Week 39.10 28th Sept. 2010

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Pope Benedict’s Visit

I thought that it was probably wise to withhold comment on the Pope’s official visit to Britain until he had safely returned to Rome. Had I dared to do so while he was still here, fate would probably have arranged some unexpected triumph or disaster!

I am very glad that his visit proved to be a great success and was marked neither by the apathy that had been prophesied by much of the press, nor by the widespread protest and outrage that had been joyfully anticipated by some of our proselytising enemies of religion. There were protestors it is true, but fewer than had been anticipated and with very diverse causes. Peter Tatchell and his disciples haven’t really all that much in common with Rev. Ian Paisley and his, nor have campaigners for women priests, abortion-on-demand enthusiasts, and victims of the appalling child abuse scandal, a great deal of common ground.

I wasn’t impressed with the argument that none of the cost of the Pope’s visit should have been met out of taxation. Remember the much greater cost of the State Visit of the King of Saudi Arabia with his enormous entourage. He is arguably the ruler of the least liberal country in the world and the one with the least respect or regard for human rights? I did resent having to help pay for his luxurious welcome.

At a meeting of ‘the big three’ during World War II when Churchill, or possibly Roosevelt, spoke of the importance of keeping the Pope ‘on side’, Stalin is said to have asked sarcastically, ‘And how many army divisions does the Pope command?’ Today, I suppose the equivalent question would be, ‘How many oil wells does the Pope control – and how many jet fighters is he prepared to buy?’

The child abuse scandal did cast a shadow over the visit. I wouldn’t wish to enter into historical or theological controversy but I do feel that the Roman Catholic rule of clerical celibacy has a lot to answer for, and not a great deal to justify its continuation. The Gospels tell us that St. Peter, the ‘rock’ on which the Universal Church of Christ was built, was a married man. A celibate priesthood was not insisted upon during the first thousand years of the Church’s history, and it is known that that some of Pope Benedict’s late-medieval predecessors, although unmarried, were hardly role models of celibacy.

Much was heard from commentators about the fact that the Pope was welcomed in Westminster Hall, where Sir Thomas More (St. Thomas More to Roman Catholics) had been condemned to be beheaded for obeying his conscience in defiance of King Henry VIII. Thomas More was by no means the only victim of 16th century intolerance. It would have been a nice gesture of reconciliation had Pope Benedict made a short pilgrimage to Oxford to spend a few minutes in silence before the Martyrs Memorial. There he could have remembered Archbishop Cranmer, Bishops Latimer and Ridley and many others who were burnt to death (a far more agonising death than beheading) for obeying their consciences in defiance of King Henry’s daughter, the staunchly Roman Catholic Queen Mary.

It would have been a salutary reminder to us all that while a conviction that God is on our side can inspire us to great heights of heroism and self-sacrifice, it can also lead us to inflict unspeakable cruelties on our fellow men and women, unless we give primacy to Jesus Christ’s golden rule ‘Treat other people exactly as you would wish them to treat you!’ Those who kill, mutilate or torture their fellow men and women never have God on their side. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it (good or bad) unto even the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me!’ said Jesus and, in teaching us to pray to ‘Our Father in Heaven….’, he acknowledged all of us to be his brethren.

Two views on ‘the deficit'

I welcomed Nick Clegg’s recent affirmation of the Coalition Government’s determination to end income tax evasion (which is illegal) and curb income tax avoidance (which sadly isn’t). These activities result in an annual loss to the exchequer of millions of pounds. They are, said Mr Clegg, as bad as benefit fraud. It could be argued that they are much worse, because serious income tax avoiders certainly don’t need the money that they avoid paying. Many are very wealthy individuals who imagine that, because of their wealth, they should be immune from nuisances like the tax demands that burden lesser folk.

Why should they help to pay for the NHS? They can have the pick of the very best surgeons if they need one. Education? They send their kids to posh private (probably called ‘public’!) schools. Police? They have their own security, and their hired guards aren’t hampered by the pettifogging rules that obstruct official police forces.

