Week 48 2013

Tendring Topics……..on line

Too near to home!

          A couple of weeks ago I remarked in this blog that we could all consider calmly and dispassionately failures of the NHS in London, Liverpool, Glasgow or other similarly distant regions.   The situation was very different when a local hospital – in our case the Colchester Hospital – was involved.  Its failures could, and possibly have, affected the lives and health of people we know, close friends and relatives, people who are very dear to us.  The NHS is not the only field of human activity in which a distant threat can seem much less real and much less sinister than those close at hand.  I have written on a number of occasions about the fact that the incidence of crime, which is becoming less in other parts of Essex is increasing in Clacton-on-Sea.  When I learned of a near-fatal knifing within sight of my Dudley Road bungalow, of a customer being attacked and robbed after drawing cash from his account at Magdalene Green Post Office (where I draw cash from my account from time to time!) and of a break-in just a few houses away from mine, I began to feel that Clacton’s crime-wave was getting uncomfortably close to my home. A fortnight ago a tiny ripple from that crime-wave penetrated it!

            It was Saturday night, the 9^th November. The next day would be Remembrance Sunday.  There were two paper poppies pinned to my jacket lapel – a white one expressing my support for peace campaigners world-wide, and a red one in memory of good friends and comrades killed in World War II, particularly perhaps the fifty who had been taken prisoner at Tobruk and were torpedoed by a British submarine while being transported to Italy.  I too had been captured at Tobruk, but  had been transported to Italy on a different ship and had lived to tell the tale.

I went to bed soon after 10.00 pm and was asleep within minutes.  At about midnight (I glanced at the clock as I got out of bed) I was awakened by my door bell ringing and an urgent knocking on the door.  I slipped on my dressing gown and  made my way to the front door.  ‘Who is it?’ I asked cautiously.  A young and rather tremulous female voice asked me to please open the door and let her in.  The owner of the voice sounded frightened and I opened the door.  Rather to my surprise three girls apparently about 15 or 16 (I am not much good at guessing ages) came thankfully in.  They were courteous, well-spoken and very grateful. They claimed to have been pursued by a group of drunken youths and were asking me for temporary refuge.

I asked them if they’d like me to call the Police.  Oh no, they said.  They thought that once they had been seen to enter a house the youths would go away.  They sat down in my sitting room.  One of them visited the bathroom and it struck me that they ought to contact their mums to let them know they were safe.  Put it down to my age that it didn’t even occur to me that at least one of those girls would almost certainly have been carrying a mobile phone!   One of them said that she would like that, so I gave her my cordless phone and she left the room so (in my innocence I thought!) that we wouldn’t hear the conversation with her no-doubt anxious and angry mum.  She returned after a few minutes very pleased with herself.  Her mum would pick them up and would be with them within minutes.  They would go out and meet her.  With profuse thanks, they made their departure.  I breathed a sigh of relief, went back to bed and – once again – was asleep within minutes.

            However I woke at about 2.30 am quite convinced that there had been something suspicious about the incident.  Almost immediately I noticed that my wallet that had been on the bedroom tallboy, was missing.  I searched the pockets in which I might, just possibly, have left it – though I didn’t think so.  No – it was gone.  There hadn’t been very much money in it – perhaps £20 or £30.  There was a book of stamps, my European Union Health Service card – and my VISA credit and debit cards!

            It was by then getting on for 3.00 am.  I belong to the Co-op Bank which, despite its recent troubles, maintains a 24 hour customer help service.  The assistant I contacted couldn’t have been more helpful.  He stopped at once the use of both cards and told me that my debit card had been used (certainly not by me) shortly after midnight.   The bank would refund the money drawn on that occasion.  New credit and debit cards would be issued within a few days – and so they were.

            On Sunday morning I had to decide whether or not to inform the police.  The loss of my credit and debit cards would cause me only in minor inconvenience for a few days.  The theft of the money was a different matter but I didn’t even know how much it was, and its loss certainly wouldn’t cause me serious hardship.

