Week 15.10

Tendring Topics……on Line

The General Election!

I suppose that we all look forward to the forthcoming General Election in different ways; some with eager anticipation, some with anxiety, some – I have little doubt – with boredom. I, for instance, have realized with very mixed feelings that it is likely to be the very last General Election in which I shall vote. Just twelve days after it takes place I shall celebrate my 89th birthday and will therefore enter my 90th year. No member of my family has, as far as I know, ever made it to 90 and I hardly expect to be the first to do so.

Since it is likely to be my last opportunity to influence the future of my fellow-countrymen and women, I had better get my comments, and my voting intentions, right! I certainly do intend to vote. I am now able to do so by post. It is unlikely therefore that any circumstances (other, of course, than a fatal accident) will prevent me.

Our sitting MP is Douglas Carswell, Conservative. At 38 he is the youngest of our five candidates and has the very slender majority of 920. However, since the last election, constituency boundary changes have removed Harwich from what used to be the ‘Harwich Constituency’. This is considered to have been to the Conservative advantage. According to the Daily Gazette, Ladbrokes, the bookmakers, give odds of 100 to 1 on his re-election.

Which is a pity, because although I’m not yet quite sure for whom I will vote, I am quite sure that my cross will not go against his name. This isn’t because he is a Tory (if Ken Clarke were standing in this constituency I would probably vote for him) but because he has made it clear that he is strongly opposed to my own views on issues that I believe transcend Party Politics.

I, for instance, have no doubt whatsoever that potentially catastrophic climate change is taking place, and that this is to a very large extent due to human activity. I have backed my conviction by having a solar water heating system installed in my home – and I am already experiencing the benefit in reduced fuel bills. On this issue I am on the same side as David Cameron, the Conservative Leader – but not on the same side as Douglas Carswell. He is convinced that any climatic change that may be taking place is a natural phenomenon and nothing to do with the actions of humankind. It follows that the development of alternative sources of energy is a waste of time and money.

Similarly, I believe that Britain’s best future lies within a more closely integrated, more democratically governed Europe in which British voters would have a powerful influence. I believe that together with our fellow-Europeans we could become a powerful economic and political force that could co-operate, or where necessary compete, on equal terms with the USA and the emerging powers of the Far East. Alone, we would be destined to become a non-voting protectorate of the USA. Douglas Carswell is described in the Daily Gazette as ‘fervently anti-Europe’. The fact that UKIP is not contesting his seat surely speaks for itself.

Anything else? Douglas Carswell was contemptuously critical of the Tendring First (‘anything but Conservative’) coalition that administered the Tendring District until last year, describing them as ‘incapable of running a bath’ at a time when, according to the Government’s Audit Commission, they were the best run council in Essex and among the best in Britain. This does rather suggest that he may allow his political convictions to cloud his judgement. Tendring First may find some consolation in that he is also a strong critic of the BBC! I expect he prefers the news and views of The Sun!

Oh yes, and he is very proud of having been a leader of the pack that brought down the former Speaker of the House of Commons in connection with the expenses scandal. That Speaker was, however ill advisedly, trying to preserve the honour of the House of Commons by concealing the cupidity and extravagance of its members. The expenses claims of Mr Carswell, one of those members, although unquestionably honest, were sufficiently extravagant to attract the somewhat amused attention of the press.

Who else quite certainly won’t be receiving my vote? Well, there’s Jim Taylor, the British National Party Candidate. I really didn’t spend seven years of my life in the army playing a tiny role in the destruction of Nazism and Fascism in Europe, to vote for their equivalent in England. I am tempted to say that at 72 (he’s the oldest candidate in the field) Jim Taylor is old enough to know better. However, he isn’t old enough to remember Hitler transforming a tiny, and apparently harmless, nationalist party into a threat to the whole world. I am.

Neither shall I be voting for Chris Southall, the Green Party Candidate. This isn’t because I don’t agree with most of his aims, but simply because he hasn’t the least chance of being elected. With our present electoral system a vote for him would be a wasted vote – and at my age I can’t afford to waste the miniscule fragment of political power that I possess.

That leaves me with Michael Green, the Lib. Dem. Candidate, and Ivan Henderson, the Labour Candidate and our former MP, who was narrowly ousted by Douglas Carswell at the last General Election. I am torn between them.

