Tendring Topics……..on Line
‘How will the Chancellor’s child benefit move hit you?’
This was the question posed by the daily Coastal Gazette to its readers on Tuesday 5th October, the day that Chancellor George Osborne broke it to the Conservative Party Conference that from 2013 higher rate taxpayers would not be eligible for Child Benefit. Predictably the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph saw it as yet another assault on ‘Middle England’. Local readers of the Coastal Gazette however seem to have taken the news much more philosophically.
The higher rate of income tax comes into force on incomes of about £44,000 a year. I reckon that a substantial number of Gazette readers think in terms of a weekly wage rather than an annual salary. For them £44,000 a year is roughly £850 a week, not the sort of sum that many of them find in their wage packets on payday. Unsurprisingly they see the Chancellor’s decision as a sound one. Nina Hamilton, who lives not far from me in Old Road, is reported as saying, ‘People who are bringing in about a grand a week don’t really need the help in my opinion. Child allowance makes a big difference to people on lower incomes’. Amanda Snelling, a mother of one, from Great Clacton, made a similar point: ‘I’m all for these cuts for people earning upwards of £40K a year. If they’re on that money then what does a £20 a week benefit really mean to them anyway? It’s good news for the working classes who rely on that money’
Those who definitely will see the Chancellor’s proposals as unfair will be ‘Middle England’ mums whose husband’s income only just comes into that upper tax band and who feel that being at home for their growing children is more important than, for instance, owning a second car, living in a rather posher home or taking regular holidays in the Caribbean. Next door to them, in the leafy suburb in which they both live, may be a family with a total income of £60,000 a year – but it comes from a man and wife both working and earning £30,000 a year each. They will still get their child allowance because no one in the household is on the higher tax band! ‘Fair’, did I hear David Cameron say?
In my younger days, certainly in families from ‘Middle England’ and in many working class ones too, the wife made and maintained the home and looked after the children. The husband was, and was expected to be, the ‘breadwinner’. My mother never had a job other than home making once she was married. Neither did my wife. What a medieval idea that seems today! There was much less juvenile delinquency though in those days, many fewer schoolgirl pregnancies and many fewer teenage sufferers from alcoholism or sexually transmitted diseases.
One thing that has been made plain by those who protested indignantly at the Chancellor’s proposals, and those who thought that they were a good idea, was that everyone welcomes cuts in services and benefits – provided that they always affect other people. And that this is true of wealthy and poor alike! This will no doubt be confirmed when more details of ‘the cutbacks’ are known on 20th of this month. I really don’t envy the Chancellor in his task! He can’t possibly please everybody and he can’t possibly be fair unless he pleases nobody!
Some Cheerful News – for now!
There isn’t much good news about these days but it was nice to spot a small news item on an inside page of the Clacton Gazette announcing that the village of St Osyth has been listed by the Daily Telegraph as one of the best endowed by nature as a place to live. It has, says the report, low levels of air pollution and offers its residents ‘exhilarating sea walks’.
Its outstanding positive feature though is its low rainfall, at 20in or 513mm, the very lowest in Britain and (as I used proudly to claim when I was Tendring Council's Public Relations Officer) was comparable with that of the fringes of southern Africa’s Kalahari Desert! If you prefer a nearer comparison, Britain’s wettest spot, Crib Goch in Snowdonia (an area where thousands go on holiday each year) has almost 90 times as much annual rainfall at 177in or 4500mm.
It isn’t quite so good of course for keen gardeners. I remember, in the distant days when I was one of their number, surveying my parched lawn and wilting runner beans after weeks of drought, and reflecting that there were snags about cultivating a garden just three miles from the centre of Britain’s driest location!
It won’t, of course, affect the weather but I reckon that if the present owner of St. Osyth Manor gets his way and doubles the total number of homes in the village, St Osyth will become a lot less desirable place in which to live. Perhaps though, as Britain’s population grows, expansion on those lines is inevitable. I won’t be around to see it, but I think it possible that before the end of this century the village community will have been swallowed up in Clacton and will have become one of the town’s more attractive suburbs. 'Oh brave new world!'
Chip off the old block?
