17th December 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘Lord, make me chaste and celibate…….

          but not just yet!’

            This was said to have been a prayer of St Augustine of Hippo (no, not the St. Augustine who brought the Christian faith to the heathen English) and proves that saints are 'only human'!.

            I think of St Augustine’s prayer whenever I read, or hear on tv or radio, about yet another international conference on climate change resulting from global warming.  There’s always a remarkable unanimity about these conferences.  The leaders of almost every nation accept the reality of global warming resulting in extreme weather conditions throughout the world.  The northern polar ice-cap is shrinking as are glaciers world-wide. There have been killer typhoons in the South Pacific Ocean and unprecedented monsoon floods on the Indian sub-continent. North America has had searing heat and drought as well as floods and unseasonal arctic spells that have stretched most of the way from Canada to the Mexican border. 

The Rhone Glacier, photographed by me in 1979.  There is now no ice to be seen.

Africa has had prolonged droughts and Australia has had both floods and bush fires, laying waste to hundreds of square miles of land. 

Mainland Europe has had floods, mud-slides and avalanches. During the winter of 2013/2014 the UK’s weather was unseasonably mild but heavy storms battered and broke the sea defences on Britain East Coast while elsewhere – particularly on the Somerset Levels and the Thames Valley – hundreds of acres of land, together with farms and homes, were flooded for weeks as a result of continuous torrential rain.  Last month, our government produced plans for flood prevention to be carried out in the next two or three years.  If only nature proceeded at an equally leisurely pace!

            The latest international conference on climate change was in Lima.  The world’s leaders heard scientific experts explain that a major cause of climate change is the steady increase in ‘greenhouse gases’ produced by fossil fuels; coal and coal products and fuel oils used in industry, in road transport and for warming our homes.  We must, say the world’s scientists, urgently reduce the use of fossil fuels – leaving some reserves untouched – if we want to save our planet for our grandchildren and their grandchildren

            The world’s political leaders agree.  Reducing the use of fossils fuels must be a priority – but not just yet.  The Chinese want to wait until their industrialisation has caught up with that of the USA.  The UKs leaders have got a general election coming up.  They certainly don’t want to take any precipitate action that might cost them votes – or the support of those giving generous donations to the ruling party.  Beside in shale oil, another fossil fuel obtained by ‘fracking’, the Americans are sending us cheaper fuel – and encouraging us to wreck our own countryside by producing our own.  Producing a cheaper fuel (never mind that it produces greenhouse gases) is certainly a vote winner.  There are very few votes to be gained in the pursuit of clean and sustainable energy.

            The result of the International Conference in Lima?  Well, no worth-while action will take place this year.  Next year, perhaps something positive will be agreed – but I’m not holding my breath.

        We’ll never know whether the prayer of St Augustine to be made chaste and celibate – but not just yet, was answered.  Perhaps it was.  It is the nature of the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ to forgive sins of the flesh, particularly those who have acknowledged and confessed their fault.   ‘Perverse and foolish oft I strayed, But still in love he sought me. And on his shoulder gently laid, And home rejoicing brought me’   I think God may be a little less forgiving towards those who, from greed, national pride or fear of election defeat, ignore the warnings of the wise, and are prepared to sacrifice future generations to their own self-centred interests.

‘It’s not what is done……..it’s who it is does it’

       The American Senate’s report on the conduct of the CIA in the aftermath of ‘9/11’ has brought the whole policy of the USA at that time into the limelight.  As well as the torture of suspects under interrogation, there was their ‘rendition’ to countries, Libya for instance, where torture could take place without as much as raised eyebrow, and there was the establishment at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, of a concentration camp of which Himmler would have been proud!

        I find myself interested less in what the CIA and their political masters did, but what they didn’t even attempt to do.  The outrages of ‘9/11’ were planned and carried out by El Qaeda, the dominant jihadist terrorist organisation of the day. At the head of El Qaeda was Osama bin Laden whom the CIA tracked down and killed, without so it seems, making any attempt to capture him.  It certainly stopped him from revealing, in the dock, the support El Quaeda had from the CIA in their campaign of terror against soldiers and civilians of the Soviet Union.

          Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi Arabian, so were the overwhelming number of the terrorists who had successfully planned and carried out the destruction of New York’s ‘Twin Towers’ on ‘9/11’.   There was not an Iraqi or an Iranian or a Syrian among them.  Saudi Arabia practises and preaches the noxious perversion of Islam that has been taken up by El Quaeda and their successors IS or Islamic State.  Compared with Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and President Assad’s Syria were havens of freedom and tolerance.  Furthermore, it is known that prominent Saudi Arabians helped finance Islamic State in its early bloodthirsty progress in Syria and Iraq – and possibly continue to do so today.

       

            The USA, and the UK the USA’s ‘special relation’, invaded Iraq on the pretext that the Iraqi government had been involved in ‘9/11’ and that it possessed ‘weapons of mass destruction’, neither of which claims had even a scintilla of truth.  Hundreds of British and American service-men died as a result, together with thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.  Nor did we bring peace and prosperity to Iraq.  Since our departure Iraq has never been at peace and is currently under attack by Islamic State.  We have now sent in hundreds of British troops ‘to train Iraqi forces’.  How long will it be before those troops have to defend themselves against IS attack and we find ourselves dragged unwillingly into a third ‘Gulf War?’

       Again, in support of the USA, we went to war in Afghanistan because their Taliban government was protecting the bases of El Qaeda.  Within months El Qaeda had moved those bases to Somalia and Yemen – but the Taliban fought on.  We have, after ten years and goodness knows how many deaths on both sides of the conflict, withdrawn all our combat troops.  They may not have been defeated but I am quite sure they wouldn’t claim to have gained a great victory.  My guess is that in six months time a fundamentalist Muslim government (it may not be called Taliban) will be ruling Afghanistan and all those mini-victories, for education, for women’s liberation and so on, will have been lost.

