Week 30 2011 2.8.2011

Tendring Topics……..on Line


‘Thou shalt not………


A recent issue of the Church Times, an independent Anglican weekly, records that to celebrate the fourth centenary of the King James Bible, York University had organised a competition, asking five to sixteen year olds to compose a new ‘Ten Commandments’ for the 21st Century. Some of the entries contained practical advice ‘Don’t leave the bathroom light on, the world is short of energy’, ‘Don’t build nuclear power stations where there are likely to be earthquakes or tsunamis’. Some were modern paraphrases of the original Ten Commandments: ‘Don’t worship celebrities’, ‘Try to see everyone gets a fair wage for his work’. One, possibly from a reader of the now defunct ‘News of the World’, advised ‘Don’t snog the wrong person and, if you do, don’t try to cover it up with a super-injunction’.

This report prompted me to revisit a 19th century parody of the Ten Commandments by Victorian poet, Arthur Hugh Clough, possibly best known for his inspiring ‘Say not the struggle naught availeth’. The Latest Decalogue lampoons a false piety and a cynicism that was apparently as common in the 19th century as it is in the 21st. Here are a few of the verses:

Thou shalt have one God only, who
Would go to the expense of two?


No graven images may be
Worshipped except the currency.


Honour thy parents; that is - all
From whom advancement may befall.


Thou shalt not kill, but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive*


Thou shalt not steal, an empty feat,
When it’s so lucrative to cheat**.


Do not adultery commit,
Advantage rarely comes of it.


Thou shalt not covet, but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.


*I have just heard on BBCtv news that some Hospital Managers are delaying operations in the hope that before the operations are due and the NHS has to spend money on them.  patients will decide to ‘go private’ –or will die!   How well the Hospital Managers have heeded that ‘commandment’!


**And how well some of our elected representatives have heeded that one!

Yet another step down that slippery slope!

It started – was it only four months ago? – with the imposition, authorised by the United Nations, of a no-fly zone over Libya to protect the civilian population from air attack by Colonel Gaddafi’s forces. That, so it was confidently expected, would be sufficient to topple the Colonel’s ramshackle autocracy.

It wasn’t, and almost at once first France and then Britain began air attacks on Libyan government tanks and other ground forces ‘to protect innocent civilians’ and also, of course, to support the rebel forces ranged against the government. Quite quickly eastern Libya (Cyrenaica) where Gaddafi had never been popular, fell to the rebels. Surely Tripolitania (western Libya) would soon follow. It didn’t. It became clear that an army of untrained volunteers, however enthusiastic, couldn’t stand up effectively to Gaddfi’s tanks, artillery and disciplined infantry. Some volunteers, who had demonstrated their machismo by firing their rifles into the air (no wonder the rebels are permanently short of ammunition!) discovered that being under fire from a real enemy with heavy weapons wasn’t quite so much fun.

It also became clear that in and around Tripoli Gaddafi enjoyed a great deal of genuine support.

Britain and our allies stepped up our involvement. The scope of the bombing was widened to include arms dumps and command posts, some within Tripoli itself. There were well-publicised deaths of the civilians we were supposed to be protecting.

We began to use helicopters to give closer support to rebel forces on the ground. Still Gaddafi obstinately declined to abdicate his power.

Now another step towards all-out war has been taken by our government. We have declared our recognition of the rebels as the lawful government of Libya. This should make it possible for us to release frozen Libyan assets to allow them to purchase more arms from us. It could also be an excuse for us to put troops on the ground ‘in response to an urgent request from the legitimate government of Libya’.


This evening (26th July) on BBC News I heard John Simpson explain why it was that the rebels hadn’t yet managed to capture Tripoli. It was Libya’s awful climate. During the summer the heat was so great that touching metal objects, a rifle for instance, could burn your hands. After about 10.30 a.m. fighting was impossible.

I wish someone had told us that when we were there. The barrels of our guns, undoubtedly made of metal, must have been a real danger – and not just to the enemy!

Can John Simpson really be unaware that between 1940 and 1943 there were opposing European armies in both Libya and Egypt? Ferocious tank battles and artillery engagements took place each summer. Believe me, the Libyan weather was among the least of our worries. In North Africa, World War II certainly didn’t stop between 10.30 in the morning and the cool of the evening!

Why haven’t the rebels taken Tripoli yet? Probably because they are a disorderly and undisciplined – if enthusiastic – rabble. It now seems that their ‘supreme commander’ has been assassinated because of doubt about which side he was supporting! They are not, I would say, our government’s most reliable allies.

What an ignorant lot we are!

It seems that we Clactonians are the most uneducated community in North Essex and that the folk of Harwich, just a few miles away, are among the best!

