Post Script 1

POSTSCRIPT

Little Royal Nazis?   What rubbish!

            When, a few weeks ago, I wrote my farewell bog, it was my firm intention never to blog again.  I was old, my ideas were stale and I wasn’t expressing them half as effectively as once I did.  In short I was a now senile and decrepit early twentieth century man who had somehow made it to the twenty-first century but who didn’t fit in with the spirit of today’s ‘brave new world’

Oscar Wilde once remarked that he could resist anything except temptation and one or two recent events have tempted me to write at least one postscript to my blog series.  Although many of my views have been described as ‘way out left’ and I am now a member of the Green Party I am not, and never have been, a republican. I think that there is a lot to be said for having a Head of State who is outside party politics, is trained from childhood to be a constitutional monarch and who, even before the coronation, is likely to be more knowledgeable about our government and constitution  than any of the here-today-and-gone-tomorrow Prime Ministers who will form a government during his or her reign.

Scandinavian Royal style.  The Queen of Denmark  arrives in London for the Olympic Games.  Photo by my elder son Pete.

I can’t think of any way of achieving this surely desirable end other than by a hereditary constitutional monarchy.  I would prefer our monarchy to be more in the Scandinavian style but perhaps something on those lines will evolve.

I was both angry and contemptuous when I learned that the Sun had used on its front page photographs taken in 1933 of the children of the Royal Family, and their mother, giving the outstretched arm Nazi salute.   I was around in 1933 (an enquiring lad of twelve), which I am quite sure can not be said of either the editor or the owner of the Sun. We had all seen Hitler and the Nazi salute in the newspapers or on the brief cinema newsreels (there was, of course, no tv in those days) and most of us thought that Hitler looked like Charlie Chaplin and that all the heel clicking and saluting was just plain daft.  We practised the Nazi salute and one or two of us even tried goose-stepping!  It was just a laugh. We were taking the mickey. 

 It could be that that is just what those young royals were doing back in 1933.   It was unfortunate that someone had a good camera available at the time.  It was a family photo that the Sun has obtained (by bribery or the proceeds of a theft?  We’ll probably never know) and used to try to undermine trust in the Royal Family.  In 1933 no-one (certainly no-one in our government) foresaw the potential for evil in Adolf Hitler.  Nor, I think did anyone in the press.  Those who did not regard Hitler as a joke, saw in him a politician who was different and would pull Germany together, defeat the communists (they were seen as a much bigger threat than the Fascists and Nazis) and with whom Britain could negotiate with confidence.

I think that it is significant that the owner and ultimate controller of the Sun and other newspapers, radio and tv enterprises, all of which help to mould public opinion, is a former Australian, now USA, citizen who owes and shows no loyalty to the United Kingdom, its constitution and its traditions.  He is the   head of a ‘news’ organisation that is best known for its phone hacking, its obtrusive pursuit and harassment of its victims (who can be any of us), and its bribery of public officials – all of which activities are said to be in exercise of ‘the freedom of the press’; a strange ‘freedom’ that involves control by a foreign multi-millionaire.

I find it strange that Rupert Murdoch is permitted to reside in the UK and even stranger that so many top politicians fraternise with him and seek his favours.  One who, very honourably, declined to do so was Prime Minister John Major – who subsequently suffered at the hands of the Murdoch press.  Among the latest to seek his company and his favour has been Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP.  They have in common a determination to prevent the UK from ever becoming part of a European Federation.  I wonder if both, or either, would be equally determined to keep the UK independent of Federation with the USA – with the ‘A’ tactfully altered to be the initial of ‘Atlantic’ rather than ‘America’?

More of Rupert’s malign influence?

            Among the emails urging me not to give up writing my blog was one from a regular blog reader expressing his concern about the government’s apparent determination to change, or even destroy, the BBC as we know it.   Urging them on in this enterprise are, of course, the BBC’s commercial rivals, prominent among them Mr Rupert Murdoch of Sky tv as well as a number of newspapers.  Below are extracts from my correspondent’s email;

            Literally every day more reports are leaked to undermine the BBC. A Parliamentary Committee has been appointed with a specific brief to investigate and make recommendations about the future role of the BBC. More than half the people nominated to this Committee have previously made public statements about how the BBC needs to be scaled back, or the licence fee should be abolished. And on top of that, they are clearly briefing papers like the Times with more details of their “thinking”, suggesting that the BBC is “too popular” and that they shouldn’t be doing successful programmes with high audiences, and they should not be running such an extensive web site, and they shouldn’t be attempting to cover all of the News in it, and some of the money for the Licence fee (if it continues at all) should be given to other providers, not just the BBC. They have called the Licence Fee “a regressive Tax” – (so unlike their other taxes).  Oh, and ministers saying the BBC Commission is “not fit for purpose” (always a prelude to scrapping something) because of “the Saville scandal and the pay-offs to senior staff who were made redundant”. Clearly it  would be better for them to discredit and then abolish the Commission first, because last time they threatened to axe part of the licence fee, the entire Commission threatened to resign in protest – probably never been forgiven for that piece of insurgency.