Anyway, they hire the very best lawyers and accountants to make sure that their tax avoidance is both effective and absolutely legal. Nick Clegg claimed, and I have no doubt he is right, that making sure that multi-millionaires pay minimal, if any, tax has become a lucrative industry. It certainly gives a new slant on the concept of living on immoral earnings!

I wish the government all success with its endeavours, but I’m not holding my breath. The tax avoiders can hire the very best lawyers and accountants. Can a government determined to cut public services afford to hire even better ones?

Needless to say the views of the Confederation of British Industry (“the bosses’ TUC”) are very different from Nick Clegg’s. They have their eyes on ‘benefits’. Not, of course, that they want to abolish them. Perish the thought! They do feel though that some benefits, Child Allowances and the pensioners’ Winter Fuel Allowance for instance, should be means tested so that funds can be diverted to the really needy. I hadn’t heard really needy enunciated quite so unctuously since the departure of Mrs Thatcher from the political scene!

What the CBI and the top politicians, of all parties, overlook is that there is already in force a Means Testing mechanism that assesses everybody’s income and extracts contributions in accordance with ability to pay. It is called Income Tax. It needs only to be progressively and properly graded to ensure that it demands a fair proportion of everyone’s wealth, and tightened up so as to eliminate both tax evasion and tax avoidance. Then it would claw-back unneeded universal benefit, eliminate the need for any other means testing, and ensure that we all shared fairly the burden of closing the deficit.

Beach alert as Sunshine Coast is named skin cancer hotspot

Now there’s a headline calculated to create panic in hundreds of homes! Families who spent a happy holiday here this year will be searching their backs and arms for unaccustomed moles or warts. Those who were thinking of spending a holiday in Clacton (or Brightlingsea, Walton, Frinton or Dovercourt) next year will be having second thoughts. As for us natives, we’ll be seeking urgent appointments with our doctors!

The headline was in the Coastal Daily Gazette on Monday of last week (20th Sept.) and it could hardly have given a more inaccurate impression. Mind you, another accompanying scare headline AREA IN WORST 20 FOR MALIGNANT MELANOMA (yes, it was in black capital letters!) if carefully read, suggested that the situation might not be quite as desperate as had been suggested.

‘In the worst 20?' Well, since Malignant Melanoma is usually caused by over-exposure of unprotected skin to sunshine, it would have been astonishing if East Anglia’s seaside areas had not been more prone to the condition than, for instance, London, Birmingham or Manchester – though almost certainly less prone than Spain’s Costa del Sol or the south of France, where so many Brits. head for their holidays.

In fact we are 18th – only just within the worst 20, wherein are also to be found such famous holiday towns and areas as Bournemouth, the South Devon coast and the Isle of Wight. This means that there are seventeen British holiday areas more dangerous than we are. They must surely include almost every other holiday resort in southern and eastern England.

Our incidence of malignant melanoma is higher than the national average but remember that that average is brought down by inland towns in the Midlands and North-West, better known for their high rainfall than their hours of sunshine. It is also true, and is included in the small print of the Gazette’s news story, that mortality from Melanoma in our area is below the national average thanks to early detection and good treatment.

I reckon that that Gazette headline would have been at least as accurate had it read, Essex Sunshine Coast is well down danger list for skin cancer – and local victims have better than average chance of recovery! But there, good news doesn’t make good headlines!

Tendring Careline speaks for itself on www.tendringcareline.co.uk !

It is now nine months since I signed on as one of the many clients of Tendring Careline, the telephone SOS service available throughout our district, principally to enable old and/or disabled folk like me to get instant help in an emergency. At that time I had recently had a fall. It had been out of doors and my son and daughter-in-law were with me at the time. Consequently I suffered nothing worse than a black eye and broken glasses.

It made me realize though how much worse the situation could have been had I been alone and at home. I might very well have been unable to get onto my feet again without help – and no help would have been available. I am very fortunate in having concerned and caring neighbours, but it would have been many hours before they, or anyone else, realized that anything was amiss.

