week 12/10

Tendring Topics……on Line

An Easter Message – from Network Rail

The Government, so it is said, is urging us to get out of our cars (no, not me personally; I haven’t got one!) and onto public transport. By so doing we’ll be easing traffic congestion on the roads, reducing petrol consumption and doing our bit to ‘save the planet’.

Occasions in the year when large numbers of us are inclined to travel at the same time, are our public holidays. We don’t have as many as most of our fellow Europeans. Perhaps because of that, we tend to make the most of them – to get away from our town or suburban homes, see friends or relatives and perhaps visit the sea or the countryside.

Two of these holidays are really special – Christmas and Easter. For one thing, both have more than one day of holiday. Both are major Christian Festivals though sadly the ‘Christian’ dimension is now only a minority interest. At Christmas time families of every faith and of none like to get together – and families are much more far-flung than once they were. Easter is the first holiday of the spring. It is a time to get out into the country and enjoy nature as it wakes from its winter sleep, or perhaps to visit the seaside for the first time in the year.

It might have been thought that our railways would have seized the opportunities these universal breaks present. It was, after all, the railways that first made travel possible for ordinary people. I am sure that there was a time when that was precisely what the railways did. In the past the LNER (remember them? The London and North-Eastern Railway) put on extra trains into London and other big cities at Christmas to facilitate family reunions, and provided ‘special offer’ excursion trains at Easter, Whitsun and the August Bank Holiday to take passengers on day trips or for the weekend to holiday resorts like Clacton, Frinton and Walton. I have lived in Clacton long enough to remember crowded trains pulling into Clacton Station on Saturdays, and the local children with their home-made barrows supplementing their pocket money by transporting holiday-makers’ luggage to their boarding houses or perhaps to Butlins Holiday Camp.

Is that what Network Rail and the various railway companies created by privatisation, do today? Not a bit of it. The closure of Liverpool Street Station from Christmas Eve till after the New Year has become as much part of Christmas as Santa Claus, roast turkey and Christmas crackers. We count ourselves lucky if ‘due to unforeseen circumstances’ the closure doesn’t extend days into the New Year.

This year the coming of Easter was welcomed in the Daily Gazette with the headline Easter closures and strike threat spell rail chaos. ‘Work to replace overhead power lines between Liverpool Street and Romford on Easter weekend will cause disruption across the whole of Essex’. There is also a strike threat over plans by Network Rail to axe up to 1,500 jobs and change working practices! Private enterprise and ‘throwing the railway service out to healthy competition’ has certainly made a difference!

We can look forward to the usual Bank Holiday chaos as special buses replacing disrupted rail services join the thousands of motorists taking to the roads over the East Holiday.

Remember the slogan 'Let the train, take the strain?' Perhaps it’s time to add 'But the road must carry the load!'

Essex County Council – an unwieldy and extravagant giant

I have just received my Council Tax Bill for the coming year. I expect that everyone resident in the Tendring District will get theirs during the next day or two. I really can’t complain. I pay my Council Tax by direct debit, in ten instalments. During the next financial year, after the first payment the remaining nine will be just £1 more each month than I have been paying during 2008/2009.

I note that of my total annual charge of £1123.66, Essex County Council gets £845.25, Tendring District Council £105.38, Special Expenses (I’ve no idea what that means) £18.61, the Essex Fire Authority £51.66 and the Essex Police Authority £102.76. On the whole I think that we get value for money from Tendring’s share and I don’t complain about the needs of the Fire and Police Authorities.

I do question the County Council’s £845.25 though – nearly three times as much as the sum of the requirements of the other authorities. I heard Lord Hanningfield, the County Council’s former leader, claim (as he was leaving court where he had been charged with fiddling his expenses) that he had given 40 years of his life to the public service and had saved the County Council ‘millions of pounds’.

If that claim is anywhere near the truth it makes one wonder what the County’s cash demands would have been like without his Lordship’s hand on the tiller!

A ‘Freedom of Information’ request by The Daily Gazette has produced some interesting statistics about the County Council’s staffing and expenditure over the past few years. I knew, of course, that Essex County Council was a gargantuan organisation and, I suppose, the biggest employer in the county. I was nevertheless surprised to learn that in 2005/2006 they employed no less than 38,589 staff either full-time or part-time. The majority of these were in the field of education but there were still 11,669 non-school staff. By 2008/2009 though, the total number had fallen to 37,764 and non-school staff to 10,0069.

You may think this kind of downsizing explains the millions of pounds Lord Hanningfield claims that he and his colleagues have saved. You would be wrong. During the same period, total spending on staff – in schools, at the County Hall and in other offices – rose from £880 million to £997 million.

But that is not the end of the story.

In addition to paying almost a billion pounds to their own employees, the County Council also paid £25.3 million to outside ‘consultants’ last year. This compares with the £14.4 million that they had paid out in this way in 2005/2006.


There are, of course, occasions when any local authority may have to spend a few thousand, perhaps a few tens of thousands, on outside consultants with the expertise to deal with one-off problems beyond the capacity of its own staff. With an authority the size and population of Essex, I suppose that the reasonable expenditure on such expertise might run to a few hundred thousands.

But £25 million spent in a year by an authority that is already spending almost a billion a year on the wages and salaries its own staff? I’d have thought that the £14.4 million paid to consultants in 2005/2006 was well over the top. I’m lost for words (which doesn’t often happen!) to describe last year’s £25 million!

The County Council has clearly become a huge, unwieldy and extravagant tier of administration that should be dismembered and replaced by smaller more local local authorities. I wish Colchester’s MP, Bob Russell, every success in his campaign to secure unitary status for Colchester. I’d like to see similar campaigns in the Tendring District and every other district and borough council in our county.

A Thought for the Thoughtless

In last week’s blog I mentioned motorists who park their cars over dropped kerbs or partly on footpaths, as being among the problems faced by mobility scooterists and by those who push prams or wheelchairs. Scarcely had I posted it on the web when I learned of Brightlingsea’s Considerate Parking Initiative that appears to be dealing with that particular problem. What’s more it is doing so without the kind of heavy-handed officiousness that can be guaranteed to create resentment and antagonism.

Recognising that those who park badly do so from thoughtlessness rather than from malice, drivers of badly parked vehicles are given written notice that they are causing a problem. Ian Taylor, a Tendring Council parking services official involved with the scheme, is quoted in the Clacton Gazette as saying, ‘We are specifically looking at anti-social parking, which doesn’t necessarily contravene any regulations but annoys and upsets people………We want drivers to stop and think about where they are leaving their vehicles and what effect it can have on those around them’.