Some people are  baffled by all this – thinking that everyone liked the BBC and would be pleased that Strictly and Masterchef were runaway successes and that all the news and cooking recipes were published for free on the web site.  I have been trying to explain to them the Right Wing thinking on all of this. First of all, the BBC is making programmes which conflict with the financial interests of Tory Party donors. Secondly they are giving the News and cooking recipes away for free, when others are trying to make money out of them. Thirdly, the Licence Fee is a sort of compulsory subscription, and poor families who have to find £140 a year for the Licence fee may not then be able or willing to buy a subscription to Sky on top of that. And lastly, from the viewpoint of the average Tory back bencher, an “unbiased BBC” which investigates climate change, tries to find the root causes of the migration, tries to explain what cuts in Welfare actually mean, suggests that not many people would actually benefit from reduced Inheritance tax comes over as rampant socialism to them.

 The Friends of Widows and Orphans?

Among the promises that helped the Conservatives to win the May General Election were measures aimed at helping widows and orphans – well, if not actually always widows and orphans those who were left after a house-owner’s death.  There were two measures promised; No inheritance tax (death duties) would be payable on the death of the owner of a property valued at less than a million pounds.   There are more of those than you might imagine – and anyone affected who wasn’t already a Conservative supportet could reasonably be expected to vote to secure a Conservative victory and the honouring of that promise.

The other promise affected a great many more people, including myself.  Folk nearing the end of their lives and needing local authority care, had to pay for that care unless they had very little savings and did not own a property that could be sold to raise the necessary cash.  This meant that many modest family homes had to be sold to pay for the care needed by the owner during his or her final years. Home owners were unable to pass on their most valuable asset to their sons and grandchildren.  The government was to put a cap (I think it was £75,000) on the amount that someone in care could be required to pay.  The family home might still have to be sold but the home-owner’s heirs might, at least, receive a worth-while legacy.

Well, the Conservatives did win the election though (I’m glad to say) without my vote.  Guess what?   They’re implementing at once that freedom from inheritance tax on homes valued at less than a million pounds.   And the cap on those in receipt of care?   Oh yes, they’re going to apply it – but not for another couple of years.

Well, I’m 94 and have stayed out of care so far.   It looks as though, if my heirs are to inherit my modest bungalow, I must try to stay out of the clutches of the official carers for at least another couple of years – or ‘pop my clogs’ without too much further delay!.   

Week 23 2013

Tendring Topics……..on line

Syria – again!

            It was a fortnight ago, on 14^th May, that I published in my weekly blog the following paragraph relating to the civil war raging in Syria:

             Britain is becoming steadily more and more involved.  It started highly commendably with humanitarian aid.  Our intervention in Libya began, you’ll recall, with the very moderate ‘enforcement of a no-fly zone’.   In Syria we have progressed to non-lethal military aid.  What next I wonder – supplying the rebels with weapons?   That would surely be almost as daft as the idea, currently held by some in the USA, that the best way to end gun crime is to make sure that all ‘the good guys’ are armed to the teeth!   The only winners in that particular arms race will be the arms manufacturers and dealers.

Those words are proving painfully prophetic.  Britain and France, with the USA cheering us on from the sidelines, have persuaded their fellow EU members to lift the embargo on the supply of arms to ’moderate elements’ in the motley array of forces in rebellion against the government of President Assad..   This, so it is said, will persuade the Syrian Government to come prepared to negotiate to the International Conference planned to take place shortly.  The British Government has not yet decided whether or not to consult parliament before actually to taking this step.  As with the disastrous decision to join the USA in the invasion of Iraq, they’ll probably wait until they are sure that they have bullied or bribed enough MPs into assuring an affirmative vote.

            Probably Iraq government representatives will attend an international conference, prepared to compromise – but will the insurgency?   Reports make it clear that they are far from a united front.   While the ‘moderate elements’ that Mr Haig is eager to supply with arms may be ready to negotiate a reasonable settlement, the extremists are unlikely be satisfied with anything less than the unconditional surrender of the government, and probably ‘President Saddat’s head on a platter’.  

            What’s more, if by some miracle, President Saddat’s government were to be peacefully replaced by the kind of secular, tolerant, liberal government that ‘the west’ would like to see, those very substantial extreme elements would immediately seek to undermine it, using the terrorist methods in which they have become experts – and in which we have encouraged them.

            This has already happened, in Afghanistan.  In the 1980s the British and American Governments covertly assisted the ‘gallant mojihadin’ to fight and win a guerrilla war against the occupying Soviet forces, only to produce a Frankenstein monster in the Taliban and Al Qaida to whom the liberal and democratic attitudes of ‘the west’ were, if anything, rather more offensive than the ideology of the Soviets.   The extremists are likely to prove victorious because, being absolutely certain that God is on their side, they have no qualms whatsoever about shedding either other people’s blood or their own in pursuit of their ends.

              An even greater danger today is that the conflict in Syria will evolve into a proxy world war with Russia, Iran and Shia Muslims everywhere, supporting the Assad regime and Britain, France, the USA, Israel, and such ‘freedom loving’ regimes as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Qatar arming the rebels.  There is a real danger that from such a confrontation a third world war, with nuclear weapons could - possibly accidentally - be triggered.

            Surely the world’s political leaders have more sense than to allow that to happen.    But have they?

The Press ………and the Politicians

          Recently I heard on the radio a heated debate as to whether or not it was reasonable to demand that members of the Police Force or other public servants should be required to declare any friendships or other relationships that they had with journalists.   It does seem very intrusive but when one considers recent occasions on which information that should have been kept secret has been leaked – sometimes accidentally and sometimes corruptly – to the press, it isn’t wholly unreasonable.

