Week 42 2011 25.10.2011

Tendring Topics…….on Line


‘Oh no – not again!’




Pete with his dog Zoe in the Scottish Highlands

 I reckon that that is what Ms Lynne Featherstone Lib.Dem MP (and coalition government member) says when she sees another letter from my son Pete. He is one of her constituents and voted for her in the General Election hoping that, by so doing, he would help bring in a Liberal Democrat Government under its new dynamic leader Nick Klegg.

Instead, he was rewarded with a coalition in which the Conservatives are the dominant party but in which Ms Featherstone secured a government (though not a cabinet) post. Since then, as our country has gone steadily down hill, Pete has written to her on a number of occasions reminding her of the Lib.Dems’ broken promises.

This time as you’ll see, he has written her a letter of congratulation though, since it is congratulating her on opposing a suggestion that could become government policy, it is possible that they are congratulations she’d prefer not to receive. Here is the letter:

Dear Lynne,


Having voted for you at the last election, I have since been critical of the Coalition and your role in it.


I therefore thought I should express my appreciation and total agreement with your stand – as reported in today’s Observer – that you are totally opposed to proposals, outlined in a White Paper which originate from Adrian Beecroft, venture capitalist reporting directly to the Prime Minister, that flexible arrangements over maternity and paternity leave should be shelved, and even that maternity pay should be scrapped altogether.


I am a small business owner, employing seven staff, one, of whom has just returned from maternity leave, another is about to go on maternity leave. I have had good notice and found it possible to provide for these upheavals. I am very conscious that balancing work and family responsibilities and budgeting for child care is a very big issue for my staff. If reasonable provisions were not available, they would not be able to cope, and might have to leave employment altogether, leaving me with a much larger problem. The business has been negatively affected by “the cuts”, and no elimination of red-tape, or freeing up bank lending, will undo the damage caused by the impoverishment of our customers. This must be true of so many small businesses at the present time.


I am dismayed that you appear to be surprised that such proposals are being made to and have the ear of the Prime Minister.


The same faction of our society has eloquently proposed in recent weeks, that the 50p tax (for people earning over £150K pa) should be scrapped to improve competitiveness and create jobs, while the minimum wage (for people earning £12K pa) should also be scrapped (lowered) for the same reason. It is becoming clear, that the more the economic problems bite (the root causes of which no one on the Left or the Right cares to address), the more the Right Wing will seek solutions from extreme policies which are essentially designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. I believe the day will come when people of conscience within the Liberal Democrat Party will be unable to support such polices and the Coalition will cease to exist.


Peter Hall



Heather - as Andy and Pete knew her

 I couldn’t have put it better myself! From time to time both my sons, by their actions and attitudes, make it clear that they haven’t discarded the Quaker values (though they’re by no means exclusive to Quakers) that my wife Heather and I had tried to instil in them in their childhood. Their Mum – who had much more to do with it than I had – would have been very proud of them.






Another 'Bridge too far'?

Quite early in the saga of the former Defence Secretary Liam Fox, there was mention of a Charity called Atlantic Bridge, claimed to have been created to further the ‘special relationship’ between the USA and the UK. The British end of the bridge, so it was said, had been run from Liam Fox’s official office – but was so no longer.

I found that Atlantic Bridge’s web site was temporarily closed. It did however yield the information that it was an organisation that had the aim of bringing ‘conservatives’ from the UK and USA together to discuss policy and other mutual interests. Remembering that Amnesty International had been refused Charity status because of its political associations, it seemed strange that this obviously political organisation should have been successful. It also seemed strange that an obviously ‘political’ organisation should have been run from a Government, rather than a Party, office.

I then heard William Hague, our Foreign Secretary, interviewed on BBC Radio 4. Asked about the Atlantic Bridge he said that he believed it to be a means of exchanging ideas between the UK and people of every shade of opinion in the USA – that was surely a good thing. And so, I suppose it could have been – had it been true.

