Dystopias

Dystopias are usually dark images presented as what may be to come, or what could have been, often in order to comment on the present and current trends. What follows below is a list of writers and their works exploring variously the predicted future, or imagined futures, or imagined pasts, or imagined presents. I do not know whether the focus is merely mine, but technology and stage of technological development seem to play a significant role, whether through science fiction or through fantasy. An issue faced by all dystopic works is how to separate the dystopia from the real world. One method is to set the dystopia in the past. More commonly, the dystopia is set in the future, sometimes post-apocalyptically. A second method is to invent a fantasy world (Gormenghast, Middle Earth). A third is to place the dystopia on an island.

Early Works
Although I feel reluctant to include here The Revelation of St. John, canonically the final book of the New Testament, it purports to consider the future. Indeed, it is an eschatological work, that expresses the fears and hopes of the writer. There is no sense of a different technology, merely the destruction of society, maybe on moral grounds.
In total contrast, some of the writings and drawings of Galileo Galilei focus on moving technology forwards so as to better the lot of people in contemporary society.
Thomas More wrote a utopia, a pastoral idyll that I guess (for I have not read it) to be a kind of correction to all that was wrong with Elizabethan England. As I understand it, his writing was not about the future.
Nostradamus purported to predict the future. No doubt he had an agenda that was more financial and less mystical than popular imagination would care to believe. However, for people who take him seriously, the future was his to observe, not to control or judge. Why are people fascinated with his writing? What sort of people are fascinated with his writing?

Island Dystopias
Published in 1719, Daniel Defoe's novel about Robinson Crusoe, was based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk. Selkirk was shipwrecked, and for four years lived on an island off the coast of Chile. This was at a time when Britain was developing its empire. Selkirk and Crusoe had access only to pre-Iron Age technology, and the island represented regression.
The issue of regression, but much more explicitly regarding human nature, was explored by William Golding in The Lord of the Flies. In this 1950s novel, the aeroplane crash lands on a desert island, and the only survivors are children. The atavism that lies at the root of what it is to be human is progressively exposed by the island, leading to the savage murders of both Simon and Piggy.
In 1980, Lucy Irvine agreed with Gerald Kingsland to be Castaway (book, and movie starring Oliver Reed, 1986) on a desert island (Tuin Island in the Torres Straight, off the northern coast of Australia), as were both Joanna Lumley in Girl Friday (1994), and Tom Hanks, albeit fictionally, in Cast Away (2000).
Islas Sorna and Nublar constitute a different kind of island dystopia, inhabited by dinosaurs. These are largely closed worlds in which technology has been or becomes destroyed. It is ironic that it is only the most advanced technology that has permitted the re-creation of the archaic animal (and plant) life, whereas the dinosaurs themselves have the effect of destroying all technology. There is an obvious sense of disclocated time: 65 million years ago, a kind of present day, a near future in which such technology would be possible. There is also the observation in each movie that our society is fixated with entertainment I: theme park, II: safari, III: extreme sports / personal recreation.

Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe
During the height of the industrial revolution, with new sources of energy and new forms of power, the promise and threat of modern technology began to be explored.
In France, Jules Verne was writing exciting adventure stories, such as Journey to the Centre of the Earth, with exploration at their heart and new understandings of science and technology to add spice and suspend disbelief.
H.G.Wells wrote about possible futures. In The Time Machine, his protagonist is an observer; however, the tension between the Eloi and the Morlocks suggests a moral dimension that accords with Wells' eugenicist leanings. In both War of the Worlds and The Shape of Things to Come, Wells focuses on England in the future, although he gives a sense of life beyond Britain.
Fritz Lang's Metropolis is distinctly set in a future. It is not comforting.
Aldous Huxley set Brave New World in the future of the 26th century. It is a utopia in that it is a place of order, but it is a dystopia in that to a contemporary person there is no freedom. Huxley was extrapolating from what he knew of social (rise of Nazism and Stalinism) and technological developments (eugenics and the steadily increasing mechanisation of society).
Tolkein's response to what was happening in the world was to regress into the early medieval times of Middle Earth. In his highly moral tales, social relationships are rigid, and there is an absence of technology beyond the Iron Age. Middle Earth includes England (The Shire), but also includes dangerous places that are far away.
C.S.Lewis, in his writings, also explored a moral (Christian) past in Narnia (some of which resembles the medieval England of Robin Hood tales). However, Lewis also looked into the future, albeit with moral foreboding (Voyage to Venus, Out of the Silent Planet, That Hideous Strength).
Mervyn Peake also apparently retreated into a kind of Gothic (perhaps early 19th century) English past in his Gormenghast trilogy. However, his work is also more obviously a comment on what he was experiencing in mid-20th century England.
Written in 1947, and also commenting on post-war England, albeit set in the near future, is Orwell/Blair's 1984. There is technology, but no science. There is no freedom. For faithful party worker Winston Smith, the bad dream turns into a nightmare when he transgresses. There is for me an irony that whilst Orwell/Blair wrote that Big Brother is watching us, and therefore we must not transgress, in early twenty-first century, everyone is watching Big Brother, and has little time to transgress. With the exception, perhaps, of Monaco and Singapore, metropolitan Britain is probably one of the most observed places in the world, with webcams, cellphone cameras and closed-circuit television cameras beyond count. However, it is also clear from incidents such as the terrorist bombings in London on 7 July 2005, that despite hugely more advanced technology to the British state than was available in 1947 Britain, or to Airstrip One in 1984, it was not possible to prevent the bombings: the sense of being watched is more in the mind than in reality.
In Brazil, Terry Gilliam reworks 1984 into a darkly humourous absurdity. Whilst the location of the drama is a city in an economically-developed state, the place is more obviously New York than London.
In Escape from New York, John Carpenter takes the New York dystopia almost to its logical conclusion: the city as a prison from which there is no escape.
On the other hand, although A Clockwork Orange, is set both in place (southern England) and time (1960s), Anthony Burgess and Stanley Kubrick, in their dystopia, consider the breakdown of morals.
In John Wyndham's novels, there is a breakdown in society, usually precipitated by the desire for dangerous (scientific) knowledge: The Day of the Triffids, The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos (Village of the Damned: John Carpenter), The Kraken Wakes.
On the other hand, Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick see progressive and evolutionary development of human awareness both as co-dependent on technological development, and also continuing into the future, as shown in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Similar ideas are developed more dystopically in Minority Report (starring Tom Cruise)
In I, Robot, Isaac Asimov develops a future in which the distinction between humankind and our technological creations become indistinguishable.

Post-Apocalyptic Visions of the Future
In The Postman, Kevin Costner plays the part of a drifter in a post-apocalyptic future in which society and civilised values and morals have been all-but destroyed. The stage of technological development is a mixture of early-Iron Age (I think that there is a blacksmith) and legacy industrial. Although the movie is critically held as flawed, it raises some interesting issues, for instance about what it is that we carry into the future. A hope for their future lies in rebuilding their civilisation, initially focused around the US Mail (c.f. the role of the Post Office in Die Blechtrommel).
In Waterworld, Kevin Costner plays the part of a drifter in a post-apocalyptic future in which society and civilised values and morals have been all-but destroyed. The stage of technological development is a mixture of pre-Iron Age and legacy industrial. The movie questions what will be left of our civilisation in centuries to come. A hope for the future, which becomes realised in the movie, is finding and re-inhabiting dry land.
In the Mad Max series, Mel Gibson plays the part of a drifter in a post-apocalyptic future in which society and civilised values and morals have been all-but destroyed. There is no hope for the future, and all hope has been destroyed.

The UK Immigration Debate

This post is based partly on two postings I made on the weblog of BBC television's flagship current affairs programme: Newsnight. During late October and early November 2007 the print and broadcast media have been making much of announcements made by the UK government about the number of people without British nationality who are living in the UK. I have been very unhappy about the tone of the discourse, the tenor of which is to wish to reduce or relegate the validity of people not born in the UK to live and/or work in the UK. The pronouns most frequently used are "we" (referring to people born in the UK, with the strong implication that these people are white-skinned and speak English as a first language) and "them" (referring to people not born in the UK, with the strong implication that these people may or may not be white-skinned, but do not speak English as a first language). I do not wish to be categorised as part of the "we". I should much rather that the focus were on 'people living and/or working in the UK'.

I am fed up with hearing commentators endlessly repeat immigration statistics. I would much rather listen to an informed and intelligent discussion about the changing demographics of ecomically-developed and -developing states, about the desirability or otherwise of doing anything about the changing demographics, about an ethical analysis of migration (refugees, asylum seekers, poor people wanting a better life), about the pros and cons of classic nationhood in this
globalised world, and about the ways in which the news media and political parties address, or fail to address, these issues.

Myth-buster 1:
Britain is not a small island. Britain is huge: not only are there are vast, unpopulated tracts, there are many towns and cities in northern England that are under-populated with stagnant local economies awaiting revitalisation. Britain is far from the most densely populated economically-developed country. Greater Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York City, Monaco and the Netherlands, for example, are more densely populated than the supposedly over-populated south east of England, and they are social and economic powerhouses for that.

Myth-buster 2:
Indigenous culture is a determinant only for people who wish to make it so. Contemporary Britain has more in common with most of the economically-developed world than it does with Britain a century ago ("The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." Hartley, L.P., London, 1953) The culture of a country is whatever the people who happen to live in that place make it to be, not what it used to be. Christianity was once alien to the islands now called Britain. Happily, few of the world's major cultures are now strangers to each other here in Britain.

Myth-buster 3:
I have neither a legal nor a moral right to determine who lives in my street. I do have a right to choose in which street I live. Many Britons choose to exercise that right by migrating to France, Spain, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and so on. I am happy that people from all around the globe choose to exercise their legal right to migrate to Britain. Rather than tightened, as the current political rhetoric would have, I should prefer that legal restrictions on migration were eased.

