Letters to the Fenland Citizen editor – October 7, 2020
Thanks for your support
Thank you to everyone who supported this month’s March’s Heritage Open Days and for your kind messages. Despite present conditions, we have had the opportunity to see some of the ‘Hidden Nature’ in March either through watching the videos on The March Society’s YouTube channel or actually taking the walks.
We have had the fine weather and time to discover, remind ourselves of and appreciate, all the beautiful places in March.
Please share any of your photographs and comments on this year’s virtual heritage events with The March Society.
Huge thanks to all the volunteers who help restore and maintain these green spaces.
It has been difficult this year because of the lockdown and distancing. Also the glorious weather has produced tremendous growth in plants but their work makes a fantastic difference.
If you would like to join these groups of volunteers please contact them through their websites or Facebook pages or through The March Society.
If you are visiting these sites please remember groups of no more than six, and distancing of two metres.
Jennifer Lawler
The March Society
COVID means we need extra volunteers
The Poppy Appeal is again upon us but obviously because of the problems with COVID-19, which the whole country is experiencing at the moment, things will have to be different.
At this time it is still unclear how things will progress, but at Chatteris we are hoping to be able to cover the Aldi supermarket.
We are looking for extra volunteers as the majority of our usual volunteers are aged and/or in poor health and therefore unable to help us this year.
All volunteers must be under 70 years of age and in good health. Anyone asked to shield, or who lives with someone shielding, must not volunteer.
Those at “increased risk” should consider carefully before volunteering, but I’m happy to discuss this with you. Collection dates this year are from Saturday, October 24 until Saturday, November 7. If you are able to help us, please contact me.
The poppy table will be set out differently this year, in as much as volunteers will sit behind the table, and hand gel, face masks and gloves for protection will be there, along with a contactless machine for payment.
Buckets will be situated at both ends of the table for cash payments. There will be no need to be in direct contact with the public.
There will be no Remembrance Sunday Parade this year but if anyone, or organisation, would like a wreath to lay at the Memorial in their own time, please contact me – 01354 695257, 07774 121 545 or lynda.behagg@btinternet.com
Lynda Behagg
Chatteris Poppy Appeal
Home care workers, please take note of ruling
A tribunal has exposed the unfair pay faced by many low-paid homecare workers.
A group of home care workers have won a significant legal victory that ruled they should be paid for time spent travelling between clients.
The ten workers, who were supported by Unison, have won around £10,000 each in the employment tribunal ruling.
It found that Haringey council in north London outsourced contracts to private firms who were paying some home care staff less than half the minimum wage.
Kaamil Education Limited, Diligent Care Services Limited, and Premier Carewaiting Limited have been ordered to pay out more than £100,000 in backdated earnings.
The penny-pinching working practices saw the workers work for under half the legal minimum hourly rate. This was despite working as many as 14 hours a day.
The judgement said that travelling and writing time of up to 60 minutes between appointments should be treated as working time.
Homecare workers have battled to provide vital support to their clients throughout the coronavirus crisis.
Their skills and experience meant people could continue to live in their own homes rather than care homes.
Home care workers are underpaid and undervalued by the private contractors who try to deliver necessary public services as cheaply as possible.
People think the job just involves giving out tablets or a cup of tea. But you have to be a doctor, nurse, and social worker.
The outcome of the four-year legal battle will open the floodgates to many more unfair pay claims.
Unison said: “This ruling sends a message to other home care bosses that it’s completely unacceptable to pay staff illegal poverty wages.”
Homecare workers – please take note!
John Smithee
Wisbech
If the worst happens, show some respect
So, now we have had the first batch of the reintroduction of coronavirus restrictions thrust upon us, many people are undecided as to whether they go far enough, or whether they are a step too far.
I am not writing this to debate the rights or wrongs of Boris Johnson’s new COVID strategy, I am just trying to give a little reminder of the one word that seemed to have been forgotten during the pandemic, and that word is RESPECT.
Whilst the lockdown turned from day to week, from week to month, to three months, many people gained a new found friendship with the newspaper deliverers, postal workers and even refuse workers.
But, those who seemed to draw the shortest of straws were those that worked in retail, in our supermarkets, those that had to face abuse, vitriol and anger and in some cases, even physical assaults from a few members of the public that thought they had some divine right to buy all the household essentials they could.
This minority of people that thought our supermarket workers were fair game to be attacked and trolled just for doing their jobs, are nothing but an example of the highest levels of ignorance, selfishness, and deplorability of the greed and callousness of people in Britain today.
Then we got to the food aisles in our supermarkets,with panic buying, fights and an obscene amount of buying
The greedy filled fridges and freezers with food one week, and then our bins with it the next week, whilst NHS staff had to beg and plead on social media channels for a little compassion.
During the months of March, April and May, compassion ended up in the bin, with all the food waste, and our friend RESPECT.
But, on a positive note, I have been asked by so many people to put a BIG THANK YOU out there to the staff and management at one store in particular, and that is the Tesco store in March.
So many have commented on many aspects of shopping there during the pandemic, all the way from the organisation of the store, and its implementations of the COVID rules and the availability of stock levels, to the helpfulness of ALL of the staff that worked through the darkest of days. Also, thank you to independently-owned shops like Bash’s Norwood Road convenience store, the petrol filling stations and other amenities that “kept calm and carried on”.
But, please, let us not forget, if lockdown us forced upon us, each and every one of us has a care of duty to show these workers some respect.
Ashley Smith
March
Concerns raised for years
With all our attention on COVID-19, has anyone been tracking the bulldozing of the Japanese Trans Pacific Trade Deal through the House of Lords etc?
Is this deal like the USA Ceta/Ttip trade deal where the UK Government and UK taxpayers can be sued in a private arbitration court over a trade dispute.
Did you also know that the UK and central London financial banking sector is the biggest offshore tax haven and legitimate tax laundering set up around the world?
And all it would take is a simple revoke statement (instruction) from our dear Queen to shut down this behaviour by our financial sector. Concerns over this issue have been raised by politicians for the last five years. However, it’s big money so the Government turns a blind eye to it, despite knowing some of these funds are involved with crime, terrorism and narcotics, all around the world.
Mark Burton
Chatteris
Looking for ex-Wrens
I am looking for ex Wrens – anyone who joined during 1947-81 and trained at HMS Dauntless (Reading).
I’m compiling a searchable archive of Divisional “class” photos that only ex-Wrens may access. The collection also encourages old friends to be rediscovered, memories shared and new support groups formed.
With permission from various Wrens support groups, I started this archive and stored it in a private Facebook group and contacted all the Wrens I could trace using normal social media sources.
If you were in the Wrens, please get in touch with us because we’d love to hear from you and give the opportunity to reconnect with old classmates.
Janette Crisp
44 Moreton Road, Worcester Park, Surrey, KT4 8EZ, 0771 990 9844
