Week 41 2014

Tendring Topics….on Line

Coping with Islamic State

            So now we are officially ‘at war’ with IS (Islamic State) with our aircraft already striking IS targets but with the promise that there will be no ‘boots on the ground’.  This may slow down Islamic State’s progress but I don’t think it will stop it; much less reverse it.  Its principal effect will probably be to recruit more enthusiastic young people from the UK and no doubt, from other ‘western’ countries, into the IS ranks.  Now, so it seems, British teenage girls are making for Turkey as the first step towards becoming brides of their IS heroes in Syria!  It’s strange (well perhaps it isn’t) that we never hear of young people travelling to Syria to help those ‘moderate forces’ opposing President Assad that the UK and the USA are so eager to support.

            I heard on the tv a few days ago an ‘authority’ on Middle Eastern matters declare that the IS uprising is a result of Britain’s failure a year ago to take decisive action against President Assad.  This, so he said, had enabled President Assad’s army to defeat the ‘moderate opposition’ and leave the extreme jihadists in control. What rubbish!  Does he really imagine that if Assad had been overthrown, those moderates would have prevailed over IS?   On the contrary, without Assad, his army and the substantial number of Syrians who remain loyal to him, IS would probably now be ruling the whole of Syria. 

            The Iraqi army has proved woefully unable to halt the IS advance.  The Kurds have been more successful but they are not a national army and the Turks are unwilling to let them have the heavy weapons they need, because of their fear that they might be used to create an independent Kurdistan – part of which would be part of what is now Turkey!  The only effective national army in the Middle East, experienced and hardened in battle with Islamic State, is that of President Assad.  It is time we made our peace with him and accepted him as an ally.

            No doubt the pre-civil war Assad regime had its faults (what Middle Eastern regime hasn’t?) but it was an oasis of freedom and tolerance compared with some of those whom we now claim to be our friends.  Saudi Arabia in particular is the source of the poisonous doctrines that IS puts into practice.  The overwhelming majority of those known to be responsible for the 9/11 outrage were from Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia regularly abuses human rights in much the same way as IS, but only on its own people.  Half its population (the women) are regarded as the property of members of the other half!   I have little doubt that IS’ initial funding came from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.  Now, of course, IS doesn’t need outside funding.  They have enriched themselves from their conquests in Syria and Iraq.

 A regular blog reader points out in an email that IS, unlike Hitler and his Nazis, is part of a militant movement that is sweeping the globe.  The Archbishop of Canterbury accurately described it as a ‘many headed Hydra’. Islamic State in Syria and Iraq has the same motivation and the same objectives as the Islamic jihadists who abducted, and still hold, those Christian teenage girls in Nigeria; those who constantly threaten the government of Pakistan, who are fighting for control of Libya, and who are likely to take over Afghanistan as soon as the last GI leaves.

I am reluctant to criticise Obama and Cameron for authorising air strikes on IS targets.  I am sure that they have done so reluctantly and that they are both well aware of the risk of their countries being dragged into a third ‘Gulf War’.  I really have no idea of what their course of action should be.  My blog-reading email correspondent clearly feels the same.  ‘I don’t think we can stand idly by and let these people take ever more and more land, forcing completely peaceful populations out of their towns and villages and murdering anyone who opposes them.  I feel that the priority should have been the defence of the innocent and humanitarian relief – and that does need boots on the ground.  Surely we have the hardware to put a ring of steel around these villages and keep the enemy at bay without getting deeply involved.  It can’t be right for all the Kurds to have to move into refugee camps in Turkey’.

No, of course it isn’t.  My knowledge of military tactics is (to say the least) extremely limited – but I am sure that it wouldn’t be possible to defend all those vulnerable towns and villages as my correspondent suggest. I don’t think we should underestimate the fanaticism and determination of these jihadists. National boundaries mean nothing to them.  If they successfully drove all the Kurds out of Iraq and into Turkey they’d drive on into Turkey!

I am just a little disappointed at the reaction to Islamic State of the majority of peaceful and moderate Muslims in the UK and Western Europe. Imams have condemned the actions of IS as unislamic but -  where are the angry street demonstrations and demands for a fatwa that were provoked by Salman Rushdie’s ‘Satanic Verses’ and the cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper?  As well as increasing Islamophobia in the ‘western world’ and providing encouragement to members of such Neofascist organisations as BNP, English Defence League and some Ukippers, it is surely the ultimate blasphemy to suggest that the torture and slaughter of any of his human children is in accordance with the will of God.

I had been persuaded that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance and that jihad doesn’t really mean a ‘Holy War’ but the inner struggle within us all against the forces of evil.  The members of Islamic State and other similar organisations worldwide are doing their best to persuade me (and thousands of others) otherwise.

‘Ring of Steel’

My email correspondent’s  use of the phrase Rings of Steel to protect non-Islamic communities in Iraq and Syria from the fury of the Islamic State, reminded me that Ring of Steel was the headline on the front page of the weekly Clacton Gazette on Thursday 25^th September.  A sub-heading announced that Special Branch, undercover police and sniffer dogs are to be drafted into Clacton in a huge security operation for the town’s high-profile by-election on 9^th October – a fortnight away as that particular Gazette was published.  If I publish this blog on the internet on Monday 6^th October as I intend, it will be just three days away. 

A news article within the Gazette points out that this by-election will have the highest profile in English political history and its announcement has come just as the country is put on a heightened state of alert against possible terrorist threats.  Police say that there is no known terrorist threat in Clacton but electoral organisers are taking no chances.  Ian Davidson, Tendring Council’s Chief Executive and Returning Officer for the Clacton By-election, told a Gazette reporter that, ‘This election is massive in terms of attention and national politics – the spotlight is on Clacton politically.  We have been in touch with Special Branch and the Police because there are potential security issues and we are taking every precaution to make sure it is a safe and secure count.  We have never had Special Branch at an election before. There is no information of a specific security threat, but we are taking every precaution because of the national and international profile of the by-election’.

Tendring’s district police commander, Chief Inspector Russ Cole said that local police officers would be visiting polling stations throughout the day and there would be a police presence at the count.  ‘We are very much driven by intelligence, and the intelligence we are looking at says there are no major public disorder or counter-terrorist issues but we want to make sure we have enough policing assets’.

