25th March 2015

Tendring Topics……..on line

‘Dear Ernest……….

                                 …….. warm regards, Douglas’

            You would probably imagine that the above was the salutation and farewell of a personal letter from a close friend or relative, and that between that ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ there was a communication of great interest to both ‘Ernest’ and ‘Doug’.   It wasn’t; and although presumably it was of interest to the sender it certainly was not to me.

            It wasn’t a personal letter. I have never met, and almost certainly never will meet the ‘Douglas’ who addresses me by my first name and sends me his ‘warm regards’.  Nor was it a personal letter.  It was a circular letter, probably sent to every Tom, Dick and Harry and every Jane, Mary or Kate in the Clacton-on-Sea parliamentary constituency from Douglas Carswell once our Conservative MP but currently, thanks to a lightning conversion and an expensive and totally unnecessary by-election,  one of two UKIP MPs in the House of Commons.

            A remarkable feature of that by-election was the fact that Douglas Carswell the UKIP candidate, was the only one who seemed to make a real effort to get elected.  I was deluged by UKIP leaflets, brochures and at least one of those ‘personal’ letters from Douglas Carswell.  I received a phone call on behalf of UKIP and a canvasser who called at my front door.  He seemed a little shocked when I assured him that I would never vote for any UKIP candidate. There was also – so I believe – a well-attended public meeting addressed by both Douglas Carswell and his political boss Nigel Farage.   I received just one leaflet from the Conservative candidate, one from the Liberal Democrats and one from Labour.  There were also a Green candidate and two independents from whom I received nothing.

            The General Election is now only a few weeks away.  History seems to be  repeating itself.  During the past week or so I have received three glossy brochures or leaflets extolling Douglas Carswell’s virtues, a canvassing phone call, and today (21st March)  this ‘personal letter’ from the man himself.  The content of the letter confirms my opinion that, apart from leaving the European Union and reducing immigration, UKIP’s policy is simply to jump on any band-wagon that offers the promise of a few extra votes.   I have so far received nothing from any of the other candidates.

            Douglas’ circular letter promises that UKIP will abolish hospital parking charges, funding this by ’cutting overseas aid and EU payments’ (could be a vote winner – parking at Colchester General Hospital is difficult and expensive – and getting worse!).  They’ll also ‘defend the NHS, defend winter fuel payments, bus passes and tv licences for older folk’ (there are lots of ‘older folk’ with votes in this constituency) ‘stand up to big corporations’ (I don’t know quite what that means but it certainly sounds vote-catching!) and ‘introduce an Australian-style points system’ to control immigration (locally our most serious immigration problem is created by fellow-Brits driven from the London area by ridiculously high housing costs and the ‘bedroom tax').

             

            At the end of the letter there is a chart based on figures supplied by www. ElectoralCalculus.co,uk which suggests that UKIP can expect to gain 48 percent of the votes in this area in the general election, and the Conservatives 45 percent.  Douglas Carswell appeals ‘Only UKIP can keep David Cameron’s candidate out of Clacton’.  I’m inclined to reverse that message and proclaim.  Only the Conservatives can keep Nigel Farage’s candidate out of Clacton. 

            Regular blog readers will know that at the by-election I ‘voted strategically’.  For the first, and probably only time in my life I put my cross against the name of the Conservative candidate in the hope of denying the seat to Douglas Carswell.  It didn’t succeed!    The closeness of the two parties in the forecast tempts me to do the same in the General Election – but I won’t.  This time I’ll vote Green because I am convinced that it is only the policies of the Green Party that offer a cure for Britain’s ills.

           

Final Note:  

The reason that, in both the by-election and in the months preceding the coming general election I had so much potentially mind-bending material from the UKIP candidate and so little from the others, is not I am sure, because the Labour, Conservative, Green and Lib.Dem candidates and their supporters lack enthusiasm and conviction, but that they have limited funds – and good quality printing and distribution costs money.  UKIP presumably has some very wealthy and generous financial backers – or perhaps Douglas (as he uses my first name I’m sure he won’t mind my using his) has a very considerable personal fortune that he is prepared to use to secure electoral success.

