POSTSCRIPT (2)

POSTSCRIPT (2)

Post-Election Politics

          I have long believed that what we had come to think of as the three main political parties – Conservative, Labour and Liberal/Democrat, all had the same basic policy;  to win the next election by any means possible and, having done so, to hang on to power for as long as they could.  The Lib.Dems knew that they wouldn’t win outright but hoped they’d have sufficient parliamentary seats to hold the balance between the Labour and Conservative  MPs at Westminster.  They wanted to form a coalition with one or other of the two parties (they really didn’t care which one) and they expected to get a few cabinet posts and the title (and appropriate salary and perks) of Deputy Prime Minister for their leader.

          But in the General Election it didn’t happen like that.   The Conservatives (who secured only 35 percent of the votes cast) obtained a small first-past-the-post overall majority and, as I had forecast, the Lib.Dems. were all but destroyed.  The third party in today’s House of Commons is not the Lib.Dems. but the Scottish National Party!  That's something that I hadn't foreseen!

            After the General Election the leaders of the Lib.Dems, the Labour Party and of UKIP all resigned.   Nick Clegg, Lib.Dem. leader brought his downfall upon himself by acquiescing to and defending measures he had, only a week or so earlier, promised to oppose.  The opening words of Robert Browning’s ‘Lost Leader’ come to my mind ‘Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick on his coat’.  Ed Miliband, Labour Leader, lost the election not because of anything he had done or failed to do but because of the daily dose of quite unjustified vilification and denigration  launched about him by the right-wing press.  If something appears before your eyes day after day you begin to feel there must be something in it – even when there clearly isn’t.  What about Nigel Farage of UKIP?  He did resign, but was back and leading his odd army of Europhobes and crypto-fascists before you could say ‘Brussels Bureaucrat!’

            The Lib-Dems have chosen their new leader who has, as might have been expected, been denigrated by the right-wing press.  Apparently he is a fundamentalist evangelical Christian and believes in a literal Heaven and Hell.  Well, that’s no more fanciful than believing that ‘market forces’ and private enterprise will solve all the world’s problems.   He is, I think, likely to prove to be a man of his word. 

The election of a new Labour leader is proving much more exciting than had been expected.  There appear to be three ‘New Labour’ candidates with proposed policies that are much the same as the Conservatives but perhaps – depending on what the latest opinion poll says – a little less harsh on the poor, the unemployed and the disabled.   But now there’s another candidate; Jeremy Corbyn, fighting for the ‘old Labour’ policies of a fairer distribution of the country’s wealth, an end to privatisation and unilateral nuclear disarmament.  At least one of those who sponsored him said that she didn’t think for a moment that he would get anywhere but that she felt the voice of ‘old Labour’ should be heard.  No doubt lack of support for Corbyn was expected to demonstrate beyond doubt how thoroughly ‘New Labour’ had destroyed the tattered remnants of the ‘old Labour’ of George Lansbury, Nye Bevan and Michael Foot.

            But, once again, it hasn’t happened like that.  Jeremy Corbyn, who seems to be a very likeable, straight-forward chap, and his radical policies are proving unexpectedly popular, especially with younger Labour voters.  Opinion polls suggest that he could win the leadership election.  Hundreds of people who have previously not bothered to vote, may decide that Jeremy Corbyn offers something different; something that it’s worth turning out to vote for.  I don’t know why everybody should be so surprised. The democratic socialist policies for which Corbyn stands are much the same as those held by the Scottish National Party who, you will recall, made an almost clean sweep of Scotland’s New Labour MPs in the recent General Election.  Are the Scots really so different from the rest of we British?

            Needless to say, prominent has-beens from Labour’s past have been paraded to offer dire warnings of endless years of opposition for Labour if Corbyn were to be elected leader.  Finally former Prime Minister Tony Blair gave us his great thoughts on the matter - and probably increased rather than diminished Jeremy Corbyn’s chances of success..   Anyone, he said, whose heart was inclined towards old Labour ‘needed a heart transplant’.   That, I think, was bound to infuriate hundreds of sincere Labour supporters who cherish the memory of the up-hill struggles of the 19^th and 20^th Century pioneers of the Labour, Trade Union and Co-operative movements. 'Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, We'll keep the Red Flag flying here!'

            No-one could deny that Tony Blair was a great winner of elections.  He did so by creating 'New Labour and dragging it far enough to the right to attract the support o the Murdoch Press.  Thousands of Labour Party members who voted to revoke Clause 4 imagined that they were voting against everything being nationalised.  They were, in fact, opening the door to the privatisation of every public service.

            In the ten years that New Labour formed our government, the gap between the wealthy and the poor actually widened, Tory legislation like the Right to Buy Act which lies at the root of today’s housing problems, remained intact.  An unholy friendship between Tony Blair and the most reactionary American President in living memory, led to an illegal bloody war in Iraq that has resulted in the ruin of that country, the growth of terrorism throughout North Africa and in Europe and the USA too, and the martyrdom of hundreds of Christians in the Middle East, North Africa and the Indian sub-continent.  Tony Blair was made United Nations Peace envoy to the Middle East.  As I have previously said in this blog, that was like making one of the Kray brothers a Chief Constable.  

            It simply isn’t true to claim that a political party can achieve nothing in opposition.  Had Nick Clegg not entered into coalition with the Conservatives the Lib.Dems. could have retained their independence – voting for, or at least abstaining from voting against – any legislation to which they didn’t object and joining with Labour and the small opposition parties to oppose legislation they found objectionable. Where the party in government has only a small overall majority this can be very effective.  In this parliament David Cameron was all set to pass legislation legitimising fox hunting with hounds.  The SNP MPs said they would join with Labour in opposing this (largely to remind the Conservatives of their fragile majority) and, to avoid the possibility of humiliating defeat, that legislation has been put on the back burner.

