Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt: A Review - Part 1

The toughest lesson life teaches is the difference between who you wanted to be and who you actually are. And it can take a whole life to teach it. (Richard Holloway)

Richard Holloway's book, "Leaving Alexandria" begins with the graveyard of the Society of the Sacred Mission at Kelham. It's is a shaded rectangle containing thirty-five simple gravestones, irregularly spaced, and he knows quite a few people buried there from his time at Kelham, at the start of a winding path which took him from a celibate priesthood in England and Africa, to married life in Glasgow and America, and becoming Bishop of Edinburgh before hurling his Bishop's mitre in the Thames and resigning.

That seems like a very turbulent journey, and indeed it is, but it is an inner conflict between faith and doubt which pervades this narrative. It is, of course, written after the end of his ecclesiastical career, it is also how he would like this journey to be seen. And yet it is a very honest narrative; he is aware of the changes that time has wrought in his life. As he says, walking among the graves, pondering his early years:

The hard thing about coming to this place is glimpsing the young man I was fifty years ago, brimming with ideals, taking this same walk, earnestly conversing with a companion - and completely unaware of the spring and drive of his own character and where it would lead him. He thought then he had chosen a high road and would walk it to the end, whereas I know now that roads choose us and what they unfold before us is not the person we want to be, but the person we already are, the person time slowly discloses to us. Yet in spite of trying to learn this lesson, I still regret roads not taken. Is that why I keep coming back here? Am I trying to discern the outline of an alternative past, the most futile of pursuits? What is certain is that I am so far into my own head at the moment that I am not paying enough attention to what's going on around me; so I have come too far and passed the graveyard. I turn back down the walk, identify the untidy gap in the tall yew hedge and enter.

He noticed that even in those days, there was something apart from his faith, fleeting moments of joy, which were quite different, and could not come on demand, but came, unbidden, when the sense of self was least, when concentrating on other matters:

Those were sweet moments, because they were fleeting. I learnt that pleasure was caught on the slant. Contentment, if it happened, came when I wasn't looking for it and was intent on something else. Concentrate on the something else, the matter I was engaged on, and a sense of wellbeing might strike like a flash of sunlight from a frozen river.

It's interesting how different that is from the New Age practices of meditation, of trying to find and capture something beyond from within oneself. Holloway finds those moments coming when not actively pursuing them, not looking inward, but looking into the distance.

Sent to Africa, he finally realised that he was not cut out to be a particular kind of celibate priest; his saintly ideals were more fantasy, not an ideal he really wanted after all, but an dream which didn't match the reality. As he notes:

It was in Accra that I finally lost the direction I thought my life was supposed to take. It was there I said 'No' to the great demand, there I realised what a disappointment I must be to God. And it was there I began to recognise how incommensurate my character was to my own ideals and aspirations. It's hard when you discover that the person you are is not someone you admire; not the person you want to be; not cut out to be a saint.

His return saw him assigned to be Priest-in-Charge, St Margaret's and St Mungo's in the Gorbals, Glasgow. Here he was actively engaged in matters of social concern as much as religious matters; for him, the division was an artificial one. He noted how the solution to Glasgow's housing had been imposed from above, with little care for the people who actually had to live there. The position after the the Second World War was truly terrible:

It was what came after the war that began the destruction. Glasgow's housing stock was in an apocalyptic state. An official survey established that 98,000 houses were unfit for human habitation. Most of the old tenements had no hot water, internal lavatories or baths, and they were all tired and dilapidated. It was the era of the slum landlord, most of whom were incompetent as well as grasping, and some of whom were actively criminal and warehoused the poor into derelict buildings of last resort when there was nowhere else for them to go.

But he felt the buildings were sound, and could have been modernised. After all, country estates were modernised and changed with hot water piping and indoor lavatories replacing chamber pots. The fabric of the buildings were sound, but they had been left to fall into disrepair. The solution was to impose a different way of living, and replace slum areas with high-rise flats. This was the era of "build high for happiness", where the planners were drawn to this partly as an architectural ideal (the latest fashion), and partly to save costs. The people who lived there had no say:

The streets of grey and red sandstone seemed organic to the landscape and climate of our northern nation. Even the cheaper ones were built to last, and they looked as though they belonged where they stood - and knew it. Why not keep them, improve them, modernise them? Had they been consulted, that is what the natives themselves would have gone for, but social engineers are famous for their indifference to the views of the subjects of their experiments. No one bothered to ask the people who actually lived in Gorbals. Glasgow wanted to do something dramatic to counter its reputation as the slum capital of Europe, so they opted for what they called comprehensive redevelopment, the complete flattening of the district and the erection of an entirely new housing pattern. They blitzed the traditional horizontal grid of streets and sent them into the sky in the famous twenty-storey high-rises.

Meanwhile, he worked within the slum areas, helping people living there to fight the slum landlords, who as Orwell noted, take advantage of the desperate need for houses: "people will put up with anything--any hole and corner slum, any misery of bugs and rotting floors and cracking walls, any extortion of skinflint landlords and blackmailing agents--simply to get a roof over their heads" (The Road to Wigan Pier)

It is here that Holloway was attracted to Christianity, not just as a social reform movement, but as a refuge for the outcast on society, those living on the margins, and those whom Jesus came to live among. It is like the BBC Nativity play, where the angel Gabriel tells the shepherd Thomas that the Messiah is born not for the high and mighty, but "for such as you".

Against this prophetic strand, Holloway sees the moralists, who want to make a codified Christianity, where mistakes are policed, and people kept in check by fear:

How could I explain that what attracted me to Jesus was his acceptance of those who saw themselves as failures rather than moral successes? There was a subversive tradition in Christianity that claimed it was sinners who got Jesus, people who couldn't mind their Ps and Qs, not the righteous. It was the hopeless prodigal who understood, not his upright and disciplined big brother. Where to start trying to explain all that? But the dissonance went even deeper. It may have been fear of being found out myself, but I actually felt a strong revulsion against the morality-policing aspect of religion that was such a strong element in the Scottish tradition. I was attracted to the prophetic voice of faith that spoke against structural or institutional sin and the way the powerful ordered the world to suit themselves. I hated the prurient kind of religion that pried into personal weaknesses and took pleasure in exposing them.

Karen Armstrong has also argued strongly that the Mythos in religion can be neglected for the Logos. Holloway sees this with religious institutions, that they become more rigid, and the religious longing is captured and chained up. This is where religion can become a vehicle for all kinds of nasty practices, from telling people who are dying of aids that it is God's judgement on them, blowing up people who deliver abortions, telling people who have had IVF treatment and have children that they are murderers, and talking about wars as "crusades" against evil. The corrupting nature of religious institutions was something than repelled Richard Holloway:

All institutions over-claim for themselves and end up believing more in their own existence than in the vision that propelled them into existence in the first place. This is particularly true of religious institutions. Religions may begin as vehicles of longing for mysteries beyond description, but they end up claiming exclusive descriptive rights to them. They segue from the ardour and uncertainty of seeking to the confidence and complacence of possession. They shift from poetry to packaging. Which is what people want. They don't want to spend years wandering in the wilderness of doubt. They want the promised land of certainty, and religious realists are quick to provide it for them. The erection of infallible systems of belief is a well-understood device to still humanity's fear of being lost in life's dark wood without a compass. 'Supreme conviction is a self-cure for infestation of doubts.' . That is why David Hume noted that, while errors in philosophy were only ridiculous, errors in religion were dangerous. They were dangerous because when supreme conviction is threatened it turns nasty.

And he notices how one of the worst kinds in modern America is the apocalyptic Christian fundamentalism, which sees the end of the world as divine, and something to be welcomed. What price peace, when you believe the prophecies tell of Armageddon coming in the Middle East? Or global warming, when you regard the world as disposable!

Bad religion can be comforting, a blanket that protects us against the chilly winds of an empty universe, but it can be dangerous too. Belief in the imminence of the Second Coming became the preserve of the Christian Right in America, where it fed the growth of a conspiracy theory that became one of the most powerful weapons in America's culture wars.

The dangerous thing about the movement is that, rather than looking for ways to address the problems that beset the world, the apocalyptic mind-set welcomes them as signs that the end is accelerating towards us. The late Jerry Falwell, a co-conspirator of LaHaye's, when asked about the growing degradation of the planet said it did not concern him. Jesus would be back soon to end the world, so we should use it before we lose it.

But he wasn't too taken by the Anglo-Catholic movement in Anglicanism either, where he described:

pale young curates could be seen gazing longingly into their windows at displays of mitres, copes and chasubles - and the dazzling futures they promised. There was little harm in any of this, though it did demonstrate the mysterious weakness of the human male for dressing up in elaborate uniforms and insignia. Though it was not a fatal vanity, it could be silly and precious; when it was done mischievously, archly, it could have charm and humour; but it was never without self-consciousness.

Discussing matters with Graham Leonard, one time Bishop of London (who later left the Church of England over the ordination of women priests and jointed the Catholics), he noted how often the arguments come after the positions have been taken, and serve as a kind of rational justification for those decisions which we have already made. He makes some marvelous points against the weakness and incoherence of Leonard's position:

What I came to realise in my discussions and debates with Graham Leonard was the role non-theological factors played in theological debate. In particular, we are all experts at finding intellectual arguments for decisions we have actually taken on temperamental or emotional grounds.

