And, while the simplistic Left like to blame it all on ‘Tory cuts’, these citizens know it’s not all about budgets. Instead, it’s about the fashionable causes and warped priorities of a richly rewarded managerial elite versus the expectations of the people they serve.

For example, the public hear the Chief Constable of Surrey saying that her officers may no longer bother chasing car thieves or those who drive away from petrol stations without paying.

They hear the Police Commissioner for Devon and Cornwall say officers may no longer bother investigating some suicides or those who do a runner from a restaurant (in an area dependent on tourism).

They hear the Police Commissioner for Bedfordshire saying — as he did this week — that motorway speed cameras might be recalibrated to extract fines from the tiniest infractions (with no mention of ‘road safety’).

Yet they also know there are plenty of police available to swoop on pensioners who remonstrate with feral youths, or to take sneak photos of celebrities from helicopters, or to round up journalists who talk to whistleblowers and so on. And sympathy is in short supply.

If Frinton was very multi-cultural or very troublesome, there might be grants and pilot schemes and shiny new infrastructure. But it is not.
This is forgotten England: one of those unglamorous, unsexy back-waters where nothing much happens and things just slowly become more and more rubbish every day.

The local GP surgery, for instance, once a partnership of doctors who tended families from cradle to grave, reached crisis point last year after the last permanent GP departed. Patients had to queue round the block at dawn to see a ‘locum’ doctor.

‘It was dreadful,’ says Tony Comber, chairman of the surgery’s patient participation group. ‘If you did manage to get in, these locums would just keep repeating, “You’ve only got ten minutes”, even when my wife was having an epileptic fit right there.’

The surgery has been taken over, in the short-term, by a local employee-owned healthcare provider, with three doctors hired until March and locums filling any gaps. But elderly patients, often with complex problems, yearn for someone who knows their medical needs.

It will be a familiar story to millions, of course, but it simply compounds the sense of neglect in end-of-the-line places such as Frinton.

While other parts of the country look forward to expensive new railways or chunks of motorway, there’s nothing new heading in this direction. No one has mentioned an ‘Eastern powerhouse’.

The street lights go out between midnight and 5am to help the county council save money. The schools are overcrowded.

At the same time, central government is planning 10,000 new homes for the district, with no obvious employment for all the new arrivals, let alone extra health workers or schools.

I meet local councillors Jeff Bray and Richard Everett — both members of the Ukip opposition on the Tory-controlled district council — who say that Whitehall is clueless about the impact it will have.
Mr Bray represents a ward where an outlying village Many people all over the country feel not merely neglected but abandoned by central government. They pay their taxes, as they have always done, but the services which they expect in return — be it health, education or policing — are now in steep decline.
And, while the simplistic Left like to blame it all on ‘Tory cuts’, these citizens know it’s not all about budgets. Instead, it’s about the fashionable causes and warped priorities of a richly rewarded managerial elite versus the expectations of the people they serve.
For example, the public hear the Chief Constable of Surrey saying that her officers may no longer bother chasing car thieves or those who drive away from petrol stations without paying.
They hear the Police Commissioner for Devon and Cornwall say officers may no longer bother investigating some suicides or those who do a runner from a restaurant (in an area dependent on tourism).
They hear the Police Commissioner for Bedfordshire saying — as he did this week — that motorway speed cameras might be recalibrated to extract fines from the tiniest infractions (with no mention of ‘road safety’).

Yet they also know there are plenty of police available to swoop on pensioners who remonstrate with feral youths, or to take sneak photos of celebrities from helicopters, or to round up journalists who talk to whistleblowers and so on. And sympathy is in short supply.
If Frinton was very multi-cultural or very troublesome, there might be grants and pilot schemes and shiny new infrastructure. But it is not.
This is forgotten England: one of those unglamorous, unsexy back-waters where nothing much happens and things just slowly become more and more rubbish every day.
The local GP surgery, for instance, once a partnership of doctors who tended families from cradle to grave, reached crisis point last year after the last permanent GP departed. Patients had to queue round the block at dawn to see a ‘locum’ doctor.
‘It was dreadful,’ says Tony Comber, chairman of the surgery’s patient participation group. ‘If you did manage to get in, these locums would just keep repeating, “You’ve only got ten minutes”, even when my wife was having an epileptic fit right there.’
The surgery has been taken over, in the short-term, by a local employee-owned healthcare provider, with three doctors hired until March and locums filling any gaps. But elderly patients, often with complex problems, yearn for someone who knows their medical needs.
It will be a familiar story to millions, of course, but it simply compounds the sense of neglect in end-of-the-line places such as Frinton.

While other parts of the country look forward to expensive new railways or chunks of motorway, there’s nothing new heading in this direction. No one has mentioned an ‘Eastern powerhouse’. The street lights go out between midnight and 5am to help the county council save money. The schools are overcrowded. At the same time, central government is planning 10,000 new homes for the district, with no obvious employment for all the new arrivals, let alone extra health workers or schools.

I meet local councillors Jeff Bray and Richard Everett — both members of the Ukip opposition on the Tory-controlled district council — who say that Whitehall is clueless about the impact it will have. Mr Bray represents a ward where an outlying village of 750 homes is on course to absorb 1,000 new ones. ‘Where is the infrastructure and who will live in these houses if there isn’t the work here?’ he asks.

To cap it all, local policing is shortly to go through the wringer.
Faced with making £63 million of savings over the next five years, Essex Police is about to cut 15 of its 25 walk-in stations and shed 190 of its 250 police community support officers (PCSOs). The nearest police base to Frinton-on-Sea, in neighbouring Walton, is to be sold.

Morale is nose-diving. While the national average for sick days has fallen to four per year, the rate among Essex Police officers has risen to 13. Among PCSOs it’s 17.5. By the standards of any organisation, it’s a scandal.
‘This is the England that the politicians take for granted,’ says local MP Douglas Carswell, who defected to Ukip from the Tories and is his party’s only MP.

‘These are people who have paid into the system all their lives. Now they find themselves let down by the sheer incompetence of the state and by a political class cocooned in another world, spouting figures handed to them by civil servants. …”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3307955/Forced-hire-police-town-old-white-politicians-care-about.htmlof 750 homes is on course to absorb 1,000 new ones. ‘Where is the infrastructure and who will live in these houses if there isn’t the work here?’ he asks.
To cap it all, local policing is shortly to go through the wringer.
Faced with making £63 million of savings over the next five years, Essex Police is about to cut 15 of its 25 walk-in stations and shed 190 of its 250 police community support officers (PCSOs). The nearest police base to Frinton-on-Sea, in neighbouring Walton, is to be sold.
Morale is nose-diving. While the national average for sick days has fallen to four per year, the rate among Essex Police officers has risen to 13. Among PCSOs it’s 17.5. By the standards of any organisation, it’s a scandal.
‘This is the England that the politicians take for granted,’ says local MP Douglas Carswell, who defected to Ukip from the Tories and is his party’s only MP.
‘These are people who have paid into the system all their lives. Now they find themselves let down by the sheer incompetence of the state and by a political class cocooned in another world, spouting figures handed to them by civil servants.’