An Anniversary

          We have recently seen the first anniversary of the annexation/recovery of the Crimea by Russia.  It was marked by a public opinion poll in the Crimea that revealed that 93 percentage of the population were happy to remain as Russians and had no desire to be once again citizens of Ukraine.   Ninety-three percent! That’s the kind of result that one would only get in a place like North Korea – it must have been fiddled or fabricated!   Well, that’s what ‘the west’ would no doubt like to believe.  The only difficulty with that explanation is that the opinion poll was carried out by a Ukrainian polling agency commissioned by the Ukrainian government.  That was not the result for which the government in Kiev was hoping!  Certainly in the 1950s when both Russia and Ukraine were provinces of the Soviet Union, the citizens of the Crimea were not consulted when Nikita Khruschev decided that their land (which had been part of Russia since Tsarist times) should become part of Ukraine.

            Meanwhile the fact that we have heard no recent news from the disputed region of Eastern Ukraine suggests  that the terms of the cease-fire are being observed; that hostilities have ceased and heavy weaponry withdrawn from the front line.   I hope that prisoners are being exchanged by both sides and that talks are in progress about the degree of autonomy to be granted to the Russian speaking eastern areas of Ukraine. Meanwhile the British Government, which played no part in the cease-fire negotiations, has supplied the Ukrainian Government in Kiev with armoured cars, and is sending units from our army (depleted by government cuts and by less-than-totally-successful campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan), to help train the Ukrainian army.  That’s our contribution to the cause of world peace!

            

           

           

           

     

13th December 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

The World’s most polluted spot!

          A few weeks ago I quoted, at some length, my elder son’s concerns about air pollution, particularly in London.  Now air pollution – from motor vehicles – has become a matter of national concern. Even towns in our largely agricultural East Anglian Region are seriously affected.  It has, so it is reported, become almost as serious a killer as tobacco smoking.   Last year in the UK air pollution was responsible for nearly 20,000 preventable deaths.  In some towns pedestrians are being advised to walk along the footpaths as far as possible away from the carriageway, not because of the danger of being struck by a vehicle mounting the pavement – but because a distance of even a few feet further away from the vehicle exhausts can reduce the risk of lung damage.

            Where, do you think, is the most polluted air in the whole world?  My guess would have been somewhere in Beijing – or possibly in Rio de Janeiro or Chicago.   I’d have been wrong.  It is, in fact, London’s Oxford Street – the home of Harrods and of other quality retailers where the seriously rich do their shopping.  In Oxford Street the high-rise (by British standards) buildings create an artificial canyon to retain the polluted air while continual starting and stopping of the diesel engines of buses and taxis inexorably add to the pollution.  

            The first reaction of Mayor Boris Johnson was to question the findings of the scientists who had revealed that Oxford Street’s air was the most polluted on earth.  He now accepts the report’s validity – but hasn’t so far done anything about it.   Sadly, it’s one of those issues like climate change.  Hardly anyone now doubts that climate change is taking place, and scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that it is largely a result of human activity - but to take effective action would cost money, and possibly lose votes!  So would taking effective action against vehicular air pollution.

            In our free market society where everything and almost everybody has a price, short-term profit will always triumph over long-term benefit.   So polluting motor vehicles will not be banned from city centres in the near (or middle-distant) future, and we’ll carry on – and speed up - fracking!

The Consequences

          On Monday 8^th December the local Daily Gazette had the front-page headline We’ve got to build 21,000 homes by 2032.  The headline didn’t relate to the Gazette’s complete circulation area but simply to the borough of Colchester.  The adjacent authority of Tendring District – comprising the coastal towns of Clacton-on-Sea (where I live) Brightlingsea, Walton-on-the-Naze, Frinton-on-Sea, Dovercourt and Harwich and the rural hinterland of the Tendring Peninsula, has a similarly ambitious building programme with one substantial housing estate to be built immediately adjacent to the boundary with Colchester.