            In the end I decided that I would report the matter to the police in the hope of discouraging the perpetrator or perpetrators from repeating their act on someone less resilient, with fewer or no ‘emergency reserves’, and perhaps without a supportive family and friends.  Two very helpful and sympathetic detective-constables called to see me, had a friendly chat and took an official audio-and-video recorded statement from me.  Since, they have phoned me to report progress, which is considerable. I don’t think though it would be right for me to reveal the details.  What will come of it in the end?  I would like the person or persons guilty to be deterred from trying to repeat the act elsewhere.   I would not wish though to be the cause of a juvenile acquiring a criminal record that, in today’s economic climate, would make it unlikely that they would ever be able to find honest work.  For such a young person there might well be no future but one of crime and/or prostitution; not a fate I would wish on a juvenile (or on anyone else come to that!) however foolish or greedy they may have been.

Footnote

            Clacton’s Europhobic Climate-Change-Denying MP, Mr Douglas Carswell has given the Clacton Gazette his thoughts on the local crime prevention scene.  A week or so ago blog readers will recall that he was demanding a new style of policing for our town.  It would involve more ‘stop and search’ (though he didn’t make it clear what the police were supposed to be searching for) and ‘coming down hard on the bed-sit guys’.

           
                 His latest thoughts strike a more confident note. He says that the election of Nick Alston as Police and Crime Commissioner has had a major impact on policing in the town. ‘Because we now have a single individual we can hold to account we are starting to get a much more responsible style of policing.............because we have got a locally-elected commissioner, we have seen the police start to take knife crime seriously here, it is working’.  As far as Clacton, Mr Carswell’s constituency, is concerned, I would have thought that Mr Alston’s election has – if anything – had a negative effect.  Clacton’s crime rate has actually gone up during the year that has elapsed since his appointment.  If the government had really wanted local voices to be heard about the appointment of Chief Constables and local policing strategy, they could have instructed the local authority of each Police Area (usually the County or Unitary Authority Council) to appoint a small all-party committee to undertake that function.* This would thus have saved hundreds of thousands of pounds and ensured genuinely local democratic control of the police.

            The Clacton Gazette reports that Mr Carswell’s was one of the loudest voices calling for the introduction of the commissioner role in the first place  He first wrote a paper advocating locally elected police chiefs in 2001 – and now it is law.

            Mr Carswell comments that ‘There was a disappointingly low turnout for the election itself, but two out of every three people are now aware of the fact that there is a police commissioner.  I suspect that in a few years time when we next have an election for the role of police and crime commissioner there is going to be a massive turnout’  I find it rather extraordinary that, after all the publicity, one third of the electorate is not even aware that we have a crime commissioner!  In fact, at that election of a crime and police commissioner to which Mr Carswell refers, there was a record low turnout nationally, and the turnout in Essex was the lowest of the lot.  The only way we’ll get a ‘massive turnout’ in a future election is if the electorate is given the choice of voting for the scrapping of the whole daft ‘jobs for the boys’ business!

* Yesterday (25th November) I heard on the tv news that someone much more authoritative and with much greater knowledge of the situation than I have, is suggesting much the same thing.

The Co-operative Bank

            I first opened an account with the Co-op Bank in 1956 when I came to Clacton as a Public Health Inspector. The Public Health Department was at the rear of the Town Hall at one end of The Grove.   The Co-op Bank then had a branch office at the other end. That’s why I chose them. In fifty-seven years I have never had reason to regret that choice.  There is no longer a branch within easy reach but I can contact them easily by phone or by their website.  I can pay in cheques and draw out cash from my account at any post office.  They will arrange direct debits and similar regular payments, and their cheques can be used for payment for goods or services or as Christmas and birthday gifts to young relatives or friends.  That’s all I need.

