POSTSCRIPT (3)

POSTSCRIPT (3)

Global Warming – Global Warning!

          In my last blog I said that I was a member and supporter of the Green Party because I believed that Climate Change (global warming largely due to human activity) was currently the biggest threat facing humankind.  Since then I have had an email from a regular blog reader who points out that global warming is not just a future threat – it is already responsible for most of the political problems that are causing us concern today.  Here is part of that email:

I am beginning to see world events in terms of global warming.  Did you know that the real cause of the “Arab Spring” was the rising price of grain, resulting in people in the Arab countries being unable to afford to eat?  The uprisings coincided with a spike in the price of grain. Then the price subsided a bit, but the trend remained very definitely upwards due to lower crop yields and more of the world’s arable land becoming desert. This was reducing output while the population continued to grow.  The uprisings were a cry for help and a call for an end to dictatorial and corrupt governments.  As things got worse the protestors tried other governing systems.   In that part of the world a liberal parliamentary democracy is not the obvious choice of the reformers - but a more rigorous interpretation of Islam is.  Hence the advent of the Muslim Brotherhood (in Egypt now brutally suppressed) the Taliban, Al Qaida and, most extreme and the most successful of all, the so-called Islamic State.

  The no more than Two Degrees Centigrade rise in world temperature upper limit to which all world leaders have agreed is not an ideal figure. It is the point at which scientists predict the world will no longer be able to feed itself, and there will be widespread famine, riot and war. NASA has said publicly  that today Climate Change represents the greatest threat to world peace

So in the light of that, I think what we are witnessing in the Mediterranean and Calais, is the beginning not the end.   It is fundamentally the impoverished world meeting the rich world, and the rich believing their prosperity would be diminished if they shared it with migrants.  I think the incredible risks which the “economic” migrants are prepared to take is testament to the fact that they are escaping a life of destitution as well as immense danger, and particularly, they can see no future for their children in the country they came from. This is really what has driven all previous mass migrations, like the Irish escaping to the USA from the potato famine.

                In the past Britain has been far more generous. We welcomed Jewish migrants from Nazi Germany, we welcomed the Vietnamese Boat people escaping tyranny there and we welcomed Ugandan Asians escaping Idi Amin. And of course, in each case, the migrant population has not been a burden but has done very well in the UK.  The political tide has really turned since then.

I think that the situation in the Mediterranean, and in Eastern Europe where  almost as many migrants are  coming via land frontiers, is the most significant development.   The total number of migrants has reached 180,000.  By contrast there are “only 4000” in Calais. The rest have gone elsewhere in Europe – mainly Germany and Sweden.   So why the fuss in Calais?  Well this is entirely caused by the UK decision not to be part of Schengen, not to accept any quota of migrants at all, and to relocate the frontier to Calais, instead of it being in Dover. It is NOT the result of the UK Benefits system being too generous (it isn’t actually more generous than France), but it’s a good myth to promote.

If we had no borders – like France / Belgium – there would be none of this.  There are migrants arriving in Italy and wandering all over Europe to other EU  countries all the time, and no  one even knows. If the border was in Dover, as it should be, then people could legally hitch a ride with a lorry driver or car driver, and then apply for asylum as soon as they land. However, by putting the border in Calais, they can never get to English soil in order to apply for asylum, so they have to practically kill themselves in the attempt. Why can we not have an asylum office in Calais as well? Is it because they don’t want them applying and it is likely that too many would be approved? Why does the UK stay in the UN if we aren’t prepared respect international agreements?  

                I agree with my correspondent that those migrants aren’t attracted to the UK by our generous benefits.  Even if it were true that our benefits are more generous than those of other countries, I really don’t think that migrants would risk their lives daily in the hope of acquiring a few extra quid!   Many are attracted to the UK because they have learned a little English at school and think, probably correctly, that they’d speak it fairly fluently after a few months.  English has become a world-wide language – and that has its disadvantages as well as its benefits.

                When I hear David Cameron saying that migration from France to the UK is a European problem, not just a problem for France and Britain, I am amazed at his temerity.  It would be a European problem if we had signed up to the Schengen Agreement and had abolished our national frontiers – or if we had been prepared to accept a few of the thousands of migrants who have reached Italy, Spain or Greece either across the Mediterranean  or from Turkey.   As it is I think our fellow Europeans could surely quite reasonably say, ‘If those opt-out Brits want to keep their own frontiers and accept no refugees from Africa of Asia – it’s up to them to guard those frontiers and keep the migrants out.  We’ve got plenty of our own problems to solve before we can give thought to those   that the Brits have brought upon themselves!’

                 On the world stage our top politicians diligently pursue what they think of as our national interests. Meanwhile Climate Change waits in the wings with nasty surprises in store for all of them……….and us!

                 

            

Week 42 2013

Tendring Topics……on line

Syria – a Glimmer of Hope.

            Greek mythology has it that when Pandora opened the forbidden box (rather as, in Hebrew mythology, Eve ate the forbidden fruit) all the evils of the world escaped to plague mankind – greed, cruelty, hatred, death, famine and disease.   Right at the end, when the box had seemed to be empty, came hope – and, in the face of every disaster, hope has remained with humankind ever since.

