Week 49 2011

Tendring Topics......on line

A Career in Local Government?

            There was a time when a ‘career in local government’ meant getting a job at the Town Hall when you left school, starting off as a junior clerk and studying in your spare time for a qualification appropriate to the department of the council employing you.  That was my intended career path.  In 1937, aged sixteen and armed with the London University School Leaving Certificate with Matriculation Exemption I obtained employment in Ipswich Corporation’s Public Health Department as a Junior Clerk/Student Sanitary Inspector. 

              I was to work in the general office for two years while, at evening classes, studying Typing, Shorthand and Building Construction and Drawing.  I would then be transferred to the Sanitary Inspectors Office and spend two years gaining practical experience while travelling up to London once or twice a week for theoretical training. I would then take the exam for the appropriate professional qualification and would apply for the post of Sanitary Inspector when there was a vacancy either in Ipswich or elsewhere.  The Council would lend me £100 (a pretty trivial sum today but far-from-trivial in 1937!) to cover my tuition fees and travelling expenses.                          

  

Myself as Housing Manager

    Thanks to Hitler my own career took a totally different direction.  I did my two years ‘hard labour’ in the Public Health Department General Office but in September 1939, when I was about to commence my practical training,  I was called up  with the Territorial Army and didn’t give another thought to public health for seven years!                                                                                         

And as freelance writer

Discharged from the army in 1946, I attended a special full-time course for Sanitary Inspectors at Battersea Polytechnic.  I passed the qualifying exam in 1947 and was first employed as a Sanitary Inspector (to be renamed Public Health Inspector), later as a Housing Manager and finally as a Public Relations Officer in the local government service, before taking early retirement at the age of 59 and spending the next twenty-three years (until I was 82!) pursuing a second successful career as a freelance writer.  A similar career path in local government was still available until the economic crisis and the savage cuts in public spending limited or closed altogether local authority training schemes.

            Today though, there is another way in which to make a living out of local government without all that tedious business of studying for paper qualifications and enduring years of drudgery while ‘gaining experience’. It’s the political path. 

            Essential qualifications are an easy smile, a ready tongue and allegiance to whichever political party you think has the best chance of gaining a majority at the local elections.  Firmly held political convictions are an optional extra (they can even be a disadvantage) but absolute loyalty to the leaders of the party you have chosen is a key to success, at least in the early stages of your career.

In my day elected councillors were unpaid.  They presented themselves for election because they had strong political views that they believed should be represented when local decisions were made, or simply because they had plenty of the sound common sense and the local knowledge that they felt was needed.  There was no question of personal gain, though they could claim reimbursement of travelling and other necessary expenses and loss of earnings.   Councils made their decisions after considering the recommendations of committees comprising members of all political parties and those who had no political allegiance.

            Nowadays councillors are paid just for turning up at meetings of the full council.  The pay varies but Tendring District councillors get paid a basic £4,983 a year; not enough to live on but a useful addition to the income from ‘the day job’.   That could be just the beginning.  The old ‘committee’ system that I remember has been abolished at the insistence of central government.  Each council now has its ‘cabinet’ of a handful of members of the majority party. These consider all the issues coming before the Council.  Their recommendations can, of course, be amended or rejected by the full Council but – since the party that rules in the cabinet has a majority in the council chamber – they are usually accepted without too much trouble. 

           

            In Tendring, most cabinet members receive a special annual allowance of £10,738 on top of their £4,983.   That, for some people, would constitute a living wage – but it need not be the end of the line.  The Council’s political ‘leader’ gets additional allowances and there is no reason why a member of the district council should not aspire to being a county councillor at the same time – and county councillors, county cabinet members and their leader receive higher allowances!  It isn’t quite true to say that ‘the sky’s the limit’ for the aspiring local politician – but the limit is certainly well up in the clouds!

           

Turkeys voting for Christmas?

          The ‘cabinet’ system of local administration combined with the government’s demand that local authorities cut their expenditure, has produced a situation within Tendring District Council’s Council Chamber which an opposition councillor described as comparable with ‘inviting turkeys to vote for Christmas’.