I don’t know whether or not my experience has been shared by others but it saddens me that have to say that Ukip and Douglas Carswell have dominated the election campaign.  I have lost count of the number of items of  election literature I have received telling me what a wonderful chap Carswell is, how fortunate we are to have had him as our MP and how important it is that he should be re-elected (but this time as a Ukipper) at the by-election.   These have included leaflets, posters to stick in my window and two apparently personal letters one that addresses me as ‘Dear Ernest’ and the other as ‘Dear Neighbour’.  Douglas Carswell and I have never even met and are certainly not on ‘first name terms’. I have no idea where ‘Dear Douglas’ lives but I’m quite sure it isn’t in my neighbourhood.  I have also had a Ukip doorstep canvasser call on me and among the junk phone calls I had yesterday (1^st October) was a lady urging me to put a cross against Carswell’s name on the 9^th.

Of the other contestants, I have received election leaflets from the Labour, Conservative and Lib’Dem candidates plus a phone call on behalf of the Labour candidate.  And that’s it.  Ukip, it seems, has unlimited funds and lots of eager volunteer supporters.  The others haven’t.

 Ukip’s policies embody everything that I most dislike in politics.  I don’t like their attitude towards Europe, towards global climate change, towards ‘green’ issues generally and towards taxation.  The situation in the UK today, with a great many people (including myself) having lost faith in any of the traditional political parties, is uncomfortably like that in Germany in the late 1920s early ‘30s.  They sought a politician who distrusted politics and offered an alternative path.  They found such a politician in Adolf Hitler.  We’re in danger of finding one in Nigel Farage.

I have a postal vote and have already used it.  For the first time in my life I voted for the Conservative candidate - not because I want him as an MP, but because he offers the best chance of keeping Ukip defector Douglas Carswell, out!

           

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Week 25 2013

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘Now thrive the armourers…….’

          This line, spoken in the prologue to Shakespeare’s Henry V suggests that as long as 400 years ago it was realized that the real winners in any international or civil conflict are those who manufacture and sell the means with which the combatants kill each other.  Henry V is Shakespeare’s account of the campaign in France in 1415 that began with the siege and eventual capture of Harfleur, and ended at Agincourt.  There a much larger French army was defeated in its attempt to prevent Henry’s   depleted and disease-ridden force from reaching Calais, then an English possession, and returning safely to England. 

The campaign was part of a war that dragged on for a century. It cost thousands of French and English lives and thousands of pounds wrung from the ordinary people of France and England.   Agincourt was indeed a famous victory in which English bowmen and foot soldiers defeated a much larger French Army and slaughtered large swathes of the French nobility and chivalry.  Whatever else may have been its result there’s no doubt at all that, on both sides of the Channel, those ‘armourers’ did very nicely out of it, and out of the century-long war.

Let us hope that the war ‘the west’ has been waging ‘against terrorism’ since ‘9/11’ doesn’t go on for so long.  In Iraq the flames of conflict have been dampened down but not extinguished. The future of Afghanistan seems likely to be similar, if not even bleaker.  Libya could hardly be described as a country at peace.

In Syria a motley array of rebel fighters (many with a minimal knowledge of Syria but a wide experience of terrorism) are trying to overthrow the government of President Assad.   We are being dragged deeper and deeper into the conflict.  At first there was just aid for the victims, more recently there has been supply of ‘non-lethal’ military equipment to the rebels.  The government of the USA has repeatedly said that it would take more positive action if it were satisfied that the Syrian government’s forces were using chemical weapons.  Now it proclaims that that Rubicon has been crossed – Sarin gas has been used and it has claimed over 100 victims.  The USA will therefore support the rebels with military aid of all kinds. It is to the credit of our Prime Minister that for once he strikes a note of caution.  I hope that he will resist any plea to send more weaponry and perhaps troops from our depleted army, to ‘train and support’ rebel fighters, among whom, eagerly gaining more murderous experience, are the very terrorists who threaten us in the UK.

Reports suggest that the principal backer of the Syrian rebels is Saudi Arabia, which is supplying them with both weapons and funds.  Compared with Saudi Arabia, pre-civil-war Syria was an oasis of liberty and tolerance.  Does anyone seriously imagine that the rulers of Saudi Arabia, with its absolute ban on any religion other than its own version of Islam, its religious police (who make the ‘thought police’ of pre-war imperial Japan look like well-meaning boy scouts), its subjugation of women and its medieval legal and penal code, want to see a new liberal and tolerant Syria as preferred by Barak Obama and David Cameron?

It is probable that Sarin gas, or whatever, has claimed victims in the Syrian conflict.  But which side has used it?   Barak Obama has repeatedly said that the use of chemical weapons by the government side would result in more positive action by the USA in favour of the rebels. That’s just what the rebels need. Is it likely that the Syrian government would authorise the use of a small amount of Sarin gas; enough to provoke the USA into action but by no means enough to turn the conflict in the government’s favour?  Nor would it be likely to do so at a time when government forces are gaining the upper hand using conventional weapons. Surely it is much more likely that the rebels have used it as a sure, if desperate, means of gaining greater support from ‘the west’ in their cause?   We were deceived into taking part in the invasion of Iraq by a dodgy dossier of ‘irrefutable evidence’ that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at his disposal.   He hadn’t. Nor had he, as was falsely claimed at the time, played any part in the outrage of 9/11. We surely have more sense than to be again deceived into military action by false or flawed evidence.

Perhaps we should look on the bright side.  Arms manufacturers and salesmen (modern ‘armourers’ engaged in one of the UKs most successful industries) are doing do very nicely out of the conflict. If the UK and USA give more support to the rebels, they could do even better. They’d make more profits and might even be able to ‘create more jobs’ knocking a few hundred off the UK’s two and a half million unemployed   For some that would be ample compensation for the destruction of a country and for  tens of thousands of its inhabitants being slaughtered, mutilated and/or rendered homeless.

A little grand-paternal pride!

