31st July 2011

My in-house critic warns me that these blogs are becoming too serious but I say we are living in serious times.

Still I claim to be offering a wry look at the big society so I guess wryness is required. Dryly humorous with a touch of irony is the on-line definition of wry.

So I have been told to inject a bit of dry wit and irony after all you should never ignore your critics.

I was delighted to read that Manchester United had beaten Barcelona in Washington DC and then visited the White House I hope that David Gill was able to offer President Obama some insights in how to manage his debt ceiling given United's own levels of debt about which the Chief executive is apparently comfortable.

My delight was somewhat lessened when I read that not only was Messi not playing but Guardiola also chose to leave Xavi, Carlos Puyol and Gerard Piqueout of his team. Still 2-1 is 2-1 and Michael Owen scored which leaves me hoping that next week at Wembley the Manchester Derby goes United's way and gets the season off to a winning start.

What with News International still making the headlines and Parliament about to recess and Mr Cameron off to Tuscany following in the footsteps of Mr Blair, although, apparently,  he is paying for the Villa himself and flying on a budget airline, the big society will be on hold.

Apart that is from the announcement of Big Society Capital which is the name of what was going to be called the big society bank until the FSA determined that it wasn't a bank at all, which given the post credit crunch, post Lehman Brothers, post financial crisis, reputation of banks is probably just as well.

So a shot in the arm or a boost for citizen power. The big society has been capitalised.

That's capital you might say.

Now things that were worse stand a chance of getting better as we all pull together in this we are all in this together society we are creating, where it seems the rich get richer whatever the weather and the sun always shines in Tuscany.

So where will the rest of us go for our holidays?

Certainly not Iran, Libya or Afghanistan, although Egypt still get good reviews.

But the most popular destination of choice seems to be staying put. Staying at home has never been so popular.

The staycation is here to stay in the big society.

Unaffected by exchange rates, debt ceilings and airport waiting lounges and with only the price of filling the car with fuel, (and prices going up again that will not be cheap), to worry about, the traditional British sea side holiday is gaining in popularity.

There is a big society angle to all this of course and its all in the post cards which stand on the racks outside newsagents and gift shops.

Having a great time, wish you were here messages on the back of the card, brightened up by the witty or slightly smutty cartoon on the front, no dry wit or irony there.

Lots of pneumatically endowed young ladies and raffish older men enjoying themselves in various ways and usually described by double entendres and homonyms.

There! I wanted to get that word in because I saw it yesterday in a poem by Paul Muldoon which is published in a book celebrating Dylan's 70th Birthday. My poem called Zimmerman to Zimmerframe was rejected, not enough dry whit and too humerus probably.

28th July 2011

I read the news today, Oh Boy .......

Apparently Mr Cameron's big ideas guru has come up with some big ideas to give the big society some traction.

Amongst his proposals, Mr Hilton wants to abolish maternity leave and all consumer rights.

Maybe as the pregnant mum to be slips into the staff room, assuming it hasn't been abolished as well, to give birth and then strapping baby to her back resumes her productive activity in the tractor factory or wherever, she will comfort herself with the knowledge that she is helping to pay off the deficit.

Or maybe when the baby seat collapses or the cot or the high chair she will happily accept that, as she has no rights, she had better pop out to Mothercare and just buy another out of her wages instead of complaining thereby increasing productivity.

Another proposal is that Job Centres should also be scheduled for abolition with community groups instead directing young people into work.

At my first visit to a job centre/careers adviser aged 15 I was asked what I wanted to do, I said I thought working with people in a job that wasn't based in an office would suit me, the careers adviser riffled through his card index and said here's the perfect job, assistant to a coal man, I thanked him and became a Vicar instead.

So the loss of the Job Centres I could live with, now that I am retired I don't especially need them anyway, but then my grandchildren might need some good advice about job possibilities in the future assuming they don't decide to become Vicars or experts in selling daft ideas to politicians.

Essentially, it would seem to me, that Mr Cameron's strategy adviser is an anarchist rather than a radical.

