Thursday, May 28, 2009
A Journey of Discovery
Excitement shoots through a community like an electrical pulse when a Hollywood film crew bring their trucks, lights and stars to a locality.
Moviemakers have scoured the world for locations but West Wales was picked by the creative minds behind the latest Harry Potter fantasy and Russell Crowe-starring Robin Hood epic.
Anyone who has wandered across a Pembrokeshire beach, even when the sleet is horizontal, knows this is one of the world’s glories. But just as a dad must beam with pride when his daughter appears on the cover of Vogue, there is a flame of delight this back-garden paradise has been “discovered”.
The sight of a film star at a local pub is a disconcerting experience. Normally, their image is computed by the part of the brain which processes the make-believe; but now they stand, sit, holler, dance and gyrate before your eyes.
Perhaps it is a sign of the health of Welsh democracy that people do not feel the same fuzz of awe when they see a local politician on their doorstep. Few hold back in venting their indignation about the expenses malarkey and the quality of kerbstones.
This is quite different to what happens in much of the world, where politicians do expect to be regarded as bearers of the glory of the state. It may be the upside of a constitutional monarchy that we do no confuse aristocrats and politicos, and no-one feels the urge to bow before complaining about their broadband speed and the illogic of importing elderberries.
The primacy of doorstep politics is something glorious about UK democracy, and maybe we should act to make this even an even bigger feature of national life?
Just as a remote village can somehow accommodate the arrival of a film set’s worth of Olympian egos and pyrotechnical paraphernalia, so quite a few places could cope with the arrival of 646 MPs – many a Welsh chapel could squeeze in such a congregation.
If parliament visited Pembrokeshire, for example, the county would cease to be a theoretical place in the minds of MPs who were raised to record anywhere north of Oxford as barbarian territory.
Many MPs would no doubt jump at the chance to stage Prime Minister’s Questions at Newport’s Celtic Manor (although they would have declare any free round of golf) and it would do them a horizon-expanding world of unadulterated good to stage similar events on Shetland, in the cities of the North and in the farthest reaches of Scotland and Northern Ireland.
This would not be just a gimmick. It would inject cash into communities, demonstrate how difficult and expensive it is to travel around this country, and bring home the reality of the power they wield to change lives.
Many MPs may feel the dire need for a change of scene. But how about one with a purpose?
Moviemakers have scoured the world for locations but West Wales was picked by the creative minds behind the latest Harry Potter fantasy and Russell Crowe-starring Robin Hood epic.
Anyone who has wandered across a Pembrokeshire beach, even when the sleet is horizontal, knows this is one of the world’s glories. But just as a dad must beam with pride when his daughter appears on the cover of Vogue, there is a flame of delight this back-garden paradise has been “discovered”.
The sight of a film star at a local pub is a disconcerting experience. Normally, their image is computed by the part of the brain which processes the make-believe; but now they stand, sit, holler, dance and gyrate before your eyes.
Perhaps it is a sign of the health of Welsh democracy that people do not feel the same fuzz of awe when they see a local politician on their doorstep. Few hold back in venting their indignation about the expenses malarkey and the quality of kerbstones.
This is quite different to what happens in much of the world, where politicians do expect to be regarded as bearers of the glory of the state. It may be the upside of a constitutional monarchy that we do no confuse aristocrats and politicos, and no-one feels the urge to bow before complaining about their broadband speed and the illogic of importing elderberries.
The primacy of doorstep politics is something glorious about UK democracy, and maybe we should act to make this even an even bigger feature of national life?
Just as a remote village can somehow accommodate the arrival of a film set’s worth of Olympian egos and pyrotechnical paraphernalia, so quite a few places could cope with the arrival of 646 MPs – many a Welsh chapel could squeeze in such a congregation.
If parliament visited Pembrokeshire, for example, the county would cease to be a theoretical place in the minds of MPs who were raised to record anywhere north of Oxford as barbarian territory.
Many MPs would no doubt jump at the chance to stage Prime Minister’s Questions at Newport’s Celtic Manor (although they would have declare any free round of golf) and it would do them a horizon-expanding world of unadulterated good to stage similar events on Shetland, in the cities of the North and in the farthest reaches of Scotland and Northern Ireland.
