6th December 2014

Tendring Topics………on line

‘The time draws near the birth of Christ………’

          We are in the Christian season of ‘Advent’, the few weeks before Christmas when it was customary for Christians to prepare for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ ‘In a lowly cattle shed’ in Bethlehem some two thousand years ago.

            Sadly, except in churches and chapels, there’s little evidence of the celebration of one of the most important events of the Christian year, though there are plenty of reindeer, toboggans, Christmas Trees, Christmas fairies and Santas to be found.  It is though, difficult to find unequivocally Christian greetings cards in the shops. News bulletins on tv and radio tell us that primary school children nowadays perform in ‘mid-winter festival’ plays at Christmas time instead of the traditional Nativity Plays that have been part of the pre-Christmas life of primary schools for generations. Ask at any post office for Christmas stamps and you’ll be shown the, admittedly very attractive, secular ones.  You have to make a special request for some of the ‘Madonna and Child’ first or second class stamps that are now available every year.  They’ll be found for you, though it may be made clear that it’s an unusual request.

            It is said that the female partner (at one time I’d have said ‘the wife’) of a young couple on a pre-Christmas shopping trip was attracted to a particularly bright display in a shop window.  She returned disgusted to her partner, ‘D’you know; over there, they’re even trying to drag religion into Christmas!’   All of this is said to be because we are a multi-faith and multicultural society and public celebration of a Christian festival might cause offence to those of other or no faith.  I’m convinced that that is total nonsense.   It’s a strange religion that takes offence at the story of a young woman who takes shelter in a cattle-shed to have her baby on a cold winter’s night in Palestine.   In any case we don’t mind Jews, Muslims and Hindus observing their holy days.  It is surely patronising and insulting to suggest that we Christians respect the faith of others and they do not.

            The real enemy of the Christmas story is the spirit of consumerism and greed which does its best to replace the real Christmas with an artificial one of greed, selfishness, gluttony and booze – one in which folk of any faith (but preferable of none!) can take part wholeheartedly.  I find it useful to personify that anti-faith spirit as the great god Mammon, manifest to us mortals in his unholy trinity of productivity, profitability and cost effectiveness.  Mammon’s Christless festival is centred on 25^th December but its true unholy days are appropriately named Black Friday the last Friday in November, and the week following 25^th December, when devotees queue for hours, then riot and quarrel with each-other in their eagerness to acquire the very latest consumer-desirables a little cheaper than they could get them at any other time of the year. Meanwhile the thousands rejected by Mammon (he is quite arbitrary in his choice of favourites) have to queue at Food Banks to keep themselves and their families from starvation and, as they shiver in the December winds, have to choose daily  between eating and heating.

             Sixty years ago former Poet Laureate the late Sir John Betjeman wrote a satirical poem Advent 1955 about the commercialisation of Christmas in those days. Here are a few lines from it:

We raise the price of things in shops,
We give plain boxes fancy tops
And lines which traders cannot sell
Thus parcell'd go extremely well
We dole out bribes we call a present
To those to whom we must be pleasant
For business reasons. Our defence is
These bribes are charged against expenses
And bring relief in Income Tax

 The devotees of Mammon have learned a trick or two since those days.  They no longer ‘raise the price of things in shops’.  They temporarily reduce them and call it a pre-Christmas Sale.   There’s more profit on lots of things sold at a lower price than on just a few things sold at a higher one!  And those who manage to persuade potential customers that there’s a special, ‘pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap, day called ‘Black Friday’ are on their way to becoming  millionaires.

Chancellors of the Exchequer have also learned a trick or two!   I began spare-time freelance writing in the early ‘50s and by the end of the decade had acquired several regular clients. In those days editors would send regular contributors a bottle of single-malt whisky, or something equally worth-while, as a Christmas present.   When such presents became no longer ‘tax deductable’ those annual editorial offerings dwindled to ‘a really nice Christmas card’ or perhaps ‘a useful commercial calendar’!   Sir John finished his poem with a rhyming verse that has stuck in my memory as summing up, not only the real meaning of Christmas, but what it is that is unique – and very special – to the Christian faith:

The time draws near the birth of Christ,

A present that can not be priced,

 Given two thousand years ago.

And if God had not given so,

He still would be a distant stranger

And not the baby in a manger.

Our God is not a distant stranger.  He is still to be found in the baby in the manger and in the suffering man upon a cross - and today, in those who serve and love their fellow men and women, who prefer co-operation to competition, and who make peace not war.  We Quakers believe that everyone in the world of whatever race, colour or creed, has ‘that of God’, a divine spark, within his or her soul.  It is that within us that leads us towards kindliness, forgiveness and peace and away from anger, vengeance and greed. That divine spark is, says St. John in his Gospel, ‘the true light of God’ that shines in the darkness and cannot be overwhelmed by it.

3rd November 2014

Tendring Topics……….on line

Westminster’s Robin Hoods…….in reverse!

            For the seven years I have been writing and publishing this blog I have been banging away about the way in which successive Chancellors of the Exchequer have acted like Robin Hoods in reverse, for ever widening the gap (already the widest in the EU) between the incomes of the rich and the poor, and using the taxation and benefits system to punish the poorest people in Britain in order to reward the very richest.  Now we learn that George Osborne’s austerity programme has failed.  Instead of reducing the national debt he’s managed to increase it.  I have little doubt that it is the poor who will be expected to pay for his failure.

