Week 44.09

Tendring Topics……..on line

Is your County Council really necessary?

Colchester Liberal Democrats have launched a campaign for Colchester to be granted the same unitary status that is enjoyed by, for instance, Southend and Thurrock. Unitary authorities undertake all local government functions. While remaining geographically and socially an important part of the county in which they are situated, they are politically independent of its county council.

Supporting the campaign, the town’s Lib.Dem. MP, Bob Russell, told the local Daily Gazette:

‘The public has had enough of the county council. It treats Colchester very much as a second-class citizen – the bad relative of Chelmsford.

I think the final straw was when public opinion was overwhelmingly against the closure of two of our secondary schools, but it went ahead and closed them anyway.

Places much smaller than Colchester are now unitary authorities, so we know we are large enough.

The move would be cheaper for the town too, because instead of the silly issues we have at the moment, such as Colchester collecting waste but Essex County Council disposing of it, we would be doing it all ourselves.

While wishing the campaign every success, I don’t think that it goes half far enough. Regular readers of this blog will recall that several months ago I suggested that the Essex County Council was a very expensive stratum of local administration that we could very well manage without. There is, I believe, no reason at all why every district and borough council within the county should not become a unitary authority, and the Essex County Council be consigned to the history books.

The arguments that Bob Russell advances on behalf of Colchester apply equally to our own neighbouring Tendring District. Both authorities now cover both urban and rural areas with populations considerably higher than those of either Ipswich or Norwich before World War II. Yet, in those days, as County Boroughs they both had infinitely greater powers and responsibilities than today’s unitary authorities……and they exercised those powers and responsibilities to general public satisfaction.

As well as getting rid of such anomalies as the division between refuse collection and refuse disposal, it would spare us the continuing expense of the trips of influential county councillors and top county council officials to far-flung corners of the world, of the expensive ‘members only’ restaurant at County Hall, and of the need to maintain ‘a presence’ in Communist China! It would also bring accountable democracy closer to the people and might well increase the turn-out at local elections. When I was Tendring’s Public Relations Officer one of my most difficult tasks was convincing residents that while it was the District Council that had to send out Rate Demands (now Council Tax Demands of course) and the District Council that had to prosecute those who failed to pay them, by far the greater amount of money that they had to pay, went straight to the remote County Council in Chelmsford.

TENDRING SAYS NO

That was a headline in last Wednesday’s (21st October) ‘Daily Gazette’ reporting that Tendring was opposed to Colchester gaining unitary status. This surprised me because I hadn’t recalled ‘Tendring’, of which I am a tiny part, ever having been consulted about it.

The news story under the headline made it clear that neither the whole of Tendring, nor even the whole of Tendring Council, had so far expressed an opinion on the matter. Councillor Neil Stock, a Conservative councillor, and leader of the majority group (by one member!) in the Weeley Council Chamber, had told a reporter that he opposes Colchester becoming a unitary authority.

He went on to say, The idea is ridiculous. Everyone knows there are going to be massive cuts to local government funding. You would have to replace many services that are currently based at County Hall. We would continue doing our things and we would continue working closely with the county council’

I believe that it is precisely because there are bound to be massive cuts in local government funding that we should campaign for autonomy for district and borough councils and end the expensive and extravagant (with our money!) tier of local government operating from County Hall, Chelmsford. We should be working with Colchester Council, and with other district and borough councils in Essex, toward that common end.

The money that we currently have to pass on to Chelmsford could be used to provide the same services that are at present the responsibility of the County Council, but locally organised and supervised – and I am convinced that, if organised locally, they could be provided more humanely, more efficiently, and more economically.

Put the question to the people of Tendring squarely, without urging them to follow any particular party line, and I have little doubt that the Gazette headline would read TENDRING SAYS YES!

‘It’s an ill-wind…….

that blows nobody any good’, insists the proverb, and we all know that that is true. There are those who have made a fortune, not just despite the recession, but as a result of it. When a substantial part of my income came from royalties and public lending right payments on my plumbing books, there was nothing like a really hard winter to boost sales and public library loans. A wet summer pushes up the sales of raincoats and umbrellas!

