Week 31. 2011 9.8.2011

Tendring Topics……..on Line

The Riots and the Looting

The riots in London - and now in other big cities, were still taking place only a few hours ago.   I don't think that there is any useful comment that I can make just yet though I hope to do so next week.  In the meantime perhaps we should think about the value of the recently-much-derided Public Sector.  It is the Public Sector that has to try to stop the rioters and the looters and strive to put out the fires and minimise the damage.  It is the Public Sector that patches up the human victims and it is the Public Sector that has to clear up the mess, clean the streets and try to get civilised life going again,  Mr Cameron's Big Society isn't going to help.  Many of its membrs were busy creating the chaos and destruction.

Is this the time to emasculate the Public Sector?


A Question of Copyright


It was early in my career as a freelance writer that I learned the importance of the copyright laws. When I submitted an article to a newspaper or magazine editor for publication, I was offering the first opportunity to publish that particular article. I retained the copyright. This meant that I could grant permission for the article to be used again elsewhere – but no-one else could copy it, or any substantial part of it. International treaties extend copyright to most other countries.

This has proved very important to me. A series of articles on domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage, published in Britain’s Do-it-yourself magazine, caught the attention of the editor of a similar publication in Australia. He asked my permission to publish them, offering me a rather larger fee than I had been paid me originally by Do-it-yourself. Although my half a dozen or so commercially successful plumbing manuals are long out of print, I still receive small sums every year for Public Lending Right from British public libraries and from the Authors’ Copyright and Lending Rights Society for the loan or photocopying of them in mainland Europe.

Similar rights exist for musical as for literary work but, because of the ease with which broadcast music can be copied, it is much more difficult to enforce them, difficult – but not impossible. However our present government, despite our continuing unemployment and stagnant economy, has abandoned the pursuit of measures that would block this drain on the fruits of successful British enterprise.

It is an abandonment that has infuriated the social conscience of my elder son who has penned the letter below to Ms. Lynne Featherstone, his Lib.Dem. MP, who is also a member of the government. I wish him every success – though I wouldn’t bet on it!

Dear Lynne,

I have just read on the BBC web site:-

“Plans to block websites that host copyright infringing material are to be dumped by the government.

Business secretary Vince Cable announced the change following a review of the policy by telecoms regulator Ofcom.

Website blocking was one of the key provision contained in the Digital Economy Act.
Internet Service Providers had objected to the idea that copyright owners could compel them to cut off some sites.”

I must make it clear that I am not involved in any way in the performing arts industry, although I am in the IT business. I have had two sons, who in their teenage years, believed it was OK to copy music from file sharing web sites, and that no normal person would actually pay for music.

In view of the economic situation, the level of unemployment, the lack of growth, much of which can be blamed on the policies of your government, I find it unbelievable that you should so casually ignore this piracy which is damaging an important part of the UK economy and you should do so by covering it with a smoke screen about “format shifting”, a non-issue which is supposed to be some benefit to the public at large. It is of absolutely no consequence that big lobbyists like BT “object”.

Quite rightly, no consideration was given to airlines about the cost and inconvenience of vetting for illegal immigrants before allowing them to be flown to the UK. Blocking web sites and cutting off customers will be difficult and expensive for Internet Service Providers, but certainly not impossible. That is the price we should pay to protect jobs quite literally being stolen by pirates in the Seychelles and other locations outside UK jurisdiction. Legislation should also be considered to make modem manufacturers force the password protection of wifi networks to get rid of the feeble excuse that someone might be borrowing a neighbour’s wifi connection.

There is also the need to send out a signal from Government that file sharing is theft, as 99% of teenagers, who will be parents themselves within 10 years, do not even realise that there is anything wrong with it and believe that copyright law should just be completely abandoned.

I know that this is not your area of responsibility within Government, but I hope that as a member of the Cabinet and the same party as Vince Cable you will express disgust at this decision born out of laziness and vested interests, and stand up for British industry and ask for a re-think.

