Week 22 2014

Tendring Topics…..on line

A Personal Story

            Those who regularly read this blog hoping to find a solution to the World’s problems, the problems of the United Kingdom, or even those just of Clacton-on-Sea, will do so today in vain.  This week’s blog is a personal story that began in Germany during the closing months of World War II.  Last Saturday, 17^th May,  the Bowling Green pub/restaurant a few miles outside Clacton-on-Sea saw the latest, perhaps its final, chapter.

            I spent the last eighteen months of the war in a ‘working camp’ (Arbeitskommando) of British other-rank PoWs in the small German town of Zittau.  It has about 30,000 inhabitants and is now the Federal Republic of Germany’s most easterly town, just on the German side of the point at which the frontiers of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic coincide.  There were only thirty of us PoWs.  Our accommodation (a dormitory and barrack room within what was left of the town theatre that had been badly damaged by fire) was luxurious by PoW standards.  These rooms were on the first floor and the guards lived immediately below us on the ground floor.   The guards were neither the sadistic bullies nor mindless morons of popular fiction.  They were, in fact, remarkably like us.  Most had seen active service on the Eastern Front and had been wounded and/or badly frost bitten.  Their sole ambition was to keep their heads down and survive the war.  Ours was the same! Our rations were better than they had been in the concentration camp in which we had been incarcerated  in Italy. The Red Cross food parcels arrived regularly – and we were often working with food, in railway trucks, warehouses and wholesalers’ premises.  We rarely went hungry.  I have spoken to many other ex-PoWs about their experiences and ours were far better than most!

            Our work, which was heavy, for up to ten hours a day and with only one ‘rest day’ in three weeks nearly killed us at first after idleness, boredom and semi-starvation in Italy. We soon got used to it though – and it did make the time pass quickly. The work was mostly loading and unloading trucks on railway sidings in and around Zittau.  We also did any other manual work that was needed – digging graves in the cemetery, sweeping the streets, moving furniture, delivering coal, potatoes and other vegetables from wholesaler to retailer and so on.  We worked in parties of two to six, sometimes with a guard but often with an unarmed civilian with an arm band denoting that he was in charge.  We quickly picked up enough basic and very ungrammatical German to make it possible for us to chat with German civilians and other POWs and forced-workers mostly from Russia and Ukraine, who worked with us.  We really had an astonishing amount of freedom while we were working. It would have been easy to escape – but where to?  Take a look at a map of central Europe!

            One day in mid February 1945 a few days after the fire-bombing of Dresden by the RAF and US airforce on 13^th and 14^th of that month (in my opinion a war crime if there ever was one) we were sent with a guard to Zittau civic museum.  I remember that the incessant thunder of gunfire from the east was getting louder every day as the eastern front moved inexorably nearer and nearer to Zittau.   It was obvious to our guards, the local civilians and foreign workers and to us that the Third Reich was collapsing and that within a few months – perhaps weeks – the war would be over.  Our job was to load large and heavy cases onto a lorry, climb onto the lorry and unload them at our destination.  This proved to be some ancient ruins near the summit of a mountain (Mount Oybin) a few miles from Zittau.  It was, in fact, a ruined monastery and we unloaded the lorry and put the cases in the crypt.  We were told that they contained ‘treasure’ from the museum and they were taken there for safety from the kind of air raids that had devastated Dresden – only some sixty miles away.  It was ‘just another job'.  It was sixty years before I gave it another thought!

            The war in Europe ended on 8^th May. A free man again, I walked through the front door of my home in Ipswich on 18^th May (by a happy coincidence my 24^th birthday!). How, in the turmoil at the end of World War II, I managed to get home from the Soviet occupied, most easterly part of Germany, in just ten days, is another story.

            Sixty years, almost a lifetime later, my wife and I had two adult sons and we were beginning to think about our diamond wedding celebration.  I was a freelance writer and had an article about some of my experiences as a POW published in The Friend, a Quaker weekly journal.  In the article I wrote positively of the time I spent in Zittau, although I thought it unlikely that any reader of ‘The Friend would have heard of the town.  I was wrong.  The family of Jasper Kay, a Quaker and Friend reader living at Cottenham near Cambridge, had originated in Zittau.  He was in regular correspondence with a Zittau family and would be paying his first visit to the town in a few weeks time.  Was there anything I would like brought back from there?

