Week 29 2014

Tendring Topics……on Line

First – the Bad News

            For years the UK has had nuclear Trident submarines roaming the world’s oceans as a so-called Independent Ultimate Deterrent to aggressors. Like NATO it is a relic of the cold war and of the ‘defence policy’ aptly described as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD); ‘You dare to threaten me with your nuclear missiles – and I’ll threaten you with mine. If you dare to attack me with them, then I’ll attack you.  We’ll both be totally destroyed and (it's unfortunate about the collateral damage) large areas, perhaps the whole, of planet Earth will be made uninhabitable.

            Well, neither the Soviet Union nor NATO were stupid enough to use nuclear weapons.  The ‘cold war’ ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The UK ran down its full-time professional army, navy and air force in response to our economic situation – but Trident remained sacrosanct, untouchable.  In the meantime acts of aggression took place and it became abundantly clear that our ‘ultimate deterrent’ deterred no-one at all in the real world.  It didn’t deter Argentina from invading the Falklands.  It didn’t deter Turkey from invading Cyprus.  It didn’t deter the USA and its Caribbean allies from invading Grenada.  When, quite recently, Russia annexed and recovered its lost province of Crimea ‘the west’ blustered and threatened but – thanks to God and common sense – nobody even mentioned that ‘ultimate deterrent’.

            In the meantime the real threat to us all comes not from aggressive sovereign nations but from terrorists who have been inspired by a perversion of Islam to believe that they’re fighting God’s battles for him on earth.  They don’t yet possess nuclear weapons but the danger of their acquiring them is a natural consequence (or perhaps God’s punishment!) for our continuing to develop them, instead of banning their manufacture world-wide and destroying every single exiting nuclear weapon.  We have learned recently that chemical weapons can and have been banned world-wide.  It must be possible to do the same with nuclear weapons.

  I believe that much more dangerous than the possibility that Iran may develop a nuclear armoury, is the very real possibility that the nuclear weapons that we know Pakistan possesses should fall into the hands of terrorists.  NATO sent forces to Afghanistan to destroy the bases of Al Qaeda that had been protected by the Taliban government.   All they succeeded in doing was persuading Al Qaeda to move its bases elsewhere, notably the tribal areas of northern Pakistan, and Yemen in the Arabian peninsula. In those tribal areas of Pakistan, Al Qaeda, the Taliban and those who sympathise with them, are a considerable force possibly with a ‘fifth column’ in the Pakistan armed forces.  It is by no means impossible that they may one day overthrow the present Pakistani Government, acquire those nuclear weapons and threaten to use them

            Would our ‘independent ultimate deterrent’ then reveal its true value?  I doubt it.  Are people who tie explosives round their bodies and blow themselves up in crowded market places in the conviction that thereby they’ll go straight to Heaven as holy martyrs, likely to be deterred by the possibility that the victims of their nuclear weapon may respond in kind?

            And the bad news?  The independent cross-party Trident Commission, set up by the British American Security Information Council, has decided that there is no credible alternative to Trident.  I’m glad to note that British Quakers – but there are so few of us – are opposing this decision.  Here’s a copy of a report in The Friend, an independent Quaker weekly:

 The assertion that ‘these are weapons of mass destruction……….which have proved to be a poor deterrent against acts of terror or against recent political events’ must be an example of Quaker fear of making exaggerated statements.  They haven’t proved to be a poor deterrent, but have been no deterrent whatsoever!

…..and the not-quite-so-bad news!

          When I first heard it, in fact, I had thought that it was really good news.  It all began a few months ago when we learned that, to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, the Royal Mint was going to strike a memorial £2.00 coin with an image of Lord Kitchener on it.  The image was taken from an army recruiting poster in which the general (the hero of Corporal Jones in Dad's Army!) was assuring anyone viewing the poster that  Your Country needs YOU!

            I was one of thousands who felt that a war that had cost millions of British, French, Russian, Austrian and German lives, fought for reasons that were far from clear, and which had led to another bloody world-wide conflict  only twenty-one years later, was not best remembered by an image of a  luxuriously   moustached General urging young men to become cannon-fodder.  We petitioned the Royal Mint and the government to use instead an image of Nurse Edith Cavell.  The daughter of a Norfolk parson, she had been nursing the wounded of every country in a hospital in German-occupied Belgium.  She also helped two hundred wounded and captured British service-men escape to neutral Holland.  She was detected and arrested by the Germans, court-martialled and shot.

