Tony's Musings

St Helier in 1932 - Harbour and Town Church

2012-01-31T12:42:00.002Z

A few more extracts from the 1932 Guide Book to the Channel Islands...

It is interesting to see a grumble about the "unattractive, bare-looking Harbour approach" - we've had that in the last 20 years, especially when the reclamation work was all going on. It's a lot better now, with a fairly nice avenue past the roundabout and Cineworld car park, but the chief problem today is that it is a long way to go, especially for foot passengers. Guernsey has always had an advantage in this respect - from Harbour to St Peter Port is a short distance.

I remember the Weighbridge Gardens with the statue of Victoria, all shifted to make way for the bus stops. The open space that exists now is perfect for open events, but looks rather bare the rest of the time. It seems a shame that a garden could not have been restored, especially as there is photographic detail of how it looked.

The Post Office is still in Broad Street, but the train offices are long gone, alas!

The history of the Town Church seems to be quite deficient. It certainly doesn't date from "the middle of the
fourteenth century" - the choir and a small part of the nave which show clear evidence of early Norman, tenth or eleventh-century architecture. And the date of the church can be placed before 1066, because William, Duke of Normandy (not yet King of England) endorsed his father's gift of half its revenues to the Abbey of Cérisy la Forêt.

What is more, the North Chapel has a stone-built half-vault which is unique in Channel Island Churches. So much for the dismissive "little architectural interest" of the guide book. The other note that "unlike nearly all the other parish churches, it has retained its square tower". One can only assume that the author of the guide was basing his architectural comparisons on English churches, not Jersey ones.

The restoration of 1863 is covered in more detail on the Parish Church website:

In 1865, The Revd. Philip Filleul Rector and Vice-dean, with the support of the Constable and parishioners, undertook a thorough restoration. A south transept and western extension to the nave, both with galleries, were built, the chancel, altar and font replaced and the church furnished with uniform pews. An organ was installed in the north chapel, which had been used for many years as the town mortuary. In 1930, the choir was raised and new stalls erected and over the years the organ was enhanced to become a first-class instrument. (1)

It is interesting to note that 142 years later, more restoration has taken place, and the burial site of Major Peirson, mentioned in the guide book, has actually been uncovered.

The Town Church is currently undergoing a period of restoration. During 2007-2008 the exterior has been completely re-pointed and re-roofed. Starting in 2009 the focus of the restoration work has moved inside. The work will include the installation of under floor heating, re-plastering, maintenance of the wall monuments, and lighting.

I've not been able to find any major reasons for the mention of tombstones, except that one was a little over 4 years, and the other one over 100 years old. Jean Laffoley, born in 1659, dying in 1759, would have lived though the end of the Republic, when Richard Cromwell was forced to resign, and through the reigns of Charles II (1660 - 1685 ), James II ( 1685 - 1688 ), William and Mary ( 1689 - 1702 ), Anne ( 1702 - 1714 ), George I ( 1714 - 1727 ) and almost to the end of the reign of George II ( 1727 - 1760 )!

IN THE TOWN.

Having reached the landward end of the Harbour from the landing-stage on the pier, one passes between the Western Railway Station and the Weighbridge Gardens, a small grass-plot with beds of flowers relieving the unattractive, bare-looking Harbour approach, and containing a Statue of Queen Victoria, erected in 1890.

Facing the sea hereabouts are some of St. Helier's many hotels. Extending to the left is the fine Esplanade. To-
wards the right rises Fort Regent, at which we will presently look more closely, and ahead, leading into the town, are two thoroughfares. That on the right, MuIcaster Street, goes to the Parish Church and to the immediate neighbourhood of Royal Square, both of which can also be reached by way of the left-hand thoroughfare, Conway Street, which ends at Bond Street on the right and Broad Street on the left. A few steps along the latter is the General Post Office. In Bond Street are the offices of the Southern Railway and the Great Western Railway. On the right also is

The Parish Church.

The town church of St. Helier is one of the twelve parish churches of the island. It dates from the middle of the
fourteenth century, but is of little architectural interest.

In 1863-7 it was thoroughly restored. Unlike nearly all the other parish churches, it has retained its square tower.

Stained-glass windows display Biblical subjects. At the eastern end of the south wall is a tablet to the memory of the gallant Peirson, who was buried under the tower.

On the west wall of the south aisle is a tablet removed from the floor near the north door, in memory of Maximilian Norrey, who died in 1591 while serving in the army of Henry IV of Bourbon, King of France and Navarre. The inscription is in Latin. French and English translations are given on adjacent slabs. The Norreys, whose arms are on one of the gateways of Mont Orgueil Castle, were buried in a vault in this church.

The organ, placed in the church in 1922, is the finest in the Channel Islands.

In the churchyard, against the east wall of the church, is a flat tombstone recording in French the death of P. H.
Durell, Jun., on the 31st April, 1755, aged 4 years and 8 months.

On the north side of the church, in a line with the west front, is an upright stone inscribed : " Icy repose le corps de Mtre Jean Laffoley decede le 30eme Jeanvier, 1759 age de 100 ans et quatre mois."

Links
(1) http://www.townchurch.org.je/st_helier_town_church_town_church_jersey_history.htm

Spare the rod?

2012-01-30T09:43:00.002Z

Experience had taught me that it was no use 'sparing the rod'. If you did, word would soon get about the school that you were 'soft'. Since the object of a caning was both to punish and to deter a boy from reoffending, it needed to be made as unpleasant as possible. The object was to instil a fear of the cane into offenders and amongst potential offenders. (A Headmaster's Recollections)

Though I was small my devotion was great when I begged you not to let me be beaten at school . our parents scoffed at the torments which we boys suffered at the hands of our masters. For we feared the whip as much as others fear the rack, and we no less than they, begged you to preserve us from it.
(Augustine)

Smacking children is back in the news once more, and is being cited as one panacea for poor discipline in homes:

Boris Johnson has backed calls for parents to be allowed to smack their children to instil discipline. The Mayor of London spoke after a senior Labour MP blamed his party's partial ban on smacking children for last August's riots. Former education minister David Lammy called for a return to Victorian laws on discipline, saying working-class parents needed to be able to use corporal punishment to deter unruly children from joining gangs and wielding knives. He claimed parents were 'no longer sovereign in their own homes' and feared that social workers would take their children away if they chastised them. Labour's 2004 law did not completely ban smacking, but said a smack should cause no more than a reddening of the skin. (1)

This reminds me of the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland:

"Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases."

Sweden has a "no smack" policy and has had one for some time, longer than Britain.

Adrienne A. Haeuser made a study about Sweden and how they broke the generational transmission of physical punishment as a childrearing method:

Can you bring up children successfully without smacking and spanking? Sweden appears to be doing just this only a decade after passing a law which stipulates that a child may not be subjected to physical punishment or other humiliating treatment. Initially somewhat skeptical, Swedes now take the law for granted and Swedish children are thriving.

The reasons for the ban were because allowing "discipline" in the home meant in practice that there was widespread child abuse going on there. The problem with trying to limit it was that any form of physical discipline was on a continuous spectrum, and it was almost impossible to fix limits. A smack could be a light tap on the hand, or it could be a heavy wallop. The Swedish authorities decided that the only way to stop the latter was to ban all use of force.

Despite seemingly idyllic conditions for childrearing, Sweden moved into the 1970's with widespread child abuse. Corporal punishment in the schools had been banned in 1958; however, the harsh beatings of the previous era - as well as less severe forms of physical punishment - persisted in the privacy of home life. A major Swedish research project concluded that child abuse constituted one end of a large continuum beginning with physical punishment, and that stopping all physical punishment was the "gateway" to preventing most child abuse

The government's stated intent in passing the 1979 law was twofold: primarily to stop "beatings," and secondly "to create a basis for general information and education for parents as to the importance of giving children good care and as to one of the prime requirements of their care"

This law does not carry penalties - a point that no doubt speeded its passage. When reports of physical punishment are substantiated by social services staff or the police as assault (that is, child abuse) according to Sweden's Criminal Code, the code sanctions apply. Even so, few minor infractions have been reported by spiteful neighbors or children, putting to rest the speculation that such a law would create chaos by turning minor parental infractions into government cases.

We can see how matters have changed even in Jersey. Part of the problem with taking to court those accused - and later found guilty - of child abuse in Haut de La Garenne was the problem of differentiating between what would have been a commonplace in any home as well as a State run institution. It was not uncommon, for instance, in the 1960s for a father to beat his son with a slipper for minor misdemeanors. For example, I know personally of a case where a young boy was beaten with a slipper for reading in bed with a torch after "lights out". Boys at Victoria College were caned for bad behaviour as the ultimate sanction even in the 1970s. This was not seen as abusive or wrong.

So "common assault", for which Morag and Anthony Jordan were convicted of at haut de La Garenne was more difficult to determine because the degree of discipline had to be placed into the context of a background acceptable culture of violence. Nevertheless, they were deemed to have crossed the line on at least 8 occasions:

Morag and Anthony Jordan, both 62, from Kirriemuir, Angus, Scotland, were both found guilty on eight separate counts relating to abuse at the Haut de la Garenne home in Jersey. But after deliberating for more than eight hours, the jury at the royal court of Jersey acquitted Morag Jordan on a further 28 counts and Anthony Jordan on four. (3)

If it is thought that a prohibition on smacking is a causal factor in riots, then the question should be asked: why have there been no similar riots in Sweden.

So why have there been no summer riots in Sweden? I think it's more a culture thing than a parental one - England has soccer violence (and did have even in Victorian times), other countries do not.

The game of football has been associated with violence since its beginnings in 13th century England. Medieval football matches involved hundreds of players, and were essentially pitched battles between the young men of rival villages and towns - often used as opportunities to settle old feuds, personal arguments and land disputes.

Forms of 'folk-football' existed in other European countries (such as the German Knappen and Florentine calcio in costume), but the roots of modern football are in these violent English rituals. The much more disciplined game introduced to continental Europe in 1900s was the reformed pastime of the British aristocracy. Other European countries adopted this form of the game, associated with Victorian values of fair-play and retrained enthusiasm. Only two periods in British history have been relatively free of football-related violence: the inter-war years and the decade following the Second World War. (4)

The cycle of generational abuse can be broken, but the case of Sweden saw a mass effort by the entire population, rather than a top-down imposition of particular rules, which is why it worked, because it operated by consent. But some aspects of physical violence can certainly be curtailed, and the current law in operation, whereby "a smack should cause no more than a reddening of the skin" would seem to be a pragmatic compromise until such time as our society has changed enough for a complete ban.

In the meantime, we should be aware that the lessons learned by smacking are not necessarily the ones that are indented. It is no coincidence that one of the cases of of Haut de La Garenne - Michael Aubin - found guilty of indecent assault - was himself the subject of abuse. Violence begets violence, and the unintended consequence of heavy smacking are to convey the notion that might is right:

Smacking (perceived by children as one person hitting another) not only gives children the message that it is OK to hit others but also that violence is an acceptable way to solve problems and get what you want. Bullying behaviour may also develop as children perceive such violence as a means of control. (5)

Link
(1) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2093654/Parents-right-smack-children-instil-discipline-says-Boris.html
(2) http://www.neverhitachild.org/haeuser.html
(3) http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/26/jersey-childrens-home-assaults
(4) http://www.sirc.org/publik/fvexec.html

(5) http://www.geelong.vic.gov.au/common/Public/Documents/8cbc92664199137-No.%2029%20The%20Arguments%20Against%20Smacking.pdf

The Ethics of Exploration

2012-01-29T15:16:00.000Z

This was written in 1981 as part of an submission at St Luke's Exeter regarding religion and the teaching of religion in schools. This section actually only marginally deals with teaching of religion, although it sets out an ethical framework for such teaching to take place. I thought a Sunday would be an appropriate time to revisit it.

There is a bit too much purple prose in the rhetoric in places, but I'm still quite pleased with it. One of my pet hates at the time was those panaceas to life that offered "self-development" or "increasing self-awareness" that seemed to be wholly centred on the ego, with roots in Nietzsche and some forms of existentialism; it seemed to lack any ethical dimension or social dimension, and while this nascent New Age has developed some forms in which those are present, there is still a good deal of narcissism there that needs to be pruned away. I was also strongly motivated to look at how fundamentalist Christian groups behaved towards outsiders, or those they ranked as outsiders, having seem some experience of that at Exeter.

The Ethics of Exploration

We are poor, not demigods. We have plenty to be sorrowful about, and are not emerging into a golden age. We need a gentle approach, a non-violent spirit, and small is beautiful. We must concern ourselves with justice and see right prevail. And all this, only this, can enable us to become peacemakers. (E.F. Schumacher, "Small is Beautiful")

In a trivial world, life becomes "a hollow scaffolding of imposed anonymous values.. We are constantly afraid (of other men's opinions, of what 'they' will decide for us, of not coming up to the standards of material or psychological success though we ourselves have done nothing to establish or even verify such standards)"(Steiner(1)).

Even work is absorbed into banality by this 'slave morality'. As Nietzsche so poignantly observes, "it keeps everybody in harness and powerfully obstructs the development of reason, of covetousness, of the desire for independence. For it uses up a tremendous amount of nervous energy and takes it away from reflection, breeding, dreaming, worry, love and hatred; it always sets a small goal before one's eyes and permits easy and regular satisfactions" (2) .

Against the boredom of such settled servility, man often revolts, refusing to be tamed: he seeks something more worthwhile than mind bogglingly dull duties which reap petty rewards. The cry of rebellion is heard: "Live dangerously !" (3)

The philosophy of Nietzsche would rant: "Live dangerously! Yes, this is the way to true expression in existence. Not: live outrageously - that is folly and bad sense. But: live dangerously! Do not be afraid to live; do not be afraid to exist; do not be afraid to face the danger in any living that is to be worthwhile living. So I say: live dangerously Live dangerously, that you might live!"

So rants and raves the hysterical screaming of this revolution. It begins by proclaiming the twilight of the idols (4); then, as if that were not enough, it takes a hammer to the idols, being satisfied only when they are in fragments at its feet (5). It finishes by crying "I am a destiny!"(6); triumphantly, heroically, it shouts "Ecce Homo: I am God!" (7), before it perishes in the madness of its own megalomania.

Such an ethic begins innocently enough, with pleas for development of the personality; it ends in a freely expressed megalomania (8) that knows of no bounds, freely doing all manner of unspeakable atrocities, "things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious - such as digging up and mutilating the dead" (Lewis (9)) .

Against the 'slave morality' has been countered a 'master morality' (10); an ethic of domination has replaced an ethic of submission. Yet this is not altogether unexpected, because an ethic of submission always has its roots in an ethic of domination. This is clear if we consider the ethical demands of each ethic: the ethic of submission says "you must obey" while the ethic of domination says "you must conquer". Obviously which demand is heard depends upon whether you stand as one of the dominators or not; it depends on which 'side' you are on.

To see how partition calls into being these ethics, let us consider the segregation and discrimination introduced by asking the question: who is a Christian?

Who is a Christian? This creates a boundary: it separates those who are declared as Christians from those who are not. It makes a clear, sharply cut, dividing line. Then the community of Christians is isolated from the world; it becomes a mystery religion with conditional initiation rites. Most clearly this can be seen in the groups which practice "believers' baptism". The baptism becomes an initiation into the group, conditional upon belief. The line is clear between belief and unbelief (11). Those who are on the inside are the "saved", those on the outside the "unsaved" (12).

But by drawing this line, the community cuts itself off from the world (13). Whatever name it gives itself is of no account; it has become a sect (14). So the attempt to define who is of the Christian community and who is not leads to a split between Church and World, in which the World is largely left to its own devices and the Church to its own - except when it ventures forth from its fortified battlements in the name of "evangelism" to capture people from the World.

How comes this division? It comes about because the attempt to define who is a Christian rests largely upon the 'sin mythology' (15).
According to the sin mythology, all men are sinners; there is however an exclusion clause to this: it says "but not Christians"; although not explicitly stated like this, the logic of the situation follows from the understanding of sin as disobedience to God where to be obedient to God is to be a Christian; by this a Christian is 'saved' from 'sin'." (16)

The sin mythology, by branding all men as sinners except Christians, does two things.

Firstly, it provides a scapegoat explanation for the existence of moral and social evils: evil exists as a result of sin. The world is full of evil because it is full of sinners, people who are not Christians. If everyone became Christians, the world would be a better place. If this seems naive, then it is because it is! But it is often found preferable for personal security to take refuge in a scapegoat explanation such as this, rather than admit ignorance and helplessness in the face of our inability to achieve understanding and mastery of diverse and complex moral and social problems (17).

Secondly, it provides a form for "existential cannibalism" whereby Christians could gain meaning for their lives by invalidating the meaning other people gave to theirs (18). This was enacted by the Inquisition (19).

Sin mythology of varying types plays a large role in most groups with totalitarian beliefs. The importance of both to religious discovery cannot be doubted: it is precisely because totalitarian belief and the sin mythology block religious discovery that we can learn from their mistakes.

The failing of both totalitarian belief and sin mythology lies, I believe, in their idealism. In asking the question "who is a Christian?" we seek to find the universal generalisation rather than the particular instance; we avoid reality. People cannot be sharply divided into 'believers' and 'sinners': reality is not so clear-cut; it appears fuzzy. Like Jesus, we should meet not 'believers' or 'sinners' but, simply, people - in all their concrete complexity; as C.E.M. Joad observes: "Here on earth perfection is not to be found;.. good and evil are always mixed and never pure; that every cloud has a silver lining; that the darkest hour comes before the dawn; and that equally there is always a fly in the ointment, a canker at the heart of the rose; these opinions and sentiments are the stock-in-trade of the secular as well as of the religious wisdom of the ages"(20). And we would do well to be mindful of it.

The tension of submit-or-dominate springs from roots in a collectivist idealism (21). And it is clear that it impedes rather than aids discovery (22) ; it is an escape from reality, therefore an escape from exploration. For exploration necessitates freedom for truth, while idealism must deliberately falsify reality at any cost.

But we have had too much idealism: the price tag is too high! It is folly to mindlessly obey: "the man of duty will end by having to fulfil his obligation even to the devil''(Bonhoeffer (23)); it is folly to conquer: "this brings with it an inward rottenness from which there is scarcely a possibility of recovery''(Bonhoeffer (24)).

Those who conquer evade truth; they wish the world as it is to be a lie, their lie, and they would declare this "truth"! An ethic of domination puts an end to truth and exploration ceases; instead myths of race and destiny abound. "The state has, in general," writes Hegel, "to make up its own mind concerning what is to be considered as objective truth"(25). And so freedom of thought vanishes as the ethic of domination (- here state domination - ) takes root (26). Truth is at a discount; exploration ends!

Those who submit evade truth: with the timidity of a frightened rabbit (27), they avoid the question of truth; they avoid the risk of discovery. Instead, they seek refuge in a pitiful pragmatism, where any commitment to exploration is greeted with questions such as "Will it make me happy?" "Will it help me'.'" "What's in it for me?" - but never is it asked "Will it discover truth?" ! Such pragmatism can only be the basis for the fearful faith of an intellectual ostrich. Of this Nietzsche scornfully observes: '"Faith' means not wanting to know what is true" (28). Truth is concealed; exploration ends!

So while domination silences truth, submission evades truth; one stifles exploration, the other ducks the issue. Neither is an ethic of exploration; for in each is a cowardice that would not know truth.

For exploration and discovery, above all we must prize freedom of thought and the love of truth; this is the ethic of exploration. It demands humility; it demands honesty; it demands reality! But we cannot greedily grasp discovery; there are no easy paths to truth. If we are to discover anything, if discovery is worthwhile, then we must not lose sight of this ethic.

"Man has created new worlds - of language, of music, of poetry, of science," writes Karl Popper, "and the most important of these is the world of the moral demands, for equality, for freedom, and for helping the weak" (29). If we lose touch with these human realities, then discovery ceases; we are captive in a dreamworld of our own making: for in these moral demands set forth by man, and only in these bounds, is the space and freedom to discover: the ethic of exploration knows of no moral vacuum.

Notes on Text
1. G. Steiner "Heidegger" (1978), p.92
2. Kauffman (1975), p.125
3. This was the slogan of F. Nietzsche
4. "Twilight of the Idols" (1977) by F. Nietzsche is alluded to here; justifiably because he is one of the best representatives of this revolt against triviality.
5. The subtitle of "Twilight of the Idols" is "How to philosophise with a hammer."
6. Title of last chapter of "Ecce Homo" (1979) by F. Nietzsche is "Why I am a destiny"!
7. "Ecce Homo" was an autobiography of sorts by F. Nietzsche; this being a deliberate blasphemy on his part. It was written only weeks before his complete mental collapse.
8. "Ecce Homo", the most megalomaniac book Nietzsche ever wrote, has the subtitle, "How one becomes what one is", or in more vernacular speech, how one develops one's personality to the full! And certainly my rendering is in keeping with his intention, i.e. he does assert his personality prominently throughout the book, with chapter headings: "Why I am so wise", "Why I am so clever", "Why I write such excellent books", "Why I am a destiny".
9. C.S. Lewis, "The Abolition of Man"(1978) p.46
10. "A Nietzsche Reader"(1977), p.106ff for detailed analysis.
11. Against this T.F. Torrance advocates infant baptism as a sign of "unconditional grace" - source personal letter from Professor Torrance.
12. This may be modified to "insurance", i.e. inside the Church you can be sure of salvation, but outside you would be uncertain - why take the risk? Against it may be mentioned K. Barth and F.D. Maurice, among others, who hold to an open position on all men. "Peculiar Christendom" says Barth, "whose most pressing problem seems to consist in this, that God's grace in this direction should be too free, that hell, instead of being amply populated, might one day be found to be empty" (quoted in R.L. Short (1974), p.149)
13. Against this, John Taylor, in the "Winchester Churchman" says: "If the Church draws a circle round its regular members, the rest of the community will treat us as a sect. But if the Christians allow themselves to belong primarily to the local community, then everyone begins to feel they are members of a circle whose natural centre is the Church. This is the opposite of a rigorist attitude on the part of the Church, but it does not mean a lowering of standards. When ordinary people are allowed to feel that they belong to a circle whose centre is the Church, they expect that centre to have its standards and make its demands. They realise that they themselves may be nearer to that centre or further from it, either moving inwards or outwards, as the case may be. But near or far, they will be inside the circle, because the circle is the whole community."
14. I am not going to quibble over true meanings of the word "sect", my convention, which relates to the function of the group, is given in the text. If another word is sought, I suggest "elite".
15. I am not denying moral imperfection! What I explain and criticise is this "sin mythology" as outlined in the next paragraph.
16. For confirmation that this logic holds, even if not explicitly stated, see Barr, "Fundamentalism"(1977) p.27ff, p223, p.317ff, p.326f.
17. T.S. Szasz (1977) p.193 on "scapegoat explanations"; also Szasz (1974), pp.47-69 on "the rhetoric of rejection"
18. T.S. Szasz (1977), p.315
19. Szasz (1973) provides many examples.
20. C.E.M. Joad (1952), P.53 "The Recovery Of Belief" (1952) p.63; also Joad remarks "that all of us are wicked in some degree, all of us wicked on occasion, and that we are so because strands of evil are inextricably woven into our fundamental make-up" (same page).
21. For this see K. Popper "The Open Society & Its Enemies: Vol. 1" (1974) on "Totalitarian Justice" pp.86-119; also Vol. 2 (1977) p.24f, and :p.276f where he describes it as "a romantic, combination of egoism and collectivism".
22. A point made by Sydney Smith in his "Mostly Murder" (1959) p.292 about the Nazi war crimes: "The experiments were not merely carried out with gross indifference to the value of human life and callous disregard of human suffering, but were incompetent in both conception and execution from a purely scientific point of view"; see also note 21 above.
23. D. Bonhoeffer "Ethics" (1978) p. 48
24. D. Bonhoeffer "Ethics"( 1978) p.57; see also p.54ff .
25. quoted in Popper( 1977) P43
26. Note the comment of Nietzsche in "Twilight of the idols"( 1977) p.40 on Plato: "I, Plato, am the truth". This is a perfect summary of what happens to truth in the Republic, as confirmed by Popper (see n.21 above)
27. See C.S. Lewis "God in the Dock"( 1979) PP-67-73, ch. entitled "Man or Rabbit" for an analysis of this issue with regard to the truth of the Christian faith.
28. quoted in Kaufmann( 1975) P. 19
29. Popper "Open Society: Vol. 1" (1974) P.65; note the consistency of this with Popper's remarks on education in Vol. 2(1977) p.276: " 'Do no harm' (and, therefore, 'give the young what they most urgently need, in order to become independent of us, and to be able to choose for themselves') would be a very worthy aim for our educational system.. Instead, 'higher' aims are the fashion, aims which are typically romantic and indeed non-sensical, such as 'the full development of the personality'".

Justice

2012-01-28T21:37:00.000Z

Justice

Upon his throne, and between two pillars

Here is the mightiest of arbitrators

Justice adorned in crimson robes

With searching mind that ever probes

The foundation of organic law

Wherein his mystery he once saw

The balance of all human kind

Equilibrium now here we find.

Funny Old World 10

2012-01-27T08:26:00.001Z

Health Warning: what follows is not news, any more than the middle section of Private Eye is news, or The Impressionist is news, or Spitting Image was news. It is a light hearted spin on the real news, which can be found on genuine news sites, such as BBC Jersey. Other news sites are available. This is not one of them. None of the individuals mentioned have ever said anything quite like the words attributed to them. Which is perhaps a pity.

The size of households in Jersey is shrinking, new figures in the 2011 Census reveal. The results show there are now on average 2.3 people per private dwelling in the island - that is down on 2.4 people ten years ago, and 2.5 twenty years ago.

Our reporter went out in search of the 0.3 of a person. "It can be difficult at times," said Miss Thora Third of La Moye Cuttings, St Brelade, "as we are still expected to pay full taxes and social security, which is not really fair." Another 0.3 of a person said "I'm a young person, and the media are always picking on young people as troublemakers, but as 0.3 of a person, they should note I'm quite armless."

Duncan Le Figure at the States Statistics Unit said: "That number we've recorded over the decades actually, through census, has been declining. The part-people are shrinking, and if you wanted to remake the Disney cartoon in Jersey, it would be Snow White and the 3 1/2 dwarves."

Inflation in Jersey rose by 5% during 2011, says the States Statistics Unit. The report shows that politician's egos expanded during the election campaign last October and that was a key contributor to inflation. "There was a lot of extra hot air", said a spokesman, adding that "cheesy and processed politicians increased by more than 15%. But there was a decline in vegetables, caused by some older States members retiring or failing to be elected. "

Accountancy firm firm Scrooge and Marley has boosted the part of its practice that deals with business failures as a result of buying part of a rival service provider. The firm, whose headquarters are in Kensington Place, has bought the insolvency and restructuring arm of Beggars Traynor in the Channel Islands. The other arm, legs, torso and head are still available for sale to any bidder.

Police in Jersey will be targeting known criminals. Officers said they hoped Operation Hornet would help deal with an overall increase in break-ins in the island. A spokesman said that "The release of a special squad of a thousand hornets will be trained to seek out burglars and sting them on their fingers. Then all we have to do is to capture them when they go to Accident and Emergency, where they will be caught red-handed."

A Christian group in Jersey is set to buy a former cinema to turn it into a community centre. The former Odeon cinema, on the corner of Bath Street, in St Helier, has fallen into disrepair since it shut three years ago. The Freedom Church is now planning to buy the cinema. Pastor James Bond, a spokesman for the church, said: "Our vision is to re-generate and transform the landmark building. It will once again become a hive of activity, with as we will also be training the police hornets under someone called Q in our secret service."

Politicians must wear badges with picture warnings to be in Jersey from Wednesday. The health department said politicians have had a year to prepare for the new regulations. Health Minister Deputy Anne Pryke said: "We hope placing warnings on politicians will put young people off from voting." The health department said adding a picture to the existing warnings on politicians had encouraged some voters to quit.

The head of health improvement at the health department, said: "States members continue to be a significant cause of avoidable death and disease. It is important that these measures are put in place as they will reinforce existing support to help people give up voting."

The planning authorities have turned down a scheme for homes on the site of a former Jersey campsite.They rejected plans for four houses. According to a leaked memo from planning, the design would be too sympathetic to the environment because (1) it was only four houses and not ten flats (2) it was tucked away in a quiet area overlooking no one and not at Greve Le Lecq overlooking the entire bay.

A faster planning process would secure the future of Jersey's building industry, says the chairman of the construction council. Builder Mr Floyd Pink said projects getting under way more quickly would help improve the economy, especially builders, as they were often pillars of society. Economic Development Minister Senator Alan Maclean said the States was supporting the construction industry as best it could, and wanted to cement contracts in place.

Senator Maclean said the States injected tens of millions of pounds into the building industry two years ago and that there were others projects in the pipeline. But Constable Philip Rondel complained that he hadn't seen any more pipelines or main drains in the Parish of St John for many years.

Meanwhile builder Mr Floyd Pink released a musical single to raise awareness of the plight of the building industry:

We don't need no competition
We don't need no planning control
No luxury flats - now that means gloom
Planning give us building zone
Hey! Planning! Give us building zone
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

I don't need no red tape around me
And I don't need no listed place, see
I have seen the writing on the wall.
I need planning projects or I'll fall
And no shops much in Liberty mall
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.
All in all you were all just bricks in the wall.

The Mikan Grove

2012-01-26T04:06:00.002Z

And now for something completely different. Here is a short story from Annie Parmeter which I came across by accident yesterday. It was written when she was 11, and in year 6 at Moorestown College, St Peter - an independent school that, like so many others in Jersey in the 20th century, is now closed. It was written in 1973, and already shows a strong command of English.

If anyone wonders what "mikan" is, it is a kind of orange, technically called "citrus unshiu", which is a seedless and easy-peeling citrus. It is also called cold hardy mandarin, satsuma mandarin, satsuma orange, and tangerine. In Japan, this is known as mikan or formally unshu mikan.

One of the English names for the fruit, "satsuma", is derived from the former Satsuma Province in Japan, from which these fruits were first exported to the West. It is not the only province where they are grown, however, but it is the province from which they came to America in 1876. The towns of Satsuma, Alabama; Satsuma, Florida; Satsuma, Texas; and Satsuma, Louisiana were named after this fruit. But in the 1930s a cold spell wiped out the industry in North America.

The Mikan Grove

by Annie Parmeter

As the rising sun spread her rosy fingers over the mikan grove, the Matsumoto family made their way to their orchard, chatting all the while, carrying their great iron cooking pot to cook their breakfast, and baskets to harvest the tangerines.

On reaching the field, the grandfather began to make a fire and put the tripod and hook over it. When it was time for breakfast, he would fill the cooking pot with water from an icy mountain stream, and hang it on the tripod and hook to boil.

By now the members of the family were scattered over the orchard and had begun the harvest.

The trees seemed to slumber in the grove and, as the delicious orange moons were plucked from their branches, each tree reacted as if it were being woken up, by the pulling of its boughs. Dead leaves were falling off and revealing new tender green shoots, so that the trees looked as if they had been given a new coat of paint.

A little further down the road a majestic cypress reposed, as if frozen in time. Below, on the rocks, a fisherman tried his luck in the azure waters, poised like a heron, waiting for the fish to bite.

Out in the bay a tako-fisher laid his lines of jars from his agile craft, then moved on without even marking the place.

Even to this day, I am left wondering how he remembered where it was.

States Jobs in January: An Analysis

2012-01-25T12:41:00.000Z

When he was in the States, Deputy Paul Le Clare laboured in vain to get organisational charts for States departments.

This was one kind of reply

As members should be aware, Departmental Business Plans contain organisation charts which are updated annually and are available on the States of Jersey website.

but of course, those give only the basic structure, and very few fine details - and if more detail was wanted

"To help and assist the Comprehensive Spending Review, would the Minister provide an organisation chart of his department identifying every post, the post holder's duties and responsibilities, the salary grade and whether the post is currently filled or vacant and, if possible, if any of these post holders are suspended?"

Answer
The Deputy's request for the detailed information listed above has not only been directed to the Treasury and Resources Minister but also to the Chief Minister, Social Security, Planning and Environment and Health and
Social Services. Taken together these departments employ some 2960 staff out of a total of 6000. The Deputy is asking for information to be provided on each one of these posts. That would take a massive amount of time to collate and present in a meaningful format

In other words, no one can get a "big picture" and drill down to fine details - although Senator Sarah Ferguson did precisely that for the health department - not in terms of salaries, but in terms of positions for individuals, and produced a set of charts which gave precisely that kind of picture. It highlighted, incidentally, the large number of human resources posts at Health and Social Security - despite the States having its own centralised Human Resources department, and begged the question: what have those to do with healthcare?

