from Pantperthog to Knockando

Word of the week: obesogenic

2012-01-11T19:15:00.000Z

I saw this in a blog post about public health that was talking about McDonalds and other companies posing as responsible corporations while still selling tons of their "obesogenic and dentally challenging" products.

I'm not sure who coined the word, but whoever it was deserves a 'Well done!'

“No, George, no! Bad director, bad!”

2012-01-10T19:03:00.001Z

I have mixed feelings about the news that the Star Wars movies are going to be re-released in super-duper 3D. Firstly, I don’t really care about 3D. But the main problem is George Lucas’ penchant for mucking around with Star Wars.

My feeling that Lucas should leave it alone started with the Special Edition of Return of the Jedi. I know many fanboys will shudder at the thought of the original release of ROTJ – ‘Brrr, Ewoks!’ But, at the risk of ruining my own credibility, I quite liked the Ewoks.

I wasn’t too bothered about the first two Special Editions. Having never seen the movies in the cinema before, it was quite fun. Yes, the extra CGI creatures, including Jabba, in A New Hope looked clunky and obvious, but I could live with that. And it had Boba Fett breaking the fourth wall. What’s not to like? Although, there was, of course, the whole 'Han shot first' thing. That was a pretty bad call.

Not much changed on Empire either. But for the Special Ed of Jedi, Lucas went off-piste with his ‘improvements’. Firstly he messed up the great song in Jabba’s Palace by Sy Snootles by adding in an annoying jumping around creature called Yuzzum. And then he bodged the ending by cutting away from the celebrations on Endor to show a crowd on the Imperial capital planet Coruscant puling down a statue of the Emperor.

It was an awkward and idiotic way to introduce the first ever shots of Coruscant and it messed up the post-film storylines that have been laid down with Lucas’ guiding direction. In the books, starting with Heir to the Empire, it takes 8 years for the Alliance to finally ‘liberate’ Coruscant from the remnants of the Empire. Lucas just binned all that for the sake of a scene that added nothing to the film.

The next sequence of disasters happened with the prequels. The Phantom Menace is almost universally derided among true fans, and yet I think it is still the best one of the three. True, it has no main protagonist. He should have toned down Jar Jar Binks a lot. Darth Maul was pre-hyped as a massive villainous character then had about three minutes of screen-time. The plotline is essentially feeble. But it’s a ‘set up’ movie – what would you expect?

There were two disasters, though. One was the ‘explanation’ of Anakin’s potentiality in the Force as being due to microscopic force-producing organisms in his blood called ‘midichlorians’ and the corresponding random decision to accord him a ‘virgin birth’ (seriously). The other was the repeated fudging of the monarchy issue. ‘Queen Amidala’ is a teenager, who has somehow been democratically elected queen. Yes, that’s right, the constitutional monarchist system of Naboo elects teenagers to positions of unquestionable power.

It’s ridiculous and has more to do with the American audience who presumably wouldn’t countenance an equation of monarchy with freedom. The USA is a republic after all and small-r republicanism matters.

The second and third prequels just built on these shaky foundations. There was no more nonsense about midichlorians, thank goodness, and Jar Jar was pensioned off to a role in the civil service. There was the godawful ‘romance’ sequence in Episode 2, and I never really got why Anakin embraced the Dark Side in Episode 3. I was expecting some kind of agonising / internal wrestling and at least a discussion about the merits of the Dark Side before he turned, but instead he seemed to have about two minutes talking about how worried he was about his pregnant wife and then went off to massacre children.

Again there was a continuity mess-up. In Return of the Jedi, Leia tells Luke she remembers their mother. Well, I doubt it, unless she was an exceptional newborn baby with facial recognition from the moment she drew breath. Because in Ep 3 Padme dies after saying her name.

By that point, I was past caring, really. As far as I’m concerned the prequels are non-canon; part of the apocrypha of the Star Wars universe, on a par with the Star Wars Holiday Special, the Marvel comic strips, the Droids cartoon series , the Ewok movie and the appearance of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker on the Muppet Show.

But then came the release of the Special Editions onto DVD and the true evil of the prequels was revealed. For George had decided to monkey about with them again and, boy did he monkey! In the daftest and most annoying of ways!

Firstly, in the Special Edition of The Empire Strikes Back, he revoiced Boba Fett using the New Zealand twang of the actor who played Boba’s ‘father’, Jango Fett.

The thinking, presumably, is that Boba is a clone of Jango, and therefore he would sound exactly like his Dad. But, okay, some speech characteristics are probably genetic (tone, pitch etc.), accents aren’t ‘set’ genetically. It makes no sense for Boba, orphaned at a tender age, traveller of the galaxy, to have exactly the same accent as his Dad. It was a completely unnecessary change.

And then secondly, George managed to bodge the end of Jedi AGAIN! This time he replaced the ghost of Anakin Skywalker as played by Sebastian Shaw when Luke removes Darth Vader’s helmet on board the second Death Star, with the ghost of Anakin Skywalker as a young man, i.e. Hayden Christiansen, who played Anakin in Episodes 2 & 3.

There was no need for that. Maybe the thought was that having an old man next to Yoda and Obi-Wan was confusing for (stupid) kids. But Luke has never seen his father, except when he removes Vader’s helmet. How is he supposed to recognise a guy who looks about his own age?

And if you’re going to do it, why is Anakin the only one to return as a much younger version of himself? Why not replace all of Obi-Wan’s ghost scenes with footage of Ewan McGregor? It makes as much sense.

There does come a point where you begin to wonder whether George Lucas should be allowed near his own movies any more because he is slowly killing them. At what point should his underlings step in and say ‘Sir, in good conscience, we can’t allow you to exercise your ‘creativity’ on your cadre of work any more’.

‘Step away from the CGI machine, Sir. Thank you, Sir. Now, let’s leave the editing suite, and I’ll get Susan to make us a nice cup of tea...’

2011 – year in review

2012-01-03T18:49:00.002Z

I did this last year and found it fun, so here’s a look backward at 2011.

January

I was recruited to write an end-of-session report for a Commission that ended up a few weeks later with having lunch in the then Health Minister’s office in Cardiff Bay. I also had a wisdom tooth out and had a bad reaction to the anaesthetic that laid me up crook for most of a week.

February

I spent most of the month working on the report for the Commission, interspersed with a family wedding in Bournemouth, which included drink in a remarkable Victorian booze-house. I branched out onto a new social media platform and joined Twitter as me. One aspect of my migration to Twitter is my daily use of Facebook dropping to weekly, or even longer, between visits. As someone (can’t remember who) said, “Facebook feels so 2008”.

March

Went to an odd gig – Boothby Graffoe at Chapter Arts Centre. He was filming a DVD but that meant occasionally he’d be asked to repeat stuff if the cameramen hadn’t quite got the shot they wanted. He had to make his entrance several times. At that point I knew it was going to be a long night. I also went to my 22nd Wales football game at the Millennium Stadium. They lost, to England, 2-0.

April

Did my second ‘in the News’ studio slot at UCB Radio on April 1 and then went to a football match on my birthday – love it when that happens, especially as Town won 4-1. Had two round trips to Newcastle to see a poorly sister-in-law later in the month and ended up driving home on Royal Wedding Day.

May

Marked my first-year anniversary at the job I still sometimes think of as my ‘new’ job. A couple of weeks after that I got to travel to the exotic city of Birmingham for a conference. Spent the end of the month driving round Wales filming people – including my first ever visit to Llanidloes. Shrewsbury Town bodged the play-offs and stayed in League 2.

June

Summer holiday in Mull and then on the Ardnamurchan peninsular. I preferred Mull. Ardnamurchan was the wrong kind of remote for me, although the Lighthouse was cool. I also enjoyed eating lunch next to Loch Morar and wondering if Nessie’s cousin Morag would appear. (She didn’t.) On the 24th I became Uncle Jon to Joy Lindsey Matthias.

July

Bit of a weird month in work. One of my line managers was overseas the entire month, although I was left with plenty to get on with! Outside of work I restarted building a model railway. Updates have been infrequent of late as I have barely had time to work on the project, let alone blog about it.

August

Preached for the first time in Glenwood on 1 John 2 – if you don’t love people you’re not really doing it right. I had a very positive response. (Have a listen) When Mum and Dad came down for a couple of days we went to Cardiff Castle for the first time. It only took living here 16 years...
September

A very busy month with a particularly memorable milestone. After decades of waiting for the ‘right time’, Cathy got baptised. It was a lovely family occasion. I also travelled to the Emirates Stadium and saw Shrewsbury Town take the lead against Arsenal before eventually losing 3-1. Another great occasion, though, despite the result. And then we had a week with my family in rural Herefordshire.

October

I seemed to spend most of October either on the road filming or editing the masses of footage we accumulated all over Wales. I also had another live morning in the studio at UCB and ended the month with a disappointing trip to see Shrewsbury play AFC Wimbledon, the only upside of which was introducing a new person to the ‘joys’ of watching Shrewsbury Town. Went to a Bowling for Soup gig that I felt was disappointing, but really liked one of the support bands, Suburban Legends. Bought their CD and have played it repeatedly since.

November

My second Town ‘away’ match of the season, but the shortest trip I’ll make to see them for a while as they played Newport County in the cup. So far I’ve seen at least one match a month this season – the streak continued into December as well. Work-wise, we had two massive events on consecutive days and then later in the month I got to go to The Guardian offices for a conference.

December

Always a busy month, particularly with all the travelling we tend to do to see family at Christmas and all the friends we only seem to catch up with at Christmas. (We started Christmas Day in Cardiff and ended up with my folks in Shrewsbury having eaten Christmas dinner with Cathy’s folks near Gloucester.) For the first time since 2002 I went into work between Christmas and New Year. It was a bit strange.

Political blog post: unemployment

2011-12-29T22:35:00.001Z

One of the unexpected side-effects of working in a job tangentially linked to public health is that I keep discovering new things. I’ve become a gatherer of noteworthy trivia and factoids that actually scare me when I think about them.

One of the more shocking was this: chronic worklessness has an equivalent debilitating effect on a person’s health as smoking 20 cigarettes a day. That means that if someone is unemployed for a long period of time, they are statistically more likely to die at a younger age than someone with a job – to the same tune as if they puffed a packet of death-sticks every 24 hours.

We know the effects of smoking, and most sensible people would support a total ban if any government had the balls to do it. Lung cancer, and if like me you’ve seen it kill someone you care about, is a truly horrible way to die. But we don’t see the wasting disease of the soul that is unemployment in quite the same way – its impact is hidden.

And yet draw a map of disease and early mortality in any part of the country and the map will always follow a pattern: low mortality = poverty = high smoking = high obesity (i.e. poor nutrition) = low child birth weight = chronic or prolonged unemployment = poor housing = higher cancer rates, more heart diseases, more illness per se.

Poverty and suffering from ill health go hand in hand on any public health map drawn up ever.

And poverty and worklessness go hand in hand on any demographic map drawn up ever.

Just before Christmas the Government announced it was going to put over £400m into efforts to tackle ‘problem families’ – i.e. dysfunctional families with ‘feckless’ dads, tearaway teens, benefits cheats and criminal genes. This wasn’t new news, but it was reported as such. The Government previously said it was going to spend over £300m in October. Inflation means everything costs more a few months later.

A Daily Mail article that ran in October carried the headline “How Britain's Shameless families cost the taxpayer £8bn every year.”

It went on to say:

“The summer riots have convinced the government that drastic steps are required to tackle a hardcore of workless neighbourhoods where no-one has a proper job.

The coalition says Labour’s welfare legacy means there are many parts of Britain where three generations of families have never worked and live a life funded by state benefits.

Some neighbourhoods, particularly in inner cities and on large estates, are so blighted by long-term unemployment that no-one on a street has a job and children never see anyone getting up and going to work.”

We have a scenario, then, where generations of young people are growing up in workless households, where to be unemployed is the norm. There’s a reason for that. Good jobs – and by that I mean jobs that will enable you to pay the rent or mortgage, buy nourishing, nutritional food, pay for insurance, pay for heating and lighting, clothe your kids and yourself, and maybe have enough left over to pay for a monthly night out at the cinema – are hard to come by.

Whose fault is that, exactly?

According to Government, and reproduced faithfully by the bleating Mail, Labour’s welfare policies are responsible for “three generations of workless families”.

I know it feels like forever since Tony Blair’s New Labour victory in 1997, but that wasn’t three generations ago. It must be linked to whoever was in charge before Tony.

And what is Labour’s record when it comes to employment, anyway? One of the sea-changes in British politics came after the Second World War. The newly-installed Labour Government is still, I think, the only British Government ever to state a commitment to full employment. There would be jobs for people as Britain rebuilt itself – that was the plan.

It was ambitious, but it wasn’t a pipe-dream. It was founded on an ethic that saw the social good in employment. Work wasn’t just about earning money – or even a cynical exercise in keeping the population occupied. Work was something that drew communities together. If the majority of people in a community work in local business or manufacturing, it creates cohesion. Never mind the individual health benefits that we now know accrue from being engaged in work.

Another sea-change was the Thatcherite revolution of the 1980s. The privatisation of national industries – gas, telecoms, electric – were all justified using economic arguments. Nationalised industries were inefficient, they had too many employees, they were monopolies that kept prices high.

So they closed the pits and the steelworks, the mills and the mines.

Interesting story – when my Dad was 16, my Granddad had a word with a friend and got my Dad a job at the steel mill that loomed above the small Welsh village where he grew up. Dad had other ideas – he wanted to study medicine and become a doctor, but many of his contemporaries went to work there.

In many respects, Dad chose a hard path. Studying medicine was even more brutal in the 60s than it is today – and I know enough junior doctors to know it’s pretty brutal today. He worked long hours, and later in hospitals and as a GP worked all hours of the day and night caring for people.

But he wasn’t thrown on the scrapheap when the steelworks was shut down in the name of efficiency in the late 1980s. He wasn’t forced, like so many people in their late 40s, to retrain for a new career and cross your fingers there would be work at the end of it. Being a doctor was a stressful career choice, no doubt about it. But he wouldn’t have traded places with the people facing an uncertain future before a retirement in penury.

That’s the thing about ‘efficiency’ – it’s only a benefit in the short-term to the balance sheet of the company. In the long-term, and we’re talking the inter-generational long-term, the social efficiency of keeping ‘inefficient’ industries going is far greater.

So, now the tories are irked that billions are being spent on benefits for workless communities. Well, you reap what you sow.

Of course, the middle class tax-payers who senselessly vote tory and equally senselessly read the Daily Mail are regularly up in arms about the work-deprived communities their taxes now subsidise. But tory policy created those areas blighted by unemployment. Here’s an idea: Stop voting for the short-term, slash-and-burn, quick-buck opportunists.

The history of tory economic policy is about short-sightedly sacrificing social capital and infrastructure for a few pence. There was never a golden egg they weren’t willing to kill the goose for. As a frivolous example, in the 60s they axed hundreds of picturesque railway routes throughout Britain, never thinking that one day heritage railways could potentially be money-spinners. (The Severn Valley railway once ran through the Ironbridge Gorge into the heart of Shrewsbury – think what that would be like as a tourist attraction now!)

When you are blinkered by the balance sheet you only see the money you will ‘save’, not the opportunities you will miss out on.

That was the 60s. In the 80s they hammered heavy industry – creating poverty blackspots that have drained the public purse for decades in the process.

What are they doing now? Youth unemployment is heading towards an all-time high. Incidentally, so are domestic fuel bills – ending those monopolistic nationalised industries certainly didn’t work in the consumers favour. The NHS is in a process of privatisation; with plans to corral off half of NHS beds for paying customers.

We’re told the NHS, like so much else, has to change because it is ‘inefficient’. But there are different ways of defining 'efficiency'. The NHS is actually very efficient at delivering a central element of what makes a society civilised – care at the point of need for all members of society, regardless of their economic status.

That principle is a bottom line worth more than any balanced books will ever be.

Provenance

2011-12-28T22:59:00.002Z

I’m increasingly troubled by the issue of provenance – how do we know what we read is in any way true or not.

Recently I wrote a white paper about the founding of the NHS, based on presentations by three eminent professors. One of them included a quote from Aneurin Bevan in his PowerPoint. The quote was:

“Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune, the cost of which should be shared by the community.”

I agree whole-heartedly with that statement – it succinctly sums up the issue at the heart of universal healthcare. But, as this was going to be a white paper, I felt I ought to reference it. That’s where the trouble began.

I read Bevan’s key work ‘In Place of Fear’ and it wasn’t in there. A quick scout of ‘quote websites’ on Google didn’t turn up anything. In fact, the only reference I could find on Google was to another presentation by the same professor, where again the quote appeared unattributed. So, I contacted the presenter who said he thought he’d noted it from the many-hundred page biography of Bevan by Michael Foot, but he didn’t have the reference.

He obviously also had a fruitless web search, because in his email he said: “The quote doesn't come up on Google, which makes we wonder if it was part of something Bevan said rather than wrote.” And then he added: “But it rings so true as a Bevan quote that I can't imagine anyone will challenge its authenticity.”

That wasn’t quite good enough for me, so I went further. I got in touch with the Aneurin Bevan Society, and the person who got back to me said they thought it was in his speech at the final reading of the NHS bill in 1948 and also mentioned the Foot biography.

I looked through Hansard for the years surrounding the formation of the NHS (not just ’48), but I couldn’t find it. I didn't have the time to trawl through the biography, so I fudged it in the paper – saying the professor quoted Bevan, but without noting the lack of source. So far, he was right. Nobody has challenged its authenticity.

Then again, within the last few weeks I was writing another paper based on a presentation and there were two quotes attributed to Gandhi. The good thing is that Gandhi is a bit more famous on Google than Bevan and it didn’t take long to find out that the quotes were probably spurious.