It can be disconcerting to find traits in your offspring that are replicas of your own. It can, of course, also be extremely satisfying. I have been more than pleased that my two sons have both chosen socially useful careers motivated by job satisfaction rather than by financial gain, and that my three grandchildren have followed in their parents’ footsteps. I am pleased too that, although no longer ‘go-to-meeting’ Quakers, my sons pursue what I consider to be the Quaker values of honesty, plain speaking and concern for others. In that respect I fear that it was their mother rather than I who set the example.
A little while ago I confessed in this column that I was an opinionated old man and one who was not content to keep his opinions to himself. Pete, my elder son, is beginning to display similar symptoms. I tend to spread my opinions via this blog and in the correspondence columns of the press. He – more usefully perhaps – shares his with his member of parliament. I should perhaps mention that in many respects, the present Prime Minister would consider Pete to be an ideal role model. Made redundant from a very senior post in local government housing administration, he launched his own IT consultancy, gathering round himself a team of IT experts experienced in public administration, to solve the problems of local, police and other public authorities. HUB Solutions Ltd ( www.HUBSolutions.co.uk ) now has satisfied clients throughout England and Scotland and an office in Glasgow as well as in London. This doesn’t mean that, any more than I do, he supports all – or even many - of the policies of David Cameron and the coalition that he heads. Very shortly after the General Election he wrote to his local MP, Lib.Dem. Lynne Featherstone about the coalition’s axing of the school building and renovation programme and received a very rapid and positive reply. Now he has written again in the wake of policies announced at the Conservative Party Conference. Below, slightly abbreviated, is his letter.
Dear Lynne,
I wrote to you shortly after the General Election, in which I voted for you, concerned at the decision your Government has made to cut the entire School Building Programme. I appreciated your prompt reply. However, I feel that policy pronouncements of the last week require me to tell you that the latest decisions of your partners in the Coalition seem to me to move so far in the wrong direction, that it is difficult for me to understand how you can remain a party to such a regime.
I am sure that I am not alone in noticing, that while the Prime Minister says that the burden of cuts must be shared by all, in fact a particular sector of the community – those with children in their care – has been relentlessly singled out for sacrifice. This anti-child policy started with the immediate and apparently careless decision to cut the school building programme. Since it became apparent that this could not even be accurately listed, it could hardly have been carefully assessed.
The Chancellor, in his first speech to the House, announced a cap on Housing Benefit, knowing that it would mainly impact upon families with several children living in central London properties, who would, as a result, be forced to move out – possibly away from extended family and schools, which are so important to children. I am sure that you are aware that it is practically impossible for a Benefit claimant to start a private tenancy on a high rent, as very few landlords would allow that. Therefore, the arbitrary cap would mainly affect those who were working and suffered misfortune such as illness, separation or redundancy.
The Chancellor this week announced two further policies that deliberately and quite carelessly extend this strategy, placing an arbitrary cap on Benefits receivable, and removing entitlement of Child Benefit from households in which any member is paying the higher rate of tax.
I have yet to see any attempt to share the “national sacrifice” with single young people and childless couples, who often have a high disposable income much of which is spent on entirely unnecessary luxuries. Just as relevant, if we are genuinely concerned about people who should be more motivated to get a job, I haven’t seen anything to encourage single young people, neither in work nor in full time education, who are potentially highly mobile and who have very little justification for claiming benefits, to seek employment.
I believe that decisions such as these which focus on the most vulnerable in our society are not just a matter of political judgement – or misjudgement – but are quite immoral in their motivation, carelessly indifferent to the impact of their application, and nothing whatever to do with the financial crisis.
I admire the loyalty that Liberal Democrats have shown to the concept of a coalition in the national interest, but morality demands that loyalty must have its limits. It doesn’t look as if the Liberal Democrats were even consulted on any of the policy pronouncements I have listed and I would urge you to consider the threshold at which, from a Liberal Democrat point of view, the Coalition is no longer serving the National interest. I believe that you can compromise on judgement, but not on the issues of fundamental morality to which I have referred..
Yours sincerely
Peter Hall
It is all stuff that I would have been happy to have written myself, except that I hadn’t realized the effect that capping housing benefit would have on poorer households in central London. But there, I haven’t had experience of housing administration in central London. Pete has. I am glad too that he has drawn attention to the fact that well-off ‘singletons’ and the DINKY (Double Income, No Kids Yet) Brigade seem so far to be escaping the cuts that are threatening those with families.