Peter Hall

A Reminder of Global Warming

I can’t remember whether Clacton’s MP Mr Douglas Carswell, doesn’t believe that global warming is taking place or whether he accepts that it is a reality but that it is a purely natural phenomenon and hasn’t resulted from human activity In either event he believes that attempting to do anything about it – by developing alternative sources of energy for instance – is a waste of time and money.

He is also a convinced Eurosceptic and believes that we should have another referendum about membership of the EU. All of which left me rather surprised when, a few weeks ago, he had quite a lot to say at a locally held international conference exploring ways in which Europe could help the economic development of English seaside towns, and from which the only positive outcome was the suggestion that taking part in the development of off-shore wind farms offered Tendring District it best possibility of future prosperity.

Recently, when the weather seemed more appropriate to the end of October than the end of July, it was indeed difficult to believe in the reality of global warming. As I write though (on 2nd August) we have had scorching sunshine for two or three days and the solar panel on my roof has been filling my storage cylinder with free hot water! But, of course, sudden and extreme changes from cold to hot and back again, and from wet to dry, are all part of climatic change that we must increasingly expect.

Last week I had an email from a lady whom I had never met but who had been very interested in one of the ‘holiday photos’ displayed in my Flickr site, (www.flickr.com/photos/ernestbythesea) It was taken in 1979 when my wife Heather and I were touring in mainland Europe with our motor-caravan. We had spent some time in the Italian Alps and were making our way to Switzerland and ultimately to Germany’s Black Forest.



The Rhone Gkacier 1979

  Half way up a precipitous mountain pass we saw on the right the Rhone Glacier – the source of France’s River Rhone. I incurred the wrath of half a dozen multi-national lorry drivers behind me, to stop just for two minutes (it really was only two minutes!) to take this picture

My email correspondent had recently negotiated that same Alpine Pass and had seen that same valley – but now there is no glacier; just a barren mountain valley with a stream destined to become the mighty Rhone, tumbling through it.

Another example of the retreat of the Alpine glaciers and the inexorable progress of global warming.

The bad news – and the good!


A few years ago, when I had to go into hospital for minor surgery, my doctor was at some pains to ask me which, of several hospitals, I would prefer to go to for my operation. I have no doubt that that was a choice offered to everyone needing hospital treatment. My doctor knew perfectly well though that I would want to go to the nearest hospital capable of offering the treatment required. I would just have to trust the NHS to ensure that that hospital was not only capable but competent.

That, for me, was Colchester General Hospital. Most Clactonians in the same situation would have made the same choice. I am sure therefore that many of us must have been dismayed to learn that Colchester General Hospital had been publicly criticised by the East of England Strategic Health Authority for ‘missing waiting time targets, having high death rates and performing poorly when it comes to patients’ experience’.


My own experience, both personally and as a visitor to my wife when she was an in-patient both in Colchester General and in Clacton Hospital was that they were both generally very good (my sons, who were also regular visitors, thought that Colchester General compared very favourably with hospitals in Enfield where, at that time, they both lived) but that there were never enough nurses available to meet patients’ needs.

My more recent experience has been as an outpatient. I have to go four times a year to the Outpatients’ Department of the Essex County Hospital in Lexden Road, Colchester, as follow-ups on operations for the excision of cancerous material from the skin and cartilage of both ears.

I have always had to wait at least an hour beyond my appointment time to see the surgical registrar, and on one occasion I had to wait two hours. This, I have put down to an over optimistic estimate of the time needing to be spent with each patient. Five to fifteen minutes is, I imagine, allowed for this, but some patients – I have no doubt for very good reasons – take far longer than that. I don’t. The Registrar looks at my ears, feels my neck and so far has recorded ‘The operation wounds have healed well and the glands of the neck show no signs of swelling’. And that’s that for another three months. There must be lots of patients just like me. Were our journeys to Colchester and our long waits for attention really necessary. Couldn’t our own doctors have examined us just as competently and referred us on only if potential trouble was spotted?

That was the bad news.

And the good news? That was that there had been not a single case of the Hospital killer superbug MRSA recorded in either of Colchester’s Hospitals for ten months. At the peak of the MRSA epidemic in 2004 and 2005 there had been no less than 37 patients infected, 14 of whom had died as a result. The current success has been, so the hospital authorities claim, thanks to careful screening of patients and meticulous attention to hygiene and cleanliness.

