Tendring Topics......on line
Pots and Kettles!
Rarely before can such a relatively
trivial thoughtless action have caused so great a tragedy as that of the two
Australian disc jockeys who successfully phoned through to the hospital ward
where the Duchess of Cornwall was being treated for severe morning
sickness. They clearly did it ‘just for
a laugh’ and with no malicious intent whatsoever. It should have done no more than cause
embarrassment to the hospital (who should have had a professional phone operator
on duty at all times), to the nurse who had actually discussed her royal
patient’s condition to a caller pretending to be the Queen, and – just possibly
– to the Duchess of Cornwall herself.
In fact it resulted in the death of
a well-loved and devoted nurse who was also a wife and mother. She had done
nothing wrong but had tried to help by answering and passing on a phone
call. She died, so we are told, because
she couldn’t endure the ‘shame’ of having received a hoax call and believing the
caller was whom she claimed to be.
My word! During the past year we have seen government
incompetence permit hundreds of illegal immigrants enter the country; appoint a
private security enterprise to ‘police’ the Olympics that was clearly incapable
of fulfilling its obligations; and make a complete botch of handling the West
Coast Line rail franchise – costing tax payers millions of pounds! We have also seen top politicians of both
main parties involved in close personal friendships with the principals of a
news organisation that has been exposed as involved in widespread criminal
activities seriously damaging scores of lives.
Those are just the disasters that have come to my attention!
None of the top politicians
concerned have felt sufficient shame even to resign their office, never
mind take their own lives! As I have
said before in this blog, they simply blame it all on the civil servants, tell
us that ‘lessons have been learned’,
shrug their shoulders and carry on as before. Nurses, whose duties are
certainly as full of responsibility (and some may say are at least as valuable)
as those of politicians, clearly have thinner skins.
I have also found nauseating the
alacrity of the British Press in condemning the Australian radio station and
the two disc jockeys involved in the hoax phone call that had such tragic
consequences. All of this was just a week after the publication of the report
of Lord Leveson into the nefarious activities of the press in this
country. If ever there was a case of the
pot calling the kettle black, that was it.
And could the David Cameron who said that he couldn’t imagine why the
two Australian disc jockeys had been ‘allowed’
to make that phone call, possibly be the same David Cameron who last week was
denouncing the idea of ‘freedom of
speech’ being stifled by any kind of statutory control on the activities of
the news media?
A New Layer
of Bureaucracy?
Countrywide, not very many
people bothered to vote at that election in October for a Police and Crime Commissioner
to appoint (and dismiss!) the Chief Constable, set the police budget and
generally point the police in the direction that they should be going. I wonder how many of us who did vote (yes. I was among them)
realized that we weren’t just electing one man or woman on an inflated salary
to rule the constabulary roost but establishing the base of a new bureaucracy.
It should have been obvious that it
wouldn’t be only Chief Constables
that the new Commissioners would appoint.
They would need their own office and their own staff. They would need an accountant with some
knowledge of public finances to help with the budgetary demands of the
office. They would need a deputy and at
least one or two assistants to visit far flung parts of the police area. Essex is a
big area – as large and as populous as some European states, as Lord
Hanningfield used to remind us. They
would need a secretary and probably a dogsbody to receive visitors, answer the
phone, do the filing, and make an occasional cup of tea. Oh – come to think of it, it might be a good
idea to recruit someone with at least some experience of police work.
A report in the local daily Gazette suggests that some of the newly
elected Commissioners are already throwing their weight about. Some have compelled the existing Chief
Constable in their areas to apply again for his own job! Sixteen of them have already appointed
deputies on salaries of up to £65,000 a year!
Adam Simmonds, Northamptonshire’s Conservative new Commissioner has published
plans to hire seventeen people, including four Assistant Commissioners to help him. There should be several nice ‘jobs for the boys’ there!
Nick Alston. Essex ’s
new Commissioner is taking a more cautious approach. He is first of all recruiting an adviser to
help him draft a job description for the post of Deputy. He hopes to have the deputy in office by
April. A rather more urgent task will
be finding a replacement for the existing Chief Constable, Jim Barker-McCardle
who has announced that he will be leaving ‘for personal reasons’. There are said to be fourteen forces
currently looking for new Chief Constables (I suppose it couldn’t be the
thought of having a political ‘commissar’ breathing down their necks that has
prompted a mass exodus?) so he’ll face strong competition for the best.
