A Blogging Year

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Thanks to everyone who dropped by, left a comment, linked etc. August was an interesting month in that I was away from the keyboard for quite a bit of it, but a post about Bob Dylan and A Short Film About Karl Barth spiked some madness. Tumultuous thanks are thus due to Ben Myers for sparking such excitement! The prod to keep blogging comes from my neighbour and comedic genius Sion. If you like reading witty, incisive commentary on all aspects of human existence, visit Sam as soon as possible. This blog isn't a diary, still less a themed periodical, but is a scrapbook of the images and thoughts that have flashed through life and I'm loath to forget. Have a beautiful year.

Quite Good Lords

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SPARE a thought for any members of the House of Lords lurking in your neighbourhood on these dark nights.



They will look out through cold panes of glass and shiver at the thought of the desolation 2007 may bring.

With near-certainty they envisage the arrival of a new Prime Minister in Downing Street with a brain buzzing with ideas about how to reform the second chamber.

No politician of any stripe would dare do anything radical with economic policy – busts are so unpopular no one is likely to go in pursuit of a boom. And getting booed by nurses and teachers is so easy that no ambitious politico will wander into the realms of the public services wearing a reformer’s hat.

But politicians burn with the need to do something – anything.

Many have endured, are enduring or will endure interminable days in opposition when they imagine what they would do were their party elected to power. Even among Labour MPs, many have not got within scratching distance of a ministerial position and the walloping increase in salary promotion brings.



But if Gordon Brown does find himself sitting in the position of Prime Minister, now, like a beaver building a dam, he can divert the course of history. As with hoodie- clad hoodlums holding aerosols, all of us, deep down, find it difficult to resist the urge to make our mark.

Renationalisation of the railways is unlikely, as is fitting the nation’s cod stock with an indelible dye in an effort to stop the French poaching them. But storming the ramparts of the House of Lords is a campaign that will make the heavens thunder, shake the pillars of the Establishment, and yet only seriously annoy people who are already members of one of the world’s most idiosyncratic parliamentary bodies.

While the Queen has effectively lost all power to block bills and publicly note the ethical and legal catastrophes inherent in proposed legislation, peers can. Yet it seems likely any so-called “reform” of the Lords is likely to neuter a body that has served in recent years as a safety valve for constitutional democracy.

Notions that it should be filled with a ghoulish goulash of elected and appointed pontificators fills me with something that’s probably called dread.

Who would apply for such a role? Only someone who lacked the ambition to be an MP and the brains to be a high court judge; they would want to talk about the law, rather than shape it or defend it. In the House of Commons alone we already have more representatives than in the US Congress, and added to this number are Scottish MSPs, Welsh AMs and Northern Irish MLAs (the latter group enjoying one of the last true sinecures in British life, being paid to do literally nothing).

Our bloated system funnels power into Downing Street and wastes talent. Reform is needed, but demolishing the Lords would be a symptom of decay rather than proof of progress.

The Christmas Castle

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The College House

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The Castle in Canada

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The House of Books

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Happy Christmas!

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Renaissance Films

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WHEN you stagger through Tesco in search of asparagus on a December Thursday it can be hard to believe that we are living in the throes of a renaissance.



Yes, there is a deficit of political leadership in the United States, Britain and the Middle East. Nimble-minded people who could negotiate compromise where ideologues foment strife appear to have abandoned the democratic process to get rich trimming hedge funds – truly, we get the politicians we deserve. But, in 2006, when you switch off the rolling news and go to the cinema or DVD cellar, it is easier than it has been for years to find works of visionary imagination. It’s as if the vacuum of thought in the political realm has inspired film-makers to fill the void.

Monsieur Clooney

George Clooney made millions swoon as a lifesaver par excellence in ER, but he has also done more than any other heartthrob to keep Hollywood’s social conscience alive. His Goodnight and Good Luck reminded us how paranoia and a cowed media allowed Senator Joe McCarthy to go on an anti-Communist witch-hunt; he then starred in Syriana, a film of mesmerising complexity which travelled through the badlands where oil barons and international terrorists pass in the dark.

Constantly Gardening

Fernando Meirelles’s adaptation of John le Carré’s The Constant Gardener illustrated that corruption in African politics can often be traced back to the complicity of western governments and the mendacity of our own corporate villains. He did this in a film with one of the most moving portrayals of marriage since Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now.

At the start of this year Steven Spielberg gave us a flawed diamond of a movie, Munich, which confronts some of the thorniest dilemmas at the heart of the Israel-Palestine crisis.