             Much more serious to my mind is a problem to which I can see no obvious answer and which wasn’t seriously addressed in the Leveson Enquiry. That is the way in which government policies may be swayed by close friendships between top politicians and newspaper owners or senior executives who have the power to sway public opinion, and thus influence the result of parliamentary and local elections.  Mrs Thatcher used Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times (or did he use her?)  in their mutual struggle against British Trade Unions.   Tony Blair created New Labour and robbed the Labour Party of its soul, to gain favourable headlines in The Sun.  David Cameron and senior members of his government had a far too friendly relationship both with Rupert Murdoch, and with at least two of his top executives.

            There was, of course, no formal agreement.  That was unnecessary.  Good friends obviously try to help each other.  What could be more natural?   I have no doubt that had it not been for the phone hacking and police-bribing scandals (about which, of course, Rupert Murdoch was blissfully ignorant) full ownership of BSkyB would have gone to Rupert Murdoch’s News International ‘on the nod’.

            Incidentally, two of News International’s senior executives have been arrested, charged and released on police bail, on the serious charge of ‘perverting the course of justice’.  I hope that those cases haven’t been ‘kicked into the long grass’ and are destined to be dropped for ‘lack of evidence’ or because ‘pursuing them wouldn’t be in the national interest’.

            No, I don’t know the answer to this problem. I do know though that it is quite wrong for control of a powerful means of influencing public opinion to be in the hands of one or two extremely wealthy individuals, especially individuals who are not citizens of the UK and owe no loyalty to our customs, our traditions – and our Queen. This, rather than venting their Europhobia, is a matter that should concern UKIP if they are genuinely worried about the UK’s independenc.  I understand though that Nigel Farage recently had a cosy lunch with Rupert Murdoch!  The leader of UKIP is clearly very selective in his choice of ‘threats to UK Independence’.

 Try to please everybody……..

          …….and you’re very likely to end up pleasing nobody. It seems that the Chaplaincy team at Colchester Hospital managed to achieve that result in their organisation of this year’s annual memorial service for the parents of miscarried or stillborn children, or of children who died within the first year of their lives.

St James' Church, Clacton-on-Sea (interior)

      For many years this service has been held in St James’s Church of England Church very near to Clacton Hospital.  This year though, the organisers had thought that the venue should be changed so that bereaved parents of any faith or none could be accommodated – and they decided that the venue should be in the hospital restaurant.  Rev David Flower, principal chaplain, is reported as saying, ‘What we wanted was to make the service more inclusive and thought that being in a building other than a church would be helpful to some people.  There was one family that came that would not have done if it had been held in a church’.  It seems though that many other families didn’t come who would have come to a church.  Only seven families were there and most of them were anything but pleased.  One complained that, ‘it was held in the hospital restaurant amongst cups and saucers.  Behind us, the tea urn was going and candles for parents to light were presented on a meat tray covered with foil……..I thought it would be in the chapel but when we got there we were told it would be in the canteen – we were disgusted’.

            My wife and I were fortunate in never having a miscarriage, stillbirth or child death in infancy.  However many years ago – it was while I was contributing a weekly Tendring Topics (in print) for the Coastal Express - I was asked to attend one of these services and write an account of it.  I recall that I was deeply impressed.  The service was well-attended and there were bereaved mums and dads on their own as well as families.  Votive candles were in proper holders and the service was conducted with great sensitivity.  There were prayers and hymns and it was suggested that those present should attempt to visualise their lost children. I do not recall anything specifically Christian about the service.  Its theme was that those lost children were in the care of a loving Father-God, perhaps with an implication that eventually, beyond the bounds of time and space, they and their parents would be re-united.  I would have thought that that was a theme that would have been acceptable to followers of any faith with a loving father-like God central to its worship.  I don’t see how any kind of service can help atheists with their loss.  There is no materialist compensation for bereavement, nor any such comfort for the bereaved.

It is a service that demands an ‘atmosphere’ that is difficult to define or describe but that most of us can experience.  St James’ Church has that atmosphere. Roman Catholic and Non-conformist churches, Quaker Meeting Houses, synagogues, mosques and temples may also have it.  Hospital restaurants definitely do not!  I am glad for the bereaved that next year the service  will again be held in St. James’ Church.

           

           

             

Week 35 2012

Tendring Topics.........on line

A Red Cross Parcel

            It is strange how, as one gets older, a recently taken photograph can stir up memories of a distant past.  Here is a photograph, taken recently, of my German friend Ingrid in the reception office (it looks as though it doubles as someone’s breakfast room!) of a guest house near Colditz Castle, familiar to a great many film and tv viewers.  Ingrid was on a sight-seeing visit.

            What particularly stirred my memory was the cardboard box with a Red Cross on it by Ingrid’s right hand.  It is one of the Red Cross Parcels that saved the lives of thousands of British prisoners of war (including myself) during World War II.  Each parcel contained a tin of powdered milk, tins of meat or fish, butter or margarine, and jam or other sweet spread.  There were also biscuits and a packet of either tea or coffee.  Each PoW was supposed to receive one such parcel a week.  At the small working camp in Zittau in eastern Saxony where I spent the last eighteen months of World War II, we received our parcels regularly even when the Third Reich was visibly crumbling around us.  At the large POW Camp in Italy where we had spent the previous eighteen months of our captivity, delivery was much more spasmodic, probably due more to failure in the local transport system than to malice.

