Week 49 2011

Tendring Topics......on line

A Career in Local Government?

            There was a time when a ‘career in local government’ meant getting a job at the Town Hall when you left school, starting off as a junior clerk and studying in your spare time for a qualification appropriate to the department of the council employing you.  That was my intended career path.  In 1937, aged sixteen and armed with the London University School Leaving Certificate with Matriculation Exemption I obtained employment in Ipswich Corporation’s Public Health Department as a Junior Clerk/Student Sanitary Inspector. 

              I was to work in the general office for two years while, at evening classes, studying Typing, Shorthand and Building Construction and Drawing.  I would then be transferred to the Sanitary Inspectors Office and spend two years gaining practical experience while travelling up to London once or twice a week for theoretical training. I would then take the exam for the appropriate professional qualification and would apply for the post of Sanitary Inspector when there was a vacancy either in Ipswich or elsewhere.  The Council would lend me £100 (a pretty trivial sum today but far-from-trivial in 1937!) to cover my tuition fees and travelling expenses.                          

  

Myself as Housing Manager

    Thanks to Hitler my own career took a totally different direction.  I did my two years ‘hard labour’ in the Public Health Department General Office but in September 1939, when I was about to commence my practical training,  I was called up  with the Territorial Army and didn’t give another thought to public health for seven years!                                                                                         

And as freelance writer

Discharged from the army in 1946, I attended a special full-time course for Sanitary Inspectors at Battersea Polytechnic.  I passed the qualifying exam in 1947 and was first employed as a Sanitary Inspector (to be renamed Public Health Inspector), later as a Housing Manager and finally as a Public Relations Officer in the local government service, before taking early retirement at the age of 59 and spending the next twenty-three years (until I was 82!) pursuing a second successful career as a freelance writer.  A similar career path in local government was still available until the economic crisis and the savage cuts in public spending limited or closed altogether local authority training schemes.

            Today though, there is another way in which to make a living out of local government without all that tedious business of studying for paper qualifications and enduring years of drudgery while ‘gaining experience’. It’s the political path. 

            Essential qualifications are an easy smile, a ready tongue and allegiance to whichever political party you think has the best chance of gaining a majority at the local elections.  Firmly held political convictions are an optional extra (they can even be a disadvantage) but absolute loyalty to the leaders of the party you have chosen is a key to success, at least in the early stages of your career.

In my day elected councillors were unpaid.  They presented themselves for election because they had strong political views that they believed should be represented when local decisions were made, or simply because they had plenty of the sound common sense and the local knowledge that they felt was needed.  There was no question of personal gain, though they could claim reimbursement of travelling and other necessary expenses and loss of earnings.   Councils made their decisions after considering the recommendations of committees comprising members of all political parties and those who had no political allegiance.

            Nowadays councillors are paid just for turning up at meetings of the full council.  The pay varies but Tendring District councillors get paid a basic £4,983 a year; not enough to live on but a useful addition to the income from ‘the day job’.   That could be just the beginning.  The old ‘committee’ system that I remember has been abolished at the insistence of central government.  Each council now has its ‘cabinet’ of a handful of members of the majority party. These consider all the issues coming before the Council.  Their recommendations can, of course, be amended or rejected by the full Council but – since the party that rules in the cabinet has a majority in the council chamber – they are usually accepted without too much trouble. 

           

            In Tendring, most cabinet members receive a special annual allowance of £10,738 on top of their £4,983.   That, for some people, would constitute a living wage – but it need not be the end of the line.  The Council’s political ‘leader’ gets additional allowances and there is no reason why a member of the district council should not aspire to being a county councillor at the same time – and county councillors, county cabinet members and their leader receive higher allowances!  It isn’t quite true to say that ‘the sky’s the limit’ for the aspiring local politician – but the limit is certainly well up in the clouds!

           

Turkeys voting for Christmas?

