Week 9 2012 1.3.2012

Tendring Topics........on Line


The Cost of Weddings ………

            One of the biggest changes in public attitudes that have taken place during my lifetime is that relating to love and marriage.  In my childhood and youth the idea of an unmarried couple living together as man and wife evoked shock and horror.  It was ‘living in sin’.  The woman in such a liaison was regarded as ‘fallen’, any children were ‘illegitimate,’ a designation that could prove to be a lifelong disadvantage. As late at the early 1950s a popular song announced that, ‘Love and marriage, love and marriage, They go together like a horse and carriage.  You can’t have one without the other’.  Well, that was certainly what I - and many thousands like me – took for granted.

            How different things are in the twenty-first century.   It is considered perfectly normal – even wise – for a young couple to live together, and perhaps have one or two children before getting married or, in many cases, deciding not to marry at all.   Sometimes they’ll say that they are ‘saving up to get married’ by which they usually mean saving up to be able to afford the kind of lavish wedding reception and honeymoon that will be the envy of their friends, neighbours and work colleagues.

            Recently I was quite shocked to discover that many couples may have to ‘save up’ to pay for the actual ceremony. It was something with which I had never been involved.  Traditionally it is the bride’s parents who pay for the wedding, though that too seems to have changed nowadays. Heather and I were married in the Methodist Church of which she was a member with a (teetotal!) wedding reception in the church hall.  One of my sons was married in a Roman Catholic Church and the other in a Registry Office.  Obviously there was a charge for the Registry Office but it didn’t even occur to me that there would be a charge for the actual wedding in a church – except for the services of the organist and, if there was one, the choir.  I thought it was just ‘a service’ like any other service at which the priest or minister officiated.  I have also been peripherally involved in several Quaker weddings – and for them there is definitely no charge.

            I now learn that there has been a charge of £262 for a Church of England wedding and that this has recently been raised to £400.  That is quite a lot of money to a great many people today; quite enough to make an impecunious young couple who had been thinking of ‘tying the knot’ think again.  They may be facing a lot of other expenses including furnishing a home!

            I would never have expected the Church to deter couples from the sacrament of marriage and am not surprised at the fact that at least some members of the clergy are rebelling against this latest charge.  One such is Fr. Richard Tilbrook of St Barnabas’ Church, Colchester.  He intends to stick to the former fee of £262.   He is reported as saying, ‘In this economic climate in poor parishes this is a huge increase which is not acceptable.  We work very hard to encourage people to come to church and to get married in church and I worry that this will turn people away.          Fr. Richard has the support of Colchester’s recently knighted MP Sir Bob Russell who has promised to raise the matter in parliament.

…….and of Funerals

            Charges for Church of England funerals have also been increased to £160, not quite so much, but quite enough to add worry to a great many hard up new widows and widowers faced with the other inevitable funeral costs.

            Oddly enough, I have had some direct experience here.   It must have been about twelve years ago that an occasional attender at our Clacton Quaker Meeting who, like me, had been a POW in Germany during Word War II, asked me if I would officiate at his funeral service when the time came.  No – he didn’t want a Quaker funeral, but he would like me to take it.  I didn’t feel that it was the kind of request that I could refuse, though I didn’t take my promise all that seriously.  There was no certainty that he would predecease me – and in any case, it would be his relatives who would decide on the form that the funeral would take.

            However, eighteen months later I had a phone call from a local funeral director. He had died and his desire that I should officiate at the funeral had been included in the will.  I was given the name and address of his son and daughter-in-law, and I went to see them.  Yes, they would like me to officiate at the cremation.  No, they didn’t want a Quaker funeral.  They didn’t want long Quaker silences.  No, none of the relatives wanted to speak at the funeral, though they were happy enough to tell me all about the deceased. No, they didn’t want any hymns.   

            A crematorium funeral service lasts only 20 minutes but that can seem quite a long while when it has to be filled with talk and prayer!  I managed it, including a reading of the 23^rd Psalm and Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar, in which the poet compares dying with passing through the turbulent water at a harbour’s outlet. I pressed the button that brings curtains round the bier as I asked for a blessing on us all at the end of the service.  My ordeal was over and the relatives were pleased.

            They were even more pleased when I waived the £80 that the Funeral Director told me was ‘the usual fee’.  £80 for twenty minutes work, perhaps an hour and a half in all if my preparation was taken into consideration!   Still pretty good payment – but I wouldn’t have accepted any payment.  Quite apart from the fact that to do so would have been considered unquakerly, I felt that I had simply been fulfilling a promise made to a former comrade; a straightforward not-all-that-difficult task dictated by friendship.

            If the ceremony had taken place in a church that had to be maintained, kept clean at all times, and warm when required, it would, I suppose, have been reasonable to make a small charge for the use of the premises, but £160? – hardly.  Once again Fr Richard Tillbrook of Colchester’s St Barnabas’ Church is sticking to the old fee of £105 for a funeral – and I think that he is right.

             Unjustifiable charges play into the hands of the National Secular Society and others who would like to separate religion from every aspect of what they regard as ‘real life’.

 Some thoughts on Taxation

          Did you notice the story last week about Civil Servants whose salary was being paid into a limited company to reduce their tax liability?  There was a tremendous fuss about whether or not they really were civil servants – or were they just contractors to the civil service. 

            Whether or not they were civil servants is surely beside the point.  What was to the point was that due to a loop-hole (one of many I fear) in the law, the Inland Revenue was deprived of tax to which it would otherwise have been entitled and which the rest of us will now have to pay.  The exact employment status of those concerned should not have mattered in the least.

            It is tax loop-holes of this kind that the government needs to seek out and close with at least the same vigour and enthusiasm that it seeks out Benefit Scroungers,  if it is to persuade even the most gullible that ‘we’re all in this together’.

            Then there was the promise last week by the opposition  that, if they were elected, they would take those with the lowest incomes out of the income tax system altogether because it had been found that extra money in the pockets of those with the lowest incomes tends to be spent, thereby helping Britain’s economic recovery.  Extra money in the pockets of better off people tends to be saved – however wise that may be personally it isn’t going to speed national recovery.

