Week 20 2014

Tendring Topics…..on line

The Odessa Steps – déjà vue?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Bloodshed divides, prayer and forgiveness unite’

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

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

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

Applause for David Cameron…….again!

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

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

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

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

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

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

           

            

Week 16.2011 19.4.2011

Tendring Topics……..on line


‘Thank Christ….for Easter!’

I don’t think that we would be particularly surprised if we saw that message on a Notice Board outside any church or place of worship this week. Yet that message, with the addition of ‘Bank Holiday’ after ‘Easter’ and accompanied by a caricature of a smiling and beckoning Christ, wearing ear phones, outside Tom Peppers pub on Clacton’s Marine Parade has caused outrage among many Christians, including the Bishop of Chelmsford.

Well, I have to confess that when I first saw it, I too felt outraged. Jesus Christ’s name was being used blasphemously and his image was being exploited to encourage irresponsible boozing! Disgraceful. But was it? A chat with friends wiser than I am and with a Christian faith firmer than mine, made me begin to think otherwise.

The poster did at least acknowledge that Jesus Christ had something to do with Easter. The further, admittedly tasteless, advertisement for a vodka drink to bring yourself back to life even suggests that the author of the advert was acquainted with the fact of Christ’s resurrection.

A couple of pages after the report of this ‘outrageous’ poster and the Christian reaction to it, the same Clacton Gazette had nine pages of Easter Extra full of adverts for Easter activities and commercial services. There were advertising features extolling the attractions of Clacton and Holland-on-Sea over the Easter holiday, the beauty of the nearby bluebell woods, and so on (I have written advertising features like that myself in my time!) but not a single word about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nor was there even a whisper of the possibility that going to church to ‘thank Christ for Easter’ was among the ‘Things to do in Clacton at Easter’.


I reckon that fundamentalist atheists like, for instance, Professor Dawkins, who are always eager to spread their unbelief, would derive far more satisfaction from those nine pages of Easter Extra that studiously avoided any connection between Easter and the Christian Faith, than from the poster that, however crudely, brought the reality and importance of the Easter story to the attention of us all.

An insult to Jesus to suggest that he had anything to do with pubs and the kind of people who use them? Hardly; tradition asserts that he was born in a stable at the back of an inn. He was, so he told us himself, accused of being ‘a glutton and a wine bibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’. The God whom Jesus revealed to us does not tell his followers to seek out and punish those who insult him. On that first Good Friday Jesus was subjected to far more abuse, insult and wanton cruelty than the rest of us have to endure in a lifetime. His reaction was to pray: ‘Forgive them Father. They don’t realize what they are doing’.

I think that Christians should thank the landlord of ‘Tom Peppers’ for having, however inadvertently, brought the true story of Easter to the front page of a local newspaper that would otherwise have ignored it.

Nursing care?

Some weeks ago I mentioned in this blog my late wife Heather’s brief and unhappy stay in the Kate Grant Ward of Clacton Hospital in 2004. She had fallen, broken a hip and had had it repaired at Colchester General Hospital. She had then been sent to Clacton Hospital for rehabilitation. I had known at about the time her ambulance would arrive there and, when it arrived, I had my introduction to the situation that prevailed there!

The ambulance driver pushed her, in a wheel chair, into the Kate Grant Ward and up to the empty bed prepared for her. There were no nurses there to receive her and get her into the bed. After waiting for about ten minutes the driver said, ‘I’m not supposed to do this, but I can’t leave her sitting in that wheel chair after that long drive. I’m going to get her onto the bed’. And so he did. He was strong and my wife was very light so it was no problem. Eventually of course a couple of nurses did turn up, very kind and helpful, and she was properly admitted.

That summed up all her subsequent treatment. The nurses were kind, hard working and thoroughly professional – but there were not enough of them. With a ward full of more-or-less immobile elderly ladies there was almost always at least one of them needing urgent attention and often more than one. The result was that it took well over an hour to get them settled at night and even longer to get them up, washed, dressed and ready to sit in their bedside chairs, in the morning. Alarm bells often went unanswered and patients were catheterised (and became permanently incontinent as a result) simply because it avoided the need to supply a bottle or bedpan, or to help the patient to the toilet. It was a great relief when I managed to persuade the Ward Sister that I was well able to care for my wife myself at home, and we bade the Kate Grant Ward farewell.

My wife’s experience pales into insignificance compared with that reported of Carol Carr of Dovercourt. She is a sufferer from Multiple Schlerosis and has paralysis down one side of her body. She was admitted to Colchester General Hospital with a persistent urinary tract infection. A report in the local Daily Gazette records that, ‘Her husband Dennis said she was left initially without food and drink for eight hours while waiting in the admissions area. Once properly admitted to hospital, he claims his wife was left lying in her own faeces for more than six hours’.


Mr Carr says, ‘The conditions in that hospital were atrocious. My wife’s carer and myself found ourselves having to do stuff for elderly patients. Bells were going off and being ignored. It’s so infuriating to sit there and watch this going on. To have it happen to a member of your own family is appalling……..there are good people there, good nurses. But they just don’t have sufficient staff’.