I dug a little deeper (how did we manage before Google?) and found out a great deal more. The founder and chairman of Atlantic Bridge had been none other than our former Defence Secretary, Liam Fox. Its Chief Executive, and its only paid employee, was Adam Werrity. It had an Advisory Council consisting of William Hague, George Osborne, Chris Grayley and Michael Gove. A great many other leading Conservative politicians had been closely associated with it. Could William Hague, a member of the Advisory Council, really have been unaware of the Bridge’s real nature? It seems hardly likely.

Perhaps even more disquieting, I discovered that Ms Gaby Bertin, David Cameron’s Press Secretary, had worked for Atlantic Bridge and, until Adam Werritty had taken her place, had been its sole employee on this side of the Atlantic.

Finally, I learned that only last month the Charities Commission had declared the Atlantic Bridge to be a wholly political organisation (goodness knows why they had taken so long to discover that!) and stripped it of its charitable status. I wonder if the Government, keen as they are on hunting down benefit cheats and tax dodgers, will pursue those who – for a number of years – have fraudulently claimed tax relief and other benefits by virtue of this false claim to charitable status?

I find the thought that Atlantic Bridge may have been providing the members of the most bigoted and bellicose faction of the USA easy access to the very heart of British government, extremely disquieting. Have some of our top politicians forgotten that, despite a shared language and some common objectives, the USA is a foreign country with interests that do not necessarily coincide with those of the United Kingdom?


And there’s UKIP – and our own MP – worrying themselves to death about the EU robbing us of our sovereignty!

A Damp Squib!

Some people, I have little doubt, had great hopes about the meeting of our Prime Minister with the representatives of the UKs gas and electricity suppliers. He was the champion of Middle England – a twenty-first century Cromwell. He had tackled the red-tape-bound bureaucrats of Britain’s town and county halls. Now he was going to take on and tame the lords of the power supplies. Reductions in fuel bills were confidently expected

Judging from the results of the confrontation, his performance resembled more closely that of the timid policeman in Doc Martin than that of the iron man of the 17th century.

Clearly he was persuaded that the suppliers were without blame for the massive above-inflation increases in the price of gas and electricity. It is up to us consumers to put up with them and make the best of them. We must, as Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit might have put it, stand on our own two feet or perhaps to leap onto our bikes and find our own solution.

First, we must shop around to make sure that we are on the fuel tariff that is best for us. There are only six main fuel suppliers so that shouldn’t be too difficult. Except of course, for the hard-up single mum or the pensioner who doesn’t own a laptop and certainly wouldn’t know how to use one. I’d be very surprised anyway if there is very much difference between suppliers’ tariffs. I use E-on myself because they have an arrangement with Age UK that gives me substantial benefits in frosty weather. Perhaps – for all I know – other suppliers do the same.

In any case, many of us oldies simply don’t like ‘shopping around or haggling’. We feel that there is a right price and that is the price that we should be charged. It was because folk came to realize that they would never overcharge and would never haggle, that such 19th Century Quaker enterprises as Cadbury and Fry (not to mention Trumans and Charringtons!) thrived and prospered.

The other thing that we consumers are advised to do is to conserve the heat that we have purchased so expensively. To be fair to the government, they do have very worthwhile schemes to help pensioners and others to prevent heat loss from their homes by insulating the roof space and infilling cavity walls. My wife and I had our cavity walls infilled at our own expense many years ago, but I have found free improved roof space insulation to be well worth having. Also, it is suggested, we should use our heating sparingly and economically.

All very sensible advice, but it hardly needed a conference of the Prime Minister and the bosses of the energy companies to produce it. I would have been happy to pass on all those ideas to David Cameron had cared to give me a ring – and so would thousands of other people!

A Cheerful Note on which to end




Doesn't she look happy!

 This hasn’t been the cheeriest of blogs, so here is a photograph that warmed my heart when I received it from friends of mine in Germany. Their little daughter Maja (my ‘honorary German niece’) celebrated her fifth birthday during September. Here she is on that auspicious occasion:

I won’t live to see it, but I hope most sincerely that by the time she is in her mid-teens, she and my great-grandchildren, if any, will be living in a truly united Europe in which the most easterly part of Germany where she lives will seem no more remote and ‘foreign’ to East Anglians than the Lake District or the coves of Cornwall do to us today. May you have many, many more very happy birthdays Maja, my dear child!