Listening to an edition of Newsnight broadcast on the evening of Thursday 8 November 2007, during which telephone callers were invited to offer their opinions, it became clear that few if any of the callers were interested in generalisable facts and statistics. They did little to demonstrate that their minds were open to rational argument. Instead they used slogans such as "Britain is a small island", and "We are an island nation", "Our country has been flooded with immigrants" and "We have become an ethnic minority". It was, at the same time, clear that many of the callers, speaking from their own experience, perceived no benefit to themselves from the presence of people who they considered to be from elsewhere ("foreign", "immigrant"). Whilst I am enthusiastic to live in a modern, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic country, many people born in the UK would prefer to live in a society made up of English-speaking, white-skinned, anglo-saxons. Their intentions, as they so readily (too readily, perhaps) stated, are not (strongly) racist. However, they directly experience the discomfort of social change, including dislocation, but perceive themselves as receiving none of the benefits. Arguments such as "The NHS/London Transport/fruit picking would collapse without the work of people from overseas" are weak in their eyes for two reasons: many of the jobs undertaken by unskilled people from overseas are low status jobs, and are invisible in the way that homeless people on the street tend to be looked through (and being poorly recognised quite how many jobs of this kind there are, there is little sense of how vulnerable to collapse these sections of the UK economy may be); there are white British people who are unemployed who should be doing such jobs (with little attention being given to the location of the people versus jobs, and the health status of many unemployed people in relation to physically demanding jobs).

Migrant Workers

Some of the UK public debate about immigration focuses on the perceived value to the UK economy of people from other countries. The argument is that the British economy benefits from both the specialist skills, and also the lower wage expectations, of people from other countries. The debate revolves around the concept of migrant workers. The term is used largely to refer to people who are undertaking low-skilled, poorly-paid jobs such as fruit picking and other agricultural work, office and hospital cleaning, and low status care roles. At the high-status end of the spectrum, it would be unusual for a Chicago-born Managing Director of the UK office of a transnational corporation, or a young, Hong-Kong-born international banker working for a few years in the City, or a partly Frankfurt-based Commodities and Futures Manager who commutes to London for three days each week, to be referred to as 'migrant workers'. Perhaps intermediate in status are the specialist skills of a computer software engineer from, say, Bangalore, who takes a well-paid job in Bristol, Birmingham or Manchester, sending much of his salary to his family in India; or a dentist who has let her flat in Warsaw so that she can live and work in Nottingham for a few years, earning enough money to be able to buy a house in the southern mountains of Poland.

I am unhappy that people from other countries are being seen in terms of their economic worth to the British economy. To me, this view approaches the attitude of seeing people primarily, or even merely, as units of production. Ultimately this is the attitude that permitted (and in some cases still permits) the slave trade. People are, first and foremost, human beings.

Asylum Seekers and Bogus Asylum Seekers and Refugees

I am certain, although I cannot prove it, that in the minds of many people in the UK there is no distinction between the categories of refugee and asylum seeker, and there is an elision between the categories of asylum seeker and migrant worker (who in this context is more typically referred to as an economic migrant, which is considered synonymous with 'someone who is out for whatever they can get'). I am equally certain that, whilst there are occasions when the overall tenor of public discourse leads to more overt expressions of compassion for people fleeing disasters such as drought, flood, famine and wars, the duration of the compassion rarely extends to an enthusiasm to rehouse the victims of such circumstances in the UK. For example, when a volcanic eruption devastated the Caribbean island of Monserrat, there was a national failure in Britain to understand why the displaced people had to come to the UK. "Why can't they go elsewhere?" It was the same with refugees from the war in Bosnia. There appears both to be an unwillingness to accept that, along with every other country with UN membership, the UK has international legal obligations, and also a belief that Britain already does more than its fair share. There is also the perception, expressed most vocally in the 'red-top' press, that people claiming a fear of persecution as the reason for their need to leave their home country, are either lying or exaggerating, and are principally motivated by the simple desire for a better life. These so-called "bogus asylum seekers" are most charitably described as economic migrants, and much resentment is expressed by white British people who would like a better life for themselves. The fact that it may be very hard to leave the country in which one has always lived, the country in which one's relatives and friends (those that remain alive) still live, a country in which one fears that the police (e.g. Jack Mapange) or the military (e.g. asylum seekers from Rwanda and Burundi) or the death squads, will be watching the ports, and also that it is remarkably difficult to arrive in, and gain admittance to (see The Terminal starring Tom Hanks), the UK, is considered to be of little relevance. In The Net, the character played by Sandra Bullock expects to get her life back, which she does in the end, as do the characters played by Harrison Ford in The Fugitive, and by Will Smith in Enemy of the State. Life on the run in one's own country is lonely and miserable, and played by Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State.

Edinburgh: the best place to live in the UK

Edinburgh (population 430,082) is considered to be the best place to live in the UK.

It is easy to offer reasons for Edinburgh's status. The city has shops: (inter)national chain and independent, and the reputation of Princess Street extends beyond the UK. There are restaurants (including several vegetarian restaurants) offering a wide range of cuisines at a range of prices. Tripadvisor lists 194 hotels, 219 B&Bs and inns, and 45 speciality lodgings. There are cinemas, theatres and art galleries that are swept up in an internationally-renowned summer arts festival. Murrayfield is well known to sports fans, and there are golf courses around the city. Encircling the southern half of the city is a near-motorway by-pass, and there is a well-used local bus network, a local rail network, and construction of a tram network is underway. The local economy is thriving, boosted by tourism. The presence of the Scottish parliament is a vote of confidence in the city.

The building that houses the Scottish parliament is a wonderful construction. Although much criticised, and unjustly mocked, it is highly original in design, in excellent taste, apparently fit for purpose (although I should want to hear the opinions of MSPs before firming up on that statement), and an impressive intertwining of contemporary and historical.

Middlesbrough: the worst place to live in the UK

In a recent popular UK television property programme (Location, Location, Location) focusing on the best and worst places to live in the UK, it was announced that Middlesbrough is the worst to live in 2007. The programme-makers compiled and analysed what they implied were vast quantities of statistical data about the areas defined by each local government authority in the UK. The data for Middlesbrough are depressingly clear: poor diet leading to high levels of obesity; heavy use of tobacco leading to poor health; high levels of crime, especially violent crime; high levels of prostitution and illicit drug use; poor quality housing; and poor educational achievement. According to the Office for National Statistics, the population around the docks have the poorest life-expectancy in the UK. Hartlepool, Hull and Grimsby also fared badly for similar reasons. All four are North Sea coast industrial towns that thrived during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but are now stuggling to find new twenty-first century roles, and some kind of post-industrial purpose in life.

When interviewed, people in Middlesbrough expressed unhappiness about the designation. It is not that they expressed any (misplaced, perhaps) sense of responsibility. Some of these people identify with the town, and in a love-me-love-my-dog kind of a way, take the label as a personal criticism: criticise my town and you criticise me. Some denied the designation, claiming that the programme researchers were in error. Although approximations and judgments will have been made, and mistakes are possible, it seems unlikely that the four North Sea coast industrial towns should in truth be designated as deeply desirable places in which to live. The long-held British penchant for empiricism over abstract theory is not lightly to be dumped by denying the data. Some people denied the designation, claiming a southern conspiracy. However, the purpose and motivation for such a conspiracy are unclear.

It would be easy to understand were the people of Middlesbrough to express anger that they are ill-served by the statutory services of local government, the police and the National Health Service, for it is the authorities and the statutory services that are failing the people. However, Ray Mallon, the mayor of Middlesbrough, and its former police chief, rather than committing himself and his office to social improvement, chose to express dissatisfaction with the designation. It is not my intention to criticise the work of any individual, as I am certain that there are many people working in the statutory or voluntary sectors who are performing sterling work under difficult circumstances. However, there is a responsibility for the people who lead and manage these services to be in possession of an analysis and a vision that can lead Middlesbrough, and its people, away from its current status.

Another comment I have heard in this context is that it is unhelpful to kick a dog when it is down. However, Middlesbrough is not a dog, it is a town on some 142,691 people who deserve better services than they are receiving from the organisations with responsibility to serve them. Better a bleak, stark picture that tells the truth, even if it is only a snapshot, than a comforting chocolate box image that glosses over what should be unacceptable.

Diet and health

Of course I am what I eat. If I eat junk then my bodily functions get junked. If I eat poisons my body gets poisoned. If I drink carcinogens I get cancer. This is not rocket science. It is, however, experienced as extremely challenging to people who, wedded to unhealthy habits, deny evidence that demonstrates their habits to be unhealthy. Under the hot African sun an ostrich may be wise to bury its head for a while in the sand. To leave its head buried indefinitely, however, leads inevitably to death. The British news media exist not even in a parallel universe, but in a universe that at times appears to be perpendicular to reality. In keeping with "Up Yours, Delors", "Gotcha" and "Freddy Starr Ate My Hamster", the British news media can be relied on to deride any suggestion that might enpale the deepest ultramarine of political, cultural, social and scientific status quos. (When Murdoch supported Blair in 1997, Murdoch already knew what most of us then did not.) "Bonkers nanny state claims Earth is round" "Boffins claim phlogiston does not exist" "Pinko bishops say Earth goes round sun" If alcohol is a mild carcinogen, then alcohol is a mild carcinogen. If eating mammals too often leads to a variety of cancers and to heart disease, then it probably makes good sense not to eat mammals very often, or even not at all. As I understand it, Canute/Knut did not believe that he would stop the tide: he was demonstrating that not even he could stop the tide. Third, the food, drink and drugs manufacturers. "Would you like to try this lead-based make-up?" "How about this mercury-based medicine?" "Smoking tobacco will improve both your health and your image."
I am happy that money raised from taxes should be spent on promoting healthy living. I do not understand why money raised from taxes is used to promote healthy living at the same time as money is spent promoting those same products. This is like permitting an arsonist to continue to spray petrol onto a fire that firefighters are trying to extinguish.
Manifesto for immediate action:
1. ban all advertising (including sponsorship) of food related to mammals
2. ban all advertising (including sponsorship) of alcohol
3. ban any retail outlet (including supermarkets) from selling alcohol for consumption off the premises, with the exception of licensed, sole-purpose premises (off-licenses), and prohibiting the sale from those licensed, sole-purpose premises of anything that is not explicitly identified in legislation as alcohol-consumption-related (specifically: confectionery, snack foods and soft drinks)
4. ban any retail outlet from selling tobacco with the exception of licensed, sole-purpose premises (tobacconists), and prohibiting the sale of anything that is not explicitly identified in legislation as smoking-related (specifically: confectionery, snack foods, soft drinks, newspapers and magazines)
5. require anyone importing alcohol into the UK, or entering the UK with alcohol (no exceptions) to be in possession of a wholesale or retail license to sell alcohol
6. require anyone importing tobacco into the UK, or entering the UK with tobacco (no exceptions) to be in possession of a wholesale or retail license to sell tobacco.

