Week 39 2013

Tendring Topics……….on line

The Kindness of Strangers

          The newspapers and the radio and tv news bulletins are full of stories of human folly and wickedness; of senseless slaughter in the Middle East (can either side of the conflict in Syria really believe that any possible ending will be worth the death, destruction and human misery that is taking place daily in that unhappy country?) of robbery, fraud, neglect and abuse of children and of the old and disabled. They record the triumph of selfishness and greed. It is easy for very old people like me to despair of humanity and to fear the future; not for ourselves but for our grandchildren and their grandchildren.

            I try to tell myself that it is the exception that makes the news; that the time to get really worried is when acts of kindness and generosity are so rare that they make the headlines in the press and the ‘lead story’ on the tv news bulletins. Just occasionally though, something happens that makes me realize that, despite the gloomy headlines and the news stories of violence, cruelty and greed, most people are not a bit like that.  They’re kind and helpful and generous.  They really do try to treat other people as they themselves would like to be treated. .

            I had such a moment on Monday of last week.  I had written a letter to a friend of mine in Brussels.  There were a couple of enclosures to go with it and I had no idea what it would cost to send.  The days when I could stroll along to the Post Office are long past.  Supported by my stick I took the half dozen steps to my shed, mounted my mobility scooter (my ‘Iron Horse’!) and drove the few hundred yards from my home to Magdalene Green Post Office.  There I dismounted, retrieved my stick from its holster and stepped inside.  I had forgotten that Monday was ‘benefits day’.   There was a queue.  I took my place and slowly shuffled forward.  The queue was being dealt with very efficiently and I don’t suppose that I had queued for longer than fifteen minutes before I realized that I had stood for as long as I was able to. I had to sit down or collapse! There was a chair nearby and three people ahead of me in the queue; a youngish woman with a toddler, a middle-aged man with several parcels and an elderly lady who was, I thought, probably drawing her pension.  I told them that I wasn’t trying to jump the queue but would they mind if I sat in the chair until it was my turn to be served? They agreed and I thought it likely that I’d have about another ten or fifteen minutes to wait.

I was totally astonished when the counter clerk became available and called for the next customer.  All three of those who were before me in the queue urged me to take their place and go first. My business at the counter took no more than two minutes. It had been a spontaneous act of kindness and thoughtfulness towards an old man with walking stick whom none of them knew – but it really was deeply appreciated.   There were tears in my eyes as I thanked them for their kindness.

We humans aren’t just half-trained animals, motivated only by greed and self-interest as politicians seem to imagine.   There really is – as we Quakers maintain – a divine spark deep within the personality of each one of us, just waiting to be transformed into a warm, friendly and generous flame.

‘Out of the Tax system?’

I don’t grudge Nick Clegg his minor triumph over the provision of free school meals for all children in the first three classes of primary schools.

It was only to be expected that some would complain about having to help pay to feed other people’s kids – many of those other people being much better off than they are.  Young people, struggling to bring up a family, might equally complain about having to pay for the benefits enjoyed by well-off pensioners.  I can see the difficulties and injustices that would arise if every benefit were to be means-tested.  Pride would prevent some needy folk from applying.  Poor children getting free school meals would be stigmatised by their fellows. Children can be cruel to each other. But there is one ‘means test’ to which we are all subjected – our income tax assessment.  The state retirement pension is taxable. Those pensioners who, like me, have a supplementary pension from former employment, or some other source of income, know that the state retirement pension is added to it and becomes taxable income.

I can see no reason why all universal benefits – children’s allowance, job seekers’ allowance, winter fuel allowance, free tv licence, housing benefit, attendance allowance and so on, should not be similarly taxable.  The really poor would continue to get their full benefit.  The better off would pay back some of it in tax and the really wealthy would pay the highest rate of tax on it.  Even with our tax system as it is at present it would bring some welcome cash back into the Treasury (to help with that deficit!)  It would be fairer than the current system and no-one would suffer real hardship. Income tax has never yet made anyone hungry or homeless. I am surprised that this idea hasn’t already been embraced by our cash-hungry chancellor.

If, of course, the income tax system were to be reformed so that we all – rich and poor alike – paid an equal percentage of our gross income (before thousands are siphoned off into charitable trusts, tax havens and the like!) as income tax or – as I prefer to think of it – as our annual membership fee for British citizenship, the system would be fairer still.  What’s more, I believe that the indirect taxes (VAT, customs duties and so on) that disproportionately penalise the less-well-off could be reduced or even eliminated.  

I very much deplore Nick Clegg’s claiming that the coalition government has benefited low earners by raising the level of income at which income tax becomes payable ‘and taking millions out of the tax system altogether!’ This perpetuates - or tries to perpetuate – the myth, fostered by much of the press, that the only really burdensome tax is income tax.  It divides society into two antagonistic classes – the taxpayers, whose hard work and enterprise keep a parasitic underclass of non-taxpayers in comfort and, in many cases so they claim, in idleness.

Raising the level at which income tax is payable is often presented as helping only the very poorest in society. It isn’t. Raising that level affects and benefits every income tax payer from those who only just become liable for income tax, to the seriously wealthy with an income (I hesitate to say ‘earnings’!) of a million pounds or more a year.  Nor is it true that those who are not liable for income tax pay no taxes to the government.  Since the Thatcher years there has been a shift from direct taxation (income tax, death duties and so on) to indirect taxes such as VAT and customs duties.  The tax is the same for rich and poor alike but the VAT payable on, for instance, a repair to the family car or essential maintenance to the home, makes a far greater dent in the budget of someone with a low income than it does on those of the wealthy.

There’s one source of revenue for the government that comes almost exclusively from the poor.  That is the quite small amount that goes with the purchase of every lottery ticket and every scratch card.  Lots and lots of tiny payments come to a very considerable sum of money.  Even the very poor feel able, as I once heard a Government Minister put it, ‘to have fun on the lottery’.  It is their one, albeit very very remote, chance of gaining a fortune and escaping from grinding poverty.  You’ll look in vain for stockbrokers, merchant bankers or payday money lenders in the queue for lottery tickets and scratch cards.  They prefer to gamble much more profitably and preferably with other people’s money, on the stock exchange!

I wait, probably in vain, for one of the political parties to include in their programme the reform of the income tax system to ensure that every adult citizen, rich and poor alike, pays the same percentage of his of her income to the Inland Revenue as their annual  membership fee as British citizens.  This reform would be the first step towards narrowing the vast gap that at present exists between the incomes of the very rich and the very poor and the transformation of the United Kingdom into a United Common Wealth in the future of which every citizen would have a stake and a responsibility.

'I shall not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,

Till I have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land'.

Lord Hanningfield’s Legacy

          When the Police decided to take no other action with regard to Lord Hanningfield’s use of his County Council credit card to spend nearly £300,000 on business trips abroad, expensive meals and hospitality, I commented in this blog that there must have been sighs of relief from some of his colleagues at County Hall. .  Certainly his downfall seems to have heralded a new era of thrift there.