              Meanwhile Saudi-Arabia, the inspiration and (I believe) clandestine supporter of Islamic terrorists, remains unchallenged as one of our ‘trusted allies’.   We buy their oil and we sell them our armaments and don’t ask too many questions.  As I have said before, nowadays it isn’t ‘what is done’ but ‘who did it’ that is of greatest concern to our Government and that of our American allies.  What a pity that not even the combined efforts of the CIA and MI6 can manage to establish that Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein and President Assad, conspired together to carry out ‘9/11’!

Merry Christmas?

     This will be my last blog before Christmas, probably the last blog in 2014.  It’s the season of good will and I’d very much like to wish all humankind a Happy Christmas and  New Year.

       Sadly the news seems to get worse from day to day. World-wide no early effective action will be taken place to counter climate change.  On the other side of the world, in Sydney Australia, a jihadist fanatic has held the customers and staff of a busy café hostage – a situation that resulted in the death of the fanatic, of the café’s  manager and of one of the customers, a barrister in her thirties with two children.  Worst of all was the massacre by the Pakistan Taliban of 132 children, and nine members of the staff, at a school in Peshawar in north-western Pakistan – a crime even more heinous than that of  King Herod’s slaughter of the 'Holy Innocents’ in Bethlehem two thousand years ago!

     For ‘good news’ we are told about the new vessel –  half a kilometre long! – that is being built in South Korea to exploit new fields of (greenhouse gas producing) oil that lie beneath the ocean floor off the north of Australia. The production of similar enormous vessels to extract and process submarine oil fields is planned for the future!

     It’s the ‘season of good will’ and I have to  confess that I feel very little good will towards politicians who are prepared to sacrifice future generations in their pursuit of immediate economic or political advantage.  I feel even less good will towards those who torture or murder their fellow men and women in the blasphemous belief that their crimes will earn them the favour of God, and none at all towards those, whoever they may be and whatever their cause, pretext or excuse, who harm or kill innocent children.

     That said, I do wish a very Happy Christmas and a New Year of Peace and Hope to all readers of this blog and to all those who, with love for humanity in their hearts, are striving to make this sad world a happier place, and to work towards an answer to our prayer, Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’.

                                                                                            t   

27th October 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

The EU isn’t some hostile foreign alliance!

          …….but sadly, that’s how some newspapers and some politicians behave as though it were.  The European Union is a political and economic association of European States that Britain joined for its own advantage.  Over its policies and activities we have as much power and influence as any other member.   What’s more, it is the only international association of which the UK is a member and of which we – the members of the public - have already been asked in a referendum whether or not we wished for membership.

            The Scots have recently been able to say whether or not they wished to be part of the United Kingdom – but neither the English, the Welsh nor the Northern Irish, nor any of our ancestors have ever been asked in a referendum whether we want to be part of it.  Probably there’s little doubt that most of us would vote ‘yes’ to continued membership – but a resounding ‘yes’ is much less certain about our continued membership of the United Nations or of NATO, or our ‘special relationship’ with the USA.  I would not have voted yes to the last two of those.  I think it’s quite likely that they have cost us more in pounds and pence (keeping that Trident submarine fleet active for instance) than the EU ever has and they have certainly cost us much more in British lives.   They have dragged us into an illegal war in Iraq that has made us thousands of implacable enemies world-wide and has certainly not made Iraq a happier, more peaceful and more tolerant country in which to live; and into an unwinnable war in Afghanistan from which we are now withdrawing if not in defeat, certainly not victoriously.  When the Falklands were invaded and we could have done with some help from the ‘allies’ we support so loyally, we received none.

            Freedom of movement of goods, capital and people was an important feature of the European Union when we joined and for some years no-one objected.  We wanted a ‘level playing field’ for our exporters and importers so there naturally had to be union-wide labour and health and safety regulation.  The membership, when the UK joined, was of nations with similar economies and public services.  There was no influx of workers into Britain from Germany, or the Netherlands or Denmark or any of the ‘old EU’ member countries.  If anything the flow of migrants was in the other direction.  The popular tv comedy series Auf Wiedersehen Pet was, at least in the first instance, about a group of British building workers who found employment in Germany.  My grandson, an international Tourism Publicity Consultant, lives in Brussels but commutes to his office in Ashford in Kent (near the Eurostar station).   His business takes him to every part of Europe and indeed the world but, thanks to Britain’s membership of the EU, travelling in most of Europe is much simpler than it once was.

Some years ago the then existing members considered making their union a united political and economic bloc capable of co-operating and where appropriate competing on equal terms with the USA and China, or expanding to include former members of the Soviet bloc like Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.  Tony Blair, then Britain’s prime minister, was one of the keenest and most determined of European leaders to draw these countries into the EU fold.  The problems that this could lead to were fairly obvious. Their economies and public services were in no way comparable with those of existing members.  The uncharitable thought crossed my mind that his enthusiasm for expansion could have been to ensure that Europe would never unite into a strong federal political force – a United States of Europe – that might not please his bosom friend across the Atlantic, George W. Bush.

            Well, the expansionists got their way, and provided Nigel Farage and his Ukippers with some ammunition, though hardly as much as they had hoped for. Do you remember the imaginary coach-loads of eager immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria who, according to the popular press, were just waiting for the gates to open so that they could flood in, swamping us poor natives and taking our homes and jobs?   Some turned up – mostly those who had jobs waiting for them, but in a trickle rather than a flood.  The swarm of migrants who now seem to be permanently camped near Calais waiting for an illegal opportunity to enter the UK are not from EU countries.

            The strange thing is that the worry about immigrants from the EU seems, at least from a casual glance, to be in inverse proportion to the number of EU immigrants in the area.  We clearly have some Polish immigrants here in Clacton because I note that there is now a shop here dealing with Polish delicacies. Perhaps if I were a Roman Catholic and going to mass at Our Lady of Light Roman Catholic church, I would meet some of them - and be pleased to do so.  As it is, I don’t think I have ever encountered a Pole in this town, though a Polish worker was one of the team from Enfield that very efficiently, insulated my roof space a year or two ago.  As a former public health inspector I have met Greek and Italian restaurant owners – but they were here before we were EU members!

