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.

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Cheap and Cheerful?

After my early retirement from Tendring Council’s service in 1980, I pursued a new career as a freelance writer. In the 1980s and ‘90s I wrote five commercially successful books about domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage, as well as the plumbing sections of such d-i-y manuals as The Reader’s Digest Complete DIY Manual. I also wrote a great many articles on the same subjects for Do-it-yourself and later for Practical Householder magazine. For twenty-three years I wrote Tendring Topics in print for the Coastal Express, and I also wrote innumerable ‘advertising features’ for all of Essex County Newspapers, now the Newsquest Group, as well as for other East Anglian magazine publishers.

The last of these, although not the best rewarded, was often the most challenging. A voice on the phone would demand ‘Can you do 500 (or 350 or 200) words on this, that or the other, pub, restaurant, hairdressers, jewellers, undertakers or whatever and a thousand words on shopping in Frinton, or some area within the district or elsewhere?’ often adding, ‘Oh, and can you get mugshots of the proprietors and a general view of the pub, shop or shopping centre?’ I could and I did. Often I’d be writing with enthusiasm about businesses for which I felt no personal enthusiasm whatsoever. I regarded myself as being in the same position as a barrister. It was up to me to stress my clients’ good points and see if I couldn’t manage to turn their bad points into well-disguised blessings. My contributions were, after all, labelled ‘advertising feature’ and while I always tried to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, I sometimes took comfort in the thought that no-one could ever hope to tell the whole truth!

Here I am, at the ‘workbench’, with a ‘Brother’ electronic typewriter I think, which places it about twenty years ago and me in my late sixties. Around me are some of my plumbing books and just behind my left wrist, a copy of ‘Coastal Express’, ‘The read one’ as its banner headline proclaimed.

There were some words that were absolutely taboo in advertising features. ‘dull’, for instance, was never used as a description of the weather at any of our holiday coast resorts. Our skies might, very occasionally, be ‘cloudy’ but nothing whatsoever about one of our holiday towns was ever ‘dull’. Similarly nothing, whether food, clothing, entertainment or any kind of service to the public, was ever described as ‘cheap’. ‘Cheap’ implied, at its best ‘Cheap and Cheerful’, with overtones of fish and chips with a sprinkling of salt and vinegar, eaten with the fingers out of a greasy newspaper on a windy beach. At its worst it meant ‘Cheap and Nasty’, the sort of gadget that claims to have half a dozen purposes but actually performs none of them. Goods and services might be ‘competitively priced’ or ‘inexpensive’. In the world of advertising features though, they were never cheap.

All of this is why I felt nothing but dismay when I read in bold headlines in the Daily Gazette CLACTON IS CHEAP AND CHEERFUL RESORT with, underneath it, a picture taken just west of Clacton Pier of a crowded beach and a lower prom so crammed with holiday makers that movement must have been all but impossible. The caption said Busy - Clacton is the cheapest UK holiday. We Clactonians were, no doubt, expected to greet this with gratitude and enthusiasm. My own thought was, ‘while we’ve got friends like that, we certainly don’t need enemies!’

The news story, that accompanied the headline and the picture, was in fact quite cheering. A survey, commissioned by Virgin Money Travel Insurance had revealed that Clacton was the least expensive holiday resort in the whole of the UK, followed by Orkney, Bournemouth (that was a surprise!), Morecambe and Bognor (and so were they!). The survey, which took into consideration hotel and restaurant availability and charges, quality of beaches, and the overall cost and number of nearby tourist attractions, also listed the ‘best’ holiday resorts in order.

In this list Clacton-on-Sea was 19th best, well ahead of Southend-on-Sea who were 28th. The survey also praised the quality of Clacton’s beaches. The news report doesn’t say how many resorts were surveyed but as we know that among them were resorts on the south coast and Orkney in the far north, it may be assumed that 19th was well towards the top.

Had I been writing that story in my advertising-feature days, the illustration would have been of children enjoying themselves on a busy, but not crowded, sandy beach in full sunshine. This would have been my headline and my news story:

HOLIDAYS AT HOME?….CLACTON’S THE BEST!

An independent survey, conducted by Virgin Money Travel Insurance, has rated Clacton-on-Sea, whose beaches were specially praised, as the best holiday resort in Essex, and among the ‘top twenty’ within the UK. It was also declared to be the least expensive resort in the whole of the United Kingdom!

The survey took into account the weather, the cost of a week in an hotel, price and availability of restaurants, quality of beaches, and the overall cost and number of nearby tourist attractions.