It especially targets parking in front of dropped kerbs, at junctions and on pavements and grass verges. Street wardens and some council officers issue the notices. These may be followed up by a visit to the offender’s home. Photos are also taken so that persistent offenders can be identified. The scheme has worked in Brightlingsea and is to be introduced in Harwich and Manningtree next month. I hope that the needs of Clacton haven’t been overlooked!

At the risk of seeming preachy, I cannot do other than to point out that the real answer to this, as it is to so many other problems arising from human behaviour, lies in advice given some two thousand years ago, when road transport consisted largely of ox-carts, pack horses, and chariots: ‘Treat other people as you would like them to treat you

How much indignation and anger would be averted if all of us – motorists, cyclists, mobility scooterists and pedestrians always tried to obey that rule.

There are Six of them – and all of them are Great!

I was an ‘only child’, with neither brother nor sister. However an unexpected blessing resulting from my sixty-year long marriage to Heather was the acquisition of a sister-in-law, a fine nephew, and four lovely nieces – all much kinder and nicer to me than a mere ‘uncle-by-marriage’ has any right to expect.

They in their turn have given me five great-nieces and a great-nephew in whom I take pride and interest – and whose birthdays I make every effort never to forget!

Here they are – all together to celebrate two important ones.



Nicola (‘Nikki’) first on the left, had just celebrated her 18th birthday and her cousin Catherine (‘Cat’), fourth from the left, her 16th. Clinging to Nikki is her five year old cousin Rosie. Between Rosie and Cat, is Cat’s twelve year old brother Adam. On the right of the picture, Rosie’s seven-year-old sister Millie is in the arms of Nikki’s sister Tania. Tania, of whom we’re all very proud, is a second year medical student. It astonishes me to realize that she will be twenty-one later this year. It seems such a little while ago that her Mum and Dad brought her to Clacton as a tiny baby to introduce Heather and I to our very first great niece!

They are five great nieces and a great nephew!

Week 11.10

Tendring Topics…….on line

We Mobility-Scooterists are in trouble again!

Ought mobility scooter users face a test before being allowed out onto the pavements on their iron steeds? Ought our mobility scooters to be – like cars – compulsorily registered and insured against third party injuries? These are said to be measures that the government is considering. We in the Tendring District have particular reason to be interested in this since we are said to have the highest proportion of disabled people in Essex. Also, according to the Daily Gazette, our district ‘has witnessed a growing number of accidents involving motor scooters in recent years’.

Have we though? The only evidence the Gazette produces to support this claim is that in 2005 a woman scooter user suffered fatal injuries when her scooter was in collision with a car in Clacton’s Marine Parade East, and in 2006 an 80 year old woman from Walton called for a change in the law after she was hit by a scooter and a Walton toddler ‘was dragged under the wheels of one’ (considering the size of scooter wheels that takes a bit of imagining!). Also in 2006, Tendring Council considered banning scooters from cliff paths and seafront promenades, after a woman on a scooter suffered fatal injuries when she accidentally drove her vehicle off the prom.

If one swallow doesn’t make a summer, four accidents involving mobility scooters that took place between four and five years ago, hardly make a cause for serious public concern today. How many accidents involving cars, commercial vehicles, motorcycles and pushbikes have taken place in our area since 2005? Considerably more, I fancy, than the four in which mobility scooters were involved. We don’t even know in how many, if any, of those four accidents the user of the mobility scooter was to blame.

Having said that, I can’t bring myself to go all the way with Gordon Beare of the Tendring Pensioners’ Action Group who claims that the idea of the test is ‘an outrageous suggestion……..I’m certainly against having to take a test. I’m sure there would be a charge for it, which many elderly people can’t afford’.

I have been a scooter user rather longer than Gordon Beare, and I am not quite so sure. Driving a mobility scooter, crossing busy roads with it and behaving correctly towards other road and pavement users isn’t quite as simple as those who have never tried it might think. Mobility scooters go faster than the average pedestrian (not many people can walk at 4 mph) and they have very powerful motors. It was at least a fortnight after purchase before I felt sufficiently confident on mine to venture into the town centre. I think that some kind of a test might be a good idea. It is unlikely that the test would be free but then mobility scooters aren’t exactly cheap either. Surely most people who could afford to buy one would also manage to find the extra pound or two for the test.

As for registration and third party insurance; registration needn’t cost anything and most responsible scooter users already have third party insurance. I certainly wouldn’t be happy without mine. The low premiums charged testify to the small number of claims that are actually made.

I am fully in agreement with Gordon Beare on one point – the unpredictable and thoughtless behaviour of some other road users can present mobility scooter users with problems. I am particularly wary of pedestrians walking down the middle of the pavement towards me, engrossed in conversation on a mobile phone. They’re clearly not looking where they are going and depend on pedestrians coming towards them stepping aside at the last moment. That is something a scooter user can’t do! I have even seen someone tapping in a text message while striding blindly along the footpath.

Other ‘hates’ that one develops when driving (or should it be ‘riding’) a mobility scooter are the motorists who leave their cars right across the dropped kerbs that we rely on when crossing a road, and those (commercial vehicle drivers are major offenders) who park partly on the footpath, leaving just sufficient room for a fairly slim pedestrian to squeeze through. Motor scooters and, I imagine, those pushing prams or wheel chairs simply can’t get past.

These are a minority though. I have found most motorists, and most pedestrians, to be courteous and considerate. We scooter users must remember that we take up rather more room, and move faster, than pedestrians. It is up to us to cause as little inconvenience as possible to others, to give way on narrow or partially obstructed footpaths, and never to forget to smile, to say please or thank you, and to apologise whenever an apology is due.

Could do better……much better!

What on earth has happened to Clacton’s secondary schools?

Only last week in this blog I commented on the fact that Bishops Gate College and Colbayns High School during 2008/2009, the last academic year of their existence, had the highest truancy rates of any school in Essex! Their general progress showed much to be desired and they have been amalgamated as The Coastal Academy in an attempt to save them from failure. Only time will tell whether or not this move will prove to have been successful.

Two ‘likely lads’! Pete and Andy, the Hall brothers in 1966. Both were pupils at Clacton County High School in the ‘60s and early '70s

At least, I thought, Clacton County High School remains a centre of secondary educational excellence. I hadn’t realized how much that school has changed since the 1970s! Then both my sons were pupils. They were among many who were a credit to the school, and have since
pursued profitable and socially useful careers. In his final year, my elder son was one of four sixth form students who were offered and took up places at Cambridge University. Many others went to other Universities.

