Week No 40 2012

Tendring Topics.......on Line

Patronising the Poor?

            Nick Clegg continues to insist that the wealthy must make a bigger contribution to the nation’s finances, though quite how he hopes to achieve this is far from clear.   There are financial incentives to encourage universities to accept more students from deprived backgrounds and schools are given similar incentives to provide extra educational help to children from deprived families.  There are free school meals for children who need them and free public services for those in receipt of means-tested benefit.  Meanwhile well-meaning politicians boast that they have removed the income tax burden from thousands of less-well-off families by raising the level at which this tax becomes liable.

            These measures are like treating acute pneumonia with a couple of aspirins!   Our aim should surely not be to make poverty more tolerable but to reduce and ultimately abolish it.   I do not believe that it is a good idea to remove those with low incomes from income tax liability.  This encourages the idea of the division of society into the tax payers, whom the taxman robs of the fruit of their labours, and the rest of the population who benefit from this, including of course the scroungers and benefit cheats of whom we read so much in the popular press.   It encourages folk like Mr Romney, Barak Obama’s opponent in the forthcoming Unites States Presidential Election to announce that he has no interest in the 47 percent of the American population who are not wealthy enough to be taxed.

            In this blog I have again and again stressed my conviction that income tax should be the principal source of government revenue and should be regarded as our annual subscription for membership of a very exclusive international club; British citizenship.  It should be a fixed proportion of the gross income of every adult British citizen without exception, from the very poorest to the very wealthiest.  The contribution of those surviving on job seekers’ allowance, disability living allowance, the state retirement pension, or the minimum wage would be very little, while that of the very wealthy would be a great deal. We would though all be contributing an equal proportion of our income to our country’s needs.  All of us, from the very lowest to the very highest, would have a stake in our country’s future prosperity.  Did not Jesus Christ point out that the widow who contributed her ‘mite’ to the Temple Treasury was making a bigger sacrifice than the wealthy – since they merely handed over part of their surplus wealth while  she gave all that she had? 

            The proportion of each adult’s income that would be needed to balance the nation’s books could be worked out every year.  If everybody contributed I’d be surprised if it would need to be higher than 20 percent.  This, I believe, would be sufficient to fund all necessary public services (a government sensible enough to adopt such a system would surely also have the sense to scrap those nuclear submarines!) and to pay generous allowances to those unable to work or unable to find work.

            Don’t let us patronise the poor.   Let’s abolish them!

It’s just a word!

           As incidents go, it wasn't  a very important one, but Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell’s reaction when frustrated by the Police in Downing Street, certainly demonstrated that when the occasion arises, well-heeled patricians from society’s top drawer can be as bad tempered and foul-mouthed as the very toughest and roughest of plebs.   I thought that Mr Mitchell was at his most objectionable, not when he lost his temper (we all do that sometimes!) but when he made a half-hearted apology, implying that the long-suffering police were lying about the actual words that he had used.

 It all brought to my mind (as so many things do these days!) an incident that occurred, it must have been in 1932 or ’33, when I was eleven or twelve and we had Ron, a cousin of mine from Bethnal Green, staying with us in Ipswich during the school holiday.  Ron’s dad, my uncle, was a mounted policeman and the family lived in married quarters in Bethnal Green Police Station.  Ron was a few months younger than me.  We were good friends and we got into all sorts of trouble together.

Ron (on the right) and I

           

On one occasion I remember that something had upset him and he used one of the words that, from Mr Mitchell’s lips, have caused offence.  No – it wasn’t ‘plebs’. I doubt if Ron would have heard of that.  It was the other one and, just like Mr Mitchell, he used it ‘adjectively’.  It happened that he was at the time within the hearing of my normally easy-going mother – and I was totally astonished at her reaction.  That, she thundered, was a truly dreadful word that was used only by the very lowest of the low.   If she ever heard him say it again he’d be packed straight off to Bethnal Green and his mum and dad would be told why!  Goodness!  He certainly didn’t use it again, or at least not when my mum was around.

            This was in the early 1930s and I don’t recall often hearing that word again until I was in the army, nearly ten years later.  Even there it was used quite sparingly until I was a PoW when we really did have something to swear about.  I remember it particularly in Germany where we were working regularly both with German civilians, and with conscripted slave-workers from Russia, the Ukraine and other occupied countries.  They were fascinated by our bad language and our ready use of it, and would try with varying degrees of success to follow our bad example!  Perhaps, even as I type this, some very elderly Ivan or Natasha (well, I’m still around so why shouldn’t they be?) in St. Peterburg, or Odessa or Kiev, may have clumsily knocked over a glass of vodka and have used an expletive that, as they explain to their puzzled grandchildren, they learned from some Anglishky comrades way back in 1944!