So, if you’re holidaying in Britain and have been flooded out (or ripped off!) in the Lake District, the West Country or the Scottish Highlands, try Clacton-on-Sea next year. It’s the best in Essex and rated among the best in the UK, it has the lowest annual rainfall in the British Isles, some of the best beaches – and the lowest prices!

‘Cheap and Cheerful’ never!

This picture, of my younger son enjoying himself on a Clacton beach in the early ‘60s is the best illustration that I could find at short notice. I am sure that the ‘Gazette’ has many much better and more recent ones on its files

Our Man in Nanjing!

Much as I might have liked to forget Essex County Council for at least a week, its members force themselves upon our attention. They have sold off all their old people’s residential homes, are eager to turn their schools into privately controlled ‘academies’, have incurred Colcastrian wrath by closing two schools and bussing their displaced pupils miles across the town, and have been severely criticised for the standard of their child care and social services. Unabashed, triumphant in fact, they have now established a ‘company’ in Nanjing, in Jiangsu Province of the People’s Republic of China. This must surely be ‘a first’ for local government enterprise!

It is going to cost the County Council (which means, of course, that it’s going to cost us) £40,000 a year. £26,000 of this will go as salary to a Chinese citizen, and the remainder to running his office in Nanjing. As a life-long trade unionist and a retired life-member of UNISON I hope that existing staff at County Hall, Chelmsford will offer their new Chinese colleague membership of our Union!

The purpose of the County Council’s new overseas venture is to help Essex businesses meet potential buyers and sellers and it seems that under Chinese law, the county council cannot operate unless it has a company there. Lord Hanningfield, eloquent as ever, explains:

‘Essex has a long-standing relationship with the province (of Jiangsu) and the establishment of a permanent office there will allow us to identify potential inward investment and opportunities for local businesses. The downturn has shown us we must look at alternative ways to sustain our local economy and keep local businesses thriving, and we have taken the initiative on this.’

That is all very worthy and done, I am quite sure, with the very best of intentions. When, many years ago, I was learning about the nature of local government, I was taught that a big difference between a local authority and a private person was that while a private individual was permitted to do anything that wasn’t prohibited by law, a local authority could lawfully only undertake tasks specifically entrusted to it by central government. Anything beyond that was ultra vires, or beyond its powers, and illegal. Essex County Councillors have, I am sure, the very best legal advisers in their employ. Perhaps the law has since been changed. If not, the County Council must surely have found some statute that permits a local authority to use public funds to establish a company on the other side of the world, in a country with laws and traditions completely alien from our own.

Common sense tells me that such a venture should be funded by the businesses hoping to benefit, not by the council taxpayer. Council tax and Government grants should surely be spent on tasks entrusted to County Councils; social services, education, highways, refuse disposal and so on; admittedly pretty boring old jobs compared with jetting round the world, running banks and post offices, and founding and managing businesses in faraway lands.

‘It was us wot won it!'

Most people will remember The Sun’s proud, and deliberately semi-literate, boast after supporting John Major’s successful general election campaign. The sad thing about it is that that boast was probably justified. Whatever politicians may say, I have no doubt at all that daily newspapers do influence public opinion.

At the very least they reinforce and strengthen opinions and prejudices already half-formed. To some extent readers are influenced by leading and feature articles; even more though by large black headlines and brief punchy reports that never tell more than a fragment of any news story. Such reports distort the truth, as much by omission as by anything that actually appears in print. I think that I have demonstrated this in this blog in my piece about advertising features. At least my contributions to the press were labelled 'advertising feature'.

Why is it that Eurosceptics can be confident that referendums held in England on the Lisbon Treaty, or on the adoption of the Euro, would almost certainly produce a large ‘No’ vote? Certainly not because a majority, or even a sizeable minority of us, have carefully studied the pros and cons and have decided that they would be to Britain’s disadvantage. The reason is simply that in a large section of the press; The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, the Daily Star and, though rather less stridently, The Daily Telegraph, never mention the Treaty, the Euro or the European Union without a sneer.

For that reason I think that the Government has every reason to be angry (however much they may claim not to care) not only at The Sun’s change of policy, but at its having been carefully timed to fill news bulletins that might otherwise have been occupied by reports of the Prime Minister’s speech at the Labour Party Conference.

I don’t think that regular readers of this blog are likely to accuse me either of uncritical support for New Labour or of mindless xenophobia. I do feel very strongly though that the means of moulding/manipulating/distorting public opinion should not be in private hands and under private control. This is surely particularly important when those hands are based in, and that control exercised from, a foreign country, even if that country is one with which we are said to have a ‘special relationship’.