Before we get too elated and congratulatory we should remember the ‘bad old early days’ of the NHS. Then Matrons (rather than professional ‘administrators’) ruled hospitals with a rod of iron, and every ward was in the charge of its own nursing Sister with an ambition to become a Matron herself one day. Instead of contract cleaners, the hospital had its own cleaning team, each member of which took a personal pride in the cleanliness of the area for which they were responsible. In those days MRSA was unheard of.

Perhaps, of course, that was just coincidence

Week 49.09

Tendring Topics……..on Line

‘These Mechanical Beasts…..these Carbuncles…..these Monsters!’

These are the words of Tendring District Councillor Peter Halliday published on the readers’ letters page of the local Daily Gazette. The object of his wrath is, as you may have guessed, the five wind turbines that are to be built off St. John’s Road, between Clacton and St. Osyth. After a full public local enquiry in which the objectors had every opportunity to state their case Tendring Council’s decision to refuse this development was overturned by the government inspector.

Mr Halliday says that it became clear to him that this would be the outcome of the enquiry, ‘When the Environment Minister told the Labour Party Conference that local Conservative councils refusing such applications would see their decisions overturned by Government Inspectors’. I had realized it well before that. Regular readers of this blog may remember my comment, at the time, on the Council’s decision to refuse the development, against the advice of their own professional planners, for no reason other than that of well-orchestrated very local protests.
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I forecast with confidence that the developers would appeal, that there would be a full and expensive (for us council-tax payers) public enquiry, and that the Council’s refusal would be overturned. But there, I have probably had a rather longer experience of local government and of public enquiries than has Councillor Halliday.

The sole objection to the development was, as far as I know, the one plastered on all the objectors’ posters and banners ‘Too near to Homes!’ The Council’s Planning Officers, who were on the spot, and the Government’s inspector who visited the site, clearly thought otherwise.

There was no possible risk of physical danger from the turbines. Almost a mile away from homes, they would surely be inaudible. Unlike the hideous electricity pylons that stride across the English countryside, there has never been any suggestion that living in their proximity can endanger either child or adult health.

The sole objection was their appearance. They would obviously affect the view. The same objection could be made though wherever wind turbines are provided in a rural or semi-rural area ……..and if the turbines were to be sited anywhere but in such an area then they might truly be ‘too near to homes’.

Needless to say our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, like Mr Halliday, is outraged by the inspector’s decision. He, together with two or three correspondents to the local press, is convinced that no climatic change is taking place or, if it is taking place, that it’s a natural phenomenon and nothing to do with human activity. It must be very comforting to watch on tv the human misery created by horrific floods in Cumbria, for the second time in just a few years and worse than anything ever experienced in the past, and to be able to say, ‘Ah well, very sad……but of course it’s an “Act of God”, nothing whatsoever to do with us and our activities!’

Iraq

The long-awaited public enquiry into the events preceding the war in Iraq, the conduct of that war, and its aftermath has only been hearing witnesses for two or three days. Already though, it has become clear that the reasons for our joining the USA in invading Iraq were far different from those we were told at the time.

The invasion took place in the aftermath of ‘nine eleven’ and it was claimed that Iraq was a sponsor of the kind of international terrorism that was responsible for that event. This claim, it has been revealed, was held by the United States’ Government but was never really believed in Britain.

‘Nine eleven’ had its genesis within the frontiers of Afghanistan and of ‘the west’s’ allies in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, rather than in either Iraq or Iran.

Then we were told that the Iraqi government possessed cunningly concealed ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that posed a threat to the whole of the Middle East and to ourselves. The United Nations’ Weapons Inspectors had found no evidence of these before the allied invasion and none have been found since. It has now been revealed that there had never been any really convincing evidence that they existed.

