Zen of the Road

No Zen Approach to Road Conditions

By Kent Barker

I hit another pothole yesterday. There was a nasty crunch but, as far as I could see, no damage to the wheel. It was not always so. A few years back I was driving down the same lane in the dark and there was a massive bang. When I examined the wheel rim the following day the alloy had splintered, slashing the tyre.

I was quoted nearly £400 for a new wheel and £75 for a tyre! In the end I found a second hand wheel and a slightly cheaper tyre, but it was still an extremely expensive incident. My son (who doesn’t have a licence and thus doesn’t pay for the upkeep of a motor) had an interesting take on it. He argued that potholes give driving an added frisson and chuck in an element of chance to every journey. Every time you don’t hit a pothole and damage the car is, he said, a good day and one to be celebrated!

Instead of taking this Zen-like advice, I complained long and hard to the County Council who, eventually, came along and filled in the hole. But it was only one of many. The whole road is pitted with crevasses all waiting to surprise the unwary motorist. Most, it is true, are caused by contactors on behalf of various utilities digging long trenches and then failing to fill them in properly. But does the road ever get properly resurfaced? Do any of the roads around here get properly resurfaced? You just know those questions are rhetorical, don’t you?

I remember an epic journey about a decade back. I’d bought a boat off eBay from somewhere near Retford and was returning home with it on a rather ropey trailer. We were OK going down the A1. It was fine on the M25. It was even all right on the A20. But as soon as we came off onto a ‘B’ road around Sissinghurst, the surface became so uneven that the craft started bucking around on the trailer as if it were sailing a stormy sea. The point is that roads maintained by the Highways Agency are relatively smooth and flat. Roads maintained by Kent County Council are an absolute disgrace.

And it’s not just road surfaces where they seem to fail so dismally. I chair the Highways Committee of our Parish Council and we’ve been campaigning for years to get better speed signs around our village and limits reduced. Will KCC’s highways officers engage with us? Will they come and look at the problems we’ve identified. Again you just know the answer, don’t you?

Apparently one criterion they employ is the number of deaths on a given stretch of road. If insufficient people have been killed they won’t consider lowering the speed restriction.  Am I alone in finding this abhorrent? Surely they—we—should be trying to prevent deaths, not waiting for them to happen.

But then I’m not too impressed with their attitude generally. Our Country Councillor has been campaigning for ages to have the A229 priority altered as it approaches Cranbrook. Currently, you have to make a right turn across the opposite lane in order to continue on the main road—effectively the town’s by-pass. If you go straight on, you hit the narrow High Street with two sharp dogleg turns. A foreign articulated lorry was just the most recent of vehicles to misread the signs and get stuck. So the simple solution is to make the main road continue to the right, and oblige you to turn left into the smaller Waterloo Road if you really want to go into the town.

But were the county’s highways officers sympathetic to this scheme? Apparently not. It was either too expensive, or too difficult or didn’t quite accord with the small print of the rules. So they’ve prevaricated for years on the issue. I thought that council officers existed to do what they were asked by the elected members. If councillors say this needs changing, the civil servants should say right, let’s find a way to do it. Not our lot. Quite the opposite.

Of course, the situation wasn’t helped by an extraordinarily vociferous campaign by a group of local residents who seemed determined to prevent the change at any cost. My view is that they were misguided and have blocked a perfectly sensible proposal. But they did have one salient point. As far back as 2006, KCC estimated the cost of changes to this junction at £300,000. Currently just £24,000 is being spent to try to achieve the same objective.

So whether it’s potholes or road signs or speed limits or improving junctions, KCC seems unresponsive or obstructive. But, with continuing central Government cuts to Council funding, I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised at lousy services.

Rubbishing the Local Council

Times of TW

Rubbishing the Local Council

By Kent Barker

Let me say it before your do, this column is rubbish.

Here’s the question.  What do you consider to be the prime service provided by your local council?  If you answered refuse collection you wouldn’t be alone.  A borough council does, of course, oversee far more services including planning, housing, benefits, and even parking. (Roads and education are handled at County rather than Borough level.)

But let’s stick with rubbish.  As good responsible citizens I am sure you want as much of your refuse recycled.  Tipping it into landfill sites creates methane which is a key greenhouse gas.  And, anyway, the government has to meet stringent European reduction targets.  Which is good.  But the problem is that, just as local councils are trying to cope with providing greater recycling facilities, Westminster is slashing their budgets.

So let me take you to our recent Parish Council meeting where a Borough Councillor – the Portfolio Holder for Sustainability (!!) had come to speak to us, along with the TWBC Head of Environment and Street Scene (who on earth dreams up these daft titles?)  Anyway, the former is an elected councillor and the latter a paid council officer, but both were with us to explain or defend council decisions.

Let’s take the bottle issue first.  The council doesn’t do kerbside collections for glass.  So if you want to recycle your bottles you have to take them to a bottle bank.  As luck would have it Benenden has a bottle bank in the village hall car park. But this is extremely unpopular with nearby residents who object volubly to the sound of breaking glass smashing the quiet enjoyment of their garden.  Plus we’re on the border of Ashford Borough which has recently introduced domestic glass collections and removed its bottle banks.  And that means that people with lots of bottles to dispose of now drive to our village to deposit them in our bank.  Which means it’s often full to overflowing.

