I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.

When you come to a fork in the road - take it.

I think we have Mark Twain to thank for this helpful advice.

The real John Venables problem

Like many people I struggle with the apparent conflict between our needs to understand and yet to condemn the terrible killing of Jamie Bulger. But there is room here for a more considered view. Melanie Reid gives it.

The blood of the martyrs

Frank Skinner has found the secret of success - embrace religious victimhood.

How sad?

"Sadly there are large chunks of the world that I've never visited."

Francis Turner expresses this regret in his normblog profile. I wonder what he means by this. I wonder what he thinks he's missed - or that 'large chunks of the world' have missed on account of his not having been there?

A senior moment

I often wonder which is more needed for survival - the ability to remember - or the ability to forget? I like the notion that human memory has a will of its own.

"Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!"
John Irving

Just been thinking

We never know our parents. We never know our children. And we never know ourselves.

This isn't a problem. It's just a fact.

The problem is that we think we do.

Many of the world's difficulties stem from a single mistake. We think we know things when we don't.

The Secret Caretaker

I used to interview people - mainly teachers - for jobs. One of my own mentors in this role was the managing director of a large company who attended interviews for new staff. As the candidates arrived on the company premises he met them in the guise of the caretaker, key chain, overalls and all. He noted their attitude to him in what they perceived to be his lowly position, and compared it with their demeanour when introduced to him a second time in the boardroom.

I was once shown round a hospice by the chaplain. I had agreed to cover for him at holiday time. I noticed that whilst he couldn't wait to introduce me personally and politely to the consultant, medical and nursing staff on duty, he walked past the cleaners without so much as a greeting.

I'm particularly sensitive about this - probably because my dad was a caretaker. He took good care of me.

The wrong end of the stick

 Tim Worstall has a go at Geoffrey Lean for this piece of obvious wisdom:

Green technologies also seem to provide plenty of jobs. Exploiting renewables now employs 2.3 million people worldwide, more than the entire oil and gas industries, even though they contribute a small fraction of the amount of energy. They provide several times as much work per dollar invested than fossil fuels, with other green measures like recycling and saving energy proving even more job-intensive. 

 

Come on Tim:

"Imagine an economy of 100 people. 80 of them must labour to provide the food for all 100. This leaves only 20 to do the arts, the crafts, the medical care, lawyering, defence, banking and manufacturing. Over time we get better at that farming thing. We now need only 20 to produce the food for 100, we have perhaps 50 doing manufacturing and 30 doing the services. Times and technologies move on again and we need only 2 to feed us all, 12 to make things we can drop on our feet and 84 can run creches, tend the sick in the NHS, write Grand Theft Auto and appear on the X-Factor.

"Roughly speaking that is what has happened in the UK economy over the past couple of hundred years. We have become wealthier by reducing the amount of labour required to produce food and things and services meaning that we can produce more of all of them to share among us out of the labour we have available. We've even, over the same time span, gone from the majority of everyone's time being spent in labour to the minority of it.

"A useful shorthand for this process is "we've got richer".

Leaders' spouses

As questions are raised about whether Gordon Brown has a bit of a temper, Michael Skapinker in the FT suggests that:

"the signal service spouses can render is to tell leaders what no one else dares to.

"In June 1940, Clementine Churchill wrote a letter to her husband, tore it up and then wrote it again. Roy Jenkins, in his biography of Winston Churchill, described the letter as "terrifying", which it must have been – both for the writer and the recipient.

"My darling," Mrs Churchill began. "I hope you will forgive me if I tell you something that I feel you ought to know. One of the men in your entourage (a devoted friend) has been to me & told me that there is a danger of your being generally disliked by your colleagues & subordinates because of your rough sarcastic & overbearing manner. If an idea is suggested (say at a conference) you are supposed to be so contemptuous that presently no ideas – good or bad – will be forthcoming. I was astonished & upset because in all these years I have been accustomed to all those who have worked with & under you, loving you – I said this & I was told 'No doubt it's the strain'."