            Wonderful news for those of the homeless who are willing and able to buy their own homes.  I suspect though that very few of those dwellings will be ‘social housing’ – owned by the local authority or a Housing Association and available for letting at a reasonable rent.   Good news too for workers in the building industry who will have the promise of work for nearly two decades – and I have little doubt that the major supermarket chains will increase their stake in the area, providing new branch retail outlets to meet almost every need of the new home buyers and their families.

            But it will only be almost every need.  We have so far heard nothing of the provision of other essential services that do not yield an early profit for the provider, such as education and the Health Service.   21,000 new homes in Colchester and a similar number in the Tending district suggest that there may be as many as 30,000 extra children all needing education in the next decade and a half.  Are there any plans to build new schools for them?

            As for the health services in the Clacton/Colchester area; the currently available services are already proving woefully inadequate for the existing population.  They are quite incapable of dealing with perhaps an influx of perhaps 60,000 new residents.  Colchester General Hospital is under ‘special measures’.  Appointments for diagnostic examination of serious medical conditions are postponed and then delayed indefinitely because of a failure of the medical staff to be present when promised and of the administrative staff to find a locum.  Less medically serious but affecting a great many patients and their friends and relatives, is the inadequacy of the car parking facilities at the Colchester General, whether for keeping appointments at out-patient clinics or for visiting in-patients.  This has been made worse by the transfer of services from the Essex County Hospital which is to be demolished and the site used for bungalow building (more potential patients!) in the future.

            In the ‘front line’ of our health services are the many medical practices throughout the district.  It seems that the situation is much more serious in Clacton, Frinton and Walton than it is in Colchester.   I have been with the same medical practice in Clacton since my family and I moved here in 1956.  There were then two doctors (both Scots and astonishingly similar to the Dr Finlay and Dr Cameron of tv’s Dr. Finlay’s Casebook!).  Since those days the practice has doubled the size of its premises and had many changes of doctors. I have been very pleased and happy with the service that my family and I have received from them.  They have seen my two sons through their childhood illnesses.  They cared for my wife who had recurring ill-health.  I particularly appreciated the doctor who called every day as my wife’s life was ending, and (against the advice of the district nurse) supported my determination to keep her at home and to care for her to the end.   They have patiently and professionally looked after me through the health problems of old age.  

However I have seen the number of doctors grow from two to, at one time, six and then decline to the three that it is today.  I am quite sure that if I had a serious medical condition one of those three doctors would see me without delay but it is becoming increasingly difficult to get an appointment with the doctor of my choice. They badly need at least one more – preferably two more – doctors.  They are obviously quite incapable of dealing with an added influx of patients. It’ll be wonderful for there to be a home for everyone who needs one – but I hope that some thought has been given to the inevitable consequences.

The Ukraine

            The conflict in eastern Ukraine isn’t the bloodiest or the most devastating war in today’s sad world (though it has the potential of developing into World War III, if the world’s political leaders are even stupider than I think they are), but it is of particular interest and concern to me.  That’s because it is possible that  some of those on both  sides of the conflict, could be the grandchildren of the friendly ‘Ostarbeiters’ (men and women from Russia and the Ukraine) who, as 'forced labourers' were often my fellow workers when I was a prisoner of war at a small working camp in Germany from 1943 till 1945.  We shared our labours and we shared our work-breaks. Often, in broken non-grammatical German, we shared parts of our life-stories too.  We were all good friends and good comrades against our Nazi bosses.

