Week 10 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

Birds of a Feather………

          HRH the Prince of Wales referred to them as ‘headless chicken’. Writing recently in the Church Times (not a publication likely to be accused of sensationalism or scare mongering)  Paul Vallely, Senior Research Fellow at the Brooks World Poverty Institute at Manchester University, prefers to call climate change deniers 'ostriches'. That’s rather more appropriate because ostriches are popularly believed to bury their heads in the sand rather than observe, and do something about, scary things going on around them.

            Paul Vallely quotes a geography professor who told him that if the floods and gales of this winter are the beginning of climate change (and most intelligent observers are now convinced that they are) then there is nothing that we can do about it.  What seems to us now to be ‘extreme weather’ will be the norm for at least twenty years.  However he tempered that apocalyptic message by adding that ‘all we can do now is to stop it getting worse’.

            ‘Climate change deniers’, says Paul Vallely, ‘always insist that you cannot prove a causal link between one spell of extreme weather and global warming. That is true, just as you cannot link one specific cigarette to a smoker’s developing lung cancer.  Trends though, are another matter’.

            Lord Stone, a punctilious and naturally cautious man with a great concern for academic accuracy, is a friend and former colleague of Paul Vallely.  He wrote a seminal report on climate change in 2006 and recently noted that four of the five wettest years ever recorded in the UK have occurred since 2,000 – and so have the seven warmest!  Elsewhere in the world Australia has just had its hottest year on record. North America has been gripped by a polar vortex.  Bangladesh has had two ‘once-in-lifetime’ cyclones in three years.  The Philippines have had their worst-ever cyclone.

            It might have been thought that global warming would make the weather warmer here in Britain.  That though, is not the case.  Scientists warned years ago that the first change the UK could expect would be more rain and wind, since a warmer atmosphere holds more water and energy, meaning more floods – and thus it has happened!

            Looking back, Lord Stern says that his verdict back in 2006 should have been harsher than it was.  ‘Since then, annual greenhouse-gas emissions have increased steeply, and some of the impacts, such as the decline of Arctic sea ice, have started to happen much more quickly’

            Paul Vallely notes that recently our Prime Minister advised the folk of flood-stricken Upton-on-Severn to speak to ‘the man upstairs’ about the floods.  Paul comments that prayer is not a sufficient answer and that, as his grandmother used to say, God helps those who help themselves.   To expect God miraculously to remedy the harm that we humans have done to our environment is almost as stupid as believing that the floods are God’s punishment for our approving same-sex marriages!

            The God in whom I believe, created the Universe and everything in it using evolution and natural selection as his tools.  That God is present, both throughout the Universe and as an 'inward light' within the souls of every man, woman and child in the world.  He listens to and answers our prayers but, as St. Theresa has declared, ‘In this world God has no hands but ours to do his work; no feet but ours to run his errands’ and he (I could with equal accuracy have said ‘she’ or ‘it’) has given us free will.

            We humans have chosen to follow the paths of greed, covetousness and relentless competition with each other for wealth and worldly possessions, rather than those of co-operation, compassion and sharing the earth’s riches with our fellow men and women. We have squandered the world’s finite resources and as greenhouse gases accelerate climate change, we are rendering our planet uninhabitable.  God does not punish us for folly and selfishness. We punish ourselves.

            Here is the final paragraph of Paul Vallely’s article:   If what we are seeing around us is the result of a two-degree rise in global temperatures, what can we expect from the four degrees rise that many scientists say is inevitable unless we cut carbon emissions?  Lord Stern suggests mass migrations, conflict and war.  The last time the global temperature was five degrees different from today, the earth was gripped by an ice age.  We cannot say that we have not been warned

……..flock together.

            

            I have been following the reports of the trial of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson – both were senior employees of Ruper Murdoch's News International  and both were close friends and confidantes of Prime Ministers and other top politicians of both the main political parties. Andy Coulson was for some time David Cameron’s personal spin doctor.  Now they are both on trial in connection with alleged phone hacking and attempts to pervert the course of justice while they were employed by News International.  I was particularly interested to note that Tony Blair, former Prime Minister and creator of New Labour had offered Rebekah Brooks his support and told her that he would similarly help and advise Rupert Murdoch, who owns and heads News International.

           

          Pioneers of the Labour Party – Keir Hardie, George Lansbury, Sir Stafford Cripps, Clem Attlee, Jenny Lee and Nye Bevan must surely be turning in their graves. Rupert Murdoch, his  lieutenants, and his News International stand for everything that the Labour Movement was created to oppose.

  

 The Ukrainian Tragedy

 Seventy years ago – when I was a PoW at a small Arbeitskommando (working camp) in Eastern Germany we regularly worked and (when we had learned a little basic German) chatted with civilian fellow-workers who were clearly not German and who wore a distinguishing badge OST sewn onto their jackets. We soon learned that the OST was short for Ostarbeiter (worker from the east) and that they were conscripted ‘slave workers’ from German occupied areas of Russia and the Ukraine.

There were men and women. We got to know them very well both as fellow forced-workers and as friends. There is nothing like having a common enemy to bring people together, and all we foreign conscripted workers, PoWs and civilians, were good friends.  Much more recently I have learned about the rift between western and eastern Ukraine. Is the Ukrainian language very different from Russian?  That's certainly not the impression that I gained - but perhaps the Ukrainians that I knew all came from the Eastern Ukraine.  They were certainly friendly enough with their Russian fellow 'Ostarbeiters'.  In Russian ‘Ukraine’ means ‘the Outlands’, a province in the south of the former Tsarist Empire acting as a buffer zone against the always threatening Turks.

Many 'Ostarbeiters', Russians and Ukrainians alike, had seen their parents and their village elders killed in cold blood by German SS units.  Some, particularly the girls, had themselves had horrific experiences before being rounded up and deported to Germany.  They were invariably friendly, cheerful and patient.  Many of them were genuinely interested in our lives in Britain.   Daily we heard the thunder of gunfire from the Eastern Front grow louder and louder as the Soviet Armies advanced through Poland and into Germany.   We learned a few words and phrases in Russian from our Ukrainian and Russian friends and fellow-workers. These proved immensely valuable to me when the war came to an end and a mate and I were hitch-hiking our way through Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia on our way home to England!