At about that time Essex County Council (never backward when it comes to self-congratulation!) were publicising what they claimed was their telephonic home-care alarm system, with a ‘special offer’ of a free service for twelve months for new clients over eighty. They could have had me in mind! I contacted County Hall Chelmsford and was a little surprised when a very friendly and helpful lady turned up in a Tendring Council van. It appeared that this ‘new’ County Council service was the tried-and-tested Tendring Careline run by the district council. I remembered having written about it in Tendring Topics ‘in print’ in the Coastal Express when it was first launched in the 1980s. It was now vastly expanded and with thousands, rather than just a few hundred, clients.

The last nine months have been fairly uneventful for me. I haven’t needed the Careline service. I have though, as requested when the system was installed, remembered to press the red button on that gadget round my neck (had I preferred it could have been on a bracelet round my wrist) once a month, to hear a cheery voice asking if I am OK – and to know that the system is working properly. Meanwhile, as I approach my ninetieth birthday, I am conscious of becoming frailer, less steady on my feet and more and more grateful for the Careline safety net. When my ‘get one free’ period ends in the New Year, I shall gladly pay my £16.80 a month (I think I’ll be VAT exempt) for continued protection and reassurance.

Now Tendring Careline has its own web site ( www.tendringcareline.co.uk ). On it you’ll find everything you need to know about the local careline service, including the answer to questions that it might not even have occurred to you to ask! I was very pleased to note that under ‘Testimonials’ there is a very long extract from the blog that I posted onto this website when I first had the Careline installed. Today, I wouldn’t change a word of it!

If either you, or friends or relatives, are old, living alone and vulnerable, do click on that website and find out what Tendring Careline has to offer. Sign on with Tendring Careline and you’ll sleep more easily for knowing that, whatever happens, there’s a friendly voice on hand offering practical help and reassurance.

Week 3.10

Tendring Topics…….on line

The Vandals!

I have been familiar with the effects of vandalism for many years. I have seen young, newly planted street trees broken off and destroyed, windows smashed, public toilets wrecked – apparently with a sledge hammer – beach huts and public shelters set on fire, and telephones (that could be needed for some life-threatening emergency) torn from the public phone box in which they were installed.

When I was Tendring Council’s Public Relations Officer I publicised with some enthusiasm, the council’s reward scheme for those who provided information leading to the prosecution of vandals. I made certain that the very few occasions on which this reward was paid out were well publicised. I often wondered what on earth could be the motive for vandalism. Why and how could anyone derive pleasure or satisfaction from defacing something that was beautiful, destroying or disabling something that was useful, or desecrating something that others considered to be sacred? Theft, fraud and even homicide seemed positively reasonable by comparison.

Vandalism had rarely affected me personally. In the pre-mobile phone age I had, on occasion, been annoyed when I found a public phone box out of order because of it. I had been displeased when I had found a public convenience closed for the same reason. But nothing of mine had ever been vandalised. I had no reason to suppose that I would ever be the vandals’ target.

I was wrong. A low brick wall marked the front boundary of my property in Clacton’s Dudley Road. It had been provided when the bungalow was built in 1953 (three years before Heather and I had bought it and moved in) and had been showing signs of its nearly fifty-seven years of use. The top course of brickwork had weathered and was probably due for replacement. However, it was perfectly serviceable when I departed from Clacton on Christmas Eve. When I returned home five days later, the top few courses of one section of the wall had been knocked off and were lying in my front garden.

Left – the wall as it was before Christmas. Photo taken about 18 months ago. The top course of bricks is looking distinctly weather-beaten!
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It was no big deal; not worth claiming on the insurance. I asked a builder friend if he would fix it and he promised to do so directly the temperature dropped below freezing. Sadly, that wasn’t the end. On Sunday night, 10th January and again on Monday night, 11th January, the wall was again attacked, finally leaving barely a quarter of the original wall standing.