            An uneasy cease-fire currently exists over eastern Ukraine but my interest was revived when I heard a tv commentator remark that the ill-fated Malaysian air liner, shot down with the death of all its crew and passengers, had been a victim of the ‘cross-fire’ between the warring factions. ‘Crossfire’?   It was surely flying several thousand feet above that!  The black boxes, examined by international experts revealed that  the plane had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile but that there was no way of telling which side had fired that missile.  One thing is quite certain.  Neither side deliberately shot down a Malaysian passenger air-liner.  Whoever did so had wrongly imagined they were targeting a high level enemy bomber.

            Most people in ‘the west’ probably believe that the eastern rebels (aided and encouraged by Russia) were responsible.  One snag about that idea is that the rebels possessed no ground-to-air missiles or the means of projecting them to their targets.   There were unconfirmed reports from the Kiev government that a Russian missile launcher had been seen passing surreptitiously into Ukraine. However, the American CIA found no evidence that Russia had been involved in the plane’s destruction. Had there been any such evidence I have little doubt that the CIA, with very few scruples and spies in every country, would have found it!

 The rebels are also said to have delayed the United Nations inspectors in their examination of the wreckage, mostly in rebel-held territory.  The fact is that the rebels didn’t delay the UN inspectors – it was the Kiev government’s continued shelling of the search area that did that.  The rebels found and handed the plane’s ‘black boxes’ over to the UN authorities (they could easily have ‘lost them’ had they thought they might establish their guilt).  Immediately the ‘black boxes’ had been despatched to Britain for opening and examination, a spokesman for the Kiev Government announced that they had established the rebels’ guilt.  At that stage they hadn’t even been opened!  It is clear that the Kiev Government was desperately eager to persuade the world that the rebels were guilty.    

            Suppose though that that  government, knowing that the rebels had no air force of their own to respond to their  continual air attacks, had expected them to seek Russian help.  They may well have possessed ground-to-air missiles, the means of firing them, and the skill needed to do so  As a ‘sovereign state’ they could purchase any weapons that they chose to, and train their soldiers to use them.  Those in charge of their air defences might well have been ordered to look out for high-flying Russian bomber aircraft – and have been told that any large unidentified aircraft flying in Ukrainian air space was likely to be Russian.  So – it is surely at least as likely that it was Kiev Government forces as the the pro-Russian rebels, who brought down that Malaysian air liner, believing it to be a Russian bomber. Their eagerness to blame the rebels with little or no evidence, adds credence to this idea.

              Most responsibility though for that tragic accident must surely be borne by those in Malaysia who had routed a vulnerable passenger air liner directly over a conflict zone.  Only a month or two earlier another Malaysian air-liner had been lost without a trace – and still nothing has been discovered about the cause of that air liner’s disappearance.   Nor do we know, even approximately, where the disappearance took place.  I don’t think that Malaysian Airlines would be my first choice were I to be considering long-distance air travel!  

            For the sake of Ukraine, of Russia, and of the whole world, I hope and pray that those who may be the grandchildren of my friends from long ago, will come to an agreement acceptable by both sides, stop killing each-other, and co-operate to maintain the peace and increase the prosperity of the whole region.  I wish them all a very Happy Christmas and a New Year of Peace and Hope. 

                  

           

Week 34 2014

Tendring Topics……on line

Sleep Walking…….into war!

           Just before 5 p.m on every day from 28^th June 1914, the centenary of the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo, until  4^th August,  the centenary of the date on which the UK declared war on Germany,  BBC’s Radio 4 gave listeners a brief account of that day’s events one hundred years earlier, as recorded in contemporary newspapers and official documents.

            I found the account fascinating. It seems clear that it was several weeks before it occurred to anyone in Britain that that assassination could possibly have anything to do with us.  ‘An assassination in Sarajevo, where’s that? In the Balkans? That’s the sort of thing that they do there isn’t it? An Archduke?  I thought they were to be found only in comic operas. These foreigners!  There’s really no accounting for their ways.