I certainly prefer the policies of the Lib.Dem. Party to those of New Labour. They have an uncompromisingly positive attitude toward the European Union. They accept the need for urgent action to combat climate change, they believe firmly in electoral reform and they hope to reduce the gap between the richest and poorest in our society. They opposed our involvement in the invasion of Iraq. These are all policies that I wholeheartedly support. Michael Green should surely be my preferred candidate.

And so he would be if I thought that he had the slightest chance of winning the parliamentary seat. But I really don’t think that he has. Those policies that attract me to the Lib.Dems. are by no means universally popular. Michael Green has no roots in our area and is virtually unknown. Ladbrokes assess his chances of winning at 100 to 1 against and I fear that they are probably right.

Ivan Henderson, on the other hand, was born and bred on the Tendring Peninsula. He was our MP for 13 years and I think that even his opponents would concede that he was a good MP, always seeking what was best for his constituency (it was, after all, his home!) and his constituents. If he doesn’t wholeheartedly support some of those policies that I think are important, at least he doesn’t actively oppose any of them.

He is the one candidate other than Douglas Carswell, whom Ladbrokes give a small chance of winning. They assess him at 16 to 1 against, but those odds could be greatly shortened if folk like myself, whose natural inclination is to vote Lib.Dem or Green, decided to support him.

Do you really want change, as David Cameron keeps insisting? If so, your best chance of getting it in this Clacton-on-Sea Constituency may well be to vote for Ivan Henderson. I haven’t yet fully made up my mind. Possibly I won’t do so until it is time for me to make that cross on the ballot paper and slip it into the post.

Too many deaths?

Only a few weeks ago I commented on the fact that despite a hard winter that could generally have been depended upon to carry off a reasonable number of us old folks, there hadn’t been sufficient deaths to keep Colchester’s cemetery and crematorium staff gainfully occupied. It had therefore proved necessary to raise the charges for cremations and interments. A member of the council’s staff had blamed this sad circumstance on the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance.

I recall that I counselled patience. Not even the toughest old pensioner lasts forever.

Now it seems, the reverse is happening. The number of deaths in Essex dealt with by the Coroner’s courts is proving more than the management can cope with. Dr Peter Dean, the county’s coroner, recently told BBC Radio 4’s Between ourselves’ programme, that because the process of arranging post mortem examinations and releasing bodies has slowed down, funerals have recently been delayed and family viewings of bodies cancelled. These circumstances have arisen only since the management of the Coroner’s services were transferred from the Police to Essex County Council in 2006. Dr Dean had warned at the time of the probable consequences of the change.

I found the response of John Jowers, the Essex County Councillor who is responsible for these matters, very disturbing. He is reported as saying that the new system, introduced by the County Council, was saving taxpayers money. ‘We have to do as good a job as we can within the financial constraints and if things are going wrong, we have to look very closely and see what we can do about it. It wasn’t an easy decision, but you need to make it as easy as possible for everyone in Essex to get to. We have to cut a coat according to the cloth really’.

That somewhat incoherent statement appears to mean: ‘Sorry, we simply haven’t had enough money to do the job properly. We’ll just have to see if we can do better within the present financial limits’.

This comes strangely from a leading member of a Council that spends tens of thousands of pounds on jetting leading councillors and top officials round the world (America, India, China) on the county’s business, has set up a branch in mainland China, launched a bank in the UK, subsidised a ‘members and officers’ canteen’, and bought expensive advertising space on tv assuring the viewing public that ‘Essex Works!’

You’d have thought they would have been able to find a few extra thousands to ensure that the county’s dead and their relatives were treated with efficiency, courtesy and respect.

A Tax Break for Married Couples?

It would be a bit tough on us widows and widowers – two may not be able to live as cheaply as one, but a couple’s cost-of-living isn’t twice as much as a single’s.

That isn’t really the point though. I reckon that any politician who promises that any group of people will be better off after the next budget (or the one after that) is either making false promises or proposing to rob the rest of us. The most that, in honesty and fairness, should be offered is that some groups – those who are already on the poverty line, for instance – can expect to suffer rather less extra pain than the rest of us.

Week 44.09

Tendring Topics……..on line

Is your County Council really necessary?

Colchester Liberal Democrats have launched a campaign for Colchester to be granted the same unitary status that is enjoyed by, for instance, Southend and Thurrock. Unitary authorities undertake all local government functions. While remaining geographically and socially an important part of the county in which they are situated, they are politically independent of its county council.