            I understand that argument but, though raising the level of income tax liability would certainly be to my advantage, I don’t think that it is the right way to achieve that objective.  I believe that we need to reverse the transfer of direct taxation (income tax, death duties, national insurance and so on) to indirect taxation such as VAT and customs duties on alcohol, petrol and diesel fuel.  This was initiated during the governments (I nearly said the reign!) of Mrs Thatcher and continued enthusiastically during those of Tony Blair.

            VAT is paid by rich and poor alike (‘we are all in this together’) but it is a much larger proportion of the total income of the poor.  Its imposition and removal therefore affects the poor more than the rich.   Reducing the cost of goods by cutting VAT would make it possible for the poor to buy goods that would otherwise have been beyond their reach – and help economic recovery.

            I have personally had an example of that during the past few weeks.  I have recently self-published part of my autobiography as a 65 x A5 page booklet entitled ‘Zittau….and I’, relating to my association with that small German town both during World War II and more recently.  I had 250 copies printed to give to friends, family and anyone who may be interested.  Printing work of this kind is not subject to VAT – so I was able, within my means, to have the work done and thus help keep the printing firm functioning.  Had the work been subject to VAT I couldn’t have afforded it, and probably many of the firm’s other customers wouldn’t have been able to either.

            As for income tax – well, it is the one tax that could be levied on all of us according to our ability to pay it.  Properly graded, so that we all paid a similar proportion of our incomes, it could make sure that we really were all in this together.

           

I believe that even the poorest should pay a small amount in income tax.  They too could then claim to be tax payers and free themselves of the jibe that others have to pay for public services that they enjoy.  Those – like me – who are a little better off should pay a larger amount but the same proportion of our income in taxation and so on, with the very wealthy paying a much larger amount, but the same proportion of their incomes.  It seems blindingly obvious to me that that is the path towards fairness and the creation of a true Common Wealth.

            I should add that I don’t think that there is the least possibility of the present, or any currently-possible alternative government, pursuing that path in the foreseeable future!

Provoking ‘The Wrath of God’

          It is becoming more and more certain that NATO’s adventure in Afghanistan will end in the same way as the two British incursions into that country in the 19^th century and the Soviet one in the 20^th century - in humiliating departure.  I have little doubt that within months of the final withdrawal of our forces, Afghanistan will be ruled by an extreme Islamist clique, its schools (except of course those indoctrinating boys in the most extreme Muslim traditions) will be closed and its women and girls again reduced to the status of ‘goods and chattels’. There will have been a massacre of those Afghans who co-operated with the ‘Western Infidels’ and were foolish enough to imagine that we would protect them.

            This opinion has been reinforced by recent events.  A population that supported, or meekly endured without protest, the outrages of the Taliban was raised to hysterical fury by the accidental burning of some copies of the Koran by American troops.  There have been days of frenzied rioting and hate-demonstrations against NATO and ‘western values’ generally, culminating in the murder of top American Army Officers in what should have been the most secure compound in the most secure city in Afghanistan.  The murders are believed to have been committed by interpreters or other Afghans trusted as being ‘on our side’.  We may succeed in training Afghans in the use of modern weapons and in the skills of modern warfare – but we can’t dictate against whom those skills and weapons will be used!

            How extraordinary that all the violence and killing has been done in the name of God.  The God in whom I believe knows very well that books, however significant and sacred may be the words that they contain, are made by human hands and, when destroyed, can easily be replaced with identical copies.  Every single one of our fellow humans, on the other hand, is (as our Quaker Advices and Queries assert) unique and a child of God, created by God in his own image and irreplaceable.  My God, learning that sacred books dedicated to his worship and service had been destroyed, would metaphorically shrug his shoulders and say, ‘My servants will make many more to replace them’.  I believe though that nothing would be more likely to arouse his anger than learning that someone had killed even a single fellow human, one of his children, and had claimed to have done so in his name

           

           

           

            

Week 8 2012 23.2.2012

Tendring Topics.....on Line

Where are we going?

          Did you know that we are all to be invited to take part in an election in November of this year?   It is to decide who, in the future, is to appoint Chief Constables and to have strategic control of the UK’s Police Force in our area.  I have to confess that I had only the vaguest idea of who exercises this control at the present time.  I did know that a relatively small proportion of our Council Tax payments is earmarked for the ‘Police Authority’ and, as Police Authority boundaries generally coincide with those of the county, I thought that the Police Authority must be something to do with the County Council.

            In fact, Police Authorities are quite separate organisations.  Typically they have seventeen members, nine of whom are nominees of the County and District Councils in their area and eight are ‘independent’ councillors, nominated by the Police Authority itself.  Of the independent councillors at least three must be Justices of the Peace.  I don’t think that anyone would claim that an organisation of which almost half its members are self-appointed could claim to be ‘democratic’.    Alternatives might be for all the members to be directly elected in the same way as councillors, or perhaps for them to be nominated by the county and district councils in the Police Area. Justices of the Peace in the area might be invited to elect their own three representatives on the Police Committee.

             Those however are not the choices that we shall be invited to make in November. The Government, which has abolished ‘committee control’ of local government and now requires local councils to have all-powerful elected Mayors (the preferred option) or ‘cabinet control’ by a small majority party clique, as in the central government in Westminster, is introducing an even more dictatorial system of control for Police Authorities.  Police Authorities will be abolished and replaced by an elected full-time Police Commissioner for each area who will appoint the Chief Constable, allocate funding, and decide on strategic police policy.  Candidates for these posts will not be required to have any previous police experience and political parties will probably put their own candidates forward.  I understand that the only party so far to have selected a candidate is UKIP – though I have just learned that Lord Prescott (former Deputy Prime Minister) hopes to be Labour’s candidate for South Humberside.  Oh yes – there is one requirement.  Each candidate will be required to find a £5,000 deposit to be forfeited if he or she doesn’t achieve a certain proportion of the total vote.

             The new idea may be more efficient than the present arrangement.  It may be less expensive – though that I doubt.  It will certainly be easier for central government to persuade one man (or woman) rather than a committee to toe the government line. It won’t be more democratic.  And all of this from a government that says it is promoting localism and power to the people! 