            Here in England the use of that word is no longer limited to the lowest of the low’ as my mother had insisted it had been in 1932. You may well hear it if you walk behind any group of school children chatting to each other! It is to be found in the first line of a poem by a celebrated modern poet.  It was used very effectively in the acclaimed film The King’s Speech. It is used, as we now know, by ex-public-schoolboy cabinet ministers. It sometimes appears in the press and has lost much of its ability to shock. However, I am old fashioned enough to be able to declare confidently that you will never come across it in Tendring Topics…….on line! 

A Footnote

While I was writing the above I found myself thinking of my father.  He died suddenly of a coronary thrombosis in 1939 at the age of 57.  I was 18 and just in the army at the time.  My father had enlisted in the 17^th Lancers in 1901 when he was 18 and left the army as Regimental Sergeant-Major of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps in 1922 after having completed 21 years service.  At the time of his death he was employed as clerk, dispenser, veterinary nurse and general dogsbody to a local veterinary surgeon.

      As I wrote about the use of bad language by myself and others I realized, with some astonishment, that I had never at any time throughout my childhood and youth heard him swear or use any ‘bad language’. On reflection, I hope that as far as their childhood was concerned, my sons would say the same of me.  How about during the years since their childhood? .............. well they do read this blog, so I had better claim no more than that neither they, nor their mum, were ever either the cause or the  object of any verbal lapses that I may, very occasionally, have had!  

  

Above are pictures of my father - as a staff sergeant before his final promotion to Regimental Sergeant Major and, as I knew him best, a few years before his death.

A Promise Fulfilled (sort of!)

          When, earlier this year, Tendring District Council introduced its new refuse and recyclables collection scheme there was a storm of protest.  Apart from the fact that the new scheme demanded extra effort from householders, there were two main criticisms of the new system.

            One I wrote about in this blog a few weeks ago.  It was that with the new scheme only plastic bottles (milk bottles, cleaning fluid bottles and the like) were collected for recycling.  Plastic bags and wrapping and plastic food containers, that had been collected for recycling under the old regime, now had to be put into our black plastic bags for landfill.  That problem may be solved in a few years’ time when it is hoped that a new plastics sorting centre will be built in the south of the county.

The other criticism was that, presumably to save a few pounds, there were no lids provided for the red boxes intended for the reception of waste paper and cardboard for recycling.  We in Clacton may have the lowest rainfall in the UK but there are still occasions (particularly during this summer!) when the contents of the box could be reduced to a soggy mess.  We do have our fair share of ‘sea breezes’ and these are quite capable of scattering paper from the uncovered red boxes far and wide.

            The justification for this complaint was demonstrated on every breezy collection day, with paper litter bestrewing footpaths and nearby front gardens.  The council promised to do something about it.  And now they have, but in a way that explains my ‘sort of’ in the heading above.   They have obtained a supply of fitting plastic lids for the red paper-and-cardboard boxes but, presumably again to save themselves a few pounds, are not arranging for the refuse/salvage collectors to leave them with householders on their rounds.  The lids are available for householders to collect from centres in the district. We Clactonians can pick one up from the reception desk at Clacton Town Hall.

            That’s fine for car owner/drivers but what about the rest of us?  The lid will hardly go in a shopping basket and, although light enough in weight, isn’t the easiest thing to carry under one’s arm!  Were it not for my mobility scooter (my ‘iron horse’) I would be housebound.  Would I be able somehow to load the lid onto it I wondered.   I asked an anonymous but helpful voice on the phone, ‘Has the council made provision for delivery of lids to the elderly and disabled?’   ‘Only to those who have already made arrangements for their refuse and salvage to be collected from outside their back door’, came the reply. That ruled me out! A kind neighbour puts my plastic sack and salvage boxes out every week.  I had friends whom I was sure would collect a lid for me if asked, but I don’t like taking advantage of their good nature unless absolutely compelled to do so.

            I drove my scooter to the Town Hall.  At the reception desk a very helpful young lady supplied me with a lid and even gave me a tip on how best to transport it (Clacton is a town of mobility scooters and I clearly wasn’t the first with the same problem!).  I got it home safely.

            So – I now have my full quota of refuse and recyclables collection equipment, and hope, with the help of my friendly neighbour, to have my black plastic bag for landfill, my food waste container (never much in that!) and either my red paper-and-cardboard box, or my green plastic-bottles-and-metal-can box at the entrance to my driveway ready for collection early on every Tuesday morning.

Week 4 2012

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


‘When the Bon Marché was shuttered…….’

            ……..When the feet were hot and tired,

           Outside Charringtons we waited, by the STOP HERE WHEN REQUIRED’

            So wrote the late Sir John Betjeman in his poem Parliament Hill Fields, a graphic evocation of part of the London scene of days gone by.  Sadly it seems that Clacton’s Bon Marché in Pier Avenue may soon be closing its shutters for good as its parent company Peacocks is threatened by the current financial crisis and is endeavouring to sell off its long-established satellite.