            Clacton’s immigration problems are mostly home-grown and all-British. They relate to the fact that we are within easy reach of London, have generally dry weather (a help for those in b. and b. or sleeping rough!) and that cheap accommodation of a sort can usually be found on the Brooklands Estate, Jaywick or elsewhere in the area.  None of this has anything to do with the European Union – yet Essex’s seaside holiday coast is real Ukip country, with many of its residents worried to death about EU immigration and the fact that 70 percent of our laws are now ‘made in Brussels! – a blatant lie that Ukippers accept as a fact.

            Ukippers have convinced themselves that if there is a simple IN or OUT referendum  on EU membership, there will be an overwhelming OUT majority.   They may well be surprised at the result.  I voted NO to EU membership in that earlier referendum because I had a romantic notion that the Commonwealth could be moulded into a viable political and economic unit.  It was a stupid idea that I have outgrown.  In any future referendum I shall vote for continued membership, hoping that the EU will become more politically and economically united and that there will be fewer UK opt-outs.

Nor would I be alone. Recent MORI and Ugov public opinion polls, publicised in the London Evening Standard, indicate that nationwide, despite the rise of Ukip and although there is a big worry about immigration, a comfortable majority favour retaining EU membership and that this majority is even larger in the London area.

A Boost for the Ukippers

          The shock was considerable.  The timing calculated to bring maximum joy into the hearts of Nigel Farage and his motley band of followers.  If I were a believer in ‘conspiracies’ I’d be considering the possibility that an under-cover Ukipper had   penetrated the inner defences of Brussels and, just when Europhiles were rejoicing at opinion polls showing that most Brits would prefer to stay within the EU, arranged for ’Brussels’ to send the UK a peremptory demand for the almost immediate payment of the eye-watering sum of £1.7 billion pounds!  And, adding insult to injury, they were proposing to give substantial cash hand-outs to France and Germany.

            Rarely has there been such agreement between British political leaders.   They were unanimous.  We weren’t going to pay it and we asked our Prime Minister to make that clear to other European leaders.  No one, it seems, even considered the fact that the criteria that decided whether EU members were to get a hand out or a demand had been agreed by our representative as well as that of other members. Nor was much said about other countries who had received demands that seemed at least as ridiculous as ours.  The Netherlands is probably as well able to pay as we are, but are scarcely likely to be any more eager than us to do so.  How about Greece?  We haven’t heard much about the Greeks recently but not long ago many of them were literally starving.  Then there was Cyprus and the Irish Republic. All three have received similar demands and all three are poverty-stricken compared with either France or Germany.

            The decision to demand payment from us is at least partly because of our much-trumpeted economic recovery and growth. It had been more than expected.   The anger of the public, reflected in that of the top politicians, has been strengthened by the fact that very few of us have noticed any improvement whatsoever in our daily lives as a result of George Osborne’s economic triumph.  Inflation is low but wage rises are even lower – in the case of thousands of public servants – non-existent.  Due to ridiculously low interest rates, thousands of life savings, mine included, are steadily losing their value in Bank or Building Society savings accounts.

            Only the very wealthy have benefited from that recovery and there has, so far, been no sign of that wealth ‘trickling down’ to the rest of us.  I have no doubt that somehow some kind of an agreement will be reached in connection with the EU’s wealth redistribution.  I wish I felt equally sure that the anomaly that working people on low wages pay a much bigger proportion of their income to the government in taxes, VAT and customs duties than the bankers with their telephone number salaries and bonuses, the big property owners, financial fiddlers and tax evaders, will also be put right.

Blog readers

     Only last week I wrote that I would not, in the future, be able to write so long a blog, nor would I be able to publish it every Monday - yet here I am, with a blog that is every bit as long as usual, and is published on Monday morning!

      I did say though that I would write and publish it 'as and when' the situation might demand.  Last week there were two news items in quick succession that seemed to me to demand immediate comment; the two pro-EU opinion polls, and the demand from the EU that the UK should pay up £1.7 billion pounds -  so I duly commented.  I could have published my comments on Saturday 25th October, but decided to wait to see if there were any new developments over the weekend.

         Next week?  Who knows?

           

      

Week 33 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

It wasn’t ‘too good to be true’

          Regular blog readers will know that I have been concerned about the fate of Meriem Ibrahim, the young North Sudanese mother who had been convicted of the ‘heinous crime’ of abandoning Islam for Christianity (she had, in fact, been brought up by her Christian mother and had never been a Muslim) and sentenced to death by hanging.  Before being hanged she was to be flogged with 100 lashes for marrying a Christian and having a child by him.  Such marriages are forbidden by Sharia law and are condemned as ‘adulterous’! At the time of her condemnation she was heavily pregnant with her second child – a baby girl who was born while her mother was shackled to the floor of her cell.

            Following world-wide protests an appeal against the sentence was successful but she was prevented from flying with her family to her husband’s home in the USA on the pretext of a faulty passport. A fortnight ago a report on BBC tv announced that the whole family had been allowed to fly to Italy where they had met the Pope who had congratulated Meriem on her steadfast refusal to abandon her Christian faith, a course of action that could have earned her freedom.  Sadly this report was never confirmed or taken up by the media – and a search on line by Google discovered no news of Meriem later than her re-arrest at Khartoum airport when she had tried to leave the country.  I concluded that the news of the family’s flight to Italy was ‘too good to be true’ and this gloomy opinion was reinforced by a news report that the family had taken refuge in the United States Embassy in Khartoum and that her father (who had left her mother to bring up her baby alone!) was urging the reinstatement of the death sentence.

 Home – at last.  The Ibrahim family re-united in the USA.  Baby Maya, born in a Sudanese prison cell, is in her mother’s arms and her toddler son in the care of his Grandpa.   