Now it seems that Clacton County High School is also in trouble. Following an Ofsted inspection last November, the school was criticised for having inadequate teaching and falling GCSE grades. The report said that its leadership team had not recognised significant weaknesses in the way that it dealt with bad behaviour, and with pupils having learning difficulties. Student attendance was too low and GCSE maths results were consistently below average. Some pupils and parents had also complained that the school’s disciplinary policy was unfair. The Governors were criticised for not questioning high exclusion figures.

I must say that I have some sympathy with the Head-teacher Mr Jeff Brindle in connection with the exclusion of pupils whose behaviour disrupts the education of others. What other effective disciplinary measures are available to head teachers these days? I wonder to which schools Mr Brindle is referring when he claims that his exclusion figures were still ‘lower than other local schools’. Could it be Colbayns and Bishops Gate?

It is amazing how eager those in public office (whether they are MPs referring to their expenses claims or school governors discussing adverse Ofsted reports) are to put unpleasant facts behind them and ‘look to the future!’ My former colleague Bert Foster, now Chairman of the CCHS Governors, says, ‘What is important now is the interests of our students. We intend to move forward, put this report behind us, and build on the many strengths the school has’.

I think that the Governors and Head Teacher should not put that report behind them, but keep it in front of them – as a reminder that they must do a great deal better in the future. I don’t envy Clacton parents with ten-year old sons and daughters about to begin their secondary education.

Another, ‘Modest proposal……..’

Those readers of The Times who are well past the first flush of youth may have been shocked to read an article in which novelist Martin Amis (son of Sir Kingsley Amis) shared with readers his solution to the ‘problem’ presented by our ageing population.

He suggested that we deal with this ‘ticking demographic timebomb’ by providing euthanasia booths on every street corner. If we fail to do this, he suggests, ‘There’ll be a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants, cafes and shops. I can imagine a sort of civil war between the old and the young in 10 or 15 years time’.

Possession of a very fertile and active imagination is, I am sure, on the CV of every successful author. The article was surely a satirical one, in the same vein (and as deliberately tasteless!) as the famous ‘Modest proposal…’ of Dean Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels. In it he appeared to suggest infanticide and cannibalism as a solution to many of society’s problems. Some of his contemporaries imagined that he actually meant it!

It is to be hoped that Martin Amis’ intention was satirical, because a search on Google Chrome reveals that he is himself 60 years old. If there were to be a civil war between young and old in fifteen or twenty years time he could expect to be in the front line – and on what he would now consider to be ‘the wrong side!

A few months ago we were celebrating the life and work of Charles Darwin. Martin Amis’ article is of value in that it graphically illustrates what I think of as ‘Fundamentalist Darwinism’; the conviction that the survival of the fittest is the primary law of nature and that the sole purpose on earth of every living creature (including every man and woman) is the perpetuation of its species. The old, the disabled, the infertile and the impotent have no evolutionary purpose. Therefore they have no place in Darwinism’s ultimate Brave New World. ‘Away with them, to the guillotine, the gas chambers, or the euthanasia booths!’

The Fateful 6th May

It is now almost certain (if not entirely ‘beyond reasonable doubt’) that the General Election will be held on Thursday 6th May. What is even more certain is that its highlight will be a carefully staged and televised debate between the leaders of the three main political parties.

The way in which the debate is to be held and the propaganda that is already preceding it make it even clearer to me that on polling day we will not be expected to choose between different sets of policies (there is not a great deal of real difference between them anyway) or even between political parties, but between three individuals; which one ‘comes over’ best on the small screen! If his party has a substantial majority the winner can expect to be able to exercise dictatorial power for the next five years, since all the rewards (for party loyalty) and all the penalties (for what would be seen as disloyalty) will be in his hands.

It seems to be assumed that a ‘hung parliament’ in which neither of the two largest parties have an overall majority, would be a national disaster. It would mean we couldn’t have a strong government. My experience of strong governments suggests to me that it would be the best possible outcome of the election.

If we hadn’t had a strong government in the 1980s and early ‘90s, we wouldn’t have had the almost universally detested Poll Tax (They really should have known better. An attempt to impose a similar tax in the 14th century had triggered the Peasants Revolt!) If we hadn’t had a strong government in the first decade of the third millennium, we wouldn’t have embarked on a bloody and illegal war in Iraq.

Were there good things that happened under those two governments that wouldn’t have happened if we had had a hung parliament? I suppose that there must have been. Off hand, I can’t think of any though!

Week 10.10

Tendring Topics……on line

The Coastal Academy

Last summer, as all Clactonians know, Colbayns High School and Bishops Park College were transformed into The Coastal Academy, which opened with the new school year in September 2009. The outward and visible sign of this was the appearance on our streets of lots of eleven-to-eighteen year olds wearing the blazer and tie of the new academy. All the pupils, both new and existing, of the former schools were supplied with a free school uniform and free sports gear. This new academy was clearly going to be better funded than either of the two schools from which it sprang! If money had anything to do with it, it would surely do very well indeed.

Has it? The Academy blazers are still in evidence, some as pristine as they were in September, others looking distinctly weather-beaten or battle-worn.

We should have a preliminary idea of the Academy’s academic achievements in a few months’ time when the school-leaving exam results are known. It will be a couple of years though before it will be possible to make a balanced assessment of the academy’s progress. An indication of the steepness of the road ahead is indicated by the recently published ‘truancy league tables’ showing the percentages of truancies (unauthorised absences from school) in 31 Essex secondary schools. The figures relate to the 2008/2009 academic year, the last before the advent of the Coastal Academy.

This is, of course, one of those league tables where the worst are at the top and the very best at the bottom. Leading, and far ahead of every other school in Essex, is Clacton’s former Bishops’ Park College with a truancy rate of 6 percent. Well behind Bishops’ Park but still ahead of every other school, is Colbayns High School with 2.7 percent truancy. Next down the table is Maltings Academy, Witham, with 2.5 percent and so on down to Colchester Royal Grammar School, at the bottom with no truancy at all.

The presence of Witham’s Maltings Academy in the ‘top three’ makes it clear that Academy status doesn’t provide a magic remedy for truancy. Why should it? I am sure that the causes of truancy lie in the home and the out-of-school environment and that it is there that it needs to be tackled. A close friend of mine assures me that the great divide in British society isn’t between the well off and the hard-up, the North and the South, the aristocracy and the rest of us, but between the parents or guardians who believe in the value of education for their child - and those who don’t. There can be no greater handicap for potentially gifted children than parents who take no interest in their education, put other considerations before giving them space and time for their homework, and let them know that the sooner they ‘get away from all that book learning’ and start bringing in some money, the better.

I can’t really see what even the most supportive school or academy can do about such a parental attitude but I am sure that the staff of the Coastal Academy are doing their best. I wish them all success.

