21st May 2015

Tendring Topics……….on line

……and in the rest of the World

            I have been preoccupied with the British General Election in recent weeks and have barely mentioned the two devastating earthquakes that have taken place in Nepal, and the appalling loss of life there.  They certainly demonstrated humankind’s helplessness in the face of the forces of nature, and our inability either to forecast the occurrence of natural disasters or to counter or modify their power. It may be that events in Nepal will teach us all a little much needed humility, but terribly sad that this should have been at the cost of so much destruction, so many innocent lives lost, and so much human sorrow.

            Then there have been the thousands who have seen Europe as a promised land of wealth and prosperity and have tried to reach it from African and Middle Eastern poverty and strife – and the hundreds who have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in the attempt. Our efforts have all been towards saving their lives and preventing their attempting that hazardous journey.  We may slow them down but they’ll still keep coming.    Ought we not to give some thought to the reasons for their flight and help them to make their homelands better places in which to live?

            There has been one unequivocally good thing that has developed on the world scene in recent weeks, and that is the restoration of normal relations between the USA and Cuba.  Ever since Cuban rebels overthrew the corrupt Batista regime in Cuba and, under their leader Fidel Castro, established their own Communist government, the USA has tried by one means or another to secure a regime change.  The failed Bay of Pigs invasion from the USA (which could certainly not have happened without United States help and encouragement) resulted in Castro asking for help from the Soviet Union.  They sent some missiles and we had the Cuban missile crisis that could have developed into a nuclear World War III.  Fortunately the Soviet Union withdrew its missiles and the US government made sure there were no further attempts at armed invasion from the USA.

Instead the USA cut off all diplomatic relations with Cuba, tried to isolate it from South and Central America and from the rest of the  world, and its CIA made several comic opera attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro Cuba’s President. These included, would you believe it, a gift of exploding cigars!   A new U.S. President stopped these assassination attempts.

With external threats reduced, the regime mellowed (it had long been a paradise of freedom and human rights compared with – for instance – Britain and the USA’s ally, Saudi Arabia.  President Obama, to his credit, is resuming normal diplomatic relations.

I had hoped that the commemoration of the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe might have brought about a similar effort on Britain’s part to bring an end to current hostility towards Russia.   Have we forgotten that from 1941 to 1945  Russia, or the USSR as it then was, was our ally – and had been our ally against Nazi Germany for rather longer than the USA?   What’s more, not only had the people of the USSR suffered far more than those of any other country at the hands of the invading Nazis, but they had contributed more than any other country towards Victory in Europe and the destruction of Nazism.  Winston Churchill acknowledged this when he declared that The Red Army tore the guts out of the Wehrmacht’

 I spent the final eighteen months of World War II as a POW at a ‘working camp’ (Arbeitskommando) in a small town in eastern Germany.  I well remember how our spirits rose when we heard artillery fire in the east during the bitter winter of 1944/1945, as the Red Army advanced through Poland into Germany itself.  At first a faint murmur, the sound increased almost daily to a roar.  We knew that the day of our liberation was close at hand.  And so it was.  On 7^th May 1945 we could hear the chatter of machine gun fire as well as the thunder of the guns as we were marched, with armed guards, southwest into the Zittau mountains and away from the battle-zone.  The following day our guards, having heard that the war was over, deserted us – and we made our own way home.  With a mate, I hitch-hiked through Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia at first to Prague, then on to Pilsen, where we encountered the American army. They transported us by air to Rheims and the British Army.  I walked through the door of my home in Ipswich at about 10.00 pm on the 18^th May – just ten days after VE Day.  By a fortunate coincidence it was my twenty-fourth birthday!

Had it not been for Hitler’s mistake in invading the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 I have little doubt that Britain would have been invaded and occupied.  Even if the USA had eventually won, the war would have dragged on for at least another two or three years.  Very likely I would never have returned home.  Many POWs didn’t.

I have never forgotten the debt that I owe to the Russian army and to the Russian people.  I am sorry that Angela Merkel, an East German who has probably learned from her parents and grandparents something of the horrors of modern warfare, was the sole ‘western leader’ who joined with President Putin and hundreds of others in the commemoration of Russia’s loss of tens of thousands of men, women and children, who had died in what the Russians call their Great Patriotic War.  I am not, of course, referring to the depressing display of military hardware on the anniversary of VE Day but the much quieter and more peaceful commemoration on the following day.

David Cameron quite thought, until he was corrected, that the United Kingdom was ‘junior partner’ to the USA in the struggle against Hitler in 1940.  I hope that all blog readers are aware that Britain ‘stood alone’ in that fateful year, that the USA was neutral and that many Americans (including the US ambassador to the UK – the patriarch of the Kennedy clan!) were determined that their country would remain neutral.  It follows that David Cameron may not be aware of the USSR’s leading role in Hitler’s defeat – or even perhaps, that they were our allies in World War II.  He certainly gives that impression.