This year, on the Essex Holiday Coast and in East Anglia generally, we haven’t had a wet summer. We have had a very good one. Clacton has been full of holiday visitors. Hotels, boarding houses and campsites have been fully booked, and the tills of beachwear and beach equipment retailers have been ringing merrily. The weather was kind to Clacton’s carnival and to the air-show. The summer of 2009 was in sharp contrast to those of 2007 and 2008.

But fine warm weather doesn’t bring joy to everyone. East Anglian farmers have found their land too dry and hard for them to sow their autumn seed. Perhaps the rainy spell that we are experiencing as I write will have come in time to save the day. Perhaps too, it will have come in time to rescue the nature reserve at Minsmere in Suffolk, normally an earthly paradise for wading birds. Just a few weeks ago though, they could hardly find enough water to wade in!

Tendring Districts beach patrols and seafront wardens were stretched to the uttermost by no less than 1,250 incidents, an all-time record for a holiday season. The greatest number of swimmers who had previously had to be rescued from the sea in any one year had been eight. This year the number rocketed to thirty-four. Saddest and most traumatic event of the season was the accidental drowning of ten-year-old Stella Akanbi in August. She went missing while bathing off a busy and normally safe beach on a sunny Sunday afternoon. A massive search was launched immediately but it was the next day before her lifeless body was found.

Other activities of the beach patrols included reuniting ninety lost children with their parents, attending two attempted suicides and giving minor first-aid on the seafront to no less than 700 holidaymakers!

Seafront manager Tim Sutton and his team were deeply saddened by the tragic loss of little Stella but I have no doubt that they would otherwise welcome similar seafront challenges next year…..and the year after!

Tempting Fate

When, just over a year ago, Trent Wharfage, owners of Mistley Quay decided to erect a two-metres high steel fence along the edge of Mistley Quay for ‘health and safety reasons’ local people were furious……and sceptical. The fence was an ugly monstrosity effectively fencing off and denying access to the Stour.

‘Health and Safety?’ No-one could remember anyone, not even after a few too many drinks at a local hostelry, falling off the quay into the Stour. They could though, remember occasions on which casualties from boating accidents on the river had been brought ashore there to be brought back to life and health. ‘That there fence’ll lead to tragedy. Dew yew mark my words!’

And so it….very nearly…. did; and sooner than even the most pessimistic of the local wiseacres could have imagined. During the afternoon of Saturday 10th October a private boat sank in the distinctly chilly waters of the Stour not far from Mistley. Passing yachts rescued from it three adults and a teenage boy and transferred them to the Harwich lifeboat, which made for Mistley Quay. There an ambulance awaited – on the other side of the fence!

Coastguards needed the help of locals to unbolt and remove a section of the offending barrier before those rescued could be brought ashore. A near tragedy was prevented simply because the incident took place during the daytime when there were local people available to help.

Not surprisingly, the Health and Safety Executive who, it seems, had never asked for a fence on that scale in the first place, is reviewing the situation ‘in the light of what has happened’. When asked how much power the Executive had to enforce any ruling it made, a spokesman replied, ‘Any organisation would have to follow HSE instruction’.

It seems likely therefore that when my son, daughter-in-law and I next lunch at Mistley’s Quay Café, that offensive fence will have been removed.

Nick Griffin and the BBC

Was the BBC right to give Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, airtime by inviting him to take part in Any Questions? On balance I think they probably were. Excluding someone who has been proved in the polls to have considerable support, on the grounds that ‘right thinking people’ abhor everything about him, would set a dangerous precedent. Should spokesmen for the Green Party be similarly banned? I know from personal experience (in the correspondence columns of the local press!) that quite a lot of people believe that concern for global warming is ‘just scare mongering’.