 

            Tendring Council’s services had been organised in ‘departments’ with a portfolio holder (one of the ten members of the ‘cabinet’) presiding over each.   In September a money-saving internal reorganisation cut the number of departments to five.  At the last meeting of the full council, Labour councillor Ivan Henderson called for the number of cabinet members to be reduced to reflect the new structure, thus saving the council approximately another £40,000 a year.

          This seems an entirely reasonable idea and the Council could have debated it and voted on it immediately.  However the Council Chairman, needless to say a member of the ruling party, decided that the motion should be sent to the cabinet for consideration.   That puts off the final decision at least till the next meeting of the full council, which won’t be till February next year!   Ivan Henderson has calculated that the extra cost of four redundant cabinet members between September (when the number of departments was halved) and February, will amount to £20,000.

In any event what is the cabinet’s recommendation likely to be?  Will the four members who could be made redundant vote to be deprived of over £5,000 each – and will the other members of the cabinet vote for the dismissal of their colleagues?  I wouldn’t bet on it.  Council leader Neil Stock is reported as saying, ‘I am planning to reduce the size of the cabinet, but it will be done in a calm and rational way when we have seen how the departments are working’.   If it is just the Council’s political leader who makes decisions of this kind, perhaps we could dispense with the whole of the rest of the ‘cabinet’.  Now that would produce a worth-while saving!

On a lighter note

The news news that two giant pandas from China have been loaned to Edinburgh zoo reminded me of happier days when my wife Heather and I used to write verses each week to amuse our grandchildren.  You can guess how long ago it was from the fact that those grandchildren are now in their late twenties and early thirties!  One of our early efforts was The Giant Panda.  If you have young children or grandchildren it may amuse them too.   Here is a photo of Heather with granddaughter Josie and, below it, The Giant Panda

The Giant Panda used to fight with every animal in sight.

He now looks like a cuddly toy, but once he was a bully boy.

He’d quarrel with the wolves and bears, and challenge tigers in their lairs –

And then he’d settle down to munch someone else’s stolen lunch!

One day he teased a kangaroo, (a very foolish thing to do).

After they’d fought for half a day, the Giant Panda ran away!

And now you’ll find he always hides on lonely, wooded mountain-sides.

His only food is now bamboo (It’s tasteless, tough and hard to chew)

And it will come as no surprise to find that he has two black eyes!

          The Future of Afghanistan – and the Middle East

          Last week an international conference on the future of Afghanistan was held without two voices that are likely to have an important – possibly decisive – influence on that country’s future.  One was Pakistan, boycotting the conference after being understandably outraged at an attack by United States’ forces on one of their border posts that resulted in the killing of a score of Pakistani soldiers. Did they over-react?   Hardly; imagine the outrage there would be in the USA if a score of their soldiers had been killed by Pakistani, or British – or any other – allied armed force. An apology, however abject, and condolences, would not have sufficed.  Believe me, the wives, mothers and girlfriends of Pakistani soldiers killed by ‘friendly fire’ mourn every bit as deeply as would wives, mothers and girlfriends in New York State, Ohio, or California under similar circumstances.

            The other ‘absent voice’ at the Conference was that of the Taliban.  They know perfectly well what they want and are convinced that, in the fullness of time, they will get it.  They are not prepared to compromise, so there was really nothing for them to discuss.   Nothing emerged from that conference that persuaded me to modify my conviction that within months of the departure of the last NATO soldier, the Taliban will be back in control – and may Heaven help those Afghan who had thrown in their lot with the NATO forces!

            Elsewhere it seems that there is little possibility of liberal and tolerant forces emerging triumphantly from the Egyptian general election or from the current post-Gaddafi turmoil in Libya. It is easy to overestimate the attraction of free speech and of liberal, parliamentary democracy as we know it in Europe, to people who have never known anything but autocratic government. In both North African countries it is likely that Islamic political parties will triumph and that they will be unable to curb the activities of jihadist extremists.  This would be bad news for members of Egypt’s nearly 2,000 year old Coptic Christian Church, just as the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime proved to be bad news for Iraqi Christians. Even in ‘friendly and democratic’ Pakistan, Christians come regularly under attack and a woman is currently in prison facing the death penalty for allegedly committing the heinous crime of converting from Islam to the Christian faith.

