17th December 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘Lord, make me chaste and celibate…….

          but not just yet!’

            This was said to have been a prayer of St Augustine of Hippo (no, not the St. Augustine who brought the Christian faith to the heathen English) and proves that saints are 'only human'!.

            I think of St Augustine’s prayer whenever I read, or hear on tv or radio, about yet another international conference on climate change resulting from global warming.  There’s always a remarkable unanimity about these conferences.  The leaders of almost every nation accept the reality of global warming resulting in extreme weather conditions throughout the world.  The northern polar ice-cap is shrinking as are glaciers world-wide. There have been killer typhoons in the South Pacific Ocean and unprecedented monsoon floods on the Indian sub-continent. North America has had searing heat and drought as well as floods and unseasonal arctic spells that have stretched most of the way from Canada to the Mexican border. 

The Rhone Glacier, photographed by me in 1979.  There is now no ice to be seen.

Africa has had prolonged droughts and Australia has had both floods and bush fires, laying waste to hundreds of square miles of land. 

Mainland Europe has had floods, mud-slides and avalanches. During the winter of 2013/2014 the UK’s weather was unseasonably mild but heavy storms battered and broke the sea defences on Britain East Coast while elsewhere – particularly on the Somerset Levels and the Thames Valley – hundreds of acres of land, together with farms and homes, were flooded for weeks as a result of continuous torrential rain.  Last month, our government produced plans for flood prevention to be carried out in the next two or three years.  If only nature proceeded at an equally leisurely pace!

            The latest international conference on climate change was in Lima.  The world’s leaders heard scientific experts explain that a major cause of climate change is the steady increase in ‘greenhouse gases’ produced by fossil fuels; coal and coal products and fuel oils used in industry, in road transport and for warming our homes.  We must, say the world’s scientists, urgently reduce the use of fossil fuels – leaving some reserves untouched – if we want to save our planet for our grandchildren and their grandchildren

            The world’s political leaders agree.  Reducing the use of fossils fuels must be a priority – but not just yet.  The Chinese want to wait until their industrialisation has caught up with that of the USA.  The UKs leaders have got a general election coming up.  They certainly don’t want to take any precipitate action that might cost them votes – or the support of those giving generous donations to the ruling party.  Beside in shale oil, another fossil fuel obtained by ‘fracking’, the Americans are sending us cheaper fuel – and encouraging us to wreck our own countryside by producing our own.  Producing a cheaper fuel (never mind that it produces greenhouse gases) is certainly a vote winner.  There are very few votes to be gained in the pursuit of clean and sustainable energy.

            The result of the International Conference in Lima?  Well, no worth-while action will take place this year.  Next year, perhaps something positive will be agreed – but I’m not holding my breath.

        We’ll never know whether the prayer of St Augustine to be made chaste and celibate – but not just yet, was answered.  Perhaps it was.  It is the nature of the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ to forgive sins of the flesh, particularly those who have acknowledged and confessed their fault.   ‘Perverse and foolish oft I strayed, But still in love he sought me. And on his shoulder gently laid, And home rejoicing brought me’   I think God may be a little less forgiving towards those who, from greed, national pride or fear of election defeat, ignore the warnings of the wise, and are prepared to sacrifice future generations to their own self-centred interests.

‘It’s not what is done……..it’s who it is does it’

       The American Senate’s report on the conduct of the CIA in the aftermath of ‘9/11’ has brought the whole policy of the USA at that time into the limelight.  As well as the torture of suspects under interrogation, there was their ‘rendition’ to countries, Libya for instance, where torture could take place without as much as raised eyebrow, and there was the establishment at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, of a concentration camp of which Himmler would have been proud!

        I find myself interested less in what the CIA and their political masters did, but what they didn’t even attempt to do.  The outrages of ‘9/11’ were planned and carried out by El Qaeda, the dominant jihadist terrorist organisation of the day. At the head of El Qaeda was Osama bin Laden whom the CIA tracked down and killed, without so it seems, making any attempt to capture him.  It certainly stopped him from revealing, in the dock, the support El Quaeda had from the CIA in their campaign of terror against soldiers and civilians of the Soviet Union.

          Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi Arabian, so were the overwhelming number of the terrorists who had successfully planned and carried out the destruction of New York’s ‘Twin Towers’ on ‘9/11’.   There was not an Iraqi or an Iranian or a Syrian among them.  Saudi Arabia practises and preaches the noxious perversion of Islam that has been taken up by El Quaeda and their successors IS or Islamic State.  Compared with Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and President Assad’s Syria were havens of freedom and tolerance.  Furthermore, it is known that prominent Saudi Arabians helped finance Islamic State in its early bloodthirsty progress in Syria and Iraq – and possibly continue to do so today.

       

            The USA, and the UK the USA’s ‘special relation’, invaded Iraq on the pretext that the Iraqi government had been involved in ‘9/11’ and that it possessed ‘weapons of mass destruction’, neither of which claims had even a scintilla of truth.  Hundreds of British and American service-men died as a result, together with thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians.  Nor did we bring peace and prosperity to Iraq.  Since our departure Iraq has never been at peace and is currently under attack by Islamic State.  We have now sent in hundreds of British troops ‘to train Iraqi forces’.  How long will it be before those troops have to defend themselves against IS attack and we find ourselves dragged unwillingly into a third ‘Gulf War?’

       Again, in support of the USA, we went to war in Afghanistan because their Taliban government was protecting the bases of El Qaeda.  Within months El Qaeda had moved those bases to Somalia and Yemen – but the Taliban fought on.  We have, after ten years and goodness knows how many deaths on both sides of the conflict, withdrawn all our combat troops.  They may not have been defeated but I am quite sure they wouldn’t claim to have gained a great victory.  My guess is that in six months time a fundamentalist Muslim government (it may not be called Taliban) will be ruling Afghanistan and all those mini-victories, for education, for women’s liberation and so on, will have been lost.

              Meanwhile Saudi-Arabia, the inspiration and (I believe) clandestine supporter of Islamic terrorists, remains unchallenged as one of our ‘trusted allies’.   We buy their oil and we sell them our armaments and don’t ask too many questions.  As I have said before, nowadays it isn’t ‘what is done’ but ‘who did it’ that is of greatest concern to our Government and that of our American allies.  What a pity that not even the combined efforts of the CIA and MI6 can manage to establish that Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein and President Assad, conspired together to carry out ‘9/11’!

Merry Christmas?

     This will be my last blog before Christmas, probably the last blog in 2014.  It’s the season of good will and I’d very much like to wish all humankind a Happy Christmas and  New Year.

       Sadly the news seems to get worse from day to day. World-wide no early effective action will be taken place to counter climate change.  On the other side of the world, in Sydney Australia, a jihadist fanatic has held the customers and staff of a busy café hostage – a situation that resulted in the death of the fanatic, of the café’s  manager and of one of the customers, a barrister in her thirties with two children.  Worst of all was the massacre by the Pakistan Taliban of 132 children, and nine members of the staff, at a school in Peshawar in north-western Pakistan – a crime even more heinous than that of  King Herod’s slaughter of the 'Holy Innocents’ in Bethlehem two thousand years ago!

     For ‘good news’ we are told about the new vessel –  half a kilometre long! – that is being built in South Korea to exploit new fields of (greenhouse gas producing) oil that lie beneath the ocean floor off the north of Australia. The production of similar enormous vessels to extract and process submarine oil fields is planned for the future!

     It’s the ‘season of good will’ and I have to  confess that I feel very little good will towards politicians who are prepared to sacrifice future generations in their pursuit of immediate economic or political advantage.  I feel even less good will towards those who torture or murder their fellow men and women in the blasphemous belief that their crimes will earn them the favour of God, and none at all towards those, whoever they may be and whatever their cause, pretext or excuse, who harm or kill innocent children.

     That said, I do wish a very Happy Christmas and a New Year of Peace and Hope to all readers of this blog and to all those who, with love for humanity in their hearts, are striving to make this sad world a happier place, and to work towards an answer to our prayer, Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’.

                                                                                            t   

Week 31. 2011 9.8.2011

Tendring Topics……..on Line

The Riots and the Looting

The riots in London - and now in other big cities, were still taking place only a few hours ago.   I don't think that there is any useful comment that I can make just yet though I hope to do so next week.  In the meantime perhaps we should think about the value of the recently-much-derided Public Sector.  It is the Public Sector that has to try to stop the rioters and the looters and strive to put out the fires and minimise the damage.  It is the Public Sector that patches up the human victims and it is the Public Sector that has to clear up the mess, clean the streets and try to get civilised life going again,  Mr Cameron's Big Society isn't going to help.  Many of its membrs were busy creating the chaos and destruction.