Nick and Romy in a Brussels restaurant 

            I am very proud of the fact that Nick, my younger grandson, has become an authority on international tourism.   Shortly after graduating he obtained a post with the European Travel Commission and was appointed as their on-line Sales Manager.  Later, despite the fact that he was not yet thirty and that the UK had opted out of membership of the ETC, he was appointed as the Commission’s Acting Executive Director. Nick though, had no intention of becoming a senior International Civil Servant or of limiting his tourism activities to Europe. With the experience he had gained and the world-wide contacts that he had made, he launched his own international tourism consultancy SE1Media Ltd. of which he is now Managing Director (www.se1media.com).  Since then he has organised international tourism conferences and seminars world-wide and has visited the tourism and holiday-travel ministries of over forty countries.

            Nick had, of course, visited my wife and I in Clacton on many occasions as a child and adolescent. I don’t recall his ever expressing any great enthusiasm for our town as a holiday destination.  I was a little anxious therefore when, after the guests at the celebratory  lunch for my 92^nd birthday (see Blog Week 21) began to disperse, my German friend Ingrid and her partner Ray announced that with the younger members of my guests, they would be going down to the sea front to see the cliff-top gardens and the pier.  How, I wondered, would  Nick, now an international expert, regard Clacton's holiday attractions?

                                                                        Clacton’s Memorial Gardens

            I am very pleased to be able to record that they all, including Nick, thoroughly enjoyed themselves and were deeply impressed.  They appreciated the pier and its present rides and facilities.  Nick was very impressed with the Pier Restaurant with its large glass windows looking out on to the great sweep of the sea and the new Maplin Sands wind farm.

 There was Ingrid from Germany (originally from Zittau but now living and working in Bayreuth), her Austrian god-daughter Jenny, grandson Nick, and Romy, from Brussels, grandson Chris from Taiwan, granddaughter Jo from Sheffield and Ingrid’s partner Ray from Ipswich.   It is good to think that they have all returned to their homes with positive memories of their visit to Clacton-on-Sea and the Essex Sunshine Coast on the occasion of my ninety-second birthday.

Oh dear!  Sixteen year old Austrian Jenny has been gobbled up by an alien ogre from outer space, on Clacton Pier.     

                                                         The Pier Restaurant

Week 45 2012

Tendring Topic.......on Line

Some Real Horror Stories!

Hurricane ‘Sandy’

          When publishing my one successful work of fiction (a ‘horror’ story!) as my blog last week I wrote that there was more than enough real horror in today’s world without my adding to it from my imagination!  Events have certainly proved me right.  In the past, when there have been official warnings of doom and disaster to come, the reality has often turned out to be something of an anticlimax.   The flooding of New Orleans in 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was something of an exception.  Its appalling effects were restricted in area though and they were made worse by the lack of effective leadership by US President Bush.

            Hurricane Sandy that struck the USA just a week ago, was most certainly an exception. It was far worse than had been expected by the experts – and their expectations had been pretty dire!   An area of the north-eastern USA larger than the whole of Europe, reaching up to and beyond the Canadian border, was affected.  Millions of homes were damaged and/or had their electricity supply cut off, and hundreds of thousands of people rendered at least temporarily homeless. The centre of New York City and other towns on the Atlantic coast were flooded by a tidal surge made even worse by hurricane strength winds and torrential rain, trees were brought down, public and private buildings alike were wrecked.  Heavy unseasonal snowfall compounded the misery in northern parts of the affected area. It has been estimated the cost of the damage will run to tens of billions of dollars.

            Loss of life was mercifully low, probably less than 100 victims, largely due to the dire warnings, backed by President Obama personally, and sound advice given over and over again on radio and tv.  It will surely be weeks though before life gets back to any semblance of normality for thousands of people.  No electric power means that there are no lifts (I think the Americans call them ‘elevators’). Imagine the plight of someone like myself, with very limited mobility, marooned indefinitely in an apartment on an upper floor of a skyscraper! 

            We have become accustomed to similar disasters (though on a smaller scale) in central America, the Caribbean, the Indian Subcontinent and south-east Asia – but not in an area that many see as representing the very highest standard of living that modern civilisation has to offer!

            Despite the tremendous achievements of mankind in the past two centuries and the phenomenal progress of our scientific knowledge and understanding of the forces of nature, Hurricane Sandy reveals humankind as impotent and powerless when those forces are ranged against us.

            Was Hurricane Sandy, and the other extreme examples of drought, storm and flood that we are now experiencing every year, even in our own country, the result of global climatic change, global warming?  I firmly believe that they were and I believe furthermore that these changes are being brought about, or at least made worse, by human activity. 

            If these increasingly frequent catastrophes can finally persuade the climate-change deniers (including our Clacton-on-Sea M.P.!) of the reality of world climatic change, and the need for urgent action to counter its effects to take priority over all other national and international concerns, then those world-wide who have suffered from them will not have done so in vain.

A Horror closer to Home!

            Much closer to home are the still-developing ramifications of the scandal concerning the late Jimmy Savile. There now seems little doubt that this almost universally popular tv personality, honoured by the Queen and the Pope for his fund-raising and practical service to hospitals and for charitable causes was, in fact, for many years a predatory paedophile, corrupting and contaminating other people as he pursued his pernicious activities.

            Who knew what, and when, and what if anything did they do about it? This is the subject of police investigation, and of internal investigations within the BBC, famous hospitals, and other honoured and respected institutions.  Other celebrities from the ‘pop’ world and the world of politics are being investigated.  As I write two other arrests have been made and more are anticipated.

         

          I hope that Jimmy Savile’s victims, especially those who summoned up the courage to complain but had their complaints ignored or discounted, will find satisfaction in the final outcome of all the current probing.  One regrettable result of the scandal has been to make it possible for rubbishy publications like the Sun, the flagship of the remaining Murdoch Media Empire, to pour scorn on the BBC, an all-British institution of which most of us want to be proud. However the BBC has weathered storms before and I have no doubt that it will, in the end, weather this one.

