10th May 2015

Tendring Topics…….on line

The Day of Reckoning (2)

            I can’t even say, ‘I told you so!’, because I didn’t!  Like almost everyone else, I believed that the outcome of the General Election would be a hung parliament. Either David Cameron or Ed Miliband would have to form a coalition, or at least come to an understanding with one of the smaller parties in order to produce a workable government.  Most of the press feared an understanding between Ed Miliband and the SNP.  I would have welcomed it because I thought that Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader was far more impressive than any of the other party leaders. She might prevent a Miliband premiership from becoming a pale imitation of a Tory one.  Perhaps that’s just what the press lords feared!

            My own worst possible outcome was of a coalition between the Conservatives and the Ukippers which I felt could easily develop into a right-wing dictatorship.

            In this blog I did at least consider the possibility that, despite the predictions of the opinion polls, one or other of the two main parties might achieve an overall majority and  manage to form an effective government without seeking the support of any other party.  I said that if that happened I could confidently predict that the final outcome would not be as good as supporters of the majority party were hoping, but was unlikely to be as awful as their opponents feared.  I still stand by the first part of that prophecy – but am a little less confident of the second.

            I did correctly foretell the humiliating defeat of the Lib.Dems but really didn’t expect Ukip to lose one of the two seats it held prior to the election, thus making Douglas Carswell, our own MP for Clacton-on-Sea, the sole Ukipper in the House of Commons.  Ukip gained a lot of votes but they were spread fairly evenly over England.  As a result, our first-past-the-post electoral system prevented those votes being translated into parliamentary seats.  It has been quite educational to observe Mr Carswell’s sudden conversion to the idea of proportional representation. I quite expected the SNP to triumph in Scotland but was astonished by their almost complete demolition of the previously dominant Labour Party there.  

            Ed Miliband’s defeat was, I think, at least partly due to the constant drip, drip, drip of denigrating and scare headlines principally in the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, about his weakness as a leader and the probability that he would be subjugated by the wicked witch from the north (Nicola Sturgeon).  Several people interviewed after the tv debates said they were quite surprised to discover that the Ed Miliband they had seen on tv didn’t match those headlines.

            The Sun is part of the Rupert Murdoch press empire, the Daily Mail is owned by Lord Rothermere, and the Daily Express by Richard Leonard, who also owns the ‘adult’ tv channels Television X and Red Hot TV   (No, I haven’t tried to access either of them but their names suggest their nature).  Oh yes, and Richard Leonard has recently donated over a million pounds to Ukip.

            Do you find it as extraordinary and shaming as I do that three very wealthy individuals – a foreigner with no ties of loyalty to the UK, a ‘non-dom’, and a purveyor of soft porn, should own and control the means of influencing the British electorate?

            The Conservative Government will have only a very small majority over all other parties in the House of Commons. I don’t think they’ll find their task to be an easy one, especially bearing in mind the fact that the opposition, with its Scottish, Welsh and English MPs, is much more representative of all the people of the still-united United Kingdom than the members of David Cameron’s government.

…….and the Green Party?

            I have never made any secret of the fact that I voted for the Green Party in the General Election and am now a member of that Party.  On the face of it they failed dismally.  They gained not a single extra member in the House of Commons.

            Look a little deeper though and it will be clear that they are a Party on the way up, not down.  Their candidates obtained a total of over a million votes throughout the UK.  Remember too, that for every voter who puts a cross against the name of a Green candidate there are probably at least two others who would be supporters, but because they live in a strongly Tory or Labour area, or like me, in the heart of Ukipland, imagine that a vote for the Greens is a wasted one.   I knew perfectly well that Chris Howell the Green Candidate in my area hadn’t a hope of being elected, but he did get twice as many votes as he did in the by-election only a few months ago.  Caroline Lucas, our one MP, retained her Brighton seat in Parliament with a substantially increased majority, and the Green candidate came second in four constituencies.  The Green Party now has more actual members than either the Lib.Dems. or Ukip.  

            No, I don’t consider that my vote was a wasted one.

Some sage advice

          Did you see that some has-been Labour politicians have been commenting on Ed Miliband’s lack of success in the election.  Some say that he should have made a greater effort to reach the ‘aspirational’ voter.  Lord Mendelson (he’s an architect of New Labour who has ‘no problem with billionaires!) says that Ed Miliband took the Labour Party too far to the left.  Too far to the left!  We’re talking about the chap who apologised for Labour’s original opposition to ‘right to buy’, who, if he had been elected would have carried on with austerity, and who supported the renewal of the wildly expensive and utterly useless Trident submarines!

            Hasn’t anyone noticed that Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party swept away New Labour in Scotland with policies well to the left of anything that any Labour leader in England has ever dared to suggest?

            If the electorate want Conservative policies, they’ll vote Conservative – not New Labour!

March 2015

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man’

            In Shakespeare’s Hamlet that was part of the advice that Polonius, a Danish courtier, gave to his son Laertes before the latter embarked on a trip to England, then a distant perilous country, full of temptations and pitfalls for a visiting young Dane with money in his pocket. 

 If Nick Clegg had heeded that advice five years ago I think it very unlikely that his Party would now be facing the possibility of humiliation in the coming General Election.  The Liberal Democrats didn’t really have to be junior partners in a very unequal coalition.  They could have let David Cameron form a minority government promising to support it for as long as it was possible to do so without breaking pledges that they had made to the electorate.

            But he allowed the promise of the empty title of Deputy Prime Minister and two or three Ministerial jobs for a few of his lieutenants to lure him into a coalition and – very shortly afterwards – to break spectacularly the pledge he had made to the electorate  about University Tuition fees.

            Before the last General Election I don’t recall that anyone expected it to result in a hung Parliament and an unequal Conservative/Lib.Dem. coalition.  This time two other parties, the Ukippers and the Greens are serious contenders nationwide and in Scotland the Scottish National Party will almost certainly overturn Labour’s domination of the electoral scene.  Few expect either of the two main parties to achieve an overall majority in the House of Commons. If we are again to have a coalition government which parties will coalesce to form one?

            Nick Clegg appears to be confident that the Liberal-Democrats will again hold the balance and have the choice between coalition with the Conservatives or Labour.  The opinion polls suggest otherwise and so, for what it’s worth, do I.   Since the Lib-Dems, in government, broke promises that they made to the electorate before the last election why should we imagine they’ll be any different now?  I voted for them then but they certainly won’t get my vote in May.  I’m not alone!

