Sunday 1st February 2015: David Hare on politics:
Wonderful quotes from David Hare’s piece in the ‘Review’ section of yesterday’s Guardian, prompted by the opening of his play “The Absence of War” at The Crucible, Sheffield:
“In any democratic society, whatever the current flux of ideology, there will always be two major parties, one protecting Money, and the other representing Justice. One side will say that nothing can be achieved without promiscuous licence being given to the creators of wealth; the other will say that wealth’s distribution is equally important.”
“If a society isn’t just, it can’t be happy. it was Blair and Gordon Brown’s intention to see whether the claims of Money and Justice could be reconciled, and whether you could create a party, New Labour, that was committed to both. But the messianic flaws of character that led to Blair’s opochal mishandling of the Iraq invasion left the jury out on whether the domestic experiment could ever succeed. It has not been attempted since.”
Sunday 8th March 2015 at 19.38 hrs: re “Margot’s War” by Anne de Courcy:
Ruth is reading this book, a recommendation from the WI. Amazing insight into the politics of the early 20th century. Margot Asquith was Herbert Asquith’s second wife. A very wealthy woman (via her father). But the snippet which struck me was this. He (Asquith, Liberal prime minister 1908-1916), was very much ‘no longer a young man’. But, because her doctors recommended against another childbirth (after two), and due also to the then-ineffectiveness of contraception, and (I add) he being evidentlly unable to think of (or anyway to implement) any other solution, he found himself sexually a loose cannon. He was well-known for his sexual infidelities. Amongst these was the fact that he would take the hand of the lady next to him at dinner and cause it to make the lady very much aware (below the table) that whatever else might be said about him, he did not suffer from erectile dysfunction. What the great and the good can get away with! And what a perspective on the sufferings of others, sent for months of hard labour for sexual misdemeanours.
Monday 9th March 2015 at 20.41 hrs: re our family’s ‘German Connection’:
Listening again (for the severalth-time) to Neil Macgregor’s “Germany - memories of a nation” (an unabridged audiobook version of the massive book accompanying the corresponding exhibition at The British Museum a few months ago, and pondering the fact that currently Germany seems to have got things so ‘right’ about their attitude to things that matter like climate change and european co-operation and political balance and democracy, which were so desperately wrong wrong wrong in the Germany of the 1930s and 1940s when I arrived in the world, I remembered something about our family. It’s this. My mother, Gwen Archer (but Penfold in the 1920s), wanted to marry a German from Frankfurt in the late 1920s. Or at least, she wanted to continue her relationship with him, and might well have married him. But she didn’t because her parents, my grandmother Rose and her husband Frank Penfold forbade it. And the lad did not visit them in Brighton as Gwen had wanted. And that was the end of it. And after the war, they made enquiries about the family, and the end result was that it seemed likely that the family had all been killed in the bombing of Frankfurt. Well, well. How different things might have been! I have Gwen’s transcribed audiotape account of all this and lots of photographs, and will post it all here in due course.
Monday 23rd March 2015 at 15.12 hrs: What hope has reason?
From today’s Guardian: front page item: “BP staff fund climate sceptic”. Nothing surprising whatever about that of course. And the sums involved, $10,000 (£6,700) were not particularly large. So why bother to mention it then Phil?
Well, the interesting point is about Jim Inhofe, the Republican senator from Oklahoma, and who is chair of the Senate’s enviroment and public works committee. Last year he threw a snowball across the Senate floor, saying: “In case we have forgotten - because we keep hearing that 2014 is the warmest year on record - it is very, very cold outside. Very unseasonal”. So far, so predictable from someone who campaigns tirelessly against calls for a carbon tax and challenges the overwhelming concensus on climate change. He it was who received the funding. He it was who published the book “The Greatest Hoax” cementing his credentials as the most outspoken denier of climate change in US politics. And this is the point: senator Inhofe gave a radio interview on Voice of Christian Youth America, publicising his book, in which he said: “God is still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what he is doing in the climate to me is outrageous”.
After that, what can you say? What hope has reason? If that’s the voice of the chair of the Senate’s enviroment and public works committee? Of civilised thinking America. Maybe silence is the only possible reaction at the immensity of the problem facing the world. It’s like World War 1, something so immense in its futility and imbecility, and into which the great and the good went willingly and even with enthusiasm, in the thought that ‘out of this crucible of renewal we will forge the new Europe of the future’.
Tuesday 31st March 2015: About Tunbridge Wells local council:
From Monday 31.3.15’s Guardian, the obituary of Peter Catin, “Pianist who brought poetic sensibility to the works of Chopin”:
Peter Catin’s name is well-enough known to me over the years, simply as a great pianist whose name one saw on concert programmes.
The obituary ends with the paragraph: “He made his Wigmore Hall debut in 1948, accompanied the violinist Alfredo Campoli in the 50s, and gave three recitals with Victoria de los Angeles in the 1970s. As a supporter of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality he had the distinction of a concert in support of the campaign in 1974 being banned by the local council in Tunbridge Wells.” Which brings vividly to mind the period of UDL’s talks about merger with a firm of patent agents having an office in Tunbridge Wells, in about 2000, during Bill Orr’s senior-partnership. They now have a new name, having managed to find someone else to merge with, and say on their website that “We don’t like to dwell too much on our history”. I’m not surprised. Thank goodness we didn’t merge. Neil Pawlyn scuppered that by his wonderful research online which convincingly disproved their financial growth claims, and they forthwith shut up and withdrew from the talks. One of their partners had proudly claimed to me, when I mentioned that Ruth was on Rutland County Council, that he had been on Tunbridge Wells Council for years. When I commented on the hard work that Ruth found was necessary (almost a full-time job, in practice) to represent her constituents properly, what with the vast amount of reading needed to prepare properly for council meetings, he said that, as a point of principle, he never read council papers before council meetings! I suppose that’s right. People who know what’s what on matters of principle in life hardly need to do anything so mundane as actually being aware of the facts, or indeed to trouble themselves actually to quote real figures when they’re telling people what they’ve achieved.
Thursday 16th April 2015: about Dinosaurs in Rutland:
Got the Conservative Party election leaflet from Sir Alan Duncan, our MP, yesterday. It makes clear that Sir Alan is proud to have supported the opposition to the Asfordby wind farm and says so under a photo of him with some jolly constituents who doubtless are equally opposed to wind farms. We know that such opposition is a vote-winner round here. It’s painfully clear that nimbys are in the majority. In this village, a proposal for 2 small windmills and a small field of solar panels was overwhemingly defeated in a village meeting at which, apart from the scheme’s proposer, every single speaker except one (who might that be?) was against the idea of making Lyddington part of the world movement against climate change. "No, I'm not willing to see a windmill when I’m dog-walking” said one. "And anyway, it won’t make any difference. Just like panic-buying of petrol whenever there’s a threat of a tanker strike, makes no difference. The odd 23 gallons or so to fill up my Range Rover couldn’t alter anything, so I queue up and buy the last drop.”