            In 1947 I worked briefly as a Public Health Inspector for the city of Westminster.  Quite near the office was a statue of Edith Cavell.  It bore the words for which she is best remembered.  ‘Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone’, which she said to the pastor who visited and prayed with her on the eve of her execution.    She was obviously a much more appropriate image for a memorial coin than that of a past-his-best general beckoning other men to their deaths.

            Last week I was elated when I learned that there would be a Nurse Edith Cavell coin struck in commemoration of the World War I centenary.  We had won!   Or so I thought until I read the ‘small print’ of the news item.   The Nurse Cavell coin is not to be struck instead of, but as well as, the Lord Kitchener one.   What’s more the Kitchener coin is to be a £2.00 one for general use – apart from the image it’ll be exactly like the £2.00 coins in use today.  The Nurse Cavell coin, on the other hand, will have a nominal value of £5.00 and is intended for coin collectors.  Unlike the Kitchener coin, they won't be in daily use.  Most of us will probably never see one.

             

                                                           

 Here are enlarged pictures of the two coins.  It is likely to be all that most of us will ever see of the Nurse Edith Cavell coin!

                                                                          

Week 28 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

A prophetic blog reader!

            A fortnight ago I published in this blog an email received from a regular reader on the subject of the jihadist extremists in the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent and Africa.   It contained the following sentence:

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.

            Today it seems that that is happening.  The Isis invaders of Iraq and Syria have declared the areas that they have occupied to be a new Islamic Caliphate under their control in which ‘Sharia Law’ will be enforced.  The Shia Iraqi President desperately needs western help but apparently is not quite desperate enough to be prepared to widen his government to represent a truly united Iraqi nation.  That, he says, would be a negation of democracy – that word again.  It clearly means whatever its user wants it to mean!

            We have seen the inspiring spectacle of hundreds of young Iraqi Shia militia volunteers marching up and down with automatic rifles on their shoulders shouting words of defiance against the fighters of Isis.  I’m afraid they’ll discover that there’s a big difference between posturing at patriotic gatherings safe in the middle of Baghdad and actually facing a resolute enemy, with mortars and shells bursting all around you, comrades killed and wounded, and machine-gun fire sweeping the battlefield.

            I think it unlikely that 300 American troops can train an Iraqi army to a standard in which they can defeat those Isis fighters in the few weeks – or perhaps only days – available to them.  It would surely be disastrous for the UK or the USA to become more involved in this conflict than they already are. When we and the Americans withdrew our forces from Iraq after that disastrous and illegal invasion, I wrote in this blog that I thought it likely that within a few years Iraq would be divided into three separate states; an independent Kurdistan in the north, Shia Muslim with close ties to Iran in the south and a Sunni Muslim state in the centre.  It really took someone as ruthless as Saddam Hussein to hold those three opposing factions together.  Already there is virtually an independent Kurdistan in the north and it seems apparent that Sunni and Shia Muslims can’t and won’t live together in peace.  They’ll learn eventually (just as Protestant and Roman Catholic Christians in Europe eventually learned to live together) but we can’t, and shouldn’t try to, hasten the process by force of arms. 

            I wasn’t surprised to learn that very few members of this Isis Army that is trying to take over Syria and Iraq are actually either Syrians or Iraqis.  They are a hotchpotch of fanatics convinced that they’ve got God on their side, from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kosovo, Chechnia and, to our shame, from the United Kingdom and, no doubt, from wherever else there are Muslim communities with a few fervent jihadists or malcontents among them.

            But just as the members of Isis are from a number of different countries there is quite a surprising array of countries opposing them. I remember that when during World War II the Fascist government of Italy was overthrown and the Italians changed sides – we couldn’t bring ourselves to call them ‘allies’ – they were co-belligerents.  Perhaps we’ll have to use that expression again, though most of those concerned aren’t actually fighting yet.

            One that definitely is, is the army of President Assad in Syria.  We seem to have conveniently forgotten that Isis had its origins in Syria and was one of the groups that we were supporting in their efforts to topple President Assad.  The Syrian army is no doubt grateful that Isis has transferred its main attention to Iraq, but Isis definitely intends Syria to be part of its new Islamic Caliphate! 