            Had they adopted that policy the Lib.Dems. could have prevented particularly objectionable legislation from being passed, and retained their own integrity.  They wouldn’t have been given any seats in the government and their leader wouldn’t have become ‘Deputy Prime Minister’ – but they might well have been spared humiliating defeat in the General Election.  ‘This above all, to thine own self be true!’

            I am neither a member nor a supporter of today’s Labour Party.  I am a member of and support the Green Party because I believe that today, care of the environment and countering the effects of climate change are more important than any other political issue.  I think though that if Jeremy Corbyn were to be elected leader of the Labour Party a great many, perhaps most, Greens would be delighted that one of the main parties  would be working towards the resolution of at least some of our concerns.

           

24 January 2015

Tendring Topics………on line

Keeping things ‘in proportion’

          I am not one of Lord Mendelson’s greatest admirers.  He was one of the creators of New Labour which, to win elections, surrendered the Labour Party’s soul and converted British politics into a pale imitation of the politics of the USA. There is precious little difference between the objectives of the two main parties.   They only differ in how best to achieve them.  In office Tony Blair, Lord Mendelson’s friend and political colleague, continued the process begun by Mrs Thatcher of turning the UK into a Prime Ministerial dictatorship.

            However, I am inclined to be on Lord Mendelson’s side in his current disagreement with Ed Miliband and his shadow Chancellor Ed Balls.   It is, I think, shameful that multi-millionaires in this country are likely to pay a much smaller proportion of their income in taxation than those whose income is so low that they pay no income tax at all, but do have to pay the government every time they buy an object or service that is subject to VAT or purchase something that is subject to customs duty, like a packet of cigarettes or a pint at a pub.  Multi-millionaires also, of course, pay a much smaller proportion of their income in taxation than do those mythical beings who David Cameron always claims he is eager to help – average hardworking wage earners who pay income tax and, of course, the indirect taxes and custom duties that this government prefers

Ed Miliband’s mansion tax may not be intended to be a one-off tax to help the NHS – or any other good cause – out of its current crisis, by taking a few hundred thousand pounds from the bank accounts of the super-wealthy, but that’s how it sounds.  I think that the government should be fair to both the wealthy and the poor by claiming an equal percentage of the gross income of all of us to fund public services.   The obvious way to do this is by means of the income tax system, the only tax that is linked to ability to pay.  I think we should consider it not as an imposition but as a privilege to pay our annual subscription towards the not-inconsiderable benefits of being a British Citizen, or towards our permission to live and work within the UK.  We would then all have an equal stake in the prosperity or economic failure of our country.  We really would be all in this together!

            Income tax is the obvious means that a government could use to level the economic playing field but another way that would help to do this would be – as Lord Mendelson suggests – adding additional tax bands to the Council Tax system.

            Blog readers past the first flush of youth will recall the ‘bad old days’ in which local authorities, County, Borough and District Councils raised part of their income by means of ‘the domestic rates’.  These were an annual charge on each dwelling within the district.  Nobody enjoyed paying them but they were based on the estimated rental value of the property. They therefore had at least a rough relationship to the income of the occupier of the occupier or occupiers

Mrs Thatcher’s government changed all that.  Instead of the rates we were to have a ‘community charge’ (almost instantly rebranded ‘the poll tax’) which taxed each individual equally regardless of whether that individual was a millionaire or a refuse collector.  It took no account whatsoever of ability to pay. The rating system may have been disliked but the poll tax was actually hated.   It was just such a tax that had provoked the medieval ‘peasants revolt’.  In the late twentieth century it produced wide-spread demonstrations, riots and the eventual fall of the Thatcher government.     

The Poll Tax was replaced by the ‘Council Tax’. This is based on the estimated purchase value of the property and therefore makes a pretence of bearing some relationship to the income or wealth of the householder.  Properties are classified as being in one of eight ‘tax bands’, the lowest of which is under £40,000 and the highest £320,000 and above.  A glance will make it clear that those bands are hopelessly out of date.   I suppose for £40,000 you might, just possibly, get some kind of a shack in an area like the Brooklands Estate, Jaywick  just a couple of miles from my home – but that estate has been declared to be the most deprived area in the UK!

At the other end of the tax bands the situation is even more ridiculous.  The highest tax band for Council Tax is £320,000 and above. I agree that in the Clacton area you would get a very nice property for £320,000 – but not in many other parts of the UK

Do you ever watch ‘Escape to the Country’ ­on BBC tv.   Briefly it’s about very fortunate (and often very hard working and gifted) folk who have made a fortune in London, or Manchester or Sheffield or wherever and are now seeking a residence ‘in the country’.  A BBC presenter introduces them to three or four ‘desirable residences’ in the area of their choice.   It’s not a programme I like to watch.   I have spent too much of my professional life trying to help people who are homeless, or overcrowded or living in squalid conditions, to enjoy seeing well-heeled folk looking over a luxurious home and complaining that ‘the view isn’t quite what we’d hoped for’ or ‘the paddock isn’t really big enough for Rosalie (their spoilt brat!) to exercise the pony we’ve given her for her birthday’.

It’s very unusual for one of those very comfortable and very desirable homes ‘in the country’ to change hands for as little as £320,000.   That sum would probably buy a roomy three bedroom home in one of London’s more pleasant suburbs.  That means that an executive officer of a biggish enterprise or a middle-grade civil servant, living in a comfortable but hardly palatial home in Cheam or Twickenham would pay exactly the same Council Tax as the owner of a ‘Downton Abbey’ or similar stately home or family mansion.