Looking at the bigger picture, it leaves me wondering whether financial measures affecting the great majority of us who are neither the seriously wealthy nor even residents in the very comfortable ‘Middle England’ of the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, should be under the control of a Chancellor from a privileged background who has never experienced poverty or been in a situation where every penny (or even every fiver!) counts.
A Bungled ‘Rescue’
I can’t stop thinking about that Aid Worker, full of compassion for the Afghan people; kidnapped by those she was trying to help and then killed by our NATO allies in a bungled rescue attempt. The final indignity was surely the ever more detailed lies that were told about the manner of her death. (‘The embrace of death’, ‘Clutched to the bosom of a suicide bomber in the hour of rescue’) until, so it appears, photographic evidence suggested that she was killed by a fragmentation grenade hurled by one of her rescuers into the room in which she was held captive. Resolutely casting aside such thoughts as ‘trigger-happy Yanks’, there are two or three questions to which I would dearly like to know the answers.
The need for her rescue was said to have been urgent because she had been about to be transferred across the frontier into Pakistan. Isn’t the Pakistan government supposed to be our loyal ally who has recently fought a vastly expensive (both in resources and in human life) campaign clearing their border area of Taliban terrorists?
Why on earth were fragmentation grenades carried by troops engaged in a rescue mission? Stun grenades and stun guns, certainly – automatic rifles and hand guns, probably – the rescuers wouldn’t have known what armed resistance they might have encountered immediately before or after the rescue attempt. Tear gas or similar grenades, possibly. Surely not fragmentation grenades, deadly weapons used at relatively close range and guaranteed to kill or maim anyone, friend of foe, in their immediate vicinity!
Had it not been for that photographic evidence, we would still believe those lies about that aid worker’s death at the hands of her dastardly captors as the heroic rescuers drew near. How many other lies have we been told, I wonder, about this unwinnable war that is looking more like ‘Vietnam’ (except that then there were no British troops involved) as every day passes?
Showing posts with label HUBSolutions Ltd.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HUBSolutions Ltd.. Show all posts
11 October 2010
10 June 2010
Week 24.10
Tendring Topics…….on line
‘The most unkindest cut of all’
The phrase above is an example of tautology that no schoolboy or girl in my day could have hoped to get away with. Shakespeare could though. By using it in Mark Antony’s funeral speech for Julius Caesar, he effectively emphasises Antony’s abhorrence of the part that Brutus, Caesar’s friend, had played in his assassination.
Some may feel the same way about the Lib Dems in the current government coalition being prepared to endorse cuts in expenditure that, only a few weeks ago, they were claiming would harm the progress of economic recovery. We still don’t know exactly where those cuts are to fall but we have been told that they will be deep and savage; that their effects will be felt for generations to come – and that they will affect us all.
It is upon the accuracy of that final phrase that we may judge whether or not Lib Dem co-operation with the Conservatives is a betrayal of their own principles. Throughout the election campaign Lib.Dem emphasis was on fairness in politics and in economics. Central and local government services are generally aimed at supporting the less advantaged and poorer members of society – people who can’t afford to buy the goods and services that are considered essential in a civilised society. Cuts in those services are most likely likely to penalise the poor, the old and the disabled disproportionately and unfairly. It isn’t they whose greed and profligacy have brought about the financial crisis.
So far there has been little or no official mention of tax rises, surely the most obvious means of increasing national at the expense of individual wealth. VAT, which had been reduced in an effort to stimulate the economy, has been restored to its former level. Probably it will rise further. That too though, will disproportionately penalise the less affluent. Don’t tell me that the seriously wealthy find the VAT on the servicing of the Bentley or Rolls that takes them to the races or the hunt, as much a financial burden as the building worker finds the servicing of the second-hand Ford that he needs to get to work each day.
One of the more idiotic promises made by New-Labour in their attempt to stave off electoral defeat was not to interfere with the income tax system. They had promised it before and had broken that promise by introducing a 50 percent tax band for part of the income of high earners. It was one of the few really sensible things that they did, but they destroyed its full effect by giving a year’s notice of its introduction. There was plenty of time for the smart lawyers and accountants of the wealthy to devise schemes of avoidance (not of evasion of course, that would have been illegal!)