Supporting the campaign, the town’s Lib.Dem. MP, Bob Russell, told the local Daily Gazette:

‘The public has had enough of the county council. It treats Colchester very much as a second-class citizen – the bad relative of Chelmsford.

I think the final straw was when public opinion was overwhelmingly against the closure of two of our secondary schools, but it went ahead and closed them anyway.

Places much smaller than Colchester are now unitary authorities, so we know we are large enough.

The move would be cheaper for the town too, because instead of the silly issues we have at the moment, such as Colchester collecting waste but Essex County Council disposing of it, we would be doing it all ourselves.

While wishing the campaign every success, I don’t think that it goes half far enough. Regular readers of this blog will recall that several months ago I suggested that the Essex County Council was a very expensive stratum of local administration that we could very well manage without. There is, I believe, no reason at all why every district and borough council within the county should not become a unitary authority, and the Essex County Council be consigned to the history books.

The arguments that Bob Russell advances on behalf of Colchester apply equally to our own neighbouring Tendring District. Both authorities now cover both urban and rural areas with populations considerably higher than those of either Ipswich or Norwich before World War II. Yet, in those days, as County Boroughs they both had infinitely greater powers and responsibilities than today’s unitary authorities……and they exercised those powers and responsibilities to general public satisfaction.

As well as getting rid of such anomalies as the division between refuse collection and refuse disposal, it would spare us the continuing expense of the trips of influential county councillors and top county council officials to far-flung corners of the world, of the expensive ‘members only’ restaurant at County Hall, and of the need to maintain ‘a presence’ in Communist China! It would also bring accountable democracy closer to the people and might well increase the turn-out at local elections. When I was Tendring’s Public Relations Officer one of my most difficult tasks was convincing residents that while it was the District Council that had to send out Rate Demands (now Council Tax Demands of course) and the District Council that had to prosecute those who failed to pay them, by far the greater amount of money that they had to pay, went straight to the remote County Council in Chelmsford.

TENDRING SAYS NO

That was a headline in last Wednesday’s (21st October) ‘Daily Gazette’ reporting that Tendring was opposed to Colchester gaining unitary status. This surprised me because I hadn’t recalled ‘Tendring’, of which I am a tiny part, ever having been consulted about it.

The news story under the headline made it clear that neither the whole of Tendring, nor even the whole of Tendring Council, had so far expressed an opinion on the matter. Councillor Neil Stock, a Conservative councillor, and leader of the majority group (by one member!) in the Weeley Council Chamber, had told a reporter that he opposes Colchester becoming a unitary authority.

He went on to say, The idea is ridiculous. Everyone knows there are going to be massive cuts to local government funding. You would have to replace many services that are currently based at County Hall. We would continue doing our things and we would continue working closely with the county council’

I believe that it is precisely because there are bound to be massive cuts in local government funding that we should campaign for autonomy for district and borough councils and end the expensive and extravagant (with our money!) tier of local government operating from County Hall, Chelmsford. We should be working with Colchester Council, and with other district and borough councils in Essex, toward that common end.

The money that we currently have to pass on to Chelmsford could be used to provide the same services that are at present the responsibility of the County Council, but locally organised and supervised – and I am convinced that, if organised locally, they could be provided more humanely, more efficiently, and more economically.

Put the question to the people of Tendring squarely, without urging them to follow any particular party line, and I have little doubt that the Gazette headline would read TENDRING SAYS YES!

‘It’s an ill-wind…….

that blows nobody any good’, insists the proverb, and we all know that that is true. There are those who have made a fortune, not just despite the recession, but as a result of it. When a substantial part of my income came from royalties and public lending right payments on my plumbing books, there was nothing like a really hard winter to boost sales and public library loans. A wet summer pushes up the sales of raincoats and umbrellas!

This year, on the Essex Holiday Coast and in East Anglia generally, we haven’t had a wet summer. We have had a very good one. Clacton has been full of holiday visitors. Hotels, boarding houses and campsites have been fully booked, and the tills of beachwear and beach equipment retailers have been ringing merrily. The weather was kind to Clacton’s carnival and to the air-show. The summer of 2009 was in sharp contrast to those of 2007 and 2008.

But fine warm weather doesn’t bring joy to everyone. East Anglian farmers have found their land too dry and hard for them to sow their autumn seed. Perhaps the rainy spell that we are experiencing as I write will have come in time to save the day. Perhaps too, it will have come in time to rescue the nature reserve at Minsmere in Suffolk, normally an earthly paradise for wading birds. Just a few weeks ago though, they could hardly find enough water to wade in!

