Week 26.10

Tendring Topics…….on line

‘Non Angli, sed Angeli’

‘Not Angles but Angels’. These are said to have been the punning words of Pope Gregory the Great when in 573 A.D., before his elevation to the Papacy, he enquired about the origins of some young blue-eyed and fair haired slaves in a Roman slave market*. He had been told that they were called Angles and came from a remote heathen country called England on the very edge of the known world. It was an incident that is said to have led to his sending Augustine across Europe and the English Channel to convert the English to the Christian Faith.

Had political correctness been a fad of 6th Century Rome as it is of 21st Century Britain, he would have been instantly urged. ‘Please don’t call them “angels”. There are none in their religion and it will give them ideas above their station in life. In any case, quite a few of our keenest customers are non-Christian. Calling those slaves angels will bring down their price!’

These were some of the thoughts that went through my head when I read in the Gazette that a Charity called Whisperers, that tries to console and support the grieving parents of stillborn babies, had been chided by Colchester General Hospital for referring to these babies as ‘new little angels’.

Jenny Collins, senior midwife at the hospital is reported as saying, ‘We are not happy about the use of the word “angel” on a card giving information about Whisperers, because we suspect that it has the potential to offend some parents at what is an extraordinarily difficult and sensitive time for them. Not all religions believe in angels and secular people certainly do not’.

I can’t claim to be knowledgeable about ‘all religions’, but I do know that angels feature in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths and what little I know of Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs suggests to me that they wouldn’t in the least mind still-born children being referred to as ‘new little angels’. Nor I think, would any of the many ‘secular people’ of my acquaintance.

A few people (not necessarily those obsessed with ‘political correctness’) may quibble about the use of the word ‘angel’ for the souls of the departed. Angels, they may inform us, are God’s messengers and are a quite separate creation.

However, the man who was to become Pope Gregory the Great used the word loosely in the sixth century to describe Anglo-Saxon slaves. In the nineteenth century Cardinal John Henry Newman used the word in much the same sense as Whisperers do today, in the last two lines of his hymn, ‘Lead kindly light’

Then, with the dawn, those angel faces smile,
That I have loved long since – and lost the while.

With such distinguished examples, Christians at least can surely not object to the word being used to bring some comfort to bereaved parents whose grief and loss are really beyond consolation. I think that it is patronising and impertinent to assume knowledge of what will, and will not, give offence to other people.

*No, I don’t know why Pope Gregory and, for many centuries, Christians of every tradition, tolerated the institution of slavery. Jesus Christ condemned it when he said (Matthew 7.12) that the whole of the moral teaching of the Old Testament, “The Law and the Prophets”, could be summed up as “Treat other people exactly as you yourself would wish to be treated” – a little piece of fundamental Christian faith and practice that clearly rules out slave trading and slave owning.

We don’t yet know the half of it!

My idea of a ‘good’ budget is one that tends to narrow the gap between the richest and poorest in our nation. A ‘bad’ budget is one that widens it. It follows that it is a long time since I saw a good budget.

Nor is the present one an exception, though it has some good points. I am sorry that my former colleagues in the public service are having to pay for the economic crisis with a two-year pay freeze (in a time of continuing inflation this amounts to a pay cut, as David Cameron when pressed, was forced to agree) while others, whose folly and incompetence triggered the crisis, continue to enjoy huge salaries and bonuses.

There’s a rather harsh Spanish proverb that asserts, “Take what you want”, says God. “Take it…..and pay for it!” True enough - the trouble is that it is rarely those who take who have to pay!

I am glad that public servants earning less than £21,000 a year are exempt from the freeze and that they are to receive a flat rate increase of £250 a year. I think that we have to get away from the pattern of percentage increases. These can give the impression that the Chief Executive and the lower ranks of an organisation are having identical pay increases while, in fact, they are wildly different. Inevitably every across-the-board percentage pay rise, increases the gap between the highest and the lowest paid. Eventually, as we have seen, it results in some top officials enjoying a higher salary than the Prime Minister!

I am glad that the threshold of income tax liability has been raised (even though, as an over-65 year old, it doesn’t benefit me!) so that many people on low pay will be exempt from paying income tax in the future. However, it doesn’t do anything for those whose incomes were so low that they weren’t liable to pay tax anyway. We’ll all be affected by the increase in VAT to 20 percent. I remember Mrs Thatcher assuring us that VAT was one of the fairest taxes because it was the same for everybody and one had the choice of paying it or not. I don’t think that the householder with a leaky roof or the motorist who needs an urgent repair to his car to get to work, has much choice in the matter.