            Now they are in trouble because someone was stupid enough to appoint a  Methodist Minister with no relevant banking experience as their chairman. Had he been a saintly Methodist Minister it would still have been stupid. It seems though that their choice, Rev. Paul Flowers, is very unlikely to be awarded a halo!

            However, I don’t see news pictures of depositors queuing up to withdraw their money, as they did from other banks a little while ago.  I haven’t heard a word of the government having to let the Co-op Bank have millions of pounds of our money to keep it afloat.  I don’t see senior officials of the bank departing with millions of pounds in ‘golden handshakes’.  Someone is trying to retrieve £30,000 from Rev. Paul Flowers, someone else £70,000.  Goodness, that’s petty cash in top banking circles.

            I think I’ll stick with the Co-op Bank.  I am confident that its troubles will pass.

  

Week 47 2013

Tendring Topics……..on line

‘To Vote or not to Vote….?’

          ….That is the question, about which BBC Radio 4 listeners were debating over the air waves last week.  A great many of them were disillusioned with party politics. They felt felt that they couldn't support any political party having the least chance of forming the next government.  They couldn’t really make up their minds though whether it was better just to stay away from the voting stations, to put a blank ballot paper in the black box or to deliberately spoil the ballot paper by voting for every candidate or by scribbling ‘None of the above’, or perhaps some even ruder message, on the ballot paper.

            As one who has been a Presiding Officer, a humble poll clerk, and a counting assistant at parliamentary and local government elections in the past, I can assure blog readers that how they display their disillusion really makes no difference whatsoever.  If you take no part in the election it won’t be put down to indignation – but apathy.  If you deface your ballot paper, no matter how wisely or wittily, it won’t be seen by anyone more important than the Presiding Officer (probably a school teacher or council official sacrificing a day from his or her holiday entitlement for a few extra quid!) He may well agree with what you have written but he’ll just discard it as a spoilt ballot paper.  These are counted at the end of the day and when it is announced that there were 450 spoilt papers most people won’t think, ‘That means there were 450 principled objectors to the electoral system’, but, ‘That means there must be 450 people so dim-witted that they can’t even manage to put a cross against a name on a piece of paper!’

            I sympathise with all those disillusioned and cynical former-voters.  I’d be inclined to join them – except for the fact that there are groups of electors who do believe in their candidates and who promote their causes with fanatical enthusiasm.  They will turn up at the polling stations and vote, and they’ll try to persuade others to do the same.  These are those that support fringe candidates who have no time whatsoever for the opinion-poll-driven candidates of the main parties.  Some are benign, like those who support the ‘Green Party’. I’d be among them were it not for the certainty that, in this area at least, their candidates stand no chance whatsoever under the first-past-the-post electoral system used in British parliamentary and local elections.

            Others are, I believe, much less benign though probably more appealing to a cynical and disillusioned electorate. Supporters of UKIP, United Kingdom Independence Party, are united in their delusion that most of the UKs troubles derive from our membership of the European Union and that leaving the Union would supply an instant remedy.  They also – just like Clacton’s MP - believe that if global climate change is occurring it has nothing to do with human activity  wind farms, solar panels and talk of green and sustainable energy are a waste of time and money.  Other of UKIPs policies are those of the extreme right wing of the Tory Party.   I think of it as a Neo-Fascist Party with its policies endorsed by the same right-wing millionaire-owned press that supported Hitler’s Nazis, Mussolini’s Fascists and their friend General Franco in Spain, in the years before World War II.  Just as disillusion with the forces of democracy helped the Nazis into power  in 20^th Century Germany, so our disillusion with Party Politics could allow these Neo-Fascists into power in  21^st century Britain.

            I believe very strongly that everyone with an entitlement to vote should do so to prevent a takeover by extremists of this kind.  If we can’t bring ourselves to vote positively for any of the candidates in a parliamentary or local government election we can at least vote negatively to keep out the candidate we would least like to represent us.  Most of us could, I think, decide on that!