Anarchists essentially believe that society will work better and more effectively if there is less state intervention, every decision that affects all of a society's members could be determined by referendum, and with less state intervention, society would be less aggressive, less directed and more open, indeed such a state could be characterised as a big society.

Occasionally I photograph graffiti if it is interesting in some way, appealing or in some way of artistic merit.

On my first ever family holiday to France I took a photograph of the words Anarcho-Syndicalism spray painted on a wall somewhere in the middle of Europe.

Anarcho-Syndicalism is my idea of a way forward for a society which has been nearly bankrupted by bankers and the almost failure of capitalism.

Essentially syndicalism is a co-operative economic system.

Rather than tinkering with the current failed economic system it proposes that capitalism and the state are replaced with a new society which is both democratic and managed by the people.

The trouble with this idea, which is no dafter and possibly more idealistic than some of the ideas apparently pedalled by the Government's strategy adviser, is that it challenges the vested interests of the ruling class and as such is ruled out of hand by those with interests to protect.

So the woman who works in the Bank will doubtless have contingency plans in place when the Government abolishes maternity leave, after half a days paid leave in the private maternity clinic, the nanny will have arrived and the baby will be cared for whilst the new mum is back at work hedging her funds or her bets or whatever actually happens when something is hedged and the Government can point to another new job having being created as a result of its thinking the unthinkable, turning back the tide of socialist ideas and introducing tougher rules and regulations to ensure that people can function without being reliant on state support ..........

27th July 2011

Today I read the obituary of Theodore Roszak.

My copy of Roszak's book, The Making of a Counter Culture, is the first British Edition published in 1970. I seem to think that I replaced an earlier paper back which I bought at college in the 1960's with a hard back because I felt that the book was both a classic and its thesis important.

The sub title of the book, Reflections on the Technocratic Society & Its Youthful Opposition describes both Roszak's thesis and the purpose behind the book.

In the book Roszak describes how in his view young people are making not only the news but leading the way in creating a new culture, a culture which is described in almost apocalyptic terms as a 'new heaven and a new earth'.

For Roszak technology was not an unmitigated blessing.

He chronicled the summer of love, the birth of flower power and the rise of the innocent dream of a future communicated through buttons, slogans on T Shirts and the lyrics of pop songs.

Sadly what happened, as we know only too well, the counter culture was countermanded by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the UK and President Ronald Reagan in the USA.

What had been the promise of a future free of war, dedicated to peace and music, a world that looked and felt like a permanent Woodstock or Glastonbury without the rain.

But Roszak was also an early eco warrior who suspected that technology would in the end destroy not only the innocence of the youthful counter culture he was describing but that its impact on the worlds ecology would be a negative one.

He went on to write further about this and was at the forefront of thinking about the threat of climate change and dismissed the internet as 'electronic graffiti' something with which Bill Gates and Steve Jobs clearly disagreed.

But reading his obituary made me think again about those heady days, the summer of love is now a memory for most people, and the French, soixante huitards, are largely in the conservative mainstream. The generation that listened to the music and dreamed of change, the baby boomers, have now retired and are dependant on their pensions and the NHS to maintain the quality of their lives as they look forward to living longer in their retirement communities, their GT's have become G&T's as life slows down or maybe like Sir Mick Jagger, they launch another super group.

The tragic events in Norway and the news of the continuing and worryingly stagnant British Economy reflect two aspects of how the counter culture has unravelled with the far right elements in Europe seeking to misrepresent the teachings of of Islam as somehow undermining western values and the whole capitalist economic banking nexus beginning to show signs of unsustainability.

It is interesting to contrast the Islamic view of money and lending and its antipathy to punitive interest rates something which, as in Marxism, differentiates between price and value and which lies at the heart of current western economic difficulties as we struggle to grow our way out of our indebtedness.

Perhaps if we wish to get our big society back on track we would do well to recall and practise the ideal contained in the final words in Roszak's book, quoting an old Pawnee Shaman: to approach with song every object we meet.

25th July 2011

I don't really care for tribute bands.