A Soup Kitchen for Jaywick?

Just before the end of February, the local Daily Gazette’s front page bore the bold headline SCHOOL SOUP KITCHEN PLAN. The school concerned was the Frobisher School in Jaywick and the news story below the headline revealed that teachers there are so concerned about poor nutrition affecting children’s schoolwork that they have decided to do something about it.

Tracey Caffull, one of the school’s two head teachers was reported as saying that diet was a serious issue for the school as it had a massive effect on pupils’ learning. She said that the children were living ‘in massive deprivation’ and that she had been talking to the Salvation Army about setting up a soup kitchen on the lines of ‘the ones that the Salvation Army runs for homeless and hard-up people in poor areas’. I think she may have been referring to the Soup Run provided in Clacton’s town centre by Churches Together in Clacton, with which the Salvation Army plays an important part. If this charity were to be unable to help, she said that the school would set up its own kitchen.

Keith Bodsworth, the school’s business manager confirmed that, ‘The aim is to improve the nutritional standard of the food our children are getting, but we will not close the door to other people. We are really targeting the community as a whole, and it will be there to support people if they need it. We are a community school and if we can help those around, then we will'. He added that the kitchen would probably not be based in the school in Frobisher Drive but somewhere in the Brooklands area of Jaywick, where many of the pupils live.

I think that there is a big difference between providing soup or whatever for homeless people and those in squats or bed-sits with no cooking facilities as Churches Together does at present, and providing it for a community in which where there are cooking facilities, however basic, and the problem is that its members lack the money, or the skills, or the inclination, to use them.

I am not one of those who claim that ‘there is no poverty in England today’. I know that there is. I don’t believe though that there is any family in our area so poor that its child members are inevitably reduced to ‘massive deprivation’ and semi-starvation. I believe that in the Brooklands area of Jaywick and possibly other areas, there is a need for child-care social workers to investigate thoroughly, to advise, to support, to cajole and – if no other remedy is successful – to take whatever legal action may be available to prevent child neglect.

I can see great opportunities for the Tabloid Press here! Either there could be headlines about a tragic case of child neglect that could have been averted ‘if only the Health Visitors and/or Social Workers had done their job properly’ or equally bold headlines denouncing ‘Council snoopers who invade the privacy of Englishmen’s homes, probably to enforce some pettifogging regulation dreamed up by a bureaucrat in Brussels!’

They might even manage both!

Farewell ‘Readers Digest’

So the Readers Digest has proved to be one of the victims of the great recession and is no more! What on earth, I wonder, will doctors, dentists, solicitors and the like find to put on the magazine racks of their waiting rooms?

Those, I have to say, are the only places in which I ever read a copy. They were ideal for that purpose; filled with brief, always ‘wholesome’ articles, usually shortened and well written, culled from other publications. They were perfect for whiling away the time while waiting to have a tooth filled or blood-pressure taken, though rarely so gripping that there was a pang of regret at putting them down when your name was called by the receptionist.

I found them a little too ‘homespun and American’ for my personal taste, a little too ‘heart-warming’ in fact. What’s more, during the period of the Cold War (I don’t think I have actually seen a copy since) there was never an issue that didn’t contain a ‘reds under the bed’ attack on anything that could be considered to bear the taint of socialism. I did quite a lot of work for them in the 1970s and ‘80s and would tease the very friendly sub editor to whom I sent my work by suggesting that she was, of course, a CIA agent. She took it in good part and wanted to know whether my pay rates with the KGB were better!

The work that I did for them? I never contributed to the magazine, but I did make substantial contributions to some of the manuals that were, I suppose, spin-offs from the magazine sales. On my bookshelves as I write, I can see the ‘Readers Digest Complete DIY Manual’, ‘The Readers Digest, How to Fix Just About Anything’ and the ‘Readers Digest, Know your Rights’. To the first two of these I contributed the very substantial sections on domestic hot and cold water supply and drainage and to the third, a popular manual about the law as it affects the householder and the individual, I contributed a short section about the law relating to ‘combined drains and private sewers’ – not really the most fascinating of subjects! There were one or two earlier manuals that I have lost and the names of which I have forgotten, but for which I wrote the ‘plumbing’ contents.

They paid generously but always bought the copyright of the material outright. With Readers Digest’s mammoth advertising campaigns and pushy (to say the least!) sales techniques, we authors would have done even better had our payment been a share of the royalties!

Commenting on Readers Digest’s demise in the Guardian, a columnist criticises the magazine for much the same reasons that I have, but has a word of praise for their manuals, conceding that ‘I’d never have tried to fix a tap without the guidance of the Readers Digest Book of Household Maintenance’. I think that the writer may have remembered wrongly the title of the manual but I have no doubt at all that the guidance had been mine!

Money well spent!

In September 1980, six months after I had retired from the Council’s service, and after I had assured myself of an adequate income from freelance writing, Heather and I spent a wonderful fortnight touring the then peaceful and united country of Jugoslavia in our motor-caravan.

The next year we decided to forego an overseas holiday and to dip into our savings to bring our bungalow up to late-twentieth century standards. We had an extension built at the rear, to house a fridge, freezer and spin-dryer and to provide some badly needed extra cupboard and storage space. It cost as much to build as it had to buy the bungalow thirty years earlier! We had already had our cavity walls infilled (by Rentokil) and I had installed fibreglass blanket insulation in the roof space. Now we disposed of the two Courtier solid fuel stoves (one with back boiler) sometimes supplemented by oil-filled electric radiators, that had been our means of space and water heating. We had gas fired central heating installed, thus eliminating the chilly ‘no go’ areas of the bungalow during every winter. We got rid of our old and dated bathroom suite and had a new suite installed. We had our windows double-glazed and wall-to-wall carpets fitted in our sitting room and hall.

Had we waited a few years we might well have obtained government or council grants towards much of that work. However, we had done it when we could afford to, for our own comfort and convenience, without any thought of ‘saving the planet’. We certainly never regretted what we did and when we did it.

Fixing my solar panels. March 2009

Last year (nearly thirty years later!) I decided to have solar panels fitted on my roof as part of a solar water heating system to supplement my existing gas boiler. It was expensive and I certainly won’t live long enough for its savings to equal the cost of installation. I was confident though that the savings it would make would be greater than the interest the money was earning in my savings account - and that it would add to the value of my home. There have been ‘teething problems’ but the system has fulfilled my expectations. I pay my combined gas and electricity bill by direct debit. A year ago this amounted to £125 a month (£1,500 a year). It is now £70 a month (£840 a year), a tax-free saving well worth having. What is more, my meters were read in mid-January and revealed that, despite December and early January’s bitter weather; I was £140 in credit. Possibly my monthly payments will be further reduced.

