Today is my birthday. I have had a book on cooking fish from my wife, a Bristol Rugby shirt from my parents, and a DVD from T. Even my brother remembered and sent me a tenner.
My good humour was tempered somewhat, though, as after a pleasant morning's annual leave I had to go to work, and deal with public transport crowded with people who quite frankly don't give a toss whether they tread on you or barge you out of the way.
It was, therefore, a surprise and a joy to be stopped from buying a travelcard at Ladywell station by a woman who only wanted to give me hers which she had finished with for the day. It felt incongrous given my usual travel experience, but helped me maintain my morning positivity throughout the afternoon.
Whoever you are, thanks.
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
Oath of Allegiance
Much sound and fury over Lord Goldsmith's suggestion that young Britons take the oath of allegiance.
The reactions were predictable and generally boring. The Tories think Labour is putting a sticking plaster on a problem of its own politically correct making while the metropolitan liberals whine about swearing allegiance to the Queen - and it is these latter people I spend most of my time with.
I'm at best a luke warm monarchist and one of the reasons that I like being British is that we don't wear our nationality on our sleeves. That said, I think that I'm with the former Attorney General. At the moment, it is only new British citizens - immigrants - that have a citizenship ceremony including the Oath of Allegiance. This is unfair. It's like a hoop that they have to jump through that the rest of us don't. If citizenship is equal and truly based on civic values then this seems unfair. So yes, on leaving school and taking up their place as citizens then young people should go through the same ceremony.
As for the fact of swearing allegiance to the Queen, well, the last time I looked this was still a monarchy, so it is entirely appropriate. If you think that the monarchy needs to be change (as I do) or that it needs to be abolished, well, that's actually a separate debate.
But it is a debate that a lot of people seem to want to introduce into this one. It's the way that they do it that I find interesting.
"I'm a republican, I'm not swearing allegiance to any queen", they say. Orwell's essay The Lion and the Unicorn is illuminating here, "In England patriotism takes different forms in different classes, but it runs like a connecting thread through nearly all of them. Only the Europeanized intelligentsia are really immune to it . . .it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box."
There is strain in left liberal thinking, particularly amongst the London middle class, for whom having the right opinion and being seen to have that opinion, is more important than anything else. Though it values collectivist thinking and community values, in the final analysis too many of the metropolitan elite care more about what people think about them and refuse to compromise these for notions of the greater good.
Their problem with the oath is expressed in terms of 'I'. 'I don't want this', 'I'm not a royalist', 'I don't believe in God'. There is no engagement with how citizenship ceremonies could make us a more cohesive and happy 'we'.
The reactions were predictable and generally boring. The Tories think Labour is putting a sticking plaster on a problem of its own politically correct making while the metropolitan liberals whine about swearing allegiance to the Queen - and it is these latter people I spend most of my time with.
I'm at best a luke warm monarchist and one of the reasons that I like being British is that we don't wear our nationality on our sleeves. That said, I think that I'm with the former Attorney General. At the moment, it is only new British citizens - immigrants - that have a citizenship ceremony including the Oath of Allegiance. This is unfair. It's like a hoop that they have to jump through that the rest of us don't. If citizenship is equal and truly based on civic values then this seems unfair. So yes, on leaving school and taking up their place as citizens then young people should go through the same ceremony.
As for the fact of swearing allegiance to the Queen, well, the last time I looked this was still a monarchy, so it is entirely appropriate. If you think that the monarchy needs to be change (as I do) or that it needs to be abolished, well, that's actually a separate debate.
But it is a debate that a lot of people seem to want to introduce into this one. It's the way that they do it that I find interesting.
"I'm a republican, I'm not swearing allegiance to any queen", they say. Orwell's essay The Lion and the Unicorn is illuminating here, "In England patriotism takes different forms in different classes, but it runs like a connecting thread through nearly all of them. Only the Europeanized intelligentsia are really immune to it . . .it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box."
There is strain in left liberal thinking, particularly amongst the London middle class, for whom having the right opinion and being seen to have that opinion, is more important than anything else. Though it values collectivist thinking and community values, in the final analysis too many of the metropolitan elite care more about what people think about them and refuse to compromise these for notions of the greater good.
Their problem with the oath is expressed in terms of 'I'. 'I don't want this', 'I'm not a royalist', 'I don't believe in God'. There is no engagement with how citizenship ceremonies could make us a more cohesive and happy 'we'.