Are TWBC going to help by offering to collect our glass from our homes?  No, said the Head of Street Scene, they are not.  The trouble is, five years ago,  they locked themselves into a ten year contract with a waste facility that does not include glass.  Will they consider amending or renegotiating the contract?  No, they won’t.  Plus it’s too expensive to change the vehicles they use to collect the bottle-bank bins.  So, deadlock. The current situation, in our village at least, is unacceptable but the council cannot or will not consider changing it.

So lets move on to the Civic Amenity Vehicle (rubbish lorry to you or me). This is the responsibility of the Portfolio Holder for Sustainability. Fifteen or twenty years ago TWBC closed a local dump (and sold off the land). In return they promised to provide a weekly lorry for bulky items that would not go into the domestic bin.  And very popular it is too.  But now they have cut the service by half and are threatening to halve it yet again - unless the Parish Council pays an additional levy.  Which, as we have pointed out, amounts to double taxation.  Householders already pay for the refuse service through their council tax, now they are being expected to pay a second time through their village precept which will have to rise to meet the obligation.

Frankly we’re furious.  As I, and others, made extremely clear at the Parish Council Meeting.  The Portfolio Holder for Sustainability seemed a nice enough bloke and he seemed surprised and not a little taken aback by the strength of feeling.  It’s all the fault of central government he told us.  We have to make savings.  We’re all in it together.

No, we’re not, we replied.  We are at the extreme periphery of the borough and no one seems to give a fig about our needs.  In Tunbridge Wells you only have to drive a short distance to the North Farm Waste Recycling Centre.  For us it’s a 40 mile round trip. If residents of the town need extra collections, they get them. There are eight council run bottle banks in the town and others at supermarkets.

Then there is the question of fly-tipping. Even now, with the bi-weekly village refuse lorry service, some unsociable people dump their rubbish on the side of the road or in the woods. Which the council has to clear up at considerable cost.  We fear this will simply increase if the refuse lorry is further reduced.

So will the council reconsider double charging for our lorry?  No they won’t.  Government cuts and all that. The current situation is unacceptable but the council won’t consider changing it.

The councillor got rather upset when I suggested that our only option may be to vote him out at the next election!

Kentish Chainsaw Massacre?

Times of TW

Kentish Chainsaw Massacre Narrowly Averted

By Kent Barker         

I had my collar felt the other Sunday—metaphorically speaking. I was working up in the orchard cutting the roadside hedge. It was a volunteer day organised by our local community orchard group and had been advertised around the village. We’d alerted immediate neighbours lest the sound of our chainsaws should interfere with their Sunday morning activities or make it hard to hear the Archers. And then we noticed the police car cruising the lane.  

Now we don’t get a lot of crime down our way. A few garden tools go missing from time to time and we did, a year or two back, have our old tractor stolen from the middle of the field. But by far the most dramatic malefaction was the explosion at a nearby bungalow which destroyed an outbuilding. To this day no one is sure if this was actually a crime or merely an accident. The more conspiracy-minded were adamant it was an attempted ‘hit’.

The thing is that the farmer who lived there is not very popular.  He has an unpleasant habit of bellowing across his field to people on the public footpath: “put that §@$±€*-ing dog on a lead”. This is particularly irksome because, as I may have mentioned previously, there is no legal requirement for dogs to be kept on leads on public rights of way so long as they are kept under ‘close control’. (Equally farmers have absolutely no right to shoot them unless they are actively worrying sheep and it is the only practical way to stop them). Anyway, it did seem a tad unlikely that this particular land-owner had made himself so unpopular with ramblers that one or more had tried to blow him up. And, if it was­­­­­ a contract killing, then it was spectacularly unsuccessful because he’s still there and still shouting at walkers.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the police car. It wasn’t long before two burley officers emerged wearing bullet-proof vests and with handcuffs and truncheons swinging from their belts. I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if they’d also had powerful tasers within easy reach in the event of trouble. Indeed, looking at the assembled group before them, they might well have anticipated a problem or two.  Normally members of our working party would be considered mild-mannered, well-dressed, professional gents, mostly in their early sixties, greying and/or balding. But, on this occasion, we were all dressed—and equipped—to do battle with Mother Nature. Rigger boots with steel-toecaps were the order of the day, along with grubby jeans, moth-eaten jumpers and torn jackets. But, on this occasion, it was not the apparel that proclaimed the man so much, as his implements. Three of us had chainsaws in hand. Two had sharp bill-hooks, while another two sported big bow-saws with vicious looking serrated blades. But the pièce de resistance was our vice chairman who was carrying a heavy machete of the sort used to lop off heads in South American revolutions or African tribal massacres.