Now the children and grandchildren of those warm-hearted and friendly young men and women have been killing each other in the streets of Kiev and other Ukrainian cities, and all the major powers can do is ‘take sides’ – the Russian Government supporting the ousted Ukrainian President, and the UK, USA and EU supporting the rebels (just as in the Syrian blood-bath!)  At the heart of the quarrel between the two Ukrainian factions seems to be whether Ukraine should seek the friendship and support of the EU or of Russia. 

 For goodness sake!   The cold war is over and the ‘iron curtain’ drawn aside.  Is it really impossible for Ukraine to enjoy the friendship of both – and to enter into military alliance with neither;  perhaps even to serve as a friendly bridge between us and our Russian former allies?   Have we forgotten already the contribution that the Soviet Army (mostly Russians and Ukrainians) made towards the defeat of the Nazis?  Winston Churchill said that it was the Red Army that ‘tore the guts out of the Nazi War Machine’ and I have no doubt at all that had it not been for their efforts and their sacrifice (8 million dead!) I would, at the best, have remained a prisoner for at least another two or three years. It is much more likely though that I would never have come home at all. I now have good friends in Germany and, in particular, in the small town where I spent the last eighteen months of World War II as a PoW – but I have always remembered with gratitude those to whom I owe my life and my liberty.

Late News

I wrote the above three days ago (on 28th February) and things have moved swiftly since then. Russian troops have moved into the Crimea where they appear to have been welcomed by the civilian population. They have, in effect, confined troops of the interim Ukrainian Government to their own bases.  I can only hope and pray that the world's rulers will keep their heads cool and their eyes on world peace rather than on scoring points or losing 'face'.  Is it not just possible that the presence of a considerable Russian force in  the Crimean peninsula will deter the current provisional government from attempting to force their ideas and their culture on their compatriots in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, thus provoking another civil conflict?

I do find the holier-than-thou attitude of the government of the USA somewhat surprising.  Some of us still remember the USA's backing of the disastrous 'Bay of Pigs' attempted invasion of Cuba, the USA's illegal blockade of Cuban ports endangering international shipping and - almost exactly thirty years ago - the completely unprovoked USA led invasion of the  Caribbean island of Grenada  for no purpose other than regime change.  This was condemned by the United Nations General Assembly as an act of unprovoked aggression though the UK's government, then headed by 'iron lady' Margaret Thatcher was strangely silent, despite the fact that Grenada was then part of the British Commonwealth and its head of state was our Queen.

‘First cast the plank out of your own eye, and you will see more clearly how to deal with the mote in the eye of your brother’   St. Matthew Chapter 7 verse 5

 

             

           

           

Week 47 2013

Tendring Topics……..on line

‘To Vote or not to Vote….?’

          ….That is the question, about which BBC Radio 4 listeners were debating over the air waves last week.  A great many of them were disillusioned with party politics. They felt felt that they couldn't support any political party having the least chance of forming the next government.  They couldn’t really make up their minds though whether it was better just to stay away from the voting stations, to put a blank ballot paper in the black box or to deliberately spoil the ballot paper by voting for every candidate or by scribbling ‘None of the above’, or perhaps some even ruder message, on the ballot paper.

            As one who has been a Presiding Officer, a humble poll clerk, and a counting assistant at parliamentary and local government elections in the past, I can assure blog readers that how they display their disillusion really makes no difference whatsoever.  If you take no part in the election it won’t be put down to indignation – but apathy.  If you deface your ballot paper, no matter how wisely or wittily, it won’t be seen by anyone more important than the Presiding Officer (probably a school teacher or council official sacrificing a day from his or her holiday entitlement for a few extra quid!) He may well agree with what you have written but he’ll just discard it as a spoilt ballot paper.  These are counted at the end of the day and when it is announced that there were 450 spoilt papers most people won’t think, ‘That means there were 450 principled objectors to the electoral system’, but, ‘That means there must be 450 people so dim-witted that they can’t even manage to put a cross against a name on a piece of paper!’

            I sympathise with all those disillusioned and cynical former-voters.  I’d be inclined to join them – except for the fact that there are groups of electors who do believe in their candidates and who promote their causes with fanatical enthusiasm.  They will turn up at the polling stations and vote, and they’ll try to persuade others to do the same.  These are those that support fringe candidates who have no time whatsoever for the opinion-poll-driven candidates of the main parties.  Some are benign, like those who support the ‘Green Party’. I’d be among them were it not for the certainty that, in this area at least, their candidates stand no chance whatsoever under the first-past-the-post electoral system used in British parliamentary and local elections.

            Others are, I believe, much less benign though probably more appealing to a cynical and disillusioned electorate. Supporters of UKIP, United Kingdom Independence Party, are united in their delusion that most of the UKs troubles derive from our membership of the European Union and that leaving the Union would supply an instant remedy.  They also – just like Clacton’s MP - believe that if global climate change is occurring it has nothing to do with human activity  wind farms, solar panels and talk of green and sustainable energy are a waste of time and money.  Other of UKIPs policies are those of the extreme right wing of the Tory Party.   I think of it as a Neo-Fascist Party with its policies endorsed by the same right-wing millionaire-owned press that supported Hitler’s Nazis, Mussolini’s Fascists and their friend General Franco in Spain, in the years before World War II.  Just as disillusion with the forces of democracy helped the Nazis into power  in 20^th Century Germany, so our disillusion with Party Politics could allow these Neo-Fascists into power in  21^st century Britain.

            I believe very strongly that everyone with an entitlement to vote should do so to prevent a takeover by extremists of this kind.  If we can’t bring ourselves to vote positively for any of the candidates in a parliamentary or local government election we can at least vote negatively to keep out the candidate we would least like to represent us.  Most of us could, I think, decide on that!

