Splitting the Christmas Season

Christmas is supposed to be a time for family, or so it is said. But what do you do when you have more than one family who wants your time over the holiday?

I’m not talking specifically of children who have to deal with separated parents, - though that is something to be considered – but rather bog standard couples trying to split their time between both sides of the family. How do you keep everyone happy?

This problem is one I have come across for the first time this year, as I have had to decide how to split my time between my family and my girlfriend’s.  It was all sorted in the end – I will spend Christmas with my family, the days between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve with hers, and then she will come back to mine - but trying to figure out how to split myself was quite a headache I can tell you.

I think in the end it comes down to the fact that for the majority of people family is still the most important thing. However much people may argue otherwise, and however much society may have tried to disprove this, I think it is still the case.

It has been suggested that nowadays, with the majority of people no longer living where they grew up and instead moving away and setting up their own life, family ties are no longer as important as they were a hundred years or so ago, when people lived and grew up in the same place. Now, while that does sometimes still happen, people largely “fly the nest” and create their own life and social circle somewhere else, learning to become self-sufficient. But I don’t think that means that people don’t still think that family is important.

If this was the case, then I don’t think people would make such a big effort to maintain family ties at Christmas and at other times of the year. We may not see as much of our families as we used to, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t still important to us. And thanks to modern telecommunications (email and Skype and so on) it is possible to maintain contact with family members, no matter how faraway they live, allowing for the old ties to be maintained even if you do move away for whatever reason.

Trying to figure out how to split yourself between various family members is never going to be easy, and it is never going to be possible to please everyone at once. Someone is inevitably going to be left out and disappointed and if you have somehow managed to please everyone else then you are going to find yourself with no time for yourself. But the fact that people still make the effort, rather than just throwing up their hands and giving up, proves, at least as far as I am concerned, that for most people family is still very important, even if you only get to see them once a year.

 

It's Time To Take Responsibility

There’s a phrase in environmental politics called Nimbyism, which stands for Not In My Back Yard.  In essence it means that people want renewable energy projects such as wind farms to be built, provided of course, they aren’t built anywhere near them.

The problem is, this is not a problem unique to sustainable energy projects. In all walks of life, people want things, but aren’t willing to pay the price for them. If you survey a group of people and ask them if they want the government to invest more money in schools and hospitals, then they will inevitably be in favour. But if you ask them if they would be willing to pay higher taxes in order for this to happen, they are inevitably against it.

We have become a society that expects something for nothing. It didn’t use to be like this. In my grandparents’ time, - the first generation to get a free university education – they believed in hard graft. If you had something, it was because you had worked for it, paid your share and sacrificed for it. It we had asked them if they were ok with wind farms, they would probably not have liked the idea, but they would have managed.

In contrast we now live in what I have come to think of as an X-Factor society. We have come to expect that everything we want, everything we desire, will just be handed to us. We consider that celebrity and fame are ours by right, rather than something to be earned. We want the benefits of society, but we don’t want to have to pay our way. We believe that because we are so magic and special it’s not our responsibility.

Not everyone of course. A lot of people are more than willing to take responsibility for their actions. But enough aren’t to cause a problem. Perhaps if people had thought about the effects of their actions, we wouldn’t be in some of the messes that we are in now. If we want to return to a stronger, fairer society, the one that made Britain respected around the globe, then we have to go back to the way things used to be. We have to return to the traditions that once made us great, that can still make us great again.

We have to stop putting the blame on others, and start taking responsibility for our own actions. We have to stop believing that we are entitled to something in exchange for nothing, and put in the effort. We have to accept that – in the words of my favourite US Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr – “taxes are the price we pay for a civilised society.”

If we truly wish to leave behind a better world for the generations to come then we must start setting up that world now. And it falls to this generation to create it, and if necessary pay the cost of it.

It’s time to take up our responsibilities.

Welcome to the Ministry of Truth

In George Orwell’s novel 1984, the hero, Winston Smith, works at the Ministry of Truth, the government agency concerned with the media, and propaganda. Smith’s job is literally to re- write the history books, so that everything the Party says matches up with what they have supposedly said before. Even if they have said something different there is no proof.

It seems someone at Conservative Party Headquarters has had a similar idea.

This week it was revealed that someone at CPHQ had deleted from their website all speeches and policy proposals made between 2005 – when David Cameron became leader – and 2010 – when he became Prime Minister. The interesting thing about this is that most of those speeches and policy proposals contained ideas the Tories would rather forget about. The promise that there would be no top down reorganisation of the NHS? Gone. The slogan “Vote Blue, get Green”  and it’s suggestion of greener polices from a Cameron Government? Erased from the history books.

There are two big problems with this of course. The first – and the bigger one – is that retroactively rewriting history is not something democratic governments usually like to do. While it’s recognised that Stalin made certain that Lenin’s distrust of him was forgotten, and the Nazi’s burnt books in order to erase ideas they did not believe in, a government that claims to be a world leader in democracy and lectures others on their suppression of human rights should not be undertaking this sort of action.

A government needs to admit to its mistakes. If they made promises they shouldn’t have done, or their priorities or ideas have changed, then that’s okay. But they need to admit that this is the case, and explain why, rather than try to pretend that they have been saying the same thing all along. We recognise that governments are human and sometimes, for reasons beyond their control, things need to be changed.

