...Usually Confined...

Bishop Sees Wood

2011-11-02T00:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/01/st-pauls-seeks-new-direction

A topical quote from a book that doesn't often get an airing on this blog. It's a difficult book to quote from: the way people use it has created a situation in which the mere act of quoting it is often seen as a statement in itself about the beliefs of the one doing the quoting. No such statement intended here, one way or the other.

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves and said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them. And when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased, and said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? And he left them, and went out of the city into Bethany; and he lodged there.

Matthew 21:12-17

Perhaps it should get an airing more often: let's face it, for centuries it was considered so subversive that its translation into English was forbidden. Perhaps the authorities then were frightened that if people actually read the book they'd realise not only how much radical stuff was tucked away in it but also how much of what Jesus Christ says and does (this quote is a case in point)is about criticising religious establishments for concerning themselves with worldly hierarchy rather than spirituality and for not being able to see the wood for the trees.

Rank & File Sparks and Occupy LSX unite to shut down Balfour Beatty site

2011-10-21T14:09:00.000-07:00

You can find out more about Reel News, an activist video collective dedicated to bringing you the news you don't see on the telly, here.

The Bum on the Plush

2011-10-18T14:17:00.001-07:00

As Stanley Unwin might have said, "Werritty, I say unto you..."

The bum on the rods is hunted down
As the enemy of mankind
The other is driven around to his club
Is feted, wined and dined.
And they who curse the bum on the rods
As the essence of all that is bad,
Will greet the other with a winning smile,
And extend the hand so glad.

The bum on the rods is a social flea
Who gets an occasional bite,
The bum on the plush is a social leech,
blood sucking day and night.
The bum on the rod is a load so light
That his weight we scarcely feel,
But it takes the labor of dozen of men
To furnish the other a meal.

As long as you sanction the bum on the plush
The other will always be there,
But rid yourself of the bum on the plush
And the other will disappear.
Then make an intelligent, organized kick
Get rid of the weights that crush.
Don't worry about the bum on the rods,
Get rid of the bum on the plush.

Frying Pan Jack

Timber!

2011-02-17T00:05:00.000-08:00

So the Condems have backed down on their forest sell-off policy. Cause for celebration. Push and they fall. Now for the rest of their policies...

The Mores

John Clare

Far spread the moory ground, a level scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green,
That never felt the rage of blundering plough,
Though centuries wreathed spring blossoms on its brow.
Autumn met plains that stretched them far away
In unchecked shadows of green, brown, and grey.

Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene;
No fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect from the gazing eye;
Its only bondage was the circling sky.
A mighty flat, undwarfed by bush and tree,
Spread its faint shadow of immensity.

And lost itself, which seemed to eke its bounds,
In the blue mist the horizon's edge surrounds.
Now this sweet vision of my boyish hours,
Free as spring clouds and wild as forest flowers,
Is faded all—a hope that blossomed free,
And hath been once as it no more shall be.

Enclosure came, and trampled on the grave
Of labour's rights, and left the poor a slave;
And memory's pride, ere want to wealth did bow,
Is both the shadow and the substance now.
The sheep and cows were free to range as then
Where change might prompt, nor felt the bonds of men.

Cows went and came with every morn and night
To the wild pasture as their common right;
And sheep, unfolded with the rising sun,
Heard the swains shout and felt their freedom won,
Tracked the red fallow field and heath and plain,
Or sought the brook to drink, and roamed again.

While the glad shepherd traced their tracks along,
Free as the lark and happy as her song.
But now all's fled, and flats of many a dye
That seemed to lengthen with the following eye,
Moors losing from the sight, far, smooth, and blea,
Where swopt the plover in its pleasure free.

Are banished now with heaths once wild and gay
As poet's visions of life's early day.
Like mighty giants of their limbs bereft,
The skybound wastes in mangled garbs are left,
Fence meeting fence in owner's little bounds
Of field and meadow, large as garden-grounds.

In little parcels little minds to please,
With men and flocks imprisoned, ill at ease.
For with the poor scared freedom bade farewell,
And fortune-hunters totter where they fell;
They dreamed of riches in the rebel scheme
And find too truly that they did but dream.

The War You Don't See

2010-12-10T23:02:00.000-08:00

This is the official trailer for John Pilger's new film, 'The War You Don't See', which is in UK cinemas from Sunday 12 December 2010 and can be seen on ITV two days later at 10.35pm.

The War You Don't See trailer from John Pilger on Vimeo.