So the opposing forces lined up. The hedge-cutters had the higher ground, but the police officers definitely had the advantage of youth. I was standing towards the back not, you understand, out of cowardice, but because that’s where I happened to be. So I couldn’t actually hear the ensuing conversation.  However, later, as we re-ran events over a pint or three in the pub, it seemed that someone had called 999, alleging that we were causing criminal damage to the hedgerow and stealing wood. The complainant was named the grandson of the person who had land-plotted the orchard back in 1972 and who still seems to consider it belongs to his family, even though they’d sold off over 80% of the plots.

This, of course, raised an interesting problem. Just who does own a hedge? Next day I thought I’d ask a lawyer friend of mine and shot off a quick email.  The reply started ominously: “The ownership of boundary features is a very complicated area of law and entire books have been written on this single subject. The following is a general guide:...”. There then followed three pages of closely typed case law which I tried to follow until the line; “As Lord Hoffmann explained in Alan Wibberley Building Ltd v Insley [1999] UKHL 15, this presumption is really two presumptions.” At which point my eyes glazed over and my head sagged.

So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that the nice police officers decided that this was really a civil matter and nothing they need get involved in. With just one backward glance at our armoury, they got back in their patrol car and returned to the station, doubtless to tell tales of how they’d narrowly averted the incipient Benenden Chainsaw Massacre.

ends.

Kicking the Bucket (List)

for Hastings Independent Press

Kicking the Bucket List

By Kent barker

It being the season when one is supposed to set some improving targets for the coming year, I’ve decided to buck the trend. Not, of course that I have anything to fear from scrutiny of last year’s resolutions.  No, I have a clear conscience – largely because I didn’t make any.  I never do.  Why set yourself up for failure, I say.

So let’s gaze on a broader canvass.  How about creating a bucket list?  For the uninitiated that’s things you plan to do before you kick the proverbial.  You know the sort of items; visit the Taj Mahal or climb Everest.  Though in my case getting up the East Hill is tricky enough these days and why travel 4,273 miles to Agra when there’s a perfectly good Taj in St Leonards?

I wonder if I am alone in finding the Bucket List rather constraining? I mean I don’t want to feel I have to go to Finland to see the Northern Lights this winter, or to the Burning Man Festival in Nevada this summer just because they are on the list.  And how would you feel if you only made it half way through before you popped your clogs?  Pretty sick I’ll be bound.

So, instead, I thought I’d look back at the random things I have done in the past couple of years.  Things that I’d never, in my wildest dreams, imagined I’d do. Like performing in a Café Theater group or playing the Ukelele at a gig at my local pub. Unlike Hastings where there is a plethora of good bands most nights, out here in the sticks we only get a session about once a month.  But they are generally excellent with Buick 6 and the Blue Devils being regulars.  So for them to book our rather ramshackle Uke ensemble is a bit intimidating. 

Among us are a couple of very good musicians, a number of pretty good ones, a rump of competent players … and me. I think it may be because I so evidently enjoy playing that they haven’t the heart to chuck me out.  But while they are tunefully finger picking and plucking, I’m still trying to work out how to get from C to G. 

Arthur Rubenstein, when asked how to get to Carnegie Hall, apocryphally replied, “Practice, practice, practice”. The same probably holds good for me for the Bull at Benenden.

Frustration of Knavish Tricks

Hastings Independent Press

The Frustration of Knavish Tricks

By Kent Barker

One of the joys of dog walking is that, as you tramp the fields and survey the wonderful colours of autumn, you have plenty of time to contemplate life’s anomalies and to come up with alternative solutions.

Take the red vs white poppy conundrum.  A 91 year old veteran was quoted as saying he refused to wear the red poppy because it had come to be seen as a glorification of war rather than a remembrance of forces killed. It’s a sentiment I’ve long shared, and I particularly dislike the terminology that surrounds it all:  making the “ultimate sacrifice”: “giving” their lives for their country.  No they weren’t.  They were killed in wars that should, in most cases, never have taken place, and often as a result of poor military and political decisions.  Show me the squaddie who says, as he steps on the landmine or is blown away by the roadside IED, “I’m just happy to ‘sacrifice’ my life or my limbs for my country’s involvement in Afghanistan or Iraq.”

So wear your white peace poppy with pride and, if you still feel that you would like to commemorate the senseless slaughter of so many of our young men over the years, then perhaps create a new symbol  - a poppy with alternating red and white petals perhaps?

Similarly I thought, as the dog bounded off in hopeless pursuit of a rabbit, we need a new national anthem. Republicans and Humanists (like Jeremy Corbyn) should stick to their principles (I nearly said guns!) and refuse to sing such twaddle. “God save the queen” is a meaningless concept; I don’t want her sent victorious, nor do I want her enemies to scatter or fall, or for their ‘knavish tricks’ to be frustrated (check out verse 2!).

So, walking through the woods, I rewrote the anthem words for a more secular and democratic age:

“Let’s celebrate our land / Fields, forests seas and sand / Our island home. / We welcome all who’re here / Whether from far or near / Long to live without fear / In our island home.”