The other thing that the Tories seem to have forgotten is that the internet is forever. It’s not like in the old days, where if you just shredded the paperwork, no one would know about it. Nowadays, everything is archived, in multiple places. News agencies have videos of Cameron and his colleagues making these speeches. Those can’t be so easily erased. Every time Cameron denies he ever made these suggestions, the videos can be played endlessly until he backs down.

I am not suggesting that the Prime Minister or any senior Tories actually ordered this act of revisionism themselves. But it certainly does not reflect well on the party as a whole if they are not willing to stand by the things they have said in the past. If they only said them to get votes, then they should not have said them in the first place. But if they said them because they actually meant them, then they need to stand by them now.

Either way, they cannot simply erase them, and hope we will forget.

 

A Persistant Myth

There’s a persistent myth where university is concerned that, even if you don’t know what you want to do when you arrive, by the time you start your third year you will know exactly what you want to do with your life. What’s more, you will have a plan of exactly how to get there, right down to the job you will get when you graduate.

Yeah, no…

I am a third year, and I have no idea what I want to do with my life. And most of my friends who are third years also have no clue. We are doing everything we can to figure it out – career service meetings, looking at post graduate degrees, the works – but I can’t imagine that come May I will have any better idea of what I want to do than I do now.

In fact, I think I can safely say that I have better idea of what I don’t want to do than of what I do. This may come as a surprise to some people, but I have realised that I don’t actually want to be a journalist. I love my degree, but not the idea of having to go out, talk to sources, collect stories and the like. It’s fun, and maybe one day I will go back to it. But right now, no. It’s not what I want to do.

What I want to know though, is why is there such an obsession with everyone knowing exactly what they want to do with their life. Sometimes it feels like being stuck in Soviet Russia, with their oppressive five year plans. My lecturers are telling me that I need to think about where I want to be in a year, then in five years, and then in ten.

What’s wrong with taking it a day at a time? With figuring out what you want to do at your own pace?  I like where I am right now, my life is going pretty well. Yes the concept of life after university is a little scary, but I am reasonably sure that in a year I will find myself in a house, with a job and a steady internet connection, even if that job isn’t in the field I want to be in.

It has something to do with my faith I think. I know that through all the challengers of the last few years, that God has not abandoned me. I know I wouldn’t have got to university without him, and I know that he will provide a job when I need one. He hasn’t let me down yet, and I don’t think he’s going to start soon.

Would I be happier if I knew exactly where I am going to be in a year? Quite possibly, I have that type of brain. But at the same time, I am looking forward to finding out. It’s going to be an adventure and one that I am very much looking forward to experiencing

A Chance for Reflection

In the HBO movie “Game Change” John McCain tells Sarah Palin not to get “co-opted by (Rush) Limbaugh and the other extremists,” warning her that they will “destroy the party if you let them.”

Apt words don’t you think?

As the United States recovers from the Government shut down and the fact that the Government  nearly defaulted on all its loans, the Republican Party needs to take this opportunity to do some serious soul searching, figure out what its priorities are, and think how it can avoid being wiped out during next year’s Midterm Elections.

Please understand I’m not saying that the Democrats are completely blameless. The Democratic Senate refusing to pass a House approved Budget Bill was one of the reasons for the shutdown. But the reason that the Democrats kept sending the bills back was because they were completely moronic. If the Democrats can be accused of anything, it’s realising that the word compromise doesn’t simply mean doing what the other person tells you all the time and acting accordingly. The rest of the blame lies solely with the GOP, or rather with the minority within the GOP that supports the Tea Party movement.

But come the Midterms and the majority are going to be paying the price for the actions of the minority. So before next year, I believe the GOP needs to do three things to win back public trust

1: Drive out the Tea Party

The Party of Eisenhower and Ford, the party of small government and low taxes, has been taken over by a bunch of small minded paleo-conservatives and religious extremists with a tenuous grasp of reality who believe that the best way to govern is by putting a gun to the country’s head. This cannot be allowed to continue. Bachman, Santorum, Cruz and the rest of their ilk, who spend their days parroting the lines fed to them by business interests and shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh, need to be driven out of the party and out of politics for good, using whatever means necessary to achieve this end.

 2: Sit down with the Speaker

I don’t believe that John Boehner is the villain of the piece. I think he got hijacked by his own Caucus and found himself unable to do anything but hold on for dear life. But that’s not acceptable from the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He is supposed to lead his party, not do what they tell him. Party grandees need to sit down with him and either tell him get his house in order, or ask for his resignation. Either way he needs to get his act together.

3: Listen to their Constituents.

While a small minority of Republican voters probably do agree with what the GOP has been doing, I can’t believe that the majority do.  Most of them are probably as annoyed as the rest of us. If the GOP is to have any hope of surviving then it needs to sit down with the people who vote for it and ask them what they want. It needs to build its party platform around its voters’ needs, and its voters’ views, not around the needs and views of big business. The lower house of Congress is called the House of Representatives for a reason.

Now I’m not saying that this will save the GOP. They may already be too far gone. But if they carry on as they are, then they are most certainly doomed.

 

 

Atmosphere is the Key

I’m not a huge fan of sport; I should say that right now. For me a nice evening in with a book, or a political debate on the telly is much more fun. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been very good at it, but I have never really understood what people see in sport.

Except sometimes I do.