But one of the results of this deficiency is that we cannot look at States jobs advertised and see the following questions. They have to be asked, instead:

1) is this a new position, or a replacement of an existing post?
2) if a new post, why is it required?
3) is there a major shortage in staff in a particular area, and what are the reasons for this?
4) is there any in-house scheme whereby people can be trained up to take on positions rather than sourcing from outside of Jersey?

It is interesting to look at the January jobs advertised and see any trends or matters arising.

There are an overwhelming proportion in the Health and Social Services department, including 5 senior staff nurses and one head of nursing. One wonders why there are suddenly so many of those posts advertised, and if something could have been done to address the situation by ensuring the previous incumbents (assuming they are existing posts) could have left in a staggered timetable. Instead, all seemed to have left around the same time. Perhaps advertising is a formality, because there are trained nurses who are looking for advancement who will apply, if no other applications are forthcoming? Or perhaps there is a serious staff shortage? Not enough being paid - even a Head of Nursing at £54,015.00 - a post requiring medical expertise and knowledge - people's lives are in your hands - is lower than the administrative posts. It's a topsy-turvy world.

Posts that seem to possibly be newly created include the Procurement and Contracts Manager (£52,775.00) and the Senior Manager Business Support Group ( £66,461.00) and the Data Security Officer (£58,004.00).

They are also notable for rather vague job descriptions, which suggest in the case of the Senior Manager, than there is no information technology strategy in place - otherwise why say "will determine the strategy". Likewise the Data Security Officer is "responsible for developing the States approach to security", which again suggests something needs to be developed and is not in place.

It is most probably the case that the writers of these blurbs simply doesn't understand ordinary English, which is I suspect an endemic problem with people who work in human resources. Why look for the right word when the you've been trained and qualified to use ready-made but nonsensical stock phrases?

The legal posts all have "negotiable" salaries, which give no idea at all what the cost to the public purse will be of these posts. The job application doesn't give any details either. Perhaps you need to be in the inner circle of lawyers to know the code for what might be expected as a salary for any given experience, but it is hardly a good example of "transparency" on behalf of the States.

And for a really good "holiday job", the Law Officers department is offering a limited number trainee lawyers who are University students an internship for four weeks at £500 per week, which comes to £2,000. That's some holiday work experience!

Senior Manager Business Support Group
Salary:            £66,461.00 p/a
The Business Support Group Senior Manager will determine the information technology strategy of the Health and Social Services Department and oversee the delivery of the strategy.

Head of Nursing - Unscheduled Emergency Care
£54,015.00 p/a

Health Care Assistants (Special Needs)
Salary:            £11.07 p/h

Senior Staff Nurse - Gynaecology
Salary:            £34,870.00 p/a

Senior Staff Nurse - Intensive Care and HDU
Salary:            £34,870.00 p/a

Senior Staff Nurse - Orthopaedic and Trauma Unit
Salary:            £34,870.00 p/a

Senior Staff Nurse - Private Patients Unit
Salary:            £34,870.00 p/a

Senior Staff Nurse - Surgical Ward (Portelet)
Salary:            £34,870.00 p/a

Travel Officer
Salary:            £13.61 p/h
The successful applicant will arrange travel for staff and patients for Health and Social Services and maintain accurate accounts on an access database.

Assistant Legal Adviser (Children)
Salary:            Negotiable
The Law Officers' Department has a vacancy for an Assistant Legal Adviser in the Children's Section of the Civil Division assisting in public law work, representing the Minister of Health and Social Services in care proceedings.

Finance Manager
Salary:            £52,775.00 p/a
The Taxes Office is looking for a dynamic, motivated Accountant to join their Finance Team

Financial Analyst (Home Affairs)
Salary:            £37,098.00 p/a
A Financial Analyst is required to support criminal investigations through the research and analysis of financial intelligence and evidence.

Forensic Accounting Support (Home Affairs)
Salary:            £37,098.00 p/a

Intelligence Administration Officer (Home Affairs)
Salary:            £26,284.00 p/a
An Intelligence Administration Officer is required to process and input financial crime information and intelligence.

Administrator
£26,284.00 p/a
An Administrator is required to provide administrative support to the JMAPPA (Jersey Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements)Coordinator and Officers in the Offender Management Unit.

Legal Adviser (Police HQ)
Salary:            Negotiable
The Law Officers' Department has a vacancy for an experienced criminal lawyer to join the team working at Police Headquarters, advising the States and Honorary Police forces and appearing in the Magistrate's Court.

Procurement and Contracts Manager
Salary:            £52,775.00 p/a
Reporting to the Category Manager for Professional Services, you will assist with shaping the strategic direction of this category and lead on corporate cross cutting contracts for goods and services.

Taxes Collection Manager
Salary:            £47,375.00 p/a
We are recruiting for a Collection Manager to lead on tax collection strategy and debt recovery for the entire Taxes Office.

Customer Services Manager
Salary:            £37,098.00 p/a
The postholder will have excellent customer services skills and at least 5 years experience of delivering customer services in a complex organisation

Data Security Officer
Salary:            £58,004.00 p/a
The Data Security Officer will be the principal advisor and compliance manager for Data Security across the States, responsible for developing the States approach to security and ensuring appropriate compliance.

Trainee Planner
Salary:            £29,067.00 p/a
Applications are invited for a professional Town Planner to join our busy Development Control team, dealing with planning applications and related matters.

Anticoagulation Nurse
Salary:            £17.82 p/h
A Registered Nurse is required to work in our nurse-led dosing service within the area of anticoagulation

Pharmacy Assistant
Salary:            £21,484.00 p/a

Phlebotomist
Salary:            £17.82 p/h
A Registered Nurse is required to work as a Phlebotomist for our Private Patients Service.

Internships Programme
Salary:            £500.00 p/w
The Law Officers' Department is able to offer a limited number of internships to students who are in their second or later year of an initial degree course and who are considering a career in law or who will complete their law conversion or professional training in 2012. The internships will be for periods of four weeks and are available during the Easter and Summer vacation periods.

Deputy Daniel Wimberley's New Year Wishes

2012-01-24T09:39:00.002Z

I make no apologies for posting former Deputy Daniel Wimberley's letter to the JEP from 7 January 2012, as somehow it was one of those which failed to get to the online version of the paper, as indeed, so far, has Ben Querree's article which attacks his integrity.

Of the points which Daniel makes, humility is certainly one which has been singularly lacking. Immediately there is any criticism of the States, the immediate reaction is one of defensiveness. There is still a fortress mentality present.

This can be seen in in the report mentioned by Deputy John Le Fondre which apparently shows significant losses for the Waterfront project, even with a private contractor. What is the position with regard to the States now having the Jersey Development Company (formerly WEB) now running the project themselves?

We have been told that the unpublished report, commissioned by the Treasury, says that taxpayers could end up footing a bill for £50 million in connection with the Esplanade project.

It might be better to own up to a past mistake than to try to bury it.

And the same is true with the golden handshakes to departing Chief Officers, where again information is concealed under the guise of privacy. But as "Yes Minister" says, ""The Official Secrets Act is not to protect secrets, it is to protect officials."

Yet somehow the States accounts will be fudged to conceal these payments, and there seems no desire to investigate who produced the contracts and who signed the contracts, and we are simply told "it will not happen again"!! No one seems to want to pursue this within the Council of Ministers. This is not humility.

On the electoral commission, the States are moving away from Daniel's proposal to a largely "in house" commission, chaired by Sir Philip Bailhache. This will not mean consensus, or something that Islanders want, although it may mean proposals that can be pushed through by enough States members and forced on the Island whether the population want it or not. That is hardly a good start to dealing with electoral apathy.

Daniel's comments that "the media have a role to play here too" is important, because Ben Querree recently impugned his integrity, saying that Daniel would be much less annoyed if the commission was headed by someone from the left. It shows how the media have their own take, and simply have often lost the ability to listen; it says more about Ben Queree's cynicism that he thinks Daniel Wimberley's motivation might be as venal as he imagines it to be.

I work near the Town Park, and the Le Seeleur building is a total disgrace. Boarded up, decaying and no one apart from Simon Crowcroft shows the slightest motivation to do anything about it. In his will the former owner, builder Harold Le Seeleur, left his town workshop to the island decades ago. But it has been lying idle ever since is falling into disrepair.

We are told that the terms of the Trust prevent anything much being done with the property yet that didn't stop the States managing to do something positive with the Howard Davis Farm, despite that being subject to a covenant. Perhaps a Royal Visit to the Town Park would focus minds wonderfully?

Letter from Daniel Wimberley

HERE are my H is for Happy New Year wishes for the States (or should that be, the ministers?). What are yours?

Honesty: about population.

Ask the public genuinely what they want on this most important of issues. Describe the issues fairly and plainly. Reach all parts of the population not just those who shout the loudest. Abandon the mind-set which says: 'my ideology must win at all costs' and the spin and deception which goes with it. The process of trying to reach an honest consensus will lead to better policies and a more united Island. Try it.

More honesty: the other major issue-in our politics is: how much should we spend on our public services? And exactly the same considerations apply as set out above. So we have to be open in saying that our public spending is way below that of all other advanced countries, we have to stop claiming that low public spending leads to poor economic performance, when this is simply untrue, and we have to put real choices to the public instead of heaps of spin..

Humility: a big dose of this, please. It should be OK in 2012 to say: 'I got it wrong, sorry.' And this implies that others have the grace and right spirit to say 'fine, thanks' and resist the temptation to make political capital out of the apology.

The triumphalist 'we never get it wrong' grates on the nerves. Its purpose is to gain political advantage but it only does this by undermining politics itself, leading as it does to unrealistic expectations of our politicians and creating mistrust and apathy when reality does not match the absurd rhetoric.

If people and government are to work together to face our problems we need to understand what is going on, not have spin and propaganda thrown at us. Note: the media have a role to play here too.

Healing: the Committee of Inquiry into Haut de la Garenne must proceed, and in a format which is acceptable to all stakeholders. The results may be painful in parts, but it is the only way forward - for the individuals, agencies and departments involved, for the politicians, for all of us. It will no doubt take honesty and humility (see above).

Honesty again: an Electoral Commission set up to be transparent and independent aiming to achieve a voting
system for Jersey which ensures that, we are all represented in a fair and equal way, and to ensure that the people of the Island have a decisive influence in who ends up with political power (or, if that turns out not to be possible, with decisive influence on the policies pursued).

And finally, let's see some "aiming high", or ambition, instead of just a no-can-do feeling of being tired and
depressed. Some examples:

. We could return Plemont to nature, paying a fair amount of money for a derelict building and lots of bracken and gorse.

. We could get maximum value out of the fantastic asset which is Fort Regent. This will probably take public investment. The waterfront is a lesson to us all in what happens if you set out with Frank Walker's words: 'No public money will be spent on this.' What you get is what you pay for.

. Help a genuine democratic community group to form which would run the Le Seelleur building as the community focus for the new Town Park.

That's enough to be going on with - what's your wish list?

St Helier: 1932

2012-01-23T14:30:00.000Z

A dip into the past today, with some details from the 1932-33 Ward Lock and Co Guide to The Channel Islands and Parts of Normandy and Brittany.

It is interesting to see how the topography of St Helier was considered a mess even back then! There was no Howard Davis Park, and the Triangle Park where bands played on a Sunday is that strip of green land beside the Grand Hotel where Queen Victoria's Statue now resides. The site of the Howard Davis Park was only purchased by T.B. Davis in 1937.

The population was 26,314. The population is now 97,857, and the population of St Helier at 33,522 (2011) exceeds that and even did so in 2001 when it was 28,310. So this was a very sparsely populated Island.

Some of the amenities are present today. Despite mergers and name changes, the main banks listed are still pretty much where they were in 1932. The Havre des Pas Swimming Pool is still open, although it doesn't make admission charges any more except for use of lockers, showers etc. The West Park pool having recently been closed, doesn't look as if it will re-open in the near future, but the site is still visible.

The main library existed, but only as a reference library. It's amusing to see the precision of the number of books held - exactly 20,000!

For other libraries, people would take a subscription. The best known (but not mentioned in this guide) was probably the Boots Lending Library. The first library was started in 1898 by Florence Boot, who was greatly interested in art & literature. My mother remembers in the 1950s having a subscription as a birthday present to the Boots Library.

By 1903, 143 of the 300 Boots shops had a library. You could pay a yearly subscription of 10/6 for one book at a time or 42/- for 6 & 7/- for each extra volume. Alternatively you could pay as you read , leaving a deposit of 2/6 & paying per day that you borrowed the book - the price depending on the category of book; the most popular being the more expensive. The cleanliness of the books was a key point in advertising - makes you wonder what state the books were in from other commercial libraries. The major city branches had desks & chairs as well as notepaper & flowers. The extra services available included reservations, much like today, & also the ability to leave a wish list & the books to be reserved when they came in. There were all sorts of additional memberships for holiday periods only, juniors & arrangements for those in the country. Boots also had library sales to sell off the older & less popular books. The shield on the front cover was crossed through when the books were sold. (1)

There was a lot more diversity of local newspapers available to Islanders which is amazing considering the smaller population. But then we must remember that newspapers were one of the main outlets for news and stories to read, without the myriad magazines and other forms of media available today from abroad. One newspaper catered for the French speaking population; we forget how large that was in comparison to the whole population.

There was a French consulate, and perhaps more surprisingly one for the United States!

A good sales gimmick was the discount available to travellers from England on day trips to St Malo, thus generating extra passengers for that service. It would be interesting to know if it would be viable today for Condor to bring in.

With regard to the boats, the early boats left in the morning, and that's when honeymooners would depart. It also became a stock phrase when I was growing up at people from the UK who grumbled about the Island - "there's always the early boat in the morning." That is, alas, no longer the case, and nowadays day trips to Guernsey - like those I used to enjoy as a boy -often leave very little time to explore St Peter Port.

Until the demise of Sealink, the railway and boat links were run by the same management, which was very good for matching up as the timetables would be arranged to facilitate the visitor, or the traveller to the UK. In 1932, the railways had not been nationalised, and there were two lines both touting for passengers to and from the UK.

And when you arrived, there was a porter available, something we do not have now. I love the idea of a porter taking your luggage "to any part of St Helier"!

Cab fares are also interesting - by horse! While motorized buses were making headway on the Island's roads, the principal other form of transport available to hire was literally "horse power"! I wonder what state the roads around St Helier were in, and who cleaned up the horse droppings.

And with Eastbourne trying to steal Jersey's crown, even in 1932, it was "sunny Jersey". I've not heard of the name "St Martin's Summer", for the Autumn weather, which is perhaps not surprising, because it has dropped out of common use:

There was a time when all of Europe understood the phrase: only the British, with our expansions into occident and orient, displaced it with another saying. Indian Summer has nothing to do with India. The phrase was used by European colonists in North America in the 18th century to describe the bright, still season in which native raids ceased and the warriors went home to harvest. The precise chain of inference between the season and the Native Americans is lost in etymological dispute. There are hints of treachery in it, perhaps because ''Indians'' were held to be treacherous, and the magical season was brief and unreliable.(2)

ST HELIER

A LARGE harbour ; a maze of streets, busy and prosperous;. a huge fort rising perpendicularly above the town ; good shops ; numerous places of worship ; a miscellaneous assortment of carriages and well-appointed motor-coaches, plus a general air of comfort and well-being, are the prominent features of St. Helier.

So irregularly is the town planned that we shall not attempt precisely to describe its topography. Suffice it to say that the chief buildings of interest are in the vicinity of Royal Square (near Fort Regent), and that the best shops will be found in Queen Street, King Street, Beresford Street and Halkett Place.

General Information.

Approaches

By steamer from St. Peter Port, Guernsey, 25 miles ;from Southampton, via Guernsey, 140 miles ; from Weymouth, via Guernsey, 100 miles ; from Plymouth ; from St.Brieuc, 50 miles ; from St. Malo, 42 miles ; from Granville, 30 miles ; from Carteret, 18 miles.

Bands.

Local bands play in the Triangle Park or in the neighbouring pavilion on Sundays, and occasionally during the week.

Banks (closed on Wednesday afternoon):

Lloyds, Broad Street ; Westminster, Broad Street ; Midland, Library Place and Hill Street; Barclays, Library Place; Jersey Savings Bank, New Street.

Bathing - Excellent.

Two extensive pools of sea-water-one known as Victoria Marine Lake, and controlled by the West End Bathing Co., near West Park Station ; the other at Havres des Pas -are retained by circular walls. Bathing in the pools is safe and convenient at all states of the tide, and mixed bathing is permissible at all times. Single ticket at the Victoria Marine Lake, tickets, single ticket 6d. At Havre des Pas, single ticket, 6d. Admission for non-bathers, 2d. 12 tickets 5s. 6d. At First Tower there is good bathing from machines.

Beaches.

On the western side of the Harbour, St. Aubin's Bay presents at low water an extensive stretch of sand, perfectly safe when the tide has receded. This beach is flanked by a solidly-built granite promenade and a fine broad thoroughfare called Victoria Avenue and Fort Regent the sandy bay and beach of Havre des Pas is studded with rocks. Around the various indentations of the beach is a broad stone and cement walk, with seats at intervals.

Boating.

Owing to the deadly nature of the coast and the strong tides, sailing or rowing boats venturing beyond St. Aubin's Bay should be accompanied by a capable man.

Bowling.

At Westmount (near People's Park), 4d. per hour, and at the Recreation Ground, Greve d'Azette.

Bus Service.-See page 28.

Cab Fares.-By distance : For each mile or fraction thereof, 1s. 6d. By time : (one-horse vehicles) : Each half-hour or portion thereof, 2s. ; vehicles with two horses, each half-hour or portion thereof, 3s. For luggage outside the cab, 3d. each package. From the boat to the town, or vice versa, 3s.

Chief Buildings of interest to visitors :

Elizabeth Castle. Open daily, Sundays included, 6d.

Royal Court House and States Chamber, Royal Square. The attendant will show visitors over these fine buildings (free).

Public Library, Royal Square. Open (free) 10 to 1 ; 2 to 9.

Town. Hall, York Street. An attendant will show visitors over the buildings, which include a picture gallery (free).

Police Court, adjoining Town Hall. Open at 10 a.m. Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

Parish Church of St. Helier can be seen daily.

Museum of the Société Jersiaise, 9 Pier Road

Markets. The buildings in Halkett Place and Beresford Street are well worth a visit.

Climate.-" Sunny" Jersey is the familiar appellation, for this is the sunniest spot in the United Kingdom. The air is equable and mild, bracing on the high ground, but less so in the valleys. A long, sunny autumn, called St. Martin's Summer, begins about October 10. Excellent water supply and drainage.

Clubs.-The Victoria has an imposing house in Beresford Street ; United, Royal Square ; Cesarean, King Street ; Y.M.C.A., with debating and chess clubs, New Street ; Rotary; Mechanics' Institute, Halkett Place ; United Services, Queen Street ; Y.W.C. Association, Société Jersiaise, Royal Channel Islands Yacht Club, etc. Clubs for golf, cycling, archery, lawn tennis, rowing, cricket, and many other sports.

Musical. Jersey Choral Society and Jersey Musical Union.

Consulates.-French, 24 Hill Street ; United States, 15 Royal Square.

Croquet.-At Recreation Grounds, Greve d'Azette.

Cycling.-Highly popular on account of the fine roads and convenient runs. Many machines are brought over by visitors, but those who do not propose to spend a large proportion of their time a wheel will find it more convenient to hire a machine. Every cycle must bear a number plate obtainable at the police office.

Early Closing Day.-Thursday. Banks close on Wednesday afternoon.

Entertainments

The current attractions are advertised in the Jersey papers, and in the Visitor's Guide, weekly, gratis.

On the eastern side of the Harbour Triangle Park, (or, if wet, in the West Park Pavilion), concerts, troupes, etc.

Opera House (Gloucester Street), Alhambra (Phillips Street), the Picture House (Don Street) and West's Picture Palace (Peter Street).

Springfield Grounds and Pavilion (off St. Mark's Road), concerts, shows, sports.

Fishing

Fair-not so good as formerly. Motor launches and yachts put out daily from Albert Pier at 11 a.m. Lines and
bait supplied.

Libraries.-The Public Library is in Royal Square (Reference only ; 20,000 volumes). Open 10 to 1, 2 to 9, free. There are several Subscription Libraries in the town.

Museum.-9 Pier Road, near the Parish Church. Open, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 10 to 12, 2 to 4. Admission 6d. And May to September, free, on Thursdays from 2.30 to 5, by the main entrance, Caledonia Place.

Newspapers.-The London papers are on sale in the town shortly after the arrival of the morning boat. The local papers are Evening Post (daily), Morning News (daily). Twice weekly : Les Chroniques de Jersey (French). The Weekly Post, Jersey Critic (weekly).

Passport Office.-Office of the Lieut.-Governor and District Staff, Rouge Bouillon.

Population.-Census 1921: 26,314.

Porters.

For taking luggage on or off steamer, 3d. ; when taken at the steps from the boats to the landing-place, 6d. ; to any part of St. Helier, 1s up to 100 lbs. ; one-third more up to 200 lbs.; double over 200 lbs.

Railway Stations.-The Western Railway terminus (for St. Aubin and Corbiere) is at the Harbour end of the Esplanade. The terminus of the Eastern Railway (to Gorey and Mont Orgueil Castle) is opposite Snow Hill, to the rear of Fort Regent.

Sailing

Several yachts and motor launches advertise sailing excursions at moderate prices.

Steamers.

From about the middle of July to the end of September there is a daily service (Sundays excepted), via Guernsey, to Southampton, from the Albert Pier, at 715 a.m., and to Weymouth, from North Quay, at 7.45 a.m.
For the rest of the year, via Guernsey, to Southampton, from Albert Pier, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 7.30 a.m. ; to Weymouth, from North Quay, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 7.30 a.m.
Return tickets are available by either route.

Southern Railway Office, 6 Bond Street ; G. W. Office, 9 Bond Street.

There are also frequent sailings, particulars of which are advertised locally, from St. Helier to Granville and St. Malo. Less frequently to St. Brieue (Hare Steamship Co.), and from Gorey to Carteret.

Passports must be procured before embarking for France. District Office, Rouge Bouillon.

Excursions to Sark and around the Island during the season.

Particulars will be found in the local press.

Passengers holding the return halves of Great Western Railway or Southern Railway tickets can obtain tickets for St. Malo or Granville at reduced rates.

Tennis Courts.-At the Recreation Ground, Greve d'Azette, one mile from Royal Square, two minutes from Greve d'Azette station on the Eastern Railway. Two grass and ten gravel courts. 2s. per hour. And in Victoria Avenue, at the Lower Park, and Le Chat Noir.

Links
(1) http://www.dnsmedia.co.uk/posts/view/63
(2) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6243586/Indian-Summer-No-its-the-sunshine-season-of-St-Martin.html

Evidence Based?

2012-01-22T16:07:00.001Z

There have been a number of recent letters from humanists in the JEP, mostly adopting a rather belligerent tone, and calling for beliefs to be "evidence based". And yet there are a number of beliefs which we all take for granted, as basic axioms, or "common ground", as the lawyers would state it, which philosophers know cannot be proven but have to be taken for granted. These cannot be "evidence based", and yet they form the basis for living together on this planet; without taking these assumptions largely for granted, it would be impossible for society to function. I do wish some of those letter writers studied a few philosophers before putting pen to paper, and thereby shooting themselves in the foot.

These assumptions were enumerated long ago by G.K. Chesterton in his article "philosophy for the schoolroom", and here they are, as he put them, because I probably could not do it better, and certainly without the wit that he brings to the argument. But they have been the subject of debate and concern among professional philosophers from Plato to David Hume, from Hume to Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper. Here they are - matters which are not "evidence based", and can never be:

All of us believe in St. Paul's Cathedral; most of us believe in St. Paul. But let us clearly realize this fact, that we do believe in a number of things which are part of our existence, but which cannot be demonstrated. Leave religion for the moment wholly out of the question. All sane men, I say, believe firmly and unalterably in a certain number of things which are unproved and unprovable. Let us state them roughly.

Every sane man believes that the world around him and the people in it are real, and not his own delusion or dream. No man starts burning London in the belief that his servant will soon wake him for breakfast. But that I, at any given moment, am not in a dream, is unproved and unprovable. That anything exists except myself is unproved and unprovable.

All sane men believe that this world not only exists, but matters. Every man believes there is a sort of obligation on us to interest ourselves in this vision or panorama of life. He would think a man wrong who said, "I did not ask for this farce and it bores me. I am aware that an old lady is being murdered down-stairs, but I am going to sleep." That there is any such duty to improve the things we did not make is a thing unproved and unprovable.

All sane men believe that there is such a thing as a self, or ego, which is continuous. There is no inch of my brain matter the same as it was ten years ago. But if I have saved a man in battle ten years ago, I am proud; if I have run away, I am ashamed. That there is such a paramount "I" is unproved and unprovable. But it is more than unproved and unprovable; it is definitely disputed by many metaphysicians.

Lastly, most sane men believe, and all sane men in practice assume, that they have a power of choice and responsibility for action.

The Victory of Death

2012-01-21T14:21:00.001Z

Some Greeks (and Romans) thought death the complete end; most, however, envisaged a continuing, shadowy existence in Hades. Homer, for example, tells of a murky world full of witless, gibbering shadows that must drink sacrificial blood before they can think straight, let alone talk. This poem represents that kind of sensibility, a pessimism that not even atheists have today.

The Victory of Death

There we came together, in that place
In which we meet death face to face
Marble columns rising to great height
And here we came to celebrate the rite
Our friends, our lovers, now no more
Into the land of shadows, death's door
And down to that darkest river below
Of forgetting all that they do know
Who shall pay the ferryman? Not I
Until the day comes when I too die
And take my place among the shades
Cut off from life by sharpest blades
And down the tunnel, into the dark
No more the singing of the lark
Night falls, Hades takes his throne
A land of ashes, of defleshed bone
And into that dark land, none return
Whether buried, or bones that burn

Funny Old World 9

2012-01-20T09:11:00.003Z

The States of Jersey police are changing the way it deals with people who have been arrested. At the moment the custody unit is run by the response department. A new dedicated department will decide whether they should be detained overnight, remanded in custody, or shot on the spot, which will free up the response officers for their main duties.

And crime in 2011 was at its lowest level for 10 years, according to a report from the States of Jersey Police. The police said high-profile policing, targeting prolific offenders and shooting them on the spot had all played a crucial part in bringing down crime.

Allowing States Members to sit on the new Electoral Commission would be a "disgraceful betrayal". Former Deputy Daniel Wimberley has asked the States to stick with an independent commission and urged them not to appoint Senator Philip Bailhache as chairman.

Last year it was agreed to take the matter out of the hands of States Members, and put it in independent hands. But Privileges and Procedures Committee changed the original plans to allow politicians to sit on the commission.

The Committee President explained "The States has a long tradition of failing to reform itself, and we had to ensure that we didn't avoid all the wrangling and bickering that has scuppered previous reform efforts. Sir Philip Bailhache is the right man for the job. If it was in independent hands, something might actually get done."

And the States of Jersey has decided to delay a debate on government reform as the group responsible needs more time. The Privileges and Procedures Committee said it was looking at a wider review. It said it would be setting up a sub-committee to look at all the issues over the next few months.

A press release explained: "We recommend setting up a committee with broad terms of reference, so we're in a position to think through the various implications and decide based on long-term considerations rather than rush prematurely into precipitate and ill-conceived actions. As far as one can see, in the fullness of time, we will bring propositions to the States, but Rome wasn't built in a day, you know."

Reports came in that the Chief Officer was cancelled at Jersey Airport because of fog. Thick fog on Wednesday meant the figure for the payoff on the resignation of the Chief Officer could not be seen in the States sitting. The poor weather conditions meant that at one point on Wednesday all Ministers were ensuring the question was either delayed or on hold. Other Chief Officer retirement bonuses were also lost in the fog. Meanwhile, on Radio Jersey, Roger Bara put on the song "Pay Misty for Me".

Married women in Jersey to have access to tax affairs. Changes to the tax return form mean married women can get access to their tax affairs. For years, married women have suspected liaisons between their husbands and female clerks at the Income Tax Department at Cyril Le Marquand House, but now those affairs can be made known to them.

The tax return form includes a new box which a woman's husband can sign to give her permission to access their tax husband's tax affairs. There was also a new measure to allow spouses to have separate tax affairs, presumably with male clerks at Cyril le Marquand House. The tax department said it would allow "autonomy and privacy" in conducting their tax affairs.

Jersey Tourism is looking for German-speaking islanders to become tour guides this summer. Jersey Tourism said the island had seen a 23% increase in the number of German visitors in 2011.

A local tour operator has offered to pay for guides to do a tourist guide course at Highlands College. Albert Speer, director of tourism, said: "We had 13,000 German visitors last year and... we are expecting that number to rise." And Charles de Gaulle, the General Manager of tour operator Bonjour, said: "Most German visitors come as part of an organised tour and already we have had more requests for German-speaking guides."We are looking for people who speak German, are confident with people, have good customer service skills and are able to take charge of a group.

Customs Officials have already been trained with a repertoire of questions translated into German, which can be fielded at suspicious looking Germans. They will stop anyone with the name "Adolf" and ask "Halt! lassen Sie mich die Unterlagen für Ihren Schnurrbart sehen", which in English translates to "Halt! let me see the documentation for your moustache."

Other German words for tourist guides include:

Abfahrt - departure

Autofahrt - car ride

Bootsfahrt - boat ride

Butterfahrt - trip to buy duty-free merchandise

Busfahrt - bus ride

Extrafahrt - additional ride

Fahrtenmesser - travelling knife

Fahrtroute - travel route

Fahrtwind - airstream, air turbulence

Familienfahrt - family trip

Gratisfahrt - free trip

Kaffeefahrt - cheap bus trip combined with a sales pitch

Kamerafahrt - tracking shot

Klassenfahrt - field trip

Lustfahrt - pleasure cruise

Radfahrt - bike trip

Seefahrt - navigation

Sternfahrt - car rally

Tagfahrt - day trip

Taxifahrt - taxi ride

Testfahrt - test drive

Trampfahrt - sea cargo hauling to multiple ports

An Enterprising Look A Like

2012-01-19T09:57:00.003Z

Constable Patrick Stewart

of St Ouen (a Hamlet)

Star Trek Actor Michael Paddock (in Hamlet)

Is it just my imagination, or does Constable Mike Paddock look like Actor Patrick Stewart?

To boldly goes where no one has gone before - the wilds of St Ouen!

Look A Like Horror

2012-01-19T07:46:00.004Z

Senator Ian Gorst

Chief Minister of Jersey

H.P. Lovecraft

Famous writer of horror stories

Is it my imagination or does Senator Ian Gorst, Chief Minister of Jersey, look like H.P. Lovecraft, who wrote "At the Mountains of Madness"?

Planning Trends

2012-01-18T12:43:00.001Z

Richard Rondel asked the following question:

"Would the Minister make available a list of residential planning applications for three properties or more that are currently waiting to be determined together with the dates that the applications were submitted to the department?"

There are a number of fields which have planning applications, but apart from that, I'd suggest that there are three main trends.

One is the demolition of single dwellings, and their replacement with apartments. There are not a huge amount of those, but the trend is clearly to fit as many people on as small an area per person as can be done. This is obviously very profitable for the developer, as the sale price of each portion can be significantly higher when totalled than the single dwelling would fetch on the market.

The second trend is the the demolition and loss of hotels which continues to take place. It would be interesting to know how many hotels actually still exist, and how many have been lost each year over the last five years. Is this a trend which is diminishing, as the number of hotels begins to match the demand from tourism?

Or is the kind of hotel which survives largely likely to be one which sources a good proportion of its income from the Island internally, by way of health facilities, swimming and like amenities, and conference centres for both out of Island but equally importantly local conferences and business related seminars?

It is, I think, notable that a some of the hotels that have planning applications, and are on the way out, are those who have good facilities in terms of locality, and proximity to bays and beaches. The entire stretch along the promenade at Havres des Pas will soon be largely denuded of hotels, the La Plage being the first to go, now some time ago, and all being replaced with apartments. The bucket and spade tourism is still here, but it is not nearly such a significant factor as it was in the golden post-war heyday, and out of town places away from main roads are more at risk of going.

The third trend is for businesses to close, and their premises to be developed into apartments or dwellings. The most notable example of this is Jersey Potteries, although that has also suffered from the decline in tourism. I think that there is also a tendency (over the past five years and perhaps longer) for out of town businesses to get less trade in their locality, as strapped for cash customers tend to shop around a lot more. But there is quite a variety in those listed, the common factor being that they are out of town, and hence the residential buildings taking their place will fetch a fairly substantial price.

Here are some of the examples of these trends, given in reply to that question.