There should be at least three higher tax bands, ending at homes valued at £2 million pounds or more, to bring something like fairness to the Council Tax system. The Council Tax bands, like the income tax system, need urgent reconstruction to make sure that those who have done best from our market economy should pay at least as big a proportion of their wealth in tax as those who have been less fortunate.

A trusted ally – or a ‘pariah state’?

In recent months I have been quite proud of the fact that I am a member of the Church of England as well as of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).   I welcomed the Church’s decision to ordain women as Bishops as well as Priests.   I have applauded the Archbishop of Canterbury’s campaign to replace ‘pay day lenders’ with local ‘credit unions’ and his criticism of economic policies that have led to the proliferation of Food Banks throughout the UK.

That enthusiasm suffered a severe blow this (23^rd January) afternoon when I learned that, to comply with government guidelines, the authorities of Westminster Abbey would be flying our national flag at half-mast in mourning for the King of Saudi Arabia.  It suffered a further blow with the news that the Prince of Wales (a future ‘Defender of the Faith’) together with our Prime Minister were to fly to Saudi Arabia to express their condolences.  I suppose that the Prince is aware that any expression of the Faith that he will pledge himself to defend is strictly forbidden in Saudi Arabia and that any Muslim in that country who converts to Christianity is likely to be executed!

Saudi Arabia’s disregard for democracy and human rights makes North Korea seem like a liberal Paradise!  Torture is routinely practised in Saudi gaols and public executions, amputations and floggings are daily occurrences.  The case of a blogger who considered the possibility that Saudi Arabia might become a secular state and who is being publicly flogged with fifty lashes every Friday until, if he survives long enough, he has received a total of 1,000 lashes, has recently made the press headlines.  Women in Saudi-Arabia are said to be much more free than they were a decade or so ago – but they are still forbidden to drive cars or leave their homes without a male escort (husband, father or brother).

Most of those involved in the 9/11 outrages in New York were Saudis.  Saudi Arabia is the home of the noxious fundamentalist Islamic faith that IS (the Islamic State) is trying to impose in Syria and Iraq and that Boko Haram is imposing, even more blood-thirstily, in sub-Saharan Africa. Donations from oil-rich Saudi millionaires financed IS during its early days. They possibly still do so.

Do we really need oil (and arms sales) so badly that we are prepared to befriend a state whose philosophy is the exact opposite of the British values that David Cameron and his colleagues are so eager to propagate?

   

Week 32 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

Nick Clegg

          Do you remember the televised debates of the Party leaders prior to our last parliamentary General Election?  I don’t usually listen to politicians sounding off – but I did watch those debates, and thought that I learned from them. 

 I had for many years considered myself to be an internationalist and a democratic socialist. More recently though I had come to the conclusion that the most important task any new British government needed to undertake was the reduction of the yawning gap between the incomes of country’s wealthiest and poorest citizens. I had been impressed by The Spirit Level by Quakers Kate Picket and Richard Wilkinson which demonstrated that reducing that gap benefited the whole community and not just the poor. I had become a modest supporter of the Equality Trust* and had come to realize that public ownership of the means of manufacture and distribution (whether by local or national government) was only one of the means by which greater economic justice could be secured.  .

During the decade of New Labour rule the gap between the incomes of the rich and poor had actually widened!  Lord Mandelson, a creator of New Labour had publicly declared that he had no problem with billionaires.  Well, I believe that while there are families that are homeless, ill-clad, and don’t know where the next meal is coming from, he should have a problem with them! 

Despite being well into my eighties at the time of the last election I was one of those ‘floating voters’ that politicians are eager to persuade. I intended to vote for the candidate of the Party most likely at least to attempt to reduce that ever-widening gap.

           I have to confess it.  I was taken in by Nick Clegg.  He I thought was the most inspiring of the three speakers, and the one with the most radical ideas.  He appeared to have a ‘fire within’ that reminded me of some of the early twentieth century Labour Movement pioneers  Because of this, for the first time in my life, his party received my vote and although with our system of voting it would have made no difference which way I voted, I have since deeply regretted it.

            Tony Blair, although he abandoned many of the purposes for which the Labour Party was created, did at least win elections for his New Labour.  Nick Clegg didn’t.  His party did quite well – but not well enough.  He went into an unequal coalition with the Conservatives and began to drop the principles on which he had been elected.  I had hoped that he might work towards a more equal society.  He supported the new Chancellor’s early gift to the super-rich, the reduction of the highest rate of income tax, thus benefiting those with a taxable income in excess of £150,000 a year – while beginning an austerity programme that particularly affected the poor and disadvantaged!  In his election campaign he had tried for the student vote – promising not to raise tuition fees.  In coalition this was one of the first promises that he abandoned.

            He would no doubt claim that by membership of the coalition he had been able to modify his Conservative partners more objectionable policies in a way that would have been impossible had he been in opposition.  In the world of British politics today, I don’t believe that that is true.  When a government doesn’t command the majority of votes in the House of Commons a determined opposition party can support the government on matters about which they agree or at least find acceptable, and join (or threaten to join) with other parties to defeat legislation that they find unacceptable.  Thus, in modifying the policies of a ‘minority’ government  a determined opposition party can exert more effective influence than a coalition partner.

            Nigel Farage’s UKIP has an increased representation in the European Parliament - where the Ukippers revealed themselves as an ill-mannered rabble, insulting their fellow parliamentarians by ostentatiously turning their backs on the European Anthem!. In the European and local government elections UKIP have shown themselves capable of appealing to the xenophobia, greed and fear of a great many electors and of taking votes, particularly from Conservative candidates.  They haven’t yet any Westminster MPs and they haven’t gained control of any local authority, but they have gained many Council Chamber seats and, again and again, have driven representatives of the Conservative, Lib.Dem. and Labour parties into ‘third place’ in the polls.