I would rather have the original and if they don't, can't, play live any longer by virtue of age, infirmity or having been enrolled in the great rock pantheon in the heavens, then I will settle for listening on my ipod.

But sometimes something pretty unusual comes along, which is why last night I was listening to Chuck Prophet and the vaguely tribute-ish sounding Spanish Bombs play the whole of London Calling.

It was a musical tour de force, ear bleedingly loud and just terrific, the band was great and they played with an interesting alternative take that made it at once both a tribute and a re-reading of the original work.

In a sense, the re-interpreted songs provided a new narrative for politics and communities in the 21st Century and the high point was the song mid-way through the set that described a modern take on jungian neurosis:

I'm all lost in the supermarket

I can no longer shop happily
I came in here for that special offer

A guaranteed personality

This has been a tragic weekend with the peace of Norway shattered by a right wing extremist, the disaster was too quickly labelled as an Islamic Terrorist outrage by politicians around the world including our own government.

But the papers are also reporting on the continuing falling out from News International, the Euro Credit Crisis, the need for a further round of quantitive easing to get us all back to the supermarket spending again and the stand off between Tea Party Republicans and President Obama in the USA.

Right wing extremism is all too easy to dismiss as the ravings of a lunatic fringe but ninety three, mainly young people have died simply because they attended a labour party youth camp and that cannot under any circumstances be justified or excused and our thoughts and prayers go out to all those who have died their families and the Nation.

There is a sense in which such extremism, which is indeed shocking to all right minded people, needs to be tackled head on, but there are ways of achieving this of which far and away the most positive is to engage in a public conversation which engages individuals and groups.

This public discourse needs to take the form of a new narrative replacing hostility and confrontation with a dialogue promoting the liberal values which allow human beings to flourish.

The narrow political ideologies of monetarism and conservatism which find expression in the American Tea Party which is proving so influential in American politics, despite their rhetoric, bring neither equality nor freedoms to people.

The Norwegian gunman is being described as a 'Christian Fundamentalist' which will doubtless fuel further debate about the role of religion in public debate.

My own preferred phrase is 'social ecumenism' by which I mean a relationship which is both open hearted and which includes all sectors and opinions and in which sometimes opposing views can be debated and reconciled wihtout resorting to violence.

More simply it rests on the twin commands to love God (however you understand that concept) and your neighbour, as yourself.

Or, as we sang along with Chuck Prophet and the Spanish Bombs last night, evoking a spirit and a time when freedom was celebrated and fascism resisted:

The hillsides ring with, "Free the people"

Can I hear the echo from the days of '39

With trenches full of poets

I met Chuck Prophet after the show and thanked him for the performance, Yeah he replied, It was fun ..........

22nd July 2011

I was about thirteen when my school offered a school trip to France.

My parents could not afford both the cost of the trip and a present for my Birthday and so I was offered a choice France or a Bicycle, I chose the Bicycle on the grounds that a trip to France was a one off event but a Bicycle was forever. Which it was until I ran into the back of a parked car on Ashton New Road one rainy Saturday afternoon.

If I had gone to France I would have had to juggle Francs and the exchange rate in order to buy presents and sweets and drinks.

That all came later.

I finally acquired a passport and set off for a summer job in Germany in 1967 where I had to juggle Marks in order to buy presents and bratwurst and beer.

Later again came France and the Franc followed by America and the Dollar and later again Belgium and the Belgian Franc.

Each visit abroad, to Europe or the USA involved a calculator to check the prices against the price at home.

I was at a conference in Birmingham when I met a delegate from Southern Ireland who showed my his Euros and very proud he was that his country had moved away from the Punt and now had a currency that was both grown up but which was also very sophisticated.

When next I was in Europe and exchanged my pounds for euros I suspected that prices were no  longer as competitive somehow the euro had both encouraged and masked a degree of inflation and my Belgian beer and chocolate seemed and probably was more expensive, dividing by three and multiplying by two only gets you so far nevertheless generally I welcomed the euro on the grounds that it made travel in Europe far easier and the idea of a common currency made much more sense in a common market so it was both a practical and a principled innovation.