 It has now become clear that that early BBC report was true.  The whole family had clandestinely flown to Italy with an Italian government minister.  They had met the Pope and Meriem had been congratulated on her refusal to renounce her faith despite the dire consequences that could have followed that refusal.  It seems too that that hasty departure from the American Embassy and from North Sudan, was not a moment too soon.  A lynch mob had been threatening to storm the Embassy and seize its prey!  At a time of bloodshed and violence and of the persecution of Christians throughout much of the Middle East and large areas of northern Africa, the Meriem Ibrahim story is one that has a happy ending!  Latest news reports confirm that Meriem, her husband and two children have flown to her husband’s home in the USA where they have been given a heroes’ welcome.  It was one story that wasn’t too good to be true!

Still living with Mum at 21? - and 31?

          Members and supporters of the present government never tire of complaining about the ‘terrible mess that the previous Labour government left us to clear up’. Well, I was never an enthusiast for New Labour but the Governor of the Bank of England who has recently retired always insisted that it was the Bankers and money-lenders, not the politicians, who were to blame for that mess.

            One of the messes that the New Labour government inherited from the Thatcher years – and failed to address – was the iniquitous right to buy legislation that compelled local authorities, but not private landlords, to sell their council owned houses at a fraction of their market value to sitting tenants  Inevitably council houses in pleasant rural areas were quickly bought up and sold on - often at an enormous profit – directly this legally became possible.  Equally inevitably, since councils were unable to build houses for letting ­to replace them, there were no properties for letting at reasonable rents in many rural villages.   Young couples, whose forbears had lived in that village for generations, found themselves compelled to move away.  Many villages consequently became ‘dormitories’, with their inhabitants commuting daily to the nearest town, doing much of their shopping there, and taking no interest in local life and local affairs.

            Mrs Thatcher and her successors, in pursuit of their dream of home ownership for all changed public attitudes so that, as Paul Honeywood, Tendring Council’s ‘housing boss’ told a Clacton Gazette reporter ‘Council homes are often looked at as a last resort for the unemployed and people in financial trouble but’ he added, ‘we are trying to change that perception and offer it as an alternative for those wanting to set up on their own or start a family’. What Mr Honeywood is urging is in fact, a return to the system that existed and worked satisfactorily for a century before the advent of Thatcherism – when local authorities, without interference from national politicians, built houses for letting and allocated them to those in need.  There was then no stigma attached to ‘living in a council house’.  When I was appointed as a Public Health Inspector by Clacton Council in 1956, my family and I were happy to live in a Council House in Holland-on-Sea until, after a few months, we purchased and moved into the bungalow in which I am living today.

            Clacton, and the Tendring District generally, is particularly in need of social housing available for letting at a reasonable rent.  The housing charity Shelter has discovered that one third of Tendring’s 20 to 34 year olds, despite being in work, continue to live in the family home with mum and dad.   They simply can’t afford ‘to get their feet on the housing ladder’ with house properties at their present level – and there are no longer, as there once were, council houses available for letting.

            Tendring’s position is worse than that of other neighbouring local authority areas.   In Colchester 6,064 (22 percent) of 20 to 34 year old are still living in the family home, in Braintree 5,770 (28 percent) and in Tendring 4,801 (37 percent) Typical of such a ‘stay-at-home’ is 22 year old Natasha Fuller of St Osyth who works full-time as a hairdresser.  She told a Gazette reporter, ‘I still live at home with my parents even though I have a full-time job.  I don’t earn enough to save for a mortgage or rent on my own home while running a car at the same time’.

Shelter representative Campbell Robb told the Gazette ’The clipped-wing generation are finding themselves with no choice but to remain living with mum and dad well into adulthood.  And those who aren’t lucky enough to have this option face a lifetime of unstable, expensive, private renting.  The government knows that the only way to turn the tide of the housing shortage is to fill the gap between the homes we have and the homes we need’.

And the only effective way of doing that is to repeal the ‘right to buy’ legislation and – as in the pre-Thatcher past – encourage local authorities to build the homes their district needs, and to let them to local people who need a home, without interference from ‘Nanny knows best, dear’ politicians!
 .       
ISIS is still with us!

          The blood bath in Gaza, the downing of the Malaysian air liner over eastern Ukraine and the centenary commemoration of World War I have driven ISIS and its determination to establish an extremist Islamic Caliphate throughout Syria and Iraq (and that’s just for a start!) from the news headlines during the past week or so.  They’re still there though and although they don’t seem to have made any progress towards taking Baghdad, they’re consolidating their strict Islamic rule over the territories that they have taken and are edging forward whenever they have the opportunity to do so.

            A recent effect of this has been to drive tens of thousands of Christian Iraqis from their homes in areas where the Christian faith has flourished for centuries.  Many in northern Iraq had been protected by the semi-independent Kurds but their protectors have now been driven out and the new extreme Islamic regime has offered the choice of death, conversion to their own extreme version of Islam, or a crippling tax payable by all non-Muslims. nearly one hundred thousand have fled and are now trapped on a barren mountain without shelter, food or water..  They urgently need the help of their Christian brothers and sisters in Europe and elsewhere. ISIS has changed its name and now likes to be called simply IS, standing for Islamic State.  Its members haven’t changed their nature though.

            Successive British governments’ no-doubt-well-intentioned meddling in Iraq, Libya and Syria has prepared the ground and earned recruits for extremists like IS and Al Qaeda.The Christian faith is being eradicated from the very area that gave it birth, and the whole of the Middle East and large areas of Africa, are now areas in which Britons visit, live and work in danger of their lives!  

            I wonder if Tony Blair and his successors are proud of the results of their activities?

Later News

         Since I wrote the above, only a day or two ago, events have moved quickly.  The USA and the UK governments have heeded the call for help of the thousands of Christian Iraqi civilians in their barren mountain refuge.   We are co-operating with the Americans in dropping water, food and the means of providing shelter to those refugees and the USA is also carrying out air strikes on the IS forces, though both governments insist that there will be no ground forces involved.