As you may remember last weekend I went to Silverstone with my girlfriend and her family for the British Touring Car Championships. Now they are all massive motorsport fans and I am…..not. I get that it’s something they enjoy, but for me it’s just guys driving around a track for a couple of hours. But this time it was different. Seeing the cars rush past me, being able to walk through the pit lane, pick a car that I wanted to support and, yes, see a couple of major crashes. That made it fun. I finally saw what everyone else saw in motorsport. But it wasn’t the racing itself, but the atmosphere of Silverstone that made it fun.

But atmosphere is always helpful I find. It’s the reason I have also enjoyed the few football matches I have gone to see – can’t stand the game, but take me to the Emirates and you would never know it. But I don’t think it’s something that is just true of sport. The atmosphere in a place or a situation can do a lot to influence how we think and feel.

Take churches for example. A person may not be very religious or even religious at all, but I suspect that most people will admit that if you take them to a very old and very impressive Church – Westminster Abbey say – they will feel something. They may not understand what it is they are feeling, but they will feel something.

On the other hand if you go to something that you thought you enjoyed, but all the people there are clearly miserable, then shortly afterwards you are probably going to start feeling miserable yourself. We are all influenced by the atmosphere in the places we go. In quiet places we are quiet, in happy situations we are happy, in sad ones we are sad. No one is going to start making funny noises at a funeral for example.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I went to Silverstone. As I said above, I’m not a motorsport fan, and while I hoped that I would enjoy the experience I wouldn’t have been surprised if I hadn’t. I have other things I could have been doing. But luckily for me I did enjoy it. And not just because of the people I was with, but because I was in a place filled to the brim with people, all excited, angry, happy, upset and overjoyed as their teams succeeded or failed. It was kind of like a virus; once you were there you just got infected with enthusiasm. You couldn’t help but enjoy yourself.

I probably won’t watch it on telly though.

 

 

Leap into the Unknown

Being a journalist is all about being willing to try new things. After all, if we stay in our little bubbles and only write or talk about what we know, then yes, we may write insanely good copy regarding French parliamentary elections, but we will have a very limited career. In fact, we probably won’t have a job.

As my journalism lecturers have told us over and over during the past three years, the best journalists are ones with a wide range of experiences and interests. It’s why we are encouraged to seek a placement that is outside of what we might be comfortable with. It’s actually why we are encouraged to seek a placement in the first place. When we are applying for jobs in a year’s time, if our CV shows that all we have written about is chocolate bars and all our work experience is with the local chocolate factory, we might get a job there. But good luck getting a job at the BBC.

And as a writer as well as a journalist, having a wider range of experiences helps my skills grow. We are always told to write what we know. The more I know, the more I will be able to write about. And the more experiences I have the more stuff will bleed through into my writing, and make it more interesting to read.

However if you ask me, this is something that should apply to everyone, not just journalists or writers – or in my case a prospective journalist and writer. A web designer whose only hobby is developing more web programs, will probably be brilliant at any job in that field. But they will also be boring as heck, and not a person that you would want to sit next to at a dinner party. But on the other hand, a web designer with a passing interest in science, or history, or comic books, is going to be someone well worth talking to.

Our hobbies help us become more rounded people and also help us increase our social circles. As a journalist I have obviously met some very interesting people. But it was as a fan of CS Lewis’ Narnia series that I met some of my closest online friends - friends who helped me get through a very dark period of my life. I wouldn’t have met these people if I had focused all my time and energy on learning about politics, or economics or what have you. My hobbies, and interests are a vital part of who I am, and by doing things I haven’t done before I grow as a person.

That’s why by the time you read this I will have come back from a weekend at Silverstone, with my girlfriend and her family, watching the British Touring Car Championship. I know a little less than absolutely nothing about motorsport, and I’m sure I will have spent the weekend going, “Huh?” and “Whose that?” and “What just happened?” But I’m also sure that I will have learnt something new.

I’ll be sure to tell you about it next week.

 

 

Maybe it's time to look to Germany

The chances are that by the time you read this, the results from the German general election will be in, and barring something completely unforeseen, Angela Merkel will have claimed the crown once again. But this article is not about the German elections, important as they are, but about two key characteristics of the German political system and what we can learn from them.

 

German politics practices consensus and coalition, two things that I think the UK should take a long look at adopting itself. Let’s look at what they mean, and what they could mean for us.

 

Firstly, consensus: because Germany has long since embraced proportional representation as its electoral system, German governments rely more than most governments on working with a variety of small parties, such as the Greens or Die Linke (The Left). This means there is very little room for party posturing.  Unless one specific party, such as Mrs Merkels CDU, has a very strong hold over a coalition, the chances of it forcing through policies that are strongly disliked are extremely small.

 

From a UK perspective, this would mean that under a consensus system – which I must point out did exist until it was blown apart by Mrs Thatcher – divisive policies such as the Bedroom Tax, or immigration policies that are a blatant attempt to appeal to the fringe right, would never even be considered, much less become serious government policy. Under a consensus system we would be a much less polarised nation.

 

Secondly, coalition: as mentioned earlier, proportional representation, and the coalition nature of German politics that results from it, creates room for smaller parties to flourish. For example, The Left, which I mentioned above, is a small party made up of a variety of left wing political groups with some past links to Communism. In the UK a party like this would have a hard time getting council seats. In Germany, they hold 76 parliamentary seats.

