Claude Cahun: Some Sources - Part 1 /2

For a brief background on Claude Cahun, see my blog posting:
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/06/claude-cahun.html  
 
Here are some more sources about her, with brief snippets from each source to whet the reader's appetite.
 
Claude Cahun's Iconic Heads: from 'The Sadistic Judith' to Human Frontier
An article by Katherine Conley
 
"Under this mask,/another mask. I will never be/finished removing/all these faces." (Claude Cahun)
 
This essay uses a photographic self-portrait by Claude Cahun as a focus for examining the ambivalences of photography and gender identity within surrealism.
 
Cahun has recently become famous for her fascinating and prolific self-portraits, which have earned her international recognition as an important twentieth-century artist. Her photographs are stunningly visible to us at the beginning of the twenty-first century because of the ways in which they anticipate contemporary investigations of sexuality
 
http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/papersofsurrealism/journal2/acrobat_files/conley_article.pdf
 
Reading Claude Cahun: Essay by Lauren Elkin
In The Quarterly Conversation
 
"I want to stitch, sting, kill, with only the most pointed extremity. The rest of the body, whatever comes after, what a waste of time! To travel only at the prow of myself." (Claude Cahun)
 
When the Nazis invaded the island in July 1940, the sisters (for that is how they were known there) sprang into action, and began to apply Surrealist techniques to a covert resistance operation designed to confuse and demoralize the Germans into renouncing war and leaving the army. The two would slide anti-Nazi tracts into the French-Catholic newspapers for sale at the kiosk, stick them under the windshield wipers of Nazi vehicles, and leave cigarette cartons full of tracts in alleyways. Over time, the Nazis grew convinced that there was a full-scale resistance group in operation on the island, and when they finally apprehended Cahun and Malherbe, they were embarrassed to find the whole operation had been carried out by two middle-aged ladies. They were imprisoned and sentenced to death, but were released at the end of the war in 1945.
 
http://quarterlyconversation.com/claude-cahun-disavowals
 
Hidden Herstories: Claude Cahun
 
"Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me." (Claude Cahun)
 
During the Occupation of Paris, Cahun was involved in Georges Bataille's Contre-Attaque resistance group until she and her partner fled to Jersey in 1938, which unfortunately was the only British territory that the Nazis captured. While in Jersey her and her partner Suzanne Malherbe produced fake letters and tracts advertising unrest among the occupying forces, which had the Nazis fearing mutiny.
 
http://www.blogcitylights.com/2013/03/04/hidden-herstories-claude-cahun/

Inverted Odysseys, edited by Shelley Rice
 
"Perhaps Cahun's most poignant costume was a disguise of wig and disheveled clothes that she donned when sheand her companion, Suzanne Malherbe, distributed anti-Nazi propaganda duringthe four years of the Channel Islands' occupation by the Germans" (Shelley Rice)
 
This has some fantastic examples of her photographs. It also includes the full text of Norman MacAfee's translation of her writing "Heroines" - the reader can, for the first time, read this work. It is a retelling and re-imagining of tales told by classical and biblical figures.
 
The "Heroines" manuscript is a very well known unknown work. Though it was never published in full during Cahun's lifetime, excerpts appeared in Mercure de France and Le Journal Littéraire in 1925, early in her literary career. In 1992, this fictional series of monologues was mentioned, indeed described, by François Leperlier in his book Claude Cahun: L'écart et la métamorphose.
 
Interested in its potential relevance for the exhibition/book Inverted Odysseys, I went looking for it when I visited the Jersey Museums Service archive, which houses Cahun's personal papers. Ultimately, after much ado, I found the manuscript, missing only a few pages, buried at the bottom of a box -and it is here translated and published in its entirety for the first time. The arrangement of text on pages and decorative devices at the end of certain chapters-created using a typewriter-follows as closely as possible Cahun's original manuscript..
 
This work, published as part of a program of aid for publication, received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Service of the French Embassy in the United States.
 
Delilah, Woman among Women
The Sadistic Judith
The Tease: Penelope the Irresolute
Helen the Rebel
Sappho the Misunderstood
The Virgin Mary
Cinderella, Humble, Haughty Child
Marguerite, Incestuous Sister
Salome the Skeptic
Beauty (Or the Taste for the Beast)
The Essential Wife or the Unknown Princess
Sophie the Symbolist
Salmacis the Suffragette
The One Who Is Not A Hero
 
 http://monoskop.org/images/5/59/Rice_Shelley_ed_Inverted_Odysseys_Claude_Cahun_Maya_Deren_Cindy_Sherman.pdf
 
The Equivocal "I": Claude Cahun as Lesbian Subject
By Abigail Solomon-Godeau
 
The special interest Cahun holds for feminist critics and scholars derives from many features of her life and her work, not least from the fact of her being, as Leperlier notes, "l'une des très rares femmes qui participa activement à ce mouvement dans les années les plus critiques et les plus complexes" (one of the
rare women who actively participated in this [surrealist] movement in its most critical and complex years).

Their electrifying, unsettling effects are largely a consequence of Cahun's particular staging of herself-that, and the Medusa-like ferocity of her face and gaze.
 
http://monoskop.org/images/5/59/Rice_Shelley_ed_Inverted_Odysseys_Claude_Cahun_Maya_Deren_Cindy_Sherman.pdf
 
More photos at:
http://madampatty.blogspot.com/2012/02/claude-cahun.html
 
War on the Margins
 
Claude Cahun and her partner/lover/stepsister Marcel Moore were heroes of the Surrealist movement and also of the Resistance on the island of Jersey during WWII. They spread German-language BBC transcripts and pro-mutiny propaganda to German troops occupying the island and hid escaped slave workers. They ended up on death row in military prison, but were spared the death sentence and lived to see the liberation of Jersey. The Wikipedia page offers an excellent bibliography. They also figure prominently in my novel, War on the Margins which contains English translations of Cahun's prison letters and notes. As Gavin James Bower said in a recent Guardian article, her whole life was a work of art.
 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Margins-Libby-Cone/dp/0715638769
(also available on Kindle)
 
Afterthoughts: War on the Margins by Libby Cone
Review By Robert Burdock
 
I won't dwell on the synopsis of War on the Margins or its background too much (because more information on this can be found in my forethoughts), except to say that the novel centres on the German Occupation of the Channel Islands during Word War Two, and the effects that the Occupation had on the resident Islanders. War on the Margins is a largely fictional work, however its author having originally used the research material gathered for this novel for a history thesis, grounds much of this story in fact as well as fiction.
 
From the outset I've got to say that War on the Margins is a real eye-opener. I was fully aware of the fact that the Channel Islands were occupied during WW2 before reading this novel, but I had no idea to what extent the Islands and its residents suffered under Nazi control. This novel really does bring home just how widespread starvation and persecution were on the Channel Islands during the period, and it ain't pretty!
 
This is truly an accomplished work by Libby Cone, not least for its historical value, and it is one that should be read by anyone who has the slightest interest in the Nazi Occupation of the Channel Islands. Cone should be celebrated for what she has achieved in War on the Margins, for aside from illustrating the suffering that the Channel Islanders endured, she's spotlighted the degree to which Nazi persecution of the Jews extended; a persecution in this case, that offers a chilling glimpse into the fate that would no doubt have awaited Jews in mainland Britain should the Nazis have succeeded with their belligerent expansion.
 
http://robaroundbooks.com/2008/11/afterthoughts-war-on-the-margins-by-libby-cone/
 
Behind the Pen: Libby Cone, author of War on the Margins
Review by Robert Burdock
 
This week sees the exciting release of War on the Margins by Libby Cone. Well written and engaging, War on the Margins is an important novel, because it not only sheds light on the level of suffering that was inflicted upon the Channel Islanders during the Nazi Occupation of WW2, it also provides an archive for a number of important historical documents from the period.
 
My gripe centred around the fact that the historical documents and communiques were presented verbatim in the main body of the story. I felt that their length to some extent interrupted the flow of the story, and at times everything just seemed to mingle in. Duckworth have fixed this 'problem' simply and elegantly - they've used a different typeface for the official documents. Problem solved, and although the documents are still presented in the body of the narrative as before (which makes sense because they are an inherent part of the story), they don't seem to interrupt to the same extent as they used to.
 
Rob: Aside from the artist's diaries, there are a lot of original wartime documents reproduced in War on the Margins. Did many of these come directly from the Jersey Heritage Fund or did you source them elsewhere?
 
Libby: The documents came from the archive. The BBC and German Overseas Radio broadcasts I described were from various sources who collect the broadcasts on CD's. I also used three diaries written by people stuck on Jersey during the Occupation, Nan Le Ruez, Leslie Sinel, and Dr. John Lewis. I tried to cross-check everything that wasn't a primary source. I could have written about more people, but I couldn't corroborate their stories. Fortunately, I didn't have to write the thesis with footnotes, but I could have.
 
http://robaroundbooks.com/2009/07/behind-the-pen-libby-cone-author-of-war-on-the-margins/
 
Sans Nom: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore
By Louise Downie
 
Claude Cahun was an enigma. Her work invites but defies explanation, but perhaps some of the biggest clues are in her writings. For example she wrote: "Masculine? Feminine? But it depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me", and "I will never finish removing all these masks."
 
Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore had a long association with Jersey, having spent many childhood holidays in the Island. They usually stayed at  St Brelade's Bay Hotel and became friends with the owners, the Colley family. In 1937 the sisters purchased La Rocquaise, a house just opposite the hotel, and moved there permanently in 1938. The garden, the house and the area around the bay were favourite settings for Cahun's work. While living in Jersey they were generally known by their real names and gained a reputation for strange behaviour, such as taking their cat for a walk on a lead and wearing trousers.
 
They remained here throughout the occupation, carrying out subversive resistance activities for which they were arrested and imprisoned.
 
Claude's already weak health suffered during the war and the few self portraits she did after the Liberation were dominated by the theme of death. In this series of five photographs, she sets herself against the backdrop of St Brelade's churchyard, where she is buried. Some images include a skull, and some mask out her face.

 

In the third of the series, she appears to mock death, with the cigarette dangling from her mouth. But death is literally written all over her in a double exposure print, with words from gravestones overlaying her figure. She wears military clothes, perhaps laying blame for her death on her captors.
 
Claude Cahun died in 1954. Her death certificate cites coronary and pulmonary embolism, although it is known that she also had digestive problems. Suzanne moved to a smaller house, Carola in Beaumont, where she committed suicide in 1972.
 
http://www.jerseyheritage.org/media/Find%20a%20place%20to%20visit/Cahun.pdf

 

Claude Cahun

"Their story speaks to the hidden power of art and the gifts we receive from those considered marginal by the dominant culture." (Libby Cone)
 
For my blog today, I thought I'd share an information sheet about one of the people whom I admire greatly for their dogged and clever resistance campaign during the German Occupation of Jersey.
 
While Attorney-General Duret-Aubin was forwarding anonymous letters denouncing islanders to the Germans, and Aliens Officer Clifford Orange was zealously supplying Germans with lists of Jewish people, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore were waging a secret propaganda campaign to undermine the morale of the German troops.
 
Claude Cahun
 
Claude Cahun (25 October 1894 - 8 December 1954) was a French artist, photographer and writer. Her work was both political and personal, and often played with the concepts of gender and sexuality.
 
Born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob in Nantes, she was the niece of an avant-garde writer Marcel Schwob and the great-niece of Orientalist David Leon Cahun. Her mothers mental problems meant that she was brought up by her paternal grandmother, Mathilde Cahun.
 
She began making photographic self-portraits as early as 1912, when she was 18 years old, and she continued taking images of herself through the 1930s.
 
Around 1919, she settled on the pseudonym Claude Cahun. During the early 20s, she settled in Paris with her lifelong partner and stepsister Suzanne Malherbe. For the rest of their lives together, Cahun and Malherbe (who adopted the pseudonym "Marcel Moore") collaborated on various written works, sculptures, photomontages and collages. She published articles and novels, notably in the periodical "Mercure de France", and befriended Henri Michaux, Pierre Morhange and Robert Desnos.
 
Cahun's work encompassed writing, photography, and theater. She is most remembered for her highly-staged self portraits and tableaux that incorporated the visual aesthetics of Surrealism.
 
Her published writings include "Heroines," (1925) a series of monologues based upon female fairy tale characters and intertwining them with witty comparisons to the contemporary image of women: Aveux non avenus, (Carrefour, 1930) a book of essays and recorded dreams illustrated with photomontages; and several essays in magazines and journals.
 
In 1994 the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London held an exhibition of Cahun's photographic self-portraits from 1927-47, alongside the work of two young contemporary British artists, Virginia Nimarkoh and Tacita Dean, entitled Mise en Scene. In the surrealist self-portraits, Cahun represented herself as a dandy, skinhead and androgyne, nymph, model and soldier.
 
In 1937 Cahun and Malherbe settled in Jersey.
 
Following the fall of France and the German occupation of Jersey and the other Channel Islands, they became active as resistance workers and propagandists. Fervently against war, the two worked extensively in producing anti-German fliers.
 
Many were snippets from English-to-German translations of BBC reports on the Nazis' crimes and insolence, which were pasted together to create rhythmic poems and harsh criticism. The couple then dressed up and attended many German military events in Jersey, strategically placing them in soldiers pockets, on their chairs, etc. Also, fliers were inconspicuously crumpled up and thrown into cars and windows. They were aware of the danger and eventually in 1944 they were arrested and sentenced to death, but the sentences were never carried out.
 
However, Cahun's health never recovered from her treatment in jail, and she died in 1954. She is buried in St Brelade's Church with her partner Suzanne Malherbe.
 
It is the policy of St Brelade's Church to welcome all denominations and the Jewish Star of David is clearly displayed on their gravestone, which can be found alongside the boundary wall south west of the Fisherman's Chapel. The grave is approximately half-way along the wall.

Apostasy and Islam: The Political and Historical Contexts

According to the Daily Telegraph: "Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese woman sentenced to death for apostasy, is to be freed in a few days, a senior Sudanese official has said. But her lawyers say they will not believe it until they see her walk out of prison" (1)
 
As the BBC reported: "Dr Meriam Yahya Ibrahim was condemned to hang for allegedly leaving Islam and marrying a Christian man. The court said that by doing so, she had abandoned her religious faith and was guilty of apostasy, which carries the ultimate penalty under Islamic law in the country." (2)
 
The BBC noted that this applies in other countries - Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan also uphold strict interpretations of Sharia law.
 
Curiously, while David Cameron has been open in his condemnation of the sentence, there has been a deafening silence from the White House. Perhaps it is not seen as politically expedient to make this a cause as the kidnapping of the schoolgirls was. Michelle Obama launched a campaign to rescue them under the Twitter hashtag  #BringOutGirlsBack, but has been silent on this case.
 
As a Telegraph writer Rob Crilly notes, part of the problem is how people behave
 
"Islamic law is being abused by the impious and the hypocritical. To these pseudo-believers, it is simply another tool to be used to keep women in their place or foreigners in line. That is exactly what happened to Meriam. A half-brother apparently furious that she had gone her own way, choosing her own husband and planning to emigrate to America, was simply not going to allow it. Never mind that Meriam had never practised as a Muslim, he cried 'apostasy' and accused her of converting to Christianity."(3)
 
Yet if the laws were not in place, she would not have ended up in prison. When stringent laws were in place in Jersey, forbidding witchcraft, and allowing very little in the way of proof to be adduced, small and petty minded people, often neighbours, accused others of witchcraft. Some were exiles, many others were sentence to be strangled and burnt at the stake.
 
It was an abuse of the laws, but the laws themselves were part of a cultural mindset which fostered intolerance, and was a ready seed bed for false accusations to take root. For over a hundred years, people facing such accusations were placed into prisons under gruelling conditions, and often were executed, although lesser sentences, such as banishment, sometimes with ears cut off, could also occur.
 
It is pretty obvious that the law was certainly being abused by the impious and the hypocritical, but it is also obvious that it was an extremely bad law, ripe for that kind of abuse. And that is exactly what we do see today in places like the Sudan.
 
Professor Abdullah Saeed has noted that what has happened is that in a number of Muslim countries, "the government assumes the responsibility of 'protecting' local orthodoxies. Those who do not adhere to the government-sanctioned orthodoxy can be branded as deviants, heretics, or apostates. The potential for abuse is all the more real because governments in a number of Muslim countries are either semi-authoritarian or fully authoritarian; thus civil, political, and religious rights remain severely curtailed there."
 
He comments that "in these countries also mean that there are very few, if any, institutional safeguards to check abuses, safeguards such as elected representatives of Parliament, independent courts, or a free civic society and media."
 
In his historical survey of the roots of the law of apostasy, he notes that much of this was bound up in the earlier period when Islam was emerging.
 
"In the political context of the Prophet's time, a person either belonged to the community of believers (Muslims), the unbelievers (non-Muslims) who were at peace with Muslims, or the unbelievers who were at war with Muslims. If one leaves Islam and the Muslims and their allies, there is no option but to join the opposition. An apostate, therefore, was perceived to have automatically joined the non-Muslim side, becoming part of the enemy ranks and using apostasy as a means to attack and inflict maximum harm on the Muslim community. Thus the question of apostasy in early Islamic history was closely associated with the safety and security of the Muslims. Apostates were deemed a serious social and political threat to the whole community."
 
The texts of the hadith, such as the one which said "If anyone changes his religion, kill him", in their historical context, referred to those who were in a state of war against Muslims, and hence could be put to death. It was not so much a question of changing belief, as a matter of treason, hence the death sentence - much as the death sentence remained on the statute books for traitors in the UK until the later part of the 20th century.
 
The historical context was largely forgotten, and what emerged was a instead a limitation of the scope of freedom available to Muslims regarding belief, when Muslim scholars of the classical period opted for an extremely narrow definition of religious freedom. It was confined to non-Muslims as freedom to remain under Islamic rule as "protected religious minorities" (and pay a special religious tax for that privilege) or convert to Islam. Conversion from Islam was banned completely.
 