This would not be just a gimmick. It would inject cash into communities, demonstrate how difficult and expensive it is to travel around this country, and bring home the reality of the power they wield to change lives.
Many MPs may feel the dire need for a change of scene. But how about one with a purpose?
Monday, May 25, 2009
Bath Time
Cardiff is a mere 1hr 15mins away from Bath, which was once the Las Vegas of Britain. The Georgian architects did not have access to neon so constructed a marvel of a city out of distinctive oolitic limestone. You cannot have too much of this stuff.
We dashed off to see our good friend Ali who is a dietician and not a nutritionist.
I don't know if one's grandchildren will loll beside fibre-optic cables in the future, but lounging next to a canal - a gem of the industrial revolution - is one of the most pleasurable things to do in countryside.
The sun gave us a 24hr burst of a flashbulb which lit up the fields and villages and warmed the happily idle.
The ground is deep in history, but not all corners of this land have become museum pieces. The bells of bicycles on paths and the sounds of guitars from the bedrooms of ancient cottages remind you that this is a breathing place.
It's a feast of life. And I'm feeling happily full.
We dashed off to see our good friend Ali who is a dietician and not a nutritionist.
I don't know if one's grandchildren will loll beside fibre-optic cables in the future, but lounging next to a canal - a gem of the industrial revolution - is one of the most pleasurable things to do in countryside.
The sun gave us a 24hr burst of a flashbulb which lit up the fields and villages and warmed the happily idle.
The ground is deep in history, but not all corners of this land have become museum pieces. The bells of bicycles on paths and the sounds of guitars from the bedrooms of ancient cottages remind you that this is a breathing place.
It's a feast of life. And I'm feeling happily full.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Hear! Hear!
I love books. I’m still addicted to the physicality of the book, and committed to its ontological status as a non-virtual object.Ben Myers
Splintering Britain
Like a lightning storm so spectacular that traffic comes to a stop, the scandal of MPs’ expenses has brought regular politics to a halt.
This drama will not end when the thunderclaps of revelations cease and the most venal elected representatives are ousted.
Reformers may grasp the opportunity to create a legislature which is not only honest but vigorous and relevant. Just as an American President pushes Congress around at his peril, the Commons could become a body which holds Prime Ministers to account, makes ministers sweat for their budgets, and scrutinises with unintimidated independence.
Yet even greater change may come. In the midst of political scandal and constitutional evolution, we are confronted with the potential for both the rebirth and the long-term splintering of the United Kingdom.
Unlike most famous political fiascoes, the expenses debacle did not involve a mere gaggle of nefarious miscreants engaging in dastardly acts of undercover corruption.
Rather, the actual system of expenses allowed politicians to operate in a fashion unthinkable in civilian life.
Not only were absurdities not ironed out, repeated efforts were made to suppress evidence of extravagant abuses. The real scandal is not that rogues were breaking rules, but that the rules were scandalous.
The relationship between the people of the United Kingdom and Westminster as an institution may be irreparably weakened.
Pugin ‘s masterpiece of a parliament has been a source of pride, and not just for architectural reasons. It was considered an icon for a thrifty culture which contrasted with the chaos and corruption of European legislatures and the hyperbole of American politics.
Such self-righteous attitudes now seem ill-founded. If MPs cannot get their own House in order by the time of the next election, voters will.
But a bout of purging and reform may not be enough to stop a dramatic realignment of the balance of power throughout Britain.
As parliament’s reputation is damaged, its claim to be the preeminent, sovereign institution cannot help but be corroded.
Devolution has encouraged politicians to talk of the “Scottish people” and the “Welsh people” at the same time the concept of Britishness has grown confused.
The 60 AMs in Cardiff Bay and 129 MSPs in Edinburgh may be encouraged to see their institutions as the places where the sovereignty of “their” people resides and is expressed.
If the legitimacy of these institutions is believed to flow from the local electorate rather than from the British monarch via a devolving Westminster, a shift to an outright federalist – and potentially separatist – politics is possible.
Certainly, English voters are no less appalled by Westminster’s hi-jinks. People in Huddersfield and Cornwall deserve and demand attentive good governance with equal justification as the Irish, Scottish and Welsh.