            The Middle East and in particular Syria has had a surfeit of all those evils during the past two years.  Armed rebellion against the regime of President Assad, and the resistance to it of forces loyal to the President, have brought death and destruction on an unprecedented scale to that unhappy country.  Thousands have been killed or mutilated, thousands more – refugees from death and violence - have been rendered homeless and have sought shelter either in their own or neighbouring countries.  The situation has been made worse by foreign interference.  Britain, France and the USA have joined Saudi Arabia and other Arabian Peninsula states (unlikely champions of freedom, tolerance and democracy!) in supporting the rebels, while Russia and Iran support the Syrian government.  Surely non-one can possibly imagine that ‘victory’ for either side can justify the carnage and destruction of this Civil War made even worse by the use of chemical weapon attacks, for which both sides claim their opponents were responsible.

            The glimmer of hope appeared when, after a particularly appalling chemical weapons attack the USA, convinced that the Syrian Government had been responsible, threatened missile strikes on government targets.  The Syrian Government declared that they were not responsible for that outrage, but that they were prepared to surrender all their chemical weapons to the United Nations for destruction.  There was considerable scepticism in London and Washington about the genuineness of this offer – and anger from the rebels and their Arab (Sunni Muslim) allies who had hoped that missile strikes from the U.S. would give them a decisive advantage.

            But, confounding the sceptics, the Syrian government has given the United Nations’ inspectors all the access they demanded, and destruction of these dreadful weapons has begun.  The civil war with conventional weapons (and heaven knows they are terrible enough!) rages on, but the Russian Government is urging that both sides should be brought together at a Peace Conference to be held in November.

            There surely lies at least the hope of peace.  I have little doubt that the Russian Government will be able to coerce the Syrian Government into attending the Conference prepared to compromise, but will the rebels be ready to do the same?   They consist of a number of quite separate groups sometimes (so it is reported) fighting among themselves and with quite different objectives. Those enjoying the support of ‘the west’ believe they are fighting for a new democratic and tolerant secular state in which Sunni and Shia Muslims will live at peace with each other and with Christians.  It seems quite likely that they would be prepared to compromise to reach agreement with the Government in the interest of peace and reconciliation.

 How about the fervent jihadists, some of them members or supporters of Al Qaida? They are determined to turn Syria into their own kind of Muslim state enforcing their interpretation of Sharia law and tolerating neither ‘infidels’ nor Muslims of other traditions.  These are the people who massacred the Pakistani Christians in Peshawa; who shot sixteen year old Malala, the heroic Pakistani girl who campaigned for girls’ education; who punish ‘unchaste’ women by burying them to their waists and then throwing stones at them until a merciful death releases them. 

They may be in a minority among the rebels but I fear that because of their determination, their conviction that God is on their side, and their willingness to die (and to kill!) for their cause, their will is likely to prevail.  I wish I could imagine them reaching a compromise agreement with the Syrian government – and keeping it!

We can only hope – and pray.  The God revealed to us in Jesus Christ loves all his human children – Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists; even those who deny his existence.  I believe though that there may be just one human action, the ultimate blasphemy, that always provokes God’s wrath.  That is deliberately harming a fellow human being – and claiming that it is being done in his service!

             ‘Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways’

                                                  John Greenleaf Whittier, 19^th Century American Poet and Quaker

A 21^st Century Heroine

          Mention of Pakistani teenager Malala above reminded me of the thought-provoking Panorama programme on BBC tv on Monday evening 7^th October, in which she and her family were interviewed about the attempted assassination that brought her to the front pages of the world’s press – and, thanks to British surgery, her almost miraculous recovery.

            I presume that English is not Malala’s first language yet this unassuming sixteen-year-old spoke fluently and eloquently in English of her campaign, in defiance of death threats, to be educated herself and to achieve education for girls world-wide.  To silence her, a Taliban assassin had boarded a school bus and shot her twice in the head.  Thanks to the fact that she had been immediately rushed to her local hospital and thence to Britain for extensive surgery she had lived to tell the tale.  Now, with the full support of her family, she  is determined to continue her campaign for girls to have the same right as boys to a proper education.

What a contrast between this Pakistani teenager who fought, and is fighting, against tremendous odds, for education for herself and others and the many British children who have to be bribed (sorry ‘offered incentives’) to get to school regularly, who do not value education for themselves and who, by disruptive behaviour, do their best to deny it to others!

Just the day after that Panorama programme we learned that a world-wide survey of standards of literacy and numeracy among young people between the ages of 16 and 24 had revealed that British young people within that age-group had come near the bottom!  How sad it is that oldies like me are not greatly surprised.

A Glad Farewell to Party Conferences

          I am glad that the political party conferences are over.  I find listening to top politicians, whichever party they support, is a depressing experience. One regular blog reader who emailed me after the Conservative Conference seemed even more angry than I was – perhaps he had paid more attention than me!