            Meanwhile ‘the West’ is becoming ever more threatening to Syria, torn by what has developed into a civil war, and to Iran because of its alleged nuclear weapon programme.   I pray daily and with all my heart that the UK will not be dragged into yet another military adventure in the Middle East by that wonderful ‘special relationship’ with the USA!  You think this would be impossible in our current financial situation?  Don’t you believe it.  We may not be able to afford proper pensions, homes for the homeless and generous help for the poor, the sick and the disabled – but governments can always find a few billion pounds for a small war, especially if they can be persuaded – as they were in 1914 and again in 1939, not to mention Afghanistan in 2001 – that, ‘It’ll be all over in a few months!’

         

Week 24 2011 14.6.11

Tendring Topics………on Line


The Future of Education?

Two hundred primary schools, that have consistently failed to bring their pupils to a satisfactory educational level, particularly in English and Mathematics, are to be abolished and merged with successfully performing schools in their areas, to form new academies. This will sever their connection with and reliance upon their current Education Authority (usually the County Council). Head teachers will have autonomous powers to hire and fire teachers, to adjust the curriculum and even to alter school hours where they consider it desirable.

Academy status has previously been given only to secondary schools but primary schools are now to be included in the programme.

All of this, Education Minister Mr Michael Gove told us in a tv news bulletin, was to free head teachers from the control of the ‘pen-pushers of the Education Authority’ (his phrase not mine!) and give them the independence that they need to bring our primary schools up to the standard of our European partners.

They also have to strive to change the attitude of teachers, pupils and pupils’ parents to make them appreciate the value of education and to feel pride in their school and in the educational progress of its pupils. New academies are given extra funds to further those objectives. When in Clacton,. two existing comprehensive schools were merged to form the new Coastal Academy, every child in both schools was provided with a smart new and distinctive school uniform and sports gear. The school also had sufficient funding to enable the giving of awards (incentives? bribes?) to pupils who attended school regularly and behaved themselves when they got there.

I wholly applaud the idea of bringing our schools up to European standards, I warmed to Mr Gove’s obvious enthusiasm for the project and I hope it will be successful.

I do question though its compatibility with the Government’s avowed intention of ‘power to the people’, of taking power away from central government and handing it to local communities. State primary schools are currently under the control of County Councils. They are not exactly ‘local’ and I would have thought that a move towards ‘localisation’ would have been to transfer them to district and borough councils most of whose members would then at least know where they are! Local people, the electorate, would have had an opportunity of expressing their opinion as to whether or not they are well run at local elections.

But no, they are to be handed over to Head Teachers, professionally qualified and no doubt, in most cases, well able to run them efficiently. They are not in any way answerable to local people though. They will not be entirely unrestrained. They have been given autonomy and central government funding in order to bring their pupils up to the required standard. If they fail to do that they will soon find that he who pays the piper calls the tune. They will have been freed from the control of the pen-pushers of the Education Authority only to find themselves controlled by the even more remote pen-pushers of central government.




Ingrid with 13 year old Jenny

 Education on the Continent

 Mr Vole’s suggestion that education on the European mainland is better than it is in Britain may well have infuriated supporters of UKIP and readers of the Daily Express!   Readers of this blog may gain a taste of the standrad of continental education from the extracts below from an essay written by Jenny, an Austrian girl of 13. She visited England (and Clacton!) for the first time last November, with her godmother Ingrid, a good friend of mine,

Her English is by no means perfect and there are a few factual errors. The restaurant where we lunched was, in fact, the Kingscliff Hotel at Holland-on-Sea. Jenny clearly misheard Harrods as ‘Herod’s’ and imagined that ‘seagulls’ was an abbreviation of ‘Sea eagles’. Her home is hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean and it was probably the first time she had encountered those large and always hungry birds. Pete, Arlene and Nick, whom Jenny met on the last day of her visit, are of course my elder son, daughter-in-law and younger grandson. Nick isn’t ‘studying’ in Brussels. He lives and works there.