Then, of course, there’s Iran.  It seems but yesterday that Iran was considered by ‘the west’ to be the centre of all evil in the Middle East.  'We' were quite sure they were  trying to make weapons of mass destruction (just as 'we' had been sure Saddam Hussein had been doing the same in Iraq!) and had to be stopped at all costs.  However Iran is now definitely keen to support Iraq’s Shia government against a Sunni invasion – and we’re welcoming that support.

Finally, Russia has supplied the Iraqi government with some second-hand jet fighter aircraft!   Who knows?  If Iraq has the trained pilots to fly them they could make the air strikes on Isis targets that Barak Obama is so reluctant to authorise, unnecessary.      

            What a muddle!  And most of it brought about by the interference of foreigners in the affairs of both Syria and Iraq.  I think it likely that if all those in Syria and Iraq who are not citizens of those benighted countries were to go home, the natives – those who haven’t yet either fled or been killed – would find a way of resolving their differences and living at peace with each other.

A footnote

Reviewing, in the Radio Times a tv programme about the 'Bay of Pigs' episode in 1961 that ended in total disaster, when the USA sponsored an armed attempt by Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and oust Fidel Castro, Gill Crawford quotes an unnamed US academic as saying: 'Every country has a right to figure out its own destiny......every time we intervene........we produce consequences that are ugly and resonate for generations'.

 If I may quote the Book of Common Prayer, I'd like every American President and every British Prime Minister, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest, that quotation.

The Idol with Feet of  Clay!

            A recent story-line in Holby City  BBC 1’s popular hospital ‘soap’ related to a terminally ill man in his nineties who came into Holby City Hospital accompanied by his granddaughter in her late twenties or early thirties.  She obviously loved him dearly and was very proud of his Polish origins and of the fact that, after coming to England in the immediate aftermath of World War II he had worked in the Fire Service, saving the lives of others at the risk of his own.  He was brave, loving, kind and generous. He was admired, not only by his grand-daughter, but by all who knew him.

            Except - that research revealed that he wasn’t Polish at all but German, and as a young man during World War I he had been a member of Hitler’s dreaded Waffen SS.  He had been a guard at a concentration camp, where he had been feared by all for his cruelty and disregard for human life.  At the end of the war he had stolen the identity of a dead Polish prisoner, in whose name he had come to England and found work in the Fire Service.  Neither his English wife nor his grand-daughter had known anything of his Nazi past and that he was, in fact, a still-wanted war criminal.

            I felt something like the shock and horror and – in the first instance – disbelief, that the grand-daughter felt on learning of her well-loved grandfather’s past, when I realized that Rolf Harris, a tv personality for whom I had felt warm and sincere admiration, had for decades been an abuser of any personable young girl who had the misfortune to make his acquaintance.

            Somehow, although I was shocked at the endless string of offences of which Jimmy Savile is  said to have been guilty, I really didn’t feel the same about him.  My early 20^th century sensibilities had been suspicious of his hairstyle and his very professional showbizzy manner.  Although I watched several of his ‘Jim’ll fix it’ programmes  and had felt admiration at his apparent working as a hospital porter, I wasn’t all that surprised when he was revealed as having been a predatory paedophile.

            I really had been taken in by Rolf Harris though. He was just as much part of the ‘showbiz’ scene as Jimmy Savile but somehow he always managed to give the impression of being an extremely gifted amateur.  And he certainly was gifted, both as an artist (he wouldn’t have had the opportunity of painting the Queen had he not been) and as an entertainer.  He gave hours of innocent pleasure to thousands of viewers and listeners and, like Jimmy Saville, did a great deal of work for thoroughly deserving charities. He had even played a leading role in a film warning children of the danger of paedophiles!

            All of that though counts as nothing compared with the now-revealed activities that have led to his downfall and exposure as an abuser of young women and girls.  I feel desperately sad and sorry for Rolf Harris’ victims, and for the thousands who have seen their idol shattered. Was Rolf Harris' prison sentence too lenient?  I reckon that he found his very public shame and disgrace, after years of adulation, a harsher punishment than any number of years in prison.  There's a couple of lines from Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol that may come to his mind:

All that we know who lie in gaol is that the walls are strong,

And every day is like a year - a year whose days are long!