Income tax is the one tax levied strictly in accordance with the ability of the taxpayer to pay. Those who have very low incomes don’t have to pay it at all. Those with higher incomes pay a small amount, and those with still higher incomes pay more. I believe that it is here that taxation can fairly be increased – but that there should be more carefully graduated tax bands and the highest rate (it is only on part of the income remember) should be above fifty percent. Furthermore, real efforts should be made to plug the loopholes in the tax system that make it possible for the wealthy to avoid much of the income tax that the rest of us have to pay.
Yes, it would evoke indignation among the self-appointed champions of ‘Middle England’ – but it is only when we see outrage in the columns of the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph that we will know that the pain of Britain’s economic recovery is being evenly shared!
I am, of course old, increasingly disabled, and reliant on public services that I shall hate to see reduced or abolished. However, I am also an income tax payer and consider myself very fortunate in having an income high enough for me to be liable for it. I wouldn’t enjoy having to pay an extra penny or so in the pound in tax, but I would prefer it to having to pay an extra few pounds to the government in VAT on the cost of essential repairs or maintenance to my home.
‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new’
So says the dying King Arthur, in Tennyson’s ‘Mort d’Arthur’. It is a process that continues today and we oldies usually fiercely resist it. We all feel that we have experienced more than enough change in our lifetimes. We certainly don’t want to see any more of it!
In the immediate aftermath of local government reorganisation in 1974, Mr Colin Bellows, Tendring Council’s Engineer and Surveyor, and I, as Public Relations Officer, visited every town and parish council in the new district to explain and answer questions about the effects of the changes in local administration. In particular Mr Bellows explained that for the first time, parish and town councils would have the right to comment on planning applications and proposed developments in their area.
I well remember one elderly St. Osyth parish councillor, who rose to tell us that, as far as planning was concerned, ours was a wasted visit. In St. Osyth, he said, they had all the development that they needed and were opposed to any further building.
That occasion came back into my mind when I read in the Coastal Daily Gazette the headline FEARS OVER IN-VOGUE ISLAND followed by a report about ‘Historic Oyster Sheds’ having to make way for a Seafood Restaurant. It seems that Mersea Island has become fashionable and that the site currently occupied by old Oyster Sheds would be ideal for a restaurant to serve the needs of an increasing number of ‘dining-out’ visitors.
Destroying another piece of England’s cultural heritage? Hardly; the pictures of the sheds in the Gazette suggest that they are very ordinary wooden structures, partly built on stilts, which no longer serve any useful purpose. Unless steps are taken to conserve them they will undoubtedly ‘die of natural causes’ during the next decade or two. Their only remarkable feature is the fact that they are 140 years old. Surely we don’t believe that everything over a century old merits conservation. I’d have thought that photographs and a description of their purpose would be quite adequate for anyone researching the island’s history.
I hope that permission is granted for their replacement by a seafood restaurant. I hope also that the restaurant proves to be a great success and helps to bring prosperity to Mersea. It too though can expect to have only a limited lifespan. I have little doubt that before this century is out, it will have been replaced by whatever is the fashionable fad of the late twenty-first century. No doubt its passing will, in its turn, evoke protests from elderly residents at the loss of something that, as it mellowed over the decades, had become a part of the island’s history! ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new’.
Now it’s the turn of Walton-on-the-Naze!
Only last week we had news of a multi-million pound scheme to regenerate Clacton-on-Sea. Now we have a similar scheme, drawn up by consultants BNP Paribas for neighbouring Walton-on-the-Naze. Costing £100,000, the report suggests, among other things, turning the dilapidated Walton Mere into a boating lake and water sports centre, redeveloping the Martello Caravan Park for 250 new homes and 50 new holiday homes, plus an hotel and retail space. It also recommends that The Pier and Pier Hotel should be made ‘more attractive’ and that an ‘urban beach’ should be created next to the Columbine Centre for such activities as Beach Volleyball and rock climbing.
This last proposal caught my attention because it was suggested to me some years ago that, with our broad sandy beaches and low rainfall, our Essex Sunshine Coast had everything that was needed for Beach Volleyball, and that Tendring Council should have leapt onto the band-wagon while enthusiasm for the sport was developing. I don’t think that the suggestion was made with the idea of an artificially created ‘urban beach’ in mind. That would surely be like providing an indoor dry ski slope in the midst of the Swiss Alps!