The Kulke family in 2008  Left to right – Ingrid, Maja (born 2006), Frau Ingrid Kulke, Kornelia (Konni), Andreas.  Tomas was not yet born but was imminently expected!

I replied, telling him where I had lived and where I had worked while I was a PoW there.  I would very much appreciate post cards or photos of the town.  Thus began my friendship with the remarkable Kulke family.  Daughter Ingrid had a knowledge of English.  She had been Jasper’s correspondent and became mine too.  She translated my original article and my letter into German for her family.  Her mother, another Ingrid, and her brother Andreas, cycled round Zittau and district taking photos of all the places I had remembered.  Frau Kulke also obtained for me a facsimile of the local newspaper Der Zittauer Nachrichten, for 18^th May 1944 – my 23^rd birthday that I had spent in the town.  My wife and I felt that we had become members of the Kulke family.  When Andreas married Kornelia (Konni) we were told all about it – and I received an excited card when their first child, a little girl whom they christened Maja, was born.  During the course of my email correspondence with Ingrid I mentioned that one of the more unusual jobs that I had done while I was working in her home town had been to help transport those heavy boxes of ‘treasure’ from Zittau Museum to the crypt of the ruined monastery on Mount Oybin. To my astonishment this caused great excitement.  It seemed that I had, quite accidentally and inadvertently, played a minor role in the 550 year history of the Zittau Great Lenten Veil (or ‘Fastentuch’) an enormous textile artefact that was, and is, the town’s pride and joy.

                                                     Zittau’s Great Lenten Veil on       display    

During the Middle Ages it had been the practice to screen off the sanctuary and choir of churches with a linen veil during the season of Lent – to impose a spiritual as well as a material fast on the congregation.   Zittau’s Great Lenten Veil was unique in that it had 90 pictures, 45 of scenes from the Old Testament and 45 from the New, painted upon it.  When the war ended it was found to be missing from its home in the Zittau Museum.  Months later it was discovered on Mount Oybin where it had been found by Russian soldiers, cut into four pieces and used to line the walls of an improvised sauna!  It was rescued and, after German reunification, lovingly restored and returned to its home in Zittau.  It is now permanently on display in a controlled atmosphere and lighting in the redundant church of the Holy Cross.  Here it attracts thousands of visitors every year.  No-one in post-war Zittau had known how or when the town’s famous artefact had been transported from the town museum to Oybin – until I sent that email to Ingrid!

Meanwhile my wife had become increasingly reliant upon me and, for two years, I could think of little except her care.  Sadly, on 12^th July 2006, just three months after we had celebrated our Diamond (60 years) Wedding Anniversary, her life came to an end.  It left a gaping and aching space in my life that even today, nearly eight years later, has not wholly healed.

 My interest in Zittau helped to fill that gap. I managed, with the support of my family, to visit Zittau four times between 2006 and 2011. I met Frau Kulke and her family.  Little Maja acquired a young brother Tomas.  They are my ‘honorary niece and nephew’ and I try never to forget them at Christmas and on their birthdays!  I met Dr Volker Dudeck who had been Direktor of Zittau Town Museum. Now retired, he devoted his life to the care and publicising of the Great Lenten Veil.  I visited Mount Oybin and saw the crypt to which I had helped take those cases in 1945.  My last visit (and it will be my final visit I feel sure) was on the occasion of my 90^th birthday (18^th May 2011) and I was accompanied by members of my immediate family.  There were nine of us in all.  We were given a champagne welcome and reception in the Town Hall by Mayor Herr Voigt, there was a special VIP showing of the famous Great Lenten Veil in its permanent home, and a ‘command performance’ by a local piano-accordion orchestra beginning with ‘When the saints come marching in’ as they marched in, followed by the European Anthem Schiller's Ode to Joy, and other folk and light classical music, and concluding with Happy Birthday to you’ performed with great gusto and enthusiasm.  On our last evening in Zittau I hosted a dinner party for the members of my family and all my German friends including Dr Dudeck and his wife and the Mayor of Zittau and his.  It was a birthday never to be forgotten.