            The daily Gazette reports that Ms. Joanna Killian, the County Council’s Chief Executive appointed in 2006, spent £4,700 on her County Council credit card including a team-building exercise for five members of the council’s staff that included a trip to Colchester Zoo, various expenses during a weeklong trip to Jamestown, Virginia where she and a number of councillors took part in their 400^th anniversary celebrations.  These included ‘a meal for 23 at the Old Original Bookbinders Restaurant that set taxpayers back £1,152.16 and a four-night stay for seven at Jamestown’s Berkeley Hotel that cost £3,436.59’   The purpose of the transatlantic excursion was to ‘create new trade and business links between Essex and Virginia’ ;. and did it, I wonder?   For Christmas 2007 Ms Killian paid Kingsmead Publications £331.35 for personalised corporate Christmas cards.

            That was then.  Now, we have a somewhat different story.  Since 2010 Ms Killian has used the card only seven times – six times for train journeys and once for the renewal of a subscription to the Local Government Chronicle. In 2011 her expenses amounted to just £259.   It seems that we have at least something for which to be grateful for Lord Hanningfield’s example!

Week 9 2113

Tendring Topics......on line

‘Arms and the Man’

            That is the title of one of George Bernard Shaw’s more light-hearted plays, but ‘the arms’ that I have in mind are the weapons of death that, even as I write, are killing men, women and children in Syria and elsewhere and during the past century have killed millions of men, women and children world-wide.  ‘The man’ is our Prime Minister, David Cameron.

            He has recently been in India, furthering trade with that rapidly growing potential consumer of the products of British industry.  It was his second visit there in the past three years, his earlier one having been in July 2010.  Since then he has paid similar visits to Egypt and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia (on two occasions), Indonesia, Japan, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Brazil, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

            Furthering British trade relations is obviously a very worthy activity though some may wonder if affairs at home in Britain are really running so smoothly that our Prime Minister can afford frequent absences on trade missions.  What is concerning is the fact that much of the commercial activity that he is so eager to promote is that of the arms trade – a trade that many of us regard as being as undesirable as the slave trade and that, like the slave trade, is destined to become  one of the darker aspects of our nation’s history.  This interest of the Prime Minister was noted particularly during the ‘Arab spring’ when he toured the Middle East in the company of arms salesmen who regarded the turmoil in the region as a unique sales opportunity.  How those salesmen must have rejoiced earlier at the bloody break-up of the former Jugoslavia.  Quite apart from the deadly weapons required at the time, its outcome was the creation of five potential customers instead of just one!

            Howard Wheeldon, Director of Policy for ADS, a ‘defence’ trade organisation is reported as saying, ‘The PM has done a fantastic job.   He has picked up the value of defence to the national economy.  Other PMs haven’t necessarily’.  No doubt; but the promotion of arms sales surely can’t have a very high priority on the Prime Minister’s ‘job description’.

            In fact, the British arms trade does very well by global standards.  The USA is the world’s biggest arms exporter with 35 percent of the market share.  The UK comes next with a 15 percent share, narrowly in front of both Russia and France. It is not a statistic in which I take any pride.

            It may be argued that every country has a right to self-defence.  Trouble arises only when weapons fall into the wrong hands.  Much the same argument has been put forward in the USA about gun control.  ‘The only way to foil the activities of  bad guys with guns is to make sure that the good guys are well armed’.

 Internationally, how do we tell the ‘good guys’ from the bad?  And how do we ensure that they remain ‘good? I am sure that when the French sold Exocet Missiles to the Argentineans they hadn’t intended them to be used against the British in the Falklands.  When the USA and the UK covertly armed the Mojihadin in Afghanistan to support them in their guerrilla war against the USSR they hadn’t intended to put weapons into the hands of those who, a few decades later, would be using them to kill British and American troops.  It would surprise me if British made weapons are not being used by both sides in the current bloody conflict in Syria.

            I look forward to the day when the success of the arms trade is a distant memory and we are better known for our tractors, our dams, our bridges and our medical and surgical expertise than for our tanks and guns, our bombers, our jet fighters and our death-dealing missiles.

An elderly ‘Essex boy’!

          It might have been thought that someone who had had to serve only nine weeks of a nine months sentence for serious fraud, and had heard that there was to be no further investigation into his expensive activities as former Leader of Essex County Council, would have thanked his lucky stars for his good fortune and have kept a very low profile, at least for a year or two.

           

But that was not Lord Hanningfield’s way.  He sued Essex Police for wrongful arrest and trespass and has been awarded £3,500 in damages. Only a month or two ago we had learned that, as the fraud for which he had been convicted had been much greater than had originally been realized, he would have to pay back a further £37.000 under the Proceeds of Crime Act, or return to gaol for a further term.  We were told at the time that as he was by no means a wealthy man this might compel him  to sell his bungalow and ‘take up the tenancy of a Council House’. (Did he really imagine he'd qualify for one?)   Under the circumstances he might have been expected to add that £3,500 to his meagre savings, but not so.  He is ‘still working to raise that £37,000’ and is donating the £3,500 to a cancer charity!

            Lord Hanningfield (who was plain Paul White, an Essex pig farmer, before Tony Blair arranged for him to be ennobled on Margaret Thatcher’s recommendation) says that one chapter of his life is now over and he wants to get on serving the people of Essex.  ‘I’ll mainly be working in the House of Lords and I’m already taking up some issues’.

            How strange that the government and members of the House of Commons should be so strongly opposed to convicted criminals being permitted to vote in elections for those who make our laws – but are apparently quite happy for a convicted criminal, who has not yet ‘paid his debt to Society’ (he still owes us £37,000 or a further spell in gaol!) and as far as I know has uttered not a single word of apology or contrition, to play a part in the House of Lords in making those laws!

            We used to hear a great deal about ‘Essex girls’ and their characteristics.  Lord Hanningfield is surely an elderly ‘Essex boy’ to match any of them!

           

              The Assassins

          It is said that at the beginning of the Battle of Waterloo it was reported to the Duke of Wellington that the commander of one of the British cannon had Napoleon himself squarely in his sights.   Should he give the order to fire?  ‘Certainly not’, replied Wellington, ‘We are soldiers – not assassins’.  Yet had he given the order to fire it is at least possible that thousands of British and French lives would have been spared.

            That, I suppose, is always the justification advanced for assassination.  A particular individual is the enemy of the State/the Party/Democracy/the Faith/ the Revolution, or whatever else is considered most important at that time and in that place.  The violent erasure of just one life, it may be claimed, would save thousands of others.  In the nineteenth century a Russian nobleman said of his country that its system of government was ‘despotism tempered by assassination’.

            The present Russian government may well have been responsible for the assassination in London in 2006 of Alexander Litvinenko, a former member of the KGB and of its successor, who had defected to MI6, becoming a double agent working for British Intelligence. It wouldn’t be particularly surprising if he were regarded as a threat to his former employers (much as Burgess and Maclean, who defected to Russia, were regarded in Britain) and orders given for his elimination.  It was an assassination that has soured Anglo-Russian relations to this day.

