Week 13 2013

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Happy Easter to all Blog readers!

          This week is an important one for all of us.  There has been – at last – agreement among politicians on the way in which the press should be regulated following the publication of the Leveson Report.  We will have had time to digest the effects of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Budget, which was presented to Parliament last Wednesday the day after last week’s blog was published, and it is the final week of the 2012/2013 Financial Year.  The main force of the government’s austerity programme will begin to be felt a few days into the following week.

A depiction of Christ’s Resurrection in St James C of E Church in Clacton-on-Sea.  The risen Christ is asking weeping Mary Magdalene ‘Why weepest thou?  Who seekest thou?’

           

It is also ‘Holy Week’ the final week of the season of Lent which comes to a climax on Good Friday with the remembrance of the rigged trial and cruel crucifixion of Jesus Christ whom we Christians believe to have been the incarnation of that true light of God that St John declares in verse 9 of the first chapter of his Gospel, 'enlightens everyone who comes into the world’. This is sometimes known as the Quaker Verse because it gives scriptural authority to the Quaker assertion that there is a divine spark, ‘that of God’, within every man, woman and child in the world, irrespective of                                                  their colour, race or creed.

            Fortunately for all humankind the agony and grief of Good Friday was overcome on that first Easter Sunday morning by Jesus’ resurrection and his appearance to the weeping Mary Magdalene.  Blinded by her tears she had imagined that it was the gardener who was sharing her pre-dawn vigil until Jesus made himself known with those kindly words ‘Why are you weeping? Who are you seeking?’ and with incredulous recognition her sorrow turned to joy.   That miraculous resurrection gives Christians the assurance that, in the end, good will triumph over evil.  Compassion, love and forgiveness will ultimately triumph over greed, hatred, selfishness, fear, and thoughts of vengeance, and the will of God ‘will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven’.

            I hope to join with others in giving thanks for that assurance on this Easter Sunday morning.

 Our ‘Free’ Press

          At the beginning of this blog I mentioned that, at long last, agreement had been reached by the political parties about regulation of the press.  Perhaps that statement should be qualified.  The politicians have indeed agreed, but membership of the group of newspapers to be subject to regulation is voluntary.  The editors (or would it be the owners who make the decision?) of one or two newspapers have reluctantly agreed to join ‘the club’ but others are strongly opposed to it.  Unless a clear majority decide to ‘sign on’ the whole elaborate arrangement could surely collapse.

            I was  interested in the comments of Ian Hislop, Editor of Private Eye a hard-hitting publication that I always enjoy reading, during the course of a BBC tv news programme on Tuesday 20^th May.   He pointed out that the press practices that have caused outrage among both celebrities and members of the general public – phone hacking, bribing or attempting to bribe the police or public officials, using recorded material in stolen mobile phones, unwarranted intrusion into the private concerns of members of the public by means of force or deception, were already criminal offences.  Why was it that they hadn’t been pursued before by the forces of the law?

            I think it likely that it was for the same reason that Jimmy Savile was allowed to get away with his activities for so long, and locally and on a much smaller scale, how Lord Hanningfield’s extravagant expense claims as a member of the House of Lords and Leader of Essex County Council, didn’t attract official attention for several years.  Those who knew or suspected wrongdoing had mortgages to pay and families to support.  The person they suspected had powerful friends who clearly had no such suspicions. They may though have had control of the future of any potential whistle-blower, whose promotion, job and whole future could be at risk. It would be best not to say a word without absolute, cast-iron proof.  Even then, it might be wiser to leave it to someone else to blow the whistle.

This brings me to the question of the ownership and control of our ‘free press’.  It is surely wrong for the means of influencing public opinion and swaying the mind of the electorate to be in the hands of wealthy individuals.   It is even worse if those individuals are not British – whether they be Russian oligarchs or American news media millionaires.  Such owners of the press wouldn’t dream of asking their editors and reporters to print anything that is untrue – but those employees know that their future careers will be enhanced if they select material that supports the newspaper owner’s preferences and prejudices as being newsworthy, and reject or put on a back page material that opposes them.  Meanwhile those owners, or their trusted lieutenants, seek the acquaintance and friendship of top politicians.  They don’t, of course, seek to bribe or bully them – but they leave them in no doubt about which policies and actions would ensure favourable headlines and news stories.

            This is not something that could happen.  It is something that has happened and I believe is still happening.  I don’t know the answer but I do know that a ‘free press’ tightly controlled by wealthy individuals isn’t free in any real sense of the word.  While I’d hate to see a government controlled press, I’d hate even more to live under a government controlled by the machinations of foreign media millionaires.       

‘It's all right for some!’

 On Wednesday 20^th March, most of us were trying to work out whether we would be better or worse off after George Osborne’s Budget.  Beer drinking motorists seeking daytime care for their children, who have been deterred from house purchase by the size of the deposit required, may well be better off – at least for the time being.  