Let no one tell me that the call to insulate our homes and to supplement our present energy sources with wind and solar power, is all a big confidence trick. I have demonstrated that, as the tv adverts claim in quite another context, ‘It works for me!’

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.

Week 8.10

Tendring Topics…….on Line

‘If winter comes…….

Can spring be far behind?’ This was the rhetorical question with which Shelley ended his ‘Ode to the West Wind’. The answer surely is ‘I suppose not’. In 2010 though, it is not an affirmation that I can make with conviction. I was surely tempting fate when, a fortnight ago in this blog, I drew attention to the fact that the weather on Candlemas (2nd February) was ‘dull with rain’ and that weather folklore insisted that ‘winter had gone and would not come again’.

Hardly had I posted that blog on ‘the web’ before the temperature dropped like a stone and we woke up to see once again a sprinkling of snow on our gardens and on the roads and pavements. It didn’t last. Since then, although we have had some sunny days, the temperatures have hovered around freezing point day and night and the threat of snow has refused to go away. There is another piece of weather folklore (there is something to suit every situation!) that certainly has been all too accurate. ‘As the days grow longer, the cold gets stronger’.

The days are, at least, getting longer. It is now light at 7.00 a.m. and darkness doesn’t begin to fall until after 5.00 p.m. I am an early riser, particularly on Sundays when I usually go to the 8.00 a.m. service at St. James’ Church. Backing my mobility scooter out of the shed in the dark at 7.00 a.m. and, muffled up in winter coat with fur hat and sheepskin gloves, driving on it through Clacton’s almost deserted streets in semi-darkness at 7.30, was a less-than-cheering experience.

What’s more, I notice that (whatever may have happened to the green shoots of economic recovery!) the green shoots of daffodils are appearing round the apple tree in my garden and there are two or three snowdrops in flower. Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, was on 17th February and Easter is now less than six weeks away. Be it never so tardy, spring really is on the way!

You can just see the daffodil shoots at the foot of my apple tree and, to their left, you can just see two or three snowdrops. Photo taken on 12th February.

Save our Circus!

‘Save our Circus’, is a slogan that nowadays, could usually be guaranteed to raise the ire of Animal Rights activists. When used in Colchester though, it has nothing to do with performing animals and everything to do with the preservation and exploitation of a unique archaeological discovery in ‘England’s oldest recorded town’.

Archaeological excavations in 2004 and 2005 revealed a Roman ‘circus’ or chariot-racing track within the area of the garrison, south of the town centre and outside the town wall but. This is the only such reminder of the four hundred years of Roman occupation that has been found in Britain and is therefore of unique archaeological and general interest.

The circus’s starting gates are buried within the garden of the now-derelict Victorian Sergeants’ Mess. This belongs to a property developer who had intended to build flats on the site. He is however, prepared to sell it to the Colchester Archaeological Trust for £200,000. The original deadline for this sale was the end of January but this deadline has been extended to the end of this month.

The idea is that the starting gate area should be properly excavated, preserved and opened up to the public under a protective covering, and that there should be a heritage centre provided where there could be a plan of the original circus, a description of its use and, of course, information about other historical and archaeological sites (the Balkerne Gate, the Castle, the Town Wall, the Siege House and so on) in and around the town. By mid-February the appeal was only £27,000 short of its target and several more fund-raising events were planned. I have every hope that the appeal will succeed.

I certainly hope so. It is a splendid idea and a very worthwhile cause. I have often thought that more should be done to exploit the tourist potential of northeast Essex and the Stour Valley as a European Tourist Region. Colchester, with its Roman and Boudiccan archaeological heritage and its reminders of the English Civil War, is a natural centre for the region. Within half an hour’s drive is the ‘Constable country’ of Dedham Vale with the unforgettable villages of Dedham and East Bergholt (with Flatford Mill). Next there’s the beautiful tidal Stour beginning at Manningtree, England’s smallest town, and terminating at historic Harwich. Then on round the Tendring Coast, with its high sunshine records and low rainfall. Dovercourt, Walton-on-the-Naze, Frinton, Clacton-on-Sea, St. Osyth and Brightlingsea, each has its own unique character and atmosphere. Together they offer everything that could be asked from a seaside holiday.

I believe that the local authorities from that area should get together to publicise the attractions of the whole area as the ideal holiday destination from the rest of Great Britain and from the European mainland.

We oldies again!

Yes, we oldies are getting the blame again. On his death-bed King Charles II is said to have apologised for being, ‘an unconscionably long time dying’ - and it seems that that is just what we octogenarians and nonagenarians are doing. The Daily Gazette reports that, Colchester’s cemetery and crematorium are facing financial problems because, so the council claims, 'fewer people are dying’.

Councillor Tim Young, who is responsible for the provision of burial and cremation facilities in Colchester is reported as saying, ‘Staff have told me they think it is partly down to the introduction of the winter fuel allowance. Usually in a cold winter like this here would be more deaths, but that has not been the case’.

Oh dear! We have clearly been ignoring the advice given one of the ‘commandments’ in 19th Century poet Arthur Hugh Clough’s satirical poem, The Latest Decalogue:

Thou shalt not kill; but need’st not strive
Officiously to keep alive.

Colchester Council’s answer to this stubbornness on the part of the elderly, has been to make a modest increase of between one and three percent in cemetery and cremation charges. The opposition Conservative Group has a more radical solution in mind. They would hand over the running of the cemetery to a private company to save money.

I wonder how that would work? The usual commercial inducements ('Buy one, get one free') hardly apply.


The provision of the means of interment or cremation is a service entrusted to local authorities as representatives of their communities. It is the final service that they can render to their citizens. The idea of passing that service on to a commercial enterprise that will hope to make a profit from it and, simultaneously and miraculously, 'save money' for the Council is one that I find extremely distasteful; a 'vote loser' if there ever was one!

Time ('like an ever-rolling stream') will eventually solve Colchester’s problem. All that is needed on the part of the authorities is the exercise of a little patience. Nobody escapes the attention of the grim reaper forever. As Shakespeare put it:

Golden boys and girls all must
Like chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

So must I, and so must even the most resilient of OAPs!

Some good ideas

It is surprising how often Conservative Leader David Cameron seems to strike the right key with my sensibilities yet somehow fails to produce quite the right note.