Supporting Clacton’s Tourist Industry

          It isn’t very often that I find myself eye to eye with our MP, Mr Douglas Carswell – a right-wing, climate-change-denying Europhobe; a Crypto-Ukipper if there ever was one!  However I am right behind him in his support of a campaign for the reduction of VAT payable on such tourist-specific items as accommodation in hotels, guest houses and caravan sites and on, for instance, the attractions on Clacton Pier, from the current 20 percent to 5 percent.               

            I believe that the Chancellor could recover the cost of this from income tax – perhaps by making all ‘state benefits’ (including the Attendance Allowance I get because of my very limited mobility!) subject to that tax.  It is the nature of income tax that no-one is ever asked for more than they can afford to pay, whereas VAT hits the poorest the hardest and the very richest the least because, of course, the VAT on any purchased goods or services is a much smaller proportion of the income of the wealthy purchaser.

            Clacton-on-Sea does not attract the very wealthy.  In fact it attracts precisely those whom the government claims to support – the hardworking man or woman who can just afford to take his or her family for a seaside holiday on Britain’s sunny east coast but for whom a few extra pounds one way or the other make all the difference. 

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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 44 2013

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Our Grandchildren’s Legacy

            One of the most persuasive arguments that the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer use to justify their continuing assault on the finances of the poor and disabled and the services on which they depend, is that it would be grossly unfair of us to leave our grandchildren with a legacy of our debts that we have been too selfish to clear.  It’s a persuasive argument. None of us wants to be the cause of suffering or hardship to our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.   I doubt though if it has  satisfied those whose car has been damaged by a pothole in the road, who have tripped over a broken paving stone or who have found that they are no longer eligible for a financial benefit needed to keep their family warm and above starvation-level.  Our top politicians are also – or so I thought – quite keen on supporting British industry that will provide jobs for British workers and thus make up for some of the unemployment resulting from their cuts in the public services.

            That being so, I find it difficult to understand why they are quite so enthusiastic about a new nuclear power station that is to be built, at the cost of billions of pounds, by a French enterprise and financed by the Chinese!   It will, announced the Prime Minister, provide thousands of jobs and cost the British taxpayer nothing at all.  And that, he added with self-satisfaction, ‘must be a good thing’.

            The Chinese aren’t philanthropists and they are lending that money for the power plant’s construction just as surely as the financial institutions lend money to the government to allow it to carry out its functions.  They’ll want it back – with interest!  It may not cost us anything now as tax-payers but it certainly will cost our grandchildren and great-grandchildren as consumers.  Luckily for the government they won’t have votes in the next General Election!  The government has promised repayment by means  of electricity charges to domestic, commercial and industrial consumers at twice the rate at which those consumers are charged today – and goodness knows, many people, and many firms, are finding today’s prices crippling.  It’s true that some of that increase will be absorbed by general inflation by the time that power station is producing electricity – but wages and incomes (except for those of the very wealthy) aren’t keeping up with inflation now.  Why should we assume they’ll do so in the future?

            Debt will not, of course, be the only legacy left to our grandchildren and great grandchildren by this and other nuclear power stations.   The production of nuclear power leaves a toxic residue that remains lethal for hundreds of years and for which no-one has yet discovered a safe means of disposal or storage.

            I wrote fairly light-heartedly in this blog about ‘fracking’ a few weeks ago.  The real objection to its practice is not that it will despoil the countryside and possibly pollute water supplies but that it will encourage complacency in the face of the strongest evidence yet that accelerating climate change is taking place and that human activity is responsible for it.  Fracking, as well as being expensive and destroying the beauty of ‘England’s green and pleasant land’, produces fossil fuels that will hasten that climate change and delay our development of sufficient clean and renewable sources of energy sufficient to meet the UK’s needs.

           

            Nuclear power doesn’t produce greenhouse gases but it does have bulky by-products that remain lethal for centuries.  Nuclear power plants are also subject to damage by natural disasters, as we have seen recently in Japan where radio-active material from a ruined nuclear energy installation continues to pollute the Pacific Ocean.  Had anyone warned of that Japanese power plant’s potential vulnerability four years ago they would have been laughed at, just as those who in Britain warn about vulnerability to natural disaster and to terrorist action, are laughed at today.