            My own political priorities are (1) Closing down the Trident submarine fleet and promoting meaningful international negotiations outlawing all nuclear weapons in all countries  (2) closer political and economic ties with our fellow Europeans in the European Union, together with a determination to work within the union for general reform (3) working continuously and by every means available to reduce the gap between the incomes of the wealthiest and the poorest within the UK. Currently we have the biggest gap in Europe! (4) Recognising the reality and urgency of dealing with Climate Change, and funding further research into the exploitation of wind, solar, wave and tidal power to provide sources of energy that would eventually eliminate the need for either fossil or nuclear fuels.

              Alone among the political parties the Green Party would support at least some of my priorities and would not, I think, actively oppose those they couldn’t endorse.  If therefore I am still around next year when we are invited to vote for our representatives in the European Parliament, I shall vote for the Green Party candidate because for that election we will have proportional representation. Every vote will count!  In the even-less-likely event of my survival till the next British Parliamentary Election (a first-past-the-post election) I shall vote for the candidate most likely to unseat our present MP.  The thought occurs to me that it is just possible that that could be the UKIP candidate.  If that were so I would – with extreme reluctance and a prayer for Heaven to forgive me - vote for our existing MP as slightly the lesser of two evils.

 ‘What’s wrong with being a 'pleb'?

          

                It seems extraordinary that there should have been so much righteous indignation over whether or not the Government’s then Chief Whip did, or did not, describe police officers with whom he was having an altercation, as plebs!  This happened over a year ago but only a fortnight ago the officers were again summoned before parliament and grilled on the subject.  I doubt if we have heard the last of it yet.

            I thought that I was familiar with all the words of abuse (printable and unprintable) in the English language, and quite a few in several mainland European ones.  I have to confess though that I had never before heard plebs used as a term of abuse or derision. I don’t, in fact, think I had ever heard it used at all.  It is presumably an abbreviation of plebeian, the designation of the underclass (the folk who actually did all the work) in ancient Rome.  The upper class who, except figuratively, never got their hands dirty were the Patricians (the pats?).  I suppose the Roman equivalent of a Chief Whip would have been one of them.

            Well, I’m a pleb and I’m inclined to think that most of the people I know wouldn’t be deeply offended if I suggested that they were plebs too. I don’t really know any pats though I suppose I have met a few people who thought they were.  Pleb is a word that I have never used but that I wouldn’t hesitate to use in even the primmest and most respectable company.  That can’t be said about other words that the former Chief Whip freely admits that he used on that disputed occasion.

            During the past year we have had steadily increasing bloodshed in Syria (but now just a slight possibility of a peaceful outcome), cripplingly escalating fuel prices in the UK,  a fall in unemployment but – just in case we get too pleased with ourselves – an increase in short-term debt and in the number of people depending on Food Banks and other kinds of charitable giving. Just last week there was a natural disaster in the Philippines (another result of the global climatic change that a small minority in the UK doesn't believe exists?) that has killed  thousands of people and rendered hundreds of thousands homeless.

            For goodness sake let’s stop worrying about whether a top politician insulted a couple of probably officious, coppers and whether policemen are more or less likely to tell the truth than top politicians. Who cares?  There are far more important things with which we should be concerning ourselves.

The Truth – and nothing but The Truth

          Writing about the truth and who is and who is not likely to be truthful reminds me that the trial of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, both former senior employees of News International has begun. Andy Coulson, you’ll remember, was appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron as his spin doctor.  He departed from that post only when the phone hacking scandal involving News International erupted.  Rebekah Brooks was a neighbour and close friend, not only of David Cameron but of other former prime ministers and other top politicians of both the right and the left.

            They both face serious charges relating to the phone hacking scandal and other matters involving their employment by News International.  The court will no doubt decide whether or not they are guilty of these alleged offences.

            One charge that they won’t have to face, because it isn’t an offence, is exercising undue influence over a number of politicians.  Yet that, I believe, is how they may most have harmed our country.  For that we can only penalise, by means of the ballot box, the politicians who put themselves in a situation where they could have been influenced.  And I hope that we will do so.