I am, for instance, totally in agreement with his contention that children these days are being robbed of their childhood but (apart from the absurd conviction that more and ever-earlier sex education will reduce the number of schoolgirl pregnancies) I don’t really think that schools are mainly responsible for this. I would blame tv programmes, in particular tv advertising viewed in the home, and the break-up of ‘normal’ family life resulting from both parents being at work all day and returning home too tired to spend leisure time with their children.

The Conservative suggestion that Head Teachers rather than Education Authorities should be responsible for deciding what advertising and sponsorships should be permitted in schools is a ridiculous one. There is just a chance that a responsible education authority may make wise and disinterested judgements on this issue. A Head Teacher, desperately needing some item of educational equipment obtainable by giving way to commercial interests, would be much more likely to yield to temptation. The best answer would be to make a universal prohibition of any form of advertising or sponsorship within school premises.

Then there’s David Cameron’s idea of turning public services into co-operative ventures, managed and run by those who are engaged in them. It sounds a good idea to me – but why limit it to public services. The extremely successful John Lewis Partnership shows that the idea is at least equally, perhaps even more, appropriate for private enterprise.

I believe that the big mistake made by the Labour Government that I helped into power in 1945, was their belief that public ownership of the means of production and distribution could only be achieved by the creation of vast nationalised corporations, mimicking instead of replacing those of the commercial world.

They might have been more successful had they proceeded more slowly, accepting that public ownership could be achieved by municipalisation rather than nationalisation (many local authorities were successfully running hospitals, public transport, water supply, gas and electricity services before World War II) and by the creation of employee co-operatives and partnerships.

Such a policy would have been unlikely to create an earthly paradise. It would however undoubtedly have narrowed the currently ever-widening gap between the richest and the poorest of our society that is responsible for many of today’s ills. Had Cadbury’s been an employee partnership (an outcome that I am sure its founder would have welcomed) it would never have been taken over by a foreign enterprise having no interest in its British employees. Nor, if Press and tv were run by such partnerships, would it be possible for foreign business tycoons, who do not share our history, culture and moral values, and do not pay our taxes, to own and control the sources of information and the means of popular persuasion in this country.

Week 7.10

Tendring Topics……….on Line

Saving the Naze?

‘Crumbling cliffs and tower saved’, announced a headline in the Clacton Gazette on 11th February. It related, of course, to Walton’s crumbling Naze cliffs which recede year by year. A silent witness to the progress of the erosion is the concrete defensive ‘pillbox’ now yards from the foot of the cliffs. This had been built on the cliff-top as part of Britain’s defences against invasion during World War II

The news story below the headline made it clear that the salvation of the cliffs and Naze Tower, a Grade II Listed Building and a well-known local landmark, hadn’t yet occurred. Moreover the work to be undertaken will, in fact, protect only a 110-metre stretch of the cliff immediately in front of the Tower.

The work referred to is the creation of a ‘Crag Walk’, a tourist attraction and educational project that will include a rock revetment to protect the foot of the eroding cliffs and a new walkway that will incorporate a viewing platform from which the fossil-rich red crag cliffs can be inspected. The project will cost £1.2 million and the Gazette’s report follows the news that a grant of £500,000 from Essex County Council will bring the funding to that figure. Tendring District Council have contributed £520,000 from a £1 million grant in connection with the Government’s Coastal Pathfinder scheme and the Naze Protection Society has itself raised £230,000.

I have no doubt that it is a worthwhile scheme but it surely hardly deserves quite the enthusiastic reception it is receiving from Naze Protection supporters. It does not protect the whole of the Naze and it will only temporarily (though perhaps for a number of years) protect any part of it. A truly long-term solution can only be found by dealing with the seepage of rainwater through the subsoil and the stratum of permeable red crag, to the clay bed below it. This currently flows over the surface of that clay to escape at the foot of the cliff. It thus makes the crag above it unstable. The surface of the cliff crumbles and falls – and the sea washes the debris away.

In the very first years of Tendring Council’s existence following the reorganisation of 1974, the Council’s Engineer and Surveyor’s Department worked out a solution to this problem. This was the subject of a Public Enquiry. The Government inspector approved the scheme which was then shelved because of ‘lack of funds’. I pointed this out in my very first Tendring Topics in print, in 1980.

When the Crag Walk Project is completed the cliffs each side of the project will continue to erode. The protected section of the Naze will become a salient under constant threat from the sea. Eventually, possibly after many years, the sea will win. As King Canute demonstrated to his flattering courtiers a thousand years ago, no man can halt the flow of time or tide.

Not quite ‘proportional representation’ – but very welcome!

The passage through the House of Commons of the very first step towards a much-needed reform of our electoral system hasn’t attracted a great deal of attention from the national press – possibly because, with a general election only weeks away, it is quite likely that it will come to nothing.

At the moment we have a ‘first past the post’ voting system. The candidate who gets the greatest number of votes is elected. This is fine when there are just two candidates. However, when there are a number of them (as there often are these days) it is quite possible for the candidate elected under this system to have less than half the total votes cast. This means that, whoever else electors may have wanted, the majority of them didn’t want the candidate who has been declared the winner!

Under this system it is also quite possible, and has happened twice in recent years, for the Party that secures the most parliamentary seats, and therefore forms the government, not to be the one that secures the greatest number of votes throughout the whole country.

What is proposed is an ‘alternative vote’. Ballot papers would be exactly the same as at present but voters would be able to express their preference by putting 1, 2 or 3, indicating first, second and third choice against the candidates names.

When the votes are counted, the ‘first choices’ are first counted. If more than fifty percent of those who voted made any one of the candidates their first choice, then that is the end of the matter. That candidate is elected. If no-one has secured more than half of the ‘first choices’, then the second choices are counted and added to the ‘first choice’ totals. This will almost certainly produce a candidate with more than fifty percent of the vote. If it does not, then the ‘third choices’ can also be counted and added to the total. The candidate with more than fifty percent of the total votes counted will then be declared the winner.

This isn’t true ‘proportional representation’. It would still be possible for a party of government to have less than half the total vote. It would mean though that individual members of parliament couldn’t be elected on a minority vote and, unlike some forms of truly proportional representation, it would mean that those electors who chose to do so, could vote for the candidate rather than his or her party.

Gordon Brown’s opponents say that he has put the suggestion forward now ‘for political reasons’. It might make people who were wavering between Labour and Liberal Democrat, vote Labour. If there were to be a ‘hung parliament’ after the election it might persuade the Lib. Dems. to form a coalition with Labour rather than with the Conservatives.

Of course Mr Brown has put the idea forward for ‘political reasons’. That’s what politicians do. That doesn’t mean that it is a bad idea though. I think that, in the interest of democracy, it is a good, if not the very best, solution

The proposal that has successfully survived its first reading in the House of Commons is not that such a system should be introduced, but that the idea of its introduction should be presented to the electorate in a referendum.

