Rosehips

One of the programmes I am really enjoying at the moment (along with Good Cop, Parades End and The Thick of It) is Wartime Farm on BBC2.

The latest episode told us about the health properties of rosehips, which made me look with new interest at the succulent rosehips on the dogroses along the lane.

I think I will put them in a blender and try a rosehip smoothie (along with some other fruit as I can't imagine they will taste nice).

And why so many Russian readers?

This last few weeks Russians have been all over this blog.

There is a Bulgarian reader of this blog, and I think I know who he is.

Always I get distracted - the past week at work

Monday

In this job e-mails dominate the working day in a way I have not previously experienced.

All we seem to be doing at the moment is planning the seminar we will hold at a conference in early October.  "Head Office" is naturally taking an interest as they do not trust our Director Vijay Singh to be on-message.  I am being loaded with all the administration of the seminar (which Vijay Singh does not trust our Administration Team to do either competently or confidentially).

Lunchtime I went to a local mall, bleak concrete plaza, visiting the bank, Co-Op and cheap goods store (I am still "method researching" a low-income demographic in an attempt to understand their thoughts and emotions).

The rest of the lunchbreak I sat in my car reading On the Edge of Reason by Miroslav Krleza.

In the afternoon I looked at databases.

Tuesday

News that Administration Supervisor Bridget O'Farrell will not return from maternity leave.

Today I finally got to grips with the papers on my desk and began to organise my work.

Wednesday

More staff started today, one on Administration and one on the Society project.  These appointments are evidence of the positive effect the new funding is already beginning to have on the Institute. Both are short-term contracts, a reminder that our new benefactor is not giving us a blank cheque.

Too much time spent replying to e-mails in the afternoon, so that an analysis report I was drafting became delayed.

Thursday 

Each day I arrive in the office determined to work hard, but always I get distracted.

Friday

I have never seen so many people in the office - all of our staff were in, plus lots of visitors from Head Office.  The reason for this gathering was to go over training and rehearsals for the October seminar.  I kept out of it all and worked on the analysis report.

The weather wonderfully warm so that at lunchtime I went downstairs where the library staff had opened the back door to the stacks and put chairs out in the sun.  I drank diet cherry Coke and talked to Assistant Librarian Gary and Library Manager Stan D.  They wanted to know whether there would be a salary review now that more money was coming into the Institute (salaries have remained the same since 2008!).

Anna Soubry

With all the problems facing the government in general and the Department of Health in particular why has Anna Soubry, immediately on her appointment as a (very very junior) minister, decided to call for the legalisation of assisted suicide?

Has she nothing better to do?

Or does she think such a controversial topic will get her some quick headlines?

The problem with Tory MPs is that they are no longer Tory (in the same way that Labour MPs are no longer socialist).  The vast majority of Members of Parliament, all parties, are interchangeable, shameless and unprincipled.  Literally unprincipled as they have no principles. 

The principle of not taking another's life is worth maintaining because it protects everyone.

As soon as you start to say there is "a life not worth living" where do you stop?

You could say mentally-ill people have lives not worth living.  You could say deaf-blind people have lives not worth living.  You could say asylum-seekers, caged in detention centres, have lives that are not worth living.

Can you see where this slippery slope is going to lead?

If the Archbishop of Canterbury is serious about the Anglican Communion having a "president" perhaps he should be courageous enough to talk through the implications of such a proposal.

It would not be possible in the twenty-first century for such a person to be "appointed" - to have any legitimacy the post would have to be elected, preferably by the people (for England this could be those on the PCC roll of each parish).

And if that point is conceded, then why not elect the bishops who sit in the House of Lords?

Difficult but necessary question

Today is the penultimate day of the Paralympic Games.

If you recall, the Olympic Games spurred Toby Helm and Sunder Katwala and others to tell us "At least a third of Britain's 65 medals reflected the positive contribution of immigration and integration to Britain over the last three generations."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/aug/19/olympic-poll-positive-britain?CMP=twt_fd

Therefore it is somewhat puzzling to see that the overwhelming ethnicity of the Paralympic British gold medal winners is not due to "immigration and integration".  In fact they are overwhelmingly white.  Whiter than Greg Dyke's BBC. 

All sorts of questions arise:

Is the selection process for Paralympic athletes so mired in racism that almost no Black & Minority Ethnic athletes were selected to represent the United Kingdom?

Or does it mean the Black & Minority Ethnic communities so despise the status of people with disabilities that for cultural reasons they have entirely shunned participation in the Games?

Or (difficult but necessary question this one) does it mean that the participation of Black & Minority Ethnic athletes in the mainstream Olympic Games was artificially inflated for political reasons? (and if so who authorised this and for what motive).

Toby Helm and Sunder Katwala and all the other commentators who have lectured us on the multi-cultural multi-ethnic Olympic Games (one thinks of Paul Mason, incontinent with left-wing excitement as he read out The Sun's editorial verbatim on Newsnight) - all these people have some explaining to do.

A class of Nietzschean supermen and women

Is it true that seven members of the Labour front bench did PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at Oxford?