            My own political priorities are (1) Closing down the Trident submarine fleet and promoting meaningful international negotiations outlawing all nuclear weapons in all countries  (2) closer political and economic ties with our fellow Europeans in the European Union, together with a determination to work within the union for general reform (3) working continuously and by every means available to reduce the gap between the incomes of the wealthiest and the poorest within the UK. Currently we have the biggest gap in Europe! (4) Recognising the reality and urgency of dealing with Climate Change, and funding further research into the exploitation of wind, solar, wave and tidal power to provide sources of energy that would eventually eliminate the need for either fossil or nuclear fuels.

              Alone among the political parties the Green Party would support at least some of my priorities and would not, I think, actively oppose those they couldn’t endorse.  If therefore I am still around next year when we are invited to vote for our representatives in the European Parliament, I shall vote for the Green Party candidate because for that election we will have proportional representation. Every vote will count!  In the even-less-likely event of my survival till the next British Parliamentary Election (a first-past-the-post election) I shall vote for the candidate most likely to unseat our present MP.  The thought occurs to me that it is just possible that that could be the UKIP candidate.  If that were so I would – with extreme reluctance and a prayer for Heaven to forgive me - vote for our existing MP as slightly the lesser of two evils.

 ‘What’s wrong with being a 'pleb'?

          

                It seems extraordinary that there should have been so much righteous indignation over whether or not the Government’s then Chief Whip did, or did not, describe police officers with whom he was having an altercation, as plebs!  This happened over a year ago but only a fortnight ago the officers were again summoned before parliament and grilled on the subject.  I doubt if we have heard the last of it yet.

            I thought that I was familiar with all the words of abuse (printable and unprintable) in the English language, and quite a few in several mainland European ones.  I have to confess though that I had never before heard plebs used as a term of abuse or derision. I don’t, in fact, think I had ever heard it used at all.  It is presumably an abbreviation of plebeian, the designation of the underclass (the folk who actually did all the work) in ancient Rome.  The upper class who, except figuratively, never got their hands dirty were the Patricians (the pats?).  I suppose the Roman equivalent of a Chief Whip would have been one of them.

            Well, I’m a pleb and I’m inclined to think that most of the people I know wouldn’t be deeply offended if I suggested that they were plebs too. I don’t really know any pats though I suppose I have met a few people who thought they were.  Pleb is a word that I have never used but that I wouldn’t hesitate to use in even the primmest and most respectable company.  That can’t be said about other words that the former Chief Whip freely admits that he used on that disputed occasion.

            During the past year we have had steadily increasing bloodshed in Syria (but now just a slight possibility of a peaceful outcome), cripplingly escalating fuel prices in the UK,  a fall in unemployment but – just in case we get too pleased with ourselves – an increase in short-term debt and in the number of people depending on Food Banks and other kinds of charitable giving. Just last week there was a natural disaster in the Philippines (another result of the global climatic change that a small minority in the UK doesn't believe exists?) that has killed  thousands of people and rendered hundreds of thousands homeless.

            For goodness sake let’s stop worrying about whether a top politician insulted a couple of probably officious, coppers and whether policemen are more or less likely to tell the truth than top politicians. Who cares?  There are far more important things with which we should be concerning ourselves.

The Truth – and nothing but The Truth

          Writing about the truth and who is and who is not likely to be truthful reminds me that the trial of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, both former senior employees of News International has begun. Andy Coulson, you’ll remember, was appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron as his spin doctor.  He departed from that post only when the phone hacking scandal involving News International erupted.  Rebekah Brooks was a neighbour and close friend, not only of David Cameron but of other former prime ministers and other top politicians of both the right and the left.

            They both face serious charges relating to the phone hacking scandal and other matters involving their employment by News International.  The court will no doubt decide whether or not they are guilty of these alleged offences.

            One charge that they won’t have to face, because it isn’t an offence, is exercising undue influence over a number of politicians.  Yet that, I believe, is how they may most have harmed our country.  For that we can only penalise, by means of the ballot box, the politicians who put themselves in a situation where they could have been influenced.  And I hope that we will do so.

              

           

           

                                      

Week 43 2013

Tendring Topics……on line

Our ‘free press’ and the politicians……. just who controls whom?

          I have been observing the current quarrel between ‘the press’ and all three main political parties with astonished fascination.  Our free press is, so its representatives insist, the envy of the civilised world.  It is the safeguard of our hard-earned freedoms and must be at all costs protected from interference by scheming politicians.  Ed Miliband’s recent protests against  the Daily Mail’s  vilification of  his father as an ‘enemy of Britain’ is, so it was claimed, an example of attempted interference; ‘Just what one might expect from the son of a committed Marxist’, was implied.

            I knew nothing about Ed Miliband’s dad until recently. However I now know that he was a refugee from Hitler’s Germany who subsequently served on a destroyer in our Royal Navy, and took part in the D-day landings on the Normandy beaches. That surely speaks for itself.  I am old enough to remember that the Daily Mail in the 1930s supported the Nazis in Germany, and Hitler and Mussolini’s pal General Franco in Spain.  I remember too the Daily Express, a newspaper with a very similar outlook to that of the Mail assuring us throughout 1938 and the early part of 1939 that ‘There will be no war this year – or next year either!’ There really wasn’t much to be proud of in our ’free press’ in those days.

            With regard to the present concerns of ‘the press’, my own anxiety is almost the exact opposite of theirs.   Unless UKIP triumphs in the next General Election, I don’t really think there is the least possibility of our press coming under government control in any way comparable with that of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy or the USSR.   What is a matter of concern is the way – often quite blatant – in which the owners of the press have manipulated and bent the minds and wills of our top politicians.

            I have little doubt that the credit/blame (delete as preferred) for the creation of New Labour lies as much with Rupert Murdoch as it does with Tony Blair and Lord Mandelson.   Remembering The Sun’s boast that, ‘It was the Sun wot done it’ when in 1992 persistent vilification of Neil Kinnock by that newspaper led to an unexpected defeat of the Labour Government, Tony Blair and a few of his colleagues moved the Labour Party’s policies far enough to the right to win the approval of the head of News International.  While Tony Blair was in control, the Sun supported New Labour. Rupert Murdoch acknowledges his own over-riding influence on the political outlook of The Sun, but claims that the editor of The Times has complete freedom of action.  No doubt, but the editor of that once-illustrious publication is well aware of the owner’s views and would be very foolish to ignore them.