Despite the errors, I understood exactly what she meant and, at the end of each paragraph I was eager to read the next one. That is surely the test of good writing. How many British thirteen year olds could do as well – in a foreign language? I think that some would find difficulty in writing such a narrative in their native tongue.

My journey to England

(Saturday)
Phew, I’m tired …
It was 3 am o’ clock and I had to get up. We took grandpa’s car, because it is driven very rarely and my dad thought the ride to the airport is a good opportunity.
We had to pick up Ingrid in Bayreuth, when we arrived in Bayreuth I realized, I had forgotten my passport. It was terrible, because it was my fault. We had to drive to Immenreuth to pick up my passport. I was afraid, we won’t catch our flight. I ran into the house and took my passport. We droved to Nürnberg, but the time were short and we had grandpa’s car so we can’t drive so fast because my dad didn’t know the car very well . . .
But we were lucky, we came to the airport in the last minute.
We sat in the plane to Zürich, it was a good flight………..
……………………………
…. when we arrived in London we had problems, because of the ‘check out’ the man ask in witch ratio Ingrid had to me, Ingrid said that I’m her goddaughter. The man said that Ingrid isn’t allowed to travel with me and he wanted to see a letter from my parents that I can travel with Ingrid. We hadn’t a letter so he said ‘give me the number of your mother so I can call her to be sure that you can travel with your godmother’.
We gave him the number but Ingrid said that my mom can’t speak English very well. . .
The man said ‘ I see you two are close together so you can go but the next time you travel together you have a letter from your parents IN ENGLISH’…………………

………………..We went by train to Ray, it was evening when we arrived in Ipswich. I was very tired because of the strenuous day.

(Sunday)
We could sleep as long as we wanted and then we had such a good English breakfast, it was wonderful……………

(On the Tuesday Ingrid took Jenny to meet friends of hers in Oxford)

………………….On Tuesday morning we went to Ursula Kneissel and on the way we saw a very funny house with a fish in the roof, it was really impressive.
Ursula Kneissel was a very nice person who told some very interesting things about her live especially about her childhood. In the afternoon we went to a church in Oxford with a big bell. After that we visit the Oxford University and the Library. But than we had to take a bus to London and we went to a big shopping street in witch we couldn’t stay long, unfortunately. Ingrid and I went to a big building ‘HERODS’ it was a big shopping paradise but so expensive ... a jacked for nearly 1200 pound it was unbelievable. We went to the station and drove to Ipswich.

(On the Thursday)

We went to Clacton on sea to visit Ernest Hall. He collects us at the station with his ‘iron horse’ and we visit the Clacton Pier to drink a coffee. After the coffee we fed the seaeagles. Then we walked to Ernest’s house, on the way we went past some houses and in one house there were some very cute cats and two dogs.

Jenny took this photo of Ingrid and I at the Kingscliff Hotel

Ernest called a taxi and we drove to a very fine restaurant called ‘ Holland on sea’ we had a very nice lunch and after that we drove with the taxi to Ernest’s house again, we were even at his house a little bit and then Ernest called a taxi and we were taken to the station………………………..

(On the Saturday)

The last day . . . I was sad because it was such a great journey.  Ray drove with us to London. We crossed the tower bride. It is a fantastic bridge I like it so much. We drove to the London eye and we got a very good parking maybe one hundred meters away from the London eye……………. we had a breath breaking view out of the London eye. After that we drove to Pete and Arlene. Nick was there too, he’s studying in Brussels. We had lunch in a little cafe behind a shop. My salad was very delicious!
But then we had to drive to Heathrow and we had to say good bye.
When we checked in I termed that I haven’t a souvenir for my best friend Sonja... so I bought some overpriced cookies and a nice magnet.
Then we flew to Zürich and then to Nürmberg………….Maria collects us at the station in Bayreuth. At 12 o’clock I was in the bed.