            And the event at the Bowling Green on 17^th May this year?   Well, I had had a  birthday celebration lunch last year but I had left it rather late and several folk both in England and in Germany who would have liked to be present  had prior commitments.  I could also feel that my body and mind were wearing out (I can’t think of a better way of putting it!).  It wasn’t being morbid or pessimistic, but just realistic to feel that this year I might have my last opportunity to see some of my friends, particularly those from Germany.

 

Left to right - Frau Julia Dudeck, Dr. Volker Dudeck, me, Maja Kulke

In the end twenty-two of us sat down to that birthday celebration lunch on 17^th May.  I was particularly pleased, and humbled, by the fact that Dr Volker Dudeck of Zittau, a distinguished historian and a ‘cultural senator’ of the Federal State of Saxony had, with his wife Julia, driven 1000 Km. from the most easterly town in Germany to be with me.   I had four totally unexpected guests.  I hadn’t invited them because I hadn’t for one moment thought they’d be able to come – but I was delighted when they did!  They were my ‘honorary nephew and niece’, Tom and Maja, now five and seven respectively, but shortly to be six and eight!  With them were their mum and dad, Konni and Andreas.  Their presence made the event perfect.  There were seven Germans (all originally from Zittau), two Austrians (Ingrid’s god-daughter Jenny and her boy-friend Sebastian), one Belgian (my grandson’s partner Romy) and the rest of us were Brits.  Most, but not all, of the German speakers also spoke English but we were extremely fortunate in having a waitress who could understand and speak German!

Maja and Tom with their mum, Konni Kulke

The lunch, with friendly conversation, a delightful short speech by Jenny and Sebastian and a brief display of folk dancing by Ingrid and her English partner Ray, lasted till 4.30. Then I said farewell to my guests and was driven home for a much-needed rest, while the younger of my guests made their way to the sea front to sample the delights of Clacton’s sandy beaches and lively pier.  It was the first time that Maja and Tom had seen the sea and I’m told that they really enjoyed it. 

 That celebration lunch was, I think, my swan-song.  Even if I survive until this time next year, I will certainly not be capable, physically or mentally, of hosting another similar event. It was a wonderful way to celebrate my 93^rd birthday and I like to think that the friendship that has developed between members of my family and people of Zittau has been a tiny step towards Anglo-German friendship and thus towards world peace

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Week 21 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

Thursday’s Vote

          This Thursday (22^nd May 2014) is voting day for the European Parliamentary Elections.  Please don’t just yawn and ignore it.  The European Parliament is the one truly democratic institution of the European Union.  It is more democratic than our own parliament in Westminster since its members are elected by proportional representation instead of ‘first past the post’ as in UK parliamentary elections.  That means that every vote for any party can count.  It is impossible for a candidate to be elected by a minority of the electorate, as is possible in UK parliamentary elections..  It also means that minority parties’ voices are heard – in proportion to the number of electors who voted for them.

            That is why in European parliamentary elections we vote for the party rather than the individual candidate (though the names of the candidates from each party are listed).  That’s how it is that there are UKIP members of the European Parliament with no purpose other than to destroy the institution that made it possible for their voices to be heard!  It is true that, thanks to the determination of some national governments (including our own) to limit the European Parliament’s powers, these are not as wide and all-embracing as they should be.   However European parliamentary power is steadily increasing and will continue to do so if we, the electors, demand it.

The claim made by UKIP’s leader that 70 percent of British laws now come from the European Parliament is totally untrue. Although exposed as false in Radio 4’s More or Less programme on Friday 2^nd May, it continues to be quoted as a fact.

Our own European Constituency covers the whole of ‘Greater East Anglia’ and there are no less than nine parties hoping for seats.   They are ‘Independence from Europe’, ‘British National Party (BNP), Christian People’s Alliance, Conservatives, English Democrats’, ‘Labour’,’ Liberal Democrats’, NO2EU, and ‘Green’.

            Some of those parties you will never have heard of – and the chances are you’ll never hear of them again!  I think that those which may reasonably hope to secure enough votes to get at least one member from East Anglia in the European Parliament are Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP and Green.