            ‘I really don’t think even Mrs Thatcher so skilfully turned public opinion against one minority after another, blaming each for our economic woes.  It has been the migrants, the not-so-disabled, the subsidised tenants, the ones with subsidised bedrooms, and now the 200,000 ‘life style choice’ claimants who have been unemployed for more than 2 years.  And each pronouncement has been lapped up by a willing public and press eager to find someone else to blame.  No attempt to explain how any of these issues could possibly have caused the economic crisis.  It is really easy to see how easily Hitler was able to use the same tactics to turn a nation against the Jews!  And there were the pre-conference announcements that “we don’t need to be at the forefront of green energy, and it is adding too much to fuel bills and – we are minded to block all future land wind farms” (which are actually the cheapest form of green energy), on the very day that the worlds scientific community warned of the consequences of climate change.

I felt that the Conferences of all three main parties reinforced my conviction that they really all have the same policy –  to get elected at all costs and to remain in office as long as they can persuade a gullible electorate to let them. Gone are the days of conviction politics – when political parties had fairly clearly defined final objectives and devoted their efforts to persuading the public that those objectives were desirable and attainable, and that they were the ones who could achieve them.  Nowadays not even the Mail and the Express ever refer to the Labour Party as Socialists.  Nor can the Conservatives claim to be ‘conservative’. Mrs Thatcher’s governments made more revolutionary changes to the British way of life than any of her predecessors or successors.  It was under her governments that we lost our manufacturing base and became reliant on ‘service industries’ (money lending, share juggling and the like), and the policy of wholesale privatisation began. Our efforts were to become directed towards satisfying the shareholders rather than serving the public.

An exception is sadly the one Party whose policies I believe to be totally mischievous and, if they were implemented, disastrous. UKIP has one principal aim; to get the UK out of the European Union.  It is obvious to me that the United Kingdom, on its own, cannot hope to compete or to co-operate effectively with other world political or economic blocs.  As an active part of a more closely integrated European Union we could do either or both.  Europe is the biggest recipient of our exports.  We are Europeans – geographically, historically and culturally.  Of course the EU is imperfect – but its imperfections are largely due to the determination of individual states to pursue their own short-term interests rather than those of Europe as a whole.  The EU is not some alien and hostile state.  We are an important part of it. We have helped to create it and make it what it is. We, if we summon the will to do so, can perfect it.  For all our sakes I pray that we will not fall for the Neo-Fascist nationalist charms of Nigel Farage and his disciples.  Their policies, including that of a rapid exit from Europe, are simply those of the ‘raving right’ of the Conservative Party.  If that is really what we want, I am glad that at 92 I am unlikely to have to live under the UKIP/Conservative coalition government that I can see on the not-so-distant horizon..

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Week 11 2012 15.3.2012

Tendring Topics.....on line

‘Some corner of a foreign field…………’

          Shortly after the outbreak of World War I, Rupert Brooke wrote his best-known poem The Soldier, which begins with the lines;

If I should die, think only this of me

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England.

These assume that in that corner of a foreign field, the poet’s remains will at least be left in peace.

          By no means the worst or the most tragic image shown on tv last week, but the one that has remained most persistent in my memory, was that of the vandalised and broken tombstones of British war dead in Benghazi’s British military cemetery and the desecration of the stone crucifix that had been provided there.

            The spectacle filled me with deep sadness – not for those buried there (they are past caring about such things), nor because among those war dead are former comrades of mine who died in a PoW transit camp in Benghazi in the late summer and autumn of 1942.  Nor even was it because of the desecration of the image of Christ, the Prince of Peace, and of the cross on which he had been executed. It was a cross that a fellow-countryman of the vandals, Simon of Cyrene, had helped him carry to Golgotha, the place of execution.                 

            What made me saddest was the thought that, anywhere in the world, there were people who harboured such a hatred of Britain, British values, and of the Christian faith, that they were prepared to vent it even on the dead and on the sacred symbols of their faith.  Such unreasoning and implacable hatred cannot be overcome by force of arms. Nor, I think, can it be defeated or brought to acceptable compromise by reasoned argument and discussion.

            It is for that reason that I see no possibility of an end, either by  military victory or agreed compromise, to the war in Afghanistan that continues to take a toll of our young men and, of course, of an unknown number of Afghan civilians. I have no doubt at all that exactly the same implacable hatred motivates our Taliban opponents there.  Last week six young British men died in just one incident, an event that brought renewed calls for an immediate withdrawal of British troops.

            It is a new experience for me to find myself on the same side as much of the popular press, but there really is no point in waiting a couple more years in the hope that by that time we’ll have had a miraculous victory or that the Taliban will have accepted a reasonable compromise.  Nor do I think that we can rely on the NATO trained and equipped Afghan Army to have either the ability or the inclination to step into the role currently held by our troops.   What is certain is that in that time there will be yet more pointless deaths of young men, more weeping widows and children, and more sorrowing parents.  I am sorry for the Afghans – and particularly for the Afghan women and girls – who have acquired western ways and embraced western values. I can only hope that they will be able to escape from their benighted country before the hate-fuelled  retribution of some of their fellow-countrymen catches up with them.