As Professor Saeed suggests:
 
"These scholars went against the general ethos of the Qur'an when they argued for state coercion to prevent Muslims from converting to other religions. The view of these early scholars is unsurprising as they functioned at a time when religious freedom and the concept of individual human dignity were not related in the way they are today"
 
And he notes that:
 
"People who remain Muslims under the threat of force are unlikely to have anything beneficial to offer to Islam or Muslim communities. Criminalizing apostasy and imposing a death penalty give the impression that Islam is an imposed religion"
 
Because the textual basis for the apostasy laws is actually quite weak, he would like to see a reformation of those laws, emphasizing religious freedom as a basic human right. Focus has been on those governments when Islamic law is imposed in very strict ways concerning apostasy, but he thinks that the vast majority of Muslims are moving away from the notion of the need to force Islam on Muslims to an alternative view that
 
"Islam is essentially a covenant between the individual and God. This is closer to the Qur'anic idea of noncoercion in religion, which was so strongly emphasized in the Qur'an in a variety of contexts but largely ignored in the formulation of the classical law of apostasy.Just as the institution of slavery, which had garnered Muslim and other consensus in the past, has been dropped, punishments for blasphemy and apostasy can also be revised."
 
However as Paul Marshall and Nina She observe: "many moderate Muslim voices are being silenced, especially by apostasy and blasphemy rules, which are key to preserving the tyranny of reactionary forms of Islam"
 
Zeyno Baran comments that: "The most important ideological struggle in the world today is within Islam. Moderate and secular Muslims, who embrace the compatibility of Islam and democracy and the individual freedoms we all cherish in the West, are being confronted by Islamists, who are extremist activists that hijack Islam and seek to gain political power and reshape societies."
 
And Marshall and She conclude that:
 
"In recent years, political campaigners who call for transparent elections in Iran, democracy activists who demand a constitution in Saudi Arabia, and editors who press to end the criminalization of blasphemy in Afghanistan have all been imprisoned for apostasy or blasphemy. Some, like Pakistan's minister Bhatti and governor Taseer, both strong advocates of blasphemy law reform, have been murdered."
 
There is evidently a long way to go yet before the situation is improved, not least because governments which use authoritarian means of control over their own people, are less likely to countenance anything which weakens that control. But scholars like Professor Saeed can lay solid foundations, so that where reform becomes possible, there is a solid foundation within the Qur'an for building an alternative and more contextual view of apostasy..
 
Links
1) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/sudan/10867220/Sudanese-woman-Meriam-Ibrahim-sentenced-to-death-for-apostasy-to-be-freed.ht
2) BBC News
3) http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/robcrilly/100274070/bad-muslims-are-to-blame-for-shackling-meriam-ibrahim/
4) Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide, editors Paul Marshall, Nina Shea, quotes fromchapter by Abdullah Saeed and concluding chapter by editors, OUP, 2011.

Paths of Glory

Today's poem is one about magic, deep in the heart of the forest, in a sacred grove, where fleeting glimpses of another world might cross over with outs.

Paths of Glory
 
Dark the forest, dark the night
Open space in ancient grove
Rays of glory, rays of light
Here the pagan treasure trove
 
Dark the night, comes the dawn
Rays of glory, rays of light
Dancing dryad, dancing faun
In the fairy circle bright
 
Comes the dawn, birds awake
Dancing dryad, dancing faun
Magic spell to cast and make
In their steps, a circle drawn
 
In paths of glory, by olden ways
Light the feet from ancient days

Stinking Bishop and a Wake Up Call

At the end of the Wallace and Gromit film, Wallace lies almost fatally dying after a fall until Gromit revives him with a sniff of "Stinking Bishop" cheese.

There was a degree of upset not unlike sniffing that cheese caused by the Anglican Bishop of Willesden, Greater London, England, putting a comment on Peter Ould's blog. In it, among other matters, Bishop Pete Broadbent commented on the case of HG, and "the dull and witless way that the Dean handled things"

As the BBC reported on the news story

"Bishop Peter Broadbent said there was not much "nice or defensible" about Jersey or its society. The Deputy Bishop of London has claimed Jersey was "in the grip of freemasonry" and that there was a "conspiracy of silence" on the island."

This is not the first occasion that the good Bishop has courted controversy, as at the occasion of Prince William's engagement to Kate Middleton in November 2010, he said that their marriage would last about seven years, and that he was sickened by the "fawning deferential nonsense" in the media coverage of the event, and wrote "We need a party in Calais for all good republicans who can't stand the nauseating tosh that surrounds this event. Need to work out what date in the spring or ­summer I should be booking my republican day trip France"

This was grist of course, to the Daily Mail, who while thundering forth in righteous indignation, must have been pleased to have a lurid headline to attract readers. But it was also reported on as far as the New York Daily Times, which reported his that he called Prince Charles and Princess Diana as "Big Ears and the Porcelain Doll"

The Peat Me blog commented that:

"The real problem is that again like many corporations the Church doesn't have a formal Social Media and Blogging policy - many organisations don't get one until something like this happens."

The author is not advocating a "gagging" policy, but notes that

"Swearing allegiance to the Queen and her heirs and successors, doesn't really sit well with referring to one of them as "Big Ears". When you accept the post of a Bishop you give up some of your freedom to express your own opinions, you become a Bishop of the Church of England, and there is an expectation that you'll toe the line. You have a lot of latitude to express your own opinions, but it's not unlimited."

And very sensibly noted that:

"You need be aware of what is public and what is private. Certainly in any public forum you need to be watching what you say, it's very easy to relax into thinking that you're having a private conversation when in fact anybody in the world can see it - that is precisely the trap Bishop Pete fell into. You can bleat about how unfair it is, but ultimately people know what the British press is like."

That is clearly still a lesson that has not been learnt properly by the Bishop, who also accused lay Jersey people involved in the dispute of being freemasons. As he probably has Sir Philip Bailhache in his sights, it is worth noting that a little research would have shown that Sir Philip is not a freemason, but is friendly towards freemasons, which is quite different. Freemasonry Today noted this in reporting on the official opening of a "garden for residents of Les Amis in St Saviour, Jersey, a charity associated with the local Mencap, has been provided by the island's freemasons from its 1999 and 2000 collections". It said: "Sir Philip Bailhache, Bailiff of Jersey, opened the garden. Although he is not a mason, his father and grandfather were, the latter being Deputy PGM between 1947 and 1959."

Sir Philip, of course, has a large degree of involvement in the dispute between the Bishop of Winchester and the Dean of Jersey, having written a letter to the Dean, and also being seen reviewing notes on the case in open view of a member of the public travelling on  the same flight as him, from which the fellow passenger was able to identify details of both the victim and alleged abuser in the suspension of the Dean's Commission case. Sir Philip responded to concerns expressed by the passenger in an email to Deputy Trevor Pitman that: "Taken in the round, it gives a fictitious and malicious account of my reading habits on aeroplanes and I am not going to be drawn further on this subject".

Bob Hill commented that "The exchanges that ensued could be akin to a playground spat whereby the bully whilst denying any wrongdoing called his accusers nasty names and impugned their integrity"

In the end, when it became apparent that the matter would not rest, Sir Philip eventually was further drawn on the subject and gave a grudging apology to the States: "Having had time to reflect, I am sorry that I used language that was stronger than was necessary or appropriate. I withdraw the phrase "fictitious and malicious" and would like to make it clear that I do not impute dishonesty or malice to Deputy Pitman's constituent or, for the avoidance of any doubt, to the Deputy himself."

When one read the BBC report - "The bishop also claimed Jersey's culture was difficult to change and that those that spoke out were silenced." - it is worth remembering the businessman (who made the complaint about Sir Philip Bailhache) was badly treated by Sir Philip's first reply, perhaps in a hope that this forceful and intemperate language would cause the matter to drop, in other words - to silence him when he had spoken out.

Even in this one case, there can be seen a degree of truth in the Bishop's accusations, although as Tim Nash rightly noted "To simply write off a whole society as one homogenous lump is stupid, unwise and ignorant. Jersey is a diverse place, despite its size."

But clearly those who wield more power have a greater need to cover up their mistakes, just as in the UK, and there is certainly a culture lacking in transparency with regard to the state of play between the Anglican Church in Jersey and the UK. Some people, for example, have called for the Korris report, which began this chain of events, to be removed from the Winchester diocese website.

Related to this, in 2013, as well as the Dame Heather Steel investigation, there was also a Church inquiry (Visitation), carried out by Bishop John Gladwin, to consider the wider implementation of safeguarding in Jersey and across the Diocese. The Winchester website reported that:

"Bishop Gladwin will be publishing his report on the Visitation later this year, providing recommendations for enhancing the Diocese's safeguarding policies and procedures."

"Bishop Gladwin's wide-ranging terms of reference include looking at the 'safeguarding' procedures in place in Jersey and 'clarifying' the Island's relationship with the Diocese of Winchester"(JEP)

This, one would imagine, would tackle the situation where, as the Korris report noted of the churchwarden at the centre of the complaints by HG:

"E.Y.'s behaviour towards women had been a matter of concern at St for some time with comments about it coming from various sources. In a telephone call to the Safeguarding Advisor  J.F. in December 2008 the Dean R.K. says that E.Y. had been spoken to about the fact he is too tactile, stands too close to women, touches too much/inappropriately. His manner was deemed to be inappropriate to such an extent that he was chaperoned within the church when in close proximity to women. This was an informal but explicit policy of the parish and at interview the Dean of Jersey acknowledged that it was known to him."