Monday, 10 March 2008
Hilly Fields
Radio 4's Today Programme included a bit this morning about Hilly Fields, and a project by Natural England to put "everyone within 300 metres of nature". I am frequently to be found here, running laps of the park in a desperate effort to stay fit for rugby, or taking T out for weekend walks. I had seen the meadow area, but I had no idea that there was so much going on here. To my mind, this is fantastic. Rising above the city, Hilly Fields feels like a resurgence of the countryside that you can see far to the south and which is buried beneath the suburbs that sprawl around it.
Sadly, today saw some of the worst weather of the year, so the outside broadcast by the BBC was curtailed, but well worth a listen. It'll be on their archive soon enough.
Sadly, today saw some of the worst weather of the year, so the outside broadcast by the BBC was curtailed, but well worth a listen. It'll be on their archive soon enough.
Friday, 7 March 2008
Libraries
During my time in local government I worked on a couple of projects with libraries. Now, I'm not a librarian, but I do know a few, and I know something about what they do and the numerous ways in which they make a real difference to communities.
Sadly, this contribution is lost beneath a mountain of ill-informed comment that, as far as I can tell, completely distorts and renders meaningless library debate.
Take Thursday's Guardian. Author Naomi Alderman is outraged by the appearance of a coffee shop in her local library. She thinks this is somehow symbolic of the death knell of the public library.
Sadly, from the point of view of a sensible discussion on libraries, Naomi hasn't got the faintest idea what she is talking about. Hyperbole replaces fact. Assumptions stand in for reasoned debate, and lying behind it all is a vacuous and dated view of what public libraries should do. She might have a point on the cut in opening hours (an issue for the councillors of the London Borough of Barnet and their electorate - this is still a local service, remember), but her overall view of what libraries do and how they do it is deeply reactionary and elitist.
Naomi is saddened that the periodicals room has been been replaced by a "computer learning zone". How can she possibly view this negatively? Surely the libraries mission is to provide access to information that supports learning? If the learning needs of the local community are best met through ICT provision, then the library is still meeting its historic function in a way Andrew Carnegie would recognise? In the past the provision of books (an information resource) supported learning. Books are now cheaper. The internet is increasingly important but there remains a stubborn digital divide. Providing computers and internet access (an information resource) bridges the digital divide. What on earth could be wrong with that?
Yet Naomi cannot accept this as part of the core purpose of a library, and the reason is depressingly familiar. Naomi has a hidebound view of the role of the public library: "Hendon library was my temple, my treasure house, the place that inspired me to read and then to write. As an adult, I wrote a lot of my first novel there."
No doubt libraries played an important part in the intellectual development of this novelist, but not everyone can be a novelist, and the interests of the novelist (Susan Hill has similar rants) should not dominate public debate over libraries.
As conceived in the 19th century, public libraries supported education and learning, enjoyment and access to information necessary for citizenship - particularly amongst those unable to purchase this for themselves. That mission remains current today. It would be stupid, therefore, in a world in which the end of the net book agreement, the advent of Amazon, and the fact that so much information is now online, for the debate about public libraries to be led by novelists with an entirely inaccurate view of what libraries are for and how they should do it.
Not only do they misunderstand the role of libraries, but they also misrepresent reality. Now, I've never been to Hendon library, and Naomi may well be telling the truth, but to conclude that, "if we keep on the way we are going, one day they will be gone" is ludicrous.
Naomi will no doubt be unfamiliar with things as mundane as public satisfaction surveys, but they tell us that people are generally happy with their library service. Naomi has generalised from the basis of her own experience and analysed that experience on the basis of a misconceived view of the value of public libraries.
Having no knowledge of public services is of course no barrier to having your opinions published on them - especially if you are happily ensconced in the metropolitan elite. Observer journalist Rachel Cooke is another for whom the delight of having a regular column must be tempered with the demand to fill it. Sadly, for libraries, they make for easy copy that you don't have to think too hard about.
As for those of us who might actually have something to contribute to the debate - welcome to the furthest reaches of the blogging universe.
Sadly, this contribution is lost beneath a mountain of ill-informed comment that, as far as I can tell, completely distorts and renders meaningless library debate.
Take Thursday's Guardian. Author Naomi Alderman is outraged by the appearance of a coffee shop in her local library. She thinks this is somehow symbolic of the death knell of the public library.