            Another sad effect is the way in which it will deepen the atmosphere of suspicion with which adult males are regarded when in the company of the young.  Like many old people I find myself attracted to young children.  I like to hear their happy and spontaneous laughter.   It is a joy to see them happily at play.  Yet nowadays I would hesitate to watch children at play on the beach or at a public playground for more than two or three minutes.  I would be afraid of a plain clothes police officer arriving and inviting me to step down to the nearest Police Station and answer a few questions!  

            The Jimmy Savile affair also illustrates how very difficult it can be to pursue resolutely and disinterestedly, an allegation of criminality made against a well-loved celebrity.  In the USA many people believe that such a celebrity may have literally ‘got away with murder’ when, despite overwhelming evidence, a jury acquitted him.

            We hope that couldn’t possibly happen in the UK, but we have seen celebrities acquitted of fraudulent tax evasion by persuading a judge and jury either that they were too other-worldly to have thought about sordid financial matters, or that in all matters other than the narrow one that made their fortunes, they have ‘severe learning difficulties’    Funny thing – one never hears of celebrities being so other-worldly or so dim-witted as to unintentionally pay the Inland Revenue a million or so more than they owe!

Government policies promise horrors yet to come.

-  In the field of ‘Defence’

I don’t think that one needs to be a member of CND or a supporter of the Peace Movement, to believe that devoting another few million pounds to the continued use of those totally useless Trident submarines – while leaving the UK without an aircraft carrier and cutting down the conventional forces that still have unfinished (and never to be finished) business in Afghanistan, is an act of utmost folly.

             Foreign Secretary Hague keeps making bellicose noises against the government of Syria and the Prime Minister is sending war planes to the Middle East to threaten Iran!  Yet Cameron & Co have systematically run down the conventional armed forces that could have backed their bluster while finding millions to support a ‘deterrent’ that we have had for years, that has not as yet deterred anyone and that, if it were ever to be used, would inevitably result in an incalculable number of deaths and the end of civilisation on this planet; Mutually Assured Destruction or M.A.D. (mad indeed!)

- In the field of Planning and Building

The government has decreed that, in order to give a boost to the building industry, create more jobs and provide much-needed homes, the planning laws are to be relaxed.  There is to be a presumption of acceptance of developers’ plans and planning permission will no longer be required for building extensions to homes or structures in back gardens.          

 Building Regulations are also to be relaxed, including those relating to fire precautions and to disabled access.  This is described as cutting through pettifogging red tape and allowing the wealth-creating entrepreneurs to get on with their task of creating wealth for themselves and, purely incidentally and if circumstances permit, serving the needs of the public.

What it will do is create ready-made slums of jerry-built badly insulated buildings, subject to fire risk and threat of flooding, and inaccessible to wheelchair users (so much for the new deal for the disabled that was supposed to be a legacy of the Paralympics!)  It is a step towards making Britain a land of slums comparable with those of the Britain of Victorian times, and of many Asian and South American cities today, and with run-down trailer parks for drifters and missfits on their outskirts, like many cities of the USA.

Add to this either departure from the European Union or ‘repatriation’ of health, safety and labour protection laws ‘imposed by Brussels’, and we’ll have a developers’ paradise and a  positive move towards making the UK ‘competitive in the Global Market’.   Shame about the poor – but David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ will surely see to it that there are sufficient soup runs, food banks and charity handouts, to make sure that very few of them will actually starve or freeze to death.

The American Presidential Election

I am very pleased that Barak Obama won the American Presidential Election.  I am sure that that is good news for both the USA and the rest of the world.

However I have had first the radio and then tv switched on to BBC programmes from 5.00 am till 7.30 am (with a half-hour break for wash, shave and shower) and have heard nothing else.  Surely that can't be all that happened in the world and, in particular, on this side of the Atlantic, in the past twenty-four hours!

Week 6 2012 9.2.2012

Tendring Topics........on line

 ‘Do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you’

            St. Matthew records in his Gospel that Jesus declared that single commandment summed up the whole of the moral teaching of the Old Testament.  I hope that I am not being too heretical in saying that I wish he had gone on to state the corollary, ‘Do not do anything to other people that you would hate them to do to you’.  Perhaps Jesus did say that too but it seemed too obvious to need recording.   It clearly needed to be said though, because Christians have flagrantly ignored it through the centuries.

            It could be argued that do not is even more important than the positive do. The things we like vary widely.  George Bernard Shaw wrote in his Maxims for Revolutionaries that we should not do to others what we would like for ourselves. Their tastes may be different.  I think though, that even Shaw would agree that while we may like many different things, there are dislikes that are shared by us all.  I am quite sure that every single one of us would hate the idea of being tortured or burnt to death.  We all would hate to be brought to a violent death, to be enslaved, starved, rendered homeless, or separated from those we love.

            Yet, as Lord Byron pointed out; ‘Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded that all the apostles would have done as they did’ and Thomas Hardy wrote in his poem Christmas 1924 ‘After two thousand years of mass, we’ve got as far as poison gas’.

            These thoughts came to me when I heard Barak Obama, an international leader whom I had greatly admired, defending the use of unmanned drones to find and kill in Pakistan individuals whom the CIA has decided are members of Al Quaida or some other similar terrorist organisation.   The killing of these people, he said, was justified because they were a threat to the people of the USA.  They were carefully targeted and ‘very few’ innocent civilians were accidentally killed at the same time!

            It isn’t so very long ago that convicted, not just suspected, IRA murderers could find sanctuary from British justice in the USA.  American courts refused to return them to Britain for trial and/or punishment. They were a threat to the people of the United Kingdom. What, I wonder, would have been the American reaction had British MI5 agents in the USA sought them out and assassinated them – even if they managed to do so without harming a single innocent civilian?

            Assassination, without even the semblance of a trial, is abhorrent whether carried out by Al Quaida, by Mossad, the CIA or MI5.  In human society there can be no licence to kill

Do not do to other people what you would hate being done to yourself!

 ‘In the bleak midwinter’

  

The sudden change in the weather from milder-than-normal to sub-arctic has come as an unpleasant surprise.  Old people like me are warned to wrap up well and to keep at least one room in our homes warm at all times. I am very sorry for the increasing number of people, not necessarily all old, who have to decide whether to heat or eat.  It was a choice that the unseasonably warm autumn and early winter had led us all to imagine no-one would have to make this winter.