              

           

           

                                      

Week 46 2013

Tendring Topics…….on line

Hitting the target – but how and at what cost?

          We can read about NHS scandals in London, Liverpool or Glasgow without feeling anything more than disapproval and perhaps a little relief and satisfaction with the thought that, ‘thank goodness, that sort of thing doesn’t happen down here!’  That, of course, makes it all the worse when that sort of thing definitely does happen here and makes the headlines in the press and in the radio and tv national news bulletins.

            Colchester Hospital, our local major hospital, where most of us find ourselves at some time or another, if not as ‘in-patients’ at least seeking specialist advice or diagnosis, has featured in the national newspapers on several occasions recently.  At first it was just that an above average number of deaths had occurred there.  Not, in itself, a cause for great concern – it is the nature of an ‘average’ that there will be as many above it as below it.  Just last week though the allegations were much more serious. They were about the quality of cancer care. Members of the staff had complained that they were being pressured or bullied by ‘management’ to record false figures for the records relating to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.  The police had been informed!

            That was much more concerning.  During the past six years I had had three operations on my ears for cancer of the skin and cartilage. They were successful though I am still required to attend the hospital at six monthly intervals to make sure that my ears were still OK and that the cancer hasn’t spread to the glands of my neck. Much more serious, a very good friend of mine has had major surgery for cancer at Colchester Hospital followed by a month of out-patient radio-therapy at Colchester and Southend Hospitals, all  during the past six months,

I am not in the least worried about my own situation.  Although my ears were cancerous and I was told that the condition in one of them was ‘very aggressive’ prior to the operation, I have so far been treated as a ‘plastic surgery’ rather than a cancer patient.  At ninety-two my life is, in the nature of things, approaching its end. I think it very unlikely that the problem with my ears will get even a mention on my death certificate! The situation is very different for my friend who is many years younger than me, and for other folk who have been treated for cancer at Colchester Hospital during the past year. For all their sakes I can only hope that there will be a happy and expeditious conclusion to this present crisis and that very few, or not any, patients’ conditions have deteriorated as a result of it.

            The hospital is now ‘in special measures’, the cause of the present crisis is being investigated and steps will no doubt be taken to prevent a recurrence. My own knowledge of the situation is limited to what has been published in the local and national newspapers and announced on radio and tv.   I shall be very surprised though if at the root of the crisis has not been a determination on the part of senior members of the hospital’s professional and administrative staff to hit unrealistic ‘targets’, set at  a high level by people obsessed by statistics and quite ignorant of circumstances ‘on the front line’.

            It must surely be obvious that if an emergency department, and all hospital departments sometimes have to deal with unexpected emergencies, is staffed and equipped only to deal cost-effectively with ‘normal circumstances,’ it will not be capable of dealing with abnormal circumstances when they arise.  There must be sufficient slack to accommodate sickness, holiday absences, staff training, medical and surgical emergencies and so on.  It is ridiculous to expect a consultant to deal with a given number of patients in an hour, or a day. Nor can a midwife or obstetrics nurse deliver a given number of babies in a given time.  The minds of ‘human resources’ managers and time-and-motion experts may work like that, but nature doesn’t!

            Surprisingly Iain Duncan-Smith, the Government’s Work and Pensions Minister (whose knowledge of the conditions in Colchester’s Hospital is unlikely to have been much greater than mine) is reported as having said much the same thing while visiting Colchester on a totally different matter in the height of the crisis.  He too felt that determination to reach ‘targets’ was at the root of Colchester Hospital’s troubles.  Targets, he said, are useful but we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be controlled by them.  Perhaps he was prompted by his own signal failure to hit the targets that he had set himself in carrying out his sweeping welfare and benefit changes, notably the introduction of ‘universal credit’.