The Wrong Cure

2010-12-07T13:29:00.000-08:00

A video from the False Economy website:

Why cuts are the wrong cure from False Economy on Vimeo.

Captain SKA

2010-11-13T00:49:00.000-08:00

The news in the Guardian today. that Nick Clegg had secretly planned to ditch a commitment to abolish university tuition fees after the election is hardly a surpise, but it does boost Captain Ska's ambition to make it to the Christmas No1 spot.

I read the other day that Margaret Thatcher, for all her strident talk, didn't manage to implement cuts on anything like the scale proposed by this government. It seems to think that if it keeps calling its policies "fair" and "progressive" no-one will notice what's happening.

Roll up your Trousers for the Poetry Bus...

2010-07-02T14:15:00.001-07:00

The Weaver of Grass has set this week's Poetry Bus Challenge. In the course of so doing, she referred to Eliot's Prufrock - which I set about re-reading, not only in search of inspiration but also in the hope that I might start to like Eliot, who I have not read for years. The only way I can describe it is I'd grown to dislike his tone. Has re-reading the poem changed the way I feel? The answer is a cautious yes. I felt moved to go on to The Hollow Men and The Waste Land. I found something in him I hadn't found before: I'm ashamed to say I'd never grasped quite how personal his poetry was. Too often, for me, humanity in his poetry seemed to be "formulated, sprawling on a pin,/... pinned and wriggling on the wall" (Prufrock). I'd not noticed the extent to which his work was that of one in awe of "of some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing" (Preludes) - and that that "thing" could sometimes be human. I wouldn't begin to try and tell other people what TS Eliot's poetry is about but perhaps it's a poetry that reveals itself intimately by not quite being able to bring itself to be intimate? A bit like an academic friend who having just split up from his wife, comes round and goes on and on about his thesis, but you can tell what he's really feeling by the body language, the way he's going on and the way reality affects his thinking? I don't know: I'm just rediscovering. I'll have to read some more.

Anyway, back to the Poetry Bus...

Prufrock Revisited

I feel worn out,
I'm growing old.
What's left?
Not much, if truth be told.

Perhaps I need
an image change;
but then they'll notice,
think me strange.

Bugger life,
bugger the mermaids -
I think I'll stick
to tea and sex aids.

From Catalogue to Analogue

2010-06-19T23:38:00.000-07:00

Whenever I go through a Tesco's checkout -which is quite often- and get asked if I collect vouchers for schools, I've always said yes.

However, I'd not given these vouchers much thought. I was visiting a school yesterday and got a chance to look through the Tesco catalogue which schools use to redeem vouchers (I now realise it's online, too!). I'd never realised that schools had to redeem the vouchers in the form of commodities bought at Tesco's. Obvious really. It seems to be a sort of communal extension of the reward card principle: inducing schools in the nicest possible way, over a long period of time, to be dependent on business -via the shopping habits of it's customers- for it's funding. When I think about it, is it much better than the habit of employers in the industrial revolution paying their workers in vouchers they could redeem in the employer's own shops? Money -which can be spent on anything, anywhere, within reason- gives us freedom. That doesn't just apply to us personally. It should apply, also, to us as a community: in this case, to our schools.

I opened the catalogue at random at a page dealing with science teaching aids. The first thing I saw was a digital temperature probe. This caught my attention immediately: what's wrong with thermometers? I even remember making a thermometer out of a plastic tub and a straw. The whole idea of the thermometer is to show the presence of heat by measuring the expansion of a substance. Use an "analogue" mercury thermometer and you can see this in action. Use a probe on a wire attached to a chip and a liquid crystal display and you can't. Similarly, you'll often see microscopes in schools which plug into computers: you put the specimen under it as normal and the magnified image is displayed on the screen. The same arguement applies as applies to the thermometer and there's another: in a traditional microscope you are seeing the actual light reflected off the specimen - it enables you to see the thing itself. With the computer microscope an element of wonder has been lost. OK, you've held the specimen in your hand and put it into the microscope, but otherwise, with the computer microscope, you might as well -almost- have taken the specimen from the nature table and searched for a magnified image on the internet.