Many comfortably off folk (The ‘Middle England’ about whom the Express and Mail are always so concerned) will suffer as a result of cuts in means test related benefits, and some will be affected by the increase in Capital Gains Tax. I see little sign of the seriously wealthy (the owners of football clubs, luxury yachts and second homes in the Caribbean) being seriously, or even modestly, inconvenienced by the budget.

I am getting a little tired of hearing David Cameron and Nick Clegg saying how sorry they were to have to increase VAT and cut benefits but ‘there simply wasn’t an alternative’. Really? When they hadn’t considered the possibility of a modest one or two pence increase on income tax, and no one is even allowed to think about axing the vastly expensive and totally useless Trident Submarine programme.

And – there’s more to come. We don’t yet know the half of it. Every government department except Health and Overseas Development is to cut its budget by 25 percent – a quarter. We shall know the effect of this in October. It doesn’t take a clairvoyant to see an autumn and a winter of discontent looming ahead.

Does this mean that Nick Clegg and his colleagues have betrayed the electors by joining in coalition with the Conservatives? Perhaps, but without them things could have been even worse. At least the desires of right-wing Climate Change Denying Europhobes (like our MP) have been curbed. And does anyone really imagine that the income tax threshold would have been raised, that there would have been any rise at all in Capital Gains Tax, and that ‘Middle England’ would have been in any way discomforted, had it not been for the influence of Nick Clegg and his not-so-merry men.

Was it worth it? We’ll just have to wait and see.

A blog reader’s comment.

I wouldn’t pretend to be able to assess the effects of the Budget, and of cuts yet to come, on the national economy. However, here is the opinion of a regular blog reader who is much more knowledgeable in this field than I am – and who has an enterprise of his own, serving the public sector, likely to be directly affected.

'I am very concerned that the 25 percent cuts will make it impossible to win new business for the next five years. Perhaps even worse, this level of cuts – coupled with the same sentiment elsewhere in Europe – may cause negative growth, reducing tax receipts, and prompting another round of spending cuts and a vicious spiral downwards. I think they have taken a huge gamble, and that a more cautious approach would actually have been safer'.

Carry on working!

I took early retirement from Tendring Council shortly before my fifty-ninth birthday in 1980. I had no intention of sitting back and enjoying inactivity (for one thing, I couldn’t have afforded to!) but immediately embarked on a new career as a freelance writer. I wrote advertising features for Essex County Newspapers (now Newsquest Ltd) and for twenty-three years contributed a comment column Tendring Topics to their free newspaper Coastal Express. The column was the predecessor of this blog, Tendring Topics……on line.

My retirement presentation (Left to right) myself, Heather, Councillor Fred Good, Chairman of the Council.

I also wrote half a dozen commercially successful books on domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage, provided the plumbing section of a number of nationally sold DIY Manuals, and wrote a regular feature on the subject for Do-it-yourself Magazine, as well as answering readers’ queries on the same subject.

For years my wife Heather and I had recouped part of the cost of the camping holidays we had enjoyed every year by writing articles about them, with photographic illustrations, for the camping and caravanning press. In retirement we exchanged our frame tent for a motor caravan and continued with this practice.

I worked hard throughout and beyond the first twenty years of my retirement, perfecting my writing skills and effectively supplementing my pension. My wife Heather was a partner in everything I did. We both enjoyed every minute of it.

Myself, aged about 70, surrounded by my books and with a copy of the ‘Coastal Express' by my left wrist. This was before I had been introduced to the joys of computing, and I am using a Brother electronic typewriter.

It might be thought that I would therefore be wholeheartedly in favour of a later retirement age. I had carried on in paid employment (though very little pay as my output dwindled!) until I was over eighty. At sixty-five I must have been in my prime.

Quite so, but I retired voluntarily to do what I had really wanted to do throughout my life. I certainly wouldn’t have wished to carry on beyond 65 doing any of the jobs (public health inspection, housing management, public relations!) that I had done for the Council. I think that folk should have the option of carrying on working after 65 but that they shouldn’t be compelled to do so unless of course, they are incompetent as well as old!

The government is eager to get people capable of working, out of benefit and into paid work. They would, so it seems, like to do much the same with us pensioners. At the same time their policies ensure that there are fewer and fewer jobs for any of us to do.

During World War II there was a widely used propaganda poster announcing in large letters: From the Home Secretary: Three words to the whole nation: ‘ GO TO IT!’ To which an irreverent reply was, ‘OK – but where the ‘ell is it?’