            We need to press on with our harnessing of the power of the wind and the sun.  We need also to find effective ways of exploiting the power of the waves that crash onto our beaches and the foot of our cliffs all the year round.  The potential energy of wind, sun and waves does, as critics delight in pointing out, vary according to the weather and the season.    That of the tides that ebb and flow twice daily round our coasts and into and out of our estuaries is completely dependable.  Tidal power doesn’t pollute, needn’t deface the landscape and doesn’t produce a lethal by-product.  It has been harnessed and used in tide-mills for centuries. We need to use 21^st century technology to exploit for modern use this totally reliable, non-polluting and inexhaustible source of energy.

I have little doubt that if we invested half as much capital and effort into researching and developing those entirely benign and renewable sources of energy as we spend on manufacturing weapons of death and destruction, our grandchildren would have all the energy they needed, in safety and at prices they would be able to afford.

Late News - David Cameron has announced that he will 'roll back' the green taxes introduced to combat  climate change as they add too much to fuel bills.  Well, it's easier than confronting the energy supply companies and it should win a few votes for his Party.  Tough on those grandchildren and great grandchildren about whom he and the Chancellor were once so concerned.

A Prophecy Fulfilled!

How very rarely does the ability to say ‘I told you so!’ give the speaker any satisfaction whatsoever!

It must surely be obvious to any sane person that this dreadful civil war in Syria must be stopped. Thousands of innocent people have been killed.  Thousands more have been rendered homeless.  Much of the country has been reduced to ruin. The flood of refugees is overwhelming neighbouring countries.  Egypt and Libya, Muslim countries that might have been expected to welcome their fugitive co-religionists are simply moving then on – many to their deaths as they try to cross the Mediterranean Sea in cockle-shell boats. The religious tolerance that was once a hallmark of the Syrian regime has been replaced by sectarian strife, intolerance and persecution of people of minority religious traditions. Christians, who before the civil war had lived in peace beside their Muslim neighbours have been particularly targeted by the very rebels whom our government is supporting. 

 Backing either one side or the other in an attempt to force an end to conflict by bringing one of the combatants to victory is as stupid as it is wicked!  The fact is that both sides have shown total contempt for human life. Both sides are culpable.   The only possible end to the conflict must surely lie in negotiations in which all concerned are prepared to compromise to restore the country to peace and allow Syrians – free from any foreign interference – to heal their wounds, bury their dead and rebuild their shattered country.

Just such an international conference has been planned for next month.  I prophesied in this blog that I thought it likely that Russia would be able to persuade the Syrian Government to attend in a spirit of compromise.  Our government's ability to persuade the rebels (a hotchpotch of liberal idealists, fanatical Muslim jihadists and known democracy-hating terrorists, many of them foreigners with no previous   association whatsoever with Syria) to send representatives ready to compromise and authorised to negotiate, would be another matter!

So it has proved.  The Syrian Government is prepared to attend the international conference with no preconditions.  By promising that President Assad would play no part in any future Syrian Government (I'd have thought that that was a decision that the Syrian people might have been allowed to decide in the ballot box?) our Foreign Secretary William Hague has persuaded some of the rebels to send representatives.  Others though, notably members and supporters of Al Qaida, are interested only in total victory no matter how many innocents are slaughtered to achieve it. If, miraculously, a compromise is reached and a new peaceful Syria emerges, I have little doubt that supporters of Al Qaida will continue their war of terrorism to try to undermine and destroy it.

Just one good thing does appear to be emerging from this appalling conflict.  The Head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, believes that the surrender and destruction of Syria’s stock-pile of chemical weapons will mean that the organisation’s objective;  a world free of these terrible means of killing fellow human beings, can and will be achieved in his lifetime.

If that is possible – then why should it not be possible to make progress towards achieving a world free of those even-more-terrible nuclear weapons?  At the moment we in the UK live in one of seven countries (but officially only six!) that possess these dreadful weapons of mass destruction. Do we really imagine that the citizens of for instance, Canada, Germany, Sweden and Japan sleep any less easily in their beds than we do because they don’t possess these so-called ultimate deterrents?  I hope, again for the sake of our grandchildren and great grandchildren, that it doesn’t take their use in some future conflict to persuade the world’s governments of the importance and urgency of banishing them for ever from our planet.

  Is the UK betraying Europe – for the CIA?         