Later Developments

          Since I wrote the above there have been further disturbing developments, none of which encourage me to change my general view of the situation in Afghanistan.

            Last Saturday 10^th March I learned that the Afghanistan Religious Council, funded by the Afghan Government (and thus, indirectly, by us!) whose decrees had already resulted in Afghan women tv news readers having to wear a head scarf while working, has now decreed that Afghan women and men should not work or be educated together, and that women should not go out in public unless accompanied by a male member of their family.   This decree doesn’t yet have the force of law but it is certainly a straw in the wind, and an indication of the probable fate of Afghan women and girls when NATO forces depart.

            Then, on the following day I heard the appalling news that a United States soldier (a staff sergeant in fact) had gone alone into two Afghan villages in the dead of night and deliberately massacred at least sixteen people, including a number of women and children.   The perpetrator of this horrific crime must obviously have been either insanely drunk or simply insane at the time. This though is unlikely to be regarded as an excuse by those who will demand vengeance.

            Back in Essex, on the same day came news of the vandalising and desecration of a churchyard memorial to British troops who had died in Afghanistan.  Is this evidence of the same implacable hatred, now in England, that resulted in the violation of British war graves in Benghazi?

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‘A Bridge over Troubled Waters’

            Opening my newly delivered copy of The Friend, a Quaker weekly journal, last week, I was surprised to see a photograph that reminded me of a very happy period of my life.  The picture was of the old Turkish packhorse bridge in Mostar, Bosnia; the ‘old bridge’ (or ‘stari most’) that gave the town its name.  I remembered it from the late summer of 1980 when my wife Heather and I had toured what was then a united Jugoslavia in our motor- caravan.

Here is a picture that I took at the time.  Young men were demonstrating their machismo by diving from the apex of the bridge into the turbulent waters of the fast-flowing River Neretva beneath. It was a peaceful scene and, throughout our visit, we saw no sign of the suspicion, hatred and resentment that were so soon to lead to bitter civil war.

A casualty of that civil war was that beautiful old  bridge, destroyed in conflict between Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims.  It was rebuilt with funding from the Turkish Government (sadly there is no way of similarly restoring the thousands of human lives lost in that conflict!)  The picture in The Friend on International Women’s Day, 8^th March, was published as a symbol of peace and reconciliation.

Did you, by the way, know that 8^th March was International Women’s Day and that women  were holding demonstrations on bridges round the world, hoping, says a spokesperson for Women for Women International, that they will represent ‘bridges of peace and hope for the future’?  The organisation declares that ‘Women are forced to bear the burden of war and are targeted for mass rape, mutilation and torture as a tool of war’ and that ‘Eighty percent of wartime refugees are women and children’.

I am only sorry that International Women’s Day wasn’t more widely publicised beforehand.  The campaign reinforced my own idea (for which no-one else seems to have much enthusiasm!) that there should be an all-embracing ‘Civilian Victims Day’, a companion of Remembrance Day on which we remember the war dead of the armed forces.  On that day there would be special religious services of remembrance and of repentance and we would all be urged to wear white poppies as a symbol of our desire for peace.   The proceeds of the sale could be used to help civilian victims of conflict. in a similar way to that in which the proceeds of red poppies on Remembrance Day are used to help wounded and disabled members of the armed forces.

Perhaps the reason that this idea hasn’t caught on is the fact that while virtually every nation of the world has civilian war dead to mourn, very few indeed have no need to repent the suffering they have inflicted  on the civilian victims of other nations, other creeds or other ethnicities.

‘Inasmuch as ye have done these things unto even one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done them unto me’, said the Prince of Peace.

A Boost to the Economy – and Solution to Britain’s Housing Problem?

            I am referring to the Government’s recently announced initiative to underwrite loans from Banks and Building Societies for purchases of new-built homes to enable those lenders to require a deposit of only 5 percent of the total purchase price.  This, it is claimed, will give a boost to the building trade, and thus to the country’s economic recovery. It would also make it possible for thousands of potential purchasers, who could afford the monthly repayments on their loan but were unable to find the all-important deposit, to get their feet on the first rung on the property ladder.

             Will give a boost to the building trade?   I think that it is the sort of idea that could only emanate only from a government of millionaires, remote from the world most of us live in! Even 5 percent of the price of a new home would be well beyond the reach of many would-be purchasers.  It was in 1956 that my wife and I bought the bungalow in which I am now writing these words.  We did – in those distant days – have the offer of a loan with a deposit of only 5 percent. We had been married for ten years.  I had an adequate salary, but   our two young sons, and a loan to repay on the cost of the car I needed for my job, ensured that we had very little money saved.  We had to sell some of our furniture – and my wife’s engagement ring (a transaction for which I have felt guilty ever since!) – to raise that deposit.

            We did manage to pay the monthly repayments unfailingly. I was a Public Heath Inspector employed by Clacton Council.  In those days local government salaries were lower than comparable ones in the private sector, but they were secure and part of that salary was contributing to a pension.  Nowadays salaries in the lower reaches of the local government service are still low but the jobs, like all jobs these days, are anything but secure.  What is more, pension contributions are going to be higher and today’s local government officers are going to have to wait (and work) longer for a lower pension.  Jobs in the private sector are scarce and certainly no more secure.  With all of this in mind prudent home seekers should surely think twice – and then again – before incurring a debt that, like the student loans, is going to be a burden for decades to come, and for which any change of circumstances could make it impossible to keep up the repayments.