 

Now the advantage of smaller parties having a genuine chance of getting elected is that they then have to think about more than appealing to their own core supporters. If you actually have a chance of being elected you can’t just be seen as the crazy guys yelling from the side-lines. You actually have to think about how you appear to the electorate in general and what’s in your manifesto for the population at large. Imagine how much soul searching UKIP would have to do if they thought there was a chance they might actually gain seats in parliament.

 

Of course under a coalition system, it can be harder to get things down, as you are always at the mercy of your partners. But it certainly hasn’t done Mrs Merkel any harm, given that she is on track to beat Mrs Thatcher as the longest serving female head of government in EU history. And unlike with Mrs Thatcher, there doesn’t seem to be any desire in Germany to be rid of Mrs Merkel.

 

The British system of parliamentary democracy is respected the world over. But in this modern age, where people won’t just accept the concept of a two party dynamic, where people’s political opinions don’t just fit into left or right boxes, maybe the time has come to take some lessons from our friends in Germany.

An Open Letter to University Freshers.

Dear University Fresher’s

With a load of you moving in at the University of Gloucestershire today, I started thinking about when I moved to university, and what my life has been like since then.

I was terrified when I started university. A new life, in a new town which I had only visited once before. This was my first step on the road to an independent life, trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do. It was like standing on the edge of a massive ocean, waiting to dive in. But now as I start my third year, I look back and I know it has been one of the best experiences of my life.

I have grown more than I ever thought possible, both intellectually and emotionally. I have a fair idea of what I want to do with my life, even if I don’t have a five point plan. My faith is stronger than ever and I’ve met some of the best friends I’ve ever made and I met my girlfriend. There have been some rough patches, but, all in all, I’ve had a great time.

I know that those moving in today have a lot to worry about, not least, on top of all the stress of going to university, having to pay £9000 in tuition fees. I still maintain allowing that level of tuition fees was one of the biggest mistakes of the current government, and a decision that may well be the death knell of the Liberal Democrats. I know that university isn’t for everyone and the government should be seeking to invest either in employment or in other means of education and training for young people. But if people want to go to uni, they shouldn’t have to risk racking up massive debts in order to do it.

University is a great experience. Whether you end up at a big one like Oxford or Cambridge, or at a smaller one UOG or UWE, it doesn’t matter. University is what you make of it. Everyone’s experiences are unique to them, and help you figure out what you can do. Don’t ignore any open doors. You will be offered lots of opportunities, and even if you don’t think you can do them, give them a try. You never know what’ll happen. That’s how I got this writing gig after all.

Ignore all the stereotypes that you may have heard. Don’t go in with any preconceptions. Set out with an open mind, and a willingness to try anything – except mixing drinks- and you will be fine. Join societies; make friends, part ways with decent sleep. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll get homesick, and you’ll forget what home was like, all at the same time. Don’t be afraid. People will be there to look after you.

As I stare down the barrel of my third year, with graduation at the end of it, I’m almost jealous of you, and the brilliant three years you have ahead of you. Make the most of it.

Welcome to University. You’re going to love it.

William Davie.

The Dream Not Yet Fulfilled

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed - we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal...I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.”

It was fifty years ago this week that Dr Martin Luther King gave his famous, “I have a dream” speech, a speech that looked forward to a day when equality would reign, when it was what you did, not what you looked like, that mattered.

Some would argue that Dr King’s dream has been fulfilled. They would say that black people in America are no longer looked down upon as second class citizens. The laws that discriminated against them have been abolished. They are more and more – with certain exceptions of course – considered equal. After all, the US has just re-elected its first black president. Surely the dream has indeed become a reality?

However, we know that this isn’t true. While legalised segregation is no longer a problem, there is evidence that black people are still looked down upon by significant sections of white American society. You only have to look at the case of Travyon Martin – shot dead for the crime of being black in a white neighbourhood – or the mad ‘birther ‘movement that has grown up around the Obama presidency, precipitated by small minded people who simply can’t accept the idea of a black presidency and who therefore argue that Mr Obama was not born in the United States and is the President only by fraud.

It is also worth noting that, while Dr King’s dream centred on the United States, it was also a dream for the world, and there is abundant evidence that even here in the United Kingdom there is still inequality based on race and a deep rooted distrust of anyone who isn’t seen as “white” or British. While the English far right may have fallen into disarray in recent years with the decline of the National Front and the British National Party, it has been replaced by the “respectable face” of English nationalism, in the form of UKIP, whose rapid rise in popularity has highlighted the fact that large sections of the British electorate still distrust foreigners. After all, people very rarely vote for UKIP because of its polices over the NHS.

But it’s not only UKIP. Recently the Coalition sent vans out into areas of London with a high proportion of residents from ethnic minorities with signs urging illegal immigrants to “go home,” an action that has recently been decried as “racist” and “shameful” by Scottish MSPs and the Scottish charity Positive Action in Housing. And this wasn’t the work of a bunch of fringe racists. This was a Home Office policy.

I long for the day when Dr King’s dream will be fulfilled. When it won’t matter where you come from, or what you look like, or what language you speak. When the only thing that will matter about you is how you behave. When we will not think it odd to see a black or Asian MP on the front benches of Parliament. When colour will be irrelevant. But I suspect that that day is long off, and we have a lot of work to do, before we can truly cry, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty we are free at last!”

Welcome to 1984

Ok, if you had to choose between, let’s say, Egypt or the United Kingdom, and predict which country you think is more likely to detain someone for nine hours without cause, I’m willing to bet that most of you would say Egypt. The UK after all doesn’t do stuff like that.