So I don't agree with the euro sceptics and although I have never been a frequent flyer my previous job and my current involvement with the Diocese of Europe mean that I draw euros from cash machines more routinely than I have ever done.

Despite the current problems that the euro zone countries are experiencing and the fact that Britain is in some ways insulated from the possibility of contagion from the euros problems nevertheless I remain a convert to the possibilities that Europe and the euro offers.

A small Island on the edge of a large landmass gives us both opportunities and challenges, independence is all very well but if we are to play our part in the future of the European project it seems to me that the is an inevitable, albeit risky, step we will one day have to take.

Meanwhile my grandson is happily spending all his grandparents left over euros on his first school trip to France.

21st July 2011

Some years ago I entered a Haiku competition.

It was sponsored by Sunderland City Council to celebrate the opening of the Nissan Factory.

My Haiku read:

Fuji on Wearside
The sound of one hand clapping

Greets the first Nissan

After posting my entry I waited but I heard nothing, so after a while, thinking that it might be nice to visit the Kite Festival and enjoy the Sushi Buffet, whilst collecting my prize, I rang to enquire what had happened.

Oh, said the young lady who answered the 'phone there was only one entry to the Haiku Competition, it was terrible, so we cancelled that event.

Watching the news these past few days my attention has been focused not so much on the events at News International or in the select committee but on the growing evidence of what I can only think of as 'product placement'.

Every time a Murdoch arrives or leaves, either in Heathrow, Wapping or Westminster they are pictured arriving in a Range Rover.

So far I have seen a Red one, a Grey one, a Silver one and a Black one and then a somewhat resigned looking policeman was also filmed arriving ..... in a Range Rover.

There are still a few colour choices remaining, green, brown, sand, teal and a fetching blue but choice of colour aside the implication is clear if you are in a tight situation and you want to make a sharp but dignified exit then the vehicle of choice is, can indeed only be, a Range Rover.

Its tough exterior will protect you from the British climate the rain, snow, hail, flooding in other words our typical July weather, and its four wheel drive will ensure that you always have traction as you race from one meeting to another around the tough streets of the Capital and it will offer protection from paper plates full of foam 'custard' pies'.

I don't imagine that News International will be running a Haiku Competition to celebrate their recent public travails but nevertheless and with due apologies to Basho the most celebrated writer of Haiku:

If you're in a fix

And you must exit Wapping

only the Range Rover (will hack it)

19th July 2011

You should always be careful what you wish for.

I wonder whether Mr Cameron has had that thought whispered into his ear in the last few days?

From slease amongst MP's resulting in some MP's jailed, to downright criminality and law breaking by the press and subsequent resignations of Senior Police Officers the News has not been made comfortable reading for anyone in public life.

Generally society has been organised into or described as having five 'estates' with the Crown above and independant of all five.

The first estate was the church and the clergy.

The church was followed by the nobility although more recently parliament has been defined as the second estate, the third estate was very loosely defined as the commoners, the fourth estate was the media .

Now three of the great estates of society, parliament, police and the media are caught in a web of conspiracy and what Boris Johnson called the 'concatenation' of issues which had been thrown up by the phone hacking scandal.

Clearly the Archbishop has weighed into the debate with his own opinions and has been both criticised and seen his views dismissed, but then the first estate has all but lost its influence.

On the whole public opinion finds the first estate somewhat mildly amusing and generally smiles benignly at the idea that all clergy, men and women, are essentially Vicars of Dibley, unthreatening, vaguely amusing and worthy of a chuckle or two and certainly not to be taken seriously.

The most powerful estate it seems is public opinion sometimes called the fifth estate.

Public Opinion has been focussed by the campaigns made possible by the new technologies to challenge the sale of forests, the wholesale reorganisation of the NHS and in its clearest expression of revulsion and distaste the hacking of the mobile 'phone of the murdered teenage Millie Dowler.

When I had Cable TV installed in my house in Birmingham, we had a special offer as compensation for the fact that in our street that all the pavements had been dug up for months whilst the cable was laid, I noticed that the remote control had a voting button.

This struck me as a great democratic idea.