            The Peacock Group, like the country as a whole and many of its inhabitants, is seriously in debt.  A spokesman for the Group is quoted as saying that the board and its advisors have been discussing possible restructuring with its creditors. No agreement has been reached but discussions with other possible investors are taking place. He added ominously, ‘To protect the business while discussions with such investors are going on, the directors of the Peacock Group have filed a notice of intention to appoint an administrator’.

            Compared with many other towns Clacton-on-Sea hasn’t done too badly during the past few years.  The gap left by the closure of Woolworths and that left by the closure of the Co-op Departmental Store in Station Road have both been filled, though in each case with less prestigious enterprises employing fewer people than their predecessors.   The much-criticised re-design of the town centre has, I think, been found attractive by visitors, though it was surely idiotic to move the Tourist Information Centre from its central position at the junction of Pier Avenue and West Avenue, to the Town Hall.

Could this now be changing?  Pierre Oxley of the Clacton Chamber of Trade says, ‘If we do lose Peacocks and Bon Marché it would hit us hard. I always think that one empty shop leads to more appearing.  It looks like it is going to get harder and harder for businesses this year’.

Other depressing local news is that the number of unemployed within the Tendring District has risen steadily for five consecutive months.  There are 170 more people unemployed today than at the same time last year.  Nationally eight percent of 18 to 24 year olds are unemployed.  In the Tendring Area the figure is almost 12 percent, well above the national average. On the plus side, there have been more vacancies at Tendring’s Job Centres – the number has risen from 500 last November to 635 today.  Cheering perhaps, but it still means that there are about six applicants for every job vacancy!

A day or two ago I listened to a young man who has never experienced employment being interviewed on BBC Radio 4.  He has qualifications in gardening and regularly goes up to the local golf course where there is a half-promise of work some time in the future.  He is, of course, the kind of young man whom local authority parks and gardens departments were once seeking.  He would have started off on menial jobs like weeding flower beds and clearing them of rubbish, and gradually learnt his trade.  Who knows? He could have been another Alan Titchmarsh in the making!

However local authorities no longer have their own Parks and Gardens Staff.  They have to employ private contractors for the work that those departments once undertook.  In any case, the kind of jobs that this young unemployed man is capable of doing in the first instance are precisely those that supporters of David Cameron’s Big Society are hoping will be done free by enthusiastic volunteers!

How much longer will it be, I wonder, before that young man is not just unemployed but unemployable?

Waste and Recycling Collections

          I don’t think that I am likely to be accused of being an uncritical admirer of the current Tendring District Council and its policies. I had thought though that its members had reason to be proud of their waste and recycling collection service.  Householders are all issued with a supply of black plastic sacks for unrecyclable waste and a green box for items that can be recycled. These, in our district, are paper and cardboard, metal cans of every kind, and plastic bottles.

            Collections of both refuse and recyclables take place regularly, both on the same day each week.  Our council has stayed with a weekly collection while many others changed to fortnightly to save money.   I have been sorry that glass jars and bottles are not included among the recyclables.  It isn’t easy for those without a car to take glass containers to the nearest bottle bank and, for those who do have a car, burning petrol by making a special car journey for that purpose is surely defeating its purpose.

            Despite this reservation I was very surprised and disappointed to learn a month or two ago, that the Tendring District’s record for collecting recyclables was the poorest in the whole of Essex!  It is presumably in an effort to remedy this situation that the Council and their contractors Veolia intend to introduce a restructured collection system within the next few months.

            Every householder will be issued with a red recycling box for paper and cardboard only and two new green boxes, one large and one small, for cooked or raw food waste, in addition to the existing green box (which will then be used only for metal cans and plastic bottles) and the black plastic sacks used for residual waste.  The small new green box for food waste is to be kept in the kitchen and is intended to be emptied into the larger one to be kept out outside. 

The black plastic bag of unrecyclable waste will be collected and the large food waste container will be emptied ever week.  The red box of paper and cardboard and the green one of cans and plastic bottles will be collected on the same day but on alternate weeks.

            I realise that, now that I do no gardening and am living alone, I have virtually no food waste!   I use mostly frozen or otherwise ready-for-cooking vegetables and prefer vegetarian dishes though I am only a somewhat half-hearted vegetarian.  I never prepare and cook more food than I can eat in one meal!  Mind you, even in my previous married life when I was a keen gardener I would have had no food or other organic waste for the Council’s bins – I had my own garden to keep productive and my own compost bins to feed for that purpose!