What a lovely election it is going to be. Proud to be against the scientific consensus. Proud to say “I’m all right Jack”. Proud to continue with the tradition of the British Empire and what it did to defenceless people in countries where climate change is already biting. Can’t even see that if they’re wrong they’ve exchanged this whole world and its breathtaking beauty, for the sake of “seeing a windmill on a dog walk”. It’s called ‘The balance of risk’.(Added 17.4.15): And Alan Duncan says the same and more in today’s Rutland and Stamford Mercury: “I will keep campaigning fiercely against inappropriate wind turbines”. A wonderful vote-winner for him. And near his heart, as he is an oil-baron himself. And yet he still feels it necessary to hide behind the “inappropriate” banner. Unwilling to debate the ‘in-principle’ question. “So, you’re for the wind-turbines in-principle are you Sir Alan? It’s only their inappropriateness that’s a problem to you?” A likely suggestion! But this IS DEMOCRACY. It’s the voice of the people. And that is what they think round here. Their brains tell them so. And that can be ascribed to evolution. So there’s not much you can do about it Phil. Except educate, I suppose. And those same people are indeed kind and generous and good to old folks and so on. Yes indeed. Those things matter. But it also matters, perhaps more, that we don’t turn earth into Venus, where the average temperature is 864 degrees Fahrenheit. Weren’t they lovely, our grandparents (times “n"), they will say about us. Lovely people. Got lots of things right. But the one thing that really mattered, they didn’t give a toss about. Just like the first world war. They went into that thinking it would produce some wonderful changes.
Friday 19.6.2015 at 10.12 hrs:
Wonderful news!
- The Pope has warned of an “unprecedented destruction of ecosystems” and “serious consequences for all of us” if humanity fails to act on climate change, in his encyclical on the environment, published by the Vatican on Thursday.
That is pasted from the Guardian’s website. And he’s got it so right. Good old popey! I applaud you. After the Catholic Church has got so many many things so desperately wrong, this is so desperately and actually much more importantly right right right for the world as a whole. Usually the church is inclined to be so backward on such things, it is wonderfully and refreshingly encouraging to find that it actually understands and has no vested interest requiring it to take the usual conservative and right-wing view. Hurrah for the pope, say I. I wish Alan Duncan had some of his common-sense.
More good news. A vision of hope that has come to me since getting back from our short break at Titchwell in Norfolk, from where we went on Wednesday to the “Bacon and the Old Masters” exhibition at Norwich University (UEA) in the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. It’s a feeling that the balance between family and other issues that has evolved here over the years meets my needs for meaning in this short life. More thought as to exactly what this means is needed, and a consideration of how my mother Gwen’s life fitted into this evaluation. Luck of course is probably a big factor, but also those things and views and feelings where we (Ruth and I) differ so strongly from some others in our lives. Important factors in this equation are our family, our children, the fact that we have only two children and only four (including one adopted) grandchildren, our garden, and this website. More on this in due course.
Friday 3.7.2015 at 10.16 hrs:
Philosophy:
A thought. The target in life is: “A glorious, positive, balanced mix of all aspects of life”. That’s the fruit of 73 years of living. Seldom achieved. Infinitely difficult. Many achieve great things in one or two fields of life. But to achieve what I mention is, well, not a bad goal for any of us.
Monday 10.8.2015 at 20.57 hrs:
Slavery, Britain and its elite or ruling or moneyed classes:
I have just watched the two episodes of the BBC2 documentary on “Britain’s forgotten slave owners”. I will add a link to the University College London web site which provides documentation on the extremely widespread ownership of slaves and the equivalent of £17,000,000,000 (£17Billion) which was paid-out to the owners in compensation, in about 1835, to offset their loss of the income and assets lost on abolition of slavery. In other words, when it was settled that slavery was an abhorrent system that must be proscribed, the British Elite Ruling and Propertied Class, who owned most of the slaves were not penalised for the inhuman practices that they had invented and practised and perpetuated for many decades. No, they were rewarded for these actions: for branding with red hot irons on all parts of the body, including the face, for the use of spiked leg irons, and face/tongue/neck irons (including on children), for gruesome beatings, and any number of bestial and inhuman tortures inflicted for the most trivial of causes. What do we do about this ghastly aspect of our history? Nothing? Well what can or could you do? At a minimum we could acknowledge its awfulness and the need for that acknowledgement to be part of an attitude-change from the current ‘it was right at the time, and anyway, we did lots of good things’.
The link to the UCL project: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/
Tuesday 25.08.2015 at 17.08 hrs:
The refugee crisis:
Here’s a graphic:
It’s from The Guardian last Saturday, 22nd August 2015. An article about a couple in Calais who took in a Syrian refugee who knocked on their door. Tired, homeless, thirsty, hungry. They fed him and helped him. Eventually they took him in. What a wonderful example to us all. And what are we as a country saying about the current European refugee crisis? Cameron offers totally negative unhelpfulness. That’s what our people want, he says. Well, not at this address, they don't. It’s a total disgrace. Blinkered, selfish short-termism, and driven by the Mail and the Murdoch press.What about Matthew 25 verse 42 Mr Cameron? As a good Christian church-going Tory? How much better Merkel and Hollande conduct themselves. Civilised. Aware of their responsibilities as members of the human race. Working together as Europeans. And at the same time doing their best to cope with and reduce climate change. This refugee crisis is just the beginning of what is coming. Every day the world population increases by 200,000 - look it up on Google. It’s true. And we’re doing nothing about it. Just as we’re doing very little about climate change. This is absolutely nothing compared with the related crises there will be in decades to come, long after I’m gone. As a race, we haven’t a clue how to conduct ourselves. And we don’t deserve to survive. And we won’t. It’s just a shame for nice people like the couple in Calais.
25th October 2014 - St Crispin’s Day - 400 years to the day, since the Battle of Agincourt:
We saw Henry V the other day at Stamford Arts. Online from the RSC at Stratford. Wonderful stuff. Loved it. Henry was the greatest monarch England has ever had. A wartime leader who achieved an unbelievable victory against all the odds, in very unfavourable circumstances, who was wonderfully modest about it all……and so on. Yes, yes, I agree. BUT, in the interview with Greg Doran, the producer, before the play began, last week, he was talking about the play and its background, and he said (which I have heard elsewhere) that the war in France of which Agincourt was a part, was entirely at the suggestion of his father Henry IV, who, on his deathbed, told his son Hal, that he needed a good war ‘to distract the populus from the domestic problems of poverty and hunger and taxes and the plague' and so on. Indeed, there was no need for England to invade France in 1415, other than the usual ones of plunder and ransoms and (perhaps more so in the Agincourt case), distraction. So that was the very simple reason why all those people had to die in that battle: a mere distraction. So the common soldiers that Harry spoke to ink the play on the night before the battle were right: there needed to be a good reason why all those lopped-off heads and arms and legs should not come back together and haunt him. If there was not, then they would. And perhaps they did. Because he died not many years later in a siege of another French town, that was no doubt no more needful (the siege) in all truthfulness, than was the battle of Agincourt. Nor any more needful than the Falklands War, which rescued Margaret Thatcher from the political oblivion she was obviously heading for on account of domestic problems, when the Argies helfully gave her a pretext to ‘Do a Henry V’. And how it pleased the faithful Tories. They just loved it to bits. And have done ever since. So, don’t you love your country then Phil? Well, I don’t love things like wars as a distraction from domestic policy failures. And that’s flat. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
30th April 2016 - 14 years to the day, since I retired from UDL:
Antigone:
Oakham’s ‘Crossing-gate’ scandal:
Reminded by today’s Guardian leader on “Those who dared to tell the truth are the Antigones of our time” about the Hillsborough inquest. A play by Sophocles written in around 442BC.