            My mind goes back to cold winters of the past, to the winter of 1962/1963 when the sea froze over.  I was a Public Health Inspector at the time and took these two photographs near Clacton Pier.  It was a bitter winter and a cold spring.  I remember the cemetery staff complaining that when they dug graves, the frost followed them down, freezing the soil beneath their feet as they worked!

We were dressed for the Libyan Winter! No 4 Gun of B Troop, 231^st Medium Battery RA at Wadi Halfaya (Hellfire Pass) on the Egyptian Libyan border, early January 1942.  I am the one on the right – with a woolly hat!

           

                During World War II I spent one winter in the Egyptian/Libyan frontier region, one in a PoW Camp in northern Italy and two in a small working camp (Arbeitskommando) in Germany.  In North Africa it could be bitterly cold when the north wind blew in from the sea.  Some South African troops experienced snow for the first time – a light dusting over the surface of the desert that disappeared as the sun rose.

            The winter in a prison camp in Italy is one that I would prefer to forget.  We were housed in unheated jerry-built huts, wearing totally inadequate Italian army uniforms (most of us had been wearing just shorts and shirt when captured) in which we tried to sleep, pulling our overcoats and two thin blankets over our heads to try to conserve what little warmth we had.  We were permanently hungry, louse infested and bored out of our minds.  Every day in winter we shivered on parade while Italian guards counted us – often miscounting and having to start again from the beginning.  As a result I can still count in Italian uno, due, tre, quarto, cinque and so on as quickly as I can count in English!  There were between 2,000 and 3,000 of us in the camp and deaths from cold-and-starvation related conditions were a daily occurrence.                                                                             

Zittau Rathaus (Town Hall).

One of my more back-aching jobs was to carry filled sandbags to the roof of the town hall as a fire precaution!

My memories of the two winters in Zittau, eastern Germany are far less negative.  We were wearing British army uniform and greatcoats (presumably supplied by the Red Cross) as our louse-infested Italian uniforms had been burnt on arrival.  I was in a small working ‘camp’ (Arbeitskommando) of just 30 British PoWs.  Our living quarters were palatial compared with those in Italy.  We had a separate living room and dormitory with double glazed (as well as barred!) windows.  There was a tortoise stove in the bedroom and a solid fuel cooker in the living room.   We were very often unloading coal trucks on the local railway sidings – so we were never short of fuel, even if it was only inferior lignite (‘brown coal’) briquettes! We were never cold.  Working every day (with just one ‘rest day’ in three weeks) we had no time to be bored and, from mid-winter 1944/1945 we could hear the gradually increasing thunder of artillery fire as the Soviet Army advanced inexorably across Poland and into Germany, and a constant stream of refugees from the battle front trudged wearily westward through the snow-covered streets of Zittau.   Our time of captivity was hastening to an end.

           

A New Danish Invasion!

            If any one had told me a year ago that I would get hooked on a tv serial in a foreign language about high level politics in a foreign country, with dialogue subtitled in English as in the silent movies, I would have thought that they were crazy.  Goodness knows I find news reports  of English party-political point scoring tedious enough! I can though at least understand what it is all about. Political manoeuvres in a foreign land and in a foreign language would surely be much worse.

            Yet I have just watched the tenth and final hour-long episode of Borgen, a Danish political drama on BBC 4 tv, with real regret that it had come to an end.  It was the third Danish tv drama with English-subtitles that BBC 4 had given us.  The first two were detective thrillers, both with the unpromising title of The Killing, featuring the unsmiling but strangely magnetic police detective Sarah Lundt.  I thought that the first, in which we were taken into the ‘real life’ of the family of the teenage murder victim, was the better of the two. I know that they were ‘only actors’ but it was difficult to believe that the grief, sorrow and anger of her parents and younger brothers were not real!  Surprisingly, the strong intertwined sub-plot, about the election of Copenhagen’s Mayor, was equally gripping.

            Borgen was quite different.  It followed the fortunes of Birgitte Christensen, fortyish, married, mother of two, and leader of one of Denmark’s political parties. Very likeable, she was clearly highly principled – sacking her Public Relations Consultant for unfairly discrediting the then Prime Minister, one of her political opponents. 

            As a result of political manoeuvring she found herself Prime Minister of a coalition government of a number of political parties.  At first we saw her clearly ‘on the side of the angels’.  She stopped the use of a Greenland air base by United States planes engaged in the ‘rendition’ of political prisoners, thereby  incurring the wrath of the White House and the cancellation  of a Presidential visit to Denmark.   She called the bluff of a Danish millionaire newspaper magnate who threatened to leave the country if she persisted with legislation promoting women's rights.   She secured a contract to supply wind turbines to a former Soviet Republic with an appalling human rights record, outwitting the country’s president who would have liked to have made the deal conditional on the extradition of a dissident refugee who had fled to Denmark.

            Then Birgitta’s halo began to slip. She allowed the use of a recorded remark made by a former friend many years earlier at a drunken party, to justify the bugging by the Danish Secret Service of the office of the political party which that former friend now led. Her friend’s reputation and political career were shattered.  To help cover up the Defence Minister’s corrupt acceptance of gifts and hospitality in connection with the purchase of fighter aircraft, Birgitta persuaded her husband to refuse a very satisfying and lucrative job that he had been offered.   She sacrificed the cabinet post of a trusted colleague and long-standing friend and adviser to keep the coalition government intact – and she agreed to a divorce and abandoned her marriage in the pursuit of her political ambition.  At the end of the final episode we saw her after she had made on tv the most eloquent speech of her career, extolling Danish nationalism and earning the applause even of her victims!   She was Denmark’s undisputed political leader – but she had lost everything that had made her the likeable, principled political leader that she once had been.   'What shall it profit a man (or woman) to gain the whole world and lose his/her soul?'

            I am looking forward to the next tv offering from the land of the Vikings!

             

           

           

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Week 24.10

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘The most unkindest cut of all’

The phrase above is an example of tautology that no schoolboy or girl in my day could have hoped to get away with. Shakespeare could though. By using it in Mark Antony’s funeral speech for Julius Caesar, he effectively emphasises Antony’s abhorrence of the part that Brutus, Caesar’s friend, had played in his assassination.