            I thought that there was an element of malice though in the Italian authority's practice of opening each parcel and deliberately puncturing every tin before distributing them. The excuse was that it was to prevent our storing up tins for an escape attempt.  We would watch this process taking place with both hatred and hunger in our empty bellies!   On one never-to-be-forgotten occasion we watched an Italian Officer unwittingly puncture a ‘blown can’.  It made our day when the stinking contents exploded in his face and all over his immaculate uniform! 

            Colditz is, of course, famous for its escape attempts and I have been asked – perhaps a little reproachfully – why we never attempted to escape from our working camp in Germany.  We wouldn’t have needed to construct tunnels or build gliders to get away.  While working we enjoyed a great deal of freedom, often with only an elderly civilian, wearing an official armband, nominally in charge.  We could simply have walked away – but where to?  Working all day, and living cheek by jowl with our guards, we had neither the time nor the ability to forge identity papers, obtain civilian clothing and otherwise make plans for a journey of hundreds of miles through a hostile Germany to the nearest neutral country.  Wearing British uniforms with a big red triangle on the back of the jacket, and speaking very little German, I don’t think we would have got far before being recaptured.

            And the consequences of a failed escape? The escapee would have been instantly despatched to some other, much stricter and more secure, working camp.  Our easy-going guards would have been posted away, probably to active service on the Eastern Front.   They would have been replaced by Nazi zealots and a much more rigid regime would have been instituted.  Our lives, which had been tolerable, would have become those of closely guarded slave labourers – and all for an attempted escape that would have been doomed to failure from its very first moment.   

            Attempted escapes of rank and file prisoners were likely to have been taken rather more seriously than those of officers. Captured officers were an expensive burden to their captors. We were actually needed as labourers to replace a German workforce which, thanks to the folly and wickedness of their Nazi government, was bleeding to death on the Russian steppe and in the fields of France.

‘Load sixteen tons and what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt’

            Those two lines, that I quote from memory from a protest-song of the 1960s, came to my mind when I learned that despite all the austerity, all the increased taxes like VAT disproportionately penalising the less wealthy, all the cutting of public services, our country has had to increase its debt this month and we remain obstinately in the grip of a double-dip recession.

            A few weeks ago I quoted an email from a blog reader who pointed out that George Osborn’s policies increased the number of people needing financial support and reduced the income from taxation. It reduced the chances of economic recovery, since a population impoverished by government policy and above-inflation price rises lacked the spending-power that was needed to get those wheels of commerce and industry turning again.  The email pointed out that the Chancellor’s  uncompromising fundamentalist attitudes meant that his only answer to the economic crisis  exacerbated by his imposed austerity and savage cuts in public expenditure, is to impose yet more austerity and cut even more deeply.  He is deepening the economic hole in which he is proudly standing!

            The Prime Minister, Chancellor and their colleagues seem blissfully unaware of the effects on taxpayers and voters of cuts in services and allowances coupled with increasing prices. Last year, as an over-eighty year old householder I had a 25 percent cut in my winter fuel allowance; from £400 to £300. At about the same time there were over-the-top increases in fuel prices. My supplementary solar water heating and the increased insulation I had installed helped me weather both these economic blows.   One large fuel supplier now warns of price increases three times above inflation that will be imposed this autumn.  Where one supplier leads it is likely that others will follow.   I can only hope that the new condensing gas-fired boiler that has replaced my old Baxi Bermuda back boiler, will limit the effect of that increase too.  Many elderly householders, because they do not own the property in which they live, or simply haven’t the financial resources needed, are in a much more serious position than I am.  They may well be faced with the stark choice; eat or heat!

            Nor, of course, is the price of heating our homes the only extra expense that many taxpayers are facing now, or will have to face in the coming months.  Transport costs (since virtually everything that we buy has to be transported, the effect of these goes far beyond private motorists) are much higher than they were last year and are destined to rise further.    Those who think it both economically wise and socially responsible to use public transport rather than a private car have also had a shock. Rail travel costs are to rise well above the level of general inflation.  The Gazette reports that the cost of a season ticket from Colchester to London will rise by over £300.

            Despite recent reports of a slowing down, even reversal, of house price inflation the fact remains that since the dawn of the new millennium twelve years ago, house prices in the Tendring District have risen by 82 percent.   A home which in 2001 cost £93,412, today has a price of £170,285.  Meanwhile average wages in our area increased by only 31 percent, rising from £12,376 to £16,571 a year.  The dream of our becoming a nation of home owners encouraged during the Thatcher years is becoming an ever more distant mirage.

            At the same time as the gap between incomes and house prices is widening, Banks and Building Societies, having been stung as a result of having given 95 percent and even 100 percent mortgages to very dubious borrowers, are tightening their rules and demanding ever-larger deposits.  The Gazette reports that a decade ago, banks were willing to take deposits of 10 percent of the value of the property.  Now, many require up to 25 percent.  As a result, although monthly repayments on mortgages are at a record low level, the average deposit required for the purchase of a house in Colchester has leapt from £11,496 to £50,703!

            Way back in 1956 when my wife and I obtained a mortgage to buy the bungalow in which I am writing these words, the normal 10 percent deposit required was reduced to 5 percent because of a guarantee from Clacton Council, then my employer.  I hesitate to reveal what a tiny sum by today’s reckoning that was.  We still had to sell my wife’s engagement ring to raise it though!  In those days, for £50,000 you could have bought several  very nice homes outright!