          The ‘cabinet’ system of local administration combined with the government’s demand that local authorities cut their expenditure, has produced a situation within Tendring District Council’s Council Chamber which an opposition councillor described as comparable with ‘inviting turkeys to vote for Christmas’.

 

            Tendring Council’s services had been organised in ‘departments’ with a portfolio holder (one of the ten members of the ‘cabinet’) presiding over each.   In September a money-saving internal reorganisation cut the number of departments to five.  At the last meeting of the full council, Labour councillor Ivan Henderson called for the number of cabinet members to be reduced to reflect the new structure, thus saving the council approximately another £40,000 a year.

          This seems an entirely reasonable idea and the Council could have debated it and voted on it immediately.  However the Council Chairman, needless to say a member of the ruling party, decided that the motion should be sent to the cabinet for consideration.   That puts off the final decision at least till the next meeting of the full council, which won’t be till February next year!   Ivan Henderson has calculated that the extra cost of four redundant cabinet members between September (when the number of departments was halved) and February, will amount to £20,000.

In any event what is the cabinet’s recommendation likely to be?  Will the four members who could be made redundant vote to be deprived of over £5,000 each – and will the other members of the cabinet vote for the dismissal of their colleagues?  I wouldn’t bet on it.  Council leader Neil Stock is reported as saying, ‘I am planning to reduce the size of the cabinet, but it will be done in a calm and rational way when we have seen how the departments are working’.   If it is just the Council’s political leader who makes decisions of this kind, perhaps we could dispense with the whole of the rest of the ‘cabinet’.  Now that would produce a worth-while saving!

On a lighter note

The news news that two giant pandas from China have been loaned to Edinburgh zoo reminded me of happier days when my wife Heather and I used to write verses each week to amuse our grandchildren.  You can guess how long ago it was from the fact that those grandchildren are now in their late twenties and early thirties!  One of our early efforts was The Giant Panda.  If you have young children or grandchildren it may amuse them too.   Here is a photo of Heather with granddaughter Josie and, below it, The Giant Panda

The Giant Panda used to fight with every animal in sight.

He now looks like a cuddly toy, but once he was a bully boy.

He’d quarrel with the wolves and bears, and challenge tigers in their lairs –

And then he’d settle down to munch someone else’s stolen lunch!

One day he teased a kangaroo, (a very foolish thing to do).

After they’d fought for half a day, the Giant Panda ran away!

And now you’ll find he always hides on lonely, wooded mountain-sides.

His only food is now bamboo (It’s tasteless, tough and hard to chew)

And it will come as no surprise to find that he has two black eyes!

          The Future of Afghanistan – and the Middle East

          Last week an international conference on the future of Afghanistan was held without two voices that are likely to have an important – possibly decisive – influence on that country’s future.  One was Pakistan, boycotting the conference after being understandably outraged at an attack by United States’ forces on one of their border posts that resulted in the killing of a score of Pakistani soldiers. Did they over-react?   Hardly; imagine the outrage there would be in the USA if a score of their soldiers had been killed by Pakistani, or British – or any other – allied armed force. An apology, however abject, and condolences, would not have sufficed.  Believe me, the wives, mothers and girlfriends of Pakistani soldiers killed by ‘friendly fire’ mourn every bit as deeply as would wives, mothers and girlfriends in New York State, Ohio, or California under similar circumstances.

            The other ‘absent voice’ at the Conference was that of the Taliban.  They know perfectly well what they want and are convinced that, in the fullness of time, they will get it.  They are not prepared to compromise, so there was really nothing for them to discuss.   Nothing emerged from that conference that persuaded me to modify my conviction that within months of the departure of the last NATO soldier, the Taliban will be back in control – and may Heaven help those Afghan who had thrown in their lot with the NATO forces!