            We are, thanks to those ‘brilliant brains’ in the banking and financial services sector, already a nation in debt.  The government seems determined to make us also a nation of debtors!

A Moment of Remembrance – and foreboding.

          I am an early riser.  Last Sunday (11^th March) I switched the tv on to BBC 1 at about 5.40 a.m.   Usually at that time there is a discussion about the European Union in progress.  Last Sunday was different. Unknowingly I had switched on just before the exact moment at which, on that same day a year earlier, the devastating earthquake and Tsunami, followed by a catastrophic nuclear energy emergency, had taken place in eastern Japan.  I was watching a memorial event, presided over by the grey-haired Japanese Emperor and Empress, in an enormous crowd-filled arena. There were recorded scenes of the earthquake, of the subsequent enormous ‘tidal wave’ engulfing all before it – and of the radiation polluted landscape that remains devastated to this day. Then, at the anniversary of the moment the earthquake struck, came a minute of silence As one, the enormous audience fell into silent mourning for the tens thousands of dead, many of whose bodies have never been recovered.

            We are fortunate in this country in that we rarely experience a damaging earthquake and never, so far, a tsunami.  We have had devastating tidal floods though (one on this coast as recently as 1953), and we too have nuclear plant in locations liable to flooding.  A recent survey predicted that within this century, there is a strong probability that both Bradwell and Sizewell nuclear plants, neither very far from us and one very near, will suffer dangerous flooding as a result of the inexorable progress of global warming. 

We have been warned!

           

                       

           

           

                                                 

Week 41.10 12th October 2010

Tendring Topics……..on Line

‘How will the Chancellor’s child benefit move hit you?’

This was the question posed by the daily Coastal Gazette to its readers on Tuesday 5th October, the day that Chancellor George Osborne broke it to the Conservative Party Conference that from 2013 higher rate taxpayers would not be eligible for Child Benefit. Predictably the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph saw it as yet another assault on ‘Middle England’. Local readers of the Coastal Gazette however seem to have taken the news much more philosophically.

The higher rate of income tax comes into force on incomes of about £44,000 a year. I reckon that a substantial number of Gazette readers think in terms of a weekly wage rather than an annual salary. For them £44,000 a year is roughly £850 a week, not the sort of sum that many of them find in their wage packets on payday. Unsurprisingly they see the Chancellor’s decision as a sound one. Nina Hamilton, who lives not far from me in Old Road, is reported as saying, ‘People who are bringing in about a grand a week don’t really need the help in my opinion. Child allowance makes a big difference to people on lower incomes’. Amanda Snelling, a mother of one, from Great Clacton, made a similar point: ‘I’m all for these cuts for people earning upwards of £40K a year. If they’re on that money then what does a £20 a week benefit really mean to them anyway? It’s good news for the working classes who rely on that money’

Those who definitely will see the Chancellor’s proposals as unfair will be ‘Middle England’ mums whose husband’s income only just comes into that upper tax band and who feel that being at home for their growing children is more important than, for instance, owning a second car, living in a rather posher home or taking regular holidays in the Caribbean. Next door to them, in the leafy suburb in which they both live, may be a family with a total income of £60,000 a year – but it comes from a man and wife both working and earning £30,000 a year each. They will still get their child allowance because no one in the household is on the higher tax band! ‘Fair’, did I hear David Cameron say?

In my younger days, certainly in families from ‘Middle England’ and in many working class ones too, the wife made and maintained the home and looked after the children. The husband was, and was expected to be, the ‘breadwinner’. My mother never had a job other than home making once she was married. Neither did my wife. What a medieval idea that seems today! There was much less juvenile delinquency though in those days, many fewer schoolgirl pregnancies and many fewer teenage sufferers from alcoholism or sexually transmitted diseases.

One thing that has been made plain by those who protested indignantly at the Chancellor’s proposals, and those who thought that they were a good idea, was that everyone welcomes cuts in services and benefits – provided that they always affect other people. And that this is true of wealthy and poor alike! This will no doubt be confirmed when more details of ‘the cutbacks’ are known on 20th of this month. I really don’t envy the Chancellor in his task! He can’t possibly please everybody and he can’t possibly be fair unless he pleases nobody!

Some Cheerful News – for now!

There isn’t much good news about these days but it was nice to spot a small news item on an inside page of the Clacton Gazette announcing that the village of St Osyth has been listed by the Daily Telegraph as one of the best endowed by nature as a place to live. It has, says the report, low levels of air pollution and offers its residents ‘exhilarating sea walks’.

Its outstanding positive feature though is its low rainfall, at 20in or 513mm, the very lowest in Britain and (as I used proudly to claim when I was Tendring Council's Public Relations Officer) was comparable with that of the fringes of southern Africa’s Kalahari Desert! If you prefer a nearer comparison, Britain’s wettest spot, Crib Goch in Snowdonia (an area where thousands go on holiday each year) has almost 90 times as much annual rainfall at 177in or 4500mm.