The Government could have avoided all this
extra expense and further tier of bureaucracy by simply passing the
responsibility for overseeing the police to the democratically elected local
authority for the area. Those
authorities would then have had to make fewer of their existing staff
redundant, would have ensured closer co-operation between the police and other
closely related local services such as education and social service – and would
have saved the expense of that stupid, unrepresentative and expensive election. If only they could get it into their heads
that what may be right for Boston Mass. isn’t necessarily the best thing for Boston Eng.
And that Littlehampton’s needs aren’t necessarily exactly the same as those of Little Rock ! You’d never dream that this was a government
cutting services and benefits to the unemployed, the old and the disabled in a
frantic effort to reduce the national debt.
Will the new Commissioners breathe
fresh life into our police forces and thus justify their existence and their
very nice salaries? Perhaps…….but I’m not holding my breath!
Local
Statistics
I don’t suppose that anyone
was surprised to learn that last year’s census revealed that the Tendring District
was among the top ten with the oldest populations. I was only surprised that as many as eight
of the 363 local authorities in England
and Wales
have populations older than ours. Over
35 percent of Tendring’s population are over the age of 60 and 1.4 percent
(more than 2,000 altogether) are – like me - over ninety. I am personally
acquainted with only three of them beside myself and I suppose that the reason
we are not very conspicuous is that old age tends to limit our mobility.
Certainly it is only my mobility scooter (my iron horse!) that prevents my
being housebound – and a miserable old so-and-so I’d be if I were!
I was pleased to see that 88,000 of
us describe ourselves as being Christian.
That’s 64 percent of Tendring’s population, five percentage points
higher than the population of England
and Wales
as a whole. I think that the relatively
low figure may be at least a little misleading.
I know personally several people whom I would describe as Christian but
who don’t themselves do so because they feel that it associates them with the
crusades, the religious wars and persecutions of the Middle Ages, the witch
trials and the inquisition.
I prefer to think that it associates us
with such great Christian characters as Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, the
martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador , William Penn,
Elizabeth Fry and thousands of other unknown-by-name men and women who, over
the past two millennia, have opposed the evils of their world. Many have suffered
as a result. Tens of thousands of others
have quietly tried to live their lives in accordance with the example and
teaching of Jesus Christ. Without them the
world today would be an even sadder place than it is.
Some Good
News
As 2012 draws towards its
close it is good to have news of the progress
of an international enterprise whose activities will affect us all and
whose efforts are proceeding on time and in accordance with promises made
months ago, despite a year of extreme weather conditions that did their best to
hinder progress.
Earlier this year I commented on a
ground-breaking addition to the Gunfleet Sands Windfarm visible from Clacton ’s beaches and promenades. Two giant turbines – beside which the
existing turbines will appear as midgets! – with vastly increased energy
producing capacity, are to be added to that wind-farm. If successful they will be the prototypes of
future wind turbines round the British coastline.
Dong
Energy’s recently published Community
Newsletter tells us that they are well beyond the half-way point in the
offshore construction of these two giant turbines. Onshore and offshore cable installation has
been completed as has the foundation structures for the turbines. It is hoped that the turbines themselves will
be installed in January (this does depend to some extent on the weather) and
that they will begin to generate power by March of next year – in less than
three months time !
I look forward to the appearance of
these two new ‘one-legged giants’ on our skyline. Wind turbines can’t supply all Britain ’s
energy needs but we do need urgently to end our reliance on fossil
carbon-producing energy sources. Even
our climate-change sceptical MP, and the one or two misinformed correspondents
of the Clacton Gazette who oppose
both wind and solar farms, must surely
see that the sources of fossil fuels are finite and even if they did not hasten climatic
change (which I am sure they do!) we would need to replace them with clean and
infinitely renewable means of energy supply.
Wind-power, solar power, tidal and wave
power can, I believe, ultimately supply that need. We should welcome any and all progress toward
that end.
Christmas is coming!
In fact, when I publish this blog on
the internet next Wednesday morning 19th December, it will be less
than a week away. Christmas Day is on
the Tuesday of the following week so I shall publish my blog for that week on
Christmas Eve, Monday 24th December, instead of on Wednesday 26th. I really don’t yet know when the blog after
that will be published – possibly on Wednesday 2nd January.
I know from the statistics given by
my website provider that I have many greatly valued readers in India and in the Middle
East . Christmas is a
Christian Festival and my blog next week will relate to the Christian story of
the birth of Jesus. May I assure Muslim,
Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist readers (and readers who have no religious faith at
all!) that you will read nothing in that blog that will offend you or your
religious faith in any way. I hope that
you will find the blog interesting and entertaining and that it will encourage
friendship and understanding between people of every religious tradition.
Whatever your faith may be I wish
all blog readers a very happy day on 25th December – and a New Year
of Peace and Hope. May God Bless us All.
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