Finally I want to say THANK YOU to everybody especially Ray and Ingrid.
It was an unforgettable journey and I met some nice people.

That was about half the actual essay. I have left the less-than-perfect grammar and spelling exactly as Jenny wrote it. What did you think of it?

Week 3 18.1.11

Tendring Topics…….on Line

The Cost of Disillusion

As we move into the second decade of the third millennium, I don’t remember ever before experiencing such general disillusion with all politicians and with all political parties, as there is today.

The Conservative-dominated coalition leaps in impetuously to right wrongs, redistribute power, build a fairer society – and ends up either bogged down (rather like the French cavalry at Agincourt!) or producing the direct opposite of their stated intention. They were going to save millions of pounds by getting rid of all the Quangos, until they discovered that for the most part Quangos were doing a worthwhile job. The most that could be done was merge some of them or pass their functions on to some other body.

They were going to abolish the bureaucratic NHS Primary Care Authorities and hand their responsibilities over to ‘the doctors’ in their areas. But ‘the doctors’ have plenty to do caring for the sick. They don’t want to take on the administrative tasks of the PCAs. They are combining into area consortia, creating little bureaucracies of their own.

They were going to stem the great flow of overseas immigrants – but farmers and others couldn’t function without the foreign workers prepared to undertake tasks that no Brit cared to do. They were going to reduce the power of the government and hand it over to ‘local communities’. They haven’t handed over a single function of central government but they have taken power away from local authorities – the elected representatives of local communities!

They were going to curb the power of the bankers – especially those whose irresponsibility and incompetence had been the immediate cause of our financial woes, who had been saved from bankruptcy with our money, but who were proposing to continue handing themselves five-figure bonuses. If only the government had been prepared to back up fiery words with effective action! The confrontation between bankers and the government was reminiscent of the medieval struggles between church and state – except that the conflict is now between the representatives of the British people and the High Priests of Mammon. The struggle isn’t quite over as I write these words but, whatever face-saving words may be used to make defeat sound like victory, I have little doubt that it will be Mammon who will come out on top.

The Lib-Dems? They had to pay too higher price to become junior partners in a coalition government. Instinctively ‘green’ and ‘Europhile’, they find themselves allied with Climate Change denying Europhobes like our (Clacton) MP, and compelled to support policies to which, up to the day of the election, they were strongly opposed. Student fees, for example, and control orders for suspected terrorists. Poor old Vince Cable was humiliated for saying, in what he had imagined was a private conversation, that he had ‘declared war on Rupert Murdoch’ (well, It was certainly time someone did!). He was replaced by someone whose impartiality had been demonstrated by unequivocal support for the Murdoch media empire!

Altogether I can see little hope of either coalition partner changing ‘The good old law, the ancient plan, that he shall take who hath the power – and he shall keep who can!’

As for the Labour Opposition – I think that Ed Milliband is probably doing his best to breathe new life into his Party. However, I can’t forget that under New Labour the yawning gap between the incomes of the rich and poor widened; we were dragged into two unwinnable wars by blindly following the most reactionary American president in living memory; the infamous ‘Right to Buy’ legislation that had turned urban municipal housing into slums and destroyed rural communities, remained on the statute book; while New Labour’s leaders took their holidays in the palatial residences of their multimillionaire friends! No wonder Lord Mandelson, who – with Mr Osborne, our present Tory Chancellor – had enjoyed the hospitality of a millionaire friend on his luxury yacht, told the press that he ‘had no problem with billionaires!’

I very much fear that the time is ripe for the emergence on the scene of a young, energetic and charismatic politician, with brawny and heavy-booted supporters, who will promise to get rid of venial and self-serving politicians, and the ‘alien riffraff taking our jobs and threatening our culture’, cut our ties with Europe, establish comradely links with Sarah Palin’s ‘Tea-Party’ warriors in the USA, and lead Britain on a new path – toward the kind of future that would have brought joy to the hearts of Hitler and Mussolini! We must be thankful that so far at least, neither the BNP nor UKIP have leaders of that malignant quality.