However, it turns out, of course, that we apparently do.

Now I can understand why our government – and the American government come to that – would not want some of the information leaked by Edward Snowden to come to light. It is, after all, information regarding the activities of two of the world’s biggest security services, and there is bound to be stuff in there that is better off not being printed, not to prevent embarrassment, but for reasons of national security.

But the point remains that if the Government is keen to prevent information being published, for whatever reason, there are legal avenues which it can pursue. The government can issue the newspapers with a little thing called a DA-Notice which means that a newspaper cannot legally print the information that is covered by the notice. It’s like an injunction, only with the Official Secrets Act behind it. What they can’t do is send a senior civil servant down to a newspaper to strong arm them. And they most certainly cannot drag someone out of the line at Heathrow and detain them under some obscure section of the Terrorism Act.

David Miranda had done nothing wrong, nor was he a suspected terrorist – though apparently under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act that doesn’t matter. What he is, is the partner of Glenn Greenwald, a journalist working on the Snowden story, and what he was doing was carrying information that Greenwald needed for his work on that story. Again, if the Government was worried about what that information contained there were perfectly legal ways for them to get hold of it. Detaining Mr Miranda was unnecessary and comes across as a blatant attempt to scare people into not reporting on the Snowden material.

It’s not just the Government’s decision to go all Orwellian on the Fourth Estate that has me angry though, though that does terrify me. It’s the hypocrisy of it that really gets to me. On the one hand, you have a news report about the Government ordering the detention of a journalist for no reason other than that they can, and on the other, you have them condemning Egypt and Syria for their acts of oppression. You can’t have it both ways.

If this country is really committed to standing up for those who cannot help themselves and to  being a bastion of free speech, free ideas and free thought, then we have to act like it. Sometimes that means letting people do stuff that we don’t like or that we don’t necessarily want them to do. But if the Government is going to use strong arm tactics to get its way, then it needs to keep its nose out of international affairs. After all, nobody has any reason to listen to a hypocrite

 

Frack Off Indeed

It’s understandable why the people of Balcombe are unhappy. Not to mention the people of the “desolate” North West and North East. I don’t think I would want a fracking operation on my doorstep either.

Now please don’t misunderstand me. I am as much in favour of using sustainable energy sources as the next twenty one year old, not least because, very soon, we are going to be faced with a situation where a group of miners are going to emerge from the coal face, shake their heads grimly and report that there ain’t no more down there. As a world and a civilisation we desperately need to move away from fossil fuels.

And on many levels I can understand the appeal of fracking. There are enough untapped pockets of natural gas to last us for a decade or more, it creates jobs – very important right now – and it isn’t too complicated. Essentially, you insert water and extract gas. The pluses are there for all to see.

But unfortunately so are the minuses. Fracking involves shooting a mixture of pressurised water and sand down a well shaft at very high speeds and essentially “fracturing” the rock underneath (hence fracking’s full name of “hydraulic fracturing”) thus releasing the gas. Unfortunately, doing this comes with all sorts of side effects that no community would want to deal with. For one thing, natural gas isn’t the only thing released during the fracking process and the various harmful chemicals that are also released tend to find their way into the local water table. There are also concerns about the side effects of the chemicals used during fracking process itself, including such things as benzene, uranium and hydrochloric acid. All this before we get into what repeated fracking does to the geological stability of the local area.

I am all in favour of the government looking into alternative energy resources, but at the moment it seems as if they are looking for the quick solution, the quick fix. That’s not what the energy crisis needs. We don’t need to put something in place that will fix problems now only to create bigger ones in future. We still have time to invest in ways that we know work, such as wind power, and work out all the kinks involved with them. After all, for all its flaws, at least a wind turbine doesn’t dump radium into the local drinking water.

As I have said, on the surface fracking seems like the perfect solution. But once you dig a bit deeper you discover that this is just another example of the Coalition looking for the easiest and flashiest solution so that they can claim they have done something without actually having to put in any of the hard work involved in coming up with a properly thought out answer to the problems we are facing.

The government needs to listen to the people of Balcombe and look at the data again. If after that, fracking is still the best solution, then they can go right ahead and start, with my blessing. But until then, can they please just frack right off.

                                                                                                

Maybe we should be toning things down

As an unashamed supporter of the British Monarchy, I was of course very excited about the birth of Prince George of Cambridge, and I wish both him and his parents every happiness. However, that’s not what I’m going to write about today, because, let’s be honest, it’s been overdone.

I was in the John Lewis food hall in Bluewater yesterday, and in the process of wandering around aimlessly stumbled across THE NEBUCHADNEZZAR, a bottle of champagne 2′6″ tall, 15 litres in volume, and costing a mere £1400. The scary thing is that a brief session on Google showed me that this isn’t the biggest size of champagne bottle available (that, incidentally, is the Melchizedek, 30 litres in volume, roughly 4′ tall and probably costing a live unicorn).

Now at the best of times  I have a problem with the type of decadent posturing that such items are a symptom of, just as I have a problem with people who drive  4 x 4s in central London, as if to say, “Well, I could drive a Fiat Punto, but I can afford to run this and you can’t, so I’m going to buy it.” But I especially have a problem with it now. We are still – despite the Treasury pulling out the bunting over 0.6% growth – in a time of recession and, according to the government, we are supposed to be “all in this together.” But the existence of the Nebuchadnezzar proves that in fact there are still those who are less in this than the rest of us.