            Last week London Evening Standard columnist Armando Ianucci made all the points that I have been trying to make, but much more effectively than I have, in a feature article on the subject of Punishing Poverty, a practice of which he accuses politicians of all the main parties. Below are the introductory paragraphs: 

It’s now a rite of passage for any aspiring political leader to state that he or she is keen to cut the welfare budget; it’s a mantra as regular as putting a penny on tobacco or vowing to protect the NHS. That’s why it drew no real howls of outrage when George Osborne got up at his party conference last month and declared that to cut the deficit further he needed to find another £25 billion of savings, and that he’d get them from cuts to welfare. You don’t have to be a Harvard-trained economist to know that the last people to have a  spare £25 billion sloshing around are the poor. Yet no one seemed that bothered by the Chancellor’s economics. 

           Similarly Ed Miliband, who has spent the past few years putting his party through intensive social policy reviews, seems to be restricting his public pronouncements to “tough” decisions to limit child support payments and to put a cap on welfare spending.

There’s nothing “tough” about kicking someone when they’re down. In fact, it appears to be the easiest job in British politics. So, even though benefit fraud itself is dwarfed thirtyfold by annual tax fraud by companies and individuals, headlines express more contempt for the shirker than for the City’s creative accountants and financial experts who caused the economic crisis in the first place. There are no poster campaigns asking us to snoop on tax fraudsters; but it’s become a common trope in any portrayal of benefit culture that it’s peopled entirely by women banging out babies to get better housing, and men claiming sickness benefit while out ten-pin bowling.

  

The passage that I have printed in bold type should be written in letters of fire on the walls of the House of Commons and in every newspaper editorial office!  The article in the Evening Standard goes on:

The true picture is a much more sobering one: it’s of an increasing section of society working or trying to find work while living within touching distance of poverty. We may be through the worst of the Great Recession but many have had to drop down in pay level, endure frozen salaries, move to find work at great personal cost, or take themselves off the unemployment register by entering the fickle world of self-employment. This weekend’s figures that show there are now a record 5.2 million workers in low-paid jobs point to a significant section of the community being pushed to the margins.

Meantime, those claiming benefit are evaluated by firms such as Atos and Maximus, charged with keeping welfare costs down. Claimants are subjected to an undignified, demoralising series of tests and conditions which, if flouted, result in a sanction, an automatic suspension of payment.  Fair enough, you might think, were it not that these firms are under pressure to hit targets. There are thousands of examples of claimants sanctioned for missing interviews when they’re incapacitated, or in hospital, or receiving notice of the date after the event, or being sent it on line even if they’ve said they don’t have wi-fi.   You can appeal against a sanction, in case you’re wondering, but the process can take six months, and benefits stay suspended for the whole of that time. 

Even claiming disability benefit draws suspicious looks. The suggestion by welfare reform minister Lord Freud that certain disabled people were not worth the minimum wage can only reinforce a current unspoken prejudice against disabled claimants. There are more and more accounts of people in wheelchairs receiving verbal abuse and worse on the streets.   

We are now in the middle of a shocking rise in poverty in all its forms, most shocking of all being hunger. Since 2012 both Save the Children and the Red Cross, institutions set up to provide charity overseas, have been busy working in Britain. Meanwhile, the number of food banks has grown tenfold in the past four years, with around 1,400 food bank centres distributing food around the UK.

The experiences of volunteers there are not of dealing with skivers or cheats, but with vulnerable people whose dignity has been washed out of them by austerity and who are embarrassed by their situation. Some come admitting they skip evening meals so they have enough to feed their children. Some are children bringing fathers or mothers who are too proud to make the trip on their own. Many are working, sometimes with two jobs, but on low pay.

          

            I think that that is a pretty damning article and one that goes against the policies of most politicians and most of the popular press.  I can only congratulate and thank the author of the article and the editor of the Evening Standard for swimming against the tide.  I hope that this blog will be instrumental in gaining it a wider publication both at home and overseas.  In the UK today hard-working tax payers do not support an idle and feckless poor.  On the contrary, it is the labour of poor people, the majority of whom work hard for long hours for meagre pay (who pay, through indirect taxation, a far greater proportion of their income back to the state than even the richest income-tax payer)  that maintains and increases the wealth of the richest fraction of our society.

           

  Why do you imagine that multi-millionaires contribute so generously to traditional political parties?  It’s to keep them acting as Robin Hoods in reverse!

Some unquestionably Good News!

         

            One has to look hard for unequivocally good news in the news media today.  Murders, child abuse, uncontrolled epidemics, wars and rumours of wars fill the newspapers and the tv and radio news bulletins.   I have to keep telling myself that what is newsworthy is the exception and that most of my fellow men and women are friendly, law abiding and peace-loving.  No-one is going to buy a local newspaper with the headline No-one was assaulted, robbed or murdered in Clacton-on-Sea Yesterday!  It’s the occasional violent crime not the much more usual boring old peace that makes the headlines!

            Yet during the past fortnight we have had what was at least to me, a completely unexpected piece of good news and the possibility of more to come.  Surgeons in Poland (yes, that’s the same country that produces all those unwanted migrants!) had performed an operation on someone whose spinal cord had been severed and who had been told he would never walk again!  The basis of the surgery seems to have been the removal of some tissue from the back of the nose and its transplant in the area of the broken spinal cord.  The British consultant who had carried out the research that had made this possible commented modestly that he felt this was equivalent to ‘A man walking on the moon’.  I think it is far more important to human-kind than that. It offers hope where, in the past, there had been none.  