In view of the national financial situation there is really very little possibility of the scheme being brought to fruition in the near, or even the more distant, future. Was the £100,000 spent on its commissioning, and whatever was spent on commissioning the similar scheme for Clacton, justified?
I am the last person who would suggest that local authorities should never seek the services of outside consultants. My elder son is the founder and Managing Director of an IT Consultancy, HUBSolutions Ltd. ( http://www.hubsolutions.co.uk/ ), developing computer software used by progressive public authorities throughout England and Scotland to reduce or eliminate ‘paper work’, thus enabling public service professionals (police officers, social workers, health visitors, environmental health officers and so on) to get on with the work for which they are qualified..
However I don’t really think that (perhaps with the exception of the ‘urban beach!’) there is any idea in BNP Paribas report that couldn’t have been produced by Tendring District Councillors or their staff. That money would have been better spent carrying out some modest practical improvements rather than on the preparation of an ambitious and expensive wish-list.
‘Stand up for Britain!’
That was a recent message to the Prime Minister, urged in a headline in the popular press.
Who, you may have wondered, was currently threatening our sacred sovereignty? It must surely have been ‘Brussels’; journalistic shorthand for everything that newspaper proprietors most hate about the European Union ………. or could the Press simply have been urging the PM to support England in the World Cup?
Neither was right. On this occasion it was a much less predictable villain – the USA or, in particular its President. ‘Mind you’, I expect it was being said in indignant editorial conferences, ‘I always did say that that Obama was a dangerous leftie, not a bit like good old George Bush!’
It seems that the great American public had become aware that BP, whose oil was still gushing (though not quite so profusely as a week or so ago) into the Gulf of Mexico and threatening the whole of the south coast of the USA, was short for British Petroleum. This realisation had threatened to trigger the biggest outburst of anti-British feeling since the days of the Boston tea-party. President Obama had even suggested that BP should suspend paying dividends to its shareholders until it had compensated the tens of thousands of US citizens whose lives and livelihoods had been ruined by the leaking oil! ‘My goodness! The man’s not just a leftie. He’s some kind of a commie!’
How strange that British newspapers and politicians who hadn’t raised an eyebrow over our country being led by the USA into two foreign wars costing millions of pounds and hundreds of British lives, should get so upset over dividend payments! I wonder how we would have reacted had a similar catastrophe, arising from the activities of a US enterprise in the English Channel, threatened England's south coast?
In fact, of course, BP isn’t really a British enterprise, or at least only part of it is. I heard on the radio this morning (12 June) that 40 percent of BP shares are in British ownership and 30 percent in that of the USA. Suspension of the payment of dividends will affect investors in the USA as well as in the UK.
Neither Britain nor the USA (nor even the EU!) is responsible for the present catastrophe. Responsibility lies with world-wide uncontrolled, or inadequately controlled, striving for ever more material wealth; taking short cuts and ignoring ‘pettifogging regulations and precautions dreamed up by desk-bound bureaucrats.’ Those pettifogging regulations were put in place precisely to prevent the occurrence of such disasters.
In an earlier age it might have been described as the worship of the false god Mammon, to whom the whole of the USA's Gulf Coast is currently being sacrificed!
‘The most unkindest cut of all’
The phrase above is an example of tautology that no schoolboy or girl in my day could have hoped to get away with. Shakespeare could though. By using it in Mark Antony’s funeral speech for Julius Caesar, he effectively emphasises Antony’s abhorrence of the part that Brutus, Caesar’s friend, had played in his assassination.
Some may feel the same way about the Lib Dems in the current government coalition being prepared to endorse cuts in expenditure that, only a few weeks ago, they were claiming would harm the progress of economic recovery. We still don’t know exactly where those cuts are to fall but we have been told that they will be deep and savage; that their effects will be felt for generations to come – and that they will affect us all.
It is upon the accuracy of that final phrase that we may judge whether or not Lib Dem co-operation with the Conservatives is a betrayal of their own principles. Throughout the election campaign Lib.Dem emphasis was on fairness in politics and in economics. Central and local government services are generally aimed at supporting the less advantaged and poorer members of society – people who can’t afford to buy the goods and services that are considered essential in a civilised society. Cuts in those services are most likely likely to penalise the poor, the old and the disabled disproportionately and unfairly. It isn’t they whose greed and profligacy have brought about the financial crisis.