In the event, I’d be surprised if his contribution to Any Questions? found him a single additional supporter. Charismatic, hypnotic, spell-binding were not adjectives that came instantly to mind. He was certainly not an Adolf Hitler, a Benito Mussolini or an Oswald Mosley.

If there is blame to be attached to his appearance in the limelight, blame the misguided folk who voted for him and his party in the European and local election, and those who have created, and continue to create, the conditions in which Nick Griffin and his like flourish.

I reckon that,

Members of Parliament who have submitted fraudulent claims for expenses…and are now moaning about having to pay back a fraction of their ill-gotten gains.

Bankers who have been rescued from ruin with our money, but have resumed handing out enormous salaries and huge bonuses to those whose greed and incompetence created that ruin.

Political Parties full of schemes to ease the national debt by reducing the incomes of the poor, the old and the disadvantaged, but from whom we have yet to hear proposals for extracting a proportionate sum from the coffers of the seriously rich.

do more to recruit supporters for one or other forms of political extremism than Nick Griffin and his followers could manage in the whole of their lifetimes.



Our Man in Nanjing - 'my man in Taiwan' comments.

My grandson Chris, who currently lives and works in Taiwan, but who previously lived and worked for some time in mainland China, is a regular reader of this blog. I had thought that my item last week about 'Our man in Nanjing', might interest him. It certainly did! Here is an extract from his email that I have just received:

'I was amazed by the office in Nanjing. I am really curious to know what they are expecting? How exactly do they think they would profit from it?

I was amazed at the man in Nanjing's salary! That is far too much! Do you know how well he could live on that in China? He could have his own chauffeur for that! I think that Essex could get a better deal if nothing else. £24,000 in China and £24,000 in England are very different things! I would like to know what he will be doing to earn that salary. I wonder what kind of return they expect to get on that investment?

No doubt Lord Hanningfield and his colleagues know the answer to that.

Week 36.09

Tendring Topics……on line

A lifetime ago!

I shall be posting this blog onto the Internet on Wednesday 2nd September 2009. Seventy years ago that date fell on a Saturday. The postman pushed through the letterbox of my home in Ipswich an OHMS envelope addressed to Gunner Hall E.G. Its contents informed me that ‘His Majesty King George VI had been graciously pleased to embody the Territorial Army’. I was instructed to report, in uniform and with full kit, to the Drill Hall, in Princes Street, Ipswich forthwith.

The 67th Medium Regiment RA’s first guns – iron-tyred 6in howitzers with limbers – intended to be horse-drawn! The distinctly unsoldierly way in which we are clambering all over them suggests that we – and they – had only just arrived at Roedean. These antique weapons were replaced by new limberless and rubber tyred howitzers when we left Ipswich.

The summons wasn’t unexpected. I had not long returned from two weeks at a Territorial Camp at Roedean (in front of the famous girls school), Brighton. There we had been introduced to our guns, ancient iron-tyred 6in howitzers with limbers, that may well have played a part in the defence of Mafeking. Back in Ipswich I had found the Public Health Department, where I worked, in turmoil. As a result of the worsening international situation, and in expectation that another world war would begin with massive air attacks, first aid posts were being established all round the town, ‘black-outs’ were being prepared for windows and the office phone had to be manned day and night to receive and pass on the news that ‘the balloon had gone up’.

In 1939, this building in Elm Street, Ipswich, housed the Council’s Public Health Department

Call-up, when it came, was quite a relief! However my parents, who had seen their young warrior off ‘to the war’ in the morning were somewhat surprised to see him trudge home again, still with full kit, in the evening. Having called us up, the army clearly hadn’t much idea what to do with us. The 67th Medium Regiment R.A., which I had joined early in the New Year, was a newly formed territorial regiment, comprising volunteers from Ipswich, Felixstowe, Woodbridge and the surrounding smaller towns and villages. Billets were found for those called up who lived outside Ipswich while we Ipswichians were billeted in our own homes, our parents receiving a welcome billeting allowance. And there we stayed ‘learning our trade’ until the spring of 1940 when we entrained for Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire and prepared to join the British Expeditionary Force in France.