            Nearly half a century ago, when I was Clacton’s Housing Manager, we had a young newly-married couple in one of our Council Houses.  The young man was very keen on 'keeping fit' and went for a jog and a quick plunge into the sea every morning.  One morning he plunged head-first into what he had thought was 6ft depth of water.  It was actually little over 18 inches – he was rescued and survived, but with a broken neck that left him paralysed from the neck down, and with no hope of ever recovering movement in his limbs.

            The Council moved him into a bungalow specially adapted for his restricted life but, of course, he needed twenty-four hour care.  I felt desperately sorry for his young wife; still in her early twenties. The prospect of being a carer for 24 hours a day 7 days a week had not been in her mind when on their wedding day, only a few months earlier, she had promised to love and support him 'for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health' as long as they both should live.

            Nowadays, thanks to British research and the skills of those Polish surgeons, such a young couple could be offered at least the hope of an eventual happy ending.  Dante knew what he was doing when, at the entrance of his imagined Hell, he put the notice 'All hope abandon, ye who enter here'.  We humans need hope to make our lives worth living.

Week 27 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

A democratic choice?

         Democracy;  rule by the people;  is such a wonderful idea and so obviously (to us) a very desirable form of government.  It is said to have originated in ancient Greece, where every individual city claimed to be a democracy. They weren’t democratic by our standards. It never even occurred to anyone that women should have a vote, and there was a large slave population who were excluded from any role in decision making, though they did all the hard work that made those city-states habitable.

            In Europe, including of course the United Kingdom, democracy as we know it today has a fairly short history.  Even the Chartists, the ‘loony lefties’ of the 19^th century only demanded universal male suffrage*. It wasn’t until  the twentieth century (within my lifetime!) that, in this country, all women over 21 had the same voting rights as men.  Most people alive today can remember the voting age being reduced from 21 to 18 – and there are those nowadays who campaign for the voting age to be further reduced to 16.  There are also those (and I am among them!) who believe that we should change our ‘first past the post’ voting system, which makes it possible for a candidate to be elected even if his votes were less than the total received by other candidates, to ‘proportional representation’ by which the number of candidates elected is proportional to the number of votes cast for his or her party.  That would mean that every vote would count, smaller parties would be likely to get some representation in parliament, and it would be impossible for a party to form a government despite having a minority of votes in the country. This has happened in the past.

            One of the criticisms constantly levelled against the European Union is that it is ‘undemocratic’.  Decisions are made by the European Commission, the members of which haven’t been elected by anybody, and by the Council of Ministers – all senior Ministers of the member states of the EU.  Well, they have all been elected as MPs, but were elected to seniority only by members of their own party and are members of the Council of Ministers simply by reason of their office – hardly democratically put there by the European electorate.

            There is one European institution whose members are unquestionably democratically elected – and that is the European Parliament.  It was more democratically elected than our Parliament in Westminster since a system of proportional representation was used in the election.  The UKs representatives pretty accurately reflect changes in our national political thinking.  The Lib.Dems. once a force to be reckoned with, have all but disappeared;  the Ukippers (who want to see the end of the institution to which they have been elected!) have increased in numbers and so have the members of the Green Party – it’s true only from two to three but, of course, they’ll strengthen the voice of other European Greens on relevant issues.

            Now comes the question of who is to be President of the all-powerful European Commission.   The largest single political grouping in the European Parliament is that of the ‘Centre-Right’ – hardly the grouping that I’d normally be keen to support, but I’d have thought they’d be just the lot that would appeal to David Cameron, George Osborne and Co.  Not on this occasion as it happens.  The Centre-Right (and therefore the European Parliament’s) preferred candidate is Mr Jean Claude Juncker. A former Prime Minister of Luxemburg, Mr Juncker is ‘a federalist’ who believes that the EU’s best way forward lies in closer political union.  As such he is anathema to our Prime Minister Mr Cameron who is hoping to achieve the reverse, a looser union. He is trying hard, without much success, to gain support for his insistence that the democratic way forward is to ignore the expressed opinion of the democratically elected parliament, and to leave the appointment of the Commission’s President to the Political Heads of the EU member states.

            I don’t think he’ll succeed but, if he does, I’m inclined think that his fellow top politicians will make the same choice of Mr Juncker!  And so they did - when those top politicians voted on 27th June. David Cameron found just one supporter. Europe's best future does lie in closer integration.  If the UK doesn't think so it'll probably be better for Europe if we left the EU - but I think it will prove disastrous for us!

* It is interesting to note that all but one of the Chartists demands, considered dangerously revolutionary during the 19^th century, have since been met without the dire consequences predicted.  The one exception was the demand for annual Parliaments.  Thank goodness that wasn’t met – who nowadays would want all the hassle, all the false promises and all the lies of a General Election every year?

Almost, some Good News

            It isn’t very often that I have the opportunity to comment on a piece of unequivocally good news.  This isn’t because plenty of good things, resulting from the kindness of good and compassionate people, aren’t happening all around us every day.  But it is the bad things, the cruel, selfish, greedy and stupid actions of a minority of us that make the headlines.  Never forget that It’s the exception that makes the news. 

Meriem with her toddler son                                           

           

I really thought though that this week I'd be able to comment on the unquestionably good news that Meriem Ibrahim about whom I wrote the week before last, had been freed by North Sudan's Court of Appeal. She would, I thought, shortly be going home with her American husband, her toddler son, and her new baby daughter, born in a prison cell. You'll recall that she had been sentenced to be flogged and hanged after being wrongly convicted of adultery and apostasy.The report of her home-going  was too good to be true.  She was released, rejoined her family and was at Khartoum.Airport en route for the USA, when she was re-arrested for attempting to travel on a false passport and is currently, I believe, languishing in a police cell.