            Well, Mr Iain Duncan-Smith is a senior member of a government that has sometimes seemed target obsessed.  Perhaps he’ll pass the news on to his colleagues and persuade them that patients are more important than targets and the well-being of individual men and women more important than statistics.

Clacton’s Problems ……… Contrasting Attitudes

          Clacton-on-Sea is unique in many respects, most of them positive.  We are the only seaside resort in East Anglia still holding an annual Air Show attracting thousands of visitors. We are the holiday resort with the lowest average annual rainfall in the United Kingdom.  Our miles of safe, sandy beaches, cliff-top gardens and lively pier aren’t unique but are the equal of any in England, and much better than most!  We have a lot of which to be proud  - I have lived here for 57 years, well over half my lifetime, and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world.

            There is a downside though.  While every other district in Essex has a falling crime-rate, ours is rising!   Part of the cause of that is the scarcity of jobs for young people and older alike, made worse by the fact that former prosperous hotels have, thanks to nationally changing holiday habits, been converted into cheap bed-sits. At the same time in the Brooklands area of Jaywick, flimsy properties intended only for temporary summer holiday use, have been used for all-the-year-round living accommodation.  They are cheap to buy or to rent.  Coupled with our proximity to London, these factors have attracted people unable to afford the steadily increasing cost of living in the capital, down to Clacton where they may hope to find cheap accommodation – but can’t find work.

          

           Clacton’s MP, Europhobic climate-change-denying Douglas Carswell has a totally predictable solution to the problem.  ‘We do have a specific problem in the centre of Clacton – and it needs a different style of policing.  Part of that has got to mean police do more stop and searching (but what are they supposed to be searching for?) and be more aggressive with the bedsit guys’.  A nice thought as the ‘season of good will towards all men’ approaches!  I reckon Mr Carswell would have felt really at home in medieval times when migrant ‘sturdy beggars’ were flogged and then driven out of town and told to go back  to the village or town from which they came.

          

            A quite different attitude is that of a group of  unemployed  sixteen to  twenty-five year olds  (I’ve no idea whether or not they include any ‘bedsit guys) who have been helped by the Prince’s Trust to set up an empty store in the town’s Pier Avenue to distribute warm clothing, bedding and food to people in need throughout December.

            The Clacton Gazette quotes Ryan Kavanagh, one of their members, as saying, ‘The idea is to help people less fortunate than us.  If they are struggling through the winter months they can come in and we help them as best we can.  This is especially important in Clacton, where there aren’t many places for people to go if they’re unfortunate enough to living on the streets or need help’

The new ‘Winter Warmer’ shop opens on 2^nd December and the volunteers are busily painting the shop, putting up new shelves, creating a new sign and making everything spic and span for opening day.

They would welcome donations of clothing, shoes, blankets, toys or food.  Donations should be taken to the Citizens Advice Bureau base in Carnarvon Road.  I wonder if Mr Douglas Carswell MP, will be making his way there with donations from one – or both – of his comfortable homes.

Immoral Earnings?

Two long feature articles in a recent issue of Private Eye reveal in some detail the lengths to which two extremely wealthy men, Lord Rothermere owner of the Daily Mail and  Richard Branson, head of the Virgin Empire, go to avoid paying to the UK taxes that lesser mortals (like you and I) pay without question, if without enthusiasm.

Remembering that the Daily Mail recently declared Ed Miliband’s dad, who in World War II served on a destroyer in the Royal Navy, as ‘The man who hated Britain’, Private Eye  described Lord Rothermere as ‘The man who hates (paying any tax in) Britain’.   I find it incredible that some immensely wealthy men and women (Lord Rothermere and Richard Branson are clearly not alone) do not feel it their duty and their privilege to pay a sum that they will hardly miss for the privilege of British citizenship. This has made it possible for them to amass, keep and increase their great wealth while many of their fellow countrymen, men, women and children, rely on charity to feed and clothe themselves and to keep warm in the winter.  