A dire calamity!

Oh dear! England lost that knock-out match against Germany, and our World Cup Dreams have, once again, been shattered. It's true that the England team’s earlier performances in the World Cup matches - draws with the USA and Algeria and a one-goal win against tiny Slovenia – hadn’t inspired much confidence. Hopes had been raised though and I am sorry they have been shattered. Yes, I know that it’s only a game and doesn’t really matter. Thousands think that it does though, and I’m sorry about their disappointment.

Week 9.10

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Thirty Years On

During March 1980, just thirty years ago, I took early retirement from the post of Public Relations Officer to the Tendring District Council, severing a service to local government that had begun way back in 1937 at the age of 16. I hadn’t intended to retire early, but a proposed reorganisation by the Council’s new Chief Executive (Mr Richard Painter) devalued my services to a degree that I couldn’t accept without losing my self-respect.

On the day I left the Council’s service we had a splendid unofficial party in my office. I bought the drinks, my colleagues the food! My colleagues gave me a ‘professional’ tripod for my camera and life membership of NALGO – now UNISON. The official farewell from the Council (see above) took place a few weeks later. The Chairman of the Council (Mr Fred Good of Harwich), a councillor whom I had always liked and respected, presented me on behalf of the Council, with a pair of Greenkat Binoculars and Heather with a bouquet of flowers.

At the time early retirement had seemed a complete disaster. The press constantly tells us how good public service pensions can be, but mine amounted to just half my far-from-generous salary (I was never one of those ‘highly paid officials’ one reads about!), and I wouldn’t be entitled to my state pension for over six years.

Like many of the apparent disasters that have overtaken me in my life, my early retirement turned out to be one of the best things that have ever happened to me. I immediately obtained a part-time job as an advertising feature writer with what was then Essex County Newspapers (they evidently felt that since, as PRO, I had managed to ‘sell’ Tendring Council, I could sell anything!) and another part-time job as advertising feature writer to a regional magazine Look East, devoted to promoting East Anglian enterprise. I was also invited to write a weekly comment column Tendring Topics in the Coastal Express, a task that I carried out for twenty-three years and am continuing, on line, in this blog!

I became a part-time lecturer and publicity consultant for the Further Education Colleges in Thorpe-le-Soken and Frinton, I wrote half a dozen or more commercially successful books on domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage, as well as the plumbing sections of a number of diy manuals, together with a great many feature articles on local government, environmental health, do-it-yourself plumbing, camping, caravanning, continental travel and so on, for specialist and general interest publications. It was nice to discover that my services were appreciated in the commercial world if not in that of Tendring Council’s Chief Executive!

I have sometimes wondered if Mr Richard Painter, who didn’t stay very long with Tendring Council after my departure, ever realized how much I had benefited from his insulting assessment of my duties.

A Perennial Problem…..and possible Solution

Britain is said to be a nation of dog-lovers – but that love is by no means either unconditional or universal. Nobody likes walking on dog-fouled pavements. Today there does seem to be less of that particular nuisance in Clacton’s streets than there was when I was personally involved with the problem as a Public Health Inspector and later as Tendring’s first Public Relations Officer.

Exercising dogs on some of Tendring’s beaches is prohibited, and they’re not welcomed in other recreational areas. Elsewhere in any town, they are expected to be ‘under control’ – on a lead at all times. Where, say exasperated dog-owners, can we exercise our beloved four-legged-friends freely? A solution may have been found in Ipswich which (despite the fact that I have lived in Clacton over three times as long as I ever lived there!) I still think of as my ‘home town’.

A correspondent to the East Anglian Daily Times writes:

While visiting friends in the vicinity of Ipswich’s Britannia Road, they suggested that I visit the dog park with my dogs and take theirs as well.

This turned out to be a most worth-while visit, as next to the fenced off playground for all the different ages of children with different sports facilities for each, was an enclosed area for dogs and their owners to come at any time of the day or evening.

This area was perfect for the dogs and their owners, where they could let their dogs off their leads to run free. They couldn’t escape so both they and their owners could relax, the owners sitting on the benches provided. There was a paved path round a grass area, complete with water bowls and dog bins.

The owners enjoyed the company of other dog lovers while the dogs ran free and played with each other. I have to say there is almost never any dog mess about; no doubt the owners want to keep it that way.

It sounds idyllic though the image of a number of dogs playing happily and quietly together does strain my credulity just a little. I certainly feel though that it is an experiment that deserves further investigation.