What I'm saying is that perhaps the preponderance of gadgets in school is in danger of coming between the pupils and the things they're learning about. In a way, it's the old argument about using calculators in maths: actually it's a great idea so long as you first learn arithmetic and get it thoroughly embedded in your mind. It would be wrong to simply teach primary school children to use calculators without it. Today there are many other areas less obvious than the problem of calculators and arithmetic where we are in danger of reducing the activity to how can we use digital technology to do it for us. I should say that I do trust teachers to be onto this: it's not schools I'm criticising, it's the pressure businesses like Tesco's can place on schools to be places where children learn less how to use their minds and more, instead, to be dependent on commodities. (OK, you might say, it's the modern world: but the modern world was brought about by the likes of Einstein: and Einstein's most powerful tool -for which he's famous- was the "thought experiment"). And, funnily enough, I'm not a dinosaur who is against IT in schools, I'm just against it coming between the pupils and their potential to wonder and conceptualize - it can, and must, always foster these things. Thanks to digital technology, for example, school pupils can see images from the Hubble space telescope. Schools can't send telescopes into space, but they can hold a convex lens over a drop of pond water. Sorry, Tesco, but long may they do so!

In the interests of balance, I should point out that schools can obtain magnifying glasses ("a must for all those with an inquisitive mind" as their blurb puts it) and some other non-digital resources from the Tesco scheme - but not, if my search is anything to go by, a real thermometer. The emphasis of the scheme is most definitely on IT.

The Poetry Bus: Passenger List

2010-05-27T14:57:00.000-07:00

Keep them coming - there's still plently of seats left! Below is a list the people who've boarded the Bus so far. If you want to read them all, keep coming back to this page, as I'll be adding on anyone who leaves a link to their poem in the comments section.

(If you're looking for this week's instructions, see the previous post).

First in was Marion, listening to the voices of tiny headed men (posted in the comments to the previous post);

Gwei Mui is seeking refuge;

The Bug, seeking love.

Someone's knocking on the door over at crazy field mouse's mousehole.

Rachel's Mélodie wants to find a book that tells her everything.

Chicoreal's going bonkers in the best possible way: ZAROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

Savour Dave's wonderful lunacy.

The Weaver of Grass is taking the slow road.

Knock, knock! Who's there? Titus. Titus Who?

Enchanted Oak is locking up the village goats.

Enjoy Niamh's see-through chainsaw trees. She couldn't? She could.

Peu une quelque chose Euro-Dada-esque pour vous par le sciencegirl ICI. Elle est perdante ses cheveux.

And don't miss The Watercats making shapes!

And, VA VA BOOM! Pass by not. Tether your horse and take a look at TFE's.

Jeanne is entering a darkened hallway...

Poetikat's stripping it down to the bone.

Emerging Writer's getting dark and dramatic.

Karen (of Keeping Secrets) is dreaming of Vandalia.

Oh, and then there's mine:

The End

on this day, the last of all,
the sun beats down and there you sit
underneath the washing line
that curves away to the opposite wall,
reading a magazine and drinking lemonade.

on the windowsill unwatered plants
droop silently. beyond the wall
parents push their children, laughing pendula,
on swings. the trees that yesterday revealed
so much have nothing more to say.

It's a Great Life on the Poetry Bus!

2010-05-25T09:52:00.000-07:00

This weeks challenge:

1: Think of (or find) a sentence.

2: Delete the second half of it.

3: Think of as many different ways of finishing it was you can.

4: Now, delete the first part of the sentence, leaving only a collection of "second halves".

5: Play with these and concoct a poem out of them. You'll probably want to mess about with the grammar, leave bits out, put bits in, etc. Feel free.

6: Post the poem.

7: Leave me a link to the post in the comments section below, and I'll post a list of all the contributions I receive.

A tip (you may not need one if you've done this before). If you find you're getting nowhere, go back to square one and try a new half-sentence as a starting point. Some work better than others, of course.

Have fun!

And, finally, love it or hate it...

Sobering Slide Show

2010-05-23T01:49:00.000-07:00

I remember vividly pushing a fractious baby round the block in her buggy to try to get her to sleep during a heavy rain-storm. Fortunately the buggy was well covered. I wasn't. When I got back I realised why I'd not seen anyone else on my walk: the rain-storm was the one we were all supposed to avoid. It was probably radioactive as a result of the Chernobyl accident.

That was in London. I'm lucky I never found myself closer to Chernobyl than that. I have a feeling UK hill farmers are still feeling the effects. However, what they or others like them this side of Europe have suffered is nothing compared to what those closer to the plant went through.