It seems almost equally incredible that there is a small army of solicitors and accountants who derive their own inflated incomes from devising schemes to avoid the even wealthier having to hand over any of their wealth to the government!  It’s all above board and perfectly legal but it is surely ‘living on immoral earnings’.

.

         

.

Week 45 2013

Tendring Topics………..on line

'.........and from the easy speeches that comfort cruel men'

              As far as I know G.K.Chesterton, Edwardian author and poet and creator of the Father Brown detective stories, wrote only one hymn.  In it he asks for divine deliverance from, 'Lies of tongue and pen, and from the easy speeches that comfort cruel men'.

           At the end of the political party conference season an angry blog reader wrote bitterly to me about the way various groups had been singled out and falsely demonised at one of the conferences, as responsible for  all our economic woes - the long-term unemployed, the allegedly not-so-disabled, occupiers of under-occupied social housing, people living on ‘benefit, young people neither at school nor in work, illegal immigrants, legal EU immigrants, and so on……and on. 

            More recently we’ve had another scapegoat to explain whose fault it is that it’s so difficult to make an appointment to see your family doctor, why hospital wards are understaffed and why accident and emergency patients, needing immediate attention, sometimes may have to wait for hours to get attention.  It’s nothing to do with hospitals having had to downsize their nursing and medical staff to meet government economic targets.  Of course it isn’t!  It’s all those foreigners – health tourists – who come to Britain with the sole purpose of exploiting our free National Health Service. They go home directly they’ve had expensive treatment that we have paid for with our taxes.

            An official government report claimed that the NHS is spending up to £2 billion a year on ‘foreign visitors and short-term migrants’ and £300 million of that figure is spent on ‘health tourists’.  Health Minister Jeremy Hunt said that we couldn’t afford to run an ‘international health service’ and that less than 50 percent of chargeable foreign nationals are identified.  Funny thing – like most old people I’ve spent quite a lot of time in doctors’ and hospital waiting rooms in the past year or so, and the only obvious ‘foreigners’ I’ve encountered (and have been pleased to see!) have been the foreign doctors who make up for the fact that we’re no longer training enough professionals each year for those jobs.

            Needless to say Clacton’s Europhobic and climate-change-denying MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, has leapt onto the populist bandwagon.  Having read reports in the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph that ‘an EU study has found that 600,000 unemployed migrants are living in Britain at a cost of £1.5 billion to the NHS alone’, he claimed that ‘a wave of benefit migrants….a tsunami of economic refugees’ are causing a huge burden on the NHS.

            None of the allegations are true.  Evidence from the London School of Tropical Medicine and the University of York, quoting research commissioned by  the government itself, showed that, contrary to Jeremy Hunt’s claims, twice as many foreign visitors pay to use the NHS as exploit free health care and that the UK is a net exporter of patients seeking treatment.    Jonathan Portes of the National Institute of Social and Economic Research claims that evidence shows that EU migrants, like migrants in general, on average pay in more than they take out.

            You’d never dream, from the allegations of the Health Minister and a sycophantic press that British visitors to mainland Europe (health tourists?)  enjoy exactly the same privileges when visiting other EU countries as other EU citizens enjoy in Britain.  During the past seven years I have visited mainland Europe on nine or ten occasions, staying for several days in Belgium and in Germany and visiting five other countries that are members of the EU, and one non-EU country. Always in my wallet I have carried my small plastic European Health Insurance Card (they’re free, and you can get an application form for one from any post office) that throughout the EU entitles me to exactly the same medical treatment as any citizen of the country I am in.

            I am fortunate in that I have never needed to use that card, but its possession has allowed me to visit countries in mainland Europe without taking out the very expensive (at my age!) health insurance that would be prudent if I were visiting the USA or any other Non-EU country.  Nor should it be assumed that health provision in other European countries is necessarily inferior to that in our own.  My grandson Nick,  founder and Managing Director of an international tourism publicity consultancy, spends a great deal of time in Brussels.  He has used the Belgian health service on a number of occasions and he tells me that, although different, it is in no way inferior to ours.