            Many people who are entitled to vote are totally disillusioned with the main traditional parties.  Conservative policies have widened the gap between wealthy and poor that is, I believe, at the root of many of Britain’s troubles today.   They have run down our conventional armed forces that can have a peace-making and peace-keeping role (as well as being a disciplined force available to help with civil emergencies) while slavishly preserving our nuclear weapons and our Trident submarine fleet. These weapons and the submarine fleet have no purpose other than destroying our fellow men, women and children.  They have totally failed to deter the many acts of aggression, violence and terrorism that have sullied recent history.  If nuclear weapons were ever to be used it would probably herald the end of civilisation as we know it – possibly the extinction of human-kind.

            Sadly, Labour Governments have failed even to try to follow the lead of pioneers of the Labour Movement like Kier Hardy and George Lansbury.  In ten years of New Labour Government the gap between the incomes of the wealthiest and poorest actually increased.   They too are prepared to spend millions on a nuclear ‘ultimate deterrent’ that doesn’t deter!  Ramsey MacDonald is said to have failed because he was ‘dazzled by duchesses’.  Tony Blair and his New Labour colleagues have been ‘blinded by billionaires!’ and their policies are merely modifications of those of the Conservatives.

As for the Liberal Democrats.  There’s really no point in heeding any of their pre-election promises.  The issue of student fees has illustrated that they’ll abandon any of their high principles for the sake of a few seats in the government and the empty title of ‘Deputy Prime Minister. 

            No, I can’t summon up any enthusiasm for Conservatives, Labour or Lib.Dems.  Neither can thousands of others – many for quite different reasons than mine.    This disillusion could give UKIP its chance – Nigel Farage, its leader, is quite sure that it will.  I do urge readers of this blog not to let it. Apart from a determination to leave the EU nobody can be quite sure what UKIP’s policies are because its leader has disowned everything on its former manifesto.  Leaving the EU will not solve all, or any of Britain’s problems.  We are inextricably part of Europe, historically, geographically and economically.  The EU gives our exporters, of both goods and services a ‘level playing field’ in which to conduct their services.  Those ‘petty regulations’ that some find so irksome ensure the health and safety of all EU workers.   The countries of the EU are our biggest market. Of course we need to sell our goods and services elsewhere as well.  There is nothing that the EU does to prevent or discourage this.  Exporters are almost unanimous in their support of EU membership.  Leaving would cost thousands of jobs.  Is that really what we want?

            Apart from getting out of Europe the speeches of prominent Ukippers suggest  that, on the whole, they support the policies and the attitudes of the extreme right-wing of the Conservatives.  They don’t believe in man-made climate change and would stop the provision of wind turbines and solar farms.  They’d encourage ‘fracking’ -  provided it wasn’t carried out in their own back yard!  They’d permit fox-hunting again and allow smoking in pubs and public places where it is now forbidden.  Is that really what we want?

            Fortunately it is possible to react to disillusion with the main parties by voting for a party whose policies are almost the exact opposite of UKIP.   The Green Party, already a force to be reckoned with within Europe, and (unlike UKIP) with representation in our House of Commons, realizes that, unless we do something about it, climate change will destroy ‘the best-laid plans of mice, men’ and political parties.  Have we already forgotten the storms and devastating floods that caused such havoc in this country just a few months ago, the typhoons in the Philippines and the Indian sub-continent, the bush fires in Australia and the arctic conditions in the USA?  The policies of ‘the Greens’ give human-kind its best chance of survival.  They support continued membership of the EU because they realize that to be effective in protecting us from the worst effects of climate change, action needs to be taken on a regional and global level.

Polling day is on Thursday but thousands of us, who vote by post, have already voted.  I have, and I voted GREEN!   Those who wish their grand-children and great grand-children to inherit a world worth living in, will do the same!

Cause and Effect

The devastating mine disaster in a recently privatised coal mine in Turkey that claimed over 300 lives is a timely warning of the possible result of a free market economy, unfettered by the kind of ‘pettifogging health and safety provisions’ imposed by Brussels, from which Nigel Farage and, rather less stridently, David Cameron and George Osborne, are promising to free us!  It certainly does produce higher dividends for shareholders and encourage investment; tough about all the widows and orphans, but you can’t make omelettes……………

Green Party Policies

Since I wrote the above, the Green Party has launched its campaign for the European and local government elections.  Afterwards leader Natalie Bennet was interviewed by the BBC.  Below is the BBC report of that interview.