Footnote – The clear winner of the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election was disillusion. 48 percent of the electorate voted. This means that those who didn’t vote (52 percent) were in a majority. Your guess about the motives of those who did vote is as good as mine. I think it likely though that a great many of the votes secured by the winning candidate were cast against the coalition partners rather than for New Labour.

Disaster strikes Ipswich?

As I switched my tv set on a few mornings ago, the news reader was saying ‘…and Ipswich has been inundated, with 2,000 families rendered homeless’.

I wasn’t at my brightest at that time but it was amazing how many thoughts flashed through my mind in what was probably less than half a minute. I was back in memory to January 1939. Heavy snow and prolonged frost had been succeeded by a rapid thaw with torrential rain. The Gipping Valley had been inundated. The wooden road bridge at Sproughton, a few miles up stream from Ipswich, had been swept away. My family’s home was safe enough but there was severe flooding of low-lying streets in parts of the town. Was this scene from the past being re-enacted with even more flooding than before?

Of course not. I had momentarily forgotten that there is another Ipswich, in Queensland, Australia, not far from Brisbane. That was the town that was under water. It was, in fact, part of an inundated area in north-eastern Australia larger than the combined areas of France and Germany!

Australia is part of the Commonwealth with which we have historical and cultural ties. Some of us have friends and/or relations there. It is hardly surprising that it has been the flooding there that has received most British news media coverage. It is though by no means the only part of the world to have endured almost identical disaster. Sri Lanka and Brazil suffered far more human casualties than Australia and although the flood waters have now receded in Pakistan, the havoc that they wrought remains – and is likely to remain for months, perhaps years, to come.

This is no coincidence. Although the Meteorologists, wary of making a false prediction, say that it is too early to be certain of the cause of these floods, it seems to me to be evident that global warming is responsible. The vast expanse and volume of water in the southern oceans (Atlantic, Pacific, Indian) has warmed up, resulting in more evaporation and a moisture-filled lower atmosphere. At the same time adjacent land masses – South America, Australia, the Indian sub-Continent – have warmed up even more. The warm air above these land masses, rises and is replaced by moisture-filled air from the ocean. As this moisture-filled air cools, particularly when flowing over mountains, the water vapour precipitates as torrential, and potentially devastating rain. It is what happens already in the southern Asian Monsoon.

Climate change deniers delighted in telling us that the bitterly cold weather we experienced in November and December proved beyond doubt that Global warming was a myth, propagated by scaremongers. On the contrary, our icy weather may well have been a result of world-wide warming. We know that the polar ice-caps are melting. Tens of thousands of gallons of fresh water, only just above freezing point, are being precipitated into the North Atlantic daily. I don’t know whether, as some believe, this is affecting the flow of the Gulf Stream on which North-Western Europe’s normally equable climate depends. I am quite sure though that it must have a cooling affect on the waters of the North Atlantic, thus making our winters colder.

I think it likely that weather in Britain will become more extreme. At least until all the polar ice cap disappears, our will winters continue to become colder. Our summers will be cool and cloudy while the prevailing wind direction remains from the west or south-west. When it changes to coming from an easterly or south-easterly direction it will, perhaps only briefly, become abnormally hot.

Unless or until we take Climatic Change seriously that is the future to which we can look forward.

Double Opportunity for Harwich

Last year Tendring Council failed to secure a government grant for Harwich because Essex was considered to be too prosperous a county. Perhaps, overall, it is, but the Tendring District certainly has areas of severe deprivation, parts of Harwich, Clacton and Jaywick among them.

Harwich at least, could have a brighter future. The Council has launched a £5 million bid to attract the wind farm industry to the town. The idea is to build a skills and business centre to support an ever-growing industry. The ultimate aim is to make Harwich a major centre for the maintenance and manufacture of Wind Turbines. The historic port is internationally known as a staging post between England and the Continent and is well placed to serve the now-established wind farm offshore at Clacton and the developing farms both to the north, in the Thames estuary and off the coast of Kent. Councillor Neil Stock, the Council’s leader, says that such a development could result in up to 40,000 jobs and add hundreds of millions of pounds to Harwich’s economy.