Single Dwellings to Apartments

Tamaris, La Grande Route de la Cote, St Clement
Demolish existing dwelling. Construct 4 No. apartments.

Ker du Pons, le Mont du Petit Port, St Brelade
Demolish existing dwelling. Construct 5 No. apartments and 2 No. dwellings.
Model Available. AMENDED PLANS: Construct 4 No. apartments and 2 No. dwellings.

Victoria Cottage, La Rue des Boulees, Trinity
Demolish existing dwelling. Construct 3 No. dwellings. Model available.

Hotels to Dwellings / Apartments

Les Charrieres Hotel, Le Mont des Charrieres, St Peter
Demolish existing hotel. Construct 10 No. dwellings.

Beau Couperon Hotel, Le Mont de Rozel, St Martin
Demolish existing hotel and restaurant, retaining registered walls. Construct 10 No. apartments with basement parking.

Cheval Roc Hotel, La Rue des Charrieres, St John
Convert existing hotel into 22 No. flats and construct parking area to the West of Condora. Various external alterations. AMENDED PLANS: Elevational changes to existing building. Parking layout alterations. Transport statement submitted. FURTHER AMENDMENTS: Demolish part of building to West. Reduce number of units to 19, and alter mix to 12 No. 1 beds, 5 No. 2 beds and 2 No. 3 beds. Alter parking layout.

Hotel des Pierres, Le Mont de la Greve D'Lecq, St Ouen
Demolish existing hotel and construct 3 storey apartment building comprising 13 No. apartments with covered parking. AMENDED PLANS: Amended design. Number of units reduced to 10.

Le Chalet Hotel Site, La Rue de la Corbiere, St Brelade
Construct 3 No. 4 bed dwellings and 1 No. 5 bed dwelling

Mont de la Rocque Hotel, Le Mont de la Rocque, St Brelade
Demolish hotel. Construct 9 No. apartments with associated landscaping and parking. Model available

Businesses to Dwellings / Apartments

Big Deal Carpets, La Rue de L'Eglise, St Peter
Demolish existing building. Construct 12 No dwellings and 8 No. apartments to include basement parking. Create new vehicular access. AMENDED PLANS: Construct 12 No. dwellings and 3 No. apartments. Model Available

Former Cleveland Garage & Heather Lea, St Clements Road, St Helier
Demolish existing garage and dwelling. Construct 16 No. dwellings with basement parking.

Jersey Pottery, Gorey Village, Grouville
Demolish existing buildings. Construct 53 No. houses and garages. Model Available

Guardian Nursing Home, La Rigondaine, Grouville
Demolish nursing home. Construct 4 No. dwellings.

Websites I Like: Paleobabble

2012-01-17T10:07:00.001Z

Paleobabble is a website compiled by Mike Heiser.

He's a well qualified individual, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (M.A., Ancient History) and the University of Wisconsin- Madison (M.A., Ph.D., Hebrew Bible and Semitic Studies) who is familiar with an assortment of ancient languages, such as Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Syriac, Ugaritic, Phoenician, and Egyptian hieroglyphs. His academic expertise is divine beings (gods, angels, divine assembly/host of heaven) in ancient Israelite and Canaanite religions.

The blog deals with what he terms "cyber-twaddle and misguided research about the ancient world".

http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/

The day to day content is links and comments. What is interesting is the kind of material that comes up time and again. Heiser puts links to the material supporting his comments, and it is an excellent port of call for the latest "paleobabble" coming onto the Internet.

Why do people believe such things? The picture promoted originally by Von Daniken in "Chariot of the Gods" was of a maverick amateur who was unearthing material that upset the conventional archaeology of the ancient world, and which they tried to ignore or explain away because it was too startling and amazing, and they didn't want to believe that, for instance, alien astronauts were at work in the past. It's a very clever picture, because it defuses criticism before it even begins - "they would so that, wouldn't they".

It is, I think no coincidence that the rise of such ideas comes with the decline in traditional religious belief, and the rise of New Age movements. This can be seen mirrored in bookstalls where over the last twenty years, the science section has steadily diminished, while the New Age section has exploded.

In the 1970s, science and academia was the way forward, and books like "The Secular City" were being written. Religion was on the way out, burnt up in the white heat of the technological revolution. But that kind of arid, dry, humanism left a void, and that was filled by New Age spirituality.

Archeology also suffered with academics coming under pressure from "alternative archaeologies" which were much more in tune with the New Age, and apparently well-established results were called into question. In part this was a presentational problem, as with science in general. Paul Feyerabend noted how:

Scientific "facts" are taught at a very early age and in the very same manner in which religious "facts" were taught only a century ago. There is no attempt to waken the critical abilities of the pupil so that he may be able to see things in perspective. At the universities the situation is even worse, for indoctrination is here carried out in a much more systematic manner.

The gap was in the explanatory text, of how scientific theories developed from problem solving. Science was instead becoming a new mythology, and alternative theories, like alternative archaeologies could be claiming "equal time" in their presentation, however bogus they might be. The skeptical element was missing.

So we need people like Mike Heiser, who provides a good overview of all the alternatives out there, with a very healthy dose of skepticism.

Here's a selection:

http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2010/02/giant-paleobabble/

Yesterday I received an email containing some pictures of alleged giant skeletons. PaleoBabble readers know that I've posted before on this topic before, noting how Photoshop is certainly the solution to many of these pictures you see circulating on the web. Whenever I get photos like these (see below), I wish I had the time to comb the web for the originals that were used to create the hoaxes. Sometimes you find someone who's already done that work (like my earlier post, linked above). But this sort of thing could take dozens of hours. Fortunately, among the two photos sent to me are two that are easily demonstrated to be fakes

Can you spot the problem? Look at the skulls side by side... See it? What are the odds that two skulls, at two allegedly different archaeological digs, would be missing the exact same teeth? A billion to one, I'd say. Take a closer look at the comparison picture. You can see that the fracture lines on the two photos at the bridge of the nose are also exactly the same. It's the same skull, photo-shopped into two different pictures, with adjustments made in tinting. You can find these pictures on several creationist websites.

http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2011/06/the-fictional-roots-of-the-ancient-astronaut-myth/

The Fictional Roots of the Ancient Astronaut Myth

All of those interested in PaleoBabble should be aware of the work of Jason Colavito. Jason has done a lot of work tracing the common ancient astronaut motifs back through science fiction of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His primary focus is H.P. Lovecraft. You can read a fairly lengthy overview on his site, entitled, "From Cthulhu to Cloning." It's fascinating stuff. Check out his book: The Cult of Alien Gods: H.P. Lovecraft and Extraterrestrial Pop Culture.

I've got a copy of that book, and it is indeed fascinating. Science fiction and gothic fiction seems easily to morph into a presentation of the same themes as real, whether it is ancient gods who are in fact aliens (Lovecraft to Von Daniken), or Ron Hubbard, who started writing science fiction and then promoted scientology (a bastard offspring of his science as science fact.

http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2010/11/promotion-of-racist-theories-using-the-bible/

I recently discovered a book that I can't wait to read called Adam's Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins (author: David Livingstone; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). The book is about how, in response to Darwinism, certain 19th and 20th century preachers and biblical scholars came up with the idea that there were races *before* Adam. They justified the idea with some truly bizarre Bible interpretation. Whether theologically conservative Christians and Jews who imbibe such ideas realize it or not, much of this is similar to "root race" theories peddled by occultists like Helena Blavatsky, whose esoteric teachings were one thread in the racial theories of people like Adolf Hitler. (And in case you think these ideas aren't still around, spend some time on the internet).

http://ncse.com/rncse/29/3/review-adams-ancestors
http://www.michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/Adams%20Ancestors%20review.pdf

http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2010/06/crystal-skull-myth-disproven-again/

I'm sure you've heard of the crystal skulls before. They are allegedly ancient Mayan artifacts capable of mysterious powers, like inspiring a terrible Indiana Jones movie. Turns out they aren't ancient (I know-what a shocker). But look on the bright side. Maybe George Lucas will retire from script writing now.

http://www.archaeologydaily.com/news/201005314172/The-Mitchell-Hedges-crystal-skull-Fact-fiction-and-the-creation-of-myth.html

http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2011/12/ron-wyatt-egyptian-chariot-wheels/

Ron Wyatt and Those Egyptian Chariot Wheels

I've complained before about the poor quality of Ron Wyatt's "research" (loosely defined) before. While he may have been well-intentioned (his aim was to defend the Bible's content), there is no excuse for the kind of paleobabble he has become notorious for. What follows is a simple but telling example (though to be fair, this one comes from Mary Nell Wyatt, whom I presume is Wyatt's wife).

Wyatt's name is well known on the internet for touting the Nuweiba location for the crossing the Red (Reed) Sea. It was in conjunction with this investigation that Wyatt allegedly found Egyptian chariot wheels under water in support of his theory.

Did Wyatt ever bring one of these out of the water? The link below claims so, but (as is so common with paleobabble), no independent peer-reviewed examination by archaeologists and other specialists (to see if they were merely coral formations) was ever conducted and published. But aside from that, there are the obvious logic problems: If it was a chariot wheel, how would one know it was Egyptian? If Egyptian, how would one know it was related to the exodus event? And if it was from that event, didn't anyone notice the incongruity of the sea floor *not* being littered with these wheels?

http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2011/12/dogon-debunking-source/

Dogon Debunking from an Unlikely Source

I recently blogged about the so-called Dogon "mystery." Readers will recall that it has nothing to do with alien contact. I utilized several scholarly articles where anthropologists went back to the Dogon people to check the original reports that made the Dogon so popular with ancient astronaut theorists. Turns out it was bogus (insert surprised look here).

I recently came across an older debunking of the Dogon issue from, of all places, the "Above Top Secret" website. It's well worth the read. If a source like this can think clearly and critically about the sacred Dogon cow, I would hope that others can embrace the effort that went into the piece. It doesn't seem like a biased source from people corrupted "by all that establishment book learning."

Ed Miliband’s taxing attempt to stop his ratings slide

2012-01-16T14:24:00.000Z

Ed Miliband is calling for an end to UK tax havens, starting with the Channel Islands and Isle of Man. Under current rules, British residents are able to keep money in offshore accounts where it can go unnoticed by HM Revenue and Customs. Labour said the government should "start with diplomacy" to try to encourage tax havens to reform. But if that fails, the opposition said ministers should threaten to put them on an international blacklist. (1)

But shouldn't the UK be under a blacklist status too? The book "Treasure Islands" exposes how the City of London functions as a tax haven within Britain for any countries outside - Britain has a tax haven at the heart of
its financial centre.

The City's "elsewhere" status in Britain stems from a simple formula: over centuries, sovereigns and governments have sought City loans, and in exchange the City has extracted privileges and freedoms from rules and laws to which the rest of Britain must submit. The City does have a noble tradition of standing up for citizens' freedoms against despotic sovereigns, but this has morphed into freedom for money.

So, the corporation has two main claims to being a tax haven: first, as a semi-alien entity, floating partly free from Britain (just as the Cayman Islands are), and second, as the hub of a global network of tax havens sucking up offshore trillions from around the world and sending it, or the business of handling it, to London. These are possibly the biggest reasons for the City's wealth and power - yet how many Britons understand this? (2)

The fear of a Tobin tax sending millions away from the City of London - recently raised with the European meeting - led to David Cameron using a veto to prevent that. It wasn't Jersey or Guernsey that he was protecting; the bottom line for the UK, as we have seen historically with regard to unfair tax competition, is that they are quite prepared to sacrifice the Channel Islands if required, but they are not prepared to give up their own internal tax haven.

To be true, the City does channel a flow of funds from the Channel Islands, but it also cheerfully deals with flows from Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, Hong Kong and the Bahamas. How will Ed Milliband deal with those? Will he blacklist the Chinese and face down any economic reprisals they may take? Since the OECD itself had trouble getting Hong Kong to sign up to the much more limited Tax Information Exchange Agreements, I think it is unlikely that he'd risk a conflict, and face embargoes from trading opportunities within China.

So what is it all about? Ed Miliband's popularity has slumped and he badly needs some kind of credibility if he is to stay on as leader of the labour party, and be potentially election material. The simplest way of getting a good lot of publicity and not to get much in the way of bad feedback is to drum up support by beating a populist drum, and closing down the Channel Islands as tax havens as soon as possible is a good way of getting that cheap publicity.

Mr Milliband says the EU is acting too slowly, but the EU has problems with moving everyone forward at the same time, to ensure that tax haven activities do not simply re-locate elsewhere in the world. Part of the problem is that within the EU - in Austria and Belgium and Ireland - as well as with Britain - there are tax haven style activities going on, nameplate companies, protected secret bank accounts. So there are internal problems with putting their own house in order. And outside the EU are havens like Hong Kong, or indeed the United States of America, where Delaware, in particularly, welcomes overseas companies under a veil of secrecy.

And of course, there is a little matter of the Labour Party itself:

Tycoon Andrew Rosenfeld, who has made an estimated £100 million from property investments, registered his international network of businesses in the British Virgin Islands – using a trust company that boasts that it 'makes full use of the legal and tax advantages offered by different jurisdictions'. Mr Rosenfeld was appointed by the Labour leader last year to mastermind the party's General Election strategy, shortly after the businessman made a £1 million donation to Labour.

None of these matters come to light in his statement, which suggests that he is basically a poseur hoping for cheap headline grabbing publicity, rather than a serious attempt at improving global matters. Putting someone else's house in order and ignoring your own problems is the mark of a desperate man. He's got it the cheap headline, of course - the BBC has the story on its website. But in the long term he may find that a too hasty attempt to garner cheap publicity will backfire, when his personal ratings slump again as the story becomes the stuff for wrapping up fish and chips, and a leadership challenge comes from someone with rather more integrity.

Links
(1) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16567816
(2) http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporation-city
(3) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083707/Ed-Milibands-efforts-tough-Citys-fat-cat-pay-culture-undermined-backers-island-tax-haven.html

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

2012-01-15T23:51:00.003Z

' Ever since the Industrial Revolution, Man has polluted his planet, until now his only home. Not only has Man ruined his own environment, he has made life impossible for other living creatures. Seventy-five species of animals were made extinct in the first seventy-five years of this century. Others are threatened. The Giant Lemurs of Madagascar may soon suffer the same fate as the King Kangaroos of Australia-'

... Man is the only animal to prey on his own species. As society breaks down, armed gangsters take over. In America, with fifty murders a day, law-abiding citizens live behind electrified fences to keep criminals out. In the City of London another type of criminal exists. Property developers have destroyed-'

... The conveyor-belt system of mass production brings drudgery to the workers. Their natural creative drive is stifled. They are slaves to the machines. Working in continuous noise, unable to speak to their fellow workers, they are brutalised... '

... the brutalisation of millions of people extends from the factories to the buildings in which they live. To accommodate an ever increasing population vast tenement blocks are thrown up in our cities, providing no sense of community for the unfortunates who dwell in them. Gone is the concept of the village... '

(Re-education Room, snippets from re-education film, Invasion of the Dinosaurs)

"Invasion of the Dinosaurs" has just been released on DVD. It's the Jon Pertwee story where Central London has been evacuated due to a mysterious outburst of dinosaurs, appearing and disappearing; being a "Doctor Who" story, this is to do with the manipulation of time, scooping up dinosaurs from the past.

"My belief is that the people responsible for bringing these creatures into the present want to clear London of its population. They have some vast project that can only be carried out in a deserted London."

As the Doctor notes, the dinosaurs are just part of a bigger plan - to clear the area, and "roll back" time on earth to before mankind was settled, so that the people remaining hidden in London (and in the "safe zone") will be free to take humanity and direct history along different lines.

Not all people would agree with this, and a number have been duped into believing that instead they are going to a "New Earth". The novelisation by the writer of the story, Malcolm Hulke, makes their reasoning very clear:

'We are on our way to New Earth, a small planet similar to Earth but at an earlier stage of development.' 'You've been in suspended animation for three months,' Adam informed her. 'But it will all come back to you when you fully recover. New Earth is still pure, undefiled by the evil of Man's technology. There is air that is still clean to breathe, and a simple pastoral people, innocent and unspoiled. It will be our task to guide them so that the evils developed on Earth shall not be repeated.'

Sarah screwed up her face, and pretended that she couldn't remember what he meant. 'My memory still isn't very good, Mark. How will we live?' 'We shall found a settlement. We have seed, tools, and enough provisions to keep us going for a year. We'll be like the Pilgrim Fathers who went to America.' 'What about the present inhabitants of the planet? I don't think the Red Indians liked the Pilgrim Fathers very much. Maybe these people won't like us.' 'We shall treat them kindly and decently,' Mark insisted. 'We'll guide them, and make sure they don't make the same mistakes that were made on Earth.' 'What mistakes?' 'Surely you know. Factories and mines that destroy the landscape. Explosives of all kinds that kill and maim. Cars and aeroplanes that pollute the atmosphere.'

Ruth and Adam appeared from the direction of the main living quarters. 'Finding it interesting?' Adam asked Sarah. 'Very. Mark's just reminding me about all the awful things humans have done to ruin Earth.' She turned back to the young athlete. 'But what about medicine and education? Surely they were good things.' Ruth laughed. 'Compared with its evils, the benefits of technological civilisation are very few.' Adam took up the argument. 'Supermarkets, colour television, plastic cups. But what are they all worth?'

'Finding it interesting?' Adam asked Sarah. 'Very. Mark's just reminding me about all the awful things humans have done to ruin Earth.' She turned back to the young athlete. 'But what about medicine and education? Surely they were good things.' Ruth laughed. 'Compared with its evils, the benefits of technological civilisation are very few.' Adam took up the argument. 'Supermarkets, colour television, plastic cups. But what are they all worth?' 'They make life comfortable for a lot of people.' Adam, ignoring Sarah's reply, continued: 'We shall take the good, but leave the evil behind.' 'And who decides which is which?' 'It's all so obvious.' Adam's eyes began to look like those of a prophet who was in personal communication with God.

'But don't you think that people have a right to choose the kind of life they want?' Sarah blurted out. Ruth looked at her a little sternly. 'People on Earth were allowed to choose-and see what kind of a world they made! Moral degradation, permissiveness, cheating, lying, cruelty!' Ruth's one-sided attitude angered Sarah. 'There is also a lot of love and kindness and honesty! Didn't you ever notice those things on Earth?' Ruth's mouth set into hard lines. 'You mustn't say such things!'

And that is very much the story of Invasion of the Dinosaurs. It is a story about fanaticism, in a good cause, but fanaticism none the less. The writer Malcolm Hulke had come across in the 1970s a number of people concerned with the environment, and environmental issues, but also found that also attracted people who were extremely fanatical about their aims.

The people trying to change history in Invasion of the Dinosaurs see the earth heading towards catastrophe, and the normal mechanism for changing matters are too slow, so they take matters into their own hands. Anyone who disagrees with then has to be "re-educated" so that they can see what is right, because there can be only one right way.

'I quite agree,' added Ruth. 'She'll have to go to the Reminder Room.' Sarah backed away. 'What's that?' Adam gripped her arm firmly. 'You are in desperate need of re-education.' 'Don't worry, child,' said Ruth, taking Sarah's other arm. 'Very soon you will have returned to our point of view-about everything.'

The key sentence - as script editor Terrance Dicks points out in a documentary on the show - is "You mustn't say such things" And from there, with the re-education room, it is not a very distant step to "You mustn't think such things."

Now there are indeed major environmental issues which need to be tackled. But I've also observed how people who do take Green Issues seriously, if not as committed as some environmentalists, get labelled as "heretics". With regard to Climate Change, I've seen this with Dr Judith Curry, where her position, taking perhaps a slightly less committed approach to the interpretation of the evidence, led to her being labelled a "heretic".

It is an extraordinary term to find in scientific debate, and denotes more a pattern of belief in those who denigrate her in this way than her own position. What is happening is very akin to religious belief when that becomes fanatical, when the very best hopes are corrupted into a fascist theocracy. It can be seen in a strident tone, a determination to always have the final word, an inability to discuss, but instead to bludgeon one's opponent with mountains of "facts".

The sad thing is that there is a real problem with the way our world is run, but the way the fanatical presentation of these matters is done will in fact alienate people who would otherwise be sympathetic. As the Doctor says to Grover: "Look, I understand your ideals. In many ways I sympathise with them. But this is not the way to go about it, you know." The problems haven't gone away, but shouting at people is not the way to be heard.

In the 1970s, there was also a TV series called Doomwatch, which presented environmental issues in a dramatised form. There was not always a "right answer", although there often were wrong ones, usually caused by people cutting corners, putting profit above people etc. But in many ways that was the right way to approach the matter. When Charles Dickens was concerned about the poor, he was about to write a tract about the squalid conditions, but changed his mind and wrote Christmas Carol. That tale is still told; it gets into the minds of people far more than a plain tract would have done. A parable is often the way to tell a truth that is not confrontational but gets over the barriers and pre-conceptions people have. Using a verbal megaphone to blast away at everyone is the complete opposite, and no one will in fact end up listening because all they can hear is noise.

The story of "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" has a lot to say about the wrong way to promote environmental issues. In fact, the dinosaurs are not just the monsters from the Jurassic, but those people who cannot adapt their message by listening to the response they have from other people. They talk at, not talk to, and they don't listen. That is the dinosaur still within our midst, and sadly, it probably won't go away.

The Doctor : "It's not the oil and the filth and the poisonous chemicals that are the real cause of pollution, Brigadier. It's simply greed."

The Wheel of Fortune

2012-01-14T15:56:00.000Z

The Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel spins in the midst of sky

Four creatures around its edge do fly

The flux of human life in motion

Turning key in activation

Providence revealed in the flux

As it spins in vast epochs

This is the riddle of the Sphinx

How each moment fits and links

The serpent crushed beneath its frame

Time is an ever consuming flame.

Funny Old World 8

2012-01-13T13:03:00.001Z

Health Warning: what follows is not news, any more than the middle section of Private Eye is news, or The Impressionist is news, or Spitting Image was news. It is a light hearted spin on the real news, which can be found on genuine news sites, such as BBC Jersey. Other news sites are available. This is not one of them. None of the individuals mentioned have ever said anything quite like the words attributed to them. Which is perhaps a pity.

A major inquiry with powers to demand documents and force witnesses to answer questions could be held into "golden implants" to departing civil servants. The Chief Minister's department has refused to answer questions from the JEP about payouts to top staff who leave States jobs. A spokesman said "It would be an unwarranted invasion of their privacy and we are not going to reveal who signed off their contracts with what has been known as a 'tits-up' clause." It recently emerged that two Chief Officers retired early with "golden implants" rumoured to cost around £800,000.

Dr Susan Turnbull, Jersey's Medical Officer of Health, said: "Chief Officers who take early retirement with 'golden implants' will naturally have been worried that they could be at risk of the facts becoming public, and the information emerging through the local media has been conflicting. We can give a reassurance that there is no evidence that will be forthcoming of any risk of the truth getting out."

But Deputy Roy Le Hérissier says a formal inquiry might be the only way to get the facts. "It's finally time to tear down the fence of secrecy," he said, "and I know all about fences having sat on several for a number of years."

News from Durrell. Last year saw the silverback gorilla Sy-Vret leave the wildlife park. He had been there since 1993, but because he had not bred for eight years, he was sent to his new home with a bachelor group of gorillas at La Moye de Prison in November.

Jersey-based designers are being asked how the design of new buildings could reduce crime as part of new proposals. Jeremy Castle, Architectural Liaison Officer in the States of Jersey Police, said buildings should be designed with drawbridges activated remotely by iPhones, moats with piranha fish, and CCTV on turrets with the option of computer sensor automated systems pouring down boiling oil on burglars trying to gain access.

A Waterfront report which said that the Esplanade Quarter project would cost taxpayers £50 million was kept quiet by ministers when it was delivered in 2008, it has been claimed. It has been rumoured that Ministers were hoping the report would have sunk without trace, rather like the proposed Waterfront tunnel. The assistant Treasury Minister, Deputy Eddie Noel that any losses described in the report would have been for the developer, not the States.

An informed source says "Now the previous preferred developers are now out of the picture, the scheme has effectively been cut in half and the States of Jersey Development Company will develop it themselves without a third party, so any losses will be for the States, not the developer, and they'll only be £25 million."

Jersey politician supports narrow gauge railway trial. A Jersey politician said he would like to see the island's old railway track restored. It comes after UK railway enthusiast Nigel Harris suggested bringing trains back to Jersey running from the old Corbiere Station towards St Aubin.

St Brelade Deputy Sean Power said it was a good idea. He said: "There are lots of people out there who would like to see me passing by and giving them a cheering wave but can't because they have maybe mobility issues or disability problems. A small train on a narrow gauge like that would possibly afford them a chance to just see me as I chugged past, I think it would be good. I'd like to jump on the bandwagon."

Jersey used to have a railway until 1936 when the last train, the Terry Le Sueur Express ran between St Aubin and Corbiere. Despite its name, it turned into something of a slowcoach, and is now on display at the Steam Museum, alongside other vintage vehicles.

Brief TV Reviews - Sherlock and the Musicals

2012-01-12T12:45:00.002Z

BBC1 - Sunday. The Hounds of Baskerville. A brilliant twist on the tale by Mark Gatiss, using names from the original, but cleverly making Dr Stapleton a woman, and Seton isn't a convict, although he is responsible for mysterious morse-like code. I felt there was a lot more fun to this episode than last weeks, and the location filming gave it a dense creepy atmosphere at night, and a feeling of the remote wilderness by day.

Some nods to the last show, where the picture of Sherlock wearing a deer-stalker kind of hat (only done to hide his face, and not even his hat) is now the newspaper standard image for him,. This was rather a neat mocking of the fact that is now how the character is often seen in the original Conan Doyle stories, despite only wearing a deerstalker in the Sidney Paget illustrations, and only those set in the country - in towns, he is depicted wearing a top hat.

There were also a couple of distant shots of Holmes standing on a tor which were extremely nicely done. The village and the pub did have a small whiff of Avenger land; I could imagine John Steed turning up there. But that was fine; it worked well. And he cleverly worked in the line: "Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound". Who really uses the term "hound" nowadays? There's an extremely clever reason why - it is an acronym!

BBC3: The Musical - all on the hits of the 1980s, with shows like Cats, Starlight Express, Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, Me and My Girl - lots of these were groundbreaking shows in terms of choreography and performance, breaking the conventions of the Broadway musical.

Even Me and My Girl (a more traditional show) did not have the high kicking line up of American ladies which the Americans thought should be part and parcel of a musical - as Stephen Fry memorably described, an American told him the men wanted to see a chorus line "kick ass"!

What also came across as clear was that theatre critics of that time really didn't want to understand these shows, and had a complete disconnect from the public, and got it almost completely wrong. Starlight Express was light and fluffy, and criticized for not being serious; Les Miserables was criticized for being too serious and gloomy - miserable! The critics seemed stuck in an American musical past, while the public had moved on, and wanted something different.

In fact, Les Miserables was slammed by the critics at the same time as it was selling out at the box office. And unlike the more traditional musicals, this show had a world-wide and translatable appeal to the non-English speaking world. It has characters and a strong emotional heart in the story, which have been taken over very well from Victor Hugo's novel, as well as fantastically rousing tunes.

It is interesting also to reflect on the musicals that didn't make it. Mutiny on the Bounty with David Essex didn't prove a draw despite its star. Chess had about one really good song, and never really took off before the Cold War ended. Cliff Richard performing in Dave Clark's Time The Musical was hi-tech, and strangely weird, lots of dazzle, pushing the boundaries of technology but with nothing to remember. It also featured a disembodied holographic head of Laurence Olivier as a Godlike figure (not too far removed from his self-image) which went wrong on occasion, putting his eyes where his lips were.

What they all didn't have was Trevor Nunn. Cats, Star Light Express and Les Miserables all saw his sure hand in the direction, and he seemed to have an uncanny knack of knowing how to get extraordinarily difficult shows to work, in which the boundaries of actor and dancer became blurred. And Cameron Mackintosh as producer seems have known how to pick winners, although he later had a few flops, such as Moby Dick.

The slow burn success story was Willie Russell's Blood Brothers, a musical which failed to achieve success on its first run, and then came back and gradually built up a following in the provinces before triumphantly coming to the West End. It is now one of the longest-running musical productions in history. Unlike the panorama and spectacle of the other shows, it is relatively low key, more of a domestic and homely drama, tightly focused on the family group, but showed how you don't need acrobatics and special stage effects to make a musical that works.

It could only happen - part 2

2012-01-11T11:46:00.001Z

"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it yourself!" (Emerson)

After "It could only happen in America", as promised, I've redressed some of the balance.

This follow on piece comes the 1984 edition of "Thinks", here's a lighter piece from the editor, Ken Webb.

The quotation at the top of this page is a "filler". Quite often there would be a small amount of space left which was not filled in the magazine, and Ken and I would look for some suitable quotation to fill it. Emerson is a good source of these, and my personal favourite is "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines".

I came across it with a preface to a story by Isaac Asimov called "The Dying Night", and loved it ever since. It is a perfect put down to pettifogging nit-pickers. He wrote:

Some years before this next story was written, two colleagues and I joined forces in writing a large and complicated textbook in biochemistry for medical students. We spent days-literally-on the galley proofs, and frequently we came across minor inconsistencies. We would spell a chemical one way here and another way there; here a hyphen and there no hyphen; here one phrase and yon an alternate.

We despaired of getting everything perfectly concordant and one of us finally said, 'To quote Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."' We latched on to this with ebullient joy and thereafter, whenever the proof-reader questioned a small inconsistency, we would write 'Emerson!' in the margin and let it go.

So here now is the extract from "Thinks!":

IT COULD HAPPEN ONLY IN THE SOVIET UNION

Russians ban Trots

Soviet authorities have ordered Western Embassy staff to stop jogging in the streets of Moscow. They claim it was disrupting the city's normal life!

Running too fast for the K.G.B. to keep up with them?

IT COULD HAPPEN ONLY ON THE CONTINENT

A not so fast lady

A couple making love in a carriage of the Orient Express delayed the train for some forty minutes. She caught her foot in the emergency brake!

Coitus interruptus?

IT COULDN'T HAPPEN HERE

2p or not 2p.

A subject of some delicacy is the usage of a Loo - particularly when the Loo in question is in a space capsule - more particularly when there is a crew of both sexes - yet even more particularly when it does not function!

Such was the problem which recently faced the American Space Administration. They spent some months overcoming the deficiency at a cost of ten million dollars.

To think we still call it spending a penny!

IT DID HAPPEN HERE

As though we men did not know.

Some interesting facts have come to light in the recent discussions on providing new Telephone facilities in the Channel Islands.

Do you know that every man, woman and child in Jersey makes on average 650 phone calls a year? The comparative figure for Guernsey is 590.

This will come as no surprise to men with teenage children - hence the reason they can never make a call on their own telephone.

It also leaves we men wondering how - with the length of each call made by children and spouse - there could ever be sufficient hours in the year.

Electoral Commission - A Few Comments

2012-01-10T09:00:00.001Z

There are strong moves afoot to get Sir Philip Bailhache as the Chairman of the Review body for Electoral Reform. I am at a loss how this will lead to an independent review, as he has made his view very well known in his manifesto. Here are a selection of statements made by him on the subject.

I would note that while he says "as recommended by the Clothier panel", he is NOT prepared to take on board the Clothier panel's recommendations that the Constables be excluded from the States. In other words, he is prepared to use Clothier to back his arguments, only as long as it suits him, and if not, Clothier can be ignored. So that argument - let us follow the wisdom of Clothier - is entirely spurious.

In fact the Bailhache vision of the States is pretty clear on some matters, less so on others. He is very coy about whether Senators should remain or not - in fact, while he mentions Deputies and Constables, the only thing he has to say about Senators is that a 30 Senators Island wide mandate would be impossible to manage.

But the Constables remain, and the Island moves to superconstituences. Now that's more or less what has been proposed before by Roy Le Hérissier, and it got thrown out. I think that the recent Census highlights the disparity between Deputies and the number of people they represent, and larger constituencies - as introduced in Guernsey, are an obvious way to go, amalgamating various Parishes. So I am in substantial agreement with this idea, as it gets what is important - voter parity - into the equation, and if Deputies represent a district rather than a Parish, the Constable can fight the Parish corner. There needs to be a balance.

Why has this been thrown out in the past? Well, the Deputies, in particular, often do not want to lose that Parish connection. John Le Fondre has stated this to me quite clearly, and I suspect he is articulating a commonly held view. Deputies are engaged at a Parish level, and a larger constituency would break some of that connection - although there is no reason why they should not remain involved in Parishes in which they live as private people, they will lose the political element.

