An incessant wind is blowing from the North Sea, sending waves crashing on to Clacton beach. "Our biggest achilles heel was the size and scale of this pier, because there's so much to maintain out over the North Sea. Many of the houses here were built as holiday chalets and are hard to maintain at the mercy of the North Sea. Ketterer says he was a Conservative right up until Thatcher: he thinks she should never have spent the North Sea oil money on lowering taxes. Bobbie-Jean Halls Smith is the Essex county carnival queen, not the Jaywick carnival queen, as an earlier version said.