            My partner, however, thought this was a bit anemic and suggested Corbyn might prefer her version:

“Land of ‘democracy’ / Greed and hypocrisy/ Our blessed land / Thanks to the one percent / Money has all been spent / Privilege is heaven sent / In our blessed land.

            Now it’s your turn!

Tanks For The Boot Fair

For Times of TW

Tanks For The Boot Fair

By Kent Barker

We have a problem, my partner and I.  We are constitutionally incapable of passing a country boot fair without stopping, exploring and, usually, buying something that we really don’t need or, as it often turns out, don’t actually much want. But it looks so tempting lying there on the ground, or perched on a rickety table.  And it’s sooooo cheap that  we just cant resist the bargain. There’s probably some complex psychological name for the affliction, but I have yet to discover any cure.

            The problem is that, over the years, we’ve acquired so many unwanted knick-knacks that cupboards, cellars, attics, garages and spare rooms are crammed to bursting point and I’ve even started building sheds in the garden as additional storage space.  That’s when you know that you’re in the grip of a serious addiction.

            Anyway, this is just as a preamble to recounting my experience in a field outside Rolvenden a few weeks ago. M’lady had rushed off to check out the clothes rails, fearful lest anyone else should have snapped up some moth-eaten fur-collared offerings, while I made a bee-line to the stand selling CDs.  Now this, like second marriages, is generally an exercise in hope over experience.  Usually all that’s on offer are Boney M rejects or The Absolute Ultimate Pan Pipe Collection.  And while I can (just) stand Boney M, I certainly can’t abide anything to do with Pan Pipes (or Richard Clayderman or Demis Roussos  come to that - all of whom are lumped together in my mind as a sort of sticky-treacle mire waiting suck me down.)

            So imagine my surprise and delight when I found an extraordinary collection of obscure Jazz recordings from favourite artists like Miles Davis and Bill Evans.  I thought I already had almost everything they’d ever done, so these unknown albums were a real find.  As I loaded up as many as I could carry and fished in my pocket for a £20 note, I asked the purveyor how he managed to get such a fantastic collection and, more pertinently, why he was disposing of them?  “Oh, they’re not mine,” he said “someone donated them to us.  It’s all for the 4253 project.”

            I muttered something about being delighted to help such a good cause, unwilling to admit to my total ignorance of it.  But fortunately he thrust a leaflet into my hand which I was able to read later over tea and scones (another good reason for frequenting upmarket boot fairs).

            It turns out that 4253 is, in fact, a steam engine.  But not just any old steam engine, it’s a 2-8-0T locomotive, built for the Great Western Railway in 1917.  And even more excitingly it’s a tank engine.  Now, when my son was a toddler he developed a serious passion for the Rev Wilbert Awdry’s tales about Thomas the Tank Engine and for hour after hour I would have to read them to him or sit with him watching the videos narrated by Ringo Starr.  I got to know Thomas and his friends Henry and Gordon far better than I could ever have imagined possible – or have any wish so to do.  But in all of that time it never occurred to me to ask, what exactly IS a tank engine?  Well, thanks to GWR 4253 (and the wonders of the internet), now I know.  And thanks to me, you soon will too!  A tank engine is a steam locomotive that carries its water in one or more on-board water tanks, instead of a more traditional tender.

            Now you may be about to complain this is hardly information to set the world on fire. But just wait a bit.  When the tank engine was developed around 1840 it was quite revolutionary.  Up until then locomotives had trailed a tender behind them with spare water and coal.  But the problem was that they couldn’t reverse very quickly because the tender, being designed to be pulled, didn’t like being pushed and easily became derailed.  So the tank engine was really useful for goods work and shunting, being able to go backwards just as easily is forwards.

            And this was the case with GWR 4253.  It s principle role was hauling coal trains through the Welsh valleys from the pits to the docks or steelworks. For this it needed formidable traction and steaming power as it was often pulling more than a thousand tons up quite sharp inclines.

            Anyway, 4253 was bought as a wreck by the Kent and East Sussex Railway and is currently being totally rebuilt at a cost of £375,000.  Of which about £20 has come from me!  But the question remains, just why does our little local light railway need such a powerful workhorse.  And the answer, I’m afraid, will have to wait until next week.

ends

Fat Contoller Redundant?

Redundancy for the Fat Controller?

By Kent Barker

Did I mention I’m involved with a little Café Theatre group?  We go round pubs and clubs performing a play about 18^th Century smuggling in Kent and Sussex, chronicling the activities of the Hawkhurst Gang.  Our initial amateur antics were considerably enhanced by the addition of two proper actors. Our leading lady is pretty much retired from previous roles in art house movies but our principal man still works regularly on stage and small screen.  In between bigger parts, James plays Sir Topham Hatt at Thomas the Tank Engine events.  (The character is more usually known as the Fat Controller, but James rather takes umbrage whenever we refer to him as such!)

Now I was vaguely aware that local railway societies held TTTE (Thomas The Tank Engine) days and that a locomotive, painted light blue and with a face stenciled on the front of the smokebox door, came along to entertain visiting toddlers – indeed I took my own lad to such an event a number of years back.  But we were not graced by the presence of Sir Topham Hatt and, quite frankly, I would never have guessed that this curious character would provide gainful employment for actors.