            Then though, every local authority had a stock of council house, bungalows and flats available, and an annual building programme to meet local future need.  These Council homes were not just to accommodate the penniless homeless, but were intended for any local family that needed a home and lacked the capital to pay a mortgage deposit, or an income large enough to pay the regular mortgage repayments, plus the other expenses that house purchase brings. That situation ended with the passing of the Right to Buy legislation in the 1980s which required local authorities (but not private landlords) to sell off to existing tenants at bargain-basement prices. the properties they had inherited from their thrifty forebears, We are still suffering from the effects of that legislation (which has been described as buying votes with other people’s money) today.  

            No, I don’t know how our country can reduce its deficit and drag itself out of recession, though I have no doubt that, in the long run, narrowing that yawning gulf between the super rich and the poor would help.  The fact that I don’t know the answer doesn’t matter in the least.  What is of concern is that I don’t think that George Osborn and David Cameron know the answer either.  Nor, I think, does Ed Miliband (who actually apologised for the fact that New Labour had opposed the Right to Buy legislation!)

            Oh – for anyone who is interested I think that the next two lines of the protest-song from which I quoted at the beginning of this comment are:

St Peter don’t you call me, ‘cos I can’t go,

I owe my soul to the Company Store!

Rupert’s Revenge?

          Of course, Rupert Murdoch may have had nothing directly to do with the publication in his flagship newspaper the Sun, alone among British Newspapers, of the pictures featuring Prince Harry that have been the subject of so much publicity and controversy, and that ‘the Palace’ had particularly asked should not be published in the British press.   It is difficult though to believe that the editor of a newspaper in which Mr Murdoch has always had a special interest would go ahead and publish them without first consulting and obtaining the approval of his boss. Mr Murdoch may well have welcomed an opportunity to cause further embarrassment to the British ‘Establishment’ which, having sought his favour for years, had now seen fit to repudiate him.

            The circumstances under which the pictures were taken suggest that Prince Harry may have been carefully chosen as the victim of a ‘honey trap’. The fact that the photographer managed surreptitiously to take such photos at crucial moments does suggest careful preparation – and, I am quite sure, will have earned him (or her) a great deal of money.  As for the Prince himself, I really have no comment to make.  A personable and wealthy young man who is also third in line for the throne is faced with opportunities for self indulgence (old fogies like me think of them as being 'temptations') far beyond the experience of the overwhelming majority of us. Who knows how we might have responded to such opportunities at his age and in similar circumstances.   I think that there may be a greater risk of  the Prince becoming an object of ridicule rather than of either envy or disgust.

            Meanwhile the readership of the Sun, the only British newspaper to ignore the royal request, has probably reached fresh heights today The editor claims that, by publishing the photos, he has struck a blow for Free Speech!  He will certainly have struck a blow for Richard Murdoch’s claim last year (flatly contradicted by his sister this week!) that profitability is the sole criterion by which a newspaper should be judged.

            If freedom of the press means no more that freedom to publish the salacious details of the private lives of celebrities, then it really isn't a freedom worth fighting for.

           

           

Week 25 2012 21.6.2012

Tendring Topics......on Line

 'Just good Friends!'

The Leveson enquiry rumbles on.   On Tuesday evening (12^th June), as I write this, we have just heard the report of Sir John Major’s appearance at the enquiry.  His evidence had the ring of truth and sincerity about it.  He recorded relevant events (and the result of offending the ruler of the Murdoch Empire) as he recalled them, without hesitation or prevarication.  He told us that for days after incurring the Murdoch displeasure, he had read in the press every day, things that he had not done and things that he had never said

            Let me now write a word or two in defence of Rupert Murdoch!   His statement, under oath, that he had never asked any Prime Minister to do anything, is said to have been contradicted by Sir John’s statement that he had wanted the government to change its policy toward Europe.  The two statements are surely not contradictory.  Mr Murdoch didn’t ask the Prime Minister to change his attitude towards Europe – he simply told him that unless the government changed its policy, the newspapers under his control would switch their support from his party to their opponents. The government didn’t change its policy – and the support of the Murdoch press did change from Conservative to New Labour.  Mr Murdoch keeps his promises. 

            No-one seems to have commented on the impertinence of a foreign media tycoon attempting to persuade a British Prime Minister to change British foreign policy. Imagine the outrage there would have been in Mr Murdoch’s flagship newspaper the Sun if such an attempt had been made by a Russian oligarch or an oil-rich Middle Eastern Sheikh rather than an American multimillionaire! 

            Everybody concerned goes to great lengths to deny that there had been any sort of conspiracy or agreement to grant favours to the Murdoch Empire in exchange for press support.  I don’t suppose for a moment that there has been.  All that happened was that Rupert Murdoch, his family and his senior managers went out of their way to make friends with our Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer and other leading members of the government.  It helped, of course, that Mrs Rebekah Brooks News Corporation’s Chief Executive and her husband, were actually neighbours of the Prime Minister.  He and his wife, together with other top politicians, were invited to a Christmas Party and to other social events. The Prime Minister was encouraged to practise his equestrian skills on Mrs Brooks’ horse – which turned out to be ‘on loan’ from the Metropolitan Police!  The Prime Minister and members of the Murdoch inner circle became good friends. That was all there was to it.  But, of course, one of the characteristics of good friends is the way in which (without having to be asked) they help each other in every way that they can. I don't imagine that media millionaires and top politicians have much difficulty in finding ways of demonstrating their loyal friendship.   ‘If you sup with the devil you need a long spoon’, says the proverb.  At neither 10, nor 11 Downing Street, nor at Chequers were any of the spoons nearly long enough!