            British-Israeli relations were similarly soured by the assassination of Mahmoud al Mabhooh, a Hamas activist, in Dubai in 2010 by agents of Mossad, the Israeli Secret Service.  The assassins used forged British passports to get near to their victim, again provoking British official condemnation.  Such assassinations, we may think, are the sort of conduct that we expect from Russians and folk from the Middle East – but are far below the standard of the United Kingdom and our allies.

            But are they? Whoever murdered Alexander Litvinenko and those who murdered Mahmoud al Mabhooh at least put their own lives at risk and in danger when they carried out their criminal actions.   We can hardly say the same about those in the USA who control drones (unmanned aircraft) to fly over enemy – or sometimes nominally allied – countries, seeking out individuals considered to be a threat to the USA as targets for the launch of their death-dealing missiles.  ‘Smart’ as these drones and their deadly cargo undoubtedly are, they are not quite smart enough to distinguish between individual friends and foes. From 2006 to 2009 between 750 and 1,000 people were assassinated by drones in Pakistan, of whom it is reckoned that 66 to 68 percent were Taliban activists and between 31 and 33 percent innocent civilians.

            I understand that the UK also uses drones but that, at present, their use is restricted to military targets in Afghanistan.  We do, of course, support the activities of our American allies.   There was a time, not so very long ago, when American courts refused to extradite suspected, and in some cases tried and sentenced, IRA murderers to the UK.  There’s no doubt what the American reaction would have been had we then sent drones to pick out and ‘neutralise’ those enemies of our country and its people - especially if a few innocent American civilian deaths occurred as ‘collateral damage!'    Do not do unto others what you would hate them - or anyone else - to do unto you!

           

           

             

            

Week 47 2012

Tendring Topics.....on line

Taking a Sledgehammer (if not a Pile-driver!) to crack a nut!

   Last week, a headline of the local Daily Gazette read ‘Use too many black bags and you risk a visit from the recycling snoopers’.  

            In fact there’s no such risk just yet, but the Gazette reports that, ‘From early next year, waste collectors in Colchester will begin using a new hi-tech computer system to log how much waste is left out for them.  Householders repeatedly caught leaving out too much trash in black sacks will get a visit from council wardens to ‘educate’ them on recycling.  Those wardens will go through the household’s black sacks and explain which items could be recycled instead of going into landfill.

            ‘The hope is’, Matthew Young, Head of Waste Services, says, ‘that we educate people and, collectively, the amount of waste going to landfill is cut massively’.

            I applaud Colchester Council’s aims but I can’t help feeling that they could have achieved their objectives much more easily without all the hi-tech computer activities, without having to rummage through other people’s refuse, and without kindergarten style lessons to householders on what can and cannot be recycled.  All of that seems to me like using the latest third-millennium technology plus the techniques of a seedy ‘private eye’ to teach grandmothers how to suck eggs!

            I don’t suppose that the residents of Colchester Borough are markedly different from those of our own neighbouring Tendring District and, in particular, my own town of Clacton-on-Sea.  Driving, cycling or, in my case, mobility-scootering round Clacton’s residential streets on refuse and salvage collection day will reveal a number of households where the Council’s requirements are fulfilled to the letter.  On the boundary of the property will be a black sack containing non-recyclable land-fill waste and a smallish green plastic box with food waste for recycling. These are collected weekly.  There will also be either a larger green plastic box containing plastic bottles and metal food cans, or a red box containing cardboard and paper waste.  These are collected on alternate weeks. Each householder has been supplied with a chart showing which box is to be put out on each particular week.

            There will be a number of properties where there isn’t a red or a green box, either large or small, in sight.  There will though be up to as many as half a dozen filled black plastic bags put out for collection for landfill.  These are the homes of those who don’t co-operate with the council’s scheme, have never done so, and probably have no intention of ever doing so.  It doesn’t take hi-tech equipment to discover them and there really is no point in opening any of those back plastic bags and pointing out which items could have been put out for recycling.  The vast majority of non-co-operating householders know perfectly well what can and what cannot be recycled.  They simply won’t, or perhaps can’t, sort them out, put them in the appropriate box and take them to the boundary of their property on collection day.  It’s far simpler and easier just to put everything in black plastic bags. If the council supplies only one bag for each week, they can buy some more from the nearest supermarket.  They’re not expensive.

            An official should call on each one of those householders and find out why they are not co-operating with the council’s salvage collection scheme.  Some may have a perfectly valid reason.  Sorting out what is salvageable and what isn’t, putting it into the appropriate container and taking the correct filled containers to the property boundary each week will be beyond the capabilities of many elderly or frail people – and our Essex Sunshine Coast has a great number of these.  I am one of them!  By the time I have got the plastic sack and appropriate boxes ready for collection, I am exhausted and incapable of conveying them the few dozen yards to the end of my drive-way. A kind neighbour does so for me.  Not every one is so fortunate.

            Others may find that holding down a job, looking after a home and perhaps bringing up several children, leaves them with neither the time nor the energy to undertake an extra task.  Sorting out the refuse and salvage and taking it to the property boundary would, in their case, be the final straw that would break the camel’s back!  The Council may be able to help some of them by, for instance, arranging for the refuse to be collected from outside the back door instead of the front gate.

            It is those who could co-operate but choose not to on whom local councils should concentrate their efforts, first by persuasion and, if that fails, by rewarding those who co-operate and penalising the others.  Now that, despite talk about empowering local communities, local authorities have become little more than agents of central government, their ability either ‘to wield the stick or offer the carrot’ is probably extremely limited.  Nevertheless, that path – rather than by the hi-tech plus patronising educational efforts being attempted in Colchester – is the only one that can hope to bring the proportion of recyclables to that of land-fill to an acceptable level.

Another ‘Time Traveller’ finds himself in trouble!

          I sometimes feel that I am a kind of Time Traveller, a cheap ‘economy version’ of Dr. Who.  I am a mid-twentieth century man, with mid-twentieth century attitudes and a mid-twentieth century vocabulary, who finds himself in the twenty-first century and sometimes gets into trouble as a result.  As L.P. Hartley says in the first sentence of his novel The Go-Between, ‘The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there’.

            It seems that I am not alone. Tendring Councillor Michael Talbot, the respected leader of the Independent Group on Tendring District Council (although I think several decades younger than me) appears to be a fellow time-traveller. He has got himself into serious trouble by using a phrase that was common enough in the time of my youth, and presumably in his, but is totally taboo in 2012

In a public meeting Mr Talbot used the phrase ‘the n……….in the woodpile’ and thus provoked shock and horror among his fellow councillors and some council officials.  He realized at once that what he had said was unacceptable and apologised to the Meeting, saying ‘It’s an old-fashioned term and I put it down to my age that I used it at all.  I understand that it has caused offence and apologise to all members of the Council for this slip on my part’.