These TTTE days are part of a bigger passion – I would almost say obsession – that we have with railways.  Take my local one.  The Rother Valley line opened in 1900 running, eventually, between Tenterden and Robertsbridge.  In 1904 it became the Kent & East Sussex Light Railway and was taken over by British Railways in 1948.  This was not good news because the passenger service was closed six years later, and the entire line shut in 1961, two years before the notorious Dr Beeching recommended slashing about half the country’s entire rail network.

But were the people of the Rother valley going to take this lying down?  Oh, no. They immediately formed the Kent and East Sussex Railway Preservation Society and, by 1971, had steam trains running again between Tenterden and Rolvenden. Year by year they extended the derelict line and in 2004 reached Bodiam. Now plans are afoot to open the last part of the 14 mile section as far as Robertsbridge.

Before I question the wisdom of this let me say I love seeing the little trains chugging along and when I last travelled on the line - about 20 years ago -  it was thoroughly enjoyable, with lovely views across the valley and dinky little stations like Wittersham Road to pass through.  But I suppose I do rather question this whole nostalgia thing.  I’m old enough (just) to remember regular steam train services on main lines.  And thoroughly inefficient, noisy, dirty and smelly they were too.  The coming of the diesel and then the electric locomotive was a major improvement in environmental terms, let alone in reliability, punctuality and speed.

Today we have dozens of ‘heritage’ railways, generally charging extortionate sums for tourists to travel a few miles.  Heavens knows what it’s costing to relay the track from Bodiam to Robertsbridge, but as I discussed last week the restoration of a locomotive (GWR 4253) powerful enough to pull the carriages along this new stretch is costing at least £375,000.  And what do we get at the end of it?  Seasonal and infrequent trains that no one actually uses as proper transport.  Wouldn’t it be rather better to install a driverless, electric, one carriage train or tram shuttle service that would run all year round and at times when people actually needed to travel?  Tourists could still have the pleasure of travelling through the beautiful countryside, but on the line but it would actually be of benefit to others too.

In the part of France I frequent they’ve recently instituted a wonderful ‘go anywhere for one euro’ train fare for their small branch lines.  It means you can leave Beziers in the morning and travel up to the magnificent Tarn gorge for lunch or a picnic, gazing up in wonder at Norman Foster’s epic Millau Viaduct bridge.  But the train is also used by farmers taking their produce to market, or children travelling to school.  It’s seen as a public service worthy of receiving a subsidy.

In Britain we end up with a group of well meaning volunteers and fund-raisers bent on preserving costly outdated and redundant steam trains for tourists.   And even if my idea of re-opening all the Beeching lines for tram-trains is impractical, then better perhaps to turn them into cycleways, or footpaths or, another French innovation, the rail bike.  This enables families to pedal their way along the tracks, getting some exercise while admiring the view.

The trouble is, I suppose, that without heritage railways there’ll be nowhere for Thomas to run, and my mate, Fat Controller James, will be out of a job.

ends

What's in a (young) Name

For Times of TW

The Continuity of the Young

By Kent Barker

There’s a pleasing sense of continuity in village communities like mine. I was walking back home the other day—having driven my tractor up to the orchard in order to mow an area in preparation for our annual apple day—though that’s really another story.

So there Myrtle and I are, taking the short cut across the fields and through the woods before squeezing through the adjacent hedge into our meadow behind the house. Normally the only creatures we encounter are pheasants, the odd rabbit or fox and squirrels leaping from tree to tree. But occasionally we spy—or are spied by—a gamekeeper or one of the family of farmers who own the land.

The legality of our route is slightly questionable. It is private land with no public footpaths nearby. We have permission to walk in the woodland, but I think it was assumed that we’d approach it from the house, not the orchard.  However, the only other route home is down a busy road with no footpath and plenty of blind bends. So, from time to time, we walk across—or rather around the edge—of the field. Usually, a tractor driver, ploughing, spraying or harvesting, will ignore our incursion and get on with his work. But, on this occasion, we came face to face with one of the owners of the farm, transporting apple bins.

As is my wont, I gave him a cheery wave and was about to continue when he stopped his tractor and called over to us. I nodded at the bins and asked him about his apple harvest and about the new trees planted a couple of years back and dropped in a few comments about ‘my’ orchard in the hope he’d be sympathetically inclined towards a fellow grower.

It didn’t take long to get round to where I was heading and I mentioned the name of my house. “Oh,” he said, “you’re Young Barker.” And then, with an almost imperceptible pause: “Not so young any more, though, I see.”

Looking at his grizzled face, and grey locks, I made some rejoinder about how none of us was so young any more!

But it was that phrase “Young” Barker that got me thinking. Apart from anything else, when you get to my age, any suggestion of youthfulness is deeply appreciated. (Someone only a couple of years my senior referred to me as ‘lad’ recently. I was really chuffed.)