Tendring Districts beach patrols and seafront wardens were stretched to the uttermost by no less than 1,250 incidents, an all-time record for a holiday season. The greatest number of swimmers who had previously had to be rescued from the sea in any one year had been eight. This year the number rocketed to thirty-four. Saddest and most traumatic event of the season was the accidental drowning of ten-year-old Stella Akanbi in August. She went missing while bathing off a busy and normally safe beach on a sunny Sunday afternoon. A massive search was launched immediately but it was the next day before her lifeless body was found.

Other activities of the beach patrols included reuniting ninety lost children with their parents, attending two attempted suicides and giving minor first-aid on the seafront to no less than 700 holidaymakers!

Seafront manager Tim Sutton and his team were deeply saddened by the tragic loss of little Stella but I have no doubt that they would otherwise welcome similar seafront challenges next year…..and the year after!

Tempting Fate

When, just over a year ago, Trent Wharfage, owners of Mistley Quay decided to erect a two-metres high steel fence along the edge of Mistley Quay for ‘health and safety reasons’ local people were furious……and sceptical. The fence was an ugly monstrosity effectively fencing off and denying access to the Stour.

‘Health and Safety?’ No-one could remember anyone, not even after a few too many drinks at a local hostelry, falling off the quay into the Stour. They could though, remember occasions on which casualties from boating accidents on the river had been brought ashore there to be brought back to life and health. ‘That there fence’ll lead to tragedy. Dew yew mark my words!’

And so it….very nearly…. did; and sooner than even the most pessimistic of the local wiseacres could have imagined. During the afternoon of Saturday 10th October a private boat sank in the distinctly chilly waters of the Stour not far from Mistley. Passing yachts rescued from it three adults and a teenage boy and transferred them to the Harwich lifeboat, which made for Mistley Quay. There an ambulance awaited – on the other side of the fence!

Coastguards needed the help of locals to unbolt and remove a section of the offending barrier before those rescued could be brought ashore. A near tragedy was prevented simply because the incident took place during the daytime when there were local people available to help.

Not surprisingly, the Health and Safety Executive who, it seems, had never asked for a fence on that scale in the first place, is reviewing the situation ‘in the light of what has happened’. When asked how much power the Executive had to enforce any ruling it made, a spokesman replied, ‘Any organisation would have to follow HSE instruction’.

It seems likely therefore that when my son, daughter-in-law and I next lunch at Mistley’s Quay Café, that offensive fence will have been removed.

Nick Griffin and the BBC

Was the BBC right to give Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, airtime by inviting him to take part in Any Questions? On balance I think they probably were. Excluding someone who has been proved in the polls to have considerable support, on the grounds that ‘right thinking people’ abhor everything about him, would set a dangerous precedent. Should spokesmen for the Green Party be similarly banned? I know from personal experience (in the correspondence columns of the local press!) that quite a lot of people believe that concern for global warming is ‘just scare mongering’.

In the event, I’d be surprised if his contribution to Any Questions? found him a single additional supporter. Charismatic, hypnotic, spell-binding were not adjectives that came instantly to mind. He was certainly not an Adolf Hitler, a Benito Mussolini or an Oswald Mosley.

If there is blame to be attached to his appearance in the limelight, blame the misguided folk who voted for him and his party in the European and local election, and those who have created, and continue to create, the conditions in which Nick Griffin and his like flourish.

I reckon that,

Members of Parliament who have submitted fraudulent claims for expenses…and are now moaning about having to pay back a fraction of their ill-gotten gains.

Bankers who have been rescued from ruin with our money, but have resumed handing out enormous salaries and huge bonuses to those whose greed and incompetence created that ruin.

Political Parties full of schemes to ease the national debt by reducing the incomes of the poor, the old and the disadvantaged, but from whom we have yet to hear proposals for extracting a proportionate sum from the coffers of the seriously rich.

do more to recruit supporters for one or other forms of political extremism than Nick Griffin and his followers could manage in the whole of their lifetimes.



Our Man in Nanjing - 'my man in Taiwan' comments.