            Elsewhere it seems that there is little possibility of liberal and tolerant forces emerging triumphantly from the Egyptian general election or from the current post-Gaddafi turmoil in Libya. It is easy to overestimate the attraction of free speech and of liberal, parliamentary democracy as we know it in Europe, to people who have never known anything but autocratic government. In both North African countries it is likely that Islamic political parties will triumph and that they will be unable to curb the activities of jihadist extremists.  This would be bad news for members of Egypt’s nearly 2,000 year old Coptic Christian Church, just as the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime proved to be bad news for Iraqi Christians. Even in ‘friendly and democratic’ Pakistan, Christians come regularly under attack and a woman is currently in prison facing the death penalty for allegedly committing the heinous crime of converting from Islam to the Christian faith.

            Meanwhile ‘the West’ is becoming ever more threatening to Syria, torn by what has developed into a civil war, and to Iran because of its alleged nuclear weapon programme.   I pray daily and with all my heart that the UK will not be dragged into yet another military adventure in the Middle East by that wonderful ‘special relationship’ with the USA!  You think this would be impossible in our current financial situation?  Don’t you believe it.  We may not be able to afford proper pensions, homes for the homeless and generous help for the poor, the sick and the disabled – but governments can always find a few billion pounds for a small war, especially if they can be persuaded – as they were in 1914 and again in 1939, not to mention Afghanistan in 2001 – that, ‘It’ll be all over in a few months!’

         

Week 46 2011 22.11.2011

Tendring Topics…….on line


‘Sing, Choirs of Angels’

Have you watched that extraordinary choirmaster Gareth Malone on tv, creating award-winning choirs from the most unpromising material? We first saw him produce a choir  from a very ordinary comprehensive school that proved itself capable of competing internationally in Beijing,. Then came a choir from a tough rugger-playing school where pupils and staff were convinced that singing was a leisure occupation for girls only. He persuaded not only the pupils but the very macho sports master, to take part. The climax was a performance at the Albert Hall!

Next he produced a choir from the residents in a new town on London’s outskirts populated by folk from London’s East End. I am quite sure that not one of his choristers had previously had even a passing acquaintance with Latin or Greek.. Yet the climax of Gareth’s efforts saw them singing the Agnus Dei (O Lamb of God) prayer extremely creditably in Latin at St. Alban’s (I think) Cathedral.

His latest exploit has been to produce a choir in a small garrison town from the wives and girlfriends left behind there while the troops were doing a six months stint in Afghanistan. Once again he worked a miracle and created a choir that performed in the open air in Plymouth for Armed Forces Day and at the Albert Hall for the British Legion’s Festival of Remembrance. While doing so he managed to weld these waiting-and-worrying women into a close self-supportive community.

Those programmes, transmitted over the Remembrance Day period, brought vividly to my mind the anxiety that mothers, wives and girlfriends must have experienced during World War II. We temporary soldiers went overseas, not for a fixed period of six months but ‘for the duration’. There was no home leave from North Africa or the Far East. Separated wives today know where their husbands are serving and roughly what they are doing. There is postal and internet communication and there are regular phone calls. Our wives, mothers and girlfriends didn’t even know for sure in which country we were serving. Our mail was addressed to Middle East Forces. When I was captured with the fall of Tobruk to the Germans, my mother was simply informed that I was ‘missing’. She imagined the worst (I realize that I am very like her in some respects!) and it was several weeks before she learned from a friendly Roman Catholic neighbour that my name had been among those broadcast over the Vatican Radio as being a Prisoner of War in Italy.

Our wives and girlfriends weren’t able just to wait and worry. They were part of the conflict. My girlfriend Heather Gilbert worked in central London (near the British Museum) in the office of a printer. One morning she arrived at the office to find that it had disappeared. There had been a overnight air raid and it was now just a pile of rubble. Nor did Ilford, where she lived with her parents, escape the Luftwaffe’s attention. She lived through the blitz, the pilotless ‘doodlebugs’ and the V2 rocket attacks. Her life in the early 1940s was scarcely less perilous than my own.