In case the above appears extreme, it is worth noting that there are places in the world where the sale of alcohol is either banned (such as in some Musim countries) or restricted in a manner similar to that described above (such as in Scandanavia and parts of Canada). There is legislation in most countries about which drugs may be retailed, and control of the way in which those drugs are advertised and retailed. There is legislation in many countries restricting the import without an appropriate license of any quantity whatsoever of a wide variety of foodstuffs (try taking a sandwich into the US through JFK).

There are many people employed in industries relating to the production and distribution of tobacco, alcohol and food derived from mammals. These people will lose their jobs. New jobs must be found for them. Part of the UK, EU and world economies are based around these products, and there will be a reduction in economic activity. New opportunities must be found and exploited. There is very much to be done in the world: spreading education; building developing economies out of their poverty; improving the natural environment; developing and exploiting energy sources that are less destructive of the natural environment; finding ways to rescue archaeology, cultures and languages that are being eclipsed by the modern world; seeking out new ways and places to live; seeking out new pharmaceutical products; improving the quality of the housing in which people live; spreading and embedding new technology; helping people to get fit and lead healthier lives.

Were western societies to progress in the simple ways described above, the move would represent further steps towards a more wholesome existence.

On making fun of disability

At the end of the daily electronic newsletter of the BBC's flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight, some weeks ago, was printed a 'joke' about Van Gogh having severed his ear. I found the 'joke' to be in very poor taste, for the reasons set out below, and wrote the following in the Newsnight weblog feedback.

I found the Van Gogh 'joke' offensive: it colludes with people who laugh at my uncle as "foot-loose" because his foot was amputated as a result of advanced diabetes; with the people who laugh at injured war veterans being "legless" or "'armless "; with people who mock the spasms associated with cerebral palsy; with people who laugh at the disturbing effects of mental health problems. Making these circumstances into 'jokes' might relieve tension in those not directly impacted by disability, but it also brazenly stigmatises. There is so much in life at which to laugh without any need to descend to stigmatising.

I recently read a report on a BBC news webpage 'Humour comes from testosterone' about some research recently carried out that concluded that much humour is sublimated aggression.

Japan 2: some differences between Sunderland and Tokyo

Sunderland has churches made of honey-coloured sandstone. Outside each church may be the street, or maybe a path through a graveyard. Tokyo, Kyoto and Nara have Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines made of wood painted black or white or tomato red. Each temple and shrine has a tori or a gatehouse. The place of worship is hidden behind a wall that encloses an open area. However, the open area is not a graveyard, although it is a place of peace.

When greeting a person, or acknowledging them, or thanking them, or when saying goodbye, Japanese people bow to each other. This action demonstrates respect, and when performed by both (or more) parties, shows mutual respect. How the people of Sunderland communicate respect is not obvious to me.

Pedestrians in Japan tend to obey road crossing signals. However, unlike in Germany where it is usual to encounter a group of people standing beside an empty road waiting for the green man to tell them that they may cross, in Japan (Tokyo, Kyoto and Nara to be precise) they would cross the road if it made no sense to wait. In Sunderland it is a commonplace that pedestrians ignore road crossing signals, endangering themselves and road users.

In Tokyo, and particularly in Kyoto, cyclists ignore instructions and park their bicycles anywhere. Teams of municipal workers make monthly raids to clear the footpaths of illegally-parked bicycles. The bicycles are not locked because it is not expected that anyone would steal them. In Durham a cyclist is likely to be careful where they park and chain their bicycle so as to avoid it being stolen. Few people cycle in central Sunderland.

In Tokyo and Kyoto, the streets are clean because people rarely drop litter. In Sunderland and Durham the streets are clean because gangs of street sweepers remove on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis the litter that people toss onto the ground.

In Tokyo and Kyoto it seemed to be a matter of great personal importance to people whose job it is to serve that they give excellent service. Staffing levels are high. In North East England it is rare to encounter anyone in the service sector who is eager to deliver excellence with enthusiasm. The exceptions are noteworthy, such as a waitress at El Piano in York, and a young man at the Jorvik Viking Centre. Overall, staffing levels are low. This may be significant.

Japan has a massive railway system, with frequent trains that run on time to the second. Staffing levels are high, and the officials take their job very seriously. The North East of England has four railway lines, with infrequent train services that are often unreliable. Railway officials are little in evidence, and not known for their customer service.

In Tokyo (and Kyoto) supermarkets typically carry little fresh fruit, it is very expensive, and is often ready-basketed as a gift. In North East England almost every supermarket carries some fresh fruit, often a very wide range, mostly quite cheap, and ready for eating not gifting.

In Sunderland people visit the bookmakers, the casino, the slot-machine shops, the bingo and buy lottery tickets. In Tokyo and Kyoto, we saw people sitting feeding metal to metal, glaze-eyed as though zombies, in the pachinko parlours.

Japan 1: transport

I visited Japan for the first time in August 2007. Flying from Newcastle (NCL) via Schipol (AMS) to Narita (NRT), and back, the long flights over Asia were painful and long-as-a-lifetime. However, KLM was good, and avoided adding extra pain.
Taking the Narita express was the least problematic means of travelling the fifty or so miles from the airport into central Tokyo. Returning to Narita at the end of the holiday it was a mistake to take the stopping train, for although the ticket was cheaper, the train was crowded for much of the journey, which was also substantially longer.
Japan has many railway companies, some of which belong to the Japan Rail Group. Trains belonging to different companies may run on the same lines, or on different lines; may stop at the same stations, or at different stations; may start and terminate at the same place or different places. Inevitably there are different running frequencies, different travel times and different fare structures. Working out how best to travel by train from, for instance, Tokyo to Nikko, is as complicated as working out how best to travel by train from Durham to Newcastle is easy. Within Tokyo, the subway system has a tendency to shadow the suburban railway system. Not forgetting the limited-stop, deep-underground suburban railway system. Whether Japanese people are so used to these multi-layered options that they negotiate them without effort, or like unsuspecting visitors from overseas they quail at the thought, I have no idea. Their ability to read modern Japanese script, which, true to form, uses four different character sets (kanji, hiragana, katakana and roman), delivers a profound advantage when buying a rail ticket from machine, for although the machine offers instructions in English, the same courtesy is not extended to the names of stations, which are written in kanji.

Lila, by Robert Pirsig

There are few people who have not read Robert Pirsig's principal claim to fame: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. That I have read the book twice is not saying much. Even if some people have a copy on their bookshelves only for show, never having read the novel, that proportion must be small compared with the number of people who posess a copy of A Brief History of Time by Professor Stephen Hawking, although the pages of the book are as yet uncut. I doubt, however, that there is kudos associated with either owning or reading a copy of Pirsig's Lila, a sequel in several senses to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Lila uses a similar formula to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: a 'road trip' story interspersed with the advancement of a philosophical model of human experience.

On the positive side I found many valuable insights in Pirsig's text, the most illuminating being:

"If objects are the ultimate reality then there's only one true intellectual construction of things: that which corresponds to the objective world. But if truth is defined as a high-quality set of intellectual value patterns, then insanity can be defined as just a low quality set of intellectual value patterns, and you get a whole different picture of it.

"When the culture asks, 'Why doesn't this person see things the way we do?' you can answer that he doesn't see them because he doesn't value them. He's gone into illegal value patterns because the illegal patterns resolve value conflicts that the culture's unable to handle. The causes of insanity may be all kinds of things, from chemical imbalances to social conflicts. But insanity has solved these conflicts with illegal patterns which appear to be of a higher quality."

However, I feel suspicious about philosophy being presented inj the format of a novel. Despite the existentialists, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Friedrich Durenmat having presented and explored, or at least illustrated, their ideas in a fictional format (novels, novellas, short stories and theatrical plays), and probably being most popularly known for this, I question why someone who purports to have something new and substantial to say would choose a medium that requires the suspension of disbelief and literary sleights of hand, and would risk the message being ignored or thrown out because the literary quality of the work may be considered to be poor. The literary works of Sartre, Camus and Durenmat may not all be masterpieces, but they can be read at least adequately, and in many cases exceptionally well, without being required to engage with the philosophical exposition. Susan Hill's novels, such as In the Springtime of the Year, The Bird of Night, and I'm the King of the Castle, are typically each important psychological explorations that work well as novels. In none is Hill breaking new and contentious ground, and with each it would be possible to visit source material, for example with the novels listed: respectively bereavement, psychotic breakdown and sibling rivalry. I would feel uneasy were I to find that Hill was, in fact, presenting new, unsupported ideas about psychology and psychiatry through the medium of a novel.

[to be continued...]

Green issues 9: media discussion of green issues

Why does every other comment in the UK media regarding global warming appear to criticise either air travel or 4 x 4s, the so-called 'Chelsea tractors'? I think that reason might involve the fact that they are, for several reasons, popular targets, and also that these targets serve to distract from addressing more sensitive issues.

[To be continued...]

Faith in geological processes

Too many geologists appear to have lost faith in geological processes. Instead they call upon 'satan ex machina', as explored entertainingly in the movie The Fifth Element. The dinosaurs were not hit on the head by an asteroid (or even two). If someone as much as sneezes these so-called geologists invoke a killer asteroid. Have more faith in your training! Geology happens because of geological processes. Volcanic eruptions, lava flows, plate tectonics and salt domes are examples of what is perfectly good enough to explain much of what happens here on Earth - after all, look at Venus. The latest examples of asteroid-mania is the claim by UK geologists who, feeling left out of the limelight, are insisting that fomer salt dome structures in the North Sea are the UK's own meteor impact craters. What is wrong with these people? I am starting to wonder if they have been 'got at' by Creationists.

In contrast, methane hydrates represent a real tipping point ready to topple. Global warming threatens to release these extensive greenhouse deposits, as happened at the end of the Permian, roasting the Earth for hundreds of thousands of years. This is a bona fide, if catastrophic, geological process that has rapid and far-reaching consequences. (I consider this issue in greater detail in my website: Green.)

Subceptions: counselling weblog

I have started a new weblog, Subceptions, which can be found at:

http://myblogs.sunderland.ac.uk/blogs/blog-259/

The purpose of this weblog is to explore counselling-related issues.

Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art: MIMA

Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA) is a new art gallery housed in a recently-completed building set in a magnificent square in the heart of Middlebrough town centre. The gallery cost £14.1 million, and the square £5.5 million. These are signiifcant sums of money for a town that carries an unremitting industrial reputation to spend on fine art and architecture.

I visited the gallery on a cold, breezy day in March, bright with sunlight, and was able to photograph both the gallery itself and some of the other buildings around the square. Photography of the inside of the building is permitted, but not of exhibitions. To view my photographs, follow this link:

Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art

From the outside, and contrasted with the other buildings in the square, this grand building looks fittingly like a modern art gallery. Its box-like structure, somewhat reminiscent of Walsall's new art gallery, feels modern and contructed. Whilst the two side walls and the back wall are made of a glowing white material that could be limestone, conrete or rendered breeze blocks, the wall overlooking the square is mostly an immense expanse of glass recessed behind vertical steel cables. The main entrance is at the front of the building towards the right. Beside the main entrance, part of the wall is built from am ordered chaos of limestone blocks with all manner of different dressings. From this I took a message that paying attention to detail will yield results. This wall departed from the concept of minimal decoration and large flat areas. It also appeared immediately obvious that thought and attention have been given to the materials of which the building is made.

With its grand atrium from which all floors are visible but activities are hidden. the inside of the building feels a little like the inside of the Sage in Gateshead. The dark stone tiled floor feels pleasingly lavish. To the immediate right of the main entrance a tasteful cafe/restaurant occupies the right end of the ground floor. A staircase with wooden (oak?) bannister climbs diagonally from left to right in a barely-broken run from ground floor to third floor.

[Give details of the gallery spaces.]

On the day of my visit there was an exhibition of drawings in a variety of media. Most notable was the fact that there were a few works by some big names: Picasso, Pollock. The value of the exhibition, however, was the work of less-well-known artists [give details]. Perhaps one of my shortgcomings is that I value examining the drawings of an artist only once I am familiar with their work. I was disappointed not to view some of the paintings in the gallery's permanent collection. With this purpose in mind I intend to visit the gallery again soon.

[Give details of the square]

[Upload photographs of the square]

In summary, I visited Middlesbrough in order to see, examine and photograph a building, and also to view an exhibition. Although the exhibition did little for me, the building is very obviously a significant and valuable addition to the architecture of Middlesbrough town centre.

Postmodern Pantheon

This posting has been growing for over six months.

There are people, chosen by me to a greater or lesser extent, who have influenced the thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, feelings and behaviour of the person I was and the person I have become. I have decided to identify them. These are my pantheon.

However, the task is too difficult, too risky, too suspect simply to present the results. The task must be examined, analysed, critiqued and developed

However, to present their names here is little more than a game, not to be taken seriously, as I consider celebrity to be an ugly aspect of contemporary western culture. With some obvious exceptions, such as Isherwood and Frank, I know little about the domestic circumstances of most of these people, and I may, for all I know, be inadvertently acclaiming a racist, homophobic, wife-beating paedophile. Few of these people were, or are, vegetarian, let alone vegan, which anyone who has encountered me knows is an essential part of who I am.

There are some, such as William Shakespeare, who have influenced me directly for much of my life (I saw my first Shakespeare play - Twelfth Night - when I was ten years old), and indirectly all my life because of the culture in which I have been raised and live. There are others whose influence has been fleeting, or more recent. There are some whose influence has been mediated through only one literary work, such as Lao Tse and Anne Frank, whereas regarding others, such as Hesse, Isherwood and Golding, it is the broad range of their literary output rather than one work in particular, that has been influential. There are those to whose vision (most of the artists) and ideas I am attracted, and there are others regarding whom it is their ideas and the way in which they lived them (such as Gandhi and King) that stand out for me.

I have focused on the people who have influenced me positively, rather than concerning myself with those from whom I have learned by rejection of some key aspect(s) of their legacy (Confucius, Plato, Jesus of Nazareth, Paul of Tarsus, the Prophet Mohammed, Chartles Stewart, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Senator MCarthy, Richard Nixon, Ayotollah Khomeni, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Osama bin Laden - who did you expect? I am politically liberal, of course I am going to reject icons of political conservatism).

Preparing a list such as mine below is nearly impossible because much of what has influenced me is hidden to me. I live in an economically-developed country, with piped drinking water, sewage treatment, elecricity for lighting, fuel for heating and cooking, an abundance of food in the shops, an albeit somewhat creaky national health service (partly free at the point of delivery), a comprehensive social wefare system, a wealth of information services (including broadband internet), and access to more technology than I have any hope of imagining. The countless thousansds of people who have been instrumental in constructing this western society to date are at least as influential on who I am as anyone I might place in a list. For me, this highlights the point that my 'list', my pantheon, is of people who distinguish me from others, people who define the colour of my livery.

Observers of the psyche
William Shakespeare
Herman Hesse
Carl Rogers
Eric Ericsson
Christopher Isherwood (who introduced me to interiority, and gave me permission to write in the first person)
William Golding
Susan Hill
John Rowan

Observers of history
Thomas Hardy
Christopher Isherwood
Anne Frank
Simon Schama
Norman Davies

Explorers of culture
Alan Watts
Andrei Tarkovsky
Akira Kurosawa
Peter Greenaway
Woody Allen (because I, too, love New York City)
Pieter Breughel, the elder
Pieter Breughel, the younger
Hieronymous Bosch
Rembrandt
William Morris
Modigliani
Claude Monet
Vincent Van Gogh
Jackson Pollock
Mark Rothko
Edgar Degas (his sculptures more than his paintings)
Henry Moore
Barbara Hepworth
Frank Lloyd Wright
Mies van der Rohe
Gaudi
James Stirling
Norman Foster
Richard Rogers
Antonin Vivaldi
Ludwig van Beethoven
Gustav Mahler
Sibelius
Gustav Holst
Ralph Vaughan Williams
George Gershwin
Aaron Copeland
Janecek
Bela Bartok (who prepared me for being able to hear Toru Takemitsu)
Toru Takemitsu
Arvo Part
Peter Maxwell-Davies
Van Morrison
Dave Cousins
Martin Carthy (who keeps me in love with both the countryside and with vernacular history)
Sandy Denny (who keeps me in touch with melancholy)
Jon Anderson (who keeps me in touch with dreams)
Phil Collins (who keeps me in touch with ebullience)
W.H. Auden
Roger McGough
Brian Patten
Adrian Henry
Jon Silkin
D.H. Lawrence
Thomas Hardy


Observers of spirituality
Lao Tse
Buddha
George Fox
Alan Watts

Players on the world stage
Oliver Cromwell
Mahatma Ghandi
Martin Luther King

Engineers and entrepreneurs
George Stephenson
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Bill Gates
Steve Jobs
Tim Berners-Lee (because you co-invented the internet)
Clive Sinclair
Richard Branson
Anita Roddick

Scientists and technologists
Pythagoras [~ 580 / 572 BC – ~ 500 / 490 BC]
Aristotle [384 BC – 322 BC]
Roger Bacon [c. 1214 – 1294]
Leonardo da Vinci [15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519
Isaac Newton [4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727]
Humphrey Davy [17 December 1778 – 29 May 1829]
Michael Faraday [22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867]
Charles Darwin [12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882]
Marie and Pierre Curie [7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934 & 15 May 1859 – 19 April 1906]
Albert Einstein [14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955]
Carl Sagan [9 November 1934 – 20 December 1996](for popularising science, and believing in space)
Richard Dawkins [26 March 1941 to date](for his rational, fearless defence of atheism, and steadfast rejection of anti-science)
Stephen Hawking [8 January 1942 to date](for developing his astrophysical theories despite his deteriorating physical condition)

More YouTube movies

I have uploaded more short movies onto YouTube. With each new movie I am shuffling up the learning curve. By the time I have uploaded several dozen movies, I hope that they will be much more accomplished than my current efforts.

Here are the latest URLs:

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzrZ0OyGmC8

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSNN-PzSYP4

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeyzKcYb4GE

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrI3TtdCPUI

5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyR2U_tyJVg

6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QU1K0U0aoE

Movies 1 through 3 show my recording of animals at the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington DC. I recorded footage of many different animals there, including Tai Shan (coming soon by popular request from my daughter), the baby panda bear. As I progressively edit this material, I intend to upload it onto YouTube. In particular, I am concerned to ensure that no images of my daughter appear in a form that is capturable by people with malign intent. As she is, naturally, an important aspect of a 'home movie' of 'our holiday', I currently find the craft of editing a movie to be dauntingly demanding.

Movie 4 is my narration of verse by A.A. Milne. I was experimenting with using my webcam, but the video quality is not great. I have also been trying to work out how to construct something that approximates to an autocue so that I can look at the camera while speaking. Despite the fact that wielding a camcorder is remarkably easy, filming a performance while performing is rather more demanding.

Movie 5 is a collection of photographs of Boston, Massachusetts.

Movie 6 is a collection of photographs I have taken of Van Gogh paintings in the Smithsonian National Art Gallery, Washington DC; MoMA, New York; and the Musee d'Orsay, Paris.

I am at a loss about how to give my movies a musical soundtrack without contravening copyright.

Executing people

The BBC News website announced today that four prisoners on 'death row' in Japan have just been executed. In Libya, several health workers accused and convicted of spreading HIV / AIDS, from which children have died, are now sentenced to death. I have little hesitation in condemning without reservation these barbarities. Killing is wrong. It is as though a blood sacrifice is required to restore the balance of justice. In the Libyan case, the people found guilty are patently innocent of the crimes, but the local people (according to the BBC News website) want someone to 'pay the price' for their children being infected. Whether or not the Japanese prisoners were in fact guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted and sentenced to death I have no idea, and would make no difference. The only spirit served by executing them is brutality, thus increasing the sum of violence in the world. People throughout the world are in desperate need of less, not more, barbarity. As wars, and police death squads, and vigilante groups, and terrorist cells should become only of the past, so should executing people. Abolish the death penalty!

Wikipedia article about High Shincliffe

I have been busy: writing an article about the village in which I live. I have uploaded the article onto Wikipedia at the following address:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Shincliffe

Gifting

This weblog posting is, as many of my weblogs postings are, incomplete.