            Anybody surveying the UK political scene today can see that it is the Ukippers rather than the Lib.Dems. who pose the greater threat to an overall  Conservative Majority at next year’s General Election. Ukippers themselves are becoming increasingly confident.  I have always regarded our own Conservative MP Douglas Carswell as a Crypto-Ukipper.  He has the essential qualification of acute Europhobia and has even been singled out for praise by Nigel Farage.  Yet UKIP has selected a candidate to oppose him in the forthcoming General Election.  That candidate probably won't win – but he could take enough Conservative votes to ensure that Douglas Carswell doesn’t win either.  It isn’t surprising that David Cameron is much more concerned with out-flanking Nigel Farage with ever-more Europhobic measures to halt the flow of EU visitors and immigrants, than he is with the concerns of his own Lib.Dem. ‘deputy’.

   I think it likely that Nick Clegg will be remembered in history as the man who finally destroyed the once-great Liberal Party.

*For further information about the Equality Trust and ‘The Spirit Level’ contact www.equalitytrust.org.uk or Equality Trust, 18 Victoria Park Square, London E2 9PF   Email – info@equalitytrust.org.uk

The Slaughter of the Innocents!

          Last week the CIA announced that it had found no evidence of Russia being directly involved in the destruction of that Malaysian air liner.  That, I am sure, was not what their political bosses had wanted them to report and I am equally sure that, had the Russians been directly involved, the CIA would have found evidence of it.

            On 28th July,  a spokesman for the Kiev Ukrainian Government declared that the aircraft’s ‘black boxes’ had revealed that the air liner had been destroyed by a ground-to-air missile as had been surmised.  That was surely extraordinary.  We had been told that the ‘black boxes’ had been handed over intact by the pro-Russian insurgents to representatives of the Malaysian Airline and that they were being sent to the UK to be opened and have their contents analysed.  How, I wonder, did those boxes fall into the hands of the Kiev government and had they tampered with them in any way?

It was a fortnight before international inspectors were able to secure the site of the crash and begin to make a proper inspection of the remains of the plane and even now their situation is far from safe and secure.  This has not been because of lack of co-operation from the insurgent authorities (they, after all, found and secured the ‘black boxes’ and handed them over untouched to the Malaysian air line). The reason the inspectors can't get on with their work is continued shelling by the artillery of the Kiev Government and the refusal of that government’s forces to cease their attacks while inspection is going on. 

In fact, we still don’t know for certain how that air disaster took place.  We don’t know if it was shot down by a missile and, if it was, who fired that missile, why they fired it and from where.   This hasn’t prevented the leaders of the EU from deciding that it was all the result of Russia’s support of the Ukrainian rebels – and they have imposed a further set of economic and political sanctions on Russia.  Meanwhile, NATO is holding a series of naval exercises in the Baltic Sea and the UK is sending troops to take part in military exercises in Poland. Both actions are surely quite uncalled for and dangerously provocative.  Can we really have already forgotten the horrors of the two twentieth century world wars?  The few of us who still remember World War II certainly haven’t.

Meanwhile in the ‘Holy Land', Israel is conducting a bloody and destructive campaign in Gaza which has so far resulted in the deaths of nearly 2,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians and many of them women and children. A fragile temporary cease-fire lasted only a matter of hours and the Israeli Prime Minister has suggested that the campaign may go on for much longer. Yes, they have been provoked.  HAMAS too bears some responsibility for the slaughter – but the Israeli response has been and is totally disproportionate.  The situation is made worse by the fact that Israel exerts a tight blockade on Gaza which means that the unfortunate victims haven’t even the choice of fleeing their country and becoming refugees. Twice at least, Israeli forces have bombed or shelled United Nations buildings in which hapless civilians have sought safety.  ISIS, Al Qaeda and the like must be delighted by the extra recruits that the situation is producing!

Why is there not even talk of sanctions and dire ‘consequences’ for Israel and those who support her and supply her with the weapons of death?  Israel is responsible for many more deaths and much more destruction than those east Ukrainian insurgents.  Are the lives of Middle Eastern women and children less sacred than those of European countries?  Or is it, as I suggested in this blog a fortnight ago: It’s not what is done, it’s who it is does it, that really matters?  How much more strident and belligerent the voices from 'the west' would have been if only it were the 'Russians’ who were slaughtering innocent women and children in Gaza! 

Week 26 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

Middle East Maelstrom

          A recent email from a regular blog reader sums up the current situation relating to Islam and its neighbours in the Middle East, a considerable part of central Africa and the Indian sub-continent:

Well, I said the militant Islam thing was going to come to a head, and almost immediately the Pakistan Taliban come very close to capturing Karachi main airport, and ISIS are getting close to taking Baghdad. And still the Nigerian school girls haven't been returned.  The day surely cannot be far away when they succeed in overthrowing the government of a major country, or carve out a completely new country by annexing bits of other countries.  Would have been better to have left Saddam Hussain in Iraq, but I see Tony Blair is very sensitive to that obvious criticism and has tried to pre-empt it. Likewise, it is crystal clear the west should have given no support to those trying to overthrow Assad. These dictators may be bad and use their powers arbitrarily and brutally, but an ultra orthodox religious regime is ten times worse because it so deeply affects the lives of ordinary people; especially women, who make up 50% of the population and gays who make up 7%, and anyone else of a different religion, or of a more moderate version of Islam.