How on earth can the the Labour Party claim to be representative of ordinary people when power and influence is monopolised by such a small number of cliquey identitkit people.

It would be useful to know the process by which each of these seven people finessed themselves onto the front bench.  Who were the patrons and enablers who helped them on their way?  Or was it all due to will-to-power merit, and we should be in awe of PPE graduates as a class of Nietzschean supermen and women?

Predistribution

Whenever I hear the word "predistribution" I am, through some process of dyslexia, thinking the word is "predestination".

Not sure how this Calvinist interpretation got into my mind.

As an Anglican I believe that we are saved through faith (and that ultimately everyone will be saved - hell exists but there is no-one in it).

Zadie Smith is taking a risk

On the Today programme this morning author Zadie Smith, in a recorded interview talking to Mariella Frostrup about her new novel NW, told us that she had discriminated in the way the characters in her novel are described and portrayed.  Only white people have their race commented upon (and from the basis of an exerpt published in the Guardian at least one of these white characters is portrayed unfavourably in terms of behaviour, appearance and general obnoxiousness).  Zadie Smith justified this racial discrimination on the grounds that American authors discriminate against black people (she quoted two American authors who have done this, although her novel NW is set in London and is about Londoners).

Zadie Smith is taking a risk in doing this, as under equalities legislation only one person has to make a complaint to the police about racial discrimination and the police must investigate it, no matter how trivial it might seem.

Presumably Hugh Muir will be castigating Zadie Smith in his Guardian column Hideously Diverse Britain.

The Reverend Giles Fraser called for the disestablishment of the Church of England

On Thought for the Day this morning (BBC Radio 4) The Reverend Giles Fraser called for the disestablishment of the Church of England.

Of course, no-one should take this call seriously.  The Rev Giles Fraser probably doesn't mean it seriously.  "Outrageous" remarks are part of his style and designed to get media attention.

However it does reveal an ignorance on the part of the Rev Giles Fraser about the status of the Established Church.  The Church of England does not belong to the clergy, it belongs to the people.  The Anglican priests do not have the authority to disestablish the Church.

Individual clergy or groups of clergy can remove themselves from the Church and join other religions.  Or set up their own sects, as many have done over the centuries.  Perhaps the Rev Giles Fraser would be happier doing this?

And how does the Rev Giles Fraser have the time to minister to his parish and simultaneously manage a busy career as a media celebrity? 

The Save the Children report doesn't quite ring true

Charity Save the Children, an organisation normally active in third world countries countering famine and malnutrition, has announced a campaign to help children in the United Kingdom who are reportedly going without food.

A Save the Children report emphasises the shocking levels of deprivation that have overcome United Kingdom children:

http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/child_poverty_2012.pdf

The announcement has been seized upon by left-wing commentators as an indictment of the current Coalition government.

Except that the Save the Children report doesn't quite ring true.

I take an interest in social issues, and regularly visit social housing estates in deprived areas. 

I also have relatives living in the rougher parts of Peckham, Bellingham and the Watling Estate in north London.

So far I have not had any feedback that children are starving in deprived parts of the country, nor that famine relief operations are necessary to "save the children".

Is it possible the Save the Children report and campaign is a scam?

That low-income families are experiencing hardship is undeniable, but Mehdi Hasan should ponder the thought that this has not just happened in the last 800 days but is a legacy of the incompetence of the last government - in many cases the poverty has been endemic over very long periods of time.

I am also suspicious of the fact that the Director of Programmes for Save the Children is Fergus Drake.

If you look at Mr Drake's record you can see that he was a Treasury adviser under the last government and then moved into a role working for The Office of Tony Blair, before "somehow" popping up as a Director of Save the Children.

Would you trust anything produced by a former adviser of Tony Blair?

Brazen performance by Stella Creasy MP on Newsnight discussing foodbanks.  No acknowledgement of how the Labour years created the systemic poverty we now see.  And mentioning her constituency every other sentence presumably to appeal to the local media.

What a horrible example of the very worst kind of political careerist.

Justine Greening MP

I have a lot of respect for Justine Greening MP.

Steady, capable, polite.

Also kind and patient even to nonentities such as myself, explaining government policy to me when I have failed to do the proper research.

Is The Times a machine for destroying intellectuals?

One of the (perhaps unintended) consequences of The Times paywall has been the disappearance from public view of several previously well-known commentators. David Aaronovitch for instance used to be everywhere.  You would see him on television, hear him on the radio, be able to read his articles on the internet.

Now, unless you actually buy The Times (which I do occasionally) you are not able to obtain an Aaronovitchian insight into issues of the day (I am not counting Twitter, which is tedious beyond belief).

One of the advantages of the internet has been that the ephemeral writings of journalists, previously only available if you went to the trouble of collecting clippings, have become part of the easily-accessible collected knowledge of humanity.

But not for Times journalists.

Not only have their articles become limited to subscribers, their reputations must be suffering in comparison to other commentators and their ability to influence wider society is surely waning.

Which makes me ask:  is The Times a machine for destroying intellectuals?