It appears that she had only a South Sudanese passport.  It was surely the sort of problem that, given good will, could have been solved within hours - but the good will wasn't there.  The Sudanese Police? Religious Authorities? were no doubt angry that their chosen victim had escaped from their clutches. They might not be able to flog and hang her but they could prevent her going home.

Meriem mustn't be forgotten.  The governments, and the thousands of those who petitioned for her release, must keep up the pressure until this latter-day Christian martyr is free to go home with her family.

The WAR CRY!

          Have you ever had a copy of ‘The War Cry’ thrust at you in the street by an eager individual wearing Salvation Army uniform.  If so, it’s quite possible that you fumbled in pockets or handbag for some small change and took the proffered magazine, quite intending to deposit it in a litter bin at the earliest opportunity.

            If you did that recently, you made a sad mistake.  Today’s War Cry is an attractive, ecumenical and very readable journal far removed from the fundamentalist, evangelical and sectarian publication I remember from the distant past.  I have the 14^th June issue in front of me.  The cover is a ‘still’ from a recently released historical film ‘Belle’ while inside, on page 3, is a review of the film that left me  eager to see it!    There’s also a well-written article about ‘People Trafficking’ a modern scourge with which the Salvation Army is particularly concerned, in which young people (particularly young girls seeking a better life) are tricked into what amounts to modern slavery

             Nor is today’s War Cry narrowly sectarian.  There’s a news story about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent visit to Nigeria in which he prayed with Nigeria’s President and expressed his sympathy and concern about the recent terrorist attacks to which Nigeria has been subjected.  There’s also news of the Methodist Church of Sierre Leone’s campaign against Ebola, a deadly infectious disease that has recently reached theirea from Guinea.

            The Salvation Army has been active in the provision and management of Food Banks (our local Clacton-on-Sea Food Bank is run by them) and War Cry reports on the findings on this subject of Oxfam and Christian-based groups ‘Church Action on Poverty’ and the Trussell Trust.

            Food Banks and food aid charities gave more than 20 million meals to the needy last year and there was a 54 percent increase in the number of people seeking food help.  It was pointed out that food prices rose by 43.5 percent in the eight years prior to July 2013 and during the same period household energy prices rose by 37 percent.  Meanwhile, ‘low and stagnant wages and insecure and zero-hour contracts mean that for many low-income households the income is less every month than their essential outgoings’

            It was good to see that the Salvation Army continues its success in finding people who had lost touch with their relatives.  During May 2014 The Salvation Army’s Tracing Service found 121 such people.  Over the course of the month the service concluded 134 cases, with a 90 percent success rate.

Note to Blog readers.  I have a problem with sending and receiving emails and my laptop will be with a computer specialist till Monday at the earliest.  I am therefore publishing this blog two days early.   I hope to be back to normal next week.   Ernest Hall

Week 17 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘Treat other people as you would like them to treat you!’

            A couple of weeks ago I commented in this blog that this commandment, that Jesus said summed up the whole of the moral teaching of the Old Testament, applies as much to the affairs of nations as it does to those of individual men and women.  I have often regretted that he didn’t add its corollary (perhaps he thought it was so obvious that there was no need to spell it out) ‘Do not do to others what you would hate them to do to you’.   My comment came in connection with the current crisis in the Ukraine and the Crimea.  It seems to me important that both sides involved in this matter should ask themselves how they would feel and what they would do if they were in the situation in which their opponents find themselves.  If both did that, I think there might be a chance of their coming to a compromise acceptable by both sides.  

            A lot has happened in the past fortnight.  Crimea has been ‘annexed’ by Russia.   I have heard no reports of protests from the inhabitants at their change of nationality; no reports of Crimean citizens seeking political asylum in ‘freedom loving’ Ukraine, or begging NATO to free them from the Russians. Surely most people in ‘the west’ now accept that annexation as a fact even if they continue to claim it was ‘illegal’.  It was, no doubt, this that has encouraged the mostly Russian-oriented residents of East Ukraine to assert themselves, raising Russian flags and seizing police stations and government buildings. Probably some of them would like to become Russian citizens.  It seems though that many, perhaps a majority, would prefer to remain an autonomous region of Ukraine but retain the right to have Russian as the region’s ‘first’ language and to conduct their own economic relationship with their Russian neighbour.  Surely this offers ground for a compromise that would involve no bloodshed and could be accepted by both sides without 'losing face’.

            The Foreign Ministers of NATO and of Russia and of the Ukraine are to meet shortly, but the meeting will be fruitless unless both sides are genuinely seeking peace.  Our Foreign Minister William Hague has told the world that he is quite certain that the present unrest in eastern Ukraine has been created and orchestrated by Russia. It is surely much more probable that Russia has simply exploited a situation that already existed.  Their efforts would have been in vain had they not known that a substantial majority of Eastern Ukrainians regarded themselves as being treated  as second class citizens, and would welcome any support that Russia could offer them.  I am equally sure that NATO would have been helpless to support (as I am certain they did) the demonstrators and rioters in the cities of Western Ukraine had they not known that a substantial majority of Western Ukrainians wanted to get rid of their pro-Russian President.