The fact that it was even on sale proves that, while people all around the country are struggling to feed their families and earn a decent living, there are still those who look up from their game of croquet, or kick the peasant, signal their manservant and say “Jeeves, I’m a little parched. Fetch the Nebuchadnezzar will you.  And, while you’re at it, the swan stuffed with duck, stuffed with quail. I fancy a sandwich.” There are still those who have no idea what it means to be hungry, or unemployed, or homeless. They couldn’t even imagine what that would be like.

Now I’m sure some will argue that the production of luxury items like the Nebuchadnezzar and the Melchizedek provides jobs, which people can ill afford to lose in a time of austerity. But let’s be honest. Pop into any wine merchants – or, to be fair, any supermarket- and there is clearly enough work going in the wine industry without the need to produce something that costs roughly £100 a glass.

 I’m not saying that we can’t enjoy ourselves. We all need something to cheer ourselves up from time to time, especially in a time of austerity when everything can seem so grim. Yet surely there has to be some better, cheaper, less in your face, way of doing it than by buying a bottle of Champagne you’d have a hard time picking up without the help of your faithful manservant.

 

Maybe it's time we just went Federal

It’s not often that a sitting government’s attempt to massively change the way the UK’s political system works just passes everybody by without so much as ruffling a few feathers, especially when it’s a change that will only benefit the party proposing it.

This week the Coalition introduced a proposal designed to solve once and for all the curious issue of the West Lothian Question – that strange quirk of British politics that allows Scottish, Welsh  and Northern Irish MPs to vote on issues that only concern England whereas English MPs cannot vote on issues that only concern Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Coalition’s solution? Ban Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs from voting on issues on English bills. Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs, otherwise known as half the parliamentary Labour Party.

Now I’m not saying that the West Lothian Question doesn’t need solving – though we have managed to get along without solving it for a very long time – but this isn’t so much a solution as a partisan attempt by the Conservative party to behead the Labour party and prevent it from being able to form an effective government ever again. Under this bill, a Scottish Labour Prime Minister would have been unable to vote on half the legislation of his own government, as would half his party, basically rendering his government powerless. You can see who this benefits can’t you?

If the Conservatives are serious about dealing with the problem of the West Lothian Question, then there is a solution that would not only solve it, but benefit them in perpetuity. Set up a devolved English Parliament. This is an idea that has been floated before, but dismissed on the grounds that we have already have a parliament at Westminster and have no need for two. But the success of the devolved parliament in Scotland and the devolved  assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland have proved that individual national assemblies or parliaments can work within the wider Westminster framework.

In fact, I would go one step further and suggest that we need to follow Germany’s example. Maybe the time has come for the United Kingdom to become the Federated Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Germany, much like the US, is made up of sixteen federal states, each with their own leader and their government, overseen by the Federal Government in Berlin. Maybe this is what we should do. Strip Westminster of everything bar foreign policy, tax raising powers and the ability to create legislative guidelines for the federal assemblies to operate. Everything else relating to the day to day running of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland would be handed over to the federal assemblies. This would solve the West Lothian Question once and for all, and would also serve to pull the need for independence out from under Scotland’s feet. If they already have all the powers they need to run themselves, why become an independent country? It would also potentially allow us to reduce the number of MPs sent to Westminster; though that is something we’d have to look at in more detail.

Westminster would never go for it, being overly keen on keeping as much power for itself as possible. But in the face of an overtly partisan attempt by the Tories to keep themselves in power, maybe this is an idea that needs to be seriously considered.

We Need Local Papers

I have just finished a very enjoyable and interesting week with my local newspaper, the News Shopper. As this was my second time with them, this year I was given a bit more responsibility, in terms of going out and finding stories.

But this blog is not about my experiences at the News Shopper. This blog is about the importance of local journalism. One of the first things you are taught when you start studying journalism is that local journalism and local papers aren’t what they used to be. The money isn’t there for local papers to employ as many journalists as they used to and because of this local journalism has become less about actual reporting and more about recycling press releases. This isn’t because the new breed of local journalist doesn’t care about proper reporting. It’s just that when you are being told by the higher ups that you have to produce x amount of stories in a very short time then some things slip. That’s just economics. Twenty people trying to do the job of thirty are always going to have a harder time.

This is a shame, I think, because it deprives a community of one of its greatest assets. A proper local paper will know the area it covers back to front. It will know all the shortcuts, all the people worth talking to, and its reach and contacts will be limitless. For example the News Shopper’s patch also includes Woolwich. When Drummer Lee Rigby was murdered, they were among the first on the scene, and were able to cover the story in a way that has earned them congratulations from a lot of people. Other more famous news outlets were asking them for quotes, as they knew that they would know the details better than anyone else on the ground, bar the police.

Local newspapers can do more to inform a community about what’s going on in their local area than possibly any other form of communication. And bigger news groups can also find a use for them. Sometimes – as in the case of the guy who escaped from Southend Crown Court – the local press, by benefit of being on the scene, is able to break stories before the big boys get there. They can be an unending source of useful and interesting stories.

Of course they have their flaws as well. In an attempt to cover their costs, they can often come off looking like they contain more adverts than news. But that’s a minor disadvantage when compared to all of the major advantages that local papers have.

Lastly, by not buying local papers or reading them, or paying them any attention, we are depriving ourselves of not only a very useful source of information, but also a very, very, important part of our media heritage.