Anyone who thinks nuclear is the answer -or even part of the answer- to our current environmental problems should watch this slide show on The Independent's website. OK, I admit, I'm not making a scientific case here. On the other hand, there are times when we just have to open our eyes to the effects of what we do and, well, listen to our intuition. And I don't think the argument is just a scientific one: nuclear reactors are designed, run, checked and tested by human beings. As with computers, no reactor is more reliable than the people who design and operate it. And none of us are as reliable as we want nuclear reactors to be. And as for the argument that we've paid a price in human life for coal so we should be prepared to pay the price for nuclear power... Well, watch the slide show. When did a coal mine last render a whole area uninhabitable? OK, so there's a good answer to that: if we just carry on the way we always have, the use of coal could render the whole earth uninhabitable. But if that's true -and I think it probably is- then we have to come up with cleverer answers than nuclear.

Close to the Ground

2010-05-15T00:33:00.000-07:00

This week's Poetry Bus -driven by Barbara- required as a condition for boarding a poem beginning with the line

I got down on my knees and smelled the new linoleum...

She also suggested that the poem might make use of long -as opposed to short- lines.

I must say it had me pretty flummoxed. I can't help feeling that what I've finally come up with, now I read it back, must have something to do with the recent UK general election and all those cheerful chappies in their dapper suits and shiny shoes falling over themselves to congratulate each other. I'm not sure what.

I've uploaded my effort as an image since I thought the blog format might chop up the lines in all sorts of unintended ways. Click to enlarge:

NOTE: The substances mentioned in the poem are commonly used in the fabrication of linoleum. See Wikipedia.

PS Regarding my previous post, just when I thought I'd finished it (it's doubled in length since the first version)... Nick Clegg came along. I'll have to think of another verse...

A Return to The Mask of Anarchy 2010

2010-04-09T07:31:00.000-07:00

As I said I would in my previous post, I have extended this joint effort between myself and PB Shelley. I haven't overwritten all ninety or so verses of Shelley's original and, sadly, I've yet to discover the note of optimism Shelley found. Where he could summon the people of England to rise up in the name of Freedom, what's needed here is a summons to the people of the world. As before, where whole verses of Shelley have been more or less retained, these have been printed in italics.

The previous post includes a link to Shelley's original poem. I neglected to link to Paul Foot's essay, Poetry of Protest. In the early 1980s I was lucky enough to encounter Paul Foot a number of times. He made a profound impression on me, looking back. He was living evidence -if it were needed- that radical politics need not be slavishly dogmatic. It could be poetic, visionary. He had many less imaginative detractors on the political left who thaught he should have been more slavish to the dogma of the day. Talking about Shelley, he was inspiring. It's a great shame he died when he did.

The Mask of Anarchy 2010

after PB Shelley

Written in response to the ongoing wars participated in
by the British Government in Iraq and Afghanistan

As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea,
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.

I met Murder on the stair -
He had a mask like Tony Blair -
He did his best to look sincere;
Yet wore a grin from ear to ear.

A bloodstained bible in his hand,
Upon his prayers he based his stand.
His word left many thousands dead.
Did he mislead? Was he misled?

Then so-called Prudence, dressed as Brown
(A sober tie, an honest frown)
Who somehow found the cash to spend
On wars that never seem to end.

Next came Fraud, no less astute,
Like Cameron, in a well-cut suit.
Photoshopped he was, and clean;
The product of a smooth machine.

A fresh-faced boy to wonder at -
Yet no less dangerous for that,
Hard-pressed to explain how he
Would act the same, yet differently.

And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.

Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.

And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw -
'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'

With robot aircraft high and fast,
Over foreign lands he passed,
Bombing, through a laptop screen,
Multitudes he'd never seen.

And o'er the earth an army moved
By Western governments approved
With tanks and guns, an armoured horde
Pressed to the service of this Lord.

See how, in pomp and dressed in black,
The politicians welcome back
The fallen, weeping as they sing
A hymn to Anarchy, their King.

And Anarchy, the skeleton,
Bows and grins to everyone,
As well as if his education
Had cost ten million to the nation.

Many barely glimpsed his form:
They lived their lives beyond the storm.
The thunder rolled, but never near:
"Such things would never happen here."

Then one arose distraught, a maid
And her name was Hope, she said:
But she looked more like Despair,
And she cried out in the air:

"Your bombs destroyed my people's home
"And now, around the world I roam.
"See, how distraught my father stands
"Clutching his head in desperate hands.

"He has had child after child,
"And the dust of death is piled
"Over every one but me -
"Misery, oh, Misery!"

With that, she disappeared from sight
Consumed within a blinding light.
A shockwave ran through those around
Scattering their limbs across the ground.

And then, among her ravaged foes
A mist, a light, an image rose:
An unseen world of desolation,
Hordes, dispossessed, from every nation.