In the case of women's ordination, Graham Leonard paraded the supposedly theological objection, which was as simple as it was crass. Jesus was a man. At the altar the priest represents Jesus. Therefore the priest has to be a man. A number of rejoinders were possible to this. Jesus was a Jew. At the altar the priest represents Jesus. Therefore the priest must be a Jew. Jesus was circumcised. At the altar the priest . . . and so on. He would have none of it. But he was embarrassed by the arbitrariness of his own logic. It was then the tip of the iceberg bobbed above the surface, and it revealed the anxious nature of the conservative mind as it negotiates change and contemplates doing something for the first time.

In fact, he came to realise that for him, it was people that counted first, not the institutions and the rules, when they were used to oppress:

I was also coming to recognise that I could not privilege any institution above the individuals who composed it. When it came to a choice between them - which was usually when it meant applying the rules against them - I noticed that I usually came down on the side of the individual.

That's a position that I certainly agree with; it is often a matter where a choice comes up, and sometimes that involves rethinking principles and seeing if they are actually prejudices instead. That's not to say that rules are always bad; society needs some kind of rules to function. But religious organisations tend to be good at using their rules to exclude diversity - the heretic, the excommunicated, the backslider, the lapsed - all terms which suggest that the individual concerned is in the wrong, without perhaps asking why they have chosen that path.

I remember the Exeter Christian Union in the late 1970s among whom I had friends speaking of the dangers of back-sliding, and telling me of someone who had been their CU leader at one of the Halls of Residence who had left, drifted away. Curious, I chatted to her, and found that it was more a case that she had outgrown the restrictive demands of the CU. It was the institution which was causing people to leave because of its rules, particularly the misogynism where women were concerned, but those within just couldn't see that. They excluded, where I would always tend to include. I remained friendly with people within, as well as people without, but it opened my eyes to the way that an institution can bend the mind of its members to privileging its internal rules over individuals, whatever the problems there might be with those rules. 

Victor Hugo's masterpiece, "Les Miserables", is a narrative with a central thread - Jean-Valjean, who always takes the side of the outsider, reaching out with compassion, having been the recipient of compassion at a very low ebb in his life, a convict on parole - and Javert, the Inspector whose only rationale for life is bound up with upholding the smallest print within the law, and is unbending, without mercy. It dramatises that conflict, but it is one that, as Richard Hollow found out, does not go away.

In the second part of this review next Sunday, I'll be looking at Richard Holloway's later career and time as Bishop of Edinburgh.

Fall Back

Don't forget the clocks change tonight!

Looking back at summer, and summers past, as we come to colder times. Time for something melancholy...

Fall Back

The hour is changing, falling back
But what if we could move in time
Jump an hour past, along the track
Would we find fear or joy sublime?
 
I wish that I could visit times past
Moments more precious once again
But nothing remains, all ends at last
Once more sorrow, grief, and pain
 
The glorious days of summer hours
Basking in sunlight, walking lanes
Showers bring the scent of flowers
But present binds us with its chains
 
The fleeting moment, now expire
Burning up like winter fire

Grave Matters

A Jersey family say they're disgusted that they have to remove plants and personal belongings from their relatives graves. Alida Beason's brother and grandfather are buried at Les Quennevais cemetery, but she's been told by the parish only specific items are allowed there. St Brelade say it's to ensure the graveyard remains tidy and respectful, but Alida insists the move is bureaucratic. (1)

Now readers with long memories may recall that a year or two back this same Committee took the decision to refuse black headstones on the graves:

Danny Michel wants to put the stone in Les Quennevais Cemetery for his late wife Violet. But St Brelade Constable Mike Jackson said there was a clause in the rates book that said only headstones made of local material could be used. There is no black granite-type material available in Jersey so it would need to be imported. Mr Michel argues there are already 14 black headstones in the cemetery.(2)

In the case of Mr Michel, the decision was overturned:

Mr Michel's battle with the parish to have a black headstone for his wife's grave has been won. Yesterday the Constable announced that the St Brelade Cemetery Committee, who met for the first time in 5 years, would be willing to change to regulations to permit the stone to be erected. In an email to the Parish deputies and Senator Ferguson, Constable Jackson wrote: "The cemetery committee decided yesterday to agree to submitting a revised regulation to a Parish Assembly to permit black natural stone in the cemetery."(3)

That was eventually overturned after a public meeting and petition. So who is the Comite des Cimetiere des Quennevais? On the Parish Website the details are given except for the Churchwardens of St Brelade's Church, who are listed on a notice board inside the Parish Church:

Comite des Cimetiere des Quennevais
Le  Connétable - Steve Pallett
Le Recteur - Rev Mark Bond
Parish Priest of the Catholic Church - Rev Kevin Hoiles
The Methodist Minister
Procureurs du  Bien Public - Arthur Morley and Peter  Norman
A Church Warden - which must be either Brian Clarke or Eddie Cuthbert

All the Parish website has to say about the rules are as follows:

Every Parish has a cemetery and details are listed for this Parish below. Some Parishes may have burial plots that are not consecrated and there are areas reserved for Jewish burials and for Muslim burials in St Helier

A notice is posted on the cemetery, but I think it would also be helpful - in this day and age - to have the details shown online. People often walk past notice boards without really taking in what is on them, except when large warning signs are displayed.

Incidentally, the last set of online accounts for St Brelade as a PDF are for 2009! A revamp and update of the website is long overdue. The accounts, for the year ended 30 April 2009, have "Refilling of graves and general maintenance" -  £522, with the 2008 figure of 1,832, so perhaps someone is looking to reduce costs here.

There have been a number of angry comments, in particular, focusing on the fact that items on the grave were thrown away without notifying the relatives. One particular one sums this up:

This is disgusting. Who are they to say what can and can't be left on a grave? Stuart was a friend of mine and I know that visiting his grave and leaving beautiful flowers and plants is very important to Fiona and Stuart's family and friends. I am appalled that items have been removed and thrown away. How dare the Parish disrespect this.

And another shows that whatever policy there is, it is not applied consistently at all cemeteries:

Typical unfeeling nonsense from 'up top'. Jersey red tape gone mad again. My other friend died and his grave is covered in items and that's never been a problem, in fact it serves as a reminder of our good times. It's entirely personal. How dare these people even think to touch or remove them, or try to nanny us in yet another area of life.

Anything to do with death is likely to raise strong emotions, and it does raise the following questions:

Who is responsible in the day to day running of the cemetery. According to the BBC, when the Committee met to discuss the issue of black headstones, it was the first time they had met in five years. On that matter, Mike Jackson, former Constable remarked:

"Those earlier stones were granted on the basis of the previous practice but I soon after received complaints from the public about the black gravestones and thought the most practical solution and pragmatic solution was to stick rigorously to the regulations."

That gives the impression it was his decision but was it? How often do the committee meet? Do they have minutes of decisions made? Are these publically available, or kept in secret?

Or is the oversight of the cemetery delegated to the hands of one or two individuals, or even delegated further down the line to other Parish officials? Do they discuss infringements of the rules and ever look at changing them? When were the original rules drawn up, and what scope is there for interpretation? Are they being applied too rigidly.

Given the heavy handed, and somewhat tactless way the Comite des Cimetiere des Quennevais has operated recently, I think that these are questions that need answering.

However, the alternative viewpoint should also be considered. The rules were set up partly for aesthetic reasons, partly for maintenance, and partly so that the cemetery should be kept dignified. It appears that the grave of Alida Beason's relatives has virtually a miniature garden placed on it, with garden ornaments. This isn't just the placement of flowers. Where does that kind of decoration stop?

I do wonder perhaps if previous committees did not pay as much attention as they should to the rules, and gently reminding people what is not acceptable, thus making trouble for the future.

An example of something similar would be parking by St Thomas Church. For years it was ignored on Sundays and police turned a blind eye. At the special mass after the death of Pope John Paul II, suddenly they descended on the road and proceeded to book people with parking tickets while the service was just ending. That caused a lot of anger. It was another example of perhaps two wrongs - a tactless approach at almost conceivably the worst moment - and the problem caused by previous officers not being as strict as they should in the past.

So not all the fault lies with the Comite des Cimetiere. There are ground for enforcing the rules, even if this seems to have been done - as with the black gravestones - in a very heavy handed way. Perhaps the Comite des Cimetiere should take a course in etiquette and counselling.

Where people's loved ones have been buried, very intense emotions come to play, and a very gentle but firm touch is needed. Barging in, removing items, disposing of them (rather than just placing them for collection elsewhere) is not the right way to go about things. It comes across as uncaring, unfeeling and unthoughtful. A softer approach would be better, apologising for the fact that the rules don't allow this.