It isn’t quite so good of course for keen gardeners. I remember, in the distant days when I was one of their number, surveying my parched lawn and wilting runner beans after weeks of drought, and reflecting that there were snags about cultivating a garden just three miles from the centre of Britain’s driest location!

It won’t, of course, affect the weather but I reckon that if the present owner of St. Osyth Manor gets his way and doubles the total number of homes in the village, St Osyth will become a lot less desirable place in which to live. Perhaps though, as Britain’s population grows, expansion on those lines is inevitable. I won’t be around to see it, but I think it possible that before the end of this century the village community will have been swallowed up in Clacton and will have become one of the town’s more attractive suburbs. 'Oh brave new world!'

Chip off the old block?

It can be disconcerting to find traits in your offspring that are replicas of your own. It can, of course, also be extremely satisfying. I have been more than pleased that my two sons have both chosen socially useful careers motivated by job satisfaction rather than by financial gain, and that my three grandchildren have followed in their parents’ footsteps. I am pleased too that, although no longer ‘go-to-meeting’ Quakers, my sons pursue what I consider to be the Quaker values of honesty, plain speaking and concern for others. In that respect I fear that it was their mother rather than I who set the example.

A little while ago I confessed in this column that I was an opinionated old man and one who was not content to keep his opinions to himself. Pete, my elder son, is beginning to display similar symptoms. I tend to spread my opinions via this blog and in the correspondence columns of the press. He – more usefully perhaps – shares his with his member of parliament. I should perhaps mention that in many respects, the present Prime Minister would consider Pete to be an ideal role model. Made redundant from a very senior post in local government housing administration, he launched his own IT consultancy, gathering round himself a team of IT experts experienced in public administration, to solve the problems of local, police and other public authorities. HUB Solutions Ltd ( www.HUBSolutions.co.uk ) now has satisfied clients throughout England and Scotland and an office in Glasgow as well as in London. This doesn’t mean that, any more than I do, he supports all – or even many - of the policies of David Cameron and the coalition that he heads. Very shortly after the General Election he wrote to his local MP, Lib.Dem. Lynne Featherstone about the coalition’s axing of the school building and renovation programme and received a very rapid and positive reply. Now he has written again in the wake of policies announced at the Conservative Party Conference. Below, slightly abbreviated, is his letter.

Dear Lynne,

I wrote to you shortly after the General Election, in which I voted for you, concerned at the decision your Government has made to cut the entire School Building Programme. I appreciated your prompt reply. However, I feel that policy pronouncements of the last week require me to tell you that the latest decisions of your partners in the Coalition seem to me to move so far in the wrong direction, that it is difficult for me to understand how you can remain a party to such a regime.

I am sure that I am not alone in noticing, that while the Prime Minister says that the burden of cuts must be shared by all, in fact a particular sector of the community – those with children in their care – has been relentlessly singled out for sacrifice. This anti-child policy started with the immediate and apparently careless decision to cut the school building programme. Since it became apparent that this could not even be accurately listed, it could hardly have been carefully assessed.

The Chancellor, in his first speech to the House, announced a cap on Housing Benefit, knowing that it would mainly impact upon families with several children living in central London properties, who would, as a result, be forced to move out – possibly away from extended family and schools, which are so important to children. I am sure that you are aware that it is practically impossible for a Benefit claimant to start a private tenancy on a high rent, as very few landlords would allow that. Therefore, the arbitrary cap would mainly affect those who were working and suffered misfortune such as illness, separation or redundancy.

The Chancellor this week announced two further policies that deliberately and quite carelessly extend this strategy, placing an arbitrary cap on Benefits receivable, and removing entitlement of Child Benefit from households in which any member is paying the higher rate of tax.
I have yet to see any attempt to share the “national sacrifice” with single young people and childless couples, who often have a high disposable income much of which is spent on entirely unnecessary luxuries. Just as relevant, if we are genuinely concerned about people who should be more motivated to get a job, I haven’t seen anything to encourage single young people, neither in work nor in full time education, who are potentially highly mobile and who have very little justification for claiming benefits, to seek employment.

I believe that decisions such as these which focus on the most vulnerable in our society are not just a matter of political judgement – or misjudgement – but are quite immoral in their motivation, carelessly indifferent to the impact of their application, and nothing whatever to do with the financial crisis.

I admire the loyalty that Liberal Democrats have shown to the concept of a coalition in the national interest, but morality demands that loyalty must have its limits. It doesn’t look as if the Liberal Democrats were even consulted on any of the policy pronouncements I have listed and I would urge you to consider the threshold at which, from a Liberal Democrat point of view, the Coalition is no longer serving the National interest. I believe that you can compromise on judgement, but not on the issues of fundamental morality to which I have referred..

Yours sincerely

Peter Hall

It is all stuff that I would have been happy to have written myself, except that I hadn’t realized the effect that capping housing benefit would have on poorer households in central London. But there, I haven’t had experience of housing administration in central London. Pete has. I am glad too that he has drawn attention to the fact that well-off ‘singletons’ and the DINKY (Double Income, No Kids Yet) Brigade seem so far to be escaping the cuts that are threatening those with families.