Its replacement is covered by my ‘Age Concern’ home insurance – which is just as well, as clearance of the site, removal of rubble and construction of a new wall or other boundary is unlikely to cost less than £1,000. As I write I am considering whether to replace it with another similar wall (which might well be subject to immediate vandal attack!) or some kind of a wooden fence. The latter, I think, might be less attractive to vandals and if any parts of it were damaged they would probably be easier to repair or replace.

Right – the wall as it was on Tuesday 12th January. The rubble had already been cleared from between the two concrete posts in the foreground

As I am claiming on my insurance policy I had to notify the police. A very pleasant young police officer visited me and, in a friendly chat, apologised for the fact that there really wasn’t much possibility that the culprits would be brought to book. I had already known that to be the case and, rather to my surprise, I realized that I didn’t particularly want them to be caught and ‘taught a lesson’. I think it likely that all they would learn from such a lesson would be to take greater care not to be caught next time.

It would be nice to be able to claim that I forgive them, as I assure God that I do every time I recite Our Lord’s Prayer (‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’). It wouldn’t be quite true though. It isn’t so much that I forgive them as that I can’t be bothered to judge them. I think that I feel quite sorry for them. What sad and empty lives must be led by young people whose pleasure in life comes from destroying, defacing, or damaging things that give other people service or pleasure. Towards what a joyless, purposeless and loveless adult life and old age they are heading!

Essex Works (wonders – thanks to other people’s efforts!)

'Essex Works' is the bold claim to be found on all Essex County Council published material. You'll see it on their leaflets and on their, quite wexpensive, tv adverts. A few weeks ago I wrote enthusiastically in this blog about Essex County Council’s ‘Telecare Home Safety Service’. This service was intended for ‘vulnerable adults who would like to feel safer, more protected and independent in their own home, particularly perhaps for ‘older, infirm or disabled people’.

The 'Telecare Home Safety Service' of the Essex County Council provided, according to need, a personal alarm that enabled the user to summon immediate help if he or she were suddenly ill, fell over or had some other emergency while at home or in the garden; a bogus caller button by the front door for use when a stranger tried to gain entry to the home; a smoke detector; a fall detector; a flood detector; and a ‘movement detector’ that would verify and record the presence of an intruder or alternatively detect prolonged inactivity. What was more the service required was available on twelve months free trial to those over 85.

I am less steady on my feet than I once was and, if I do fall, am unable to get up unaided. The personal alarm system would obviously provide an answer to some of my problems. At eighty-eight I possibly wouldn’t need it longer than the twelve months trial period. If I did the monthly charge of £16.47 wouldn’t make a serious impact on my financial resources. I filled it in the form, posted it off to the County Council and awaited developments.

As I waited I felt just a little remorseful about some of the less-than-kind things that I had written about the County Council and its hierarchy in this column. I had, for instance, said that I thought that the County was a stratum of local government that could well be dispensed with. I had urged that all Essex District and Borough Councils should be accorded unitary status and, within their own districts, should carry out the tasks entrusted by central government to county councils. There was every reason to believe that they would do so more economically and more effectively. Tendring Council, for instance, had been declared by the Audit Commission to be the best performing council in Essex while the County Council’s performance had been designated only as ‘adequate’.

Perhaps I had been wrong and, at least in providing the Essex Telecare Home Safety Service, the County Council was performing a valuable countywide service.

Here is the front of the brochure publicising the Essex Telecare Home Safety service

My written request was attended to with commendable speed. An appointment was made by phone and, at the time and date arranged, a very friendly and helpful lady appeared at my front door to explain and install what I understood to be the County Council’s service. It transpired though that the service had nothing whatsoever to do with the County Council. I had been a little surprised when the lady had turned up in a Tendring District Council vehicle. In conversation it soon emerged that she was, in fact, a Tendring District Council employee and that the service for which I had asked was not a new, or even an old service of the Essex County Council. It was, in fact, the long-established Tendring Careline, founded and run for at least the past twenty years, by the Tendring District Council.