On the question of nomenclature, the choice of how to distinguish between the generations is an interesting one.  Our transatlantic cousins tend to do it with ‘junior’—a system I’ve never much liked. To be known as Barker ‘Jnr’ would seem somehow diminutive and redolent of private schooling. Or they use numerical suffixes. And while ‘Barker II’ might have a pleasingly regal ring it hardly distinguishes you as an individual.

So round here we’ve tended to use ‘Young’. Now, in my grandfather’s time, there was a gentleman named Turk who ran a lorry company up the road. His son was, therefore, known as Young Turk (rather a complimentary term I’d have thought but, apparently, it technically refers to the revolutionaries who deposed the Ottoman Empire’s Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1908—though I’m fairly sure our Turk had nothing to do with such radical activities.)

Anyway, by my father’s time, ‘Young’ Turk was no longer so young, had taken over the transport firm, and had a son of his own. But, instead of slipping the appellation down one generation, the latest member of the family was henceforth referred to as Young Young Turk. Which I suppose had some logic.  And it wasn’t until ‘Old’ Turk died that anyone thought of promoting the other two. Though this led, inevitably, to some confusion. “I see Turk’s bought a new, lorry,” my mother might remark. “Which Turk?” my father would query. “Young Turk?” she’d say. “Yes, but is that Young Turk or Young Young Turk?” father would ask.

So, it was with some amusement that I discovered I was known as ‘Young Barker’ and wondered what the farmer might call my son, who also occasionally walks the dog across his land.

The farming family is, incidentally, called Cyster. Written down, this is reasonably clear, but in conversation sounds exactly like ‘sister’.  Since the farm is run by a pair of brothers this also has scope for copious confusion.  As in: “the older Cyster brother’s son is known as the young Cyster, as is his male cousin, while their aunt, is the Cyster’s sister.” It reminds me of that old riddle: brothers and sisters have I none but that man’s father is my father’s son.  Who am I?

I wonder if it might be easier all round to stick to given names?

ends.

Ashamed To Be British (2)

Hastings Interdependent Press DID publish this:

Huddled Masses That Make Me Ashamed To Be British

By Kent Barker

One of the joys of living in South East England is jumping onto a ferry and, some 90 minutes later, sitting down to an excellent meal in a French restaurant.

Sadly, a trip to Calais is by no means the jolly outing it used to be.  The day I was there earlier this month, two refugees died trying to get to England – one by a train in the tunnel and one on the motorway heading to the port.  It brought to 16 the number of deaths since June.

6000 people are currently in the Calais “Jungle” (what an awful term for an unofficial refugee camp). Home Office figures say that in the past year there have been 39,000 attempts to cross the channel illegally - suggesting every person has tried at least half a dozen times. Meanwhile French police are reported to have arrested 18,000 people in the first half of this year – averaging each person 3 times.

But these statistics are not as shocking – or as saddening – as the sight of people tramping from one end of the town to the other, hanging around in groups or sheltering under motorway bridges.  Or as upsetting as the sight of van-loads of police blocking entrances and exits to the Port or the miles of newly erected metal fences topped with razor-wire.

The latter is courtesy of me and you. Our government has spent £9 million on secure zones for lorries.  The fence at Coquelles is called – with Orwellian inappropriateness - the “National Barrier Asset”. 

I am not advocating opening our borders to everyone.  But I do seriously question Cameron’s policy of taking refugees who are a thousand miles away or more, while ignoring those at our very doorstep.  And the ‘commitment’ to take 20,000 refugees over 5 years means just 4,000 a year.  By contrast Germany is planning to take in 800,000 asylum seekers this year.

 Knowing these hungry and desperate people are so near rather turns the fine French food to ashes in the mouth. As you sit down to lunch try reciting the stanza by Emma Lazarus that adorns the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: / I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Sometimes I’m rather ashamed to be British.

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Ashamed To Be British

The Times wouldn't publish this one ... I wonder why not?

Huddled Masses That Make Me Ashamed To Be British

By Kent Barker

In a dusty box in the attic there’s a lovely little photograph of my father, my sister and my aunt on a day trip to Calais in the early 1970s.  It’s one of the joys of living here in the South East of England.  You can so easily jump onto a ferry and, a little over 90 minutes later, be sitting down to an excellent meal in a French restaurant. Since that family trip I’ve probably been over once or twice every year to buy wine and enjoy the food. 

The coming of the Channel Tunnel in 1994 was an exciting innovation and meant a couple of extra hours shopping or gastonomising. (I’m not at all sure that’s a word, but I dare say you’ll get my drift.)  It was the tunnel, though, that helped curtail ferry services to Boulogne which was always a much nicer destination for lunch.

Ever since Calais was annexed in 1347 by Edward III, the port has had a special resonance for the English.  It was a vital point of export for the British wool trade which made Kent and East Sussex so wealthy from the Middle Ages onwards.  No wonder Queen Mary declared its name would be found engraved on her heart after she ‘lost’ it to the French in 1537. Later, stout British resistance at the Siege of Calais in 1940 held up advancing German Panzers long enough to enable the Dunkirk evacuation.