As the second devolution decade begins, we may be feeling just the first tremors of the true earthquake.
This drama will not end when the thunderclaps of revelations cease and the most venal elected representatives are ousted.
Reformers may grasp the opportunity to create a legislature which is not only honest but vigorous and relevant. Just as an American President pushes Congress around at his peril, the Commons could become a body which holds Prime Ministers to account, makes ministers sweat for their budgets, and scrutinises with unintimidated independence.
Yet even greater change may come. In the midst of political scandal and constitutional evolution, we are confronted with the potential for both the rebirth and the long-term splintering of the United Kingdom.
Unlike most famous political fiascoes, the expenses debacle did not involve a mere gaggle of nefarious miscreants engaging in dastardly acts of undercover corruption.
Rather, the actual system of expenses allowed politicians to operate in a fashion unthinkable in civilian life.
Not only were absurdities not ironed out, repeated efforts were made to suppress evidence of extravagant abuses. The real scandal is not that rogues were breaking rules, but that the rules were scandalous.
The relationship between the people of the United Kingdom and Westminster as an institution may be irreparably weakened.
Pugin ‘s masterpiece of a parliament has been a source of pride, and not just for architectural reasons. It was considered an icon for a thrifty culture which contrasted with the chaos and corruption of European legislatures and the hyperbole of American politics.
Such self-righteous attitudes now seem ill-founded. If MPs cannot get their own House in order by the time of the next election, voters will.
But a bout of purging and reform may not be enough to stop a dramatic realignment of the balance of power throughout Britain.
As parliament’s reputation is damaged, its claim to be the preeminent, sovereign institution cannot help but be corroded.
Devolution has encouraged politicians to talk of the “Scottish people” and the “Welsh people” at the same time the concept of Britishness has grown confused.
The 60 AMs in Cardiff Bay and 129 MSPs in Edinburgh may be encouraged to see their institutions as the places where the sovereignty of “their” people resides and is expressed.
If the legitimacy of these institutions is believed to flow from the local electorate rather than from the British monarch via a devolving Westminster, a shift to an outright federalist – and potentially separatist – politics is possible.
Certainly, English voters are no less appalled by Westminster’s hi-jinks. People in Huddersfield and Cornwall deserve and demand attentive good governance with equal justification as the Irish, Scottish and Welsh.
As the second devolution decade begins, we may be feeling just the first tremors of the true earthquake.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Wright-io!
We mustn’t make the mistake of thinking that everything God does is just for the sake of little old me. We should rather realize that in biblical theology it is we who are circling round God; it is we who are in orbit around him. God and God’s purposes for the whole creation are what matters, and we should be so lucky as to be caught up in orbit round God.
That shift of perspective is actually what I think a lot of people are resisting. But resistance is futile because the Bible is about God and God’s purposes before it is about me and my salvation.
NT Wright
Country Swap
It's a paradox of 21st century entertainment that the Victorian freak show is considered an abomination but television executives make a healthy living broadcasting the escalating indignities they call “reality”.
I have never had to eat strange jungle creatures which look like miniature John Prescotts; nor do I wish to. But if I wanted to I could regularly watch supposed celebrities gorge on such gastronomic spectaculars.
What is coming next? A digital channel devoted to live knee operations?
Futurists envisage a dystopia where we return to the decadence of ancient Rome and watch toga-clad contestants fight to the death on remote islands and executions are televised in grisly detail before the baying mob of the global village.
But a Welsh-Japanese friend earlier this week described his vision for taking the genre to next level. Instead of thinking grosser, he is thinking bigger – much bigger.
Is the world ready for Country Swap?
Imagine transferring the entire population of one nation to another; an audience of billions would watch in transfixed wonder as families adapted to new climates, ingredients and geological features.
We could start small, perhaps swapping San Marino’s population of 29,973 with that of the Vatican City’s. This wouldn’t be a drastic change, but the good people of San Marino might enjoy their unprecedented access to one of the world’s greatest ceiling when the Sistine Chapel becomes their local church.
Similarly, the Vatican’s monks could have a kick-about on some new football pitches and there is great fun to be had on the cable-cars up to Monte Titano.