 

I once again thought how extremely fortunate I had been, not only to return home safely in 1945 (one in seven of the young men who volunteered with me in 1939 never came home) but in finding my girlfriend there, waiting for me. We were not married nor were we even engaged, but she had waited patiently for a reunion that might never have taken place. This photograph, taken when she was nineteen and sent to me in Germany while I was a PoW there, makes it obvious that she would have had no problem in finding a different boyfriend with a more predictable future had she wished to do so. I was particularly pleased to note that she was wearing the miniature Royal Artillery badge brooch that I had given her when we had said goodbye!

After my return to England I had to spend almost another year in the Army. We were married just four days after I had shed my khaki uniform for good!

That was another big difference between us and the soldiers and their wives of today. They are professional soldiers, who chose the life and everything that goes with it. We were citizen soldiers, civilians in uniform, who had volunteered for the army because our country was threatened by Nazism and Fascism, evils that we believed could only be eradicated by force of arms. We were not prepared stand by and let others get on with it. When it was over though, we couldn’t wait to get back into civvies!

We served the guns and did our duty as soldiers but most of us detested the spit-and-polish, the parades, the rifle drill and the barked orders that are an inescapable part of army life. We had a word for it that I prefer not to repeat in this blog.

Those of ‘The fallen’ whom I knew best shared my distaste. It is for that reason that I have reservations about attending British Legion ceremonies of remembrance. I don’t care for the quasi military berets worn by many Legionnaires, the clipped words of command, the ceremonial raising and lowering of the flags. I do appreciate the two minutes shared silence though and – irrationally perhaps – I am always deeply moved by the sounding of the Last Post before the silence and of Reveille with its message of hope, at its end.

The Murdoch Empire

Hardly had the enquiry into the dubious activities of our national press opened than there were fresh revelations. Phone hacking was by no means limited to the News of the World. It would have been astonishing if it had been. I confidently expect to hear more scandalous revelations – phone hacking, surveillance of celebrities to the point of harassment, bribery of the police and threats to whistle-blowers.

What concerns me most will probably not even get a mention. It is certainly not illegal and I really don’t see any way in which it could easily be made so. Yet it surely poses a real threat to our national sovereignty; a far more dangerous threat than that posed by ‘Brussels’, the pet hate of the Europhobes!

It is the way in which millionaire newspaper owners can influence and bend our political leaders to their will. Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron all made a point of friendship with Rupert Murdoch, head of News International. I have no doubt at all that Tony Blair created ‘New Labour’ to obtain the approval of the News International Empire and thus to gain the support of the Sun. Thus he could, and did, make his ‘reformed’ Party ‘electable’ – though, in my opinion, not worth electing! I have no idea to what extent the other Prime Ministers may have changed their Party’s policies to bring them in line with Mr Murdoch’s ideas – but I am sure that they certainly wouldn’t have taken any steps that they knew might antagonise him. It is worth noting that the takeover of the whole of BSkyB by News International was destined to be approved on the nod – until the phone hacking story broke.

If we are to have a truly free press then we must somehow deprive wealthy and powerful men and women of their power to influence the will of the electorate. There is nothing new about this malign influence. Who can say how much damage to our preparedness to resist Hitler was done by the confident Daily Express headline in 1938 and early 1939, ‘There will be no war this year – or next year either!’ I was reminded of this a week or so ago when I watched on tv a wartime cinema classic, 'In which we Serve'.   As a British vessel sank under submarine attack, a copy of the Daily Express with that infamous headline came floating by!
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In particular, I believe that we must never allow the British press, a powerful moulder of public opinion, to be controlled by those who are not British citizens and owe no loyalty to our country. This, I believe, should apply to American billionaires as much as to Russian oligarchs!

Black Clouds and Silver Linings!