The first quote was:

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises.
He is not dependent on us. - We are dependent on him.
He is not an interruption to our work. - He is the purpose of it.
He is not an outsider in our business. - He is part of it.
We are not doing him a favor by serving him. - He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

All well, good and laudable in a healthcare context. Anything that refocuses the work of clinicians on the people they are caring for gets the thumbs up from me. And, although I don’t personally like the use of ‘customers’ in a healthcare setting, I have seen enough family members receive poor customer care from the health service to hope this maxim takes root.

But I still had a problem with the quote – I wasn’t sure it rang true for Gandhi. Sure enough, Wikipedia’s extensive halfway house of uncorroborated quotes had it in storage – noting that the common attribution of the quote didn’t match the known facts of Gandhi’s life. Several websites seeking to affirm it as a genuine quote report that Gandhi said it on a visit to Johannesburg in 1890, but Gandhi’s first visit to South Africa was in 1893.

Something was screwy there. The Wikipedians and other editors noted its similarity to a statement popularised by an American entrepreneur called L. L. Bean. But no-one knew where he had got it from, or whether he coined it.

The second Gandhi quote was the famous “Be the change you want to see in the world” aphorism. As the first quote had proved probably spurious, I thought I’d better check this out. As a quote, it doesn’t appear in any of Gandhi’s published works, but it was attributed to him by his grandson, Arun Gandhi. So maybe it was genuinely something Gandhi said. I’d rate the chances of it being authentic as 50/50.

My problems with ascertaining whether quotes were true remind me of a piece of fact-checking I did when I worked for a Christian family charity. The founder of the organisation is a well-known public speaker and often tells stories as part of his presentations. One, which I heard on numerous occasions and I’ve heard told by another well-known Christian speaker, concerns a world-famous violinist called Itzhak Perlman.

The basic gist of the story is that Perlman (who was born in Israel in 1945) contracted polio and was crippled at a young age. He is now a world-famous concert violinist. When he plays, the audience have to wait for him to limp onto the stage on crutches and position himself.

One night at the concert hall, Perlman had just started a violin solo and one of the strings snapped on his violin. Instead of stopping, he carried on playing, rapidly transposing the notes as he went so he is played them on different strings than usual. When he finished, the auditorium sat in stunned silence for a heartbeat than explodes in rapturous applause.

Perlman signalled for quiet and hauled his crippled body upright. He turned to the hushed crowd and announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, all my life I have sought to make music with what remains!”

That’s the story. The moral – that whatever hardships in life leave you in some way deficient can be overcome – that you too, whatever your struggle, can ‘make music with what remains’ is uplifting. I saw people powerfully moved by the story; some moved even to tears.

I wondered if there was more to the story, so I Googled it. And that’s when I discovered there’s a small problem with it.

As far as anyone can tell, it’s not true.

The details are correct – Itzhak Perlman is a world-renowned violinist. He did have polio as a child and was crippled as a result. So far, so good. But the ‘with what remains’ story didn’t happen. It’s never been mentioned in any review of his concerts – although it has been noted that once when he broke a string, he entertained the crowd with jokes while his violin was re-stringed.

As Snopes.com says “Apparently if Itzhak Perlman ever did continue playing a concert piece after one of the strings on his violin broke, at least one newspaper considered the feat less remarkable than his performing a stand-up routine in similar circumstances.”

The slightly cloying sentiment isn’t the reason the story annoys me. What annoys me is the way it’s been presented as true, yet a 1 second search on Snopes reveals that it is most likely made up.

I think anyone who uses someone else’s words when they present should name the source, or at least check whether a story they tell actually happened. I do.

People – particularly those with a trade in telling feel-good stories and sticking them in books – might say ‘Well, it doesn’t matter whether the quote is genuine, as long as it sounds genuine, or has a good point to make.’ But if we’re just making shit up, then where do we draw the line?

We’re not even talking about centuries-old beliefs or legends from the dawn of time. We’re talking about people and events that happened within living memory. I work with someone who heard Aneurin Bevan speak at a public event in Tredegar. Gandhi wrote an autobiography, his various writings are still in print, and there have been several biographies about him. Itzhak Perlman is still alive.

So, how come so much misinformation can exist? How can sourceless quotes be taken at face value, or when sources are described, they are easily disprovable (thinking of Gandhi’s speech in Jo’burg three years before he set foot in South Africa – which incidentally wouldn’t be ‘South Africa’ for another 20 years).

I think these are issues in a healthcare setting – because clinical practice should be based on evidence and the facts should be right. I think it’s even more crucial in religious circles, particularly if you are trying to draw spiritual lessons from them.

Or to put it another way, if the facts are malleable when it comes to a violinist who still walks among us, how much credence should we give to anything said about a carpenter who disappeared from this earth 2,000 years ago? Why should we believe anything written about him or any quotes attributed to him, given the way modern, documented lives have been expanded and expounded upon?

Those are important questions. They show why provenance matters.

The person whose mug this was does occasionally read this blog

2011-12-26T10:42:00.001Z

And if he reads this he'll be relieved to know that I'm nicer than many of my Facebook friends...

(Pardon the typo in my original status - the shame!)

The real meaning of Christmas captured on a card

2011-12-24T07:38:00.002Z

Amazingly, we got two of these cards, with a picture that I think really captures the essence of midwinter festivity in honour of the birth of humanity's saviour.

A parable of SoMe seasonal goodwill ~ or ~ How Twitter brings people together

2011-12-23T07:01:00.001Z

A few months ago I had a chat with a chap selling second hand toys about Action Force – my favourite toy from the 80s. As is my wont, I tweeted about it.

I was subsequently contacted by two fellow AF fans on Twitter, and a fun conversation developed. It was nice to know other people knew or cared about the forgotten heroes of the 80s and their battles with the villainous Baron Ironblood.

One of the AF fans is called Annie (@AnniePalitoy) and she tweets entertaining glimpses into her life in between references to AF, GI Joe and other fab toys.

Recently Annie tweeted that she was going to donate a chunk of her Christmas bonus to charity, and wanted to know if anyone was doing anything ‘mad’. Now, I happen to know someone who is doing something mad – my friend Liz (@Lizmrawlins) who is braving the bracing brine off Barry Island on Boxing Day. (Brrrr!)

I mentioned this in a tweet to Annie. She then chatted to Liz via Twitter and ended up sponsoring her via Just Giving.

So, two people who never met except via Twitter – one with the cash, the other with just enough crazy to walk into the sea in December – will be contributing to a worthy cause. Social Media genuinely can bring people together. (As does Action Force!)

David Cameron's 'Christian country' comments

2011-12-17T22:27:00.001Z

David Cameron is now on record as saying "Britain is a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so".

He said this in a speech marking the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. He went on to say “the Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today."

Now I am partisan, as this post from a few days ago shows, so it’s interesting to see what David Cameron said and what did he possibly meant by the phrase, a ‘Christian country’.

The phrase ‘Christian country’ seems to crop up regularly, among people bemoaning the state of things, but what does it mean? It’s usually one of those ‘hark back to the past’ phrases, when we recall the ‘good old days’.

So, this would be the Christian country that got rich off the back of the transatlantic trade in human livestock. Eventually, yes we finally stopped selling fellow humans as chattels, but we weren’t done with exploitation. We were a solidly ‘Christian country’ during the Industrial Revolution, which crowded the poor into cities of slums, where most of them died of cholera and typhus. We were a ‘Christian country’ of workhouses, prostitution, gin palaces and opium dens.

Or maybe you’re thinking about the ‘Christian country’ of the twentieth century. The ‘Christian country’ that conscripted teenagers, gave them six weeks training in Ireland, shipped them to France and sent them over the top into the bloody mist of the Somme, where only 1 in 4 kids made it back alive. The ‘Christian country’ that authorised the military to open fire on civilians protesting the working conditions down the South Wales coal mines. The ‘Christian country’ that operated a political Empire for the first half of the century and then repeatedly stitched up the developing world through economic imperialism for the second half.

I’m just saying, our nation’s history ain’t particularly glorious or enlightened and I’m not sure I want my faith to be tainted by association with it. In fact, many of the best examples of British Christians, from Wilberforce, to Barnardo, to Booth, spent their time as outsiders to the prevailing culture of this ‘Christian country’, regarded as annoying, or awkward, or cranks.

But apparently, emphasising our Christian-ness as a country will prevent "moral collapse". David said: "Whether you look at the riots last summer, the financial crash and the expenses scandal, or the ongoing terrorist threat from Islamist extremists around the world, one thing is clear: moral neutrality or passive tolerance just isn't going to cut it anymore."

Well, yeah, much as it pains me to agree with a tory leader, I would agree with that. To an extent.

I’m a bit concerned by the phrase ‘moral neutrality’ – I’m not sure what he’s criticising there. It looks to me like a sop to the vocal Christians who believe we would fix everything in society if we just banned abortion and stopped the gays from screwing each other.

But you don’t need to be a Christian to make an ethical distinction between behaviour that is right and wrong. In fact, David knows that – he said being a Christian wasn’t a "necessary nor sufficient condition for morality" but having a faith could be a "helpful prod in the right direction". So we’re a ‘Christian country’, but that’s no guarantee that people who call themselves Christians will do the right thing. Good to know.

He also said: “just as our language and culture is steeped in the Bible, so too is our politics.” I’m sorry, what? I have to disagree with that statement.

What reading of the Bible justifies the persecution of the vulnerable, the widening of the gaps between the haves and have-nots, the granting of favours to the rich and powerful, and the general acquiescence to the amoral profiteering of the markets?

David Cameron’s politics are not “steeped in the Bible”. They have never been seen near the Bible. (Unless he’s reading the list of Israelite kings who “did evil in the sight of the Lord” and has got the wrong end of the stick.)

Okay, I’m in danger of editorialising there, but either living a Christian faith is a radical departure from ‘normal’, acquisitive, selfish human behaviour, or it isn’t. You either love your neighbour or you don’t.

He does say: "The absence of any real accountability, or moral code, allowed some bankers and politicians to behave with scant regard for the rest of society.” That’s a very interesting thing for him to say, considering he has done FA to challenge that behaviour.

David’s government are just about the only European government to oppose the institution of the financial transactions tax (‘Robin Hood tax’), he has refused to crack down on bankers bonuses, and he has supported the head of his tax division who cut numerous shady deals with financial institutions so they could get off paying tax.

Maybe he thinks a semi-stern telling off will solve the problem. He gets to wag the finger at the banks in the confines of a church and so they’ll all listen to him and sort themselves out – do the decent thing, and all that. No, David, maybe you’ll have to man up and fill that vacuum of “real accountability” and get tough with the city boys who keep screwing everyone over.

To do that you would need a clear sense of right and wrong. The problem is David wants it both ways – he wants a free market system and he wants morality. But markets and morality are incompatible. Markets follow the money, and mammon is amoral. You have to apply your morality to the market – make the market serve your purpose – for the market to deliver any social good. That’s why a planned economy brought about the NHS and affordable housing for millions, and also why market economies have made housing unaffordable and turned our health system into a postcode lottery.

So, he wants a nice moral system, but he isn’t willing to impose anything to make it so. Cameron’s comments about faith indicate his levels of confusion.

“Let me be clear: I am not in any way saying that to have another faith – or no faith – is somehow wrong. I know and fully respect that many people in this country do not have a religion. And I am also incredibly proud that Britain is home to many different faith communities, who do so much to make our country stronger.”

So, basically, we’re a Christian country where “many” people aren’t Christians. Not sure how that works, but okay.

He described himself as a "committed but vaguely practising Church of England Christian", or to put it another way, a ‘committed and uncommitted’ Christian. Which explains why he wants everyone to do the right thing, but is too scared to make them.

And finally, he admitted he was "full of doubts and, like many, constantly grappling with the difficult questions when it comes to some of the big theological issues". Presumably that includes big issues like how to live out Christian values you’re only vaguely committed to, and practice politics that are ‘steeped’ in a Bible he’s blatantly never read.

Good luck with that, David.

Building a model railway part 9: Impulse purchase and gifts!

2011-12-12T23:06:00.000Z

Here's a photo of the three 'home locos' of the SCRHC - Lacey (AKA the Big Dog), Pitbull and Snoopy

To their ranks has been added an unexpected 4th small loco - Coyote.

He's a Canadian Pacific Plymouth shunter - in a slightly different scale (HO, don't you know), and yes, he's North American. This will no doubt anger the railway purists, but I have my reasons. Firstly, he was incredibly cheap - only £14.99 brand new. Secondly, you do see foreign locos on preserved railways over here - I remember being on a narrow guage railway somewhere in North Wales that was hauled by Romanian locos. Thirdly, one day I might build a North American railroad and it would have to be West Coast!

Behind Coyote you can see the new Skaledale waiting room and the important additions of platform bins. These were Christmas presents from Matt - thanks Matt! - and I think they look great. The waiting room matches the other brick buildings I've been constructing, even though it's resin, not card.

Coyote also has the distinction of being the first engine I have 'modded'. Being HO and American it had different couplings, so I bought some UK-style replacements and fitted them. I forgot to take a 'before' shot, so you'll just have to make do with the 'after' shot, which is probably the least exciting model railway related photo I've posted on here.

Political post

2011-12-09T23:18:00.023Z

There’s always a danger when expressing political views of offending somebody. I’m aware of this and generally in life I try to avoid political discussions in the justifiable fear of rejection.

But I’ve noticed myself being politicised of late. I’m starting to feel angry about the state of things and particularly the people in charge who seem bent as hell. So this is a foray into politics and all the things that have been brewing up inside me.

Partly my renaissance as a politico is because of Twitter and tuning into various voices there (like @UKuncut and @robinhood).

Working in the public sector has also introduced me to new sources of information. I went to a lecture last week delivered by Professor Allyson Pollock, who outlined the abolition of the NHS in England as it is opened up to private competition. David Cameron and co are demolishing the NHS based on intellectually flawed ‘research’ that is so preposterous, even I, as a non-statistician with an arts degree, can spot its glaring deficiencies.

Basically if you live in England you won’t have an NHS any more when this bill goes through. There is no guarantee of comprehensive cover or any duty for the Government to provide it. The organisations being given control over millions of pounds will have no obligation to provide services for people not on their ‘membership’ – and the poor, vulnerable, mentally ill, frail, confused, chronically sick, and illiterate could very easily fall through the cracks.

David Cameron has repeatedly told the public how much he loves the NHS, with the desperation of a wife-beater professing adoration of the woman he treats violently. But this privatisation in all but name turns him into a pimp whoring out his beloved to anyone with money.

There’s other stuff going that drives me crazy too.

Did you know that the head guy at HM Revenue and Customs, Dave Hartnett, was taken out to dinner by senior bods at various corporations, who subsequently got excused from paying millions in tax? He’s just lost his job by the way, or rather he will when he ‘retires’ next year (giving him another 6 months to trouser a few more quid from the taxpayer). Meanwhile one of the guys who blew the whistle is being hounded out of his job.

I’d like to know who I can take out to lunch so I don’t have to pay any tax any more.

I’d also like to know why the head of HM Revenue and Customs didn’t seem that bothered about collecting tax from wealthy people. And why the Prime Minister supported him when people started questioning it.

Did you know that the Prime Minister and Chancellor have both flatly ruled out the ‘Robin Hood Tax’ that levies financial transactions – currently conducted tax-free – because they say such a tax will work against Britain’s interests? It’s so nice they have our interests at heart, but by “Britain’s interests” they mean the interests of the banks, many of whom operate here without paying any tax because they know who to take out to lunch.

The banks, of course, are the responsible citizenry who prompted this global downturn by playing fast and loose with money they didn’t have. And strangely, although no government has held them to account for it, those same banks are seeking legal recourse to prevent a Robin Hood Tax being introduced.

The tax could raise millions – and if the banks and other corporations were made to pay their tax the way we ordinary folks are made to pay our tax – then that would be more millions. But instead the squeeze is on public sector funding.

I don’t want to defend poor spending decisions or financial mismanagement in hte public sector, but that isn’t what’s motivating the austerity measures. These were always the plan for any Tory government. High unemployment benefits capitalism because it keeps wages down. Cut people’s benefits and they will have to work and in the world of ‘caring conservatism’ that includes all those people on sickness and disability benefits.

There’s been a significant rise in attempted suicide among the chronically ill already being recorded due to the stress put on people who are unable to work but are having their lifelines taken away from them.

Then there’s the pensions thing. While any employer is fully within their rights to change the conditions of employment for their employees, there is something fundamentally untrustworthy about an employer who just unilaterally does it. Making people pay more for less is one thing – at 35 it will be decades before I see a penny and a dirty bomb in Whitehall may render it all moot before then anyway. But to suddenly tell people who have been investing for years that they will be on a significantly smaller income than they had been planning for in their retirement seems immoral.

Amidst the discussion about pensions and strikes, it is worth remembering that the average public sector pension is only £5,600 a year – not the “gilt-edged” pension pots that bedenimed tool Jeremy Clarkson seems to think they are. But Clarkson’s level of ignorance is the same as any moron tory braying out the party line about how ‘we’re all in this together’.

There are 17 millionaires in Cameron’s cabinet. No wonder they look out for the 1%. They are the 1%. And we are certainly not all in it together.

For what it’s worth, I didn’t strike, mainly because I don’t belong to a union. And I also don’t know whether striking would do any good. Unless you went out for a month – and everyone went out at the same time. That might cause enough disruption to ruffle even silky smoothy Dave’s oily feathers.

This brings me to another source of frustration, the opposition. There is little, if any, organised political dissent. Labour leader Ed Milliband seems to be incapable of having an opinion, let alone expressing it. He is a floppy-faced, doe-eyed bunny in the headlights of realpolitik and he doesn’t seem to have the nous to challenges the tory BS and expose it as vacuous mammonism.