And Anarchy, the ghastly birth,
Reared even higher o'er the earth.
The Horse of Death, tameless as wind,
Rode on, and with his hoofs did grind
To dust the helpless throng behind.

The Mask of Anarchy 2010

2010-03-20T18:36:00.000-07:00

A poem for the TFE Poetry Bus. Shelley's original can be found here. For anyone who doesn't know the poem, I should point out that Shelley doesn't use the word "anarchy" the way anarchists do. As the late Paul Foot put it: "In more recent times anarchy has come to be used as a word of the left. But in Shelley’s day the word had no such progressive meaning. It meant horror, chaos, violence."

What would Shelley have written if he were alive today? What I've posted it today is quite short, but this is just the first installment: there's more on the way. Shelley's original poem is very long.

It's angry, I think, and personal but, then, this is something I feel angry about. It's a commonplace (but true) to say that when terrible things happen a long way away they tend not to register in the mind quite like things that happen close to home. Similarly, the media which gets upset when a politican makes outlandish expense claims seems to take a less serious view when the same politician makes decisions that lead to the deaths of thousands (soldiers, civilians, anyone) a thousand miles away.

Angry poetry can upset people. If you wildly disagree with my stance please comment - civilised discussion is the stuff of blogging!

Where whole verses of Shelley have been more or less retained, these have been printed in italics.

The Mask of Anarchy 2010

after PB Shelley

Written in response to the ongoing wars participated in
by the British Government in Iraq and Afghanistan

As I lay asleep (where could I be?)
There came a voice from over the Sea,
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.

I met Murder on the stair -
He had a mask like Tony Blair -
He did his best to look sincere;
Yet wore a grin from ear to ear.

Then so-called Prudence, dressed as Brown
(A sober tie, an honest frown)
Who somehow found the cash to spend
On wars that never seem to end.

Next came Fraud, no less astute,
Like Cameron, in a well-cut suit.
Photoshopped he was, and clean;
The product of a smooth machine.

And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.

Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.

And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw -
'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'

With robot aircraft high and fast,
Over foreign lands he passed,
Bombing, through a laptop screen,
Multitudes he'd never seen.

And o'er the earth an army moved
By Western governments approved
With tanks and guns, an armoured horde
Pressed to the service of this Lord.

And now, in pomp and dressed in black,
The politicians welcome back
The fallen, weeping as they sing
A hymn to Anarchy, their King.

And Anarchy, the skeleton,
Bows and grins to everyone,
As well as if his education
Had cost ten million to the nation.

Natives

2010-03-19T15:57:00.000-07:00

After reading a post on Rachel Fox's blog I got thinking about the whole idea of "the best song ever written". Of course, as Rachel infers, there's no such thing, but there are many songs that can create the impression of being the one and only, while you're listening to them. This one has always had that effect on me. It's not the best song ever written, of course. None of them are, but...

Two Poems

2010-03-16T00:45:00.000-07:00

The Choice

should I get up
and set about
exterminating minor celebrities
with a toxic aerosol
specially designed
for the purpose
(I know it sounds
cruel but it's
got to be done) or
should I stay
in bed listening
to disembodied voices
from another world?

Let's

live forever breathe
ideas instead of oxygen
travel through time
just by thinking about it
sing like skylarks fly
like supersonic jets turn
green at the flick of a switch
think like trees
flow down rivers
call night a day
let go - see
what's on the other side

A Night Out

2010-03-12T09:29:00.001-08:00

One for the TFE Poetry Bus. The challenge this week was to write a poem with the improbable opening lines

She was wearing Stella McCartney
I was drinking Stella Artois...

So here goes. A grubby, sordid tale, but then I can't helping thinking it was destined to be. I thought of binning it, in case anyone thought it was even an itsy bitsy bit autobiographical. It isn't. I don't even drink lager. It merely grew from those opening lines and a paucity of available rhymes...

A Night Out

She was wearing Stella McCartney
I was drinking Stella Artois
I said “are you busy tonight, luv?”
she said “who are you talking to? Moi?”

And then it began to rain
and the wheel fell off the van
and the hole in the wall ate my card
and she said she'd this husband called Stan.

“You can keep your Stella McCartney” I said,
“And I'll stick to the Stella Artois.
You can give me a ring if Stan thinks it's his thing
to get into a ménage a trois.

But I won't 'old me breath."