Local newspapers were where it all began, before the nationals arrived. Without them, we would not have the news as we know it today. And a world like that is unthinkable.

Pomp and Glory

Those of you who read my weekly musings regularly will know that I am no fan of the style of knee jerk, jingoistic, patriotism espoused by the likes of the BNP and the EDL. However that does not mean that I am not proud of my country, quite the opposite.

There are many things I love about being British. For example, I love our overall commitment to fair play and decency, the central role of tea in our daily lives, and the fact that we regularly take the mick out of ourselves (mostly so no one else can). But one of the things I love above all is our sense of tradition and ceremony.

I was reminded of this while I was watching the Trooping of the Colour this morning, part of the Queen’s Official Birthday celebrations. What other country in the world could pull off something as amazing as that? Not only does it look amazing, and almost perfectly choreographed, but it is insanely well rehearsed for months in advance. It is hard to picture any other country having the reason, or the time, to pull off something like this. And yet we pull it off again, time and time again, year after year.

We demonstrated it last year with the celebrations for the Jubilee as well. I dare those of you who watched it to say that the river pageant wasn’t inspiring, amazing and downright beautiful at times as well. The same was true of the Olympics’ Opening Ceremony. When we as a country want to show off, when we pull out all of the stops, then prepare to be amazed.

There are lots of things wrong with the country at the moment, not least the fact that we have a government beset with infighting, which seems to be making an extra special effort not to make people’s lives better, but to make them much, much worse. Our economy is still not great and not showing any signs of getting better, and it can seem at times as if we have lost everything that once made us a great nation. It is this feeling that groups like the BNP and UKIP feed upon and use to gain positions of influence and power.

The thing is they are wrong. All the things that used to make us a great country still do. The recession hasn’t dented them, nor has it destroyed them. The things that make us great were never physical things, like industrial prowess, or an empire. They were things I mentioned earlier, our shared sense of history, our shared culture and traditions. They still exist. They are not physical things, but things that exist in the very fabric of our island, that are bound into the very souls of the people who live here. They are eternal, unaffected by the stresses of daily life. All we have to do is look at the Trooping of the Colour, or the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, or take a walk up to a building older than some countries, to discover that we are still, and always shall be, great.

Survivor is Exactly the Right Word

I’m a cancer survivor.

I don’t talk about it very often, but I am. In December 2010, just a few weeks shy of Christmas, I was told that I had testicular cancer, and would be beginning a nine week course of chemotherapy early in the New Year. Those few weeks changed my life, both for the better and for the worse.

So reading that by 2020, a scant seven years from now, almost half of the people living in this country will suffer from cancer at some point in their lifetime unsettled and upset me. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone, not even my worst enemy, and the fact that most of those people will survive isn’t much of a comfort.

But what really caught my eye about the article was the fact that it used the word “survive”. They won’t recover from cancer. They will survive it. I know that it was meant in the sense that they won’t die from it, but it struck me in a completely different way. From my perspective you don’t recover from cancer. You simply survive it if you are lucky.

To pull out an exhausted military metaphor, having cancer is like fighting a war. It takes all your energy, all your time, all your focus. It takes everything you have and offers nothing in return. It wounds you and leaves you with scars, some physical and obvious, some not so much. And if you are lucky, if you are very, very lucky, sometimes you get to walk away at the end and say that you have survived it. You come through the other side, but you are not, and never will be, the same person you were before. And cancer will never leave you, it will always be there in the background, haunting everything you are and everything you do.

I know it has affected me. I still dread my regular outpatients appointments, even though I know I have nothing to fear now, and I still wince every time I hear mention of someone else getting cancer, both because I know how it feels and because I know that but for the grace of God it could be me again. Cancer is something that, once you have it, stays with you, silent but always present.

To borrow a quote from the TV show Firefly, “No one leaves Serenity Valley. They just learn to live there.” Similarly you only ever recover from cancer physically. But the other than that, you just have to learn to live with it. You don’t just wake up the day after you final chemo and think “I am now done with cancer.” You wake up the day after you final chemo session and think “This is day one PC. Post cancer.” It changes your life forever, and the best you can do is not let it overwhelm you or take over your life.

My name is William Davie. And I am a cancer survivor.

 

 

MPs Are Not For Hire.

There is nothing wrong with people asking MPs for help or asking MPs if they can bring up in Parliament issues dear to their hearts. That’s why we are a representative democracy. As much as politicians quite often do a bad job of representing their constituents – or the views of anyone other than themselves – that is what their job is about. Representing people’s views.

The problem comes when MPs are not representing the views of their constituents – Mrs Bloggs and her twenty seven dogs – but the views of a huge interest group or a multinational corporation like British Airways, and are not doing it out of a sense of duty, or because it is a job that they have been elected to, but in exchange for a substantial fee. When this happens, it appears as if our representatives are in fact up for hire.

I suspect many in Westminster had hoped that the scandal of lobbying and special interests had ended, and that they would be able to move on. Having promised to tighten the regulations regarding lobbying, they could quietly shelve the legislation when no-one was looking. But with the revelation that backbench Conservative MP Stephen Mercer has been taking money from the dictatorial government of Fiji in exchange for lobbying on their behalf, the whole sorry mess is back in the spotlight

It is easy to understand why lobbying takes place. After all, corporations – while not people – have needs as well and if it looks like government legislation is going to have an impact on their business it is only logical that they will want to express their opinion. And while a public service, or perhaps because of it, being an MP is hardly the most lucrative business in the world, you don’t go into it if you want to make money. Under those circumstances it is understandable that they might be tempted by the offer of a little extra money on the side, for doing no more than ask a question.