Having looked at many elections over the years, I would say that as a rule of thumb, votes for Deputies are often made primarily on how they are viewed within the Parish, not within the States. Provided you are not extremely right or left wing in the States to the detriment of Parish matters, political leanings in the States Chamber, and where you vote on GST etc don't count for half as much as how you supported the Battle of Flowers, or opposed a planning application, and attended Parish Assemblies. Once that link has been broken, Deputies will be more vulnerable, they won't have the smaller base constituency that they enjoy, and have to appeal to a wider range of voters geographically and Island wide issues will matter more, as they do with the Senatorial elections.

So we can see at least one reason why the proposals have been thrown out in the past. That is why Daniel Wimberley proposed an independent commission. The States are not good at making their own mind up, and whether they will be any better if Sir Philip is in charge of the whole matter remains to be seen. He did not manage to carry the States with him on the open vote for Chief Minister, and this will be an open debate, and open vote, so he may be surprised to realise that despite his call in the Hustings for compromise, that does not come so easily.

The other matter is whether or not he is suitable having stated his own opinions so clearly. An independent body would be able to review submissions on merit, but he has already given his own submission, so he is not independent. And I think spurious arguments, drawing on only selective parts of Clothier for support, should be dropped. I think Clothier got it largely wrong on some issues as Constituency boundaries and voter parity, where the Guernsey programme of reform, the Harwood report, got it right.

So I am against his chairing the reform commission because he has too clearly stated his own views, and I think has compromised any independence or impartiality by doing so. On the other hand, his proposal for around 10 larger constituencies is one that I would personally support, and have done for years, and my own submission would be very much along those lines.

What I think also muddies the waters is his view that "the devil makes work for idle hands", and the dysfunctional nature of the States is due to too many members. I think it is due to too little democracy, too little participation and inclusion by the previous Councils of Ministers.

When I was at school, the captain of a football team would be able to choose, and would choose his chums. That's not a good basis for "team spirit", what that is a basis for is what C.S. Lewis called "the inner ring", a cozy clique of individuals where favouritism reigns. If there is any divisions within the States, that is the first thing that must be addressed. Reducing numbers does not mean this will end, as it is part of a malign ethos that has developed within the States, and let's hope the new Assembly can see its way to more consultation and participation.

If I may be permitted another anecdote - my late Aunt always tended to play favourites with her children, and she was treated as a favourite by her parents. My mother was not, and perhaps as a result, she went out of her way to ensure that myself and my sister were treated equally fairly. Favouritism, in team games, or in interpersonal relationships, is in fact an easy option; it requires effort and commitment to ensure fairness instead.

Philip Bailhache: Manifesto:

The reputation of the States in the Island has seldom been lower. Too much time is wasted by the discussion of trivial matters, and too much energy is wasted on personal antagonisms instead of concentrating on important issues affecting the well being of the Island. Following the introduction of ministerial government, there are now too many members of the States. The devil makes work for idle hands. Constitutional reform is urgent but it has so far proved difficult to find a consensus as to what change is necessary.

As was recommended by the Clothier Panel, the number of members should be reduced to 42. How does one get there? I do not support the removal of the Constables from the States. The Constables represent an important link with the parishes. It would diminish the office of Constable if they ceased to be in the States. With 12 Constables there would then be 30 other seats. There are ways of dividing up those seats which require discussion. Once the States have found a solution, it should be put to the people for their approval in a referendum.

St Helier Hustings

In my view we do not need an electoral commission costing two hundred thousand pounds. I am sick and tired of the employment of expensive experts and consultants because States members and their officials cannot or will not work out the solutions for themselves. The answer to the problem of constitutional reform is staring us in the face.

We all know that there are too many members; we should reduce the number to 42. Not everyone, but the majority of people want the Constables to remain as links between the parishes and the States and to ensure that each parish, however small, has a representative in our parliamentary assembly. That only leaves a decision as to how to divide the 30 remaining seats among 10, 12 or 15 larger constituencies. A larger constituency gives some of the advantages of the Island-wide mandate but without the disadvantages of a raft of candidates who cannot be properly questioned. With a smaller number you could really test them and see what they stood for and what their abilities were. With larger constituencies there will always be an election, and politics would be forced into the centre because candidates would have to appeal to a broader range of electors.

St Brelade

I am standing for election because I want to see reform of the constitution of the States and an end to the bickering and time-wasting that disfigure our parliamentary assembly and have caused it to sink so low in public esteem.

St Mary

Reform of the constitution of the States is, in my view, at the very heart of the solution to what has gone wrong with our assembly and why it no longer enjoys respect in the Island. No one has done more than your Constable to try to find a solution, but on every occasion there is a coalition of interests that defeats the proposition. There are those who favour the Island wide mandate; there are those who want the Constables out of the States, or kept in the States; there are those who want to keep the parish deputies; there are those in St Helier who quite like being elected by only 200 or 300 votes. If no one will compromise in the interests of the Island, we will never find a solution, and the shambles that we have at the moment will continue.

There are two important preliminary questions. (1) Should we reduce the number of members? (2) Should the Constables remain in the States? My answer to both is Yes. I believe that almost everyone accepts that we have too many members given that we now have ministerial government. We should reduce the number to 42. And the Constables should stay because they are a vital link with the parishes. Removing the Constables would diminish the office and make them junior to the deputy. Imagine a contentious issue before the Parish Assembly presided over by the Constable - parishioners vote to oppose a proposition to build a multi-storey car park at the Devil's Hole - and the Constable says "I will now have to ask the deputy to convey our views to the States". The Constable should continue as chief of the parish, and have the authority to represent the parish in the States.

This is important. Some people say that it is absurd to have the Constable of St Mary representing 1600 people in the States while the Constable of St Helier represents 29,000 people. My answer is that this is the price for supporting the parish system - and it is a price worth paying. The friendly rivalry between the parishes is good and wholesome, and encourages efficiency and cleanliness. People are rightly proud of their parish. We should not undermine the institution by removing the constable from the States.

I am now going to lose some votes in St Mary but I want to be straight with you. If we keep the Constables in the States, the only practical way of reducing numbers is to have larger constituencies - somewhere between 10 and 15 constituencies with 2 or 3 members in each. That would mean that there would be no deputy of St Mary. But it would also mean that there was always an election in every constituency and that candidates would have to appeal to the political middle ground. The electors of St Mary would remain an important part of a new larger constituency, and hustings would have to be held here as in the past because candidates would want your vote.

St Clement

The Clothier Panel recommended that the Assembly should be reduced to 40 or 42 and we should accept that recommendation. How should we get there? My own view is that the Constables should stay because they are an important link with the parishes. If they stay, that leaves 30 other members to be elected from the other constituencies. Many people like the Island wide mandate, but 30 senators would be impossible. Imagine 70 or 80 candidates on this platform. I think that there should be between 10 and 15 larger constituencies. This would draw politics into the centre, because candidates would have to appeal to a broader mix of people.

It could only happen in America

2012-01-09T16:55:00.001Z

As the darkling skies fled before the deepening dusk, and the sun went to its slumbering sleep behind the cityscape of sheer and vivid rectanguloid outlines, glimmering in the gloom, and the sodium lights began to shine with sulphurous yellow, I decided to post this piece from the 1984 edition of "Thinks", here's a lighter piece from the editor, Ken Webb.

My American friends should take note that it was followed by other "It could only happen..." shorts on other countries which will be inflicted on the readers of this blog tomorrow. So they don't need to feel singled out!

The worst opening of a novel has been suggested as "It was a dark and stormy night" by Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton at the beginning of his 1830 book "Paul Clifford". The rest goes on:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest named after the aforementioned opening was started in 1982 by Professor Scott E. Rice, Professor of English at San Jose State University. The first year got only three entries, but when it went public in 1983, it got 10,000 entries. Here is Ken's report of that year:

IT COULD ONLY HAPPEN IN AMERICA!

A professor of English from the State University of San Jose, California, organised a competition for the worst opening sentence of a novel.

Strange to relate, there was world wide interest and no fewer than 10,000 entries flooded in. (Editor of "THINKS" please take note!)

An American (who else) won the first prize for this abysmal effort:-

"The Camel died suddenly on the Second Day, and Selena fretted sulkily and, buffing her already impeccable nails - not for the first time since the journey began - pondered snidely if this would dissolve into a vignette of minor inconveniences like all the other holidays spent with Basil."

My personal preference was for the entry of the winner of the second prize, an Englishman, who commenced a spy novel as follows:-

"It came to him in a cocaine rush as he took the Langley exit that if Aldrich had told Filipov about Hancock only Tulfengian could have known that the photograph which Wagner had shown to Maximov on the jolting S-Bahn was not the photograph of Kessler that Bradford had found at the dark, sinister house in the Sehillerstrasse the. day that Straub told Percival that the man on the bridge had not been Aksakov ..." .

He managed to keep going for a few more score words before coming - mercifully - to the all important full stop.

Such was the international flavour of this competition the third prize winner hailed from West Germany. How's this for a snappy start to a romantic novel?

"She flung her feverishly disquieted body onto the cool camnbrie of the Waldorf Astoria bed and knew, oh yes, sobbingly knew, that her love was lost, that her pearly teeth absent heartedly , in a sense, began gnawing the silky pillow her golden dreams had so recently lavishly blossomed on."

There's hope for the Editor yet.

Giant Mistakes

2012-01-08T23:22:00.000Z

‎"And there were giants in those days..." says the book of Genesis. And there is on YouTube a video to prove it - a giant footprint, allegedly millions of years ago, found in South African granite.

"It is estimated to be between 200 million and 3 Billion years old because of our current understanding of the formation of granites in Earth's history."

Which explains why there aren't any giants around now - they were clearly ignorant of the fact that granite is not a sedimentary rock and is a very hot rock. To put a footprint in it (if you somehow could) would be the last thing you would ever do. Nor would it congeal around you, because granite is a plutonic rock, not a volcanic one. That means it is formed deep underground, high pressure, and very hot - it would incinerate a foot, if one good get deep underground, which one cannot. The liquid state of granite is over 1,000 Celsius.

As tectonic plates shift, rocks that were deep underground like granites get pushed up to the surface, but unlike volcanic rocks, that's not where they are formed. The process is called "uplift" - the pressure causes faults and folds in the rocks, then erosion wears away softer sedimentary rocks, until the deep rocks are visible at the surface.

The rock itself then must be a natural formation, although some people suggest it may have been "enhanced" with a chisel to sharpen parts of it - the toes.
.
It is strange that people want to believe something like this. The more prosaic facts of geology have a vast timescale, where human beings come in very much at the last minutes. Far from being "lords of creation", they are a tiny blip in time. If the 4 1/2 billion years of the planet were compressed into one 24 hour day, then single cell organisms only appeared at 4 am. Multicelled animals evolved around 9 am. And dinosaurs started roaming the earth around 11 pm, very late in the history of the planet. Human beings - the last 30 seconds! 11.59 pm and 30 seconds.

Biblical Creationists don't like this at all, as they want a literal chronology from Eden, which is why they rejoice at anything, however preposterous, that they can use as a stick to attack this chronology. The flood, of course, wiped out the dinosaurs, but that means you need human beings around at the same time as dinosaurs, like Rachel Welsh in the Hammer film One Million Years BC.

And alongside them are the Ancient Astronaut, or Atlantis supercivilisation believers, who also want anything that can confound the existing chronology. You often need, after all, lots of time for supercivilisations to rise and fall leaving barely a trace, especially if they were wiped out in some kind of nuclear war, leaving no advanced artifacts or any background radiation.

In a way, it is a reversion to the universe of Aristotle, which had man at the centre, and a stationary earth around which everything moved. The planets included the sun and moon, because planet meant wanderer, and unlike fixed stars, they moved. Aristotle knew that the earth was round - the notion of a flat earth was a myth, largely propagated by Washington Irving and his contemporaries. But the curvature of the earth, and a pretty accurate measurement of the diameter of the earth by the Greeks, was known since ancient times.

Anyone who sails must see that the earth cannot be flat, the only question which Columbus asked was how large. He thought it was a much smaller earth, which is why we have the West Indies, as he imagined he'd landed on a remote area close to India.

The stationary earth was actually very logically thought out. Firstly, we do not notice any sense of spin on the earth. But Aristotle had another argument to play - the Tower. Imagine climbing a very tall tower, and dropping objects from it. As they move down, the earth is spinning under them, so they will not end up directly below the tower - the ground there will have spun onwards as they were falling. But, as we know, they fall directly under the tower, so clearly the earth cannot be rotating. It's a very neat argument.

Galileo countered it with an argument from ships. If a ship is racing along with a strong wind in its sails, and someone throws a heavy ball (so as not to be blown by wind) across the width of the ship, the ship has moved onwards as the ball is in motion, so by Aristotle's principles, the ball should travel both across the ship, and move towards the back of the ship, moving in a diagonal, because the ship moves on once it is in the air. But of course, the ball just travels directly across - its motion is relative to the ship, not relative to the surrounding sea. The frame of reference in which it moves is the ship, not the ship on the sea. It took a long time for people to grasp relative motion well, and even when railways started, there was a notion that air would be sucked out of the carriages as the train picked up speed.

The idea that the earth was not stationary, and the sun was the center around which it moved (albeit in an ellipse not a circle) was a profound shock, and I think people still like to cling on to a vestige of that. They can't now believe in a stationary earth at the centre of the universe, but they can place humanity on a pedestal, at the apex of creation. That's a very strong impetus.

Even early ideas of evolution tended to see evolution as a ladder, progressing up rung by rung, from bacteria and simple creatures to land creatures, mammals, apes, and finally mankind. It is a wholly misleading picture because evolution is more like a bush, with lots of branches all reaching the same height - after all, the bacteria are still here. Some branches die out relatively quickly, and we may be one of them, which in today's climate of uncertainly about the effects of climate change is something few people want to contemplate. So when anything comes along that asserts that conventional pictures of the world's history are wrong, critical thinking falls away, and the "evidence" is greedily latched onto. Perhaps the step to true maturity will be when we do recognise our small place in the history of time.

The Starry Messengers

2012-01-07T09:28:00.001Z

A poem for Epiphany and wise men who study the stars...

The Starry Messengers

Look for the stars, night shining, the fabric of creation
O behold, look at the signs, the portents of every nation
Listen and hear, stars approach and draw near
A conjunction of glad adoration.

Seek the pattern, that over all things so wondrously reigns
The spheres turning, in synchronicity so softly sustains!
Here wisdom has been, we travel to where it is seen
Unfolding what now fate ordains

Look for the stars, night shining, wondrous pattern now see
Promise above, now falling to earth, unfolding to be
Not yet tears of grief, but a sign for belief
And a mercy that will set you free

Seek the pattern, when tempests their warfare are waging,
And nation fights nation, and all about death is raging
That this may cease, and stars portent peace
And friendships once more be engaging

Look for the stars, in the darkness of storm clouds abounding
Words of power open the curtain of night so confounding
Let there be light, away the darkness of night
Stars shine with moonlight surrounding.

Funny Old World 7

2012-01-06T09:50:00.002Z

Health Warning: what follows is not news, any more than the middle section of Private Eye is news, or The Impressionist is news, or Spitting Image was news. It is a light hearted spin on the real news, which can be found on genuine news sites, such as BBC Jersey. Other news sites are available. This is not one of them. None of the individuals mentioned have ever said anything quite like the words attributed to them. Which is perhaps a pity.

Package holiday days 'are over' says Jersey tour operator. Valerie Singleton, managing director of the Channel Island Travel Group, said she believes the days of standard package holidays are over. "The days when people would get in a cardboard box, allow themselves to be sealed in with brown paper and sticky back plastic, and have the whole package sent to the Channel Islands are over," she said. John Noakes, KPMG's head of travel, leisure and tourism, agrees. "More and more travellers opt for self-packaging online and niche solutions," he said, "and no one wants Blue Peter packaging where the tour operation prepared a standard package in advance when you can go directly to the Amazon online."

PROPOSED three-story development on Petit Port hill was described by angry neighbours as a 'huge glass box that will ruin the headland' yesterday morning. Concerns for privacy were other issues raised by the residents of the Petit Port Close residents committee at the meeting. "If people live in a huge glass box," said one resident, the late Mary Whitehouse, "there will be complaints about them exposing themselves to their neighbours. It's indecent."

Passengers travelling from Portsmouth by ferry have arrived in St Helier harbour in Jersey after spending 24 hours at sea. The Commodore Clipper was not able to dock at the Jersey port after the captain decided the strong winds and big seas made it too dangerous. The passengers on board were given free food and drinks, and a sing-a-long was organised.

Slow, slow, slow your boat,
Rough waves make you scream
Ghastly, ghastly, ghastly, ghastly
Sadly not a dream

The passengers on board all belonged to the Jersey Union Unite, and they said that the increase in food and drink offered by the States of Jersey was derisory, and there was more stormy waters ahead before they would strike anchor.

A giant wave was also spotted off the east coast of Jersey, but the Chief Minister's office refused to say who was waving goodbye, and how high their wave off was because it would breach King Neptune's privacy.

Fisheries officers will talk to anglers about conservation and regulations when they visit popular fishing areas in Jersey. The Environment department said while most leisure fishermen stick to the rules to conserve fish stocks, there was still a need for fisheries officers to visit popular areas. They would enforce the regulations and carry out educational activities such as handing out i-Spy Fish booklets. The economic development minister has approved the appointment of two fisheries officers, Henry Turbut and Hayley Haddock, to do the out-of-hours visits.

Minister says Jersey media reports were 'exaggerated'. Senator Le Marquand said he was issuing the statement to correct the worst exaggerations about his similarity to the Television character Mr Bean. "The media reports have been misleading in places," he said, "and I would like to set the record straight that I do not have a teddy bear that I take on holiday with me."

New year honours were handed out to Islanders. For those unfamiliar with the terms, and what they mean, here is a brief guide:

LVO = Low Value Objects. The Chief of Staff at Jersey's Government House got one of these from amazon.royal.com. There's currently a move afoot by the British government to stop them in the Channel Islands.

CBE = Cheesy Beef Eaters. This is not available for vegetarians. Recipients carry pikes and wear silly hats.

MBE = Multi-Band Emitter. People who get this like to tell other people about their honour. A lot.

OBE = Overtaken By Events. Former Chief Minister Terry Le Sueur received this.

St Aubin's Harbour in Jersey is to be cleared of mud. Boat owners had complained it was preventing them from working on their boats and was spoiling people's enjoyment of the port. A mound of mud will be cleared from the harbour in March, followed by a complete dredging starting in September. In the meantime, a protest is being carried on by boat owner Roy Deeming, who has staged a production of his very own boating song.

Mud, mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
I've had promises, promises, all sounding hollow
But the States just delay, and wallow in mud
And St Aubin's harbour, it is not so nice
Nothing yet done, when push comes to shove
But only glib talking, and endless advice
Trickling down, the words from above
Like thunder the harbour re-echoed the sound
Of politicians delay, behind the ears wet
I tell in truth, and my boat is aground
A picture in truth just for La Baguette

Now more muddy banks began to convene
The entrance so difficult, not very wide
I wonder now what am I to say of the scene
Of boats now stranded on mud till high tide
And anchors away, with an ear-splitting sposh
And only uplifted with help of a crane
Boat owners despair, and give up a sigh
Singing along with this haunting refrain

Mud, mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
I've had promises, promises, all sounding hollow
But the States just delay, and wallow in mud

TV Review: The Royals who Rescued the Monarchy

2012-01-05T15:06:00.000Z

The last two nights, I watched "The Royals who Rescued the Monarchy", a fascinating study of how George and Mary both innovated the monarchy and moved it back to more Victorian moral values.

The first part looked at the way in which the stricter moral behaviour was in a way a reaction against the lifestyle of Edward VII, with his mistresses (before and after he became king).

The first World War, and the anti-German sentiments that engendered also saw the change of name to the House of Windsor, and the monarchy connecting directly with the people, at official events, but also visiting miners in Wales, and other similarly depressed areas. Unlike the autocratic and remote monarchies elsewhere in Europe and Russia, which were largely crumbling after the Great War, the British monarchy established a much more direct connection between themselves and the people, away from the aristocratic land owners. In public, George V realised that he could not be remote and autocratic.

At home, however, George V could act like an absolute monarch, and did, regimenting and bullying his children. A photo shows the children in children's "sailor outfits", looking for all the world like the regimented children from the Von Trapp family in "The Sound of Music". Perhaps it is not surprising because like Captain Von Trapp, George V came from a strict and orderly Naval background.

Innovations included the first Radio broadcasts at Christmas, the tours of both George V and his wife Mary (and not the monarch alone, as had often been the case) to meet ordinary people, the presentation of cups at popular sporting occasions, and the invention of the OBE - a medal for ordinary people rather than already privileged ones, and visits to the dominions as Emperor and Empress. All these held the monarchy in good stead as the crowned heads of Europe came tumbling down. The Tsar in fact looked for refuge in England, but the unpopularity of him in the British press led to George V pressing hard and getting his initial offer refused.

We may think that Katherine Middleton as a commoner was a first, but in fact marrying outside the Royal families of Europe was a major first - their son Bertie (later George VI) married Lady Elizabeth Bowler-Lytton, who was not of a Royal bloodline. That was a major break with the past, where Royal always married Royal.

A curious omission - the King was supposed to be increasingly fonder of the well-behaved Bertie rather than Edward, yet other accounts show Bertie's speech impediment was not helped by bullying by his father. Also interesting - the funeral showed the crowds, and the voiceover mentioned the great esteem in which the late King had been held, but evidently the Government of the day did not entirely have the same faith in the crowd - there were countless policemen in evidence.

Lovely moments - the description of the King's voice on radio by one commentator - "he spoke in a mellow voice that appeared to have been marinated in an ancient whiskey, as indeed, it probably had. In fact what was good was the sound archive, that you could actually how George VI spoke.

The "time bomb", as the commentator pointed out, was the emphasis on a moral Royal family, no place for the playboy style with mistresses of Edward VII. The second part saw the impact of that on Edward VIII, wanting to marry a divorced woman, and of course one can't help see the impact of that on today's Royal family, from Princess Margaret onwards.

In the second part of "The Royals who Rescued the Monarchy", the theme was how Mary helped shape the Monarchy. Originally May (of Teck), she changed her name to Mary when her husband became George VI.

It was good, but the first half-hour was rather padded by some identical clips and comments from the first part yesterday - obviously some of the historical clips would be the same, yet some of the modern interviews were also word for word the same.

But later on there was some fascinating colour footage from George V and Mary's 1935 Silver Jubilee procession. It was striking how the brilliant reds of coaches and coats, for instance, contrasted with the rather dull clothes of the crowd, in a way that black and white footage misses. I was also struck by how people waved white cloth handkerchiefs or hats in the air - so many men with hats - today it would be small flags on sticks bought for the occasion, as hardly anyone wears a hat, and paper hankies do not wave well!

The last half hour was new stuff because it was after the death of George V. I would have been disappointed if it had not mentioned Mary's kleptomania - when visiting, people with any inkling of her would hide any valuables, or she would tell them how good they would match one she had at home, and wasn't it a shame they were parted! And they did - unlike George VI who was a stamp collecting bore, she loved antiques, and also the history behind them. Mary was clearly brighter than him, and made sure the young Elizabeth had a better reading list than that prescribed by her mother - 19 PG Wodehouse novels! She also imbued Elizabeth with a sense of duty, which I think possibly only Princess Anne has really inherited from her. Her final act was to save the name "House of Windsor" when Mountbatten wanted to rename the Royal family as the "House of Mountbatten" - he came across as rather an egoistic snob hungry for privilege, which of course, he was.

It is interesting that she refused Wallis Simpson the title HRH, and Queen Elizabeth stripped it from Princess Diana - both cases indicating Royal disapproval. Quite a bit of footage of Wallis Simpson and Edward, but I don't really know why the commentary persisted in saying he was "handsome" - he clearly had some kind of thyroid condition, a case of goiter if ever I saw one, which became more pronounced as he aged. But the chief mark against him was that he wanted a private life, and quite a hedonistic one, and as a future king, he was not allowed to have one. His less formal manner and latest suits must have seemed very modern, but while the clothes of George and Mary have a formal, timeless, quality, Edward's now quite dated style of clothes, his often pale looking face, and the slightly jerky film make him seem more like a relative of Buster Keaton.

After the abdication, there was another first, Queen Mary attended the Coronation of her son, now George VI (a nod to the legacy of his father), and there are lovely shots of the whole family, including Mary smiling, on the balcony of Buckingham Palace before a huge crowd below. Usually dowager Queens would stay away from the new King's enthronement, but her presence served to remind people of the continuity, and the fact that the Royal family was indeed a family, not one autocratic ruler. In many ways, she mellowed when not under the thumb of George V, and rather than incessantly boring shooting parties, could get out to the theatre more often.

In the Second World War the dowager Queen Mary was evacuated to her niece's house at Badminton, where she waged war on the ivy, getting anyone she could to tear bits of it off the house. She also wanted to chop down the cedar tree outside her window, and only stopped mentioning it when her niece said it would come down "over my dead body". But while she was dripping with jewels, she still had a common touch, and would get her chauffeur to pick up any serviceman she noted walking by in the nearby town and give them a lift, whether British or Americans, much to their surprise! She also took time to give the future Queen Elizabeth lessons in the history and meaning of paintings and ornaments in Royal Palaces like Windsor, and together with George VI led to Elizabeth's strong sense of duty.

Kenya: Debt and Debate

2012-01-04T08:34:00.001Z

I've had permission to reproduce here an email from Ed Le Quesne about Kenya's economy, and also the comments on the state of play by his son John on the figures. Ed notes that:

John was born in Kenya but left with us when he was 6 months old. He came with me on a visit to Kenya last June. We have lively debates about how far Kenya is the author of its own problems or still suffering a colonial hangover.

Technical terms used are "internal debt" and "external debt". These are

External debt (or foreign debt) is that part of the total debt in a country that is owed to creditors outside the country. The debtors can be the government, corporations or private households. The debt includes money owed to private commercial banks, other governments, or international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

Internal debt owed by a government (money a government borrows from its citizens) is part of the country's national debt. It is a form of fiat creation of money, in which the government obtains cash not by printing it, but by borrowing it. The money created is in the form of treasury securities or securities borrowed from the central bank. These may be traded but will only rarely be spent on goods and services. In this way, the expected increase in inflation due to the increase in national wealth is lower than if the government had simply printed the money and increased the more liquid forms of wealth (i.e., the money supply).

Public borrowing may become costlier for the government especially when it resorts to public borrowing by issuing bonds and debentures. Such bonds and debentures carry a high rate of interest to the extent of 15 percent. The impact of such interest payments may develop manifold and still worsen in the future if the government stick to the same policy of borrowing in the years to come.

This means that the "internal debt" is to some extent misleading. It is generated by the government issuing treasury bonds (and the like) on which interest is paid and while it is structured so that it can only be used internally, it can be used as a form of collateral for external debt.

For instance, in Kenya, treasury bonds are restricted to: (1) Resident or non-resident individuals and/or corporate bodies who hold an account with a local commercial bank (2) Resident or non-resident individuals and/or corporate bodies who may not have an account with a local commercial bank but invests as a nominee of a commercial bank or investment bank in Kenya. However, there is also this note:

Treasury Bills are not traded at the Nairobi Stock Exchange. However, investors may pledge them as collateral (or for lien creation) security against credit facilities (loans), and may also be transferred among holders of CDS accounts. CDS Statements are adjusted accordingly to reflect these transactions. Commercial banks also use them as collateral for liquidity management through Repurchase Agreements (Repos) and Intraday Liquidity Facility (ILF).

Here are the emails:

Jambo,

You may have read about the pressures on Jersey to bring in a law to stop vulture funds using the Jersey court to claim a large sum from Congo. As part of our response to the States consultation paper, Christians Together in Jersey invited Tim Jones from the Jubilee Debt Campaign to visit Jersey and talk about the debt issue, He was an excellent speaker and we have made our submission on this issue to the States and await their response

Tim has done detailed research recently on the debts owed by Zimbabwe. Some of these debts go back to loans to Ian Smith to maintain UDI in Southern Rhodesia! Others were given as they tried to rebuild the country. Jubilee Debt Campaign is calling for an audit of all their debts to judge whether they are legitimate.

I have much more information about Zimbabwe but I also asked about Kenya and got the reply below from their website

Kenya:
Total external debt: $6.8 billion
Total external debt payments: Kenya gives $364 million each year to the rich world in debt payments
Total debt payments: Kenya allocates $1.6 billion a year to paying debts, including domestic debt*
UK debt: Kenya owes approximately £20 million to the UK
Population: 33 million
Average income: $1.32 a day per person
Percentage of adults who can read and write: 74%**
Average life expectancy: 48 years
Total health spending: $430 million a year*
(All figures 2004, except * are 2005/06 and ** is 2003)

Debt cancellation status
Kenya is officially classed as a low-income country by the World Bank. It is considered to have a 'sustainable' debt: this is measured by the size of external debt in comparison to the value of exports, without taking into account domestic debt or what Kenya needs to spend on tackling poverty. It is therefore not eligible for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative or the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative. It is theoretically eligible for additional debt assistance from the UK, but has not met the conditions required to qualify.

What do campaigners say?
"We ask the Government of Kenya to be firm and united with debt campaigners in demanding 100% unconditional cancellation of Kenya's external debt, in order to release funds for the country's and people's sustainable development. Our debt is largely odious and illegitimate, contracted by a corrupt ruling elite and conveyors of the creditors out to make money. This is a matter of justice. We have paid this debt many times over, through direct monetary repayments, and through colonial and post colonial injustices by the creditors."
Njuki Githethwa, KENDREN (Kenya Debt Relief Network)

Last updated: April 2007

From Jubilee Debt Campaign website

It shows that Kenya is paying almost a million dollars a day to the rich world, or was in 2007, and little has changed since. This is more than their spending on health. This is why those who support the work Hezron is doing through our donations should also give some support to campaigns on the campaigns for justice that are run by a number of agencies, including Jubilee Debt Campaign, Oxfam, Christian Aid etc.

I certainly look forward to seeing the report that Tim produces in the next two months.

Best wishes

Ed

John Le Quesne:

It looks like Kenya's debt payments are mostly internal (total debt payments are $1.6 billion and external debt payments are only $364 million or less than 25% of this). This means that the total debt repayments wouldn't change that much even if all the debts were repaid. Also, bribery / corruption is estimated at $1 billion a year!

I also did a chart comparing Kenya's debts to those of the UK (based on World bank figures) for my benefit with all the debates we hear over here - I used 2010 figures in USD to take currency out of the equation. Kenya has less debts than us on all measures! Also our debt figures are potentially rather understated as if we included pension liabilities + PFI etc, the public debt % would at least double! The other difference is the GINI index which is a measure of the inequality of distribution. In this case 0 means everyone has the same and 1 means all the income is with just one person. In this case, the UK is a more equal society (btw Namibia is the worst, Sweden the best).

GDP
Kenya: 66 billion
UK: 2.17 trillion

GDP per capita
Kenya: $1,600
UK: $34800

Debt (external)
Kenya: 8.46 billion
UK: Not quoted

Debt per capita
Kenya: 210
UK: Not quoted

Revenue
Kenya: 7.02 billion
UK: $908 billion

Expenditure
Kenya: 9.04 billion
UK: $1140 billion

Budget surplus (% of GDP)
Kenya: -6.30%
UK: -10.30%

Imports
Kenya: 11.2 billion
UK: $563 billion

Exports
Kenya: 5.22 billion
UK: $410 billion

Public debt (% of GDP)
Kenya: 47.70%
UK: 76.10%

Distribution of wealth (GINI index)
Kenya: 42.5
UK: 34

Its a murky world.
John

January - The Diary of a Country Parson

2012-01-03T14:06:00.002Z

This year I'm looking at some of the entries in the "The Diary of a Country Parson". This was a diary kept by an English clergyman, James Woodforde (1740-1803). Woodforde lived in Somerset and Norfork, and kept a diary for 45 years recording all kind of ordinary incidents which paint a picture of the routines and concerns of what Ian Hislop terms "the middling folk" of 18th century rural England.

One of the notable events in January 1779 was a great deal of very bad weather, and as I write this, gale force wind and rain are lashing at the windows, so once more bad weather is the norm. Diaries such as this can provide useful records to show us the weather before scientific measurements became commonplace.