The Daily Gazette explains that the offensive phrase was a figure of speech meaning, ‘a fact of importance that is not disclosed’.  It in fact a phrase that had its origins in the USA and has the wider meaning of an unexpected and usually unpleasant surprise concealed among otherwise harmless or beneficial material. It is similar in meaning to ‘the fly in the ointment’ or ‘the spanner in the works’. I can well understand that it is a phrase that would cause deep offence to black people, but in the 1920s and ‘30s many of us had never met or even seen a black person (I never had until I joined the army) so we used the phrase casually, totally unaware of its offensive and hurtful potential.

Following his immediate verbal apology Mr Talbot sent an email to his fellow-councillors apologising even more profusely for having used ‘what is a quite unacceptable expression regarded as being racist, in the conduct of a public meeting’.

It seems that these apologies were not really enough for Council Leader Neil Stock who had chaired the Meeting.  Calling for Mr Talbot to resign his leadership of the Independent Group he declared that the use of the phrase had left him ‘genuinely stunned’ and said that after the Meeting a Senior Council Officer had remarked that if Tendring had been a London Borough the use of the phrase ‘would not simply have been a matter for the conduct committee, it would have resulted in a full-scale police investigation’. If that is so then we certainly do need Commissioners to make sure that Police get their priorities right!   It seems that, as in my day, there are always a few officials eager to tell influential councillors what they think they would like to hear!

I suppose that Mr Stock’s professed shock and horror couldn’t have had anything to do with Mr Talbot’s earlier criticism of the oafish behaviour of the council’s finance supremo Councillor Peter Halliday whom Neil Stock is supporting as Council Leader when he leaves that post shortly?

‘In days of old, when knights were bold……

            The bad, bold barons of those days could – and did – get away with murder!   Things are different now but one local life-baron does seem to have got away very lightly with some pretty reprehensible activities.

            I have been strongly critical of Lord Hanningfield ever since I started to write Tendring Topics….on line, four years ago.  He was then political leader of the Essex County Council.  I thought that he was pompous, self-important, publicity seeking, always ready to accept graciously any praise accorded to the county council, while hurriedly passing on to someone else any criticism of any of its services, such as – for instance – its failing child protection service. He was always floating brilliant ground-breaking ideas that made headlines in the press but were either wildly expensive, ineffective or unwanted.

            There was the wonderful Essex Bank, for instance, that was going to offer quick and easy finance to Essex businesses.  It turned out to be less helpful than the ordinary commercial banks and was clearly unwanted.  There was the Essex County Council branch office in mainland China that was going to bring vast export orders to Essex firms.   Whatever happened to that, I wonder?  There was the ‘Essex jobs for Essex men and women’ campaign, urging potential employers to employ local staff.  That was followed by the Essex County Council, at Lord Hanningfield’s initiative, outsourcing its IT services to an international enterprise. Its HQ was not only not in Essex but not in the UK!  Members of The County Council’s existing IT staff lost their jobs. Then there was the conference he called of other highway authorities (Essex leads the way!) on combating the effects of hard winters.   The following winter Essex was the very first highway authority to run out of grit and salt!

            It was obvious to me too, that he had a taste for international travel at the tax-payers’ expense.  There was an event in Harwich, Massachusetts to which our Harwich Town Council sent representatives (at economy travel and accommodation rates!).   The County Council, quite unnecessarily, also sent a delegation, headed by Lord Hanningfield.  Its purpose was to encourage businesses in the USA to buy from Essex firms.   They did not travel by the cheapest means and use the most economical accommodation.  Did they bring back any orders?  I never heard of any.  He made similar journeys to China (for the Olympics!), Hong Kong, India, and the West Indies.  All of course were at our expense.

            All this time Lord Hanningfield was attending the House of Lords as a member, and it was in this capacity that Nemesis caught up with him!  In May, 2011 he was prosecuted and found guilty of fiddling his House of Lords expenses to the extent of £14,000 (it was subsequently discovered to be much more than that!) and was sentenced to nine months in gaol.   It was a light sentence and for reasons that have never been made clear, he served only a small part of it.   Shortly after discharge he was re-arrested on suspicion of fiddling his County Council expenses too and released under police bail.  Just last week we learned that no further action was to be taken by the police because of ‘lack of evidence’.  This did mean that all the evidence supplied by Essex County Council was returned to them.  They promptly published details of purchases made on Lord Hanningdale’s corporate credit card, and paid for by the county council, during the last five years of his Lordship’s nine year reign as Leader of the County Council.

            During those five years he spent £286,938 on that credit card – on flights round the world, on luxury hotels and on hospitality in the House of Lords and elsewhere. It was also revealed that the County Council employs three chauffeurs working up to 97 hours a week.   They were often employed to convey the peer to and from his home to the House of Lords!   There was, it appears, no firm policy on the proper use of the chauffeurs and it is difficult, if not impossible, to work out which travel expenses were allowable – and which were not.

            Lord Hanningfield was not the only guilty one.  Senior officers and fellow-councillors must certainly have known of his profligacy – and done nothing about it.  Others took advantage of his generous hospitality (at our expense!).  They must surely bear a share of the guilt.

            I’m not surprised that the present leader of the County Council now wants closure on the past and concentration on the present and future!

           

         

   

  

           

           

           

              

           

  

Week No 41 2012

Tendring Topics........on line

‘He hath put down the mighty from their seat………’

            It might have been thought that we had seen and heard the last of Lord Hanningfield.   After almost a decade served as leader of Essex County Council he was discovered to have been fiddling his expenses as a member of the House of Lords, claiming expenses for overnight stays in London when actually he had been driven to his home in West Hanningfield by his Essex County Council funded car and driver!  On one occasion he claimed for an overnight stay in London when he was actually on a flight to India at County Council expense!  In 2011 he was found guilty of having stolen £13,379 by fraud and received the very lenient sentence of nine months in prison – the lowest sentence of any imposed as a result of the Parliamentary expenses scandal.  Alone of those convicted of fraud during that investigation, he showed no contrition and, while not contesting the facts, clearly considered himself to be innocent. ‘I did just the same as hundreds of other Peers’, he claimed.

            Extremely lucky in the length of his sentence he was even luckier in being discharged, for reasons beyond my understanding, after serving only nine weeks of it. In due course he again took his seat in the House of Lords (I know of no better reason for the urgency of reform of the ‘Upper House’!) where he now considered himself to be an authority on the penal system!

            But Nemesis awaited him.   It appears that the £13,379 for which he served his brief sentence was only a fraction of the sum that he had really stolen from the public purse. Further investigations had revealed that he may have helped himself to over £67,000 of taxpayers’ money.  Now Southwark Crown Court has given him the option of repaying a further £37,158 within the next six months or of going back to prison for a further 15 months.

            Lord Hanningfield’s lawyer Mr Mark Spragg is quoted as saying, ‘He’s appalled.  He’s not a wealthy man.  His only asset is his house.  He may have to sell it and have a council house’.  Mr Spragg is unduly optimistic on his client’s behalf.  He clearly does not keep up with the news.