            In Scotland the SNP has come on in leaps and bounds since the referendum.   Nicola Sturgeon, their present Leader, seems to be a worthy successor of Alex Salmond. The Tories are evidently fearful that they will have sufficient successful election candidates to join a coalition with Labour and form a government. Many Labour hopefuls fear the same. Well, they certainly brought that possibility onto themselves.  If at the time of the referendum they had been a bit less enthusiastic about preserving the United Kingdom intact there would now be no Scottish MPs at Westminster.   Both Ed Miliband and Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, have said that there will be no such coalition but, of course, politicians don’t believe other politicians’ promises any more than the rest of us do!     

            If there are a substantial number of Scottish MPs I think it likely that they’ll do what the Lib.Dems. should have done last time; support a minority government for as long as its policies are acceptable to them but try to amend or defeat them when they are not.   They won’t get any seats in the government that way but ‘What profiteth it a man (or a political party) to gain the whole world – and lose his soul?’

            A much more sinister, and I fear more likely, outcome of the General Election could be that UKIP will form a coalition with a minority Conservative government, with Nigel Farage as Deputy PM and several Ukip MPs (almost certainly our own turn-coat MP Douglas Carswell would be among them) in senior government posts. The flamboyant and charismatic Nigel Farage would soon outshine the present PM and the Chancellor in the public eye, and probably in the eyes of a substantial number of hard-line Tory MPs.  Farage’s career has, so far, mirrored that of Adolf Hitler in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s.  I fear a future in which he acquired real power.

            But it may well be that all these anxieties and hopes are groundless.  Such is our first-past-the-post electoral system that perhaps, to everyone’s surprise, either the Conservative or the Labour Party will secure a commanding majority and rule the country for the next five years.  If that is so then I can confidently predict  the future outcome:  Britain’s future will not be anything like as happy and as prosperous as supporters of the ruling party promise – but neither will it be quite as disastrous as opponents of that ruling party fear.

            In May I fully intend to vote for the Green Party candidate.  The Greens won’t form a government and it’s unlikely that they’ll be asked to take part in any coalition.  In my own Clacton-on-Sea constituency it’s very improbable that, with our present first-past-the-post electoral system, the Green Candidate will be elected.  I may help him save his deposit though (the Greens rely on the support of its thousands of members.  Unlike other parties, they have neither multimillionaires nor trade unions financing them), and nationally I will add to the number of Green voters.  ‘This above all’ I shall be being true to myself and voting for a party whose policies I wholeheartedly endorse; a party that really does want to make Britain and the world a better place for this and future generations.

            My vote will not be wasted!

           

A Spendthrift’s Charter?

            I have sometimes wondered if the present government likes having a large proportion of the UKs population in debt.  Perhaps it makes the failure of their policies to reduce the national debt substantially, seem less important.  There are student loans, for instance;. I understand that increases in tuition fees result in some students leaving their colleges with a debt burden of as much as £40,000!  Then, of course, the Government’s obsession with home ownership has made sure that thousands of home buyers will owe thousands of pounds to banks or building societies for the whole of their working lifetimes..

            The latest encouragement to financial irresponsibility is making it possible for those who put aside a percentage of their income every month to provide themselves with a pension on retirement, can now withdraw the money at any time from their ‘pension pot’ and use it as they think best.  The hope is presumably that they will re-invest the money to enrich themselves and to help keep the wheels of industry turning.

            It will surprise me if at least some of those pension investors, with the opportunity to get a considerable sum of money into their bank accounts will say, ‘Blow provision for retirement.  Let’s go on a cruise to the Bahamas.  We’ll worry about “tomorrow” when it comes1’

            I’m glad that I was never able to withdraw cash from the ‘pension pot’ into which I paid 6 percent of my salary for most of my working life.  I wouldn’t have squandered it on a spending spree but, when my wife was diagnosed with pulmonary and laryngial TB, I’d have been sorely tempted to withdraw any money I had saved in the hope of buying her better, speedier treatment.   Perhaps (or perhaps not!) in that way I might have bought my wife a speedier recovery; might even have spared her the major surgery that saved her life but left her with a permanent disability.

            There’s no ‘perhaps’ though about the fact that, without an adequate pension, our sixties and seventies would have been much less comfortable, less worry-free and much less pleasurable.  And now that I am in my nineties and have been a widower for nearly nine years, I would be a poverty-stricken housebound cripple without the pension that has provided me with a warm and comfortable home and, among many other things, my mobility scooter and the lap-top on which I am writing these words. Thanks to that pension I am able to remember generously the birthdays of my young great-nieces and great nephew (I have yet to acquire any great grand-children), and to offer visiting family and friends hospitality in a local licensed restaurant!  As some-one once remarked, 'money can't buy happiness, but it can help you to be miserable in comfort!'

 I daren’t think how miserable and bad tempered I’d be without all those things!  I’d advise anybody – ‘However much you may be tempted never imperil your retirement pension. You will live to regret having done so.  It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll make your fortune by gambling on the Stock Exchange – and even less likely that you’ll make it on the National Lottery!’

The Budget

Regular blog readers will know that my idea of a good Budget is one that narrows the yawning gap between the incomes of the very richest and the very poorest people in the UK.   A bad Budget is one that widens that gap.  It follows that it is a long, long time since I have experienced a good Budget and that the one revealed by George Osborne on 18^th March was more blatantly robbing the poor and enriching the wealthy than most.

The threshold of income at which tax becomes liable has been raised.  That means that some low-paid workers will no longer have to pay tax and that every single payer of income tax (including the very wealthy) will benefit.  Those who won’t benefit are the really poor, whose incomes are too low to be taxable.  They will, of course, continue to pay indirect taxes such as VAT and excise duties like those on petrol, alcohol and tobacco.   But that’s not all – the level of liability to pay the higher rate of income tax has also been raised, even higher.  Thus those whom most of us would consider to be very wealthy will receive a double hand-out. Meanwhile, there are to be even more cuts in the  funding of benefits and of public services, which will most  affect the very poor.

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of the news reports was that I didn’t hear a word of protest from Ed Miliband about this particular aspect of the Budget.

18th January 2015

Tendring Topics……….on line

The Parliamentary General Election

          There was a time when political parties existed to promote specific policies – the Conservative Party on retaining the status quo and, in general, observing the sage advice, ‘If it ain’t bust, don’t fix it’.  They were naturally the party of the ‘haves’ rather than the ‘have nots’.  The Labour Party on the other hand, was the party of change.  They wanted a fairer, more equal Britain, a Britain without nuclear weapons and without imperial pretensions or ambitions.  They argued that these objectives could best be achieved if most or all public services were owned and run by the public.   They were the party of the ‘have nots’.  Both parties tried to persuade a majority of the electorate to support them.