Steve Bell

2010-02-10T08:44:00.000-08:00

I've not taken very much notice of my favourite cartoonist for a while, so it was great to see that Steve Bell hasn't lost his edge. Like a lot of other people, I first came across him when he wrote the Maggie's Farm strip for Time Out magazine. In the days when I got a newspaper every day, I was a keen follower of his "If..." strip. How has he managed to keep his ruthless satirical edge as sharp as it is all these years? I can't help feeling that it's going to find plenty to slice into in the coming decade. It's going to be almost as much fun for satirists as the Thatcher era - and as miserable and uncertain for everybody else. Oh well, at least politicans in those days couldn't photoshop themselves...

Twice in my Life

2010-01-31T00:00:00.000-08:00

Only twice in my life have I been present at the death of another person. Both people had cancer and in both cases, death was the end of a slow, inevitable decline. Both had enjoyed a good quality of life for a while despite their illness but, near the end of it, that quality took a nose-dive. Of course, I was not in their position, so I can't speak for them, but their lives looked -from where I stood- to be a lot more trouble for them by then than it was worth.

There came a point when, for hours on end, the only things that seemed to happen were the symptoms of impending death. In at least one case, some remnants of consciousness seemed to be there.

A few weeks have now elapsed since the second of these deaths. It leaves me with a deep conviction that was, before it, only a passing thought: that we should all have the right, when terminally or chronically ill, to choose the time and manner of our death and, moreover, the right to enlist the assistance of someone else to enable us to bring it about. (Funnily enough, the whole issue has come to the fore recently due to the Gilderdale Case).

With this post in mind, I searched the internet to find out more about the best way to kill oneself with a minimum of suffering ("exit bags", the "peaceful pill", and so on). Suffice to say, it's not something I feel even vaguely qualified to comment on. All I know is that we make a reasonably comfortable assisted death available to our pets when we decide that their lives are not worth the suffering they have to endure. Surely we should be able to make similar decisions for ourselves.

Thankfully things are beginning to change, but slowly. Whenever the subject crops up, people worry about the legal problems and the risk of dying people being exploited by their relatives. All I can say to this is that everything we permit to be done has negative side effects: for example, if we were so concerned to avoid death and suffering we'd give up driving, or at least reduce the speed limit.

There is also the concern that strapped-for-cash health services (or health insurers) might offer euthanasia to people they don't want to spend money on. This has already happened in Oregon, apparently, where a Death with Dignity Act was enacted in 1997. As a supporter of "the right to die" this concerns me, too, and it shouldn't be allowed to happen.

People might also raise religious objections. Of course, everyone has to think and act according to their conscience. However, on a social, rather than a personal level, we have all sorts of other ways round the biblical injunction not to kill, so why not another one? All kinds of excuses are routinely made on behalf of nation states for war and capital punishment by those who wish to make them, so why not a humane excuse, for a change, for the individual?

Happiness 101

2010-01-29T08:48:00.000-08:00

It's nice to know people enjoy what you write, whatever you think of it yourself. And while I sometimes think the institution of the blog award isn't quite my "thing", I somehow seem to stop thinking that when one comes my way. So thank you, John Hayes (proprietor of the excellent blog Robert Frost's Banjo), for the Happiness 101 award!

I'm supposed to list ten things that make me happy. If you don't know a lot about ostriches, you might find my list a bit confusing:

1. Chatting to humans.
2. Running with antelope.
3. Not burying my head in the sand. (Pliny got it wrong. Why do people always think we do?)
4. Really big eggs.
5. Getting the wink from the top hen.
6. Blogging.
7. Watching Star Trek.
8. Driving rival males off my territory.
9. Eating locusts.
10.Spending time with other members of the nomadic group.

Who should I pass it on to? I decided on:

(a) one or two blogs I enjoy reading whose readers (and comment makers) don't seem to be shared in common with other blogs I read. Blogs, to put it another way, that seem to belong to different clouds in the blogosphere, and

(b) one or two blogs that, like this one, haven't been around too long.

They are:

Get off My Lawn!

Poet in Residence
Poet in Residence, incidentally, is also responsible for the well worth reading blog, Shakespeare's Haiku.

Painted by the Sun

Wilde

I will quite understand if the proprietors of the above blogs don't want to display the award - those cakes look decidedly bad for you. However, if you're one of them and are reading this, feel free to take the photo, display it along with your own happiness list, and pass it on.

I wish, I wish, I wish...