My grandson Chris, who currently lives and works in Taiwan, but who previously lived and worked for some time in mainland China, is a regular reader of this blog. I had thought that my item last week about 'Our man in Nanjing', might interest him. It certainly did! Here is an extract from his email that I have just received:

'I was amazed by the office in Nanjing. I am really curious to know what they are expecting? How exactly do they think they would profit from it?

I was amazed at the man in Nanjing's salary! That is far too much! Do you know how well he could live on that in China? He could have his own chauffeur for that! I think that Essex could get a better deal if nothing else. £24,000 in China and £24,000 in England are very different things! I would like to know what he will be doing to earn that salary. I wonder what kind of return they expect to get on that investment?

No doubt Lord Hanningfield and his colleagues know the answer to that.

Week 24.09

Tendring Topics…..on Line

A 'Change of Horses'


'Never change horses in mid-stream', insists the proverb. But that is precisely what Tendring Council has done. Circumstances having little or nothing to do with democratic choice have resulted in a tiny majority in the Council Chamber of the 'Tendring First' Coalition (Labour, Lib.Dems and others) councillors being replaced by an equally tiny majority of Conservatives. The next 'general election' of Tendring District councillors will be early in May 2011, so we are almost exactly in mid-stream.

In the 'bad old days' when, at least in most provincial authorities, political party labels meant no more than an indication of councillors' general political philosophy, this would have made very little difference. The composition of the committees and their chairmen might have changed but there would have been a general continuity of Council policy. Members would have been horrified at the thought of being required to vote at all times in accordance with local party policy rather than as common sense and conscience dictated.

All that has, of course, changed with the introduction of parliamentary style party politics into the Council Chamber. Now we have a local 'government' and 'opposition'. There is a 'cabinet' consisting of members of the majority party. These are each given responsibility for various aspects of the Council' functions. ''Cabinet Ministers' would be just a little too pretentious a designation even for 2009 AD, so they are called 'Portfolio Holders'. Needless to say, 'the Opposition' then has to have 'Shadow Portfolio Holders'. What pretentious nonsense it all is!
It is in the meetings of this 'cabinet' (a small minority of the full council whom we vote into office) that real decisions are taken. Party members on the Council are expected to support them loyally. Those who fail to do so 'have the party whip withdrawn'. This has, in fact, happened to members of both main parties.

Authority is thus concentrated in the hands of a very small group. This makes for efficiency and speed in decision-making, which was presumably the purpose of the change. It doesn't make it any more likely that the right decisions will be made. It also means that a tiny change in the Council's composition can result in an immediate reversal of policy.

Tendring Council's new administration can hardly have anticipated and made plans for their future in power. For the first time ever, I feel quite relieved that since World War II successive governments have progressively limited the scope of local authorities' freedom of action!

The Best of Intentions

Our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, once commented that the out-going Tendring District Administration, 'couldn't run a bath'. It was an effective and memorable sound-bite, but it came ill from a member of an organisation so badly run it that has proved to be incapable of preventing many of its members from feathering their own nests at our expense*.

Tendring Council did and does, in fact, run a number of public services extremely efficiently. Its once-weekly refuse and recyclables collection, for instance, sets an example for other authorities to follow. There have been a few very serious mistakes and misjudgements though.

There was a bad slip-up over the ill-fated water feature in the town square. I still haven't heard an explanation of how it is that our water feature is a danger to health, while those (apparently identical) in other towns are considered to be safe. There's no sign as yet of that protective fence that was supposed to be erected round it. Could that be an idea that has been dropped by the new administration?

I think though that the very worst decision that the 'Tendring First' Council made was in creating a separate, privately-run regeneration company InTend, financing it with thousands of pounds of our money, and eventually seconding to it the Council's own regeneration staff. A recent issue of the Daily Gazette succinctly defines what was considered to be InTend's purpose; It would access grants the council could not, would be far removed from the humdrum business of emptying bins and other menial matters, and would recruit specialised staff.

It is a definition that underlines InTend's pointlessness. Councils have always employed highly professional specialised staff. When I was employed by the Tendring Council there was a barrister, two solicitors, an engineer and surveyor, accountants, environmental health experts, planning experts and, of course, one journalist (myself!). How many of those were ever required to concern themselves with the humdrum business of emptying bins and other menial matters? As for accessing grants that are not available to local authorities, I don't believe that there are any such grants. We know that InTend has made a number of applications but we haven't yet heard of any being successful.