            He who pays the piper calls the tune.  On a much more humble scale, I had complete freedom of action when I wrote Tendring Topics (in print) for the Coastal Express. No-one even dreamed of telling me what I could, and what I could not write.  However my awareness of the fact that adverts from Estate Agents and Used Car Salesmen kept the free weekly on the road, made sure that any criticism in my column of either occupation was very limited and discreet.

            Mrs Thatcher courted the good will of Rupert Murdoch and other senior figures in the News International Empire. So did Tony Blair and so, to a greater extent than either of them, did David Cameron and senior members of his government.  John Major was an honourable exception – and John Major suffered for it at the hands of the The Sun.  Of course there were no written agreements between any senior politician and the rulers of the press.  It was just that they were all good friends and the political leaders knew what their friends’ views were (on Europe for example, on immigration, on anything that might cause inconvenience to the extremely wealthy) and bore them in mind when formulating party or government policy.  They were also, of course, well aware of which policies would and which would not produce positive headlines in the Sun!

            It is sometimes claimed that the newspapers have little effect on the way that people vote.  I simply don’t believe this is true.  The newspapers do influence public opinion, and can do so without publishing a single word that isn’t true.  Out of the thousands of newsworthy events that occur every day, most are probably politically neutral.  Of the ones that aren’t, the editor who wishes to succeed in his profession gives those that support the owner’s views, headline and ‘feature article’ treatment.  News stories that oppose those views are either ignored altogether or tucked away half-way down an inside page.   When did you last read a positive story about the European Union, about Green Energy or about the contribution that immigrants make to our economy in the Sun, the Daily Mail or the Daily Express?   Remember that the Sun, arguably the most noxious of the three, has over seven million readers – the largest readership of any daily in the UK.   Of course a sizeable proportion of those seven million believe every word they read – and vote accordingly.   

            Lord Leveson in his report, touched on the way in which newspaper proprietors and their senior staff may influence politicians but, as far as I am aware, offered no solution. I don’t believe that very wealthy individuals, who need not even be British citizens, should be able to control such a powerful means of moulding public opinion. Perhaps a national newspaper or regional newspapers, could be run by an organisation similar to the BBC, which (since it is criticised from both the left and the right) probably gets the balance of its news bulletins and discussion programmes about right.

            I wouldn’t like to see national newspapers under the control of politicians.  But they are at least answerable to us at election time.  I would prefer that to their being controlled by a foreign cosmopolitan billionaire, who is answerable to no-one but himself and owes no loyalty to Britain or to British traditions and culture.

The British Red Cross Society

          A few months ago Ingrid Zeibig, a German friend of mine, sent me a photograph that brought vividly to the forefront of my mind events of nearly seventy years ago when I spent eighteen months as a prisoner of war in Italy, followed by a further eighteen months in Germany.  Particularly in Italy, where I was in a large POW Concentration Camp in northern Italy I learned what constant nagging hunger meant and what could be its consequences.

       
           Now, my doctor would probably tell me that I am overweight. Then my face fell in, my ribs protruded, and my weight fell day by hungry day. Scarcely a week passed without one of my fellow-prisoners dying of hunger related disease.  During that time we had the opportunity of having our photographs taken and sending home to our parents or wives.  My mum took one look at mine and tore it up.  She couldn’t bear to look at the emaciated scarecrow I had become. What kept us alive and never completely devoid of hope during that dreadful time, was the delivery to the camp of food parcels from the British, or sometimes the Canadian, Red Cross Society.  Each parcel contained tins of meat or fish, dried or condensed milk, margarine, a tin of jam or honey, tea or coffee, sugar and biscuits.  We were supposed to get one each, every week, but in Italy delivery was very spasmodic and sometimes we’d go for weeks without a parcel.  Then, when they arrived, the Italian guards insisted on opening each parcel and piercing every food tin so that its contents had to be consumed almost immediately.  We all believed that this was done out of spite and envy but, on reflection; I suppose it was to prevent our saving food to eat if we escaped!

           

There’s Ingrid with a genuine World War II Red Cross Food Parcel originally intended for a hungry POW!  I could practically see – and taste – the contents.

In Germany things for me (though by no means everyone had the same experience) were much better.  I was at a small working camp. Our guards weren’t bad chaps, our rations were better (they realized that they wouldn’t get much work out of us if we weren’t better fed!), the Red Cross parcels came regularly and were distributed unopened. And, of course, when you’re working with food, as we often were, you don’t go hungry!  I have tried always to support the British Red Cross and have often thought of those food parcels and how pleased we were to see them.  The photo that Ingrid sent me was of her with one of those parcels!  She was visiting Colditz Castle (now it seems to be a museum) with a friend, and the parcel – just as I remembered them from my POW days - was among the exhibits.

            I received that photo some months ago but I was reminded of it last week when I learned that the British Red Cross was again distributing food parcels to the hungry – but this time to the hungry in our own country. And Freedom from want was one of the ‘four freedoms’ for which we thought we were fighting in World War II! How shameful that one of the world’s wealthiest countries – that can afford to give tax hand-outs to its wealthiest citizens and patrol the world’s oceans with nuclear submarines - has an underclass that depends on Food Banks and Red Cross Parcels for survival, that this winter will have to decide whether to eat or heat, and spends its coppers ‘having fun’ with the national lottery in the forlorn hope of escaping from soul-destroying poverty to extreme wealth!

           And top politicians have the effrontery to claim that we’re all in this together!

           

             

           

           

             

Week 40 2013

Tendring Topics………on Line

 Redundant Royals?

          I am sorry that Prince William is giving up his job as a search and rescue helicopter pilot with the RAF.  It was a thoroughly worth-while occupation and he seemed to enjoy doing it. How splendid, I thought, that a senior member of the Royal Family should be in the armed forces, but saving lives rather than threatening them. I’d have thought it was much more satisfying, and more socially useful, than trotting round the country – or the Commonwealth – cutting ribbons, shaking hands and making anodyne speeches.

            Sadly, government policy would soon have snatched that job from him even had he had wished to continue with it.  Obsessed with the doctrinaire conviction that every function carried out by a public authority will be better and more efficiently performed by private enterprise, the government is discontinuing the air-sea rescue service that has been carried out by the RAF and out-sourcing it to a private firm.