As Christmas 2006 nears, gifting becomes for me the source of considerable, increasing and unnecessary anxiety. I also feel apprehensive about being corralled into a ritual of elevated expectations awaiting the inevitable anticlimax and disappointment. It all feels like humbug to me. Yet gifting can be such a wonderful transaction that strengthens and deepens a relationship.

I am a hypocrite. The views I express here are those to which I aspire, not those I uphold in practice. As a result of writing this weblog posting, I intend to try to live more closely to my aspirations.

I have many things. If I desire some thing - food, an item of clothing, toiletries, a book, a DVD - I buy it. In both contemporary and historical contexts I am wealthy enough. I no longer require charity.

There are times in the year, such as Christmas, my birthday, and on your return from holiday, when I might receive a gift from you. It is kind that you should think of me. I do not require a gift from you at those times, although those are the occasions when a gift may be less unexpected. I like it best when I receive a gift unprompted by events or dates.

I have no right to receive a gift from you. Should I receive a gift from you, then I receive your gift to me as a mark of your caring for me. Should I receive no gift from you on a day when a gift might be less unexpected, then I am no worse off than on the day before. However, I might occasionally reflect on the quality of our relating.

I like it best when your gift to me shows that you know who I am, that you care who I am, and that you care for me.

I cannot dictate your gift to me, for to do so would seem to miss the point. I am aware, however, of my reaction to your gift. If you gave me money when I was poor, I was intensely grateful; but were you to give me money now, I would be left wondering how much you wish to know about me. Should you give me aftershave, I would be left wondering whether you notice that I have worn a beard for thirty years. Should you give me a silk tie, a leather wallet, a box of milk chocolates, or a book about football or about non-vegan cuisine, I would be left wondering whether you have heard me saying who I am. Sometimes I am left wondering whether your gifting might represent a ritual rather more than kindness, and I can find it easier to cope with you not giving me a gift.

Occasionally I wonder whether your gift might be more about you than it is about me. If you want something, then why not obtain it for yourself? If you want to give to charity, then give to charity - there is nothing for us in you gifting to charity. If you want something from me, then why not ask me for it. Even though I might refuse, and our relationship would be hurt a little, the honesty involved should stand us in good stead for the future.

There are occasions when I give you a gift, mostly to show my caring for you. I like best to give gifts when least expected of me, not least because then you can be certain that the gift and gifting were intended.

I like best to give a gift that speaks of my knowledge of you. However, I might not always get this right because my knowledge may be insufficient: I rarely buy clothes as gifts because I have little confidence that I know your taste well enough; I rarely buy books as gifts because I am unlikely to know whether you already have that book; I rarely buy wine for friends who know wine well because I have little confidence that I could distinguish between a good wine and a mediocre wine.

I try never to give a gift that might offend in some way, such as a book about how to manage your life better, or a bottle of whiskey if you are a recovering alcoholic, or confectionery if you have eating / weight issues. I try never to give gifts that might contravene your political / ethical / moral / spiritual sensitivities, such as a book about Islam if you are a devout Christian, or food that is not clearly labeled as Kosher if you are Jewish, or a T-shirt produced in a 'developing economy' sweat shop if I know you to be enthusiastic about Fair Trade. I risk getting this wrong, and however painful it might be for both of us, I should rather know that I had made a mistake.

In gifting to you, I am unlikely to contravene my own morality. For example, I would neither gift you animal flesh, nor a compendium of 'Irish jokes', nor items that result from the proceeds of crime or fund terrorism (state-sponsored or otherwise). This does not imply, however, that I would intend to promote my own political / ethical / moral / spiritual preferences, nor my own taste. I am unlikely to give you recipes for a vegan cuisine, unless I knew that you too are a vegan; I am unlikely to give you tickets for a Van Morrison concert unless I knew that you too especially enjoy his music. I am unlikely to gift you a subscription to an environmental magazine unless I knew that you too are enthusiastic about green issues. I am unlikely to gift you my donation to the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), although I am a member, because there is nothing of you, or for you, in that transaction. There are many gifts in the world awaiting my gifting to you about which we can both feel entirely comfortable.

One respect in which I am lately no longer a hypocrite is that my gifting is no longer ritualistic. However, I do not yet feel comfortable in my newly-attained position, and still feel a heavy social pull towards the ritual of gifting.

As a postscript in December 2007, I found this on the BBC News website:


To be continued ...

Oh My Newsnight

I have uploaded a short movie onto the YouTube website. The current address of the movie is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0XqoOZ4vik

The movie has many technological flaws, including a two or three second sound drop-out, that I wish to remedy. Each time I upload an amended version of the movie, I shall update this weblink.

The movie script is my posting in this weblog entitled Green Issues of 4 November 2006. I anticipate leaving the movie text unamended, because I intend to make several more short movies looking in greater depth at a wider range of green issues.

Cathy Come Home

I watched 'Cathy Come Home' on UK television yesterday (Sunday 26 November 2006) evening. On each occasion, including the first, I have watched Ken Loach's 'Wednesday Play' several times over the past 30 years I have felt a great reluctance to put myself through the unswerving inevitability (listen to Ravel's 'Bolero', or read the description by Simone de Beauvoir of Jean-Paul Sartre and herself watching US 'western' movies) and the mounting agony of the simple plot. On each occasion, however, I am enticed and drawn into the movie by Loach's unsentimental, unsensationalised docudrama treatment (contrast with the recent BBC 'Horizon' docudrama on pandemic 'flu).

Loach's characters are Everyman and his Wife, who we are not invited to love, interacting with characterisations of people employed to run 'the system', who we are not invited to despise. Both the subject matter and the acting seem to belong to unexceptional BBC television drama/soap. However, the camera-work and editing are much less languid than a contemporary soap such as Coronation Street. I love the devices of having the voice of Cathy looking back to provide a commentary; and of providing factual information about homelessness in various parts of the UK (as Manuel Pueg does about homosexuality in his novel 'Kiss of the Spiderwoman', and John Fowles does about prostitution in Victorian London in 'The French Lieutenant's Woman').

The movie rehearses a range of myths about the apparent fecklessness of people who become homeless, unostentatiously exposing the patent fallacy of such myths. The movie shows how easily (and even arbitrarily) people can be knocked out of society into an effectively disenfranchised underclass. The movie shows how a couple of ordinary people, with ordinary aspirations, can be driven to shout at (i.e. to behave impolitely towards) officials of 'the system' who fail to hear (won't or can't?) the increasingly desperate plight of Cathy and her family. On several occasions during the movie (such as at the meeting of the householders who live near the caravan site, and the subsequent arson attack on the caravans; and when the baliff comes to evict them from the squat), the hypocrisy of the characters is suggested, although the scene is never devoid of sympathy for them.

... to be continued ...

Infanticide (de facto)

Guidance recently issued to hospital paediatric units by the BMA (British Medical Association) upset me. It is proposed that UK babies born at 22 weeks or earlier should not be resuscitated because their chances of survival are only one per cent, and the likelihood of a surviving child being disabled is high.

Had I only a one per cent chance of living, I would take it without hesitation. I find it hard to believe that few people would say differently. If my daughter had a one per cent chance of survival, I would do all in my power to provide her with that chance.

It would appear obvious, therefore, that the issue for the BMA is not about the chances of survival but that the cost of intensive neonatal medical care is considered too high to make the expense worthwhile. I accept that there are prices that may not be worth paying for a human life, or even the chance of a human life: the sacrificial death of other people; a Chernobyl-scale environmental disaster; or the destruction of a national art gallery or national cultural / world heritage site. However, people, companies and governments the world over spend millions of pounds, euros, dollars and yen on armaments, on base entertainment and on conspicuous consumption. Whilst it would be fair to argue over the merits or otherwise of goods and services bought and sold the world over, a medical policy of refusing to save the life of a prematurely-born child in order to economise on resources seems to be turning medical ethics upside down.

I do not believe that whether a child is likely to be born disabled should be a consideration regarding whether to save the child's life. If the issue is about cost, the financial expense of caring for that child through life would be a drop in the ocean compared to building and launching a military satellite, making a blockbuster movie, or a constructing a cruise liner. However, maybe there is an implicit belief that the life of a disabled child is a life blighted. ("The child would be sensorily impaired, be in constant pain, and have a poor quality of life. We'd be doing it a favour, putting it out of its misery. Were it a dog we'd have little hesitation about putting it down.") It would be interesting to find out the differential suicide rates for disabled and able-bodied people: I doubt that there is much difference (I am ready to be corrected). Maybe the BMA's concern is for the inconvenience to blameless parents of being saddled with a child requiring medication several times each day; additional attention to needs; specialist care, equipment and schooling.

I have a strong belief that societies the world over are better, richer, more humane societies because of the engagement required of them to care for children and young people, older people, people with a learning disability, physically disabled people, people whose health is frail, emotionally vulnerable people, people who live on the edge. Societies that most of all prize and reward strength and excellence, and strive towards conceptual ideals and ideas of perfection, risk losing touch with warm humanity. It seems to me that the UK is already quite some way along that cold path.

I recognise that for many people the term 'family' is problematic, perhaps because of abuses that have taken place within their family. However, I like the term when used more broadly to refer to a group of people who struggle together to make life work. To quote from Lilo and Stich: "Family means no-one gets left behind." For me, that means no-one.

Killing Saddam Hussein

I permit no-one to take life in my name, for killing is wrong. Whether perpetrated by tyrants or democratically-elected governments, killing is wrong. Regardless of purpose, motivation or mitigation, killing is wrong. Whether executed as a crime in passion, in time of war, or judicially in cold blood, killing is always wrong.

Some cities in the US

Mahattan is the capital city of high culture; the most vibrant of cities in which to shop, eat and be entertained; and simply the centre of the world. The terrorist attack of 11 September 2001 prompted me to visit - four times to date. Were a year's job-swap ever possible, I should find it impossible to resist. In the meantime my next visit is being plotted.

DC, with its Smithsonians, its grand architecture, and the charming politeness of many of the people who live there, make it a worthy tourist city. Its pleasant weather, reasonably accessible public transport system, and several vegetarian eating places (all of which had vegan dishes) made the four days I spent there all too brief, and I should have preferred to have spent four weeks. DC is high on my list of cities to revisit.