Speaking to the BBC after the campaign launch, Natalie Bennett said the party hoped to treble its number of MEPs to six, and would need a swing of just 1.6% to do so.  Even with a small number of representatives in the European Parliament, it is "possible to make a real difference" she continued, "as we have done on issues like bankers' bonuses, on fishing policy, on making Europe more friendly and more social".

The party aims to scrap tuition fees and prescription charges in England and Wales, increase child benefit, and renationalise the railways and energy companies These policies would be costed by the 2015 general election, she said, but the party was considering imposing a top rate of income tax of more than 50% on the highest earners"We need a society that works for the common good, not just the good of the few, which it does at the moment," Ms Bennett said. "We need real change in our society. It's working for the 1%, not the 99% of us. We need decent benefits, we need to make the minimum wage a living wage, and we need to insure that privatisation doesn't keep costing us an absolute fortune.  "What we need is for multinational companies, rich individuals, to be paying their taxes, which they're simply not doing at the moment."

Later, appearing on BBC One's Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Ms Bennett acknowledged that the Greens were "identified with" campaigns against the extraction of shale gas, or fracking. It was, she said, a "very uncertain industry that may very well not get off the ground", she added, and there is "massive and growing public resistance to it" with her party on the "front line" of protests against fracking.

Having read the above, I am now more than ever glad that I voted 'Green' in the European parliamentary elections.  Every one of those Green policies was among those that I included among my political aims a fortnight ago in this blog.

             

                                          

Week 20 2014

Tendring Topics…..on line

The Odessa Steps – déjà vue?

          One of the most striking sequences in The Battleship Potemkin, a very early classic silent film, is of the massacre of unarmed protesting civilians by the Tsar’s Cossacks on the Odessa Steps, a giant stairway providing the main access to the town of Odessa from the Black Sea.  The film tells the story of the mutiny and takeover of the Potemkin in 1905 by its crew, provoked by brutal treatment and maggoty rations.  At about the same time there was an attempted revolt against the Tsar in Moscow and elsewhere throughout Russia.  The revolt was put down with extreme brutality.

            The Potemkin with its mutinous crew put in at Odessa and the mutineers were supported by the town’s people.  The film, directed by Eisenstein, shows them gathering on the Odessa Steps  (elderly men and women, students, a mother with a baby in its pram) to welcome the mutineers,  and being massacred by Cossacks and other of the Tsar’s troops.   It is a very vivid and memorable sequence, subsequently much used for propaganda purposes.  I saw the film for the first time two or three years ago and it certainly impressed me.

            History records though that it didn’t actually happen – not like that anyway.  In Odessa there were demonstrations in support of the mutineers and of the revolt against the Tsar.  The Tsarist troops did respond and did quell the revolt with brutality – but there was no spectacular massacre on the Odessa Steps.

            Perhaps in time to come someone will make a film about another massacre that took place in Odessa a week or so ago.  Again there was a public protest – this time against the pro-western government in Kiev and in support of the pro-Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine.  It seems though that there was also a rival demonstration by supporters of the Kiev government – described by their opponents as violent Fascists and Nazis.  Violent they certainly were.  They drove the pro-Russian demonstrators back to take refuge in the local trade union building, and then threw in petrol bombs setting the building on fire.  There were over 40 victims – either burnt alive by the fire, or dying when leaping from upper windows to escape the flames.

            Meanwhile the police watched – and did nothing.  Who knows?  Perhaps there were so many pro-Kiev demonstrators that there was nothing else they could do.

            A glance at a map of Ukraine will make clear the significance of the events in Odessa.   This Black Sea port is many miles south-west of ‘eastern Ukraine’ where many of the inhabitants are ethnic Russians and most of them favour closer ties with Russia rather than with the EU and NATO.   It is clear that in Odessa and, no doubt, in many parts of Western Ukraine there are a considerable number – though probably a minority – of residents who have a similar outlook.   I expect too that in Eastern Ukraine there is also a minority loyal to the Kiev government.  That being so, any system of Federal Autonomous regions would leave large numbers of people still feeling that they weren’t represented.