            Air-sea rescue, the Royal Mail; what next I wonder?   If the government cuts too deeply into the public services and privatises too many of their activities they could find themselves in serious trouble.   Do you remember when the private sector let us down over security at last year's Olympics or when, a few years earlier, a food-animal epidemic produced a problem the solution of which was beyond the private sector’s capability? On both occasions they urgently needed the public sector’s expertise, loyalty and co-operation. To solve a similar problem in the future they may find that there’s no public sector left on which they can fall back!

            Even Mrs Thatcher, the great evangelist of privatisation, drew the line at selling off the Queen’s head by privatising the Royal Mail.  Having passed that hurdle I’m only surprised that Messrs Cameron, Osborne and co haven’t yet had the idea of completing the job by privatising the monarchy.  News International could surely put in a successful tender.  They’d make the institution productive, profitable and cost effective – and produce satisfying dividends for their shareholders.  They’ve already had unrivalled experience of manipulating the mighty and bending the minds of top politicians.  The reign of King Rupert the First would undoubtedly be remembered as the one in which the United Kingdom really became a land fit for cosmopolitan billionaires to prosper in.

 Tough about the fate of the former Royal Family – and the rest of us!

A Freeze on Fuel Prices?

          Goodness – it was rash of Ed Miliband to promise to freeze fuel prices for a fixed period, two years in advance of the possibility of his being able to fulfil it. Despite national efforts to develop sources of sustainable energy, oil and gas originating from countries that are notoriously unstable and unreliable seem likely to be our main sources of energy for the foreseeable future.   If he should succeed, say the furious fuel companies, he is risking power failures and blackouts. Is that a forecast I wonder – or a threat?

            I warmed to the idea just a little when I learned that Lord Mandelson was strongly opposed to it.  He, you’ll recall, was one of the architects of New Labour and is remembered for his comment that he, ‘had no problem with billionaires’.  I am one of the many who think that in a country where thousands are depending on Food Banks and charitable-giving to survive, he should have a problem with them.

            A regular blog reader suggests a couple of ideas that might have gone into Ed Miliband’s speech if he really wants to prevent the poorer members of our society having to choose between eating and heating:

What would be a good and realistic thing to do is to ban energy companies from charging extra for pre-paid meters. These are almost entirely used by poor families with debt problems who live in low-cost privately rented homes, bedsits for example.  The price difference they have to endure is really quite significant. If this involved any extra cost it would be much fairer for all consumers to share it..

 A more imaginative policy would be to force energy companies to introduce a price structure in which the first xx Kilowatts were very cheap but after that the more fuel was used, the more  would be its cost per unit. This would make it possible for poor (and frugal) people to stay warm at lower cost, while those who were trying to heat six bedroomed mansions and a swimming pool would find it very expensive and be encouraged to put solar panels on the roof

Well, why not?

A Closer look at Clacton-on-Sea’s Sea Front.

          Regular readers of this blog will know that old age and arthritis have crippled me (or, to use a politically correct euphemism, ‘have severely reduced my mobility’).  Without my electric mobility scooter – my iron horse – I would be housebound.  With it I can visit local friends, go to church and to our Quaker Meeting and do my shopping.  For longer journeys I am dependent on the kindness of my family and friends to give me a lift in their cars.  I very much appreciate these occasional outings but, of course, when we reach our destination and the car is parked, I can still hobble only a few yards, leaning heavily on my stick and preferably with a supportive arm!

Pete and I (on my ‘iron pony’) on Clacton Pier        

Pete and Andy, my two always-thoughtful sons, found a solution. Pete and daughter-in-law Arlene visited me on Saturday 21^st September.  In the boot of Pete’s car was an easily-assembled mini mobility scooter – an iron pony – that he and Andy had bought for my use!  Pete drove us to Marine Parade West and parked his car with the help of my ‘blue disabled badge’.  Then, in a matter of minutes, he assembled the mini-scooter, and we set out on a journey of exploration.  We went down the slope at Pier Gap and onto the pier itself.  Riding my new steed was an exciting experience.  The controls were almost the same as those on my trusted ‘iron horse’ but everything (except of course me!) was on a much smaller scale.

It had been years since any one of the three of us had had a chance to explore the pier thoroughly – although we had received very enthusiastic reports from the younger guests at my birthday celebration in May. They had visited the pier after the celebratory lunch.  We were pleased and just a little surprised, to see that there were plenty of visitors of all ages enjoying themselves despite the fact that schools had re-opened and we were nearing the end of September.  There was plenty of noise and bustle.  Pete said it reminded him of the pier iu Clacton’s glory days in the ‘60s and ‘70s when Clacton had thronged with visitors during the holiday period.  He was particularly pleased to see the Steel Stella, the Helter Skelter and the Dodgems, as well as other newer rides.  We went to the end of the pier and surveyed the wind-farm, and the restaurant with its huge glass windows looking out over the ocean.

          

On Clacton Pier - Steel Stella and Helter Skelter

          Having explored the pier we thought that we’d take a  stroll along the lower prom towards the Martello Tower and the Coaches Car Park.  I can’t remember when I had last made that once-familiar journey.  Looking back, Pete was particularly pleased to see the silhouette of the pier with its Steel Stella, Helter Skelter and other buildings, looking exactly as he remembered the pier of his childhood.  Along the prom he and Arlene were impressed with the new brightly coloured beach huts and the lively (graffiti style) mural decorations on the nearby wall.

 

Brightly coloured beach hut and wall painting

. We walked back (well, I rode my iron pony of course) through the cliff-top gardens.  My visitors and I were exhausted but we had enjoyed ourselves.  Despite all the bad press reports and the whingeing letters in the local papers, Clacton-on-Sea has all that is needed for a bright future – sandy and safe beaches, a reborn and prospering pier, colourful cliff-top gardens, and a rainfall and sunshine record as good as  any holiday resort in the UK – and much better than most!  Tendring Council’s top priority should be to make that known to the world!

I am now looking forward to a visit from son Andy and daughter-in-law Marilyn on 12th October. Perhaps my new 'iron pony' will have another outing!