"My Darling Winston – I must confess I have noticed a deterioration in your manner; & you are not so kind as you used to be cannot bear that those who serve the Country & yourself should not love you as well as admire and respect you – Besides you won't get the best results by irascibility & rudeness."

"Please forgive your loving devoted & watchful Clemmie."

"You don't get that quality of advice from many management consultants."

Is it me?

Remember Churchill when you think of Iraq

 Daniel Finkelstein is on fine form today:

Whatever view you take of Mr Blair’s dossiers or George Bush’s politics, without a proper estimation of the possible consequences, as seen at the time, of not acting, the whole war is impossible to evaluate or understand.

A school I'd have been happy at

"If I were choosing a school for a child I should avoid any which imagined itself competent to do more than teach efficiently and provide a polite and civilized environment in which children were not exposed to physical or psychological attack from either the pupils or the teachers."
Celia Green

A Questionnaire I completed recently

1. What does it mean to be religious and/or spiritual? The kind of words that come to mind are - urgency, single-mindedness, intensity, integrity, moral courage, the individual, the exception, the outsider.

2. Would you describe yourself as religious and/or spiritual? I’m working on it.

3. How is religion and/or spirituality important in your life? Please comment on how it is or why it isn’t. Without something that I can identify as a religious purpose I can hardly see the point of living at all. This made the decision to have children of my own a tricky one. Fortunately my two adult daughters, as far as I can tell, do not share my squeamishness on this matter.

4. What is the contribution (if any) of religion and/or spirituality in dealing with questions of peace, justice and sustainability? When I started to think seriously about religion as a young adult it was under the guidance of a priest who was a pacifist (in wartime a conscientious objector). He lived a life of self-denial, offered his home to the homeless and brought the gospel to the poor. One of my early philosophical mentors was John MacMurray. He taught that all human thought is for the sake of action, and all action for the sake of friendship. This has made sense and informed my thinking at the deepest level all my life - friendship as a kind of end in itself, the Trinitarian God a kind of ideal community of friends (Friends?). I have come seriously to re-think my position on this. I am increasingly drawn to the view that the kind of this-worldly emphasis in modern theology has been a distraction and even a betrayal of those who have rightly sought in religion a way of transcending the limitations of human finiteness. I am so unused to thinking in this way I am almost embarrassed to be doing it, but this is where I am. I find myself asking for the first time whether this focus on human relationships, morality and politics  which has been the central concern of much modern theological writing is anything more than a distraction from, and defence against, the overwhelming and possibly intractable problem of existing at all, as we humans do, in a state of ignorance, uncertainty and powerlessness. This is a new direction in my thinking and as yet more than usually tentative.

5. Were your parents (or other carers) religious/spiritual and in what ways have they influenced the views you hold now? My parents introduced me to the reality of human existence, they brought me to birth - a happy event? Actually they were lovely people who just didn’t stand a chance. My mother was a tormented person who committed suicide (?). My father had troubling thoughts about life, death and human destiny. He railed (quietly) against the human predicament, especially that he had not been consulted on the two most important questions – whether he should be born and whether he should die. He was also one of the funniest and most entertaining people I have known. 

6. Have you ever been aware of or influenced by a presence or power, whether you call it God or not, which is different from your everyday self? If so, please briefly describe your experience. God is love – crucified – makes a kind of sense - also the absent and hidden God of R S Thomas’ poetry.

7. Does prayer have a place in your life? If not, please comment on why. If so, please describe when and how you pray and what for. I’m not sure whether my problem with prayer is how to do it or how to stop doing it. My apprehension of life and living things and sometimes even inanimate objects is mostly of a hypersensitive kind. Trying to connect everything to everything else and to God is my ongoing experience and practice of prayer. Liturgical worship and prayer have always meant a lot to me. I can lose myself in it. My parents were RC and took me and my sister as small children to Mass. I liked it.

8. Is the notion of God meaningful for you? Please comment on why or why not. God, Love, the Absolute, have been a vital part of my life-vocabulary.