            I think that if Ukraine is to have anything like a lasting peace ‘the West’ and the Russians need to forget their ‘cold war’ enmity and co-operate instead of competing both economically and politically.  We all face a common enemy in militant extremist Islam.  The USA the UK and other NATO countries, the Russian Federation and China have all suffered from the acts of terrorism of the jihadists.  They need to pull together, with mainstream Muslims both east and west, to defeat them.   Squabbling over Ukraine is just a distraction from the real struggle (Tony Blair got it right for once!) that faces civilisation.  

            Russia and the EU should break down the trade barriers between them and give Ukraine equal access to each economic bloc.  Ukraine’s permanent neutrality should be guaranteed by both NATO and the Russian Federation.  The reduction in Ukrainian defence spending that could follow such an agreement, plus economic access to both the EU and Russia, would surely give a tremendous boost to the country’s economy and give it the possibility of achieving a living standard equal to, or higher than any in the world.  Both the EU and Russia would also benefit.  The only losers would be the armaments manufacturers who thrive on ‘wars and rumours of wars’!

I wish I thought that there was even the remotest chance of all that happening!

‘Bloodshed divides, prayer and forgiveness unite’

          Thus declared Russian Quakers after they had recently considered the situation in the Ukraine..  They called for restraint by all parties and abstention from violence in any form.  ‘We are for purely peaceful and non-violent activities in defence of their claims and protection of their rights by everyone, regardless of which group of the population they represent in Ukrainian society. .Peace cannot be enforced by military means and no circumstances can justify armed warfare.

Note – Quakers have had a long and friendly relationship with Russia.  Two Tsars; Peter the Great in 1697 and Alexander I in 1817, joined Friends at Meeting for Worship when visiting England. Also in 1817 the Tsar invited English Quaker Daniel Wheeler to plan and supervise the drainage of the marshes and reclaim land near St Petersburg – a task that engaged him for thirty years!   A daughter-in-law of novelist Leo Tolstoy was a Quaker, and British and American Quakers were active in famine relief and other relief and rehabilitation work in Russia in the aftermath of World War I, the revolution and civil war.  In 1921 alone British and American Quakers fed some 212,000 people.  They remained a presence there throughout the 1920s.

The present Quaker presence is centred on Friends House Moscow.  Type Quakers in Russia or Friends House Moscow into Google, for a wealth of information on the subject.

Applause for David Cameron…….again!

            A fortnight ago I applauded David Cameron’s declaration that the UK is a Christian country and that we should be glad that of it.  This week I am again endorsing one of his public statements. No, I haven’t changed my political outlook. I don’t think I could ever vote for an election candidate from his party – unless, of course, it seemed to be the only way of preventing a U-kipper from topping the poll! There are though surely some topics on which all people of good will and compassion will agree and act.  David Cameron found one of them when he denounced, with real passion, the evil acts of the Boko Haram terrorist organisation in burning down a school in a remote part of Nigeria, abducting some 200 teenage girl pupils and threatening to sell them into slavery or forced marriage. Subsequently the same organisation has kidnapped more teenage girls and carried out more murderous terrorist acts in the same country.

            Mr Cameron was quite right too in pointing out that these were not isolated acts committed by a small group of terrorists in a remote part of Africa.  They are part of a loose movement of fanatics who practise a perversion of Islam that subjugates women, detests ‘western’ education especially for women and girls, and seeks to gain God’s approval by carrying out a hate-filled jihad of violence against everything that the rest of the world values.  They were responsible for ‘9/11’, for the tube bombings in London and for the many bomb outrages in Russia, including those before the winter Olympics in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad).  I fear that they are to be found among those whom Britain and the USA have been supporting, trying to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria.

            The USA the UK, France and China have all volunteered to assist in securing the liberation of those kidnapped girls.  I am sorry that Russia is not among them.  They have had longer and more recent experience of dealing with jihadist terrorists and could probably have offered valuable help and advice.  It is also important that we should obtain the vocal and visible support of the great majority of Muslims.