            Has anyone else noted the sinister similarities between the situation in Europe today and the one that existed just a century ago in the summer of 1914?   Bosnia-Herzegovina was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  The ethnic Serb Bosnians deeply resented this, and one of their number – Gabriel Prinzip – assassinated the Austrian Grand-Duke Ferdinand and his wife while they were on an official visit to Sarajevo

            The Austrian Government was quite sure that the Serbian Government was responsible for this outrage (just as certain, I am sure, as William Hague is, of Russian responsibility for Eastern Ukrainian unrest today).   They presented the Serbs with a humiliating ultimatum that would have effectively robbed them of their independence. Surprisingly perhaps, the Serbs agreed to comply with every point but one of the ultimatum – but that one was sufficient for Austria to declare war on Serbia.

 Serbia had a powerful ally in Tsarist Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire had a powerful ally in Germany. Russia had a powerful ally in France.  France had a powerful (but perhaps a little hesitant) ally in Great Britain and, of course, Britain had its world-wide Empire. Immediately the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war in Serbia, Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary.  Then, like falling dominoes, Germany declared war on Russia, France declared war on Germany and, last of all, and only after the Germans had attacked France through Belgium whose neutrality had been guaranteed a century earlier, Great Britain declared war on German. The British Empire obediently followed its leader ……. and the senseless slaughter of ‘The Great War’ began.

            World War I could have been avoided had the governments concerned had the sense to meet together in a spirit of compromise, genuinely seeking a just peace rather than national advantage, before all those alliances were activated.

             It may be thought that the current situation is quite different.  There’s no thought of war – yet, and in any case, both Russia and NATO possess nuclear weapons ‘the ultimate deterrent’.  Surely no-one would be stupid and arrogant enough to start a world war with the nuclear threat hanging over all our heads.

            In June 1914 there was no thought of war either, except perhaps in the minds of a few power-hungry rulers.   There was no ‘ultimate deterrent’ in those days, but had anyone had the least inkling that that the assassination in Sarajevo would trigger a world-war resulting in over Sixteen Million (armed forces and civilians) dead, I am quite sure that a compromise would have been found.  God forbid that there should be any thought of war today – but if there were to be an armed conflict, we shouldn’t imagine that those ‘ultimate deterrents’ would actually deter either side.  They haven’t deterred any act of aggression yet!  Both sides might well decide to be the first with a pre-emptive nuclear strike that – they would probably delude themselves – would make ‘the other side’ see reason!  

Later News

          The meeting of Foreign Ministers appears to have been much more useful than I (or the Foreign Ministers themselves!) expected.  The pro-Russian protesters are to lay down their arms and vacate the Ukrainian government buildings and other property and an amnesty is offered them.   The Ukrainian provisional Government has promised to grant autonomy to the eastern region retaining only defence and foreign policy over the whole country.

            The US and UK foreign ministers have voiced cautious optimism about the final outcome while threatening further ‘consequences’ for Russia if the pro-Russian protesters do not fulfil their side of the agreement.  The only people who weren't represented at the Geneva talks were the pro-Russian protesters!  How extraordinary that the people most concerned weren't represented while the USA, on the other side of the world and with no possible national interest in the Ukraine, dominated the proceedings!

            The agreement was reasonable enough – if the Russian Government does control those protesters or can exert sufficient pressure on them to persuade them to comply with it.  I am by no means sure of either.  I recall that a similar ‘reasonable’ compromise was agreed to end the mirror-image demonstrations and protests in Kiev and other cities in western Ukraine that began this whole crisis.  The protesters ignored the agreement and carried on with their by-then violent protests until they had obtained all their objectives and had formed a new government with a new ‘interim’ President. I am still cautiously optimistic as I write these words (on Good Friday).  I may need to alter them before I post this blog on Easter Monday!

            Well, Easter Monday is here.   Some of the militant pro-Russian activists are refusing to disarm and leave the buildings they have occupied. True to form, William Hague tells us that Russia will face dire consequences.  Penalising the Russian government for the stubbornness of the pro-Russian activists is directly comparable with, and would be just as daft as, penalising the Irish Government for the activities of dissident republican groups in Ulster!

‘Blessed are the Peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.’

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom ……….

          ……the Trussell Trust, to which most food banks are affiliated, has declared that during the past financial year 913,000 people required emergency food parcels for at least three days.  This is an increase of 163 percent over its figure of 347,000 during the previous twelve months. It was also reported that 83 percent of its food banks had reported that government benefits sanctions were driving people to seek food aid.

            The Church Times reports that the publication of these figures coincides with the sending of an open letter signed by 42 Anglican bishops and 600 other clergy and ministers of other Christian traditions, to David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband asking them to work with the parliamentary inquiry into food poverty launched two weeks ago, and to implement its recommendations.

            The letter says, As we approach Easter the mind turns to the hope of spring, the promise of resurrection and renewal.  Hope drives us to act.  It drives us to tackle the growing hunger in our midst.  It calls on each of us, and the government too, to act to make sure that work pays, that food markets support sustainable and healthy diets, and that the welfare system provides a last line of defence against hunger.

            Among the signatories were the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, nineteen other diocesan bishops and representatives of other denominations, including the Roman Catholic, Methodist, Baptist and United Reformed Churches.

            I very much hope that a representative of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) was also among the signatories.

         

           

Week11 2014

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Echoes from 1982

          On 10^th July 1982, over forty years ago, bombs planted by the Provisional IRA exploded in London’s Hyde Park and Regent’s Park killing eleven soldiers, members of the Household Cavalry, and seven of their horses.  Echoes of those explosions have travelled down the years to 2014 – to make press headlines and to cast a little light on a feature of the Good Friday Agreement, that was apparently unknown to thos now responsible for governing that troubled province of the UK.