            Now both main parties, and what’s left of the Liberals, claim to serve the interests of the whole country.  In reality they all have just one overriding policy. It’s the same policy; to win elections, gain political power – and keep it.  To this end the Conservatives under Mrs Thatcher became a party of revolutionary change; among other things selling off most public services to private enterprise and compelling local authorities, who had built houses to rid their districts of overcrowding and homelessness, to sell them to sitting tenants at bargain basement prices; thus very cleverly buying votes with other people’s money.

            New Labour, ‘to make itself electable’, sold its own soul by going along with the retention of a nuclear ‘deterrent’, accepting the revolutionary changes that had been introduced by Mrs Thatcher and erasing ‘Clause 4’ from its own constitution.  I have little doubt that many party members voted for the removal of Clause 4 imagining that they were simply acknowledging that some activities were best carried out by private enterprise.  If fact they were accepting the wholesale privatisation of every public service.  In addition, they allowed our country to become the puppet of the most reactionary American president in living memory.  This resulted in our engagement in two ‘colonial’ wars – one illegal and the other unwinnable – resulting in the loss of billions of pounds and the sacrifice of hundreds of British lives

            Party policies are decided nowadays, not by principles or by the exercise of reason and compassion, but by the findings of the latest opinion polls.  And influencing opinion polls is the popular press, owned largely by foreign billionaires who owe no loyalty to the United Kingdom and care only about ‘circulation and profit’. I don’t find it in the least surprising that thousands of electors are now disillusioned with the traditional political parties.  It is upon the way that they react to that disillusion that the future of our country depends.

Don’t bother to vote

            Probably the commonest reaction is to decline to vote.  What’s the point?  They’re all the same – feathering their own nests.  If voting changed anything they’d ban it. Our first-past-the-post electoral system makes sure that the voice of those who can’t bring themselves to vote for any of the main parties, is never heard. The Chartists of the nineteenth and the Suffragettes of the twentieth century must be turning in their graves.  They suffered and died to make sure that everyone had a vote – and they really believed that universal suffrage would change the world.

           

Those who don’t bother to vote have no right to complain when they find themselves represented by someone whose views they thoroughly detest.  Those who can’t bring themselves to vote for any of the candidates must surely be able to select one of them whose policies and attitudes they detest more than those of the others. Vote for the candidate most likely to defeat him or her.  For the much-publicised recent Clacton-on-Sea by-election I voted Conservative for the first (and probably only) time of my life.  Although I disliked the Conservative candidate’s policies, he seemed to be a nice enough chap and I thought he was the candidate most likely to defeat Douglas Carswell who had defected to UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party).   He didn’t do so and Clacton had the dubious honour of returning the very first UKIP MP to Westminster!  Still – I did my best. 

Vote for one of the ‘minority’ candidates

            We don’t yet know how many candidates there will be for our own constituencies in next May’s General Election. In every English constituency there will certainly be representatives of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal-Democrat Party.  There will almost certainly be a Ukipper (in my Clacton constituency he’ll be the sitting MP) and a Green Party Candidate.  Also there’s likely to be a variety of fringe party and special-interest candidates ranging from the Official Raving Loony Party to those eager to publicise local or special concerns like ‘saving a hospital from closure’, ‘building a new bypass’ or, as we had for the Clacton by-election, a lady who wanted to raise the status and ensure the safety of ‘sex workers’.   

            My guess (and you can’t exaggerate how much I’d like to be proved wrong!) is that in the Clacton-on-Sea Constituency Douglas Carswell (the sitting UKIP MP) will retain his seat though with a smaller majority, The Conservative Candidate will come next but with only a few more votes than  his Labour opponent, followed by the Green, the Lib.Dem. the Official Raving Loony Candidate and the various ‘special interest’ candidates who will get only a tiny handful of votes each.

UKIP versus GREEN

            In my constituency (Clacton-on-Sea) our sitting MP is a Ukipper.  That is true of only one other constituency in the United Kingdom.  In most other constituencies there will be a Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat MP who will be looking nervously over his or her shoulder at the UKIP contestant and wondering what effect this new and apparently growing party will have on the election result.

            UKIP and its leader Nigel Farage, remind me uncomfortably of the NAZI party and its leader, Adolf Hitler, in Germany in the 1920s and early ‘30s.   There too, the electorate was disillusioned and tired of the old political parties and their failing policies.  In Adolf Hitler they found someone who was a fervent German nationalist, just as Nigel Farage is a fervent British Nationalist, who disliked the ‘old politics’ and offered a new path for Germany of action rather than talk.  What’s more he assured the Germans that they weren’t to blame for their country’s problems – it was all the fault of ‘the Jews’.  At first most Germans thought that he was a bit of a joke,  Then the wealthy thought they could manipulate him for their own purposes.   One morning though they woke up to discover that he and his brown-shirted followers had taken over their country. – Hitler’s Third Reich had arrived.

            Nigel Farage also assures us that outside forces – the European Union (demonised as ‘Brussels’) and all those foreign immigrants for which the EU, so he says, was largely responsible – were the cause of Britain’s problems.  Shake off the European yoke and get rid of all those foreigners, and Britain would be great again!  At first everyone thought that Nigel Farage – usually seen holding ‘a fag and a pint’ to assure those who saw him that he was ‘one of us’ - was a bit of a joke.  Then, as with Hitler, the wealthy and powerful thought they could use him for their purposes. They have poured their spare thousands of pounds into his party’s coffers. The story is on-going……….. UKIP is essentially a ‘one-objective party’.   The EU and immigrants are its main target.  Other causes are taken up as seems opportune, but generally UKIP policies are those of the extreme right of the Conservative Party.  Abolish ‘green taxes’ and cease subsidising solar and wind power schemes.  Encourage ‘fracking’ for cheap oil and gas.  Ignore the warnings about climate change and global warming.  It either isn’t happening or, if it is, it’s got nothing to do with human activities so there’s nothing to be done about it.  Vote for UKIP and cheaper fuel oil!  I have little doubt that thousands will be short-sighted enough to do so.

            The Green Party is almost the exact opposite of UKIP.  Below is a brief account of their policies and intentions.