Some may feel the same way about the Lib Dems in the current government coalition being prepared to endorse cuts in expenditure that, only a few weeks ago, they were claiming would harm the progress of economic recovery. We still don’t know exactly where those cuts are to fall but we have been told that they will be deep and savage; that their effects will be felt for generations to come – and that they will affect us all.

It is upon the accuracy of that final phrase that we may judge whether or not Lib Dem co-operation with the Conservatives is a betrayal of their own principles. Throughout the election campaign Lib.Dem emphasis was on fairness in politics and in economics. Central and local government services are generally aimed at supporting the less advantaged and poorer members of society – people who can’t afford to buy the goods and services that are considered essential in a civilised society. Cuts in those services are most likely likely to penalise the poor, the old and the disabled disproportionately and unfairly. It isn’t they whose greed and profligacy have brought about the financial crisis.

So far there has been little or no official mention of tax rises, surely the most obvious means of increasing national at the expense of individual wealth. VAT, which had been reduced in an effort to stimulate the economy, has been restored to its former level. Probably it will rise further. That too though, will disproportionately penalise the less affluent. Don’t tell me that the seriously wealthy find the VAT on the servicing of the Bentley or Rolls that takes them to the races or the hunt, as much a financial burden as the building worker finds the servicing of the second-hand Ford that he needs to get to work each day.

One of the more idiotic promises made by New-Labour in their attempt to stave off electoral defeat was not to interfere with the income tax system. They had promised it before and had broken that promise by introducing a 50 percent tax band for part of the income of high earners. It was one of the few really sensible things that they did, but they destroyed its full effect by giving a year’s notice of its introduction. There was plenty of time for the smart lawyers and accountants of the wealthy to devise schemes of avoidance (not of evasion of course, that would have been illegal!)

Income tax is the one tax levied strictly in accordance with the ability of the taxpayer to pay. Those who have very low incomes don’t have to pay it at all. Those with higher incomes pay a small amount, and those with still higher incomes pay more. I believe that it is here that taxation can fairly be increased – but that there should be more carefully graduated tax bands and the highest rate (it is only on part of the income remember) should be above fifty percent. Furthermore, real efforts should be made to plug the loopholes in the tax system that make it possible for the wealthy to avoid much of the income tax that the rest of us have to pay.

Yes, it would evoke indignation among the self-appointed champions of ‘Middle England’ – but it is only when we see outrage in the columns of the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph that we will know that the pain of Britain’s economic recovery is being evenly shared!

I am, of course old, increasingly disabled, and reliant on public services that I shall hate to see reduced or abolished. However, I am also an income tax payer and consider myself very fortunate in having an income high enough for me to be liable for it. I wouldn’t enjoy having to pay an extra penny or so in the pound in tax, but I would prefer it to having to pay an extra few pounds to the government in VAT on the cost of essential repairs or maintenance to my home.

‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new’

So says the dying King Arthur, in Tennyson’s ‘Mort d’Arthur’. It is a process that continues today and we oldies usually fiercely resist it. We all feel that we have experienced more than enough change in our lifetimes. We certainly don’t want to see any more of it!

In the immediate aftermath of local government reorganisation in 1974, Mr Colin Bellows, Tendring Council’s Engineer and Surveyor, and I, as Public Relations Officer, visited every town and parish council in the new district to explain and answer questions about the effects of the changes in local administration. In particular Mr Bellows explained that for the first time, parish and town councils would have the right to comment on planning applications and proposed developments in their area.

I well remember one elderly St. Osyth parish councillor, who rose to tell us that, as far as planning was concerned, ours was a wasted visit. In St. Osyth, he said, they had all the development that they needed and were opposed to any further building.

That occasion came back into my mind when I read in the Coastal Daily Gazette the headline FEARS OVER IN-VOGUE ISLAND followed by a report about ‘Historic Oyster Sheds’ having to make way for a Seafood Restaurant. It seems that Mersea Island has become fashionable and that the site currently occupied by old Oyster Sheds would be ideal for a restaurant to serve the needs of an increasing number of ‘dining-out’ visitors.

Destroying another piece of England’s cultural heritage? Hardly; the pictures of the sheds in the Gazette suggest that they are very ordinary wooden structures, partly built on stilts, which no longer serve any useful purpose. Unless steps are taken to conserve them they will undoubtedly ‘die of natural causes’ during the next decade or two. Their only remarkable feature is the fact that they are 140 years old. Surely we don’t believe that everything over a century old merits conservation. I’d have thought that photographs and a description of their purpose would be quite adequate for anyone researching the island’s history.

I hope that permission is granted for their replacement by a seafood restaurant. I hope also that the restaurant proves to be a great success and helps to bring prosperity to Mersea. It too though can expect to have only a limited lifespan. I have little doubt that before this century is out, it will have been replaced by whatever is the fashionable fad of the late twenty-first century. No doubt its passing will, in its turn, evoke protests from elderly residents at the loss of something that, as it mellowed over the decades, had become a part of the island’s history! ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new’.

Now it’s the turn of Walton-on-the-Naze!

Only last week we had news of a multi-million pound scheme to regenerate Clacton-on-Sea. Now we have a similar scheme, drawn up by consultants BNP Paribas for neighbouring Walton-on-the-Naze. Costing £100,000, the report suggests, among other things, turning the dilapidated Walton Mere into a boating lake and water sports centre, redeveloping the Martello Caravan Park for 250 new homes and 50 new holiday homes, plus an hotel and retail space. It also recommends that The Pier and Pier Hotel should be made ‘more attractive’ and that an ‘urban beach’ should be created next to the Columbine Centre for such activities as Beach Volleyball and rock climbing.

This last proposal caught my attention because it was suggested to me some years ago that, with our broad sandy beaches and low rainfall, our Essex Sunshine Coast had everything that was needed for Beach Volleyball, and that Tendring Council should have leapt onto the band-wagon while enthusiasm for the sport was developing. I don’t think that the suggestion was made with the idea of an artificially created ‘urban beach’ in mind. That would surely be like providing an indoor dry ski slope in the midst of the Swiss Alps!