The UK Government's deafening silence amid a chorus of indignation about the bugging of the phones of European leaders, while David Cameron reserves his condemnation for those who have revealed this practice, gives credence to the accusation that Britain's GCHQ has been assisting in the CIA's clandestine activities.  Imagine the outrage there would be if it were revealed that agents from 'Brussels' were listening in to the private conversations of David Cameron, George Osborne and William Hague!  How do we know that the CIA isn’t doing just that?  ‘We’ve been given assurances……. I’ve no doubt that if Angela Merkel had enquired six months ago, she’d have been given the same assurances.  There’s no honour among thieves or among spies  and not very much it seems, among politicians!

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Week 42 2013

Tendring Topics……on line

Syria – a Glimmer of Hope.

            Greek mythology has it that when Pandora opened the forbidden box (rather as, in Hebrew mythology, Eve ate the forbidden fruit) all the evils of the world escaped to plague mankind – greed, cruelty, hatred, death, famine and disease.   Right at the end, when the box had seemed to be empty, came hope – and, in the face of every disaster, hope has remained with humankind ever since.

            The Middle East and in particular Syria has had a surfeit of all those evils during the past two years.  Armed rebellion against the regime of President Assad, and the resistance to it of forces loyal to the President, have brought death and destruction on an unprecedented scale to that unhappy country.  Thousands have been killed or mutilated, thousands more – refugees from death and violence - have been rendered homeless and have sought shelter either in their own or neighbouring countries.  The situation has been made worse by foreign interference.  Britain, France and the USA have joined Saudi Arabia and other Arabian Peninsula states (unlikely champions of freedom, tolerance and democracy!) in supporting the rebels, while Russia and Iran support the Syrian government.  Surely non-one can possibly imagine that ‘victory’ for either side can justify the carnage and destruction of this Civil War made even worse by the use of chemical weapon attacks, for which both sides claim their opponents were responsible.

            The glimmer of hope appeared when, after a particularly appalling chemical weapons attack the USA, convinced that the Syrian Government had been responsible, threatened missile strikes on government targets.  The Syrian Government declared that they were not responsible for that outrage, but that they were prepared to surrender all their chemical weapons to the United Nations for destruction.  There was considerable scepticism in London and Washington about the genuineness of this offer – and anger from the rebels and their Arab (Sunni Muslim) allies who had hoped that missile strikes from the U.S. would give them a decisive advantage.

            But, confounding the sceptics, the Syrian government has given the United Nations’ inspectors all the access they demanded, and destruction of these dreadful weapons has begun.  The civil war with conventional weapons (and heaven knows they are terrible enough!) rages on, but the Russian Government is urging that both sides should be brought together at a Peace Conference to be held in November.

            There surely lies at least the hope of peace.  I have little doubt that the Russian Government will be able to coerce the Syrian Government into attending the Conference prepared to compromise, but will the rebels be ready to do the same?   They consist of a number of quite separate groups sometimes (so it is reported) fighting among themselves and with quite different objectives. Those enjoying the support of ‘the west’ believe they are fighting for a new democratic and tolerant secular state in which Sunni and Shia Muslims will live at peace with each other and with Christians.  It seems quite likely that they would be prepared to compromise to reach agreement with the Government in the interest of peace and reconciliation.

 How about the fervent jihadists, some of them members or supporters of Al Qaida? They are determined to turn Syria into their own kind of Muslim state enforcing their interpretation of Sharia law and tolerating neither ‘infidels’ nor Muslims of other traditions.  These are the people who massacred the Pakistani Christians in Peshawa; who shot sixteen year old Malala, the heroic Pakistani girl who campaigned for girls’ education; who punish ‘unchaste’ women by burying them to their waists and then throwing stones at them until a merciful death releases them. 

They may be in a minority among the rebels but I fear that because of their determination, their conviction that God is on their side, and their willingness to die (and to kill!) for their cause, their will is likely to prevail.  I wish I could imagine them reaching a compromise agreement with the Syrian government – and keeping it!

We can only hope – and pray.  The God revealed to us in Jesus Christ loves all his human children – Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists; even those who deny his existence.  I believe though that there may be just one human action, the ultimate blasphemy, that always provokes God’s wrath.  That is deliberately harming a fellow human being – and claiming that it is being done in his service!

             ‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways’

                                                  John Greenleaf Whittier, 19^th Century American Poet and Quaker

A 21^st Century Heroine

          Mention of Pakistani teenager Malala above reminded me of the thought-provoking Panorama programme on BBC tv on Monday evening 7^th October, in which she and her family were interviewed about the attempted assassination that brought her to the front pages of the world’s press – and, thanks to British surgery, her almost miraculous recovery.

            I presume that English is not Malala’s first language yet this unassuming sixteen-year-old spoke fluently and eloquently in English of her campaign, in defiance of death threats, to be educated herself and to achieve education for girls world-wide.  To silence her, a Taliban assassin had boarded a school bus and shot her twice in the head.  Thanks to the fact that she had been immediately rushed to her local hospital and thence to Britain for extensive surgery she had lived to tell the tale.  Now, with the full support of her family, she  is determined to continue her campaign for girls to have the same right as boys to a proper education.

What a contrast between this Pakistani teenager who fought, and is fighting, against tremendous odds, for education for herself and others and the many British children who have to be bribed (sorry ‘offered incentives’) to get to school regularly, who do not value education for themselves and who, by disruptive behaviour, do their best to deny it to others!

Just the day after that Panorama programme we learned that a world-wide survey of standards of literacy and numeracy among young people between the ages of 16 and 24 had revealed that British young people within that age-group had come near the bottom!  How sad it is that oldies like me are not greatly surprised.

A Glad Farewell to Party Conferences

          I am glad that the political party conferences are over.  I find listening to top politicians, whichever party they support, is a depressing experience. One regular blog reader who emailed me after the Conservative Conference seemed even more angry than I was – perhaps he had paid more attention than me!

            ‘I really don’t think even Mrs Thatcher so skilfully turned public opinion against one minority after another, blaming each for our economic woes.  It has been the migrants, the not-so-disabled, the subsidised tenants, the ones with subsidised bedrooms, and now the 200,000 ‘life style choice’ claimants who have been unemployed for more than 2 years.  And each pronouncement has been lapped up by a willing public and press eager to find someone else to blame.  No attempt to explain how any of these issues could possibly have caused the economic crisis.  It is really easy to see how easily Hitler was able to use the same tactics to turn a nation against the Jews!  And there were the pre-conference announcements that “we don’t need to be at the forefront of green energy, and it is adding too much to fuel bills and – we are minded to block all future land wind farms” (which are actually the cheapest form of green energy), on the very day that the worlds scientific community warned of the consequences of climate change.

I felt that the Conferences of all three main parties reinforced my conviction that they really all have the same policy –  to get elected at all costs and to remain in office as long as they can persuade a gullible electorate to let them. Gone are the days of conviction politics – when political parties had fairly clearly defined final objectives and devoted their efforts to persuading the public that those objectives were desirable and attainable, and that they were the ones who could achieve them.  Nowadays not even the Mail and the Express ever refer to the Labour Party as Socialists.  Nor can the Conservatives claim to be ‘conservative’. Mrs Thatcher’s governments made more revolutionary changes to the British way of life than any of her predecessors or successors.  It was under her governments that we lost our manufacturing base and became reliant on ‘service industries’ (money lending, share juggling and the like), and the policy of wholesale privatisation began. Our efforts were to become directed towards satisfying the shareholders rather than serving the public.

An exception is sadly the one Party whose policies I believe to be totally mischievous and, if they were implemented, disastrous. UKIP has one principal aim; to get the UK out of the European Union.  It is obvious to me that the United Kingdom, on its own, cannot hope to compete or to co-operate effectively with other world political or economic blocs.  As an active part of a more closely integrated European Union we could do either or both.  Europe is the biggest recipient of our exports.  We are Europeans – geographically, historically and culturally.  Of course the EU is imperfect – but its imperfections are largely due to the determination of individual states to pursue their own short-term interests rather than those of Europe as a whole.  The EU is not some alien and hostile state.  We are an important part of it. We have helped to create it and make it what it is. We, if we summon the will to do so, can perfect it.  For all our sakes I pray that we will not fall for the Neo-Fascist nationalist charms of Nigel Farage and his disciples.  Their policies, including that of a rapid exit from Europe, are simply those of the ‘raving right’ of the Conservative Party.  If that is really what we want, I am glad that at 92 I am unlikely to have to live under the UKIP/Conservative coalition government that I can see on the not-so-distant horizon..

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