14.6.12  The evidence given today by David Cameron to the Leveson Enquiry confirms the accuracy of my conjectures above – except that the friendship between the PM and Mrs Brooks was rather closer than I had imagined.

 What goes around, comes around

          It isn’t very often that I find myself in complete agreement with a pronouncement of a member of the government.   Whether, had I been a teacher and facing yet another change of official policy, I’d have felt exactly the same is doubtful.  However, as I am just a more-or-less disinterested by-stander I warm to the idea that children in primary schools should be taught more things ‘by rote’ and that teachers should pay more attention to grammar and spelling.  That’s how it was done in my day!

A class of 8/9 year olds in 1930 at the Ipswich primary school where I learned ‘my tables’. I am the anxious little boy with glasses at the headmaster’s right knee.

           

Arithmetic, the foundation stone of Mathematics, was never my best or favourite subject at school.  Yet to this day if someone says to me ‘what’s seven times eight’ or ‘nine times six?’ the answers (56 and 54 respectively) come unbidden to my tongue.  This facility comes from my chanting, over and over again, with a whole class of some 40 eight year olds, the ‘times tables’. It is an ability that has been useful on occasion. Even more importantly, chanting those tables provided a learning discipline – the realisation that before learning can become enjoyable, there is hard and boring work to be done in establishing its foundation.

            Similarly History (to choose a subject at which I was good and in which I am still interested) is often said to have been ‘in the bad old days’ (my schooldays!) just a case of learning by rote a list of dates and notable events.  There was a lot more to it than that.  The fact remains though that until you have at least a rough idea of the sequence of events in British and world history you can’t hope to see the way in which, over the centuries, one event has led to the next.  Unless you know that the Roman invaders, about 2,000 years ago were followed by the Anglo Saxons and the Vikings and, about 1,000 years ago, by the Normans, followed by the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance; the Protestant Reformation, Thomas Cranmer, Shakespeare, Milton, Christopher Wren, and Isaac Newton   (Oh yes and, really much less importantly, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Cromwell and so on) you’ll never understand how today’s political and economic world evolved – and is still evolving.  Once you have acquired – by rote, by constant repetition and by boring hard work – that skeleton of events, you can start putting the flesh on it and begin to enjoy reading history.

            Being encouraged to learn poetry ‘by heart’ (rather than by rote!) in my primary school years, gave me the ability to store in my head a very considerable collection of poetry, ranging from extracts from the King James Bible,  through some of of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the work of the great poets of the 18^th and 19^th Centuries, and more recent ones like Houseman, Belloc, Kipling and Betjeman, to modern less-than-prim-and-proper limericks.  This mental anthology has been a source of immense pleasure and satisfaction to me in the past and (though I may nowadays forget what happened yesterday – or an hour ago!) it remains in my memory and continues to give me pleasure and satisfaction today.

            I remember being told at school that although we had special English classes, every lesson was in fact an English lesson.  No matter how thoroughly a pupil may have mastered, for instance, a Chemical, Physical or Biological principle, that knowledge is incomplete unless it is accompanied by the ability to pass it on to someone else in clear and lucid English.  That means in grammatically correct and correctly spelled English prose, and legible handwriting.  In those days, that was what teachers and examiners demanded, not because they were fussy and pedantic, but because in later life it would be what other people including employers, would expect

       
           One proposed alteration to the curriculum that is definitely an improvement on that of my childhood and youth is compulsory introduction to a foreign language at primary school. I had no acquaintance whatsoever with a foreign language until I was introduced to French at the age of ten at my secondary school.  That, I think, was much too late.  I was taught French for six years and still only managed to scrape a ‘pass’ mark in the school leaving exam.  Where a school is really determined that its pupils will emerge from their education with a thorough command of a language (Welsh in all schools in the Principality and Hebrew in Jewish schools for instance) that language is taught from ‘infants’ level.  

            I wish the Education Secretary success with his proposed reforms.  It remains to be seen whether or not he’ll be able to introduce them without the firm discipline that was enforced in schools in my day*, and the then taken-for-granted co-operation and compliance of most parents.

*Take another look at that picture from my childhood. It’s clear that, especially in the presence of the headmaster, not one of us dared to step an inch out of line!

A timely reminder

            A timely reminder that it isn’t only the present Prime Minister and top members of the Conservative Party who stand accused of inappropriate fraternisation with Rupert Murdoch and his entourage, has come with the publication of an autobiographical record based on the diaries of Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair’s chief spin-doctor. This reveals the closeness of Tony Blair to Rupert Murdoch, ruler of News International, the international news media empire. 

            Mr Campbell reveals that in the week prior to Britain’s declaration of support for the American-led invasion of Iraq Rupert Murdoch phoned Tony Blair on three occasions to urge him to declare his support without delay.   How extraordinary that an American multimillionaire and newspaper tycoon, owing no loyalty whatsoever to our Queen and Country, should have immediate access to a British Prime Minister in order to exert influence on a matter of foreign policy!   This was the Prime Minister who allowed parliament to be deceived about Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’* and about the presence and influence of Al Qaeda in that country; the same Prime Minister who ignored the million British citizens who marched through London registering their strong opposition to the invasion of Iraq and the further millions who supported them

Perhaps we need an enquiry into the behaviour of top politicians quite as much as we needed an enquiry into the behaviour of the press!