In view of the national financial situation there is really very little possibility of the scheme being brought to fruition in the near, or even the more distant, future. Was the £100,000 spent on its commissioning, and whatever was spent on commissioning the similar scheme for Clacton, justified?

I am the last person who would suggest that local authorities should never seek the services of outside consultants. My elder son is the founder and Managing Director of an IT Consultancy, HUBSolutions Ltd. ( http://www.hubsolutions.co.uk/ ), developing computer software used by progressive public authorities throughout England and Scotland to reduce or eliminate ‘paper work’, thus enabling public service professionals (police officers, social workers, health visitors, environmental health officers and so on) to get on with the work for which they are qualified..

However I don’t really think that (perhaps with the exception of the ‘urban beach!’) there is any idea in BNP Paribas report that couldn’t have been produced by Tendring District Councillors or their staff. That money would have been better spent carrying out some modest practical improvements rather than on the preparation of an ambitious and expensive wish-list.

‘Stand up for Britain!’

That was a recent message to the Prime Minister, urged in a headline in the popular press.

Who, you may have wondered, was currently threatening our sacred sovereignty? It must surely have been ‘Brussels’; journalistic shorthand for everything that newspaper proprietors most hate about the European Union ………. or could the Press simply have been urging the PM to support England in the World Cup?

Neither was right. On this occasion it was a much less predictable villain – the USA or, in particular its President. ‘Mind you’, I expect it was being said in indignant editorial conferences, ‘I always did say that that Obama was a dangerous leftie, not a bit like good old George Bush!’
It seems that the great American public had become aware that BP, whose oil was still gushing (though not quite so profusely as a week or so ago) into the Gulf of Mexico and threatening the whole of the south coast of the USA, was short for British Petroleum. This realisation had threatened to trigger the biggest outburst of anti-British feeling since the days of the Boston tea-party. President Obama had even suggested that BP should suspend paying dividends to its shareholders until it had compensated the tens of thousands of US citizens whose lives and livelihoods had been ruined by the leaking oil! ‘My goodness! The man’s not just a leftie. He’s some kind of a commie!’

How strange that British newspapers and politicians who hadn’t raised an eyebrow over our country being led by the USA into two foreign wars costing millions of pounds and hundreds of British lives, should get so upset over dividend payments! I wonder how we would have reacted had a similar catastrophe, arising from the activities of a US enterprise in the English Channel, threatened England's south coast?

In fact, of course, BP isn’t really a British enterprise, or at least only part of it is. I heard on the radio this morning (12 June) that 40 percent of BP shares are in British ownership and 30 percent in that of the USA. Suspension of the payment of dividends will affect investors in the USA as well as in the UK.

Neither Britain nor the USA (nor even the EU!) is responsible for the present catastrophe. Responsibility lies with world-wide uncontrolled, or inadequately controlled, striving for ever more material wealth; taking short cuts and ignoring ‘pettifogging regulations and precautions dreamed up by desk-bound bureaucrats.’ Those pettifogging regulations were put in place precisely to prevent the occurrence of such disasters.

In an earlier age it might have been described as the worship of the false god Mammon, to whom the whole of the USA's Gulf Coast is currently being sacrificed!

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Christmas is coming!

Christmas is coming……..and as sure as that there will be Carols from Kings and the Queen’s televised Christmas message, there will come a headline-grabbing little lecture calculated to dampen down and spoil the faith and joy of others. Sadly, it is often delivered by a no doubt well-meaning cleric.

This year, it is the Bishop of Croydon (did you know that there was one?) who, it seems, dislikes our traditional Christmas carols. Many of these, he says are the product of Victorian sentimentality and nothing to do with God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ. Particularly the subjects of Episcopal displeasure are two of the best known and, I think, most loved of carols; ‘Away in a Manger’ and ‘O come, all ye faithful’.

The lines in ‘Away in a manger’ to which the Bishop takes exception are, ‘The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes’. The point is presumably that the Church has always taught that Jesus was wholly human as well as wholly divine and that, as a human baby, he would have woken up crying. Perhaps …. .but if a baby is warm, full of milk and comfortable, and wakes to hear the gentle lowing of cattle, he may well remain silent on waking. Perhaps the Bishop has had an unfortunate experience of parenthood, but human babies really don’t cry all the time.

There are actually two lines of that carol that do make me feel uneasy. ‘I love thee, Lord Jesus look down from the sky, and stay by my side until morning is nigh’. I tell myself though that it is a carol intended for children. It is difficult enough for an adult to understand that Jesus can be ever-present while being outside time and space as we know them. ‘Above the sky’, is however a metaphor easily understood by children.

‘O come all ye faithful’ with its echoes of the Nicene Creed is surely the most magnificent of all the carols, and the one with which every carol service should end. The Bishop says it should be ‘O come all ye faithless’. I think he means that our message should be to those outside the Church. And so it should be, all through the year. Surely though, on the anniversary of the day that ‘the Word was made flesh’, if on no other, the faithful are allowed to be ‘joyful and triumphant’!

There are plenty of other hymns that do have lines that set my teeth on edge. How about ‘sufficient is thine arm alone and our defence is sure’, sung with gusto at an Army Church Parade, 'Take my silver and my gold, not a mite will I withhold’, sung by a comfortably-off middle-class congregation and ‘The vilest offender who truly believes, that moment from Jesus his pardon receives'? Surely there must be contrition as well as belief. St. James in his Epistle says ‘the devils also believe – and tremble!’

Lord Bishop, do have a look through the rest of the hymnbook by all means, but please leave our Christmas carols alone!

A Fateful Decision

I was delighted when Barak Obama was elected as President of the US. I hope that it wasn’t simply because he wasn’t George W. Bush. It was obvious though that he was going to have a fight on his hands in a country where any good work carried out by a public authority is liable to be denounced as ‘communism’!

Since his election he hasn’t disappointed, and he has certainly had to fight every inch of the way. He has, for instance, made it clear that (unlike George W. Bush – not to mention our own MP, Mr Douglas Carswell!) Mr Obama does accept the threat from global warming and humankind’s responsibility for this danger. He is, in fact, attending the Conference of World Leaders and leading scientists that opened in Copenhagen this week to discuss climate change and how best to combat it.