            Directly elected all-powerful Mayors! Directly elected all-powerful Police Commissioners!  Where are we going? Perhaps we should have a directly elected all-powerful Prime Minister.  He could be given a new title – National Leader perhaps?  I am old enough to remember that something of the sort was tried in mainland Europe during the last century – in Germany, Italy, Spain and the Soviet Union!

‘One Nation’ Conservatism?

          A few years ago I was amused when one Conservative MP told us proudly that to him ‘One Nation Conservatism’ meant keeping England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as one United Kingdom.  That isn’t its meaning of course.  It derives from a novel written by Benjamin Disraeli, the founder of the modern Conservative Party entitled Sybil or The Two Nations. In it he claimed that early Victorian Britain was not one nation but two – the rich and the poor; possibly not a message that today’s Conservatives want to hear.

            It is a novel remarkable for its realistic description of the living conditions of  working class people in England at that time; a description remarkably similar to that of Frederick Engels who, with Karl Marx, was a founder of the Communist Party, in his ‘Condition of the Working Classes in England in 1844’. The two books were published in the same year – 1845.

            I think it likely that David Cameron, despite his old Etonian background and his millionaire-packed government, would claim to be a ‘One Nation Conservative’.  He genuinely believes that he speaks and acts for the welfare of the whole population of the UK, rich and poor alike.  Of the current financial crisis he claims ‘We’re all in this together’.

 That is something that many would question.    I don’t think though that anyone would doubt his devotion to that other, incorrect, meaning of One Nation Conservatism.   He made clear in his recent speech in Scotland which he had visited to have face-to-face talks with Scotland’s First Minister and Leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party Alex Salmond that he would do his utmost to maintain the union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, even though Scottish independence would be to his own political party’s advantage in England.  Unable to prevent a referendum on Scottish independence (after all, he does claim to believe in local autonomy) he is determined to achieve a resounding ‘No’ vote when it takes place.     

Did the public speech that David Cameron made on that occasion further or hinder his cause?   The first part of his speech could well have come directly from the Scottish tourist office, listing the illustrious Scots who have played a part in shaping Britain’s destiny. This was followed by an exposition of the reasons why he believed the Scots should reject independence. Most of these (a United Kingdom can play a larger part on the international stage than a fractured one, for instance) are also good reasons for our becoming an active member of a more closely integrated Europe!  There was as well, a promise and a not-all-that-veiled threat.   After the referendum had taken place he (no word about Parliament being in any way involved!) would consider the possibility of transferring other powers to the Scottish parliament and government that are currently held by Westminster.   That would, of course, depend upon there being a clear ‘No’ vote to Scottish Independence in the referendum.

            I don’t know how the Scots may have reacted to all that.  I do know, as an East Anglian, that if a Politician from elsewhere in the UK visited us to make a speech telling us what a wonderful contribution to British history had been made by, for instance. Hereward the Wake, Fr. John Ball,  Cardinal Wolsey, Lord Nelson, Mother Julian of Norwich, Elizabeth Fry and Edith Cavell, I would have thought he was being patronising and trying to teach his grandmother how to suck eggs!  Had that politician been David Cameron I would have been amazed that someone who had imagined, even momentarily, that in 1940 Britain had been a junior partner to the USA in the struggle against Nazism, could have had the effrontery to deliver a homily on British history to anyone at all!

            As for the threat (or possibly ‘promise’), nobody with any sense believes politicians promises and my admittedly limited knowledge of Scotland and its inhabitants suggests to me that the Scots don’t take kindly to threats. 

            If I were a resident of Scotland I would unquestionably vote YES in the forthcoming referendum on Scottish Independence.  I would certainly have much more confidence in Alex Salmon’s Scottish Nationalist government in Scotland than in David Cameron’s coalition.  They have been more successful too.  Despite Glasgow’s one-time reputation for violent gangs, there were no summer riots ‘north of the border’, and I think that, given independence, the Scots would get rid of that nuclear submarine base within their territorial waters.

            However as a resident in England (I’m too old to emigrate northwards and I don’t really think I’d care for the climate!) I have mixed feelings.  I certainly wish our Scottish neighbours and their government well – but I fear that, as David Cameron predicted, independence for Scotland would be to his party’s advantage in England.  It really wouldn’t make much difference to me.  I can hardly expect to live to see anything different.  I would be sorry though to think of my sons and grandchildren condemned to years – perhaps decades – of Europhobic ‘market obsessed’ governments with the gap between rich and poor becoming ever wider, wider….and wider still!   

‘Essex Works’ – so they claim!

            Since falling in a hotel bath on Boxing Day and having to summon help, I have been rather more conscious of ‘health and safety’ than in the past.  I am ninety, I do live alone and I am vulnerable!   I make sure that I always have my Tendring Helpline pendant and my mobile phone within reach while I am having my morning shower.  I never venture out of the house without my walking stick and mobile phone.  I have been looking round my bungalow for potential danger spots.

            One possible hazard that I have identified is just outside my front door.  There is a fairly deep step down to the concrete path.  Several years ago a kind neighbour made a wooden ramp with a non-slip surface to make it possible for me to push my wife in her wheel-chair in and out of the bungalow.  Since her sad death, now nearly six years ago, I have retained it.  I may one day need to get my mobility scooter in and out of the bungalow in the same way!   In the meantime I do find the easy slope of the ramp rather easier than using the step.

 However I realize that I am in my greatest danger of falling as I step down that ramp. I always have my stick and I descend very slowly and carefully.   There is no doubt though that I’d be much safer and more secure if I had a hand-rail to clutch as I come in or go out. 

The observant viewer will note a ‘key safe’ fixed to the wall to the right of the door. It affords the local police means of entry in an emergency.

This, I thought, is where Essex County Council’s Social Services Department will be able to help.  Promoting safety in the homes of old people living alone as I do must undoubtedly be one of the activities to which the County Council is referring in the  claim on all its printed material that Essex Works!  I surely had only to give them a ring and an expert would visit, assess my need, and arrange for a hand-rail to be fitted.  While he or she was with me I’d ask them to look round and let me know if they could see any other potential hazard that I might have missed.