            The Council’s new scheme seems a bit complicated but I hope that we’ll get used to it and that it will be a success.  As I ride round Clacton on my ‘iron horse’ I notice that on ‘collection days’ there are a substantial number of homes with several black plastic bags bursting with rubbish on display and not a green recyclables box in sight.  If Tendring is to move up the recycling ‘League Table’, dealing with these non-co-operating householders must be a top priority!

Just how ‘free’ is our ‘free’ Press?

If here is one thing about which all the witnesses at the Leveson enquiry into the behaviour of the press agree, it is that no-one wants a government controlled press.  We have seen the results of that in Nazi Germany and in the Soviet Union.   Our press must remain free and uncontrolled by politicians.  Although the excesses of which a ‘free press’ is capable have been made clear for all to see, there remains strong opposition to any kind of statutory control.

But just how ‘free’ are our newspapers?  Privately owned, they are subject to market forces like everything else in a market economy.  For their survival they depend heavily on their revenue from advertising.   The wise editor makes certain that he (or she) doesn’t upset too many advertisers too often.

This operates at even the very lowest level.  As many blog readers know, this blog is a direct descendant of the Tendring Topics comment column that I wrote every week in the Coastal Express (it actually changed its name several times but that is how I always thought of it!) for twenty-three years.   The Coastal Express relied heavily on advertising revenue from Estate Agents and from the sellers of new and used cars.  Nobody warned me, but my reason told me that it would be foolish to be too critical of either estate agents or used car salesmen!  So I wasn’t.  Searching back through my memory I don’t recall a single occasion on which this thought affected anything that I wrote – but it could have done.

Similarly, one of the witnesses at the Leveson Enquiry commented that if a reporter saw that his employer was enjoying cosy tea parties with the Prime Minister and other senior Ministers, and that a former senior colleague had been appointed as the Prime Minister’s personal spin doctor, his reports were likely to be slanted accordingly.

Rupert Murdoch made no bones about the fact that he controlled the Sun for political purposes (‘It was us wot done it’, boasted the Sun after a Tory victory) but is proud of the fact that he gives the editor of The Times free rein.  Very creditable – but surely the editor of The Times is well aware of Mr Murdoch’s general political philosophy and is unlikely to promote a point of view strongly opposed to it.  He who pays the piper calls the tune, and if he doesn’t actually call it – well, the piper knows his general musical taste. As a modern proverb that I heard recently put it, ’If you must hide your light under a bushel, make sure everyone knows under which bushel it is hidden!’

By the promotion or rejection of news stories as much as by direct persuasion, the news media does sway public opinion and thereby influence the results of local and general elections.  The BBC and the ITV set admirable examples of objectivity.  Perhaps newspapers should be run by independent editorial boards on similar lines.

I would not like to see government controlled newspapers, but the government does at least comprise politicians whom we can influence and ultimately accept or reject.   On balance I would prefer to read a newspaper run by people who are answerable to the electorate than by immensely wealthy individuals, answerable to no-one, who may not be British citizens and therefore owe no loyalty to our country; or Brits who have their fortunes stashed away in an overseas tax haven and who therefore escape our burden of taxation.  It is one thing for the very wealthy, whether they be Russian oil oligarchs or British or Trans-Atlantic multimillionaires, to own football teams, luxury yachts and half a dozen palatial homes – but quite another for them to control the means of influencing our thoughts and our choices.  They will inevitably serve their own best interests, which are very unlikely to be the same as ours!

An Early Learning Aid

            A modern silent movie’s nomination for this year’s film awards  took me back to my childhood when all films were silent!   Poole’s Cinema in Ipswich’s Tower Street, favoured by my parents because I was a member of a national daily’s ‘birthday club’ that gave me free admission, ‘when accompanied by a paying adult’, continued to project silent films long after all other local cinemas had gone over to ‘talkies’.   I well remember my first talkie – it was a ‘who-done-it’ called ‘The Argyle Case’ and I saw it at the Ipswich Regent Cinema (it’s still there I believe) in the late 1920s or early '30s.

            It has been only fairly recently when failing hearing has made me glad to make use of the subtitles nowadays available on tv programmes, that I have realized what a valuable learning aid those silent films must have been.  To really enjoy them you had to be able to read – and to read fast – before each caption disappeared and its successor appeared on the screen.

            Kids who might have scorned to read a ‘boring old book’ were desperately eager to know what ‘Buck Jones’ or ‘Tom Mix’ had said to the crooked Sheriff before leaping onto his trusty steed and galloping off to save the heroine from ‘a fate worse than death’*.   There was just one way to find out – learn to read!

            That accounts for the fact that, while I understand there are plenty of illiterates and semi-literates around today, during the seven years I spent in the Army from 1939 till 1946, I met only one chap who couldn’t read battery orders and couldn’t communicate with his mum and dad, and his girlfriend.  We had all spent our early childhoods speed-reading the subtitles of those silent movies!

*Yes, some of us were quite eager to find out what that was too!