The other opposition I see most often is the Occupy movement (or more accurately, non-movement). This is fairly visible as I have to walk past their encampment in Cardiff to get to my workplace. They are camped on a square of grass in front of a union building, but to what purpose, I don’t know.

If you are going to be anarchic and oppose the government, I can see the point of firebombing banks or bricking tory mansions. I wouldn’t condone it – certainly not on my blog given the penchant for prosecuting people ‘inciting violence’ online – but I could understand it. But to set up a few tents and regard yourself as a revolutionary just seems stupid to me.

Most of all, though, the thing that annoys me is the lethargic acceptance of the status quo. There are real issues at stake here. I think we should care – and I think we should do something.

I’m particularly appalled by the complacency of Christians. We are talking about social justice and the fortunes of the poor and dispossessed in society. These are the things that Jesus seemed to give a shit about.

To paraphrase Steve Chalke, more of my Christian friends would be upset about me using the word ‘shit’ than any of the issues I’ve listed above regarding institutionalised dishonesty and the shameless mugging of the poor to grease the cogs of the financial system, or the inhuman treatment of the marginalised.

I have always struggled with the way some Christians approach politics. Ever since I was a teenager I have hated the way the Christian approach to politics has cared more about stem cells than social justice; about abortion rather than what happens to adults living with infirmity or disability.

I understand the idea that the way society treats the unborn is indicative of the kind of society we are – but what about the way the Government are demonising the disabled and denying them support? What about the way the care of the sick and the dying is being opened up to the piranha for-profit companies? What about the tax breaks investment banks somehow get while lowly shelf stackers in the hgh street stores nervously wonder if they'll still have jobs in the New Year?

Do these things not matter?

Why should we campaign to create a society where the unborn are protected if then they are born into a society that teaches them they have to look out for number one, that compassion is weakness, that the ones who win are the ones born into privilege or who mortgage their souls to mammon in order to achieve privilege? I don’t get that.

I'm beginning to feel that everything about this government is antithetical to the teaching of Christ and yet I know many Christians will still blindly vote for them or argue for them or stand in elections wearing a blue rosette. I can only assume it’s because they don't read the same Bible I do. Maybe their God is not on the side of the weak and the poor and the downtrodden. Maybe their Jesus preached good news for the rich, and blessings only for the monied and powerful.

Aneurin Bevan stated that the success of the tory party was down to them repeatedly convincing the population to vote against its own interests. He was right. It isn’t in the interests of any of the 99% to vote such a ghastly bunch of smiling crooks into power, and yet people did.

Bevan, interestingly, rejected the church of his day because he said they were immune to the suffering around them. He felt they supported the wealthy in society in the class struggle. If he was right then the church was no longer on the side of Christ. I don’t know how much has changed. Sadly, probably not enough.

2 gems from the WSC Weekly Howl

2011-11-25T23:41:00.001Z

The first rule of proof-reading - always check the headings!

Secondly - whose idea was THIS?

Available on Amazon

The romance of the cup

2011-11-12T20:57:00.000Z

When the mighty Shrews were drawn away against Newport County in the 1st round of the FA Cup, I was pleased. Talk about a quick trip to see them play. Short of a possible draw against Cardiff I don't think they will be any closer to my house this year.

However, compared to my last away trip (the Emirates!), Newport Stadium was a bit of a rude return to life on the road as a Town fan. It's basically an athletics stadium and we were in the 'away end' - banks of temporary seating on the running track, next to a netting construction I think was a hammer-throwing cage.

The opposite end to us was a similar uncovered stand - so this is what our end presumably looked like from a distance.

We were very close to the pitch, though. I took this picture as the teams observed a minute's Remembrance silence.

The match kicked off at 12.30 - moved because ESPN decided it was the pick of the first round ties to televise. That should have been a warning to me. I have seen Shrewsbury play in three games that have been televised live and they have all been dire. Many moons ago I saw Shrewsbury's first ever live match on Sky - a grafted 1-0 win at Cheltenham. Then, eight years ago I was at the Gay Meadow when we were drubbed 4-0 by Chelsea. (Although, admittedly, Gianfranco Zola's goal is still talked about reverently by Town fans.)

The plus side though was getting close to the ESPN broadcast demountable and seeing the FA Cup in all it's pomp, perched within range of an errant clearance. You can just about make it out in this picture - on reflection, I could have taken one close up. But the guy behind me confidently told me that it was only a replica anyway. Still, I would have dearly loved to see a shanked ball go crashing into it, iconoclast that I am.

Today's TV outing will do nothing to raise people's expectations of the team if they had the misfortune to tune in. It was a Godawful performance on an oily pitch playing hit and hoof. When Town scored we couldn't see initially because it was up the other end, but that was about the only thing to shout about.

It really seemed that the Town players' touch had deserted them. In fact, for the first time ever at a football match I was a bit worried about the safety of my dependable VW Golf, because our defenders seemed determined to launch as many clearances into the car park as possible.

John Barnes and Martin Keown were summing up for the telly. Goodness knows what they made of it - the comments in the stand were pretty negative! Barnesy got asked to rap for us and got a short chant of World in Motion, but didn't oblige. We didn't ask Martin Keown to perform.

The results will show that Shrewsbury scraped a win, and in the long run that's all that matters, I guess. But to do it in such an artless style, doesn't fill me with confidence. There wasn't a gulf in class and Newport can consider themselves unlucky - only a fab save by Town 'keeper Chris Neal kept them out in the second half.

It's strange, but I think County fans will be happier with their team's performance in defeat than I was with our team's win.

Cake packaging with added potential rudeness

2011-11-09T23:51:00.000Z

Spotted this in Tesco. It made me laugh.

"Did you get the 4 King Cakes, dear?"

"Yes, I 4 King did!"

Our first ever hi-fi as a married couple

2011-11-06T22:03:00.000Z

After almost 17 years together and just over 14 years married, Cathy and I have purchased our first hi-fi as a couple.

It's strange that we haven't bought one before, given how often we have music on. We bought (and played out) several of the small all-in-one units in our kitchen over the years. But this was our first 'front room hi-fi'.

It's taken us a while to get it. We decided to get one last year as a Christmas present to each other.

This is what we were replacing.

The tapedeck was my Dad's, bought back in the 80s, and as dead as a Monty Python parrot. The Pioneer amplifier I bought for a tenner from a friend in about 1993, but as it had originally been his family's stereo, then his, that must date from the early 80s too. The CD player and record player I bought in my first term in my first year at Uni.

Cathy helped me carry the CD player home from the train station to the house I was lodging in in Llandaff North. We'd just started going out. She thought I was crazy blowing my money like that, but as my diet was predominantly Heinz spaghetti hoops on toast, I could afford it. (I didn't like using the temperamental gas oven in my student house. You had to reach right into the back to light it with a match and I was afraid it would blow up and burn my arm off. Hobs were safer. I ate a lot of hoops.True story.)

I bought the record player a week later, because I was a muso and I liked to buy limited edition coloured vinyl singles. I presume the turntable still works. I haven't used it in years. The CD player is okay - occasionally sticky. The amp fades in and out and you have to twiddle the volume knob to get it to function. I'll probably freecycle them as someone could use them.

Anyway, that was about half our lifetimes ago. So, today we went and bought a micro hi-fi that cost less than my CD player separate did back in the day. It can play CDs and you can plug a USB into it - a technology that was simply science fiction when our old hi-fi was built.

It's freed up some space, which was easily filled. It sounds amazing. Happy Christmas to us 10 and a bit months later!

Retrotechnophile

2011-11-01T21:07:00.003Z

My Dad uses an old 35mm camera, and then has to take the film in to be developed. He likes to tell people about this. He says he's the last person using film in Shrewsbury.

Anyway, this cartoon really reminded me of him.

Reliving my childhood through retro packaging

2011-10-31T20:53:00.000Z

I made an impulse buy in the supermarket tonight - a Star Wars figure on a retro style backing card that reminds me of buying them first time around back in the 1980s.

Having only returned from abroad in 1983, I only ever bought Star Wars figures on the Return of the Jedi backing cards. A whole load of the figures I had back in the day have been retooled and re-released now, including Luke Skywalker in his Jedi Knight outfit, and the Gammorean Guard from Jabba's palace.

I could leave those ones, but when I saw my favourite space admiral ever, I had to have it! Altogether now: "It's a TRAP!"

Building a model railway part 8: new / old acquisitions

2011-10-30T22:37:00.001Z

Those following this series will know I have acquired a few things from my Dad. recently I was able to raid his boxes of stuff and install a few new pieces on my model railway.

I also brought home a railcar that Dad bought in the 1980s, just to see if it would run. Surprisingly it does, but the headshunts at either end of my lay-out are too small for it to traverse. But at least it runs. It's in a nice early BR maroon as well, so fits in with the other locos.

Dad had a couple of Cambrian wagons - another mainline one and one produced by Dapol.This rake looks pretty good on the surface, but you can easliy spot the same numbers on the side. I am considering how to go about altering them (or at least the ones on my Mainline wagon).

I borrowed a few other pieces of rolling stock. But also some vintage trackside pieces, including two water cranes, a loading gauge and some signals.

They are a mix of manufacturers, including Triang and Hornby Dublo, and date to the 60s, I think. Part of the ethos of building a heritage railway has been to include some 'vintage' pieces like this, so it's 'heritage' in real-life as well.

I plan to build a water tower to back on to the water cranes, which I've placed together to function as an 'exhibit' in the heritage centre.

Why Shrewsbury Town struggle to attract new fans

2011-10-29T23:20:00.000+01:00

It seems whenever I take someone new to see the mighty Shrews, the team don't live up to their 'mighty' name-tag and turn in a performance that can put you off football as a sport, let alone supporting Shrewsbury. It was thus when I went with a kid to his first ever football match last season. It was thus when I took my cousin for the first time in 26 years.

And it was thus today when I took my friend Connor to his first ever Town game, making him get up at an unearthly hour on a Saturday (well, unearthly for him seeing as he's a student), and drive 110 miles to see two teams struggle to do the basic things right. Like get shots on target. Or pass.

There were a few 'firsts' though. It was the first time I'd ever seen a matchball delivered by helicopter (from the local RAF station as it's poppy appeal time). I don't know how hard it is to land a helicopter in the centre circle, but they made it look easy.

It was also the first time I'd ever seen an opposing team's fans applauded when they were announced.

AFC Wimbledon were formed by fans after the terrible FA decision to allow the original Wimbledon to 'relocate' to Milton Keynes and become the MK Dons. As such, they are held in tremendous esteem by most fans who care about football as a whole, rather than the exercise-in-branding Premier League team they've chosen to support this year. (Yes, I support a real football team; so sue me.)

However, I will hold them in less esteem from now on. I can live with the stifling 'come-for-the-draw' tactics that killed the game from about 10 minutes in. We've seen that time and again, and it was understandable that after shipping several goals and losing three on the bounce, they played cautious tactics. It's boring and frustrating to watch, but really it's up to my team to pick the lock.

But what I can't forgive is a player falling to the floor and clutching his face, rolling in simulated agony after his shirt was tugged gently by an opponent. That is shameful play-acting to get another professional sent off. Okay, it was one player, but it sullied the AFC Wimbledon name in my eyes.

It ended 0-0. Not the greatest intro to the blue and amber for Conn as he sat there loyally wearing the scarf I'd leant him. Town were lucky Wimbledon hit the post after about 3 minutes, but the missed a few good chances and had a decent shout for a penalty turned down, so there were talking points. Just not many good ones.

Mid-October Mayhem

2011-10-18T22:59:00.003+01:00

I seem to be too busy to blog of late, so here are some random bits and bobs to keep however many people click on here regularly to see what is going on in my life in the loop:

Work
Crazy busy driving round Wales filming brilliant people doing a brilliant job improving healthcare and saving lives. Had a day-trip to Wrexham the other day, which involved 8 hours driving and a fatality. A suicidal pheasant added itself to my roadkill tally and managed to rip a bit of the bumper off The Tank for good measure.

My favourite quote from filming so far was the person who said they had been on "a real learning kerb". (Don't hit that too fast.)

Church
Cathy got baptised at the end of September, after 20+ years of waiting. When she read me the first draft of her testimony she made me cry. Friends and family turned out to see her get dipped, and make it a real special moment for us.

I've been co-opted onto the youth co-ordinating team thing and also taken on responsibility for Soul Mr, the once-a-month boy's night. It's fun, but we are in a period of adjustment as our new youth leader in training settles in.

Back in August, I did a Sunday morning talk ('sermon', if you want to get old school about these things). You can read it here. It was my first talk of that kind for over 5 years.

Family
We survived a week with the family in Herefordshire. Some pictures will make their way on here soon, including my cute little niece, Joy, who is in the grabbing-your-thumb-and-not-letting-go stage of adorability. Given the location, I didn't buy too much cider (although how much is too much?)

Freelance theology
I haven't had much chance to write for this project for a few years, but I have been buoyed by having my first ever donation off the site in the last couple of days. Someone likes it. (More importantly, someone reads it!)

I have had some good sessions on UCB Radio on the back of it. The most recent one was last Friday. I may be doing some more 'slots' for them in future. I've also recorded some stuff for them for future broadcast about the possible existence of aliens, because apparently I'm the guy to talk to about stuff like that.

Model railway
I liberated some of my Dad's old model railway gear last weekend. Will post some pictures soon, because I know how much you all love them!

Most recent film
Cowboys versus Aliens - fairly daft, but enjoyable. 6.5/10

Currently reading
'Franny and Zooey' by JD Salinger. I'm on a bit of a Salinger kick at the moment. I've recently finished his collection of short stories, 'For Esme with Love and Squalor'. One of the stories made me laugh so loud Cathy arched her eyebrows at me.

What's on this week?
More filming and editing in work and lots of plans outside. Going to see Bowling for Soup on Thursday, baby-sitting Friday, model railway exhibition on Saturday and ice hockey in the evening, leading youth on Sunday morning (need to prep for that - aagh!), visiting relatives in the afternoon (possibly). All good stuff.

You want me to what?

2011-10-10T23:08:00.000+01:00

These posters have been put up around my workplace.

Now I'm all for raising funds to cure cancer, but the choice of slogan is open to (pervy) misinterpretation. I'm not sure everyone would be happy if I 'unleashed my inner pink'. Especially in a predominantly female office.

Of course, this ambiguity might be what they were going for, to 'get people talking' (or blogging). But I'm sure there are ways of putting it that would sound a bit nicer.

Building a model railway part 7: Upgrading facilities

2011-10-08T22:26:00.000+01:00

I said in an earlier post that I was thinking of changing my Hornby good shed.

I wasn't keen on the model, so decided to replace it completely. I opted for a Metcalfe Models kit, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, even though it's just made from card, the signal box kit really impressed me, and I wanted to try another one. Secondly, it's in the same red brick pattern as the signal box lower floor and the engine shed I scratchbuilt (using Metcalfe card), so would fit in. Thirdly, from the pictures I'd seen it looked more interesting than the Hornby one, with an extended platform and an office attached to the shed. Fourthly, it came with a bonus kit of a weighbridge and office. And I love bonus kits!

Anyway, I got glueing and sticking last night. Here are some pictures:

Bulldog clips are useful to keep the card together while the glue dries

The shell of the building takes shape

Interior detail - a loading platform and roof trusses. Note the elastic band keeping the edges together so the platform stays flush with the wall.

External office attached - also the shed doors stuck in place.

Some detailing to go (e.g. chimney pot), but virtually finished.

And it is now happily in situ on the railway.

The detached building next to it is the weighbridge.

A few other scenic details added, like a skip between the goods shed and the weighbridge (just about visible). I've kept the Hornby loading gauge (above the tank wagons, top right).

Next jobs - painting and sealing the baseboard (Cathy's instructions). Ballasting (which will be fun I'm sure). Touching up the engine shed (possible re-engineering job!) And maybe installing a crane on the platform outside the new good shed. I'm looking into options...

Building a model railway part 6: New loco

2011-10-07T21:58:00.001+01:00

I imagine very few men get given model locos from their spouse as a wedding aniversary gift, but I've long suspected my wife, Cathy, is the most awesome wife in the world!

Anyway, for my 13th wedding anniversary I was given a Hornby model of a Thompson L1 tank engine. It was, coincidentally, quite an unlucky class of loco. After a brief working life in the 50s and 60s, all examples of the class were cut up within 20 years of being built. None survived into preservation - a fact Cathy described as "very sad"

But in the world of model railways, one did survive into preservation, and is now on the manifest of the SCRHC. Number 67772 is known locally as 'Lacey', named by Cathy in honour of our 'Lace' anniversary. (Did you know that 13 is the Lace anniversary? no, neither did I.) Among the drivers, the dog theme means it also goes by other names - 'Black Dog', 'the Hound' (as in the Hound of the Baskervilles - a big black dog), or simply 'the Big Dog' because it dwarfs Pitbull and Snoopy.

Here's some pics of it 'running in'.

Asda staff humour makes Hallowe'en less horrible

2011-10-06T21:39:00.001+01:00

Personally I don't know why you would want to fill your house with creepy-looking fake crows for any reason, let alone Hallowe'en, but I do admire the Asda employee who labelled these guys.

(I think they meant Sheryl Crow not Cheryl Crow, but stil 10/10 for effort!)

In search of Salinger; and other books

2011-10-05T23:03:00.000+01:00

Back in the summer I bought 'Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters' by JD Salinger. Cathy found it in a RNLI fundraising bookshed near the ferry crossing to Iona. Bit of an odd place to find it, but there you go.

This cover image is for illustration purposes only, as my copy has a blue cover. (I couldn't find it to scan it. I think I might have loaned it to somone in my book group.) It's two novellas, featuring the same characters. The first one was very funny.

Anyway I now want to read the two other books in print by him, 'Franny and Zooey' and 'For Esme, with Love and Squalour'. However, being a bit cheap I don't want to buy the recently re-packaged, fairly expensive Penguin paperbacks. But tracking them down second-hand is proving problematic.