In the UK, there's an example of this from 2008:

A DISTRAUGHT mum fears she could be forced to move her daughter's grave because its decoration breaks cemetery regulations (5)

But while the rules don't permit this, the way of dealing with it has been very different - a lesson perhaps for St Brelade:

Staff have given her until November 15 to remove the garden or the items will be put in storage for six months and then be destroyed. A Salford council spokesman said: "Grave owners are provided with clear guidelines which operate for everyone's benefit. "Vicky purchased an ashes grave which is much smaller than a standard grave and therefore it has limited space for ornamental purposes. The extent of her garden is setting a precedent for others nearby."  Coun Keith Mann, spokesman for the environment, said: "We have every sympathy with Vicky and would like to seek a satisfactory solution." (5)

Where the black headstones were concerned, the precedent had been set, and the Comite des Cimetiere should have taken the initiative in actively regularising the situation. But where making a "grave garden" is concerned, with plants and personal belongings, this can be rectified, and possibly should.

Also most UK cemeteries have the regulations clearly online, and it is about time that St Brelade's followed suit. The Parish website needs updating to include that. Those often include reasons for the regulations, for example:

The use of breakable items (i.e. glass vases, glass containers, porcelain etc.,) is not permitted. Breakable items pose a serious hazard to cemetery visitors, our maintenance crew and their equipment. For the same reason, we ask that you not use wire, wire pins, or make holes in the soil to secure flower arrangements, or to place rods of any kind in vase or at the gravesite.

While we recognize that taste is an individual matter, we reserve the right to remove from graves sites any items which have deteriorated; which are contrary to cemetery regulations, or do not contribute to the beauty and dignity of the cemetery. We will not be held responsible for such items that may be removed. (6)

I hope that some improvement in the way the Comite des Cimetiere operates will come about, and improvements to the Parish website regarding cemetery rules. I have sympathy with them in this recent case, but not with the way it has been handled - Inspector Javert who rigidly enforced the law in "Les Miserables" would have been pleased, but then he is hardly held up as a model to emulate!

Links
(1) http://www.channelonline.tv/channelonline_jerseynews/displayarticle.asp?id=502034
(2) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-13694178
(3) BBC News Report
(4) http://www.parish.gov.je/administration.asp?parish_id=11#1
(5) http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1078247_mums_fight_for_babys_grave_garden_
(6) http://www.trinitymemorialgardens.com/facilities/rules-and-regulations.cfm

Santa Smoker

A Canadian publisher is involved in a row about Father Christmas and smoking. According to The Daily Telegraph, the publisher removed a reference to Santa's pipe from the famous poem A Visit from St Nicholas, which begins: "Twas the night before Christmas". The publisher says "I don't think Santa should be smoking in the 21st century".

Santa is clearly in a bad way, it's obvious he is chain smoking his way around the world on the night before Christmas. Obviously they should add an extra verse, suggesting that smoking is bad for you:

Twas the night after Christmas, and told off by his spouse
In the rehab clinic, though he did grumble and grouse
The little old man, still madly puffing away
A nicotine addict, what would children say!

Other politically correct changes have taken place. And clearly some of them are quite justified. The Dam Busters' dog will be renamed for a new version of the classic war movie. A black Labrador was the mascot for RAF 617 squadron, and it was called "Nigger".

Stephen Fry is writing the film screen play and said: "no question in America that you could ever have a dog called the N-word". In the remake, the dog will be called "Digger" instead of "Nigger".

Another similar change came to Agatha Christie's novel "And Then There Were None", which was originally titled "Ten Little Niggers", published in 1939. In fact, even in 1940, the title in the USA, though not in Britain, was changed to the less offensive " Ten Little Indians". Less offensive, unless you were a Native American, of course, which is perhaps why it changed again to "And Then There Were None".

Ten little Indian boys went out to dine;
One choked his little self and then there were nine.
Nine little Indian boys sat up very late;
One overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight little Indian boys travelling in Devon;
One said he'd stay there and then there were seven.
Seven little Indian boys chopping up sticks;
One chopped himself in half and then there were six.
Six little Indian boys playing with a hive;
A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.
Five little Indian boys going in for law;
One got in Chancery and then there were four.
Four little Indian boys going out to sea;
A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
Three little Indian boys walking in the zoo;
A big bear hugged one and then there were two.
Two Little Indian boys sitting in the sun;
One got frizzled up and then there was one.
One little Indian boy left all alone;
He went out and hanged himself and then there were none.

Of course, Agatha Christie had come across the Nursery Rhyme, and it suggested to her the plot for a story in which everyone mysteriously came to this Island in Devon, and died one by one, in such a way that the police and reader had no idea who had done it, despite the fact that the list of suspects seemed to be diminishing. The Hollywood movie rather spoilt it by having the villain unmasked, and not able to complete their fiendish task.

It's debatable how racist Christie was, and you find people blogging on both sides. As far as the book goes, she was simply on the look out for a suitable plot device. Nursery rhymes were a particular favourite of hers for book titles, so that's not surprising. In the book, one character Lombard abandoned some men in Africa to die, and another character voices this remark "They were only natives". However, Lombard has been judged by the mysterious person who has brought them to the Island, and sentenced to death because of this; it is considered a crime.

Many of those people Poirot encounters mistrust him as that little foreigner, often those being the snobbish country house elite, but we are not to take that seriously, rather the reverse. It is their attitude to Poirot, whose side we are on, which is repellent, not admirable.

We must be careful not to judge Christie by her characters motivations and attitudes which quite a few of those do, or mistake irony where it occurs. The primary sources must surely be her autobiography, and the personal account "Come Tell Me How You Live", neither of which displays any racism.

As one commentator remarks on a book:

"Murder in Mesopotamia was published in 1936, a full 10 years after the disappearance.  On its surface, it is a classic Christie murder mystery but it is also one of her finest novels, with layers of cultural and historical commentary that transcend the narrow focus of her English village mysteries.  It is a delicately woven tale of the English upper middle class tourist abroad in the wonders of the Middle East and it has many shrewd things to say about imperialism and racism.  Christie was a woman who understood both these evils.  Her best writing reveals she rejected them in her heart, although by and large her irony is misunderstood and underestimated by her critics on this point." (1)

Incidentally, Johnny Speight had a similar problem on TV with the character of Alf Garnet in "Till Death Us Do Part", where the irony was lost on many people, unlike the terrible sledgehammer approach of "Love Thy Neighbour", one of the most dreadful TV series.

"The Black and White Minstrels" would be completely unacceptable today, and "Mind Your Language" where foreigners are stereotypes would probably not go down well. "Allo Allo" managed to get away with the very broadly drawn stereotypes, because we sympathise with Rene, a Frenchman, and the Englishmen are silly-ass stereotypes.

In the area of religion, "Onward Christian Soldiers" has been changed to "Onward Christian Pilgrims" as being rather too militaristic, although the following verse does say "Marching as to War", not marching to war. That's possibly a less forgivable change, especially as Paul's Letter to the Ephesians in the New Testament extols the reader to "put on the whole armour of God", including the "shield of faith" and the "sword of truth", so the metaphor is deep seated within the New Testament.

One verse of "All Things Bright and Beautiful" is usually dropped

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Now that's clearly a reference to the parable of the rich man and the beggar (as Maurice Frost points out in a letter in her defence), where the rich man has duties to serve the beggar, and goes to hell for failing to do so. Mrs Alexander and her audience would have had that in mind, but we've lost that contextual familiarity with the New Testament, and so it seems to be promoting the status quo and class divide.

As Arthur Wallace points out, it is too open to misconstruction, which perhaps is also the case with "Onward Christian Soldiers", which can be seen as overtly militaristic.

Political correctness is a difficult issue, and what seems acceptable in the past may seem less so in the present. I suspect though, that the present has its own prejudices, which are probably too close for us to see them closely. So while we may reconsider Santa smoking, we should perhaps also look to see what the fashionable and acceptable vices are today - those that we don't consider vices.

Links
(1) http://sexualfables.com/poison_pen_letters.php

Misquoting Tibullus: An Investigation of Sources

As readers may know, I often end the day by posting a quotation on Facebook, which is prefixed with the sentence "And so to bed... quote for tonight is from X". Last night I posted one that I believed came from Catullus, a Roman poet (ca. 84 BC - ca. 54 BC), of whom Wikipedia notes:

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Roman poet of the 1st century BC. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art. Catullus invented the "angry love poem."
 
This is the quotation:

"I myself have seen this woman draw the stars from the sky; she diverts the course of a fast-flowing river with her incantations; her voice makes the earth gape, it lures the spirits from the tombs, send the bones tumbling from the dying pyre. At her behest, the sad clouds scatter; at her behest, snow falls from a summer's sky."

After a few comments asking about it, I decided to research the context, but I couldn't find those words anywhere else apart from the Goodreads site in 2008 - where they were attributed to Catullus, and later postings on blogs. So where did it come from? Was it made up or authentic?

I decided to search thematically for elements rather than text - "Catullus, stars, summer, clouds, snow" and found a paper from 2012 on "Latin: Advanced Higher Interpretation". Under a section on "sky", it has the following references:
 
Ovid 8 day overcast with cloud, moon turned bloody, blood dripped from the stars; Ovid 6 pervigil in mediae sidera noctis, Lucifer; Ovid 9 apta . sidera; Ovid 12 stars not vanish, blinding cloud, the Moon, the sun rose; Ovid 20 sun wheeling back; Catullus 22 stars; Catullus 27 cry to the moon; Propertius 29 lure the moon from heaven, draw the stars with spells; Propertius 31 moon fleeting past the open shutters, the officious moon, gentle beams, the stars are put out; Propertius 33 full stars; Tibullus 37 dog star; Tibullus 38 drawing stars from the sky, drives the clouds, hides summer skies, calls snow, clear moonlight; Tibullus 39 sun's course, nature of the moon; Horace 43 moonless night; Horace 45 insensate stars (1)

But that has the basic form of the quotation - "drawing stars from the sky, drives the clouds, hides summer skies, calls snow" attributed to the Roman poet Tibullus and not Catullus. Yet the elements are so close that it seems unlikely that they occured in both Roman poets.