          

Week 49 2012

Tendring Topics......on Line

Be careful what you wish for!

          Do you remember how recently it was that we were all worried about Britain’s devastating drought?   Not much more than six months ago we were warned about the dreadful effects of a drier than usual autumn and winter.   It would, we were told, take weeks of steady rain to replenish reservoirs, fill rivers and bring underground water supplies to their normal levels. Quite early in the spring the use of hose-pipes for watering domestic gardens or washing the family car was banned in a great many areas.   We all yearned for soft refreshing rain.  In churches and places of worship throughout the UK rain was the object of many a heartfelt prayer.

            Oh dear!  What happened was like one of those fairy stories in which a wish is granted by an apparently benevolent witch.   The wish is fulfilled but with consequences that had not been foreseen.

            We had our rain, buckets of it, throughout a thoroughly wet summer.  Rivers filled and overflowed. Homes were flooded. For a brief period in some areas there were simultaneously hose pipe bans and floods!  Soon though the Water Authorities realized that they had, in a few weeks, received several normal months’ worth of rain.  Hose pipe bans were lifted and the faithful began to pray for a dry and sunny late-summer and autumn so that, at Harvest Thanksgiving services they could sing confidently, ‘All is safely gathered in, ‘ere the winter storms begin!’

But in many parts of the UK all was not safely gathered in, or at least harvest time had not brought the abundant crops for which farmers and gardeners had hoped. Autumn brought more heavy rain and now – at the beginning of winter – we have been having yet more.  Once again there have been flooded homes in the West Country, in Yorkshire and in the North-East. Some unfortunates have had their homes flooded three times in as many months.  This south-eastern corner of East Anglia, although having much more rain than usual, has escaped the floods.  Our Essex Sunshine Coast really is a good place to live!

New Year’s Day 1979. My motor caravan outside my bungalow in Dudley Road, Clacton. I hope that we don’t get a repeat of the weather!

What next?  As I type these words the sky has cleared but the temperature has dropped several degrees and the immediate weather forecast is ‘dry - but much colder!’   Oh dear, I do hope we don’t get standing snow.  It is the one circumstance guaranteed to keep my mobility scooter in its shed (or, as I prefer to put it, my ‘iron horse in its stable’!) and leave me house-bound!

I have distrusted forecasts of any kind on the front page of the Daily Express ever since in 1938 and early 1939 when their headline assured us that ‘There will be no war this year, nor next year either!’  In 2011 they kept up the tradition by forecasting icy weather just before that Indian Summer in October.  I have an uncomfortable feeling though that this year, as they forecast a bitterly cold and ice-bound winter – they may be right!

The Government - and the Press

I sometimes think that politicians must be made of sterner stuff than the rest of us.  During the past year we have seen disastrous failures in Government functions that, had I been the senior politician responsible for the department concerned, I would have felt demanded my immediate resignation.  However, the politicians concerned have simply shrugged their shoulders, blamed the disaster on the civil servants involved, assured the public that ‘lessons have been learned’ and carried on as though nothing had happened.

Reaction to the phone hacking and corruption scandal that has engulfed the press, the police and the politicians during the past year has been somewhat similar. All the press have been tainted but at the centre of the scandal was News International, a news media empire ruled by Rupert Murdoch, Australian by birth and a citizen of the USA by adoption.   Successive British Prime Ministers have courted his favour and that of his lieutenants in the hope of ensuring favourable headlines in the Sun, the News of the World and other publications under his control.   This hope was not unjustified.  ‘It was us wot done it!’ boasted the Sun after one of Mrs Thatcher’s electoral victories.

I have long believed that New Labour with its rejection of democratic socialism and traditional Labour Values and, in government, its willing acceptance of the leadership of the most right-wing American President of the last century, was created for no other reason than to persuade Rupert Murdoch to switch his media Empire’s political allegiance from the Conservative to the Labour Party and thus  make Tony Blair’s emasculated party ‘electable’.

David Cameron followed in Tony Blair’s footsteps, appointing Andy Coulson, one of Rupert Murdoch’s former lieutenants as his personal spin-doctor and becoming a close friend of News International’s Chief Executive Rebekah Brooks. Both these former employees of News International now face criminal charges in connection with alleged phone hacking and other scandals related to press abuse of its powers.

The Leveson enquiry investigated objectively and comprehensively the whole range of Press Activities, interviewing Rupert Murdoch and his senior lieutenants and former lieutenants,  Prime Minister David Cameron, Tony Blair and a great many others. David Cameron told victims of the phone hacking and other abuses of press freedom, that he would accept the verdict of the Leveson Enquiry in full, ‘unless it was completely bonkers’. As part of the verdict would inevitably criticise the Prime Minister himself for the closeness of his relationship with members of the News International organisation, I would have thought that his best course of action would have been to accept Lord Leveson’s verdict and recommendations in full, hurry through any legislation that might be necessary to implement those recommendations, and hope that the electorate would soon forget the whole sorry affair.

But that isn’t going to happen.  David Cameron has evidently forgotten his pledge to News International’s victims. While accepting Lord Leveson’s insistence on the need to have a strong and wholly independent (both of politicians and of those involved in the press) body to regulate press behaviour, he is strongly opposed to that body having the statutory underpinning needed to enforce its decisions.

The reason for this, so it is said, is to protect the freedom of the press – a future government might use any such legislation as a springboard to curb press freedom.  What total rubbish!   Does Mr Cameron really imagine that a government of the future determined to muzzle the press would give two hoots about decisions that might have been made a decade or so earlier?  Can you imagine Hitler, in 1936, having the least interest in whatever a democratic German government had decided in the 1920s?    In any case, how ‘free’ is a press where editorial policy and political direction of a large part of it are dictated by a cosmopolitan multi-millionaire with no roots here and owing no loyalty to this country, its culture and its institutions?

Until we give more thought to the ownership of the press we should worry less about having a government-controlled press and worry rather more about having a press-controlled government constantly ‘adjusting’ its policies in the hope of gaining a few more votes at by-elections as a result of positive headlines in the tabloids and the support of the press moguls!

