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DOVER HARBOUR DEVELOPMENT, BRITAIN, AND ITS FUTURE IN EUROPE: AN ESSAY UP FOR DEBATE.
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I have been in Dover since coming over from India in 1947 when all the British nationals had to leave. Apart from twenty years in Australia, most of it in the Australian Merchant Navy. Ten years in France. Dover has been my home for most of my life.
I went to St Mary's School in Queen Street Dover as a nipper. I used to play in the rock pools with my twin brother under the Prince of Wales Pier. I had my first job in Dover painting the wrought iron legs of the Pier, which now lie under tons of concrete. Legs never to be seen again because of Hover Speeds noisy interlude.
I do not like the changes in progress planned for the Dover seafront. By people who do not have the town's citizens at heart, only their own commercial interests. Nor do I like what is happening to Britain either.
I feel a sense of loss at what The Dover Harbour Board is contemplating. To build another Yacht Marina in the outer bay will cause the bay to become just another rubbish dump, sewage disposal area, and a silt trap. It is evident that big business is moving in against the wishes of the Dover people. Just as it is in other parts of Britain.
I worked at the Dover Harbour Board for thirteen years, after a lifetime at sea. I worked on the small boats before I retired in 2003 from the job of survey and environmental cox'n on the Diana and Dracula. The last ten years surveying the bottom of the harbour and its approaches every single month. I know the tides and the bottom better than my own hand. The harbour board's dredger keeps the silt down to a manageable level or the harbour would silt up. The harbour is not as deep as people ashore think it is. It is subject to strong tides and moving silt.
If they were to fill the Granville Docks in. It will just become another huge Lorry park or a complex of luxury apartments for wealthy yacht owners in the future. I do not think the Harbour Board would consider building and renting social housing there as an option. There would be no money in it.
I also think the small boats are open to abuse in France and Southern Europe by the swarms of fleeing immigrants seeking a better life, coming in from overseas. With fewer Custom's launches and Navy patrol boats hundreds would get through. Once the desperate immigrants twig there is another easier route into Britain than the Lorries are, they will take the chance. If the people smugglers can afford big cargo boats. They can also afford to buy or steal hundreds of small sailing and motor boats from marinas in Africa and the Mediterranean. Which could land their human cargo in any one of hundreds of secluded inlets and beaches around Britain's coast. We would have an invasion on a par with the invasion of the ancient Vikings. I do not think the smugglers would care too much for the immigrant lives lost at sea in transit. I believe this to be an option in the close future. As in my job with the harbour board, it was part of my duties to escort yachts in and out of the harbour or from going aground. There were few yellow quarantine flags flown for the officials to come aboard and little interest in private yachts at the quayside, except as revenue.
I have served at sea in three different Merchant Navies since 1959. I have always believed in Britain, being and staying an island nation. It should have a container Merchant Navy fleet owned by British companies like P&O. Staffed by British sailors, officers, and men. Who are the best-trained seamen in the world? Trading with its Commonwealth people. Instead of being held to ransom and marooned by its French neighbours and others, every time there is a ferry strike or dispute over the Channel.
Modern Politicians have proved they do not have the people's interests at heart, only their own. The Greek fiasco, which will not be the last, as Portugal, Spain, and Ireland could suffer next, is a case in point. Politics has proved distrust and lack of honour for years now. The big banks are the same. The complete European economy is in deficit. Over-governed by too many corrupt politicians, local and national. With myriads of unelected Commissioners making most of the decisions. Some live an opulent lifestyle on the taxpayer with undeclared income on the side. There is never any proof unless caught and then only a smack on the wrist. QUESTION: Why? Why did Iceland jail their offending bankers? Why did so many Councils have hundreds of millions in taxpayers money invested in offshore accounts? While the other countries including Britain bailed their banks out with taxpayer's money. Britain to the tune of over four-hundred, or more, billion pounds. The true sum is still a mystery... QUESTIONS. What does a billion or two matter anyway and who signs these cheques? Why does a bank CEO receive millions in bonuses plus millions in salaries? Why a pension in the hundreds of thousands of pounds annually too? Moreover, all made legal and above board by contracts. Legal and illegal are just worthless words now, as laws can be made to suit any occasion when needed.
The British people voted this government in at the last election. Only because the Independent party. Led in Britain by an elected European MEP, and the other smaller parties split the vote through our inadequate voting system. Where less than half the vote can elect a government, as it did in Thatcher's time. Our voting system needs changing to a fairer system regardless of what the last referendum result was. Most people did not understand what they were voting for anyway. It will be the same with the IN/OUT European vote when it comes up. Where is the leader of the Independent party now? He seems to have vanished into the woodwork...is he back in Europe riding the Gravy train again as a re-elected MEP. Our government has proved they have no real interest in the working people of Britain. Except as taxable income, either legitimate or by stealth. After all, who would pay them 10% rise every year?
Who owns Dover town. Is it big business interests in Europe, the Harbour Board? Is there a hidden agenda by the County Council and the local town council acting against the wishes of the local people? What are the impending plans, if any, for the Western approaches from Shakespeare Cliff to the Admiralty pier? Are European interests making the poorer British people the rent payers of Europe? While they buy up the housing stock? Who owns the Royal Mail, sold for peanuts to whom for a song? Why are the British people so dispirited? More QUESTIONS that need ANSWERS. It goes on...