I couldn’t have put it better or more succinctly myself – though he’s missed out the second batch of schoolgirls who have been abducted by jihadist militants in Nigeria, or the massacres that have recently taken place there.  Nor did he mention the atrocities that have taken place after ISIS victories.  Perhaps, as a former POW, I am particularly affected by tv images of Iraqi soldiers being cold-bloodedly shot en masse by these ‘religious zealots’ after capture. In North Africa in 1941/’42 we on one side and the Germans and Italians on the other tried to kill each other – but we did all adhere to ‘the rules of war’.  Many years later, when my family and I were on holiday in Austria, we encountered a German family remarkably similar to ourselves.  We discovered that the father, like me, had been taken prisoner in Tobruk in 1942 – I, by Rommel in June, and he by ‘Monty’ in November!  Because, all those years ago, both sides had adhered to those rules, we had both survived to look each-other in the face and shake hands as friends.

I was fascinated by Tony Blair’ attempts to suggest that the current conflict has nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq into which he and George Bush lured us.   It is, so he says, the clear result of our failure to intervene in the Syrian Civil War. On which side does he think we should have intervened?  It is possible that, early in the conflict, many of the rebels did seek a more democratic Syria.  It has for some time though been clear that the current rebellion is led and dominated by Islamist zealots of the same breed as those who perpetrated 9/11, were responsible for the subsequent bomb outrages in London, who kidnapped those Nigerian teenagers, and who are now fighting their murderous way through Iraq.  Does Tony Blair really suggest that we should have helped them overthrow Hassad?

When David Cameron expresses concern about British radicalised Muslims returning from Syria to the UK after learning the terrorist arts he doesn’t, for one moment, imagine that they’ll have learned those arts from President Hassad’s supporters. Their teachers will have been those anti-Hassad activists that we have been supporting but, according to Tony Blair, not supporting strongly enough!

I suppose that one good thing that can be said to have come out of the present crisis is a more friendly relationship with Iran.  I heard a Conservative MP in the House of Commons warning the government that this might damage relations between ourselves and our present Middle East allies.  Could he possibly have been referring to such ‘allies’ as Saudi Arabia and Qatar?  These countries, to which we blithely sell arms, are the source of the jihadists bloodthirsty inspiration.  They are the patrons and supporters of Sunni Muslims as Iran is the inspiration, patron and supporter of the Shia.   I have little doubt that these wonderful Middle East allies of ours have been supplying the Syrian rebels with arms (probably some that we have sold them!) and funds to keep them going.  I wouldn’t wish to live either in Saudi Arabia or Iran but, if I were compelled to make a choice, I would certainly settle for Iran, as being the less restrictive and the lesser offender against what I (and I think, Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Miliband) regard as inalienable human rights.  But, of course, human rights are all very well - but business is business! And the manufacture and sale of the weapons of war (the instruments of death) is very big business indeed.

Now we, with the Americans as our ‘senior partners’, are considering intervention to halt the progress of ISIS and prevent the downfall of the present Iraqi government.  We’re not going to put troops on the ground, but we’ll possibly bomb ISIS troop concentrations and so on.  Unmanned ‘drones’ may be used to ‘take out’ some of the ISIS commanders and political leaders.   Inevitably, in doing so innocent civilians – men, women and children will be killed and maimed.  Whatever might be the conclusion of the current fighting it will certainly result with Middle Eastern Muslims – Sunni and Shia alike – uniting in their hatred of the western infidels who inflicted even more death and destruction on their benighted countries. History demonstrates that foreign intervention in civil conflicts always makes them bloodier and more protracted

Twenty-five years ago Christians were a tolerated minority in many Muslim majority countries though not, of course, in Saudi Arabia. In Iraq and Syria in particular there were thriving and long-established Christian Communities.  They set an example of tolerance in an increasingly intolerant world. Today, Christians have been a target of extremists in both those countries.  Christian lives are in daily danger throughout the Middle East and those who can get out have done so.  Our Christian faith is in danger of becoming extinct in the very area of the world in which it was born.

That is the true and lasting legacy of the policies of George W. Bush junior and Tony Blair.  I wonder if they’re proud of it?

Spoiling for a fight?

I have just been listening to an interview with the Secretary-General of NATO about Iraq and the state of the world generally. Perhaps we need reminding that NATO was created during the Cold War specifically to deal with the perceived military threat from the Soviet Union.  The United Kingdom is a member and, unlike our membership of the European Union, joining NATO was taken on quite arbitrarily by the government without any referendum or consultation with the British people.  It is now concerning itself with matters far beyond its original purpose.

The Afghan war for example, is now coming to a less-than-victorious end, after a decade long struggle.  It was a war in which, theoretically at least, NATO was attempting to combat jihadist terrorism at its source.  This was considered to be in Afghanistan, where Al Qaida was protected by the fundamentalist Taliban Government.  All that has happened is that Al Qaida has moved its bases elsewhere, what has been portrayed as ‘western aggression’ has gained recruits for the terrorists, and the Taliban remain undefeated. Meanwhile the conflict has cost the UK and, of course, the USA hundreds of lives and millions of pounds and dollars.  The best place to combat terrorism is in the western countries in which acts of terrorism are threatened or are taking place.  The only role that NATO should take is ensuring the dissemination of intelligence about terrorist groups, and experience of foiling their activities – a field in which, if official sources are to be believed, the UK has been very successful.