The following day, Sunday 3rd September was a day that changed my life forever. Yes, I know that that was the day on which Britain declared war on Germany, beginning a conflict that was to cost millions of lives and bring devastation to many thousands of towns and villages in Britain and throughout Europe. Many of my comrades in the 67th Medium regiment RA would lose their lives and most of those of us who survived would spend three years in captivity in Italy and Germany.

The beginning of all of that was, of course, going on in the background. What changed my life forever on 3rd September 1939 was my meeting Heather Gilbert, an Ilford schoolgirl who had been evacuated with Wanstead County High School to Ipswich, to escape the anticipated mass bombing of the London area. Heather is no longer with me, but she has been in my thoughts at some time or another on every single day of the seventy years that have elapsed since I first met her, and I am sure that she will be will remain in them until my own life ends and, as I fervently hope, we are reunited.

Heather and I, as we were in September 1939

On our first (or possibly our second) date. I was in the army and can't remember whether we were allowed to wear 'civvies' off duty -or whether I was defying an order not to! After the photo was taken we 'went to the pictures' and saw 'Stagecoach', now recognised as a 'classic western' featuring a very young John Wain

She was almost-sixteen and still at school. I was just-eighteen and newly in the army. I am quite sure that her school had been evacuated to Ipswich by mistake. They remained in the town for only two weeks, but it was long enough for us to form a lasting attachment. We corresponded regularly throughout the war. After she had left school we met on rare weekends when I was given some leave and my unit was sufficiently near London for me to visit Ilford. Within a couple of days of my returning home from Germany in 1945 we were engaged. We married on 27th April 1946, just four days after my discharge from the army. Our marriage lasted for sixty years, Heather’s life ending three years ago, a few months after we had celebrated our diamond wedding anniversary.

Last week I mentioned in this blog the tear-off calendar, with a quote for each day, that we had in our barrack room when I was a POW in Germany. Here is another quotation that I have remembered over the years, from the poet Goethe I think:

Lieben und geliebt zu werden, ist das höchste Glück auf Erden.
(To love and to be loved in return, is the highest happiness that there is in this world)

I have found that to be abundantly true.


Outside Gants Hill Methodist, Church, Ilford on 27th April 1946. We had to wait nearly seven years for this happy day.

Where there’s a will there’s a way!

I don’t get to Mistley very often. It is the ‘other side’ of the Tendring Peninsula and well beyond the range of my mobility scooter. I always enjoy going there though. Last Saturday (22nd August) my son and daughter-in-law, Pete and Arlene, drove me there. We parked on the quay and had a very enjoyable lunch overlooking the Stour estuary at the Quay Café.

The last time we were there, months before, the fence along the edge of the quay hadn’t been completed. Furious local residents were trying to prevent this with parked cars and lorries. They didn’t succeed. The fence has been completed and I have to say that it does look neater than it did. It is no better loved though locally. Posters everywhere demand ‘Free the Quay!’

It was high tide and a sailing barge, the Centaur of Harwich, had taken advantage of the high water to moor at the quay. It carried passengers and was involved in a ‘mini-cruise’ from Ipswich, down the Orwell to Shotley, then up the Stour as far as Manningtree, pausing at Mistley on the way, and then back again. It must have made a very pleasant excursion.

‘The Centaur’, moored at Mistley Quay. The ladder giving access from the ship to the quay can be seen just to the left of the figure.

Surely, you may be thinking, it couldn’t have been much fun stopping at Mistley when that unloved fence will have prevented landing. Not a bit of it! Where there’s a will there’s a way. Look at the picture and you’ll see that just to the left of the figure is a strategically placed ladder that gives access to and from the Quay. Using it is, of course, just a little more hazardous than simply striding across on a gangway. Which is odd when you consider that the fence, the cause of all the trouble, is supposed to have been provided ‘for health and safety reasons’.