But the safeguarding issue - the remit of Bishop Gladwin - has been quietly shelved. No one is pressing for the release of the Gladwin report or its recommendations, which would, I hope, have prevented this kind of informal ad hoc practice going on. The Gladwin report was to examine the way the diocese protects members of its congregation. That should have been at the centre, but instead has been left on the margins. The question raised in the leader comment in the Guernsey Press has still not been answered: "Can there be any credible reason why Jersey does not demonstrate complete adherence to the safeguarding procedures put in place by the Diocese of Winchester?"

There has also  been a degree of silence on the Jersey side with the new agreement taking oversight to the Bishop of Dover. I would have expected the formal oversight agreement, which is very short, to be placed on church notice boards for the congregations to read, but this has not been the case.

There appears to have been a marked reluctance for this to be available (outside Peter Ould's), and the Dean only handed out copies to States members after the matter was raised in the States. This is an omission which does not further the cause of greater transparency and respect for Anglican congregations.

It makes me wonder if the Steel Report, if released to the Dean and the Island authorities, will be made available to more than a select coterie of lay people in Jersey. There seems to be too much of a command and control culture, and too little trust placed in the man or woman in the pew. In this respect, the Bishop of Willesden's examination of the Church of England (in far more sober language) on his blog is worth noting: "My concern is that we are still considering centralised solutions to the problems facing us, whereas it is clear that we are no longer living in an era where a command and control approach will work."

For the purpose of giving greater transparency, I have reprinted the wording of the agreement from Peter Ould's blog.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/05/text-of-channel-islands-agreement.html

The original blog posting is here:
http://www.peter-ould.net/2014/05/12/exclusive-text-of-channel-islands-agreement

References
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-27616938
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11809053
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1331626/Prince-William-Kate-Middleton-Bishops-Facebook-slur-I-marriage-7-years.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/prince-william-kate-middleton-marriage-7-years-shallow-celebrities-bishop-article-1.452769
http://peat.me.uk/tag/bishop-pete-broadbent/
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2010/11/pete-broadbent-bishop-of-willesden-must.html
http://thebaldtruthjersey.blogspot.com/2013/05/bailhache-gate-2-what-was-senator.html
http://www.statesassembly.gov.je/Pages/Statements.aspx?page=2
http://www.winchester.anglican.org/news/story/921/
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2013/06/excuse-me-sir-ive-just-one-more-question.html
http://www.statesassembly.gov.je/AssemblyQuestions/2013/Deputy%20T%20Pitman%20to%20CM%20re%20Reading%20of%20confidential%20documents%20in%20full%20view%20of%20the%20public.pdf
http://www.winchester.anglican.org/assets/downloads/Independent_Review_of_a_Safeguarding_Complaint_for_the_Diocese_of_Winchester_(March_2013)Redacted.pdf
http://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/2013/06/23/church/
http://bishopofwillesden.blogspot.com/2013/11/twenty-quick-hits-to-change-cofe.html
http://guernseypress.com/news/comment/gp-opinion/2013/12/03/row-is-over-holding-on-to-power/

Text of Channel Islands Agreement

A reprint of the text of Channel Islands Agreement between the Anglican Deans of the Churches of the Channel Islands, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop of Winchester and Bishop of Dover.

This first appeared on the blog of Peter Ould, and can be referenced here:
http://www.peter-ould.net/2014/05/12/exclusive-text-of-channel-islands-agreement/

March 2014
Parties

The Most Rev and Rt Hon Justin Portal Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury and Metropolitan
The Rt Rev Timothy John Dakin, Bishop of Winchester
The Rt Rev Trevor Willmot, Bishop of Dover in Canterbury
The Very Rev Robert Key, Dean of Jersey
The Very Rev Paul Mellor, Dean of Guernsey

Recitals
1. The Deaneries of Jersey and Guernsey are part of the Church of England by law established.

2. The Deanery of Jersey extends to the whole of the Bailliwick of Jersey, including its territorial sea and the Deanery of Guernsey extends to the whole of the Bailliwick of Guernsey, including its territorial sea.

3. Since law in council of her late majesty Queen Elizabeth I, dated 11th March 1569, ordinary jurisdiction and episcopal oversight in the islands has been provided by succesive Bishops of Winchester, and the Deaneries are annexed to and united with the Diocese of Winchester, without prejudice to the continuing exercise within the Deaneries of the jurisdiction exercised by the Dean of each respective Deanery.

4. The Canons of the Church of England in Jersey make provision for certain episcopal functions to be performed by, or on behalf of the Bishops, for the time being, of Winchester and are approved by her majesty in council 14 March 2012, and registered in Royal Court of Jersey on 23 March 2012.

5. Save as specifically enacted by schemes made under the provisions of the Channel Islands Church Legislation Measure 1931. The ecclesiastical and Canon Law affecting both Deaneries is contained in the traditions, charters, customs and protocols which attain in the relevant islands.

6. The position of the Deaneries in relation to the Diocese is to be reviewed as advised in this agreement.

7. Pending the outcome of such review, Episcopal Oversight of the Deaneries is to be exercised by the Bishop of Dover.
Now, it is hereby agreed and declared as follows,

The Bishop of Winchester,

(i) appoints the Bishop of Dover as an Assistant Bishop in the Diocese

(ii) delegates to him the Episcopal oversight and functions reserved to the Bishop of Winchester under Jersey Canons and the customs and protocols of the Deanery of Guernsey

(iii) delegates to him such other episcopal functions as may be assigned to the Bishop of Winchester in all other ecclesiastical legislation, canons, customs and protocols as may apply in the islands

The Bishop of Dover confirms he will exercise the episcopal functions delegated to him while in canonical obedience to the Archbishop of Canterbury and pay due regard to the provisions of the Jersey Canons and the other ecclesiastical canon laws, customs and protocols as pertain on the islands, and in such manner as will minimise administrative disruption and expense for Winchester and Canterbury.

The parties will work with the Archbishop of Canterbury in all respects to ensure that every part of the Church of England provides a safe environment for all person who worship in and are ministered to by our churches.
Recognising the ministry of the whole Church of England and the islands as part of it, the Deans of Jersey and Guernsey will use their best endeavours to encourage payment of the agreed parish share for 2014 on completion of this agreement to the Canterbury Diocesan Board of Finance.

The Archbishop, after consultation, will appoint a commission as to the legal relationship of the Church of England on the islands to the Church of England on the mainland, and make any recommendations for change that they consider necessary.

As witnessed

Waste Not: Comments on the Waste Water Strategy Document

The "Waste Water strategy" document to be debated is lodged by the Council of Ministers. It is an example, for once, of real joined up work - the Treasury looking at the finance, Planning looking at the environmental needs, and Transport and Technical Services doing the basic spadework.
 
It has to be said that this is an excellent report, and the bulk of it is clearly the work of the team of Civil Servants at TTS, who have produced what is a model of detail and clarity. Anyone who simply wants to understand how the Island's waste systems operate, and their history, has only to read this report, where it is all encapsulated with the 109 pages.
 
The existing sewage treatment plant, as well as being particularly smelly in the Bellozane area from time to time, is basically the same one that was put into operation back in late 1950s for a population of 57,000, modified and marginally extended as time went on, and it really is fast approaching the end of its lifespan. The UV plant was upgraded in 2003 with self-cleaning and more energy efficient units with applied dose monitoring facilities. At present Bellozanne takes flow from a connected resident population of 85,000, which increases to a summer peak population of approximately 102,000.
 
When it was built, no one could have thought of almost a doubling of the Island population in the summer peak, and the increased demands on the infrastructure. That also leads to odours, and these have been partially mitigated by enclosing areas such as the sludge storage tanks and inlet works, with the air treated by way of odour control units. These works were implemented in 2008 but with limited success to date.
 
Water consumption can be lowered by the population using less, but an increasing population will always lead to more demands on the sewage system. As the report notes, "any additional loading as a result of an increase in the Island's population... will only result in a deterioration of the present situation."
 
This means that it is failing in many ways, which are injurious both to the environment, and potentially to public health. As the report notes, it fails "to achieve total nitrogen permit limit, and suffers from extensive biological foaming, a consequence of which is poor removal of suspended solids and lower bacteriological kill from the UV disinfection process". And a survey in 2008 also showed that "approximately 42% of the mechanical and electrical items were in very poor condition."
The existing sewage network needs re-examining as well. The older systems used to mix up ground water with waste water, and that was again fine for a small Island population. Pressure on the systems led to the cavern at Fort Regent, but there is still need for more to be done. At times of heavy rainfall the system is under increased pressure, and on occasion, outfalls of untreated sewage into the sea have taken place. As the report notes:
 
"In terms of effluent compliance, of particular concern is the fact that the existing plant discharges partially treated sewage, missing out on the secondary treatment process, on a regular basis. This is usually during storm conditions, which generate high flows to the works which are in excess of the full treatment capacity. As a result, discharge of partially treated sewage to the Bay also leads to a risk that public health will be adversely impacted. In 2010, this bypass procedure operated in storm conditions for periods totalling 130 days."
 