That however is not the way Anders Rasmussen. NATO’s Secretary General sees it.   In his Radio interview  he gave the impression of a man spoiling for a fight.  ISIS aggression against Iraq, he averred, was a threat to all of us – it was imperative that firm action be taken against them.  Fortunately for us all, American President Barak Obama (without whose OK, NATO certainly won’t act!) is a great deal more cautious.  He has reinforced the defence of the US Embassy in Baghdad and is sending 300 ‘advisers’ to help organise defence against ISIS but not to get directly involved in conflict.  He doesn’t rule out air strikes against carefully selected targets, but they are not to be taken for granted.  He does not want ‘mission creep’ dragging the USA deeper and deeper into the conflict. 

Mr Rasmussen hasn’t forgotten the Ukraine.  There’s Russia’s virtually bloodless ‘annexation’ of the Crimea, to the satisfaction of the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants! There’s the ‘provocation’ of military exercises near Ukraine’s borders, and Mr Rasmussen is sure that Russia is encouraging the armed separatists in Eastern Ukraine. I’d have thought that much more provocative were NATO’s naval exercises in the Baltic and Black Sea and the reinforcement of NATO troops in Poland and the Baltic states.  As for encouraging the armed separatists, we do know that they have asked Russia to send troops over the border to assist them – and that Russia has declined.  Russia has had more experience than any other country at opposing jihadist terrorism. They were fighting it in Afghanistan when we and the Americans were supporting the fathers and grandfathers of today's Taliban fighters. Instead of thinking up more and stronger sanctions – which affect us as much as they do them – we should be co-operating with them in combating this world-wide scourge.  Goodness knows, we were happy enough to co-operate with a much less amiable Russia to defeat Hitler and the Nazis.  But, of course, neither Mr Rasmussen nor any of the world’s statesmen are old enough to remember that!

Week11 2014

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Echoes from 1982

          On 10^th July 1982, over forty years ago, bombs planted by the Provisional IRA exploded in London’s Hyde Park and Regent’s Park killing eleven soldiers, members of the Household Cavalry, and seven of their horses.  Echoes of those explosions have travelled down the years to 2014 – to make press headlines and to cast a little light on a feature of the Good Friday Agreement, that was apparently unknown to thos now responsible for governing that troubled province of the UK.

            John Downey, a former IRA member, had been arrested and was about to stand trial on suspicion of implication in those bomb outrages, but was released on the orders of the Judge when he produced a letter from the Northern Irish Constabulary assuring him that he was not ‘wanted by the police’ for any offence committed during the ‘troubles’.  At first it was suggested that this letter had been a one-off error made by the Northern Irish Police but it later became known that some 180 similar letters had been sent to other suspected republican terrorists ‘on the run’.  It was a promise amounting (at least in the recipients’ minds) to an amnesty.  It had been sent to republican suspected terrorists only and not extended either to ‘loyalists’ or to the British soldiers involved  in the ‘Bloody Sunday’ event in Londonderry.

            Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland’s First Minister, who has the almost-impossible job of holding together an uneasy power-sharing government of loyalists and republicans, claims that he had known nothing of these letters. He is said to have been ‘incandescent with rage’ when he heard of them.  He threatened to resign his post unless there was an immediate judicial enquiry into the whole matter – and David Cameron has agreed that there should be one, reporting its findings at the end of May

It has been suggested that the letters were promised to Sinn Fein by Tony Blair in order to ensure their compliance, without involving others involved in the Good Friday agreement, They were kept secret, rather like the contents of the cosy chats between Tony Blair and President Bush that took place before a majority of members of the House of Commons were deceived into endorsing the illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq.  

It could be that it was only by means of that distinctly one-sided agreement that the present uneasy peace in Northern Ireland was secured.  I ask myself though whether a good conclusion can ever be achieved by dishonest means.  Some time ago I commented in this blog that making Tony Blair the United Nation’s ‘special peace envoy’ to the Middle East was rather like making one of the Kray brothers a Chief Constable.  Nothing has since happened to alter that opinion.

‘Why don’t they eat cake?’

            If, during the final decade of the twentieth century, you had asked an acquaintance or friend their opinion of Food Banks, they would probably have thought you were deranged.  Banks deal with money, not food. We had yet to experience the brave new world of the 21^st century!   You might have received a more positive answer in the USA because Food Banks, providing basic sustenance for the hungry poor, had been established there from 1967.   They were ‘wholesalers’ rather than ‘retailers’ though – collecting and storing donated food items and sending them, in bulk, to approved charities for distribution to those in need.

            European countries, including the UK, generally had better national social services than those in the USA and the need for Food Banks didn’t arise until nearly four decades later – in 2006.  Now they are the United Kingdom’s fastest growing voluntary service, with over 400 such banks nation-wide and growing every week.  In 2013 they fed nearly 347,000 people!  The number of applicants has grown as the Government’s welfare cuts have taken effect.  To obtain help, applicants need to get a voucher from a professional such as a local authority social worker. On presenting the voucher to the food bank they are given sufficient food for three days.

           

            Most Food Banks are co-ordinated by the Trussell Trust and are associated with Christian Churches, in accordance with Jesus Christ’s declaration that we should treat other people as we ourselves would wish to be treated.  It is very heartening that the Bishops of the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church, together with the leaders of the Free Churches, are giving their enthusiastic support, while at the same time criticising government policies that have created the need for the food banks.   Some fifty percent of the food distributed is donated by members of the public.  Some is given by private enterprises such as supermarkets and many Food Banks are supported, in one way or another, by the local authority of the district in which they are situated.

                                                   

                                                         A cartoon from the ‘Observer’

           

In my own town of Clacton-on-Sea (which includes the Brooklands area of Jaywick, said to be the UK’s most deprived area) the Food Bank is run by the Salvation Army with the support of other Christian traditions in the town including, of course, Clacton Quakers of which I am a member.