It seems that the real motive of the Anglo-American Alliance had always been ‘regime change’ rather than either retribution for ‘nine eleven’ or the eradication of unspeakably terrible weaponry. Saddam Hussein was a cruel dictator whom ‘the west’ had failed to topple after the Kuwait War. This was the time to make a thorough job of it. It now seems that, even if this very dubious excuse for war were considered to be valid, conflict could still have been avoided. Our former Ambassador to the USA has told the enquiry that pressure on Iraq was prompting rebellion and that, very shortly, the regime would have collapsed from internal pressure. Tens of thousands of lives may have been destroyed for want of a little patience!

That same former ambassador also told the enquiry about the friendly meeting between our Prime Minister and the American President at the latter’s ranch in Texas. The two of them had a cosy chat from which everyone else was excluded. No one knows what was discussed or what agreements may have been reached. It had been noticeable though that from that moment the Prime Minister’s attitude towards Iraq hardened. He began to talk both about possible war and about regime change. He was singing from the George W. Bush hymn-sheet!

I have been surprised by the amount of deception and chicanery that has been openly revealed in just the first few days of the enquiry. Whatever, I wonder, can possibly be in the evidence that – the press tells us – the Prime Minister has insisted must be revealed to the enquiry only in secret!

Crisis at the Top

Can it, I wonder, possibly be true that Tendring Council’s top three officials (each of them said to be enjoying a salary of over £100,000 a year) are facing redundancy and that councillors are thinking of replacing them with a new, lower budget ‘management board’?

If so it is interesting to speculate on the deliberations that preceded that decision. It must surely have been made by a group of influential councillors meeting in what would once have been described as ‘a small smoke-filled room’. Contrary to popular belief it is quite possible to sack a top official. I have a fairly recent memory of a Clerk of the Council (the less-well-paid equivalent of a Chief Executive prior to local government reorganisation in 1974) of the former Clacton UDC resigning his post after having been strongly encouraged to do so. To make the three at the top redundant does seem a little unusual.

The difference between local government in my day (admittedly over thirty years ago!) and life at the town hall today, was brought home to me by the composition of the triumvirate that comprises a management board of Tendring Council’s top, and most highly paid, officials. They are the Chief Executive, the Deputy Chief Executive and the Assistant Chief Executive, each of them I have no doubt, an expert in cost-effective ‘administration’ and ‘the management of human resources’.

In ‘the bad old days’, The Town Clerk, or Clerk of the Council, was ‘the first among equals’ of a number of Council Chief Officers, each of whom managed his or her own department and reported regularly to a Committee concerned with that department’s sphere of work. There would be the Council’s Treasurer, the Engineer and Surveyor and the Medical Officer of Health. Larger authorities might have an independent Housing Manager and the Chief Sanitary Inspector (later Chief Public Health Inspector) would sometimes be regarded as a separate Chief Officer.

The idea that there should be a Deputy and an Assistant Town Clerk who outranked, and were on a higher salary scale, than those professional heads of departments, would have been received with incredulity and derision, as would the suggestion that there should be a Chief Officers’ ‘Management Board’. It is true that, after the reorganisation of 1974 there was a ‘management team’, consisting of heads of departments, who met regularly to discuss common interests. Heads of departments though made their own reports and recommendations to their committees and the committees discussed them and made their recommendations to the whole council.

The present system of ‘professional managers’, exercising authority over professional doctors, accountants, architects and surveyors, appears to be part of a package that included the abolition of the committee system and its replacement by one aping party political government in Westminster. We now have a powerful officers’ ‘management board’ making recommendations to ‘Portfolio holders’ (local cabinet ministers!) who make decisions that would previously have been the responsibility of committees. At intervals the full Council meets and members of the majority party are expected to support loyally policies decided by that small ‘Cabinet’ of portfolio holders.

It is a system that may make for greater speed and efficiency (though I haven’t seen much evidence of this in Tendring) but it is a negation of representative local democracy.

Some Modern Art

I am not a great enthusiast for all-things-modern. It has sometimes seemed to me that there is a late twentieth century/early twenty-first century enthusiasm for ugliness…..in art, in architecture, in music and in poetry. Not all my family are so unenlightened. My younger son Andy and his wife Marilyn are enthusiastic Friends of the National Gallery. They share my liking for much of the art of the past, but also appreciate the work of contemporary artists. Possibly in an attempt to educate me in the finer things of life, they have recently sent me photos of an example of the work of Anish Kapoor CBE, Royal Academician, whose work has been acclaimed and exhibited world-wide.