I think that in deciding to create InTend the Council had simply swallowed whole the idea, taken by some politicians to be a universally acknowledged fact, that anything a public body can do, a private firm can do better and more economically. This simply isn't true, as the expensive failure of many put-out-to-tender services has amply demonstrated.

InTend's 'specialist staff' may not have been very good at raising money…..but they have been very good at raising expectations. While some of them were seeking funding, so far in vain, others were busying themselves working on ways in which, once the money was available, it could be spent on bringing currently dormant parts of our district back to a new life, regenerated in fact. £7 million would be spent in Brightlingsea, giving the Cinque Port town a revamped western promenade, converting the open-air swimming pool into a 'children's water park', providing a new sea water pool near Bateman's Tower, building a town museum and so on! Harwich's master-plan included pedestrianising the quayside, redeveloping Navyyard Wharf to include flats, and bringing the town's railway station up to date.

It now seems possible that the days of InTend, the author of these utopian visions, are numbered. Four of its nine directors have been removed from their posts by Tendring Council's new bosses, who have made it clear that they believe that InTend is a waste of tax-payers' money. If InTend is wound up what, ask the citizens of Harwich and Brightlingsea, is to come of those plans that offered their towns such a dazzling future?
The Daily Gazette thinks it has the answer. 'InTend may end, but work cannot', urges its headline. 'We don't care who regenerates the area. We just want someone to ensure urgent projects, such as the regeneration of Jaywick, Harwich and Brightlingsea, take place'. And so say all of us.

But the fulfilment of those more-than-ambitious regeneration plans depended upon InTend obtaining the grants that were claimed to be inaccessible to mere local authorities. So far there has been no sign of them, and I don't think that there ever will be. However, I could be wrong. I hope that before winding InTend down, the new Conservative administration will make absolutely sure that there isn't one or more unexpectedly in the pipeline.

Having done that, they will be in a position to assure the people of Brightlingsea, Harwich and elsewhere that their areas' regeneration plans are at least as likely to come to fruition as a result of direct action by the Council as they would have been by InTend………but that they will have to take their place in the queue of other council commitments funded by grants that are available to local authorities, by ever-more-meagre central government support, and by Council Tax.

'InTend', I have no doubt, was a clever play on words evoking both 'in Tendring' and firm 'Intention'. Perhaps its creators should have remembered that, 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'.

*The Pot and the Kettles!

While Mr Douglas Carswell, our MP, has been loud in his denunciations of other Honourable Gentlemen (and Ladies) making hay, at our expense, while the sun shone, it seems that he himself isn't totally beyond question, though I am quite sure that he hasn't stepped a millimetre outside those remarkable rules that our legislators have made for themselves.

Some though may question why, for the performance of his parliamentary duties, he found it necessary to rent a second home in Thorpe-le-Soken at a cost (to us of course) of £1,250 a month. Possibly he needed a home base within his constituency and that was all that was available.

In that case he will have been delighted to read in the Daily Gazette that they have found a recently built vacant apartment that would be eminently suitable for his purpose. It is a two bedroom first-floor flat overlooking the sea in Southcliff Hall, Marine Parade East (definitely an up-market area of Clacton), with a lounge, kitchen, bathroom, gas central heating, double glazing and car parking. The rent is only £535 a month, less than half the rent for his Thorpe home. If he moved there now it would be a pity about the £32,000 that he has spent (and claimed back as expenses) on refurbishing the Thorpe-le-Soken house to make it suitable for him to live in. However he would presumably be able to take with him some of his purchases; the 'love seat' easy-chair (the imagination boggles!) for instance, together with bed, mattress and bedding, chairs, sofa, fridge freezer, washing machine, radio, tv, vacuum cleaner, electric iron and tv set.

Mr Carswell told The Gazette that he doesn't feel the need to pay back any of the money he has claimed. 'Every single time I have claimed for money I always think whether I can justify it to the editor and readers of the Gazette'. It is nice to know that we are in his thoughts on those occasions!

His Lordship is right!

It isn't very often that I find myself in total agreement with Lord Hanningfield, leader of Essex County Council, whose party has just been returned to power at Chelmsford with an increased majority. I do though share his views entirely on the subject of the BNP. The day after the election, the East Anglian Daily Times quoted him as saying, 'The most disturbing thing about this election has been the BNP getting a sizeable percentage of the result. It's very depressing just knowing people vote for them. People who vote for them are not in favour of the value of the individual. The expenses row is one thing, but the BNP is the least genuine of all the parties.