            The need for Food Banks has increased as the Chancellor’s attacks on the meagre incomes of the poor have begun to bite, though the government insists that this increase is simply because ‘scroungers’ have discovered in them a source of free food and that ‘there is no robust evidence of a link between the increase in demand for Food Banks and the welfare reforms’. It has even been suggested that some recipients of food parcels have sold on their contents!   How robust, I wonder, does evidence have to be to convince those who don't wish to be persuaded.  The fact that food parcels are dispensed only to those presenting a voucher from a welfare professional, is surely a deterrent to ‘frivolous and fraudulent applicants’.

            I have just watched a very striking programme on the tv about Food Banks and the valuable service they provide.  To provide ‘balance’ a number of denigrators of Food Banks were interviewed, including former Cabinet Minister Edwina Curry.  I’d be very surprised if any one of them has ever felt the pangs of real hunger.  Some of their comments made Marie Antoinette’s alleged suggestion that if the poor of Paris couldn’t get bread ‘they should eat cake’ seem positively liberal and benign! 

The Price of Postage Stamps

Like me, you may have thought that that massive increase in the cost of sending mail that we endured last year (First Class minimum postage 60p, Second Class 50p!) was the last we’d have to put up with for a year or two; especially as privatisation, which took place just a couple of months ago, was supposed to be going to be giving us a better, more efficient, service.

We were wrong.  Postage charges are going up again - from 1^st April which is not an inappropriate date!   First class stamps are to go up to 62p (an increase of 3.3 percent) from that date, and second class ones from 50 to 53p (an increase of 6 percent).   I’m glad that I bought enough of those attractive Madonna and Child Christmas stamps to see me through several months of the new financial year.  They’ll prove to have been quite an investment, though nothing like that of the investors who bought shares in Royal Mail at the ridiculously low price of 330p a share.  They have seen their investment almost double to £6.00 a share since they made their purchase.

It is easy to forget that whenever a public service is privatised its main purpose changes from serving the public to satisfying the shareholders!

Spring is here!

A fortnight ago I published a picture with my blog, of a few daffodils around the eating apple tree in my garden, just coming into bloom in late February.  Now in early March, as you can see, they are all in full bloom. 

 Spring 2014 really is here!  

 These daffodils have a special significance for me.  From the kitchen window of our bungalow, my wife Heather watched them grow, bloom and wither, year after year, It was where those daffodils bloom that, nearly eight years ago, I scattered her ashes after sixty years of happy marriage. I hope that when the time comes my ashes too may be scattered there.

 

 

         

Week 10 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

Birds of a Feather………

          HRH the Prince of Wales referred to them as ‘headless chicken’. Writing recently in the Church Times (not a publication likely to be accused of sensationalism or scare mongering)  Paul Vallely, Senior Research Fellow at the Brooks World Poverty Institute at Manchester University, prefers to call climate change deniers 'ostriches'. That’s rather more appropriate because ostriches are popularly believed to bury their heads in the sand rather than observe, and do something about, scary things going on around them.

            Paul Vallely quotes a geography professor who told him that if the floods and gales of this winter are the beginning of climate change (and most intelligent observers are now convinced that they are) then there is nothing that we can do about it.  What seems to us now to be ‘extreme weather’ will be the norm for at least twenty years.  However he tempered that apocalyptic message by adding that ‘all we can do now is to stop it getting worse’.

            ‘Climate change deniers’, says Paul Vallely, ‘always insist that you cannot prove a causal link between one spell of extreme weather and global warming. That is true, just as you cannot link one specific cigarette to a smoker’s developing lung cancer.  Trends though, are another matter’.

            Lord Stone, a punctilious and naturally cautious man with a great concern for academic accuracy, is a friend and former colleague of Paul Vallely.  He wrote a seminal report on climate change in 2006 and recently noted that four of the five wettest years ever recorded in the UK have occurred since 2,000 – and so have the seven warmest!  Elsewhere in the world Australia has just had its hottest year on record. North America has been gripped by a polar vortex.  Bangladesh has had two ‘once-in-lifetime’ cyclones in three years.  The Philippines have had their worst-ever cyclone.

            It might have been thought that global warming would make the weather warmer here in Britain.  That though, is not the case.  Scientists warned years ago that the first change the UK could expect would be more rain and wind, since a warmer atmosphere holds more water and energy, meaning more floods – and thus it has happened!

            Looking back, Lord Stern says that his verdict back in 2006 should have been harsher than it was.  ‘Since then, annual greenhouse-gas emissions have increased steeply, and some of the impacts, such as the decline of Arctic sea ice, have started to happen much more quickly’

            Paul Vallely notes that recently our Prime Minister advised the folk of flood-stricken Upton-on-Severn to speak to ‘the man upstairs’ about the floods.  Paul comments that prayer is not a sufficient answer and that, as his grandmother used to say, God helps those who help themselves.   To expect God miraculously to remedy the harm that we humans have done to our environment is almost as stupid as believing that the floods are God’s punishment for our approving same-sex marriages!

            The God in whom I believe, created the Universe and everything in it using evolution and natural selection as his tools.  That God is present, both throughout the Universe and as an 'inward light' within the souls of every man, woman and child in the world.  He listens to and answers our prayers but, as St. Theresa has declared, ‘In this world God has no hands but ours to do his work; no feet but ours to run his errands’ and he (I could with equal accuracy have said ‘she’ or ‘it’) has given us free will.

            We humans have chosen to follow the paths of greed, covetousness and relentless competition with each other for wealth and worldly possessions, rather than those of co-operation, compassion and sharing the earth’s riches with our fellow men and women. We have squandered the world’s finite resources and as greenhouse gases accelerate climate change, we are rendering our planet uninhabitable.  God does not punish us for folly and selfishness. We punish ourselves.