My (trivial) ‘Hillsborough’ took place at Oakham level crossing on 28th October 2014. Far enough back for the hurt of the inustice I suffered to have receded. Accused of contravening regulations while crossing the line. This was not just a slight (alleged) contravention. I at first assumed I had been photographed a foot or two on the wrong side of the ‘Stop’ line, having misjudged where it was. And I took the penalty mindful of the threat that magistrates could increase the penalty if you appeal and lose - as you obviously would if there was clear photographic evidence.
But you have no the right to see the evidence against you until you actually appeal. And then it is too late to withdraw. So I took the rap. Four years. Three penalty points. And a fine of £100. This, for someone who has never even had a parking fine, never mind a speeding or other traffic penalty.
However I did manage to see the evidence against me. I asked the railway police for it. Politely. By email. After paying the fine and taking the penalty points. And I saw what the crossing keepeer had written in his book that day. It was not photographic evidence at all. It was one man’s word against another’s. There is what looks like a camera there at the level-crossing. But it may well be a dummy.
I was said to be enormously and outrageously and idiotically-dangerously out of time at the crossing. Ignoring the lights and klaxons by many seconds. In other words, I was alleged to be the sort of driver who is something like 25 yards from the crossing when the klaxons start honking and the lights start flashing, and still continues over the stop line when there is a very clear danger that the barriers will drop and he will be trapped in the path of the train. Such persons are a menace of course. And need severe punishment. I had assumed that I was perhaps a foot or two on the wrong side of the Stop line - which I may have been, as I was the last in the queue of cars to cross the line. The time taken to travel two feet at 10 mph is 2 x 6/88 = 12/88 = less than one seventh of a second. That, I could have accepted. A tiny error of judgement of slightly more than one tenth of a second. No. That level crossing man accused me of being a person who deliberately and carelessly and recklessly puts in danger his own life and those in the oncoming train. And he does this by allowing about 100 times more time to go by and still crosses the line. I shall publish the evidence. (30.4.2016).
10th May 2016 at 1056hrs:
A thought about times past. Friends remembered. Ruth and I recently went (about 16th April, I recollect) to Patrick Timperley’s induction service as Minister at Great Meeting Unitarian chapel, Hinckley. We were the only persons from Great Meeting, Leicester there (apart from the minister, Arthur Stewart, who was partly-conducting the service). No one else from the group of people at GM Leicester, of whom Patrick was part, in the 2006/7s, came. Well, well. I had the same thought when, quite some years ago, Ruth and I went to Robin Hadfield’s funeral at Chalfont St Peter, Bucks. No one else whatsoever turned up from that very large group (so it seemed to me at the time) of oh-so-sociable-people from the Dunlop Sports & Social Club (to which I did not belong), and felt at the time (1965-1970) that they must have a stronger sense of social-belonging than I did, because I spent my spare time with Ruth, and studying to get qualified. Well well. I suppose they didn’t keep in touch with him over the years until he died a few years ago. That sense of social-belonging that I perceived in them was perhaps something else all the time. A related thought occurs to me when remembering that my mother, Gwen Archer, was (according to my brother Edward, who was living with her at the time) not pleased when, in 2005, I caused Dad to be remembered in a ‘Down Memory Lane’ article in the Oxford Times. In that year, 2005, Dad, who died in May 1991 aged 85, would have been 100. And the article looked back affectionately at his life in Oxford as part of Archer Cowley & Co and as a member of Wesley Memorial Methodist church, and as a family man. Can Gwen really have wished him not to be remembered? I hope not. Though she did not attend his funeral. Heigh-ho, the ways of man are sometimes beyond comprehension!
23rd May 2016: One month from The Referendum on UK membership of the EU: What a sad situation! The EU has shortcomings of course (haven’t all human institutions), but broadly, it is the complete and effective answer to the thirty-years ‘War to End All Wars’ (1914 - 1945), and keeps faith with the millions who died in that greatest act of folly the world has ever known. How sad that those who want to quit are happy to align with anti-immigration right-wing nationalists - exactly those who attended the mass rallies in 1930s Germany - and against whom the youth of this country pitted itself in the 1910s and 1940s:
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen
Thought to have been written between 8 October 1917 and March, 1918
The EU has done wonderful things that matter, in the field of human rights, climate-change, environmental protection and much more, never mind banishing war from Europe after centuries of unending conflict, and has enormous financial benefits and clout that even the dictator Putin has to give-way to. and we are asked to vote on whether to be a member of such a club. It’s like being asked if, instead of thinking for yourself, you would prefer to align yourself with UKIP or the BNP or (in the same vein but the past-tense) the Mosleyists, or be a follower of Franco or Mussolini or Berlusconi, not to mention Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ party. Those people think/thought in the way that Brexit people think. Instead of remembering others, especially the disadvantaged, and this beautiful green world, it’s all ‘Haul up the ladder Jack!’ and ‘Forget the Golden Rule’. And if Brexit wins the referendum, they will be in the ascendancy. It’s a ghastly thought. Boris Johnson in charge, with Gove and Lawson and their ilk. If I were younger I would consider emigrating to France.
Thursday 30th June 2016 at 1518hrs:
On the current political situation, I can hardly bear to mention it. Total disaster following the ‘leave’ decision on the EU referendum last week (23.6.16). Total chaos. Conservatives and Labour both in meltdown. Not a scintilla of a government plan for what happens now. We are the laughing stock of Europe. All the lessons of the last 100 years completely forgotten and deliberately thrown away because the Tories are split. A hundred times worse than ‘Suez’ in 1956. No thought whatever given to keeping faith with the millions who died for European peace in the 1910s and 1930s/40s. And all for what? For a stupid fatuous slogan thought-up by those idiotic Brexiters Johnson/Gove/Farage: “Give us back our country!” Ludicrous in its lunatic simplicity. And yet it worked. No wonder we look like fools. Narrow-minded bigots. And the racist consequences were apparent immediately. The murder of the MP Jo Cox, and a soaring rate of racially-motivated incidents. And now of course, that we have gone over the cliff of the referendum and there is no way back, they are all (or several of them) saying ‘of course we didn’t mean what we said’ and are trying to explain it all away as a misunderstanding. And Johnson has now quit the race to be next PM. Thank God for that. But what does it tell you about the man and the campaign that he led? What a way to run a country. And what a country we live in. Do you love your country Phil? Do you love the UK? Well, Mr Gove, I will ask you a question in reply: do you love the consequences of what you have done? Talk about ‘seeing the things you gave your life to broken, and stooping to build them up with worn-out tools. What can I do in my seventies? I’ll be in my eighties before even the worst of this has come home to roost, never mind doing anything about it.