We live in unsettling times. Many of the securities that our parents and grandparents fought for – a functioning National Health Service, free education, and an affordable home – now look out of reach for most of us. Coupled with this, climate change is bringing unpredictable and threatening weather patterns. People feel let down by politicians, and yet there has been an explosion in political activism. People want to do things differently and aren’t afraid to be bold and challenging.

We believe that public services should be for the benefit of the public, not sold off in bits; we believe that education is worth investing in and not something that should mean a lifetime of debt; we believe in leaving behind a better world for our children and grandchildren. This is the only world we have and its welfare, above all things, should be the highest priority for us all.

Politics should work for the benefit of all, not just those who shout the loudest or have the deepest pockets.  We believe in “The Common Good”. A vote for the Green Party is a vote for The Common Good.

            Like UKIP, the Green Party is growing.   They have just one MP – in Brighton – but in the European Parliament elections and in recent by-elections (including that in Clacton) Green candidates received more votes than the Liberal Democrats. Currently there is controversy as to whether The Green Party’s President is to join with the leaders of the Conservative Party, Liberal-Democratic Party, Labour Party and UKIP in public televised debate before next May’s general election.  David Cameron is refusing to take part in the debate unless the Greens are also invited.  He is probably wise to do so.   Green arguments, persuasively presented, are far more likely to draw voters from Labour, Liberal Democrat, and even UKIP than they are from the Conservatives.

            If (and it’s quite a big ‘if’) I’m still around in May, I shall vote for the Green Candidate.  I hope that a great many other people will do the same.    

           

Week 44 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

The Ukippers!

            I was not surprised (though I was disappointed) that Douglas Carswell now a Ukipper, retained his seat in parliament with a comfortable majority at Clacton’s recent by-election.  Douglas Carswell had undoubtedly been a popular MP and in the few weeks before the election we had been deluged with literature telling us what a wonderful chap he was.  There was door-step canvassing, cold-calling on the phone and a couple of well-attended public meetings addressed by Nigel Farage, Ukip’s leader, as well as by the successful candidate.

            Despite all this it seems that some Clactonians were a bit confused even up to and beyond polling day.  One resident is reported as having said ‘Yes, I voted for Ukip this time – our Conservative MP has done nothing for years!’

            Did you see BBC’s Panorama feature on Nigel Farage and Ukip last week?  One thing that did surprise me was to learn how many people had held senior positions within Ukip and had apparently been close friends of its leader, until there had been a falling-out and they had parted with some acrimony.  I wonder if the apparent close friendship between him and Douglas Carswell is similarly fated.  I was also astonished to learn how many thousands of pounds Farage had claimed from the EU in expenses – and how rarely he had bothered to attend the EU parliament. 

 I wasn’t particularly surprised at a revelation of his lack of common courtesy. I had noted the rudeness of all Ukippers in  the European Parliament in standing up and deliberately turning their backs on the  playing of the European Anthem but I hadn’t realized how very rude, boorish and (he’d probably laugh at the word) ungentlemanly Nigel Farage himself can be on occasion. It was really embarrassing to watch him on tv, deliberately and without provocation insulting the European President, an older man than Farage and more distinguished than he will ever be.   

I had hoped that our MP, Douglas Carswell, former Conservative now Ukipper, might prove to be quite different in that respect.  I certainly hadn’t associated him with lack of courtesy – though he didn’t apparently have any qualms about displacing the recently democratically elected UKIP parliamentary candidate for the Clacton Constituency, when he decided to defect from the Conservatives and contest the seat as a Ukipper.  The elected candidate, Mr Lord, a UKIP county councillor and a local farmer, didn’t take kindly to the usurpation.  He resigned in anger from the Party and from the county council.     

Sir Bob Russell, Colchester’s Lib.Dem. MP was mildly surprised when the Chief Whip, Michael Gove, phoned him on Saturday 11^th October to say that Mr Carswell had invited him to be one of his sponsors when he made his debut in the House of Commons as a Ukipper.  Sir Bob told a Gazette reporter, ‘He held me in high regard as an Essex MP although I have expressed critical words about him and Ukip’.  However, when Sir Bob arrived at the House of Commons on Monday 13^th October he learned that there had been a change of plan. Former colleagues Sir Peter Tapsell and Zac Goldsmith were to accompany Mr Carswell into the chamber.  Sir Bob withdrew, though not before commenting that it showed, ‘astonishing pomposity’. 

An unfortunate muddle caused by mistaken underlings?  Perhaps, or is our born-again-as-a-ukipper MP a quick learner who realized what his new loyalty demanded of him?   

What of the future?

          A friend of mine is convinced that the current popularity of Ukip and of Nigel Farage is fleeting; that by the time of the general election next May electors will have realized where their true loyalties lie.  Ukip’s glory, and that of Nigel Farage will fade away and it’ll be a straight fight between Conservative and Labour.   I very much hope that that is so, because I believe that Ukip and its leader are dangerous.

            Meanwhile Nigel Farage is convinced that the tidal wave of public opinion in support of Ukip is unstoppable. He is already making plans for action when Ukip holds the balance between what we think of as ‘the main parties’.  In the meantime he’s delighted that there is a proposal that he will be asked to take part in at least one (he’d prefer two!) of the pre-election political leaders’ debates. It may well be that that could prove to be his downfall because although Farage performs brilliantly before a friendly audience I’m not at all sure that he’s capable of answering convincingly, hostile or even neutral questioning on either the details, or the broad sweep, of Ukip’s policies and the direction in which they would take the UK.   

            I find it extraordinary that the debates will be between the leaders of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties with the leader of Ukip taking part in at least one of them. Why hasn’t Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green Party been invited?  The Greens are offering a real alternative to the tired old policies of the Tories and Labour.  Ukip doesn’t offer an alternative – their programme simply fulfils the secret wishes of the extreme right-wing of the Conservatives as Labour defectors are likely to find out if ever Ukip gains real power.

            The Green Party stands for a more equal Britain, with a National Health Service in public hands for the benefit of the many – not a source of profit for the few; for free education and affordable homes for all. They oppose welfare cuts and believe that public services should be in public hands.  Come to think of it, that’s what we returning servicemen and women thought we were getting when we elected Clem Attlee’s government in 1945.   In those days, of course, we didn’t realize the importance of replacing fossil fuels with renewable sources of energy, another Green priority.