I applaud wholeheartedly the provision of humanitarian aid though, quite apart from the morality of the action, I doubt very much whether air strikes alone can be expected either to make it possible for the refugees to go peacefully to their former home free from persecution, or to pass through territory IS holds to a place of safety. Obviously the present situation cannot continue.  We can't supply those refugees indefinitely - and winter is approaching.  I wish that I could envisage a happy non-violent ending to the present situation.  I can't and, if I'm to be absolutely honest, I can't  imagine a violent one either.

I hope and pray that someone can! 

           

Week 26 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

Middle East Maelstrom

          A recent email from a regular blog reader sums up the current situation relating to Islam and its neighbours in the Middle East, a considerable part of central Africa and the Indian sub-continent:

Well, I said the militant Islam thing was going to come to a head, and almost immediately the Pakistan Taliban come very close to capturing Karachi main airport, and ISIS are getting close to taking Baghdad. And still the Nigerian school girls haven't been returned.  The day surely cannot be far away when they succeed in overthrowing the government of a major country, or carve out a completely new country by annexing bits of other countries.  Would have been better to have left Saddam Hussain in Iraq, but I see Tony Blair is very sensitive to that obvious criticism and has tried to pre-empt it. Likewise, it is crystal clear the west should have given no support to those trying to overthrow Assad. These dictators may be bad and use their powers arbitrarily and brutally, but an ultra orthodox religious regime is ten times worse because it so deeply affects the lives of ordinary people; especially women, who make up 50% of the population and gays who make up 7%, and anyone else of a different religion, or of a more moderate version of Islam.

I couldn’t have put it better or more succinctly myself – though he’s missed out the second batch of schoolgirls who have been abducted by jihadist militants in Nigeria, or the massacres that have recently taken place there.  Nor did he mention the atrocities that have taken place after ISIS victories.  Perhaps, as a former POW, I am particularly affected by tv images of Iraqi soldiers being cold-bloodedly shot en masse by these ‘religious zealots’ after capture. In North Africa in 1941/’42 we on one side and the Germans and Italians on the other tried to kill each other – but we did all adhere to ‘the rules of war’.  Many years later, when my family and I were on holiday in Austria, we encountered a German family remarkably similar to ourselves.  We discovered that the father, like me, had been taken prisoner in Tobruk in 1942 – I, by Rommel in June, and he by ‘Monty’ in November!  Because, all those years ago, both sides had adhered to those rules, we had both survived to look each-other in the face and shake hands as friends.

I was fascinated by Tony Blair’ attempts to suggest that the current conflict has nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq into which he and George Bush lured us.   It is, so he says, the clear result of our failure to intervene in the Syrian Civil War. On which side does he think we should have intervened?  It is possible that, early in the conflict, many of the rebels did seek a more democratic Syria.  It has for some time though been clear that the current rebellion is led and dominated by Islamist zealots of the same breed as those who perpetrated 9/11, were responsible for the subsequent bomb outrages in London, who kidnapped those Nigerian teenagers, and who are now fighting their murderous way through Iraq.  Does Tony Blair really suggest that we should have helped them overthrow Hassad?

When David Cameron expresses concern about British radicalised Muslims returning from Syria to the UK after learning the terrorist arts he doesn’t, for one moment, imagine that they’ll have learned those arts from President Hassad’s supporters. Their teachers will have been those anti-Hassad activists that we have been supporting but, according to Tony Blair, not supporting strongly enough!

I suppose that one good thing that can be said to have come out of the present crisis is a more friendly relationship with Iran.  I heard a Conservative MP in the House of Commons warning the government that this might damage relations between ourselves and our present Middle East allies.  Could he possibly have been referring to such ‘allies’ as Saudi Arabia and Qatar?  These countries, to which we blithely sell arms, are the source of the jihadists bloodthirsty inspiration.  They are the patrons and supporters of Sunni Muslims as Iran is the inspiration, patron and supporter of the Shia.   I have little doubt that these wonderful Middle East allies of ours have been supplying the Syrian rebels with arms (probably some that we have sold them!) and funds to keep them going.  I wouldn’t wish to live either in Saudi Arabia or Iran but, if I were compelled to make a choice, I would certainly settle for Iran, as being the less restrictive and the lesser offender against what I (and I think, Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Miliband) regard as inalienable human rights.  But, of course, human rights are all very well - but business is business! And the manufacture and sale of the weapons of war (the instruments of death) is very big business indeed.

Now we, with the Americans as our ‘senior partners’, are considering intervention to halt the progress of ISIS and prevent the downfall of the present Iraqi government.  We’re not going to put troops on the ground, but we’ll possibly bomb ISIS troop concentrations and so on.  Unmanned ‘drones’ may be used to ‘take out’ some of the ISIS commanders and political leaders.   Inevitably, in doing so innocent civilians – men, women and children will be killed and maimed.  Whatever might be the conclusion of the current fighting it will certainly result with Middle Eastern Muslims – Sunni and Shia alike – uniting in their hatred of the western infidels who inflicted even more death and destruction on their benighted countries. History demonstrates that foreign intervention in civil conflicts always makes them bloodier and more protracted

Twenty-five years ago Christians were a tolerated minority in many Muslim majority countries though not, of course, in Saudi Arabia. In Iraq and Syria in particular there were thriving and long-established Christian Communities.  They set an example of tolerance in an increasingly intolerant world. Today, Christians have been a target of extremists in both those countries.  Christian lives are in daily danger throughout the Middle East and those who can get out have done so.  Our Christian faith is in danger of becoming extinct in the very area of the world in which it was born.

That is the true and lasting legacy of the policies of George W. Bush junior and Tony Blair.  I wonder if they’re proud of it?

Spoiling for a fight?