‘The west’ is cold-shouldering Russia and applying economic sanctions because of Russian activities in the Ukraine. What on earth are they expecting to achieve?   Do they seriously hope to return the Crimea to the rule of the Kiev Government in the Ukraine against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the peninsula’s population?    The Crimea had been part of Russia since the rule of the Tsars.    It was ‘gifted’ to Ukraine by Nikita Khruschev during the period of his presidency of the USSR, without any thought of consulting the residents.  It made little difference at the time because both Crimea and Ukraine were part of the Soviet Union as they had both previously been part of the Tsars’ Empire. Crimea was recovered by Russia after a referendum established that that was the wish of the Crimean people.  David Cameron claimed that the referendum took place ‘under the shadow of the Kalashnikov’ but a recent opinion poll commissioned by the Ukrainian Government in Kiev emphatically confirmed that wish.

The people of the eastern provinces of Ukraine wished to retain their Russian ethnicity and the Russian language and traditions.  We saw on tv news bulletins the non-violent resistance of men, women and children to the incursion of Kiev government tanks and armoured cars.  The Kiev government used its military superiority to enforce its rule – and the eastern Ukrainians responded in kind.  Thus civil war broke out, costing thousands of lives.  Remorseless shelling of residential areas in rebel-held areas by government forces has resulted in over a million civilians crossing the border and seeking political asylum in Russia.

Peace overtures, supported by Germany and France but not by the UK, resulted in an uneasy ceasefire and the resumption of peace talks.  The Kiev Government insists that what is taking place is an invasion of eastern Ukraine by the Russian army – they criticised the Pope for referring to ‘the civil war’ in eastern Ukraine!  Since the cease-fire, UN observers and British journalists have been present in the rebel-held areas.  They would surely have noticed – and reported – the presence of Russian army units.  I think it quite likely that the Russians have supplied the rebels with arms and that Russian volunteers have strengthened the rebel forces.  We do know that the UK has supplied the Kiev Government with armoured cars and is sending British army units to train government forces in ‘defence’, although the rebels have neither the ability or intention of invading western Ukraine.  The Kiev government tries continually to involve NATO in the civil war that has resulted from its obstinacy.  I notice that the BBC’s news bulletin always refers to the Ukrainian rebels as the ‘Russian backed rebels’. Perhaps they should also refer to the Kiev government as the ‘British backed Kiev Government’.  The UK is, I think, the only NATO or EU country that is so blatantly backing one side in this civil war.

For goodness sake – it’s time that we reviewed the sanctions that are harming British interests as well as Russian, and made real efforts to bring about a permanent peace in the area.  We should be talking to the Russians.  It was Winston Churchill again who remarked that jaw, jaw is always better than war, war – and Churchill had had more experience both of patient negotiation and of the realities of warfare than most of us.   Both sides must make concessions.  The Kiev government must be made to realize that they can’t ethnically cleanse eastern Ukraine of Russian culture and influence and the rebels must, in the cause of peace, be prepared to accept something short of full independence.  With a permanent peace established, both the ‘west’ and Russia must come together to rebuild Ukraine and undo the damage done by this disastrous civil war …….or would we really prefer to walk blindly into World War III? 

   

 

           

Week 34 2013

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Fracking

A’fracking we will go,

 A’fracking we will go,

Because our toil

Will find the oil

That makes the economy grow, grow, grow!

That makes the economy grow!

The above ditty, which I offer free of copyright to anyone who wants it, could well become a popular playground song of the 2020s though only, of course, if a strictly non-profit-making activity like singing is permitted by the Directors of the Education Industry (by then fully privatised and market sensitive) during primary schools’ productive leisure periods, formerly known as ‘playtimes’.

‘Fracking’ is by no means the most attractive and melodious word to have been introduced into the English vocabulary by modern technology – but it seems likely to be one to which we will have to accustom ourselves.  It is a shortened form of ‘hydraulic fracturing’, a means of extracting gas and/or oil from hitherto inaccessible, but apparently plentiful, reserves of both these sources of energy in beds of shale deep below the earth’s surface.

Like the coal, gas and oil to which we are accustomed they are ‘fossil fuels’ and thus doomed eventually to come to an end.  However they will – if exploited - reduce our current dependency on oil and gas from distant and unreliable overseas sources.  They will also postpone, perhaps for many decades, the exhaustion of these sources of energy and their inevitable increase in price as they become depleted.   What a relief to politicians – no need to persevere with those unpopular wind and solar energy farms!   No expensive and unpopular barrages to be built across the Severn and other estuaries to harvest tidal power!  That’ll really confound the ‘green lobby’, and trim the wings of UKIP and other organised opponents of green energy!  A government that welcomed fracking (thousands of jobs, smaller fuel bills, cheaper petrol – perhaps) should surely gain thousands of votes. Any serious troubles that may arise from it are probably several general elections away!

There will be trouble of course.  The process of fracking, if I have understood it correctly (and if I haven’t I’ll gladly publish any corrections that blog readers send me!) is to bore vertically a mile or more down from the earth’s surface, lining the borehole with concrete to prevent seepage of pollutants into the subsoil; then, when a pre-determined depth has been reached, extending the bore-hole horizontally for perhaps another mile underground. The ideal situation, I understand, is for the horizontal excavation to be through porous sandstone between two strata of shale.