9. What is your understanding of Jesus? A scary man who made quite unreasonable demands on his followers. A holy man, a lonely man, an individual. An inspired genius whose life, death and teaching brought into being the Christian Church, the cradle of much of what is best in western civilization.

10. Do you think Jesus was conceived by a virgin? Please comment on why or why not. Nothing that is important to me depends on this being literally true. In any case I consider virginity to be ludicrously over-rated.

11. Do you believe that Jesus was raised from the dead? Please comment on why (and in what sense you understand that) or why not. I have found the best way of understanding this is in terms of the Church as the risen body of Christ.

12. In what way is a religious outlook compatible (or not) with the idea that life on earth, including human life, has evolved? To be credible a religious view must be compatible with reality – all that exists – and the way that it exists and has come or might have come to exist. Actually we do not know much about the universe, its origins and what it is made of. There is very little, if anything, we can be certain of. A profound and radical skepticism about everything is probably the only rational option.

13. In what way have the media articles or TV programmes celebrating the anniversary in 2009 of Charles Darwin influenced your view? As I think we know so little about what and how and why the world is then every bit of seemingly solid knowledge and more or less credible theory such as Darwin’s is to be welcomed. At the same time I regard as vain and disreputable the attempts made by some in the name of religion to equate nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ with the eternal purpose of a Great Designer.

14. What, if anything, should primary school children be taught about religion? I have never believed that Christianity is a simple faith and I doubt that there is such a thing. It is most likely to be understood and appreciated from a position of mature reflection that is only possible later in life. Those who wish to commend religious belief to children must be careful not to talk down to them.

15. What is your view of homosexuality? What is my view of heterosexuality? I think that all human beings have their own way of being close to and intimate with others. Among these are homosexuals – and heterosexuals.

16. Should churches offer blessings for same sex partnerships? Please comment on why or why not. Churches should bless all good, loving, life-affirming relationships.

17. Should abortion be available on demand? Please comment on why or why not. I have always been strongly in support of a woman’s right to choose how and when her pregnancy should end.

18. Should assisted suicide for those with terminal illness be made legal and available in the UK? Please comment on why or why not. Apart from the safeguards necessary to ensure that the person who chooses suicide has done so freely and without any form of coercion, my main concern here would be how to negate the power of the state to intervene by prescribing or refusing the medication chosen by the individual seeking to put an end to his life.

19. What do you think happens when we die? I don’t want to be stuffed. But seriously I can hardly make sense of the question. What I don’t see is why this is a religious question. A longing for ‘life after death’ is more likely to be selfish (more of me/more for me) than religious (more of God).

20. In what ways (if any) does your answer to question 19 influence how you live your life? If there is no ‘life after death’ I have no reward or punishment to look forward to or fear so I had better get on with making the most and the best of what life I have, practicing goodness for its own sake, and even loving God for nothing.

21. As you think about your life at the moment what gives you most fulfillment? I am not at all fulfilled. The nearest I get to that feeling is when a child we look after who is severely disabled falls asleep in my arms and I think to myself ‘If I’m good enough for Daniel, I’m good enough.’

22. Have you ever had to deal with a personal tragedy or crisis, and if so, who or what did you turn to for comfort. If not, who or what do you imagine turning to in those circumstances? As a priest I have been more used to being the one that others turn to. I am not that good at turning to others. The Psalms have helped.

23.  If you ever just want to feel a sense of calmness or soulfulness, what do you do? Where do you go? To the seaside.

24. What are some important morals or ethics that you try to live by in your daily life? For the sake of the planet I don’t eat meat and I don’t fly. Actually I don’t like flying and meat eating is unnecessary and probably unhealthy and nearly always involves avoidable cruelty and pain to innocent animals.

25. Do you think the world would be better off with more religion, or less? Religion is here to stay. Given the extent of extremism and fundamentalism more of the same would be a calamity. We need to raise our game.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Remember how we were told that Saddam Hussain had been supplied with weapons by the US and UK when it served our purpose to keep him in power, only later to discover that nearly all of the arms recovered after the war were from Russia and France? Well another myth has been exposed.