            A few privileged employees of Barclays Bank had no such worries.  For them – despite the banking scandals of the past year – Christmas had come early!  On the same day that Mr Osborne was making his annual Budget Speech, Barclays were announcing that they were paying a total of £38.5 million in bonuses to their top employees.   At the top of the hand-out tree was their Head of Investment Banking who was given shares worth £17.5 million!  He may have had a few personal cash-flow problems – or perhaps he knew something about Barclays that we don’t – because he promptly cashed the lot.

            Barclays Chief Executive didn’t do quite so well.  He pocketed a mere £5.3 million worth of shares of which he cashed only half.

            It’s nice to know that these two gentlemen will also be getting a hand-out from a grateful government next week when the income tax on their take-home pay above £150,000 will be reduced.  Who was it said, ‘We’re all in this together’?

Talking about income tax reminds me………

          …….that one feature of the Chancellor’s Budget will benefit me if I’m still around to take advantage of it in April 2014, when it comes into force.  The first £10,000 of my income will be tax-free.   I’d rather that it wasn’t though.  I don’t think that those whose income is less than £10,000 a year should be ‘freed from the burden of income tax’

            Income tax is the only form of taxation that is levied directly in accordance with our ability to pay it.  VAT and taxes on petrol, alcohol, the lottery and the like are the same for wealthy and poor alike.  Consequently they hit the poor the hardest. Income tax could be properly graded so that it has the same impact on us all.  I’d like to see the same percentage of every adult’s gross income be their first and most important tax demand – an ‘annual membership fee’ for the very considerable privilege of being a British citizen.

            Levied on everyone, from the very wealthiest to those on minimum wage or ‘benefit’, it would of course mean that a much larger sum was collected from the wealthy than from the poor.  But we would all part with the same proportion of our income.  No one would starve or be rendered homeless by having to pay it – and I believe that quite a low percentage of gross income (30 percent perhaps) levied on every adult without exception would make it possible for the minimum wage and unemployment and similar benefits to be higher.   We would all have a stake in the country’s prosperity.  We would truly, ‘all be in this together’.

England’s most deprived area

                                                                         

 An Avenue on the Brooklands Estate taken by a ‘ Guardian’ photographer.  

The Guardian newspaper sent a reporter, Ms. Amelia Gentleman, to Jaywick’s Brooklands Estate  on Budget Day to discover how England’s most deprived area would be likely to fare under Chancellor George Osborne’s Budget.  In her report Ms Gentleman described the Brooklands Estate as consisting, ‘of small houses, some barely bigger than beach huts, packed together along potholed lanes’. Many of the residents were, ‘entirely dependent on the welfare system which the Chancellor described as “bloated”.  With 51 percent of adults receiving benefit, the Brooklands Estate acts as a test zone for the impact of government welfare reform.   Residents here will experience the changes in great numbers as they roll out later this year.  They are already feeling the effects of tightened eligibility to some benefits…………As well as being named the most deprived place in England and Wales in 2011, the area was found last year to have the highest number of young people not in employment or training, with a third of 16 to 24 year olds claiming jobseeker’s allowance, more than five times the national average of 6 percent.

Later in her report she comments that, ‘Brooklands’ population has always been transient but recently officials have noticed a bigger influx of families from London – possibly as a result of housing benefit changes in the capital, which are forcing families to search for cheaper housing elsewhere’.  A house price survey had revealed that Brooklands is one of the easiest areas in the country to buy a house.  Bungalows there are on sale for around £20,000.

            She reported that many people living in the area , ‘would like to sign up to Osborne’s vision of an aspiration nation, and become hard-working home-owning taxpayers’ but that there simply aren’t the jobs in the area to make it possible for them to fulfil that dream. ‘There are 3,500 unemployed people in the surrounding Tendring District competing for just 500 jobs currently being advertised’.

Making the most of the Budget!

A economics expert on BBC Breakfast tv on 21^st March pointed out that, thanks to the Budget, if we drank 10,000 pints of beer – we would save £10!

           

  

Week 13.10

Tendring Topics……..on Line

'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. From whence cometh my help?'

It was in the summer of 1975 that I took the photograph below, while on a camping holiday with my family in the lovely Aosta Valley in the Italian Alps. We were camped high in the mountains not far from the ancient city of Aosta. One day we drove the length of the valley to its beginning at the foot of Monte Bianco (most of us probably know it better by its French name, Mont Blanc).

Spotting a cable car station we decided we would do some Alpine mountaineering the easy way. At the cable car terminus near the summit there was a covered walkway, over and across the upper slopes of the mountain' to a French terminus on the other side. We though, looked in another direction at this breath-taking depiction of the Crucifixion carved among the snow-covered peaks.

My knowledge of any language other than English is strictly limited. I think though that the small notice at the statue’s feet says ‘Christ, Lord of the Cords’ and on either side is the message, in Italian and in French, ‘If only all the people in the world would give me their hand’.