Friday 1st July 2016 at 1719hrs:
100 years from Ist July 1916 - Opening of the Battle of the Somme:
100 years ago this very day, 40,000 British soldiers died in one morning, as they walked slowly (according to strict orders) across no-man’s land and were cut-down by a veritable storm of machine gun and rifle fire from the German trenches. All life in the German trenches was supposed to have been wiped out by the week-long barrage from the British artillery (which made a transparently-clear statement that a large attack would be launched when it lifted). But the Germans had made deep dug-outs in the earth, which withstood the barrage. Nothing special about that. Quite simple pick-and-shovel dug-outs, but deep enough and wood-reinforced-enough to stand up to the shells. But no one in the British Army had thought of that. And that ignorance caused the loss of 40,000 lives. Whole streets of young men in the Pals Battalions. A generation lost. Brilliant stuff! That’s what we can do when figure it out for ourselves. No need for any input from ‘The Bosch’. We know how to put the kibosh on the Kaiser. Lions led by donkeys.
And now we’ve done it again. Completely forgotten the lessons to be learned from all that. Not one word about it in the political debate about the EU referendum. You would think that two world wars had never happened. Those young men died in vain. None of those involved in actually running the country apparently gave them a single thought, nor appeared to be aware that the entire concept of the EU is the eradication of war between nations by a progressive merger of their economies. The entire referendum debate was about economics and immigrants. Pictures of immigrants queing 20-deep to come into Britain. Turkish immigrants. Foreign immigrants. EU immigrants. And Michael Gove is proud (and so are plenty of his Tory friends) that that is what won the referendum for the Brexit side. He revels in being on the same side as all the right-wing leaders in recent history. How shameful is that. What a disgrace. How I abhor that man. And he aims to be Prime Minister. I am ashamed that my country has allowed itself to be betrayed by a man of his stature. He is the man who, as Education Minister, tried to introduce a history syllabus based on jingoistic simplistic concepts of British military triumphs betraying a complete lack of awareness of facts like the presence at the battle of Waterloo of far more German than British troops, and the decisive entry of certain German troops when the battle was swinging in Napoleon’s favour.
Heard this morning on the ‘Today’ programme on Radio 4: an interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury at the Thiépval Memorial. Question: Archbishop, what comes to mind when you survey a structure like this memorial? Answer: That we should find ways to avoid having to build memorials like this. And that we need strong ethical and spiritual values to achieve this. Which in turn means a need for wise national leadership. Our leaders need a cause and a vision of how they can make the world a better place.
How heartily I endorse the archbishop’s sentiments. Ways to avoid the need for memorials by strong ethical and spiritual values exemplified by wise leadership with a vision of a better world. We already had in-place exactly that in the EU’s structures, to which the UK had contributed so much wisdom and leadership towards (and achieved it) a Europe that has been free of war for 70 years.
Wednesday 19th October 2016 at 1958hrs:
“Mean-spirited”: The UK is going to take ONE DOZEN refugees from the thousands living in total squalor in the Calais camp called The Jungle. One dozen. Not one hundred. Not one thousand. Not ten or a hundred thousand. Twelve. AND, today, the conservative party is calling for extensive AGE TESTS to make sure that some, if possible, of this twelve are excluded for being not young enough.
Last summer GERMANY TOOK-IN ONE MILLION REFUGEES. Yes, one thousand thousand refugees. And all in about a one month period.
My god! If ever this country needed something to be proud of, it is now. I can think of nothing and nobody recently which or who stands up to scrutiny. Except the Lib Dems, and…... I agree with every word that Nichola Sturgeon said the other day about the Conservative Party. And I wish her well. She is so right about the EU. If ever it were clear that the Tories are THE NASTY PARTY it is now. Even twelve refugees is too-many compared with one million. Let’s try to get it down to none at all - that would be a really good answer! So it’s only a tiny minority party or a Scottish MP or (most of the important policies of) a foreign country, Germany, that stand up to ethical scrutiny, say I. And that’s to record the political views of (one member of) this family as of a time of radical change. We DO NOT follow the masses supporting the likes of Trump or Farage or The Conservatives.
Thursday 27th October 2016 at 2046hrs: Brexit and historical parallels:
Went to Lyveden New Bield today. Northants. A few miles south of Corby on the A6116 and then a couple of miles east. An unfinished summer palace/retreat/country-houses for Sir Thomas Tresham. Left untouched for four centuries. No roof. No joists or floorboards. Latter removed by the Roundheads in the Civil War. The whole place is a remarkable token of the ghastly intolerance that existed at the latter end of Elizabeth-the-first’s reign. Amazing parallels with the latter end of Elizabeth-the-second’s reign. Tresham tried honestly to be true to his Catholic faith and to the queen. And in her earlier days it was possible. Huge recusancy fees to pay, Over a million pounds in total (in today’s values), at over £2,000 (today’s values) per C.of.E service missed. And his summer palace at Lyveden was his ‘secret’ (because the symbols were all merely allusions to religious icons) way of enunciating his Catholic values, which he could not otherwise express. But it all came to nothing. He ended up in prison and died there in James I (who was less-tolerant than Elizabeth)’s reign. And his son would have been hanged-drawn-and-quartered for involvement in the Gunpowder Plot if he hadn’t turned ‘King’s evidence’. So it is now. Ghastly intolerance is practised and praised by the Tabloid Press (Times /Sun/Mail/Express). People who speak up against it like Gary Lineker, are vilified in social media and in the press. A horrific wave of right-wing intolerance is sweeeping the UK and Europe and USA. In the US, recent opinion polls show that Trump, the vile mysogynist and racist, would be the next US president if only US men were eligible to vote. And so it was about 410 years ago in the early years of James I, that it was treason punishable by hanging-drawing-and-quartering to say or have-said the Catholic mass. The most ghastly punishment that man has been able to devise for his fellow-man, applied for merely ‘using the wrong rules’ in your religion. The other day I heard an ordinary man in Devonshire saying ‘send that Syrian orphan baby away, we don’t want it here’ when it had been brought to his town to escape the fighting in its homeland. Likewise the EU. Treated by the tabloid press as worse than Catholicism was ever seen as. Whereas in truth it is and was (and I say this as a Unitarian, if I am anything) a source of values, of ethics, of a way of life, indeed of all that is worth anything lasting, as indeed of course was the Church of England, to its adherents. And the only real difference between them arose from Luther’s objections to the undoubtedly corrupt sale of indulgences for funding the new St Peter’s in Rome. And that is the Catholic religion not the EU. But much of it in truth applies to the EU, if you only know. And it does wonderful things that neither the Catholic (nor any other) religion can ever do, namely put a stop to the thousand or more years of more or less perpetual war in Europe. In short: Catholicism = Europhilia = something so threatening as to provide a mandate to dissenters to cancel the only known way for preventing war in Europe and the doing of horrible things to defenceless people. No exact parallels of course, but much commonality in the situations. Likewise the Brexit rendum. Much whipping-up of hysteria against the ‘foreign threat’. Oh boy! What a mess we’ve got ourselves into. If only the government had the common sense to try, as Elizabeth I did in her early days, to accommodate both the ‘Catholics’ (Europhiles) and the ‘Protestants’ (Eurosceptics) so that the nation could genuinely work together instead of being divided.