Government by the fifth estate.

New laws, public policy, (lower) taxes, the NHS, the sale of forests, (increased) benefits for the elderly, (lower) fuel taxes , (better) care in the community, whatever it was, we could all sit in the comfort of our homes and give expression to our feelings our thoughts or our prejudices and vote a huge and expansive development in the democratisation of society, indeed the creation of a big society in which all were emancipated and enfranchised.

But sadly it didn't happen, instead we settled for Big Brother (who stays, who goes), the Apprentice (you're fired), Pop Idol and Britain's Got Talent and whatever else and more scarily more people voted in these vox pop excercises than did in general elections.

As I say it could have been the next great step in democracy which just goes to show you should always be careful what you wish for ..........

14th July 2010

I have a vague memory of my paternal grandmother lying on a day bed in the front room of my Aunt's house.

I have a stronger memory of my maternal grandparents but my Grandfather Frank Oswad died when he was 63, still working but in my chidlhood memory an old, old man.

But times change and I keep hoping that at 66 I can swap the A66 for Route 66, Chicago to L.A..

But the dream remains frustratingly just out of touch, perhaps next year, Route 67 from Iowa to Texas and on into Mexico a strong hint of Easy Rider there I think but with a slightly different soundtrack?

This morning the new Office for Budget Responsibility announced that the more older people there are in the population the higher the costs of Health Care, State Pensions and Long Term Care.

I guess that you didn't have to be a genius to work that out but they have costed the increase to return public sector debt to 40% of national income by 2060, at an extra £22bn or 1.5%  of national income by 2016, the equivalent of VAT increasing to 24%.

Phew!

Well by 2016 I will be 71, if I live that long and my recent health check indicated that I stood a reasonable chance plus the death meter web-site suggested that I should be Ok until February 2019 although a competitor site thought I should have died in 1996 so I don't place too much faith in that forecast.

Route 68 would be Ohio to Kentucky and 69 well apart from the obvious connotation, which is why its sign is regularly stolen, it is known at the Eastex Freeway and is an evacuation route.

But I may have to sell the Harley before 2016, a seventy year old on a Harley will probably not only be a danger to himself but to every other road user as well.

So I may have to face the prospect of VAT at 24% or an increase in the tax I pay on my pension assuming that either my pension provider or indeed the Government itself can continue to afford to pay it at current rates.

The increase in life expectancy was meant to be one of the great achievements of the 21st Century but now it feels like a burden imposed on future generations who have to stand by and watch the baby boomers frittering away their inflation proofed pensions on holidays and sports cars and Harley Davidson's.

But this is a big society isn't it?

Aren't we 'all in this together?'

And older folk can still be useful, in fact some organisations have gone so far as to estimate the contribution that older people actually make to the economy as consumers, tax payers, child care providers and volunteers and it is considerable although whether it amounts to 1.5% of national income I am not qualified to say.

But I'm afraid that I can't really do anything but apologise for being the age I am, blame the NHS it did its job too well.

So I will continue to dream of life on Route 66, the open road, the bars and the fast food lifestyle of the nineteen year old on a Harley that I still secretly imagine I am (as long as I avoid looking into the bathroom mirror) ............

13th July 2011

It takes one to know one, he said with a self satisfied look on his face, as we were having lunch.

A blagger.

He was one, and we were having lunch to de-brief after a meeting with a possible collaborator who was making his own pitch for the contract we were trying to win.

To be a blagger, from the french 'blageur', means, according to my online dictionary, 'to talk through your hat' or according to another definition to joke.

Apparently in the Caribbean it simply means chatting on the corner, no doubt with the usual tendency to exaggeration when men get together.

On the whole my lunch guest seemed to think that being a blagger was OK really, it defined him in his own world view as a somewhat dashing, rogue of a chap, someone who could talk the birds out of the trees.

Blaggers can be enviable characters because their golden tongues can win them your votes, the girl or indeed as in my case, the contract that we needed to win because jobs depended on it.

Now we need a new word for blagging because the word has been corrupted, now it means nasty, underhanded business, the means by which the private and the personal can be discovered and then ventilated in the media.

