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 17 2012

Tendring Topics.......on Line

Tendring District’s Recycling Scheme.

          I thought that I was being fairly critical of Tendring District’s changed recyclables collection scheme in last week’s blog.  It seemed clear to me that, had sufficient thought been given to the matter, they would surely never have provided unlidded red boxes for the reception of paper and cardboard.  I also felt that the amount of food waste from old people like me, living alone, would hardly be worth the trouble and expense of collection.

I thought that the scheme could be improved at minimal trouble and expense simply by swapping the purposes of the two collection boxes and using the green box, with lid, for paper and cardboard and the red box which has no lid, for plastic bottles and food cans of all kinds.

Compared with ‘letters to the editor’ in the current Clacton Gazette, and comments on the Gazette’s website last week, my blog amounted to virtually unstinted praise!  I hadn’t realized, for instance, that for larger families, neither the red nor the green box is sufficiently large to hold a fortnight’s recycled items.  In the past we have been able to put any excess into a white plastic bag, place it on top of the green box, and it would be taken away with the box’s contents.  That isn’t allowed under the new scheme. Anything in such a bag will simply go into landfill.

Also now going into landfill are the plastics that once were collected for recycling but are to be collected no longer for that purpose; plastic bags of all kinds, and pots used for containing yoghurt, cream and spreads, for example.

 A number of correspondents had realized, as I had, that paper left in an open red box would blow out and litter the streets.   An official Council spokesman said that to provide a lid for each red box  would have cost £1 a lid, and that householders could use the lids from the green boxes (they can’t, they don’t fit!) or place the waste food container on top of the paper and cardboard.  If waste paper does blow about the streets, ‘it will be cleaned up’.

 Among the many letters published in the Clacton Gazette is, inevitably I suppose, one from a reader who sees the malign hand of ‘Brussels’ behind the Council’s scheme.  S.H.Wells of Holland-on-Sea writes

‘I have a suspicion that Tendring Council’s revised waste collection measures have less to do with “helping the environment” than with the EU landfill tax.

After all, a major percentage of the world is covered by water and the theory that man has anything to do with the changing cycles of the climate has never been proven.

But the tax is very real.  It varies from country to country but in the UK since 2010, it has been 51 Euros per tonne – currently about £42.

 

 If that is the idea, then a majority of Gazette readers think it is doomed to failure.  Two thirds of those polled believe that there will be more, rather than less, refuse destined for landfill as a result of the new scheme!

I am glad that I am not still Tendring Council’s Public Relations Officer.  Putting a ‘positive spin’ on the current situation would be well beyond my capabilities!    I reckon too, that the members of the ruling majority group on the Council are glad that, unlike in Colchester, none of their number has to seek re-election early next month!

A spokesman for the Council says that the scheme will be kept under review and the views of residents taken into account.  I think that that means they’ll keep their heads down and hope the scheme will be working properly and to everyone’s satisfaction, by the time of the next Council election.   I wouldn’t bet on it!

Oh for the days when decisions like major changes to a recycling collection system that was at least working, would have been thoroughly debated in an appropriate committee, before being debated again by the full Council – rather than being decided by a tiny Politburo and presented to the Council as something which all members of the ruling party are expected to support!  In those days the whole plan would have been discussed in the press and by the public before a final decision was taken and a new system was imposed on the public.

‘You can’t have your cake…..and eat it!’

            This seems to be yet another piece of folk wisdom of which the Government is blissfully unaware.   They are very concerned about truancy from school.  In my childhood, certainly in the ‘aspiring working class’ circles in which I moved, truancy was a very rare phenomenon.  None of us dared to take a day off school unless we could be sure of being able to take with us the next day a note from mum or dad explaining that on the previous day we had been too ill to attend.

            If, due to mumps, chicken pox or some other childhood ailment we were absent for two days or more, the school would expect a parental letter of explanation to arrive promptly by post (very, very few of us were ‘on the phone’ in those days).  Parents and children alike dreaded a visit from ‘the School Board Man’ that would follow any unexplained absence. The fact that the actual extent of this official’s powers were unknown added to the fear of his visit, as did the fact that his visit would be noted and regarded as a mark of shame by all the neighbours.  ‘Them at no 27 – them that’s so ‘igh and mighty; I know for a fact that they ‘ad a visit from the School Board Man yest’y afternoon. What d’ya think of that?’