Looking at the bigger picture, it leaves me wondering whether financial measures affecting the great majority of us who are neither the seriously wealthy nor even residents in the very comfortable ‘Middle England’ of the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, should be under the control of a Chancellor from a privileged background who has never experienced poverty or been in a situation where every penny (or even every fiver!) counts.

A Bungled ‘Rescue’

I can’t stop thinking about that Aid Worker, full of compassion for the Afghan people; kidnapped by those she was trying to help and then killed by our NATO allies in a bungled rescue attempt. The final indignity was surely the ever more detailed lies that were told about the manner of her death. (‘The embrace of death’, ‘Clutched to the bosom of a suicide bomber in the hour of rescue’) until, so it appears, photographic evidence suggested that she was killed by a fragmentation grenade hurled by one of her rescuers into the room in which she was held captive. Resolutely casting aside such thoughts as ‘trigger-happy Yanks’, there are two or three questions to which I would dearly like to know the answers.

The need for her rescue was said to have been urgent because she had been about to be transferred across the frontier into Pakistan. Isn’t the Pakistan government supposed to be our loyal ally who has recently fought a vastly expensive (both in resources and in human life) campaign clearing their border area of Taliban terrorists?

Why on earth were fragmentation grenades carried by troops engaged in a rescue mission? Stun grenades and stun guns, certainly – automatic rifles and hand guns, probably – the rescuers wouldn’t have known what armed resistance they might have encountered immediately before or after the rescue attempt. Tear gas or similar grenades, possibly. Surely not fragmentation grenades, deadly weapons used at relatively close range and guaranteed to kill or maim anyone, friend of foe, in their immediate vicinity!

Had it not been for that photographic evidence, we would still believe those lies about that aid worker’s death at the hands of her dastardly captors as the heroic rescuers drew near. How many other lies have we been told, I wonder, about this unwinnable war that is looking more like ‘Vietnam’ (except that then there were no British troops involved) as every day passes?

Week 6.10

Tendring Topics………on line

Weather Folklore

Red sky in the morning,
Shepherd’s warning!

So says one of the best-known pieces of weather folklore. A red sky just before sunrise is a presage of strong wind or rain before night. This certainly proved to be true when a few weeks ago, I took this before-dawn photograph from the back door of my home in Clacton’s Dudley Road.

The second couplet of that particular piece of folklore, Red sky at night, Shepherd’s delight, I have found to be rather less reliable. A beautiful red sunset may be followed by a glorious windless and sunny day – but it may not be.

Another piece of thoroughly unreliable weather folklore is the prophecy that the weather on St. Swithin’s day (15th July) determines whether or not the next forty days will be wet or dry. It is true though that at about that time of the year we often do have long spells of either very wet or very dry weather.

Tuesday of last week (2rd February) was Candlemas Day, when the Church remembers the presentation of Christ in the Temple and celebrates his role as the Light of the World. Prior to the Reformation it was the practice on that day to bless all the candles to be used in the church during the year. I believe that the custom is continued in the Roman Catholic Church.

It is a day also associated with weather folklore that seems to come true rather more often than not.

If Candlemas be clear and bright,
Winter will have another flight.
If Candlemas be dull, with rain,
Winter has gone and will not come again.

This year, if you remember, Candlemas was ‘dull with rain’ for most of the day though there was a brief period of brightness mid-morning. I hope that the worst of the winter really is over – but I won’t be putting my winter overcoat and fur (synthetic of course!) hat away just yet!

Prince of Peace…..Weapons of War!

Among the recorded sayings of China’s former leader Chairman Mao Tse Tung, was that ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’. Who am I to say that he was wrong about this? Guns and political power can certainly make a deadly combination – as the current Public Enquiry into the causes, conduct and aftermath of the war in Iraq is making abundantly clear.

A cause that I am quite sure is not best served by weapons of death of any kind, is the Christian Faith. As a Christian Quaker I believe that Jesus Christ meant what he said when he told us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, do good to those who despitefully use us. He set an example that Christians should strive to follow – though few of us completely succeed. Furthermore I believe the everyone in the world, fanatical terrorists as well as men and women of peace, is endowed with Christ’s inward light, the instinct within us all that urges us towards love, compassion and forgiveness. Whatever the cause, it is not for us to snuff out that light in a fellow human, however much it may have become dimmed by bigotry, greed, superstition or fear. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done these things (good or bad) unto one of my brethren, ye have done them unto me’.

I was shocked therefore to learn that each rifle of the latest consignment for our troops in Afghanistan has inscribed upon it a reference to a New Testament text. An example quoted in the national press is JN8:12 referring the user to Verse 12 of Chapter 8 of St. John’s Gospel, within which Jesus proclaims, ‘I am the Light of the World. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’. United States firm Trijicon, said to have been founded by a devout Christian, manufactures the rifles. I find this message, engraved on what is a weapon of death, to be profoundly offensive, even blasphemous. I had a similar though I think lesser, shock when many years ago I discovered that in World War II every German soldier had ‘Gott mit uns’ (God is with us) engraved on the buckle of his uniform belt.