Very often in my life, circumstances that have seemed to be totally disastrous have turned out instead to be well-disguised blessings. As a POW in Italy in 1943 I well remember my dismay and dejection when, after the collapse of the Italian Fascist government and the surrender of its successor to the Allies, German tanks surrounded our POW camp. We found ourselves locked into cattle trucks (just like the transports to the death camps!) on our way to further captivity in Germany.

To my surprise I found that at a small working camp in Germany conditions were far better than they had been in a large PoW camp in Italy. That was not everyone’s experience but it was mine. What is more, my quite unknowing and involuntary role as a PoW, in the ‘rescue’ of a nearly six centuries old priceless linen artefact (Zittau’s ‘Lenten Veil’) has assured me a welcome in the town where I was once a prisoner, and has provided me with an interest and a purpose in my old age.

I was bitterly disappointed when, as Clacton’s Housing Manager, I failed to secure the post of Director of Housing to the new Tendring District after 1974’s local government reorganisation. However, because of my experience as a spare-time writer and public speaker, I was appointed as the new authority’s first Public Relations Officer – an even more satisfying, though less well paid, job. I was again very apprehensive when, after seven years service as PRO, an internal reorganisation introduced by the Council’s new Chief Executive, meant that if I were to retain my self-respect I had no option but to seek early retirement. I knew that my wife and I would have had to struggle to survive on my far from gold-plated pension, and at 59 I was too old to find other congenial employment. My early  retirement though, led to a far more satisfying second career as a freelance author and journalist, a profession that I was to follow for over twenty more years!

Nationally, sad to say, we seem to have lately been experiencing a reverse effect – directly a promised silver lining appears on the horizon a big black cloud pops up in front of it! That Royal Wedding for instance at the end of April; it was supposed to be going to bring us wealth from visitors to Britain eager to share in the pomp and ceremony of the occasion, and extra economic activity from the sale of souvenirs and the like. To untutored minds like mine that all sounded very reasonable. Ultimately though, the Royal Wedding was one of the causes put forward by the government as a reason for a disappointing economic performance during that period. Could it have been because it involved an extra public holiday when those fortunate enough to have jobs stopped their feverish ‘wealth creation’ for an extra twenty-four hours? Next year’s Olympic Games were also supposed to be bringing a great influx of visitors eager to spend their money in Britain. Perhaps they will – eventually. Right now though, 2012’s bookings for holiday and tourist accommodation are fewer than those for previous years. Potential visitors prefer to avoid the Olympics crush!

Locally, Tendring Council’s ‘Tourism boss’ (Councillor Mayzes) seems determined to wreck Tendring District’s development as a leading holiday resort area.

Our Coastal Academy School Governors were astute enough, during the school holiday period, to secure the interest of the Caravan and Camping Club of Great Britain, the largest and most prestigious holiday leisure club in the UK. For the first time ever, their members held a brief rally on the school’s spacious playing fields, patronising local businesses and clearing up the site meticulously on their departure. Was Councillor Mayzes delighted? Not a bit of it. He was furious that caravans should violate ‘a school playground’ (some playground!) and sought to invoke the planning laws to prevent it happening! Then again, after a largely disappointing summer season, we had a couple of weeks of ‘Indian summer’ towards the end of September and into October. Our holiday coast enjoyed a belated boom as visitors poured in from Colchester, Ipswich and London to enjoy the last of the late summer sunshine. What did they find? No safety patrols on the beaches and Tourist Enquiry offices closed. Tendring’s ‘Tourism Boss’ had decided that the summer season had ended on 31 August and (no doubt congratulating himself of having saved the council a few pounds) had closed these facilities down.

Christmas is coming – a time when many retail businesses in Clacton hope to make sufficient profit to help them through to the holiday season again. Don’t tell me that the Government is going to blame the Christmas and New Year holidays if there is disappointing economic activity in that period!

The Government has already blamed their predecessors for our financial predicament. They have blamed the EU and, in particular, the Eurozone. They have blamed ‘Public Sector’ pensions and they have blamed ‘benefit cheats’. Could they be about to add Santa Claus to the list?