            Here is the final paragraph of Paul Vallely’s article:   If what we are seeing around us is the result of a two-degree rise in global temperatures, what can we expect from the four degrees rise that many scientists say is inevitable unless we cut carbon emissions?  Lord Stern suggests mass migrations, conflict and war.  The last time the global temperature was five degrees different from today, the earth was gripped by an ice age.  We cannot say that we have not been warned

……..flock together.

            

            I have been following the reports of the trial of Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson – both were senior employees of Ruper Murdoch's News International  and both were close friends and confidantes of Prime Ministers and other top politicians of both the main political parties. Andy Coulson was for some time David Cameron’s personal spin doctor.  Now they are both on trial in connection with alleged phone hacking and attempts to pervert the course of justice while they were employed by News International.  I was particularly interested to note that Tony Blair, former Prime Minister and creator of New Labour had offered Rebekah Brooks his support and told her that he would similarly help and advise Rupert Murdoch, who owns and heads News International.

           

          Pioneers of the Labour Party – Keir Hardie, George Lansbury, Sir Stafford Cripps, Clem Attlee, Jenny Lee and Nye Bevan must surely be turning in their graves. Rupert Murdoch, his  lieutenants, and his News International stand for everything that the Labour Movement was created to oppose.

  

 The Ukrainian Tragedy

 Seventy years ago – when I was a PoW at a small Arbeitskommando (working camp) in Eastern Germany we regularly worked and (when we had learned a little basic German) chatted with civilian fellow-workers who were clearly not German and who wore a distinguishing badge OST sewn onto their jackets. We soon learned that the OST was short for Ostarbeiter (worker from the east) and that they were conscripted ‘slave workers’ from German occupied areas of Russia and the Ukraine.

There were men and women. We got to know them very well both as fellow forced-workers and as friends. There is nothing like having a common enemy to bring people together, and all we foreign conscripted workers, PoWs and civilians, were good friends.  Much more recently I have learned about the rift between western and eastern Ukraine. Is the Ukrainian language very different from Russian?  That's certainly not the impression that I gained - but perhaps the Ukrainians that I knew all came from the Eastern Ukraine.  They were certainly friendly enough with their Russian fellow 'Ostarbeiters'.  In Russian ‘Ukraine’ means ‘the Outlands’, a province in the south of the former Tsarist Empire acting as a buffer zone against the always threatening Turks.

Many 'Ostarbeiters', Russians and Ukrainians alike, had seen their parents and their village elders killed in cold blood by German SS units.  Some, particularly the girls, had themselves had horrific experiences before being rounded up and deported to Germany.  They were invariably friendly, cheerful and patient.  Many of them were genuinely interested in our lives in Britain.   Daily we heard the thunder of gunfire from the Eastern Front grow louder and louder as the Soviet Armies advanced through Poland and into Germany.   We learned a few words and phrases in Russian from our Ukrainian and Russian friends and fellow-workers. These proved immensely valuable to me when the war came to an end and a mate and I were hitch-hiking our way through Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia on our way home to England!

Now the children and grandchildren of those warm-hearted and friendly young men and women have been killing each other in the streets of Kiev and other Ukrainian cities, and all the major powers can do is ‘take sides’ – the Russian Government supporting the ousted Ukrainian President, and the UK, USA and EU supporting the rebels (just as in the Syrian blood-bath!)  At the heart of the quarrel between the two Ukrainian factions seems to be whether Ukraine should seek the friendship and support of the EU or of Russia. 

 For goodness sake!   The cold war is over and the ‘iron curtain’ drawn aside.  Is it really impossible for Ukraine to enjoy the friendship of both – and to enter into military alliance with neither;  perhaps even to serve as a friendly bridge between us and our Russian former allies?   Have we forgotten already the contribution that the Soviet Army (mostly Russians and Ukrainians) made towards the defeat of the Nazis?  Winston Churchill said that it was the Red Army that ‘tore the guts out of the Nazi War Machine’ and I have no doubt at all that had it not been for their efforts and their sacrifice (8 million dead!) I would, at the best, have remained a prisoner for at least another two or three years. It is much more likely though that I would never have come home at all. I now have good friends in Germany and, in particular, in the small town where I spent the last eighteen months of World War II as a PoW – but I have always remembered with gratitude those to whom I owe my life and my liberty.

Late News

I wrote the above three days ago (on 28th February) and things have moved swiftly since then. Russian troops have moved into the Crimea where they appear to have been welcomed by the civilian population. They have, in effect, confined troops of the interim Ukrainian Government to their own bases.  I can only hope and pray that the world's rulers will keep their heads cool and their eyes on world peace rather than on scoring points or losing 'face'.  Is it not just possible that the presence of a considerable Russian force in  the Crimean peninsula will deter the current provisional government from attempting to force their ideas and their culture on their compatriots in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, thus provoking another civil conflict?

I do find the holier-than-thou attitude of the government of the USA somewhat surprising.  Some of us still remember the USA's backing of the disastrous 'Bay of Pigs' attempted invasion of Cuba, the USA's illegal blockade of Cuban ports endangering international shipping and - almost exactly thirty years ago - the completely unprovoked USA led invasion of the  Caribbean island of Grenada  for no purpose other than regime change.  This was condemned by the United Nations General Assembly as an act of unprovoked aggression though the UK's government, then headed by 'iron lady' Margaret Thatcher was strangely silent, despite the fact that Grenada was then part of the British Commonwealth and its head of state was our Queen.

‘First cast the plank out of your own eye, and you will see more clearly how to deal with the mote in the eye of your brother’   St. Matthew Chapter 7 verse 5