The historical narrative of a nation (and the identity of its population) must be disrupted and destabilised

Article in The Independent (website) by Owen Jones on the evils of British imperialism:

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/owen-jones-william-hague-is-wrong-we-must-own-up-to-our-brutal-colonial-past-8101370.html

The article is provocative and highly tendentious, and at several points seems to equate British imperialism with Nazi Germany.

On the one hand, radical reinterpretations of history can be useful.  New evidence comes to light on a continual basis and needs to be integrated into the historical record.  Owen Jones studied History at Oxford and must be allowed an opinion on areas of valid debate.

However I do not think this article is entirely an impartial attempt to contribute towards historical research and review.

Socialists (true socialists, not social democrats) believe that bourgeois capitalist society cannot be reformed, it must be destroyed and rebuilt along socialist lines.

To achieve this the historical narrative of a nation (and the identity of its population) must be disrupted and destabilised so that the ordinary people question who they are and question whether the national myths which sustain their society are worth maintaining.

In a normally-functioning democracy such attempts to subvert the national mythus ("the inter-relationship of value structures and historical experiences of a people, usually given expression through the arts") would get nowhere.  The population would have enough collective intellectual rigour to be able to decide whether British history was no better than that of Nazi Germany.  But as the GCSE grade inflation scandal demonstrates, the way subjects are taught in schools has become corrupted, and for several decades school leavers have not had the knowledge or interpretation skills to know when they are being manipulated.

How exactly does this happen?

I was reading an article yesterday on the GCSE grade inflation scandal.

The half-page piece was written by Matthew Taylor, who I had never heard of before.

At the end a couple of lines told us he is Chief Executive of the prestigious Royal Society of Arts and a former political adviser to Tony Blair.

How does one go from political adviser to head of one of our more important institutions?

Was it a completely open and above board recruitment process?  Did the candidates have to sit a taxing examination (perhaps like Fellows of All Souls)?  Or was it a favour bunged to an old crony?

Owen Jones, Independent journalist and scourge of the Blairite tendency, once announced he was writing a book about the British establishment.

I would like him to look at the process whereby a hanger-on from a discredited scumbag government "pops up" in charge of a reputable organisation like the RSA.

How exactly does this happen?

Boneland by Alan Garner

I have just started reading Boneland by Alan Garner.  The prose is beautiful - as one reviewer has said, it is like reading poetry.  Lovely production of the book and the dust jacket has a wonderful matt velvet feel that makes me want to keep picking it up.

Murnaghan on Sky News

Discussion about the economic situation on Murnaghan on Sky News this morning.

One of the panellists (I can't remember who) said a programme of house building was the main factor in lifting the United Kingdom out of recession in the 1930s.

This is not strictly true.

It was a programme of house building combined with protection (tariff walls that protected the British economy from external competition) and exchange controls that ended the recession.

Also remember that the house building in the 1930s was almost entirely private sector, not public sector.

He was visibly impressed - the past week at work

Monday

Bank holiday.

A bottle of Gigondas was opened at lunchtime.

Tuesday

Back to my desk.

Gary, Assistant Librarian in the Reading Room downstairs, walked backwards and forwards across the upstairs floor with one hand behind his back (presumably some kind of affectation), and in the other hand giving out the morning's mail (his new responsibility).  Without a word he presented me with a heavy parcel - they were factsheets from head office.

In an effort to understand a particular demographic I am attempting to live their lifestyle - annoying to go to the Co-Op to buy special offers only to find that all of them are out of stock.  Walking (3 miles!) to the shops instead of using the car.  So far I have not been able to bring myself to watch Hollyoaks.

Wednesday

I spent the day at head office in London (although now we have a new source of funding it is not exactly clear whether they still are our "head office").  I arrived early and sat in an empty conference room making notes.  Gradually other people filed in for the 11 o'clock meeting, most of them seeming to know who I was (including Joe S who was completely unlike what I expected; also the friendly Sharon C).

The meeting, chaired by Nancy C (young, ambitious, politically correct) was to discuss the annual Conference. I outlined what the Institute intended to contribute, then left the speaking to others.  David B as enthusiastic as a young child.  Joe S upset one of the trestle tables and spilt coffee everywhere disrupting the meeting by about fifteen minutes.  Burly Sharon C recounted all the disasters Joe S had been involved in since his arrival at head office.  The meeting finished at 1pm and I left the building to have lunch at a nearby coffee bar.

In the afternoon a meeting with Tony S in fundraising.  News of the Institute's new donor has spread to head office, and he was visibly impressed.  He told me that Alec Nussbaum had taken the news badly.

Thursday

Long meeting in the morning briefing the Institute's Director Vijay Singh about the conference planning yesterday.  We are to hold our own seminar during one of the conference lunchbreaks.  Vijay Singh wants the publicity kept deliberately vague so that no-one tries to intervene until it is too late.

An e-mail from a magazine editor praising an article I had written.

Friday

Vijay Singh asked me to design a survey to go out to 174 local education authorities. 

My demographic research is going well and e-mails streamed in from various directions so that I felt I was surrounded by voices.

Assistant librarian talking about football transfers ("I've already had a lot of grief about that").