2010-01-15T13:54:00.000-08:00

So it's 2010... Time I had a rant. I was always slow on the uptake. It's taken me this long to realise that it's 50 years since the start of the 60s. I find that quite a depressing thought: not because time flies and it only seems five minutes ago (it doesn't for me on both counts), but because since then, the world I see around me (it is a lucky, comparitively rich part of the world, it has to be said) has seemed to me to be increasingly in danger of sinking into the sort of bland, workaholic, consumerist haze summed up so chillingly by Radiohead:

As Thom Yorke sang in a different song:

I wish it was the sixties, I wish I could be happy
I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen

Of course, things happen. However, I'm not talking about world events, but about culture and the experience of everyday life. It would be naive to think that simply living through a decade like the sixties would make one "happy", but a lot of extraordinary things did happen in the sixties. It is fashionable to say that the extraordinary nature of that decade is a myth, but I get the impression that life in the seventies was a world away from that of the fifties. However, life in the tens, so far, seems virtually the same as life in the nineties. I might get it wrong, but I can make a reasonable stab at imagining what life will be like in the twenties. (I'd make an exception of the internet here. It's unoriginal but true to say that it's the one big idea worthy of the sixties thought of since then. In the sixties Jerry Rubin declared that all revolutionaries should have a colour television. Did he even dream of the internet and the PC?).

It may just be that I'm getting older, and that this is all -or, at least, partly- a subjective response to getting older. But it would be great, I think, if the tens turned out to be a decade that challenged assumptions. A decade in which students demonstrated en-masse against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention student loans and tuition fees), a decade in which new forms of music did for rock music what rock music did for trad jazz, a decade in which radical, charismatic characters questioned established notions and got people thinking, a decade, at the risk of sounding trivial, in which our dress sense changed radically. A decade, in short, in which people dared to imagine -and do- things differently.

*

Am I the only person who finds the new Renault TV advert intensely annoying? OK, so we probably should be developing electric cars, but...

It begins like an Oxfam advert, with shots of people in the developing world trying to get around. In fact, that's what I thought it was:

"is it still acceptable that some of us are able to drive, while others barely have the means to get around... does enjoyment for some have to cost the lives of others..."

Then:

At Renault, we think it's time to change things [shots of cool-looking guys driving sleek-looking cars, so obviously not car adverts] ... Driving doesn't just mean pleasure for the driver... It's a pleasure we share with others... [For a moment I thought we were going to cut back the bloke we saw earlier pulling the cart but, no. We cut to young woman crossing road, smiling at cool-looking driver]...

So, if you're rich enough and want to do your bit for world poverty, buy a new electric Renault, stop at zebra crossings and smile at pedestrians (especially attractive pedestrians of the opposite sex). Papa and Nicole were always game for a bit of a laugh, so perhaps there's something ironic going on... Or have I lost the thread somewhere?

Badger Got It Right

2010-01-06T01:10:00.000-08:00

We've been re-reading Wind in the Willows here. By a happy coincidence, for a while, the real world was following the same pattern as Kenneth Grahame's. When Mole, making his way through the Wild Wood, was being overwhelmed by the snow, so were we. In the book, Mole is joined by the Rat, who set out to look for his friend, and together, fortunately, they find themselves outside Mr Badger's front door. Almost the same thing happened to us. We were caught out by the snow while out in the car. The road got into such a bad state that the car became useless. Fortunately, we were not far from a friend's house. He had a friend with a 4x4 car who cheerfully gave us both a lift home.

So much in Britain grinds to a halt in the snow. The fact is, we get just enough to disrupt us, and although we make a fantastic job of what we do do to deal with it, we don't get enough for us to gear our infrastructure around carrying on as normal. (As for the TV and the newspapers, there are always a few serious, tragic stories but so much of the rest is trivial and gets relentlessly sensationalized: most British news coverage of the weather reads more like The Onion than serious news).

Of course, it could get worse. If it does, we really will have problems across the board worth worrying and writing about. However, to return to Wind in the Willows, when faced with a typical British winter perhaps we should just do what many other members of the animal kingdom in Britain do and take a leaf out of Badger's book:

'Yes please, sir,' said the elder of the two hedgehogs respectfully. `Me and little Billy here, we was trying to find our way to school--mother would have us go, was the weather ever so--and of course we lost ourselves, sir, and Billy he got frightened and took and cried, being young and faint-hearted. And at last we happened up against Mr. Badger's back door, and made so bold as to knock, sir, for Mr. Badger he's a kind-hearted gentleman, as everyone knows--'

'I understand,' said the Rat, cutting himself some rashers from a side of bacon, while the Mole dropped some eggs into a saucepan. `And what's the weather like outside? You needn't "sir" me quite so much?' he added.

'O, terrible bad, sir, terrible deep the snow is,' said the hedgehog. `No getting out for the likes of you gentlemen today.'