            Besides, there were lots of much more worrying things happening nearer home; in Ireland for instance.  Ireland was an important part of the British Empire. There was a serious and imminent risk of civil war there over the question of Home Rule.  Most Irish people were Roman Catholics and wanted Home Rule but in the north there was a Protestant majority who would resist any move in that direction. Ulster will fight – and Ulster will be right! was a slogan of the day.

            Then there were the militant suffragettes; women demanding the right to vote in elections and breaking windows, chaining themselves to railings and throwing themselves in front of race horses to draw attention to their cause.  Arrested, they refused to eat and were cruelly force-fed. 

            There was also labour unrest and the threat of a general strike.  There were plenty of things to worry about at home without having to give thought to foreigners murdering each other in, to quote a more recent Prime Minister, ‘a faraway country of which we know very little’.

            Meanwhile, the ripples from that murder began to spread.  It had occurred in Bosnia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  The perpetrator was a Serb who wanted Bosnia, many of whose population were ethnic Serbs, to be free of Austrian rule.  The Austrian government, which would have liked to add Serbia to its empire, was quite convinced (or convinced itself) that the Serbian government had orchestrated the assassination.  They presented Serbia with a very strongly worded ultimatum that would, in effect, have robbed the Serbs of their national sovereignty.

            Serbia however, had a very powerful ally in Imperial Russia. Austria-Hungary also had a very powerful ally in Germany, and Russia had another powerful ally in France.  Just outside this system of alliances was the United Kingdom and its great Empire.  Close friends though we were with France and Russia, we had no treaty obligations to join with them in case of conflict.

            The Serbs agreed to all but one clause of the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum.  That wasn’t enough for the Austro-Hungarians.  They declared war on Serbia and ordered their army to invade and attack Belgrade.  Like falling dominoes, the alliances came into effect.   Serbia asked for Russian support.  Austria then asked Germany and Russia asked France to honour their treaty obligations.   We don’t generally think of the German Kaiser as a peace-maker but, perhaps sensing what was to come, he asked his cousin, the Tsar of Russia, to cease mobilisation of his army.  It was too late.  The major powers of Europe were at war with each other.

            Only the UK remained at peace – and there was a strong peace movement in Britain.  We might well have remained neutral had the German High Command not decided that they must avoid a war on two fronts. They could best achieve this by quickly defeating France and then turning, with all their strength, on Russia.  This, they thought, could be done by attacking France through Belgium.   And that brought Britain into the war.  We were bound, by a treaty dating back almost to the Battle of Waterloo, to defend the neutrality of Belgium.   Thus began World War I. In the 1920s and ‘30s we called it ‘The Great War’.  Millions were killed, millions more were maimed.  It was supposed to be ‘the war to end wars’ but, in fact, the peace treaty imposed by the victors made World War II, just 21 years later, inevitable.

 All of this would have been solely of historical interest were it not for the fact that some events today are uncomfortably similar to those in 1914.  We have a rebellious faction in Eastern Ukraine who have taken up arms against a new government in Kiev.  The ‘west’ is quite sure that the rebels are supported and provided with arms by Russia – just as the Austro-Hungarians were quite sure that the rebels in Bosnia who were responsible for the assassination of their Arch-Duke were puppets of the Serbian Government.

            Ukrainian Government Forces are mercilessly shelling and bombing towns and villages in the rebel held areas, killing civilians on a similar scale to the much-more-publicised shelling and bombing of the Palestinians in Gaza, and preventing the proper inspection of the wreck of the air-liner that the rebels are accused of shooting down.   To help the victims of this bombing and shelling the Russian Government is, with the knowledge of the International Red Cross, sending a convoy of lorries bringing humanitarian aid. The President of the Kiev Ukrainian Government says that this convoy will be refused admission to Ukraine.  What will happen then?  If his troops attempt to stop the convoy by force does he really think that NATO will support him – and risk a third world war?  If so, I sincerely hope he is wrong.