Boston, on the other hand, is significantly over-rated as a tourist destination, and is worth avoiding until even Washington (Tyne & Wear, UK), Peterlee (County Durham, UK) and Harlow (Essex, UK) have been exhausted. Whereas it likes to trade under the name of 'Beantown', Boston's historical sites are few, poorly presented, and offensively partisan. Many of the people who inhabit central Boston behave coldly at best, some might say rudely. There is virtually no vegan food to be had anywhere near central Boston. On the other hand, Cambridge was pleasant in a very, very low key way, but nothing to Oxford (UK), Cambridge (UK) or ever Dublin (Eire).

Chicago has wonderful architecture stretching back to the nineteenth century. As well as the grand buildings, such as the Institute of Art, and the fascinating 1920s' skyscrapers (such as the Union Carbide building), and the imposing late twentieth century skyscrapers (such as the Sears Tower), Frank Lloyd Wright left his mark, several in fact, at Oak Park - essential viewing for anyone interested in architecture. A boat trip is an excellent way to view the architecture of downtown Chicago. The Instiute of Art, so lovingly featured in John Hughes' movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, is world class, and is essential viewing. Several recent movies use the ambience of Chicago as though a chartacter: Fugitive, starring Harrison Ford, and While You Were Sleeping, starring Sandra Bullock. The public zoo is set in parkland on the lakeshore. There is vegetarian food in Chicago, including in the gay, bohemian suburb of North Halstead.

To be continued ...

The media mainstreaming of the language of the BNP

The political agenda of the UK appears no longer to be driven by elected representatives, but is being determined by the reationary politics promoted by News International (News Corporation) and the commercial imperative of the purveyors of what the news media chose to define as news. It used to be the case that although the national newspapers were politically partisan, political action took place in the political arena: Westminster, the soapbox and demonstrations. In May 1997 the news media wrested from the UK Consertvative Party the mantle of quasi-formal opposition to the newly-elected Blair government. I am unsure about precisely when the Blair government lost control of the agenda, possibly in the run-up to the most recent (5 May 2005) general election. Maybe control of the political agenda has been ebbing away from Westminster over a period of years. This current period reminds me of the time between Tony Blair's election to leadership of the UK Labour Party (21 July 1994) and his defeat of Conservative John Major (2 May 1997), except that it is now Rupert Murdoch for whom we are waiting to move into 10 Downing Street.

Current so-called revelations about the UK Home Office appear largely driven by an agenda of xenophobia. The rehtoric focuses on the deportation of foreign nationals, 'bogus' asylum seekers, 'economic' migrants, refugees and people trafficking. For reasons I find it difficult to understand many people in Britain have become addicted to this unpleasant, bunker propaganda that should be the sole preserve of Nick Griffin's British National Party, the Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen, and paranoic, white-supremicist, North American redneck militias. (The one difference is that the UK media appear to be anti-Arab rather than anti-Jewish.)

The phrase that prompts my wry smile is "this island nation of ours". The UK is neither the most densely populated country in the world, nor the most densely populated country in Europe. The UK ranks 33 in the world league table, next to Germany, whereas the Netherlands (15) and Belgium (17) have considerably higher population densities. I am unfamiliar with people complaining about living in Jersey, Guernsey or Barbados: real islands with much higher population densities; and even London ranks well down the list in the world and in Europe.

I am not claiming that what is being stated in the headlines is necessarily factually inaccurate, but that it is being given a maliciously-twisted relevance.

... to be continued ...

However, vox pop suggests that not only is the UK population buying into this de facto deceit, but also appear immune to the facts and their significance. To illustrate this point, regarding law and order, to anyone in the UK it is self-evident both that there are fewer police officers and that crime is all but out of control - whereas despite better recording, recorded crime has been on the decline for the past 15 or more years, and there are more police officers, as well as civilians working for the police, than ever before. Regarding health, the UK public focuses on the fact there are one-third fewer hospital beds than at some point in the past, rather than the relevant facts that life expectancy has risen so much that there is a major crisis in pension savings; or that the rate at which new drugs to address this or that illness or condition are being introduced appears to be accelerating; or, perhaps most significantly, that medical procedures have advanced sufficiently that the need for lengthy stays in hospital has thankfully been signifiantly reduced. Regarding tobacco smoking, the UK public demand a right to damage the health of allcomers (smokers and non-smokers alike), whingeing plaintively about hospitals that ban smoking, and confetti-ing with cigartette butts the entrance to public buildings, when all the evidence for decades has unequivocally, adequately and graphically illustrated that smoking should be stopped immediately; as well as buying from the informal economy significant quantities of cigarettes on which no duty has been paid (are these the same people who buy newspapers that peddle myths about crime being out of control?).

... to be continued ...

Satisfaction: pleasure versus fulfilment

In pursuing thoughts about happiness from an earlier posting, I got to thinking that I am seeking to earn myself a sense of satisfaction by means of pleasure. I feel satisfied when I experience the pleasure of listening to Vivaldi ('Four Seasons), Sandy Denny ('Who Knows Where the Time Goes?' or Van Morrison ('Madame George'). I feel satisfied when I experience the pleasure of watching Spirited Away, Amelie or Koyaanisqatsi. I feel satisfied when I experience the pleasure of a well-prepared Indian, Thai or Chinese meal. I feel satisfied when I when I experience the pleasure of Monet's water lilies, Van Gogh's Provençal scenes, or Pollock's swirling rhythms. And what if I spent my life engaged only in consuming? As vital as each source of pleasure is to me (other than in matters of taste and preference, little different from football and soaps), and I should dearly love to have more of every source of pleasure-induced satisfaction in my life, something would be missing.

I have spent a significant part of my life volunteering, and I continue to volunteer in one respect or another. The paid work that I now do is about helping people, which makes my work much more satisfying to me than were people not helped as a result. It is important to me that my work (whether voluntary or paid) is meaningful in some way, so that while I am engaged in it, and also when I have completed a task, I enjoy a sense of fulfilment, and consequently satisfaction. Visiting cities overseas can be remarkably hard work, due to my travel sickness, difficulties in locating vegan-suitable food, and ensuring adequate wheelchair access to museums (I telephoned the Musée Marmottan in Paris, and was assured that access was no problem as there is a stair-lift at the entrance, but when we arrived the stair-lift was not only out of order, but looked as though it had been out of order for a long time), to hotels (I have discovered that the doors to most bedrooms in Holiday Inn hotels are too narrow to admit a wheelchair) and onto public transport (on each wheelchair-accessible bus for La Guardia that arrived over a 90 minute period the wheelchair lift was non-functional, generating considerable anxiety that we might miss our flight to DC). Perhaps because of having to overcome such difficulties, I can achieve a considerable sense of fulfilment, as well as pleasure, from visiting cities such as Paris, Berlin and Venice, New York, Washington and Vancouver, contributing to my overall sense of satisfaction with the experience. Constructing my website, or developing my photographic skills, or improving my ability to communicate in some other language, is often demanding in one way or another, and consequently offers the satisfaction of fulfilment, especially on those occasions when the discipline involved fails to generate pleasure in the experience.

In conclusion, I guess that I am motivated to achieve an only-occasionally fully-satisfied sense of satisfaction (who else but the Rolling Stones?), in part through pleasure, and in part through fulfilment, neither of which alone is sufficient, but in combination and balance can offer considerable satisfaction for a while.

Happiness and satisfaction

I read, today, on the BBC news website, that happiness is in decline in the UK. According to the report, compared with fifty years ago, significantly fewer people in the UK are very happy. Over the same time period, wealth in the UK has increased three-fold. A question was implied: being so much better off now, why are people in the UK less happy? A second, more explicit, question was asked: should government focus either on creating happiness or on creating wealth?

I feel uncertain about several points: what is happiness? is happiness made up from component parts, such as contentment, satisfaction and joy? does happiness exist other than as a generalised concept? how can blunt, ticky-box social surveys hope to understand the delicacy how each individual makes sense of their ever-changing human emotions? how can anyone imagine that it should be the business of government to attend to, and respond to, how people feel?

According to the BBC news website, it has long been recognised that it was many years ago that the US population ceased getting happier with increasing wealth. Whilst I understand what is intended by this statement, I also have many doubts about it. For example, apart from not knowing what happiness is, and what exactly was being measured, I have no knowledge of which social, demographic and geographical factors were correlated; nor of how much account was taken of wealth differentials (compared with wealth in the US and the UK, wealth in Scandanavia is more evenly distributed across the population). Were it the case that wealthy people get happier, poorer people become less happy, and wealth differentials have increased, then maybe there is nothing suprising to be discussed.

It has become a commonplace in the UK that winning millions of pounds (GBP) from the national lottery is more likely to result in a reduction in happiness. Yet the hope and belief of many people is that to become wealthy, or at least significantly wealthier, is sufficiently desirable that, for every child, woman and man in the UK, 75 GBP each year is handed over to Camelot (the company that runs the UK lottery). Accordingly to a Camelot press release from March 2005, weekly takings are between GBP 85,000,000 and GBP 90,000,000.

What is not a commonplace is that, over the past fifty years, the expectations of people in the UK have skyrocketed. Most people in the UK expect to be able to travel with ease at speed around the UK, probably in our own car; many people expect to be able to travel cheaply by air to tourist destinations throughout western Europe; it has become imaginable and feasible for many people to travel around the world. By contrast, the UK of Brief Encounter, shows a very different world. Regarding food, entertainment and recreation, expectations have changed out of all recognition. Regarding health, we have come to expect specialised medication (regardless of how expensive) as our right, and have become impatient for new techniques and cures. Regarding technology, we are so sophisticated that a cellphone without texting capability, a television incapable of receiving digital pictures, a laptop computer without wi-fi, would feel like a medieval throw-back. Regarding communication, we expect to be able to sit on a beach in Margate, Marbella or Miami, and call home, text our friends, maybe send a e-photograph or e-video; to find a means to post a weblog of our travels; to have booked our holiday on-line; to have e-mailed our pillow preferences to the hotel; and to have checked out the websites of cafes / bars / restaurants that serve food suitable for vegans or vegetarians, or food that is kosher or wheat-free or nut-free.

