            In fact, although I would claim no great credit for this, I have taken steps to make it far less likely that a similar accident will occur, and have also made it possible for me to summon help if it did.   Here is a photo of a corner of my bathroom.  A kind and very competent neighbour has made me a small portable wooden step, about 4in high, that can be pulled out and positioned immediately beside the bath as shown in the picture.  There is a vertical hand-hold on the wall immediately above the bath and another hand-hold, that I bought at Argos and fitted myself, connected to the bath rim.  I find that by standing on the wooden step and using the rim hand-hold and the vertical one in turn, I can step safely into and out of the bath.   I also have a synthetic rubber mat on the base of the bath to prevent my slipping and falling.  While under the shower I am always ready to grab that vertical hand-hold..

            Summoning help if I should collapse or fall?   If you look at the extreme left of the picture you will see part of a low shelf on which I place my Tendring Careline alarm pendant and my mobile phone while taking a shower.  Help would be unlikely to arrive as promptly as it did in that hotel – but arrive it surely would!

            No-one can foresee every possible future accident and take steps to prevent it. I think though that I have made my bathroom, potentially one of the most dangerous room in the house, as safe as is humanly possible.   If you, dear blog reader, are similarly old and frail (or you have a friend or relative who is) you may wish to do the same.