So I searched for the same theme directing it this time at "Tibullus, stars, summer, clouds, snow", and sure enough I found the context - part of a poem by Tibullus. Here's a larger extract:
 
The numbing cold of a winter's night brings me no harm nor the rain showering its vast waters on me.
This labour won't hurt me, if only Delia unlocks the door and calls me silently with the sound of her tapping.
Hide your eyes, man or woman whom we meet with: Venus wants her thefts to be concealed.
 
Don't startle us with clattering feet or ask our names, nor bring the light of glowing torches near us.
If anyone has seen us unawares, let him hide it, and deny by all the gods that he remembers.
Since if any turns informer, he'll find Venus is the child of blood and angry seas.
 
Still, your husband won't believe them, the truthful witch promised me that, with her magic rites.
 
I've seen her drawing stars down from the sky:
her chant turns back the course of the flowing river.
her spells split the ground, conjure ghosts from the tomb and summon dead bones from the glowing funeral pyre:
now she holds the infernal crew with magic hissing, now sprinkling milk orders them to retreat.
As she wishes, she dispels the cloud from the sombre sky:
as she wishes, calls up snows to a summer world.
 
She composed a spell for me, that you can deceive with:
chant it three times, spit three times when you've done.
Then he'll not be able to believe anyone about us, not even himself if he saw us in your soft bed.
Still you must keep away from others: since he'll see all the rest: it's only me he'll see nothing of!
 
What? Do I believe? Surely she's the same who said she could dissolve my love with herbs or charms, and purified me with torches, and in the calm of night a mournful sacrifice fell to the gods of sorcery. (2)
 
The same poem is also mentioned in the 1895 book on "The Evil Eye" by Frederick Thomas Elworthy, in the appendix:
 
The faith in the power of magic arts was simply unbounded, as is testified by nearly all the classic writers. Tibullus (Eleg. II. i. 43) says that a certain famous enchantress could not only draw down the stars from the sky, but could change the course of a river. Further, she could make snow to fall in summer. (3)
 
Who was Tibullus? Wikipedia tells us that:

Albius Tibullus (ca. 55 BC - 19 BC) was a Latin poet and writer of elegies.  Little is known about his life. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to Tibullus are of questionable origins. There are only a few references to him in later writers and a short Life of doubtful authority... His status was probably that of a Roman knight(so the Life affirms); and he had inherited a considerable estate. But, like Virgil, Horace and Propertius, he seems to have lost most of it in 41 BC amongst the confiscations of Mark Antony and Octavian.
 
In a book entitled "The Elegies of Tibullus" by Theodore Williams in 1908, there's another translation:

Nay, even thy husband will believe no ill.
    All this a wondrous witch did tell me true:
  One who can guide the stars to work her will,
    Or turn a torrent's course her task to do.
 
  Her spells call forth pale spectres from their graves,
    And charm bare bones from smoking pyres away:
  'Mid trooping ghosts with fearful shriek she raves,
    Then sprinkles with new milk, and holds at bay.
 
  She has the power to scatter tempests rude,
    And snows in summer at her whisper fall;
  The horrid simples by Medea brewed
    Are hers; she holds the hounds of Hell in thrall
 
And there is more on Tibullus in the 1881 book by James Davies - "Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius", where he writes:

Lest such encouragements should not suffice to influence his coy inamorata, or her fears of offending the so-called " husband," who withholds her from him, should become confirmed, Tibullus adduces the assurances of a witch whom he has lately consulted to show that a way may be smoothed for their interviews as heretofore. Of this witch Tibullus gives a highly poetic description : -

" Her have I known the stars of heaven to charm,
The rapid river's course by spells to turn,
Cleave graves, bid bones descend from pyres still warm.
Or coax the Manes forth from silent urn.
Hell's rabble now she calls with magic scream,
Now bids them milk-sprent to their homes below :
At will lights cloudy skies with sunshine's gleam,
At will  'neath summer orbs collects the snow.
Alone she holds Medea's magic lore :
 
None else, 'tis said, hath power Hell's dogs to tame :
She taught me chants, that wondrous glamour pour,
 
If, spitting thrice, we thrice rehearse the same."

The services of this functionary Tibullus professes to have secured to throw dust in his rival's eyes, though for the matter of that he lets fall a hint that, had he preferred it, she could have given him a spell that would enable him to forget her. But that was not his wish, the earnest desire rather of a lasting and mutual love.(5)

It's interesting to see how different all of these translations are, even though the basic structure the same - and the same elements are there - stars, rivers, graves, the dead etc. It shows just how free and loose translations of the Roman poets can be from the original text. Note the present of milk, however, an important feature in ancient Roman magical rites.

In the original Medea features, and the text conforms to that of 1881 which retains in translation the term Manes - the  chthonic deities of Ancient Roman religion sometimes thought to represent souls of deceased loved ones, which has been "lost in translation" in the other versions. "Latin Erotic Elegy: An Anthology and Reader" (2002) by Paul All Miller notes that "Manes can mean either ghosts or corpses, though the former is more common".

Siquis et inprudens adspexerit, occulat ille
Perque deos omnes se meminisse neget:              
Nam fuerit quicumque loquax, is sanguine natam,
     Is Venerem e rapido sentiet esse mari.
Nec tamen huic credet coniunx tuus, ut mihi verax
     Pollicita est magico saga ministerio.
Hanc ego de caelo ducentem sidera vidi,              
     Fluminis haec rapidi carmine vertit iter,
Haec cantu finditque solum Manesque sepulcris
     Elicit et tepido devocat ossa rogo;
Iam tenet infernas magico stridore catervas,
     Iam iubet adspersas lacte referre pedem.          
Cum libet, haec tristi depellit nubila caelo,
     Cum libet, aestivo convocat orbe nives.
Sola tenere malas Medeae dicitur herbas,
     Sola feros Hecates perdomuisse canes.(6)


But where did the original come from? I haven't been able to trace it, but it is either a paraphrase of one of the translations extant, or possibly a fresh and extremely free and loose translation from the Latin.

How did it end up associated with Catullus and not Tibullus on Goodreads quotations? This is only a surmise, but in the history of the text, Wikipedia notes that:

Tibullus was first printed with Catullus, Propertius, and the Silvae of Statius by Vindelinus de Spira (Venice, 1472), and separately by Florentius de Argentina, probably in the same year. Amongst other editions are those by Scaliger (with Catullus and Propertius, 1577, etc.), Broukhusius (1708), Vulpius (1749), Heyne (1817, 4th ed. by Wunderlich, with supplement by Dissen, 1819), Huschke (1819), Lachmann (1829), Dissen (1835).
 
 If the source of this was a combined Latin text, it is easy to see how the muddle arose. But the translation takes many liberties with the original Latin, so it is probably either a very loose translation or a paraphrase of a translation made from a combined source.

Very loose translations or paraphrases from translations are more common in the 20th and 21st century. Coleman Barks has produced extremely free paraphrases based on extant translations. As Wikipedia notes:

Barks does not speak or read Persian therefore his 'translations' are technically paraphrases. Barks bases his paraphrases entirely on other English translations of Rumi which include renderings by John Moyne and Reynold A. Nicholson. In addition, while the original Persian poetry of Rumi is heavily rhymed and metered, Barks has used primarily free verse. In some instances, he will also skip or mix lines and metaphors from different poems into one 'translation'.
 
So in conclusion, one construction of the history of the text might be as follows:  (1) a combined Latin version such as that of Vindelinus de Spira, or possible a Schools Latin reader (2)  translation attributed to the wrong author (3) very loose paraphrase of original text (4) placement in Goodreads.
 
Links
(1) http://www.sqa.org.uk/pastpapers/papers/instructions/2012/mi_AH_Latin_Interpretation_2012.pdf
(2) http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Tibullus.htm
(3) http://www.sacred-texts.com/evil/tee/tee17.htm
(4) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9610/9610-h/9610-h.htm
(5) "Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius", James Davies, 1881
(6) http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/tibullus1.html

Bus Drivers Update

The bus drivers' dispute is 'in the process of being settled'. That is what Jersey's Transport Minister has told the States today. That's as the Unite Union in the UK makes a scathing statement on its website about the row. Questioned about the dispute over the transfer of the Connex staff to the new bus operator in the Assembly  earlier, Deputy Kevin Lewis said that a mediation agreement has been reached and that it is confidential to the parties involved.   He said progress is being made.