So words acquire their new meanings and definitions change.

Take hacking for example.

He hacked his mobile phone to pieces may have meant that he chopped it up with a Machete?

The intrepid explorer my have hacked his way through the thick undergrowth making a new path in order to find his way out of the jungle.

Or it could be used to describe someone who has made a good job of something: s/he hacked it or conversely s/he couldn't hack it.

Now the metaphor has made the transition from the jungle to the media.

Although, intriguingly it was there already because, of course a hack refers to a journalist who produces dull, tedious and boring copy.

But not anymore.

Can't hack it now means your secrets are as safe as your forest.

What will be the next new word to be plucked from the dark recesses of the lexicon brushed off and giving a whole new meaning?

Serendipity?

Tendentious?

I think it will be 'googled'.

How did you find this dark and secret information which was never meant to see the light of day?

I googled it officer.

A likely story!

10th July 2011

On holiday in Scotland in 1984 we enjoyed two weeks of glorious sunshine. You're not leaving in this glorious weather I asked my neighbour who had told me he was a meteorologist, and who was packing his tent.

One of the earliest comments on human frailty was from the Greek historian Herodotus who observed that Hubris is always followed by Nemesis.

This inevitable procession of cause and effect is being played out again in the drama of News International which is being enacted live on TV.

As a story it threatens to run and run.

Which makes me wonder not only why are people who knew perfectly well that what they were doing was wrong are so surprised that the public reacts with its usual instinct of fairness and decency to say this was unacceptable and has no part in the public discourse.

But even with the threat of nemesis as its reward, hubristic activity continues.

As the news media and the commentariat write and broadcast their millions of words about the crisis and as the news programmes focus exclusively on the story that is engulfing the Fourth Estate, I find myself wondering, what other news is slipping beneath the radar?

How is the economy?

Has unemployment risen again?

What is happening in Afghanistan?

Has inflation risen again?

What about the Baccalaureate in our schools?

How is the Euro holding up?

There was a story a few years ago when, following 9/11, a massive, all embracing news event if ever there was one, a civil servant advised her Minister that this was a good time to release a bad news story.

Again Hubris was followed by Nemesis as criticism was followed by resignations.

By all means hold News International to account. By all means ensure that the events that led to the revelations being made public are known and better policed in future.

But as I was warned, the glorious blue skies and sunshine that had dominated our summer holiday, were not weather, then after pointing to a solitary cloud on the horizon, my neighbour commented, that's weather and it was and it rained solidly for a week ............

8th July 2011

I was a paper boy in Manchester from age twelve.

I delivered, amongst other papers, the News of the World, I always enjoyed a sneaky preview of the articles, almost as much as I enjoyed being shocked. Well I wanted to be shocked.

The Diana Dors story was a highpoint and the newsagent complained that I had been taking too long to deliver the Newspapers.

You haven't been reading the News of the World have you, he asked accusingly.

No! I replied, my red face revealing my guilt.

When I applied for the Civil Service Open Competition for promotion from Clerical Assistant to Clerical Officer my boss at the time advised that I bought The Times and read the Editorials with a view to more or less trying to emulate the style.

I did, I passed the exam and, because I had a student discount, continued to buy the paper and it became the habit of a lifetime.

First, I preferred the adverts on the front page, then I liked the broadsheet style, then I liked well, the crossword I guess, but I always read the editorials.

But no more.

I am sure that no-one will notice or pay any attention I am not after all the President of the Ford Motor Company whose advertising makes the difference between profit and loss in one of News International's titles.

But I don't think that it is an empty gesture.

Like so many people I have become increasingly concerned by the power and influence of News International. And when people act as though they are above the law well the law needs to wise up.

The links between News International and the con-dem coalition make me uneasy.

And now Mr Murdoch has acted like an old style mill owner in a D H Lawrence novel.

Trouble at t' Mill? Well shut it down and pour the Claret.

First it was Politicians and Duck Houses, Now its Newspapers and 'phone hacking.