The problem is that while it is understandable, this practice undermines everything that government should be about; in fact it undermines our entire democracy. The point of the British system of government, and the reason that it has been adopted around the world, is that it is the people, serving the people. It is supposed to be, and should be, about helping and serving the people on the ground, who just want to make a living and raise a family. But if their needs are being bumped to the bottom of the pile, if their questions aren’t being asked, because someone else has paid for the privilege then the whole system simply falls apart.

If MPs are just mouthpieces for hire, available to whoever has the biggest chequebook then our entire system of government, all the work that has been done down the centuries, by thousands of people, to reach a system which is open and fair to all, is for naught. Don’t worry about voting next time around. The whole system has already been bought and paid for.

 

The UK is no place for Fascists

Hands up if you are one hundred per cent pure blood English. If your ancestors came over from anywhere, be it on the Windrush, with the Norman invasion in 1066, or in a Viking longboat, please proceed to Dover and leave immediately. That’s the mind-set of Tommy Robinson and Nick Griffin, leaders of the English Defence League and the British National Party respectively, and never mind that that would leave the UK with a population of about six people.

The events in Woolwich on Wednesday were horrible and have rightly been condemned by everyone from David Cameron to the head of the Muslim Council of Britain. However, I find it disturbing that any Muslim body has to distance themselves from lunatic extremists due to people not being able to tell the difference (you don’t see the Archbishop of Canterbury having to apologise every time the Westboro Baptist Church does something offensive) and what I find even more disturbing is that what happened in Woolwich has returned Britain’s far right groups to prominence. Despite the BNP being bankrupt and down to one MEP, Nick Griffin was on the front page of the Independent today. This incident has given Britain’s neo-fascist organisations, previously collapsing in on themselves, a foothold back into the national psyche.

The fact that these groups still exist is disappointing enough. But the fact that they would use the murder of a solider, a man who served and represented this country to the best of his ability, as an excuse to go “See. We told you we were right. You should have listened to us,” is not only disgusting, but goes against everything they claim to represent.

The United Kingdom has never been about one culture, or one race, or one group of people. We are an island nation, made up of all of those who down the centuries have come here, settled, and called it home, sometimes conquering, sometimes simply emigrating, and who have in time added to what makes Britain, Britain. If you try to take that away, by blaming immigrants for all the problems, or by trying to assert that Britain is only a place for white people, then you are taking away the very thing that makes us who we are, our diversity and our acceptance of diversity. That is why far right fascism has never caught on, and why the rise of UKIP is so terrifying.

The EDL claim that they are “defending” the English. But what does being English, or being British, mean? If you ask me, it is about more than just nationality, it is a state of mind, a state of being. If you believe that you are English, if you think of yourself as British, then as far as I’m concerned that’s all you need. Regardless of where you came from originally, if you think of England as your home, then you are more than welcome within the boundaries of what Shakespeare called “this scepted isle.”

                                                                                                                                                            

Bad Atmosphere

I didn’t think there was a more stupid government appointment made by the Coalition than making Richard Benyon, the Undersecretary of State for Natural Environment, Water and Rural Affairs. Put the richest MP, who also happens to be a massive land owner and a passionate hunter in charge of animals and the countryside? Great idea!  Until, that is, Mr Cameron appointed George Eustace as his new advisor on energy and climate change.  George “I hate Wind farms” Eustace.

Number Ten has suffered a bit of a climate change exodus recently with several of Cameron’s advisers chucking in the towel. It’s not surprising really. Despite Cameron attempting to make the Tories more green friendly– including changing the party logo to that ridiculous tree –, just like the other two major parties, the Conservatives attitude to the problem of climate change can best be summed up as “We’re not pulling out of the Kyoto Protocols. What more do you want?”

The answer is a lot more. Climate change is a major problem, and one that if not tackled will hamstring the planet within the next few generations. According to Greenpeace, if you scale down the age of the earth to forty six years, humans have only existed for the last hour and in the last minute we have destroyed or used up more of the earth’s resources than we can hope to replace. We are doing a bad job of safeguarding the planet for future generations and the government should be doing everything possible to ensure that in fifty years’ time we aren’t all walking around wearing smog masks like they do in downtown Tokyo.

But it probably won’t. It will take a lot to convince the government to get off its backside and do something because, at the end of the day, there is no profit in renewable energy research. In fact ,  it takes more money to set up then it would initially save, thereby costing people money. On the other hand, there is a lot of money in oil and other more proven energy sources. The government has to balance a need to save money with a need to save the planet and at the end of the day it’s clear which way that particular dice will fall.  When it comes to a choice between people and profit, profit always wins in the end.

One day, and maybe one day soon, we are going to have to face up to the mistakes we have made when it comes to the climate. I’m not saying we are facing a ‘Day after Tomorrow’ style extinction event, but whatever happens it’s not going to be good. Then we will realise what we should have been doing all along. Of course by then it will be too late. The time to do something is now, while we still have a chance to change things. But until something does happen, a bad atmosphere will still hang over Westminster. An atmosphere of inactivity and unbelief that will probably never go away.