No weather yet as been quite as bad as that of January 1362, where the weather destroyed much of the coastline, as well as many lives, which seems similar in its devastation to October 1987 but more extreme:

Few great weather events in British history were as devastating as the "Grote Mandrenke", the great drowning of men, which took place in mid January 1362. A huge south-westerly gale originating in the Atlantic Ocean swept across Ireland, Britain, the Low Countries, and northern Germany, causing at least 25,000 deaths. The first warning of the storm came from Ireland, where homes and buildings in Dublin were devastated by the high winds. Next to experience the brunt of the storm was southern England, where thousands of trees were blown down. Massive damage was caused to the few high buildings, notably churches, and many spires or towers were destroyed. Most famously, the wooden spire of Norwich Cathedral fell through its roof. Worse was to come. As the storm reached the North Sea, it combined with high tides to produce the phenomenon most feared by coastal communities, a storm surge. Ports all along the east coast of England, and across the North Sea in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, were destroyed, as the power of the wind and waters changed the shape of the coastline.(1)

There is a reminder both in Parson Woodforde's writings and earlier that a changeable climate is not the prerogative of our own times, and climatic change - of whatever cause - can lead to devastating consequences. Weather forecasting is only as good as its interpretation, and the example of weatherman Michael Fish, who cheerfully dismissed reports of a hurricane in 1987, shows how easily even modern forecasters can get it wrong because of the complexity and speed in which it can change. Now they tend to play safe and publicize the highest possible winds - recently (just before Christmas 2011) a Jersey forecast suggested winds like those of 1987. If they get it wrong, that is soon forgotten, but Michael Fish's forecast will be remembered for a long time, no doubt much to his chagrin.

The last entry in these extracts also features the the first mention of an umbrella by Parson Woodforde. Umbrellas did not come into general use in England before the 1780's, and Lieut.-Colonel James Wolfe, writing from Paris in 1752, mentions the people there using umbrellas for the sun and rain, and wonders that a similar practice does not obtain in England. But the man who first appeared with one in 1778 in London was jeered by the mob. They were regarded as effeminate. John Macdonald related that in 1770, he used to be greeted with the shout, "Frenchman, Frenchman! why don't you call a coach?" whenever he went out with his umbrella. It is significant that in 1787 Parson Woodforde only succumbed to having one held over his head during a frightful blizzard at a funeral.

And the first entry also features what has been called the Little Ice Age, where he skates down on the Thames.

The diary is also interesting that it features a kind of strange light, a "will of the wisp", which Woodforde hopes is not an omen of some kind, but he also rationalises it as a natural phenomena in an after note.

January - The Diary of a Country Parson

1763 JAN. 24. We skated down to Abington where we dined and for our dinners there etc. each of us pd. 2s. 6d. We were going down about an hour and half; N.B. We walked above 2 miles out of it. It is about 10 miles by water.

1767 JAN 1. I read Prayers this morning at C. Cary Church being New Year's Day. I dined, supped and spent the evening till 10 o'clock at Parsonage, and after ten I went over to Mr. Clarke's new Hospital where I spent the whole night and part of the morning till 4 o'clock a dancing, on account of Mr. James Clarke's apprenticeship being expired. A great deal of company was there indeed, viz., etc. . . . We had a very good band of musick, 2 Violins and a Base Viol. We were excessive merry and gay there indeed.

1768 JAN. 4. . . . Jack did not come home till near four in the morning. He was much in liquor and quite unhappy. The Devil has had great power over him today. O Lord, grant him strength from Thy Holy Place, to withstand him better pro futuro.

1768: JAN. 6. I read prayers this morning at C. Cary Church being Epiphany. I had a small congregation, it being excessive cold, as cold and severe weather on all accounts as in the year 1740. . . .

1771: JAN. 10. . . . Brother John was greatly astonished by a light this evening as he came thro' Orchards, a field by Ansford Church, which light seemed to follow him close behind all the way through that field, and which he could not account for. I hope it is no Omen of death in the Family. N.B. The Reflection of the snow I apprehend occasioned the light that my Brother saw.

1771: JAN. 16. . . . Extreme hard frost with a cutting wind. It was allowed by my Father and Aunt Anne this afternoon that the weather now is as severe as it was in the year 1740. . . .

1779: JAN. 1st. I breakfasted, dined, supped and slept again at home. This morning very early about 1 o'clock a most dreadful storm of wind with Hail and Snow happened here and the Wind did not quite abate till the evening. A little before 2 o'clock I got up, my bedsted rocking under me, and never in my life that I know of, did I remember the Wind so high or of so long continuance. I expected every Moment that some part or other of my House must have been blown down, but blessed be God the whole stood, only a few Tiles displaced. My Servants also perceived their Bedsteds to shake. Thanks be to God that none of my People or self were hurt. My Chancel received great damage as did my Barn. The Leads from my Chancel were almost all blown of with some Parts of the Roof. The North West Window blown in and smashed all to pieces. The East Window also damaged but not greatly. The North W: Leads on the top of the Church also, some of them blown up and ruffled, besides 2 windows injured. The Clay on the North end of my Barn blown in and the West side of the Roof the Thatch, most all blown away, leaving many holes in it. The damage sustained by me will amount I Suppose to 50 Pounds if not more. However I thank God no lives were lost that I hear of and I hope not. Mr.
Shaddlelows Barn, Michael Andrews's, with many others all blown down. Numbers of Trees torn up by the Roots in many Places. In the evening the Wind abated and was quite calm when I went to bed about 11 o'clock. Since what happened this morning, I prolonged the Letter that I designed to send to my sister Pounsett to relate what had happened here by the storm. And this evening sent it to her by Mr. Cary. A smart frost this evening. As the year begins rather unfortunate to me, hope the other Parts of it will be as propitious to me.

1783: JAN. 26 Thos. Carr dined with our Folks to day. I read Prayers and Preached this Afternoon at Weston. Mr. Custance and a Mrs. Collier, an elderly Lady, at Church. Sent old Mary Adcock at Noon -- a hot rosted Fowl, a fourpenny Loaf and a Bottle of Beer.

1787 I read Prayers and Preached this morning at Weston Church neither Mr. or Mrs. Custance at Church, nor above 20 People in all at Church -- The Weather being extremely cold and severe with much Snow on the ground and still more falling with cutting Winds. After Service I buried a Daughter of Harrisons an Infant aged only 5 Weeks -- I think that I never felt the cold more severe than when I was burying the above Infant. The Wind blowed very Strong and Snow falling all the time and the Wind almost directly in my Face, that it almost stopped my breath in reading the funeral Service at the Grave, tho' I had an Umbrella 1 held over my Head during the Time.

Links
(1) http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2011/mar/07/weatherwatch-great-storms-1287

The Family Album

2012-01-02T20:01:00.002Z

This is my god-daughter's baptism. She's the little baby. I'm the young fresh-faced young man just standing beside her mother (in the red hat). Her father Terry Hampton, the Vicar in the picture was a great friend, and I remember happy times visiting the family, as well as some very quirky memories - Terry's beloved Cello (in its case, thank goodness) slipping from his grasp and bouncing down the cobbles of St Aubin's High Street. A dolmen tour with him and his son Mark. A gunfighter shoot-out at a themed Cowboy evening at the Parish Hall, where the photo of Lord Coutanche sported a very fetching sheriff's badge and moustache, and where Terry and the Methodist Minister Gerry Stoddern had a shoot out. Terry clutched his shirt, which was red with blood - actually a specially prepared sachet of Congo Red from my chemistry set!

I was watching a TV documentary on John Thaw, and it had reminiscences from his work colleagues, but also, and unusual in these kind of documentary, a lot of interviews with his family, his wife Sheila Hancock, and his three daughters, and quite a substantial amount of home movie footage as well. That allowed the viewer to get behind the TV face, and see - at least partially - the man himself as he was at home, and hear about his home life. There were even the odd clips of him with a young baby daughter on the set of the Sweeney. He seems, in many ways, to have been as pleasant at home as he was when he appeared in public - not perhaps as Jack Regan in the Sweeney, but in his personal favourite, Goodnight Mr Tom.

The God Janus, after whom January is named, was one of the few Roman deities without an analogue in the Greek pantheon of Gods; he had two faces, one looking backward, one looking forward. And the start of January is a month when we look back at the end of the old year, and the past stretching out behind us, and forward to the future.

Both in looking back and looking forward, memory is important. We have a sense of time that other animals do not have. We can project backwards and forwards on a cosmic scale, but also on a personal scale, because we are not machines, we are human beings, with all the emotional complexity that entails, and that means relationships - friends and family.

The past slips away, seemingly into oblivion, but when we look back at photos, or home movies, or just the pictures that we have in our minds of the past, we can bring back those memories to the present.

And it is that which gives us strength to build on for the future, which is a difficult task for those who have been scarred or damaged in some way in their past. John Thaw's mother walked out on his family when he was quite young, and Sheila Hancock could see that this effected often how he reacted to pressures. He had impressed on him that if he and his siblings misbehaved, they would be taken away from his father, and into care, and if they encountered trouble, someone trying to pick a fight, to avoid it at all costs, to walk away. As she noted, this meant that negatively, he would avoid talking about personal difficulties, because he shut that off, he walked away from anything confrontational. On the other hand, when he decided to walk away from an addiction to drink, he did so with that same resolve to leave trouble behind, and never went back to his alcoholism.

My partner Annie Parmeter used to tell me - as part of the counselling that she did - that this kind of behaviour was not uncommon. It is getting stuck in a repeating pattern of behaviour, learned often unconsciously, from childhood, which determines how we react, because we have never looked critically at our own behaviour. Memory should be examined, to paraphrase Socrates.

And memories also carry regrets of people who are no longer there, who we can no longer talk too. That is also part of looking back. But if those people changed us, their memories live on. Annie, who loved Star Trek, would have been pleased that my sons are also fervent fans, and we are currently watching The Next Generation. It brings back happy memories to me, of watching the entire series with her.

More than the original series, there is some very thoughtful philosophy along with the science fiction, and the episode we watched tonight, Skin of Evil, has one of the Enterprise Crew, Tasha Yar, killed, apparently just out of malice. At the end of the episode, there is a short sequence in which a holographic image of her speaks to her friends, about family. Like Tasha, Annie, who was an only child, always considered her friends to be her family.

Lt. Tasha Yar: What I want you to know is how much I loved my life, and those of you who shared it with me. You are my family. You all know where I came from, and what my life was like before. But Starfleet took that frightened, angry young girl and tempered her. I have been blessed with your friendship and your love.

My friend Data. You see things with the wonder of a child. And that makes you more human than any of us.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard. I wish I could say you've been like a father to me. But I've never had one, so I don't know what it feels like. But if there was someone in this universe I could choose to be like, someone who I would want to make proud of me - it's you. You who have the heart of an explorer and the soul of a poet.

And it returns to memory once more. We carry forward into the New Year happy memories of the past; they make us what we are, and they keep alive our friends and family who are now dead.

Lt. Tasha Yar: [her final words] Death is that state in which one exists only in the memory of others. Which is why it is not an end. No goodbyes. Just good memories. Hailing frequencies closed, sir.

Capt. Picard: Au revoir, Natasha.

Armageddon 2012?

2012-01-01T10:39:00.001Z

I was watching the film Armageddon with Bruce Willis a few days ago - as happens with these matters, it came to a freesat channel, doing the rounds, and I managed to record it. It is all about an asteroid hitting the earth, and mankind facing the prospect of mass extinction. That is, of course, quite a feasible scenario, although with NASA budget cut backs, the chances are slim indeed of any kind of drilling operation to split the asteroid asunder - even if it was possible to do this so that the pieces didn't hit the earth, as happens fortuitously in the film.

In fact, the film is in part about rough edged human beings, thrown into a wilderness to fend for themselves - the asteroid is a surrealist nightmare of craggy rocks, sharp and pointed light cathedral spires. Although the setting is space, the theme in part is the frontier spirit of America, the explorers trekking off into the outback and facing a sometimes hostile environment. I won't spoil the denouement, except to say that as expected, the project succeeds.

There's a token Russian for comedy effect from the Russian space station, and he has some of the best lines. Starting a jammed fuel line with a spanner, he says - Russian systems, American systems - all made with parts from Taiwan! And Paris gets wiped out - someone in the movies didn't like the French!

But the end of the world is often on the horizon in other ways. The Christian Harold Camping had predicted the end of the world, or at least the start of it, with the "rapture", a supposed moment when Christians are snatched away from an earth that will be dominated by the antichrist. This started with J.N. Derby, was very popular in the 1980s with Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth (the EU was the empire of the antichrist, the beast with many heads!) and continues to this day with the "Left behind" series of Tim LaHaye which presents it in a fictional form. It seems to be a peculiarly American phenomena, for while there are no doubt Christians in Britain and Jersey who believe it, it has never dominated the Christian mainstream, but remained resolutely on the margins, for fringe sects, and University student fundamentalism.

The New Age has its own take on the end of the world. According to a reading - actually a misreading - of the Mayan calendar, the end of the world will happen in 2012. Nonsense is also disseminated about the start of the Mayan calendar, which recent studies have pinned down not to tens of thousands of years BC, but to around August 11, 3114 BC - based on archeological evidence from the date used on inscriptions, astronomical events recorded which tie in with the calendar in inscriptions, and historical documentary material (such as the Chronicle of Oxcutzkab). 4004 BC for the Usher Chronology of the Bible is actually earlier!

The "great cycle" of the calendar is 13 Baktuns, or 1,872,000 days, which neatly brings us to December 20, 2012 but on a west panel at the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, a section of the text projects into the future to the 80th Calendar Round, which would be 13 October 4772. There is no evidence the Maya thought the world would end in 2012, but rather the contrary.

One significant matter is the length of years, just over 5,000 in a "great cycle", and I've heard it said in all seriousness that meant that the Mayans computed time in much vaster periods than other peoples. But a 5,000 year cycle is hardly large. Even 100,000 years, which would take us back to the Paleolithic, is barely something like 20 seconds to midnight on a clock which had all the age of the earth compressed to one 12 hour period. Or as another geologist said:

"Consider the Earth's history as the old measure of the English yard, the distance from the King's nose to the tip of his outstretched hand. One stroke of a nail file on his middle finger erases human history"

No ancient calendar came anywhere near estimates of the age of the earth. Eternalists like Aristotle thought it had no beginning, but the notion of deep time of an age of the earth of 4,540 000 000 years old was beyond them. If the Mayans had a calendar which could put the creation of the earth back then, I think their calendar would have a bit more credibility for 2012 end of the world.

And of the mass extinctions which have taken place - and there have been five significant ones - one was almost certainly set off by an asteroid impact on the earth around 65.5 million years ago, which led to the end of the dinosaurs. That remains the one real possibility, but I don't think it is that likely on the exact date of 20 December 2012.

What will happen after? Harold Camping has "recalibrated" his date, recalculating after he missed his date. I suspect strongly that the Mayan end of the world theorists will do the same!

My Top Ranking Posts of 2011

2011-12-31T09:16:00.000Z

My last posting of 2011 looks at the top stories on my blog, as given by "Google Stats".

Top of the list is "Lionel Logue and the King's Speech" with (according to Google) 1,121 page views! This is my review of the film, and also some of the background that I discovered researching Lionel Logue. I'd recommend the film if you haven't seen it,

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2011/01/lionel-logue-and-kings-speech.html

Next on the list is "Tweedledum and Tweedledee", a pre-election post summing up the achievements - or as I saw it lack of achievement - of two Jersey politicians who almost always voted the same way on significant matters. Unlike some bloggers, I regard "the power of the blog" as marginal compared to other media, but it was curious that both of them came more or less bottom in the October elections. The reason, of course, isn't really the blog posting, it's the fact that other voters were not oblivious to the near Trappist lifestyle of those States Members.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2011/08/tweedledum-and-tweedledee.html

"There's No Place Like Home", a transcript of James Thurber's brilliant article, which I posted when taking a break from "News from Nowhere" in the summer. It languished off the scale, then about a month ago, shot to the top, and is still getting hits, Word of mouth is clearly getting out. If you haven't read it, it is a look at a traveler's phrase book - well, the English parts. I defy anyone to read it with a straight face. I wish I could be half as funny as Thurber - he set a high standard. Here's a taster:

Trouble really starts in the canto called `In the Customs Shed.' Here we have: `I cannot open my case.' `I have lost my keys.' `Help me to close this case." I did not know that I had to pay." I don't want to pay so much." I cannot find my porter.' `Have you seen porter 153 ?' That last query is a little master stroke of writing, I think, for in those few words we have a graphic picture of a tourist lost in a jumble of thousands of bags and scores of customs men, looking frantically for one of at least a hundred and fifty-three porters. We feel that the tourist will not find porter 153, and the note of frustration has been struck.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2010/08/theres-no-place-like-home.html

From 2010, "Jersey's Sex Offenders Register - Why the Delay?" comes next. This was a proposition launched in 19th August 2009, carried unanimously on 08 October 2009, and still not in place when I was writing in November 2010. Thankfully we now have the law in place, and it would be interesting to know if some of the suggested costs materialised. There seem not to have been any court challenges, for example, by those on the list. Also while Jersey was putting its own law into place, the UK was moving on with pilot schemes on "Sarah's Law" after the murder of Sarah Payne, which allows significantly at risk members of the public such as single parents to check that they are not entering into a relationship with a listed sex offender. This is now being rolled out across the UK. Jersey, as usual, seems to be lagging behind in this area, and something that should be taken up with the new Council of Ministers.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2010/11/jerseys-sex-offenders-register-why.html

http://www.sarahslaw.co.uk/

An example: A single mother meets a man who she likes but is worried that she does not know enough about his background to allow him fully into her family's life. She telephones the local police and requests information about the man. "If the mother is given the information, she will be asked to keep it confidential - and could face civil or criminal action if she does not" The police will check the background of the man because the request has come from a mother - someone who is directly responsible for children. Officers will carry out two checks - a priority check within 24 hours, followed by a more thorough risk assessment which takes longer because it will delve into someone's history. If there is a criminal record, the pilot constabularies say they would use special child protection measures, jointly run by police and probation officers, to work out how best to deal with the suspect. If there is a serious risk, police may also pass on some of this information to the mother - but only if they are convinced that it is necessary and proportionate to protect the children. If the mother is given the information, she will be asked to keep it confidential - and could face civil or criminal action if she does not. If the investigation does not find any record of sexual offences, but does find other worrying behaviour, such as a conviction for domestic violence or intelligence of worrying behaviour, the mother may still be given information to help her protect her family.

Note that scenario could not - at present - happen in Jersey. I think it should.

"Independent Advisory Group - A Comment" - again from 2010, this highlights problems with the chronology of complaints made by the group with regard to Haut de La Garenne investigations.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2010/07/independent-advisory-group-comment.html

But on a lighter note, "How to Entertain Without A Maid" looks back on some of the advice given in a cookery book which I obtained second hand. No recipes, I'm afraid, but a window into a past that really seems rather amusing in the way it is written!

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2010/07/independent-advisory-group-comment.html

John Mbiti's "The Concept of God in Africa" features next. There is a general lack of information about African beliefs, and people have all kinds of vague notions about "primitive religion". This attempts to address the balance. It's from 2007, but is still getting hits.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2007/01/concept-of-god-in-africa.html

"RIP: Bob Tilling" has some general information, and some personal memories about Bob Tilling as well as more on his music than was given in local obituaries, and a chance to read one of his music reviews.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2011/01/rip-bob-tilling.html

"Jersey General Election - Results and Comment" - this one speaks for itself.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2011/10/jersey-general-election-results-and.html

"Philip Bailhache and the Roger Holland Affair" deals with the mishaps and general ineptitude that led to a paedophile becoming a member of the honorary police, and remaining so - even after evidence of previous convictions had taken place. It is worth reading, as a warning against complacency which I hope will never happen again.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2011/10/philip-bailhache-and-roger-holland.html

And that's it - the top listed postings by Google Stats. I'll be doing a retrospective of the year next week, but for now, this is my last blog posting of 2011.

Have a happy New Year!

Funny Old World 6

2011-12-30T15:29:00.001Z

Health Warning: what follows is not news, any more than the middle section of Private Eye is news, or The Impressionist is news, or Spitting Image was news. It is a light hearted spin on the real news, which can be found on genuine news sites, such as BBC Jersey. Other news sites are available. This is not one of them. None of the individuals mentioned have ever said anything quite like the words attributed to them. Which is perhaps a pity.

Jersey police officers having to deal with a worrying number of agitated suspects armed with knives should be equipped with phasers, according to the police chief. Mr Bowron said: 'I am pretty confident that we will get there. It has been a long trek. They've had phasers on Star Trek since the 1960s, and no one has complained. We must be enterprising." It is understood that some of the increase in incidents has been due to recent immigrants to Jersey, most notably the Klingons.

Finance news - a Jersey company has become the parent of another giant Russian metals business to list on the London stock exchange to list on the main market of the London Stock Exchange. Vladimir Putin International plc is the Jersey holding company created as part of the listing process for Russia's largest silver producer on the FTSE 100. Corporate partner Karl Marx said: 'It is highly encouraging that major Russian companies are comfortable using Jersey for listing in London."

Tidal energy could be used to power homes in Jersey, Guernsey and Sark in the next 20 years. If successful, it will pave the way for the world's largest tidal energy station, capable of powering up to 4,000 light bulbs. Chris Ambler, the head of Jersey Electricity, said "We've noticed how people at Christmas swims come out of the water shivering, and a brisk rub down with a towel heats them up. Imagine that on an Islandwide scale." However, he said that it was too expensive at the moment, because of the need for special micro-fibre towels to generate the heat required.

Jersey politician, Constable Dan Murphy, chairs the Tidal Towel Power Commission and said the islands would co-operate to harness the power of the sea. He said: "It will hopefully save us quite a lot of money and speed us up a bit because if we're doing something and Guernsey are doing the same thing it's absolutely pointless, we're wasting money. Together, we can bulk buy the towels needed to generate the heat which can be turned into electricity and make savings."

Jersey fishermen hope the results of a study into lobster stocks will help conservation efforts. A French marine biologist will give the findings from the first two years of work into the migration and growth rates of the lobsters around Jersey. The old laws on lobsters have changed recently. Previously immigrant lobsters had to swim around Jersey waters for six years before they would get qualifications to take up residence in their own lobster pot, but now they will be part of the new work permit scheme, which is designed to keep out French, Polish, and Irish lobsters so that only accredited Jersey lobsters will end up visiting the local Seafood festival.

There are plans for an international beach polo event in Jersey. The States is being asked to relax the rules on horses on the island's beach to allow it to go ahead. The economic development minister, Senator Alan Maclean, says that "A polo event could make a mint for the Island." The States of Jersey will debate whether to allow the rules to be relaxed at the sitting on 31 January 2012. Odds on whether "a major horse event" will be passed by the States are currently running at 3:2 with Alan Maclean the top favourite to win his proposition.

A cavalcade of old cars took to Jersey's roads for the traditional Boxing Day Jersey Old Motor Club 12 Churches Cavalcade. In all a line up of 93 vehicles - representing the best efforts of manufacturers from 1904 to 1950 - toured the island. For passers-by there was a chance to see some amazing living history with as Terry Le Main chugged passed in a vintage second hand car, and Terry Le Sueur went by on a 1934 Merryweather Fire Engine. A spokesman said "He was in regular service up until 2011, and was fully restored ten years ago."

Revealing controversial golden handshake payments to departing States employees would be 'an unwarranted invasion of their privacy', according to the Chief Minister's department. They have refused to reveal details of pay-outs, which have been rumoured to reach £500,000. "These people may have taken the Island for a ride, but it is all legal and above board", said the Department, "and we want to start the new year with a clean slate." It is understood the slate had the salaries and payoffs written in chalk until it was wiped out shortly after the October elections.

And finally, a 29-year-old man from Madeira has been remanded on bail in connection with a break in at a Jersey shop. He is accused of theft from the Owl and Pussycat shop in St Helier, in the early hours of Boxing Day. Items reported stolen were a beautiful pea green boat, some honey, and plenty of money wrapped up in a £5 note.

Death and Burial, Part 6

2011-12-29T18:14:00.001Z

Odds and ends

2011-12-27T10:55:00.002Z

‎"The White Witch? Who is she?
"Why, it is she that has got all Narnia under her thumb. It's she that makes
it always winter and never Christmas; think of that!"
"How awful!" said Lucy.
(CS Lewis, The Lion the witch and the Wardrobe)

The day after Christmas day and Boxing day is not a day for long well constructed pieces. Instead it is a case of nibbling on leftovers. Here are a few of mine.

Richard Dawkins

Catching up on Richard Dawkin's New Statesman issue. He does go over the top on the literary merits of the King James Bible. Some of the passages in letters of Paul are horrible translations, almost undecipherable as English. And it inconsistently translates "pneuma" according to its own whim - Coverdale was much better there.

How was it then reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.
(Romans 4:10, KJV)

Yep, clear as mud.

In his New Statesman editorial, Dawkin's hates the term "Christian children" and says it is like saying "Post-Modernist children", which he says it would be absurd to say. But actually, I think "post-modernist children" would be a very good way of describing the belief systems of most children today. If he wonders why many of them are as skeptical of science as traditional religion, but go for New Age eclecticism, "post modernist children" would be a good short-hand way of describing the situation.

Reading

Finished Elizabeth Lemarchant's Alibi for A Corpse. Nice to have some gentle but good detective story to read over the Christmas break. Reading too much non-fiction of late, mainly because I can read 10 (or more) non-fiction books at once, but only one fiction book at a time. Now onto "Pictures in the Dark" by Gillian Cross.

Non-fiction includes "Druids: A very Short Introduction" (just finished), "Royalty" by Jeremely Paxman, "Ancient egypt: A Very Short Introduction", ""Cults of Unreason" by Christopher Evans, "Patrick Troughton", a biography by Michael Troughton, "Gypsies and Fairies: Evidence for a Theory" by Robert Dawson, "The Science and Humanism of Stepehn Jay Gould" by Richard York and Brett Clark, "J.B. Priestley" by Judith Cook.

TV Watched:

The Mentalist: A very downbeat Mentalist last week. There was a degree of ambiguity as to whether the San Joaquin killer really was who Patrick Jane thought he was, and he deliberately goaded the chap into deriding Red John on air - a recipe for suicide if ever there was one.

The Rev: An excellent story that just almost went off the rails, then came back with a gloriously warm finale.

Dr Who Christmas special. A splendid Christmas story, full of that special seasonal feel, snow, trees, very special aliens (I'm not going to give a spoiler), and mothers everywhere will love it. Or their children certainly will. I did. It was wonderful. Warm, Christmassy, without being derivative, had a Narnia feel about the snow and trees, and a wonderful story. Sadness and comedy both there. Brilliant acting too by all concerned.

The Borrowers. It's always difficult when something is updated to the present day, but this version of the Borrowers worked wonderfully. Christopher Ecclestone, of course, made Pod so very real, and Aisling Loftus's Arriety was wonderful, with her emerging skills and intuition as a borrower beautifully done. Victoria Wood, of course, was excellent as the gran, and as the boy, Charles Hiscock was brilliant - gone are the days when child actors "acted" - here was a naturalism that was wonderful. The other characters were brilliant, and Stephen Fry was fortunately reined back more than in the Little Shop of Stuff, and someone had to be the villain you want to fail! Songs suitable to the mood also made this a very special treat for Christmas.

Poirot: The Clocks. An excellent production, with only slight changes made to the plot, which was nice to see, ITV's Marple has a terrible record of massive changes -here Poirot actually goes out and interviews the suspects, which was clearly needed dramatically. But good characters, Suchet's Poirot moving towards the right age for Curtain, Geoffrey Palmer pops up again in a smaller part (he seems to be everywhere this Christmas), and a narrative that flows nicely with suspense, twists, and some humour on the way - Poirot asking for "the cocktails" in what is clearly a very British pub! The convoluted nature of the plot was actually needed, a very clever touch!

A Few Short Snippets Read

An enterprising Australian has used nanotechnology to create the world's first fart-proof underpants. Gilbert Huynh claims his pants eliminate not only the smell of body gas, but the sound too. "I've suffered for years from the emissions of my family", he said, "and one cannot keep blaming these things on the dog".

An American man was arrested after calling the police to complain that his crack dealer had short-changed him. Dexter White dialled 911 to report that he'd paid for $60 worth of the drug but only received $20 worth. Police in South Carolina immediately despatched a patrol car to arrest him.

A Swedish man was arrested this year for trying to split the atom - in his kitchen! Amateur scientist Richard Handl, 31, acquired uranium, radium and americium and cooked them on his stove. He was hoping to create nuclear fission, but only managed a small explosion that messed up the hob!

A 15 year old ginger cat has become a local celebrity in Bridport, dorset, for taking regular rides on the town buses. He likes to sit on passengers laps or on the warmth of newly vacated seats. The drivers love him, welcome him on board, bring him treats, and make sure he always gets off at his stop!

Statistics of the year: Dog owners walk an average of 23,739 miles with their pet over its lifetime. The average Briton says sorry eight times a day. That's 204,536 times in three-score years and ten. One in ten British pets has its own Facebook page, Twitter profile, or YouTube channel!

Private Eye

From Private Eye (still on sale, it's brilliant - and it is still only £1.50) comes this Christmas advert (among many funny ones):

Auto-Tweet. The world's first fully automated random tweet generator take the toil out of tiresome twittering by tweeting for you twenty-four-seven!! Tweets include "I'm having a cup of tea" "Watching Downton Abbey now" "Going to the toilet" and many, many more. The amazing auto-tweet keeps the world posted whilst freeing up your valuable time so you can meet friends, talk to them, have a life, etc. Only £7,634 per annum.

The Feast of Stephen

2011-12-26T13:51:00.000Z

Boxing day is also called "the feast of Stephen", after the death of Stephen by stoning. Here is a poem about it...

The Feast of Stephen

It was a hot day, the dust rising in the air,
The sun so bright, so sharp the glare;
And the face of the man, standing now:
Can't he see the crowd? Their one avow?
Men take off their robes, strip to the waist;
Clothes cannot be soiled, or so debased,
And this will be a day of wrath, of fire;
I see the anger, their fury, all their desire,
And the sweat trickles down their back,
As they lift stones, stumble on their track'
They cry out, baying for blood this day,
And the young man still goads, still to say:
Talks of stiff necked people, deaf with pride;
Can he see that there is no place to hide?
The face of an angel, some said of him,
But the mob is enraged, such faces grim;
And I just minded their clothes, sat there,
I too was angry, and I did not care;
And I let them stone him, heard the thud,
As stones rained down, an unleashed flood
Of fury; heard groans of pain, then no more;
It was as if he slept, opened heaven's door,
And the stones still hit him, piling high,
But his breath long departed with a sigh;
And why should I recall him, now long ago,
A man I barely had seen, and didn't know?
Called Stephen, so I was told, in later time,
And I sat and did nothing, my only crime:
Thinking the time of prophets is long past,
Until on a dusty road, I saw a light, at last.

Sacred Time

2011-12-25T01:58:00.000Z

Up to a certain specific instant you are feeling ordinary and sad; for it is only Wednesday. At the next moment your heart leaps up and your soul and body dance together like lovers; for in one burst and blaze it has become Thursday. I am assuming (of course) that you are a worshipper of Thor, and that you celebrate his day once a week, possibly with human sacrifice. (G.K. Chesterton)

Merry Christmas.
Or Happy Hanukah.
Or Yuletide Greetings.
Or Blessed Winter Solstice.

However this time of year is celebrated, it is celebrated as a special time, whether it is the birth of Christ, the Jewish festival of lights, or the Pagan celebration at the shortest day of the year, the turning point when days lengthen.

Probably the earliest marking of time as special is the astrological one, the solstice. The modern distinction between astrology and astronomy simply didn't apply in the ancient world. If a time was significant, it was also sacred, and would be marked out in such a ritual manner as to make it special.

The marking of points of time as sacred is a very ancient one, and it is something that is quite distinct to human beings. While geese and other creatures might migrate at particular times of the year, they simply go; there is no rite of preparation before the long and perhaps dangerous journey. Only human beings mark out time as special.

We do it with birthdays as well, of course, and Christmas itself is the celebration of a birthday of a special kind. Again that is something human beings do - cats and dogs don't celebrate the day they are born.

With all this goes an awareness of time, and the marking out of periods of time, and celebrating some times as special. The rationalists of the French revolution would have just have segments of time like any other, and the capitalist wanting to have Sunday as a shopping day like any other are both running counter to this need of human beings to mark out time as special.

It is noteworthy that when the Jacobins of the French Revolution promoted their "cult of reason", some of the strongest rebellion came from Brittany, where the ancient Celtic culture had seeped into the ballads and poems (later collected by Théodore La Villemarqué ), and the rhythm of time as special was in direct contradiction to the atheism of the revolutionaries. In the end, the rationalist programme broke down; unlike other creatures, we need to mark time as special, and locate significance and meaning in our lives.

Martin Marty notes that:

While different religious communities view and practice observance of sacred time differently, all share in this concept and find in sacred time a connection to the eternal. Sacred time recalls significant moments of the past, and looks to the future with religious hope; it collects into the present moment both past and future in a celebration of the eternal.