The TV series The Wire shone a searching light on the great estates, a first series about the illegal drug trade and exploring the benefits of legalization was followed by a second revealing the corruption in the Dockers Unions, then corruption in City Government and amongst politicians was exposed, the school system was reviewed and finally the Newspapers became the subject of attention.

They say that truth mirrors fiction but what follows politicians and newspapers?

As the advertising for the Lottery says, It could be you .........

6th July 2011

Sometimes I blog about what has happened and try to make a link with the Big Society.

A wry look as I call it.

Sometimes I blog about matters that haven't happened in the belief that they will.

Like dreams I suppose where you imagine what might happen and then when it does you get that shivery feeling of Deja Vu.

Tony Blair was obsessed by novelty.

I once compered an event at Bradford Cathedral we called The Crossed Keys Cafe a reference to the Cathedral's coat of arms and a cafe style service with folk sitting around a circular platform with tables and candles in bottles and performances from various folk with poems and readings and jokes.

One of my jokes was about Tony Blair being greeted by St Peter, 'Welcome to heaven Mr Blair', but asks Tony anxiously, 'It is new heaven isn't it?'

Yesterday I read an article in the FT about Mr Cameron. It reflected on the fact that he had settled comfortably into his role of Prime Minister. That he looked like a Prime Minister, sounded like a Prime Minister, ergo to all intents and purposes he is Prime Minister, which he is anyway.

Acting the part is important.

In fact anybody can be anybody as long as they are a good enough actor.

I still haven't seen the Kings Speech but I bet it makes my case for me, Colin Firth as King, that would work because he looks and acts like one ergo he is, or could be, crowned.

But the thing is Mr Cameron might look and sound like a PM, he may act like a PM, he might even be a PM but unless those tricky policy things start to become clearer, will he always be PM?

That is the question that will only be answered in four years time, thankfully time is flying.

But whether the big society is a cover for cuts or an ill defined idea about a sharing, caring democracy, at the moment most of the big society ideas are in the long grass. Some most people are relieved about, some people would like to have seen given a better chance of succeeding.

Forest sells offs and the NHS on one side, prison reform on the other.

The trouble with the big society idea is that most of it is not new, the charity I worked for was a big society concept in 1915, the Methodist Church and its love child the Labour Party was a big society idea in 1900.

So will Mr Milliband step up to the plate offering novelty and enthusiasm. Can he act like, sound like, become?

Will we be invited to share dreams or imagine what might be in order that it will become so.

It's all in the DNA and the DNA of the big society can be found in the thousands of small charities and even in some of the larger ones where communities are transformed by people imagining that things can be different or better and then making sure that they are.

Yesterday I imagined catching a Salmon on the Eden, so today I went to the river and cast my line out, I returned empty handed but I had a great day.

As I put on my waders and my jacket and donned my hat I thought I look like a fisherman, sound like a fisherman, act like a fisherman, even my casting wasn't too bad, but the Salmon, well  they are clearly yet to be convinced .............

5th July 2011

This morning we found ourselves right in the middle of Mr Cameron's Broken Britain.

The shower blew up. Nothing more dangerous than Electricity and Water, it is a combustible combination.

One minute there we were enjoying a pleasing, warm, cleansing shower then came a flash, a bang, but thankfully, no Wallop.

But then again no shower either.
So maybe it was an exaggeration to call it Broken Britain, it was really just a broken bathroom, but it was shocking, indeed it could have been literally shocking and now we are heading off to B&Q to get our 10% discount on a Wednesday.

Being old is one of those conditions which you only ever think is happening to someone else.

He is old, she is old, I am really still nineteen and ready for anything.

But I can use my freedom pass (you can tell who is old and who is not by the name they use, if it is a Bus Pass or a Senior Bus Pass then they are old, a freedom pass is simply a gift of nature like sunny days and Pimms) to travel into town and then claim my 10% Discount assuming of course that I can park, in our B&Q on a Wednesday, the disabled parking fills up first.

Mr Camerons use of the phrase 'Broken Britain' annoyed liberals like me and his solution 'Big Society' annoyed us even more.

But ..................

Maybe he is on to something.