Meanwhile, Unite has said TTS needs to 'end its attack on bus drivers' pay' to resolve the dispute, saying staff are being forced to sign contracts slashing their pay by up to £12,000 a year - or face the sack. It says if the employers accept their 'exploiting morally bankrupt legislation' Unite 'can help broker an acceptable settlement'. (1)

The Unite Union is keen to show up the lack of any TUPE  -Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment - legislation, and in its full statement, it notes:

"Unite has offered to help broker a deal between the bus drivers who have taken unofficial action. Unlike other parts of the British Isles, Jersey does not offer legal protection to workers' terms and conditions who are being transferred to a new employer. The employer's conduct in this dispute has been morally wrong, it has allowed loyal staff to have their pay slashed while the Jersey government has continued to drag its feet on introducing TUPE legislation in line with the rest of the UK." (2)

It's worth noting that Deputy Southern proposed TUPE style legislation earlier this year, and comments were given by the States Employment Board on 9th July 2012. These range from the problems with the timetable being accelerated and pushing other items out of States legislation such as the discrimination law, to a discussion as to whether the whole concept of TUPE was viable for Jersey.

"The concept of a transfer on the same terms and conditions of employment may be challenging in practice. 'Same' as in the context of the ARD does mean the same 'i.e. not substantially similar or comparable in the aggregate'. Accordingly, compliance with UK TUPE for example, or the detail of legislation implied in Deputy Southern's proposition, will be obliged to replicate each and every benefit provided by the transferring company before the transfer (pensions excluded by UK TUPE and ARD) can be effected. This may be extremely costly, difficult and undesirable in practice to achieve given differing employment practices in organisations." (3)

It is also worth noting that the the Employment Forum on 21 February 2007 also had looked at the matter of business transfer and noted that:

"Since their introduction in the UK, the TUPE Regulations have been the cause of some of the most difficult and intractable employment law problems, which have mainly focussed on whether a transfer has actually occurred, who should be transferred and changing terms and conditions." (4)

But the same forum also recommends the following procedures:

"An employer who is transferring his business to a new employer must provide a specified set of information, listed below, at least 2 weeks before the transfer, to help the new employer to understand the inherited rights, duties and obligations in relation to those employees who will be transferred" (4)

This does not appear to be have happened between Connex and CT Plus, despite it being a condition placed upon Connex when they took on their contract. Kevin Lewis does not really address this failure at all in his reply. Indeed he is remarkable blasé about this when questioned at an earlier States sitting:

6.1.8 The Deputy of Grouville:
As it has been established that Connex are now reneging on their Service Level Agreement, could any
form of compensation that might be forthcoming be used to make... for T.T.S. to use alternative provision
to provide public transport in the interim?
Deputy K.C. Lewis:
That is something my officers are looking into.

The answer in the States by Kevin Lewis today also noted that:

The meeting took place on 10 October 2012 and was extremely constructive. At the meeting it was agreed that eligible staff would transfer with preserved continuity of employment, for future statutory redundancy, unfair dismissal and notice purposes. The transfer would be on the basis of new terms and conditions in order to ensure that the present needs of Islanders were met, in accordance with the provisions of the 2010 Sustainable Transport Policy. A number of changes were agreed to enhance the terms and conditions on offer.

On 19 October 2012, TTS reiterated to CT Plus that it was essential that all key terms and conditions (such as rates of basic pay) of transferring staff were either mirrored or improved upon. CT Plus agreed further to enhance the terms and conditions that were being offered to transferring staff.

There follows a note about extensive discussions between CT Plus and the union, and a not that "CT plus is now offering eligible driving staff employment on terms which include the following". Of these, the most significant is:

· No probation period will apply to transferring staff
· Staff transfer with preserved continuity of service for future statutory redundancy, unfair dismissal and notice purposes.

It also notes that:

For information, the 54 hour working week maximum being applied to this new contract has been introduced for health and safety reasons to protect both the public and drivers, in accordance with advice we have received from the Health & Safety Inspectorate. It is in accordance with recognised UK best practice and consistent with the Unite Union's current 'A Safer Way' campaign.

This still doesn't answer all of Deputy Geoff Southern's questions, in particular:

What evidence does the Minister have to support the following statements he has made in relation to this issue -
· "a workforce controlled by fear and favour";
· "despite the hindrance of the previous staff transfer. We must not allow the same political involvement to stifle a contractor again"; and,

Deputy Kevin Lewis just brushes these aside, and yet they made a very clear picture of current practice which was part of his speech in defense of TTS in the States recently. Deputy Southern was rightly pulled up when he called the Minister "a fool" in the States, and yet Deputy Lewis seems able to malign bus drivers without any evidence to support his accusations.

That's not to say he may not be right, but he offers no evidence to backup those statements. It seems to me that when left wing politicians make statements for which they offer no factual supporting evidence, they can be pulled up on it, but when Ministers do, no one cares about it. I'm personally against unsupported rhetoric of this nature whether of right or left.

It reminds me of the quote from Disraeli about Gladstone of "a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself".

If there really is "a workforce controlled by fear and favour", there should be a proper investigation, and workplace bullying stopped in its tracks. He should ensure it is dealt with severely.

Gary Namie noted how "how bullying in the workplace can rise to the level of abuse whereby the abused employee is essentially in a domestic violence-type situation. He concludes that an employee suffering from bullying must address the issue with management because it is management's responsibility to manage the workplace environment. If the employee does not find help after reporting the bullying, then he/she must go higher up the management ladder."(6)

On the other hand, if it isn't true, Deputy Lewis should issue an apology for misleading the States. What he shouldn't do is avoid answering the question. If you make statements like that, you must be prepared to justify them.

Links
(1) http://www.channel103.com/news/index.php?storyid=22732&s=1
(2) http://www.unitetheunion.org/news__events/latest_news/unite_urges_employers_to_help.aspx
(3) http://www.statesassembly.gov.je/AssemblyPropositions/2012/P.060-2012%20Com(2).pdf
(4) http://www.gov.je/SiteCollectionDocuments/Working%20in%20Jersey/R%20
(5) 5) EmploymentForumsReccommendationRedundancyBusinessTransfers%2020091211%20EV.pdf
(6) http://www.jmarklaw.com/Employment/Bullying-in-the-Workplace-What-You-Can-Do.shtml

Interim Report 8/10

The Interim Report of the Electoral Commission is now out, and I've just been reading it. It was surprising good in a number of places, and it will be interesting to see what Daniel Wimberley makes of its main principles, which I think are good ones.

. All electors should have the same number of votes.
. Constituencies should as far as possible be of broadly equal size.
. A candidate should generally require a significant number of votes in order to be elected to the Assembly.
. The electoral system should be simple, fair and easy to understand

It is good too, that the decision on the Constables rests, in part, with the people in a Referendum, although I would like the States - rather like a pre-nuptial agreement - vote to be bound by the results of the Referendum before it goes ahead.

Here are the points and my comments:


(1) That the number of elected members in the States be reduced to 42.

Almost all those making submissions to the Commission agreed that there were too many States members. The size of the States Assembly is greater than that of other legislatures with similar populations. An analysis of tasks performed by States members shows that the current system of government and scrutiny would work with 42 members although this would mean that there would need to be fewer Ministers and Assistant Ministers.

I do not think that the number of Ministries can be reduced easily unless there is enough overlap of function. Given the amount of overseas promotion the Treasury Minister does which was formerly done by the Minister for Economic Development (albeit by the same individual States member!), it would certainly be possible to subsume Economic Development as a department of the Treasury. There is a clear overlap of functions. But whether such a monolithic Treasury is desirable is another matter.

One of the key problems is that distinct departments were place together under Ministerial government, but continued to run pretty much as separate entities. The cliché of "joined up" government for improving administration by sharing resources has only just begun to take place, as with, for example, the Harbours and Airports. And it can lead to conflicts of interest. When an issue is both a planning matter, but perhaps there is a conflict with an environmental one as well, how does the Minister fairly effect the judgement of Solomon on the two sides?

It may be worth dovetailing the number of Assistant Ministers with the PPC review of Machinery of Government, which was asking if Assistant Ministers could serve on Scrutiny Panels that were not scrutinising their particular Ministry. That would avoid reducing the number of Assistant Ministers, and would provide greater overlap with Scrutiny. Effectively, this means that Scrutiny would resemble in some ways the old Committee system, and provide a training ground for members while not causing delays in the way Ministerial government operates.

(2) That the Island be divided into six large districts each electing either 7 representatives ("Deputies") or, if the Constables remain in the States, 5 representatives ("Deputies").

Guernsey has districts, but of 6 or 7 members. The aim is to get a best fit for electoral parity. If the boundaries proposed by the commission can do this with the same number of Deputies per district, I think it's a good idea, but I would warn against being to fixated on the same number per boundary, if the boundaries are grouped Parishes. Demographic changes, while minimised by larger districts, may yet mean that a better fit of electoral parity (each deputy representing x voters) can be produced with a difference of one.

For example, the current presentation has an average of 1,845 or 2,584 (for no Constables and Constables respectively) which yields a standard deviation of 152 and 213. Changing the pattern so that district 3 (the largest) gained one Deputy and District 5 (the smallest) lost one Deputy would give a standard deviation of 81 and 170. A low standard deviation indicates that the data points tend to be very close to the average (mean), whereas high standard deviation indicates that the data points are spread out over a large range of values. The difference between maxima and minima of the ranges would also reduce (from 415 and 582 to 243 and 457).

Given the small numbers involved, I think the benefits of the same Deputies per district probably outweighs that of a smaller deviation from the mean, but it is something a future boundaries commission might bear in mind.