The new system proposed for Bellozane has to comply with the following very sensible criteria. It must be:
 
-          Flexible, in terms of adapting to potential increases or decreases in population or potential future changes to consent standards;
-          Sustainable, not only in terms of power usage, carbon footprint, etc., but also in terms of its effect on the wider environment;
-          Proven, in that the success of the process technology in achieving the required level of treatment is well known, widely used and understood; and
-          Affordable, not only in terms of capital cost, but also in terms of operating costs
 
As it has been reported, the States want to spend £75 million on improving the system. But against this must be the consideration that relatively little has been done to improve the system and bring it up to modern standards, as well as dealing adequately with the demands of an increased population.
 
Two Chief Ministers have come and gone, and I noted on my blog - back in 2008  -the Medical Officer of Health's report which called for:
 
"the early formulation of an Islandwide liquid waste strategy to determine the appropriate level of improvement and extension to the mains drainage network, along with an appropriately sized and located replacement for the Bellozanne sewage treatment plant". In January 2012, TTS were saying (on BBC News) that the works were 50 years old and " outdated and not up to current standards for pollutants, saying a new treatment works would be needed in the future."
 
Contingent planning has taken account of increases in the population, and also adjusted for a seasonal increase due to tourism, visiting friends and migrant workers. The new plant is looking at a population of 118,336 estimated for 2035, which includes these extra numbers, estimated at around 19,149 for a maximum adjustment. As the report notes, "it is considered advisable to provide flexibility in the design such that 118,000 is not an absolute limit but can be expanded with minimal cost in the future." Of course population measures in place may limit that, and I hope they do,  but it is surely prudent to allow for future growth rather than requiring the patchwork modifications of the current plant.
 
Another factor is climate change, which is another reason for a better sewage works, and also for looking at improved pumping systems, and waste water separation. The report notes that:
 
"The potential for climate change impacts on the Jersey sewerage network has not been fully assessed. It has been assumed that in common with the southern part of England climate change will lead to increases in the magnitude of storm events within the Strategy period. This will increase the waste water flows to be handled by the network, the pumping stations, the overflows and the STW. In the absence of detailed modelling of the assets, a simple general allowance for upsizing the assets as they are maintained / renewed has been made of 5% of the projected maintenance cost."
 
The sewage systems themselves need checking as an initial assessment has indicated that a substantial proportion of the existing sewerage network is already at capacity. This is being addressed by a scientific study of the patterns of flow. As the report notes:
 
"A programme is currently being implemented to investigate, locate and resolve the infiltration / inflow problems across the Island. By using a combination of pumping station telemetry data and in-sewer flow monitors, a systematic investigation is being undertaken to identify the location and severity of the problem so that suitable remedial measures can be carried out."
 
Back in 2008, when I was looking at the sewage system, I noted that "Biogas production from sewage sludge treatment, via a process called anaerobic digestion, is already a well established means of generating energy in the UK."
 
It was good to read that the proposed new plant incorporates this into its plan:
 
"The ongoing project to replace the sludge treatment facilities involves enhanced sludge treatment achieved by a pasteurisation process followed by anaerobic sludge digestion. Methane gas produced during the treatment process will be utilised for heating of the sludge and power generation to meet approximately a third of the power requirements for the new Sewage Treatment Works"

It appears that the Environment Minister, Deputy Duhamel, would prefer some alternatives, and, time allowing, I will look into those. It should be noted, however, that the proposed new sewage treatment facility does accord with EU regulations regarding the environment with regard to treatment and disposal of waste matter. It is an environmentally sound choice, even if some dissenters think there would be even better choices to be made.
 
As this States gradually comes to an end before September, and the run up to the October elections, it is perhaps worth looking at what the present Council of Ministers have achieved under Ian Gorst, and which was not achieved, and perhaps delayed or ignored under the somewhat slack leadership of his predecessor.
 
Of course, there have also been failings, not least with the Electoral Commission and Referendum, and virtually anything from Economic Development seems to be hedged around with the same vagueness and management speak that Jim Hacker of "Yes Minister" would be proud of.
 
But there seems less of a fortress mentality that I noted in the past, and more willingness for Ministers to work with backbenchers to agree propositions such as Montfort Tadier's recent one on Rental Housing Standards, working with the Housing Minister.
 
The Waste Strategy is certainly a fine legacy to present to the outgoing States. I was hugely impressed by it, as a model of clarity and facts.

Harold Le Seeleur: A Betrayal of Trust by the States?

For ages, the Le Seeleur buildings in St Helier have remained empty, as the terms of the original trust meant that the use was tightly restricted. Gradually they have fallen into decay, and only recently has scaffolding been erected, and the buildings restored to a better condition. The reason for this, as became apparent after a Ministerial decision by the Health Minister, Deputy Anne Pryke  - is that they are about to be sold.
 
"The Minister accepted the investment strategy and recommendations for the Le Seeleur Trust Property Assets as detailed in the report provided by Jersey Property Holdings (JPH). The Minister authorised JPH to implement the property recommendations which include the sale of the Oxford Road workshop and 9 Chevalier Road properties in the first instance. The Minister requested that the Treasurer invest the non-property (cash) assets of the fund in the Common Investment Fund."
 
Now one question which obviously springs to mind is about the capital generated by the sale of the properties. Is it better to use taxpayers money to repair the ravages of time and make the property available for sale, or would it have been better to sell it at a lower price, and let the buyer take on the task of refurbishment and repair?
 
How much, in fact, has been spent on repairing the building prior to sale? In April 1998, the Employment and Social Security Committee approved the principle of "buying" the property from the Le Seeleur Fund.
 
The property had been designated as a Site of Special Interest (SSI), and the requirements for the refurbishment as an SSI were quite onerous. The estimated cost of the proposed scheme of refurbishment at the time was in the order of £1.8 million. The Committee could not secure the funding to be able to proceed with the scheme.
 
But let's backtrack, and have some history on these buildings. They were given in trust to the States, and the restrictions on them are rather strange. As Deputy John  Le Fondré explained in 2010:
 
"The will of the late H.E. Le Seeleur requires that the States of Jersey consult with his executors on the use of the properties - this is the nub - with a particular view that the properties be used for the benefit of aged, infirm and needy residents of the Island. Therefore, any benefit from those properties should be for residents who are aged and infirm and needy. It cannot be for one or the other but must meet all 3 criteria, and that is one of the problems we faced in the history on this building."
 
"There are further features of the consequences that come out of this. The building cannot be handed over free gratis as a sheltered workshop, for example, because that would not meet the terms of the will. However, the properties could be used to generate a commercial return, for example, through rental or disposal, and that return can be used for the benefit of the aged, needy and infirm. For example, the property could be sold and the proceeds either reinvested to generate income or used for the benefit of the aged, needy and infirm."
 
Now note his reply - when he was Assistant Minister for Treasury and Resources - that the terms of the will allow for the building to be sold - "and the proceeds either reinvested to generate income or used ".
 
In other words, the sale of the property can generate funds, which can be more easily utilised that the buildings, but they must be earmarked "for the benefit of the aged, needy and infirm". Now there are people in the Community who certainly satisfy all three criteria, so there is certainly not the same impediment towards the use of the funds from a sale to improve their lot.
 
But now the Ministerial decision says: "The Minister requested that the Treasurer invest the non-property (cash) assets of the fund in the Common Investment Fund."
 
There does not seem to be anything about restrictions. In fact, it seems as if the whole terms of the will are being abrogated by this sale.
 
This is very different from the position taken by Senator Ben Shenton in 2007, when he commented as follows on a decision to sell (back then, but not coming to fruition):
 
"The Minister for Health and Social Services has given approval for Property Holdings to progress the disposal of the property on behalf of the Le Seeleur Fund, which wishes to invest the receipt from the sale of Le Seeleur Workshop together with other of its funds into another substantial property with a full rental income and which will provide benefit for health services that need to be provided for the aged, infirm and needy residents of the Island."
 
And he added this:
 
"It cannot be morally correct for the Le Seeleur Fund to be deprived of funding from properties which a previous decision of the States has placed within the administration of the Minister for Health and Social Services for the purposes intended by Mr. Le Seeleur.
 
Is this recent decision to sell, and place the funds from a sale of the property just into the general "pot" - the Common Investment Fund, a betrayal of the will of Harold Le Seeleur?
 
References
http://www.gov.je/Government/PlanningPerformance/Pages/MinisterialDecisions.aspx?docid=b28fa51b2152547143b79882cabfcba4_MDs
https://www.gov.je/GOVERNMENT/PLANNINGPERFORMANCE/Pages/MinisterialDecisions.aspx?showreport=yes&docid=3d65f0f9064a66420ce1a7538ac55f3f_MDs
 

Losing her Marples

I have never wholly taken to Geraldine McEwan in the title role of Agatha Christie's Marple. It is an odd title, anyway, and suggests that there might be other writers who have dabbled with the character - Barbara Cartland's Marple would surely have had enormous fake eyelashes, and been extremely pink and fluffy.
 
I think it is not so much McEwan, who is actually rather good, but the fact that so many of the stories bear only a tenuous relationship to the original books. The BBC's Miss Marple, with Joan Hickson, was a very faithful adaptation, but the ITV versions almost violate the trade's description act, as apart from the titles, very little remains of the original book, and it is often rewritten in quite extraordinary ways.
 
Nowhere was that more apparent than in "The Sittaford Mystery", which had an excellent cast, including Timothy Dalton and Mel Smith (very good in a straight part), with Robert Hardy doing a cameo turn at the start with Winston Churchill.
 