            Access to the whole of Europe’s health services is, of course, one of the privileges we would automatically lose if, in any future referendum, a majority of us were stupid enough to vote to leave the European Union.

‘Fair’s Fair!’ – but what is ‘Fair’?

          I never for one moment imagined that in any confrontation between our elected Members of Parliament and representatives of the energy suppliers I would find myself agreeing with an argument of the energy suppliers.  I do believe though that one of their contentions – that the cost of the government’s ‘green energy’ measures should be drawn from general taxation, rather than from the fuel bills of energy users – is wise and reasonable.

            I would however urge that it should be funded from income tax rather than from VAT and customs duties on alcohol, tobacco, petrol and the like. VAT, customs duties and fuel bill add-ons are ‘indirect taxes’ which take no account of ability to pay.  The multi-millionaire filling the tank of his Rolls Royce (or getting his chauffeur to do it!) pays exactly the same price and the same amount of tax for his petrol as the agricultural labourer filling that of his battered second-hand Ford.  Obviously that tax is a far greater proportion of the farm labourer’s income than is that of the multi-millionaire.  Income tax is a ‘direct tax’ that does something to restore that balance – and could do much more if the tax was really calculated as a fixed proportion of every adult’s income.

            There are clearly two opposing views of what is and what is not ‘fair’.  The Chancellor and his supporters consider that it is ‘fair’ for everyone, rich and poor alike to pay more-or-less the same amount towards the provision of services for the whole community such as the NHS, Social Security, policing, refuse collection and so on.  Indirect taxes help to secure this. ‘The rich man in his castle’ pays in VAT exactly the same amount as ‘the poor man at his gate’ for his purchase of goods or services, or in excise duty when he fills his car or buys himself ‘a pint or a wee dram’.  Thus the  chancellor and those who agree with him are able to claim with absolute sincerity that the tax system is fair and that ‘we are all in this together’.

            I believe that our contribution towards services that benefit the whole community should not be regarded as an imposition, but paid with patriotic pride as our annual fee for the privilege of  British citizenship.  This annual payment, the equivalent of today's 'income tax', should be levied on every British adult, rich or poor as a percentage of his or her gross annual income (before any of it can be diverted to 'charitable trusts' or off-shore tax havens!)   The percentage required would be calculated annually.  I can only guess what it would be but I’d be surprised if would be much in excess of 25 percent.   Only thus would we become a ‘fair’ community in which every paid-up citizen had a financial stake. Then we would truly be able to say that, We’re all in this together!’

The Great Storm!

            A remarkable feature of the storm that lashed southern and central England on Monday morning 28^th October was the accuracy with which it had been forecast by the Meteorological Office.  For almost a week we had been told of its approach, the time of its arrival and its predicted path across the southern half of our country.  We were advised about the amount of damage likely to be sustained, the possibility of local flooding,  trees being uprooted, structural damage and interruption of electricity supplies, road traffic and rail services.  The forecasts were correct in every respect. Possibly because of that, only four deaths attributable to the storm were reported nationally. In Clacton-on-Sea trees were uprooted and there was some structural damage to property but – as usually happens – we suffered rather less than most of southern England.          

The Helter-Skelter – before the storm.

The most spectacular – and nationally reported – damage that we sustained was to Clacton Pier where the Helter Skelter was blown over and severely damaged.  Once before, in 1956, a similar storm had uprooted trees, damaged buildings, blown the Helter Skelter into the sea and sunk pleasure boats moored off the beach.  I remember it particularly because at that time the Council’s public health inspectors, of whom I was one, were responsible for recording and reporting details of each day’s weather to the Met. Office – and preparing a brief local weather forecast to be displayed early each morning on a notice board near Pier Gap  and the memorial garden. Any member of the public sufficiently determined and physically strong enough to struggle against the howling gale to the notice board on that particular morning would have read ‘Sunny intervals, risk of rain at times, breezy’