Anyway, fascinating as this history is, the point I am getting around to is that a trip to Calais today is by no means the jolly outing it used to be.  On the same day I was there earlier this month, two refugees were killed trying to get to England – one by a train in the tunnel and one on the motorway heading to the port.  It brought to 16 the number who have died since June.

There are calculated to be as many as 6000 people currently camping in or around Calais hoping to get to Britain.  Whether they are Asylum Seekers, or Refugees, or Economic Migrants is not certain – and may be irrelevant.  Certainly it seems that that the large Afghan and Syrian contingent are genuine refugees seeking political asylum.  But even if there are some who are motivated more by money, they’ve got themselves into a pretty desperate situation. 

Official British figures say that in the past year there have been 39,000 attempts to cross the channel illegally.  But given there are only 6000 people in the “Jungle” (what an awful term for an unofficial refugee camp), it suggests that every person has tried at least half a dozen times – and that doesn’t take into account those who have succeeded. Meanwhile French police are reported to have arrested 18,000 people in the first half of this year - every person 3 times!

But these statistics are not as shocking – or as saddening – as the sight of people tramping from one end of the town to the other, hanging around in groups or sheltering under motorway bridges.  Or as upsetting as the sight of van-loads of police blocking entrances and exits to the Port and Eurostar terminal, or the sniffer dogs going from lorry to lorry in the car-parks, or the mile after mile of newly erected metal fences topped with razor-wire.

The latter is courtesy of me and you. The government has spent £9 million of our money on fences and secure zones for lorries.  The fence at Coquelles is called – in the most awful Orwellian inappropriateness - the “National Barrier Asset”.  How much better, surely, to spend the £9 million resettling refugees in Britain?

Now I am not advocating opening our borders to everyone.  But I do seriously question David Cameron’s policy of taking refugees who are a thousand miles away or more, while ignoring those at our very doorstep.  And anyway the Prime Minister’s ‘commitment’ to take 20,000 refugees over 5 years is just 4,000 a year.  By contrast Germany is planning to take in 800,000 asylum seekers this year, while Turkey already has 1.8 million Syrians within its boarders.  And don’t I remember in the late 1990s Britain agreed to taking more than a 100,000 Kosovan Refugees?  All of which makes the current ‘offer’ pretty small beer.

Knowing these hungry and desperate people are just a short distance away rather turns the fine French food to ashes in the mouth as you sit down for lunch.  But as you pour the wine you can recite to yourself the stanza by Emma Lazarus that adorns the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: / I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Sometimes I’m rather ashamed to be British.

ends.

Is Renting Wrong?

For Times of TW

What’s so wrong with renting your home?

By Kent Barker

Oh, no. Here we go again. A government policy designed to achieve one thing is going to have precisely the opposite effect. When, in five or ten years time, you come to look back on the crisis it will cause, just remember: I told you so!

In case you haven’t guessed, it’s housing again. And, although the difficulty of finding a home is equally problematic in towns and cities, I contend that it’s out here in the country that people have the hardest time.

Take Kath: a hard-working woman with two children in their late twenties. They’d both left home and she was just relishing having her house back to herself to enjoy a little peace and quiet with her husband. But then her daughter’s flat–share came to an end and she had to move back home. Even if she could get another person to share with, the chances of them being able to find suitable accommodation at a price they can afford on minimum wage jobs (she’s a care home assistant) are next to nil. 

Then Kath’s son asked if he could move back into the family home after he split up with his partner. Kath loves her children to bits. She just doesn’t particularly love living with them anymore. But she can’t see how they can possibly get their own place. Private sector rentals are too high round here and there is almost no social housing available. Plus, as previously discussed, there will soon be even less under the government’s plan to allow Housing Association tenants the ‘right’ to buy. 

So Kath’s kids’ best hope is to wait for a new affordable rental unit to be built. For the past 25 years this was most likely to happen under a Section 106 agreement. That’s a deal by which a developer has to provide affordable homes or a financial contribution towards them, in return for the local authority granting planning permission. It’s a great idea. Make the developers –and thus the private housing market—provide or contribute towards some public housing.

A private hospital in my village wanted to finance an expansion by building 40 new houses on its site. Good; we need new homes. But they’d all have been sold at premium prices which few locals could afford. After an impassioned speech at the borough council planning meeting, I persuaded them to stick by their Section 106 responsibility and actually provide eight affordable units on the same site. Assuming it actually happens and that they are affordable rental units (and there’s many a slip…) then it may rate as the single most useful thing I achieved in my two terms on the parish council.

But now David Cameron is proposing to abandon Section 106 agreements on the back of his “Generation Rent to Generation Buy” commitment. It’s a good sound-bite and, if it does indeed produce large numbers of starter homes at 20% below the market price, then that could be a useful contribution to the housing crisis. But to do it at the expense of affordable rental homes is sheer madness.