            It hasn’t worked out quite as simply as I had imagined.  First came the problem of contacting the Social Services Department. One morning four weeks ago I dialled the number. Very promptly a mechanical voice told me that my call might be recorded for training purposes and that I’d be put through to one of their trained staff as soon as one became available.  Then, I waited – and waited – and waited. Eventually, it was at my second attempt on the following day, a human voice rewarded my patience.

            I explained my situation to a helpful lady who told me that before I could be helped I would need to be ‘assessed’ and that part of that assessment would, with my agreement, take place there and then by phone.   Why not?   She asked me my full name, address and email address and my date of birth – 18 May, 1921. At that she became more solicitous.  Was I able to get up unaided, wash, shave and shower and dress myself?  Feed myself?  Could I prepare my own meals? Could I do my own shopping, house cleaning and gardening (I already arrange outside help for the last two of these)?  Could I, perhaps with a washing machine, do my own laundry?  As I gave affirmative answers I could almost hear any priority that my age might have afforded, disappearing into the distance.  I was asked if I minded the information I had given being shared with other departments. ‘Not in the least’ I replied.  I would be hearing from them, I was assured, within the next few days.

            And so I did.   I received a communication telling me that I would be told the time and date of my on-the-spot assessment ‘shortly’. That was over a fortnight ago and I haven’t heard yet.  Enquiries suggest that there are three stages still to come; the on-the-spot assessment, delivery of any equipment agreed at the time of the assessment, installation of the equipment.

            It seems quite possible that, at some time or other, I’ll be able to confirm from experience that Essex Works – though not at a breakneck speed!    

           

           

Week 7 2012 16.2.2012

Tendring Topics....on Line

The Thirteenth of February

           Tuesday of this week (13^th February) was the 67^th anniversary of an event has played a major role in moulding the political and ethical attitudes that motivate me in the weekly production of Tendring Topics….on line.

  Regular readers of this blog will know that I spent the final eighteen months of World War II at a working ‘camp’ of thirty ‘other rank’ British POWs in the small East German town of Zittau, at the point where the frontiers of Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland now coincide.  By February 1945 no-one in Zittau, not ourselves, not our guards, not the conscripted foreign civilian workers, nor the German civilians with whom we were in daily contact, had any doubt that Germany had been defeated and that the war would be over within weeks.  The failure of the Christmas offensive (‘the Battle of the Bulge’) in the Ardennes had ended any hope of a German victory or of a face-saving negotiated peace.  The RAF and American Air Forces ruled in the skies, the news from the Western Front was uniformly bad and in Zittau the sound of gunfire from the east had grown from a distant murmur to an ever-deepening roar as the Soviet Army advanced inexorably through Poland into Germany itself.

Throughout that bitter winter the flow of refugees westward through Zittau  grew from a trickle to a steady stream.   There were old men (the young and middle-aged ones had long since been called up), women and little children.   There were British and allied prisoners of war, still under guard, and conscripted foreign workers mainly from Russia and the Ukraine.  There were defeated units of Germany’s allies – Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians, renegade Cossacks.  Some were in ancient lorries fuelled by Holzgas  (a flammable gas produced from smouldering wood chips). Some had wagons drawn by oxen.  All the fit horses had been commandeered by the Wehrmacht.  Many trudged through the snow with all their worldly goods piled onto small handcarts. As the thunder of battle drew closer, folk from Zittau joined them.

A fellow-prisoner and I, with our German guard, returned to Kurt Kramer’s wholesale grocer’s premises in Zittau’s Neustadt Square, from delivering  groceries to local retailers, to find that a young woman refugee from Silesia had climbed to Kramer’s top storey and, in despair, thrown herself to her death on the  cobbles of their yard.

The refugees were heading for Dresden, sixty or seventy miles west of Zittau, where they would be sorted out and distributed to the rapidly diminishing areas of Germany that were still relatively safe.  As the second week of February drew to its end, Dresden was packed with them.

Dresden's Lutheran 'Cathedral'. Almost totally destroyed in the bombing raids of February 1945 but now lovingly restored to its former glory.

It was then that the Western Allies struck. On the night of the 13^th February wave after wave of RAF bombers rained fire and destruction on the capital of Saxony, a beautiful historic city crammed with refugees.  Thousands of incendiary bombs created devastating firestorms from which there was no escape. Zittau’s inhabitants saw the westward sky blood-red from the inferno.  With dawn the RAF withdrew and bombers of the US Air Force took their place. Estimates of the dead range from a conservative 30,000 to as many as 100,000.  Among them must have been many of Britain's and America's allies.

I have heard all the explanations and all the excuses.  I remain convinced though that those raids, slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians at a time when the war was all but over, was a war crime and a crime against humanity.  It was not, of course, on the same scale as the Holocaust or other crimes committed by Nazi Germany – but would we really wish to make such a comparison our excuse?

My memory of the cruel slaughter of the innocents in Dresden changed my whole outlook on life and was a major factor in the decision of my wife and I in 1948 to turn our backs on violence, whatever the provocation, and to join the peaceful Quakers.  

‘Full of sound and fury!’*

            ‘Fury’ is a word much overused in the press.  There is ‘fury in the city’ over the suggestion that heads of huge business corporations might be overpaid, ‘fury’ in the House of Commons at the obstinate refusal of the Bishops in the House of Lords to rubber-stamp their plans to penalise the poor, ‘fury’ almost every day in the Daily Mail about ‘benefit scroungers’ being subsidised by hard working Daily Mail readers.

  I try not to get furious too often.  I am sure that at my age it is bad for me. Just occasionally though I read in the press, or hear on radio or tv something that brings me very close to it!  Such a moment occurred this morning (10^th Feb.), making me choke over my boiled egg and toast as I watched a review of the daily press on the BBC’s tv Breakfast programme. A newspaper sympathetic to the government carried a headline telling us that one of David Cameron’s closest advisors (that usually indicates that the government is giving some thought to the matter) suggests that old people should carry on working longer and should downsize their homes. 

