Week 7 2014

Tendring Topics…..on Line

 

Mr Gove in the News

 

             Michael Gove, the Government’s Education Secretary, has been in the news lately.  First of all there was his naïve demand that we should celebrate the centenary of the outbreak of World War I and ignore the left-wing intellectuals who insisted that it was a gigantic waste of human life from which no-one really emerged victorious except the armaments manufacturers. Born in 1921, I am not old enough to remember the war. I can though, remember being taken as a very young child to Remembrance Day (we used. to call it Armistice Day) services where there were still tearful  women clad in black mourning dead sons or husbands, and still-young ex-service men with missing arms or legs, or unsteadily making their way with the aid of a white walking stick.  There was not much celebrating then.

 

                    Then there was Mr Gove’s decision not to renew the contract of the Labour- supporting Chairman of Ofsted in order, so it was claimed, to replace her with a Conservative supporter – perhaps a generous donor to the Party. Needless to say Mr Gove indignantly denies any such motive.  It was, he said, a good idea to get new blood into any public office after three years (he clearly didn’t include the post of Education Secretary that he has held for four years!) and claimed that he always selected the best person for the job, irrespective of political affiliation.  Well, naturally – but the best person for the job in Mr Gove’s eyes would obviously be someone who would pursue his sometimes revolutionary ideas with genuine enthusiasm.

 

             I remember, in the turmoil of local government reorganisation in 1973, applying for the post of Director of Housing with the Harlow District Council.  I was asked if I would have any problem working with a Labour Council when my previous experience had been only with Conservative authorities. I replied that I believed senior local government officers, like civil servants, should be prepared to serve loyally authorities of any political persuasion.   Perhaps if I had replied that I was a whole-hearted Labour supporter and had for years been yearning for service with an unequivocally Labour Council (which, at that time, wouldn’t have been far from the truth) I’d have got the job!  Never mind – I was appointed as Public Relations Officer to the Conservative Tendring District Council, and I did put everything of which I was capable into it.   It was much less well paid but more congenial – and it didn’t involve my wife and I moving from our home in Clacton-on-Sea.

 

                 Mr Gove’s latest crusade is to make state schools as good as those in the private sector by lengthening the school ‘working day’ and encouraging extra-curricular activities like music and art appreciation, membership of the Army Cadet Corps and so on.  I think perhaps by ‘private schools’ he meant ‘private boarding schools’ where the children are available for education, or perhaps for indoctrination, for twenty-four hours a day.

 

                     When I was at a state secondary school in the 1930s, our school hours were from 9.00 am to 4.30 pm Mondays to Fridays and, once we had progressed beyond the 1^st Form, from 9.00 am till 12.00 noon on Saturdays.  We did though have two hours 12.00 till 2.00 pm for lunch (or as we young ‘plebs’ called it, ‘dinner’) and I cycled home every day because I preferred my mum’s cooking!   Added to that we were expected to do one hour’s homework every evening when we were in the first form, one and a half hours in the second and third forms and two hours in the fourth and fifth forms as we prepared for the General Schools’ Leaving Exam (the Matric).  There really wasn’t a lot of spare time for playing at being soldiers or whatever! 

 

I have no doubt that private boarding schools do teach children to speak properly, to be well mannered and self confident, and to have at least a smattering of knowledge of art, music and literature.   I have often wished that I had had those qualities when I left school, but I have sometimes been astonished at gaps that there appear to have been in the education of some of their best-known former pupils.

                   David Cameron our Prime Minister for instance, attended one of the very poshest of posh public (which actually means ‘private’) schools.  Yet he imagined, until someone corrected him, that the United Kingdom had been the ‘junior partner’ to the USA in the struggle against Hitler and Nazism in 1940.  Subsequently it transpired that he was unfamiliar with the third verse (few people nowadays even realize that there was once a second verse!) of our National Anthem.

 

             I suppose those are the kind of gaps that one might expect to find in the knowledge of the average bank or insurance clerk, shop assistant or postman of Mr Cameron’s age.  Surely though our Prime Minister (in fact all our leading politicians) should be thoroughly familiar with the history of the past century, if only to avoid making some of the mistakes that were made at that time.  It might have been thought too that the leader of a Party that aspires to ‘making Britain Great again’, is proud of its patriotism, and has appropriated the Union Jack for its political meetings, would have been familiar with:

 

Thy choicest gifts in store

On her be pleased to pour.

Long may she reign!

May she defend our laws

And ever give us cause

To sing with heart and voice

God Save the Queen.

 

               Yes, I did type the above verse from memory – but must confess that I later checked with Google that I’d remembered it correctly!

 

Mixed News from Clacton-on-Sea

             Recently, whenever Clacton-on-Sea has been featured in the national news bulletins or the front pages of the national press, it has been with bad news.