Were it the case that our expectations were being met faster than our expectations were being raised, life would feel more satisfying and we would become happier. However, the dual-fuel engine for the satisfactio of our expectations is powered by money and further-elevated expectations. Paradoxically, therefore, in a market-driven capitalist society the more we seek to have our expectations satisfied, the further out in front of satisfaction our expectations will streak. In western society, it is only by reining-in, or even reducing, expectations could satisfaction increase. In the later 1950s, a British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, famously told the British electorate that they had "never had it so good", reminding them of post-war shortages, rationing and inflation. However, the purpose of his message was for people to rein in their expectations about rising wages (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/20/newsid_3728000/3728225.stm). Successive UK governments have attempted to deliver a message of wage restraint, and suffered for their pains at subsequent elections. Living in a globalised world, in which people in Connecticut, Chad and China are able to converse together in a chat-room, it would be barely possible for a country to attempt, unliaterally, to reduce the life expectations of its people - to my understanding, the Taliban regime attempted this in Afghanistan.

I am likely to feel happier when the bad things that have been going on in my life are being relegated to the past. This is about transition. Ironically, I may feel happier while recovering from a serious illness than when I am ordinarily healthy; when my bank balance is nearing solvency after a period of debt than when I have been sitting on comfortable financial cushion for some time; when the sun breaks through after a week of perpetual drizzle than when yet another day dawns with a clear blue sky.

Talking with a colleague, Jo, reminded me that when I have a self-imposed goal, the attainment of which would give me satisfaction, I tend to feel a contented anticipation. Simple examples of this include planning a holiday abroad; learning sufficient tourist language to get by in a non-anglophone country; re-organising and redecorating a room; and slimming.

How happy I feel may also concern the absence of bad things going on in my life. When I am healthy, feel safe at home, feel financially secure in my job, and feel supported by family and friends, I am less likely to feel unhappy. However, I may be bored and doubt where I am going in life, and consequently not feel happy.

I recognise different qualities of happiness. For example, I recall something of the overwhelming excitement and joy I experienced when I first attended a Promenade concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London; when I first piloted a Piper Tomahawk; and when I stepped out onto the observation deck of the Empire State Building in Manhattan. I recall something of the serene joy I felt when crossing by jetfoil from Vancouver to Victoria, on sighting a pod of orca whales. I recall something of the awe I felt, surrounded by the Canadian Rockies, witnessing the Perseid meteor shower (13 August 1993); and surrounded by darkness on the hard shoulder of a French motorway witnessing the totality of a solar eclipse (11 August 2000). I recall something of my intensely moving joy when my daughter was born.

To be continued ...

Death of a former counselling client

(I am mindful of confidentiality.) A former counselling client died a few days ago. I feel sad. Our formal relationship ended a year ago, so I have had plenty of time to break the bonds of attachment that had held the relationship together. I do not feel distraught or disturbed, but some quiet pity for the waste of the years that will not be lived, and sadness that the client's life was never easy.

I feel bad that I shall not go to the funeral. Were I to attend, my presence, if understood, would compromise relatives because of what I know about them. My presence would offer them no comfort, and I fear that my involvement would be seen as having contributed to the problems the client experienced. I said my goodbyes a year ago and have no need to perform the public ritual at the local crematorium. Instead, I shall hold the client's life in my thoughts periodically.

Two years later: I find myself often thinking of the client. I think about our work together; the compromises we each made; my care and compassion for you; and your likely respect for me. I often wonder what it was like to live your life, and to endure your pain, loneliness and suffering. In truth, I frequently wonder what it is like to live the life of many of the people I see for counselling. As a counsellor, I probably understand more about some aspects of a person's life than anyone else they know, and yet I am humbled by how little I know or understand about them. From Ginza to Grainger Town, we are each a mystery to each other, and often even to ourselves.

I hope that you felt supported and encouraged by me. I hope that, although I could not possibly understand you better than yourself, I helped you to understand yourself better.

Respecting the speed limit

During my drive to work this morning, no differently from any of the mornings this week, this month, this ..., I watched the tail lights fading from view of almost every previously following vehicle. I drive at the speed limit.

A rational part of me tries hard to tell me that, provided that I am not affected by the behaviour of other car drivers, then their business is none of my own. However, this morning I was affected: a big waggon bore down on my car, tailgated with blazing headlights, overtook within a hair's breadth of my driver's door mirror, pulling back into the inside lane just as the road incline steepened, and the waggon slowed to a crawl up the hill.

A less rational part of me feels cheated: obeying the speed limit costs me time - time that I should prefer to spend at home, or at work, or shopping for Christmas presents. Whilst I resent paying in the currency of time, I should resent it less if most people also paid. ("Why pay the full amount when you can receive a discount?")

A moody part of me grumbled about drivers not observing the legal requirements - which is retrospectively hypocritical considering the speeds at which I have travelled on the motorways of continental Europe and North America. A slight rationalisation creeps in at this point: I admired the road signs along the Florida Keys warning that fines for speeding through roadworks would double during periods while operatives were at work - the cars and waggons on the motorway this morning were speeding through roadworks at which operatives were busy working. However, I did start fantasising about the retrofitting of tachographs in all private vehicles (electronic, with a transponder that downloaded driver and driving details to roadside receivers).

A highly rational part of me cautioned that it is generally safest to travel at the same speed as the rest of the traffic. I guess that I believe that driving in a manner significantly out of conformity with the expectations of other drivers is more dangerous than travelling at speed. When in doubt, I would prefer to 'go with the flow'. However, this part of me is easily intimidated by the law. This morning I felt resentful both towards most of the other drivers on the motorway, and also towards the speed restrictions, for placing me in a quandry about how best to drive: safely or legally?

However, the greater part of me knows that, whilst byways might be fine for milk floats and moggie thousands (Morris 1000), highways, particularly motorways, are for drivers with confidence. To drive in a manner that suggests a lack of confidence reduces the validity of my presence. Being overtaken by every car and waggon on the road was flaunting my unfitness for motorway driving. This attitude is strengthened by my awareness of the celebration in western culture of moving forward, of getting ahead, of striving. Lack of commitment demonstrates insufficiency.

I believe that vehicles travelling along roads represent a significant danger to life, limb and property. Had I the authority to do so, I would summarily reduce the blood-alcohol limit from 80 mg/litre to 0 mg/litre. Suggesting and imposing speed limits plays a key role in reducing the danger of roads. However, there is little evidence of public recognition regarding the plethora of emotional reverberations associated with attempting to drive to the speed limit.

Bridges

I have just read an article about bridges on the BBC News website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4450264.stm
I have for ever given importance to bridges. My first bridge was that in the tale: Three Billy Goats Gruff, in which a troll or an ogre hid under the bridge and menaced each of the goats as they attempted to cross the bridge. Bridges harboured hidden dangers. My second bridge was more friendly: that from which Pooh, Piglet and friends threw sticks into the stream, thus creating the game of 'pooh sticks'. As a young adult, I painted a picture of this scene, and felt proud of my portrayal of the wooden construction of the bridge. For a number of years, I used the poem by William Wordsworth, On Westminster Bridge, as the de facto home page for my website.

Many people contemplate taking their life by leaping from a bridge. In this respect, the Clifton Suspension Bridge (Bristol, UK) has a gruesome reputation. The Tyne Bridge (Newcastle, UK) and the Wearmouth Bridge (Sunderland, UK) also have something of a bad reputation regarding suicidal people, not least because of the resulting substantial traffic hold-ups. Recently, I was driving over the Redheugh Bridge (Newcastle, UK) when I was held up for an hour by police officers who were trying to 'talk down' a "jumper" (their term).

Walking across, or at least onto, bridges is an activity that I have always found disproportionately meaningful. Crossing from one place to another, from Buda to Pest, from Newcastle to Gateshead, from Manhattan to Queens or to Brooklyn, from Westminster to Southwark, from Denmark to Sweden, feels like a change of state, of manner, or expectations. Driving over the bridge is second best, but preferable to not engaging with the bridge at all. I love naughtiness of the scene in the otherwise lacklustre movie Anger Management in which Dr. Buddy Rydell, the character played by Jack Nicholson, demands that Dave Buznik, the character played by Adam Sandler, stops the car he is driving during the rush hour over the Williamsburg Bridge.

When I, eventually, visit Sydney (Australia), I intend to take the guided tour of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

In Manhattan (New York, USA) it was a reverential moment when I set foot for the first time on Brooklyn Bridge. I have many photographs of the occasion. Walking across the Queensboro Bridge from Manhattan to Queens was demanding, but I am glad to have done it. I shall not feel as though I have visited San Franciso until I have walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.

In France, I have visited the Pont du Gard at Nimes, and the Pont Vieux in Avignon. It was wonderful to stand on the medieval bridge over the River Agout in Brassac (Tarn, France). However, of greater familiarity and significance are the various bridges across the River Seine in Paris. Their variety echo the vartiety of bridges across the River Thames in London (UK).

In Italy, it was important for me to walk cross the River Tiber, although I did not consider the bridges in Rome to be as inspirational as I had hoped. It goes without saying that I ache to walk on the Ponte Vecchio when I visit Firenze (Florence) for the first time. Of greatest Italian significance, however, are the bridges of Venezia (Venice). The vaporetto tannoy announcement "Rialto!" still rings in my ears. Despite their wheelchair unfriendliness, I love the bridges that cross the Canal Grande, as well as many of the smaller, less ostentatious bridges over obscure backwater Venetian canals.

In Germany I have walked across bridges in most of the cities I have visited, starting in the early 1970s with the Rein (River Rhine) in Koln (Cologne), and most recently the Spree in Berlin. I regret to holding a prejudice that German bridges are less singular and less romantic than they could be.

In Belgium, the canals of Brugge and Gent provide the opportunities for bridges, although it is the canals, rather than the bridges that I find attractive. In Amsterdam (Nederlands), though, the balance between canals and bridges feels a little more even. However, it is not easy to loiter on bridges in Amsterdam, for fear of being squashed by cyclists.

In Scotland in the late 1960s I crossed the River Tay, walking from Dundee and back again across the Tay Road Bridge. I had been driven in a coach across the Forth Road Bridge. It was only many years later that I drove my car across the Forth Road Bridge on my way from Edinburgh to Dunfirmline. However, on this latter occasion we stopped, parked the car, and walked onto the bridge, taking photographs of it, and its sibling bridge, the Forth Rail Bridge. I may, in fact, never have crossed the Forth Rail Bridge, other than in my imagination watching the movie The Thirty Nine Steps.