            Nowadays we are all aware that the Education Welfare Officer (the successor to the School Board Man) has very limited powers and that when he called he would very likely find no-one at home. What’s more no-one would care. Parents and children are no longer terrified of an official visitor – nor are nosy neighbours interested.   Truancy flourishes.

         

          Someone at Whitehall had a brilliant idea.   Stop the child allowance of persistent truants at source!   That’ll bring the parents to heel.  That’ll make those neglectful and non-caring mums and dads make sure that their kids go to school every day.

            However, the same Whitehall geniuses expect us all, singles, mums and dads and childless couples, to be in productive work. They overlook the fact that for many there is no productive, or even unproductive, work for them to do.  They also overlook the fact that where both a husband and a wife, or a single parent, are expected to be at work at 8.30 or even 9.00 it is impossible for or them to be certain that their child or children actually go to school.  They may make sure that they’re up, dressed, breakfasted and ready, but there is no way they can be sure that those children go through the school gates. 

             

            Similarly there’s no way that working parents, returning home at about 6.00 pm can control what their kids are up to between leaving school a couple of hours earlier and their arrival on the scene.  No wonder we have truancy.  No wonder we have street gangs and juvenile crime.  No wonder we have teenage pregnancies – ‘Let’s go upstairs to my bedroom.  Mum and dad won’t be home for at least another hour!’

            It seems to me that modern society has stark choices about its future direction.

Carry on in the way that has become popular since the avaricious eighties – husband and wife both hard at work (when they can get it!) to maintain mortgage payments or HP debt, children coming home from school to an empty house, growing youth crime, teenage pregnancies, juvenile drug and alcohol abuse, and a violent gang culture.    The alternative is  revert to pre-1980 (pre-Mrs Thatcher) values, recognising that growing children need a parent to be present when they set off for school and when they come home in the afternoon; and appreciating that bringing up a child or children in a  loving caring and comfortable home is a satisfying, fulfilling and socially-valuable career. Building Societies and banks should revert to the practice of relating the size of their loan to the income of just one of the couple seeking to buy a property, instead of the sum of the incomes of the both.  

            We would need to recognise that home ownership need not be everybody’s goal and that there is no shame in living in a rented home, even if it is Council or Housing Association owned.  Social housing should be for those who need it – not just for those who can’t possibly afford anything else.

            That way, I’m afraid, we would have fewer aspiring home owners and fewer thrusting young entrepreneurs. We would probably lose a few potentially brilliant female scientists, lawyers, doctors and (dare I say it?) priests – though it could be the house-husband as easily as the housewife, who elects to stay at home and bring up the children.   On the plus side we would have fewer unsustainable debts, fewer mortgage defaulters, fewer broken homes, less youth crime, fewer teenage pregnancies, less antisocial behaviour and fewer schoolboy and schoolgirl truants destined to become illiterate, innumerate and antisocial adults!

             Punishing the Charities

            The Chancellor of the Exchequer has, so he says, been shocked to discover what most of us have known or, at least suspected, for years; that many of the seriously wealthy contrive to pay less in taxation than we less affluent mortals!  Having made this ground-breaking discovery; how extraordinary that he should take measures that are more likely to impoverish a number of worthy charities than to cause serious inconvenience to the wealthy.

            It couldn’t, I suppose, be a deliberate ploy to persuade us that if we attempt to make the rich pay their fair share into the nation’s exchequer it is the poor who will suffer?

            I could see how the state would lose revenue as a result of large donations to charity but I have to confess that I couldn’t see what the generous donor would gain from his or her action – except perhaps a few ‘brownie points’ to present at the Pearly Gates when the time comes.

            Paul Vallely, writing in last week’s Church Times enlightened me.  ‘If a basic-rate taxpayer gives £1 to charity, the state gives 25p in Gift Aid to that charity. But if a higher-rate tax payer gives £1, the state gives 25p to the charity, but another 15p or 25p to the wealthy donor in extra tax relief.  So top philanthropists don’t just get a knighthood, or dinner with the Prime Minister, or an art gallery named after them. They also get money back’.  He also points out that some charities to which we taxpayers are thus compelled to give that Gift Aid are not ones that most of us would think of as being desperate for a few extra quid – Eton College for instance!

            Paul Vallely suggests that before targeting charitable giving, the Chancellor might try cracking down on some of the  other scams – off-shore accounts, turning income to capital gains, setting up companies to rent their own homes from themselves – by means of which the wealthy avoid paying tax like the rest of us!