Those who think that having a strong and decisive government is more important than having a truly representative one, would no doubt vote NO in such a referendum. Me? The reigns of Mrs Margaret Thatcher and of Mr Tony Blair have taken away my appetite for strong government. I would vote YES.

Fencing off the sea!

I’m not surprised that residents in Brightlingsea are up in arms at Tendring Council’s fencing off part of Brightlingsea’s promenade for health and safety reasons. I am glad that the Council has decided to have second thoughts about it.

It is said that a fatality that occurred some years ago when an elderly woman’s mobility scooter rolled over the edge on a seafront path in Holland-on-Sea, is one of the factors that have led to this fencing. Gordon Beare, founder and organiser of the Tendring Pensioners’ Action Group is a mobility scooter user himself. He is reported as saying he believed that railings were a good idea. ‘Many elderly people can have simple accidents on their scooters, so anything that will make sure a scooter can’t go into the water is a good idea’. Well, I too use a mobility scooter and wouldn’t wish to be without it. It could be dangerous, even fatal, to drive too close to the kerb (the pavement edge) of the footpath of a busy street. I think that most of us are wise and careful enough to keep away from the edge of the promenade.

A year or two ago, I watched a family disembarking from their car on the Naze at Walton and preparing for a picnic. The adults failed to notice that a two or three year old toddler, rejoicing in his freedom from adult attention, was making a beeline for the cliff top. Fortunately an onlooker spotted the child’s danger, intercepted him and brought him back to his parents. Instead of apologising for their own lack of attention their reaction was, ‘You’d really think that they’d have those cliffs fenced off!’

Where will it end? Ought we perhaps to erect fences along our beaches just above high tide mark because someone might wander into the sea and drown?

I don’t blame local authorities, or even the Health and Safety Executive for this absurd determination to make every human activity totally risk-free. Responsibility lies with our own ‘compensation culture’, the idea that every single mishap is ‘somebody’s fault’ and that ‘somebody’ must be made to pay!

It is a culture that is nourished and perpetuated by the ‘ambulance chasing, no-win, no-fee, lawyers’, whose adverts holding the promise of hundreds or thousands of pounds of compensation, help to keep commercial daytime tv on its feet!

A Fateful Anniversary

I am writing these words on St. Valentine’s Day. It is the sixty-fifth anniversary of my learning of an event that has affected me for the remainder of my life. At first it reinforced the Agnosticism that I held at that time. Three years later though it was one of the factors that led my wife and I to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The date was 14th February 1945. It was then that I learned of the horrifying firebomb raids on the city of Dresden, that had been carried out by the RAF during the night, and that the U.S. Air Force was continuing throughout that day.

I was a British prisoner of war at a working camp in Zittau, a small German town situated some sixty miles east of Dresden at the point where today the German, Czech and Polish frontiers coincide. Throughout the bitterly cold winter of 1944/’45, we had heard the sound of gunfire in the east increase from a distant murmur to a continuous and ever louder rumble.

By early February (after the failure of the last-ditch German winter offensive in the Ardennes) everyone in Zittau – we, our guards, the many foreign ‘slave workers’, and the German population knew that the war would be over in months, if not weeks.

The trickle of refugees fleeing before the inexorably advancing Soviet Army had grown to a flood. There were old men (younger ones had all been called up into the army), women and children, some babes in arms. Most were, of course, Germans but there were among them allied prisoners of war on a forced march away from the front line and possible liberation. There were Russian, Ukrainian and Polish ‘slave workers’, and there were abject and defeated units of Nazi Germany’s allies, Hungarians Bulgarians, and renegade Cossacks. Some had all their worldly goods piled onto ox-drawn carts, a few had lorries driven by ‘Holzgas’ (a gas – carbon monoxide perhaps? – produced by the slow and partial combustion of wood chippings). Many just trudged through the snow with their belongings on their backs or piled into small hand-carts.

They were heading for Dresden where the German Red Cross would take charge and distribute them among the few remaining parts of Germany that were relatively ‘safe’. By the 13th February some 300,000 refugees were crowded into the city.

That was the night that the RAF struck, creating firestorms that flattened fifteen square miles of the centre of Dresden and killed an estimated 25,000 people, overwhelmingly civilian, and many of them women and children. The grandfather of one of my current friends in Zittau was among the victims. He was a frail old man who escaped the flames to spend a bitterly cold February night in the open. He wouldn’t have counted as a casualty of the raid as he died a week later, of pneumonia!

In justification of the raid it has been claimed that no-one could be sure the war was nearly over, and that Dresden was a legitimate target as it contained factories supporting the Nazi war effort. It was also an important communications centre. However factories, a large railway station and an important river bridge, on the outskirts of the town were left unscathed while the bombers concentrated on the heavily populated city centre.

I have no doubt that the raids on Dresden were totally unjustified acts of terror which, had they been perpetrated by our opponents, would have been regarded as war crimes. Could they perhaps, have been an early gambit in the Cold War, carried out to impress the Soviet Army, which we knew would be there within weeks, with the strength of British and American Air Power?

‘The Nazis did worse things’. I know they did. Is that really an excuse for us?

Week 6.10

Tendring Topics………on line

Weather Folklore

Red sky in the morning,
Shepherd’s warning!

So says one of the best-known pieces of weather folklore. A red sky just before sunrise is a presage of strong wind or rain before night. This certainly proved to be true when a few weeks ago, I took this before-dawn photograph from the back door of my home in Clacton’s Dudley Road.

The second couplet of that particular piece of folklore, Red sky at night, Shepherd’s delight, I have found to be rather less reliable. A beautiful red sunset may be followed by a glorious windless and sunny day – but it may not be.

Another piece of thoroughly unreliable weather folklore is the prophecy that the weather on St. Swithin’s day (15th July) determines whether or not the next forty days will be wet or dry. It is true though that at about that time of the year we often do have long spells of either very wet or very dry weather.

Tuesday of last week (2rd February) was Candlemas Day, when the Church remembers the presentation of Christ in the Temple and celebrates his role as the Light of the World. Prior to the Reformation it was the practice on that day to bless all the candles to be used in the church during the year. I believe that the custom is continued in the Roman Catholic Church.

It is a day also associated with weather folklore that seems to come true rather more often than not.

If Candlemas be clear and bright,
Winter will have another flight.
If Candlemas be dull, with rain,
Winter has gone and will not come again.

This year, if you remember, Candlemas was ‘dull with rain’ for most of the day though there was a brief period of brightness mid-morning. I hope that the worst of the winter really is over – but I won’t be putting my winter overcoat and fur (synthetic of course!) hat away just yet!