Twas the night before Christmas

2011-12-24T00:11:00.000Z

'Twas the night before Christmas
A festive poem for St. Breladiase

(This was written by me for the Parish of St Brelade magazine, La Baguette, which has since come out, so I'm re-using it here as my Saturday poem)

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through St Brelade
Not a creature was stirring, from house to boatyard
The double decker had gone, the final bus fare
Long gone were shoppers from Quennevais Square

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
And the allotments were quiet, no light in their sheds
Now St Aubin's was sleeping, with no geese in a flap
And beach shops had closed for a long winter's nap.

When in Reg's Garden, there arose such a clatter
He sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Glimpsed a red sleigh there, which went in a flash
Not speeding past 30, but still making a dash

Santa was coming, from La Haule to Corbiere
And his red sleigh sped by, with the tiny reindeer
Bouan Noue, he cried, as it passed every house
Where no creature was stirring, not even a mouse

And in the morning, while church bells rang out
The children exclaimed, with glee and a shout
As they saw presents, by the Christmas tree light
And the stockings of toys, that came in the night.

Funny Old World 5

2011-12-23T08:11:00.002Z

Health Warning: what follows is not news, any more than the middle section of Private Eye is news, or The Impressionist is news, or Spitting Image was news. It is a light hearted spin on the real news, which can be found on genuine news sites, such as BBC Jersey. Other news sites are available. This is not one of them. None of the individuals mentioned have ever said anything quite like the words attributed to them. Which is perhaps a pity.

Jersey assistant chief minister, Senator Sir Philip Bailhache, will meet Guernsey chief minister Deputy Lyndon Trott. Issues for discussion include international taxation, the Commonwealth and the European Union. "Our islands work well together, as... established earlier this year in the dispute over fishing limits," Senator Bailhache said.

A press briefing announced that: "It is important that politicians from Jersey and Guernsey continue to maintain a positive dialogue, and provide a lot of good photogenic news stories to hide the fact that they ignore each other when settling fishing limits or taking separate court cases to England about low consignment tax relief, and we look forward to each playing our own part in that relationship."

Meanwhile, Sir Philip sees the main problem ahead as being the Island's dealings with Brussels. "All kinds of law sprouts from Brussels, and we need a common agricultural policy to deal with it", he said.

News reaches us that Ministers are taking the UK government to court to save the threatened online mail order industry and protect up to 2,000 Island jobs. Up to 1,000 packers and sorters jobs could be saved as well as 1,000 lawyers and legal advisors who with this guarantee of work are ensured a bright start to 2012 and little fear of job losses. Twin legal challenges from Jersey and Guernsey would be made and that the Jersey's Economics Development Minister has written to the UK Treasury to inform them of the move, enclosing a Christmas Card together with a Play.com voucher.

There's good news for those of us who enjoy a walk in the park - or a green space in this case. Reg's Garden - the popular island attraction - won't close in 2013 as planned but instead parts will be allowed to grow wild, including Reg. "I will be the wild man of the wild garden," said Reg, "and I won't be serving cups of tea, but instead jumping out of the undergrowth to surprise visitors with wild bushy beard and a Tarzan style yodel."

'One of our biggest and earliest ever TV campaigns'. That is how Jersey Tourism is describing its 2012 advert, which will hit our screens on Boxing Day. Marketing Manager Simon Le Huray told Channel 103 that's to draw in people thinking about where to holiday in 2012. He says from about 4pm on Christmas Day, they noticed internet searches for holiday rocket.

'We want to put Jersey there so that when people do start thinking about where they are going to go the place they type into their search engine "holiday rocket" and get Jersey.' Getting to the Island by rocket will be faster than boat or conventional aircraft. It is thought that Richard Curtis has been involved in the promotional film, entitled, "The Island that rocketed". The film will also promote fresh Jersey produce, rocket salads specially grown as a film tie-in.

The 'Meet the locals' advert features tour guide Neil Armstrong, artist Buzz Aldrin and Oyster Farmer Michael Collins alongside singer Yuri Gagarin. It is estimated between seven and eight million people will see the advert.

Heritage pay £11,000 to return ancient ring. A Neolithic stone ring will be returned to the Island after Jersey Heritage paid more than £11,000 for it at an auction in America. Former Chief Minister Terry Le Sueur is said to be delighted that an object he well remembers as a boy will once again be displayed in its rightful home.

And finally, one of the worlds largest mega yachts is paying Jersey a visit today. Vibrant Curiosity pulled into the islands port earlier this afternoon. She is owned by billionaire Anne Summers and is larger than the Condor Vitesse. Summers is number 93 on The Forbes rich list and has made her money manufacturing screws. It can sleep 18 guests and 26 crew very comfortably.

The Apple Cart

2011-12-22T14:44:00.001Z

I've been reading the preface and the text of "The Apple Cart", which is George Bernard Shaw's play, written around 1930, about a constitutional crisis where a popular monarch intervenes politically against an unpopular and remote government, triggering a crisis which leads to his abdication.

Some of the preface could almost be written about today's bankers, who expect to be bailed out, and are already returning to "business as usual" with bonuses for risky investments:

Money talks: money prints: money broadcasts: money reigns; and kings and labor leaders alike have toregister its decrees, and even, by a staggering paradox, to financeits enterprises and guarantee its profits. Democracy is no longer bought: it is bilked.

Shaw is also extremely sharp at pointing out the profligate wastefulness of the consumer society:

Our solution of the economic problem is the Capitalist system, which achieves miracles in production, but fails so ludicrously and disastrously to distribute its products rationally, or to produce in the order of social need, that it is always complaining of being paralysed by its "overproduction" of things of which millions of us stand in desperate want.

Of course, the "planned bureaucracy" of Stalin's Russia was in fact no better about distribution, with queues for even the most basic of foodstuffs, but that doesn't mean there is something rotten about a system in which food is chucked out by the truckload in the West, while people are starving in Africa.

There's also a remarkably cynical or astute comment on elections - you take your pick depending on your point of view!

As it is, the voters have no real choice of candidates: they have to take what they can get and make the best of it according to their lights, which is often the worst of it by the light of heaven. By chance rather than by judgment they find themselves represented in parliament by a fortunate proportion of reasonably honest and public spirited persons who happen to be also successful public speakers. The rest are in parliament because they can afford it and have a fancy for it or an interest in it.

Politics, once the centre of attraction for ability, public spirit, and ambition, has now become the refuge of a few
fanciers of public speaking and party intrigue who find all the other avenues to distinction closed to them either by their lack of practical ability, their comparative poverty and lack of education, or, let me hasten to add, their hatred of oppression and injustice, and their contempt for the chicaneries and false pretences of commercialized professionalism. History tells us of a gentleman-statesman who declared that such people were not fit to govern. Within a year it was discovered that they could govern at least as well as anyone else who could be persuaded to take on the job.

And Shaw has a wonderful picture of elections, and how they don't really often change much. Listening to lots of comments, mostly by people who either didn't vote, or who were singularly depressed by some of the results in October's election, I think his picture of a balloon - and I love the "hot air" keeping it afloat - has some merit as an accurate representation:

I am going to ask you to begin our study of Democracy by considering it first as a big balloon, filled with gas or hot air, and sent up so that you shall be kept looking up at the sky whilst other people are picking your pockets. When the balloon comes down to earth every five years or so you are invited to get into the basket if you can throw out one of the people who are sitting tightly in it; but as you can afford neither the time nor the money, and there are forty millions of you and hardly room for six hundred in the basket, the balloon goes up again with much the same lot in it and leaves you where you were before. I think you will admit that the balloon as an image of Democracy corresponds to the parliamentary facts.

And Shaw has another comment to make about democratic choice, and the way in which the Chief Officials often are the tail wagging the politician's dog. Certainly the regime presided over by at least one Chief officer in recent years seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to Shaw's example:

Let me invent a primitive example of democratic choice. It is always best to take imaginary examples: they offend nobody. Imagine then that we are the inhabitants of a village. We have to elect somebody for the office of postman. There are several candidates; but one stands out conspicuously, because he has frequently treated us at the public-house, has subscribed a shilling to our little flower show, has a kind word for the children when he passes, and is a victim of oppression by the squire because his late father was one of our most successful poachers. We elect him triumphantly; and he is duly installed, uniformed, provided with a red bicycle, and given a batch of letters to deliver. As his motive in seeking the post has been pure ambition, he has not thought much beforehand about his duties; and it now occurs to him for the first time that he cannot read. So he hires a boy to come round with him and read the addresses. The boy conceals himself in the lane whilst the postman delivers the letters at the house, takes the Christmas boxes, and gets the whole credit of the transaction. In course of time he dies with a high reputation for efficiency in the discharge of his duties; and we elect another equally illiterate successor on similar grounds. But by this time the boy has grown up and become an institution. He presents himself to the new postman as an established and indispensable feature of the postal system, and finally becomes recognized and paid by the village as such.

Here you have the perfect image of a popularly elected Cabinet Minister and the Civil Service department over which he presides. It may work very well; for our postman, though illiterate, may be a very capable fellow; and the boy who reads the addresses for him may be quite incapable of doing anything more. But this does not always happen. Whether it happens or not, the system is not a democratic reality: it is a democratic illusion. The boy, when he has ability to take advantage of the situation, is the master of the man. The person elected to do the work is not really doing it: he is a popular humbug who is merely doing what a permanent official tells him to do.

The Prime Minister in Shaw's play is a grey man, someone who simply has ended up as Prime Minister without really striving for it, and who is really not very competent, just letting matters drift, he is "good for nothing else". It would be invidious to mention local names, but I suggest that most people can probably think of one!

PROTEUS. I am not a wonderful man. There is not a man or woman here whose job I could do as well as they do it. I am Prime Minister for the same reason that all Prime Ministers have been Prime Ministers: because I am good for nothing else. But I can keep to the point--when it suits me. And I can keep you to the point, sir, whether it suits you or not.

The Press also come in for come criticism. The King, Magnus, tells the Prime Minister that the press are in the hands of business men who make sure that the media line is that which is in their own financial interests:

MAGNUS. You know that I have no control of the Press. The Press is in the hands of men much richer than I, who would not insert a single paragraph against their own interests even if it were signed by my own hand and sent to them with a royal command.

And another of the lines makes me think very much of outsourcing, and sweat shops in other countries producing cheap goods for cheap labour at long hours, much like Victorian industrial factories did. This seems remarkably prescient for its time:

MAGNUS. No: we have not abolished poverty and hardship. Our big business men have abolished them. But how? By sending our capital abroad to places where poverty and hardship still exist: in other words, where labor is cheap. We live in comfort on the imported profits of that capital. We are all ladies and gentlemen now.

"The Apple Cart" has rather fallen out of favour, and to tell the truth, it has some very long wordy speeches in it which really are Shaw using characters as a mouthpiece for a conflict of ideas. But it has, I think, some rather good nuggets buried amidst the lengthy monologues, and in its preface.

The Corners of the Earth

2011-12-21T06:38:00.000Z

This short meditation draws upon Eleanor Farjeon's "People of the East" for inspiration, but develops it for all the compass points.

The third section (the South) is inspired by J.V. Taylor's "The Primal Vision". Regarding Hypatia's age ( the Eastern segment of the narrative), I'm drawing on the fairly recent (and probably best work) - Hypatia of Alexandria by Maria Dzielska, who put her age at around 60, rather than the rather glamorised earlier accounts (e.g Charles Kinglsey!) - some of the sources do suggest an older account, and Dzielska also argues that it would have been unlikely that she would have been at the same age as Synesius of Cyrene, whom she taught. Dzielska also deals with the Neoplatonism that she taught (e.g the Chaldean Oracles), and I've also been reading the fascinating study by A.J. Bregman - "Synesius of Cyrene, Philosopher-Bishop" and how Synesius reconciled Christianity with Neoplatonism to his own satisfaction.

The different coloured robes of the four men are taken from Celtic traditions, the woman in blue is, of course, borrowed from George MacDonald's At The Back of the North Wind, while the hill fort is based on Weathertop.

The Corners of the Earth
(A Meditation for the Solstice)

I am asleep, and in my dream, I see a mist. It clears, and I see the stone and earth banks; I know that I am standing in an ancient hill fort, lit with four flaming torches, and there are four entrances to the fort, and in its midst, a woman in a blue robe, with long dark hair flowing down her back, and intense green eyes. I sit upon the ground, cross-legged, and look up at her. She is looking beyond me towards the North.

A figure appears in the North, an old man in a black robe, with grey hair and a white beard. He walks in and stands in front of the lady.

"What have you to tell of the North, brother?" she asks. And he begins.

I was born in a land of fire and ice, and I left and traversed the sea until I came into harbour within the sweeping fiords of Norway. I crossed the snowy mountains of Sweden, and came to the land of the Danes.

I saw a fierce race, heading forth in long ships, ready to take what rich pickings they could from weaker lands to the south. They prized honour above all else, and feasted in great halls, singing the praises of Odin the Mighty, of Thor the God of Thunder, and the other mighty denizens of Asgard.

But came a time when they were swept away like the tide by time. On that day, the time of the gods will come to an end, and the banquet hall will lie in ruins. There will be a final battle, and Ragnarok will come, and this will be the twilight of the gods.

Then there will be silence, and the silence will be over the land from the fiords to the frozen ice sheets of the North. This is our time, a still point in the year, the darkest night, the time of silence brooding over the tundra. Fire will be lit in homes at night, to keep out the cold, and keep at bay the darkness that settles within the soul, the sadness felt at the waning of the light.

But alas for those who live alone, and have no neighbours to bring cheer in the chill days and nights.

But above the silent lands will come light, a shimmering curtain of green and blue, as the Northern lights shine forth in all their glory, blazing and incandescent, a tumult of sheer light. And the wind will sing to the people of the land:

People, look North. The time is near
Time to cast off your doubt and fear
Look out for those that cannot cope
Reach out a hand, and bring them hope
People, look North and sing today:
Love, the guest, is on the way.

Now lady turns to face the west. A figure appears, a middle aged man, in a grey robe, with a tonsure, and a short neatly trimmed beard. He walks in and stands in front of the lady.

"What have you to tell of the West, brother?", she asks. And he begins.

I was born in the land covered with ice, and it thawed and became thick with a green forest, a wild wood that covered the land. And a people came to me from across the sea, and settled on the shores of my land.

I watched over the land, and they grew into a wise people, who settled and farmed the land, and in time there came to be the Five Kingdoms of the land, of Leinster, Ulster, Munster, Connacht and Meath. They worked metals, making fine tools and ornaments of bronze and iron and gold. And the druids arose amongst them, wise men, dispensers of wisdom and justice, keepers of sacred laws, and seekers of signs in the stars.

I saw the tribes and they came together at the shortest day, for a time of fire and feasting, and merry meet on the Hill of Tara, beside the stone of destiny, to sing songs and dance to the pipes. And when the fire had burned down, and smouldered red ashes, they circled, and leapt over the last of the flame.

I saw the Grey King reach out from under the Mountain, and a chill mist descended on the land; I saw wars, and invading peoples, and a land under an alien yoke. And who would now sing of Tara, and walk swiftly along Ossian's way?

And I saw the chains of the Grey King broken, and the people set free, the bonfires blazing, beacons across the hills of the land, and sweet the sound of the harp, as the peoples gathered to rejoice and feel the warmth of the flames. And the wind will sing to the people of the land:

People, look West. The time is near
Time to cast off your doubt and fear
Look out for strength in soil and earth
Plant now the seed that gives rebirth
People, look West and sing today:
Love, the rose, is on the way.

Now lady turns to face the south. A figure appears, a dark skinned man in a white robe, with a turban on his head; he is clean-shaven. He walks in and stands in front of the lady.

"What have you to tell of the South, brother?", she asks. And he begins.

I was born in a land of desert plains, and great rivers, in the dawning of mankind, tribes came hunting and gathering from the far south and they settled in my land, and tilled the soil, watered their crops, and herded their sheep and cattle.

They lived in small villages, in simple huts, and they came together to eat simple fare, meat and vegetables stewed in large pots over the charcoal fire, and break the freshly baked bread and share it among themselves, and eat the broiled fish.

And the women sang songs and danced, and the drums began, and they wakened the spirit of the earth with the beating of the drum, the songs of the soil, the rhythms of the seasons.

But this is an ancient land, and kings arose, and priests, and the peoples were enslaved, and mighty empires rose and fell. And the sun god looked down with displeasure, and the land became a desert, a place of heat and dust; it became a dry land with no water, and the crops grew sickly though lack of water, and famine came to the south. This is a dark age, a time of dying light.

Yet I saw the people take hope, and come across the dry land, to the ancient ruins of their ancestors, and may their drums beat, and awaken once more the primal vision, and heal the land.

But alas, for those who flee the times of war, and whose bellies are swollen with hunger, and who suck greedily at every small drop of the brackish water that is all there is to assuage their thirst.

Here is the riddle of the sphinx, for our age, how can this land be born again when it is old? How can the dry places run once more with flowing water. Let the south be so born again in hope from the ashes, that the spirit of compassion can reach out from lands far distant, to touch a starving child. Like an eagle, the spirit of compassion will rise again, with wings of hope, a sign for the world to see as it unfolds its wings and soars into the sky. A new day will dawn. And the wind will sing to the people of the land:

People, look South. The time is near
Time to cast off your doubt and fear
Look out for those with hunger pain
And do not let them die in vain
People, look South and sing today:
Love, the bird, is on the way.

Now the lady turns to face the east. A figure appears, a man in a red robe, with an ancient wrinkled face, and a sharp nose. He walks in and stands in front of the lady.

"What have you to tell of the East, brother?", she asks. And he begins.

I was born in the East, not the distant east, but on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. A great port was built, and a lighthouse shone, a blazing beacon in the night, a wonder of the world. Mine was a land of the scholar, of the greatest of libraries, and the wisdom of the philosophers who studied and mapped the heavens; here also, they meditated upon the paths of wisdom in the Chaldean oracles, on the source of being, of that which is one and infinite.

But darkness came upon our land, the flame of knowledge was extinguished, and the oracle was silenced. I saw the last of the keepers of wisdom, Hypatia, the daughter of Theon, meet her doom. She who had mapped the heavens with her astrolabe, and imparted wisdom to Christian and Pagan alike, was taken by the darkness in her sixtieth year.

I saw her speaking in the square to many people, speaking about the one source of being, of that which is infinite, and they were listening to her in silence But a fanatic horde came upon her, their minds clouded with jealousy and hate, and they tore her clothes, and dragged her to the Church of Christ, and there they cut her down, and she died on the floor of the temple, and I wept bitterly.

And I too fled the land, under the shadow of a darkening cloud. I went further east, to the lands where lived the Magi; here we studied the signs and portents in the sky, and pondered the music of the spheres, the dance of the planets.

There we kept the watch, and looked deep into the reflected waters for conjunctions in the night sky, that a meeting of three signs in one may come. For we know that the dawn will come, and the longest night will end. And the wind will sing to the people of the land:

People, look East. The time is near
Time to cast off your doubt and fear
Wars will end, and fights will cease
The coming sign, the star of peace
People, look East and sing today:
Love, the star, is on the way.

Then the lady in the blue robe turned clockwise to each of the four corners of the earth, to north, to west, to south, to east. And she bowed to each of the four men, and they bowed to her. And she said:

Go now, to watch the lands you know
Plant seeds of hope that they may grow
And keep the faith, then meet once more
When shortest day, come each his door
And light will lengthen now each day
And love, the lord, is on the way.

Stand at the crossroads and look.
Ask for the ancient paths, seek the merry way.
Walk in it and you will find rest for your soul.

Now as the Lady spoke, her voice became fainter and fainter, and a mist came over my eyes so that I could not see, and the dream faded into grey. And I awoke in a cold room, seated in my armchair beside a black and empty grate, the clock striking three, and the wind howling outside.

Does Jersey administer VAT collection for the UK?

2011-12-20T14:52:00.001Z

Not surprisingly, because other jurisdictions outside the EU are exempt, Jersey and Guernsey are looking at the legal issue of the loss of LVCR. As the Telegraph reported a few days ago:

Jersey's economic development minister Senator Alan Maclean was reported to have said that the UK appeared to be "discriminating against the Channel Islands" for scrapping Low Value Consignment Relief in their territory but not in other non-EU jurisdictions. The Jersey government is currently seeking legal advice to as to whether the UK government has a case to answer. Jersey stands to lose more than six hundred jobs as the industry responsible for sending cheap internet mail order goods like CDs, DVDs and contact lenses to the UK loses its right to sell at VAT-exempt prices. Companies located in Switzerland, Cyprus and Hong Kong, however, are still believed to be reaping the benefits of the same VAT exemption, known as Low Value Consignment Relief (LVCR). (1)

Today's Jersey Evening Post reports that a legal challenge will now be forthcoming.

But what would happen if LVCR disappeared? Then all goods currently shipping would need to have VAT prepaid on them by fulfilment companies. This does happen if the item is greater than £18 anyway. The Jersey website tells us the following:

I am a Jersey trader. Can I ship goods by post to customers in the UK without delays on arrival? Special arrangements have been made for the collection of VAT that would be due on goods sent from Jersey to the UK by post. These arrangements have been agreed with UK Customs and Jersey Post and include:

- accounting for UK import VAT on commercial consignments (excluding alcohol, tobacco and tobacco products) with a value exceeding £18 but not exceeding £2,000, and all perfumes and toilet waters not exceeding £2,000, that would otherwise be chargeable on the goods on importation into the UK

- the import of commercial consignments (excluding goods liable to excise duty) with a value not exceeding £18 into the UK

- using agreed postal routes other than those through an office of exchange (a post office which is manned by UK Customs)

Traders wishing to be authorised to dispatch goods from Jersey to the UK under the scheme should in the first instance contact Customer Services at Jersey Post.

But who administers this? This comes, as the HM Revenue and Customs site tells us, from Jersey:(http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?

"3.4 Pre-payment of import VAT on goods purchased on the internet

For goods purchased on the internet UK Customs have special arrangements that allow some overseas traders to charge, collect and pay over to us the import VAT that would normally be chargeable at the time the goods are imported. These arrangements operate under Memoranda of Understanding signed with the overseas countries customs and postal authorities, and traders wanting to use this procedure must be authorised to do so by these authorities. Once authorised they are issued with a unique authorisation number, which should be shown on the customs declaration or packaging. Also they will include the statement 'Import VAT Pre-paid'. Where these arrangements are used you will not be charged import VAT or a Royal Mail handling fee when you receive your package."

This means that Jersey - it is not clear whether it is Jersey customs or Jersey Post - are acting as unpaid administrators for the UK customs authorities. They are collecting the VAT from the Jersey traders, putting a stamp to say "prepaid VAT" on the package, and this then goes through without waiting for the VAT to be paid at the other end, which in the case of perishable goods, would pretty well destroy the export industry. The Jersey collectors then pay the UK customs with the VAT, and presumably also send them supporting paperwork to confirm that.

What is not so clear is (a) who administers this scheme in Jersey? (b) how many people does it involve? (c) what cost is involved in running the scheme (in terms of salaries paid to staff in Jersey)? (d) Is this administrative cost recouped in any way - after all, Jersey would be acting as an unpaid tax collector for the UK customs otherwise?

To this can be added (e) how much extra cost would be incurred if even small items of under £18 were also included in the scheme, so that volume of parcels might increase?

Link
(1) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/offshorefinance/8940459/Jersey-could-sue-UK-over-VAT.html

Birthday - 1863 Style

2011-12-19T21:12:00.001Z

This is another extract from Whitnash Parish Magazine, from December 1863. It is perhaps not surprising that in cultured circles, some kind of sophisticated entertainment should take place, but what is interesting is the influence of German culture permeating this kind of celebration, in a way that would have probably not been possible after the Great War.

The Song of the Bell (German: "Das Lied von der Glocke") is a poem that the German poet Friedrich Schiller published in 1798. It is one of the most famous poems of German literature and with 430 lines also one of the longest. In it, Schiller combines a knowledgeable technical description of a bell founding with points of view and comments on human life, its possibilities and risks. (Wikipedia)

The musical version here is that of Andreas Romberg - "Das Lied von der Glocke". Romberg was a colleague of Beethoven, who had also set to music Schiller's ode An die Freude (Ode to Joy). It is likely therefore that the version sung was in German, and not a translation of the poem - yet another example of the facility with German enjoyed by the Whitnash Rector's family, and this is certainly corroborated by the poem which followed.

I've not been able to find precisely what was meant by "grand kinder-symphonic" with which the celebration ended, but it was probably Romberg's Toy Symphony (Kinder-Sinfonie) for Piano (or 2 Violins and Bass) with 7 Toy Instruments.

The "Living Pictures" were also called "Tableau vivants" which means still images. The term describes a striking group of suitably costumed people carefully posed. Throughout the duration of the display, the people shown do not speak or move.

Before radio, film and television, tableaux vivants were popular forms of entertainment. Before the age of colour reproduction of images the tableau vivant (often abbreviated simply to tableau) was sometimes used to recreate paintings "on stage", based on an etching or sketch of the painting. This could be done as an amateur venture in a drawing room, or as a more professionally produced series of tableaux presented on a theatre stage, one following another, usually to tell a story without requiring all the usual trappings of a "live" theatre performance. They thus 'educated' their audience to understand the form taken by later Victorian and Edwardian era magic lantern shows, and perhaps also sequential narrative comic strips (which first appeared in modern form in the late 1890s). (Wikipedia)

It is an interesting glimpse into "home entertainment" from days gone by!

BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION. (from Whitnash Parish Magazine, December 1863)

On Monday, November 2nd, the Rector's birthday was celebrated by his family in a very pleasing manner. The music, vocal and instrumental, of Schiller's Lay of the Bell, composed by A. Romberg, was performed by various members of the Rector's family, and the scenes of that poem were represented by living pictures, including -The Cradle. The Meeting. The Bride. The Home. The Fire. The Parting. The Harvest. Discord, and Concord. These scenes were very prettily designed and executed by the members of the Rector's family and their friends, and they were introduced by the following prologue, written by the Rev. R. E. Brown, and spoken by Miss Ruth Young -:

Another link upon the chain of human life,
With smiles and tears, with joy and sorrow rife;
Another step upon the path that upward tends
Through doubt to certainty that never ends.
Another stroke upon the bell that deeper rings
As each new year this festal season brings.
List to its sound ? oh, listen well and learn
That which one mastermind did 'erst discern,
The living pictures here before you see
The history of a bell from earliest infancy,
Till when uplifted to its sacred home,
Pregnant with fate, it speaks for years to come
Thus where the giant mind of Schiller led,
Let not our pigmy footsteps vainly tread,
Where our skill fails, let zeal fill up the rest,
And love, not science, be the critic's test;
Not at the world's approval here we aim,
or seek the uncertainties of public fame,
One smile alone, one look of happy joy,
For this our every effort we employ,
Father and friend with your approval blest,
Successful must our efforts be confessed.
Enough the countrymen of Shakespeare long,
To fill the air with Deutchland's Schiller's song,
Aid us, ye muses, loving Avon's waters,
While German verse is sung by English sons and
daughters."

At the conclusion of the Tableaux, the Whitnash Rectory band performed a grand kinder-symphonic, composed by Bernhard Romberg.

Rosewindow No 106

2011-12-18T13:30:00.002Z

Having been laid low with flu, and having to let the world pass by with inactivity, I came across this "Rosewindow" article from The Winchester Churchman by John V Taylor, who was then Bishop of Winchester. In a world of incessant activity, when the pace of life seems ever more frantic and frenetic, John Taylor's writing strikes quite a different note. As he notes, the infant and the geriatric are literally in other peoples hands; and so too, are those who are ill, who have to rest and let others help them.

Limitation and helplessness are not how people tend to think of God. John Taylor, however, shows how such a counter-intuitive view can provide far more depth and resonance with our human condition than Olympian images of power.

Rosewindow No 106: December 1983
by John V Taylor

Christmas Presents

Of all the various presents that may be given to any of us, at Christmas or any other time, the ones that mean most are those which have actually belonged to the person who gives them. It may be an heirloom from a godmother's jewellery box or a favourite dinky car from a small boy's collection: the fact of its having been owned and loved by the giver adds a value that money cannot buy. There is a difference between giving and handing over.

Most of our presents could come to us on order straight from the shop. They say much more when they have been personally wrapped by the friend who chose them. But something quite different is being offered when the gift actually changes owners and changes hands.

Christ "handed over" in Birth

It was just such a handing over as this that took place in the Incarnation. "He that spared not his own Son but delivered him up, or handed him over, for us all how shall he not also with him freely give us all things, how can he fail to lavish upon us all he has to give" In the birth of Jesus that which was most precious to God, his only-begotten Son, his very self, changed hands and was given up.

Christ "handed over" in His Passion

The handing over of the Son of God is a central theme of the Gospels and a turning point in the story. "The Son of Man", says Jesus in St. Mark, "shall be handed over, delivered up, to the chief priests and scribes and they shall condemn him and shall hand him over to the Gentiles." And later in the same Gospel St. Mark tells how they bound Jesus and handed him over to Pilate, and Pilate, when he had scourged him, handed him over to be crucified. Tied up like a parcel and passed from hand to cruel hand - that is what it meant to be handed over. Christ knew what he was talking about when he said to Peter after the Resurrection, "When you were young you fastened your belt and walked where you chose but when you are old a stranger will bind you fast and carry you where you have no wish to go."

The men who wrote the Gospels used this word `handed over' so often in their story of the passion of Jesus that it clearly had for them a strong theological significance. We too use it at every Eucharist to introduce the solemn words of institution:, "In the same night in which he was handed over, he took bread." It means something far wider and more mysterious than the betrayal by Judas Iscariot; that was on the beginning of a complete transposition of Jesus out of his own freedom and initiative and intense activity, and into the grasp and compulsion and will of others. "'God spared not his own Son but handed him over for us all."

Why am I speaking of the passion - the passivity - of Christ at this Christmas season? Because the very beginning of any human life has this in common with the very end - you are carried. Things are done to you. The infant and the geriatric are literally in other people's hands. So Christmas night may also be described as "the same night in which he was handed over." This is the paradox of the Incarnation: that the Maker of all things is constricted in a crib, the Eternal Word has not yet learned to talk, and he who holds us in existence must be carried and kept safe.

Here too we see the transfer of the Son of God from pure freedom to constraint, from creative energy to passivity, from initiative to waiting. "God spared not his own Son but handed him over for us all."

Jesus' Sonship

But what does it mean, this talk about God's own Son? We distort the true faith and miss the point if we allow ourselves to imagine anything like three Gods. Whatever we say about the Son of God we are saying it about God. The Son of God is God being obedient to his own nature. The Son of God is God under the constraints he has set for himself. The Son of God is God eternally tying his own hands with love and handing himself over for us all. The handing over of the Son of God was not a brief unique incident lasting from about 5 B.C. to 30 A.D. It is an eternal truth about God, but we should never have guessed it if we had not seen his overwhelming glory in the helplessness of Bethlehem and the helplessness of the judgement hall and the cross.

Passing from Power to Dependence

The living God passes our understanding and stretches like a horizon beyond our newest, clearest thought of him. But this we know: he is like an artist and he is like a lover, and both are bound and handed over.

W. H. Vanstone, whose book, "The Stature of Waiting", throws so much light on this theme, has pointed out in a further unpublished paper that the artist, in choosing to express himself in something that is not himself, but stone or sound or colour, has committed himself to an activity which cannot be the smooth unfolding of a pre-meditated plan but must inevitably involve coming to terms with the materials he has chosen, getting things right as he goes along, and an inexhaustible patience and resourcefulness, struggle and cost. The lover, unless his love is false, has by the act of loving, given to some other being the power to disappoint him infinitely. Both the lover and the artist have tied their own hands. They have passed over from power to dependence, from doing to being done to, from achievement to waiting. And precisely by letting that happen to them their true nature, their glory, is revealed. As artist or as lover they have handed themselves over, made a present of themselves and let the most essential, precious thing that is theirs change hands.

That is what God has been doing from before the foundation of the world. "He that spared not his own Son, his own self, but handed himself over for us all, how can he fail to lavish upon us all he has to give?"

Man's Response

No. he cannot help but give and give again, and wait and wait for our response. And what is that response to be when we have at last understood? Not a busy programme of service and achievement. Why should our agenda be so different from his? He who is waiting for the world's response asks above all else that we share the waiting. "Could you not watch with me one hour?" He who entered into his glory when he passed from splendid doing into shameful being-done-to calls us to stand by him in his silence and inaction. If we do so we shall find ourselves in a large company today.

And our prayer will grow more like the spontaneous movements of those who watch a sculptor at work and tense their own muscles in sympathy with his concentration, or like those who hold their breath to see whether the mail includes the letter their friend has been waiting for. "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done" is that kind of prayer.