Sadly, from the point of view of a sensible discussion on libraries, Naomi hasn't got the faintest idea what she is talking about. Hyperbole replaces fact. Assumptions stand in for reasoned debate, and lying behind it all is a vacuous and dated view of what public libraries should do. She might have a point on the cut in opening hours (an issue for the councillors of the London Borough of Barnet and their electorate - this is still a local service, remember), but her overall view of what libraries do and how they do it is deeply reactionary and elitist.
Naomi is saddened that the periodicals room has been been replaced by a "computer learning zone". How can she possibly view this negatively? Surely the libraries mission is to provide access to information that supports learning? If the learning needs of the local community are best met through ICT provision, then the library is still meeting its historic function in a way Andrew Carnegie would recognise? In the past the provision of books (an information resource) supported learning. Books are now cheaper. The internet is increasingly important but there remains a stubborn digital divide. Providing computers and internet access (an information resource) bridges the digital divide. What on earth could be wrong with that?
Yet Naomi cannot accept this as part of the core purpose of a library, and the reason is depressingly familiar. Naomi has a hidebound view of the role of the public library: "Hendon library was my temple, my treasure house, the place that inspired me to read and then to write. As an adult, I wrote a lot of my first novel there."
No doubt libraries played an important part in the intellectual development of this novelist, but not everyone can be a novelist, and the interests of the novelist (Susan Hill has similar rants) should not dominate public debate over libraries.
As conceived in the 19th century, public libraries supported education and learning, enjoyment and access to information necessary for citizenship - particularly amongst those unable to purchase this for themselves. That mission remains current today. It would be stupid, therefore, in a world in which the end of the net book agreement, the advent of Amazon, and the fact that so much information is now online, for the debate about public libraries to be led by novelists with an entirely inaccurate view of what libraries are for and how they should do it.
Not only do they misunderstand the role of libraries, but they also misrepresent reality. Now, I've never been to Hendon library, and Naomi may well be telling the truth, but to conclude that, "if we keep on the way we are going, one day they will be gone" is ludicrous.
Naomi will no doubt be unfamiliar with things as mundane as public satisfaction surveys, but they tell us that people are generally happy with their library service. Naomi has generalised from the basis of her own experience and analysed that experience on the basis of a misconceived view of the value of public libraries.
Having no knowledge of public services is of course no barrier to having your opinions published on them - especially if you are happily ensconced in the metropolitan elite. Observer journalist Rachel Cooke is another for whom the delight of having a regular column must be tempered with the demand to fill it. Sadly, for libraries, they make for easy copy that you don't have to think too hard about.
As for those of us who might actually have something to contribute to the debate - welcome to the furthest reaches of the blogging universe.
Thursday, 6 March 2008
Sand Point and Woodspring Priory
On our last full day in the West Country before returning home I was anxious to go somewhere very different to our life back in London. I wanted to go somewhere quiet, clean and lonely. The weather was windy and sharp so I knew that my best chance was by the sea. So, it was to a finger of land jutting into the Bristol Channel, Sand Point, that we headed on Monday. My parents drove us, and it gave T his first experience of the geography of his paternal heritage. Not that he paid much attention, spending most of the time wrapped up tightly and sleeping in spite of the chill March winds.
To the best of my recollections, I'd not been here before. Yet, it is just this sort of landscape that I consider emblematic of home. Like the Levels to the south, the land has been reclaimed over centuries from sea and marsh and is cris-crossed by rhynes, ditches and rivers flowing slowly to the Bristol Channel under broad and often stormy skies. Although, particularly near some main commuter routes, the villages are becoming less tatty with their desirable houses and new estates, the closer you get to the sea the more lonely and separate the land becomes, the keener the winds and the sharper the sense of solitude.
The other motivation for coming here was Woodspring Priory.
I wanted to see this place, and it didn't disappoint. My first impressions were of small site, huddled against the eastern end of Sand Point, but, on the southern and seaward side, exposed to harsh storms from the Bristol Channel. As we parked the car my mind's eye could see the monks, battered by winter storms, living a tough existence at what must have felt the edge of the land. A punishing life befitting an institution set up to atone for the murder of Thomas a Beckett.
This may have been how it was at its 1210 founding, but as I wandered around the site it was obvious that communion with nature and solitude were not the only things to inspire its former inhabitants. Now surrounded by a disused cider orchard and some unperturbed sheep, it was clear that this was not necessarily the last resort of the ascetic or penitent seeking hardship. This was reflected in the structures they put up. Agricultural use after the Dissolution obviously saved much of the priory's fabric. In the small museum there is enough archaeological evidence in the form of delicate carved faces and colourful floor tiles to show that there was more than bare stone walls to keep out the cold. The impressive vaulted ceiling in the tower was a particular delight.