First Class Travel

A recent edition of the Daily Gazette carried a picture of Colchester’s Lib.Dem MP, Bob Russell, travelling up to London in a 1st Class carriage; the implication being that he should have travelled 2nd Class.

During my almost-seven-years with the then-new Tendring District Council my status was just high enough to qualify me for 1st Class travel on the very rare occasions that I had to go up to London on official business. I had never before in my life travelled first class, though in my days as a POW I had considerable experience of cattle truck travel!

Anyway I did travel 1st Class for the Council on one or two occasions*. It meant that I could read the relevant papers on my way there and back and that I didn’t arrive at Liverpool Street or back in Clacton, already exhausted. It was certainly worth it to me and I hope that it may have been to the Council. In these days of lap-tops and mobile phones I can see that 1st Class travel could have other advantages for ‘official’ travellers.

Thus, while I am appalled by many of the extravagant claims for expenses made by some MPs (including my own), I don’t grudge any of them 1st Class travel between London and their constituencies. They are entitled to this privilege and I am sure that most of them have a far better reason for taking advantage of it than MP Sir Nicholas Winterton who, when asked why he chose 1st Class rather than 2nd, replied that ‘you get a totally different type of people’. I bet he doesn’t mind accepting the votes of ‘the other type’, even if he doesn’t care to travel with them!

*Some blog readers will recall that, last July, I travelled 1st Class between Brussels and Dresden. Once again it was well worth it – all the more so because my grandson had bought the tickets for specific trains, well in advance. We thus managed to travel 1st Class at 2nd Class prices! The picture above shows me travelling 1st Class and in unaccustomed luxury on the Deutsch Eisenbahn.

Crematorium Services

Last week in this blog I commented fairly light-heartedly on the fact that Colchester’s burial and crematorium services were in difficulties because there simply hadn’t been enough local deaths, and indignantly on a suggestion that farming the services out to a private firm would solve the Council’s problems.

This week though, I have been giving some thought to our own, Tendring District's cremation service. We have a first-class crematorium a little over 20 years old, on the outskirts of Weeley,standing in a peaceful, spacious and well-kept garden that, remote from the district’s cemeteries, has nothing about it of the inevitably melancholy atmosphere of a burial ground.

Since its opening in 1986 I have attended a great many funeral services there. I have said my final farewell to former colleagues and acquaintances for whose passing I felt no more than mild sadness, to dear friends whose deaths caused me great distress and, nearly four years ago now, to my own dear wife who had shared my life for sixty years and whom I shall never cease to mourn.

A feature of every single one of those funerals has been that of anxious haste. The crematorium authorities permit only 30 minutes per funeral, and that includes the mourners filing in and sitting down, and their departure. In effect, that means that the funeral service itself can last little more than twenty minutes and that as one group of mourners leave another group is preparing to enter. Twenty minutes may well have been fine when the greater part of most funeral services took place in a church or chapel, coming to the crematorium only for the brief committal. This is much less likely to happen today.

The whole operation has an unfortunate resemblance to an industrial assembly line. This isn’t the fault of the Crematorium staff. My experience suggests that they are unfailingly helpful and understanding. It is simply that our Crematorium is usually operating at maximum capacity.

A week ago, a kind friend drove me to the funeral of another dear friend at Ipswich Crematorium. Here the atmosphere was very different. We arrived half an hour early and, to my surprise, were able to take our seats in the crematorium chapel (appreciably larger than that at Weeley) right away. I was glad that we were early because my friend had clearly been well loved by a great many people. Every seat was soon occupied and there were people standing at the back. The service was unhurried, reverent and, I am sure, helpful to my friend’s bereaved husband and other close relatives. There were two hymns and two personal testimonies to my friend’s life as well as a Bible reading and a contribution from the officiating clergyman. At the close of the service it took some time for us all to file from the well-filled chapel. I estimate that that one funeral must have occupied the chapel for at least an hour and a half.

How was it done? Well, Ipswich has two crematoria both on the same site, each with its own chapel, waiting room and toilet facilities. Perhaps, I thought, Ipswich has a much bigger population than we have. I looked it up on ‘the web’. The population of Ipswich is 128,000, that of the Tendring District 138,000 and that of Colchester 156,000. It is, of course, likely that Ipswich’s crematoria also serve the surrounding countryside as Colchester’s crematorium did before we had our own facility at Weeley.

That said, I still think that the Tendring District Council needs to consider the provision of a second crematorium if we are to make our final farewells to our loved spouses, relatives and friends with the dignity and solemnity that the occasions deserve.