*It should be noted that Alistair Campbell, whose autobiographical publication has revealed these phone calls, was himself complicit in the compilation of the ‘Dodgy Dossier’ on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction  that contributed to the deception of parliament and of many members of the public.

Those WMDs!

            Writing the above reminded me that it was several days – perhaps several weeks – before Iraq was invaded that I realized it was most unlikely that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction (even ‘battlefield’ ones) at his disposal, and equally unlikely that Tony Blair and George Bush were unaware of this.

            I am not a great admirer of either of those gentlemen. I can’t believe though that they were so stupid or so irresponsible as to order the inevitably rather slow build-up of invasion forces in Kuwait just across Iraq’s border, if they had thought there was the slightest possibility of their being destroyed when, just before the invasion was launched, Saddam Hussein ‘pressed the button’ and unleashed his Weapons of Mass Destruction upon them.

            It really didn’t take either ‘rocket science’ or secret sources of information to work that out!

           

                               

Week 18 2012

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

 ‘The Proof of the Pudding…………’

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

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

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

           

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Evil Empire?

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

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

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

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

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

 ‘I don’t believe it!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘The Cruellest Month!’

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

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

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

           

           

           

           

Week 10 2012 8.3.2012

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

 ‘The best that money can buy!’

            The Leveson Enquiry into the conduct of the press, having been absent from the front headline news recently, came back with a vengeance early last week. On the Monday we had learned of the successful launch the previous day of News International’s latest venture, the Sunday edition of the Sun. Over three million copies of the new publication had been sold and Mr Rupert Murdoch, who had launched it in person, was said to be delighted.

On the following day he may have been a little less happy. A high ranking police official revealed to Lord Leveson that bribery of the police and other public officials had been endemic among the staff of the Sun and that this corruption had been condoned at the very highest level.  It was believed that one public official had been paid as much as £80,000 to reveal confidential information!  Furthermore, this activity had been carried out despite the knowledge that it was against the law and that the jobs, pensions and liberty of those involved were at risk. Various devious schemes had been devised to conceal it.

No wonder the recent widespread arrests of Sun journalists, that aroused so much indignation among media pundits, had taken place simultaneously, at dawn, and by surprise.   This had clearly been intended to remove the possibility of evidence being tampered with or destroyed.  

Mr Murdoch is reported as saying that although those activities may have taken place in the past all News International employees would have clean hands in the future. Perhaps so – but it will be remembered that throughout this sorry ongoing saga News International has admitted wrong-doing only when compelled to do so by irrefutable evidence.  In the first instance it was claimed that just one lone culprit had resorted to ‘phone hacking’, and he was a freelance private investigator, not a News International employee.  Then it was just the one publication, the News of the World that was culpable.  Mr Murdoch closed it down, throwing it to the wolves to protect the rest of his media empire.  Now the Sun, News International’s flagship enterprise in the UK, is accused of being a centre of bribery and corruption.  In a tv interview singer Charlotte Church, who, with her parents, has been the victims of phone hacking and harassment, pointed out that when News International says ‘sorry’ it doesn’t mean that they are sorry about their wrong-doing – only that that they are sorry to have been caught out! 

Serious as is the systematic bribery and corruption of members of the Police Force and other public officials, it is the evil influence of News International at the very highest level that most concerns me – and should concern us all.  If the Police were, as is admitted, much too close to the Murdoch Empire – what are we to say of successive Prime Ministers who have enjoyed the close friendship of Rupert Murdoch and his lieutenants?  It began with Mrs Thatcher but was closely followed by Tony Blair and by David Cameron, our present Prime Minister. There was the video shown on tv of Tony Blair greeting Rebekah Brooks, Rupert Murdoch’s ‘viceroy’, with an affectionate kiss. There was David Cameron and family spending part of Christmas 2010 with the same lady, and David Cameron appointing Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor, as his personal spin-doctor.  More recently we have had the cosy mental image of David Cameron enjoying  a brisk canter – on a horse ‘loaned’ to Rebekah Brooks by the Metropolitan Police! 

No wonder News International employees imagined that, with ‘friends at the top’ they could get away with anything.   Now I notice that, as a result of an internal enquiry, News International is handing to the Police evidence of the wrong-doing of some of its employees.  I am reminded of the German farmer who in 1946, when asked what he had been doing that morning, replied, ‘I’ve been de-Nazifying my carrot field – pulling out the little ones so that the big ones can flourish!’

No-one would dream of suggesting that our top politicians could be bribed – or that even the brashest of cosmopolitan media billionaires would be foolish enough to attempt to bribe them.  The former though, are well aware of the fragility of their electoral success and of the power of the rulers of the press to manipulate public opinion for or against them.  This power was impressively demonstrated when, to make New Labour ‘electable’ Tony Blair swung his party’s policies sufficiently to the right to secure Rupert Murdoch’s approbation, and the support of the Sun in the next General Election campaign - which New Labour then won.  Before the latest General Election the Sun returned to its support of the Conservatives, and the Conservatives emerged as the strongest party.  Rupert Murdoch must have been well satisfied with this exhibition of his power.

 The billionaire owners of most of the national press are able to exert far too powerful an influence on our political leaders – an influence that the revelations of the Leveson Enquiry may give us an opportunity to curb.  We boast of our ‘Free Press’ . It isn’t free.  It isn’t even cheap.  It is just the very best that money can buy!

‘When I hear the word “culture”……. I reach for my revolver!’