Despite three trips to the town of books, Hay-on-Wye, and a tour of all the second-hand bookshops in Cardiff city centre, I can't find good reading copies anywhere. In fact, the only version of either title I have found was an early Penguin of 'Franny and Zooey'. It had the classic orange cover, and the classic Penguin affliction of hardened binding gum meaning the book would soon self-destruct if you started reading it. And, being on a 'classic Penguin' shelf in a bookshiop in Hay-on-Wye it was priced at a ludicrous £6.95 anyway.

eBay isn't much help either. I think generally the bargains have dried up on there, compared to when it first started out back in the day. Most of the books on there are being sold by professional dealers, for the kind of money that makes you think 'Well, I'll just buy it brand new, at that price.' I've been outbid on a couple of auctions with a reasonable starting price, but I will get one eventually, I'm sure.

Books by JD Salinger may be hard to come by, but I did find two reasonable books about him on eBay that looked worth a punt. They should be arriving through the post any day now.

It's not all doom and gloom. In Hay I found the most recent Culture novel by Iain M Banks, 'Surface Detail' for less than half cover price in hardback.

I've felt Banks has drifted off form for the last couple of Culure novels. 'Matter' wasn't very good at all. But even so this was a 'must purchase' and I'm very pleased to say I thought it was very good, with a 'twist' in the epilogue that I had been hoping for and wondering about since halfway through the book. You probably do have to be a fanboy or girl for the twist to mean anything to you. But if you are a fanboy or girl, then I think you'll like it.

The story is essentially about 'saved souls' in a virtual afterlife and a war in reality to liberate those who have died from hell. It sounds crazy, but the future is going to be a far weirder place than any of us can imagine. And if the future has a Culture (and I dearly hope it does), than that plot premise is not going to be too far-fetched. My favourite character was an Abominator-class starship. That really tells you all you need to know about what kind of book it was (and possibly a bit too much about me!)

A taste of the Premier League

2011-09-24T12:19:00.000+01:00

When Shrewsbury got drawn away to Arsenal in the Carling Cup I knew I had to go. A good deal on the train tickets (£23 return to Llundain) made up for not getting home til 2.30am with work the next day.

What an event. The history books will show that we lost 3-1, even though we took a 1-0 lead. That moment - when James Collins headed home after quarter of an hour - was immense. For a brief moment I thought an almighty upset was on the cards. (Truthfully they could have been 2-0 up after five mninutes, though - only 2 magnificent reflex saves from Town goalie Ben Smith kept them out.)

But even though this was the Arsenal C team comprised mainly of kids I'd never heard of, they were a class apart. Superhumanly fast, supremely confident on the ball. It was obvious they'd had a bollocking at half time because they came out and really played in the second half.

Still, it was a great occasion. The Emirates is easily the best football ground I have ever been to - better than the new Wembley or the Millennium Stadium. However, the new meadow has one thing the Emirates doesn't have - in Shrewsbury you can look out through the corner gaps and count the cows on the hillside. Halftime entertainment doesn't come much better than that!

Some photos:

Outside the Stadium. I got there early and the only people milling around were Town fans.

Inside and everything is branded Arsenal - even the cups of tea. (I was also surprised that the seats were padded!)

Town warm up!

Uncomfortable moments for the Arsenal faithful. (It didn't last long!)

Building a model railway part 5: Shedloads of fun

2011-09-16T23:32:00.001+01:00

I always used to look at the amazing railway lay-outs in the magazines and think 'I could never do that'. But recently I thought to myself, 'Well, why not have a go?' After I built the signal box I realised that modelling in card was time-consuming, but perfectly possible. I felt confident to at least try.

I wanted a two-lane engine shed, but none of the card kits would fit the space I had. A Hornby shed would, but they are a bit plasticky, and also I wanted a shed with a closed back wall.

I had a spare set of stickers from the Hornby Goods Shed and so I stuck those to card and cut round them to give me an idea of dimensions. (To do this I had to buy a cutting mat and a metal ruler - a sortie around the shops ended up with a reasonably-priced purchase from Staples.)

I worked out ahead of time that I would need to leave gluing flaps attached, so once I had cut it out I could assemble it. The first shed was pretty plain so I scratchbuilt a lean-to workshop cum office to attach to it.

You can see the transfers on the internal wall in the top picture. Pitbull and Snoopy fitted very snugly inside their new home, so that was a good start.

That shed looked a bit plain (!), so I looked into decorating it in some way. Metcalfe Models, who made the signal box kit I built do some very nice modelling sheets of card with a brick design on. They also include a sheet of roof tiles in their packets of brick card, which is very handy.

I had an issue though - the shed needed ventilation. After some googling I worked out that a raised central roof would be an acceptable form of ventilation in keeping with the South Wales area. So I cut the fascia card to match.

I wasn't sure how to create the centre ventilation section. I originally planned to use a matchbox, as seen in one of these 'under construction' images.

However, Cathy (as senior project advisor) had a better idea, supplying some black card and some patterned craft paper that looks enough like felting / concrete to intersperse the vents.

Having got the modelling bug, I then thought about adding a coaling stage nearby. So in this 'complete' shot you can see my roofless coaling stage in the foreground.

You can also see the transfer on the interior wall. I'm still not happy with the finished shed, although I am pleased with it as a first-try. The nearside wall in this photo has windows, but they could look better. I may replace the entire wall with a new one. If I do that I will paper the inside of the wall. I plan to brick-paper the other interior walls as well, just in case people decide to peep inside. I have also purchased terracotta paint to touch up the edges.

The coaling stage wasn't an original part of the plan, but it fills a space with a semi-authentic feature and it gave me the opportunity to scratchbuild something else. The base is a small packaging box that was about the right height and the walls are Metcalfe brick card. The steps are scratchbuilt from more packaging card.

I decided the coaling stage needed a roof, so turned again to my supplies mistress, Cathy, who located me some narrow-ridged corrugated card that was close enough to the correct scale to fit in quite nicely. A quick coat of paint in the 'SCRHC olive' and it was complete and ready to be 'coaled up'!

I'm now revisiting the location and positioning of the good shed, and also what that would look like. The current one is a Hornby model and it's not that great. Metcalfe do a goods shed in the same red brick as the newly revealed SCRHC buildings and the signal box base, so I'm wondering about substituting it.

Below is the possible new position that would 'open out' the model a bit, giving a view into the goods shed interior, and making it much easier to see the loading area in front. I envisage a road leading in from the right, and possibly a weighbridge next to the shed.

I guess the thing about railway modelling is that there are many, many possibilities. That for me is most of the fun.

Windy Walk to Work

2011-09-14T08:08:00.003+01:00

(By way of explanation - it was very windy walking to work yesterday. As I passed the entrance to an alleyway I heard a banging noise, as if someone was hammering on a door. However the source of the noise was a bin bag caught on a gate. Hence this haiku.)

Windy walk to work

Wet bin bag flaps, black

Wind-pinned against a gate

Yearning to fly free

2 recent films: Super 8 and Rise of Planet of the Apes

2011-09-10T22:30:00.001+01:00

CAUTION: spoilers

Super 8 is proof that Steven Spielberg has been making the same film since the late 1970s.

First the good part - it's got some good pre-teen actors playing the young protagonists. However, apart from the fact I went with my good friend Connor to see it, there isn't much else I can say.

This is seriously Spielberg by numbers. It's set in the late 70s about a group of kids who find an alien who wants to go home (Close Encounters / ET). At one point they are trapped in a vehicle at night that is being attacked by a large beast (Jurassic Park). The military are after the alien for their own ends (ET). There are tunnels under the town (The Goonies / Temple of Doom). The main adult protagonist is a small-town sheriff (Jaws). There is hardly one original element here.

Except he's teamed up with JJ Abrams, the creative behind Lost, Alias, the excellent Star Trek reboot from a couple of years ago, and, er, Cloverfield. Which might be why the alien in this movie looks less like ET and more like the bastard brother of the thing that attacked New York, crossed with a spider. The only other thing Abrams brings to the party is unneccesary screen glare at every opportunity. It's his trademark.

So was it worth watching. Well, yeah, it was well made and not too long. I'd give it 6/10.

And so to Rise of Planet of the Apes, which is onto it's second reboot after the messy Tim Burton attempt, that even he admits went awry. Unlike the 2001 film, the 2011 one got most things right.

It's interesting that in the original films the audience was expected to side with the human hero. It perhaps shows how in a generation we have generated a racial self-loathing that puts the ape, Casear, at centre stage and has you rooting for them.

There were two stand-out moments for me. The first was when Caesar realises that he is being treated like a pet and reacts by getting into the back seat of the car instead of the trunk. The second was when Caesar was given the opportunity to leave the Guantanamo-like primate 'sanctuary', but chooses to stay with his ape brethren rather than return to a servile life.

There were weaknesses. I'm not sure how the intelligence-boosting toxin that boosts Caesar's brain power also enables him to evolve human-style vocal chords. Also, when the apes break free from the sanctuary there seem to be an awful lot more of them than you ever saw in the cages.

But apart from those mild gripes, I really enjoyed this film and would thoroughly recommend it: 9/10.

Warm and toasty with Handerpants - underpants for hands

2011-09-09T21:56:00.001+01:00

These may be one of those things that people make up and stick on the web. But if they do in fact exist I would like a pair. I haven't googled them because who knows what would come up if you googled "underpants for hands".

What was he daydreaming about?

2011-08-29T15:35:00.000+01:00

Now it may just be me and my filthy mind, but this book seemed a bit inappropriate for kids...

Building a model railway part 4: Wagons roll!

2011-08-23T23:01:00.001+01:00

And actually my wagons do roll because my layout is a little bit lopsided.

I have 11 wagons and a brake van currently, but some of them belong to my Dad I think, so I'll introduce them here, but I don't know whether they are all part of the SCRHC manifest.

Two of these three are definitely mine. The tanker I bought off eBay recently. Both it and the Cambrian open wagon are 1980s vintage Mainline wagons. I bought the ventilated van second-hand for a few quid. It has opening doors, which is quite cool. It doesn't seem to have a make on it, but I think it's by Trix.

These three private owner wagons are by Dapol. They all have coal loads in them. Two of them are local to SCHRC, but the Tom Milner one is from Oswestry, so I think that belongs to my Dad as he collects wagons local to him. (All three might be Dad's.)

This 'rake' of Great Western Railway wagons and brake van are all by Bachmann. Personally I think Bachmann produce some of the nicest and highest quality wagons on the market, although these are a bit dull and grey. I know my Dad bought these, but I think they were a gift. I'm going to try and keep hold of the brake van at least as it is printed up from Dowlais. One of the ventilated vans has 'Fruit' written on the side, which you can just about make out (click on the photo to make it larger).

And finally a splash of colour - these private owner wagons are made by different manufacturers. The Thrutchley one is Dapol and has Cardiff along with Liverpool and Manchester printed on the side. The Trimsaran one is made by Hornby (this one is definitely mine). The Harry Whitehouse one, with the white wheels, is by Bachmann. It doesn't really fit as it's based in Stourport, which is a bit out of the area. But it's a nice wagon.

As an added bonus, here's a collection of lineside huts I've built and painted in the last few weeks. They're small, but add some fun to the lay-out. I even painted the oil drums outside the lamp hut.

You know you want it!

2011-08-20T22:09:00.000+01:00

Do you remember the fugly bunny?

Well, that was just for Easter, but this beauty you can enjoy all year round. Introducing the mother-of-all-that's-fugly* poodle!

Yes, that's right - it's a metre high and bright red. What's not to love.

And all for a bargain £149.95. Because you can't really put a price on 'art'.

*Or as I like to say, motherfugly.

All or Nothing

2011-08-19T22:48:00.000+01:00

I've been looking through the archives and found this poem I wrote in January 2009, which kind of meshes with a lot of things I've been thinking recently.

All or nothing

We may get it wrong
As we travel along
And stamp on the brakes
If we make mistakes

We may get it right
To our utter delight
But we’ll have to move fast
Or the feeling won’t last

We may hear the words
And think they’re absurd
Or apply them in detail
And somehow still fail

Do we miss the point
As we sit in the joint
Our prison, our minds
As we numb our behinds?

At the end of the day
We aren’t what we say
What’s really true
Is that we are what we do.

Building a model railway part 3: Locos

2011-08-18T23:22:00.002+01:00

I have been doing a few bits and pieces on my railway recently, including soldering (burned fingers - ow!), gluing plastic model kits (fumes - mmmm), and painting (only one accidental transference of paint to clothing -so far).

I have also been exercising my creativity regarding the layout, and stated thinking around a backstory for it. At the moment I'm calling it the South Cardiff Railway Heritage Centre (SCRHC). The idea is that it is based in a smaller industrial yard on the west side of the Taff along the old railway spur that ran parallel to Clive Street in Grangetown.

At present the SCRHC has two locos - one steam and one diesel.

The steam loco is an ex-LMS 0-4-0 'Pug' in ealy British Rail livery. In the SCRHC manifest, this engine is called 'Snoopy' even though the famous cartoon character was a beagle, not a pug.

The model itself is made by Hornby. It runs quite well, although as the current set up is rather heavy with points, the actual running isn't too smooth. It's a cute little loco, though. In fact, it's shorter than many of the wagons it shunts, as shown in the above picture.

The Diesel is a Class 8, which are ubiquitous on the railways even today. Sturdy shunters of this type are still in operation. This one is called 'Pitbull' by the SCRHC enthusiasts, partly to continue the dog theme, but mainly because it's a brute. It's in early BR Green, as found on the Western Region of the national rail network.

This model is made by Bachmann, and features an amazing 'creep' feature. The model can move very slowly, which is a challenge in model railways. At some point I will shoot some video so you can go 'Wow' too.

You may notice that behind Pitbull is a platform, which is a relatively new addition to the layout.

In this view, it's a bit clearer to see. The platform is a Knightwing kit. The shelter had to be built and painted. I have chosen a sub-GWR beige and olive colour scheme for the SCRHC, and have painted the platform fencing to match. The benches are Peco and were originally bright green. I have painted them olive so they look better, and match, of course.

As yet I haven't named the station. I'm thinking of calling it 'Grange Gardens' after the park in Grangetown, but it may yet be 'Ferry Road', 'Clive Street' or even something totally fictional. It doesn't matter at the moment, as it's deserted. There are no passenger services running on the SCRHC line yet. That will change when I buy / build a coach.

The two wagons in the picture are both vintage Mainline wagons made by Palitoy in the 1980s. I'm not sure where the Cambrian one came from - I think it was a gift from my dad when I built my first layout. The tank wagon was a recent purchase off eBay. (More pictures of wagons will be posted another time.)

I don't like spiders

2011-08-12T08:05:00.000+01:00

But I quite like this one. (It looks a bit cute.)

Britain's rarest spider

To boldly Lego

2011-08-05T08:04:00.001+01:00

These little guys, representing the Roman God Jupiter, his daughter Juno, and the astronomer Galileo are being sent by NASA to Jupiter soon! (More details)

Kinda awesome, but at the end of their trip they'll be crushed under tremendous gravitational forces into nothing, which is kinda sad.

July – month of films

2011-07-27T17:02:00.002+01:00

I feel 2011 has been a quiet year for me in terms of film-viewing, but that has changed this month with four trips to the cinema.

Three of the four films I’ve seen on the big screen have been sequels. I’m not sure what that really says about the risk-averse culture in Hollywood at the moment, but it’s been interesting to see how differently they’ve approached things. [Warning - contains information some people may regard as spoilers]

Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon takes some of the main characters from the first two films and runs with a continuing story. Of course, the most interesting story about the movie was the public spat between female star of the first two movies, Megan Fox, and the director Michael Bay. Fox got dropped from the third movie, although it’s not clear who was exactly the winner there.

So what can be said about Transformers 3? Not much. It’s better than Transformers 2, but so is just about any other movie ever made about anything. The ‘plot’ is fairly formulaic. I’d issue a spoiler alert here, but the story is so obvious that when you watch it, if you can’t spot what’s going to happen then you really shouldn’t be going to movies. You know that Optimus Prime is going to be double-crossed. You know the Autobots aren’t all dead. You know that Patrick Dempsey will turn out to be a baddy.

Still it’s vaguely entertaining. I went with the lowest of low expectations and as a result found it quite enjoyable.

Kung Fu Panda 2, meanwhile, is a top-notch sequel. Moving on from the original movie in a quite unexpected way, we learn about Po, the Dragon Warrior’s origins and why his father is a goose not a panda. Cue an incredibly moving scene at the end of the film about discovering who you really are and who your real family is. I had a moist eye moment and had to manfully struggle to keep it together.

There are one or two clunky moments, but generally this film gets it right from the very first visual in the Dreamworks logo that features the wise old turtle Ugway fishing from the moon. It also has possibly the funniest final showdown shouting match between Po and the psychopathic bad guy Shen (superbly voiced by Gary Oldman), who can’t hear what Po is saying and so misses the bold statements about the justice that Po plans to mete out on him.

So to the only original movie in the quartet: Green Lantern. I quite liked this, although it was a bit slow. It felt a bit like a feature-length pilot for a TV series, especially as there was a lot of narration. The sfx varied in quality, and the acting was generally okay, but there wasn’t much to set this apart from any other about-average superhero flick.

There was some humour – when Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern, tries to woo his lady friend as his alter ego she recognises him and asks whether he thought she wouldn’t know it was him just because she can’t see his cheekbones. Also, it seems you can’t make a movie these days without anticipating the sequel – a micro-scene at the end seems to set up the next chapter in the story.

Finally, we went on the opening night to see Cars 2. This has been aggressively promoted just about everywhere, from TV spots through to a new Lego range. Unfortunately, the calibre of the film didn’t warrant such attention.