Why on earth, the advisor no doubt thinks, should an ancient widower like Ernest Hall, who is no longer a viable ‘human resource unit’ and whose children have long since left home, continue to live in comfort in a three bedroomed bungalow?  ‘A one-bedroomed flat would be ample and much more appropriate for his needs. At ninety he’s probably too old for most paid work but possibly he could take up some profit-making hobby, knitting or basket-making perhaps, that could help to prevent his being quite such a burden on the state’.

              What is the point of urging old people, well past their prime, to carry on working when there are tens of thousands of young, fit and active people looking in vain for jobs?  The government (well, I suppose that one can’t expect too much from a group that probably holds the biggest concentration of millionaires in the UK!) seems to persist in the delusion that unemployment is mostly, if not entirely, the fault of the unemployed.  Government efforts to reduce unemployment concentrate on making young people ‘employable’ – how to prepare a CV, how to write a winning job application, how to prepare and conduct themselves during an interview!  All that would be fine if there were jobs for which people could apply and be interviewed but, thanks largely to the government’s own policies, there aren’t. Perhaps we’ll finish up with having the best-qualified army of unemployed in Europe!

We learn that only one in five of ‘graduates’ from the government’s much-vaunted training schemes obtains a job within a year. That is about right, bearing in mind that nationwide there are at least half a dozen applicants for every job vacancy! 

           

As for the accommodation down-sizing - when the palaces, stately homes, desirable residences and second (and third) homes of the wealthy have been occupied to capacity by the homeless, I’ll think about the future of the modest bungalow that my wife and I bought with our blood, sweat, toil and tears in the 1950s,  '60s and '70s; the home in which, five and a half years ago, my wife’s life came to an end, and in which I hope  mine will come to an end too too!  I don’t think I’ll need to be consulting an estate agent just yet!

            Yes – it does make me furious to think that instead of the better, fairer and more peaceful future for which my generation thought we were fighting in World War II we find ourselves in a grubby and materialistic world of sleaze and corruption, of bankers bonuses and of a press controlled by non-tax-paying cosmopolitan billionaires owing loyalty to no-one but themselves; a world of wealth and privilege for a small minority and homelessness, hopelessness, poverty and enforced idleness for the many.

            I can only hope and pray that this triumph of Mammon is temporary and that goodness, justice and peace will ultimately triumph – though I no longer have any hope of seeing even the beginning of the beginning of that victory.

*From Macbeth again and perhaps particularly appropriate to politics today ‘A tale told by an idiot, full of sound  and fury, signifying nothing’

Toward a Godless Britain?

          It seems likely that the prohibition resulting from a court case, of official prayers at the beginning of local Council Meetings will be short-lived.  Providentially, the Government’s shortly to be enacted Localism Bill will restore the right of local authorities to begin, as Parliament does, with a short period of prayer if their members wish it.

            What disturbs me about this matter is the implication of the National Secular Society, which I haven’t heard effectively refuted, that religion is a private matter having nothing to do with local or national politics, that should be practised only by consenting adults in a church or other special building intended for that purpose.  As a committed Quaker and a communicant member of the Church of England, I believe the exact opposite to be true.  Our religion should inform and guide our every thought and action.

            George Bernard Shaw, no great lover of the Church, said that our faith does not consist of the things that we think we believe, but of the assumptions on which we habitually act.   Jesus said that those who heard his words and acted upon them were like the man who built his house upon a firm foundation. We may indeed hear the word of God in Church, Meeting House, Mosque, Temple or Synagogue but we act in our daily lives. St. Theresa pointed out that, ‘In this world God has no hands but ours to do his work, no feet but ours to run his errands’.

Certainly, before beginning their Council business, Christian councillors should pray that they may be guided to speak and vote in accordance with God’s will.  As an Anglican I am happy for that prayer to be formal and vocal. As a Quaker I’d be equally happy for there to be a few minutes silence at the beginning of each council meeting to be used for silent prayer by those who wish to do so.  Even committed atheists might find a few minutes of quiet reflection helpful before the business of the meeting begins.

            The National Secular Society has the impertinence to consider that it speaks for the majority of Britons.  I am quite sure that it does nothing of the sort.  It will surprise me if the recent census doesn’t reveal that in the UK a comfortable majority of the adult population do have a religious faith and that the Christian faith is the one with the greatest number of adherents.  I am personally acquainted with dozens of committed Christians – Anglicans, Quakers, Roman Catholics, Methodists and United Reformed Churchmen.   I don’t know a single member of the National Secular Society.  Do you?

             I know, none better, that Christians have done some appalling things to each other and to other people in times past.  But I also know that it has been Christians ‘dabbling in politics’ who have pioneered every worthwhile reform that has taken place in this country during the past fifteen hundred years*.  Christians, from King Alfred the Great onwards, have pioneered education for the masses, have cared for the poor and provided shelter for the homeless.  It was a Christian priest, John Ball of Colchester, who preached that When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’ He went on to become a leader of the medieval peasants’ revolt, and paid for his egalitarianism with his life.   Christians led the campaigns against the slave trade and against the exploitation of men, women and children in the ‘dark, satanic mills’ of England’s industrial revolution.  Christians pioneered prison reform and the provision of social housing and medical care for all.  Christian Bishops in the House of Lords today, lead the opposition to the penalisation of the poor and disadvantaged to help solve national financial problems created by wealthy, but greedy and incompetent, bankers.  Christian charities such as Christian Aid, Cafod and Quaker Peace and Service help people of every race, creed and colour world-wide.  

            Yet the National Secular Society would like to see Christian – and no doubt every other form of worship – confined to special buildings serving dwindling congregations and having no connection with their ‘real’ world!   We must not let them succeed.

*  It could be argued that Christian concern about material matters has a much earlier beginning. The triumphal prayer of Mary, when she knew she was to be the mother of Jesus, contains a note of distinctly radical and very practical politics: ‘He hath showed strength with his arm.  He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.  He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty away’.  Isn't that just what is needed today?