          Thus in the late 1930s, allegedly spake the late and unlamented Air-Marshal Hermann Goering, the most colourful of Hitler’s entourage.

            We haven’t yet reached that state in this country as we progress in the second decade of the twenty-first century.  There’s no doubt though that in our schools, lessons on what I think of as cultural subjects – history, geography, English literature – come a poor second to those which prepare the young to be employable human resource units supplying the needs of the global market economy; the ‘proles’ of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ .

             A basic knowledge of British and World History and Geography (where we are in both time and space, how we got there, and the direction in which we are heading!) is surely essential for us all in a parliamentary democracy.  How could we hope to exercise the vote intelligently and effectively without that background knowledge?  As for English literature – quite apart from the great pleasure that is to be derived from the magnificent prose and poetry of the past, it teaches us to express our thoughts clearly and concisely (without the constantly reiterated ‘know what I mean? that we hear so often today) and how those in the past have met and tried to resolve the problems that confront us daily.

            I heard a cocksure fifteen year old asserting on tv that Shakespeare is irrelevant these days.  Irrelevant, really?  Romeo and Juliet deals with gang warfare between the Montagues and Capulets,  the dangers of carrying knives (the gang members had long ones called swords!) for ‘protection’, the perils of teenage sex and of ignoring parental advice, and the dangers of meddling by well-meaning busybodies (Brother Lawrence).   And that’s just one of the plays!  Aspiring modern politicians could do worse than study Macbeth ­and Julius Caesar and those tempted to try to make a fortune on the stock exchange might try The Merchant of Venice. 

           

Watching University Challenge on tv can be a humbling experience.  I don’t really understand most of the questions, never mind know the answers.  However I do occasionally know the answers to questions on English history or world geography, and I quite often know more about some aspects of English Literature than any of the contestants.  I have been astonished to observe young men and women who know things about physics, chemistry, zoology, and mathematics that are a complete mystery to me, but who seem never to have heard of such poems as Milton’s sonnet On his Blindness, Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott, Keats’  La belle Dame sans Merci, and John Betjeman’s Subaltern’s Love Song.   Betjeman’s poetry I have come to know and enjoy fairly recently (well, in the past half-century)  but the others, and the Shakespeare plays I have mentioned, were just part of the English syllabus for the London University General Schools Certificate that I took and passed before leaving school in 1937 at the age of 16.

            I can’t say that the maths and science subjects that I was taught at school have been of no value to me. I have always had enough Maths to cope with my income tax returns and to work out royalties due to me from book sales.  My knowledge of General Physics was a help to me when, in my 50s and 60s, I wrote half a dozen commercially successful books about domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage.  It is though, from my study of English Literature that I have gained my ability to string words together into a readable narrative, and from my knowledge of history and geography that I have the temerity to write and publish this blog every week. I wish I knew more about other cultural subjects such as classical music and art. 

            In Great Britain culture isn’t yet the target of a revolver – but it is being slowly strangled in the service of Mammon!

‘Bad News for Home Owners?’

          When the news reader announced that there was ‘bad news for home owners’ at breakfast time this (3^rd March) morning, I wondered what was coming next.  I needn’t have worried.  It was home buyers, not home owners that had reason to be anxious.  Interest rates on mortgages were set to increase, in some cases by as much as fourteen percent.  Some home buyers will shortly discover – when they find themselves unable to make their mortgage repayments – that it is the bank or Building Society, not themselves, who is the true owner of their home.

            I feel very sorry for those who may lose their homes, but not for the politicians who have lured them into a debt that they won’t be able to repay.  Remember David Cameron saying how proud the new householder was when handed the key of his own home?  Just imagine how that same householder will feel when his home is repossessed and he has to hand it back again!

’‘Essex Works!'

            Yes, as far as I am concerned it certainly does.  You’ll recall that a fortnight or so ago I recounted my experience of trying to get a hand-rail fitted to help me get safely from the threshold of my front door to the concrete front path.  A wooden ramp had been provided (by a friendly neighbour) over the two steep steps, but I still felt the need to descend that ramp with extreme care, never venturing upon it without my trusty walking stick!

            The biggest hurdle that I had to deal with was that of getting through to a human voice at the County Hall.  I gave it up one day and rang off while a mechanical voice was assuring me that my call was valued and that I was moving up the queue.  The next day I was more determined (and possibly a little more patient!) and eventually a human voice, of a very helpful young lady greeted me.  I was ‘assessed’ over the phone.  It became clear to me that despite my age there were not a great many things that I might want to do but was unable.  I could get out of bed, wash, shower and shave, do my own shopping, visit friends, cook my own meals and do the washing with the aid of a washing machine.   I had already arranged help with cleaning and with the garden.  No, I definitely wasn’t top priority.

            However, someone would visit me in due course to see about a hand-rail and to see if there were any other hazards about the house were capable of being remedied.  It took about three weeks but ultimately some-one did call.  He agreed that I needed a handrail but thought that otherwise I was coping well with the effects of old age.  Someone would phone and make an appointment to fix the handrail.  And so they did.  A very helpful operative phoned and said that, if it was OK with me, he would call and fix the handrail at about lunchtime today, 3rd March..

            And so he did, quickly and efficiently.  See for yourself.

            It will take a long while to erase from my memory the County Council’s former political leader, Lord Hanningfield.  But in the meantime I am happy to confirm that Essex Works – and worked effectively for me!

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