Is this the time to emasculate the Public Sector?


A Question of Copyright


It was early in my career as a freelance writer that I learned the importance of the copyright laws. When I submitted an article to a newspaper or magazine editor for publication, I was offering the first opportunity to publish that particular article. I retained the copyright. This meant that I could grant permission for the article to be used again elsewhere – but no-one else could copy it, or any substantial part of it. International treaties extend copyright to most other countries.

This has proved very important to me. A series of articles on domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage, published in Britain’s Do-it-yourself magazine, caught the attention of the editor of a similar publication in Australia. He asked my permission to publish them, offering me a rather larger fee than I had been paid me originally by Do-it-yourself. Although my half a dozen or so commercially successful plumbing manuals are long out of print, I still receive small sums every year for Public Lending Right from British public libraries and from the Authors’ Copyright and Lending Rights Society for the loan or photocopying of them in mainland Europe.

Similar rights exist for musical as for literary work but, because of the ease with which broadcast music can be copied, it is much more difficult to enforce them, difficult – but not impossible. However our present government, despite our continuing unemployment and stagnant economy, has abandoned the pursuit of measures that would block this drain on the fruits of successful British enterprise.

It is an abandonment that has infuriated the social conscience of my elder son who has penned the letter below to Ms. Lynne Featherstone, his Lib.Dem. MP, who is also a member of the government. I wish him every success – though I wouldn’t bet on it!

Dear Lynne,

I have just read on the BBC web site:-

“Plans to block websites that host copyright infringing material are to be dumped by the government.

Business secretary Vince Cable announced the change following a review of the policy by telecoms regulator Ofcom.

Website blocking was one of the key provision contained in the Digital Economy Act.
Internet Service Providers had objected to the idea that copyright owners could compel them to cut off some sites.”

I must make it clear that I am not involved in any way in the performing arts industry, although I am in the IT business. I have had two sons, who in their teenage years, believed it was OK to copy music from file sharing web sites, and that no normal person would actually pay for music.

In view of the economic situation, the level of unemployment, the lack of growth, much of which can be blamed on the policies of your government, I find it unbelievable that you should so casually ignore this piracy which is damaging an important part of the UK economy and you should do so by covering it with a smoke screen about “format shifting”, a non-issue which is supposed to be some benefit to the public at large. It is of absolutely no consequence that big lobbyists like BT “object”.

Quite rightly, no consideration was given to airlines about the cost and inconvenience of vetting for illegal immigrants before allowing them to be flown to the UK. Blocking web sites and cutting off customers will be difficult and expensive for Internet Service Providers, but certainly not impossible. That is the price we should pay to protect jobs quite literally being stolen by pirates in the Seychelles and other locations outside UK jurisdiction. Legislation should also be considered to make modem manufacturers force the password protection of wifi networks to get rid of the feeble excuse that someone might be borrowing a neighbour’s wifi connection.

There is also the need to send out a signal from Government that file sharing is theft, as 99% of teenagers, who will be parents themselves within 10 years, do not even realise that there is anything wrong with it and believe that copyright law should just be completely abandoned.

I know that this is not your area of responsibility within Government, but I hope that as a member of the Cabinet and the same party as Vince Cable you will express disgust at this decision born out of laziness and vested interests, and stand up for British industry and ask for a re-think.

Peter Hall

A Reminder of Global Warming

I can’t remember whether Clacton’s MP Mr Douglas Carswell, doesn’t believe that global warming is taking place or whether he accepts that it is a reality but that it is a purely natural phenomenon and hasn’t resulted from human activity In either event he believes that attempting to do anything about it – by developing alternative sources of energy for instance – is a waste of time and money.

He is also a convinced Eurosceptic and believes that we should have another referendum about membership of the EU. All of which left me rather surprised when, a few weeks ago, he had quite a lot to say at a locally held international conference exploring ways in which Europe could help the economic development of English seaside towns, and from which the only positive outcome was the suggestion that taking part in the development of off-shore wind farms offered Tendring District it best possibility of future prosperity.