He has ordered the dismantling of the rocket sites in central Europe that the Russians regarded as a threat (well, wouldn’t the Americans have regarded Russian, or Chinese rockets sited in Canada or Mexico as something of a threat?). At home he is desperately trying, despite ferocious opposition, to ensure proper health care for the millions of US citizens who simply can’t afford adequate insurance cover.

Is he making another wise decision in deciding to send another 30,000 US troops to Aghanistan, or is it one that he will regret for the rest of his political life? The time that he took to consider this issue suggests that he is well aware of the possibility of disaster. Generals commanding armies stalemated by their enemies are always confident that, if only they had more troops and equipment, they could make one final push and sweep on to victory. They are not always right though!

Supposing the Taleban are defeated and their fighters simply disappear from the scene? No doubt their leaders are well known and may well be captured or killed. There must be hundreds of rank and file though. Most of them could just disappear among the Indian sub-continent's teeming millions and concentrate on terrorist acts there and elsewhere. They could, of course, reappear in Afghanistan when the Brits and Americans decided that they had won and withdrew their troops.

We are desperately trying to transform the Afghan government’s army into a force that can stand up to and defeat the Taleban without our help. Are we absolutely sure that they will want to? We gave covert financial and practical support to the ‘gallant Mojihadin’ in their guerrilla war against the Soviets only to see them transform themselves into ‘fanatical insurgents’, every bit as determined to get rid of us as they were the Russians. The western trained Afghan policeman who turned his weapon against his trainers, and the Muslim medical officer, who in the USA, is accused of suddenly murdering his comrades, could be straws in the wind.

Why are our forces in Afghanistan? Is it to introduce the Afghans to the joys of freedom and democracy; to encourage the education of girls and to ensure justice for women; to encourage religious tolerance? Hardly. It is surely to protect ‘the West’ from terrorist attacks like those in New York, London and Madrid.

I think it likely that the best way to do that might be to withdraw our troops completely from every Muslim country. That is what both extremist and moderate Muslims would like us to do. It would, at a stroke, remove a factor that turns ‘moderates’ into ‘extremists’ and feeds Al Quaida with a constant trickle of enthusiastic recruits. It would release NATO troops for their job of defending the peace of Britain and Mainland Europe.

A Question of Mobility

I have remarked before that although I feel far from comfortable with the zeitgeist of the 21st century, I am more than thankful for the many twenty-first century blessings that help to make life worth living, even in old age. None of my family lives very near and I would have little contact with them were it not for the telephone (particularly perhaps the mobile phone), my laptop and the Internet. And, of course, my sons living in London both have fast cars with which they come to see me regularly. Failing eyesight makes me less inclined to read than I once was (though oddly enough, using my laptop doesn’t seem to tire my eyes!) but radio, television, a video tape recorder and a DVD Player make good the deficiency

I think though, that the modern convenience that makes the biggest difference in my life is my electric mobility scooter, my ‘iron horse’. Luckily I have a shed large enough to house it, to which a kind neighbour has taken an electricity supply so that I am able to keep its batteries charged. I use it almost every day…..for shopping, for going to the Post Office, to Church and to the Quaker Meeting, for keeping doctor’s or optician’s appointments, for visiting friends and, on occasion, for going to the seafront for a breath of fresh air.

As the months pass I find myself less and less able to walk. Were it not for my ‘iron horse’ I would be totally housebound, able to leave home only with a taxi or when someone was able to give me a lift in his or her car. My electric scooter gives me freedom and mobility. It is the possession that I would be least willing to give up.

For all of those reasons I was totally shocked when I read in the Clacton Gazette that lack of funding is compelling Clacton and Tendring Shopmobility, a charity that has served local elderly and disabled local people for over a decade and a half, to close down for good on New Year’s Eve.

Shopmobility, based in Clacton’s Pier Avenue, rents out mobility scooters to those who need them for short periods at cut-price rates. It has provided a first class service to people like myself who are unable to purchase a scooter of their own (they are quite expensive!) or who would have nowhere to store it if they did purchase one. Last year they rented out scooters no less than 4,000 times and their membership almost trebled!

Shopmobility is staffed by volunteers but it does cost £45,000 a year to run. Earlier this year its management applied for lottery funding which would have secured its future for five years, but they were unsuccessful. Nor would Tendring Council help them despite the fact that the charity expects to be in a position to support itself within two years.

Shopmobility’s manager, Julie Hewes-Gardner, says, ‘People are distraught. Many will now be housebound. They won’t be able to get out to the shops and banks, or to socialise’.

I wonder on what Tendring Council is spending our money that is more important than brightening the lives of some of Clacton’s least privileged and most vulnerable residents? It is tempting to denounce them as Scrooges but that is hardly fair on Ebenezer Scrooge. He did, you’ll recall, mend his ways just in time for Christmas. There’s little sign of the Council doing anything of the sort.

Bankers’ Bonuses

Those with brilliant brains at the top of the Banking World will, so they say, desert us and sell their brilliance elsewhere if they do not receive their accustomed astronomical ‘bonuses’ on top of their already more-than-generous salaries.

I think that the instant reaction of most ordinary people is ‘let them go – and good riddance. If they are that brilliant, how is it that we had to bail them out with millions of pounds of our money?’

I think though that the threat raises a more fundamental issue. Most people whose work demands skill and experience, work primarily because they enjoy exercising those qualities. The only skill that I have ever possessed is that of stringing words together to produce the kind of material that I hope others enjoy reading. It was very nice when I was paid for doing so. Nowadays, I am not. My income is however sufficient for my quite-modest needs and I exercise my writing skills, in producing this weekly blog for instance, because doing so gives me satisfaction and pleasure.

Can it be that those whose skill lies in the manipulation of finance, come to believe that this is life’s only reality, and that work has no purpose or meaning beyond the acquisition of more and more money, from whatever source it may come? If so, I feel truly sorry for them. Despite their great wealth they are poverty-stricken indeed!