Driving south from Durham to Dover necessitates the uplifting experience of the Dartford Crossing (driving back north involves the Dartford Tunnel instead). Driving between Gloucestershire and South Wales is made special by crossing one or other of the now two Severn Bridges. When ploughing the Lancashire/Cheshire stretch of the M6, driving over the famous Thelwell Viaduct is a marvellous experience. I have never had occasion to cross the Humber, although I was excited to spy the Humber Bridge while overflying it en route from Newcastle to Amsterdam.

It gives me great satisfaction to walk from the Palace of Westminster across the River Thames. To me, Westminster Bridge is one (of several) centre of the world (Times Square in New York City is another). I ache to walk across the Millennium Bridge from Tate Modern to St Paul's Cathedral. It thrills me every time drive over Tower Bridge.

In Chester (Cheshire, UK) the Grosvenor Bridge is impressive-looking, but not very exciting to walk over. On the other hand, Handbridge, the medieval bridge, gives a sense of involvement with the River Dee. The suspension footbridge that spans the river from Grosvenor Park and the Groves to Queens Park and the Meadows is a holiday to walk across. Also in Chester are gates in the Roman and medieval city walls. As in York, these gates to the city are also bridges for pedestrians circumnavigating the city walls. Eastgate, with its world-famous clock, is a most pleasureable to stand and watch life pass beneath, up and down Eastgate Street and Foregate Street.

In York (Yorkshire, UK), my favourite bridges across the River Ouse are Lendal Bridge and the Ouse Bridge. In Sunderland (Tyne and Wear, UK) I have stood many a time on the Wearmouth Bridge looking downriver to the sea. In Newcastle I have sat eating my lunchtime sandwich on the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, driven many hundreds of times across the Tyne Bridge, made myself late by choosing to drive over the Swing Bridge, spontaneously ducked when driving over the High Level Bridge (with the East Coast Main (railway) Line on the upper deck), sped (in my car) across the Redheugh Bridge, and crawled (in trains) across the other rail bridge.

In Durham (Co. Durham, UK) I cross each of the bridges on foot, and some by car, with some frequency. Elvet Bridge and Framwellgate Bridge are medieval, both largely pedestrianised. Prebends Bridge is a formal, stylish, eighteenth century bridge in a wonderful woodland setting. Kingsgate Bridge (designed and built by Ove Arup) and the new Pennyfeather Bridge are both footbridges that are lovely to cross. Baths Bridge is the least interesting of the three footbridges. There are two road bridges: New Elvet Bridge and Milburngate Bridge. Of these two, the latter has the more interesting views being sited between two weirs.

A mile south of Durham are the outskirts of Shincliffe, the extended village in which I live. Built in seventeenth century, Shincliffe Bridge elegantly crosses the River Wear on the site of a former medieval bridge. Some hundred metres upstream is the site of a Roman bridge.

(More ...)

Political correctness

I have moved this lengthy posting onto its own web page:

http://www.btinternet.com/~p.g.h/counselling_personal_development_political_correctness.htm

4 March 2006

National Geographical article on longevity

Some people appear to consider long life to be a significant virtue. I consider long life to be a weak virtue, inasmuch as I can be of value to people who need me. Compared to a shorter life, a longer life, to me, principally provides greater opportunity to engage in whatever I consider to be virtuous. The people featured in the National Geographical article (November 2005) are leading lives that I would consider unspeakably boring: a shepherd in Sardinia, a woman living in some non-entity place in Japan, a Seventh Day Adventist woman in California. The lives of the people are characterised by a cultural conservatism circumscribed by a narrow geographical range. Whilst the article makes something of the diets of each of the people, contrasting it with a fast-food lifestyle, the message I take from it is about avoiding living life to the full. If travel and meeting a wide range of people shortens my life a little, I am willing to accept that cost, for the alternative would feel much more costly to me.

Online, on-demand programmes

As a former reader-by-conviction of Undercurrents (a magazine of the 1970s with a strongly 'alternative' and green political analysis), I watched no television programmes for about twelve years. (The UK Television Licensing Authority had great difficulty accepting that I did not have a television, and caused me much grief with their aggressive and accusatory letters.) I had an aversion to having my attention and awareness shaped by a programming schedule that was outside my control. When I pick up a book or a magazine, or listen to a CD, or browse online, I am making choices about how I wish to shape my consciousness. Watching broadcast television, most of the control I had related to the on-off switch. I believe that, as a consequence of not watching television, I was both a more creative person, and a more interesting person with whom to interact.
I bought my first television in 1993, and although it has been reapired several times, I have not yet needed to replace it. Over the intervening twelve years I have slipped into the habit of watching Question Time and This Week (current affairs), Grand Designs and other property development programmes, and programmes about relocating one's home to the countryside or elsewhere in the world. However, the televison programme I came to watch with near-religious fervour was BBC 2's Newsnight. I used to drink it like I drank my first cup of tea in a morning. I now rarely watch the programme. Instead I receive a daily newsletter from the Newsnight team, and can catch the programme online. I like to be able to watch the parts of the programme that interest me, and to skip whatever sends me to sleep. I like to be able to watch the articles I want to watch when convenient for me. As well as matters of interest and convenience, I still have a desire to avoid conforming to some grand scheduling scheme. I hope that the recent announcement by the BBC to extend the online availability of more of their programmes heralds a rapid expansion of online, on demand viewing.

Halloween carnival

Monday will be Halloween. The schedules of television channels are already flavoured with kitsch-horror. Retailing opportunities in north east England have already been themed. Supermarket shelves are filled with gruesome rubber masks, devilish tridents, pumpkins and all the rest of the mock-horror paraphernalia. Posters show graveyards, tombstones and ghouls. Gatherings of people are suffused with a weakly carnival-like atmosphere. Children will be attending Halloween parties, some dressed as ghosts, others as witches. Adults will be attending adult Halloween parties, with at least an edge of heightened sexual awareness. There are shadows beyond the public light. Alongside all the laughter there is also a lurking and pervading sense of menace: young people gleefully terrorising (trick or treat) and frightening (with masks and gruesome faces).

There is, for me, something disturbing and unhealthy about revelry swirling around concepts of death and evil. In most instances, death involves loved ones, loss, pain and difficult transitions. The prospect of my own death is a key factor in how I chose to live my life. I miss my father, who died in 1992. I still recall vividly my pain and sadness at the death of the family pet dog in the 1960s, and the violent sobs of my daughter when her pet hamster died. Evil is what murdered Anne Frank and millions of Jewish people. Evil stalked the streets of Kosovo and the villages of Rwanda and Burundi, and still visits refugee camps in Darfur. I have no enthusiasm to celebrate death and evil.

Maybe the Halloween carnival is a response to the fear that people feel about cancer, bird 'flu, war, terrorist bombs and airliner crashes. Making jokes about death, and laughing at evil, may be coping strategies for some people. There are also traditions, elsewhere in the world, such occasions as the Mexican 'Day of the Dead', that acknowledges the importance, sadness and irrevocability of death. Easter (technically Good Friday) appears to be a sober acknowledgment of the fundamental existential importance of death, even though it is also overlaid with Christian dogma. These examples seem valuable.

To be continued ...

New job

It is already Friday 23 September 2005, the week having passed as though a techno-beat of stroboscopic flashes. On Monday of this week I started a new job at the University of Sunderland, UK. I have been appointed as Senior Counsellor in the student counselling service. I feel proud and excited, and also somewhat breathless at the pace of events.

Having been out of work for several months, everything in my life had progressively slowed down. I was on holiday in sultry south west France for two and a half weeks during August. On returning to the UK, I would watch movies on video until one or two in the morning, and then sleep in until eight, breakfast, shower, read any mail, and then prepare lunch. After lunch, if I felt energetic I might go for a walk, or go shopping. Otherwise I would read a book until dozing off until it was time to prepare the evening meal. The rest of the evening would be spent watching television, then a movie, and the cycle would have restarted. Sounds like retirement: pleasant enough, but pointless, without direction, and living on borrowed.

Already one gear up, the pace of life is faster and, thankfully, continuing to accelerate. Work is important to me. Work provides me with part of my identity without which I start to fade. I am meeting and getting involved with people new to me. I am encountering people whose need can be addressed through my competence.

[To be continued]

Tall Ships, Newcastle-Gateshead

The Tall Ships that come and berth on the quayside at Newcastle-Gateshead are loved by many people in the North East of England. The energy and enthusiasm created by the Tall Ships is intense. For the duration, traffic on the main roads around Tyneside was even more congested than usual. On the night before their departure, there was a massive firework display that was watched by thousands of people.

This view shows the Millennium Bridge framing the Sage (concert hall and music conservatoire). In the background can be seen the famous Tyne Bridge.

Unline the "London Eye" on the south bank of the River Thames, I don't believe that the ferris wheel (that I heard being referred to as "the eye") in Millennium Square in front of the Baltic Art Gallery is a permanent fixture.

The colourful-looking wooden ship is a Russian vessel named Shtandart. After it set sail for Norway, the weather was so bad that it had to return to Newcastle-Gateshead.

This shows a typical riverside scene, with tall ships berthed for as far as the eye could see. Visitors were two or three deep, and it was almost impossible to get alongside the railings to take this photograph.

The BBC producer with whom I was involved making the Video Nation short film about my daughter, Jemima, spent a day out in the North Sea on board the Trepidacious, which was moored a little way downstream.

I regret that I should have been seasick within minutes of stepping aboard. Very different from my uncle, in Canada, who spent many years in the British navy, and in the mid-1960s emigrated from Britain to Canada on board an ocean liner. I must find out its name.

BBC Video Nation short film

We have just finished making a short film for the BBC Video Nation project. The film, which is online at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/videonation/stories/jemima.shtml

is a peep-hole through which to glimpse some aspects of my daughter's life. The film was edited by Andrew Jeffrey, a producer at the BBC in Newcastle. Andrew also offered guidance, gave encouragement, shot some of the film at Jemima's school, provided a stock photograph of Alan Shearer, obtained relevant permissions, and wrote the online text. He was a pleasure.

I have, until now, resisted all requests to allow online images of Jemima, for fear that such images may be used by unscrupulous people for dishonourable purposes. I gave much thought to the video images that were to be used in the short film. This has set me thinking about how to portray other aspects of her life and experience. I feel enthusiastic to make a longer film.