            And the Greens are growing. Like Ukip, they have just one member in the House of Commons but in the European parliament they are a force to be reckoned with. Did you know that 1.2 million people in the UK voted Green in May this year – 150,000 more than voted for the Liberal Democrats.  In our own Clacton by-election the Green Party Candidate – with minimal expenditure on his campaign, pushed the Liberal Democrat candidate into ignominy in fifth place! Yet Nick Clegg is offered a place in those pre-election debates and Natalie Bennett isn’t.   I voted Conservative in that by-election because I thought that the Conservative candidate stood the best chance of denying victory to Ukip.  And I think he might have had the local Conservatives campaigned with the same energy and enthusiasm as the Ukippers.

            Should I still be around for next year’s election I shall vote Green.  The Green candidate is unlikely to be elected in Clacton-on-Sea but every vote cast for him will add to the total number of Green votes nationally.  If you’re disillusioned with the traditional political parties and are seeking an alternative – don’t vote Ukip.  You’ll regret it if they ever do rule Britain.  Vote Green!

Dear Blog readers…..

          I took early retirement from the local government service in 1980, a few days before my 59^th birthday. I then embarked on a new career as a freelance writer.  Among many other things I contributed ‘Tendring Topics’ to a local newspaper every week for 23 years.  It was a weekly comment mostly on local and regional affairs though occasionally I wrote about the wider scene.

            In 2003 a new editor wrote to me saying that Tendring Topics was no longer required.  I was summarily dismissed.  I was very hurt at the time, as I had acquired a large and appreciative readership.  However, like so many apparent disasters in my life, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  Very shortly after that my wife, whose health had been deteriorating, fell and broke her hip.  She never regained her ability to walk and during the next two years she became more and more disabled.  During those two years I didn’t write a word, read a newspaper or listen to the news on tv or radio.  I was her full-time sole carer and really had neither time nor inclination to do anything else.

            On 12^th July 2006 my wife’s life came to an end.  She was 82, I was 85. Three months earlier we had celebrated our 60^th wedding anniversary and had received a congratulatory card from the Queen.  Her death left a gaping, and aching, hole in my life that I attempted to fill with activity.  My grandsons helped.  Christopher, the elder, arranged for me to have a Flickr site on which I have posted hundreds of photographs (www.flickr.com/photos/ernestbythesea)  Nick, my younger grandson, is a computer expert and now runs his own successful international Digital Travel Publicity Consultancy (www.se1media.com)   He organised at first my blogspot (www.ernesthall.blogspot.com ) and later my website (www.ernesthall.net) on both of which I have published week by week Tendring Topics …on line  for the past seven years.

            I am now 93 and am feeling my age.  I fear that my writing has become stale and repetitive and I often find myself consulting Google for information that, even a few months ago, had been stored in my head.  I don’t propose to stop writing the blog altogether but I won’t be publishing it regularly every week.  Nor will I feel that I have to write quite such a long blog as has been my custom.  I will continue to support the causes that I think are important: nuclear disarmament; a United Europe; narrowing that yawning gap between the rich and the poor; proportional representation in parliament; a comprehensive reorganisation of the taxation system so that all of us – rich and poor alike – pay  an equal percentage of our gross income  as income tax or, as I prefer to think of it, our annual subscription to British citizenship - and I shall continue to promote my Christian/Quaker Faith!   I thank all blog readers for your interest in my ideas.

Week 42 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

Some thoughts on the ‘world wide Jihad’

          A regular blog-reader and correspondent also always watches the Andy Marr programme on BBC tv on Sunday mornings, in which matters of general importance to us all are discussed.  A recent programme inspired him to give serious thought to what is an increasingly important and urgent world problem.  Below, unedited, is the greater part of an email that he sent me.  There’s certainly ‘naught for your comfort’ in it: 

There was a lot of debate also about ISIS and about a major piece of investigation in the Sunday Times about the huge sums of money that wealthy and influential people in Qatar and Saudi Arabia are giving to ISIS.   It really is terrifyingly clear that no one knows what to do about “the problem” which is not really an ”ISIS problem” but is a global problem of Islamic militancy which is definitely a movement, not a single state or a single organisation or a single person.  No amount of decapitating the leaders, blowing up their hardware from the air or rhetoric at the UN is going to make any difference.  Almost any military action only serves to help them recruit more followers, and make it more likely that people already living in western countries will conduct mindless acts of suicidal terrorism.  Their total contempt for the western way of life – and by association all westerners – makes them very dangerous. It means that nothing is out of bounds, no rules of warfare will be respected, all civilians are legitimate targets and as they don’t seek personal gain (not in this world at any rate), then any attack could be suicidal and would be contemplated, even if the chance of “success” were very low.

Somehow, I think we need to go back to first principles and ask how two cultures have become so far apart in their fundamental thinking about the way society should be organised.  I think that many of the views Muslims have today, would have been much closer to the views of our Victorian ancestors.  There is a big issue about the role of women in society. Perhaps we should be more concerned than we are about the overt sexualisation of women in just about every walk of western life, in your face on TV, in music, in advertising.  The reaction to all of this in the Muslim world seems to be to go in the opposite direction – “protecting their girls” – from what, I suspect, even moderate Muslims regard as evil.

Did you read about the girl who has been turned down by Camden High School for Girls for wanting to wear a full face veil in class?  The school (it is a 6^th form college) has no uniform policy, but felt that this was “inappropriate clothing”. Naturally, she felt her human rights had been abused (having been taught all about the virtues of freedom of expression and tolerance in a Western Society) and commented that many girls were wearing “inappropriate clothing” at that school such as “very short shorts” and no one minded that. It is – to me at least – ridiculous for any girl to wear a veil at school, but is it any more ridiculous than girls wearing erotic clothing – as I have seen at local schools in London for myself?  In our local school here, which is very mixed race, all the Muslim girls come wearing the hijab over their heads, and modest clothing – generally trousers. Indian girls also dress modestly while the others, particularly White and Afro Caribbean girls wear the shortest skirts they can get away with to complement their designer handbags, and during the holidays are generally seen wearing beach-ware in the local park.  Funnily enough the boys – of all races and religions – mainly take a delight in showing their contempt for authority, by wearing their Uniform in as dishevelled a manner as they can get away with.

Well, I said there was naught for your comfort.   I have to say that if I were a teacher I wouldn’t want to teach anyone whose face I couldn’t see – and I probably wouldn’t even notice the short shorts. (well, perhaps I would if I were half a century younger!)  Come to that, if I were to be attended by a checkout lady at a supermarket or a receptionist at any office, whose face was veiled, it would be the last time I would go there.  That’s not Islamophobia.   I have no objection whatsoever to the headscarf, but I do like to see the expression on the face of whoever is addressing me or to whom I am talking. 