Strangely, considering this was an animated film, my main criticism is that it felt too much like a cartoon. Lightning McQueen and Mater bopping wheels together in a gangsta-style best friends’ handshake near the start of the film set the tone for the rest of the movie. Cars don’t do that. The cars in Cars didn’t do that. But the cars in Cars 2 do. It was annoying.

The other defects in this film included poor characterisation, an obvious villain ‘hidden in plain sight’, and an unnecessarily convoluted, unconvincing plotline surrounding ‘lemon’ cars with a grudge against society discrediting alternative fuels. Oh yeah and racial stereotypes aplenty.

There was a great short film starring the Toy Story characters in front of the main feature, which genuinely made me laugh, so the studio hasn’t lost its touch, but you can almost see the Disneyfication of Pixar happening in real-time as its imagination is commoditized into product inventory. Pixar generally have set the bar so high for themselves they were bound to fail at some point. Even so, I was surprised that Cars 2 was so mediocre and unimaginative.

Two things I don’t miss about working in a Christian organisation

2011-07-20T22:22:00.000+01:00

Just over a year ago I started a new job, moving out of a Christian charity where I had worked for six and a half years to take up a role in the public sector.

Since then a number of Christians have asked me if I have found it difficult working in a non-Christian environment. I think my answer has surprised many people. No, I haven’t found it difficult. In fact, I would not rush back into working for a Christian organisation.

That feels like it's a vaguely heretical thing to say, and I do feel like I'm breaking ranks here.

It’s not because Christians are terrible to work with (although some are beyond difficult), or that there is anything inherently wrong with explicitly trying to create a Christian ethos in a workplace. There are one or two things I miss, like opening meetings with a prayer, but working outside the Christian bubble has helped me identify two of the things that really irritated me when I was inside.

The first is the ‘assumption of grace’. This basically runs that a person can act in any immature, selfish, ignorant way, and because ‘we’re all Christians here’, they will be ‘forgiven’ for it. Now I sometimes lose my temper in work, I say things I regret. We all do and I need grace from my colleagues and managers as much as the next person.

But to assume that grace will be shown isn’t helpful. Incompetency gets glossed over and no one ever gets called on it. When you’re talking planning projects with significant budgets, or a co-worker you have to go through who always does it ‘their way’ that seems to add unnecessary steps to a simple process, that’s not so great.

It’s quite hard to genuinely forgive someone when there is an expectation that you will show grace, however big a jackass they are being. All those things that are left unsaid build up. Eventually you anticipate failure and you lose focus and commitment. Your work becomes mediocre. You cease to care.

Quite simply, you can never resolve the issue because you can never vocalise how you really feel because if you react to provocation then you’ve failed as a Christian. Never mind that the provoker is free to continue provoking.

The second thing is the over-spiritualisation. ‘We’re facing a lot of opposition, here’ says the manager whose primary problem seems to be deficient planning skills.

I was in a meeting once with a member of our fundraising team who stated explicitly to me that the appeal mailings that had been re-written under strict direction from senior managers were now ‘awful’. A few months later, when the mailing had bombed, there were urgent calls for staff to pray about the financial straits the organisation was in, which was presented as a spiritual ‘attack’.

At what point does incompetency, organisational inertia, bad logistical planning, or just a plain old mistake become a spiritual issue? Normally, when it becomes apparent because the money isn’t coming in, or an event is happening the next day and the materials for it are still at the printers.

Finding spiritual explanations for low quality business working would be a very interesting subject to explore more fully some time. Oh, I have stories.

So, those are two things I don’t miss. True, there are frustrations in my new workplace, and probably every workplace, but they are less troublesome to me because they are at least grounded in reality. If someone is being a bit of a pratt, you can call them on it. If things go wrong, it’s usually because of a fixable issue, rather than being the work of Satan.

I find that a much more rational and helpful working environment.

Some more photos of Scotland

2011-07-19T08:03:00.001+01:00

When it wasn't raining the scenery was quite breathtaking. Here 'the tank' enjoys the early morning sunshine on Mull.

Later on the mainland, an oystercatcher searches for supper in Loch Sunart.

Some other bits of writing & stuff

2011-07-18T23:23:00.000+01:00

Occasionally I engage in some self-promotion.

A pessimistic article I wrote for When Saturday Comes has attracted at least one angry commentator detracting my status as a Shrewsbury fan. Surprisingly I'm less than bothered.

I don't usually plug stuff I've written for work, but I was involved in the creation of a recent white paper about the guiding ethos in the NHS, and whether its founder, Aneurin Bevan, would recognise it. I found it fascinating to write it and maybe you'd find it interesting.

While we're on the subject of work stuff, I had the privilege to direct some information videos about work being done to prevent falls among elderly and infirm people back in May. They're now online, so if you want to rate my ability as a documentary film-maker, you can watch them here. I suggest the ones filmed in Cardiff and Llanidloes - if you like dogs you have to watch the one from Llanidloes. (I was helped massively by a very talented cameraman / editor - this is his website.)

Torchwood goes west (big mistake)

2011-07-17T19:37:00.000+01:00

Although other people have said some favourable things about the new Torchwood series that started last Thursday, I was less impressed.

First off, this was an 'establishing' episode that only really existed to take you to the next episode and explain how Captain Jack, Gwen et al end up in America. As that kind of episode it was done to an okay level. Quite why a black ops helicopter was trying to blow the crap out of a house on a beach in Wales where Gwen and Rhys were holed up was never adequately explained, but presumably it will be. Also the casting of Bill Pullman (who has aged significantly it seems) as a creepy child-murderer could well be inspired (and is a bold role for anyone to take on).

But - and it's a big but - nothing actually happened or got resolved in the episode. There was one exceptionally gross scene where they detached a head from a barely living charred corpse, and the head remained alive. But no answers. Only a very long teaser for the rest of the season.

I don't mind TV series having story arcs, although too-rigid story arcs killed The X-Files, Alias, even The West Wing in the end. The problem an episode that is all about the arc and nothing else really happens is boring in the extreme. Exhibit A: those X-Files episodes that just seemed to be mysterious characters sitting round tables smoking cigarettes talking about codenamed projects. Snore off! You want to see some kind of conclusion in an episode, even if the conclusion is open-ended so the bad guy can return to wreak havoc later.

For me, the emphasis on a story arc instead of having a story is a minus for the new Torchwood.

So is the relocation of the series to the USA. I recognise why they're doing this - the American TV audience. It's the same reason the news series of Doctor Who unnecessarily kicked off in Monument Valley in Utah instead of the Rhondda. But it misses the point of what made Torchwood interesting to start with.

If I wanted to watch overblown science fiction in an American setting I could tune in to repeats of the X-Files, or watch more of the new series of V. There are enough good programmes made in America already to satisfy my lust for all things American - Castle, Chuck, The Big Bang Theory, to name a few.

What made Torchwood fun was that it was set in Cardiff, and, okay, that might be because I live in Cardiff and location-spotting was amusing. But it also set it apart from just about anything else in the schedule. Turning it into an American-based drama removes the one thing that made it a must watch for me. It will be hard now to pick it out from a line-up of similar, high-end, slickly-produced, drama serials.

I think trading the dorkiness of being based in a little big city that few people have ever heard of for trans-Atlantic bright lights is a big mistake. So far no amount of aliens, government duplicity, mysterious time travellers, or poor TV scheduling have managed to kill Torchwood off.

But this decision might.

Building a model railway part 2: needing a new plan B

2011-07-16T22:13:00.001+01:00

So in a follow-up to yesterday's post I discovered last night that I had affixed the new track substantially more securely than the old track I pulled up before. I can't take it up again, so I have to live with the overly long passing loop and that the whole lay-out is skewiff with the side of the baseboard.

To add to the sense of frustration taking up the last remaining original track caused me a major panic when I inadvertently broke one of the new sets of points I had put in. Thankfully I was able to reposition the spring, but it was touch and go for a while. I also have a nagging feeling that now it's relaid it isn't as true as it was originally.

Disappointing, but a valuable learning experience.

The good news is I was able to then shift attention to a new part of the project - building a card kit of a signal box. I did this with the help / guidance / project-management of my wonderful wife Cathy, without whom I think the whole exercise would have been doomed to failure. My cutting and sticking skills are less than rudimentary.

Anyway, a few hours later (and a lot of PVA glue on my fingers), I think the finished article looks pretty good.

The kit came with the added bonus of the other two structures, seen in the photo - a lineside hut and a fuel shed. I'm pretty pleased with it / them.

The only thing that is slightly out of place with it is that it's based on a LNWR prototype, so isn't really "correct" for a West Cardiff location (GWR was generally the theme around here). I have two answers to that conundrum. Firstly, this is going to be a railway heritage centre and it's not uncommon for signal boxes to be demolished at their original site and rebuilt in a preserved railway environment. Secondly, it's my railway and I like it, and that's really what matters.

This is the first in a series of buildings I want to add to the railway. My next task is to find the 'right' engine shed that will fit the space and house two track lanes. At some point I also want to have a water tower, and some platforms. I think I have a creative way of addressing the spacing issue to get the platforms running along the long stretch of track - but more on that later.

I'm also looking into adding rolling stock. I plan to publish a full manifest for the WCRHC at some point, but I've just won a new wagon off eBay so I'm going to wait until that arrives before I start taking photos and posting them for your enjoyment.

(I know this is geeky, but I'm loving it.)

Building a model railway part 1

2011-07-14T21:06:00.002+01:00

Recently I got my old model railway baseboard out from the cupboard where it had lain dormant since about 2004. I've always liked model trains and in the past 2 weeks the bug has bitten deep.

I decided to take up some of the track and reformat the layout. The orginal lay out looked like this - a loop and two sidings.

It was pretty basic and so I decided I wanted to add in another siding and maybe a reverse siding (or two) to lead to an engine shed.

There was a problem, though. When I laid this track I had made the passing loop far wider than it needed to be by adding in some non-standard pieces of track. Unfortunately that threw off my intended new siding so that it ran at a crazy non-parallel angle.

The non-standard add-in piece can be seen in this photo. Removing it also meant I could fit in an extra siding without losing too much track off the top siding.
So up came the track! And down went new track after painting on a roadbed for it.

You can see how the loop track is much closer together, leaving room for two extra sets of points.

The small divergence at the bottom of the picture will eventually be inside an engine shed. I have put in a loop of wiring to power the track from both ends, which means the reverse siding has power. (Bit of trial and error but it works.)

There are still issues with this layout. I'd like to run a platform on the left-hand side, but that track isn't straight on the baseboard (it's the last remaining original length of track from the old lay-out). I have a growing urge to take it all up and relay the lot of it, with proper measuring this time.

I could also shorten the loop and add a few valuable centimetres to the second siding. This is important because the theme of the railway is going to be a railway heritage centre, and I need extra space to store rolling stock.

Speaking of which, now I've bought all the track I felt it was time to treat myself to something new to go on it. I already had 11 wagons and 2 locos from when I first put it together (mostly gifts from my Dad, it has to be said). But today I went and bought myself a crane train from the Hornby Railroad range. HR is the cheaper Hornby stuff made using older moulds, but that kind of fits the bill for a heritage railway! The crane works and I'm very happy with it.

There's plenty of work still to do and I'll be posting updates!

Judgmental supermarket signage

2011-07-12T17:14:00.000+01:00

We know what's good for you, fatty!

Another poem (but not one of mine)

2011-07-05T23:23:00.000+01:00

Love is a pineapple
Sweet and indefinable
- Piet Hein

Hooker haiku

2011-07-02T11:33:00.001+01:00

(This is based on something I saw last week, and also a book I'm reading by J.D.Salinger, which made me think about writing haiku. Can't beat that for inspiration, really.)

Street girl seeks patrons

Flowered leggings; plastic bag

Coke and a sandwich

Comments welcome

There is another Skywalker

2011-06-26T22:34:00.000+01:00

On Friday morning I became an Uncle, courtesy of my brother, Dave, and sister-in-law, Esther (who did most of the work, to be fair!). Joy Lindsey Matthias arrived on a Friday at about 6 in the morning (same as her Uncle, so she's obviously going to be awesome).

We had a whirlwind trip up to Shrewsbury yesterday to meet her. As you can see from the pic, she treated me the same way the rest of the family treat me - by yawning very loudly as I was talking to her. So, it looks like she will fit in nicely.

This would make a nice postcard

2011-06-24T08:19:00.001+01:00

Of course, everyone emails today. So you need a computer. And that means making sure you have enough RAM.

Moving on from bad puns... Cathy exploring the white sands of Morar

Karaoke

2011-06-23T23:57:00.000+01:00

Went karaoke with our book group tonight. Great fun. Birdhouse in your Soul is a much faster song to sing than I or Cathy realised.

Singing in front of your friends is quite a brave thing to do. Mind you it's also quite brave to go hear your friends sing. Two of those present tonight had already witnessed this:

Yes, this is really a photo from Scotland

2011-06-22T22:49:00.000+01:00

Calgary Bay, Isle of Mull

Yes, that is a pine marten licking peanut butter off our cottage window

2011-06-21T22:38:00.000+01:00

One of the benefits of staying in a remote Scottish valley accessible only by driving over a mountain. (Pine martens go nuts for peanut butter.)

I expect this bunch to be planting a church in Cardiff some time in the next couple of weeks

2011-05-22T20:24:00.001+01:00

It must be just like living in Paradise

2011-05-15T16:59:00.000+01:00

I am off to a conference this week. In the run up I was sent walking directions from a nearby station to the venue. One of the directions was this:

Who knew Paradise was built out of concrete and looked like a bunker?

Zodiac Team: Meeting in the mess

2011-05-11T23:51:00.000+01:00

The scene: Leo, a new member of the Zodiac Team is being shown around the Team's stolen spaceship, The Wheel, by another team member called Cancer. He is taken to the mess where he meets soem of his new comrades for the first time.

Leo found it hard not to stare at Capricorn. The man looked alien, with metallic, ridged horns curling backwards from his temples, over the top of his head, and down to below his shoulders. The gunmetal horns tapered into a tangle of silver wires that suddenly splayed out at the very tip of the each horn.

Cancer, sitting opposite Leo at the table, noticed the newcomer staring down the table. “Wait ‘til you see him plugged in,” he said, while noisily chewing his food.

Leo felt momentarily embarrassed and looked back down at his plate, pushing the rehydrated vegetables around with his knork.

“Don’t worry,” said Taurus, interjecting from Cancer’s left. “It takes some getting used to. Even creeps me out sometimes.”

“Mind if I sit here?”

Leo looked up to see a petite young woman, holding a steaming plateful of food. She smiled at him and glanced briefly at the table, then back at him.

“Sure, no problem,” he said, shuffling along the bench in an accommodating way.

“Thanks,” she said, nimbly stepping over the bench and sitting down in a fluid movement. “Not everyone likes me sitting next to them.”

“That’s because you steal other people’s rations,” said Cancer, protectively encircling his plate with his arm.

The woman ignored him. “I’m Aquarius,” she said, smiling sweetly at Leo. The dimples in her cheeks made her look child-like when she smiled. She had large, dark brown eyes with incredibly long lashes, a button nose, tiny lobeless ears, and behind them gen-engineered gill-sacs.

“Leo,” he said, offering her a hand.

“No…” Cancer groaned as she took hold of his hand and shook it gently. She didn’t let go. Leo had a strange sensation, as if he was being tickled on the inside of his forehead. He blinked, screwing his eyes tightly shut. Cancer reached over and smacked their hands, breaking their connection.

“Get out of his head,” he said, brusquely.

“Fine!” snapped Aquarius. Her smile was gone now. She stabbed several protein chunks on her plate with her knork and put them in her mouth. Chewing quickly, she began stabbing more protein.

“Ow,” said Leo rubbing his forehead with the back of his thumb. “What was that?”

“She’s an empath,” said Taurus as he put another knorkful of food into his mouth. Cancer grunted.

Leo looked at the girl next to him, who was now devouring her food with a very definite sense of purpose.

“You read my mind?” he asked.

“Your feelings,” she said, without looking at him.

“My feelings… oh, right, like I believe that.”

“You don’t trust him” – she pointed at Cancer with her knork – “you’re awed by him” – she pointed at Taurus –“ and you are weirded out by him” – she pointed at Capricorn.

Leo opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Taurus grinned. Surprisingly, so did Cancer. It seemed he didn’t mind being considered untrustworthy.

“Oh, and you were attracted to me,” she said as a coup de grace.

Leo decided not to say anything and begin eating again.

“And I’m flattered,” said Aquarius, unexpectedly. She was smiling again. “You’re not so bad-looking yourself.”

“I’m warning you,” said Cancer, leaning across the table and emphasising his point by pointing his knork at Leo. “Blink and she’ll have that food off your plate.”

“That was one time, Cancer,” said Aquarius in a frustrated tone.

Cancer made eye-contact with Leo and raised his eyebrows. Then he shook his head, looked away and started eating again.

“They’re synaptic exo-brain units,” said Taurus.

“What?”

“The horns.” The broad-shouldered soldier used an elbow to point at Capricorn.

“What’s he doing?” asked Leo. The man with the exo-brain horns seemed in a near catatonic state. His eyes were closed, but his eyelids flickered as his eyeballs moved rapidly underneath them.

Taurus shrugged. “I don’t know. Calculating corespace co-ords or something.” He sighed. “Thing is, he does look weird. Almost not human. But he’s the only human I’ve ever met who gets corespace. Really gets it, I mean.”

“I understand it,” said Cancer flatly, as if correcting Taurus.

“Please,” said Taurus. “I’ve heard you explain it and I understood it, which means that either I’m smart enough to get corespace, or you don’t get it.”

Leo sensed the two of them had had this conversation before. Many times before.

“Do you know about corespace?” asked Aquarius, addressing Leo.