            I have never seen Lord Hanningfield’s bungalow home in West Hanningfield but I would be extremely surprised if when sold it failed to realise many times the £37,158 that his lordship has to raise to stay out of gaol.   Even in the more relaxed days in which I was Clacton’s Housing Manager a homeless single man of 72 would have had pretty low priority as a council housing applicant. Today, thanks to the policies of the political party in which when in opposition Lord Hanningfield was a ‘shadow minister’, a single homeless man of 72 in possession (even after paying the money he owes!) of what all other housing applicants would consider to be a vast fortune, would have no chance whatsoever!

            Nor would the raising of that £37,158 necessarily see the end of Lord Hanningfield’s troubles.  So far, only his misuse of public funds as a member of the House of Lords has been brought into the cruel light of day.  His possible misuse of funds under his control in his capacity of Leader of Essex County Council is currently still under police investigation.  I think that other county councillors and, possibly, senior member of the County Council staff may also be awaiting the outcome of that investigation with some trepidation.   Surely those who knew or suspected that they were accepting hospitality provided by misappropriated funds would be in much the same position as receivers of stolen goods.

‘One Nation’ Britain!

            It was a brilliant slogan for Ed Miliband to adopt for his (if I may coin a phrase) ‘Even-Newer-Labour’.  Easily remembered, it recalls the national unity displayed in support of the recent Olympic Games, it outbids the government’s quite obviously false claim that ‘we’re all in this together’,  and since it is a phrase coined by Benjamin Disraeli founder of the modern Conservative Party, it makes a bid for the Conservative voter.

            It is worth remembering that Disraeli began his political career as a Radical, one of the ‘loony lefties’ of his day, and a supporter of the Chartists who, outrageously in the early 19^th Century, demanded among other things payment of MPs and universal voting rights for all adult males. He was a successful author. The two nations portrayed in his novel ‘Sybil’ or ‘The Two Nations’, published in 1845, were the nations of the rich and the poor.  He obviously had observed at first hand the appalling living conditions of the industrial poor in the early part of the 19^th century, and he described them in graphic detail.  His description is, in fact, remarkably similar to that in Condition of the Working Classes in England in 1844, also published in 1845, and written by Frederick Engels, joint founder with Karl Marx, of the Communist Party!

            By 1845 Disraeli had become a Conservative MP.  The political scene in Britain at that time was very different from that which prevailed throughout the twentieth century and that of today.   Core support for the Conservative Party came from the landed gentry and the aristocracy, their tenants and dependents.   Support for the Liberal Party came not from working people (they couldn’t vote so no-one bothered much about them!) but from the new-rich factory and shop owners whom Disraeli may have seen as responsible for the plight of the industrial poor.  It is possible that he had a romantic notion of the landed gentry and nobility freeing the urban poor from the clutch of the materialistic ‘worshippers of Mammon’ who owned England’s ‘dark, satanic mills’ and the slum-towns surrounding them.  As the years passed, Disraeli’s dream of ‘one nation’ seems to have faded.  The pursuit of imperial glory took its place.  He became a personal friend of Queen Victoria whom he persuaded to accept the grandiose title of Empress of India.

            Is Ed Miliband destined to revive the dream of One Nation?   It will take more than just stirring words and inspiring speeches to do so.  Britain’s poor today, thank God, do not live in the squalid poverty that they did nearly two centuries ago, but the gap between the nation of the poor and the nation of the wealthy is as wide as ever. It has in fact widened during the past twenty years, which include a decade of New Labour government.  Until he actively promotes and pursues practical measures to narrow that gap he has no more right to claim that the Labour Party  stands for One Nation than his opponents have to claim that ‘we’re all in this together’, and to speak for the whole nation of the population of the United Kingdom.

Some thoughts on Education

A fortnight ago I gave a qualified welcome in this blog to Education Secretary Gove’s idea of a Baccalaureate examination, closely resembling the ‘Matric’ exam I had taken in 1937, to replace the GCSE examinations that had, in many people’s eyes, become discredited.   I think perhaps that I should give a similarly cautious welcome to Ed Miliband’s suggested Technical Baccalaureate that would test candidates in their knowledge and experience of technical subjects.  I think that he had a quite separate examination in mind but it occurs to me that the scope of Mr Gove’s ‘academic’ Baccalaureate could be extended to include technical subjects.   Mathematics and English would remain compulsory subjects in the joint examination since it is really impossible to study seriously any other subject, academic or technical, without them.  They could perhaps be the only compulsory subjects, but to pass the examination candidates would need to secure a pass mark in them and in at least three other subjects.  Some technical fields are so wide that they might need to be divided into two or more sections, each one of which would count as a ‘subject’ for the examination.

I think that it is an idea worth considering.  I think too that we shouldn’t worry too much about children leaving school without any kind of exam certificate.  Prior to World War II the overwhelming majority of kids did just that – and some of them went on to become millionaires.  Many jobs do not demand paper qualifications.  Yet they may be jobs in which those that do them deservedly take pride, and that are more socially valuable than many more prestigious occupations.  If I were a potential employer I’d much prefer a note from a head teacher saying that the bearer was not a brilliant scholar but was hard working, conscientious and reliable, than that he had just about managed to scrape a pass mark in two or three GCSE subjects.  When everyone can gain some kind of educational certificate those certificates quickly lose their credibility.   As it says (or rather is sung) in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers , ‘When everyone is somebody, then no-one’s anybody!’

There is in any case a lot more to education than obtaining some sort of a qualification.  It would be nice to be able to think that all children leave school with something of the three ‘rs’ (reading, writing and arithmetic), something of the nature of science, and at least something of the world’s and their own country’s geography and colourful history. I believe that, for the most part, that was the position pre-World War II. It surely isn’t too much to ask for today, after at least eleven years full-time education

 The Dynamic (or should it be Disastrous?) Duo         

I sometimes wonder if our Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer (described by one of their supporters as ‘posh boys who don’t know the price of milk’) really inhabit the same world as I do. In rejecting the idea of a Mansion Tax, for instance, David Cameron says that he doesn’t feel that if someone has worked hard and saved to get the home he wants, he should be penalised for it.  For goodness sake! – nobody is thinking of extra taxes for the owner of a comfortable home with a double garage in a leafy suburb, or even of a ‘desirable residence with stabling and a half acre of land’ valued at about £500,000, of the kind that those participating in BBC tv’s Escape to the country’ usually find to be ‘not quite what we were looking for’.   The ‘mansions’ that proposers of this tax had in mind were those worth over £2 million – the sort of place, for instance, that might be occupied by the  chief executive of a large international corporation  who invited  prime ministers or other influential politicians to jolly Christmas Parties!

            Then there’s George Osborne warning us that, unless he can manage to squeeze a bit more out of the poor and disadvantaged we shall – for the first time in 200 years – have a situation in which children are worse off than their parents.  Now I fully accept that I was been better off in every way than my parents, and that my sons have been better off than me and have had opportunities that I never had.  I am very glad about that.  I cannot see though any way in which the next generation that includes my grandchildren, are anything but much worse off than their parents.  Their parents, if they aspired to university, had free tuition, and means-tested grants from their local authority on which to live while they studied for their degrees.   On completing their education they generally had no great difficulty finding suitable employment, they usually had no serious debts and were free to save up to get married and make a home.  By their time (unlike mine) it was usual for a wife to continue in work, at least until the first child of the marriage was born.  For some though, being a full-time wife, home-maker and mother was a possible and wholly acceptable option.