Now the work that gives the operation its name begins.  Water, charged with grit particles, is forced under very high pressure into that horizontal bore-hole.   The pressure fractures the shale beds (the actual ‘fracking’) and grit carried by the pressurised water prevents the tiny fractures from closing again.   The water is then pumped out and oil and/or gas that had been held within the shale leeks into the bore-hole from those fractures.   The borehole becomes a well.

As I typed those last two paragraphs the sequence of events seemed to become more and more improbable with every word I typed!   However, fracking has been carried out with success for many years in all parts of the USA and has been proved to be successful in this country too.  There are snags about it.  The actual fracking is done deep underground but the surface works are extensive and, to say the least, unsightly.  Pictures have been shown on our tv of no-doubt formerly attractive countryside in the USA turned into desolate – but highly profitable - wasteland.  The fracking operation has been known to cause earthquakes – only small ones perhaps but earthquakes none the less! As well as the despoliation of the environment, fracking brings very real dangers of pollution of lakes and rivers and, in particular perhaps, of aquifers or natural underground water reservoirs.

Unsurprisingly, like sewage treatment works, landfill refuse disposal sites and waste incinerators, no-one wants a Fracking operation anywhere near their home.  They are the ultimate NIMBY (not in my back yard!)

Lord Howell, Mrs Thatcher’s Environment Minister and George Osborne’s father-in-law (a weighty thinker if there ever was one!) recently gave members of the House of Lords his valuable thoughts about the future location of Fracking wells:

‘But there are large and uninhabited and desolate areas. Certainly in part of the North East where there’s plenty of room for fracking, well away from anybody’s residence where we could conduct without any kind of threat to the rural environment.’

            Geordieland is certainly ‘well away’ from Westminster and from  London’s ‘stockbroker belt’ but I doubt if the residents of Newcastle-on-Tyne,  Durham and other North-eastern  cities would agree that their beautiful  unspoilt countryside and coastline were ‘desolate areas’ offering ‘plenty of room for fracking without any kind of threat to the rural environment.’’

As it happens it seems that beds of shale offering rich pickings to frackers are distributed pretty evenly over – or rather under - ‘England’s Green and Pleasant Land’  There are areas of southern England where the residences of  some of the government’s most loyal (and wealthy and generous!) supporters are to be found, that are particularly promising.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our Prime Minister demonstrated his enthusiasm for this exciting new wealth-creating enterprise by encouraging one or two trial holes to be bored in Buckinghamshire (not a heavily populated county) in the immediate vicinity of Chequers!

I think fracking is a very interesting idea that may well have a great future – but I’m quite glad that no geological map of England I have seen shows any sign of oil-or-gas bearing shale strata beneath the fertile fields, wind-swept heathland, winding estuaries and salt marshes of East Anglia!

…….as others see us!

 

Ray and Ingrid

            I had a very pleasant surprise on Sunday 12^th August.  Ingrid my German friend of many years standing, and her English partner Ray had been entertaining two sixteen year old German girls from the Bayreuth area of Bavaria who were for the first time paying a short visit to England.  The previous day they had taken them on a lightning tour of London, seeing Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, the House of Commons, London Bridge and Tower Bridge, the London Eye and Oxford Street.

            Sunday was their day to see the English seaside.  Where better than Clacton-on-Sea with which Ray was familiar (his home is in Ipswich) and Ingrid has visited on two or three previous occasions.  They spent the morning and the early part of the afternoon on the pier and the beach and called on me, for a cup of tea and a chat, at about 4.30.

            I found the two visitors to be very courteous and friendly young ladies who were full of teenage enthusiasm for England and everything English.  They had thoroughly enjoyed their visit to London, where they had seen all the places they had heard about or seen on German tv.  I was astonished that they commented on the cleanliness of London’s streets – though it is some years since I have been to the capital and over sixty since I lived there. Perhaps things have changed since those days.

            They were no less enthusiastic about Clacton.  I am glad they saw us at our best.  It was a warm and sunny day at the beginning of carnival week.   They had thoroughly enjoyed themselves on the pier and on Clacton’s safe and sandy beaches – though of the four of them, only Ingrid had had a swim.  The others found the North Sea too chilly, even on a warm and sunny day in August.  They had been somewhat disconcerted by the speed of the rising tide!  The girls had previously known only lake-side beaches and Ingrid had spent only a brief time on a beach on her previous visits to Clacton. 

The two girls were learning English at school and our conversation took place in both English and German.  Either I said very little (which those who know me best will consider unlikely!) or my German is much better than I had thought it was, because Ingrid emailed me later to say that one of the girls had subsequently asked her if I was German or English!  Be that as it may, it is good to know that two German teenagers have returned from their first visit to England with wholly positive thoughts about our country and about Clacton-on-Sea and the Essex Sunshine Coast.

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