Doesn't she look happy!

Week 41.09

Tendring Topics……….on Line

An Atmosphere of Suspicion

There was a time, years ago, when if the Friend who normally took the Quaker Children’s Class at our Sunday morning Meeting for Worship was absent, other members would step in and take the half dozen or so children we had at that time, under their wing. After the first fifteen minutes of based-on-silence worship, they would take them through to the Children’s room for their ‘lesson’ for the forty-five or so minutes remaining. Fifteen minutes were reckoned to be as long as normal kids could be expected to remain still and silent!

I took my turn, and so long as it happened only very occasionally, I quite enjoyed it. I doubt if I ever taught them anything very useful, but they got to know me, and at the very least, it made sure that their parents could relax in Meeting in the knowledge that their offspring were safe and out of mischief.

When I was a Public Health Inspector, and again when I was the Council’s Public Relations Officer, I would occasionally be invited to visit one or other of the local schools to chat to the children about subjects as varied as food hygiene, road safety, their future civic responsibilities, vandalism, litter dropping and so on.

As I grew older I rejoiced in seeing young children enjoying themselves at play and might occasionally pause for a few moments to watch them.

The first two of those activities I could now undertake only after my past had been searched for criminal activities and it had been certified, not only that I had never been convicted of any paedophilic activities, but that I had never been suspected of them. Were I nowadays to engage in the third one, watching children at play, I have little doubt that there would soon be a police officer on the scene, at the best ordering me to ‘move on’ at once, but more likely inviting me to accompany him or her to the Police Station for interrogation.

Child abuse is a detestable crime. It also seems to be the one crime in which the accused are not only deemed to be guilty until they have proved their innocence, but even when they have successfully done so, are likely to remain under suspicion for the rest of their lives. I feel particularly sorry for schoolteachers, youth leaders and members of the clergy. How easy it must be for a spiteful or revenge-seeking child to ruin forever a reputation and a career by claiming that the teacher, or the vicar, or the new curate, or the scout master, ‘behaved inappropriately’, one of those wonderful 21st century euphemisms that can mean anything from violent sexual assault to laying a friendly arm across the shoulders in sympathy or encouragement.

The latest idiocy in this connection has been the case of the two women police officers, both with young children and with different working shifts, who agreed to look after each-others’ children while the other was on duty. An eminently sensible arrangement that has resulted in their being accused of breaking the law! Very obviously someone whose path they had crossed during the course of their duties had made a complaint. It will, I suppose, have to be pursued. The final result is likely to be that they will both be compelled to pay a stranger to look after their children, rather than have a close friend and colleague look after them for nothing! If that is the law, then the law really is an ass!

Ironically, at almost the same time, a ‘children’s nurse’ in a day nursery who had presumably been thoroughly vetted, was pleading guilty to a series of charges of horrific child abuse! That of course, was a dreadful exception. In the overwhelming majority of day nurseries children are perfectly safe and secure.

Similarly, it can’t be stressed too strongly that most people aren’t paedophiles. Most men are neither rapists nor wife-beaters, most women don’t neglect or physically abuse their kids, and most kids aren’t malevolent little hooligans. There must surely be some way of protecting children without creating the fog of suspicion that nowadays hangs over us all!

Another Time Traveller?

Who, you may well ask, is this aristocratic lady who looks as though she has just stepped out of a tv costume drama set in the 18th Century.

No, she is neither an actor nor a time-travelling visitor from an earlier century. She is, in fact, my good friend Ingrid Zeibig, well-loved aunt of little Maja and Tom Friedrich, whom I mentioned last week. Born and brought up in Zittau, the little German town where I was once a POW, she now lives in historic Bayreuth in Bavaria, home of the Wagner festival and a Mecca for all lovers of Wagner’s music. From time to time she volunteers to transform herself into the Margravine Wilhelmine*. Bewigged and suitably gowned, she graciously agrees to accompany and inform visitors as they stroll round her domain.