            This possibility though, does illustrate the dangers of ringing Russia with small potentially hostile, NATO states – and declaring that an attack on any one of them is an attack on NATO, which will respond appropriately.  It was a system of military alliances that led to World War I.  I hope (though I’m far from confident!) that the world’s governments are not so stupid as to allow a similar system to lead them into World War III.

Recent and still breaking news

            The news about that Russian convoy of lorries bearing humanitarian aid to the homeless and shell-shocked folk of Eastern Ukraine is mixed.  A solution to the problem of the delivery of that aid appears to have been solved in an extremely sensible manner, and one that is a credit to both the Russian and the Ukrainian negotiators.  The contents of each vehicle are to be inspected by  Ukrainian Government officials and then driven, by their Russian drivers to a destination in eastern Ukraine. There the humanitarian aid will be distributed by representatives of the International Red Cross.  That should quell Ukrainian fears that the lorries might prove to be ‘Trojan horses’ loaded with weaponry for rebel fighters. TV cameras have brought to viewers images of the contents of two lorries, selected at random. They were filled with food for  the hungry and tents for the homeless.

            Rather more worrying is the fact that reliable witnesses have seen one or more Russian armoured vehicles crossing the border from Russia to Ukraine.  This, needless to say, is causing David Cameron ‘serious concern’ and making him talk threateningly about ‘further consequences’.   It should, I think, be remembered that the areas each side of that particular part of the frontier are populated by the same ethnically Russian people, many of them probably related, and all on the Russian side shocked by the way rebel cities and towns are being ruthlessly shelled by the Ukrainian army.  The rebels, for all their small-arms and captured tanks and armoured vehicles, have no artillery with which to respond to that relentless bombardment and no air force with which to attack their enemies. I don’t think it would need the prompting of Vladimir Putin, hundreds of miles away in Moscow, to make some of those on the Russian side of the border decide to go to the assistance of their embattled brethren. 

              More encouraging is the news that Russians, Ukrainians and representatives of the Ukrainian rebels are meeting in Berlin in a day or two's time to try to find a peaceful solution to this terrible civil war.  I hope they succeed.

The latest news - this morning 18th August.

I do not believe that a single aid vehicle has yet been allowed to enter east Ukraine.  The Kiev Government insists that they are carrying arms, despite the fact that their officials have been invited to inspect them.  I really believe that the Kiev government is deliberately provoking Russia in the hope that their reaction will bring NATO to the rescue! 

 ‘This is today’s news…….

          One day last week IS (Islamic State) terrorists had driven thousands of Christian and other non-Muslims from their homes in northern Iraq and compelled them to seek temporary shelter in barren mountains – devoid of water, food or shelter.  The USA had carried out air strikes on IS forces that were claimed to have slowed down (but not halted) their advance.  There was an uneasy truce in the Holy Land between Israel and the people of the Yemen.  The World Health Organisation had authorised the use of drugs that have not yet been rigorously tested, in a last-ditch attempt to stem the pandemic of Ebola that was currently rampant in parts of West Africa.  Ebola in a potentially fatal infectious disease for which there is, so far, no vaccination and no effective treatment.  Which of these, I wondered, would be the lead story on BBC tv’s news bulletin at 6.00 pm?

No, it was nothing to do with any of the above.  The lead story, that took up at least one third of the half-hour news bulletin, was about an American entertainer, an alcoholic and a drug addict, who had taken his own life during a period of depression.  We had a résumé of his life, his film and other successes, comments on his struggle with drink, drugs and depression and a few words of adulation from Barak Obama President of the USA.

There's no doubt that Robbie Williams was a very gifted entertainer with fans world-wide  – but I would have expected his decease to have deserved a mention only towards the end of a British news bulletin on a day in which nothing much else was happening either in the UK or the world!

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!

Week 20 2014

Tendring Topics…..on line

The Odessa Steps – déjà vue?