A University and College survey among people between the ages of 16 and 64, revealed that 23 percent (nearly a quarter!) of those in that age range in the Clacton Parliamentary Constituency, have no qualifications whatsoever. In the Harwich and North Essex Constituency this applies to only 7.4 percent, in Colchester 8.7 percent, Braintree 10.9 percent, Maldon 13 percent and Witham 10.4 percent. Clacton is well above the national average of 11.1 percent.

This concerns our MP Douglas Carswell, who I am sure wouldn’t wish it to be suggested that he has voter ignorance to thank for his comfortable majority. He points out that a great many people move here after having been educated elsewhere. Quite so, but a high proportion of them will have come here for retirement – and that takes them out of the age range. The County Council says that we Clactonians are trying to rectify the situation. 3,400 of us enrolled on Adult Community Learning Courses last year. But – again I wonder – how many of those 3,400 are over 64?

In the 1930s most working class kids left elementary school aged 14 with no paper qualifications whatsoever. The great majority though could read, write and do simple sums.  They also had a sketchy knowledge of history, geography and very simple science.  At school they were expected to work hard - and were punished if they didn't! 
A more valid reason for Clacton’s low educational standing is the effect of those who move out, rather than those who move in. In the Clacton area there simply aren’t the jobs for academic high flyers – so they move out to London or Ipswich or some other town where their abilities are more likely to be in demand. .

My sons both regard Clacton as their home town and are glad to come back here – but neither of them has ever even thought of living and working here. In 1971, my elder son was one of four Clacton County High School pupils who obtained a place in Cambridge University. Many others in that academic year went to other universities. It would surprise me very much to learn that any one of them is still in Clacton.

I would also like to know on what information the University and College survey was based. I wouldn’t have thought that information about everyone’s qualifications was readily available. I am well outside the age range of the survey but I haven’t always been. How could anyone know, unless I told them, the details of my own modest academic achievements?

The Evil Empire

Day by day we seem to learn a little more of the depths to which the Murdoch press was prepared to sink in pursuit of its mercenary aims. The evil effects of the press campaign for ‘Sarah’s law’ have always been at least as evident as its ultimate dubious benefits. It brought lynch mobs out onto the streets hunting down paedophiles. Obviously totally innocent people suffered. You can’t expect a regular reader of The Sun or The News of the World to appreciate the subtle difference between a paedophile and a paediatrician!
Now, as more and more victims of phone hacking come to light we learn that Sara Payne, mother of the abducted and murdered Sarah, who had fondly imagined that Rebekah Brooks was her friend, had also had her phone hacked!

But all the phone hacking, all the intimidation of politicians, and all the bribing of the Police were simply by-products of the greater, ultimate evil – that one very wealthy man from a foreign country was able to influence and exert his power over the makers of British Government policy both at home and overseas and, through his news media empire, influence public opinion and decide the outcome of British elections!

Two recent programmes on Channel 4 tv confirmed that the Murdoch influence on our politicians was even greater and more malign than I had suspected. Did you know that, since he became Prime Minister, David Cameron has made no less than 26 visits to News International senior executives? When the great Rupert himself was invited to No 10 Downing Street, he was asked to come to the back door – presumably in an attempt to keep the visit from the public’s notice.

Tony Blair was even more sycophantic. Mrs Thatcher and Gordon Brown also regularly consulted and consorted with Mr Murdoch and his minions. An honourable exception was Prime Minister John Major. As a result he was treated to constant derision by the Murdoch press. Radio and TV personality Anne Diamond was singled out for even more savage special treatment by the Murdoch press for having had the temerity to accost and beard Rupert Murdoch at a posh reception to which they both had been invited.

I believe that the influence of Rupert Murdoch and News International on our country has been wholly evil but, even if it had been good, it would still have been quite wrong for one wealthy individual, not a British citizen, to be able to exercise such a profound influence on our nation’s policy makers and public opinion.

I hope most fervently that our legislators will make absolutely sure that similar circumstances can never arise again. I shall never trust politicians who have succumbed to the Murdoch spell.

Week 22.2011 7.6.2011

Tendring Topics………on Line


‘He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,
He hath put down the mighty from their seats’


These words from St. Luke's Gospel, part of the Magnificat as printed in the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer came to my mind as I read in the local press the story of the trial and conviction of Lord Hanningfield.

Regular blog readers will recall that Lord Hanningfield, then leader of Essex County Council, had been the subject of criticism in this blog long before there had been any question of his facing a criminal trial. I saw him as bombastic, arrogant, publicity seeking and dictatorial, always ready with a news conference or a photo opportunity when there was any credit to be gained from it, or when he had one of his ‘ground-breaking new initiatives’ to announce, but quite prepared to leave the spotlight to someone else when (as for instance with their record in the field of child care) the County Council was found to be failing.