            John Downey, a former IRA member, had been arrested and was about to stand trial on suspicion of implication in those bomb outrages, but was released on the orders of the Judge when he produced a letter from the Northern Irish Constabulary assuring him that he was not ‘wanted by the police’ for any offence committed during the ‘troubles’.  At first it was suggested that this letter had been a one-off error made by the Northern Irish Police but it later became known that some 180 similar letters had been sent to other suspected republican terrorists ‘on the run’.  It was a promise amounting (at least in the recipients’ minds) to an amnesty.  It had been sent to republican suspected terrorists only and not extended either to ‘loyalists’ or to the British soldiers involved  in the ‘Bloody Sunday’ event in Londonderry.

            Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland’s First Minister, who has the almost-impossible job of holding together an uneasy power-sharing government of loyalists and republicans, claims that he had known nothing of these letters. He is said to have been ‘incandescent with rage’ when he heard of them.  He threatened to resign his post unless there was an immediate judicial enquiry into the whole matter – and David Cameron has agreed that there should be one, reporting its findings at the end of May

It has been suggested that the letters were promised to Sinn Fein by Tony Blair in order to ensure their compliance, without involving others involved in the Good Friday agreement, They were kept secret, rather like the contents of the cosy chats between Tony Blair and President Bush that took place before a majority of members of the House of Commons were deceived into endorsing the illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq.  

It could be that it was only by means of that distinctly one-sided agreement that the present uneasy peace in Northern Ireland was secured.  I ask myself though whether a good conclusion can ever be achieved by dishonest means.  Some time ago I commented in this blog that making Tony Blair the United Nation’s ‘special peace envoy’ to the Middle East was rather like making one of the Kray brothers a Chief Constable.  Nothing has since happened to alter that opinion.

‘Why don’t they eat cake?’

            If, during the final decade of the twentieth century, you had asked an acquaintance or friend their opinion of Food Banks, they would probably have thought you were deranged.  Banks deal with money, not food. We had yet to experience the brave new world of the 21^st century!   You might have received a more positive answer in the USA because Food Banks, providing basic sustenance for the hungry poor, had been established there from 1967.   They were ‘wholesalers’ rather than ‘retailers’ though – collecting and storing donated food items and sending them, in bulk, to approved charities for distribution to those in need.

            European countries, including the UK, generally had better national social services than those in the USA and the need for Food Banks didn’t arise until nearly four decades later – in 2006.  Now they are the United Kingdom’s fastest growing voluntary service, with over 400 such banks nation-wide and growing every week.  In 2013 they fed nearly 347,000 people!  The number of applicants has grown as the Government’s welfare cuts have taken effect.  To obtain help, applicants need to get a voucher from a professional such as a local authority social worker. On presenting the voucher to the food bank they are given sufficient food for three days.

           

            Most Food Banks are co-ordinated by the Trussell Trust and are associated with Christian Churches, in accordance with Jesus Christ’s declaration that we should treat other people as we ourselves would wish to be treated.  It is very heartening that the Bishops of the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church, together with the leaders of the Free Churches, are giving their enthusiastic support, while at the same time criticising government policies that have created the need for the food banks.   Some fifty percent of the food distributed is donated by members of the public.  Some is given by private enterprises such as supermarkets and many Food Banks are supported, in one way or another, by the local authority of the district in which they are situated.

                                                   

                                                         A cartoon from the ‘Observer’

           

In my own town of Clacton-on-Sea (which includes the Brooklands area of Jaywick, said to be the UK’s most deprived area) the Food Bank is run by the Salvation Army with the support of other Christian traditions in the town including, of course, Clacton Quakers of which I am a member.

            The need for Food Banks has increased as the Chancellor’s attacks on the meagre incomes of the poor have begun to bite, though the government insists that this increase is simply because ‘scroungers’ have discovered in them a source of free food and that ‘there is no robust evidence of a link between the increase in demand for Food Banks and the welfare reforms’. It has even been suggested that some recipients of food parcels have sold on their contents!   How robust, I wonder, does evidence have to be to convince those who don't wish to be persuaded.  The fact that food parcels are dispensed only to those presenting a voucher from a welfare professional, is surely a deterrent to ‘frivolous and fraudulent applicants’.

            I have just watched a very striking programme on the tv about Food Banks and the valuable service they provide.  To provide ‘balance’ a number of denigrators of Food Banks were interviewed, including former Cabinet Minister Edwina Curry.  I’d be very surprised if any one of them has ever felt the pangs of real hunger.  Some of their comments made Marie Antoinette’s alleged suggestion that if the poor of Paris couldn’t get bread ‘they should eat cake’ seem positively liberal and benign! 

The Price of Postage Stamps

Like me, you may have thought that that massive increase in the cost of sending mail that we endured last year (First Class minimum postage 60p, Second Class 50p!) was the last we’d have to put up with for a year or two; especially as privatisation, which took place just a couple of months ago, was supposed to be going to be giving us a better, more efficient, service.

We were wrong.  Postage charges are going up again - from 1^st April which is not an inappropriate date!   First class stamps are to go up to 62p (an increase of 3.3 percent) from that date, and second class ones from 50 to 53p (an increase of 6 percent).   I’m glad that I bought enough of those attractive Madonna and Child Christmas stamps to see me through several months of the new financial year.  They’ll prove to have been quite an investment, though nothing like that of the investors who bought shares in Royal Mail at the ridiculously low price of 330p a share.  They have seen their investment almost double to £6.00 a share since they made their purchase.