It is indeed a very worthwhile service and I am glad that I have had it installed in my home. An unobtrusive ‘Lifeline Home Unit’, functioning rather like the ‘router’ of a wireless broadband installation, is connected to a power point and to a nearby telephone socket. The user is issued with a pendant having a large red activating button, that is worn round the neck at all times (after an hour or so you forget you’ve got it on). In an emergency anywhere within 50 metres of the Lifeline Unit, pressing the red button will alert the operators at base. The Unit then acts as a radio station with which you can converse and which will set into motion whatever is needed to help you.

On the very back page of the County Council’s publicity brochure all the district and borough councils are listed with a little notice stating Essex County Council – working in partnership with local service providers to support independence in your own home. Well, that’s some sort of an acknowledgement of the work of district authorities, I suppose. If you are interested though, I suggest that you phone Tendring Careline at Clacton Town Hall 01255 222727 email: careline@tendringdc.gov.uk Don’t bother with that expensive and self-satisfied ‘middle-man’ in Chelmsford.

My belief that, in Essex at least, the County Council is an extravagant, uneconomical, and unnecessary tier of local government has been reinforced!

Disaster in the Caribbean

My own worries about my garden wall, my concerns about the future of democratic government in this country, even my occasional worries about my friends and family, pale into insignificance before the appalling disaster in Haiti. How sad it is that the world’s worst natural disasters always seem to afflict the world’s very poorest communities, whose members have to struggle for survival during the best of times!

The Haiti earthquake rivals the south-east Asian tsunami in its catastrophic effects. I find the depiction of human misery, despair and desolation in tv news bulletins almost unbearable to watch. How much more shattering they must be on the spot and in reality!

Over the Christmas/New Year period I have received an unprecedented number of appeals from thoroughly deserving charities in desperate financial straits due to the recession. Most I have had no alternative but to ignore. I do intend though to give as generously as I possibly can, to either the British Red Cross Society or to Christian Aid for the Haiti Disaster Relief Fund.

I hope that all readers of this blog will be prepared to do the same.

Week 51.09

Tendring Topics…….on Line

A Third Millennium Nativity!

I hadn’t been to a live play in a theatre for many years. I was determined though to see CHRISTMAS NOW (a Play for our time) at Clacton’s West Cliff Theatre on 4th and 5th December. Sponsored by 'Churches Together in Clacton', it was proclaimed to be a Nativity Play of the here and now…..its leading characters contemporary young people and something like half its action taking place in Clacton-on-Sea! What’s more, I knew both the producer and the Director. The former was Susan Wiggins, an active member of St. James’s Anglican Church and the latter, Rev. Roger Parsons, the one-time Minister of Trinity Methodist church.

During his time with Trinity Methodist Church Roger Parsons had been responsible for several very successful musical productions there. I recall once referring to him in Tendring Topics (in print) as Clacton’s Rogers and Hammerstein! I was sure that CHRISTMAS NOW, would be a great success, and so it was. It was a truly ecumenical event. I went to the Saturday matinee performance with a small party of Quakers but it was an extra pleasure for me to encounter personal friends from St. James’, from Christ Church URC Church and from Trinity Methodist Church. The theatre was well filled as, so I am informed, it was for the other three performances.

The plot followed that of the original Nativity Story (with a ‘voice from outer space’ – actually that of Fr. Anthony Spooner of St James – reading the appropriate passages from the King James Bible), but Mary was Maria, a waitress in a far-from-posh café in a big city and Joseph an out of work young immigrant, a carpenter of course, finding difficulty in getting a job because he was ‘a foreigner’.