Ingrid doesn’t always look quite as regal as that. On my recent trip to Germany with grandson Nick, she made the long journey from Bayreuth in Bavaria to Zittau in the most easterly part of Saxony, to meet Nick and myself again and to act as interpreter and ‘honorary daughter’ to me during my stay in her country.

The picture below was taken at the ceremony to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the restoration of the 500 years old Great Fastentuch or Lenten Veil (in the history of which I am believed to have played a tiny role!) and its establishment in the Museum/Church of the Holy Cross. I had just been presented with copies of the illustrated booklet ‘Rückkehr nach Zittau’, the German version of my article ‘Return to Zittau’ which I had written after my first visit to Zittau as a free man, in 2007.

Ingrid and I are both clutching copies of the German translation of ‘Return to Zittau’.

The Great Fastentuch has, incidentally, recently had its 300,000th visitor since it was installed and exhibited in the Church of the Holy Cross ten years ago. He was an Englishman from Dorset!

*The Margravine Wilhelmine (1709 - 1758) was a daughter of the King of Prussia. Her grandfather, on her mother's side, was our King George I. She married Frederick, Margrave (Marquess) of Bayreuth in 1732. There, decades before the advent of Richard Wagner, she established and nurtured the town's musical and operatic traditions.

Speeding and Cutting the Cost of dealing with Vandals and Hooligans

Public officials’ expensive and time-wasting note taking, box ticking and report writing are a constant complaint both of the victims of anti-social behaviour and of the tax payers who have to pay for it to be tackled. Yet these activities have to be noted and recorded by those on the spot, and passed on to those who will deal with them.

A report in Inside Housing, the official journal of the Institute of Housing, reports the way that Scotland’s South Lanarkshire Council are using mobile technology to deal with this problem.
The local authority has given wardens a piece of technology that lets them enter the details of an incident into a mobile phone which wirelessly transfers the details of the incident directly to a data base in the council’s offices.

Before this technology, developed by software consultants HUB Solutions, had been introduced, wardens had to log the details in a notebook, rewrite them as a report and pass them onto a data entry clerk who entered the details on the database. All of this took forty-eight hours, was prone to backlogs and occupied two staff members. Now, transmission is instant, and some of the warden’s time and all of the clerk’s time is saved.

Peter Hall, Managing Director of Hub Solutions says that his firm has also developed a system, to be tested by Portsmouth Council, that will enable members of the public to report incidents of anti-social behaviour via the internet. Their Gateway System will replace the old method of giving incident diaries to affected members of the public and from these collating a list of events that have to be keyed into a database.

Inside Housing reports Mr Hall as saying that Gateway will reduce the time staff spend recording anti-social incidents by twenty percent and that an added advantage of the system will be that staff will be immediately notified of any incidents, so that they will be able to nip problems in the bud. How valuable such a system might have been to that distraught woman who recently killed herself and her disabled daughter rather than face further persecution from a gang of youths!
Pete and I on holiday in 2007. European travellers may recognise the backdrop, the skyline of Prague

Yes, as you may have guessed, I do have a personal interest in all of this. Peter Hall is my elder son. He rose through the ranks of the staff of Hackney’s Housing Department to the position of Assistant Director of Housing and was in fact, for several months Acting Director. Made redundant following one of the borough’s political and administrative upheavals, he launched HUB Solutions Ltd. a software consultancy specialising in finding solutions to the problems of public authorities. HUB Solutions now has clients throughout the United Kingdom (South Lanarkshire and Portsmouth are pretty distant from each other!) and, as well as an HQ in London, has a base in Glasgow from which to service the firm’s many Scottish clients. Viewers of Taggart on tv may be interested to know that among these is the Strathclyde Police Authority!

Week 23.09

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Resign? Why not sack them?