Robin Hoods – in reverse

There is no field in which the members of the government have revealed what are, I fear, their true colours than that of housing.  It is there that their Robin Hood in Reverse policy of robbing the poor to benefit the rich is most clearly exposed.

In order to level off to some extent the difference between the proportion of their incomes that poor and very wealthy people pay in taxation, it has been suggested that there should be extra higher bands of Council Tax liability and/or an extra ‘mansion tax’ paid by those whose homes are valued at over £2 million.

Both ideas have been vetoed by David Cameron.  He really doesn’t think that those who have worked hard and saved all their lives for their homes, should be penalised for doing so. How many people who live in homes worth over £2 million acquired them by working and saving hard all through their lives?   You’d need to enjoy a salary of £50,000 every year for 40 years to earn £2 million, never mind save it!

When considering housing at the other end of the social scale, government attitudes are very different.  Council tenants, and tenants in receipt of Housing Benefit, are to be charged a ‘bedroom tax’ for every empty bedroom. No, they are not allowed to have a spare bedroom for occasional visitors. Those financially squeezed Daily Mail readers can’t be expected to subsidise the hospitality of ‘benefit scroungers’.

Never mind the fact that some of those tenants will be old people who have paid taxes all their working lives and are struggling to live on the state pension plus any benefits to which they may be entitled.   Others will be employed, but on or near the minimum wage.  They need the housing benefit, not for themselves, but to add to the wealth of rapacious landlords.  Nobody, says the government, will have to pay the bedroom tax.  There is the choice of moving into smaller accommodation (if they can find any) or taking in a lodger.

            A listener to the BBC’s Breakfast Programme, when hearing about the proposed ‘Bedroom Tax’, enquired how many spare bedrooms there might be at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country home, which is also publicly owned.

Week 18 2012

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

 ‘The Proof of the Pudding…………’

            It was about three years ago that I decided to have a solar water heating system installed.  My bungalow has a south-sloping roof and Clacton-on-Sea has, statistically, a good deal more than an average number of hours of bright sunshine.   I was then in my late eighties and knew perfectly well that I would be unlikely to recover the capital cost of installation.  However, thanks to the present government’s fiscal policies, it seemed probable that the money saved would be greater than the interest the cost of installation was earning in a bank savings account.  In any case, again thanks to government policy, my banked savings were inexorably decreasing in value as each month passed.

            The solar water system installed was a complicated one – a development of the very primitive solar systems that I had envisaged when writing my books about domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage twenty years earlier!    An additional small hot water storage cylinder was provided in the roof space. A temperature controlled pump circulated an antifreeze solution in a closed circuit between the solar panel on the roof and the new cylinder to warm the water stored in it.  A second electronically controlled pump exchanged this solar heated water with cooler water in the main storage cylinder. The flow and return pipes between the boiler and the main cylinder remained unchanged.

            The system worked very well when it was working properly.   My monthly direct debit payments for gas and electricity dropped from over £100 to something over £70. There was a lot that could go wrong though – and did!  Faults were always promptly put right by the installers. I called them teething problems though it must be said that some of them carried on well into the system’s adolescence!!  Last year at this time, we had had a hard winter in which I had let the gas boiler run night and day for several days.  Several faults had occurred and had been rectified. My monthly payments rose to £98.  I began to ask myself if it had all been worthwhile!

           

            Providentially (though it didn’t seem like that at the time!) last summer my main hot water storage cylinder failed.   It had been in constant operation for nearly a quarter of a century.   Its heat exchanger was covered with hard water scale. The gas boiler was taking an unreasonably long time to heat the water in the cylinder. 

            One of the operatives of Solar Power Ltd. my installers, suggested that I should replace the old cylinder with one of their recently developed ‘dual action’ solar cylinders and thus greatly simplify my system.  It would, I was assured, give me trouble-free service.   It was quite simple really.  The small cylinder in the roof space and the second circulating pump were dispensed with.  The new hot water storage cylinder is rather larger than the old one and is very heavily insulated.   It has two separate heat exchangers inside; one, in the top one-third of the cylinder is connected to the flow and return pipes from the boiler.   The other, near the base of the cylinder, has flow and return pipes connected to the solar panel on the roof.  There is just one electronically controlled pump which circulates an antifreeze solution through this latter heat exchanger when the liquid circulating through the solar panel becomes hotter than the water in the storage cylinder.  

During the summer, it would be possible on sunny days to switch the boiler off and rely entirely on the solar panel and that lower heat exchanger for all domestic hot water.   Even in the winter just an hour or two of sunshine would be sufficient to preheat the water in the cylinder before it passed through the boiler. Less gas would therefore be needed to bring it to the required temperature.

            The new ‘dual action’ cylinder was installed in mid-July.  At about the same time I took advantage of a Government grant and had my roof space heavily insulated by a specialist firm.  As we moved through autumn into winter the prices of electricity and gas rose dramatically and the government cut services and benefits.  Some old – and not so old – people were faced with a stark choice; Eat or Heat!

            My new solar hot water system was working perfectly.  It had no ‘teething problems’.   I could hear its pump switch on to warm the water in the storage cylinder, as the solar panel on the roof began to heat up.  I felt that that extra insulation above my ceilings was helping to retain warmth in my bungalow.  I awaited the annual review of my E-on account with both anxiety and hope.  Had the new system plus the insulation cancelled the effect of the price increases?  Would my monthly direct debit payments stay unchanged?  Was it just possible that they would be reduced?  The proof of the pudding is in the eating!

            That proof arrived last week – a large official communication from E-on.  I opened it with some trepidation, but I need not have worried.  My hopes had been more than justified.  My account was comfortably in credit.  £74.64 would be repaid to me within the next few days and, with effect from 1^st June, my monthly direct debit payments would be reduced from £98.00 to £62.00.   Solar power plus insulation had saved money!

            My improvements had been made towards the end of July.  They had therefore been effective for only nine months (the least sunny nine months) of the year.  Next April there should, with any luck, be a further reduction.  However, as I shall be celebrating my 91st birthday in three weeks time, it would (if I were a gambling man) be unwise of me to bet too heavily on my ever seeing that reduction!