So far there has been little or no official mention of tax rises, surely the most obvious means of increasing national at the expense of individual wealth. VAT, which had been reduced in an effort to stimulate the economy, has been restored to its former level. Probably it will rise further. That too though, will disproportionately penalise the less affluent. Don’t tell me that the seriously wealthy find the VAT on the servicing of the Bentley or Rolls that takes them to the races or the hunt, as much a financial burden as the building worker finds the servicing of the second-hand Ford that he needs to get to work each day.
One of the more idiotic promises made by New-Labour in their attempt to stave off electoral defeat was not to interfere with the income tax system. They had promised it before and had broken that promise by introducing a 50 percent tax band for part of the income of high earners. It was one of the few really sensible things that they did, but they destroyed its full effect by giving a year’s notice of its introduction. There was plenty of time for the smart lawyers and accountants of the wealthy to devise schemes of avoidance (not of evasion of course, that would have been illegal!)
Income tax is the one tax levied strictly in accordance with the ability of the taxpayer to pay. Those who have very low incomes don’t have to pay it at all. Those with higher incomes pay a small amount, and those with still higher incomes pay more. I believe that it is here that taxation can fairly be increased – but that there should be more carefully graduated tax bands and the highest rate (it is only on part of the income remember) should be above fifty percent. Furthermore, real efforts should be made to plug the loopholes in the tax system that make it possible for the wealthy to avoid much of the income tax that the rest of us have to pay.
Yes, it would evoke indignation among the self-appointed champions of ‘Middle England’ – but it is only when we see outrage in the columns of the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph that we will know that the pain of Britain’s economic recovery is being evenly shared!
I am, of course old, increasingly disabled, and reliant on public services that I shall hate to see reduced or abolished. However, I am also an income tax payer and consider myself very fortunate in having an income high enough for me to be liable for it. I wouldn’t enjoy having to pay an extra penny or so in the pound in tax, but I would prefer it to having to pay an extra few pounds to the government in VAT on the cost of essential repairs or maintenance to my home.
‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new’
So says the dying King Arthur, in Tennyson’s ‘Mort d’Arthur’. It is a process that continues today and we oldies usually fiercely resist it. We all feel that we have experienced more than enough change in our lifetimes. We certainly don’t want to see any more of it!
In the immediate aftermath of local government reorganisation in 1974, Mr Colin Bellows, Tendring Council’s Engineer and Surveyor, and I, as Public Relations Officer, visited every town and parish council in the new district to explain and answer questions about the effects of the changes in local administration. In particular Mr Bellows explained that for the first time, parish and town councils would have the right to comment on planning applications and proposed developments in their area.
I well remember one elderly St. Osyth parish councillor, who rose to tell us that, as far as planning was concerned, ours was a wasted visit. In St. Osyth, he said, they had all the development that they needed and were opposed to any further building.
That occasion came back into my mind when I read in the Coastal Daily Gazette the headline FEARS OVER IN-VOGUE ISLAND followed by a report about ‘Historic Oyster Sheds’ having to make way for a Seafood Restaurant. It seems that Mersea Island has become fashionable and that the site currently occupied by old Oyster Sheds would be ideal for a restaurant to serve the needs of an increasing number of ‘dining-out’ visitors.
Destroying another piece of England’s cultural heritage? Hardly; the pictures of the sheds in the Gazette suggest that they are very ordinary wooden structures, partly built on stilts, which no longer serve any useful purpose. Unless steps are taken to conserve them they will undoubtedly ‘die of natural causes’ during the next decade or two. Their only remarkable feature is the fact that they are 140 years old. Surely we don’t believe that everything over a century old merits conservation. I’d have thought that photographs and a description of their purpose would be quite adequate for anyone researching the island’s history.
I hope that permission is granted for their replacement by a seafood restaurant. I hope also that the restaurant proves to be a great success and helps to bring prosperity to Mersea. It too though can expect to have only a limited lifespan. I have little doubt that before this century is out, it will have been replaced by whatever is the fashionable fad of the late twenty-first century. No doubt its passing will, in its turn, evoke protests from elderly residents at the loss of something that, as it mellowed over the decades, had become a part of the island’s history! ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to new’.