Above - Sculpture by Anish Kapoor displayed outide National Gallery.

Left - Detail from above

Well, it certainly isn’t ugly. It’s new and refreshing. It’s beautiful in fact. But still (put it down to my advanced age) it’s not really my cup of tea!

Week 46.09

Tendring Topics………on Line

Why not a White Poppy Day for the Civilian Dead?

Last Sunday we especially remembered the servicemen and women slain in World Wars I and II and in subsequent and continuing conflicts.

In World War II at least, and probably in other more recent conflicts, the number of civilian dead greatly outnumbered the casualties in the armed forces. We have, it is true, a day (27th January) on which the victims of the Nazi Holocaust are remembered, another on 11th September for the victims of ‘nine-eleven’, and yet another (6th August) on which many remember those who were vaporised when the first very nuclear weapon was dropped on Hiroshima. Although we worry desperately about ‘rogue nations’ or terrorists gaining control of ‘weapons of mass destruction’, it is worth remembering that the only countries that have so far actually used such weapons are Britain and America!

The Soviet Poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s best-known poem Babiy Yar, about the ravine near Kiev where a notorious massacre of Ukrainian Jews took place during the German occupation, begins, ‘Over Babiy Yar there are no memorials’.

Much the same could be said about the civilian dead of Coventry, of London’s East End, and of other British cities during the Blitz, not forgetting the tens of thousands killed in British and American air raids on Berlin, Hamburg and (quite inexcusably in my opinion) on Dresden at a time when the end of the war in Europe was clearly in sight? And, of course, the estimated one million civilians who lost their lives during the German siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and the comparable loss of life in Warsaw, Stalingrad (now Volgagrad) and other towns and villages throughout Poland, Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine? Nor must we forget the many thousands of civilians who have died and are still dying as a result of conflicts in Africa.

I believe that there is a strong case for an International Day of Remembrance of the Civilian Dead in every country and in every conflict. Almost every country in the world has at least some civilian war dead to remember and mourn, and there are very few countries that have no responsibility for the civilian dead of others.

It could be a day to remember the victims of Dresden and Hamburg, as well as those of Coventry, Warsaw and Leningrad; of Lebanon and Gaza as well as of the Holocaust; of Serbs in Bosnia under Croatia’s puppet Fascist regime during World War II, as well as of Muslims during the more recent conflict; of the civilian victims of Japan in mainland Asia during World War II as well as those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and of course, the victims of ‘nine-eleven’ and of terror bombings throughout the world.

For almost all of us it could be a day of national repentance as well as of mourning. It could also be a day on which we all wore an appropriate emblem (perhaps a white poppy) as a symbol of our determination never, ever, to let it happen again. These emblems could be sold worldwide to help the all-too-many civilian victims of national, tribal or sectarian violence in the world today.

‘Global Warming is just hot air’, claims our MP

Nobody could possibly accuse our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell, of allowing himself to be swept along with the tide of public opinion, or even of following blindly the leadership of his own political party.

Like me, he has a blog on the internet and doesn’t hesitate to use it to promote currently unpopular causes about which he feels strongly. A subject on which we both have strong views is global warming. The difference between us is that I am convinced that global warming is a rapidly accelerating threat to humankind and that our own human activities are hastening it. In this I am for once with the overwhelming majority of informed political and scientific opinion. Mr Carswell, on the other hand, is gallantly swimming against the tide in declaring, ‘I have thought long and hard about it and in my view, the climate is not changing because of human activity’.

What a pity Mr Carswell didn’t announce this revelation in time to stop the world’s leaders and most of their leading scientists journeying to Copenhagen to discuss what our MP knows to be ‘just hot air’.

Mr Carswell believes too that this ‘dangerous obsession with climate change’ is costing us money. It has, he says, already led to an increase of 25 percent in our electricity bills and this is expected to rise to 60 percent in five years time. Funny that, because my combined gas and electricity direct debit payments have recently been almost halved, partly as a result of my heeding warnings of climate change and having had solar water-heating panels installed on my roof.