(3) That the public should decide in a referendum whether or not the Constables should remain members of the States.

This is an excellent decision. I am (as my readers will be aware) in favour, for the time being, of retaining the Constables, but views on this seem very divided between voters, and it is to the Commission's credit that it has made this a matter for the public to decide.

The States should, however, vote before any referendum - that they will accept the result of the referendum as binding, otherwise it will be a waste of time, effectively an expensive opinion poll which States members can overturn.

4) That the decisions of the States to move to a 4-year term of office and a general election should be affirmed

This seems to have come through on most of the submissions I have seen, and it make a lot of sense, given that the longer Senatorial positions will be abolished. As I pointed out in a blog posting, the move to same day elections makes the position of Senator a risky venture, and one Deputy who had been planning to stand told me that she had changed her mind as a result of that change. It also ensures that Chief Ministers come from the recently elected, and the position whereby a Chief Minister could be elected part the way through a term of office (and in both instances stood down before facing the public on their record in power) must have contributed to public disillusionment.

5) That the introduction of a transferable voting system might ensure a fairer electoral system. The Commission will be undertaking further research into this matter in the coming weeks before reporting in December 2012.

This is an interesting change, and I think it would require some kind of electronic voting system to cope with the complexities involved. But perhaps it is time for a change, and for voting to move into the 21st century. Systems which were developed in the past, when time consuming counts by hand were the only option, should surely be reconsidered. In this respect, Pierre Horsefall's hearing with the Committee probably put the argument for transferable voting in its strongest and clearest form. If it was possible, and apart from initial costs, not expensive to maintain, it would be a good option. It is good that the Commission have not ruled this out.

6) That steps should be taken to strengthen parliamentary democracy and in particular to ensure that draft legislation is properly scrutinized before enactment. The Commission will also be undertaking further research in this area before making a final recommendation.

This holds two options, and I'll comment on one:

One means of ensuring proper legislative scrutiny would be to create a second chamber, or Senate, where a small number of members, acting in an honorary capacity, could perform this important function. In other jurisdictions it is said that a second chamber is a useful check and balance to the power of the lower house.

It can be, but the UK history - up to the time of the Parliament Act reducing the power of the Lords - shows that a second Chamber with too extensive powers can cause problems in impeding, filibustering or stopping legislation that may have a popular mandate and be practical for ideological reasons. This can also be seen in the USA, where Obama's legislative reforms such as improved medical care have met with resistance from the Senate.

How the members of the Second Chamber are elected, appointed, and what powers they may have is not clearly fleshed out in this proposal, and while the Commission wishes to give further consideration, I would recommend that the Second Chamber did not have an absolute ability to veto legislation. Also while "an honorary capacity" suggest no expense, in practice there may be an honorarium offered to cover expenses.

Clearly, if the Constables were excluded from the States, this would be an obvious place for them to be, to bring Parish insights into legislation, and might be no bad thing, always providing they were providing a scrutiny oversight to ensure that important Parish matters were not overlooked, and not able to impede or filibuster legislation.

And so to bed 3

"And so to bed." was a phrase well known from the Diaries of Samuel Pepys, and I have been using it to end the day with a quotation on Facebook to ponder. Sometimes it takes around 20 minutes to find a suitable quotation, and I try to adhere to the following principles:

1) it must not be one of the interminable short quotations that are continually posted on Facebook, usually attributed (and occasionally genuinely) to Einstein, the Dalai Lama, Rumi, etc - so not a sound bite quotation. It must not be too short, but not too long either.

2) it must be genuine, and not a fake, properly sourced

3) Most importantly, it must be something that makes you glimpse the world through the eyes of the writer, and if you agree with it, it will not be because it is saying something that just chimes with you, like the sound bites, but a quotation that hopefully opens your eyes to a different vision, yet a vision with which you can also say "that is true", or "I never thought of that in that way, but now that I see it..."

So here is a third set of quotations for which I've ended each evening, for those who have missed them going out on Facebook

And so to bed... a beautiful crescent moon tonight, and a quote from Terry Pratchett:

What was supposed to be so special about a full moon? It was only a big circle of light. And the dark of the moon was only darkness. But halfway between the two, when the moon was between the worlds of light and dark, when even the moon lived on the edge...maybe then a witch could believe in the moon.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from J.R.R. Tolkien. I was exploring the power of myths at the time, and this speaks strongly about that:

We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming 'sub-creator' and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic 'progress' leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Fyodor Dostoyevsky:

You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there's no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man's nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this manifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply extracting square roots.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Robert Browning:

The rain set early in tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its best to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up and all the cottage warm.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Keri Wyatt Kent:

The fields...are white already to harvest" (John 4:35 KJV), or as other versions put it, "ripe for harvest."...One part of the harvest metaphor we may have missed was the importance of timing - there is a season for both sowing and reaping, and sometimes there is a season of simply waiting and watering.

And so to bed.. quote for tonight is from Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

We say in our African idiom, 'A person is a person through other persons.' The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms. I need you in order to be me as you need me in order to be you. We are caught up in a delicate network of interconnectedness. I have gifts that you don't, and you have gifts I don't--voila! We are made different so that we may know our need of one another. The completely self-sufficient human being is subhuman. Thus diversity, difference is of the essence of who we are.

And so to bed... quotes for tonight (several because short) are from St Francis of Assisi:

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.

He who works with his hands is a laborer.
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

All the darkness of the world cannot extinguish the light of a small candle.

And so to bed... quote for tonight from Richard Holloway:

One of the most tragic things about us is that we commit irreversible acts with no power to undo them and no way to rewind to the moment before the event that may have stolen another's joy and destroyed our own peace of mind. The remedy for the irreversibility of our actions is the ability to forgive them or be forgiven for them. The most terrible effect of bad conduct is its ability to steal the future by trapping us in a futile loop that endlessly rehearses what was done to us or what we have done to another.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time):

When people die they are sometimes put into coffins, which means that they don't mix with the earth for a very long time until the wood of the coffin rots.

But Mother was cremated. This means that she was put into a coffin and burned and ground up and turned into ash and smoke. I do not know what happens to the ash and I couldn't ask at the crematorium because I didn't go to the funeral.

But the smoke goes out of the chimney and into the air and sometimes I look up and I think that there are molecules of Mother up there, or in clouds over Africa or the Antarctic, or coming down as rain in the rain forests in Brazil, or snow somewhere.

And so to bed... quote tonight from E.F. Schumacher:

The Buddhist view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his egocentredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Robert Grudin:

There is a brief period of twilight of which I am especially fond, little more than a moment, when I see what seems to be color without light, followed by another brief period of light without color. The earlier period, like a dawn of night, calls up such sights as at all other times are hidden, wistful half-formless presences neither of day nor night, that draw up with them similar presences in the mind.

And so to bed... quote for tonight are from Robert M Pirsig:

You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes much sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.

And so to bed... quote tonight is from George Eliot:

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from J.B. Priestley, written during World War II:

We're not fighting to restore the past; it was the past which brought us to this heavy hour; but we are fighting to rid ourselves and the world of the evil encumbrance of these Nazis so that we can plan and create a noble future for all our species.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Stephen Jay Gould:

We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.

The Boat that Rocked

STATES Deputies who suggest that Island institutions are corrupt or grossly incompetent risk damaging Jersey's reputation way beyond our shores, Senator Sir Philip Bailhache has warned.

In a speech to business leaders, the Assistant Chief Minister with responsibility for foreign affairs rounded on detractors - both in and outside of Jersey - as part of a drive to combat what he called the destructive ignorance fuelling negative views of the Island.

He said that much of the criticism directed at Jersey and its label as a tax haven which was harmful to UK, EU and third world countries were the result of 'the green-eyed monster of envy and ignorance'.

Senator Bailhache told members of the Jersey Association of Trust Companies that a huge amount of work was being done both very publicly and behind the scenes to promote the Island as a well regulated finance centre around the world. (1)

Is Sir Philip Bailhache making silly statements again? As Matthew Price pointed out on BBC Radio Jersey, I think to Senator Philip Ozouf, it is not much use promoting the Island overseas as a " well regulated finance centre" when one case - very public and splashed all over the newspapers - comes along and smashes that image - namely the Jimmy Carr tax evasion scheme, which used a Jersey registered company to work. As the Guardian noted at the time:

The comedian Jimmy Carr apologised for making a "terrible error of judgment" by investing in a Jersey-based tax avoidance scheme, after facing a torrent of criticism.

On Tuesday, the PM described Carr's tax arrangements as "straightforward tax avoidance". He said it was unfair on the people who pay to see Carr perform that he is not paying his taxes in the same way that they do. The K2 tax-avoidance scheme Carr is said to have used enables members to pay income tax rates as low as 1%.

The comic, who has famously lampooned fat cat bankers, reportedly protects some £3.3m a year by channelling cash through the Jersey-based company. (2)

The inability of regulation to deal with this, or indeed the States to promote an ethos in which this is seen as inacceptable use of Jersey companies weakens the case for "well regulated finance centre". There was a Jimmy Carr tax avoidance joke ion Have I Got News for You last night. This kind of reputational damage is not, as Sir Philip claims, the result of "the green-eyed monster of envy and ignorance". On the contrary, it damages the Island because it shows it is a place where grossly unjust tax schemes can operate. Jersey Finance somewhat blasé attitude - it's perfectly legal, we can do nothing about it, it's not our fault - actually does more reputational damage than some States Members speaking their minds.