The snowbound nature of the location remains the same, but Inspector Narracott has vanished from the scene, and Miss Marple, who doesn't even feature in the original book, turns up to solve the case. And just in case you had read the story, the killer's identity is different from the one in the novel.
 
Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable way of spending an hour or so, as long as you put the original completely out of your mind, except for the plot point of the snow, which I am not going to explain here lest the reader has not read or seen this. Spoilers!
 
Of course, there is a strong tradition of straying from the plot. The Miss Marple films with Margaret Rutherford were often original creations, in which Margaret Rutherford would give her standard performance as Margaret Rutherford, and everyone would call her Miss Marple.  There were never any books on which "Murder Ahoy" was based, and "Murder at the Gallop" and "Murder Most Foul" were actually derived from Poirot stories.
 
I remember the reading some old film reviews which said that Margaret Rutherford bore a remarkable resemblance to Agatha Christie. I always remember thinking that Agatha Christie would have hated that comparison. I liked Rutherford very much in the VIPs, but she was altogether the wrong performer for Miss Marple, especially with her tendency to use gurning to convey emotions. And small and bird-like, she was most assuredly not!
 
The Mirror Crack'd, the film starring Angela Lansbury, had a decidedly odd Miss Marple, who actually smoked, something the original novels never did. The plot did follow the book quite faithfully, despite that. It was, like the near contemporary Poirot films "Murder on the Orient Express" and "Death on the Nile" done in a very Hollywood way, with pretty well all the main suspects played by well-known Hollywood stars. It was all a very glossy kind of fun.
 
The BBC adaptations are unusual, in that they represent a good attempt to remain faithful to the original stories, and usually did not rely on star names, but jobbing (but excellent) character actors, which made it more realistic, less glossy.
 
I think that, for me, Joan Hickson will be the definitive Miss Marple.

Jersey Historic Abuse Inquiry: Guest Posting

Today, with permission from Carrie Modral to re-post, I have a guest posting from her regarding the Jersey Historic Abuse Inquiry.

Jersey Historic Abuse Inquiry: Guest Posting
by Carrie Modral, Jersey Care Leavers Association

As most of you are aware, I have been actively campaigning for the last six and a half years for the right to justice for many people abused as children whilst in the care of the States of Jersey.
 
Myself and others have achieved so much over the last few years, putting pressure on our Government to pay compensation to the victims and to hold a Committee of Inquiry (COI) all of which have now (almost) been achieved.
 
Sadly, most of the victims will never get their day in Court and see their abusers put behind bars such is the Jersey way, but I am hoping and praying that the COI will be fully robust and expose the truth leaving no stone unturned!!
 
The child abuse investigation was hijacked and trashed to cover up Jersey's dark secrets and now is the time for anyone with any information to come forward and help to expose the truth for all to read. I have worked hard over the last few years,
 
I have been attacked relentlessly as have my fellow campaigners for daring to expose the truth and fighting for the rights of the abuse victims. Some people including some care leavers dislike me for what I have done and that is fine, this is an emotive subject, people don't want to hear about it over and over again especially the abuse victims where it drags up bad memories and I do understand that, I really do and I am truly sorry if I have hurt anyone by keeping this alive.
 
This is a plea for all abuse victims in Jersey to please come forward and tell your story to the COI. Each of you have a story to tell, let your story be heard and recorded in Jersey's history for all time! Please don't be nervous about coming forward, the team are compassionate and caring, they want to hear what you have to say and you can ask to remain anonymous. Each and every one of you are part of a big jigsaw, please help me to them to piece that jigsaw together and get the true picture.
 
If you know of abuse survivors, please persuade them to come forward, this cannot work without them. The enquiry team can be contact on free phone 0800 7350100 or alternatively, if you do not want to make contact yourself, Jill or myself at JCLA will do this for you and you need not be a member. The JCLA office is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday's between 9.30am and 1.30pm and can be contacted on 738351.
 
Events over the last couple of days have made me realise that my time is almost done now, I need to get on with my life and start the healing process for myself. This has consumed my life for many years, I really don't know how this is going to affect me once I do move on but little steps are all that any of us need when heading into the unknown!

W H Auden: 1907-1973 Part 2

I've been trawling through the archives at the library again, and in particular for Sundays, "The Pilot" which was the monthly magazine for the Church of England in Jersey for many years. Every month, there would be pieces from the minister of each church, along with various other articles of interest.
 
In 1995, the Reverend Tony Keogh began a series of articles in "The Pilot" under the umbrella title "God and the Poets", and here is the part of his three part series on W.H. Auden. I thought it was a shame that it should be buried in the past, so I've transcribed it for my blog.
 
God and the Poets: W H Auden: 1907-1973 Part 2
By Tony Keogh
 
Wystan Hugh Auden was born at York on 21st February 1907, the third son of a physician who was also a classicist and an antiquarian. His mother, Constance Rosalie Bicknell, was the more powerful influence of his parents and long after her death in 1941, he would judge his actions and sentiments by whether or not they would have met with her approval. She was a devout Anglo-Catholic.
 
The Audens were of Icelandic descent and the sagas on which he was brought up greatly influenced all his writings. The name "Wystan" was of a Mercian prince, murdered in 849 after objecting to the marriage of his widowed mother to his uncle, contrary, to Canon law; Auden thought it very Hamlet-like. It was given to him partly because Auden's father had been educated at Repton where the parish church is dedicated to St Wystan.
 
The family moved to Birmingham when Wystan was a year old as his father was .appointed the Schools Medical Officer. After wartime service with the RAMC in some of the most dangerous theatres: of war, Dr Auden became part-time Professor of Public Health at Birmingham University.
 
Although Wystan spent five years at St Edmund's School, Hindhead, where he: first met his' lifelong friend Christopher Isherwood, he was never an English "southerner." The midlands and the north spoke to him much more than the trimmed lawns and leafy suburbs. The industrial devastation and the disused mines and. factories came to possess his imagination. As he wrote in a poem of the 1930s, "Letter to Lord Byron":
 
"Clearer than Scafell Pike, my heart has stamped on.
The view from Birmingham to Wolverhampton"
 
Limestone, .not chalk, was his landscape the Pennines, not the Downs his spiritual home. The poem, "In Praise of Limestone," written in 1948, his own favourite is, in some sense, a personal testimony: The landscape moves him as he gazes on it, but also because it symbolises his own temperament, inconstant: limestone dissolves in water and is secretive with its underground: streams and caves. The poem recalls that statues and fountains are made out of limestone rock, which reminds him that:
 
"The blessed will not care what angle
they are regarded from,
Having nothing to hide. "
 
Yet he ends, immediately after, with the supreme gift that limestone has bestowed on-`him:
 
"Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless
love
Or the life to come, what I hear is the
murmur of underground streams, what I see
is a limestone landscape."
 
At thirteen, Auden went to Gresham's School at Holt in Norfolk. He was confirmed in 1920 and went through a period of Anglo-Catholic enthusiasm which, at Gresham's, he came to suspect as arising from "quite straightforward and unredeemed eroticism." Gresham's religion was "nothing but a vague: uplift, as flat as an old bottle of soda: water," while most who attended the Anglo-Catholic church in which his family worshipped at home seemed to him in some way handicapped, loving God because no-one else would love them. Christian images began to repel him when they did not seem risible. Yet he continued to go to church and loved .singing hymns as he did for the rest of his life. He left school, so he said, "a. confirmed anarchist individualist."
 
He began writing poetry whilst at school and his vocation suddenly dawned on him when a friend asked him what he did. He went up to Christ Church, Oxford, to read Natural Sciences but changed to English.
 
He had a famous conversation with the English don, Neville Coghill, the memory of which appalled him later:
 
"And what' are you going to do, Mr Auden, when you leave University?"
"I am going to be a poet."
"Well, in ... in that case you should find it very useful to have .read English."
(After a silence) "You don't understand, I am going to be a great poet.
 
Next month: W H.Auden's early career, the Spanish Civil War and his road back to Christianity.
 

Some comic poems

For today, some light hearted poems. UKIP are doing well, so they feature in this poem which has a surrealist twist at the end.

Euro voting

Election fever hits the streets
For all those funny old EU seats
And UKIP is trying, will they win
With Nigel Farage's beaming grin?
But the Green Party seems so small
Where did they go, how did they fall?
Cannibalism, I say, yes it is all true!
The Green party has so much to rue:
Every dinner, mothers have routines
Say to their children, eat the Greens!

And a pastiche of a nursery rhyme, on bankers - maybe they will be using this in nursery schools?

Hey diddle, diddle
The bonus and the fiddle
The banker was over the moon
The hedge manager laughed
To see such sport
But sub prime loans sank the tycoon

And finally, two clerihews, one after the Eurovision song contest:

The singer Conchita
Enjoyed eating a margarita
After winning the Eurovision contest
While so very elegantly dressed

And one about Winston Churchill

In the blitz, Winston Churchill
Was never dressed to kill
Instead, he wore an old boiler suit
Which was really quite astute

April Retrospective

Top of the April posts was "Harbour Dues", a guest posting on Rob Duhamel's suggestion to turn the Old Harbour into a communal swimming pool:
 
"We do need fresh ideas - and some States members seem bereft of any new ideas at all. I'm still trying to think of any ideas, propositions, or questions asked by Deputy Susie Pinel of St Clement, or for that matter, if she has ever spoken in any debate. St Clement seems to have a tradition of electing "trappist" deputies - her predecessor, Ann Dupre was also taciturn, and I knew a Deputy in the 1970s who never spoke once during his entire time in the States, although he was a very nice chap. "
 
"But ideas need testing as well, and preferably by the individual proposing them. If they survive critical scrutiny, then they are worth while. If this has not been done, don't release it to the public."
 