          One of the most striking sequences in The Battleship Potemkin, a very early classic silent film, is of the massacre of unarmed protesting civilians by the Tsar’s Cossacks on the Odessa Steps, a giant stairway providing the main access to the town of Odessa from the Black Sea.  The film tells the story of the mutiny and takeover of the Potemkin in 1905 by its crew, provoked by brutal treatment and maggoty rations.  At about the same time there was an attempted revolt against the Tsar in Moscow and elsewhere throughout Russia.  The revolt was put down with extreme brutality.

            The Potemkin with its mutinous crew put in at Odessa and the mutineers were supported by the town’s people.  The film, directed by Eisenstein, shows them gathering on the Odessa Steps  (elderly men and women, students, a mother with a baby in its pram) to welcome the mutineers,  and being massacred by Cossacks and other of the Tsar’s troops.   It is a very vivid and memorable sequence, subsequently much used for propaganda purposes.  I saw the film for the first time two or three years ago and it certainly impressed me.

            History records though that it didn’t actually happen – not like that anyway.  In Odessa there were demonstrations in support of the mutineers and of the revolt against the Tsar.  The Tsarist troops did respond and did quell the revolt with brutality – but there was no spectacular massacre on the Odessa Steps.

            Perhaps in time to come someone will make a film about another massacre that took place in Odessa a week or so ago.  Again there was a public protest – this time against the pro-western government in Kiev and in support of the pro-Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine.  It seems though that there was also a rival demonstration by supporters of the Kiev government – described by their opponents as violent Fascists and Nazis.  Violent they certainly were.  They drove the pro-Russian demonstrators back to take refuge in the local trade union building, and then threw in petrol bombs setting the building on fire.  There were over 40 victims – either burnt alive by the fire, or dying when leaping from upper windows to escape the flames.

            Meanwhile the police watched – and did nothing.  Who knows?  Perhaps there were so many pro-Kiev demonstrators that there was nothing else they could do.

            A glance at a map of Ukraine will make clear the significance of the events in Odessa.   This Black Sea port is many miles south-west of ‘eastern Ukraine’ where many of the inhabitants are ethnic Russians and most of them favour closer ties with Russia rather than with the EU and NATO.   It is clear that in Odessa and, no doubt, in many parts of Western Ukraine there are a considerable number – though probably a minority – of residents who have a similar outlook.   I expect too that in Eastern Ukraine there is also a minority loyal to the Kiev government.  That being so, any system of Federal Autonomous regions would leave large numbers of people still feeling that they weren’t represented.

            I think that if Ukraine is to have anything like a lasting peace ‘the West’ and the Russians need to forget their ‘cold war’ enmity and co-operate instead of competing both economically and politically.  We all face a common enemy in militant extremist Islam.  The USA the UK and other NATO countries, the Russian Federation and China have all suffered from the acts of terrorism of the jihadists.  They need to pull together, with mainstream Muslims both east and west, to defeat them.   Squabbling over Ukraine is just a distraction from the real struggle (Tony Blair got it right for once!) that faces civilisation.  

            Russia and the EU should break down the trade barriers between them and give Ukraine equal access to each economic bloc.  Ukraine’s permanent neutrality should be guaranteed by both NATO and the Russian Federation.  The reduction in Ukrainian defence spending that could follow such an agreement, plus economic access to both the EU and Russia, would surely give a tremendous boost to the country’s economy and give it the possibility of achieving a living standard equal to, or higher than any in the world.  Both the EU and Russia would also benefit.  The only losers would be the armaments manufacturers who thrive on ‘wars and rumours of wars’!

I wish I thought that there was even the remotest chance of all that happening!

‘Bloodshed divides, prayer and forgiveness unite’

          Thus declared Russian Quakers after they had recently considered the situation in the Ukraine..  They called for restraint by all parties and abstention from violence in any form.  ‘We are for purely peaceful and non-violent activities in defence of their claims and protection of their rights by everyone, regardless of which group of the population they represent in Ukrainian society. .Peace cannot be enforced by military means and no circumstances can justify armed warfare.