Just look at the figures. You’d need to be earning £77,000 a year in London or £50,000 outside to be able to get a mortgage for one of these ‘Starter Homes’. Well, sorry, but you might as well ask Kath’s children to fly to Mars as to hope ever to have that sort of money. And what about those on the wrong end of the Government’s £12 billion benefit cuts, or those three million hard working families who each stands to lose £1,000 a year in tax credits? Does anyone seriously think they are going to be able to afford a Cameron Starter Home?

Another more fundamental question raises its head. Just what is so wrong with renting? I’m not talking about sink estates or tower blocks, but pleasant well-maintained housing association OR private homes. I was brought up in a rented place. It was, admittedly, the wing of a Georgian house owned by a charity in Blackheath, but it was the sort of place we’d never have been able to afford to buy.

 They happily do it in Germany and Switzerland and Austria and Denmark.  Even France has a (slightly) bigger rented sector than we do. I’ll concede that much greater security of tenure and serious rent controls need to be introduced.  But it’s this obsession with home ownership that has so skewed the housing market over the past 50 years.

You may say that huge individual wealth has been generated from the exorbitant rise in property prices—but I’d argue that’s exactly what’s made it so impossible for the next generation to get on the housing ladder.

So I predict abandoning Section 106 agreements and artificially curtailing ‘Generation Rent’ will only make things worse.  Much worse.

ends

Organic Ends and Means

For Times of TW

Weakest Link Breaks Organic Chain

By Kent Barker

            It’s been an excellent harvest this year.  Enthusiastic gap year students have been filling ‘cubie’ bags full of ripe fruit while our ancient tractor lifts them onto trailers to be taken away for juicing and cider making.

The orchard I help to manage has, for the past several years, been fully organic.  Although no pesticides had been used on the land or the trees for probably 40 years before, we still had to undergo a five year conversion process before getting our certification.  When it finally came I was thrilled.  I am not an organic zealot, but I do firmly believe that using fewer chemicals to produce our food will be of substantial benefit to our health.

            Ever since the devastating side effects of DDT became commonly accepted, we’ve known that many agri-chemicals are a public health hazard.  Yet we blithely accept them.   If you can’t see it or taste it, then it must be OK, mustn’t it?  And anyway that’s what the government regulators are there for surely?  To protect us from rapacious chemical companies whose motivation seems driven more by profit than public health?

            OK, ok, enough tub thumping.  But just Google ‘Glyphosates’ and see how long it took before the World Health Organisation concluded they are “probably carcinogenic to humans”.  And then ask what steps are in place to stop the herbicide being routinely used on British crops. (Sorry, that’s a trick question because as far as I know there are NO steps are in place to stop the likely cancer-causing chemical being routinely sprayed on crops.)

            Quick, take me back to my orchard where I can calm down a bit. For here thistles proliferate and insects munch contentedly on the apples because neither herbicides (weed-killers) nor pesticides (bug killers) have been used for decades – and certainly not since we got our organic status.  But now that’s all under threat.

            A condition of our Soil Association accreditation is that the orchard may only be grazed by organic sheep.  (I know, it’s a slightly comical concept.  But if an animal that’s been eating chemically treated grass is moved to our land it will excrete the chemicals there.)  So we looked round for, and found, an organic sheep farmer.  In fact all their meat including beef and pork was also organic. However, to market it as such they had to graze their livestock only on organic pasture, avoid routine use of antibiotics and, crucially, have the meat butchered by an organic butcher.

            All this was fine until their butcher ceased to be organic. The trouble is there’s not another one anywhere within range. So now, even though all their animals are raised and grazed organically, they can’t be butchered organically and the meat can’t be marketed as organic. Well, perhaps that’s not the end of the world.  It’s great meat and they’ll probably get the same price for it as before.  But, if they are not selling their product as organic, why go through the bureaucratic rigmarole of being certified as an organic producer, and pay hundreds of pounds a year to the Soil Association? However, if they cease to be certified as organic, then we could also lose our status if they go on grazing their sheep in the orchard.

            Sadly this chain reaction seems to be happening across the country. Organic certified land is in decline (4% down in the most recent figures) but more alarmingly land being converted to organic fell 24% for the same year.  Meanwhile organic producers and processors also declined by more than 6% - a  trend that’s been in place for at least the past five years.

            Ironically, as Britain’s organic production is declining, our demand for organic products is holding up and even slightly increasing.  Which means imports, and more food miles, with more land in other countries like Spain and Austria going over to organic.

            So our orchard is faced with a serious dilemma. It costs us more than £600 a year to be certified by the Soil Association – more than we make from the sale of our apples.  Yet we don’t sell them to an organic cider maker. And soon we may not have organic sheep because an alternative organic flock could be impossible to find. So it seems there is no financial logic in retaining our organic status.  But I, for one, will be very sad to see it go.  It’s been a badge of pride and goes hand in hand with our ethos of preserving a traditional Kentish orchard and enhancing its biodiversity.  Plus we’d be simply accelerating the trend away from pesticide and herbicide free farming.  Which is all wrong and completely contrary to the growing scientific and medical evidence that we are poisoning our planet and its population. It’s a conundrum.  

ends.