            

Week 6 2012 9.2.2012

Tendring Topics........on line

 ‘Do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you’

            St. Matthew records in his Gospel that Jesus declared that single commandment summed up the whole of the moral teaching of the Old Testament.  I hope that I am not being too heretical in saying that I wish he had gone on to state the corollary, ‘Do not do anything to other people that you would hate them to do to you’.  Perhaps Jesus did say that too but it seemed too obvious to need recording.   It clearly needed to be said though, because Christians have flagrantly ignored it through the centuries.

            It could be argued that do not is even more important than the positive do. The things we like vary widely.  George Bernard Shaw wrote in his Maxims for Revolutionaries that we should not do to others what we would like for ourselves. Their tastes may be different.  I think though, that even Shaw would agree that while we may like many different things, there are dislikes that are shared by us all.  I am quite sure that every single one of us would hate the idea of being tortured or burnt to death.  We all would hate to be brought to a violent death, to be enslaved, starved, rendered homeless, or separated from those we love.

            Yet, as Lord Byron pointed out; ‘Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded that all the apostles would have done as they did’ and Thomas Hardy wrote in his poem Christmas 1924 ‘After two thousand years of mass, we’ve got as far as poison gas’.

            These thoughts came to me when I heard Barak Obama, an international leader whom I had greatly admired, defending the use of unmanned drones to find and kill in Pakistan individuals whom the CIA has decided are members of Al Quaida or some other similar terrorist organisation.   The killing of these people, he said, was justified because they were a threat to the people of the USA.  They were carefully targeted and ‘very few’ innocent civilians were accidentally killed at the same time!

            It isn’t so very long ago that convicted, not just suspected, IRA murderers could find sanctuary from British justice in the USA.  American courts refused to return them to Britain for trial and/or punishment. They were a threat to the people of the United Kingdom. What, I wonder, would have been the American reaction had British MI5 agents in the USA sought them out and assassinated them – even if they managed to do so without harming a single innocent civilian?

            Assassination, without even the semblance of a trial, is abhorrent whether carried out by Al Quaida, by Mossad, the CIA or MI5.  In human society there can be no licence to kill

Do not do to other people what you would hate being done to yourself!

 ‘In the bleak midwinter’

  

The sudden change in the weather from milder-than-normal to sub-arctic has come as an unpleasant surprise.  Old people like me are warned to wrap up well and to keep at least one room in our homes warm at all times. I am very sorry for the increasing number of people, not necessarily all old, who have to decide whether to heat or eat.  It was a choice that the unseasonably warm autumn and early winter had led us all to imagine no-one would have to make this winter.

            My mind goes back to cold winters of the past, to the winter of 1962/1963 when the sea froze over.  I was a Public Health Inspector at the time and took these two photographs near Clacton Pier.  It was a bitter winter and a cold spring.  I remember the cemetery staff complaining that when they dug graves, the frost followed them down, freezing the soil beneath their feet as they worked!

We were dressed for the Libyan Winter! No 4 Gun of B Troop, 231^st Medium Battery RA at Wadi Halfaya (Hellfire Pass) on the Egyptian Libyan border, early January 1942.  I am the one on the right – with a woolly hat!

           

                During World War II I spent one winter in the Egyptian/Libyan frontier region, one in a PoW Camp in northern Italy and two in a small working camp (Arbeitskommando) in Germany.  In North Africa it could be bitterly cold when the north wind blew in from the sea.  Some South African troops experienced snow for the first time – a light dusting over the surface of the desert that disappeared as the sun rose.

            The winter in a prison camp in Italy is one that I would prefer to forget.  We were housed in unheated jerry-built huts, wearing totally inadequate Italian army uniforms (most of us had been wearing just shorts and shirt when captured) in which we tried to sleep, pulling our overcoats and two thin blankets over our heads to try to conserve what little warmth we had.  We were permanently hungry, louse infested and bored out of our minds.  Every day in winter we shivered on parade while Italian guards counted us – often miscounting and having to start again from the beginning.  As a result I can still count in Italian uno, due, tre, quarto, cinque and so on as quickly as I can count in English!  There were between 2,000 and 3,000 of us in the camp and deaths from cold-and-starvation related conditions were a daily occurrence.                                                                             

Zittau Rathaus (Town Hall).

One of my more back-aching jobs was to carry filled sandbags to the roof of the town hall as a fire precaution!

My memories of the two winters in Zittau, eastern Germany are far less negative.  We were wearing British army uniform and greatcoats (presumably supplied by the Red Cross) as our louse-infested Italian uniforms had been burnt on arrival.  I was in a small working ‘camp’ (Arbeitskommando) of just 30 British PoWs.  Our living quarters were palatial compared with those in Italy.  We had a separate living room and dormitory with double glazed (as well as barred!) windows.  There was a tortoise stove in the bedroom and a solid fuel cooker in the living room.   We were very often unloading coal trucks on the local railway sidings – so we were never short of fuel, even if it was only inferior lignite (‘brown coal’) briquettes! We were never cold.  Working every day (with just one ‘rest day’ in three weeks) we had no time to be bored and, from mid-winter 1944/1945 we could hear the gradually increasing thunder of artillery fire as the Soviet Army advanced inexorably across Poland and into Germany, and a constant stream of refugees from the battle front trudged wearily westward through the snow-covered streets of Zittau.   Our time of captivity was hastening to an end.

           

A New Danish Invasion!

            If any one had told me a year ago that I would get hooked on a tv serial in a foreign language about high level politics in a foreign country, with dialogue subtitled in English as in the silent movies, I would have thought that they were crazy.  Goodness knows I find news reports  of English party-political point scoring tedious enough! I can though at least understand what it is all about. Political manoeuvres in a foreign land and in a foreign language would surely be much worse.

            Yet I have just watched the tenth and final hour-long episode of Borgen, a Danish political drama on BBC 4 tv, with real regret that it had come to an end.  It was the third Danish tv drama with English-subtitles that BBC 4 had given us.  The first two were detective thrillers, both with the unpromising title of The Killing, featuring the unsmiling but strangely magnetic police detective Sarah Lundt.  I thought that the first, in which we were taken into the ‘real life’ of the family of the teenage murder victim, was the better of the two. I know that they were ‘only actors’ but it was difficult to believe that the grief, sorrow and anger of her parents and younger brothers were not real!  Surprisingly, the strong intertwined sub-plot, about the election of Copenhagen’s Mayor, was equally gripping.