 

             We’ve an enormous bed-sit population living on ‘benefit’. Jaywick, one of Clacton’s suburbs is officially the most deprived community in the UK.  While the crime rate over the rest of the country and, in fact, over the county of Essex, is declining, in Clacton-on-Sea it’s rising.  There’s never a mention of the the fact that visitors to our town are rarely aware of any of those things, that we have suffered very little from the floods and gales that have afflicted the rest of the country since the beginning of December, that we have safe, sandy beaches, a lively pleasure pier and the lowest average annual rainfall of any seaside holiday resort in the British Isles!

 

              Once again disaster has struck Clacton and has made the national headlines – but this horror story isn’t all bad.  Last Wednesday (5^th February) what is believed to have been an accidental gas explosion completely destroyed two semi-detached houses and damaged others in the vicinity.  Two people were seriously injured and were air lifted by helicopter to a hospital in Chelmsford for treatment, and eleven others, less seriously injured, were taken by road ambulance to Colchester General Hospital. Considering the extent of the damage it is surprising that there were no fatal casualties on the spot.  Had the explosion occurred just half an hour later than it did, it might well have involved young children on their way to the nearby St. Clare’s Roman Catholic Junior School.

              The positive side to this sad story?   It was the Clactonian reaction to it.   It really didn’t take very long for the first fire-fighters and the first ambulance to arrive on the scene.   In those few minutes though, neighbours and nearby pedestrians didn’t just retreat into their homes or ‘pass by on the other side’.  They were on the spot, regardless of their own safety, helping trapped and injured people from the still –burning debris. They were congratulated on their efforts when the professionals appeared on the scene and took over.

 

                   The neighbours then organised a collection of clothing and household items to replace those that the victims of the explosion had lost.  Occupiers of adjacent properties were evacuated from their homes and driven to Clacton Town Hall where they stayed until their homes were declared safe for their return.  The operation went like clockwork and local businesses brought sandwiches for them to enjoy while they waited.

 

             The incident was a tragic one but the local reaction to it reinforced my conviction that we Clactonians have warm hearts and willing hands when needed to help those in desperate trouble, and that Clacton-on-Sea is a wonderful town in which to live, or to visit.  I wouldn’t swap my modest home in the town’s Dudley Road for any in the UK!

 

The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass may fall for ever,
But if we break the b……  glass, it won’t hold back the weather.

           Thus, remarkably prophetically, ends Bagpipe Music, a poem by mid-twentieth century Irish poet Louis MacNeice.

            I had intended not to mention the weather, the flooding and the general storm damage in this week’s blog.  But then, at the last moment, I received an email from my elder son Pete.  He is a business man who after working his way into the upper reaches of the local government service, launched his own successful IT Consultancy (Hub Solutions Ltd) of which he is now Managing Director, specialising in solving the IT problems of public authorities. He is, in fact, just the kind of successful small-business man whom the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer hold up to us as an example to emulate.  Here’s what he has to say about the floods in the West Country

 

              I'm still really in shock over the relentless weather, the devastation caused to Dawlish and other places I know well, and Somerset which seems to me to becoming an inland lake not fit for farming or habitation. The whole area seems to be below sea level, so all that water has to be pumped out, but all the time it keeps on raining. At some point you have to give up and let nature take its course. Even though it is now generally accepted to be due to Climate Change, there is very little recognition of the absurdity of finding any more oil and gas by fracking, deep sea drilling or any other way.  Scientists are saying that we cannot afford to burn the known reserves of fossil fuels, but every nation wants to get that little bit of short term financial advantage from its own reserves before the party comes to an end.  And I feel sorry for the people flooded out of their homes and who have lost their livelihoods; but give them a microphone and they just blame the government for not having built the walls higher or dredged the rivers deeper.

 

            I hadn’t realized that Pete knew Dawlish well.  I did, because his mother and I spent our honeymoon there in 1946 – seven years before he was born – and we also visited long after he had grown up and left home, when we spent several holidays in Devon with our motor-caravan.  I remember very well that railway by the sea, now wrecked by the storms.

 

            Pete had also noticed my comments about Pete Seager. Probably he remembered  going with me to Trafalgar Square at Easter time to welcome the arrival of the Aldermaston marchers and to join in the CND demo there.

 

           I see you have picked up on Pete Seager's death on your Blog! Thinking about the titles of his songs and others of the era, I feel there was "optimism in the face of adversity" where now there is just cynicism and acceptance.

 

          There must be something in this ‘inherited genes’ business because, although Pete couldn’t possibly have inherited his business acumen from me, those extracts  from his email that I have copied in italic above could have as easily been my words as they are his!

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NOTE - I experienced some difficulty in accessing this blog for editing and checking this morning.  I had intended to publish it tomorrow (Tuesday) morning but - just in case I get the same trouble tomorrow - I think I'll publish it now.

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