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/04/harbour-dues.html 
 
"Dear Fellow Resident" looked at a letter sent out regarding meeting called by John Young about development in St Brelade's bay, and was resolutely against any extra curtailment over and above current planning policy. The mood of the meeting that I attended was very much in favour of improved protection for the bay, and the anonymous writer - described as "bad form" for not signing his letter by Deputy Tadier - did not come forward to restated their views. But they may have led to a backlash of 75 people or so who did attend!
 
"What else is notable about this letter? It is anonymous. It has been put through the letterbox of residents living in St Brelade's Bay, but the writer clearly wishes not to be known. One has to ask why. Is it because they are planning a development of the kind that residents might well oppose, and don't wish to be identified? Is it because they are already the subject of criticism for a new development within the Bay? Either way, it seems very cowardly to take pot-shots at Deputy Young, and not reveal who you are."
 
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/04/dear-fellow-resident.html
 
"Saturday Limericks" from March was still in the top ratings. For those who missed them, here are links to all the limerick related posts, after one example of the genre:
 
There once was an MP called Tony Benn
Who preferred not a sword but a pen
There were Diaries that he wrote
And he often did vote
Until he scribbled the final Amen
 
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/03/saturday-limericks.html
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/03/more-saturday-limericks.html
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/04/there-was-once-states-member-called.html

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/04/limericks-from-correspondents.html
 
 
"The Jersey Goons How" was a marvellous guest post looking at a reimagining of the "Goon Show" with States members as characters from the Radio show:
 
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-jersey-goons-how_24.html
 
"Election for Chief Minister: Some Comments"
 
This was a 2011 posting about elections for Chief Minister at a time when they were elected by behind the scenes "horse trading", and before former Deputy Trevor Pitman had made the old secret ballot into an open one, which allowed the public to see who voted for whom. Fortunately, this proposition was passed, and the bad old days of secret backroom deals could not be hidden from the public gaze in the final vote.
 
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2011/08/election-for-chief-minister-some.html
 
"Presidential Politics"
 
This was a very critical posting about two proposals, one on the powers of the Chief Minister, and one on differential pay.
 
"The reality is that the current single-level salary is not commensurate with levels of remuneration for similar senior posts available in the private or not-for-profit sectors" says Philip Ozouf.
 
When I read that, I think of the "Yes Prime Minister" episode "A Real Partnership":
 
Hacker: Where's the one-page summary for the Cabinet?
Sir Humphrey: The Janet and John bit? Here it is. It's more or less the same as last time. Comparable jobs in industry.
Hacker: On whose salary are the comparisons based?
Sir Humphrey: The directors of BP and IBM, naturally.
Hacker: You don't think that might be challenged as untypical and above average?
Sir Humphrey: No. Of course, we don't mention them by name. Just ''typical industrial firms''.
 
Or indeed, in Philip Ozouf's phrase "similar senior posts available in the private sector"!
 
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/04/presidential-politics.html
 
Growing up with the Doctor - Part 7
 
An autobiographical look at my own life, and the time of the Seventh Doctor Who, Sylvestor McCoy.
 
DOCTOR: There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream. People made of smoke, and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold.
 
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/04/growing-up-with-doctor-part-7.html
 
The Bald Truth: A Global Brand
 
Still holding its own, a look at "The Bald Truth" on Blogs and Twitter - all the other "Bald Truths" apart from Trevor Pitman that exist in the world.
 
The Bald Truth, @thebaldtruth
 
"I talk about things that matter (i.e., politics and Pittsburgh sports). Pittsburgh, PA"
 
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-bald-truth-global-brand.html
 
Alfred Tennyson, 1809-92: Part IV: Conclusion
 
Tony Keogh's excellent look at Tennyson. I've put all the other links below too:
 
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/03/alfred-tennyson-1809-92-part-i.html
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/03/alfred-tennyson-1809-92-part-ii-early.html
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/04/alfred-tennyson-1809-92-part-iii.html
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/04/alfred-tennyson-1809-92-part-iv.html
 
 
Guernsey Holiday
 
A narrative poem about a recent trip to Guernsey.
 
http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/04/guernsey-holiday.html

 

Equality in Communication for All: A Personal Note

This week is Deaf Awareness week, with it's theme -"Equality in Communication for All"

"This Deaf Awareness Week you may be asking - what is deaf awareness? It's about 'promoting the positive aspects of deafness', to 'promote social inclusion' and raise awareness to all the organisations that support the week."

"Most importantly it's about helping people that are deaf.   When asked what deaf awareness meant for them, one person said: 'I want my family to include me in their conversations.'  This really got to me and emphasised how important this is to tackle."

"Do you know that 15% of the population are deaf to some extent?   Out of every 10,000 people, ten will be extremely deaf and 100 will be partially deaf."

http://www.national-awareness-days.com/deaf-awareness-week.html

This is a good link about the week:
http://www.deafcouncil.org.uk/deaf-awareness-week.html

A Personal Note on Hearing Loss

On a personal note, my hearing loss is hereditary, and I think it is a condition caused otosclerosis, which caused a substantial deterioration in my hearing during my late 30s.

I used for a time at work to have great anxiety about speaking to clients, because I could often not easily hear them. "I'm sorry, I can't hear you properly, could you speak up a bit please", I would often say, and so they would for a sentence or two, and then reduce their volume so that it was semi-audible again.

Fortunately, my boss took steps to remedy this by getting me a telephone with a volume boost, and extra volume control. This was brilliant, and I no longer had to strain to try and work out what people were saying. For the most part, I no longer have any problems with speaking to people on the office telephone. My mobile phone is more primitive regarding volume, and sometimes I have problems, but not with most people.

I have two hearing aids, one for each ear, and they are vastly better than the ones I was first given, which more or less just boosted the volume. It was an analogue system. It was fine for internal environments, but outside, in the streets of St Helier, traffic was very loud, and if windy, the wind noise caught in it and was amplified, rendering it largely useless.

The modern digital hearing aid is connected to a computer, a sound profile (it probably has a technical name) is made for each ear of the frequencies you can hear, and how loud each has to be to hear it, and the software programs the hearing aid so that the frequencies are all raised by different levels according to how little I can hear each one. The end result is a much more even hearing experience. The wind, while it can affect hearing if strong, is not so much a problem. Nor is traffic noise.

I don't usually wear them at work. There's a lot of extraneous noise in the office, such as a photocopier close by, and I can hear that well enough without hearing aids. I keep them close to hand, unlike the deaf lady in Fawlty Towers, so that I have them ready if someone wants to speak with me.

It is amazing how different voices are. Some people, even with a hearing aid, are difficult to hear. The level of their voice and the frequencies range they speak on is just not good for me to hear them. Other people can be heard relatively easily even without a hearing aid.

The barber must think me very taciturn. When I go to get my hair cut, I take out my hearing aids, and so of course, the usual banter which people have in a barber's shop is mostly difficult if not impossible for me; it is certainly a strain.

Even with hearing aids, one thing I cannot easily do because of my hearing loss is triangulate sounds easily. People with good hearing can usually tell where a noise is coming from. I can, provided I am almost on top of the sound, or the sound is loud enough. But sometimes a sound appears to come from behind me, when it is in fact in front of me.

I have found that compensate a lot with sight. Because of the nature of my hearing loss, my balance is not brilliant, and I would be wary of riding a bicycle again after so many years. If I close my eyes, I find it very difficult to keep my balance well, but with my eyes open, I can balance without trouble.

Sight also plays a part in understanding people. My hearing aid will boost a speaker's voice, but my listening can be improved and enhanced by watching their lips move. It is not lip reading as such, but I have found that the way words are shaped, coupled with the words I can hear, improves the quality of my hearing considerably.

I find something very similar when watching TV, and subtitles are available. I can turn the volume on the TV down considerably because I can convert the not well heard words into well heard words by being able to read them at the same time. That works very well. I really find subtitles very useful indeed.

One of the oddest things about hearing loss is the way in which the brain compensates for the deficiencies of hearing. Sometimes when I am not concentrating enough, the person is far away, or I have not got my hearing aid in, I will hear them say something which seems very odd, but seems a clear as a bell. It is my brain filling in the gaps, sometimes to rather surrealist effect. Many people have noticed that the TV news subtitles sometimes get the words totally wrong - my hearing is sometimes like that.

Coughs and colds can be troublesome, as they increase hearing loss sometimes below the threshold at which it is easy to hear, even with a hearing aid. Sometimes, if there is a hearing infection, it is not possible to use a hearing aid at all. The world becomes much more silent.

Busy restaurants can be a problem, as it is sometimes very difficult to carry on a conversation except with people directly to your left or right. Talking and listening to people opposite you can be next to impossible. Background noise is also boosted, though not as badly as with the analogue aids I began with.