            Borgen was quite different.  It followed the fortunes of Birgitte Christensen, fortyish, married, mother of two, and leader of one of Denmark’s political parties. Very likeable, she was clearly highly principled – sacking her Public Relations Consultant for unfairly discrediting the then Prime Minister, one of her political opponents. 

            As a result of political manoeuvring she found herself Prime Minister of a coalition government of a number of political parties.  At first we saw her clearly ‘on the side of the angels’.  She stopped the use of a Greenland air base by United States planes engaged in the ‘rendition’ of political prisoners, thereby  incurring the wrath of the White House and the cancellation  of a Presidential visit to Denmark.   She called the bluff of a Danish millionaire newspaper magnate who threatened to leave the country if she persisted with legislation promoting women's rights.   She secured a contract to supply wind turbines to a former Soviet Republic with an appalling human rights record, outwitting the country’s president who would have liked to have made the deal conditional on the extradition of a dissident refugee who had fled to Denmark.

            Then Birgitta’s halo began to slip. She allowed the use of a recorded remark made by a former friend many years earlier at a drunken party, to justify the bugging by the Danish Secret Service of the office of the political party which that former friend now led. Her friend’s reputation and political career were shattered.  To help cover up the Defence Minister’s corrupt acceptance of gifts and hospitality in connection with the purchase of fighter aircraft, Birgitta persuaded her husband to refuse a very satisfying and lucrative job that he had been offered.   She sacrificed the cabinet post of a trusted colleague and long-standing friend and adviser to keep the coalition government intact – and she agreed to a divorce and abandoned her marriage in the pursuit of her political ambition.  At the end of the final episode we saw her after she had made on tv the most eloquent speech of her career, extolling Danish nationalism and earning the applause even of her victims!   She was Denmark’s undisputed political leader – but she had lost everything that had made her the likeable, principled political leader that she once had been.   'What shall it profit a man (or woman) to gain the whole world and lose his/her soul?'

            I am looking forward to the next tv offering from the land of the Vikings!

             

           

           

.

            

Week 5 2012 2.02.2012

Tendring Topics.........on Line

A Matter of Priorities

            Our Tendring District undoubtedly has its problems.  We have, so it is said, fewer graduates and fewer folk with other qualifications than any other district in Essex.  Our town centre shops are threatened with closure. Our unemployment rate, especially youth unemployment, is well above the national average – and rising! We have had four (or was it five?) murders during the past twelve months and a number of scarcely less serious incidents of knife crime. There are potholes in our roads, and our pavements, away from the town centres, are broken, uneven and positively dangerous.  Oh yes – and there’s Brooklands Estate, Jaywick, Britain’s most deprived neighbourhood, still demanding urgent attention..

            It isn’t one – or even all – of these problems though that has brought unanimity to the often-divided Tendring District Council.  It’s the fact that they have been ‘snubbed’ by Whitehall in that the Olympic Torch, on its tortuous progress from its home in Greece to the Olympic Stadium at Stratford, isn’t going to cross the Tendring District’s hallowed soil. The Clacton Gazette records that The decision to leave the district out was unanimously condemned by councillors who tried desperately to make Olympic bosses change their minds. 

            A petition and pleading letters had been sent to Lord Coe, to the Prime Minister,  and to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.  They had even suggested ways in which, with just a little deviation, the Olympic Torch could be brought through part of Tendring – but answer came there none!   ‘It was’, said Councillor Stephen Mayzes rather petulantly ‘very disappointing and I think just plain rude’.   

            Blog readers will remember Councillor Mayzes. It was he who, as Tendring Council’s Tourism Supremo, tried to prevent one of Europe’s most prestigious leisure organisations (the Camping and Caravanning Club of Great Britain) from holding a rally, during the school holidays, on the playing field of the Coastal Academy!  He also decided that the Holiday Coast’s summer season ended on 31^st August and saved the taxpayers a few pounds by withdrawing the beach patrols and closing the Tourist Information Offices.  You will recall that we experienced an Indian summer, with hundreds of visitors at the end of September and into October!

            Not a man to admit defeat, Councillor Mayzes is now organising his own event, in which he hopes teams from local schools and athletics clubs will carry an imitation ‘Olympic Torch’ in a relay round the Tendring District.  ‘We will create our own torch and a route round Tendring.  I want to get all of our schools and athletes involved, and I think it could really get people excited about the Olympics and our local talents’.

            Who knows?  It might take off.  It won’t achieve anything though, except perhaps soothe hurt feelings in the Weeley Council Chamber. I think it’ll also make the council look petty and small-minded, or perhaps just plain bonkers!   It certainly won’t do anything to solve any of the very real problems with which Tendring Council is faced.

 ‘Be bloody, bold and resolute!’*

            Oh dear – it’s supposed to be unlucky to quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth!  Those words of advice to Macbeth  from the three witches describe pretty well though our Prime Minister David Cameron’s advice to the world’s financial experts at Davos, particularly those of the EU and the Eurozone.  They have to be bold and take urgent drastic steps to escape financial disaster.

            Certainly David Cameron was following his own advice.   It was only the day before that he had learned that growth in Britain’s economy was even lower than the already low figure that had been predicted, that unemployment – particularly youth unemployment - in Britain had reached its highest level for decades, and that the National Debt, the reduction of which had been the principal objective of his government, had risen to an unprecedented one trillion pounds! (It's a good job my laptop possesses a 'spell-check'. I have never before had occasion to type 'trillion'!)  It must have taken real courage - the uncharitable might say ‘arrogance’- after that, to fly to Switzerland and lecture other governments about how to handle their financial affairs.

            A couple of days earlier I had listened on Radio 4 to a BBC correspondent in Sweden, a country that resembles our own in many ways.  It is geographically on the edge of Europe. It is a constitutional monarchy. It is a member of the European Union but, like us, is not within the Eurozone.  It has however the great disadvantage of having a far more extreme climate than ours and, in particular, a much darker and colder winter season.