What does improve matters is serious legislation like the one that Chief Minister Ian Gorst is proposing to stop Vulture Funds using Jersey Courts. That's an example of how to really improve Jersey's image, because it is not just PR - it is making real changes. Apart from the UK Jersey is the only other jurisdiction in the world to take on board this legislation, so that information needs to get out into the media. It's not verbal fluff, it is a real example of how to be "well regulated".

And speaking of speaking their minds, why didn't Sir Philip think before giving out that clarion call about Jersey Independence? Hasn't he any streetwise knowledge of how Fleet Street operates, or did he think this would be a fairly innocuous feature? If he had only taken the lesson to heart of "Yes Minister", he would have seen how the newspapers operate. To my mind, that's just as much "destructive ignorance", and what makes it worse is that it is not some local maverick politician (and many jurisdictions have those), but as the papers were keen to point out, a former Bailiff of Jersey. In those circumstances, a Minister with "responsibility for foreign affairs" has, in my opinion, acted unwisely and even - dare one say it - a bit irresponsibly!

Senator Frank Walker on Newsnight, of course, seen using language such as "You're trying to shaft Jersey, internationally" by millions of listeners also did not help Jersey's reputation overseas. That certainly was "fuelling negative views of the Island". One expects that kind of language from perhaps someone of the ilk of John Prescott, or back in time, Dennis Skinner. Coming from a Chief Minister, it gives the impression that Jersey is being run by an uncouth thug who shouts his mouth off behind the scenes when he believes no one is listening.

Jersey, is not, of course, the only jurisdiction where this can happen. I had an email round robin (goodness knows why) extolling the virtues (!) of creating a limited liability company in Wyoming, USA.

Few people know this little fact, but it was Wyoming that first created the American LLC in 1977, as it was modeled after the 1892 German company law known as Gesellschaft mit beschrnkter Haftung (GmbH).  Nevada and Delaware then copied Wyoming's LLC and went on to experience profits through better marketing techniques.

There are several USA States which blatantly advertise their products as ideal for legal tax avoidance, but they don't get the big headlines that Jersey does, probably because Jimmy Carr isn't involved. Changing the image of Jersey abroad is not best achieved by suggesting that everyone should toe a party line and keep silent about their opinions. There are countries where that happens. Putin's Russia, for example, but I don't seriously think Sir Philip wants to go down that road, although some of his critics might.

But what is I suppose most damaging about Sir Philip Bailhache's suggestions is that he is trying to stifle free speech. I can think of many instances where the States have been "grossly incompetent". That is a matter of degree, and opinion, but lots of overspends would be a good start, giving the MD of the Waterfront Enterprise Board a salary almost "beyond the dreams of avarice" wiuld be another, the golden handshake contract and pay off for Bill Ogley, the reputational damage around the loss of the Auditor General, the stockpiles of ash and asbestos that no one has yet managed to deal, the incompetence of the tendering process around the new bus service, delays of six months with the airport control tower because the implementation had not been properly planned, the Fort regent cavern that was supposed to solve all flooding in St Helier (but now needs additional draining pipes to it), a marina whose gates didn't work properly, the mess over the Verita / Williamson reports over Haut de La Garenne, the James Reed schools fiasco and U-Turn,  Lime Grove saga, the inability to hedge the incinerator costs etc etc. And the case of Roger Holland, of course, which Sir Philip would know only too well. Where to start?

Jersey's not alone in that - Private Eye is littered with cases of grossly incompetence by government and county councils. But to say that States members should not bring it to the public because it rocks the boat is wrong. I have some sympathy with Sir Philip - some States members do seem to shout their mouths off without engaging their brains (on all sides of the political spectrum, let it be known) - but what would be better would be to ask them to think carefully and choose their words carefully before speaking. There is no need to give hostages to fortune in terms of the UK media if we don't have to, because they are often happy to latch onto any disaffection as a stick, and sell more papers.

As for corruption, a number of States Members, such as Terry le Main, seem to have flouted Data Protection, and got away with it. Guy de Faye seems to have issued a Ministerial directive, when in office, for the benefit of one developer. The suspension of the Chief of Police strayed into some very murky waters, and the "in camera" debate in which Andrew Lewis stated "I have read an alarming report from the Metropolitan Police which led me to this decision in the first place. I can do no more", when he later stated he had not in fact read the report, etc etc. None of this may be strictly speaking legal corruption, but it is, I believe, illustrative of a mindset which regards nothing as inadmissible providing it is not illegal. That inability to see that the ethos behind these situations is "corrupt" is a blind spot  which Sir Philip seems unable or unwilling to see. I suggest a reading of C.S. Lewis on "The Inner Ring".

And the inability of the States to keep away from "in camera" sessions is also extremely damaging. It gives out a reputation that we are a place of secrets, where the government have to discuss matters and keep them away from the public who elected them. The inability to see this and how it feeds the narrative of corruption shows how out of touch the States are in this respect. So that the leaking of a transcript is criticised by PPC, but the practice of so many secret debates outside the public forum is not the subject of review. Of course people think - they've got something to hide, there's something nasty in the woodshed. Wouldn't you? It's not corruption in the technical, legal sense, but government in secret sessions is a very corrupting practice in terms of weakening democracy in the Island. The mother of Parliaments manages without it, and so should we!

I imagine that if the UK media pick up Sir Philip's speech, they will give it a very different slant, and the words "free speech" will probably be mentioned, and perhaps even Jimmy Carr. What price reputational damage then?

Links
(1) http://www.thisisjersey.com/news/2012/10/19/%E2%80%98stop-damaging-our-reputation-abroad%E2%80%99/
(2) http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/21/jimmy-carr-regret-tax-scheme

Prisoners and the Vote

"All I tell thee is a faint picture of reality; the filth, the closeness of the rooms, the furious manner and expressions of the women towards each other, and the abandoned wickedness, which everything bespoke are really indescribable." (Elizabeth Fry)

Should Jersey prisoners have the right to vote?

That's not as simple a question as it may seem. I've read a number of comments on the question which take the view that once they have been imprison, they forfeit that right, and it is often implied that prison entails a loss of all the rights of a free citizen (a social contract position?). But it doesn't exactly. Thanks to the work of Elizabeth Fry, and the prison reformers, most people think that prisoners should have some basic rights. They may be stripped of their liberty, but we no longer have prisoners breaking stones, living in filthy conditions.

Elizabeth Fry came into prison reform when she was asked for help by Stephen Grellet, another Quaker:

Once again at a key moment in her life a visiting Quaker minister from America plays an important role. In 1813, Stephen Grellet came to ask for her help. He had visited some prisons, and was horrified by the conditions in the women's prison at Newgate. Hundreds of women and their children were crowded into the prison, many sleeping on the floor without nightclothes or bedding. Elizabeth immediately sent out for warm material and enlisted other women Friends to help make clothing for the infants.

The next day, Elizabeth and her sister-in-law went to Newgate prison. The turnkeys warned them that the women were wild and savage, and they would be in physical danger. However, they went in anyway. On that and two more visits, they brought warm clothing and clean straw for the sick to lie on. Elizabeth also prayed for the prisoners. (1)

The 1835 House of Lords Select Committee produced a report on gaols and houses of correction. Among the recommendations were the following:

- That Inspectors of Prisons be appointed to visit the Prisons from Time to Time, and to report to the Secretary of State.
- That entire Separation, except during the Hours of Labour and of Religious Worship, and Instruction, is absolutely necessary for preventing Contamination, and for securing a proper System of Prison Discipline.
- That Silence be enforced, so as to prevent all Communication between Prisoners both before and after Trial.
- That the Officers of the Prisons shall not be permitted to receive any Portion of the Prisoners Earnings.
- That the Practice in some Prisons, and in certain Cases, of paying Money to the Prisoners in lieu of supplying them either wholly or in part with Food or Fuel, be declared to be illegal.
- That convicted Prisoners be not permitted to receive Visits or Letters from their Friends during the first Six Months of their Imprisonment, unless under peculiar and pressing Circumstances.
- That in Cases where the Punishment of whipping is resorted to it is expedient that it should be defined as regards both the Extent to which it may be carried and the Instruments with which it may be inflicted. (2)

We can see some elements of corrupt practices here with money changing hands between officers and prisoners, but there is still a very harsh regime. Some of these ideas, and some of those from Jeremy Bentham, made their way into the design of Pentonville prison:

In 1842 Pentonville penitentiary was completed and by 1848, fifty-four other prisons had been built on the same plan. The prisons had rows of single cells arranged in tiers and in separate blocks radiating from a central hub like the spokes of a wheel. Pentonville had 520 small cells, each measuring thirteen feet by seven. Each cell had a small window on the outside wall and a door opening on to the narrow landings in the galleries. The cells were well ventilated and had the luxuries of a water-closet, though water-closets were later replaced by the communal, evil-smelling recesses because they were getting blocked constantly and their pipes were used as a means of communication.