Note – Quakers have had a long and friendly relationship with Russia.  Two Tsars; Peter the Great in 1697 and Alexander I in 1817, joined Friends at Meeting for Worship when visiting England. Also in 1817 the Tsar invited English Quaker Daniel Wheeler to plan and supervise the drainage of the marshes and reclaim land near St Petersburg – a task that engaged him for thirty years!   A daughter-in-law of novelist Leo Tolstoy was a Quaker, and British and American Quakers were active in famine relief and other relief and rehabilitation work in Russia in the aftermath of World War I, the revolution and civil war.  In 1921 alone British and American Quakers fed some 212,000 people.  They remained a presence there throughout the 1920s.

The present Quaker presence is centred on Friends House Moscow.  Type Quakers in Russia or Friends House Moscow into Google, for a wealth of information on the subject.

Applause for David Cameron…….again!

            A fortnight ago I applauded David Cameron’s declaration that the UK is a Christian country and that we should be glad that of it.  This week I am again endorsing one of his public statements. No, I haven’t changed my political outlook. I don’t think I could ever vote for an election candidate from his party – unless, of course, it seemed to be the only way of preventing a U-kipper from topping the poll! There are though surely some topics on which all people of good will and compassion will agree and act.  David Cameron found one of them when he denounced, with real passion, the evil acts of the Boko Haram terrorist organisation in burning down a school in a remote part of Nigeria, abducting some 200 teenage girl pupils and threatening to sell them into slavery or forced marriage. Subsequently the same organisation has kidnapped more teenage girls and carried out more murderous terrorist acts in the same country.

            Mr Cameron was quite right too in pointing out that these were not isolated acts committed by a small group of terrorists in a remote part of Africa.  They are part of a loose movement of fanatics who practise a perversion of Islam that subjugates women, detests ‘western’ education especially for women and girls, and seeks to gain God’s approval by carrying out a hate-filled jihad of violence against everything that the rest of the world values.  They were responsible for ‘9/11’, for the tube bombings in London and for the many bomb outrages in Russia, including those before the winter Olympics in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad).  I fear that they are to be found among those whom Britain and the USA have been supporting, trying to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria.

            The USA the UK, France and China have all volunteered to assist in securing the liberation of those kidnapped girls.  I am sorry that Russia is not among them.  They have had longer and more recent experience of dealing with jihadist terrorists and could probably have offered valuable help and advice.  It is also important that we should obtain the vocal and visible support of the great majority of Muslims.

            We have seen them take to the streets in protest when their Koran has been burnt or defiled, or their prophet insulted.  I’d like to see them do the same about the abduction, imprisonment and sale into slavery of those Nigerian teenagers.  They, the majority of peaceful Muslims who are happy to live in peace and friendship with those of other religious faiths, have the greatest reason for supporting the downfall of the extremists.  In the short term, acts like those of the Boko Hara and other Islamic terrorists, fan the flames of Islam-phobia.  ‘Phobia’, it should be remembered, means fear.  The acts of these terrorists give others cause to fear.

            Then again it is only the contents of the Holy Book of any religion that are sacred.  The book itself is the work of human hands.  If one copy of the book is burnt or defiled, a hundred other copies can be printed to replace it.  But each one of those abducted teenage girls is precious, a child of God, created by God in his own image, unique and irreplaceable.  To defile, misuse or deliberately injure any one of them is a most grievous sin.   To claim, as these extremists do, that they are doing so in obedience to God’s will is surely the ultimate blasphemy.  It is the sin against the Holy Spirit that Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet of Islam and much more than that to Christians, declared to be the one unforgivable sin.

            The deliberate harm of even one of God's children evokes more sorrow – and perhaps anger - in Heaven than the burning of a score of holy books.  I hope that the majority of peace-loving, tolerant Muslims will denounce with fervour these acts of terror and blasphemy by those who claim to share their faith, and will support efforts to end their activities.