            Yet Sweden seems to have been virtually unaffected by the European financial crisis.  There have been no cuts in public services or in benefit payments to the poor and disabled, no great surge in unemployment and no talk of an uncontrollable financial deficit.  There were no summer riots, no ‘Occupy Movement’ demonstrations in city centres - and no need to heap blame on the previous government or the Eurozone.  From the correspondent’s report I gained an impression of a country at ease with itself.

            There may be all sorts of reasons for this, but here are three that I am sure are among them.   Sweden is a land of high taxation but the tax is levied fairly and, Swedes believe, is used wisely and to everyone’s advantage.  There is no enormous gap between the incomes of the rich and the poor. They‘re not burdened with  a ‘special relationship’ that drags them into illegal and unwinnable wars and results in their having totally useless and vastly expensive nuclear-armed submarines permanently patrolling the world’s oceans.

            I believe that world politicians who would really like to know how best to run their country’s economies could do worse than to investigate the Swedish model.

             *Those who are familiar with Shakespeare’s play will know that that piece of advice from the three witches was followed by Macbeth – and led to disaster.

             

An Awful Example

          A friend of mine once remarked that no-one was ever completely useless.  Even the most unpromising could serve as awful examples, to draw attention to the causes of their plight and to encourage others to avoid them.  I am sure that my friend had in mind elderly human wrecks brought low by alcohol, drug abuse and general dissipation – summarised by Marlene Dietrich in her song in the classic ‘western’, ‘Destry Rides Again’ as, ‘cigareets, and whisky, and wild, wild women’!

            They, of course, are the awful examples at the bottom of the social scale – but there are awful examples of the effects of greed and selfishness at the other end of the social scale too.  In recent years wages and benefits have fallen behind inflation (have declined in value) while the profits, salaries and bonuses of the wealthy have increased in leaps and bounds.   Those of us who have protested about this and sought to change it have been in a minority – though a growing one.  Now, thanks to the well publicised awful example of the top officials and senior board members of the Banks, that minority has become a very vocal and increasingly influential majority.

            It was neither the Eurozone nor the last Labour Government that created the current financial crisis (though the New-Labour Government didn’t take the steps that might have prevented it) but the greed and incompetence of the Bankers.  That is not my judgement; I am not competent to make one, but that of the Governor of the Bank of England who is surely in a position to know.

            Now it is the bankers, not necessarily the ones who caused the crisis but others with the same ethos, who are receiving (I can’t bring myself to say earning!)  million-pounds-a-year-plus salaries and who are claiming even more enormous bonuses.  It is as though they draw their enormous salaries just for turning up at their offices fairly regularly but expect a bonus for actually doing the job to the best of their ability!

            I remember, in 1938 when I was a junior clerk (office boy really!) in Ipswich Corporation’s Public Health Department, hesitatingly telling the Medical Officer of Health after some minor blunder that, ‘I did my best, sir’.  Glaring at me he announced ‘I am not interested in your best Hall. I want the best’.   I suppose that had I been a potential successful banker, instead of creeping away wishing that the earth would swallow me, I’d have replied confidently that, ‘in that case sir, I would expect a substantial bonus at the end of the year’.

            Public opinion has, quite rightly, been outraged by the bankers’ attitude.  A public debate on the subject was threatened in the House of Commons.  There’s little doubt that this would have resulted in a cross-party condemnation of the bankers’ greed.  Rather than face that, both the chairman and the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, in which the government representing us taxpayers holds a controlling interest, have returned their million pound bonuses!

            The government says that it has no right to interfere with salary negotiations between banks and other private enterprises, and their employees.  Quite so – but they do have a responsibility for maintaining adequate public services and health and welfare provisions.  These were part of the fairer, more peaceful world for which thousands of us thought we were fighting in World War II and for which we voted in1945, but which we have seen systematically whittled away by successive governments since.

            The government does have the right and the duty to impose taxes upon its citizens to pay for these services, and has a moral duty to impose those taxes fairly upon us all.  The simplest, most straightforward, and fairest way of taxation is by means of an income tax properly graded so that it takes from rich, the poor and the ‘squeezed middle’ about which we hear so much, an equal proportion of their income.  None of us likes paying income tax but it is the only tax that is levied according to our ability to pay it.  No-one has ever starved to death or been rendered homeless or destitute by having to pay income tax.

            To be ‘fair’ (a concept to which the government pays continual lip service!) there needs to be many more income tax bands than the three – standard, higher and highest - that exist at the moment.  The very poor would pay little or none and the very rich might be expected to pay as much as 90 percent (not of their entire income of course, but of income in excess of perhaps a million pounds a year) in tax.  At the same time that the new properly graded system is introduced there would need to be watertight regulations preventing the tax evasion and – currently legal – tax avoidance that at the present time rob the Exchequer of millions of pounds a year.

            Both private firms and public authorities could then have an absolutely free hand in rewarding their senior staff.  We, members of the public would know that the greater part of any really excessive award would be coming back to us either in public services or in the reduction of our own tax burden.

……and an anecdote.

          This was sent me by a blog reader:

          The Chief Executive of a Bank, a Daily Mail reader, and a recipient of social security benefit are seated round a table on which there is a plate with 12 biscuits.

            The Banker pockets eleven of the biscuits and then turns to the Daily Mail reader with a word of warning, ‘You’d better watch out – that scrounger is after your biscuit’.


Postscript - Gallant knights and Noble Lords 


I am shedding no tears and wasting no sympathy over Mr Fred Goodwin's lost knighthood.   I do have a couple of questions though.

Wasn't Fred Goodwin one of the greatest of those great financial geniuses who threaten to depart from Britain   if we dare to increase their tax liability?   What a pity we didn't think of doing that before he took control of the RBS.  Who knows - we might have shaken out a few more very expensive supermen (and superwomen) whom we could well spare.

If Fred Goodwin, who has never been convicted or even suspected of any criminal activity, can so easily be stripped of his knighthood, how is it that the former leader of Essex County Council, a convicted criminal  under further investigation by the police, remains the 'Noble Lord' Hanningfield?