If this brought in good viewing figures, whoever is the new First Minister of Wales could suggest we do an exchange with New Zealand. Many of us already have quite furry toes, so we should immediately feel at home in the cinematic setting of JRR Tolkien’s Hobbit adventures.
The New Zealanders would have no trouble taking care of Wales’ existing sheep population, and Kiri Te Kanawa could sing Duffy along the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path.
It is hard to imagine how a show which would feature Max Boyce’s study of kiwis and Derek Brockway adjusting his weather calculations around the eccentricities of a southern hemisphere could be anything other than a hit.
But the next series is the one I really want to see, when India and the United States trade places. How would the emerging superpower transform the cities of the ageing one?
The values of civilisations shape the natural environment. Our attitudes to our neighbours determine our choice of architecture – would India’s communities look at the deliberate isolation of western suburban life with aghast horror?
A dramatic change of scene freshens the mind and we return home energised with a new perspective on reality. Perhaps all of us in Wales should go on a national holiday.
I have never had to eat strange jungle creatures which look like miniature John Prescotts; nor do I wish to. But if I wanted to I could regularly watch supposed celebrities gorge on such gastronomic spectaculars.
What is coming next? A digital channel devoted to live knee operations?
Futurists envisage a dystopia where we return to the decadence of ancient Rome and watch toga-clad contestants fight to the death on remote islands and executions are televised in grisly detail before the baying mob of the global village.
But a Welsh-Japanese friend earlier this week described his vision for taking the genre to next level. Instead of thinking grosser, he is thinking bigger – much bigger.
Is the world ready for Country Swap?
Imagine transferring the entire population of one nation to another; an audience of billions would watch in transfixed wonder as families adapted to new climates, ingredients and geological features.
We could start small, perhaps swapping San Marino’s population of 29,973 with that of the Vatican City’s. This wouldn’t be a drastic change, but the good people of San Marino might enjoy their unprecedented access to one of the world’s greatest ceiling when the Sistine Chapel becomes their local church.
Similarly, the Vatican’s monks could have a kick-about on some new football pitches and there is great fun to be had on the cable-cars up to Monte Titano.
If this brought in good viewing figures, whoever is the new First Minister of Wales could suggest we do an exchange with New Zealand. Many of us already have quite furry toes, so we should immediately feel at home in the cinematic setting of JRR Tolkien’s Hobbit adventures.
The New Zealanders would have no trouble taking care of Wales’ existing sheep population, and Kiri Te Kanawa could sing Duffy along the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path.
It is hard to imagine how a show which would feature Max Boyce’s study of kiwis and Derek Brockway adjusting his weather calculations around the eccentricities of a southern hemisphere could be anything other than a hit.
But the next series is the one I really want to see, when India and the United States trade places. How would the emerging superpower transform the cities of the ageing one?
The values of civilisations shape the natural environment. Our attitudes to our neighbours determine our choice of architecture – would India’s communities look at the deliberate isolation of western suburban life with aghast horror?
A dramatic change of scene freshens the mind and we return home energised with a new perspective on reality. Perhaps all of us in Wales should go on a national holiday.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Cobwebs, begone!
My great friend Liz is back from her second trip to Afghanistan and likes to relax by driving Grand Prix cars at high speeds around sharp corners. But once a year or so she takes an old hack who once studied shorthand in the same classes as her to some of the delights of West Wales.
The sweeping horizons of Broad Haven are things that can't be seen from a swivel chair on a weekday in an office.
The billowing grey clouds brought a billowing spray, but that was a good excuse to escape to the inn in Little Haven.
We reconnoitred our way round to Tenby.
On a summer's day it is a delightful Poirot film set dotted with galleries full of original art.
But that evening, you could be blown away and snatched off by a seagull.
We found some sustenance and, full of sea air, trundled east again.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Ten Years On
The Sandra Bullock movie While You Were Sleeping might provide a handy metaphor for Wales’ relationship with devolution.
She plays Lucy, a lonely fare collector on Chicago’s rapid transit system who longs to be cherished by a businessman, Peter, who visits her station each day.