It is easy to forget that whenever a public service is privatised its main purpose changes from serving the public to satisfying the shareholders!

Spring is here!

A fortnight ago I published a picture with my blog, of a few daffodils around the eating apple tree in my garden, just coming into bloom in late February.  Now in early March, as you can see, they are all in full bloom. 

 Spring 2014 really is here!  

 These daffodils have a special significance for me.  From the kitchen window of our bungalow, my wife Heather watched them grow, bloom and wither, year after year, It was where those daffodils bloom that, nearly eight years ago, I scattered her ashes after sixty years of happy marriage. I hope that when the time comes my ashes too may be scattered there.

 

 

         

Week 10 2013

Tendring Topics……..on line

The Children of the Poor

          In the 1920s and 1930s an annual event in Ipswich was ‘the Poor Children’s Outing’.  The rest of us would watch and wave as bunting decorated lorries drove out of town filled with laughing, cheering and singing children (no-one bothered much about health and safety in those days!) on their way to some rural, or perhaps seaside, destination where they’d enjoy a big, generous tea, lots of fun, entertainment and games, before being driven home again, still laughing and singing in the evening.

            My dad (a former Regimental Sergeant Major of the RAVC) who was clerk, veterinary nurse, dispenser and general dogsbody to a local vet, was once deeply offended when a well-meaning client offered him a ticket for the Poor Children’s Outing for me.  Goodness – we weren’t ‘poor’; not in that sense anyway.  There was always food on the table, I was always adequately clad and I went to a secondary school, leaving school to go to work at 16 instead of 14 like most of my contemporaries. We weren’t poor!  I realize now though that it was only my father’s modest army pension that kept us above the poverty line.

Clacton and the other towns on the Tendring Coast have a preponderance of old, retired and disabled or semi-disabled folk like myself.   Some are struggling to survive on the state retirement pension and whatever other financial benefits may come their way.  Many are dreading the coming of April when increased government cuts come into effect, and they will receive the bills for the gas and electricity they have used to keep the winter’s chill at bay.   I had thought of poverty in this area as principally affecting the elderly.  I hadn’t realized the extent to which we have an even more serious problem among families with children.

  It therefore came as something as a shock when the local Clacton Gazette carried the headline One in Three Clacton kids live in Poverty, and I heard on a tv news programme that, in BBC’s Look East Region, the Tendring District is one of those with most child poverty, defined as children in households with less than 60 percent of the average national income. The same issue of the Gazette recorded that although nationally we have had reports of a steady reduction of the number of unemployed, in our area the reverse has happened.   In January we had almost 3,500 unemployed and the number had risen during each of the preceding five months.

Every Sunday morning as I attend Meeting for Worship at the Quaker Meeting House in Clacton’s Granville Road I receive another salutary reminder of the poverty in our midst.   In the entrance lobby of our Meeting House is now a large cardboard box for the receipt of canned or otherwise imperishable food destined for the Food Bank run by our friends in the Salvation Army.  When the box is full our Warden takes its contents to the Salvation Army Citadel where they are gratefully welcomed.  I am sure that we are not the only Christian body that supports the SA in this way.

Clacton’s Salvation Army Food Bank is by no means unique.  Food Banks are nowadays to be found all over the country and there is a steadily increasing need for their service.  61,468 hungry families or individuals were helped by them in 2011 and 128,697, nearly twice as many, in 2012.  This year, especially after the government’s assault on the meagre resources of the poor and disadvantaged that is to take place in April, the number is expected to rise to a quarter of a million.   Food Banks are always run and supplied with food by voluntary effort, frequently though not invariably, by members of Christian Churches.  It is indeed, the duty of Christians to support them; the founder of our Faith told his followers that whatsoever, good or bad, we do to even the very least of our fellow men or women, we are doing to him.

But should the feeding of the hungry be left to charitable giving?   Is it not the responsibility of the State to ensure that none of its citizens needs to starve?  In the House of Lords the Right Reverend Tim Stevens, Bishop of Leicester expressed this concern in a recent debate.  He feels that we are moving towards a situation in which visits to a food bank are no longer seen as an emergency response to an economic crisis but as an integral part of the Welfare State.

That was certainly not my intention when in 1945 I voted, with tens of thousands of other returning ex-servicemen and our wives or girl-friends, to establish the Welfare State sketched out by Lord Beveridge at the end of World War II.  In that year of victory and peace not even in my worst nightmares did I imagine that nearly 70 years later thousands of homeless men and women would be sleeping rough in shop doorways and alleys in Britain’s cities, that there would be beggars on our streets and that the poor would be relying on soup kitchens and food banks to fill their empty bellies.

Successive Prime Ministers; Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron have all contributed to an achievement that, just a few years ago, few of us would have thought remotely possible. They have managed to make the era of Ted Heath and Harold Wilson seem like a Golden Age!

‘If you knows of a better ‘ole – go to it!’

          Four or five years ago, if I had been asked what Triple A or AAA meant I would have probably guessed that it must be the title of a Western ‘soap’ on tv, probably set in Montana or Wyoming in the latter half of the 19^th Century.  Every week we’d see the ‘boys of the Triple A ranch’, dealing with hostile Indians, rustlers, crooked land-owners or whatever.  The Triple A would, of course, be the brand AAA burnt onto the hide of each one of their ‘shorthorns out on the range’.