So, during these last weeks before Christmas, the best present we can prepare to hand over to him, the one that most evidently belongs to us and is typical of us, is the unfulfilled but even invincible longing that we share with him. So many of the familiar carols express it: "O that we were there?" Let us stay, then, in the posture of Advent, waiting upon the eternally patient God with the love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

The Hermit

2011-12-17T15:39:00.000Z

The Hermit

The Hermit bows his head in thought

In contemplation of all and nought

In appearance seeming aged and infirm

And yet he belies this, standing firm

Upon the mountain peak above

Silence looks down on mortal love

Past the seven ages of mankind

And holds a light to heal the blind

Within the star is shining bright

Over the earth, it casts warm light

Calls to follow in rising from below

Saying where I am, you may be also.

Funny Old World 4

2011-12-16T00:54:00.000Z

Health Warning: what follows is not news, any more than the middle section of Private Eye is news, or The Impressionist is news, or Spitting Image was news. It is a light hearted spin on the real news, which can be found on genuine news sites, such as BBC Jersey. Other news sites are available. This is not one of them. None of the individuals mentioned have ever said anything quite like the words attributed to them. Which is perhaps a pity.

The States have released more information from the census and it shows that 50% of the people living in Jersey were born there. The other half is made up of British people, but also 7% from Portugal or Madeira, 3% from Poland, and the rest from elsewhere. This makes a total population of around 110%, according to States statistician Duncan Gibault. "People say the figures don't add up," he said, "but the census is a headcount, and it proves that some people have two heads".

Environmental campaigner Dr Mark Forskitt warned that the situation could only get worse. "We've heard rumours of radiation leaks from nearby Cap de La Hague causing mutations, especially in St Ouen," he said, "and here is the proof in official figures of two headed people living in Jersey, and possibly some politicians with two faces as well."

A States survey on speed limits was 'seriously flawed' and the results extremely misleading, a Scrutiny report has revealed. The methodology and interpretation of the survey was wrong and the results were 'wholly unrepresentative', the Environment Scrutiny panel found. The survey came to the following conclusions:

- There should be special election limits of 75 mph for speeding prospective candidates on motor bikes.
- Hedley Le Maistre would like his tractor to be able to go at 25 mph along the Five Mile Road
- Green lanes of 15 mph were very slow, and should have more signs warning the public like "slow moving heavy plant ahead". In future, bushes and shrubs should have to grow at a reasonable speed.
- People speed a lot in cars. Sometimes they crash. Jeremy Clarkson is probably to blame.

The Prince of Whales is to visit Jersey next year as part of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations, Buckingham Palace has announced. Following the protests this year outside the Hotel de France, Prince Charles, a keen environmentalist, is looking to further the cause of Whales in the Channel Islands. He may also speak to a slow moving heavy plant along the Green lanes.

The White House - was painted green in January as part of the National Trust for Jersey's efforts to promote environmental sustainability. This tactic has been also successfully deployed by several States departments in 2011 to demonstrate their commitment to environmental matters.

Earlier in the year the sea around La Collette was temporarily stained green and Andrew Green became Minister for Education also on a temporary basis. A building on Green Street having become a red herring has been repainted in 'Lime Grove', a shade that the Treasury Minister is thought not to be keen on. However the former green shade of the airport which became more prominently sandy this year will be getting a completely new colour scheme - but what that might be remains undecided at the present time. A spokesman for Maclean Paints said they would be happy to mix any colour the States required and would formulate it to ensure a complete cover-up and protection against vandalism.

There could be a 'silver lining' for Jersey from the financial crisis gripping the Eurozone. Experts say that vulture funds may flee the EU and relocate to the Island. Meanwhile, local banks are already gearing up to handle multiple currencies as the potential for a break-up of the single currency zone looms large. It has long been rumoured that hidden in bunkers and old German tunnels are a secret cache of Reichmarks which may be made available to the German government if required.

A repeat of the 'flying banana' controversy has been avoided after a last-minute intervention by the new Chief Minister. Senator Ian Gorst stepped in to stop taxpayers' money being spent employing private design company Baldrick Limited to create a flying turnip. "With the ending of low value consignment relief there would be no savings on exporting flying flowers, flying bananas or flying turnips", said a Treasury spokesman.

The Jersey Chamber of Commerce has put forward proposals that it believes should be adopted to try and make the Island more competitive. It says that the 'Plan B' is necessary as the States is not achieving cost-cutting targets and seems to be prepared to increase taxes at a time when businesses are struggling. Islanders can view the proposals in a special film presentation at Cineworld, called "Plan B from Outer Space",

Plan B from Outer Space starring....

The late Bela Lugosi as a Vulture Fund
Hedley Le Maistre as a Jersey Bean
David Warr as a Coffee Bean
Peter Body as "The Businessman"
Jeremy Macon as Best Boy
A Snoring States Member as A Zombie

Special Economic Effects by Maclean Light Industrial Magic
Musical accompaniment by Geoff Cook and the Chamber Orchestra
Produced and directed by Ed Wood

Morris Dance Mythology

2011-12-14T22:14:00.000Z

To see a strange outlandish fowle,
A quaint baboon, an ape, an owl,
A dancing bear, a giant's bone,
A foolish engine move alone,
A morris-dance, a puppet play,
Mad Tom to sing a roundelay,
A woman dancing on a rope,
Bull-baiting also at the Hope;
A rhymer's jests, a juggler's cheats,
Or players acting on the stage.
(Henry Farley, 1616)

I was watching Tom Holland's recent documentary on the mythology surrounding dinosaur bones. The ancients interpreted such bones within the framework of their understanding, and saw fabulous creatures like griffins (possibly derived from protoceratops), dragons, and titans or giants. It was not until the use of comparative anatomy that the modern reconstruction of the dinosaurs began; before that, they were fitted into a mythological history, in which they had been wiped out in a global catastrophe such as the Biblical flood.

Mythological histories play a large part in our understanding of our own past even today. Virtually everyone, including Morris dancers, will tell you that the dance embodies pagan fertility symbolism, and it is certainly understood in those terms. And yet that is almost certainly an early modern attribution, and very far from the truth, just as monuments of the Neolithic age were once enfolded in the same terms as druid's temples.

Stephen D. Corrsin, writing in Folklore noted how: "At the end of the nineteenth century and in the first decades of the twentieth century, the ideas and terminology of rites, rituals, and pagan religious ceremonies pervaded English writing on performance practices such as morris dances and sword dances, and mumming and pace-egging." (1)

Part of the problem lies in the re-invention of history. The early studies of folklore and mythology, which we find in Frazer's Golden Bough or Lady Raglan's work, tend to start with an idea and select evidence to confirm that idea, often turning speculations into cast-iron facts, when of course, they are very far from that. It is like a join the dots puzzle where some of the dots can be fitted to make one picture, if one ignores some of the others, or brush them aside.

So what is the history of morris? The first reference to the English Morris dance is 1458:

when Alice de Wetehalle, a widow with property in London and Suffolk, left to her heirs a silver cup 'sculpted with moreys dauns'. At about the same time the English translation of a Norman French romance, The Knight of the Swan, included 'morishes'. They appeared at court in 1492, when Henry VII paid for the first of what became a favourite royal entertainment. Market towns were taking the morris up from the 1500s. During the late fifteenth century its cast of characters, the Lady, the Fool, and the set of dancers, became a common motif for artists all over western and central Europe. The plot of their action was the wooing of the lady by all the others, and the winning of her hand by the Fool. The dance which they performed was distinguished by its exceptional vigour, with much capering and rapid arm movements. But although it was clearly a very widespread phenomenon, none of the European appearances seem to be earlier than Alice de Wetehalle's bequest.(2)

The morris seems to have begun as a dance in the court, which then became popular outside the court. This transmission of popularity by Royal patronage can also be seen in the Christmas Tree, which became a popular part of Christmas after Prince Albert had made it part of the Royal celebration of Christmas in Victorian England. We can even see traces of the same today in naming of children over members of the Royal family. The Royal touch lends a mystique and popularity that should not be underestimated.

In the courts, there were masques which were orderly dances and entertainments, but which were preceded by anti-masques.

The anti-masque is a spectacle of disorder which usually starts or precedes the masque itself. It is characterized by impropriety and is transformed by the masque into goodness, propriety, and order, typically by the King's presence alone. It was also contrasted with the masque by the use of the lower class as characters. This then was supposed to harmonize with the king and the higher class.(3)

The antimasque was performed was performed entirely by professional actors and dancers, and provided the contrast before the stately masque which followed. Actors were often skilled dancers at the time. The printer Thomas Platter mentions seeing the actors dancing "marvellously and gracefully" after a production of Julius Caesar in 1599. But the courtiers who danced in the main masque were not actors, and there was a distinctive difference in expression between antimasque dancing and the masque which followed:

A great deal of music was performed during the presentation of a masque at court. When the king entered the masquing room and took his seat on the chair of state, loud music -- a wind consort -- was heard. The performance which followed usually fell into two parts: an antimasque and a main masque. The grotesque or comic antimasque always contained at least one dance and sometimes included singing. When this world of misrule or vulgarity vanished (at a visually spectacular moment known as the transformation scene), more loud music was heard. The masquers (courtiers, and not professional actors and dancers like the performers in the antimasque) were revealed and came forward to music. (4)

The morris dance then was unmistakably antimasque material, designed to be vulgar and brash to point up the contrast which followed the transformation scene. Antimasques were dances which did not derive from the peasantry, but which depicted the courtly idea of the peasantry, and provided social stratification in dancing. The morris itself seems to have been a craze sweeping the courts of Western Europe which were notoriously fashion conscious, much as crazes and fashions sweep across our own society without apparent rhyme or reason.

Shakespeare also takes a morris dance and places it in Two Noble Kinsmen, but this is to play up to the Queen:

Consider the morris dance in Two Noble Kinsmen. Far from being genuinely rustic, it was borrowed directly from Beaumont's masque for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine. Moreover, the court received these plays favorably. The Winter's Tale and The Tempest were performed at court in 1611; both were also performed, along with twelve other plays, as part of the wedding festivities for Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine in 1612. (5)

But by Elizabeth's time, the morris dance was already well established, and considered an ancient dance. We must be careful not to read too much into that supposition. There is no evidence of the dance before 19 May 1448, "when Moryssh daunsers were paid 7s (35p) for their services." As Ronald Hutton observes:

The earlier performances before royalty may have been by people with faces darkened to resemble the 'Moors' or Arabs after whom the morris is possibly named. At Shrovetide 1509 Henry VIII had torchbearers 'apparelled in crimson satin and green like Moriskoes, their faces black'. But by Christmas 1515 the 'moresk' dancers at court certainly appeared something like the modern morris sides: six people wearing white and green jackets with hanging sleeves, tiny dangling pieces of copper, and a large number (348 between them) of small bells. They were accompanied by a fool in a yellow silk coat and two ladies in satin representing Beauty and Venus. A gold cup owned by the king was decorated with five morrismen and a lady, while the Christmas revels of the princess Mary, in 1522, included nine dancers in coats and bells. At Kingston the coats and bells had already appeared in 1507. By 1520 the former were specified as being of spangled twilled cotton and the latter were apparently strung on garters as they were later in the century, and have been ever since. There were always six in the troupe. 86 So the costume of the morris, if not the number of performers, was becoming standardized. But we have no record of the steps.(2)

Hutton suggests that it might have developed out of earlier English leaping dances, called routs and reyes, "because those terms vanish as the morris appears", and he observes that:

by now the point ought to have been substantiated that although some of the rituals and customs carried on in early Tudor communities were very old, many had been either introduced or embellished only a few generations before or even within living memory. The churchwardens' accounts from the years around 1400 show few of them compared with those from the period around 1500, and the fourteenth-century household accounts likewise refer to them much less than those of the early sixteenth century. Literary evidence and the edicts of churchmen suggest that some earlier customs had died away by the later middle ages, to be replaced by others. (2)

The most complete study of the morris was by John Forrest in "The History of Morris Dancing, 1458-1750". He lays to rest completely the notion of a pagan dance at its origin, and comes to the following conclusions:

* morris has no single origin point
* morris is not and never has been a single or simple phenomenon
* morris has evolved continuously throughout its documented history
* morris is not especially "folk" or rural
* styles of morris from different contexts have had a constant evolutionary influence on one another (pp. 26-7

Forrest discerns three basic types of Morris in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: the solo jig, the processional, and the 'Lady' Morris. Most records from this early period refer to the latter, in which a woman stands in the middle of a group of male dancers. The woman (and later a man dressed as a woman, probably because the part was felt to be demeaning to a woman), was said to be the 'Lady' or 'Maid Marian'. Lowe speculates that the original Lady was supplanted by the Maid Marian, the latter being part of the Robin Hood May-Game which was commonly enacted on the same occasions that Morris was danced.

In 1575, Robert Langham reported on a courtly Morris at Kenilworth, "Well, sir, after these horsemen, a lively Morris dance, according to the ancient manner: six dancers, Maid Marian and the Fool." (8)

But as time went on, and the dance spread, it evolved and changed. Probably as it moved out from the warmth of the courts, and into the open streets and fields, it moved from Christmas to the warmer times of the year. Morris dancing outside, in snow or hail, on a bitter freezing night, may keep the dancers warm, but there will be few spectators. In the warmer months, it could attach itself and form part of the traditional country pastimes like fairs.

Courtly morris of the fifteenth century was a Christmas-tide entertainment involving a group of men with bells on their legs, dancing frenetically in an attempt to woo a lady. After this display of male vitality she, in fine fickle, gave her heart to a fool. Not only did this little scenario find favour in the palaces of England, soon it was spreading among the common people. First along the Thames to nearby towns and then, by the sixteenth century, throughout England. Along the way it became less a feature of Christmas than of the Maytime or summer games.(9)

The origins of the term itself are obscure. Here are two explanations:

The term morris probably developed from the French word morisque (meaning a dance, the dance), which became morisch in Flemish , and then the English moryssh, moris and finally morris. (5)

Most sources agree that the English morris dance derives its name from the Spanish moresca, or "Moorish dance." In Spain the dance is supposed to represent the encounter between Moors and Christians, and it retains this theme in its name (Moros y Cristianos); (6)

What is clear is that morris dancing has evolved over the centuries, and in its current form, it may have been influenced by the folklorists who saw a pagan origin, and who thereby incorporated motifs into the dance as a kind of reconstruction.

Most notably, this was the work of Sir Edmund Chambers in 1903 in his popular book "The Mediaeval Stage" where, intoxicated by the work of James Frazer, he stated that it must have been an ancient fertility dance. While modern day researchers find little of Frazer's work holds up to scrutiny, his opinions were accepted almost without question for about 60 years.

The musician Cecil Sharp was inspired by this to collect 150 examples of morris which by then was dying out, and revived it at the new centre of a folk movement. He clashed with Mary Neal, who was teaching morris to a girls club, and had first asked Sharp to collect examples of it, as Sharp propagated the idea that in its "original purity" the dance had only been performed by men, and henceforth women should be excluded. This was in fact relying heavily on Chambers, who was very much a biased source, and not a professional historian. When Barbara Lowe's 1957 study showed that this history was mistaken, this was largely ignored - by then, the status quo, and the supporting fabricated history had been well established.

So if you are a woman, and you ask to put on the morris dancers hat, don't assume you will get pregnant, which is the modern folk-belief. Mind you, I know of one woman who did, and she did give birth later in the year!

Links
(1) Folklore, Vol. 115, 2004, Stephen D. Corrsin
(2) The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400-1700, Ronald Hutton, 1994
(3) Wikipedia
(4) Music in the English Courtly Masque, 1604-1640. Peter Walls, 1996
(5) Moorish Dancing in the Two Noble Kinsmen. Sujata Iyengar, Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, 2007
(6) http://www.standonmorris.co.uk/page17a.html
(7) The History of Morris Dancing, 1458-1750,
(8) http://www.fishleys.co.uk/Oldmeg/EARLY.HTM
(9) http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/paganism.htm

Days of the Doily

2011-12-13T09:13:00.001Z

One from the back catalogue today, from "Household Hints", an article which appeared in "Thinks!" back in the 1980s when I was assistant editor.

Incidentally, the same book cover graces a modern revamp -"Classic Household Hints: Over 500 Old and New Tips for a Happier Home" which is currently selling on Amazon. I imagine they've modernised some of the recipes, and almost certainly will not have the details below for afternoon tea.

A lace mat - as mentioned below - was often termed a doily (or doilie). These were ornamental mats, originally the name of a fabric made by Doiley, a 17th-century London draper. Often these would be crocheted and sometimes knitted out of cotton or linen, but lace doilies were also manufactured, and can still be found for sale today on ebay.

I love the precision of the afternoon tea

Arrange cups on their respective saucers with handles at right angles to the rim of the tray.

This was clearly intended for middle class people, of the kind described in Miss Marple books, where a maid comes round to help each day to homes in Mary St Mead. One can imagine the same lady doing afternoon tea as that described by Cecil Parkinson in his book "Parkinson's Law":

It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and despatching a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis. An hour will be spent in finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half-an-hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the pillar-box in the next street. The total effort which would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety and toil.

So if you are retired, have plenty of time on your hands, and neighbours to invite round, here are a few tips...

LIFE PRE-WAR

Our Puzzle-setter, Tony, is something of a "book-browser" and second hand book shops have a fatal fascination for him. One of the treasures he discovered recently was a pre-war edition of "Household Hints". Here is an extract to bore you - amuse you - or bring back happy memories, depending on your age.

Afternoon Tea

1 All preparations must be completed beofre your guests arrive.-

2. In Autumn or Winter, draw the curtains and light the room with candles.

3. Have an adequate supply of little tables.

4. Cover each table with a lace cloth laid cornerways.

5. Place lace mats on tables to receive plates.

6. Your tray should be oblong, though oval shows off a service well. Silver is most attractive, copper next, then lacquer. Failing this a carved wooden tray of polished mahogany.

7. Arrange cups on their respective saucers with handles at right angles to the rim of the tray.

8. Arrange plates in a pile with lace serviettes,folded triangularly, beside them. As you pour out, lift plate, lay serviette on it, place cup and saucer on top, and pass to your guest.

9. Tea Service should consist of silver spoons, tea knives, pastry forks and tongs and a lemon knife
- always have a dish of lemon slices ready for those who prefer lemon to cream.

10. Serve China as well as Indian tea. Fresh tea must be brewed when two cups have been served for
your guests.

The bad old days?

Some further and quite informative snippets:-

Potatoes

To make floury:- Add a teaspoon full of vinegar for each pint of water in which old potatoes are cooked,
after they have been boiling for 15 minutes

To mash lightly:- Add a pinch of baking powder when mashing. Beat well.

To bake quickly:- Stand potatoes in hot water for 15 minutes before baking.

Potato water:- Use when making bread dough. The bread will stay fresh longer. Use instead of water
for making gravy or stock.

Potato peelings:- These are to be dried and used for kindling.

Incidentally the price of this fascinating tome was originally 2/6, or 12 1/2p in today's money - the price of a bag of crisps! What Tony paid for it second hand, he's not telling. However it really is a treasure house of information.

Gods and Monsters on Disease

2011-12-11T21:12:00.001Z

I caught up with Tony Robinson's Gods and Monsters on Disease.

The idea that illness could be spread by elfs with tiny arrows (elf-shot) was new to me but illustrated how our ancestors struggled to make sense of their own distant past. In this case, it was tiny Neolithic arrowheads, perhaps half an inch across, which formed the basis of the legend. Being stone in an age of metal as well, they must have seemed very strange indeed, and like the Iron Age Hill Camps, which became understood as "fairy forts", they were incorporated into the world view in such a way as to change them from anomaly to example.

There is, of course, a modern analogue, whereby strange phenomena in the sky in an age of science are incorporated into a system whereby far from being UFOs - unidentified flying objects - they become instead identified as alien incursions, "flying saucers" after Kenneth Arnold's description in June 1947. The skeptical reaction is to attribute these to atmospheric phenomena, or to misplaced identifications of real objects like weather balloons. But what is interesting in both cases, is that world views seem to abhor anything that can be labeled "unknown"; there is always an attempt to reduce it to the understandable, whether by incorporating it into an alien life scenario, or into a scientific reductionism that places it within the boundaries of known science. In that respect, we are philosophically very similar to our ancestors, only we regard our own explanations for the inexplicable - and our desire to have an explanation - as entirely rational!

It was good to see Owen Davies pop up on screen. I'd read his excellent studies of Cunning Folk, Charms and Charmers and witchcraft magic and culture from 1736-1951, so it was nice to put a face to the printed page. He was explaining to Tony Robinson about the notion that in the Middle Ages that disease is like a game of tag that leaves one person, then is caught by another, so as you get well, they get sick. In fact, on the surface, this is quite a rational explanation from observation - in our office, for example, with coughs and colds, you can see it all the time because the duration of the illness means that as another person gets the infection, the person who gave it to them is recovering. Indeed, last week several people were coughing, now I've caught their cough, but they will probably be getting better. For repetitive winter illnesses like that, the cycle of the disease strongly suggests a game of tag, rather than a person transmitting the illness and still retaining it.

But apply logic to that principle, and you end up with all kind of bizarre notions. Rather than just by accident, means can be taken to ensure than an infection can be taken away from someone by deliberately giving it to someone else, which is not a particularly good idea if it was plague rather than coughs and colds. Yet even there, those who survived would be recovering while others were being afflicted, suggesting that game of tag transmission of disease.

A stall was set up to demonstrate in a busy street the treatment of warts by snails. The idea was that you would rub the snail on the wart, and if left where someone would pick it up unsuspectingly, they would take on the wart, while it would leave you. Here is another odd notion by applying rigorous logic to the game of tag idea of disease - for it to leave you, you must give it to someone else.

It was interesting that the the young volunteers demonstrated non-medieval magical thinking by their way of trying to treat warts they had - a knife, the sharp end of a pen, and sandpaper! So much for medical knowledge and the age of science!

Hippocrates approach to disease, which Robinson explained was still current in the Middle Ages, was that disease was spread by "foul air", by a "miasma", usually caused by rotting bodies, or the smell resulting from the effects of disease like typhoid, or from cesspits. The germ notion of disease was, of course, completely unknown.

What he didn't mention was that it was also thought that astrological phenomena such as an alignment of humid Mars and fiery Jupiter could also cause vile, disease producing vapours in the atmosphere. One of the most significant pandemics was thought to have been caused by the orbits of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn lining up in the 40th degree of Aquarius. According to the Compendium de Epidemia, this was on March 20th 1345, and marked the beginning of the plague.

But in 1981, Astronomers Sir Fred Hoyle and Dr. N. Chandra Wickramasinghe wrote "Diseases from Space" in which they made a serious suggestion that interstellar transmission of virus or bacteria forms could in fact come from outer space:

"We noticed that epidemics and pandemics of fresh diseases, both in historical times as well as more recently, have almost without exception appeared suddenly and spread with phenomenal swiftness. The influenza pandemics of 1889-1890 and 1918-1919 both swept over vast areas of the globe in a matter of weeks. Such swiftness of spread, particularly in days prior to air travel, is difficult to understand if infection can pass only from person to person. Rather it is strongly suggestive of an extraterrestrial invasion over a global scale. We argued now that it is the primary cometary dust infection that is the most lethal, and that secondary person-to-person transmissions have a progressively reduced virulence, so resulting in a diminishing incidence of disease over a limited timescale."

This theory was provocative, and was initially treated with skepticism, because bacteria would be heated to about 500 degrees Centigrade on their way through the Earth's atmosphere. But Dr. Shirwan Al-Mufti, an astronomer at the University of Wales conducted an experiment in which he stuck tubes of bacteria into hot ovens (between 300 and 700 degrees). He noted that:

"After withdrawal from the furnace, each tube was broken open and its contents transferred to a nutrient broth...In all cases up to the highest temperatures for which the furnace was accurately calibrated, growth occurred, eventually back to normality."

So there may be something in the idea of cometary debris, for example, as a portent of disasters and plagues after all, and while the notions themselves were enfolded in an astrological world view, the initial ideas may have come from observation.

Regarding the miasma theory of disease, I'm also not totally convinced. While it is true that disease is not transmitted by bad smells, particulate matter is (because that's how smells travel) and I think that could lead to respiratory problems like allergy and asthma which might weaken the bodies immune system. Several recent papers have stressed this kind of link. For example, "Particulate matter and heart disease: evidence from epidemiological studies" (2007) tells us that "evidence is suggesting not only a short-term exacerbation of cardiovascular disease by ambient particle concentrations but also a potential role of particles in defining patients' vulnerability to acute coronary events. While this concept is consistent with the current understanding of the factors defining patients' vulnerability, the mechanisms and the time-scales on which the particle-induced vulnerability might operate are unknown." So while plague may not be transmitted by "bad smells", they may still have long term effects on the human body.

An experimental study saw Tony Robinson's body immersed in a bath of blood and entrails to recreate the story of an Irish warrior who was wounded in battle, and whose followers slaughtered cattle to give him the life giving properties from the blood. In fact, while this idea was present in paganism, it was also present in Judaism, where the Bible has such texts which prohibited the custom of eating blood.

But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.

And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood; I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.

One would expect that the failure of blood letting to magically transfer life energy in most cases (except where by accident the victim survived) would lead to skepticism, but magical thinking does not always work like that. In the case of sacrifices, the general rule has often been that the sacrifice was simply not enough to ensure the efficacy of the cure, and more would have worked.

The placebo effect was also mentioned as one of the main drivers behind the success of Medieval medicine. What Robinson didn't mention was recent studies which suggest that placebos not just cause the person to think pain is less, for example, but also alter the neurochemistry of the brain.

An example is where you control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. The saline - as a placebo - takes the pain away. Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin in Italy carried out the same experiment, but added a final twist by adding naltrexone, a drug that blocks the effects of morphine, to the saline. As New Scientist reported, the result was that the pain-relieving power of saline solution disappeared, indicating that it is not just suggestion that is at work, but possibly some deeper neurochemical changes.

The last section was on trepanning and its connection with modern brain surgery. The idea is to cut a hole in the brain to release the cause of epilepsy or mental illness etc. I was a little concerned about Tony Robinson saying that the idea was to "let out the evil spirit", because of course with Neolithic examples, no written records exist, and any consideration as to the ideas behind the practice must be speculative, and not firm. Trepanning could also be used in cases of brain injury which again might release pressures inside the skull. It is also interesting to note that prehistoric and premodern patients had signs of their skull structure healing, so perhaps they survived.

This was, of necessity, a brief excursion into diseases, and Tony Robinson didn't have time to mention the very prominent notion of the four humours, derived via Galen - "sanguine", "choleric", "melancholic" and "phlegmatic" and practices derived from that like the use of leeches, which survived until well into the 18th century. The notion of temperaments which derived from the four humours actually surfaces in modern psychology in personality profiling - for example in the work of Hans Eysenck who noted how his results were similar to the four ancient temperaments.

Links
http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=456

Fortitude (Strength)

2011-12-10T16:23:00.000Z

Fortitude

Life shines over her, gives hidden strength

That although the days increase in length

She bears them in fortitude with virtue

Subdues the roaring lion beneath anew

Bring flowers from her gardening days

Union with mystery, that she prays

To take upon herself a sweet yoke

Let justice rule, emotions choke

This is Divine Law higher still

Emerging strength in all its will.

Funny Old World 3

2011-12-09T11:57:00.001Z

Death and Burial, Part 5

2011-12-08T12:05:00.001Z

Another an extract today from Gypsies of Britain by Brian Vesey-Fitgerald (1900-1981). His book on gypsies is especially interesting because it is based on both research and first hand knowledge, and also was written in 1944, reflecting a good deal of the pre-war culture.

Around 2005, I was talking to various Romany folk on MSN Groups sites. Those are now gone; Microsoft decided to shut them down, but in their time, they were very popular. I'd heard about the book from discussions in the MSN chat rooms, and got my copy secondhand. Frank, a Romany who now works as a London cab driver (or did in 2005!), told me this:

"I'm glad you got the book . I remember telling you about it in the chat room . I hope you enjoyed it .This book is the most accurate book about English Romany's I have ever read . It gives , I feel a balanced view . It accurately represents the traditions I learnt as a child"

When I open a book depicting the past, the accuracy of it is always something to consider, and this kind of encounter, when I came across a Romany who had lived part of his life and grown up hearing these traditions - not from the book - but from his own experience, was a welcome confirmation. It is always good when oral and written sources dovetail and corroborate one another, and clearly this is the case with Gypsies of Britain.

This section deals with how the dead are buried, with clothes and possessions, and the kind of possessions. It's interesting to see how some of this seems to suggest preparation for the afterlife. Grave goods, as archeology terms this, is a very ancient custom indeed, and I wonder if it came with the Romanies or was something they came across on their travels. It's also notable that some of the customs with clothing was also reflected in the non-Romany rural culture of that time.

Certainly the food placed in the coffin, the "dear God's bread", would seem to indicate some Christian influence, but whether this is a transformation of existing custom is unknown. Cunning folk used Christian prayers as charms, as a kind of folk-magic to ward off evil, and of course, Bram Stoker adopts the use of Holy Wafers as a form of talisman to keep away the Vampire in his novel Dracula.

There were a lot of folk practices with a Christian form on what was in fact a mixture of faith and talismanic magic, where the talisman had magic properties. L'Amy's Jersey Folklore mentions numerous examples from anecdotes told by people still living, and I've heard tell of Portuguese people in Jersey doing something similar with bags of grain or flour. Perhaps the phrase in the nursery rhyme "a pocket full of rye" is a distant echo of these beliefs.

There is no clear distinction between faith and folk-magic, and the boundaries are blurred - the Celtic Carmina Gaedelica, for example, has what could be regarded as prayers, or charms, or incantations. Some people would like to tidy up matters and make those kind of distinctions, but the past is more untidy than they realise. In a way, it is the last remnant of the Medieval worldview, in which the world was full of signs and wonders, and what remains today are tattered fragments, torn loose.

DEATH AND BURIAL, Part 5
from Brian Vesey-Fitgerald's "Gypsies of Britain" (1944)

If dressing-up for death was at one time a fairly common practice among English Gypsies, the burying of possessions including clothes with the dead was very much more common and is not yet extinct, nor, in fact, does it show any signs of becoming extinct. And this is the reason why many Gypsies' coffins are so exceptionally large. There is nothing else out of the way about Gypsy coffins.   In my experience they are always very good and solidly made and the inscriptions short, plain and neat.

Clothes are the most usual possessions buried with the dead. Thompson gives a fairly full list of well-known burials of this type. Her entire wardrobe was buried with Ethelenda Heron, the greater part of Santinia Smith's with her: Isaac Heron was buried with a suit and an overcoat, Savaina Lovell with one or two dresses, a silk shawl, and other " bits o' finery." All these Gypsies were buried only in undergarments and a shroud. It was probably less usual to bury additional clothes with a fully-dressed corpse, but it undoubtedly did occur, and Thompson, who gives two examples, thinks that it would be easy to obtain many more and that it may once have been customary to do so. On the other hand, the East Anglian Smiths, who normally buried their dead fully dressed, regarded any loose enclosures in the coffin with disfavour, though one of this family, Elizabeth, was buried with two Brussels carpets, one a " large one " as well as the strip upon which she was laid out. The clothes very rarely include boots or shoes. Boots were placed in the coffins of Thomas Penfold and Supplista Smith, but this is most unusual, and I think the inclusion of a pair of new boots in Job Cooper's coffin, as mentioned by Leland, must be a mistake on the part of that great rai. There is no other record of a similar occurrence among English Gypsies, and it is absolutely contrary to accepted English Gypsy practice, though it has occurred among foreign Gypsies in England as recently as 1936.

Indeed there is a strong aversion to unworn clothes belonging to the dead, and Thompson mentions that when Theophilus Boswell was buried his large coffin was almost filled up with clothes, but a new suit which had just come for him from the tailor was left out, and subsequently cut up and sent to a rag-shop.

The clothes buried with a corpse are sometimes turned inside out. There are not many recorded instances of this among English Gypsies, but for all that I think this custom was once fairly widespread, and it is not dead even to-day. The three best known examples are all for members of the Heron family who died within a year or so of each other- Isaac Heron, his niece Amelia Heron, the wife of Elias Gray, and her niece Ethelenda Heron. Isaac and Amelia died in the midlands, Ethelenda in South Wales, and in each case the clothes were folded inside out and laid beneath the body. According to Thompson, these are the only three records of this practice in England, but he mentioned related practices in the coat of a fully dressed corpse being turned inside out and of bodies being buried clad in underclothes turned inside out, both being practices regarded as normal by his informants. I can add one further example of clothes being folded inside out and the corpse laid upon them-Caroline Penfold was buried thus. I know of no case of a fully dressed corpse having any of its clothes turned inside out, but I do know of two, and perhaps more, cases in which underclothes have been turned inside out. This at least seems to have been a widespread custom, for James Arigho maintains that the true tinkers were always buried so. The reversal of garments, so Thompson was informed, is a practice in Bulgarian mourning. I do not know about that, and cannot find confirmation anywhere, but the reversal of clothes is a well-known safeguard against ill-luck among many peoples.