            We have seen them take to the streets in protest when their Koran has been burnt or defiled, or their prophet insulted.  I’d like to see them do the same about the abduction, imprisonment and sale into slavery of those Nigerian teenagers.  They, the majority of peaceful Muslims who are happy to live in peace and friendship with those of other religious faiths, have the greatest reason for supporting the downfall of the extremists.  In the short term, acts like those of the Boko Hara and other Islamic terrorists, fan the flames of Islam-phobia.  ‘Phobia’, it should be remembered, means fear.  The acts of these terrorists give others cause to fear.

            Then again it is only the contents of the Holy Book of any religion that are sacred.  The book itself is the work of human hands.  If one copy of the book is burnt or defiled, a hundred other copies can be printed to replace it.  But each one of those abducted teenage girls is precious, a child of God, created by God in his own image, unique and irreplaceable.  To defile, misuse or deliberately injure any one of them is a most grievous sin.   To claim, as these extremists do, that they are doing so in obedience to God’s will is surely the ultimate blasphemy.  It is the sin against the Holy Spirit that Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet of Islam and much more than that to Christians, declared to be the one unforgivable sin.

            The deliberate harm of even one of God's children evokes more sorrow – and perhaps anger - in Heaven than the burning of a score of holy books.  I hope that the majority of peace-loving, tolerant Muslims will denounce with fervour these acts of terror and blasphemy by those who claim to share their faith, and will support efforts to end their activities.  

           

            

Week 19 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line          

‘Call the Midwife!’

          Clacton isn’t a town noted for its political activists and its violent (or even non-violent) marches and demonstrations. It is astonishing therefore that there were two protest marches, for the same cause, one on Saturday 26^th April and one on the following day. The cause was the hospital authority’s decision to close the Maternity Units in the Clacton-on-Sea and in Harwich and to concentrate maternity services in Colchester.   The reason is not because of shortage of midwives or other staff in either Clacton or Harwich – but because of a shortage of midwives in Colchester!   They need Clacton’s and Harwich’s midwives to make up the numbers.

            This is said to be a ‘temporary arrangement’ but we suspicious Clactonians suspect that it’s one of those ‘temporary arrangements’ that go on for longer than expected – until, in fact, everyone comes to accept them and it is then decided to make them permanent. `

            No-one likes to see a local service closed down and local people compelled to go further to a larger more distant centre, but the nature of the maternity service and the geographical situation of both Clacton and Harwich make it doubly undesirable in our Tendring district. A glance at a large-scale map of south-eastern East Anglia will make it clear that the Tendring peninsula is almost-an-island bounded by the estuaries of the rivers Stour and Colne, a relatively narrow isthmus extending from Colchester to Manningtree, and a wide length of coastline with the port of Harwich/Parkeston and the popular holiday seaside resorts of Dovercourt, Walton-on-the-Naze, Frinton-on-Sea, Holland-on-Sea, Clacton-on-Sea, Jaywick Sands, St Osyth and Brightingsea.

            The only road access is through that Colchester/Manningtree isthmus from which highways fan out to serve resorts which attract motorists from London, the Midlands and the whole of East Anglia to their safe, sandy beaches, seaside holiday attractions – and the lowest average annual rainfall in the United Kingdom!  It follows that throughout all the summer and at weekends in the spring and autumn (particularly bank holiday weekends) those roads are often clogged up with holiday traffic, sometimes reduced to a snail’s pace by sheer numbers, or by the occasional road accident.

            Tough on the mother in labour, perhaps with her first baby, stuck in a traffic jam somewhere between Clacton – or Harwich – and Colchester!  I don’t suppose that the time-and-motion experts who calculated that under ‘normal circumstances’ neither journey should take much more than half an hour, even thought about that.  Babies in a hurry to be born know nothing about normal circumstances, holiday traffic or traffic jams.

            I’m not surprised that Clactonians have protested, marched and demonstrated against this stupid and thoughtless decision of the hospital authorities.  Why though were there two almost identical marches with two lots of protesters?   The Saturday march was the Conservative march, organised and led by Conervative Tendring District Council.  The Sunday march was the Labour march and was organised by the local Labour Party and led by the prospective Labour candidate Tim Young..  The closure of Clacton and Harwich’s maternity units is not a political issue.  Gilbert and Sullivan wrote in one of their comic operas ‘Every little man-child that is born alive is either a little Liberal or a little Conservative’.  Luckily they don’t know that and, luckily or not, nowadays it isn’t only male babies involved, nor is it limited to just two parties.