Now it’s the turn of Walton-on-the-Naze!
Only last week we had news of a multi-million pound scheme to regenerate Clacton-on-Sea. Now we have a similar scheme, drawn up by consultants BNP Paribas for neighbouring Walton-on-the-Naze. Costing £100,000, the report suggests, among other things, turning the dilapidated Walton Mere into a boating lake and water sports centre, redeveloping the Martello Caravan Park for 250 new homes and 50 new holiday homes, plus an hotel and retail space. It also recommends that The Pier and Pier Hotel should be made ‘more attractive’ and that an ‘urban beach’ should be created next to the Columbine Centre for such activities as Beach Volleyball and rock climbing.
This last proposal caught my attention because it was suggested to me some years ago that, with our broad sandy beaches and low rainfall, our Essex Sunshine Coast had everything that was needed for Beach Volleyball, and that Tendring Council should have leapt onto the band-wagon while enthusiasm for the sport was developing. I don’t think that the suggestion was made with the idea of an artificially created ‘urban beach’ in mind. That would surely be like providing an indoor dry ski slope in the midst of the Swiss Alps!
In view of the national financial situation there is really very little possibility of the scheme being brought to fruition in the near, or even the more distant, future. Was the £100,000 spent on its commissioning, and whatever was spent on commissioning the similar scheme for Clacton, justified?
I am the last person who would suggest that local authorities should never seek the services of outside consultants. My elder son is the founder and Managing Director of an IT Consultancy, HUBSolutions Ltd. ( http://www.hubsolutions.co.uk/ ), developing computer software used by progressive public authorities throughout England and Scotland to reduce or eliminate ‘paper work’, thus enabling public service professionals (police officers, social workers, health visitors, environmental health officers and so on) to get on with the work for which they are qualified..
However I don’t really think that (perhaps with the exception of the ‘urban beach!’) there is any idea in BNP Paribas report that couldn’t have been produced by Tendring District Councillors or their staff. That money would have been better spent carrying out some modest practical improvements rather than on the preparation of an ambitious and expensive wish-list.
‘Stand up for Britain!’
That was a recent message to the Prime Minister, urged in a headline in the popular press.
Who, you may have wondered, was currently threatening our sacred sovereignty? It must surely have been ‘Brussels’; journalistic shorthand for everything that newspaper proprietors most hate about the European Union ………. or could the Press simply have been urging the PM to support England in the World Cup?
Neither was right. On this occasion it was a much less predictable villain – the USA or, in particular its President. ‘Mind you’, I expect it was being said in indignant editorial conferences, ‘I always did say that that Obama was a dangerous leftie, not a bit like good old George Bush!’
It seems that the great American public had become aware that BP, whose oil was still gushing (though not quite so profusely as a week or so ago) into the Gulf of Mexico and threatening the whole of the south coast of the USA, was short for British Petroleum. This realisation had threatened to trigger the biggest outburst of anti-British feeling since the days of the Boston tea-party. President Obama had even suggested that BP should suspend paying dividends to its shareholders until it had compensated the tens of thousands of US citizens whose lives and livelihoods had been ruined by the leaking oil! ‘My goodness! The man’s not just a leftie. He’s some kind of a commie!’
How strange that British newspapers and politicians who hadn’t raised an eyebrow over our country being led by the USA into two foreign wars costing millions of pounds and hundreds of British lives, should get so upset over dividend payments! I wonder how we would have reacted had a similar catastrophe, arising from the activities of a US enterprise in the English Channel, threatened England's south coast?
In fact, of course, BP isn’t really a British enterprise, or at least only part of it is. I heard on the radio this morning (12 June) that 40 percent of BP shares are in British ownership and 30 percent in that of the USA. Suspension of the payment of dividends will affect investors in the USA as well as in the UK.
Neither Britain nor the USA (nor even the EU!) is responsible for the present catastrophe. Responsibility lies with world-wide uncontrolled, or inadequately controlled, striving for ever more material wealth; taking short cuts and ignoring ‘pettifogging regulations and precautions dreamed up by desk-bound bureaucrats.’ Those pettifogging regulations were put in place precisely to prevent the occurrence of such disasters.
In an earlier age it might have been described as the worship of the false god Mammon, to whom the whole of the USA's Gulf Coast is currently being sacrificed!
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