He was going to ‘Save the Naze’, ‘Regenerate Jaywick (by wholesale demolition!), ‘Take over failing Post Offices’, ‘Establish an Essex Bank where Essex entrepreneurs could obtain the finance they needed’ (few applied to it and those who did found that it was less helpful than ordinary commercial banks!), establish an Essex County Council Branch in mainland China to boost the county’s exporters (whatever happened to that ground-breaking initiative, I wonder?)

He led a campaign ‘To give Essex jobs to Essex men and women’, castigating other public authorities that sometimes gave contracts to firms in Suffolk or other nearby counties. He then, ‘saved taxpayers millions of pounds’ by contracting the County Council’s IT services out to a giant international corporation with its HQ in the USA – not just ‘not in Essex’ but not even in Europe. Oh yes, of course it did mean that a few dozen Essex men and women employed at the County Hall in Chelmsford lost their jobs. You can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs!

While the County Council, under his leadership, was embarking on all these exciting activities they were, at the same time, selling off all their old people’s homes and failing their child care responsibilities. Lord Hanningfield wasn’t solely to blame. Almost equally culpable were his colleagues on the County Council, applauding and blindly following his lead.

It didn’t occur to me at that time that he might be criminally dishonest. I knew nothing about his claim for expenses as a member of the House of Lords. I did know though that he engaged in a great many very expensive activities for the County Council. There were, for instance, his globe-trotting trips – usually with top officials or favoured councillors – to China (the Olympics), India, the USA, and elsewhere, always, of course, on county council business! Were his official County Council car and driver sometimes to be seen at the House of Lords, as Colchester’s MP Bob Russell suggests? I don’t know, but I am very pleased that the Police are now examining very carefully his County Council expenses claims. The Council’s own internal audit may well have thought that it would be unwise to look too closely at the expenses claims of quite such a powerful and influential member.

Lord Hanningfield has yet to be sentenced. A lady with whom I was in conversation in my doctor’s waiting room last week, remarked, somewhat venomously, that she hoped he would be sent to jail. She was one of his Lordship’s victims – a county council employee made redundant from her job of supporting the sick and disabled. I would be satisfied if he were prepared to admit his guilt, refund the money he has obtained by fraud, and apologise. Not a bit of it though. After being found guilty Lord Hanningfield told reporters, ‘I’m devastated, but I have no regrets’. I am sure that he genuinely believes that he was too important to be expected to fill in claim forms properly, like other lesser folk. He had thought, as we know, that he was too important to be tried in an ordinary criminal court. He considered that he should have been tried, if at all, by his equals (his peers) in the House of Lords! The supreme court decided otherwise.

Before being ennobled on the recommendation of Mrs Thatcher and with the approval of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, Lord Hanningfield had been Paul White, a successful Essex pig farmer. He is a bit old to take that up again – but I expect that he has managed to put a bit aside for his old age. I hope so. He surely wouldn’t want to live on the state pension, plus whatever means-tested benefit his reduced circumstances might entitle him to claim.

NB. Lord Hanningfield’s defence included the plea that members of the House of Lords receive no salary for their services. Quite so – but they do get a tax-free ‘attendance allowance’ of £300 a day for every day that they put in an appearance there, even if they only stay for ten minutes. I reckon that that is the kind of ‘no salary’ for which many people would be happy to swap their paid employment.


Meanwhile………


I was absent from Clacton (and England) for less than a week but, quite apart from Lord Hanningfeld’s nemesis, an awful lot seems to have happened world-wide while I had my finger temporarily ‘off the pulse’.

In Libya we are being drawn inexorably towards full active participation in a civil war. Allied bombing raids are effectively preventing pro-Gaddafi forces from defeating the insurgents, but the ill-disciplined, untrained and ill-equipped forces ranged against them are equally incapable of advancing to victory.

Britain is now using Apache helicopters to give close support to ground forces opposing the Gaddafi regime. These are capable of attacking individual armoured vehicles or gun positions. The French are using their own helicopter gunships for the same purpose. In being able to engage the enemy more closely, low flying and relatively slow helicopters are themselves much more vulnerable to attack from small arms or ground-to-air missiles than are missile projectors or high altitude bombers. We must expect losses – and casualties.

On 1st June the Daily Mirror revealed that there are now experienced British mercenaries, former SAS men, financed by our government, strengthening the insurgent forces. The government has not denied this and it therefore seems very likely that the report is correct. How long will it be, I wonder, before David Cameron and his associates will decide that in order to fulfil the United Nations’ mandate to ‘protect civilians' and to protect our own helicopter crews, there is regrettably no alternative to putting troops on the ground?