Thompson gives one or two examples, including one from a Gypsy tale. Among peasant peoples in England it is uncommon now, perhaps it was never common, but it does still occur and the remnants of it still linger among the educated classes. I have been told by highly educated people that it is good luck to put a sock on inside out, I have even been told that it is good luck to put on a jumper or pullover inside out. I have known a Hampshire farm labourer turn his jacket inside out before taking part in a ploughing match, and I have known Irish peasantry reverse their hats before any big event in which they particularly desire to be lucky. I think it not
improbable that this reversal of clothing as a burial custom is no more than a desire to ensure that the corpse has a lucky journey to the next world, though it would be easy to produce much more complex reasons for it.

I think consideration of the journey that must be taken after death plays a large part in deciding the other articles that are frequently buried with a corpse. All sorts of things are buried, but jewellery and trinkets seem to be the most usual. Occasionally a vast amount of material is buried with the deceased.   Rodney Smith, the Evangelist, in his autobiography, Gipsy Smith, his Lift and Work, says : " When an uncle of mine died my aunt bought a coffin large enough for all his possessions-including his fiddle, cup and saucer, plate, knife, etc.-except, of course, his waggon. My wife and my sister pleaded hard for the cup and saucer as a keepsake, but she was resolute. Nobody should ever use them again." Such wholesale methods are unusual, and, as a general rule, Gypsies destroy a dead person's crockery and table cutlery. There have been few exceptions to this rule, though a Constance Smith had a knife, fork and plate buried with her, and Mordecai Boswell a cup, plate, knife, fork and spoon, all carefully wrapped up in a" crumb cloth." His daughter Ambrozina, as Thompson records, remarking that " he'd likely have need of 'em."

These are, however, exceptions : jewellery and personal trinkets are not. Most Gypsy women wear rings, necklaces and ear-rings or ear-pendants, and these are often- probably even to-day more often than not-buried with them. Leland heard of Stanleys buried with rings on their fingers, and Thompson says that the Derby Boswells regard stripping a dead woman of her jewellery as both wicked and dangerous. In this family it was usual to place in the coffin with the body any trinkets that the deceased was not wearing at the time of her death, but in most families Thompson thinks it is probably more usual to break them up and either drop them into water or bury them in a hole.

It is recorded that at Alice Barney's funeral, at Otterbourne in Hampshire in 1911, her jewellery was interred underneath the coffin, a practice intermediate between those commonly favoured. Actually the heavy gold ring
that she was wearing at the time of her death was removed and is still being worn by a descendant.   Alice Barney was buried, except for this, in the jewellery she was wearing, and all the rest, a considerable collection, was dropped into the grave just before the coffin was lowered. A point I have not seen mentioned is that a golden sovereign was thrown on to the coffin before the grave was filled in.

Watches are sometimes buried with the men, and so are all sorts of oddments that might conceivably be thought useful in after-life or on the journey, for example pocket-knives, walking-sticks, tankards (many old Gypsies carried drinking mugs in their tail pockets), tobacco boxes, and so forth. There is one record, at least, of a fiddle being buried and one of a whip. They were the things that the deceased used most frequently or was fondest of, but, curiously, I can find no record of a snuff-box being buried, and as I have seen some very old and exquisite snuff-boxes in the possession of Gypsies it would seem that these were always kept as mementoes.

Food, curiously enough, seems to have been buried with the dead only by Hampshire Gypsies. Thompson quotes a very curious record which he says was originally published by the Hampshire Field Club in 1922 of a Gypsy burial at Blackwater in 1912. (I cannot find any record of this in the Club's publications.) At this funeral there was placed in the coffin the deceased's best set of harness, some grain and some bread. The reason for this is evident enough. Harness and corn would be needed for his horse in the next world or en route to it, and bread would be needed for his own sustenance. Thompson very rightly casts doubt on this record. For one thing it is supposed to have taken place in Blackwater churchyard, but there is no church at either of the Blackwaters in Hampshire nor is there one at the Blackwater in the Isle of Wight. Again, the man is described as " a Gypsy king," and Thompson has no knowledge of anyone who could possibly be described as such dying at any of the three Blackwaters in or about 1912.

The last objection is easily disposed of-all Gypsy men who die and achieve print in so doing are " kings," all Gypsy women who achieve print at their death are " queens " (even poor Caroline Penfold was " a Gypsy queen "). It means no more than that. The objection about the churchyard is more serious, at first sight indeed insurmountable. Since there are no churchyards at any of the Blackwaters the man could not possibly have been buried in one. But he might, I think, have been buried at Blackwater. As I have already said, I have wondered once or twice about one of the Blackwaters as a possible burial ground analogous to Mousehold Heath. The late date, 1912, makes an unsanctified burial very unlikely I admit, but-. I do not know anything more definite about this mysterious burial than this-that early in 1912 one Job Churen, almost the last of that mysterious and respected family, died, and that at his funeral his favourite horse (Thompson wondered about the horse and if one was slaughtered at the Blackwater funeral) was slaughtered. So much I have heard, but I do not know where Job Churen was buried.

One more point : bread and grain are believed by many Gypsies to afford protection against ghosts, witches, evil luck generally, and even against the devil. Gypsies have been known to sew bread inside their horses' collars to safeguard the animals against " witching." Thompson states that Sandi Lovell used to clutch a loaf of bread to his naked breast whenever he was assailed by wandering spirits, and that Tom Lee crumbled a whole loaf around his tent when his son, Bendigo, was born. Furthermore, tales are not in frequently told by Gypsies of men and women who habitually carried wheat or other grain in their pockets as a measure of safety, or ran into cornfields when followed by the beng or a mulo. " The dear God's bread " and " the dear God's grain " are common expressions among old-fashioned Romanies. Amos Churen always carried some bread in his pocket. He set very great store by it. It was something much more than a talisman to him.

Waterfront Follies

2011-12-07T15:01:00.000Z

It is intriguing to see the way the new States is starting to shape up on Simon Crowcroft's proposition on the Waterfront.

Part A, on the halting the Hopkins Masterplan (refined, distilled by 25%) site, failed, as well it might now the sunken road has vanished from the equation. I wouldn't have supported that part of the proposition. As long as the Masterplan included a sunken road - maintenance of 1/2 million per annum by the States, don't forget, I would have been 100% against what seemed an act of political and economic suicide. Now that's not there, what remains, which retains car parking as well, is far more palatable.

Part B, on pausing the La Folie Inn Development, was passed, but by 26 to 21. Clearly there's some of the old "Web" spirit there. It will be interesting to see the debate and what was actually said. These were the votes

Senator Paul Francis Routier M.B.E. Contre
Senator Philip Francis Cyril Ozouf Contre
Senator Alan John Henry Maclean Contre
Senator Bryan Ian Le Marquand Contre
Senator Ian Joseph Gorst Contre
*Senator Lyndon John Farnham Contre

Connétable John Le Sueur Gallichan Contre
Connétable Daniel Joseph Murphy Contre
Connétable Leonard Norman Contre
Connétable John Martin Refault Contre
*Connétable Stephen William Pallett Contre

Deputy James Gordon Reed Contre
Deputy Anne Enid Pryke Contre
Deputy Kevin Charles Lewis Contre
Deputy Edward James Noel Contre
Deputy Andrew Kenneth Francis Green M.B.E. Contre
*Deputy Patrick John Dennis Ryan Contre
*Deputy James Patrick Gorton Baker Contre
*Deputy John Michael Le Bailly Contre
*Deputy Stephen George Luce Contre
*Deputy Kristina Louise Moore Contre

Gods and Monsters 2: A Review

2011-12-06T08:52:00.001Z

I saw the second part of Tony Robinson's Gods and Monsters on Demons, Exorcisms, Fairies and Changelings.

The first part was on exorcisms, and it was clear how neurological problems like epilepsy, or psychological problems like psychosis or schizophrenia could easily have been attributed to demons. The mindset of the Middle Ages was one steeped in angels and demons, and within that framework, the attribution of strange and alarming behaviour to demons was a rational explanation.

We have replaced the religious model with a medical one, but that itself is not without flaws. Looking at that was perhaps beyond Tony Robinson's scope, but while I am sure the scientific explanations are far better than the religious ones, it would be hubris to believe that they are not without flaws.

To speak of "mental illness" is to suggest that psychological problems are very similar to any other illnesses,
and can be treated by medical means. The history of the 20th century was a happy hunting ground for bogus medical interventions such as lobotomy, leucotomy or electro-convulsive therapy. Homosexuality was treated as a kind of mental illness, and drugs were used, as notable in the case of Alan Turing, to chemically castrate the individual. While drugs may be needed to help control psychosis and schizophrenia, they often have debilitating side effects, which are often not appreciated enough by those cheerfully prescribing them, who cannot understand why the people concerned often deliberately fail to take their medication. And in a final triumph of bogus scientism, Richard Dawkins speaks of religion as a "virus of the mind", thus creating a new scientific demonology.

Robinson also covered sympathetic magic, of using like effect for like. The idea is that the magician, can influence something based on its relationship or resemblance to another thing.

Many popular beliefs regarding properties of plants, fruits and vegetables have evolved in the folk-medicine of different societies owing to sympathetic magic. This include beliefs that certain herbs with yellow sap can cure jaundice, that walnuts could strengthen the brain because of the nuts' resemblance to brain, that red beet-juice is good for the blood, that phallic-shaped roots will cure male impotence (Wikipedia)

Sympathetic magic is however alive and well in two places today, one is obviously homeopathy, which is built around a very similar structure:

practitioners claim to treat patients using highly diluted preparations that are believed to cause healthy people to exhibit symptoms that are similar to those exhibited by the patient. [Wikipedia]

But the other area is Neopaganism, itself enjoying a resurgence in Western society. Spellworking in Neopaganism still uses forms of sympathetic magic, although often in a more sophisticated way that that described above, and is still used by some individuals for evil intent, to deliberately (as they believe) cause harm, in the same way as voodoo does.

Regarding demons, a number of fundamentalist Christians still believe in demons. The American religious landscape is perhaps a richer soil for this kind of belief than Britain, although there are believers here. Deliverance ministries are big business in America, along with the "Rapture ready" mythology of the Left Behind books, with their ideas that the Antichrist will return with demonic powers.

In 1941, theologian Rudolf Bultman made this statement:

We cannot use electric lights and radios and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament. And if we suppose that we can do so ourselves, we must be clear that we can represent this as the attitude of Christian faith only by making the Christian proclamation unintelligible and impossible for our contemporaries.

In fact his idea that you cannot believe in miracles and the electric light bulb is too dismissive of the way in which people can departmentalise their beliefs; it is perfectly possible for people to believe in such things.

But I think the mindset of "the evil eye" or demons have largely gone from our urban, secular society in Britain; it's been relegated to fantasy films and books, Buffy, Twilight etc, outside of Neopaganism and Fundamentalism. It's still present though in Africa, and that has led to deaths in London as a result of beliefs in witchcraft and demon possession.

But Tony Robinson's last section is something that has definitely gone. That is the notion of the fairy folk, mysterious beings that inhabited a world almost next door to ours, and would work mischief (as in A Midsummer Night's Dream); these are amoral beings that would steal away children or adults and replace them with changelings, fairies in a simulacra of human form.

The notion of the fairy changeling has pretty well completely gone from our society, even among people who believe in magic. Parents, especially mothers, would resort to desperate measures to get the child returned to them, like placing them in a fire, or leaving them in the woods. It seems clear that much of that related to desperate parents, especially mothers, faced with what to do with children that we'd now see as autistic, or mentally handicapped in some way.

Yet the same desperation is still there though, and parents now chase after supposedly scientific cures for their children. As science is the new magic, so the apparent cures take that form as well. The main difference is that any snake oil salesmen selling cures dress them up in scientific jargon. But I've seen parents with autistic children clutching at any straw for a miracle cure. We don't believe in changelings, but we do believe that there can be medical experts who can provide cures. A medical mythology has replaced a folk mythology.

The Victorian images of tweeness - the faked Cottingley Fairies, small sprites with gossamer wings - and cute Edwardian Tinkerbelle, taken up by Disney as an asexual being, have relegated fairies to the nursery. Only PJ Hammond had a very good attempt to revive older darker ideas in his Torchwood story a few years ago about fairies.

It was shocking, however, to hear the 1890s tale of a murder in Ireland by a husband of his wife; convinced she was a changeling, and his conviction only of manslaughter. That is not that long ago.

As always, there was a good assembly of historians, psychiatrists and medical experts to hand, and it was nice to actually see Diane Purkiss, having read several of her books on witches and fairies.

What Price Accreditation?

2011-12-05T23:08:00.000Z

This was the story run by the JEP this week:

NATIONAL newspapers knowingly ran misleading stories about children being killed and buried at Haut de la Garenne to sell more copies, the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking heard this week. Journalists sent to the Island could have told editors across Fleet Street that the reports were 'crap', but they would have run them anyway, it was alleged. The evidence was given by leading Guardian investigative journalist Nick Davies, who said that his employers were not exempt from letting 'commercial considerations' influence news judgment. It was Mr Davies, a veteran critic of the way journalists ride roughshod over the truth in the feeding frenzy over big stories, who revealed that murder victim Milly Dowler's mobile phone had been hacked by the News of the World.

And yet the editor of the JEP, Mr Chris Bright in a submission to a Scrutiny Panel, argued that "accredited media" could be trusted because they adhered to certain standards and a code of conduct:

"The public needs and wants information it can trust. That can come neither directly from the government nor from the mixture of partial pamphleteering, gossip and hearsay which typifies many blogs in both the U.K. and C.I., particularly those with politics and government as primary interests."

Now if the press has standards which non-accredited media does not then Mr Bright's argument is a valid one. Journalist, he says, sign up to a code of professional practice. And yet this week, the same JEP which is edited by Mr Bright is telling us that, after all, journalists cannot be trusted, because they make up and exaggerate stories. Where does that leave Mr Bright's argument?

He could, of course, argue that the difference is that the JEP does adhere to those standards, even if the National Press does not. But how are we to know that this is the case? I have had emails from former Senator Terry le Sueur and Senator Ian le Marquand claiming they have been misrepresented in stories. Former Senator Freddie Cohen writes in "to put the record straight" about Portelet. Senator Philip Ozouf writes in to correct misleading stories. And those are the more establishment figures in the States! If they think that the JEP presents from time to time, sloppy and misleading journalism, then where does the uniquely perfection that the JEP aspires to stand? And there are also the mistakes which are caused by reliance on hearsay, like that on Montfort Tadier spoiling an election paper, which in fact he did not do.

As for partial pamphleteering, what on earth does one call editorials which blatantly tell the public to support Sir Philip Bailhache, and tell States Members that he must be the best man for Chief Minister? Now I'm not commenting on the merits of Sir Philip, which may be substantial; all I'm saying is that as far as "partial pamphleteering" goes, the JEP certainly does that as well as reporting on news.

And for partiality, where in the Hustings reports was the question raised by former Constable Bob le Brocq at a St Helier hustings? It was available courtesy of non-accredited media, but was missing from the JEP report. Now it could be argued that there is a lot to take in a hustings, and any reporting must be selective, but any selection is a matter of judgement, or to put in another way, partiality.

So while the JEP may not make up stories on quite the scale of the National Press, I'm not wholly convinced that it is immune from partial pamphleteering or hearsay. It provides information, but sometimes the information can be selected or presented in particular ways. The election coverage had an awful lot of coverage of Sir Philip, both in photographs and snippets of speech, beginning with front page coverage of the hustings devoted to him at the start of the election campaign; other candidates were relegated to inside pages.

And of course, there are the lurid headlines, of massive rises in the percentage of burglaries over last year, when a moments thought shows that the percentage per building in Jersey has gone up fractions of a percent; it is only the small numbers that mean comparisons of one year with the last can be manipulated to give a reader grabbing headline - Darrell Huff exposed all this long ago, in How to lie with Statistics. Information we can trust? Certainly not headlines that are trustworthy. But it sells papers - commercial considerations' influence news judgment perhaps?

Finally, of course, it's not much use pointing to national journalistic standards, because, as the JEP has shown us, national journalists just ignore them, and there is therefore no way of knowing whether the local journalists do likewise when the need arises for a good story. They may say they adhere to standards, and deserve their press card, but so did the National journalists in the UK. Mistrust, unfortunately, has a corrosive effect and devalues more reliable news sources - with the possible exception of Private Eye.

Numbers

2011-12-04T15:47:00.000Z

Do the numbers matter?

I've been watching "The Burning Times" on You Tube; it's a film which is part of a trilogy, and this particular film looks at "The Burning Times", which is the time of the witch craze in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The film presents the witch trials as a kind of "gendercide", an attack by the church, which is hierarchical, patriarchal, celibate, against women, during which they were disempowered.

It's a moot point in which way they were wholly empowered before that anyway in a modern sense, in an age when women certainly didn't have the vote, and indeed few men did. It's worth remembering perhaps that the empowerment of women, in terms of having an input into political discourse and action, only came about at the start of the 20th century. Before that, some women might have power or any control over their rulers, but the majority did not. It is all to easy, perhaps, to present a somewhat idyllic picture of the past, which when it comes down to it, doesn't match up to the increases in women's power over their lives in the 20th century. That's not to say that the present situation is perfect; it certainly is not - women are still discriminated against in the boardroom, but there is certainly more freedom for most women in England, for example, than before the time of the witch craze.

The film is not rigorously researched, and shows the bias in the estimates of the burnings. Early estimates were widely over the top e.g. 9 million burnings, and not all countries had burnings (e.g. England had hangings). Modern historians such as Lyndal Roper, Robin Briggs, and Brian Levack have put the record straight by painstaking documentary research of the main witch craze period - because there had to be a judicial process, there had to be records kept.

The numbers are important because when they were miscalculated to 9 million, all kinds of comparisons were made with the Jewish Holocaust. The film terms the burning times, "the women's holocaust". In fact, "most reasonable modern estimates suggest perhaps 100,000 trials between 1450 and 1750, with something between 40,000 and 50,000 executions, of which 20 to 25 per cent were men"(Briggs). That's still a lot of people, but not nearly as much. Moreover, it was the secular courts which condemned and killed; the Church courts did not. In Spain, an Inquisitor stepped in to stop the killing because the proof of witchcraft obtained by the secular authorities was deemed to be worthless, relying as it did on torture.

That's not to say the church stopped the witch hunts, but mostly it was the civil court judges who had the well-thumbed copy of the Maliffeus, the early manual used as a guide - more on that later.
.
Understanding what was happening is important, but the false picture of a kind of conflation with Nazi Germany is mistaken; in Germany, it was from the top down that the instructions for genocide were coming; in the Witch craze, it was the break down of the chain of command, where local communities were able to take the law into their own hands (lynch mob justice) that this happened - which is why it happened when the Circuit Judges could not ride out in the English Civil War.

Alan Macfarlane found that as many women as men informed against witches in the 291 Essex cases he studied; about 55 percent of those who believed they had been bewitched were female... Other studies support a figure in the range of 60 percent. In Peter Rushton's examination of slander cases in the Durham church courts, women took action against other women who had labeled them witches in 61 percent of the cases... J.A. Sharpe also noted the prevalence of women as accusers in seventeenth-century Yorkshire cases, concluding that "on a village level witchcraft seems to have been something peculiarly enmeshed in women's quarrels."

None of this is hidden, there are archives of the trials available. In fact, a correspondent has told me that the archives of Scottish trials are all records are available to the public in Edinburgh, and new information is added as it is found. Most accusations were made by neighbours. The files show several of the accused were attacked by mobs before they could go to trial, or after they were freed if found innocent. This was more to do with mass hysteria than government or church control, which agrees with Levack's assessment that it was the breakdown of the normal process of law that lead to hysteria and lynch mobs.

The Malleus Maleficarum, contrary to how it is portrayed in the film, was treated as rubbish in its lifetime by the church. Almost all of the Malleus was written by one man: Heinrich Kramer. A German inquisitor of the late 15th century, Kramer was not a well-respected man. His views on Witchcraft were considered weird and extreme by most of his fellow clergymen, who continually opposed and hindered his trials. For instance, Kramer ran a large trial in Innsbruck in 1485, where 57 people were investigated. Yet nobody was killed. Eventually the bishop of Innsbruck became so irritated with Kramer's fascination with the Witches' sexual behavior that he shut down the trials, claiming that the devil was in the inquisitor, not the Witches. It was only later, in the 16th and 17th centuries that the secular authorities, looking for a guidebook in witch trials, came (unhappily) across the book. Jenny Gibbons notes that: "the Inquisition in the 15th century resoundingly condemned the book. It said that the legal procedures it recommended were unethical and illegal, and that its demonology was not consistent with Catholic doctrine. Undaunted, Kramer forged an enthusiastic endorsement."

Later, the Compendium Maleficarum (1608) overtook it in use - it had mention of covens, sabbats, witches marks - none of which appear in the Malleus.

Lyndal Roper in particular has done a lot of ground-breaking work in Germany, which reveals much the same as Sharpe, that women were making accusations against women (Witch Craze, 2004). This in fact confounded much of her expectations, which is a sure sign that the evidence was strong. It does not surprise me - when looking for scapegoats for infant mortality, about breastmilk that dried up, about babies who sickened and died, it was likely to be women who would seek scapegoats of other women, especially when older women (over 40) acted as midwives, helped the mothers with the infants, and could also milk cows.

The film uses exaggerations and disinformation to make an agenda about how the church disenfranchised women by using witch trials. That simply is not accurate.

Margot Adler, who took part in the film, has since mentioned this inaccuracy. She said this:

"We now know that most persecutions of witches occurred during a 100-year period, between 1550 and 1650, and the total number hanged or burned probably did not exceed 40,000. For years, many Wiccans understood that the figure of 9 million, so casually bandied about by many of us, was hyperbole, yet this number continued to find its way into countless books, films, and news articles. I confess that only last year, I told a reporter that the figure was close to 1 million. Recently, a German historian, Wolfgang Behringer, discovered the source of the 9 million figure. It was first used by a German historian in the late 18th century. He took the number of people killed in a witch hunt in his own German state and multiplied it by the number of years various penal statutes existed, and then reconfigured the number to correspond to the population of Europe. "Nine million" still gets repeated every time "The Burning Times," a searingly powerful film, is screened or shown on public television. The film's heartrending and appalling descriptions of some of the trials, tortures, and deaths that did occur is not nullified by this new and more accurate research. But it serves no end to perpetuate the miscalculation; it's time to put away the exaggerated numbers forever."

Why is it important to focus on the numbers, and also on the research which shows that the thesis of the film is flawed? Some people don't like this kind of focus, but I think it is important. If women are to become more enfranchised in today's society, it must not be dependent upon bad scholarship, which can all too easily be exposed by misogynists.

We must build on sure foundations, and not on sand.

Links:
For a survey of good reliable historians re-assessing the period, Jenny Gibbons has an excellent article at:

http://draeconin.com/database/witchhunt.htm
Recent Developments in the Study of The Great European Witch Hunt

http://webdb.ucs.ed.ac.uk/witches/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.search
Survey Database, Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, Scottish History, School of History and Classics, Th

The Chariot

2011-12-03T12:05:00.000Z

The Chariot

The conquering hero returning from the wars

In all victorious as conquistadors

Two Sphinxes draw his chariot on

White and black give riddles upon

Which he replies with rational mind

But to that mystery, he is blind

Cannot see beyond the visible light

To realm of invisible, much more bright

But hidden from conquest of logic

Not reducible to algebraic.

Funny Old World 2

2011-12-02T10:52:00.002Z

Health Warning: what follows is not news, any more than the middle section of Private Eye is news, or The Impressionist is news, or Spitting Image was news. It is a light hearted spin on the real news, which can be found on genuine news sites, such as BBC Jersey. Other news sites are available. This is not one of them. None of the individuals mentioned have ever said anything quite like the words attributed to them. Which is a pity.

Special Christmas Note: there is no pantomime with a cast of States members as listed, although the Jersey Green Room club are doing Beauty and the Beast, which I am sure will be an excellent production.

It is official - there is a lot of hot air escaping from Jersey's States! A new infrared website map shows which properties in the island are the best and worst insulated. The Jersey Heat Loss map allows you to look up your house and see how much heat it is giving off. Among the worst offenders is the States Chambers building.

Deputy Rob Duhamel, the Environmental Minister said "The plane made two passes over the Island with the infra-red scanner, and on one run, the States Chamber stood out as orange, giving off a substantial level of heat. We discounted the second scan, which showed the States Chamber as red, giving off the most hot air, as we later checked and realised there was a States sitting."

Environmental campaigner, Dr Mark Forskitt said, "The photography was all taken when the old States was in residence. It will be interesting to go back in a year or so, to see if the new Chamber is still generating as much hot air, or whether there is a climate of change."

THE price of air travel to and from Jersey is to increase next year. The current Jersey Airport passenger charge is £4.78 for a one-way ticket and £9.56 for a return flight. This will go up on 25 March by 19 pence. At the same time, security charges will also be increased by 13p per leg. This move means that people with 2 legs will be charged 26p. It is unclear what these charges may amount to for below the knee amputees who only have half a leg or anyone on crutches who technically may have up to three.

QUEEN'S Valley Reservoir could be closed to the public if people continue to ignore warnings to keep off the deep mud, according to Jersey Water. Security guards have begun patrolling the reservoir to stop people from climbing down onto the muddy reservoir floor. Howard Snowden, of Jersey Water, says, "We also have reports of dogs in the mud, and rumours of one sinister dog creeping along a safe passage through the mire in the dead of night, and howling at the moon." It is now understood that local security guard manager, Mr S. Holmes, and his sidekick, Dr J. Watson, of have said they will deploy enough guards to catch the Hound of Queen's Valley.

Saturday saw an 'immense rise' in St Helier shoppers over last year. Cameras to monitor people shopping in King Street were installed about three years ago. Since then cameras were installed in Beresford Street and Conway Street.

Town centre manager Richard Mackenzie said it was an "immense increase", and that shoppers did seem to have put on weight over last year, but he also noted that the snowy conditions last year meant many had to stay home and lose weight as they couldn't get to the shops to buy food.

A branch of Liberal Democrats Abroad is to be set up in Jersey by a group of local residents including two former senatorial candidates. A member of the branch, Ed Le Quesne, said "The Jersey branch will be set up in the Town Park, and painted with the Liberal democrat colours. It should arrive by Christmas, in which case the branch - which will be ten feet long, and made of English oak - can be decorated with electric lights."

News reaches us that the Jersey customs are linking up with France to try to reduce smuggling cases. Ian le Marquand, the Home Affairs Minister said "It took us a while before we realised that there was a highly lucrative and profitable trade smuggling high quality suitcases over to Jersey, under the very noses of the custom's officials." In future suitcases may have to be opened at borders to demonstrate that they are full, and not empty cases just being taken into the Island. "This will be an open and shut case," said Senator Le Marquand.

And finally, December is upon us and that means islanders can really begin to get into the spirit of Christmas. While the shops are bracing themselves for a festive rush, theatres across the Bailiwicks are also hoping to pull in the crowds.

Pantomime: Beauty and the Beastly Financial Crisis

Cast
Deputy Carolyn Labey - Belle (Beauty)
Senator Ian Gorst - Prince Charming
Senator Ian Le Marquand - Mr Bean
Senator Sarah Ferguson - Widow Twanky
Senator Philip Ozouf - A Sorcerer
Senator Alan Maclean - The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Deputy Rob Duhamel - a bearded birdwatcher [Bill Oddie look-a-like]
Deputy Montfort Tadier - Citizen Media
Deputy Trevor Pitman, Deputy Shona Pitman - the Chorus
Deputy Geoff Southern - A southern gentleman

Backstage Scenery:
Senator Philip Bailhache - provision of an art gallery
Deputy Roy Le Hérissier - provision of a fence
Deputy Andrew Green - provision of a green

Music: Sadie Renard accompanied by the Lyndon Farnham Quartet

The Gardener's Calendar - December 1863

2011-12-01T12:04:00.001Z

Another extract below from Whitnash Parish Magazine, in 1863, with the section that begins December and also lists the gardening tasks.

It is interesting that the identification of the passage in Isaiah is quoted in the Whitchurch as the reason for the custom of decking "our Churches and our houses with branches of evergreens". This is not to be confused with the Christmas which was introduced in England by George III's Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in early 19th century, but which only became popular among the non-German population in the 1840s.

In fact, I have managed to trace a very similar mention of this verse in the sermon "The Beauty of Holiness in the Common-prayer: As Set Forth in Four Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel, in the Year 1716."

Philip Bisse (1667-1721) was an English bishop, and was Bishop of St David's from 1710 to 1713. In 1713 he became the Bishop of Hereford, a post he held until his death in 1721, and it was then that he composed this sermon. In a footnote to one sermon about Christmas, he mentions William Stukeley (1687 - 1765), who was an English antiquary and one of the founders of field archaeology, who pioneered the investigation of Stonehenge (although he mistakenly attributed that and Avebury to the Druids). Here is the footnote:

The practice of embellishing and ornamenting churches at this great Festival is explained by Dr. Stukely ; in which he observes, that the ancients expected our Saviour was to be born at the winter solstice, and that the great Advent was to happen when ever-greens flourish. "The glory of Lebanon (the cedar) shall come unto thee, the fir tree, the pine tree, and the box tree together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary" (Isaiah). Many passages, to the same purport, occur in the Old Testament.

While the winter customs may well have developed from pagan sources, it is interesting to see that the custom was legitimised within a Christian framework by these verses from Isaiah. Modern Christmas cards with their depictions of greenery and Christmas decorations may seem far removed from Bethlehem, but a verse from Isaiah acted as a bridge between the two. Although I suspect that most people did not really need much of an excuse to decorate churches and houses.

When I was younger, I remember collecting pine cones, holly and ivy to decorate our house; those were the days before glittering ornaments were available in the shops. We used to glue them onto a base, and spray them with silver and gold. I wonder how many of today's children have such fun.

The Gardener's Calendar - December 1863

The damp and cold of November prepare us for the leafless winter, and December is frequently greeted as a more welcome visitor than his gloomy predecessor. Especially are we glad to see him when he comes with frosty face and a clearer, brighter hue than damp, dull, foggy November.

Besides, does not December warn us that Christmas is coming, and with it family joys and festivities, and greetings of friends, and forgiveness of real or fancied injuries. Even in the dark and frosty night the sound of the Church bells reminds us of this great Christian festival, and we are carried back in thought to the first Christmastide when angels from heaven came down to proclaim the glad tidings-the "good spell " of Christ's birth in Bethlehem; and we deck our Churches and our houses with branches of evergreens even as we are reminded by the first lesson for service on Christmas Eve (Isaiah 60:13):

"The fir tree, the pine tree, and the box tree shall come together to beautify the place of my sanctuary, and make the place my feet glorious."

And thus while the weather without may be harsh and inclement, we love to look upon signs of life and beauty which remind us of the summer foliage. It will be well for us if, after the close of the month and of the year, our hearts and lives, are in unison with the Angel message of peace and goodwill to all.

THE GARDEN

Take up broccoli, and replant them with their heads sloping towards the north, in order that their leaves, when frozen, may drop over the hearts, and may not be thawed by the rays of the sun. Protect celery with dead leaves. Give as much air as possible to all plants under hand-glasses and frames; remembering that the effects of cold are much aggravated by damp; so, clear away all dead leaves, and try to keep plants alive rather than to make them grow. Frequently examine stored fruits, throw away all that are rotten, and keep the rest dry. Delicate fruits should be so placed as not to touch one another. Clean paths. In hard weather wheel out manure, and attend to those operations for which time cannot be spared in summer. Dig borders; remove dead leaves, and if the garden cannot be gay, at least let it not be unsightly.

DECEMBER.

Surely Winter now is king,
Reigning o'er the fettered earth;
Buried lie the charms of Spring;
Summer's joys are little worth.

One huge pall of whitest snow
Covers all that once was fair;
While biting north winds fiercely blow,
And clouds broods heavy in the air.

Wrapt in sleep profound as death
Nature lies; but she shall wake,
Fann'd again by Spring's warm breath,
And her icy stillness break.

In pledge, the varnish'd holly see,
Scarlet berried, ever-green;
Or plant of Druid mystery,
Hanging the leafless boughs between!

Twine, oh twine them in a crown,
Such as Christmas-time may grace,
Choose the hair of glossiest brown,
Choose the rosiest happiest face!

Spring of nature, spring of youth-
Both a wintry hour must meet:
Sigh not at the solemn truth,
Wintry hours may yet be sweet.

So let Spring of Winter learn,
What its fate must one day be;
So let Winter, censor stern!
Point us to eternity.