The prisoners were forbidden to talk to each other and were stripped of their identity. They had to wear a cap called a 'peak' that covered each man's face when they were together and numbers not names were used. When they took exercise the prisoners walked in silent rows, holding a rope that had knots tied in it at five yard intervals to keep each man apart from the next.

In chapel, which they had to attend every day, they sat in little cubicles, their heads visible to the warder on duty but hidden from each other. Lincoln Prison's chapel is built to the same plan and is the only existing example of this type of chapel left in England. In chapel, the men sang loudly since this was the only time they were allowed to use their voices. They took the opportunity to talk to the man in the next cubicle while everyone else sang the hymns. (3)

Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol depicts conditions inside the prison around 1897, poor food, dirty water, unsanitary lavatory conditions, and a place that is still not too far away from the concentration camps of the last war - not the death camps, but the ones were prisoners were worked to death, and the weakest did not survive. And this was despite the earlier reforms!

I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.

This too I know - and wise it were
If each could know the same -
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.

With bars they blur the gracious moon,
And blind the goodly sun:
And they do well to hide their Hell,
For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man
Ever should look upon!

The vilest deeds like poison weeds,
Bloom well in prison-air;
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.

Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is a foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.

The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
Is full of chalk and lime,
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
Wild-eyed, and cries to Time. (4)

Why is it important to consider the Victorian prisons and reforms? I think it is precisely so that we can see what prisoners rights involves, and I think most people are pretty much agreed that even the Victorian reforms did not go far enough. But those, slender though they were, were based on the assumption that prisoners did have certain rights - to food and drink, to their own space, and that prisons should be inspected to ensure that they were being strictly but properly treated, that conditions should be monitored.

No one thinks, however, that enforced silence or hymn singing is a good idea. I think that while some people may say that a good whipping would do the prisoners good, this is largely a rhetorical flourish, and most people, when faced with the reality, would not say that prisoners should be flogged to keep them in line.

Now I'm not saying here at this stage whether prisoners should be able to vote. What I am establishing is that the notion that prisoners forfeit "rights" is a changing one; when we look at the "rights" of criminals who have been imprisoned in the past, they have changed and I think even the most die-hard reactionary would think they have improved since the 1800s. Historically, prisoners have had increasing rights.

As far as the mechanics of it goes, we are fortunate in that Guernsey has probably ironed out any logistical problems because Guernsey prisoners can vote, for example:

At Les Nicolles Prison in Guernsey low-risk prisoners can actually be escorted to the polling stations to vote. Islanders convicted of more serious offences are allowed to vote by post. (5)

Regarding which Parish they should belong too, again this should not be too difficult to resolve. The UK does allow some people in Prison to vote. Civil prisoners sentenced (for non-payment of fines, or contempt of court, for example), and those on remand unsentenced retain the right to vote.

What happens as part of the process is that a declaration of local connection may be made. Among other things the declaration must provide an address for correspondence to be sent to, or an undertaking to collect such correspondence from the electoral registration office. The prisoner must submit the declaration to the registration officer within three months of the date on the declaration and they will be treated as being resident at the address you have given

So if that was extended to cover other prisoners, they would also have a declaration of local connection, which might not be La Moye. If, for
instance, they have a friend or relative who can take correspondence (and that can often be the case), that would be the address for which they were deemed to be resident, and not La Moye prison.

So what about the arguments for prisoners having a vote. The principle in Guernsey was set out by Deputy Mahy:

The Minister for the Home Department in Guernsey, Geoff Mahy, says going to prison in the first place is punishment enough. He said: "We want prisoners to come out of prison having paid for their crime and then be good and active members of our community. And voting for elections and involving oneself in the community is to be encouraged." (5)

But a far more in depth discussion of the situation was made in a paper by Penal Disenfranchisement, by Christopher Bennett, a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield.

He notes that some people receive a prison sentence, and some community service, for the same crimes, and notes:

given that the commission of two identical offences can, for extraneous reasons, lead to imprisonment in one case and not in the other, whether an offender loses the right to vote is not determined solely by the seriousness of the crime.(6)

He also notes that people who are not imprison, who have strong - and perhaps dangerous - political views, are still allowed to vote:

Most patients detained under the Mental Health Act retain their right to vote; and there is no disqualification for expressing, or showing evidence that one has radical or potentially dangerous views.

What this adds up to is that the U.K. has an apparently strongly liberal position that all adults should be presumptively regarded as qualified to participate in the democratic, and to have their voice count equally with those of others in determining the governance of their state.(6)

And he notes how this undermines the argument that prisoners should not be allowed to vote because they are irresponsible, because people who may have very radical views are allowed to vote. Membership of the BNP does not disqualify one from voting.

In the light of this, it seems hard to uphold some of the arguments that have been put forward in favour of prisoner disenfranchisement. The arguments I have in mind are those that claim that disenfranchising prisoners is necessary in order to protect democratic procedures from being corrupted by irresponsible or immoral influences.  For instance, it is sometimes claimed that, through their crime, serious offenders have shown an irresponsible attitude to the law and its values, and to the demands of social cooperation. This is combined with the claim that, for democracy to flourish, citizens have to have a level of commitment to the value of the process, and respect for their fellow deliberators. The conclusion is drawn, then, that those who commit serious offences ought to be disqualified from having the vote because they have shown themselves to be irresponsible. This argument doesn't seem to explain why the U.K. removes the right to vote from prisoners because if this was the motivation then it would also be deemed correct to introduce other restrictions on the franchise, to introduce basic competence tests for voters, and to be far more serious than we currently are about citizenship education.

On the other hand, we might think about a non-criminal case in which someone presents clear evidence that they do not respect the law: for instance, through internet broadcasts, blogs, speeches, etc. Should we also deprive that person of the right to vote? If we have a commitment to freedom of speech then we may say no. In which case we might doubt the validity of the alleged principle that we should remove the right to vote from those we believe to have shown that they will use it unwisely. (Furthermore, voting is not the only form of political activity that prisoners or other allegedly irresponsible citizens might engage in - and certainly not the most powerful in terms of its outcomes. Should offenders - and others - also be banned from other potentially subversive political activity such as letter-writing, campaigning, reading political material? (6)

I'm not going to put here the rest of his excellent analysis, which also discusses the social contract argument and others. The full paper can be read at:

 http://www.democracyandcriminaljustice.org/penal_disenfranchisement_paper

Suffice it to say that it looks at the arguments and their flaws in quite a dispassionate and neutral way, much as one might expect from a philosopher. I strongly advise anyone to thinks that prisoners should not have the vote to see how it addresses the arguments against, and the problems with consistency that arise from that position. Reading the paper has clarified my own mind on the subject, and I do think we need to follow the path taken by our sister Island.

Links
(1) http://www.quakerinfo.com/fry.
(2) http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/laworder/separate.htm
(3) http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/laworder/penton.htm
(4) http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/owilde/bl-owilde-ballad.htm
(5) http://www.channelonline.tv/channelonline_guernseynews/displayarticle.asp?commentstatus=abuse&id=491591&commentid=45023
(6) http://www.democracyandcriminaljustice.org/penal_disenfranchisement_paper

Jersey Live Magazine, October 2012

The October 2012 edition of Jersey Live has an article by me!

My friend Linda asked me to interview her and write about her for the forthcoming  Conference on Holistic Animal Health Care, which is taking place over the weekend of 20th/21st October 2012 at Communicare Centre, La Route des Quennevais, St Brelade.

Tickets are available for the entire event or separate modules as follows:
Conference (Saturday 10.00am-5.00pm) - Only £20.00
Buffet (Saturday 07.30pm onwards) - Only  £ 20.00
Workshop/Practical Session (Sunday 09.30am-4.30pm)  -   £ 60.00

Full details at:
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2012/10/holistic-animal-health-care-conference.html

Here's the article I wrote:

---

From an early age, Linda was aware that she had  an ability to help the healing process with people, and around 2006, she decided to join the Universal Healing Group in Jersey, and pursued a two year course of study in training as a healer. Having always had an affinity with animals, she decided to pursue a course in Animal Healing in the UK with Asentia College of Animal Healing, which culminated in her successful graduation in June 2012.

What is animal healing? Linda sees it as helping restore homeostasis - the animal's natural physiological/emotional balance, and immune system, which can go out of kilter. Animal healing can help animals both before an operation, and after with the recovery process. She can also provide support for the owner of a much loved pet if it needs to be put to sleep by a vet, and bereavement counseling for people who are grieving over the loss of their pet. She can also help with animal's behavioural problems, and to ease their discomfort when they are in distress or pain.

Case studies have been documented which show that animal healing can have beneficial effects. One involved a local farm cat who developed arthritis in her hips, and because of the lack of mobility, became overweight, at 7.7 kgs. She was on a balanced veterinary diet for over a year but with no improvement in her weight, but over nine months of animal healing by Linda and acupuncture by a vet, consistently shed weight and is now almost at her ideal weight of 6.4kgs. There may be no direct causal link provable, but accumulations of case studies like these, show that animal healing is beneficial, even if we do not fully understand the mechanisms involved.

Linda aims to continue working alongside vets with their permission; also to talk about benefits of complementary therapies to help animals. This conference is about bringing people together and promoting animal welfare and to encourage research into complementary therapies.