Recently, when the weather seemed more appropriate to the end of October than the end of July, it was indeed difficult to believe in the reality of global warming. As I write though (on 2nd August) we have had scorching sunshine for two or three days and the solar panel on my roof has been filling my storage cylinder with free hot water! But, of course, sudden and extreme changes from cold to hot and back again, and from wet to dry, are all part of climatic change that we must increasingly expect.

Last week I had an email from a lady whom I had never met but who had been very interested in one of the ‘holiday photos’ displayed in my Flickr site, (www.flickr.com/photos/ernestbythesea) It was taken in 1979 when my wife Heather and I were touring in mainland Europe with our motor-caravan. We had spent some time in the Italian Alps and were making our way to Switzerland and ultimately to Germany’s Black Forest.



The Rhone Gkacier 1979

  Half way up a precipitous mountain pass we saw on the right the Rhone Glacier – the source of France’s River Rhone. I incurred the wrath of half a dozen multi-national lorry drivers behind me, to stop just for two minutes (it really was only two minutes!) to take this picture

My email correspondent had recently negotiated that same Alpine Pass and had seen that same valley – but now there is no glacier; just a barren mountain valley with a stream destined to become the mighty Rhone, tumbling through it.

Another example of the retreat of the Alpine glaciers and the inexorable progress of global warming.

The bad news – and the good!


A few years ago, when I had to go into hospital for minor surgery, my doctor was at some pains to ask me which, of several hospitals, I would prefer to go to for my operation. I have no doubt that that was a choice offered to everyone needing hospital treatment. My doctor knew perfectly well though that I would want to go to the nearest hospital capable of offering the treatment required. I would just have to trust the NHS to ensure that that hospital was not only capable but competent.

That, for me, was Colchester General Hospital. Most Clactonians in the same situation would have made the same choice. I am sure therefore that many of us must have been dismayed to learn that Colchester General Hospital had been publicly criticised by the East of England Strategic Health Authority for ‘missing waiting time targets, having high death rates and performing poorly when it comes to patients’ experience’.


My own experience, both personally and as a visitor to my wife when she was an in-patient both in Colchester General and in Clacton Hospital was that they were both generally very good (my sons, who were also regular visitors, thought that Colchester General compared very favourably with hospitals in Enfield where, at that time, they both lived) but that there were never enough nurses available to meet patients’ needs.

My more recent experience has been as an outpatient. I have to go four times a year to the Outpatients’ Department of the Essex County Hospital in Lexden Road, Colchester, as follow-ups on operations for the excision of cancerous material from the skin and cartilage of both ears.

I have always had to wait at least an hour beyond my appointment time to see the surgical registrar, and on one occasion I had to wait two hours. This, I have put down to an over optimistic estimate of the time needing to be spent with each patient. Five to fifteen minutes is, I imagine, allowed for this, but some patients – I have no doubt for very good reasons – take far longer than that. I don’t. The Registrar looks at my ears, feels my neck and so far has recorded ‘The operation wounds have healed well and the glands of the neck show no signs of swelling’. And that’s that for another three months. There must be lots of patients just like me. Were our journeys to Colchester and our long waits for attention really necessary. Couldn’t our own doctors have examined us just as competently and referred us on only if potential trouble was spotted?

That was the bad news.

And the good news? That was that there had been not a single case of the Hospital killer superbug MRSA recorded in either of Colchester’s Hospitals for ten months. At the peak of the MRSA epidemic in 2004 and 2005 there had been no less than 37 patients infected, 14 of whom had died as a result. The current success has been, so the hospital authorities claim, thanks to careful screening of patients and meticulous attention to hygiene and cleanliness.

Before we get too elated and congratulatory we should remember the ‘bad old early days’ of the NHS. Then Matrons (rather than professional ‘administrators’) ruled hospitals with a rod of iron, and every ward was in the charge of its own nursing Sister with an ambition to become a Matron herself one day. Instead of contract cleaners, the hospital had its own cleaning team, each member of which took a personal pride in the cleanliness of the area for which they were responsible. In those days MRSA was unheard of.

Perhaps, of course, that was just coincidence