            I think it a great pity that the two main parties hadn’t got together for a united protest march, thus demonstrating that compassion and common sense aren’t the sole prerogative of one party, and that they can unite when the occasion demands it.  They might have persuaded some of the others to join in – the Lib-Dems, the Greens and the Ukippers (I’m sure they’re convinced that it’s all the fault of ‘Brussels’) might well have joined them!

Those Market Forces

            I don’t like living in a society with an economy reliant on Market Forces.  I believe   that co-operation is better than competition, that we shouldn’t all be trying to get as much as we can for as little as we can get away with, and that we shouldn’t need to follow the advice to ‘shop around’ and change our power supplier, our banker, our savings account, whenever it may seem that it would pay us to do so. Old people - and there are a lot of us in this area - don't like unnecessary change. The cheapest is rarely the best and the supplier or the banker may change his charges as soon as you put your phone down. In the 17^th and 18^th century Quaker businessmen – grocers, brewers, bankers, manufacturers – made their fortunes by declining to yield to market forces.  They bought in or made the products they sold, added just sufficient to make themselves a reasonable living and stuck to that price and to that quality of goods.  Quaker businesses may not always have sold the cheapest goods but customers could be quite sure that they hadn’t been watered down or adulterated, that the price wouldn’t be put up if there were to be a sudden shortage and  that there would be no hidden ‘extra charges’.   That policy benefited both the buyer and the seller.

            Oscar Wilde once defined a cynic as someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.  The ethics of the market place have made us a nation of cynics.   We’re interested only in prices.  The only ‘value’ market traders recognise is the highest price that goods or services can command at any given time ‘in the open market’.   A diamond ring commands a higher price than a shovel (though there are situations in which a shovel could save your life and a diamond ring would have no value whatsoever), and a merchant banker (a money lender) can demand a higher price for his services than a brain surgeon!

            Market prices depend upon supply and demand.  Increase the demand for any desirable product without increasing its supply will raise that product’s price as surely as night follows day. 

            It was this axiom that made me predict confidently in this blog that the government’s help to buy scheme for would-be house buyers would have the effect of raising house prices.  You will recall that a major factor in the creation of the financial crisis from which we hope we are now emerging, was the unwise lending of large sums of money for the purchase of homes.  Because there were not enough homes for hopeful would-be purchasers to buy, the price went up…and up, until it toppled over.

            Many house-buyers had taken on a debt they couldn’t hope to pay off.  Hundreds were rendered homeless and lenders were left with bad debts that could have rendered them bankrupt had the government not bailed them out – with our money!

            Determined not to make the same mistake again, banks and building societies increased the deposit they required from would-be buyers to as much as 25 percent of the price of the property, effectively putting home ownership out of the reach of most first-time buyers.  However David Cameron and George Osborne, determined to pursue the chimera of ‘a nation of home-owners’ introduced their ‘help to buy’ scheme which offered an additional loan to help with that deposit so that the initial sum required by the house-purchaser would be no more than 5 percent of the price of the property.

            This has had two totally predictable effects. Demand for homes once more greatly exceeds supply and – as I had foreseen – house prices are again rising well ahead of general inflation.  The other effect is that the government has, by guaranteeing most of the required deposit, taken on a debt that the professional money lenders had thought was too risky – and, without consulting the electorate – has done so with taxpayers’ money!   This has clearly worried the professionals and they are now asking would-be borrowers a series of very intrusive questions before they will arrange a mortgage. ‘How much do they spend on holidays, on dining out, on alcohol, on entertaining, on children’s education and other financial commitments, and how they would manage their mortgage repayments if – or rather when - interest rates rise?

            The best response?  It’s surely to accept that home ownership is not everybody’s obvious choice.  Repeal the ‘Right to Buy’ legislation and encourage local authorities to build homes for letting as they did for a century before the advent of Margaret Thatcher – and allow those same authorities to allocate those homes as they think best.  In a word; to restore some of the democratic local decision making that is an important aspect of the ‘localism’ to which the government pays lip-service but has been systematically destroying since taking office.