            The price of properties was still relatively low and there were plenty of houses to let at a reasonable rent (the noxious ‘right to buy’ legislation had yet to be enacted!)  Building Societies were eager to enrol house purchasers and were asking for deposits of no more than 10 or even 5 percent of the value of the property to credit-worthy applicants

How very different things are today!  Graduates leave university with a crippling debt that may hang over them for the whole of their working lives.  Young people, whether or not they have graduated, have the greatest difficulty in finding a job (both my grandsons, graduates with good honours degrees, went overseas – one to Europe and one to the Far East – to make their careers).   House prices have escalated, building societies and banks now demand enormous deposits before giving a mortgage, rents are also prohibitively high and only those who are abjectly poor can hope to get a short term tenancy (government policy demands that that’s all there are) of a council or housing association property.

As for marriage and the family (institutions that the government claims to value!) young wives nowadays are expected to be in full-time work up to the time that they give birth, and to start work again as soon as they can obtain all-day child care!    No wonder that few couples bother to marry, that we have an unprecedented number of teen-age pregnancies, an unprecedented number of abortions, and an unprecedented amount of youth crime, much of it violent.

How dare George Osborne claim that so far, each generation for the past 200 years has been better off than its predecessor!  For several years, thanks to policies that he has supported, Britain's young people have been worse off than their parents in virtually every possible way!

 I notice that he is going ‘to ask the wealthy to make a bigger contribution towards solving the nation’s problems. The rest of us don't get polite requests. We just get 'tax demands'! I wonder what he’ll do if they say NO!

             

           

Week 5 2012 2.02.2012

Tendring Topics.........on Line

A Matter of Priorities

            Our Tendring District undoubtedly has its problems.  We have, so it is said, fewer graduates and fewer folk with other qualifications than any other district in Essex.  Our town centre shops are threatened with closure. Our unemployment rate, especially youth unemployment, is well above the national average – and rising! We have had four (or was it five?) murders during the past twelve months and a number of scarcely less serious incidents of knife crime. There are potholes in our roads, and our pavements, away from the town centres, are broken, uneven and positively dangerous.  Oh yes – and there’s Brooklands Estate, Jaywick, Britain’s most deprived neighbourhood, still demanding urgent attention..

            It isn’t one – or even all – of these problems though that has brought unanimity to the often-divided Tendring District Council.  It’s the fact that they have been ‘snubbed’ by Whitehall in that the Olympic Torch, on its tortuous progress from its home in Greece to the Olympic Stadium at Stratford, isn’t going to cross the Tendring District’s hallowed soil. The Clacton Gazette records that The decision to leave the district out was unanimously condemned by councillors who tried desperately to make Olympic bosses change their minds. 

            A petition and pleading letters had been sent to Lord Coe, to the Prime Minister,  and to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.  They had even suggested ways in which, with just a little deviation, the Olympic Torch could be brought through part of Tendring – but answer came there none!   ‘It was’, said Councillor Stephen Mayzes rather petulantly ‘very disappointing and I think just plain rude’.   

            Blog readers will remember Councillor Mayzes. It was he who, as Tendring Council’s Tourism Supremo, tried to prevent one of Europe’s most prestigious leisure organisations (the Camping and Caravanning Club of Great Britain) from holding a rally, during the school holidays, on the playing field of the Coastal Academy!  He also decided that the Holiday Coast’s summer season ended on 31^st August and saved the taxpayers a few pounds by withdrawing the beach patrols and closing the Tourist Information Offices.  You will recall that we experienced an Indian summer, with hundreds of visitors at the end of September and into October!

            Not a man to admit defeat, Councillor Mayzes is now organising his own event, in which he hopes teams from local schools and athletics clubs will carry an imitation ‘Olympic Torch’ in a relay round the Tendring District.  ‘We will create our own torch and a route round Tendring.  I want to get all of our schools and athletes involved, and I think it could really get people excited about the Olympics and our local talents’.

            Who knows?  It might take off.  It won’t achieve anything though, except perhaps soothe hurt feelings in the Weeley Council Chamber. I think it’ll also make the council look petty and small-minded, or perhaps just plain bonkers!   It certainly won’t do anything to solve any of the very real problems with which Tendring Council is faced.

 ‘Be bloody, bold and resolute!’*

            Oh dear – it’s supposed to be unlucky to quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth!  Those words of advice to Macbeth  from the three witches describe pretty well though our Prime Minister David Cameron’s advice to the world’s financial experts at Davos, particularly those of the EU and the Eurozone.  They have to be bold and take urgent drastic steps to escape financial disaster.

            Certainly David Cameron was following his own advice.   It was only the day before that he had learned that growth in Britain’s economy was even lower than the already low figure that had been predicted, that unemployment – particularly youth unemployment - in Britain had reached its highest level for decades, and that the National Debt, the reduction of which had been the principal objective of his government, had risen to an unprecedented one trillion pounds! (It's a good job my laptop possesses a 'spell-check'. I have never before had occasion to type 'trillion'!)  It must have taken real courage - the uncharitable might say ‘arrogance’- after that, to fly to Switzerland and lecture other governments about how to handle their financial affairs.

            A couple of days earlier I had listened on Radio 4 to a BBC correspondent in Sweden, a country that resembles our own in many ways.  It is geographically on the edge of Europe. It is a constitutional monarchy. It is a member of the European Union but, like us, is not within the Eurozone.  It has however the great disadvantage of having a far more extreme climate than ours and, in particular, a much darker and colder winter season.

            Yet Sweden seems to have been virtually unaffected by the European financial crisis.  There have been no cuts in public services or in benefit payments to the poor and disabled, no great surge in unemployment and no talk of an uncontrollable financial deficit.  There were no summer riots, no ‘Occupy Movement’ demonstrations in city centres - and no need to heap blame on the previous government or the Eurozone.  From the correspondent’s report I gained an impression of a country at ease with itself.

            There may be all sorts of reasons for this, but here are three that I am sure are among them.   Sweden is a land of high taxation but the tax is levied fairly and, Swedes believe, is used wisely and to everyone’s advantage.  There is no enormous gap between the incomes of the rich and the poor. They‘re not burdened with  a ‘special relationship’ that drags them into illegal and unwinnable wars and results in their having totally useless and vastly expensive nuclear-armed submarines permanently patrolling the world’s oceans.

            I believe that world politicians who would really like to know how best to run their country’s economies could do worse than to investigate the Swedish model.

             *Those who are familiar with Shakespeare’s play will know that that piece of advice from the three witches was followed by Macbeth – and led to disaster.

             

An Awful Example

          A friend of mine once remarked that no-one was ever completely useless.  Even the most unpromising could serve as awful examples, to draw attention to the causes of their plight and to encourage others to avoid them.  I am sure that my friend had in mind elderly human wrecks brought low by alcohol, drug abuse and general dissipation – summarised by Marlene Dietrich in her song in the classic ‘western’, ‘Destry Rides Again’ as, ‘cigareets, and whisky, and wild, wild women’!