Many people did, in fact, vote for them…..not least within our own Tendring District. In the eight county council wards in our district a total of 3,974 electors put their cross against the names of BNP candidates, 1,883 (almost half) within Clacton's three wards.

I would perhaps be rather less concerned about this had I not just watched the two part drama documentary on tv Channel 4 'The Birth of Evil; Adolf Hitler'. This graphically demonstrated how in Germany in the late 1920s and early '30s, in economic turmoil and disillusion not unlike that which prevails in Britain today, the young Adolf Hitler (a brilliant orator 'with a vision'!) joined a struggling minority political party. In it he managed to supplant its leader, change its policies into something resembling those of the BNP today and eventually bring the whole of Germany under his fanatical rule.

At least the voters did keep the BNP out of the Council Chamber at Chelmsford and increased the number of representatives of the Lib.Dems. for whose party I had voted. They're still a small minority though.

The same cannot be said for the European elections. The BNP has secured representation there for the first time, and UKIP has increased its strength both in Europe and throughout the UK. Britain now has increased the number of its representatives in the European parliament who firmly believe that that parliament should be abolished and that we should leave the EU!

I shall probably return to this matter next week when I have had an opportunity to look at the election results more closely. In the meantime I derive just a little comfort from the fact that the total turn-out was very low and that UKIP achieved its result with only a tiny increase in its share of the national vote.

Week 22.09

Tendring Topics…….on line

An undignified exit

There is no doubt that the Speaker of the House of Commons had to depart. He had tried to conceal the venality and greed of many of the House’s members, and had shown himself much more interested in the identity of the whistle-blower than in the activities that had been exposed. I didn’t care for the manner of his going though. Could it be that some MPs were less concerned about the fact that he had attempted a cover-up than that it had proved to be unsuccessful?

I have little doubt that he saw himself as trying to protect the honour of the House and of its members, in the tradition of the 17th Century speaker who famously defied the emissaries of King Charles I when they sought to arrest rebellious MPs. Did all of those members who demanded his resignation have nothing whatsoever about which they would have preferred their constituents to remain unaware?

I wasn’t particularly pleased to see our own MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, among the leaders of the pack. I have no doubt that he hasn’t spent a penny that wasn’t permitted by current rules, but we learn that he has claimed for the cost of a fridge freezer and two tables that wouldn’t have been permitted under the agreed new code of conduct. His last year’s claim of £23,083 for his second home was almost a thousand pounds below the permitted maximum. Compared with some of his colleagues he is a paragon. Doesn’t he sometimes though, feel a shade uneasy about the fact that for just a part of his ‘necessarily incurred expenses’ he received a tax-free payment in excess of the total income of a great many, possibly a majority, of his constituents?

One of the saddest, and potentially most dangerous, results of this whole sad affair is the disillusion of the general public with the whole democratic process. Cynical jokes are enjoying a new lease of life: ‘How can you tell when a politician is lying? When you can see his lips moving’; ‘An honest politician is a politician who when he’s been bought, stays bought’; ‘Don’t vote for them. It only encourages them!’; ‘If voting changed anything, they’d have banned it!’; and so on. It is amid such general disillusion that charismatic new leaders, promising to cast out the ‘tired old men of politics’ and bring in a new, clean, all-British era, emerge and flourish; such new leaders, in fact, as Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and in our own country (though he never succeeded in persuading more than a small minority) the late Sir Oswald Mosley.

It was Winston Churchill who said that democracy was, ‘the worst form of government, except for every other form of government that had yet been tried’


Using your vote ‘responsibly’

Nowadays young people have the right to vote in European, National and local elections once they are eighteen. In my day it was twenty-one but, because I was a prisoner of war from the age of twenty-one till I was twenty-four, I was not able to exercise this right until three years after I became eligible.

I welcomed the opportunity to do so in the parliamentary election of 1945. Home from Germany, I was still on leave from the army at the time. My mother and I went together to the polling station to register our votes. As we left we encountered a neighbour who my mother knew perfectly well had different views from our own. ‘Just voted, have you?’ she asked, ‘I hope that you voted the right way’. On my own, I would have either stammered something totally incoherent or, just possibly, launched into a long-winded and totally fruitless argument. My mother who, I discovered, was well able to ‘think on her feet’, smiled sweetly and replied, ‘We all think that we do that, don’t we?’