When they are used, hearing loop systems can be very good indeed. They are certainly far better than listening to a voice boosted by a microphone, with the sound travelling some distance across a room. I went last year to a recital by a performance poet (the brilliant Matt Harvey) held at St Aubin on the Hill Church, and the acoustics, even with a microphone were poor, and a strain to listen even with my hearing aid. I switched the hearing aids to the hearing loop system, and was able to relax and enjoy his wonderfully funny poems without effort.

Around 2006, I think, I had not been for a hearing assessment for around ten years. I went along, expecting the worst, but in fact there had been negligible deterioration in my hearing. So far, every two years I have been for a re-assessment and the hearing loss still seems to have slowed down or halted. I expect that age will bring some increase, but I hope not as sharply as in my late 30s.

I was reading an article about Bill Oddie, how his hearing loss meant he could not hear his beloved birds. Hearing aids have now enabled him to hear birdsong again. I can also hear birdsong well with hearing aids, and I can understand his joy at hearing birdsong once more, because I have experienced that myself.

I am very fortunate, I am not totally deaf, and the nature of my hearing loss means that hearing aids work well with me. I can still enjoy music, radio, conversation, birdsong, and a wide range of sounds, even if I know there are limitations that I have to work within.

To be stone deaf, or very profoundly dead, must be to inhabit a very different world. Labour politician Jack Ashley became completely deaf after a minor operation, aged just 45. He described the event as "rather like being struck by lightning". He wrote this in his autobiography, "Acts of Defiance":

"No one can reasonably expect the public to understand total deafness. I am sometimes bewildered by it myself. But with the right kind of help, a person deprived of all hearing can still get by. What matters is the support they get, the attitude of people, and, above all, their own determination. These are the means of escape from the apparently inescapable and rejoining society."

The States Debate Power and Pay

After a marathon run of States sittings, the proposition giving the Chief Minister the right to fire his ministers and to set up new ministries has just been passed. However, the States retain the right to nominate alternative candidates to those of the Chief Minister, so a degree of balance has been retained.
 
It is interesting to speculate what would happen if a Chief Minister fired a Minister, but the States nominated him for the post, and he was re-elected. Presumably, while in principle the Chief Minister could sack him again, it would be unlikely.
 
Of course, the method in the past, as with Stuart Syvret, was for a vote for dismissal to be brought as a proposition and debated by the whole House. As they voted him out of office, it would have been unlikely that in the new situation, he would have received enough support to win a re-nomination.
 
But the case of Rob Duhamel is interesting, as it seems as if members of the House, and the Council of Ministers, were quite divided over whether he should go. Indeed, it was the split within the Council of Ministers which led to negotiations, and a rapprochement between Chief Minister and Planning Minister, with the consequent withdrawal of the proposition.
 
The question is what difference collective responsibility would make. If  a majority in the Council of Ministers, even a slender one, supported the Chief Minister's removal of a Minister from office, would the dissenting voices be silenced? Under collective responsibility all ministers must support cabinet decisions, although I understand there are caveats for matters of conscience.
 
Fortunately, politicians voted 23 in favour to 20 against the proposal for extra pay for Ministers. Coupled with the increase in the Chief Minister's powers, Sam Mezec was quite right to point out the dangers:
 
"Not only will ministers lose their title and position if they don't toe the line, they will also lose a large part of their salary."
 
Apparently Senator Ozouf said the change would not mean ministers suddenly got more pay, it would be down to the remuneration body to decide if they deserved more money. Given the imbalance in the membership of the remuneration body - all retired high-earners - and their past decisions, I shudder to think what they would decide.
 
Politicians in the island are paid £42,600 a year and are able to claim up to £4,000 in expenses. Their salary is set by an independent remuneration body. The BBC report listed UK MPs salaries, which are considerably higher (basic pay £ £67,060), but for some reason didn't give the closest comparison, which would surely be Guernsey politicians, who have similar responsibilities and workload.
 
Guernsey politicians are paid far less than Jersey ones, and while pay is extra for Ministers, which would make Senator Ozouf very happy, Ministers now get £46,364.
 
The pay scales in 2012 (before a recent increase this year) were as follows:
 
Chief Minister................................£ 61,520 - 00
Deputy Chief Minister....................£ 48,450 - 00
Minister........................................£ 46,350 - 00
Chairman .....................................£ 39,570 - 00
Deputy Minister & Vice Chairman...£ 36,550 - 00
States Member..............................£ 34,155 - 00
 
Minister Kevin Stewart said of a recent 3.2% pay rise that: "I work bloody hard for the money, quite frankly..When I became a deputy I knew what the pay offer was and I'm entitled to take it, like any other job - I don't have another job and I work more than 50 hours per week."
 
Now if Guernsey Ministers work as hard as their Jersey counterparts for around the same , perhaps the proposition on the pay differential should have been to reduce backbenchers pay instead of increasing Ministerial pay. I don't somehow think there will be any takers for that view, surprisingly!
 
And finally, an interesting quote from an interview with Tony Benn about how to both work within collective responsibility, and raise issues and differences of opinion from it:
 
Iain Dale: It's difficult as a Minister, when you are bound by collective responsibility, to drive forward an individual agenda. You are always compromised by the system.
 
Tony Benn: Not really. I developed a way of dealing with that. I realized that collective responsibility applied to the present Parliament, so I would say "looking ahead ten years this is what we will have to think about." so I could open up a whole area. They couldn't get me on that. I would also say "I'm getting an awful lot of letters at the moment saying this, that or the other." It didn't please colleagues but I think that on the whole a government where it is known there is a debate going on is more credible than the pretence of unanimity. The idea that a Cabinet is unanimous on every issue isn't true and everybody knows it isn't true.
 
References
http://iaindale.com/posts/2014/03/14/two-extended-interviews-with-tony-benn

Could it be time the JDC curtailed its lofty ambitions?

The Jersey Evening Post's online website no longer prints any selection of "Letters to the Editor", which is a shame, because there are some very good ones. To take care of this hiatus, I will repost occasional letters on this blog. This excellent letter, which deserves a wider audience, is by Dave Cabeldu.
 
Readers may also be interested in my yesterday's post looking at the Financial Statements of the JDC.

http://tonymusings.blogspot.com/2014/05/states-of-jersey-development-company.html
 
Could it be time the JDC curtailed its lofty ambitions?
From Dave Cabeldu.
 
HAVING followed with interest the saga of the future of the Esplanade car park as planned by the States of Jersey Development Company since their formation in June 2011, and on listening to the facts emerging at the States debate following a proposition brought by Senator Alan Breckon in March of this year, I became intrigued as to what this company was about.
 
The answer is interesting and muddled.
 
JDC was itself a result of an attempt to clarify responsibilities and accountabilities surrounding the development of publicly-owned property and thereby improve its transparency. It would also relieve the States Assembly of having to be party to each and every decision taken about it. In short, JDC, which is owned by the States, but operates as, a separate legal entity outside the States, would take over responsibility for the development of publicly-owned land and buildings. As such, it would have its own board of directors and would be able, without continual reference to the States, to buy, sell and develop property
 
This well intentioned rationalisation, however, had a flaw which very soon became evident. Although the legal entity could now get on with its business alone, it was a fully owned subsidiary of the States and there were only two shareholders; the States Greffier with 19,999,999 shares and the Treasury Minister with one share. In accordance with precedence, the former did not exercise his rights so that, in effect, the latter became, de facto, the only link between JDC and the States.
 
Senator Philip Ozouf, the current Treasury Minister, contrary to the stated requirement to do so, has not shared JDC's business plans with the Assembly. The States has thus sleep-walked itself unwittingly into a very precarious situation since both planning and implementation for all this has effectively been transferred to one person, Accountability for performance is unclear.
 
From a starting point of being. given the Esplanade car park for a nominal price of £1, with its income of £759,000 per annum, this company has an. enviable advantage that no other company does, To date £4m has been spent on the Esplanade proposals without a penny of income yet being evident anywhere on the horizon. The JDC directors have received emoluments of £400,000 in salaries plus 142,000 in bonuses!
 
The board of directors is headed by Mark Boleat, a highly respected City of London financier and he, together with Senator Ozouf have, almost to the exclusion of all other States building projects, been directing JDC's efforts and resources towards the highly controversial creation of a massive office development sited on the Esplanade car park.
 
The only real financial information that is available to the States and the public comes from JDC's annual financial statements which, by law, have to be published within six months of their financial year-end (i.e. after the horse has bolted), but JDC does not even set these out so as to indicate the financial status of their most important project. Furthermore, the public are not invited (or allowed) to attend the AGM to raise questions as to how JDC's investment of public resources has been used and to form a judgment on the directors' emoluments. The only attendees are the company's board and the two above-mentioned shareholders.
 
The decision of the Royal Bank of Canada to go with alternative and proven private developers surely signals that the International Finance Centre as promoted will not be viable, and the availability of other already approved `Grade A premium office space coming on stream will soak up any other prospective tenants. Could it be that it is now time for the JDC to curtail its ambitions as developers for the finance sector and place greater emphasis on matters which will have more benefit for the public who are increasingly alarmed at seeing their savings being frittered away?