Former Vice President Al Gore didn’t dramatise the threat of global warming; he decided the bare facts are sufficiently gripping to hold an audience’s attention. His film, An Inconvenient Truth, is a straightforward lecture replete with graphs and animations – and is at once a cinematic curio and a startling summons to action.

The best film of 2006 to take a conflict of our time and transform it into narrative gold may well be Tommy Lee Jones’s The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

Jones plays a West Texas ranch foreman. When a Mexican friend is shot dead by a brutish border patrol guard he kidnaps the young punk responsible, ties him to a horse, and together they take the dead man’s body back to the village of his birth.

The lens fills with beauty and grit as the film documents an America wrestling with its own identity, where a folklore of violence can fuel the confrontations of the present.



Yet this story is about much more than social injustice. With the absolute minimum of sentimentality it plants a hope that redemption is possible at even the most arid times. As such, it’s the best Christmas movie you could hope to see.

Politics Beyond Belief

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THINKING about America in the first half of the first decade of the 21st century triggers the facial expression pulled when staring directly into the sun.



It’s not that the country’s response to the September 11 terrorist attacks was inexplicable – we joined the Spanish, Italians and Australians in invading Iraq – but so much else about the United States now seems so decidedly foreign.

The rhetoric of American elections is unique in the western world. Politicians of both red and blue talk as if locked in a desperate competition to describe their country in the most utopian terms utterable.

The Economist’s 2005 Quality of Life survey ranked the United States in 13th place. The United Kingdom languished at 29, so we don’t have much to boast about, but, statistically, top-ranking Ireland, Switzerland and Norway were closer to Valhalla than the superpower on the far side of the Atlantic.

A lucky Irish sheep

In a country where church and state are so strictly separated in law, and there is no Archbishop of Canterbury to routinely pop up and make shrewd comments, the roles of politicians and priest can easily merge. The concept of America becomes a doctrine clasped with religious zeal; the citizen entitled to hold elected office is the most fervent believer.



Emigrating to the United States is an act of conversion. Arnold Schwarzenegger pledged allegiance to the US in a husky Austrian accent and has now become the equivalent of a high-ranking bishop as Governor of California.

The United States has been locked in wars of religion for past decades, with the Republicans and Democrats different denominations fighting for their interpretation of the same creed. Who has the “true” reading of the Constitution – the secular humanists or the traditional moralists?

The debate has been shrill and rancorous and bewildering for those living outside the 50 states. But the 2008 presidential elections – which are all but under way – may bring a brief cessation of hostilities. The leading candidates from both parties seem determined to compete for the affection of the political centre – that mass of the population exhausted by the partisan battles of the fringes.

On the Republican side, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has a reputation for thriving in times of crisis but not raising an eyebrow at what consenting adults do in their spare time.

Giuliani

Senator John McCain is a pro-life war-hero who seemed baffled by the ideological extremists in his party – and was once rumoured to be on the verge of being poached by the Democrats. Their new hope, Barack Obama, has reassured evangelicals he worships the same “awesome God”, and Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have also adopted beamingly wholesome and mildly pious personae unlikely to scare moderately conservative horses.

Obama

It should be an extraordinarily interesting and open race, featuring men and at least one woman of genuine talent.

Might Al Gore decide the time is right for a Second Coming? The Vice President turned environmental filmmaker could well sense revival in the air.

U2's Window In the Skies. Hmm...

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The rule has been disproved
The stone it has been moved
The grave is now a groove
All debts are removed

Oh can’t you see what love has done?
What it’s done to me?

If you read one article about Karl Barth

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For years I kept reading fantastic quotes with Karl Barth's name attached to them. I was puzzled as to who this mysterious German theologian was, what he believed and how he lived.

This article - from a TIME cover story in 1962 - supplies the answers in a work of beautiful journalism.

Thanks to Michael.

24-Hours of Beauty

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This will blow your socks off, in a good way.

And playing with Mr Picasso Head is a wonderful way to spend a Saturday morning in Wales.

How did that happen?

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Since the year I was born (1976), there's been a Bush or a Dole on every Republican presidential ticket.

Bush's Fin de Siècle

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PRESIDENT Bush’s love of running and mountain-biking in extreme conditions is well-documented.



But even his administration’s best friends must admit that the White House is wheezing. The loss of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections was a humiliation.

A team which prided itself on scratching where the electorate itched misjudged the strength of flood defences in New Orleans and resistance in Iraq.

Incredibly, now may not be the time to write Bush’s epitaph.

Democrats know that the public is sick of polarised ideological posturing. They do not want to be seen as the guardians of elitist, urban and secular dogma, and – as Hillary Clinton has done in her time in the Senate – may well embrace opportunities for bipartisan progress.