I thought of that diplomatic reply when I read the leading article in a recent issue of the Clacton Gazette. The editor had clearly realized that, as I have warned in the article above, the current MPs’ expenses scandal could result in electors either refraining from voting in disgust or, in anger, registering a protest vote for a minority candidate whose policies they would normally have held in abhorrence. Here are the editor’s wise words:

Please use your vote, no matter how much it makes you want to hold your nose. Use your vote freely, but also wisely and responsibly. Many people will be tempted to use this time as an opportunity to protest. However protest votes can result in unintended consequences which may pose a threat to democracy, not enhance it

I couldn’t agree more; but don’t we all think that we vote ‘wisely and responsibly’? I would hate to see the BNP gain a foothold either in the County Hall at Chelmsford or in the European Parliament. Nor would I like to see UKIP increase its influence, either at home or on the European mainland. Geographically and historically we are part of Europe. Our destiny is to play a leading role in a culturally, economically and politically united Europe, not to try to position ourselves somewhere in mid-Atlantic.

We are fortunate in having a secret ballot. We cannot be penalised or ostracised by bosses, landlords, trade-union leaders, or even indignant friends and neighbours, for voting what they consider to be ‘the wrong way’. If I were younger I might have preferred to keep my own voting intentions secret, but at eighty-eight I have no hesitation in announcing that on 4th July my vote for the European Election will be for the Green Party and for the Essex County Council my vote will be for the Liberal Democrat candidate.

Eighty-eight is Great…….so far

I certainly celebrated my eighty-eighth birthday in style. It all began a fortnight earlier when my younger son and daughter in law, Andy and Marilyn, came down from London to visit me. After an enjoyable lunch at the ‘Bowling Green’, Weeley, we drove on to the Beth Chatto Gardens, a visit that I wrote about in a recent blog.

The following Saturday Pete and Arlene brought grandson Chris from Taiwan and his girlfriend Ariel to see me. Their visit was mentioned last week.

Left:Ariel and myself in my home in Dudley Road, Clacton

Above: Andy and Marilyn high above London in the 'London

Eye'

Then, for the weekend immediately preceding my birthday, Pete and Arlene took me to Brusselsto see younger grandson Nick and meet his charming girlfriend Romy, a young Belgian lady whose first language is French but who speaks English fluently and with barely a trace of accent. Like Nick, she works for the European Travel Commission. I found her to be intelligent, a good listening-as-well-as-talking conversationalist, and an altogether warm and cheerful companion. Both in her appearance, and in some of her mannerisms, she reminded me strongly (and heart-breakingly!) of my late wife Heather, Chris and Nick’s grandma, when she was in her twenties…..and that is the greatest compliment that I can pay to anyone.

While in Brussels, Pete, Arlene and I stayed at the very posh Raddison Hotel (favoured by visitors to the European Parliament!). We all went to an enormous multiplex cinema and enjoyed watching ‘Slum-Dog Millionaire’ (in English with French and Flemish subtitles) and drove out through the Ardennes to the lovely Meuse Valley, scenically comparable with the Valley of the Rhine.

A family meal in a Brussels Restaurant. Left to right; Arlene, Pete, Nick and Romy

There we lunched in an open-air restaurant beside the Meuse in Dinant (did you know that it was in the Dinant area that fish and chips was invented?) and travelled by cable railway to the Citadel, on a rocky cliff-top high above the town. I was sorry when we had to leave late on the Sunday evening.

Dinant and the River Meuse from the Citadel, built on a commanding clifftop above the town and its strategic bridge over the Meuse.

Back in London for my actual birthday Pete drove Arlene and myself into Essex to enjoy a celebratory lunch at ‘The Cricketers’ in Clavering, owned and run by the parents of Jamie Oliver, the celebrated down-to-earth tv chef. The food and service were, as one would expect, impeccable. I am glad that I didn’t even catch a glimpse of the bill! Pete drove me home to find twenty greetings cards awaiting me; not bad for an octogenarian who has outlived many of his friends and relatives.
One of my favourite stories is of the unfortunate chap who fell off the roof of a skyscraper. As he hurtled past the eighth floor he saw all the anxious faces watching him, and called out reassuringly, ‘I’m all right so far!’

Bearing that story in mind I am able to assure blog readers that, for me, eighty-eight is great…..so far.

18th May 2009
Me at my birthday celebratory lunch at 'The Cricketers'. Clavering