My correspondent’s comments about opposing values and outlooks explain how it is that the jihadists gain recruits from ‘western countries’ but doesn’t suggest any easy – or even difficult - remedies.

It did occur to me how very important it is that the jihadists should never get their hands on any of the nuclear weapons that we know Pakistan possesses.  Those ‘ultimate deterrents’ on our Trident submarines aren’t going to deter those who regard their own death while killing infidels as providing them with a first-class ticket to a Muslim Paradise!

Sunny Clacton-on-Sea makes the headlines!

It is an unfortunate fact that if ever Clacton-on-Sea features in the headlines of the popular press and is referred to in a television news programme, it won’t be about our town’s holiday attractions – our usually dry and sunny weather, our safe and sandy beaches, our colourful public gardens and our lively pier.  It’ll be about something that the Council, and all who wish our town well, would prefer remained unpublicised.  

From 1973 to 1980 I was Tendring District Council’s first Public Relations Office (Spin Doctor) and on several occasions since then I have been thankful that I have now been retired from that post for over thirty years; never more so than a week or so ago when the illustration,and comment below appeared on the front page of the local daily Gazette.

It seems that ‘Banksy’, undoubtedly the world’s best known graffiti artist had visited Clacton, no doubt listened to Clactonian chatter in shops and pubs, and had left a souvenir of his visit on the wall of a public building.   It is a powerful satire depicting five indignant pigeons bearing anti-immigrant and racist posters (the sort associated with the BNP and English Defence League) directed at a solitary African swallow.

Now ‘Banksy’ originals are extremely valuable possessions.  It might have been expected that the Council would have been delighted to have found it and would have explored ways of making the most of it.  I would have suggested finding some way of protecting it from vandals and then advertising it as one of Clacton’s tourist attractions:   Come to Clacton-on-Sea for sand, sea and sun – and an original ‘Banksy’ art work!   And under that satirical cartoon have the Council’s own comments.  How about: but that’s for bird-brains. Clacton-on-Sea welcomes holiday visitors from all over the world!

But the Council didn’t do anything like that.  Someone reported that a picture with ‘racist’ words had been painted on Council property and with what, under practically any other circumstances would have been commendable alacrity, the order was given that it should be erased – and erased it was.  I defy any spin-doctor to put a ‘positive spin’ on that particular news story!  Perhaps the Council should be pleased that the by-election, with its Ukip victory, drove the story out of the news bulletins – though the uncharitable thought did enter my head that the bird-brains had won – and now had their own representative at Westminster.

An Uncertain Future

            I had thought it likely that Douglas Carswell would win the Clacton-on-Sea by-election – if only because the Ukip election campaign made those of the other candidates look like the products of well-meaning but bungling amateurs.  I had at least twelve printed communications from Ukip, each full of confidence and enthusiasm, plus a door-step canvasser and an eager phone call.  From the others I received one or two lack-lustre leaflets, and that was all.  I dislike Ukips attitudes and policies so much that I cannot bring myself to say that they deserved to win – but all the others certainly deserved to lose.

            A few weeks ago I considered in this blog the then remote possibility of a Ukip/Conservative coalition government after the General Election – with Ukip gradually controlling the coalition.    What then was a fanciful idea now seems a distinct possibility.  I am reminded, once again, of the progress of the Nazi Party in Germany in the thirties. The NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) began by being a smallish party of ‘fruitcakes’ but with a charismatic leader, then they were a growing force that could be controlled and manipulated – and who finally, almost overnight so it must have seemed, took over and ruled with a rod of iron.    Don’t let it happen here.

           

Week 37a 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

More Refugees

          2014 is becoming the Year of the Refugees.  We have seen harrowing pictures on the tv of thousands of Syrian refugees seeking shelter and asylum in make-shift camps in Turkey, Lebanon and other nearby countries, from the cruel war in their own homeland from which there seems to be no end in sight.  We have seen similar refugees from Gaza trying to escape relentless shelling and bombing from Israel.  They didn’t even have the option of fleeing to a safer country because the Israeli blockade prevented them from escaping from the strip of land that has been described as ‘the world’s biggest concentration camp’.  More recently we have seen thousands more refugees from northern Iraq, many of them members of Christian communities who have lived peaceably with their Muslim neighbours for centuries, fleeing from the bloodthirsty murderers and torturers of the so-called Islamic State. 

            A brief mention on a BBC news bulletin this (2^nd Sept) evening persuaded me to seek more information about at flood of refugees of which I had previously heard virtually nothing.  Did you know (I certainly didn’t before I consulted Google) that over a million refugees from eastern Ukraine had fled into Russia to escape from the relentless bombardment of their towns and villages by the forces of the Kiev government? No wonder the Russians sent a convoy of humanitarian aid vehicles to the south!  I also discovered that there have been over 2,000 fatal casualties from the civil war in the Ukraine  - most of them among the ‘rebel’ population and many, as in Gaza, civilians including women and little children. Isn’t bombing and shelling his own people one of the war crimes of which we constantly accuse President Assad of Syria?   But, as I have remarked before in this blog, It’s not what is done – it’s who it is does it, that matters as far as ‘the west’ is concerned.  The Kiev government has the support of the UK, the USA and NATO, and the refugees in this case are rebels said to be backed by Russia. They clearly ‘don’t deserve our sympathy and aren’t going to get any help from us!’

             The UK, the USA and NATO’s response to this civil war has been to blame it all onto Russia, to impose ever stronger economic sanctions on Russia and to carry out troop manoeuvres in Poland and naval exercises in the Baltic Sea. These highly provocative activities have produced a response from Russia.  They too are strengthening their armed forces and carrying out military exercises.

            A few weeks ago I wrote in this blog about the way in which, as a result of a series of military alliances, the great powers of Europe had ‘sleep walked’ into World War I.  I think that Vladimir Putin, David Cameron, Angela Merkel and Barak Obama, have sufficient sense not to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors in 1914, but some of the more bullish US Senators and Congressmen may be eager for a confrontation: ‘Sure we should teach them Rooskies a lesson  – and our boys could he do it and be home again before Christmas’. I have little doubt that within the Russian parliament there are similar irresponsible idiots.  World-wide the number of those who remember the devastation of World War II is getting smaller and smaller. 