Hillary Clinton

Immigration is the issue on which the White House and the newly-blue Congress are most likely to work together. Bush drew fire from the right of his party (who literally want to build a fence along the Mexican border) the last time he attempted to find a way to bring officially-illegal immigrants into the economy.

But one defining aspect of his presidency remains the threat of international terrorism and the spread of the weapons of mass destruction.

Supporters of Israel are adamant that Iran cannot be permitted to join the nuclear club. The willfully provocative comments about the holocaust by President Ahmadinejad have instantly elevated him into the position of international pariah number one.

Ahmadinejad

The most recent scholarship about Saddam Hussein’s decisions in the lead-up to the Iraq war suggest he was convinced an American invasion force would never enter Baghdad – why would they smash open a hornet’s nest? Instead, he lived in fear of a Shiite uprising or a military coup, and his refusal to make it absolutely clear he had no WMD was part of a strategy to intimidate Iran.

These disastrous tactics resulted in United States and Britain embarking on one of the most spectacular military adventures since Vietnam and Suez.

Ahmadinejad’s goal may be to bridge the historic divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims and establish Iran as the new centre of gravity for the Middle East, eclipsing Saudi Arabia with the kudos which anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric brings. But if the American news media reports that a state led by a Holocaust-denying Muslim fundamentalist is on the verge of acquiring nuclear missiles,

Republican and Democrat lawmakers alike will start getting e-mails from horrified voters demanding something be done.

Presidential contenders in Congress today are looking for an opportunity to prove they have the prerequisite muscle and machismo to lead the free world.

Iraq-style “nation-building” in Iran may be off the agenda, but there are plenty of alpha males prepared to loudly advocate the use of overwhelming force.

Bush’s days as a maestro conducting the domestic agenda may be over but he is the commander in chief. There is every chance he will go out with a bang.

Do you like to sit and read with a book?

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I think the bibliochaise might be my favourite idea of the year.

Christophe Gilbert, the Dali of Photoshop!

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Sweet Boom! Alabama

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LET’S pause for a moment and ponder Elizabeth Hodges of Sylacauga, Alabama.

Last Thursday was the 56th anniversary of a momentous event in her life. She was napping in her living room when a meteorite the size of grapefruit crashed through the ceiling, bounced off her radio, and gave her a nasty bruise.

Golf Course, Sylacauga, Alabama

This is the only time in human history that we can say with certainty someone was hit by a space rock.

What’s fascinating about this story is the collision between the ordinary and the extraordinary.

American universities are crammed with scientists who nightly abandon their families to search the skies for heavenly bodies. Like pond-dwelling creatures looking up through murky waters at the strange shapes of fishermen standing on dry land, these astronomers yearn to see with certainty the universe beyond the foggy stratosphere.

Kindly gods might have made their day and directed a meteorite to their front door, but instead one plummeted into the abode of snoozing Ms Hodges.

How did this change her life? Did she feel incredibly lucky that out of all our species she was the one “chosen” to so dramatically encounter a celestial rock? Or did she spend her subsequent years with sensations of victimhood, disturbed that the movement of planets had conspired to direct a meteorite on a centuries- long journey to wreck her living room?



Magazines which detail the lives of celebrities sell more than those chronicling the movements of monarchs because they throb with the tantalising myth of stardom: that individuals are periodically plucked from obscurity.

We love to read of the moment when the dog of Hollywood super-agent Joyce Selznick sunk its teeth into the leg of David Hasselhoff and inadvertently dragged the ambitious waiter onto fame’s runway.

Such a tale is our society’s equivalent of the Excalibur myth. Such seemingly random incidents are laced with destiny: If you or I had been bitten by the dog, would we one day be filmed saving Californians from choppy waters with Pamela Anderson – or was there something intangibly special about the man who would one day thrill Germans with his passionate range of self-expression?



Of course, as Ms Hodges herself might feel inclined to tell us with a wag of a figure, our entire species could be heading for a decidedly disastrous date with destiny.

According to some calculations, on St Patrick’s Day 2880 there is a one in 300 chance that the cheerfully named asteroid 1950 DA will strike our planet. An ocean hit would send waves of up to 400 ft soaring towards cities in an Armageddon-style day of destruction.

The notion is horrendous, but such a prospect triggers an equal and opposite pulse of excitement. If humanity was threatened with annihilation, we like to think, we would all respond with the alacrity of Hasselhoff in his prime and do whatever might be conceivably necessary to avert such a calamity.

We dearly need such dreams at a time when the world is riven with division. Wales has far fewer statues than Rome – maybe there’s space to erect one of Ms Hodges and her meteor?