Wednesday 9.11.2016 at 1354hrs:
Trump is President of the U.S.! Unbelievable. A man in the Farage mould. Only much worse. A denier of most if not all inconvenient truths like climate change.(**) Infinitely rich, a company asset-stripper, but proud of not paying taxes, and of groping women unhindered, because he is a celebrity. Heaven help the world. We certainly can’t seem to help ourselves. This is ‘Brexit 2’ as Ruth’s sister Christine says. However, as Graham says, if you are one of those who have done badly over the last 30 years and are fed-up with ‘the establishment’ which has done nothing for you, what else is there to do but vote for the ‘non-establishment’ candidate? As they did in the ‘Brexit referendum’. But the irony is that the very people who do that will be the ones most disadvantaged by the result of doing so, in the long run. The ones of whose ancestors 19,250 were killed, many in the ‘Pals Battalions’, on the first day of the Somme. But they can’t see that.That Trump is the very embodiment of what they hate. And they never will. Heigh-ho. Thus is the world. And thus it will always be. A big brick through the plate-glass window of the world, but that window represented civilised progress beyong the centuries of war (in the case of Brexit) and some degree of ‘constipated-sanity’ (in the case of the U.S.political system).
(**) His supporters used to chant (about Hillary Clinton): “Lock her up”. I would like to lock him up in a greenhouse with all the windows shut, in full sunshine, for long enough for it to get seriously hot. Of course he would deny any relevance. But it might have some effect.
Yes indeed we had hope in 2008. And recently believed that the impossibility of a female president of the US might also come true. Well, well. So much progress is too much to expect. Keep hoping Phil. But probably not in your lifetime.
It will be so interesting to see Trump trying to do things in full public scrutiny instead of behind closed (mafia) doors, and finding that he is up against ‘the real world’, which cannot always be controlled by money, but which behaves according to the laws of physics, not to mention the laws of human behaviour. (11.11.16 at 1144hrs).
So here they are. The two architects of the disaster we find ourselves in. Revelling in it. Triumphant. Living embodiments of the negation of all the values that my 75 years have taught me are worthwhile. And my country and the US have chosen them. The only redeeming thought is that actually a majority of those who voted in the US, chose Clinton (by about 250K votes or so). And (roughly, from memory) about 18 million UK voters voted for Remain, though they were outnumbered by those who voted for Leave, by about 1 million. (Added 15.11.16): And Trump has talked of the need to re-introduce torture as a federal procedure for the treatment of certain prisoners, not to mention that the Klu Klux Klan has already begun to flex its muscles in the U.S., which is exactly as you would expect in the circumstances.
Values: (Friday 24.11.16 at 2013hrs):
The judge in the Old Bailey trial of Thomas Mair, who repeatedly shot and stabbed MP Jo Cox on 16th June during the EU referendum campaign, while proclaiming: “this is for Britain” and “keep Britain independent” and “Britain first” has helped make clear what are true patriotic values for this country. Mr Justice Wilkie told Mair that Cox was not only a “passionate, open-hearted, inclusive and generous” person, but a true patriot. He (Mair) “ affected to be a patriot”. But the judge added that “It is evident from your internet searches that your inspiration is not love of country or your fellow citizens, it is an admiration for Nazis and similar anti-democratic white supremacist creeds”. And Mr Justice Wilkie went on: “Our parents’ generation made huge sacrifices to defeat those ideas and values in the second world war. What you did betrays those sacrifices”, and “betrayed the quintessence of our country, its adherence to parliamentary democracy”. Click here to go to the Guardian’s piece on this.
Role models are hard to come-by these days, but I add Jo Cox to my existing models, namely Ruth Archer and Lillian Hindle. And I am glad to have now a valuable reference basis (above) as a standard against which to judge the patriotism of much of the current claptrap which masquerades as patriotism in the wake of the EU referendum. Another such role model for me is Mary Robinson, president of Ireland from 1990-1997. Interesting that all my role models to-date are female.
The opposite of role model is someone like Farage or Trump. The latter averaged 20 lies per day in his pre-election speeches. These were identified and published but this made no difference to him or to those who voted for him, evidently. Perhap they helped him. He is now proposing Farage as UK ambassdor in Washington. Not amazing. Typical. And it just makes the ludicrous nature of current politics so manifest. Amusingly ironic if it were not so serious. Hitler was treated as a buffoon and ignored in his early days. He was not a buffoon. He was infinitely dangerous. So is Trump. We are showing very clear signs of the madness that could lead to WW3 with the majority of the populus thinking that it might be rather fun to try something we haven’t really had a taste of since 1945. Let’s have a refendum on it. That would make it right to do it wouldn’t it?
30.11.16 at 1900hrs: Trumpism:
A thought. About Trump. President-elect. He is the man who has shown that telling lies works. The electorate loved it. It made no difference that they were identified and made public. He revelled in them. The biggest of all was about climate change of course. But he averaged about 20 lies per day in his pre-election speeches. And they wanted the liar as their President. So that’s all you need to know about Donald Trump. He is the liar. Nothing he says means anything. Nor establishes anything. Nor can be relied-on. End of story. This sums-up our world. It’s all entirely consistent with the entire content of the BBC News for the last many tens of years, which has mainly consisted of all the bad news about the world. Well, now that constant diet of degredation has had its fulfilment in Donald Trump. He is the embodiment of all that. The ulitmate bad news story. And the world has got what it wants. Hooray! And I hope it likes it and can put it in its pipe and smoke it and enjoy it. I suspect it will be the end of us all before long. Much the same was true of Brexit. The lies worked. They are now becoming apparent. Too late. The public loved them. Up yours Delours! True Murdochism and Dacre-ism. Wonderful stuff. And all paid-for by the big corporations. Paying to have Think-Tanks come up with ‘Independent’ ideas, and for ‘Grass-roots’ activism supporting those coporations’ interests. The bigger the lie the more they believe it. Just like the (misquote of) Goebels. But it was all going on in the 1920s and 1930s with its consequences in the 1940s. And our parents generation were obliged just to get on with it. And so must we.