“Only what they told us at the Academy. That we exist in the surface layer of the universe expansion and below us are dimensions of space that don’t exist in the same way. A dense object falls into that space and can then re-surface at any point. One of my lecturers said it was as if we lived in the skin of an apple, and then when we wanted to go to another point on the apple, we burrowed through the core.” Leo felt pleased with his explanation.

“Oh, please, that is nothing like corespace,” said Cancer. “That’s an analogy for idiots.”

“Palloshan ballsacks Cancer, you couldn’t explain it any better,” said Taurus.

“I have explained it better! I’ve explained it to you!” said Cancer.

“What’s an apple?” asked Aquarius.

“It’s a vegetable they grow on Earth,” said Taurus to Aquarius, before turning back to Cancer. “And your explanation makes no sense.”

“That’s because it’s a paradox,” said Cancer.

“It’s a fruit,” said Leo to Aquarius. “An apple is a fruit.”

“Look, the only thing I know with any certainty is that I don’t know what corespace is.”

“Not what it is, where it is. It’s old time. Corespace travel is movement through time.”

“They grow on trees.”

“Well how does that make any sense?”

“Time is the unmappable dimension. So when you drop a dimension, the density matrix alters relativity.”

“We used to have an apple tree in our backyard.”

“That’s nonsense. All I know is that out here there is one rule. If it works, don’t question it, and if you question it, it won’t work!”

“Oh, you’re impossible.” Cancer crossed his arms and looked away from Taurus, who breathed out heavily in annoyance, paused momentarily to steady himself, then carried on eating.

“On my homeworld, we didn’t have any trees,” said Aquarius sadly. She sipped from her squeezemug. “We had kelp forest though, dozens of feet tall. I used to swim through them with my school-friends, every morning, as the sunlight shone down through the water on the edge of the reef.”

She looked at Leo directly, and smiled again. But this time her smile was tinged with sadness. The faint crowfeet wrinkles in the corners of her eyes turned downwards and became more visible. In her sadness, her real age percolated through her child-like features.

“It’s all gone, now,” she said softly, like an innocent who had seen too much to remain innocent. “The kelp burned when the Palloshan poisoned our oceans with the gill-rot and the acid-mute.”

There was an awkward silence as Aquarius stared into the middle-distance as if she could see through the mess table, the deckfloor, possibly even the hull of The Wheel. She snapped back from memory into real-time.

“You going to finish that?” asked Aquarius peering at Leo’s plate. Her own looked pristinely clean as if she had licked up every last crumb.

Cancer grinned evilly, an ‘I told you so’ smile on his face.

Looking for comments - please let me know what you liked or didn't like!

And the award for scariest leaflet posted through my door ahead of the recent elections goes to...

2011-05-07T17:23:00.000+01:00

Plaid Cymru.

For this:

Another new blog

2011-05-06T23:45:00.000+01:00

Early days yet, but this collaborative project may turn out to be fun

A RIOTOUS OILPAINTING

Voting firsts

2011-05-05T22:47:00.000+01:00

Election today. A couple of firsts for me...

First time voting in a UK-wide referendum. I have voted in two previous refferendwms (i.e. Welsh-only votes).

First time where I has a personal stake in the election, in that the Labour party have made a manifesto pledge to keep my project running. I like my job. Guess how I voted.

Also, another first - being handed three voting ballots. Never have I had to make so many X's!

I haven't done the usual run down of pre-election bumf. But to sum it up - the parties prefer writing to Cathy than to me, the Tory candidate looked like a slug, for some reason we got delivered Labour leaflets for another area's candidate as well as our own, the Liberal Democrats comments about the NHS were a pack of lies, Plaid Cymru had the scariest leaflet (about letting the Tories in through the back door!), the Greens thought Cathy was more likely to read than me (my mailing was a poster).

All good fun.

I love elections. I'd vote every year if we had to.

A post that's not really about the Royal Wedding

2011-04-29T21:42:00.000+01:00

I drove home from Gateshead to Cardiff today, thinking that the world would be watching the Royal Wedding so the roads would be quiet.

Apparently much of the world had the same idea, with many people taking advantage of the extra day off to get in a long weekend away with the caravan. Unfortunately my idea of counting the caravans and camper vans to provide me with some blog fodder backfired, as I missed a motorway turn and so we ended up in Leicester.

(I counted 313 before the realisation that I was on the wrong road struck! That total includes 5 'Herbie Vans' - still the coolest campers ever.)

Anyway, that added about 30 minutes to our journey. Cathy did some first-class navigating to get us back on track.

I'm not sure I missed much by opting to drive than watch TV. I gather the bride wore a nice dress.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing really. I'm kind of ambivalent - it's nice that they got married, but I don't always want to go to weddings of people I know, let alone strangers. (I don't mind the actual weddings - it's the hours of standing around waiting for photos to be taken and the interminable discos I can't really stand.)

But it's over now, and with any luck the world will return to some semblence of normality fairly quickly.

Threatened worldviews threaten other worldviews

2011-04-28T21:21:00.000+01:00

I've been reading 'The Last Word and the Word After That' by Brian McLaren, that covers a lot of the same ground as 'Love Wins'. This struck me as a relatively good explanation for the criticisms levelled at Rob Bell during the recent "controversy".

"...faith must engage with the culture in which is finds itself but... can become so excesively enmeshed with that culture that its power is neutralized - actually, neutered... If a faith becomes enmeshed, not just engaged with a culture... people hardly notice - until a wave of cultural change hits. Then, when people want to move on from that fading culture, when they want to be part of that new wave, they feel they must leave their faith behind as well. Their only alternative is to try to disengage their faith from the fading culture, but this is one of the most painful things a person can do - mentally painful, spiritually painful...

"In times of profound cultural change... such as our current transition from a modern colonial culture, with its emphasis on rational certainty and conquest and control, to a postmodern and postcolonial culture, which distrausts rational certainty because of the violence that confident people have inflicted on others in their striving to conquer and control them. In times like these, people, thousands at the same time, face this agonizing task of disengaging their faith from the culture it has grown with, like two trees whose roots are intertwined." [page 15, bold text mine]

It's no accident that the last colonial superpower left is the battleground between the modern and postmodern elements within Christianity. It's no surprise that those with the most to lose - the theocrats whose worldview is bound up in a scientific narrative that insists on one form of truth as supreme - are so vocal in their criticism of reformulation (and potential reformation).

IMO.

An Easter thought

2011-04-24T22:41:00.000+01:00

Maybe Christians have been too wrapped up in the modern worldview that says we have to prove everything scientifically. I hear many people talk about the historical fact of the resurrection - as if it matters more that our faith is founded on facts, than that we let this fact impact on our behaviour.

When we place the resurrection in the past, we forget that somehow it is meant to apply to us in all we do.We are called to view the world through resurrection eyes; to see the Kingdom coming here and now; to cast off the old strictures and structures of a world of sin.

The resurrection is a metaphor for how we all should live.

It's not that it's not a fact. It's just that it's more than that.

I used to really care about Facebook, now not so much

2011-04-23T19:04:00.000+01:00

I'm much more about the Twitter now. Facebook has just got too full of other crap. I don't want to know that people have received fortune cookies, which awkward moments they identify with, or what their daily horoscope says.

You don't get as much of that on Twitter. (Spam followers, yes, but I'm developing a strategy to deal with those.)

So as I become a post-Facebook web-user, this cartoon resonated with me.

"Strange Opposites" - Similarities between forgiveness and violence

2011-04-20T23:39:00.000+01:00

I’ve been touched recently by something Rob Bell said in his most recent book: “Forgiveness is unilateral.”

I’ve heard it said that forgiveness is the opposite of violence, but it’s a strange opposite because actually it is very similar to violence.

Violence is usually unilateral, too. It is very rare that both parties are equally violent on pre-agreed terms. There is normally an aggressor, even if the only aggression is provocation. If there is only perceived provocation, then the “provoked” is the aggressor. But, however much people may claim to be provoked, the decision to act violently is usually taken by one party.

But forgiveness is also unilateral. Like violence, it does not rely on the other person doing anything – as a ‘provocation’, or as a response. If a person won’t receive forgiveness, then that does not annul the forgiveness. They are still forgiven, whether they accept it or not. You have no control about another person’s decision to forgive you, just as you have no control over whether they will act violently towards you.

You can of course modulate your behaviour – be submissive in the presence of the violent, or actively seek forgiveness – but you can’t control it. And other people can’t control your choice. You choose to forgive, or to be violent.

There are other ways forgiveness is like violence. Both are more shocking when they are totally unexpected. Blitzkrieg was devastating because it was an unexpected form of attack. When a grieving parent forgives the killers of their child on the news, it is equally unexpected and shocking. Both acts provoke a response, and that response is heightened when you don’t expect it.

Both are self-replicating. There is a phrase that ‘Violence begets violence’; a truism seen at work all over the world. But there is another truism too. ‘If you’ve truly been forgiven, then you will forgive others’ is one of Christianity’s tough lines – but the point isn’t that you have to forgive when you don’t want to.

The point is that if you truly realise what it is to be totally forgiven for every mistake, every petty selfishness, every crime against other people, society or yourself, then that liberates you. Being forgiven enables you to forgive others.

But equally, both violence and forgiveness can be too easily forgotten. Currently, it seems the lessons learned from foreign policy in decades past are being ignored. The military option has become the ‘go to’ place in too many governments. But violence in the past didn’t work. And we forget that.

When we forget about forgiveness, disaster usually follows too. The parable of the two debtors – one forgiven a large sum, but then extorting a small sum they are owed reminds us that we should never forget our standing before God. We are one side-step away from judgement and we will be judged brutally if we act brutishly.

When we forget we are forgiven, then we forego forgiving others – and forfeit our own forgiveness.

And finally, violence and forgiveness can both become a way of life. Anger, aggravation and aggression can become our default settings. The more we act that way, the less of an act it becomes – it becomes the way we are, it is how we do things, it’s what we will be in future.

But forgiveness can also be a way of life. It can be how we are – holding grievances lightly or not at all. In the words of Linkin Park, we can choose to remember what is good about a person and “leave out all the rest”. When we do that we are living a life of forgiveness. It has become the way we are, it permeates what we do, it holds out hope for who will be in future.

Burger shack irony

2011-04-14T07:41:00.000+01:00

McDonald’s are running a promotion at the moment where you can instantly win food through finding certain pull-off labels on their fries, sodas, burgers etc.

Last night, Cathy and I were feeling uninspired about cooking and I needed to be out at a meeting early evening, so we went to MaccyD’s. I like mystery prize instant win competitions, but I felt the universe was trying to send me a message through my prize.

I won a fruit bag.

Slightly powdery apple slices and three grapes.

Woo.

Healthy never tasted so disappointing.

Contender for best spam ever

2011-04-13T07:19:00.003+01:00

I get a lot of spam comments on freelance theology. This one entertained me immensely:

This is NOT SPAM, all I am asking you to do is read this…PLEASE and pass it along. This is a TRUE UPDATE on the Gulf Coast BP Oil Spill!!

Have you ever heard of Whipple Van Ness Jones, III?
Probably not, unless you watch the CBS daytime soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful.

You see, according to Wikipedia….
Whipple Jones III is a fictional character on CBS’s daytime drama The Bold and the Beautiful. He had been portrayed by Rick Hearst from February 13, 2002 to August 29, 2002 and was absent for nearly seven years before returning to the show on July 17, 2009….
However, what they don’t tell you is that Whipple Van Ness Jones, III is a real person.
Whip resides in NW Florida with his wife, 3 children, and pets.
The problem is that when the BP oil spill happened Whip and his family lost their family business in Seaside, Florida the name of the store was Molly Caroline’s named after his two daughters Georgia Caroline and Molly Catherine (Whipple Van Ness Jones, IV wasn’t born yet when they opened their store).
Whip loved the idea that The Bold and the Beautiful named a character after him, he thought it was fun because obviously how else would they come up with the EXACT SAME NAME for the show.
Whip contacted the show early on (sent a copy of his birth certificate and drivers license), they didn’t offer any money (and Whip didn’t ask for any), just an autograph from the star portraying him.

The problem is NOT that Whip has a character on a show, the problem is Whip and his family lost their main source of income due to the BP oil spill.

Now when Whip applies for a job, and the employment places run a reference check on him and find a Wikipedia article calling Whip a fictional character on CBS’s daytime drama The Bold and the Beautiful, they claim he is using the name of a soap opera character…

What Whip did was start his own dot com….and is allowing people to post blogs on his site for free, just to show that he is a real person.
Google does give Whip a TINY amount to have ads on the right hand side of his webpage.
Please pass this along to your friends to show that Whipple Van Ness Jones, III is not only a real person, but a man trying to keep food on his family’s table.

Thank you!!
PS- Whip and his family did put in a claim with BP, they just haven’t heard anything yet. AS OF MARCH 24, 2011

PPS- Also, some people consider CBS to have BORDERLINE stolen Whip’s identity. Whip doesn’t see it this way, but how would you feel if you couldn’t get a job based on what Wikipedia says about you????

I don't even know what they want me to do about it.

Laughter Links

2011-04-12T08:17:00.000+01:00

There are some funny cartoons out thar in the world wide web (remember when we called it that!)

Topical in the Christian sub-culture at the moment: ASBO Jesus meets Rob Bell

Dan Piraro takes a look at evangelising (and wants people to stop hitting him up for money for mission trips)

Basic Instructions is, basically, awesome. Here is an explanation of How to Give Constructive Criticism

And, finally, a newly-discovered probably-will-become-a-favourite-of-mine webcomic site chock full of comic book geekery and mocking idiots who deserve it: Our Valued Customers.

A more personal review of Love Wins

2011-04-09T16:38:00.000+01:00

As a follow up to my previous post, which was more of an examination of the theology in Love Wins, I decided to post about how I felt reading it.

Firstly, it resonated with me because many of the questions he asks are questions I've asked. Reconciling the idea of a loving, all-powerful God with the view that God condemns millions of created beings to hell is a difficult one.

It's a difficulty that I saw articulated years ago by Scott Adams in a cartoon about not mixing logic and religion. "What happens to the people that don't knowthat God loves all his children?" asks the protagonist. "Eternal hell!" is the response. That cartoon has always challenged me.

(Of course, Calvin's response to the exact same issue was that God sends people to Hell as evidence of His glory. (Section 3.22.11 of the Institutes) I've never felt particularly comfortable with that, ever since I read Calvin at University. The idea that our view of God as holy and glorious and righteous is contingent on him sending sinners to Hell makes God's attributes only applicable through the actions of human beings. Or, to put it another way, Calvin's articulation of God is that He is not self-sufficient.)

What I felt reading Love Wins was that here was someone else articulating many things that I've thought before, particularly the idea that an obsession about where you end up after death means you end up ignoring the realities of the here and now.

I think Rob Bell does a good job of evaluating Jesus' teaching on heaven and hell, and the commentary of the early church. I think he is fair to the Scriptural texts and his exposition of the original Greek is actually quite good. It's not the usual kind of thing I've heard in evangelical contexts, but that doesn't necessarily make it wrong.

I was particularly struck by his use of the parable of the prodigal son to highlight the negative images many Christians have of God - as a 'slave-driver', constantly looking over our shoulder to catch us out, and us not rejoicing in always being with him.

I think that chapter is actually a very good corrective to how God is talked about - his comment when talking about the atonement that Jesus doesn't save us from God, but that God saves us from the hell we create for ourselves is a good counterbalance to other technical theories of atonement that imply God is all about the wrath.

There were one or two throwaway remarks I wasn't happy with. Saying that a woman wrote Hebrews is a definite statement on a subject that from a Biblical Studies standpoint is hard to make definite statements on. There were one or two comments about people who hold a rigid view on hell (as not throwing good parties, for example) that were a bit needless. But generally, he reigned in the sarcasm.

The general tenor of the book - that we create heaven and hell through our choices and that affects how we live now and in the world to come reminded me of CS Lewis in The Great Divorce. I wish he had referenced Lewis' book, as it's not that well-known.

His comment on the literal nature of hell, based on his experience of seeing amputee survivors of the Rwandan genocide, is an intelligent way of taking something that can be quite theoretical and applying it. "Do I believe in a literal hell? Those weren't metaphorical limbs..." And then, later: "We can all choose to pick up machetes." Earlier he said "Our eschatology shapes our ethics." That's true too.

In that sense his realised eschatology is more realistic and relevant than the idea that it all happens after judgement. I've believed for a while that we need to start locating heaven and hell in the here and now to render them real. I said as much last year when talking to the youth.

For me, personally, it's been a bit of a journey to get where I am, theologically. On the subject of hell, I was helped by an insight of Frederick Buechner who made the point that if someone choose to withdraw from God, then they are withdrawing from the source of all things. That way leads to utter destruction or non-existence.

Buechner asked whether Hell was the stopping point - that God says 'You can go so far and no further'; that God wouldn't allow people to tip over the edge and cease to exist. Seen like that, Hell is an extension of God's mercy and love, because however far people run from him, he won't let them disappear forever.

I don't think Rob Bell's book was really written for those who are in churches and are happy with what's taught there. I think it's more for those who are unhappy, or who have left a church because they sense there is a discrepency between the emphasis on God's love, and the way hell is talked about.

What Rob Bell has done is offer an alternative view, that I feel is faithful to the Biblical texts, and presents a positive and affirming view of God as a loving Father. It made me feel hopeful and inspired to talk about my faith experiences with people to try and open up the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven right now.

Rob Bell, Love Wins, and Controversy - a review by someone who has actually read the book!

2011-04-08T23:01:00.002+01:00

I’ve seen several blog posts about the controversy over Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins, but unlike them I decided to wait and post until I’d read the book. I’m sure showing such patience to comment, commend or condemn isn’t unique. But it feels like it.