Things do break, which is why we have insurance, but as Mr Dilnot argues you cannot insure against getting old so something should be done before another 20,000 people have to sell their homes to pay for their elder care.

One of Mr Osborne's rooks came home to roost with the suggestion that one way forward was to pay for elder care through the sale of a home after the elderly resident no longer needed it, when suggested by the previous Labour Administration this was rubbished as a 'death tax'.

Maybe my shower is broken but I don't think that society is at all, in fact when viewed from the outside, apart from the weather, Britain is still a great country.

The future will throw up issues around University Education, there is still a major misfit between job availability and the skills needed to do them, and as we are reading the care of a growing elderly population needs to be handled carefully if it is not to become a financial time bomb for both individuals and society at large.

For working class people the traditional jobs in Pits, Shipyards or Steel are simply not there anymore and there is not the same pride to be had in claiming to work in a call centre!

According to the commentariat future social conflicts are inevitable as the middle class are squeezed whilst the underclass fails to respond to either the carrot or the stick as employed by Mr Duncan Smith.

The Church continues to be the butt of both humour and Mr Dawkins but in congregations where black and white, rich and poor, young and old, gather round the altar to break bread, there society is renewed in the worship of Jesus Christ to become a 'new humanity'.

Mr Cameron does not appear to have the necessary language to express the complexity of the social change facing western democracy and so we get 'Broken Britain' and 'Big Society' both of which fail to address the nuances of the social changes we are experiencing.

But there is nothing nuanced about a broken shower, it needs fixing, so our next trip out will be to B&Q .... the things you'll do for a discount .............

3rd July 2011

On this bright and warm Sunday in Summer I find myself settling down, not to preach a Sermon or read the lesson or even write the Parish Magazine, but to Blog.

The dog is outside snoozing in the Sun growling at something in her dreams and I am sitting typing words in order to fill the blank screen.

This morning the big society offered up some amazingly risible stories.

Not the least the Civil Servant who got into a pickle by poking fun at Mr Pickles the Community Secretary.

On Friday evening at supper in our local Indian Restaurant we were offered the pickle tray as usual.

The usual combination of sweet, sour and spicy pickles a bit like the stories the Blogger told about life in Mr Pickles department, but now he has been ousted and Mr Pickles has his revenge.

It rather suggests that the con dems have lost their sense of humour. Perhaps the very spicy pickles were just a bit too spicy?

It's all together too easy to demand to be taken seriously by everybody and demand respect from everybody, but surely it is a basic lesson, one we learn in the Nursery, that respect has to be earned.

The administration has had too many changes of both heart and policy and too many changes of direction on everything from the NHS, Crime and Punishment and Forests for the public not to develop a degree of scepticism about what proposal will be put forward next and then revised the day after it has been announced.

British jobs for British workers, a phrase that Gordon Brown must have regretted the minute he had read the words off of his script, are being used again by the man known as IDS, or Mr Smith as this ever respectful Blogger likes to call people in order to maintain a degree of respectfulness.

But of course on the whole a basic premise of any interview for a job means that the most suitable candidate will be offered the job and surprisingly for Mr Smith perhaps, often the most suitable candidate is not British but may be an Asylum seeker who wishes to become British or is, even worse, European, and is appointed on what used to be called merit.

On Friday I attended the prize giving at a school of which I am a Trustee/Governor. As usual the prize giving was a moving ceremony as the young people received awards for a wide range of  both Academic, Cultural and Sporting achievements.

As Staff, Parents and Governors wished the young people well in the futures, it was with a hope that their success at school would be translated into success in their future lives.

There was also a  story in the Sunday Paper about the fact that there are now more retired Civil Servants than working Civil Servants, because I worked briefly as a Civil Servant I receive a small pension via Capita who now administer Civil Servant Pensions, now it seems that a new member has been added to our ranks.

Like him I did not receive a Knighthood but interestingly Capita awarded me an Honorary Doctorate and I'm sure that my Post Man is impressed when he delivers the statement of my annual pension, on which I pay Tax ! to The Reverend Doctor ............