15.12.2016 at 1713hrs: “Red Shoes” (Matthew Bourne’s version at Sadlers Wells):
The review of the Red Shoes stage version in today’s Guardian revives memories of Gwen and Dad going (presumably in 1948 when it came out) to see it twice in Oxford - an unheard-of thing to happen in the Archer household. It was pronounced a wonderful film. And I can now see its significance to my mother, Gwen. The review says that the film found its meaning in the disillusioned aftermath of the second world war. Indeed. Indeed. And, for my mother, the story of the ballerina finding her own artistic life and meaning in her own way, in the film, must have resonated wonderfully with Gwen’s own realisation of the artistic limiations of her life in the Headington suburb of Oxford, though in truth, there were wonderful possibilities that she did indeed find and to some extent exploit, in the coming decades of her life until 2009. I was seven or indeed six-going-on-seven, for much of 1948, and had little or no idea for quite some years, of my mother’s artistic ambitions, realised and unrealised. Only three years since hostilities ceased. All the damage and other consequences of war still largely in-place, though very little in Oxford. And my mother, aged 39, perceiving that life had great limitations for her, married for 12 years, with sons aged about 10 and about 7, and a husband aged 43 and running a sizeable transport business. Where to go from here? Ah me. That was the question. And perhaps the film provided an answer of sorts. In 1949, my brother Edward was born.
29.12.16 at 2241hrs:Just watched Alan Bennett’s “Keeping on Keeping on” via iPlayer. His latest diaries. The postscript dated 24th June 2016 (the day after the EU referendum) refers to a parallel with ‘Munich 1938’, when Chamberlain came back with ‘Peace in our Time’, and half the population were over the moon that they had been saved from war and the other half were horrified that Hitler had just been given (by the British people) exactly what he demanded without even firing one shot. As Bennett says: “We shall see”. Indeed we shall, as we did in 1938. And we all know where that led. So much in common with Farage and Gove and Johnson, bent on destruction when internal Conservative Party politics and the British people themselves gave them the opportunity. All so stupid. All so unnecessary. Just like voting to not repair a dyke or a dam keeping the sea or a river back, in which cracks have appeared. As has been said elsewhere, we are the laughing stock of Europe and the World, with no one to blame but ourselves - the British people, the ‘Mother of Parliaments’ that has bequeathed such ‘wisdom' to the world, and the Conservative Party, which forever after will be known as the party that thought it a wise thing to offer the British people the option of not repairing the European Sea Wall, and dared-them to do it, with lunatic financial promises (of £50Million per day to be spent on the NHS), and then appointed the man who made all those promises as Foreign Secretary! What wisdom! What maturity! What an example to the world! How to govern a country! Oh my God!!
Thursday 16.03.2017 at 1640hrs: 60th ANNIVERSARY OF AC&CO’S FOUNDING IN 1857:
Today is the 60th anniversary of the Archer Cowley & Co centenary dinner at The Regency Rooms at the Cadena Cafe, Cornmarket Street, Oxford. And only 12 years later the firm was sold to Cantays, and continued a little longer before being sold and absorbed into Robinson’s Removals. Much the same happened to my legal practice in Peterborough. Twelve years after I left, it was closed and the client work absorbed by other offices of UD&L. Making about 32 years altogether for that legal practice, compared with AC&Co’s 112-plus years. Well, well. It’s a story which this web-site tells. And all such things have to come to an end.
Sunday 19.03.2017 at 1122hrs:
Thoughts: looking back, are there ‘golden periods’ in one’s life which are worth preserving in some way? If so, which are mine? Well, those coming to mind first include:
My UDL Peterborough years: 1980 to 2002 and onwards to the present via Puddles;
My ‘golden retirement years’, the first few, from 2002 onwards, to about 2006/7/8, in which I was Chair of the GM vestry and compiler of the GM newsletter and GM Treasurer and (with much help from Gerry Schofield) we got the 10-year accounts backlog made-good, and the accounts registered with the Charity Commission and Gift Aid tax-relief paid by HMRC amounting to quite a few thousands;
My corresponding Music in Lyddington years as Treasurer and Website-Compiler, from about 2006 to 2012/13, in which I reorganised the accounts on a spreadsheet basis and secured substantial funding from a particular charity-supporting funding organisation whereby we were able to afford to engage artists costing significant one-concert fees running to several thousands for particular concerts;
My now-ongoing Family-history-website years from 2014, in which I am telling the complex story of this family and its links, and slowly understanding how this story-telling gives meaning to life’s twists and turns; and, looking back to earlier periods of my life, there are:
1961 to-date: my years with Ruth: the best gift life can give; and before that
1954 to 1961: my Magdalen College School years, in its Direct Grant (equals Grammar School) days under Bob Stanier and his wife Maida, as headmaster, including my Rowing Years: 1956-1961; and this was before, of course, MCS became an out-and-out 'public school’ (like Bolton School, Ruth says) when the Direct Grant funding system ended in (roughly) the 1970s.
1948 to 1956/7: my trainspotting years in which I had a consuming interest in the transport system which (I now realise, but did not particularly do so then) had given birth to the industrial revolution, and was about to undergo a fundamental change (by switching from steam) to other power-systems, in a reversal of the post-war decision taken by the government in (about) 1945, to stick-with steam for the time being;
1941 to 1948: my pre-Christchurch (school) years in Headington, Oxford; and
1857 to 1969: the ‘Archer Cowley years’, which this website is able to chronicle, with such enjoyent by me; and so on
From which, it emerges, apparently, that, looking back that there are ‘golden elements’ in all these periods, to contemplate with pleasure? I think so. That may be a significant discovery connected with understanding aspects of the complexity of the life we lead;
Tuesday 21.3.2017 at 1423hrs: Assessment of happiness. See the report by the UN in today’s Guardian. It makes good sense to me. Click here to see the Guardian’s report. A healthy balance of prosperity, and social capital, including low inequality and confidence in government. Seems obviously right to me. Sadly this country has been moving away from these factors in recent years and is now ranked 19th - I would have guessed lower. But ‘health balance of prosperity and social capital seems to me to be something to work at in one’s private life. In other words a sensible balance between what I might call ‘individual stuff’ (done on one’s own) and ‘social activities’ in which one works with one or more others. I probably need to cultivate more of the latter.
Wednesday 7th June 2017: UK Politics:
The day before the general election. Theresa May is seeking en endorsement of her ‘hard brexit’ policy. The totally unexpected surge by Jeremy Corbyn has at least given her a very unexpected and unpleasant surprise. If only she loses! The only parties with sensible policies on the things that really matter are the Lib-Dems and the Greens. We are currently effectively governed by Farage and Trump and Gove and Johnson and Dacre and Murdoch. I mean it. They have called all the shots that really count. They run the things that matter. How ghastly is that. Hence what a wonderful thing it would be if tomorrow night it was evident that despite the total unfairness of our electoral system, despite the stupidity of first-past-the-post, desite the big-business bribery and lobbying, despite the gerrymandering, and all the other such factors, for once, that all failed! And somehow we got back to the sanity of the last 40 or more years where we worked with our continental friends and neighbours. But times are bad. A tide of cheap, shallow, lying, hating, selfish sentiments has washed-up a ghastly sequence of events that may take decades to unravel, or may never do so. Perhaps the decades of peace of my lifetime will be looked-back on as a golden age, never to be repeated?