There is no sign of an end to the conflict in Afghanistan where the regular toll of British lives continues almost daily. The NATO general in command there says that it will be at least another year before we can think of beginning to withdraw troops. He’ll probably say exactly the same in twelve months time! It seems such a short while ago that Barak Obama’s generals were assuring him that they just needed another 30,000 men to secure a victory. Agreeing to that request was a decision that he may well live to regret. Of course, if the Taliban were foolish enough to engage in battle with the NATO forces they would be heavily defeated. But it isn’t that kind of a war. It is a war of ambush, of opportunist sniper attack, of booby traps, land mines, and of enemy activists infiltrating both the civilian population and the forces ranged against them. It is a war that can go on forever. It is a war that we may never completely lose – but that we can never win.

Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan when their government realized that – and a bloodbath of Soviet collaborators followed. Sooner or later our governments will realize it too. If I were an Afghan supporter of the country’s present government (or an Afghan woman enjoying a measure of freedom and independence under the current regime) I would be making plans to get out of that benighted country before it is too late!

Waiting for a Miracle?


I mentioned Holland-on-Sea’s missing beaches in this blog a few weeks ago. They are still missing and Tendring District Council seems to be viewing their loss remarkably philosophically; fatalistically in fact. The official attitude seems to be that freak weather conditions led to the sand being washed away and, in the fullness of time – Weeks? Months? Years? – weather conditions will replace the lost sand. It is, I suppose, always easy to be philosophical over other people’s problems.

In fact the weather conditions leading up to the disappearance of the sand were not particularly freakish. There had been several days of onshore winds but I have known stronger winds, and ones that blew for a longer period. I think that the explanation, offered by Mr Richard Powis’ one of the beach hut owners affected, and cogently argued in the Letters Page of the Clacton Gazette, is at least equally likely. He points out that never in living memory has the sand been so comprehensively swept away from any of our beaches (it has certainly never happened in the fifty-six years that I have lived here). In recent years though the neglect of groynes and breakwaters at right angles to the water line has allowed the existing sand to be washed away, and the construction of sea defences at Holland Haven has prevented the natural replenishment of the beach from the crumbling cliffs

I would have thought that the Council should have urgently been considering bringing in loads of sand to rebuild those sandy beaches that are among our district’s major attractions. It is a task that has been undertaken elsewhere and has proved effective.

In the meantime, and until the sand has been replaced, natural justice surely demands that hut owners should receive a rebate on the fees that they pay to the Council. As beach hut owners point out, they pay the council for the use of beach hut and if there is no beach the Council could be considered to be failing to fulfil its part of the contract.

‘Labour Rabble Rousers’


That was how Tendring Council Leader Neil Stock dismissed a lobby of about thirty people, including members of the Tendring Pensioners’ Actions Group, who were urging councillors not to support a plan to give newly appointed Chief Executive, Ian Davidson, sweeping powers which could put the jobs of as many as one third of the Council’s workforce, some two hundred employees, at risk.

I wonder if he would have been quite as contemptuous of the distinguished group of financial experts, some of whom had been recently employed by the government, who have warned David Cameron and his colleagues that their policy of cuts, and yet more cuts, is proving counter-productive. It is killing any possibility of growth in the economy, ensuring that tax revenues don’t go up and payments to the unemployed don’t go down. Probably because of a stalled economy in the USA and austerity measures in Europe, manufacturing isn’t steaming ahead as hoped, despite what amounts to a twenty-five percent devaluation of the pound.

A successful businessman and regular reader of this blog has reminded me of his forecast that this would happen. He says gloomily, ‘However I am pretty sure there won’t be a U-turn, too much political capital tied up in this, and a fundamental belief that, even if it doesn’t turn the economy round, the public sector needs to be cut down to size’, adding – even more gloomily – ‘Not that I think that Ed Milliband would have a clue what to do if he ever gets elected’.

It is not a very cheering prospect. Locally the protest lobby was in vain. In the final vote 33 councillors voted to give the Chief Executive the powers for which he had asked, 12 voted against, 4 abstained and one was absent.

Mr Davidson now has the power to agree voluntary redundancies and impose compulsory redundancies as long as he delivers the same service. He must also refer to councillors any ‘significant change’ in the way the services are delivered. These extra powers are expected to deliver £4.4 million savings over the next four years.

The proviso ‘as long as he delivers the same service’ may seem by some to be an adequate safeguard of Council services. It is hardly that. Redundancies have immediate effect. A gradually reduced or deteriorating service may not attract serious attention for days, weeks, perhaps months. And by then it will be too late.

Perhaps Mr Davidson can work miracles – but I think that it would be unwise to count on it!