            They, of course, are the awful examples at the bottom of the social scale – but there are awful examples of the effects of greed and selfishness at the other end of the social scale too.  In recent years wages and benefits have fallen behind inflation (have declined in value) while the profits, salaries and bonuses of the wealthy have increased in leaps and bounds.   Those of us who have protested about this and sought to change it have been in a minority – though a growing one.  Now, thanks to the well publicised awful example of the top officials and senior board members of the Banks, that minority has become a very vocal and increasingly influential majority.

            It was neither the Eurozone nor the last Labour Government that created the current financial crisis (though the New-Labour Government didn’t take the steps that might have prevented it) but the greed and incompetence of the Bankers.  That is not my judgement; I am not competent to make one, but that of the Governor of the Bank of England who is surely in a position to know.

            Now it is the bankers, not necessarily the ones who caused the crisis but others with the same ethos, who are receiving (I can’t bring myself to say earning!)  million-pounds-a-year-plus salaries and who are claiming even more enormous bonuses.  It is as though they draw their enormous salaries just for turning up at their offices fairly regularly but expect a bonus for actually doing the job to the best of their ability!

            I remember, in 1938 when I was a junior clerk (office boy really!) in Ipswich Corporation’s Public Health Department, hesitatingly telling the Medical Officer of Health after some minor blunder that, ‘I did my best, sir’.  Glaring at me he announced ‘I am not interested in your best Hall. I want the best’.   I suppose that had I been a potential successful banker, instead of creeping away wishing that the earth would swallow me, I’d have replied confidently that, ‘in that case sir, I would expect a substantial bonus at the end of the year’.

            Public opinion has, quite rightly, been outraged by the bankers’ attitude.  A public debate on the subject was threatened in the House of Commons.  There’s little doubt that this would have resulted in a cross-party condemnation of the bankers’ greed.  Rather than face that, both the chairman and the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, in which the government representing us taxpayers holds a controlling interest, have returned their million pound bonuses!

            The government says that it has no right to interfere with salary negotiations between banks and other private enterprises, and their employees.  Quite so – but they do have a responsibility for maintaining adequate public services and health and welfare provisions.  These were part of the fairer, more peaceful world for which thousands of us thought we were fighting in World War II and for which we voted in1945, but which we have seen systematically whittled away by successive governments since.

            The government does have the right and the duty to impose taxes upon its citizens to pay for these services, and has a moral duty to impose those taxes fairly upon us all.  The simplest, most straightforward, and fairest way of taxation is by means of an income tax properly graded so that it takes from rich, the poor and the ‘squeezed middle’ about which we hear so much, an equal proportion of their income.  None of us likes paying income tax but it is the only tax that is levied according to our ability to pay it.  No-one has ever starved to death or been rendered homeless or destitute by having to pay income tax.

            To be ‘fair’ (a concept to which the government pays continual lip service!) there needs to be many more income tax bands than the three – standard, higher and highest - that exist at the moment.  The very poor would pay little or none and the very rich might be expected to pay as much as 90 percent (not of their entire income of course, but of income in excess of perhaps a million pounds a year) in tax.  At the same time that the new properly graded system is introduced there would need to be watertight regulations preventing the tax evasion and – currently legal – tax avoidance that at the present time rob the Exchequer of millions of pounds a year.

            Both private firms and public authorities could then have an absolutely free hand in rewarding their senior staff.  We, members of the public would know that the greater part of any really excessive award would be coming back to us either in public services or in the reduction of our own tax burden.

……and an anecdote.

          This was sent me by a blog reader:

          The Chief Executive of a Bank, a Daily Mail reader, and a recipient of social security benefit are seated round a table on which there is a plate with 12 biscuits.

            The Banker pockets eleven of the biscuits and then turns to the Daily Mail reader with a word of warning, ‘You’d better watch out – that scrounger is after your biscuit’.


Postscript - Gallant knights and Noble Lords 


I am shedding no tears and wasting no sympathy over Mr Fred Goodwin's lost knighthood.   I do have a couple of questions though.

Wasn't Fred Goodwin one of the greatest of those great financial geniuses who threaten to depart from Britain   if we dare to increase their tax liability?   What a pity we didn't think of doing that before he took control of the RBS.  Who knows - we might have shaken out a few more very expensive supermen (and superwomen) whom we could well spare.

If Fred Goodwin, who has never been convicted or even suspected of any criminal activity, can so easily be stripped of his knighthood, how is it that the former leader of Essex County Council, a convicted criminal  under further investigation by the police, remains the 'Noble Lord' Hanningfield?

            

Week 28 19.7.2011

Tendring Topics……..on Line


The next instalment!


When I wrote last week that ‘I couldn’t wait’ for the next instalment of the current riveting Decline and Fall (well, not quite that yet!) of the Murdoch Media Empire I had no idea that I wouldn’t have to! Hardly had my blog been posted than we learned that Rupert Murdoch had withdrawn his application for control of the whole of B-Sky-B, because of the strength of the opposition.

I take just a little pride in the fact that – some time before it became fashionable to criticise the News International Empire and its ruler – I had formed a tiny part of that opposition by sending an email to the proper authority. I knew nothing then of the hacking of the mobile phones of the bereaved or the bribery of the Police. I just thought it wrong that a rootless cosmopolitan, who owed Britain no loyalty and whose home was not in this country, should be in control of news media capable of swaying the results of British elections. That surely was reason enough for opposing the takeover.

It was not an empty boast when Murdoch’s Sun announced ‘It was us wot done it’ after a Thatcher election victory. The same could have been said after Tony Blair had betrayed the principles of his predecessors and swung New Labour far enough to the right to gain Rupert Murdoch’s approval. Many tabloid readers, whose interest rarely strays beyond the headlines (except of course in pursuit of the salacious detail of the latest celebrity scandal) actually believe what those big black headlines say and vote as they indicate.

In the heady atmosphere of last week’s denunciations of News International and all its works it is difficult to remember that it wasn’t all that long ago that Lib.Dem. Government Minister Vince Cable was stripped of some of his authority for saying; in what he had thought was a private conversation, that he had ‘declared war on Rupert Murdoch’ (you may recall that in this blog I remarked that it was time someone did!) His successor had proved his suitability by his public declaration of admiration for News International and its boss!

Luckily there are news stories and video clips to remind us of the not-very-distant past. I learned, for instance, that David Cameron and family spent some happy hours with Rebekah Brooks and her millionaire husband last Christmas. Then again, I have watched video clips of both Tony Blair and David Cameron (though not at the same time!) bestowing platonic kisses on the expectant cheek of the auburn-haired beauty who was News International’s Chief Executive at the time but is so no longer.

It is true, of course, that members of the upper classes bestow kisses upon their friends rather more freely than do we common folk. I feel though that the Christmas get-together and those tokens of affection suggest a rather greater degree of mutual regard than Ed Miliband’s appreciation of Rupert Murdoch’s canapés at a recent reception, an indiscretion of which the Labour Leader has been accused by an opponent!