He is mugged and knocked into a coma. She accompanies him to the hospital and, in a moment of plot-serving incaution, tells his family she is his fiancee.
When he awakes he is surprised to learn he is engaged to the raven-haired beauty by his bedside. However, she has so enchanted his tribe of relatives that he decides he must have amnesia and proposes.
Just as Peter had not pursued Lucy with zeal and passion when she sold him a ticket each day, half of the Welsh electorate did not vote in the 1997 referendum – and the margin of victory for Yes campaigners was a mere 6,721 votes.
While it would be hyperbolic to say that in the first 10 years of devolution Wales has fallen in love with self-government, the nation has woken up to its realities and a courtship is underway. An ICM poll in February found just 19% of people want to scrap the Assembly and switch off this drama.
The “proposal” moment will come if a majority of voters decide they want the Assembly to gain a raft of law-making powers in a second referendum. The poll indicated 52% of people would vote Yes.
This would be the moment when Wales would wed the concept of autonomy and redefine the relationship between Cardiff Bay and Westminster.
I lived for several years in Scotland as the 1990s drew to a close and – at least in Aberdeen – the vision of greater independence captured the popular imagination. Some 74.3% voted Yes to create a fully-fledged parliament.
The euphoria did not evaporate. A local shopkeeper used space in his window to put up a handwritten plea to back SNP policies, and a ceilidh band proudly named itself Referendum.
Such widespread infatuation with the idea of charting a nation’s destiny has not gripped Wales, which has long had a more amorphous sense of national identity rooted in language and history. This contrasts with largely monolingual Scotland where the existence of a separate legal system, four ancient universities, a once-sparkling financial services sector, the Church of Scotland and two world-class cities fostered an appetite and confidence to run (almost) the whole show.
The Assembly’s decade has forced responsibility on politicians and civil servants, and charities and campaigners now have to lobby the Assembly Government and not London.
As hurdles are leaped it is clear something is bubbling in Cardiff Bay. Countless cultures have been excited by the romance of self-determination, and the devolution story is far from over.
She plays Lucy, a lonely fare collector on Chicago’s rapid transit system who longs to be cherished by a businessman, Peter, who visits her station each day.
He is mugged and knocked into a coma. She accompanies him to the hospital and, in a moment of plot-serving incaution, tells his family she is his fiancee.
When he awakes he is surprised to learn he is engaged to the raven-haired beauty by his bedside. However, she has so enchanted his tribe of relatives that he decides he must have amnesia and proposes.
Just as Peter had not pursued Lucy with zeal and passion when she sold him a ticket each day, half of the Welsh electorate did not vote in the 1997 referendum – and the margin of victory for Yes campaigners was a mere 6,721 votes.
While it would be hyperbolic to say that in the first 10 years of devolution Wales has fallen in love with self-government, the nation has woken up to its realities and a courtship is underway. An ICM poll in February found just 19% of people want to scrap the Assembly and switch off this drama.
The “proposal” moment will come if a majority of voters decide they want the Assembly to gain a raft of law-making powers in a second referendum. The poll indicated 52% of people would vote Yes.
This would be the moment when Wales would wed the concept of autonomy and redefine the relationship between Cardiff Bay and Westminster.
I lived for several years in Scotland as the 1990s drew to a close and – at least in Aberdeen – the vision of greater independence captured the popular imagination. Some 74.3% voted Yes to create a fully-fledged parliament.
The euphoria did not evaporate. A local shopkeeper used space in his window to put up a handwritten plea to back SNP policies, and a ceilidh band proudly named itself Referendum.
Such widespread infatuation with the idea of charting a nation’s destiny has not gripped Wales, which has long had a more amorphous sense of national identity rooted in language and history. This contrasts with largely monolingual Scotland where the existence of a separate legal system, four ancient universities, a once-sparkling financial services sector, the Church of Scotland and two world-class cities fostered an appetite and confidence to run (almost) the whole show.
The Assembly’s decade has forced responsibility on politicians and civil servants, and charities and campaigners now have to lobby the Assembly Government and not London.
As hurdles are leaped it is clear something is bubbling in Cardiff Bay. Countless cultures have been excited by the romance of self-determination, and the devolution story is far from over.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Saturday, May 02, 2009
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