            Certainly the Kiev Ukrainian government has been doing all it can to lure their west European friends into the conflict.  Remember how its spokesman announced that the ‘black boxes’ on that ill-fated air liner had revealed that the ill-fated Malaysian air-liner had been shot down by pro-Russian rebels. (We haven’t yet received any official word about those black boxes or about the report of the team of international experts who inspected the crash site).  The latest claim is that two Russian armoured divisions have crossed the frontier and are fighting with the rebels.  Really? I reckon that if the Russian government really had sent two armoured divisions to support the rebels, the Russian flag would by now be flying over Kiev Town Hall!

            The bloody advance of Kiev government forces has been halted (possibly with Russian help).  Now, before a counter- offensive by the pro-Russian rebels begins, is surely the time for peace talks to begin.   It should be noted that the pro-Russian rebels have never sought to take over the whole of Ukraine.  All they ask is to be allowed to keep their own language and customs and to make their own international friendships, perhaps within a loosely Federal Ukraine.  Is that really too much to ask?

            It is, of course, a very ill wind that blows nobody any good. The blood-thirsty fanatics of IS (Islamic State) and their counterparts and supporters world wide, are delighted to see their infidel opponents – the enemies of jihadist Islam in the Russian Federation and those within NATO - at each-other’s throats.  They’d like to see a real ‘shooting war’ break out between the warring infidels, hoping that when half the world had been reduced to a radio-active wilderness, the jihadists would be able to move in and enforce their evil perversion of Islam on whoever was left alive.   

Later News

            I wrote the above four or five days ago.  I am writing this on Saturday 6^th September.  Yesterday afternoon we learned that a cease-fire has been agreed between the forces of the Kiev government and the pro-Russian rebels.  The ceasefire involves a cessation of hostilities, an exchange of prisoners and negotiations on a permanent peace based, almost exactly, on the suggestions made in the paragraph above that I have now italicised and emboldened.

            I am unreservedly thankful and very much hope that the cease-fire will hold* and that the negotiations will be successful.  The response from our government and NATO has been, to say the least, ungracious.  The increased sanctions against Russia will be put into effect and there’s to be a ‘rapid response force, stationed in Poland, ready to counter any ‘act of aggression’ on Russia’s part!   Do they really want a third world war?  I am beginning to wonder.

            What they should be doing is making sure that those Baltic countries ‘the west’ is so eager to protect – don’t deliberately provoke Russian action.  Estonia, where Barak Obama made a bellicose speech, has an ethnic Russian minority of 25 percent of the population.  That means that one quarter of the population use the Russian language and have a Russian culture.  Do we, before we make unreserved promises of protection, make sure that these Russian speakers are not treated as second class citizens?  Is Russian an official language?  There’s certainly nothing unprecedented about a country having more than one official language – Belgium, Switzerland, Wales and Canada for instance are just a few examples.

            We should also ask ourselves how we British would react if the Republic of Ireland or possibly an independent Scotland, entered into a hostile military alliance against us and had a ‘rapid response’ unit stationed within its borders as a defence against British aggression.  We do know how the USA would react.  In order to prevent a successful repetition of the ‘Bay of Pigs’ failed attempt at invasion from the USA, the Cuban Government invited the USSR to position missiles and their launchers on its territory.  The USA was so concerned about this that they were prepared to risk  a nuclear war to prevent it.  Fortunately Nikita Khruschev, the Soviet President, was not prepared to risk such a conflict and withdrew the missiles.  This was hailed as a great American victory – but it’s worth noting that there was no further attempt to invade Cuba from the USA!

            Blessed are the peace-makers………………for it is upon them (not on those who constantly prepare for war) that the survival of the human race depends

Monday - 8th September (7.55 a.m.)

            Yesterday there were reports of the cease-fire being broken - probably by both sides.  As I pointed out earlier in this blog, neither side has a monopoly of irresponsible idiots.  I switched on the TV for BBC's 7.00 am news bulletin with some trepidation.  Ukraine wasn't mentioned.  No doubt it will have been later on, but a major breach of the truce would surely have been given headline status.

                I'm still hoping, and praying, for peace.

Meanwhile – back in sunny Clacton-on-Sea…………………

,

          ………………..the political parties are getting ready for the unexpected by-election caused by Douglas Carswell's defection to UKIP, which we now know is to be held on 9^th October.   UKIP has the advantage of knowing for certain who is to be their candidate and beginning their cempaign early.   There’s no honour among thieves and, so it seems, precious little among Ukippers.  Douglas Carswell has deserted the political party that helped him win his seat in two general elections at just about the worst possible moment, publishing and distributing two self-advertising leaflets before announcing his defection. Local Ukippers have cast aside the local candidate they had democratically elected only a few weeks earlier, in favour of this defector from the Conservatives.  Mr Ling has not taken his sacking quietly.  He has resigned from UKIP, intends to resign his UKIP seat on Essex County Council and to take no further interest in politics.  Who can blame him?

            I have just received another circular and what appears to be a personal letter from Mr Carswell (but I bet dozens of people have received them!) in which he addresses me as ‘Dear Ernest’ – and I had no idea we were on first-name terms!

            I do think that the local Conservative Party has hit on a very good idea in having an unofficial ‘primary election’, even though it means that their election campaign will begin later than those of UKIP or the Lib.Dems.  .Local residents of any or no political persuasion are invited to a public meeting to help select the Party’s candidate from a short list of hopefuls who will briefly address the meeting and answer questions.  There’s also a questionnaire especially for those who won’t be attending this meeting.

            I won’t be going to the meeting and I won’t be filling in the questionnaire. To do either would give a false impression.  If I vote for the Conservative Candidate in the forthcoming by-election (which seems quite likely) it won’t be because I want him or her to be my representative in parliament.  It’ll be simply because I want to keep Douglas Carswell – or any other Ukipper - out!   The election of someone of another party (any other party) as an MP is likely to be the only way of ensuring that. So I shall vote for whoever has the best chance of defeating Douglas Carswell and that at the moment seems to be the Conservative, whoever he or she may be..

            

Week 37 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

I told you so!

 Well no, I didn’t really – because I didn’t imagine for a moment that he’d actually desert the Conservative Party, join UKIP and resign his seat in the House of Commons so that we Clactonians could decide in a by-election whether or not we wanted a Ukipper to be our member of parliament.  I did know though that his heart was with UKIP rather than with David Cameron’s brand of Conservatism, and I respect him for following his own convictions rather than his financial and social advantage.  The fact that I am quite sure that his conviction was pointing him in the wrong direction is beside the point.