The home. in Kings Head Street, of Christopher Jones, master of The Mayflower

To turn this dream into a reality the Council is again applying for a grant – this time from a £1.5 billion regeneration fund established by the government to help areas hit by public service cuts. Mr Stock says that this time they are quietly optimistic as they prepare a compelling case for a grant.

I very much hope they succeed, not only for Harwich but for the future of Western Europe. Quite apart from the need for sources of reliable renewable energy to combat climate change, we have to realize that the world’s reserves of oil and gas are finite. Alternative energy sources must be found well before they run out, or become so difficult to secure that they become prohibitively expensive.

In the meantime are you happy about the fact that most of our oil comes from the always volatile Middle East and our gas from reservoirs in Siberia?

The 2012 Olympics may well give Harwich another economic opportunity. The port is already well-known on the Continent as a gateway into Britain. It could become Britain’s main staging post to the Olympics. From the town there are direct rail and road routes to the Olympics stadium at Stratford, avoiding the need to pass through London. I hope that our Tourist Authorities will publicise that fact among our mainland neighbours and EU partners, and make sure that there is adequate first class hotel accommodation for those who wish to use our area either as a staging post or a base.

Harwich’s historic ‘Three Cups’ Inn. Lord Nelson and Emma, Lady Hamilton are said to have stayed there and in the 14th Century, Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer are said to have obtained horses here before going on to defeat her husband King Edward II. Has Harwich a bright future as well as a colourful past?

Week 16.09

Tendring Topics……..on Line

The Easter Holiday

As so often happens, in London at least (and I doubt if it was very different in Clacton!) Easter was overcast, drizzly and chilly until the afternoon of Bank Holiday Monday when, just for a few hours, we basked in warm spring sunshine.

However I had a very enjoyable and active break. My grandson Nick was home from Brussels for Easter, and granddaughter Jo was also home from Sheffield with my younger son Andy and daughter-in-law Marilyn. They live just a mile or two from my elder son and daughter-in-law, with whom I was staying. It was therefore an opportunity for a family get-together.

On Sunday morning Pete drove Arlene and myself to Southwark Cathedral where we attended and took part in an Easter Choral Eucharist. It was a really special occasion as it was televised live for BBC 1. Every seat in the Cathedral was occupied and there were over forty in the choir! If you watched it on tv you’ll know that it was a very splendid and a very happy event.

Afterwards we watched the service on BBC i-player. Arlene and I were able to spot ourselves in the congregation, but we did of course, know where to look.

Left -Magnolia in Bloom in the gardens at Wisley

Then, on Bank Holiday Monday, Pete drove us to the Royal Horticultural Society’s HQ and gardens at Wisley in Surrey. The sun came out while we were there and it was lovely to see the spring flowers and the blossoming trees and shrubs in the spring sunshine. There was a fascinating selection of plants in the enormous glass house where, thanks to clever design, plants from dry and temperate parts of the world are able to live and flourish under the same glass roof as those from tropical rain forests.

It was a lovely break and I enjoyed every moment of it. It's nice to be home in Clacton again though!

Right - a woodland path at Wisley

The Lovely Stour Valley

A new exhibition of John Constable’s work displaying his portraits rather than his already well-known landscapes*, a new biography ‘Constable in Love’, featuring his seven-year long courtship of Maria Bicknell, the girl he was to marry, and a National Trust Tour ‘Early Summer in the Stour Valley’** starting on Saturday 23rd May, brought back memories of my own of the lovely Stour Valley and, in particular, the ‘Constable country’ centred on Flatford and Dedham.

I was a keen fresh-water angler in my teenage years and sometimes on a Saturday or during the school holidays, I would seek a change from the familiar reaches of the River Gipping. I would get my mother to make me a packed lunch and carrying all my fishing gear on my bicycle, peddle my way along the London Road from Ipswich to East Bergholt and then on to Flatford for a day’s angling in pastures new.

Below - Bridge Cottage, once owned by John Constable’s father, and now a welcoming restaurant, is the first sight that the visiting motorist or cyclist sees in Flatford.