Predictably the fact that Rob Bell decided to write a book about Hell raised some hackles among the more conservative fundamentalist elements within churchianity. You’d expect that, firstly because he’s Rob Bell and some people seem to hate him on the basis that he’s successful and they’re not, and secondly, because those conservative fundamentalist elements don’t like people asking annoying questions.

And the questions in Love Wins are annoying. They are vexing questions. I’m not saying I’m in any way of the calibre of Rob Bell, but they are questions I’ve had for years about the conservative theology I grew up with, and asking those questions is probably why I don’t swim in that particular direction any more.

I had a suspicion, from the interweb argey-bargey, that most of what appears in the book wouldn’t be particularly new or spectacularly different from what many Christians believe already. And I was right.

Sure, Rob has put a spin on it and couched it in cleverly simple terms to articulate it in a way that makes people think, but it is pretty basic stuff. True, there are some comments that hyper-Calvinists would get steamed about, but that’s because hyper-Calvinism isn’t a particularly coherent theology but desperately wants to be. (I’ll explain that some other time.)

In a way it’s just a realised eschatology with a dimension that says the eschaton starts now and continues beyond this life. It’s exactly the sort of thinking about heaven and hell as modes of being that you find in CS Lewis’ parable, The Great Divorce. And he makes some good points about how concentrating on heaven and hell just as other places misses the reality of what our choices can create here and now. (His comment on the literalness of hell in the context of Rwanda is particularly insightful.)

A big criticism is that Rob Bell is preaching universalism. He’s not. At best he’s advocating inclusivism, which is left-of-centre, admittedly, but it’s not universalism. That his critics don’t get that is either due to them preferring to label things they don’t understand as heresy, or because they’re wilfully misrepresenting him.

Or to be more blunt, they’re either thick or trying to smear him with bad theology he doesn’t own.

And anyway an inclusivist position isn’t at odds with reformed theology at all. Many active reformed theologians activate Barth’s get-out clause that Jesus was the only member of the elect. Admittedly most of those theologians aren't that well-known by 'ornery churchgoers in the Bible Belt, but it's still true.

There is of course, the “Biblical” argument. But there is little in the Bible to justify the doctrine of Hell the way it is taught in many places. At least Bell is being honest enough to admit that. And he does address the paltry number of texts that do exist and makes the point (that I’ve often made to people) that Jesus only ever really threatens religious and powerful people with hell; not those who are ‘sinners’ in the eyes of the religious.

That may upset some people, but then they really ought to take it up with Jesus. It's seems a bit harsh to criticise Rob Bell for Jesus' dodgy theology.

Rob does ask whether the decision point is only available this side of death. Belief in post-mortem opportunities for salvation isn’t uncommon in Christian theology. (Again The Great Divorce comes to mind.) Rob makes a case for it, but not a totally conclusive one. However, the points he raises are worth considering.

Where he does diverge from the Reformed position, is in his elevation of human choice. His central thesis is that God loves people so much he gives them freedom to choose heaven or hell as modes of being. That’s why he’s not a universalist, incidentally, because he holds that some people will always choose hell. A true universalist is a predestinarian as much as John Calvin was.

He ends the book with an interesting dissection of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, drawing out the different attitudes of the people at the party at the end of the parable. They prodigal and the elder brother are at the same party, but for one it’s heaven, and for the other it’s hell.

It’s a clever idea, to say that heaven and hell are actually the same place, and the difference is us. But, again, it’s not that original. The Eastern Orthodox mystics said the same thing – that in the bosom of the Father, people will experience either joy or disgust, depending on whether they love God or not.

As I said at the top of this article, it seems most people’s issue with the Rob Bell book isn’t with his answers, but with his chutzpah to ask questions and challenge the dominant narrative of reformed / evangelical / fundamentalist Christianity – the narrative that says a wrathful God will send non-believers to hell.

Rob Bell’s view of God and human futures is more positive. His real crime, perhaps, is that he has stepped out of the powerful American evangelical ghetto, widened his reading to include wisdom from other Christian traditions, and then returned to the ghetto in the hope that he can challenge the dominant narrative.

Some other things I’ve noticed from this:

There seems to be a link between individuals who emphasise judgement and are also quite judgemental themselves. Has anyone else noticed that?

There does seem to be a tendency to attack independent thought, especially if ‘successful’ church leaders are doing the thinking. If it wasn’t Rob Bell saying this, there wouldn’t be so much fuss.

For example, Zondervan’s new counterpoints range of books includes a ‘Four Views on Hell’ title, indicating the range of opinions within Christian theology on the topic. Nobody is shouting from the rooftops about this, or boycotting their local bookshop about it, probably because none of the contributors are particularly famous.

I bought the Counterpoints: Salvation in a Pluralistic World from my local evangelical bookshop for two reasons. Firstly, it looked interesting, and secondly, it had a piece in there from liberal theologian John Hick advocating a pluralist position. I’ve been profoundly challenged by Hick. I think he is wrong, and I’m working on working out why he’s wrong. But I’m glad he wrote it and I don’t think he’ll go to hell for it.

Differences of opinion challenge us, shape us and frame us. Without the impetus of debate, growth is stunted.

Rob Bell, for whatever faults can be found in Love Wins (and I found a few typos!), has at least provided a thoughtful, thought-provoking sideways look at a big topic.

35

2011-04-02T12:23:00.000+01:00

35 years young today. Many of my birthday presents reflect my maturity. A Clone Wars action figure of a teenage Boba Fett; 2 small Futurama figures; and plenty of Lego.

Cathy gave me a set of three Lego figures that she constructed herself at the hive of awesomeness that is the Lego Shop. As she was putting them together she got talking to another woman selecting Lego heads, bodies and legs to create some figures.

"How old's yours?" asked the woman. "Mine's 35!"

"Mine's 35 on Saturday," said Cathy.

See, I'm not the only one!

Word of the week: titnotized

2011-03-28T23:40:00.000+01:00

'Titnotized' was coined by my desk neighbour / partner in crime Vicki, to describe the hypnotic effect that low-cut tops on certain women have on most men and a fair number of women too.

"It's like the sun. You know it's wrong to stare at it. But you just can't help yourself..."

Jon's moaning about church planting agaaaaain

2011-03-24T23:53:00.000Z

It’s spring, the time of year where the trees start to blossom and bud, and greenery appears, and that means it’s time to go out and plant. Plant churches, that is.

In the past week I’ve heard of two new church plants in Cardiff, and again I’m wondering whether it’s cynical to question whether we really need them. The current churches in Cardiff aren’t exactly full to bursting already.

One of the church plants is by an old-school evangelical church into an ‘unchurched area’ of the city. An unchurched area with a Community Church and a Baptist Church in it.

This has been pointed out.

Apparently the rationale is there is no ‘Bible-based’ church there. To me, that sounds a bit presumptively harsh on the Community Church and Baptists, unless they are raving heretics, of course.

What ‘not Bible-based’ means, of course, is that those churches interpret one or two Scriptural house style points differently. Maybe they allow women in who aren’t wearing hats, for example. The heathens.

The other church is being planted from another church in Hereford, and is linked to Hillsongs. They’re calling themselves ‘Freedom Church’, which sounds quite exciting and avant-garde, and, viewed entirely subjectively, weird. But at least it’s not as weird as calling yourself ‘The Healing Church’.

I’ve seen FC’s promo postcards and they are obviously aiming for a youth audience, given that everyone on the card looked like they were in their 20s. Meeting in the middle of the University buildings is another clue to their proposed demographic.

However, they do meet in the evenings, which is a bonus. I’ve offended people before by saying that however many coffee shops you have, all they serve is coffee. Thus, the same is true of churches. But at least the opening hours are different with this one.

I don’t have anything against Hillsongs, although I know little about them beyond their music.

My only gripe is that I’ve noticed their music videos (sorry, worship videos), generally only feature very attractive young people in the audience (sorry, worship congregation). I’m not sure if it is official church policy to exclude ugly people. Maybe going there is transformational on a physical level as well as a spiritual one. There are certainly an above average number of earnest blonde 21-year olds in their vids.

This isn’t meant to be a hostile blog post, although those keen on church planting may take it that way. By all means, people are welcome to plant churches wherever they want, particularly in genuinely ‘unchurched’ areas.

But the points I raised in my last blog post about church planting are still valid, I think. Cardiff isn’t an unchurched area. The city is teeming just with church plants let alone churches, appealing to just about every niche Christian demographic. You’re into miracles, or long worship times, or doughnuts, or Bible teaching, or whatever, then we’ve probably got an exciting missional opportunity for you to be part of a church plant.

I’m just glad that the rest of the country is so overwhelmingly evangelised and ‘churched’ that people are able to come and bring their exclusive brand of coffee to bless us here.

10 weird words that are fun to say

2011-03-21T07:43:00.002Z

Sasquatch

Boing

Shibboleth

Squelch

Chugalug

Piffle

Fandango

Zephyr

Haddock

Flange

A clever joke about cryogenics and conspiracy theories

2011-03-15T07:53:00.002Z

We went to see the slightly surreal Boothby Graffoe last Friday night. I liked this joke in particular...

"I took the kids to see Disney on ice. It was just his head."

(It's not funny if I have to explain it.)

#awfulsupergroups

2011-03-14T07:46:00.002Z

This was a recent meme on Twitter that really made me smile. The basic premise is you combine two artists, bands or pop groups to form an ‘awful supergroup’.

A couple that really caught my eye were Rage Against Florence and the Machine and Nirvanarama.

I had a go myself. What if Macy Gray joined AC-DC? Macy DC. And The Future Soundgarden of London would be pretty bad too.

While driving the minibus on a recent youth weekend, I was chatting about it to a couple of fellow leaders, and it caught their imaginations too. Minty suggested Thirty Seconds to Bruno Mars, while Sam came up with the frankly brilliant Incubusted.

Since then, I’ve been thinking of some more. I’m not sure what Queens of the GarbAge would sound like. And I think I’d avoid anything by Liberty XTC, New Order on the Block or Freddie Mercury Rev. Ditto My Chemical Brothers Romance.

But my favourite contribution by a twitter-user was the person who just put Velvet Revolver, and added the hashtag #missing the point. Irony is alive and well.

What would your #awfulsupergroups be? Leave a comment!

City boys and stars

2011-03-07T18:12:00.002Z

I've been on a youth weekend this past weekend with some kids from quite deprived backgrounds. The way they see things can be quite illuminating. There's a lack of basic life experience that you become aware of at unexpected times.

(We have kids from rather well-off backgrounds too, but that's a different challenge.)

On the first night out on the Gower peninsular we took them on a blindfolded 'trust walk' into the dunes, then on top of the highest dunes told them to take off their blindfolds and look up. The starshow was specatacular - one of the clearest nights I've ever seen in Britain. It was wondrous.

One of the kids, though, turned to the leaders and said: "Those can't all be stars. There are too many of them."

Word of the weekend

2011-03-04T19:10:00.001Z

My lovely wife can purse her lips and make a bizarre whistling noise like a balloon losing air. It occasionally annoys me, when she does this for long lengths of time.

Now thanks to my obsolete-word-a-day calendar, I have a word to describe it: SQUACKETT, defined as any disagreeable noise made with the mouth.

"Stop that squackett, you're making a racket!"

I heart potatoes

2011-03-03T19:09:00.000Z

And sometimes they heart me!

Going deeper

2011-03-02T23:32:00.000Z

I've been thinking of dusting off my second channel blog to record some slightly deeper thoughts - a bit like how BBC2 used to be the more serious / highbrow / niche channel. I'm not sure where I would find the time to do it, but these are some of the deeper ideas I want to explore, based on stuff I'm reading.

John Hick's pluralist ethos rests on an argument that if Christianity is a superior religion then Christians on average should be more saintly than, say, devout Muslims, Hindus etc. And yet experience tells him this isn't true. I think Hick's ethos is wrong, but where has Christianity gone wrong that we're no better than anyone else even though we have the 'best' revelation of God.

Aneurin Bevan describes how churchmen only got involved in talks between miners and mine-owners when there was conflict. When the conflict subsided, they lost interest. "Their problem was not with the suffering, but with the struggle," says Bevan. 'Silent pain brooks no action.' Could that charge be levelled at the modern-day church when it comes to issues of social justice?

Another Bevanism is that democracy in this country is a sham where vested interests beguile the masses into voting in such a way as to preserve the power of vested interests. Politicians who are not representative of the people cannot represent them. With 17 millionaires in David Cameron's cabinet, is this government representative of the people?

Rob Bell is causing a stir as people predict his new book will challenge 'orthodox' views on hell. Notwithstanding the ridiculous notion that modern-day churchianity is anything other than heterodox, my hunch is that Bell won't be saying anything that isn't already said by countless Christians already. So, why the palava? Why can't we debate things nicely? (What vested interests are at work that want to stifle honest questions and keep the pew-bound proles theologically illiterate by telling them what they are allowed to believe?)

So, if I get round to it, I may expand upon those themes. I'll let you know.

For the very first time

2011-02-27T22:03:00.000Z

I had the undoubted pleasure of taking a 13-year old to his very first football match yesterday and it taught me something that I knew was true, but had kind of forgotten. When you look at something quite mundane for the very first time, it can be wonderful.

So, the game ended 0-0, but there was excitement and colour, and (very limited outbursts of) flair, and atmosphere. And I asked him afterwards whether he had enjoyed the game and he said he loved it.

And as the person accompanying him it gave me a vicarious experience of newness too. Because as I pointed out the various aspects of the new stadium and had to describe what the old ground used to be like, it gave me a new appreciation for the niceties of a purpose-built place. When I pointed out the tactics, or lack of them, it made me appreciate again how football is a relatively simple, yet impossibly hard, game. And when I compared the teams we were watching against the bloated corporate behemoths of the Premier and Champions Leagues, I reasserted the belief that we were watching 'real' football, and in that moment reaffirmed my faith.

Of course, I know that seeing it with someone who is seeing it for the first time gives you a new perspective. I'd forgotten how much, though.

It made me think again of the vagaries of affiliation, when I explained that despite living over 16 years in a city that now has a team knocking on the door of the Premier League, my true loyalty lay with the club I supported as a boy.

It made me excited again about the idea of football, and tempts me to try out some new teams, places and experiences. Maybe this is what fuels the phenomenon of ground-hopping - it's the opportunity to experience novelty in a relationship that has long grown stale.

Maybe another solution is to always take someone new with you, and see it the way they do?

I wonder whether a pair of fresh eyes, the innocence and wide-eyed wonder of a total newbie, would make such an impact on my church life too.

Barclays Bank appear to be a bunch of tax-dodging bastards

2011-02-18T21:56:00.000Z

I’ve just had a bit of a rant on Twitter. Thought it might be worth making a more structured argument here.

Last year Barclays paid £113m in corporation tax on £11.6bn profits: that’s 1% rather than 28%.

The thing that really gets me about such (probably totally legal) criminality is that tax-dodging on such an epic scale is really a form of social robbery. Barclays should have paid £3,164 million (or 3.164 billion if you’re using American billions) in tax.

They have robbed the British treasury of over £3,000,000,000, which means they have collectively robbed the people of Britain of whatever the Government could have spent that money on.

Seriously, that is how much they have stolen from us by exploiting legal loopholes.

Does that bank have a social conscience? Do the people who work there? Do the people who bank there? Do the people or institutions that own shares in it?

If you’re making money off Barclays you’re guilty of complicity in this swindle. I honestly think that.

I don’t know why we don’t get more angry about this. I know it’s not just Barclays. It could be every other large corporation. Why aren’t we angry with all of them?

Business can be conducted differently. Business can create wealth for the good of everyone. It can bring much-needed equity into a sharply-divided society. Paying tax is about good citizenship and the demands of good citizenship apply equally to banks and corporations.

But it’s not going to happen without pressure from people like me and you.

This country is going to lose its free healthcare system. It’s going to lose investment in its infrastructure. The schools and hospitals and roads and rubbish collections and leisure centres and libraries and parks and public transport in your area is going to be cut. Fact. And if you’re a normal member of this society you either don’t know that or you don’t give a shit.

Most people don’t. Who cares about corporate profiteering when you can watch Got to Dance on Sky? TV is the 21st century opium of the proles.

Jesus hated profiteering and took direct action (Mark 11: 15-17). I reckon he'd be up for having a go at Barclays.

Frankie Boyle's sort of toys?

2011-02-15T08:34:00.002Z

A few weeks ago comedian Frankie Boyle (who seems to grow less funny with every passing month) caused a nasty sort of stir when he used various racist slurs in one of his routines. One of those words was 'Paki'.

Given that 'Paki' is considered quite an offensive term, I'm not sure who really thought up the names for these Disney characters...

The potential for miscommunication is immense.

"Where's Billy?"

"Oh, he's up in his room playing with a little Paki..."

Just makes you wanna wee

2011-02-13T20:00:00.000Z

Wedding in Bournemouth. Looked for a pub to go afterwards. Found a place on Google that had a 5 star rating, called The Cricketer's Arms. Friendly landlord called Jake. We made his night when we told him his pub had 5 stars on Google. The pub was a proper Victorian boozer, and when I went in the gents it had the most magnificent urinal EVER.

It was so amazing I had to take a picture.

Theologically insecure Christians

2011-02-12T22:56:00.001Z

There's a little part of me that is concerned for the person who felt the need to doctor this piece of graffiti with gaffer tape, just to make it theologically correct.

The death of blogging has been reported too early

2011-02-05T21:53:00.000Z

I have now put up over 800 blog posts on here, but for a while it felt like I was the only one of my blogging compadres (see list on right) to really be doing it regular like.

But recently there seems to have been a flurry of blogging. A recommencement of blogging commitments. Huzzah!

So, kudos to you my blogging amigos for keeping the flame alive!

Outside

2011-02-04T08:08:00.000Z

There's an "outpouring" going on in Wales. At least, that's what they're starting to call it. A church in Cardiff has been having weeknight evening meetings. Some people are very excited about it all.