            I am, of course, referring to Mr Douglas Carswell who is/was (does a resignation from parliament have immediate effect?) Clacton and District’s MP.  A few months ago Mr Carswell asked local members of the Conservative Party to describe him in two words.  I wasn’t invited to do so for obvious reasons.  However I joined in the fun and described him in this blog as a Crypto-Ukipper. Recent events have demonstrated that that description was correct

        During the time in which Douglas Carswell was deciding where his true loyalty lay, members of the local branch of UKIP were selecting their own candidate to fight for their cause in next year’s general election.  Successful candidate was Mr Roger Lord, a farmer from Great Bentley and already a UKIP County Councillor. I had thought that it was the prospect of having an election battle with someone whose views were very similar to those of Douglas Carswell, then their candidate, that had prompted the local Conservatives to push two election campaign leaflets through my letter box,  a week or so apart.  A copy of the latest one – it came just a few days ago – is shown above.  It’s quite eye-catching isn’t it?

            The contemptuous way in which UKIP members rose in the European Parliament and turned their backs on the playing of the European anthem, suggests that common courtesy doesn’t rate very highly among the qualities valued by Ukippers.   However, it might have been thought that someone from UKIP would have let Mr Lord know about Douglas Carswell’s impending defection and his intention to stand for the parliamentary seat for which the local Ukippers had selected Roger Lord as their candidate.

            Mr Lord is quoted in the Gazette as saying, ‘I was selected and have appointed a campaign team and we have an election strategy planned.  I have already recruited several members of Douglas Carswell’s team and they don’t want him back – they fell out with him big time’.

            Mr Lord isn’t the only one to whom Douglas Carswell’s actions have come as a surprise.  Ms. Dewlyth Miles, a former Chairman of the Clacton Conservative Association said, ‘This is a total blow to Conservative supporters in Clacton.  I had no inkling that he was going to do this and would have done everything in my power to persuade him to stay.  Had the Conservative Party known what was going to happen they would hardly have gone to the trouble and expense of printing those eye-catching leaflets and pushing them through our letter boxes!   Looking at that leaflet for a second time, I note that nowhere on it (not even in the small print) is there any mention of either the Conservative Party or the Conservative dominated government, though it gives the address of the Conservative Party in Clacton's Station Road, as the place to contact Mr Carswell.  Could it be that local Conservatives have paid for some propaganda for their UKIP opponents?

            I don’t want either Mr Carswell or Mr Lord to be our MP.   I am not a supporter of UKIP.  I am a Europhile and am proud of it. The EU needs reform –  but so does the UK – and I have no doubt that for us to leave the European Union, to which we are bound by Geography, History, Culture and economic self-interest, would be disastrous.

            I recall that I wrote in this blog that in the European Parliamentary Election I would vote for the Green Party because the election was by proportional representation and every vote counted.  For British first-past-the-post elections my choice would be for whoever was most likely to defeat the UKIP candidate. If he or she were to be a Conservative I’d have a struggle with my conscience but – for the first time in my life – I’d vote Blue.

         When I made that somewhat rash promise, the General Election was nearly two years away and I didn’t really expect still to be around when it took place.  Now though – we’re to have a by-election, probably in a matter of weeks.  My resolve could be sorely tested!   

             

Debt again!

            I have sometimes wondered if I am over-obsessed with the problem of debt.  My parents spent their lives determined never to owe anything to anybody.  I can recall them discussing for hours whether or not to make their first and (I’m pretty certain) only HP purchase – of a new ‘Murphy’ radio or, as we called it in those days, ‘wireless set’.   Pre World War II, if you wanted something expensive, perhaps costing as much as £5.00 (in those days, two–weeks wages for a working man!), you saved up for it, a concept that seems to be almost unknown today.   My wife’s parents (her dad was a skilled and experienced carpenter and never out-of-work) were just the same.

            Consequently when my wife and I took out a mortgage for the purchase of our own home – the bungalow in which I am writing these words today – we did so with some trepidation.  I had already started spare-time freelance writing and, year by year, my earnings from this source steadily increased.  Every penny that I earned from that spare time writing was used to reduce the mortgage debt.  As a result it was paid off completely, and my wife and I became ‘home owners’ and not just ‘home buyers’, ten years earlier than had been planned.

            Nowadays I have both a credit and a debit card but, on the rare occasions that I use the credit card, I pay the debt off directly the demand is made by my bank, thereby incurring no interest charges.

            Partly at least as a result of government policy, debt is at the very heart of today’s society.  To be free from debt has become the exception rather than the rule. Interest rates are artificially low – though they become high enough for those who fail to make their regular repayments!  Young people leave University or other further education with a debt that can amount to £20,000 or £30,000.   It’s true that they don’t have to start repaying that money until they are earning a decent salary – but that debt has to be repaid at just the time when the debtor might otherwise be saving up for a deposit on the purchase of his or her first home.  And that, of course, is another debt that has to be repaid – with interest.  The government’s ‘help to buy’ schemes, by guaranteeing a large percentage of that deposit,  drive up house prices and add to the regular monthly repayments made by the purchaser

           

It seems that the North-East Essex Coastal Area in which I live, in particular Clacton-on Sea, Frinton and Walton-on-the Naze has the highest level of debt in Eastern England.  A report from the Children’s Society and the Step Change debt charity reveals that within our area one third of families are mired in debt totalling more than £5 million!  The report says that 4,826 children in Clacton are affected  and that families are being forced into debt to make ends meet and to pay for the essential needs of their children.  Mike O’Connor, Chief Executive of Step Change told a Clacton Gazette reporter that, ‘Families face a unique set of pressures, but the sad reality is that for many parents credit, which is often unsustainable, has become the only way to cover their essential household bills’. 

            The report in the Clacton Gazette records that our MP Mr Douglas Carswell is well aware of the local debt problem.

 ‘I know from my regular advice surgeries that family debt is a chronic problem and getting worse.  If you look at average earnings in Clacton, they have barely gone up at all in five years, yet the price of basics like food and energy are going up and up.  The Government tells us that the economy is recovering, but in our corner of Essex the only thing going up is the prices in shops, and debt.

            But, of course, Mr Carswell said all that before the Clacton Gazette or I or anyone else knew that he would be changing sides and forcing a by-election in which he hopes to stand as a Ukipper.  I’m rather pleased that the last words that I shall type from him as Clacton’s Conservative MP expressed thoughts with which I can whole-heartedly agree.

            I don’t think that my obsession with the problem of debt is completely unjustified.

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