Now Mrs Brooks (who resigned – a little belatedly – from the post of Chief Executive on 15th July) and father and son Rupert and James Murdoch have been invited to the House of Commons next Tuesday 19th July to answer MPs questions and, if they wish, to tell their side of the story. Mrs Brooks accepted the invitation at once. The two Murdochs at first demurred (James would have liked to attend but had a prior engagement!) but after they had had summonses served on them they both agreed to turn up. As I write these words (Thursday 14th July) there are still five days to go. Anything can – and probably will – happen in that time. However, at the moment I am looking forward to hearing what, if anything, they have to say next Tuesday!

Meanwhile questions are being asked in the USA (some by right-wing Republicans, Rupert Murdoch’s natural allies), and the FBI are said to be on the warpath. Both in Rupert Murdoch’s adopted American homeland and in Australia land of his birth, there is concern about the conduct of his newspapers and their staff. Could it be that we really are seeing the beginning of the end of an evil Media Empire?

‘Those who sup with the devil need a long spoon’……


………….is a little piece of folk wisdom that both policemen and politicians would be well-advised to heed. I am writing these words on Monday 18th July and hope to post them as a blog tomorrow. If there is a briber it follows that there must also be someone who accepted a bribe. The spotlight has widened to include the Police. Perhaps it is destined to widen further!

A great deal has happened. Rebekah Brooks has been arrested, interrogated for about twelve hours, and released on bail. Sir Paul Stephenson, head of the London Metropolitan Police Force has resigned. I hope that the timing of Mrs Brooks’ arrest wasn’t prompted by a desire of the Police to limit the questions that she will be prepared to answer when she faces the Parliamentary Committee tomorrow afternoon.

Britain’s most senior Police Officer has told us that he considered that his only possible honourable course of action, after he had taken on a former Deputy Editor of the News of the World as a freelance consultant, was resignation. What, one may well ask, would be the appropriate honourable course of action for a Prime Minister who, despite having been warned, took on a former Editor of that same newspaper as his Head of Communications – and, of course, was on very friendly terms with yet another former Editor of the News of the World who had subsequently been promoted to Chief Executive of the Media Group that owned it?

Would you credit it?


Lord Hanningfield (or Paul White as he was before being ennobled on Mrs Thatcher’s recommendation) is now serving a nine months prison sentence for fraudulently claiming expenses to which he was not entitled, in connection with his membership of the House of Lords.. The Police are currently investigating the expenses that he claimed as Leader of the Essex County Council and it has emerged that concerns were expressed as far back as 2007 about his use of a taxpayer-funded credit card on which he was spending about £5,200 a month for what he claimed – and self-certified! – were legitimate expenses for his work as council leader.

These, according to a report in the local daily Gazette, included entertainment and subsistence expenses, as well as dining, and House of Lords bar bills. ‘First class rail tickets, flights and hotel bills were also put on the card, although some were paid directly by the council!’


The current leader of the county council, Mr Peter Martin, who says that he has never used his own corporate credit card, told the Gazette ‘There were concerns over expenses in 2008 and 2009. Officers had talks with Lord Hanningfield and meetings about receipts. But when the Crown Prosecution Service indicated in July 2009 that it was investigating Lord Hanningfield, we were advised by our legal team and police that we should not take any action which could prejudice the case’.

County councillors and top officials alike must have received that advice with a collective sigh of relief!

Until last week Lord Hanningfield was still receiving his ‘members allowance’ of £11,500, because he has not resigned his membership of the Essex County Council, and is appealing against his conviction,. Under pressure from Bob Russell, Colchester’s outspoken Lib.Dem. MP, this allowance has now been stopped. It had been pointed out to the council that they have power to suspend payment when a councillor is not able to perform his or her duties.

In a leading article the Gazette points out that an office worker at County Hall who had stolen £50 cash would have been swiftly dealt with ‘but no-one, it appears, wanted to tackle the Council Leader…………surely at least one of Essex’s highly paid officials should have mustered the courage to question him’.


Perhaps so – but Lord Hanningfield had an overwhelming personality and was reputed to be something of a bully. It would need absolute certainty of the facts, and more-than-average determination and courage, to tackle the man who could have destroyed the accuser’s whole future career. Chiding even the most senior official for hesitating to confront him would have been a bit like telling the ill-fated Anne Boleyn in 1536 that she really should have been firmer with her husband!

Childbirth – best ‘at home’ or ‘away’

Let’s think about something a little less sordid! The current debate about whether home births, hospital births or midwife-run ‘birthing centre births’ are best, has brought back vivid memories to me.

In the autumn of 1948 when we had been married for just two years, my wife Heather was diagnosed as suffering from pulmonary and laryngeal TB. She spent the next two years in what was then Nayland British Legion Sanatorium, punctuated by six weeks in Papworth Hospital where she underwent major surgery, the removal of eight ribs on the left side to collapse the left lung permanently and give it a chance to heal. It worked – though the operation weakened her and limited her activities for the rest of her life. She was discharged as ‘cured’ in time for Christmas 1950.

We had never intended to be a childless couple but it was to be two more years before our doctor felt that Heather was strong enough to bear a baby. By January of 1953 we knew that one was on the way. It was an anxious time for me (I’m an incurable worrier!) but Heather was supremely confident that all would be well. She was also quite determined that she would breast-feed her baby.

We decided that the baby would best be born in a Maternity Home and began to make arrangements. When Heather recounted her medical history the nurse taking the details said, reassuringly. ‘Well, under your circumstances you certainly won’t be expected to bother with this breast-feeding business. Directly baby is born we’ll get it thoroughly used to a bottle for you’. ‘Really’, said Heather, who could be very determined when she chose to be, ‘in that case I won’t need your services. I’ll be having my baby at home’.


And so she did. Home births were a lot more common in the early 1950s than they became in later years and luckily both the local midwife and our ‘family doctor’ supported Heather’s decision. We were living at the time in a bungalow just off the Norwich Road at Barham, two or three miles to the northwest of Ipswich. Our doctor, Dr Louise Hyder, lived on ‘the other side’ of the town – near where Ipswich Hospital is now situated. I was able to take Heather to see her regularly during her pregnancy and, despite the distance, the doctor managed to be present at the birth. Just as well – because there were complications that were dealt with promptly and efficiently.



A Joyful Heather - and son!

 Heather had a son – whom she did breast-feed. Two and a half years later, when our second child was expected, we didn’t even consider the possibility of a hospital birth. Heather had another fine son, born at home, whom she fed in the same way. I remember that I wrote and sold to Better Health (a health education monthly) a photographically illustrated article entitled Why bother with a bottle, about proceeding from breast to glass or cup, without an intervening feeding bottle!

That was our experience. It was fine for us but, quite obviously, it wouldn’t be right for everybody. I do think though that all women should have the option and not be bullied or made to feel guilty wherever they may prefer to give birth.


Two fine sons