Thursday 28th June 2017: ‘An Oxfordshire Lad’:
(Pasted from a finding when searching the record of this computer for something else altogether and I could not resist making this record of my early struggles with the facts and research for this website on record):
An Oxfordshire Lad.
(An introduction to the family history)
George Butterworth’s music for ‘A Shropshire Lad’ accompanies a tape-recorded reading of A.E. Housman’s verse that I quite often play as I do the washing-up in the kitchen at 33 Main Street, Lyddington, in January 2006. And its soulful melancholy prompts and inspires me to try to put into words the feelings that I’ve had for a long time now, about my family’s history.
At the age of 64, although I believe I’m quite well and healthy, and may have quite some years before me, nevertheless I have a strong sense that life is short, and there is so much to do to record and compile and inter-relate the large amount of information that my father and his father and my aunt Nora have left behind on this subject.
And despite my long-felt desire to get on with this important task, and my daily intention to put this into practice, nevertheless I find myself doing other things, and time and time again, I come to the end of the day and I admit to myself that, once again, I have not actually done anything more to press on with my retirement task. And I resolve to do better and to find every day, at least a little time to devote to this labour of Hercules.
But the Butterworth music acts as an inspiration for this work. I hear those plaintive melodies and think how well they accompany the verse which is to follow. Its sadness and the constant presence of the shortness of life, which was an ever-present theme of Housman’s verse, seems apt not only for its audio cassette, but also for my family’s history, which, as one looks back at names and faces which are no more, likewise cannot avoid some preoccupation with the brevity of life. (to be continued – 19.1.2006 @ 9.30 pm).
(Continued 5.10.2006) And now, today, I am three days into a new phase, I trust, of my family history project. I am getting up at around 4.15 am each morning and after a cup of tea and some porage, I get to work at about 4.40 am and continue for about two hours, and in this way, do far more per day than I have done for a very long time. If this can become a permanent habit then there is real hope of finishing the project. My heart rejoices as the feeling that I had set out to do something unattainable has saddened me for quite some time. And it has simultaneously annoyed me to think that other people seem to manage to do what they want to do in retirement – indeed they clearly do just that – and yet here I am with a clear and simple and hardly ambitious project finding myself unable to carry it through. And for no reason other than that the everyday demands of ordinary life seem to interfere with its execution. The need to: do the gardening, answer correspondence, particularly e-mails, act as chapel treasurer, and likewise as chapel newsletter editor, do as much as I can in the house in terms of housekeeping (clearing up after meals, making the bread and porage, getting the breakfast ready), walking Fred (our Bedlington terrier) every day, organising our financial investment/retirement income arrangements, organizing our annual ‘Puddles dinner/lunch’ etc, etc, are examples. But now, I do these two hours of family history work, and they come first in the day, the world is asleep while I do them, and later, when I get round to the other tasks, I know that my daily wish to make progress on the family history has been fulfilled and I can do my other tasks with a light heart. And of course I make less progress with the other tasks because two hours of the day have gone. But it doesn’t matter. I care not. Other things will just have to wait. But they didn’t ‘just wait’ before. They always always always came first, and it wasn’t right. Hurray for progress! - as Gwenda Morgan would have said, as I now know, from her ‘Diary of a landgirl 1939-1945’, which I am currently reading. (5th October, 2006 at 5.22 am).
(Continued Friday 11th April 2008 at No. 30c Glover Road, St Heliers, Auckland, New Zealand, at Helen and Martin’s home). Well, I was not able to continue with the above progress on the family history for ever, and I did revert to the problems from which I had temporarily escaped by my early-morning sojourn in front of the computer. But the need to crack that ever-present problem has remained with me and, only a week ago last Monday, that is the 31st March, I agreed with the Minister at the Unitarian Chapel in Leicester where Ruth and I have been members of the congregation for the better part of 20 years, that I would ‘revert to the back-benches’ from my present position as treasurer and newsletter compiler, progressively over the coming year, and I am hopeful that this step will enable me at last to make the progress that is so necessary for me ever to have a chance of completing this family history. Perhaps I can revert to my former every-morning-at-4am routine, who knows? And the task, in some respects is continually growing. Even as I work away at the cv of Caroline Dealing (born Smith, probably became Davis through the early death of her father, married John Lucas and became Lucas, he died and she married again and became Dealing), I realize that I want to be able to put her life into context. I have been listening with avid interest (as I walk Fred our Bedlington terrier, each day) on Ruth’s ‘i-pod’ to a reading of Neil Ferguson’s book “Empire” which has so much to say about the world of Britain in the 19th century into which Caroline was born in 1819 in Southwark: (i) the manifest fears of a repetition of the French revolution of 1789 (only 30 years ‘BC’ – before Caroline); (ii) the immense downturn in the economy after the Napoleonic wars; (iii) the plight of the former soldiers of Wellington’s armies, suddenly released from military service into a labour market that had very little to offer them; (iv) the effect of the Corn Laws which, for the betterment of the aristocratic and land-owning classes, artificially maintained high grain prices when they would otherwise have fallen; not to mention (v) the arrival of the railways and ‘railway mania’ into the world of which John Lucas launched himself by becoming an engine-driver, at least for a while, according to his daughter (my great-grandmother Lucas.Penfold)’s marriage certificate. So with so much significant history going on around her life from 1819 to 1885, I feel it a duty on me to attempt to paint-in the historical background against which Caroline Smith.Lucas’s life was led. It is not easy to see just how this is to be done. For the moment I have commenced the task by including in Caroline’s cv some headings and information about the times in which she lived. And to supplement this I am currently re-reading Neil Ferguson’s book (from a printed version as opposed to the recorded readings that I had formerly been reading). But this may well not be the most time-effective method of proceeding. (Friday.11.4.2008.)
(Friday 28.6.17): And that NZ visit was for our grandaughter Rebecca’s birth, and she is now 9 years old).
Tuesday 4.7.17 at 1201hrs: “Shall I compare thee…..” (W. Shakespeare): The German version from Graham and Paula’s teenage German girl-visitor-helper yesterday as we drove with Paula to Mitchell’s school sports event, (as I remember it): ‘Soll ich dich einem sommertag vergleichen?’:
Soll ich dich einem Sommertag vergleichen?
Er ist wie du so lieblich nicht und lind;
Nach kurzer Dauer muß sein Glanz verbleichen,
Und selbst in Maienknospen tobt der Wind.
Oft blickt zu heiß des Himmels Auge nieder,
Oft ist verdunkelt seine goldne Bahn,
Denn alle Schönheit blüht und schwindet wieder,
Ist wechselndem Geschicke untertan.
Dein ew'ger Sommer dodi soll nie verrinnen,
Nie fliehn die Sdlönheit, die dir eigen ist,
Nie kann der Tod Macht über dich gewinnen,
Wenn du in meinem Lied unsterblich bist!