I have just been listening to an interview with the Secretary-General of NATO about Iraq and the state of the world generally. Perhaps we need reminding that NATO was created during the Cold War specifically to deal with the perceived military threat from the Soviet Union.  The United Kingdom is a member and, unlike our membership of the European Union, joining NATO was taken on quite arbitrarily by the government without any referendum or consultation with the British people.  It is now concerning itself with matters far beyond its original purpose.

The Afghan war for example, is now coming to a less-than-victorious end, after a decade long struggle.  It was a war in which, theoretically at least, NATO was attempting to combat jihadist terrorism at its source.  This was considered to be in Afghanistan, where Al Qaida was protected by the fundamentalist Taliban Government.  All that has happened is that Al Qaida has moved its bases elsewhere, what has been portrayed as ‘western aggression’ has gained recruits for the terrorists, and the Taliban remain undefeated. Meanwhile the conflict has cost the UK and, of course, the USA hundreds of lives and millions of pounds and dollars.  The best place to combat terrorism is in the western countries in which acts of terrorism are threatened or are taking place.  The only role that NATO should take is ensuring the dissemination of intelligence about terrorist groups, and experience of foiling their activities – a field in which, if official sources are to be believed, the UK has been very successful.

That however is not the way Anders Rasmussen. NATO’s Secretary General sees it.   In his Radio interview  he gave the impression of a man spoiling for a fight.  ISIS aggression against Iraq, he averred, was a threat to all of us – it was imperative that firm action be taken against them.  Fortunately for us all, American President Barak Obama (without whose OK, NATO certainly won’t act!) is a great deal more cautious.  He has reinforced the defence of the US Embassy in Baghdad and is sending 300 ‘advisers’ to help organise defence against ISIS but not to get directly involved in conflict.  He doesn’t rule out air strikes against carefully selected targets, but they are not to be taken for granted.  He does not want ‘mission creep’ dragging the USA deeper and deeper into the conflict. 

Mr Rasmussen hasn’t forgotten the Ukraine.  There’s Russia’s virtually bloodless ‘annexation’ of the Crimea, to the satisfaction of the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants! There’s the ‘provocation’ of military exercises near Ukraine’s borders, and Mr Rasmussen is sure that Russia is encouraging the armed separatists in Eastern Ukraine. I’d have thought that much more provocative were NATO’s naval exercises in the Baltic and Black Sea and the reinforcement of NATO troops in Poland and the Baltic states.  As for encouraging the armed separatists, we do know that they have asked Russia to send troops over the border to assist them – and that Russia has declined.  Russia has had more experience than any other country at opposing jihadist terrorism. They were fighting it in Afghanistan when we and the Americans were supporting the fathers and grandfathers of today's Taliban fighters. Instead of thinking up more and stronger sanctions – which affect us as much as they do them – we should be co-operating with them in combating this world-wide scourge.  Goodness knows, we were happy enough to co-operate with a much less amiable Russia to defeat Hitler and the Nazis.  But, of course, neither Mr Rasmussen nor any of the world’s statesmen are old enough to remember that!

Week 13 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

‘The paths of glory………’

          Last week in this blog I discussed the approaching referendum on the future of Scotland.  All residents in Scotland over the age of sixteen (now that is a revolutionary change in electoral law!) will be given the opportunity to declare whether they want their country to remain part of the United Kingdom or become an independent sovereign nation-state.  The UK government has stated that the majority decision will be accepted and acted upon, whatever it may be.

            Just over a week ago a rather similar referendum was taking place in the Crimea about the future of that peninsula.  Crimea is a federal state of the Ukraine and voters were invited to declare whether they wished to remain part of the Ukraine or to become part of the Russian Federation.  That was certainly not an option that they were given in 1954 when Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet Government had decided, presumably on the grounds of administrative convenience, that Crimea would no longer be part of Russia as it had been from the days of the Tsar, but of the Ukraine.  It had made little difference then, because both Russia and the Ukraine were constituent republics of the USSR.

             The referendum has been declared by Barak Obama to be ‘illegal’ (it may have been 'invalid', but how can establishing whether voters would prefer to be Russian or Ukrainian possibly be against any law?), William Hague, our verbally belligerent Foreign Minister described it as ‘a travesty of democracy’, and our Prime Minister has declared colourfully, but with no evidence whatsoever, that the result was obtained 'under the barrel of a Kalashnikov!'  I have seen no reports of ballot-rigging, multiple voting, or bullying of potential voters, as there have been after elections in Afghanistan and countries in the Middle East and Africa. We can be quite sure that any such reports would have been given full publicity by the Russo-sceptic press. The pro-Russian majority of 96 percent established what had already been made obvious  The way in which the Crimeans had welcomed Russian troops and had voluntarily displayed Russian flags; provided ample evidence that the population of Crimea preferred a future with Russia rather than Ukraine.    Since ethnic Russians are said to comprise only some 58 percent of the population of Crimea, that enormous majority suggests that quite a few ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars also voted for the Russian option.

            It would be that sort of majority we would expect to get if the inhabitants of Gibraltar were asked if they wanted to be citizens of the United Kingdom or of Spain  – and for much the same reason.

            Russia’s subsequent ‘annexation’ of the Ukraine has been described as an illegal ‘land-grab’. Perhaps it was, but it was surely unique in the fact that the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the land that was ‘grabbed’ had wanted it to happen. It has also been unique in the fact that so far (even, it seems, after the forceful Russian take-over of the Ukrainian naval base reported this, Monday 24th March morning)  has been achieved with remarkably little bloodshed – less bloodshed, in fact, than in the violent demonstrations in Kiev that had preceded the Russian action.