I had thought that I was pretty angry about the way that our parliamentary representatives have been feathering their own nests at our expense. My anger though pales before that of my elder son Pete. He is particularly furious about the way in which MPs, once found out, have been able to get away with returning their ill-gotten gains and resigning when it best suits their own convenience…..and their bank balance! Here are extracts from an email that he sent to the Prime Minister on 30^th May.

I emailed you on 21^st May on the 10 Downing Street web site expressing my outrage at the manner in which Members of Parliament who were guilty of making false expenses claims, or have brought the House into disrepute, had been allowed to pay back money they should never have claimed, and resign in their own good time…..at the next election.

As a former Assistant Director of Housing at the London Borough of Hackney this is something which we would never have allowed, and I am sure the policy has not changed and is the same for every local authority in the country. I was involved in the dismissal of several members of staff and no-one was given the option of resigning, retiring or paying back money stolen. It was ensured that the guilty lost their pension rights and left without a favourable reference. Local authorities take adherence to standards in public service very seriously and I am appalled to find a different policy being adopted for Members of Parliament.

Your response, from Labour Party Headquarters was, I regret, a standard one showing that the main thrust of my email had been ignored. It sought to apologise that 'the system has let me down', share blame with other parties (references to 'the moat' scandal) and promote the policies and achievements of the Labour party. I have, in fact, always voted Labour and I do not need to be reminded of your achievements or persuaded of the benefits of your policies. This is for me, and millions of others an entirely separate, but very important issue of equality of treatment, integrity, and of upholding standards in public life, where I feel your government has so far failed lamentably.

I read in 'The Independent' today that 'Elliot Morley has become the 13^th expenses victim'. The report claims he said that stepping down was 'his decision'. I read further that he had claimed £18,000 mortgage payments for an incredible eighteen months after the mortgage had been repaid, that this was 'a genuine mistake' and it has since been repaid. 'The Independent' comments that as a result of continuing as an MP till the next election he will 'qualify for a pay-off equivalent to a year's salary'. Given that the next election may be a year away, he will in fact be about £120,000 better off than he would have been had he been summarily dismissed, as he most surely would have had he been a local government employee.

I fully appreciate that the employment situation of a Member of Parliament is unusual and probably lacking many normal provisions. However I see MPs being allowed or even encouraged simply to repay money. I hear no real anger from the Labour front benches about the illegal acts of some of their colleagues. I hear no talk of legal advice and of changing employment contracts, in order to achieve dismissal. I feel that blaming the problem on 'the system' as you did in your letter, a gross misjudgement on your part. It is not possible to have explicit rules to cover every scenario and you should not attempt to devise such rules for the future. The situation is not at all complex. It is absolutely clear that some, but not all, MPs have failed to behave with integrity. The system would be best served by ensuring that the strongest possible measures are taken against them, as an example to others and as a clear statement of your determination to enforce standards. I see no evidence that you are doing that.

The letter concludes with a request for confirmation or denial of the 'Independent's' statements that Mr Morley claimed money without cause for a period of eighteen months and that his defence was that this was a genuine mistake; that repayment of money by Mr Morley had been officially accepted, prior to any investigation as to whether fraud had been committed (thereby immeasurably weakening the legal position of the employer); that Mr Morley voluntarily decided not to stand at the next lection and that this position has also been accepted; that if Mr Morley continues as an MP till the next election he will be entitled to a severance payment of a year's salary; and that to date the only sanction that has been taken against Mr Morley is his suspension from the Labour Party.

It finally asks what contractual impediments currently exist to prevent normal disciplinary action against MPs who commit fraud or bring the House into disrepute, and what steps the Prime Minister is taking to ensure that those who have stolen from or dishonoured their employer can be dismissed without receiving any kind of leaving payment.

I think it most unlikely that Pete will receive a satisfying reply, but I am sure that he feels better for having sent that email! He is clearly takes after his dad in at least some respects!

Pete, in Switzerland, relaxing in 2007

Perhaps I may add that he wasn't and isn't just 'an Assistant Director of Housing' for Hackney. For many months, during an interregnum, he was the borough's Acting Director of Housing. Later when, after one of Hackney's political and administrative upheavals, he was made redundant, he founded his own Computer Software Consultancy specialising in problems of public administration. He is currently Founder and Managing Director of Hub Solutions Ltd. with bases in London and Glasgow, serving local authorities, police authorities and other public bodies throughout Great Britain. (see: www.hubsolutions.co.uk )

Voting Day – Tomorrow!