That was not my only experience of Flatford. Mr Alfred Morris, the headmaster of Ipswich’s Northgate Secondary School for Boys (there was a separate girls’ school) was strongly opposed to last minute swotting for exams. Accordingly, he had established a tradition that the day before the annual London University School Leaving Exam began, all the candidates would spend a day on the river.

We turned up at school as usual on our bikes (we were nearly all cyclists in those days) but bringing with us packed lunches. We then cycled en masse to Flatford. Here we clambered into skiffs hired by the school and spent an enjoyable day rowing (and some of us swimming) on the Stour between Flatford and Dedham. Those, of course, were the days before everybody became obsessed with ‘health and safety’!

By about 4.00 p.m. we all made our way up river to Dedham, where a lavish tea was provided for us in one of the village’s restaurants. The tea, like the hire of the skiffs, was paid for by the school. Replete, we rowed back to Flatford for the long cycle ride home. Many of us sat the exam the next day with aching backs and limbs and blistered hands but, on the whole, I think that our results justified the headmaster’s obsession.

I have been back to Flatford many times since and on one occasion hired a skiff and rowed some visiting American friends from Flatford to Dedham and back again. It still retains the charm that it exerted in the mid-1930s. Age however has brought a greater appreciation of Flatford and the River Stour as the inspiration and subject of Constable’s best-known works, together with the historical interest of Dedham’s cathedral-like parish church. Just opposite is Sherman House, the ancestral home of the Federal General who marched his victorious army through Georgia ‘from Atlanta to the sea’, during the American Civil War

Left -Sherman House, Dedham. Above Dedham Parish Church

It has been forecast that, thanks to the economic down-turn an extra £5 million will this year be spent on holidays in England. I certainly hope that our Essex Holiday Coast gets its fair share of it. The fact that we are little more than half an hour’s drive from the lovely Stour Valley, with its natural beauty and its artistic and historical associations, should attract the many discriminating visitors who want a little more from their holiday than sun, sea and sand.

*‘Constable Portraits; The Painter and his Circle’, National Portrait Gallery until 14 June.
** First tour begins at 10.30 a.m., cost £5 per person. For details phone 01206 298260

MPs’ Expenses

I have found the unfolding revelations about MPs’ expenses depressing rather than (or perhaps as well as) outrageous. I don’t find the continual excuse and justification that not a thing has been done that is against the rules, in the least reassuring. Yes, of course the rules need a thorough overhaul but somehow in my innocence I had imagined that MPs weren’t in the business for their personal profit but to serve their fellow men and women; ‘to make a difference’ as they say these days.

Surely that doesn’t include making a close study of the rule book to find out exactly how much money you can extract from the public purse in ‘expenses’ without risking expulsion from Parliament or having to ‘assist the Police with their enquiries’. Our parliamentary representatives continually refer to each other as ‘honourable members’. I would have thought that it was thoroughly dishonourable, even if not illegal, to claim for expenses that were unjustifiable or clearly need not have been incurred.

Could it be because our representatives are no longer conviction politicians with a cause that they find themselves compelled to promote at whatever personal cost? Nowadays are they simply men and women who have chosen politics as a career? Many would find it a very attractive one and it is one for which there is never a shortage of applicants. MPs enjoy a generous salary and (at the moment anyway) almost unlimited expenses, together with a certain local and possibly even national and international celebrity. Provided that they keep on the right side of the Party whips they can expect occasional luxurious ‘fact finding’ trips abroad at the national expense plus, if they can manage to get re-elected often enough, a very comfortable pension, and possibly a knighthood or a life peerage, at the end

I have, in the past, been highly suspicious of burning-eyed, honey-tongued (or vitriol tongued!) zealots, ‘who will not cease from mental fight, nor will their swords sleep in their hands’ till they have built their own particular version of New Jerusalem ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’. Experience suggests that they are every bit as likely to lead us to disaster. I have to say though that I can’t imagine Margaret Thatcher, Enoch Powell, Tony Benn or Eric Skinner considering, even for one moment, the possibility of ‘fiddling their expenses’.