            I recall that when it was decided to support the separatists in Kosovo (where I doubt very much if a referendum would have revealed over 90 percent of inhabitants wanted to break away from Serbia) the campaign included the RAF's bombardment of Serbia’s capital, the City of Belgrade.  When the UK government, after deceiving parliament and the British public about Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’, decided to join the USA in enforcing a regime-change in Iraq, the campaign began by inducing ‘shock and awe’ with terror air-raids on Baghdad.  As a direct result of that illegal invasion thousands of innocent lives were lost. Iraq is still a divided country in which terrorism flourishes; the same terrorism that perpetrated 9/11 and had been unknown in Iraq prior to our invasion.  I really don’t think that Crimea faces a remotely similar future.   I have referred in earlier blogs to the USA’s illegal blockade of Cuban ports, the use of chemical weapons in the Vietnam War and the totally unprovoked invasion of Grenada in the West Indies (then part of the British Commonwealth!)

            No doubt Russia has broken international rules by recovering its lost Crimean province without having first attempted negotiation, but ‘Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone!’

            I was not impressed with Vladimir Putin’s triumphal announcement of Russia’s recovery of Crimea in the Russian Parliament. Painstakingly staged, it resembled too closely George Bush’s premature announcement of victory in Iraq from the bridge of a US aircraft carrier.  All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Successful leaders surround themselves with flatterers who feed their egos and lead them on into folly. To suggest that Putin is another Stalin is ridiculous, but I do think that he may see himself as ‘Vladimir the Great’, a worthy successor of the Romanov Tsars.

            He has promised ‘to put the glory back into Russia’. I can only hope and pray that the eight million Russian dead of World War II remind him that the paths of glory lead but to the grave.  The rest of the world's leaders, every one of whom is too young to have personal memories of World War II, also need to remember it.

The Budget

          I once would have described myself as a ‘democratic socialist’. I was for a short while a member of the Labour Party and was, in fact, accepted as a Labour candidate for a county council election.  How glad I am now that I withdrew my candidature, believing that I could do more for the causes that I support in my weekly Tendring Topics column in a local newspaper, than in the Council Chamber at Chelmsford, where I’d have been expected to toe the party line.

            One of those causes (regular blog readers will probably be all too familiar with some of the others!) arises from my conviction that many, perhaps most, of Britain’s problems arise from the enormous and ever-widening gap between the richest and the poorest in our society.  To the New Labour Party’s shame that gap widened during their ten years in office and has continued to widen ever since.   I think that I am well qualified to comment on this subject because my own income and possessions are sufficient for my life style. At 92 the opportunities for extravagant living become somewhat limited! I have no desire for more than I already possess – and I certainly wouldn’t be happy with much less.  I now describe myself, not as a socialist but as an egalitarian and I don’t much concern myself with how greater equality could best be achieved. In some fields public ownership (either national or local) would probably be the best way forward, but co-operative ownership and employer/employee partnerships may also have a valuable part to play.  I support – very modestly – the Equality Trust www.equalitytrust.org.uk  that works toward that end.

 My idea of a ‘good Budget’ is one that narrows the gap between rich and poor and a ‘bad Budget’ is one that widens it.  It follows that it is many years since I have seen a ‘good Budget’ and I despair of ever seeing one produced either by our present government or any currently conceivable successor.

Both parties in the coalition government are eager to claim the credit for taking ‘millions of low paid workers out of the tax system altogether’ by raising the personal allowance (the level at which income tax becomes payable) from £10,000 to £10,500 a year.  It does, of course, help low earners but it also helps everyone who pays income tax (including me!) right up to those on £100,000 or more a year.  What’s more it perpetuates the false idea that there’s a hard-working group of ‘tax payers’ whose labours subsidise an underclass of non-taxpayers.  It’s not true.   The non income-tax payer pays tax (VAT) every time he has his car, or his bike or his house repaired.  He pays tax every time he buys himself a pint, fills up the petrol tank of his car or motor bike, or is foolish enough to buy a lottery ticket or scratch card, to put a few bob on a horse, or to play commercial bingo!   He probably pays a higher proportion of his income in tax than bankers or stock brokers with their inflated salaries and bonuses! 

Regular blog readers will know that I believe that every adult citizen, from the poorest to the wealthiest, should pay the same percentage of his or her gross income in income tax as their annual membership fee as a citizen of the UK – and that those who go abroad to escape that responsibility should automatically forfeit that citizenship.

A somewhat controversial feature of the budget would permit those who are saving for a pension on retirement to withdraw all or part of that ‘pension pot’ without financial penalty, at any time.  Fears have been expressed that ‘live-for-the-day’ fifty-year olds might draw out the lot and spend it all on a cruise to the Caribbean or a glorious boozy party, rather than leave it to  mature for a meagre pension that they may never live to enjoy!  I think there’s a much greater danger that responsible middle-aged people faced with a domestic crisis, might draw out a smallish sum from the ‘pension pot’ to deal with it, rather than go to a payday loan firm – or a loan shark.  No-one would criticise them for doing so -  but it wouldn’t take many such crises to empty that ‘pot’! 

I don’t think Mr Osborne and his colleagues realize how their policies have brought so many families to the edge of a financial precipice – and how little it could take to render them jobless,  homeless and relying on the local food bank for their survival.  But then I don’t suppose that the members of a government of millionaires who spend much of their time with fellow-millionaires can be expected to know much about the struggles and the anxieties of the less well off.

Week 38 2013

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Thoughts on an anniversary

            I am typing these words on the twelfth Anniversary of the ‘9/11’ terrorist attack on the ‘Twin Towers’ of New York, a terrorist attack that was one of the pretexts for the invasion of Iraq and the reason for the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan. I consulted ‘Google’ to check my memories of the event (I remember that when we first switched on the tv during the afternoon of 11^th September 2001 my wife and I imagined we were watching a preview of a sci.fi. disaster movie!)

            I did learn from Google that the CIA had published the names and nationalities of nineteen terrorists who had played leading roles in the outrage.  They were all members of Al Qaeda  To my surprise I found that fifteen of them were from Saudi-Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt and one from Lebanon.  There was not a single terrorist from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Syria.   Yet those are supposed to be the ‘rogue states’ that harbour and encourage terrorists and must be brought to heel by the ‘free world’, while Saudi-Arabia and the U.A.E. are trusted allies.

 Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E are the main supporters and suppliers of arms to the rebel forces trying to topple the present Assad government in Syria.  They are now expressing their anger and dismay at the fact that the USA has at least postponed its  punitive missile attacks on the Syrian government while it pursues the possibility of that government handing over its store of chemical weapons to the ‘international community’. Prominent among those rebel forces in Syria is Al Qaeda, the organisation that undoubtedly was responsible for 9/11.  We, the Americans and the French are currently giving them moral support and helping to supply them with all their needs short of actual weaponry!

            The British and American governments are said to have ‘compelling evidence’ that the Assad government was responsible for the chemical attack that undoubtedly killed a very large number of Syrian civilians a fortnight ago.  We haven’t yet  been allowed to see that ‘compelling evidence’.  Is it, I wonder, as irrefutable as the evidence for Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction that lured us into the invasion of Iraq?

 Intelligence Services are made up of fallible humans, with human strengths and human weaknesses. They receive and analyse scores of often-contradictory reports daily.  It would be surprising if they didn’t emphasise the importance of evidence that their political paymasters want to hear, and minimise or discard that which they don’t.  Evidence from Saudi Arabia is very likely to be biased against the Assad Government. Assad is the wrong sort of Muslim! So, I fear is evidence from Mossad, Israel’s secret service.   We know that Israel doesn’t like the present Syrian government, if only because of its ties of friendship with Iran.  We also know that Mossad is utterly ruthless in defence of what it considers to be Israel’s interests.  It has carried out assassinations, kidnappings and forgery (of British Passports, for example, to make it possible for assassins to get closer to their target).   I do not think that, if they considered it to be in Israel’s interest, they’d have any problem with bearing false witness.

            I hope that the current initiative for peace does succeed.  I wonder if the prayers of millions of people world-wide inspired by the Pope’s appeal to all  humanity have been heard – and answered.  I think that armed interference by foreigners like ourselves on behalf of either side can only add to the death and destruction.

            What is needed is for all foreign fighters, on both sides, to go back to their homelands.  Then, free of foreign interference, for the Syrians on both side of the conflict to lay down their arms and get on with the task of rebuilding their lives and their shattered country.   I am quite sure that they would receive generous help in doing so from well-wishing, peace-loving, folk world-wide. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers…..’

Pots and Kettles!

            I am sometimes embarrassed by the patronising ‘holier than thou’ attitude of our top politicians and those of the USA with regard to the sins of other governments. We don’t mistreat prisoners of war, bomb harmless civilians, threaten others with nuclear weapons and so on – and on.   All fine – until we are stopped in our tracks by allegations of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers, the torture and killing of terrorist suspects during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya and, going back a little, the blanket fire raids on civilian centres like Dresden in World War II.  Going back even further it comes as something of a shock to learn that it was  neither Hitler nor Stalin but we Brits. who invented Concentration Camps.  The very first of these was built by the British for the confinement of Boer Families during the South African War

         When we hear politicians on both sides of the Atlantic threatening dire consequences if this, that or the other regime manages to acquire a nuclear weapon, it is worth remembering that the only country that has ever used these dreadful weapons to kill fellow human beings (men, women and children 'in one red burial blent') was the USA when, with full British approval, they dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945!  

.      I am amazed that the Americans have the gall to lecture others on the wickedness of Chemical Weapons when there are something like half a million Vietnamese children with serious physical or mental defects as a result of the use by the USA of Agent Orange as a defoliant during the Vietnam War. About three million were affected altogether.

       The reason why some 20 million gallons of  herbicides and defoliants were poured onto the forests of Vietnam was not primarily to kill or maim little children but to get rid of the trees and bushes that provided cover for the Vietcong – but kill and maim the  innocent they certainly did.  It was, at the very best, recklessly irresponsible.  In 2010 a joint U.S.A /Vietnam Commission recommended .that the U.S. should pay $300 million in compensation for the victims and towards the repair of the ecosystem. To date the USA has paid nothing.

Then, of course, there was the use of Napalm, a particularly unpleasant chemical weapon – a burning gel that adheres to the body or clothes of its victims causing intense agony and death.  One of the most striking news pictures of that dreadful war was of the little nine year old girl who had torn off her burning clothing and was running naked with other refugees from a Vietnamese village concealed by smoke and consumed by flame..   A South Vietnam Air Force plane had committed  that particular war crime – but their US allies had supplied the Napalm, and had used it themselves often enough in Vietnam..

That naked and terrified little girl, although badly burnt, survived and currently lives in Canada.   Here is a message that she sends to all humankind.  If only we all heeded it!

‘Forgiveness made me free from hatred. I still have many scars on my body and severe pain most days but my heart is cleansed. Napalm is very powerful, but faith, forgiveness, and love are much more powerful. We would not have war at all if everyone could learn how to live with true love, hope, and forgiveness. If that little girl in the picture can do it, ask yourself: Can you?’ 

Well, can you?

Clacton Quakers

The interior, Clacton Quaker Meeting House

     Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a Quaker (a member of the Religious Society of Friends).  My wife Heather and I joined the Quakers in Ipswich in 1948 and became members of Clacton-on-Sea  Quaker Meeting in 1955 when we moved to this area.   We celebrated and gave thanks for our silver, ruby, golden and diamond wedding anniversaries in the Clacton Quaker Meeting House, and the Meeting House was full when we gave thanks for Heather's life at a Memorial Meeting for Worship there on 30th July 2006.

Our golden wedding celebration 1996

       I still try to get to our Sunday morning Quaker Meeting for Worship every week.

       We Clacton Quakers now have our own web site.  If you'd like to know more about the faith that inspires me to write 'Tendring Topics....on line' each week, click onto www.quaker.org.uk (that's the official national Quaker website) but if you'd like to know more about the Quaker Meeting of which I have been a member for over half a century click onto www.clactonquakers.org.