Solar Panels being installed on the roof of my bungalow earlier this year. I do try to practise what I preach!

Even if it could be proved conclusively that no global warming is taking place, or that, if it is taking place, it is not as a result of human activity, there would still be an energy crisis. We would still have an urgent need to end our dependence on fossil fuels, to conserve all the energy that we can, and to find and develop more and more renewable sources of energy.

Fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas, were all created millions of years ago from the luxuriant vegetation of long-prehistoric periods in the world’s history. There developed vast reservoirs of all these materials below the earth’s surface. Vast, but not infinitely vast! Nor are they renewable. As a result of the accelerating industrialisation that has taken place worldwide over the past century and a half, reserves of coal, oil and natural gas are rapidly diminishing. As they diminish market forces decree that they become ever more expensive. Future generations will not have the easy option of fossil fuel to warm their homes, light their streets and power their factories!

Not even Mr Carswell and the Australian geologist Ian Plimer, who shares his view that climatic change is not taking place as a result of human activity, can possibly imagine that the depletion of the world’s natural resources (coal, oil and gas) has been caused other than by energy-hungry humanity

North Sea Gas is already running out. The USA, whose reserves of oil were once considered to be almost inexhaustible, is now an importer. What’s more, the oil supplies on which we heavily depend come from the notoriously volatile and unstable Middle East, and our gas supply from Siberia. Is Mr Carswell happy that his (I am sure very comfortable) first and second homes depend for their warmth, lighting and power on oil from Saudi Arabia or the Persian Gulf, and gas from Russia. The Russians, recent converts to capitalism, have learned quickly how to use market forces to their own advantage. And why not? All’s fair in the global market place. Those who need a commodity in short supply must expect to pay its price to those who, for the moment at least, have it in abundance.

So if, as Mr Carswell believes, talk of man-made global warming is just ‘hot air’ humanity’s predicament is no less serious. We still need those wind turbines, solar panels, tidal and wave energy generators and, indeed, any other source of renewable sustainable energy that we can discover and develop, together with every means of recycling and conserving energy that we can find. That is, of course, if we have a vision that extends beyond the next Public Opinion Poll or the next General Election.

REAL Christmas Stamps

How refreshing to find that this year the Post Office has rediscovered the fact that Christmas is a Christian Festival and has given us (well, perhaps ‘given’ isn’t quite the right word) unmistakeably Christian Christmas Postage Stamps.

Last year, you may remember, customers at Post Offices who simply asked for Christmas Stamps were handed somewhat garish stamps with Pantomime Characters printed on them. I remember that the one used for correspondence with mainland Europe had a picture of Captain Hook. It occurred to me that in a thousand Continental homes, recipients of mail from England will have been asking, ‘Why on earth have the mad English put a one-armed pirate on their Christmas stamps this year?’

There were a limited number of ‘religious’ Christmas stamps available, if you specially asked for them. The first and second-class stamps both bore different, and very attractive, pictures of the Virgin and Child. I bought quite a lot of both and have used them throughout the year as an unobtrusive affirmation of Christian Faith. I think that I may have just one or two left.

This year things are very different. Those charming 1st and 2nd class Virgin and Child stamps are again available if you want them. The ‘ordinary’ Christmas stamps though are reproductions of detail from the stained glass windows of a village church in Norfolk.

1st Class is another picture of the Virgin and Child, 2nd Class is a pre-Raphaelitish angel with a medieval mandolin (or is it a harp?) accompanying an angelic choir) and the 56p (European) one, depicts an elderly haloed man – possibly St. Joseph looking down at the Christ-child in the manger?

No doubt similar stamps are available in other denominations but those are the ones in which I was interested, and I didn’t feel justified in holding up the Post Office queue while I viewed the others! The 1st Class stamp could certainly be used as an afirmation of faith on all personal mail throughout the year.

This year’s stamps will clearly please all Christians. Will those of other faiths or none resent them? I don’t see why they should. There will, I am sure, be plenty of stamps and books of stamps bearing the usual ‘Queen’s head’ picture. No one who doesn’t wish to do so need use an overtly ‘Christian’ stamp.