'Where's Mr Badger?' inquired the Mole, as he warmed the coffee-pot before the fire.

'The master's gone into his study, sir,' replied the hedgehog, `and he said as how he was going to be particular busy this morning, and on no account was he to be disturbed.'

This explanation, of course, was thoroughly understood by every one present. The fact is, as already set forth, when you live a life of intense activity for six months in the year, and of comparative or actual somnolence for the other six, during the latter period you cannot be continually pleading sleepiness when there are people about or things to be done. The excuse gets monotonous. The animals well knew that Badger, having eaten a hearty breakfast, had retired to his study and settled himself in an arm-chair with his legs up on another and a red cotton handkerchief over his face, and was being `busy' in the usual way at this time of the year.

Ho, ho, ho!

2009-12-16T14:59:00.000-08:00

Flying round the world on a sleigh laden with presents is a very un-21st century way of doing things. OK, so relying on reindeer power sounds green-ish in a cynical, let's-impress-the-customers kind of way, but heating workshops and warehouses at the North Pole certainly doesn't. Then there's the business efficiency angle. Employing enough elves to make presents for 6 billion people is not a viable proposition in a modern, competitive world. Sack 'em. It would be doing them a favour and they only really managed to cater for reasonably well-off Westerners anyway.

If Santa has any sense, he'll lauch a SantaCard. If everybody had one of these, they could buy what they like and Santa would foot the bill. This, of course, shouldn't be a problem for Santa. Quantatitive easing is a way of life at the North Pole, so much so that he'd be able to pay himself a huge bonus for running up more toxic debt every Christmas than all the world's wrecked banks combined managed in a decade. In effect, Santa would be taking control of the world's economy. Within a couple of years money would become obsolete, and everyone will wonder why they thought they needed it in the first place.

Thought for the Day

2009-12-15T13:32:00.000-08:00

One of the joys of blogging is that you can take your time over things. Unlike the mass media, you don't have to cover events (if indeed you want to cover events at all) the day they happen. All this happened some three weeks ago.

Under pressure from secularists, atheists and humanists, the BBC Trust considered whether or not to change the remit of their early-morning Thought for the Day slot to include non-religious thoughts. Sadly, they missed a great opportunity to improve the service they provide and rejected the idea.

A spokesman for the Church of England said: "We are glad that the BBC Trust has protected a unique slot in Radio 4's schedule where religious views from across the faith communities of the UK can be expressed openly.

"Thought for the Day is highly valued by people of all faiths and none as a distinctive slot that, if diluted, would have become nothing more than just another comment slot."

Now, I am not a secularist, atheist or a humanist, but I do strongly disagree with the Church of England's view on this.

One contributor to the slot I do have time for is Rabbi Lionel Blue. I once read a book he wrote in which he said that what people believed was, on the whole, an accumulation of things they had believed over their lives. He himself had almost joined the Church of England as a young man. He said that one day he was sitting in a Church -in England- and looked round at the congregation. He said the thought crossed his mind: how many people there would have risked their own necks to protect him -by birth, he was Jewish- had the Nazis occupied Britain? Not many, he decided. It put him off joining the Church and he came to the conclusion that in seeking spiritual expression people should look first to their cultural roots. (These are his views as expressed by me, not mine. I'm not sure if I agree with him or not). He went on to become a rabbi, but a rabbi with a "feel" for Christianity. He quoted other things he'd flirted with in his youth that had become part of how he saw the world too. What he had to say struck a chord with me and, looking back on my life, I could see similar things that had made me see the world the way I do. We're complicated. We're people, not talking pamphlets.

I get heartily fed up with the following formula. A person with religious convictions tries to hook me with a chattily delivered anecdote. After a few paragraphs designed to convince me that the person is in touch with the zeitgeist and concerned about issues that matter to ordinary people they kick in with "Jesus said..." or "When Jesus was..."(For Jesus, substitute a religious leader of choice - I'm just taking a leaf out of Lionel Blue's book). We always knew it was going there and we know that whatever Jesus said, the speaker thinks he or she knows what he meant by it. This complacent formula irks me greatly. It just about worked in the pre-radio and TV days, when going to church on a Sunday was the only form of entertainment, but those who use it should know it turns off all but those who already share the speaker's view. I'm no free-marketeer, but this is one area where opening up the debate to a bit of competition would be no bad thing. If people with religious convictions have to share their thoughts on a level playing-field with those who don't share them, there will be no losers, only winners. Thinking is good for you.