You may (or may not) be astonished to learn that this offensive aspect of the engraving is not the one that is bothering our politicians and the national press. Their worry is that a reference to a New Testament text might be used by the Taliban to persuade waverers that the allied forces in Afghanistan are engaged in a Crusade to convert them to Christianity. As the Taliban and Al Quaida are already trying to persuade Afghans that they themselves are engaged in a Holy War (a Jihad) to drive the infidels from the sacred soil of their country, that would hardly seem necessary.

In any case Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, who is usually prompt in telling us of anything that might offend his co-religionists, says that he regards the inscriptions as ‘fairly harmless’.

A single sentence in the Daily Mail’s report suggests to me that if the Press and Politicians hadn’t decided to publicise this silly business, it is likely that no one would have known about it. That sentence is, ‘The inscriptions appear in raised lettering at the end of the gunsight’s stock number’.

I haven’t always been a Christian Quaker and my views on the compatibility of Christian Faith with armed conflict haven’t always been those that I hold today.

During World War II I was a gunner in the Royal Artillery. I didn’t therefore routinely carry a rifle. We all had to learn to fire one though, and in the summer of 1940 when it was thought that a German invasion could be imminent, we were all issued with one (from which we were forbidden ever to allow ourselves to be parted!), together with fifty rounds of ammunition,

I did make sure that I was pretty familiar with mine, and was capable of using it effectively if the occasion arose. If I had happened to notice the manufacturer’s serial number it would certainly never have occurred to me that JN8.12 embossed immediately after it might be a Biblical reference………unless, of course, I had been alerted to the fact by the press and politicians.

Essex Jobs for Essex Enterprise?

Do you remember, it was only a few months ago that Lord Hanningfield, as leader of Essex Count Council, was urging Essex public authorities to choose Essex contractors to undertake their services? I remember suggesting that if Tendring District or Colchester Borough, for example, chose, without a very good reason, a tender for services from within Essex, rather than a lower one from across the border in neighbouring Suffolk, they would be in trouble with their auditors.

This advice from the County Council evidently applied only to other authorities, not themselves. More recently Lord Hanningfield has announced that he personally had negotiated a deal for a £9.4 billion contract with computer services giant IBM, a multinational IT organisation with its base in the USA and its tentacles worldwide. This, he assured us, would save the taxpayer thousands of pounds annually.

Let us hope that it does, because it has also recently been announced that the jobs of up to 275 County Council staff, Essex men and women, are to be axed either as a direct or indirect result of this deal.

I have no doubt that in the upper echelons of the County Council’s staff, there are a few faces that would never be missed. However, the inadequacies of, for instance, the Council’s child protection service, suggest that lower down the salary scales, among social workers at least, they need to be recruiting staff rather than dismissing them. No-one has yet invented a robot or computer that can knock on doors, interview householders, inspect their homes, assess the well-being of their children and their capabilities as parents, and take appropriate action.

Assuming that computerising many of the County Council’s services would be a good idea, are there really no Essex, or at least East Anglian, IT consultants who could have offered the same service as IBM, probably at a lower price?

Latest Developments

I wrote the above before the news broke that Lord Hanningfield was the one member of the House of Lords who faced prosecution in connection with the Parliamentary expenses scandal. I have decided to let the blog stand.

I have been very critical of Lord Hanningfield in the past. I have thought that many of his policies, especially his ‘ground-breaking initiatives’, were mistaken and that his style of leadership introduced an undesirable ‘cult of the personality’ into local government. However, I never, for one moment, thought of him as being dishonest, and I hope that he succeeds in clearing himself of the current accusations.

I am not going to pretend though that I am not pleased that he has laid down his leadership of the County Council. I hope that under its new leader, whoever he or she may be, the Council will spend rather less time and money on globe-trotting trips abroad for its members and senior staff, on seeking customers for Essex products in China and elsewhere, and on running banks and failing post offices (though I do think that the latter was a worthwhile exercise). This should release resources for the County's failing child protection and child care, its care of the old and disabled, education, maintenance of highways, consumer protection, refuse disposal and recycling and other responsibilities entrusted to County Councils by central government.

I hope too, that the expenses claimed by County Councillors in connection with their duties, will be investigated every bit as meticulously as those of members of parliament have been.

A Seventeenth Century Law

I find it almost unbelievable that MPs, accused of fiddling their expenses should have the effrontery to seek to avoid the judgement of the criminal courts by means of a three hundred year old law enacted for no other purpose than to ensure absolute freedom of speech for MPs within the House of Commons! Is that what they meant when they said they would be 'defending themselves robustly?'

Perhaps, as they are seeking the protection of a 17th Century law they should, if found guilty, suffer a 17th Century penalty. A few months in a cell in the Tower for instance, under the conditions of prisoners there in the sixteen hundreds, might be appropriate. Or, and this would be by far the cheapest option for we tax-payers, a few hours in the pillory in a public place within their own constituencies.