The actual birth took place in a storeroom behind a take-away in Clacton-on-Sea. Maria and Joseph had been lured here with a false promise of a job and accommodation by a crooked property developer (the equivalent of King Herod). ‘The shepherds’ were contract cleaners and ‘the Magi’ three people of different talent from America, Eurasia and Africa. It must be said that the actor who stole the show at the end was a real, live baby (I believe it was a little girl) who, acting the baby Jesus, was wheeled onto the stage in a baby-buggy. I know from personal experience that babies can be pretty unpredictable. This one though might have read the line from Away in a Manger, ‘Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes’, because she put on a superb performance, smiling, gurgling happily, playing with a ball of wool and, so it appeared, waving to the audience. Could she possibly have managed it for all four performances?

It was a very memorable, enjoyable, and thought-provoking, production.

Afterthoughts

Christmas Now was, as I said, thought provoking. What, I wondered, would really happen if a twenty-first century teenage girl from a church-going working class family experienced an angelic visitation and, immediately after, discovered that she was pregnant? Christmas Now didn’t have an unequivocally ‘happy ending’, but I have an idea that ‘in real life’ the outcome might well have been even more disquieting.

The modern Mary would confide in her parents, who would find it impossible to believe her when she assured them that neither her boyfriend, nor any other man, was responsible. Being practising Christians though, they would promise to stand by her and help her with her expected baby. As loving and concerned parents, they would also insist that she should be seen by a psychiatrist (‘She never has lied to us before. She must surely be delusional’) a gynaecologist and an obstetrician. I can imagine that, after thorough examination and long consultations with both Mary and her parents, these experienced professionals might issue a statement on the following lines:

We have interviewed and thoroughly examined Patient M. (her name cannot be revealed for legal reasons) and we have confirmed that she is, as she has always maintained, a virgin. She cannot therefore possibly be pregnant, as she believes she is. We have come to the conclusion that changes taking place within her uterus are symptomatic of a very rare (though probably not unique) psycho-gynaecological condition producing physical indications of pregnancy. Even more serious is its psychological effect, its victims being subject to convincing delusions and hallucinations. The experience of Patient M clearly demonstrates the power and persistence of these.

Fortunately this patient has presented at a very early stage. We are unanimously of the opinion that a surgical hysterectomy carried out without delay could provide a complete cure and make it possible for Patient M. to live a perfectly normal life. She would not, of course, be able to experience maternity, but that would surely be a small price to pay for being freed from a crippling and probably fatal condition.

This straightforward surgical procedure normally requires patient consent. Patient M. however is just over 18 years of age and resolutely refuses to sign the consent form, insisting that she is pregnant. This refusal is symptomatic of her condition and was to be expected. It might well have been over-ridden were it not for the fact that her parents and boyfriend, who drew our attention to Patient M’s condition in the first instance, are now firmly backing her refusal.

We hope that a positive decision on this issue will be made in time to save Patient M’s life and sanity.

If I were making a modern nativity play out of all the above (which I am quite incapable of doing) I think that I would leave it at that point and let the individual members of the audience go home to think about it and make up their own minds about probable subsequent events.

Would Mary weaken? Would the parents and the boyfriend yield to pressure from the experts? Is it possible that the medical experts would, to quote our Quaker 'Advices and Queries', ‘consider the possibility that they might be mistaken’? or…….. could they possibly not be mistaken, but absolutely right in their assessment of the situation? If the case went to Court what would be the likely outcome?

That would be something to discuss over the sherry and mince pies!

Essex’s Telecare Home Safety Service

When, a few weeks ago, I fell over, broke my glasses and gave myself the blackest of black eyes, I didn’t suffer serious or long lasting injury. My black eye has long since faded. I have new glasses and have abandoned the bifocals that I think may have contributed to my accident. I am now one of those irritating old men who never seem to have ‘the right pair of glasses’ with them!
It did make me think though. I am definitely less steady on my feet than I once was. If I fall, even if I am completely uninjured, I find it impossible to get up again without help. Out of doors there is usually someone available to help. I never (well hardly ever!) go out without my mobile phone for use in an emergency.

Indoors though, a fall could have a very different outcome. If I were uninjured I might be able to crawl to a piece of fixed furniture and laboriously pull myself up, or at least reach a phone to summon help. If I twisted an ankle or broke a limb, I wouldn’t be able to do that. I am fortunate in having caring and attentive neighbours, but it would obviously be hours at least, before they realized anything was amiss.