Mr and Mrs Carr have made an official complaint that is being looked into as a matter of urgency by the hospital authorities. Whatever the outcome of that enquiry though it is obvious to me though that there is an acute shortage of nurses ‘in the front line’, a shortage that I had noted in Clacton seven years earlier

And now it seems, Government cuts mean that there will be even less of them!

My own ‘Close encounter’ with the NHS


I was sorry to hear of Mrs Carr’s experience of the NHS and of Colchester General Hospital because, almost at the same time perhaps, I was having a wholly different and, for the most part, wholly positive experience of both.

I had been seeing my own doctor about what seemed to be a problem with my digestive system for a week or so. Then I had a very troubled night, perspiring freely and shivering at the same time. In the morning I was still trembling and shaking. Had I not been living alone I might have decided otherwise but I thought that by dialling 999 I would at least get the immediate attention of a paramedic.

And so I did. A pleasant and helpful young man turned up and examined me. He was very concerned to find that my blood pressure which, when taken on one arm was wildly different from one taken on the other. He seemed to think that that was a sign of imminent peril. He phoned for an ambulance and helped me to get dressed, urging me to do everything very, very slowly and carefully.

He must I think, have conveyed his worries about my condition to Colchester General Hospital, because when I got there I was dealt with instantly with no waiting at all. For the next hour my body wasn’t my own. A nurse helped me into one of those awful hospital gowns, I gave blood and urine samples for examination. In a hospital ‘cot’, I was electrocardiographed, my chest and my abdomen were X-rayed separately and, as I was stretched out on an ‘operating’ table, my stomach was prodded and very thoroughly examined by the Registrar.

Back in my ‘cot’, I was pushed into a cubicle to await my fate. After, I suppose, about three quarters of an hour the Registrar (a helpful and friendly young woman) turned up. She told me that those tests had revealed that I had a very severe urinary infection. It could be successfully treated with antibiotics and I could take them as satisfactorily at home as in hospital. I could get dressed and go home.

As I was about to ask her how I was going to get home, the curtain to the cubicle was pulled aside, and in walked my younger son Andy who lives in Enfield.  A friendly neighbour had spotted me being carried off in an ambulance and had phoned him. He had driven down right away and had turned up just in time to drive me home in comfort.

No negative experiences at all? Well, just one. It sounds pretty trivial now – but it didn’t at the time. While waiting in the cubicle I developed an urge to visit the toilet. There seemed to be no way of summoning a nurse so, in desperation, I told someone passing outside the cubicle of my need and asked them if they could ask a nurse to give me urgent attention. I had hoped, I suppose, that the nurse would let down the side of my ‘cot’ so that I could get out, and direct me to the nearest toilet. With my stick I would have been well able to get there on my own.

What actually happened was that, after another seemingly interminable wait, a nurse walked in with one of those (paper maché ?) hospital urine bottles, thrust it over the part of my anatomy that needed it, and walked out again. It was, I suppose, an adequate response, but hardly the one for which I had hoped. However, I came to no harm and it did confirm my conviction that many more nurses are needed ‘on the front line!’

The World’s Best! – and it’s all free?


Politicians, of all political persuasions, constantly assure us that they are determined that our Health Service should remain ‘the best in the world’ and will continue to be ‘free at the point of delivery’. If they say it often enough without thinking about it, they’ll probably believe it themselves!

It certainly isn’t free at the point of delivery – unless you consider that dentistry, optical services and actually obtaining the drugs that the doctor prescribes are not part of the Health Service. I don’t have to pay for prescribed medicines because of my age. Many others are also exempt for one reason or another but for those who have to pay (as I did before I reached retirement age) the charge is now over £7.00 per item!

Is our Health Service ‘the best in the world’? I had always imagined that it was at least among the top half dozen. Lately though I have begun to wonder. My grandson, who lives and works in Brussels (The rule that gives all EU citizens the right to live and work anywhere with the EU doesn’t just benefit those who want to come to England!) is very enthusiastic about the service that he enjoys in Belgium.
 And why do so many people needing hip replacement and similar surgery opt to go to France or elsewhere to have it done?

Infant mortality, including the incidence of stillbirths, is generally reckoned to be a pretty good indicator of the general health of a community. I was shocked to learn that Britain has more stillbirths per every one-thousand births than practically any other developed country in the world.

There can be few situations more heart-rending than the birth of a stillborn child. The birth has been anticipated for months – pram, cot, baby clothes have all been lovingly prepared. Messages of congratulation have been arriving – and the baby dies before birth. I am sure that only those who have had the experience can imagine the disappointment, despair and desolation of the bereaved mum and dad. If there were only one, per million live births, it would be one too many.

I don’t know why we have more stillbirths than almost every other developed country but, if I were a betting man, I would be prepared to wager that those countries with a lower stillbirth rate than us, have:

(a) A much narrower gap between the incomes of their poorest and wealthiest citizens than we have.
(b) Many more trained, qualified and working nurses and midwives per head of the population than we have.