Solange Menschen atmen, Augen sehn,
Lebt mein Gesang und schützt dich vor Vergehn!
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
(from: http://www.william-shakespeare.de/sonet/18.htm )
Saturday 21.10.17: Beliefs: (Text from an email I composed on 3.8.17) about life’d opportunities:
On the ‘not believing in these things any more’ point, perhaps I should respond by saying that I do see religion and belief as a perfectly acceptable and effective way for lots of people to cope with life’s challenges. Indeed I myself at this very moment do find the hymn: “City of God, how broad, how far, outstretch thy wall’s sublime” (sung to the tune “Richmond”) - which came back to me from my Methodist young days not long ago, a very comforting concept, at these times of Trump and Brexit. We live (so it seems to me) at a time when values cutting across differences of religion, ethnicity and nationality, which I grew up with and which have been the bedrock of the democracy that I believe in, are openly and widely challenged. The difficulty, more broadly, is to find a way to live a life in which the opportunities presented by the gift of life itself are seized when and where (often only once) they present themselves, while at the same time balancing the requirements of the golden rule in one’s life and politics, without resorting to denial (for example of the laws of physics) or self-deception and wishful thinking, to which we are rather prone. It’s an eternal conundrum. I don’t claim to have an answer. I do believe that JC, in his ethical teaching, gave us great truths that the world has great need of just now - such as the parable of the Good Samaritan. The mystical accretions of Christianity I can do without.
Sunday 18.2.18 at 1957hrs: Unitarianism:
A wonderful example of a Unitarian service today at Leicester Great Meeting. If (as I believe) religion is much or entirely about helping people to cope with life’s demands, then this service, which (in part or more) was about coping with failure or ’not winning’ was a perfect example (to me anyway) of what a routine Sunday service should be all about. I have already spent some time committing to memory (during my walk this afternoon with Mac our dog) the following lines from the first reading of the service:
“It is easy to enjoy the feeling of winning. it is easy to cheer the winning team through another winning season. But we are unsure how to behave when our team loses.
I have a friend who played on a college team that lost 21 straight games. He said once: “I didn’t have the emotional equipment to handle those defeats with much agility.
How could he? How could any of us? We have been taught the importance of winning: how to win at games, how to have a winning personality; how to succeed. We have not been taught how to lose, or the importance of losing, or the inevitablity of it.
Losing is as important as winning; and as common. Why aren’t we taught how to fail? Everybody does it. Some people, perfectionists for instance, tend to lose badly. They are harsh on themselves - and on others - and sometimes, in order to avoid defeat, they refuse to try anything new or risky. A character in Doctor Zhivago says: ‘I don’t like peple who have never fallen or stumbled ; their virtue is lifeless and of little value." (to be continued).....
Saturday 19.5.18 at 1430hrs: Coping with sadness:
How do your cope with sadness discovered in a family history like this? If it is long enough ago, it is not a problem and can be stated straightforwardly without offending anyone. But if insufficient time has elapsed, as in the case in point, it is less simple. Especially if those involved might become aware of such a disclosure. Well, what of that? If you are confident of your position, then why not publish and be damned? Yes indeed. Why not? Well, in this case my sensitivity lies in beieving that one of the persons involved might well prefer that such a thing be kept under wraps, and that person's view happens to be paramount in this case. So that thought, for the moment, decides the matter.
But what about the fact that a sadness of the kind in question has the utmost importance (so far as I am concerned) with 'what matters in life' not to mention 'with what things must never be done in life if you are ever to have a trace of integrity'l. `It seems important (to me) to record, somehow, in a family history, some (at least ) disclosure relating to the ethical primciples that governed life at the time in question. So difficult without seeming pompous. Perhaps if the disclosure is in terms of how the sadness was coped-with, and in particular (in this case ) with how one or more members of the group managed to retain their integrity while being assailed with all the slings and arrows that life can devise, and from a quarter where the absolute reverse would be reasonable to expect.
And if the disclosure is buried deep in the innermost pages of a site like this, otherwise than in a place where it can be looked up and easily found, that makes it the more acceptable, I believe. So there is a plan. A way of coping with sadness, otherwise than pretending that it never happened. And I cannot but believe that all families have their share of such things. Including the royal family, as we all know. And having acknowledged the pervasiveness of the problem, it occurs to me that that observation fits perfectly with the fact that the media news is totally full of terrible stories of the worst things that can happen in life, and it is foolishness to imagine that such things happen only to others. They are bound to be reflected in the lives that one recounts in a family history if only that history is anything more than superficial and brief.
Enough! It is a plan. I can cope with my needs in this way. And feel that the life story that I tell, is not emasculated. And the details might even be preserved in the supporting paper documentation of this family history for storage somewhere. (Cont'd 20.5.18): And there is the possibility of resorting to the very real device of 'pathology' as a basis for explaining otherwise inexplicable lapses in standards of values. After all, when pathology strikes, it does so, often without warning, and can cause very perceptible changes in the person concerned, and their values. And for signficant periods of time. So, one answer to some outrageous assertion, is simply to say (in unspoken acknowledgement of their;;;;;;;;kasfaLO.......(30.7.18: I must have fallen asleep)
The Cult of the Online: (added 30.7.2018):
See today's Guardian Leader:
Thank goodness for the Guardian's values! The horrors of the online cult. So manifest. Everywhere you go. Especilly the young. Sitting, standing, walking, in bed, in the train, anywhere at all, glued to their mesmerising 'Smartphone'. So smart, it outsmarts them. No idea how stupid they look. Worshipping at the digital shrine of Apple and Amazon and the rest. Oblivious of the source of much of 'information' that is fed to them. And its effects on them. And its swallowing of their free time. And much the same applies to the old - those of them who try to 'keep up' with the trend. It is the modern 'religion' and is adhered-to as fervently as that gripped the world of Shakespeare and before.
Yes, yes, the internet has its true values. For searches - done with discretion. For sat-nav services. For publishing (via websites) and so on. FaceTime is good too. Wouldn't be without it. But FaceBook is a demon..Ditto Twitter. Wouldn't touch them under any circumstance. See the Guardian leader for the details of this horror story.
The Nostalgia for the good-old wartime spirit - Guardian Leader 30.7.2018
Dad's Army - nostalgia that we should have grown out of:
There was, so I believed, a wonderful wartime 'spirit of togetherness' from 1939 to 1945. And it continued for a signifiicant time into the post-war period. And Dad's Army made great play on this. But as the leader explains, that was all very well for the post-war times. And the grown-up world built on that by inventing and introducing and making-succeed a group of nations who were determined never again to go trhough the madness self-destruction of war. And they did it. And it succeeded beyond all dreams. And European war has been banished to history. Nations working together for Peace and Human Rights and Climate Justice for the world. How wonderful is that. Beyond my wildest dreams, it is what nations should do. And they have. Its real. Its true. It has happened. The world has done something positive and wonderful and successful.