Most of the British people are not stupid, just lethargic. They need to wake up and ask questions as modern politicians have proved themselves masters of misdirection and deceit.
Already European and foreign countries have large interests in our infrastructure and utilities. With assets going abroad into offshore accounts and foreign investors' pockets. Maybe into politicians' pockets too? Too many companies, owned by the public, sold to private investors at a cheap price without the public knowing who the real buyers are. Who does own the Royal Mail or the water and power companies now?
Multi-millionaires are governing the country today. Which cannot be in the interests of the working people who pay most of the taxes. Is it right for the majority of people to live in Austerity while those in power live well on their taxes? My wife and I can just get by on our pensions and so we should. We spent a lifetime working to pay for it. These are more QUESTIONS, which need honest ANSWERS from those who govern us.
The First and Second World Wars have become a joke. We should have sold the country to the highest bidder then and saved millions of lost lives. However, then, the British people, its Commonwealth, and those of our Allies were made of sterner stuff... They knew what they were facing if they did not fight and win. We also had a leader of merit then with which no politician of today can compete. He was the man of his century with honour in his heart and a great love for his country.
Britain was once the head of a Commonwealth of Nations, of two billion people. It was a Commonwealth to be proud of, with our Queen as its Head of State. Until we abandoned it and joined Europe. Now our House of Lords is nothing more than a lucrative geriatric retirement home. Catering for, appointed but not elected, aging politicians and their aging business backers. I cannot believe our well-loved Queen sanctions this scandal of politically appointed Lords and Ladies. Even the heir to the British throne is muzzled from speaking out. What have these political Lords and Ladies done to earn their meaningless titles? Where is Britain going, where will it end up? Still more QUESTIONS. QUESTIONS. QUESTIONS.
I still remember the days when I could join a cargo ship of the British Merchant Navy. Docked in the London Docks. Loading cargoes for Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada, South Africa, and other distant parts of the Commonwealth. Bringing cargoes back too to Britain. The London Docks, loved by all deep seamen and always alive with trade then. Docks now sold at a knockdown price by a landlubber to other landlubbers who have no interest in a British Merchant Navy, only more development to benefit them financially. Sold to Chinese or other interests with the then Lord Mayor's company acting as the intermediary. Is Dover Harbour to suffer the same fate to make a few people here and I suspect some in Europe richer? Anyone who has the money today can buy Britain whether he or she be foreign or not.
I am seventy-seven years old now and retired. I still remember the gaps left in the high street by German bombers. I always think of the Dover people who must have perished under their onslaught. I can still see the torn wallpaper on the walls and fireplaces hanging in the breeze in my mind. With the Buglia bushes growing on broken walls full of butterflies in late July. Just why did our grandfathers, fathers, elder brothers, and sisters, have to die...if they died for nothing? For what did all those brave people fight? I like to believe it was for a better life of freedom and fair play for all... Not what we have now...a divided land ripe for the plucking by those in a position to pluck it clean.
I had the honour of sailing with two or three merchant seamen in the fifties and sixties. Who had been in the water many times after torpedoes, sank their ships. Over fifty thousand Merchant seamen died in the Second World War and thousands of people from our Commonwealth Navy, Air force, and Army too. All to secure our freedom. Must we forget so soon or is that Nature's way... Survival of the fittest. Even if it means the poorest will suffer in the future, which means nothing to harsh Nature. Nevertheless, should mean something to us as human beings living within a community.
Will our younger generations remember the Heroes when our generation is dead and gone? I no longer feel a free spirit anymore. Sometimes I do not even feel British. At least I have my Australian Nationality. Yet in my heart, I know I will never see that beautiful land again. All I have is a sense of foreboding for our younger generation and their future and a great disrespect for those in power.
Our younger generations only have one wish. To live a decent life without too much interference from big business and the politicians who feed off their hard work. Those who only want a job with those who will pay them enough, after taxes. Enough to buy their own family home instead of paying rent to those who live like parasites off them. The system of zero hour contracts must go. It is not a fair system of employment for those who want steady employment, especially the young. There is no job security or satisfaction in zero hour contracts... Enough is enough.
Let us get back to caring for each other. Life is too short not to. Life will be far shorter in years to come, if at all. When Nature decides she has enough of the human parasite on her Earth. One who will always fight a losing battle against her awesome power? It is a battle they cannot win. If that is the future then I am glad I will not be here to see it. It is not too late to change things...or is it?
My main reason for writing this essay, for that is what it is an Essay. I wanted to bring fierce debate into the equation in a forum situation where people at all levels of society can have his or her say. As long as there is life in these old bones, I will be a thorn in the side of those who do not care for those less fortunate. I cannot fathom why some people need more riches than they will ever need to live a fruitful life. Especially when they have it in their power to give a better life to others less fortunate than they. As our Chancellor so aptly put it. "We are all in this together." Did he mean just the politicians, the bankers, their backers, or everyone?
There is much more, which can be added to this article. Seven billion pounds to repair the Houses of Parliament. Just who will be awarded those lucrative contracts? The present scandal of politician's expenses, local, national and European? I could go on forever... If there is another life on this vale of tears. I would like to come back and change our greedy world into a better existence for all. For in my heart I have always been an honourable man...and that without religion getting in the way. All it would take. Honour within 'The Golden Rule.' Is that too much to ask?
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