I have to admit, I'm not negative about it, but I'm not rushing to see what all the fuss is about. Rumours of revival are a bit like the leading of the technology curve. There are early adopters and then there's the bell curve of interest, then there are the laggards.

The thing is when the bell curve gets going the early adopters are joined by the rush of people trying it out. But the rush don't last. How many accounts on Twitter or Facebook are all but dead? (The answer is 'many'.)

I'm not trying to retcon my own experience of church and faith. I wouldn't deny the real effects of being caught up in a spiritual outpouring 17 years ago. But I guess I've gained perspective. When I was inside I saw people rush to see what as going on, and then they drifted away. They were excited about God 'moving' (although the very definition of God is that he 'moves' if you think about it) and wanted to be part of it, but now, well...

So, being outside? I'm happy. I'm not so arrogant as to say I don't need a new experience of God, but I'm not sure I should be chasing that experience instead of chasing God. I'm where I'm meant to be; I have that confirmed to me on a regular basis. God is moving - not in gold dust from the ceiling type ways, I admit - and people are coming to know him. I've had opportunities to talk about faith this week in the most unexpected of ways.

I feel as well that from the outside this incredible thing actually looks quite small. I know from experience when you are caught up in something like this it seems huge, as if that is all there is. And you forget that actually there are millions of people outside, getting on with other (God) stuff, quite happily.

God is bigger than an outpouring. And right now there is more God stuff going on outside than inside, just by the law of probability and numbers.

When I grow up I want to be an oporopolist

2011-02-03T12:24:00.000Z

Another word of the week time.

Oporopolists sell fruit for a living.

Several years ago I was in our local Asda and I was checking how hard the plums were. For some reason Asda sells 'soft fruit' that is actually rock hard. Then Cathy turned around and said, in a very loud voice: "Jon! Stop feeling the fruit!"

Everyone present stopped what they were doing and looked at me.

I don't buy plums any more.

Leaders and followers

2011-02-02T12:34:00.003Z

After several months tweeting for work, I have decided to tweet as myself. You can follow me if you wish at http://twitter.com/jongudmund

Actually no 'if you wish'. Follow me, follow me now! What are you waiting for?

Ice Hockey game - Cardiff Devils 13 (Thirteen), Edinburgh Capitals 2

2011-01-30T16:50:00.000Z

There comes a point in a one-sided contest when you just feel sorry for the team getting spanwhengled. In fact, Matt and I applauded the two Edinburgh goals out of a mixture of pity and pleasure at seeing some relief from the relentless Cardiff attacking.

This was a total shellacking by Cardiff who camped out in the Edinburgh end throughout the game. The Capitals man of the match was their debutant netminder, who let 13 goals in, it's true, but that was out of 68 shots on target. The Devils hit the frame of the goal a further three times, and there were several passes across the face of goal that were agonisingly close to being turned in as well.

13 was possibly charitable to the visitors.

And yet, despite the huge winning margin, there was something vaguely unsatisfying about the game. Firstly, it wasn't really a game, a match, a contest. It felt like we were there to watch shooting practice. Secondly, the way the Edinburgh players mustered up their reserves of strength to take up position for restart after restart was very commendable, but made me feel like I was watching a humiliation, and that was unpleasant. Thirdly, it just wasn't very exciting.

Edinburgh have financial difficulties and a barely full roster. Some of the kids on the ice looked very, very green. Cardiff were faster, fitter, stronger and more organised. That is not a recipe for a great sporting spectacle. There was none of the tension that you get in a meeting of near-equals.

So a great result in the statistics table. But not such a great result in terms of the ineffable 'competition' that makes sport really worth watching.

Burn fast; burn bright

2011-01-29T10:31:00.000Z

Having had a wisdom tooth out last Wednesday I spent the best part of two days sleeping or watching TV, specifically DVD box sets of Firefly and Seinfeld, and comedy reruns on Fiver.

Having watched the 'roundtable' extra on the last season of Seinfeld, it struck home to me the bravery of the show's creators to walk away while it was still the number 1 American comedy show. Nine seasons = 180 episodes, and to still retain some credibility is difficult. The final days of Friends and Frasier as they limped on to their respective twee finales shows the wisdom in the Seinfeld tack.

In a strange way, a show with a much shorter run also shows the truth inherent in the saying that the stars that blaze brightest burn out fastest. Firefly was axed after just 14 episodes, by network executives who didn't really get the show.

In the sci-fi fanboy / geek community this is still regarded as one of the most criminal acts of TV exec-land (although whoever greenlighted a second season of 'Joey' probably deserves to be spanwhengled too). And yet, I'd say it's given us a gem.

True there are all the 'could have beens', the unanswered questions, many of which were only loosely tied up by the feature film Serenity. But equally, we were spared the painful lurching of genius being lost in the mundanity of season after season. Sci-fi afficionados will remember the way Farscape deteriorated until it was put out of its misery, or how boring The X-Files became with its ponderous story arc, or the sheer dullness of many of the Star Trek spin off series.

Firefly still seems fresh and fun and playful, a few years on from it's ever so brief run in the sun. Maybe it burns the brighter because its life was so short.

Word of the week: Spanwhengle

2011-01-28T22:30:00.000Z

A semi-learned friend gave me a 'lost language' day to day calendar and Wednesday's this week was rather apt.

Spanwhengle (obsolete): to violently shake or knock around.

As in: I had a wisdom tooth out on Wednesday and I feel spanwhengled.

Vehicle crime sinks to a new low

2011-01-18T19:02:00.001Z

I spotted this on the pavement opposite my office.

You know times are hard when people are jacking wheels off buggies...

First freelance theology post for 2011

2011-01-16T10:06:00.001Z

A question about discipleship that was quite interesting to answer.

Freelance theology needs more questions! Post them via the site.

Things you learn from Wikipedia

2011-01-16T09:22:00.004Z

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically correct sentence.

Confused? Read the article on Wikipedia.

I'd like to find a way of working it into my next work writing project...

Gig review - The Robbie Burns Band @ Funky Buddha, Cardiff

2011-01-15T20:09:00.000Z

It's difficult sometimes when you know an artist (musician, writer, or actual artist type of artist) in a personal capacity and they ask for your opinion on their work. However, I'd prefer an honest appraisal / critique from a friend than have someone tell me I was amazing because that's what they thought I wanted to hear.

Sometime last year Robbie Burns gave me one of his CDs and asked me for honest feedback on it. I told him it was very good but to me it sounded like the CD you'd make before you make your first CD. It had potential, but you could tell he had some way to go. I probably said some other stuff too. I can't remember. But he has improved, so in a small way I may have helped.

Based on this gig, I'd say Robbie has the potential to do this kind of thing for a living. Obviously, a whole slice of luck is needed to break it in the music business, but if he gets that opportunity, I can see him doing well.

For starters he has done something quite smart and surrounded himself with talented musicians. He also handled some technical difficulties well - yes he was sweating a bit, but swapping to another person's guitar halfway through a song would phase much more experienced people, so he did well with that. I liked that he acknowledged the problem to the audience, but powered through it. It shows maturity in a performer.

His own songs were well-constructed. There was some variety to them, although it helps having a band there to give you that breadth of sound. I'm not sure if they would sound a bit samey if they were sung solo with just an acoustic guitar accompaniament. Maybe that's me. I find after a while singer/songwriters all tend to sound a bit the same.

Is there room for improvement? Yeah, I think so. I'd like to see the band let loose more often on genuine rock numbers, and maybe see Robbie step out from behind the guitar on one or two songs to just sing as a proper frontman.

The first set, comprised of covers, was very well put together, but I was starting to get a bit bored by the time the third Jack Johnson cover came along.

I tend to think of Jack Johnson as the musical equivalent of wallpaper - you want something to liven up the room, but nothing you need to concentrate on. I'd like to see Robbie and his band throw in a real surprise - maybe a Dandy Warhols cover, or some classic rock, just to make people go 'oooh, wasn't expecting that.'

And given that he had a girl singing with him who was able to do a very good homage to Norah Jones, a genuine duet would be a good addition to the repertoire. 'Another Heart Calls' from the All American Rejects third album would fit the bill.

But those are minor quibbles for a young musician who is still doing his A-Levels, and whose primary audience seemed to be from his Sixth Form (being in that crowd made me feel oooold). There is apparently an album on its way - I'm pleased to hear that and on the basis of what I heard at the Funky Buddha, I'd expect it to be a good few levels up from his demo CD.

I also had a moment of reflected glory, when a person I know in a completely different context who happens to be one of the parents of the warm-up act came up to me and said 'Hello' and what was I doing there.When I said I knew Robbie, she asked 'How?' and I was able to say 'I'm one of his youth leaders.'

Yeah, that's right. 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of what you see up there might be attributable to me!

New Star Wars character? Or just terrible proofreading

2011-01-13T19:28:00.001Z

We all make mistakes. But sometimes they slip through the net.

I saw this t-shirt in Tesco and quite liked it, until I looked at it up close.

(Note the official merchandise tag)

OH DEAR....

2010 - that was the year that was

2011-01-03T10:20:00.000Z

It's 2011. It seems like only last week it was 2010...

A year in review always seems more momentous after the fact. But some stuff did happen worth chronicling.

January
In a journal entry in early January I wrote: "I do feel like I need to get out of [workplace]. I feel disengaged and unmotivated. Money is tight in the organisation but I feel very calm... I think I just don't care about [workplace] any more." Four months later I was gone.

February
Rumours of redundancies at work. It doesn't help when a load of redundancy packs are discovered on the printer (for real!). The eventual announcement reveals over 30 redundancies are needed - over a third of the organisation.

March
While under notice of redundancy I did a few days freelance in the office where I would end up working just seven weeks later!

Had a great morning at United Christian Broadcasting talking through issues in the news from a freelance theological point of view.

April
Was interviewed for and offered a new job the day before my birthday. Then I went to the theatre and met Dirk Benedict!

May
Started the new job. Spent a week in London with my Dad at the London Festival of Stamps. Didn't vote for either of the parties in the new coalition government.

June
Did a talk in life group about Satan. 2010 was a year of heavy topics to talk about - Evil and Satan over two talks, the Trinity in 20 minutes and another 20 minute one on Heaven. Also, one of my stints on UCB ticked off a vocal Christian bigot, so that was good.

Disappointing Florence & the Machine gig at Cooper's Field in Cardiff. Why was it disappointing, I hear you ask...

July
Being made redundant has an upside - you can get training paid for by the government. I had a fun couple of days playing about with Dreamweaver. Also saw Terrorvision at yet another 'we said we retired but we quite like gigging so here we are again' gigs.

August
Saw Toy Story 3. Nearly cried. Went to a wedding. Didn't cry. I don't cry at weddings. I don't really understand why people do. That's just one of the many things that makes me feel like I'm abnormal.

September
We spent a week in Sussex with Mum and Dad. A number of highlights - Beachy Head, Dungeness, a cliff railway in Hastings, a steam railway in Tenterden.

Fantastic gig - Barenaked Ladies in Bristol. Probably number 2 on my all-time gig list. Also the place where we heard Joel Plaskett for the first time.

October
A football match, an ice hockey match, my boss won a national award, and laser combat in the woods with the Glenwood Taliban. What a month!

November
This won't make much sense unless you're a writer, too. Or maybe it will. But anyway, I had to write an introduction for a report 'from' our programme chairs. I wrote it, and rewrote it and then it got rewritten again by someone else and then they had a look at it and tweaked it, and in the final result only two paragraphs of mine survived unchanged.

Then at a national event, to over 300 of the key players from across Wales, one of our chairs got up and summed up everything we do using two of the sentences I wrote.

Those were my words. Being spoken by a very important person.

At that moment I knew what it must feel like to be a speechwriter for a president or equivalent. To hear your words articulated by someone else is incredible. It meant so much, but most of all it meant that when I wrote them I caught the essence and 'got it right'.

(In other news, the house next door is raided by the police because the tenants have been using it to farm cannabis!)

December
I have an enquiry about publishing my Zodiac Team novel. I also get asked to do some freelance writing for a national organisation in the New Year. My brother and sister-in-law go public with news that, tangentially, means I am going to be an Uncle. Snow threatens to white out Christmas, but fails. However, the bad weather means we don't get to the church carol service and also miss out on going to a footie match on Boxing Day.

December was some month, to end some year.

Resolution

2011-01-02T21:59:00.002Z

I'm not really one for resolutions, but this year I may try something different.

This stems from a conversation that I had with my brother last week. In case you missed it, they are expecting. He asked what I thought about it and I said that generally the thing he had to remember is that nobody is ever as interested in the minutiae of your baby as you are.

It's not just babies, I said. It's true of your job, your holidays, your car, and actually pretty much anything you do in life.

People only want to hear the highlights (or lowlights). We want to know if there's something out of the ordinary. But a moment-by-moment account of every kick, every burp, every poo-filled nappy... Well, in the main, no one is as interested as you are. (The same goes for paper-heavy HR procedures, what you ate in the hotel restaurant, or whether you've roatated your tyres.)

I think I have a tendency to talk on about the things that interest me, but don't interest other people so much. So this year my resolution is to take my own advice - talk less and wait for the invitation to share. I'm sure I will bless some people by not talking so much!

I also had a funny conversation with a colleague last month. She is what I affectionately call a 'topper'. It would seem that whatever story you tell, she has a similar one that 'tops' it. We all know people like that, and she is by no means the worst person with that tendency that I have ever had to work with.

But I have that tendency too, which is why I notice it. So this year I plan to be less of a topper.

And a final resolution, because good things come in threes, is to do more writing. I may need to do this in earnest soon as I have had a tentative enquiry about the quasi-finished Zodiac Team novel I drafted several years ago. There is a long way to go on this before any definite plans are made, but I may have to rewrite chunks of it before the end of 2011.

Somehow I will have to find the time to write. If you feel charitable towards me, please wish me luck.

And, similarly, may good fortune (or divine providence if that's more your cup of tea) favour you in the coming year.

Really? REALLY?

2010-12-19T00:22:00.005Z

A bold claim.

When I think back to my childhood, I remember Sodastreams being crap. You had to buy the fabulously expensive syrups (made from unicorn blood and rocking horse droppings judging by the price) and the carbonating canisters, and you ended up with a drink that tasted a little bit like the drink normal people bought in the shops, but not quite. You got the same effect much more cheaply by buying Panda Pops.

Greatest Christmas present ever?

Yes, if you want to get your kids used to disappointment at Christmas.

That would work as a new caption.

"Sodastream - how disappointment tastes"

Best bits of 2010, part 2 - TV

2010-12-18T23:47:00.003Z

I always say that I don't watch a lot of telly, but thinking about this haas made me realise that maybe I watch more than I think I do.

So what were the highlights of 2010? Well in no particular order, they would have to be:

Camo Daleks with Union flags beneath the eyepieces in Doctor Who - the best Daleks ever. Although then they were blown up at the end of the episode by "proper" Daleks in primary colours that looked crap. Still, a Dalek asking if the Doctor would like a cup of tea was awesome.

In fact the series of Dr Who with Matt Smith replacing David Tennant was really quite good, although I wasn't too fussed about the over-arching storyline.

Season 3 of Chuck had some good moments too. The first half of the season was fairly awkward, but the last few episodes were gripping. I watched the series on DVD (thanks, Connor, for lending it to me) as it was shown on Monday nights when I was on youth. There is a danger with series like Chuck that it will get overwhelmingly silly after a while, yet so far it has managed to avoid that.

Season 3 of Outnumbered was very good, as to be expected. This is the one comedy show that has me biting my knuckles with embarrassment on a regular basis. The stand-out episode for me was one where Sue's incredibly annoying, flighty sister brought her American self-help guru husband over to meet the family. Karen, the little girl in the show, mercilessly questioned him until he cracked. It was awesome and painful to watch at the same time.

There was also a brilliant joke that was trailed extensively before the season - when Karen is told that a woman can be any shape or size she wants to be. Karen turns her head on one side and says 'What about a hexagon?'

Two new shows from America that are airing on Sky 1 seem to be producing the goods. I haven't seen too many episodes of The Middle, but what I have seen has made me laugh. And then there is Raising Hope, made by the same team who produced My Name is Earl, and very funny. Like MNIE, the central cast of misfits and losers are cringe-inducing, yet loveable. They have good hearts and that's what makes them work as character.

Raising Hope is also one of the best stories of unrequited love I've seen in a while. Jimmy's attempts to woo Sabrina capture that sense of desperation about not trying to look too desperate; of wanting someone but trying so hard not to scare them off. It is poetry.

A love story of a different kind has shown up in the latest series of The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon has a girlfriend, possessing equal brainiac weirdness as him. I quite like 'Big Bang' (especially as the Barenaked Ladies composed the theme song!), and it seems to be maturing quite nicely as a sitcom, with no signs of flagging yet.

But there is one stand-out TV moment of the year for me - from the second series of Castle, itself a great show despite being a detective series. I normally avoid detective shows, but this has enough quirky charm to keep me interested.

It stars Nathan Fillion, one-time star of the great Firefly. One episode of Castle begins with Fillion, as Rick Castle, dressed in his old Firefly garb for Hallowe'en. His daughter Alexis asks him what he is meant to be.

"Space Cowboy," he says.

"Didn't you wear that outfit, like, five years ago," she asks condescendingly.

"Yeah," he admits, before saying in a small voice, "but I really liked it."

That is probably the best TV crossover inside joke I have ever seen. It was brilliant. Definitely my highlight of the year.

You can't be black and Welsh, according to Cardiff Council

2010-12-17T20:00:00.005Z

Or any other skintone, apart from white, at least according to the 'Community Engagement form' I just filled in for them.

The categories for ethnic background only included 'Welsh' in the white section.

Sorry, my non-vanilla amigos. The best you can be, according to the form, is 'British'.