Leaving the Priory, we drove to Sand Point. My parents, my wife and T remained in the car while I braved the elements. I wanted to be outside and breath good air, and I wanted to be close to the sea for the first time in months.
I climbed the hill from the car park, and to my surprise found myself alone. I followed the footpath along the ridge. To my left, a steep slope led down to Sand Bay, and in the sky above me a kestrel used the upward draft of the sea wind hitting the ridge to stay aloft. Rabbits hurtled across my path and took refuge in the brambles. To my right I could look up the Severn Estuary, to the Severn Bridges and the towns and industry of South Wales. Yet where I was felt as far as it could be from dirty air, traffic and people. The further I went along the ridge, the more steep slopes gave way to rocky cliffs battered by waves.
The path now dropped dramatically with the decline in the ridge and soon the sea met the land. On three sides of me was water. To the north, the calmer estuary leading to Bristol and the Severn. Ahead of me clouds scudded across the sky and the sun broke through and illuminated the sea between the islands of Flat Holm and Steep Holm. 
I looked down the Bristol Channel and I could see that the sky to the west was clearing. The hills of Exmoor rolled down to the sea in the far distance, and glancing across to the extremities of Wales I ascertained the mouth of the Channel and the open ocean beyond.
I remained there for a few moments, breathing in the salty air and feeling the spray on my face, then turned back the way I had come.
To the best of my recollections, I'd not been here before. Yet, it is just this sort of landscape that I consider emblematic of home. Like the Levels to the south, the land has been reclaimed over centuries from sea and marsh and is cris-crossed by rhynes, ditches and rivers flowing slowly to the Bristol Channel under broad and often stormy skies. Although, particularly near some main commuter routes, the villages are becoming less tatty with their desirable houses and new estates, the closer you get to the sea the more lonely and separate the land becomes, the keener the winds and the sharper the sense of solitude.
The other motivation for coming here was Woodspring Priory.
I wanted to see this place, and it didn't disappoint. My first impressions were of small site, huddled against the eastern end of Sand Point, but, on the southern and seaward side, exposed to harsh storms from the Bristol Channel. As we parked the car my mind's eye could see the monks, battered by winter storms, living a tough existence at what must have felt the edge of the land. A punishing life befitting an institution set up to atone for the murder of Thomas a Beckett.This may have been how it was at its 1210 founding, but as I wandered around the site it was obvious that communion with nature and solitude were not the only things to inspire its former inhabitants. Now surrounded by a disused cider orchard and some unperturbed sheep, it was clear that this was not necessarily the last resort of the ascetic or penitent seeking hardship. This was reflected in the structures they put up. Agricultural use after the Dissolution obviously saved much of the priory's fabric. In the small museum there is enough archaeological evidence in the form of delicate carved faces and colourful floor tiles to show that there was more than bare stone walls to keep out the cold. The impressive vaulted ceiling in the tower was a particular delight.
Leaving the Priory, we drove to Sand Point. My parents, my wife and T remained in the car while I braved the elements. I wanted to be outside and breath good air, and I wanted to be close to the sea for the first time in months.
I climbed the hill from the car park, and to my surprise found myself alone. I followed the footpath along the ridge. To my left, a steep slope led down to Sand Bay, and in the sky above me a kestrel used the upward draft of the sea wind hitting the ridge to stay aloft. Rabbits hurtled across my path and took refuge in the brambles. To my right I could look up the Severn Estuary, to the Severn Bridges and the towns and industry of South Wales. Yet where I was felt as far as it could be from dirty air, traffic and people. The further I went along the ridge, the more steep slopes gave way to rocky cliffs battered by waves.
The path now dropped dramatically with the decline in the ridge and soon the sea met the land. On three sides of me was water. To the north, the calmer estuary leading to Bristol and the Severn. Ahead of me clouds scudded across the sky and the sun broke through and illuminated the sea between the islands of Flat Holm and Steep Holm. 
I looked down the Bristol Channel and I could see that the sky to the west was clearing. The hills of Exmoor rolled down to the sea in the far distance, and glancing across to the extremities of Wales I ascertained the mouth of the Channel and the open ocean beyond.I remained there for a few moments, breathing in the salty air and feeling the spray on my face, then turned back the way I had come.
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