            I hope, by the way, that I am not so pleased with the success of my own efforts to reduce my energy bills as to forget that there are many old people, and many poor families, who are not able to take similar action. They really do sometimes have to choose between Eating and Heating!   I wish I could solve their problems as effectively as I have solved my own.

An Evil Empire?

          When the Leveson Enquiry first began its work, I wrote in this blog that I had little doubt that the nefarious press practices of phone and email hacking, and the even more corrupt and illegal practice of bribing and/or threatening the Police and other public officials, would be thoroughly investigated and exposed.   I thought it likely though that there would be far less investigation and exposure of an exercise of press power that affects every single one of us but is probably not even illegal.  It is the way in which those who own and control the news media influence the policies and decisions of senior politicians, thus promoting national policies to the advantage of those owners and controllers rather than that of the rest of us – the nation as a whole.

            On 25^th April Mr Rupert Murdoch, whose News International owns forty percent of Britain’s national press and has similar holdings in North America and in Australia and New Zealand., assured the Leveson Enquiry that he had never asked a favour of Mrs Thatcher or of any other British Prime Minister.  It was a claim that was dismissed by the Daily Mirror (not a Murdoch publication!) as codswallop.  I have little doubt though that the Mirror was wrong and that Rupert Murdoch’s claim was literally true.

            Mr Murdoch wouldn’t condescend to ask a favour of any politician. Why on earth should he?  He doesn’t seek their favour.  They seek his.  Tony Blair created New Labour, reversing everything for which the pioneers of the Labour Movement had fought, to gain the approval of Mr Murdoch and the electoral support of the Sun.  David Cameron, while still in opposition, interrupted a family holiday in Turkey to fly to Rupert Murdoch on his private yacht on the Mediterranean.  In office he consulted with him and his lieutenants again and again, inviting him to the back door of 10 Downing Street to escape the notice of the non-Murdoch press.   Cameron appointed Andy Coulson, former News of the World Editor, to be his personal spin doctor and pursued a neighbourly relationship with Rebekah Brooks, Murdoch’s ‘right hand woman’.  Rupert Murdoch doesn’t need politicians’ favours.   They need his!

            Murdoch has never concealed the fact that he owns and controls newspapers to promote political causes - unfettered free enterprise and extreme Euroscepticism!  Politicians who support those causes can expect the support of the Murdoch press empire – those who don’t can expect derision!   When, after a Tory electoral victory, the Sun claimed ‘It was us what done it!’ it was no idle boast.

            If we really want a free and independent press (independent of ‘big business’ as well as of the state) we will make certain that it is impossible for a substantial section of it to come under the control of one individual, particularly not someone who is a foreign national, has his home and principal interests outside the United Kingdom, and owes and acknowledges no loyalty to our country, its culture, and its traditions.

 ‘I don’t believe it!’

            My nature is, I think, to be somewhat credulous and unsuspicious; the uncharitable might say ‘gullible’.  I tend to believe what I have been told until I have good reason to do otherwise.  On balance, I prefer, very occasionally, to be deceived, rather than to suspect wrongly that someone is deceiving me.  There are limits to my credulity though. I find that these days those limits are constantly being overstepped by politicians and others in the media spotlight.

            Take, for instance, the case of Mr Jeremy Hunt, Culture Minister.   Mr Hunt took over from Lib.Dem. Vince Cable the decision about the ownership of the residual BSkyB shares when Mr Cable was trapped into remarking that he had declared war on Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire was eager to acquire BSkyB in its entirety.  Mr Hunt was on record as an admirer of News International, so David Cameron obviously felt that he could be depended upon to make an absolutely impartial judgement and arrive at the decision everybody (well, everybody whose opinion mattered) wanted!

            Adam Smith, Mr Hunt’s principal adviser, seems to have imagined that our Government was the political wing of News International (it was a mistake anyone might have made!) and carried on a considerable email correspondence with News International on that assumption.  What I find difficult to believe is that, considering the nature of the ‘advice’ that Mr Hunt must have been receiving from his adviser, he still had no doubt that he would  be able to make an impartial judgement on the disposal of those BSkyB shares.  I am reminded of the story of the judge in America’s ‘wild west’ who told a captured bandit, ‘We’ll give you a fair trial – and then we’ll hang you!’  

              There is little doubt in my mind that the acquisition of the whole of BSkyB by News International would have gone ahead ‘on the nod’ had not the extent of News International’s phone hacking activities come to light at a crucial moment – and Rupert Murdoch had decided that it would be politic to withdraw his bid for those shares rather than to risk its being refused on the grounds that News International was an unsuitable organisation.

That brings me to the other news story that has stretched my credulity beyond its limits.  I just cannot believe that Rupert Murdoch, the astute news media superman, who prided himself on keeping a tight rein on all his enterprises, on both sides of the Atlantic and in the Antipodes, could possibly have allowed himself to become a victim of a conspiracy of his underlings to prevent his learning about the wide-spread phone and email hacking that had become the practice in at least part of his British media domains.  He was, so he claimed, a victim of that conspiracy and not its source.

            As Victor Meldrew, anti-hero of One Foot in the Grave, used to proclaim on our tv screens, ‘I  don’t believe it!’

‘The Cruellest Month!’

          T.S. Eliot begins his poem ‘The waste land’ with the remark that ‘April is the cruellest month’.   April 2012 certainly was that for our Prime Minister and the coalition government.  A unpopular Budget benefitting millionaires was followed by a scathing comment from one of his own Conservative MPs that he and his Chancellor of the Exchequer were ‘two arrogant rich boys who don’t know the price of milk’

Then there were those emails to which I have referred above – and Lord Leveson’s disinclination to stray into the Prime Minister’s domain and decide whether or not Jeremy Hunt had breached ‘the Ministerial Code’.   Almost at the end of the month came the pronouncement of Scotland’s Roman Catholic Cardinal Archbishop that the government’s policies were benefitting the rich at the expense of the poor.  On the same day came the official revelation that the richest of rich Britons had become even richer!   The rest of us don’t need official confirmation to know that we have become poorer!

This week are the local government elections.  The Prime Minister must surely be praying that the electorate will concentrate on local issues!