It was a striking message on a very striking monument ‘on the roof of the Europe’. I felt that it was one that readers of this blog would appreciate during Holy Week, the last week of Lent. It is the week that ends with Good Friday, when Christians world-wide remember the cruel judicial murder of Jesus Christ some two thousand years ago. It is followed ‘on the third day’ by Easter Sunday, when we celebrate Christ’s glorious resurrection, God’s demonstration of the ultimate triumph of good over evil, then, now, and always.

The words on the monument remind me of the message of the inner voice that seventeenth century George Fox heard when he was in despair at what he saw as the failure of both the established and the dissenting churches of his day:

‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, who can speak to thy condition’.

They were words that, as he recorded in his journal, made his heart ‘leap with joy!’ He went on to found the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) as a vehicle by means of which that message could be made known to all humankind. That message is as true, and as badly needed, today as it was three hundred years ago.

Rewards and Punishments

We have certainly come a long way from the world of Charles Dickens’ Mr Squeers, and that of Dr Arnold of ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’, at Rugby. By comparison with that world, my own secondary-school schooldays nearly eighty years ago were positively benign. We were though expected to turn up at school every day on time, to behave ourselves in class and on school premises, to do our set homework and apply ourselves diligently to our lessons.

Those who broke any of those basic rules could expect to be punished. This usually involved ‘detention’ for an hour or so after school or the imposition of extra homework, the writing of a page or more of tedious ‘lines’ to be presented at school the following morning. Trips to the Headmaster’s study for three stroke of the cane were comparatively rare and generally awarded only to persistent or defiant offenders.

The ‘reward’ for those who obeyed the rules was the teacher’s approbation and possibly a few appreciative words in the school’s report to their parents. No one expected more that that.

Now, according to a report in the Daily Gazette, pupils in years ten and eleven at Clacton’s new Coastal Academy are being offered material rewards, not for outstanding progress or effort but simply for turning up at school each day and behaving themselves in a way that earlier generations of school children took for granted. There’s no word of any punishments for truancy or misbehaviour. The pupils involved are those who previously attended truancy-afflicted Bishops Gate College and Colbayns High School. I suppose it is feared that if punishments were even mentioned, they’d just walk out of the school and disappear forever!

Rewards for punctuality and good behaviour are given by means of the ‘Vivo’ system. All members of the staff have a number of points that they can distribute and pupils collect these points, save them up, and select their own rewards from a catalogue that includes mobile phone vouchers, hair straighteners, iPods, computer consoles and so on.

Ms. Sandy Tate, the Academy’s Vice-Principal, is reported as saying that certificates for good behaviour work well enough as incentives in the lower school but by the time students are in the higher school, they lose their impact. By that time, I suppose, the children are a bit more worldly wise and conscious of their own ‘pupil power’!

Unsurprisingly, the pupils concerned are enthusiastic. The Daily Gazette quotes one fifteen-year-old as saying, ‘It makes a lot of students think about getting on with their work. People do go to more lessons, as they can really see that they are getting something out of it – it’s a brilliant idea’

The ‘people do go to more lessons’, fascinated me. Can it possibly be true that in a third millennial British Academy (claimed to be a pinnacle of twenty-first century secondary educational excellence) pupils decide for themselves whether or not they will bother to attend lessons, and only turn up if ‘they can really see that they are getting something out of it'? Something that is, in addition to an education and, in the case of Clacton’s Coastal Academy, a free school uniform and set of sports gear!

How shaming to think that while, in many parts of the world, children are so eager to get an education that they will trudge barefoot for miles to sit on mud floors in primitive schoolrooms, in Clacton-on-Sea, England, kids offered every educational advantage have to be bribed to turn up at school on time, to attend lessons and to behave themselves in a civilised manner!

‘O Brave New World!’

‘Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring’

So wrote Shelley in his poem The Question. How appropriate it is that the most important festival in the Christian year, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, with its promise of eternal life, should take place in the springtime when nature is coming out of its winter hibernation and new life is springing up all around us.
My daffodils - there were many more until two years ago when an over-enthusiastic gardener cut them back too early after blooming.

The view from my kitchen window of the flowering of the daffodils around the apple tree in my garden assures me that spring is here at last. For many years Heather, my wife, watched with pleasure from that window as the daffodils emerged from the soil and burst into flower. When her life on earth came to an end nearly four years ago, I scattered her ashes where those daffodils flourish

I believe that her spirit lives on in another better world, and I like to think that every spring her ashes are transformed into those lovely golden flowers. Sometime, in the not-too-distant future, I hope that my spirit will rejoin hers and that my ashes too will be scattered where the daffodils dance in the spring breeze.

I sometimes think that never blows so red
The rose, as where some dying Caesar bled,
And every hyacinth the garden wears,
Leapt to its couch from some once-lovely head.

Omar Khayyam