Prince of Peace…..Weapons of War!

Among the recorded sayings of China’s former leader Chairman Mao Tse Tung, was that ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’. Who am I to say that he was wrong about this? Guns and political power can certainly make a deadly combination – as the current Public Enquiry into the causes, conduct and aftermath of the war in Iraq is making abundantly clear.

A cause that I am quite sure is not best served by weapons of death of any kind, is the Christian Faith. As a Christian Quaker I believe that Jesus Christ meant what he said when he told us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, do good to those who despitefully use us. He set an example that Christians should strive to follow – though few of us completely succeed. Furthermore I believe the everyone in the world, fanatical terrorists as well as men and women of peace, is endowed with Christ’s inward light, the instinct within us all that urges us towards love, compassion and forgiveness. Whatever the cause, it is not for us to snuff out that light in a fellow human, however much it may have become dimmed by bigotry, greed, superstition or fear. ‘Inasmuch as ye have done these things (good or bad) unto one of my brethren, ye have done them unto me’.

I was shocked therefore to learn that each rifle of the latest consignment for our troops in Afghanistan has inscribed upon it a reference to a New Testament text. An example quoted in the national press is JN8:12 referring the user to Verse 12 of Chapter 8 of St. John’s Gospel, within which Jesus proclaims, ‘I am the Light of the World. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’. United States firm Trijicon, said to have been founded by a devout Christian, manufactures the rifles. I find this message, engraved on what is a weapon of death, to be profoundly offensive, even blasphemous. I had a similar though I think lesser, shock when many years ago I discovered that in World War II every German soldier had ‘Gott mit uns’ (God is with us) engraved on the buckle of his uniform belt.

You may (or may not) be astonished to learn that this offensive aspect of the engraving is not the one that is bothering our politicians and the national press. Their worry is that a reference to a New Testament text might be used by the Taliban to persuade waverers that the allied forces in Afghanistan are engaged in a Crusade to convert them to Christianity. As the Taliban and Al Quaida are already trying to persuade Afghans that they themselves are engaged in a Holy War (a Jihad) to drive the infidels from the sacred soil of their country, that would hardly seem necessary.

In any case Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, who is usually prompt in telling us of anything that might offend his co-religionists, says that he regards the inscriptions as ‘fairly harmless’.

A single sentence in the Daily Mail’s report suggests to me that if the Press and Politicians hadn’t decided to publicise this silly business, it is likely that no one would have known about it. That sentence is, ‘The inscriptions appear in raised lettering at the end of the gunsight’s stock number’.

I haven’t always been a Christian Quaker and my views on the compatibility of Christian Faith with armed conflict haven’t always been those that I hold today.

During World War II I was a gunner in the Royal Artillery. I didn’t therefore routinely carry a rifle. We all had to learn to fire one though, and in the summer of 1940 when it was thought that a German invasion could be imminent, we were all issued with one (from which we were forbidden ever to allow ourselves to be parted!), together with fifty rounds of ammunition,

I did make sure that I was pretty familiar with mine, and was capable of using it effectively if the occasion arose. If I had happened to notice the manufacturer’s serial number it would certainly never have occurred to me that JN8.12 embossed immediately after it might be a Biblical reference………unless, of course, I had been alerted to the fact by the press and politicians.

Essex Jobs for Essex Enterprise?

Do you remember, it was only a few months ago that Lord Hanningfield, as leader of Essex Count Council, was urging Essex public authorities to choose Essex contractors to undertake their services? I remember suggesting that if Tendring District or Colchester Borough, for example, chose, without a very good reason, a tender for services from within Essex, rather than a lower one from across the border in neighbouring Suffolk, they would be in trouble with their auditors.

This advice from the County Council evidently applied only to other authorities, not themselves. More recently Lord Hanningfield has announced that he personally had negotiated a deal for a £9.4 billion contract with computer services giant IBM, a multinational IT organisation with its base in the USA and its tentacles worldwide. This, he assured us, would save the taxpayer thousands of pounds annually.

Let us hope that it does, because it has also recently been announced that the jobs of up to 275 County Council staff, Essex men and women, are to be axed either as a direct or indirect result of this deal.

I have no doubt that in the upper echelons of the County Council’s staff, there are a few faces that would never be missed. However, the inadequacies of, for instance, the Council’s child protection service, suggest that lower down the salary scales, among social workers at least, they need to be recruiting staff rather than dismissing them. No-one has yet invented a robot or computer that can knock on doors, interview householders, inspect their homes, assess the well-being of their children and their capabilities as parents, and take appropriate action.

Assuming that computerising many of the County Council’s services would be a good idea, are there really no Essex, or at least East Anglian, IT consultants who could have offered the same service as IBM, probably at a lower price?

Latest Developments

I wrote the above before the news broke that Lord Hanningfield was the one member of the House of Lords who faced prosecution in connection with the Parliamentary expenses scandal. I have decided to let the blog stand.

I have been very critical of Lord Hanningfield in the past. I have thought that many of his policies, especially his ‘ground-breaking initiatives’, were mistaken and that his style of leadership introduced an undesirable ‘cult of the personality’ into local government. However, I never, for one moment, thought of him as being dishonest, and I hope that he succeeds in clearing himself of the current accusations.

I am not going to pretend though that I am not pleased that he has laid down his leadership of the County Council. I hope that under its new leader, whoever he or she may be, the Council will spend rather less time and money on globe-trotting trips abroad for its members and senior staff, on seeking customers for Essex products in China and elsewhere, and on running banks and failing post offices (though I do think that the latter was a worthwhile exercise). This should release resources for the County's failing child protection and child care, its care of the old and disabled, education, maintenance of highways, consumer protection, refuse disposal and recycling and other responsibilities entrusted to County Councils by central government.

I hope too, that the expenses claimed by County Councillors in connection with their duties, will be investigated every bit as meticulously as those of members of parliament have been.

A Seventeenth Century Law

I find it almost unbelievable that MPs, accused of fiddling their expenses should have the effrontery to seek to avoid the judgement of the criminal courts by means of a three hundred year old law enacted for no other purpose than to ensure absolute freedom of speech for MPs within the House of Commons! Is that what they meant when they said they would be 'defending themselves robustly?'

Perhaps, as they are seeking the protection of a 17th Century law they should, if found guilty, suffer a 17th Century penalty. A few months in a cell in the Tower for instance, under the conditions of prisoners there in the sixteen hundreds, might be appropriate. Or, and this would be by far the cheapest option for we tax-payers, a few hours in the pillory in a public place within their own constituencies.