23/08/2008 by admin.

The GB medal total and the number of golds were both terrific. This is an achievement for which all the participants should be acclaimed. The euphoria of the Bank Holiday weekend should be enjoyed whilst we all can.

Last, but not least, let us celebrate that the Games in Beijing have also been a triumph for Chinese organisation, flair and economic management so, for a moment, let us pause to acclaim this too and welcome China to the community of nations. Let us hope also that this heralds the opening up of China to all visitors.

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20/08/2008 by admin.

When I burst on the world of work in 1952, more-or-less straight from Cambridge I still had a strong Yorkshire accent. Cambridge had modified it a bit but not too much. The rest of my department was staffed entirely by people with received pronunciation so I strove to emulate them and, I guess, succeeded. Of course today I wouldn’t have done that. But I find, in an entirely prejudiced way, that some accents that one finds on TV grate a little, mainly, I am sorry to say, a Geordie or generic North Eastern accent, prevalent on the BBC (even on London Today for some obscure reason)  . I wonder why this is so? Asian, Carribean and the accent  reviled by Simon Heffer of the African American announcer on BBC4 bother me not the slightest so why am I so bothered by our friends from Newcastle?

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19/08/2008 by admin.

Where is Mr Brown? Not literally of course - we know he was in Scotland yesterday but he seems to be keeping out of the limelight. So far at least he has made little comment on Olympic success - Blair would have given a full interview to milk this for all it was worth and whilst this may not be GB’s style in a curious way we are beginning to miss it. It’s almost as if he is in a state of paralysis so far as the economic situation is concerned but on the other hand his highly-paid advisors may have told him to keep quiet before he unveils his Grand Economic Plan in … well when? September / October? It’s gotta be worth waiting for !

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10/08/2008 by admin.

Like everyone else I was bowled over by the opening ceremony. But the “West” always seems to be surprised by Chinese excellence. We already know how outstanding they can be in  other spheres; for instance western music, the fine arts, archaeology and increasingly western medicine in spite of the persistence of strange folk medicine. Sport too although they have seemed to excel in sports such as tennis, table tennis and badmintion. But if the Chinese were to take up cricket in a big way they would doubtless be contenders, if they were allowed to be, in world Twenty:20 games.

Perhaps we should cease to be surprised at the ingenuity and application of the Chinese and a little more understanding of their slow progress to our views of human freedom and diversity. China works !

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06/08/2008 by admin.

Well it had to be! The latest web craze. I joined it today. At least it will give my bons mots a bit of a wider audience. This blog has been neglected these summer days.I chiefly wanted to write about the extraordinary Machiavellian state of Labour Party politics. I wonder how much research is benefitting from all this. Who is conducting Mr Miliband’s private polls? Perhaps there is a twitter somewhere on the subject. Does he have a backer not far from the old Blairite seats of power?

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22/07/2008 by admin.

Someone must have been listening to my last post. Of course the Green Paper is welcome and makes a contribution to the thinking on lifting people out of a generational dependence on benefit but, in reality, is only one aspect of a necessary incentivised regeneration of the “deserving working class” morality. It comes at a rather strange time though, doesn’t it? One has to hope that there will be the jobs  to offer the mock-invalid population and also that Janet Daley is right when she asserts that the mere threat of reassessment will be enough to avoid the expense of medical assessment. We have yet to see the detailed forecasts.

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15/07/2008 by admin.

Since there is no obvious and easy solution it should be possible to get a consensus between the parties on a multi-layered approach. However the main culprit is ,to my mind, pretty obviously the cycle of deprivation which in turn is largely attributable to the legacy of workless families. Now what have we heard lately about earlier ‘initiatives’ to get people back to work who continue endlessly on dubiously-earned disability benefit or lurch from one job-seekers allowance to another, the main factor being, of course, that some people are worse off on low wages than they are if they claim the maximum benefits associated with large families. This must be broken but what has this government so far achieved. We only ask because we want to know.

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04/07/2008 by admin.

Wimbledon with its mixture of sunshine and (very occasional as yet) showers used to epitomise the English summer. Long days when cares fly away.

The dearth of real news at this time of the year used to be called the ’silly season’ in the media when stories of the ‘dog bites man’ variety pushed out the real news. Not so this year. Apart from the darkening view of the economy the dark side of our society seems to be laid bare - the dreadful murders of the two French students and the needless waste of life yet again in the murder of Ben Kinsella.

Is it really the result of the development of an underclass or just a manifestation of the lack of parental care and control and of any framework of moral values?  As Ben’s half-sister so plaintively and movingly said whatever it is it needs to be addressed  and corrected before more knives are used.

Our MPs might think about this as they vote against reforming their iniquitous ‘allowance’ system. There is little evidence to suggest that they do. Ministers continue to quote meaningless statistics on the alleged decline in knife crime and seem to imply that such incidents as Ben’s murder are an inconsequential blip on the fine New Labour society we have created. Shame on them!

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20/06/2008 by admin.

Someone said they found my last posting ambiguous. Just to clear this up, I was poking fun, admittedly a little wicked, at the C of E. I think it is monstrous that the clerics of this Church waste their time worrying about the sexual orientation of both their clergy and lay members when there are far more important things they should be concerned with. But it is important for gay people in all churches not to feel that they are being alienated just because of their sexual orientation. This would be a most un-Christian act; if those entering into civil partnerships want to seek a Christian blessing on their union I fail to see that this is to be deplored

Sexual behaviour is another thing, but this applies equally to homosexuals and heterosexuals and there is no reason to believe that heterosexual promiscuity is unknown amongst C of E members! Or indeed amongst Catholics in case you think I am biased.

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16/06/2008 by admin.

The Church of England is in turmoil again not because there is  a deep theological split over women bishops, though this looms (and keeps being postponed), but because one of its clergy has organised a service of Christian blessing of a civil union between two gay priests of the Church. Now the C of E, so far as I understand it, does not forbid such blessings, nor does it set down any special form of service, but seems to require that these celebrations are not “public” so, I assume, provided no one is invited and they are carried out secretly at dead of night, such services are allowed.

In this case an adaptation of the Prayer Book service of marriage was used, though the form of words used in the actual union was not used. It took place within a celebration of the C of E Eucharist.

I wonder what our Lord would have made of all this? Certainly he would not be passing the buck by asking the Bishop of London to ask the Archdeacon to ‘carry out an enquiry.

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