            Now, of course, I know better.   A Triple A rating is the mark of a sound and reliable borrower of money, a borrower who can be depended upon to repay his debts promptly and with all the interest due on them.   If such ratings were accorded to individuals (and, who knows, perhaps they are) I would certainly expect to be awarded one.   I know this because over and over again our Prime Minister, David Cameron, and our Chancellor of the Exchequer have stressed that, thanks to their wise and prudent handling of Britain’s economy the United Kingdom held a Triple A rating of credit worthiness.  This meant that we could borrow money at the lowest possible interest rate. They intended to keep it that way.  But they haven’t managed it.  Because the British economy has suffered a double dip recession and shows little sign of recovery, an international credit agency has downgraded our credit rating by one notch.  This hasn’t yet had much impact on us except that the pound sterling has lost some of its value (have you noticed on the radio and tv news bulletins that the Euro, which a month or two ago was worth only 82p is now up to 86p and climbing).  This can be good news for British exporters since it means that their prices are more competitive but, for the rest of us it means that imported goods – from mainland Europe, the USA and the rest of the world – will all be a little more expensive.  I think that most people, having learned that their credit rating had come down a notch (from the level it held throughout the Labour years about which the government has been so scathing!) would consider the possibility that they were doing something wrong, and try to put it right.  But not Messrs Cameron and Osborne; they believe that the loss of credit worthiness proves that their policies are sound.  We need more of the same medicine. We must dig the hole into which they have pushed us even deeper.

            I am reminded of a well-known cartoon by Bruce Bairnsfather, the satirical cartoonist of World War I.  His famous characters ‘Old Bill’, the walrus moustached old soldier and ‘Bert’, his less-experienced mate, are crouched in a shell-hole in no-mans-land with shot and shell whizzing just a few inches above their heads.  ‘Old Bill’says, ‘Well, if yer knows of a better ‘ole – go to it’.

            I think it possible that, at the next General Election, a majority of voters may do just that.  I only hope that the holes they choose aren't labelled BNP or UKIP!

‘It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good

So says the proverb and that is certainly true of the horsemeat scandal.  One effect has been to increase the number of people buying vegetarian ‘ready meals’ and  vegetarian meat substitutes generally.  Although I’m nor a strict vegetarian I generally prefer vegetarian meals and am pleased to find that Morrison’s in Clacton’s Old Road, where I do most of my shopping, have increased the range of their vegetarian foods and have made sure that there are plenty of every kind of non-meat dish always available for sale.

There’s an increasingly wide range, and you don’t have to be a conscientious objector to meat-eating (I’m not one of those myself!) to enjoy them.  Newcomers to vegetarian dishes are likely to enjoy Linda McCartney’s vegetarian sausages and country pies, and Morrison’s own vegetarian cottage pies and vegetarian curries.  There’s a far wider range than that but those are just a few meals that I reckon always to have in my freezer.  I don’t possess a micro-wave but none of the above needs to be cooked for more than 30 minutes at 200 degrees C.   Oh yes – and there’s one little tip that I have learned the hard way.   If you have a ‘fan oven’ knock at least five minutes off the cooking time recommended on the packet.

Finally – I happen to shop at Morrisons.  They’re within easy mobility-scooter range of my home and I have found the staff friendly and helpful.  I am quite sure though that other retailers have equally helpful staff and an equally appetising range of vegetarian dishes.

The Bonus Culture

‘Brussels’, so they say, has decided that Bankers’ Bonuses should not exceed their annual salary except with the specific agreement of shareholders.  This seems a modest enough idea, but at once our Prime Minister was up in arms declaring his opposition, and endeavouring to give the impression that he is defending Britain’s independence against the dictates of a sinister all-powerful clique of ‘foreigners’ in Brussels, determined to undermine our national sovereignty.

It was, in fact, the European Parliament – the voice of the European people on which the UK is fully represented – who made what most of us surely feel is a very reasonable demand on a group of people whose greed and incompetence were responsible for the current international economic crisis.   For months our top politicians of all parties have been talking about introducing measures to control the activities of the bankers and the ridiculously high monetary rewards that they award themselves.  Now the democratically elected European Parliament (yes, it does happen to meet in Brussels) has suggested one small step towards that end – and this has been met with a howl of opposition from those same politicians.

I would like to see not just the limitation of bonuses but their abolition.   We should all; road sweepers, dinner ladies, factory workers, farm labourers, civil servants, school teachers and bankers, receive a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.  We should all do our very best in the job that we are doing – and not expect to receive an extra reward for doing our job well.

Doesn’t it ever occur to any one that those who receive these huge bonuses don’t actually do anything to benefit their fellow men and women?  They don’t produce food or clothing.  They don’t build our homes or our factories. They don’t make any practical contribution to the society in which they live. Imagine being marooned on a fertile and temperate, but uninhabited and totally undeveloped island in their company.  You would surely be glad to swap a score of them for just a couple of gardeners or carpenters complete with their tools, plus a few muscular and willing labourers!

            Top bankers juggle money – lend it, borrow it, bet with it, and make sure that they retain a substantial share of it. Past experience leads them to believe that if, somewhere along the way, they accidentally lose a few millions of it, the rest of us will ‘bail them out’.   Money, whether pounds sterling, euros, dollars, even gold bars (try making anything useful. as distinct from decorative, from gold!) has no value in itself.   All those currencies only represent the harvest of the soil and the products of other people’s labour.

I am quite sure that this truth, which seems so obvious to me, will not be generally accepted within my life-time.   Perhaps in some distant land centuries after the collapse of our civilisation, the historians of a new age of freedom, equality and enlightenment will conclude that it was our obsession with what we thought of as wealth that led to our downfall.