'Tendring Careline' came to mind. They, as I knew, install a special phone in the homes of their members, who are issued with a pendant alarm button to hang round their necks at all times. Provided that the wearer is within 50 metres, indoors or out, of the phone, pressing the red button raises an immediate alarm at Careline’s HQ. It also activates a loud-speaker system enabling the wearer to communicate with that HQ. It is a tried-and-true system from which hundreds of elderly and/or disabled Tendring residents have benefited.

I was on the point of phoning them when I learned that Essex County Council is currently offering a more comprehensive alarm system that, for me at any rate, seemed to offer positive advantages over the more local one. They have available no less than six ‘telecare’ sensors that cover virtually any possible emergency in the home. These are, I have little doubt, all part of an overall plan to keep us oldies in our own homes for as long as possible, rather than clogging up spaces in a care or nursing home.

There is the Personal Alarm that appears to be much the same as is offered by Tendring Careline. Also available is a ‘Bogus Caller Button’, fitted unobtrusively near the front door, enabling the householder to summon assistance when a dubious stranger requests entry, Smoke Alarms (I already have them fitted), a Flood Detector (never a problem in my part of Clacton), a Movement Detector (a kind of ‘burglar alarm’ that can detect the presence of an intruder and raise the alarm) and a Fall Detector which is said to detect serious falls and alert the monitoring centre.

What makes the County Council’s service of particular interest to me, and to my contemporaries, is that these systems are available on a twelve month free trial to all Essex Residents aged eighty-five and over (those living within the unitary authority areas of Southend and Thurrock are, of course, excluded).


I would, I think, only be interested in the Personal Alarm, though I ought perhaps also to find out a bit more about the Fall Detector. I have already written off asking for further details. ‘A twelve months free trial!’ Goodness, at eighty-eight that’s very likely as long as I shall need it!

Particularly if you are elderly and living alone, or with a disabled husband or wife, and especially if you are eighty-five or over, do make further enquiries. It is a service you have paid for with your Council Tax. Make the most of it. What have you got to lose?

Leaflets about the service are available at Public Libraries. To learn more, write to Essex County Council (Telecare), FREEPOST CL3636, County Hall, Chelmsford, CM1 1XZ or phone 0845 603 7630 (quoting 857) If you are on-line, contact www.essex.gov.uk/telecare I understand that they are prepared to send a speaker if requested, to explain the service to voluntary organisations.

I’ll keep blog readers informed of developments in response to my own enquiry.

Why not support Shopmobility?

Tendring Council is one of fifty local authorities throughout the country that have received a windfall grant of £52,000 ‘to support their high streets and town centres during the recession’.

The Council (or, I suppose, its inner ‘Cabinet’) is considering how best so spend it to create the maximum impact. One scheme they have in mind is for the Council to acquire the leases of boarded-up shops ‘and offer attractive rates to start-up businesses and entrepreneurs to give them a foot on the ladder’. It overlooks the fact that the reason the shops are boarded up is that their previous owners couldn’t attract enough customers to stay in business. Why should ‘start-up businesses and entrepreneurs’ succeed where experienced shop-keepers have failed. In any case, boarded up shops aren’t really very conspicuous in Clacton’s High Street and Town Centre since occupiers have been found for both the Woolworth and the Co-op sites.

I think that by far the best use for that unexpected £52,000 windfall would be to keep Clacton and Tendring Shopmobility afloat. It is a charitable enterprise that has the sole purpose of enabling Tendring residents with mobility problems to visit surviving shops in the High Street and town centre and help to keep them alive. It was for just such a purpose that the money was entrusted to Tendring Council!

Without the cash injection that Shopmobility had every reason to expect from the Council, this vital service, both to town centre shops and to the elderly and disabled, will close down on 31st December and its stock of electric mobility scooters, wheel chairs and so on will all be sold off early in the New Year.