Well, it is 'tomorrow' if you are reading this blog on Wednesday 3^rd June, the day that the blog should have been posted on the internet (it was posted two days early in error!). Like many other no-longer-young or disabled people I voted by post, a week ago. I had something of a shock when I received my voting papers. On the voting paper for the County Council election there were just five candidates, all representing political parties with which I am at least familiar but for the European election there were no less than fifteen parties, of several of which I, and I have little doubt most other electors, had never heard.

On the County Council ballot paper we are asked to put our cross against the name of our preferred candidate though the political party that he or she represents is indicated. In the past there was an official pretence that we all voted for the individual rather than the party. As anyone who was involved in the conduct of elections in those days will remember, polling station peace was often disturbed by loud whispers of, 'Which one is the Conservative (or Labour) candidate?'

For the European election there is a system of proportional representation. We vote for the political party and seats are allocated in proportion to the votes cast for each party. The seats, if any, that each party gains are allocated to the party nominees whose names also appear on the ballot paper, in the order in which they are listed.

For the European election I cast my vote for the Green Party. They are a truly all-European Party whose leaders really believe that climatic change is the biggest threat facing humanity today and that it is a threat that demands drastic and immediate action. There are a number of 'Green' members of the European Parliament but none from Britain as yet. Proportional Representation offers the best possibility of putting that right.

For the County Council election I voted tactically. I have no confidence in the present Conservative Administration and little more in any New Labour Administration that might replace it. I would like to play a small part in keeping UKIP and the BNP out of the County Council Chamber and I don't see at present the least hope of a 'Green' County Council. The Lib. Dems. did oppose our involvement in Iraq, an illegal enterprise that proved to be a recruitment inducement for terrorists. The Lib.Dems. do support proportional representation and closer ties with Europe. Above all, as far as I am concerned, they are neither Conservative nor New Labour. So…….their candidate received my vote.

Finally – a much more savoury subject!

Do you remember, months ago now, my writing about Jodie Barnes (almost a neighbour of mine in Clacton's Dudley Road) the teenage archer who had vowed to her terminally ill father, that she would compete in the 2012 London Olympics? Perhaps you thought that this was just a flash in the pan, a pleasantly sentimental story about a local girl with hopes far beyond her capacity.

I am now able to record that Jodie has been making solid progress toward realizing her Olympic ambitions, and has justified every penny donated by generous sponsors to meet her travelling and other expenses. After a string of successes throughout the UK representing our local archery club, the Priory Bowmen, she has just recently returned in triumph to Clacton from her first sortie abroad. Representing Great Britain in an unofficial European Archery shoot in Malta she won top position in the UK team. Jodie shot on Saturday 24^th and Sunday 25^th April winning the highest score on both days and breaking an old Essex County record that had been unchallenged for thirty years! In this international contest she was competing with experienced archers from Malta, Italy, France, Spain and Germany. The bowmen of Agincourt would have been proud of her.

Jodie isn't, it must be said, the only promising young archer among the Priory Bowmen. The Priory team recently won, for the first time in many years, the prestigious Clophill junior indoor trophy match at Ampthill, Bedfordshire. Members of the team were Jodie, Dan Atkinson and not-yet-sixteen Alice Hall (not a relative of mine I'm afraid). Jodie again created a new county record at this event.

Jodie Barnes, The Gazette under 18 sportswoman of the year.

Modern archery, particularly for those aspiring to international competition, can be an expensive sport. Jodie is still seeking financial sponsors to support her progress towards those 2012 Olympics. Potential sponsors, and those seeking more information about the Priory Bowmen should get in touch with Mr R.S. Hogben, 349 St. John's Road, Clacton-on-Sea, CO16 8DS. Phone 012455 474652. Email: hogbrob@btinternet.com