Call it the 'war for oil' fallacy.

According to Reuters the US oil majors were largely absent from an Iraqi auction of oil deals snapped up instead by Russian, Chinese and other firms.

The Oil Ministry on Saturday ended its second bidding round after awarding seven of the oilfields offered for development, adding to deals from a first auction in June that could together take Iraq up to a capacity to pump 12 million barrels per day.

[...]Russia's Lukoil on Saturday clinched a deal to develop Iraq's supergiant West Qurna Phase Two oilfield after having failed to convince Iraq to bypass the auction and revive an old Saddam Hussein-era deal for the field.

[...]Only one U.S. firm bid in the second round, and of the four fields bid on by U.S. firms in the first round, only Exxon Mobil won a major prize, leading a group to clinch a deal for the supergiant West Qurna Phase One field.

U.S.-based Occidental came away with a quarter stake in a consortium that won a contract for the giant Zubair field.

By contrast, Chinese state oil firms were involved in every first round bid and made a strong showing in the second.

[...]"We haven't really seen U.S. companies, and that is because of intense competition ... The issue is financial and technical and not at all political. This confirms Iraq can manage its oil policy and activities without politicization," said Thamir Ghadhban, a prime ministerial advisor and former oil minister.

As Robin Simcox reflects: "So while the US barely figured, Russia and China - both of who(m) voted against the war - are now both (as they have every right) making finanical gains from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. However such facts rarely do much to puncture the depressingly prevalent idea that Saddam was overthrown by the US and UK due to an insatiable thirst for oil and financial gain. This blatant misreading of the facts seem to be increasingly accepted wisdom, and it is hard to see what Blair can say at the inquiry to change this."

Is war possible?

According to Professor Philip Allott writing in today's Times:

Wars should be preceded and accompanied by intense public debate about all aspects - strategic, moral, political, social, economic, legal.

Has there ever been such a war? Could there ever be?

Big Questions

 At the end of Chapter 1 of Celia Green's book The Human Evasion are some fiercely searching questions I seem never seriously to have asked before:

"The questions which remain are these. Are people, in fact, matters of ultimate concern to other people? And still more, can they be sources of "ultimate solution" to them? If they are not, what psychological force is at work to ensure that these questions are so seldom asked? Why, if you ask a question about man and the universe, are you given an answer about "man in society"?

Iraq War Inquiry Derangement Syndrome

That's what Melanie Phillips calls it.

She concludes:

"we all know beyond a shadow of a doubt, Blair secretly committed Britain to an illegal war on which he lied to the British public – and unless the inquiry concludes as such, its members will be consigned along with him to the first circle of hell.

"Verdict first, evidence nowhere."

Valentine

The patron saint of making sad, lonely, ugly people feel like crap.

(My last quote "Chequered" was, I think, original i.e. I made it up. This one I definitely heard somewhere.)

Chequered

The best thing I can say about my chequered past is that it exactly matches my chequered present.

Sounds unfamiliar

Labour MP David Anderson speaking in the debate on the Queen's Speech:

"I hope that John Chilcot asks people such as Bayan Rahman to give evidence. I hope that he asks Hangar Khan, from the regional trade union movement, and Abdullah Muhsin, who was exiled in the 1980s and became the international representative of the trade union movement, to give evidence too. They will say clearly what Bayan has said to me: "Some people seem to have forgotten the brutal reality of his long years of repression. Saddam conducted a campaign of genocide against the Kurds. His forces used chemical weapons to kill men, women and children including 5,000 people who were killed in an attack on the city of Halabja in 1988. They murdered innocent people including thousands of boys and men from the Barzan area who disappeared in 1983," never to be seen again, "and whose mass graves are being found today."

"Saddam's forces also "razed 4,500 villages to the ground, destroying" the agricultural heartland of Iraq. The suffering in other parts of Iraq was the same. The key question that people ask me when I am over there is not "Why did you come here in 2003?" but "Why didn't you come here in 1983? We might have had a very different way of life."