Otherwhere and Elsewhen

Whatever happened to public consultation?

There is one thing you can be sure of with Government. And that is that their attitude towards the people they are supposed to serve stinks.

Take for example their attitude towards a group of Staffordshire residents who have been locked in a battle with their local council. It's a battle which the council are most likely going to win. It is about the building of a huge sports hall for a special school where they live.

Very few things are black and white and there really are two sides to most stories. In this one it isn't a simple case of nimbyism versus new school facilities. The first that the residents learned about the major construction work was when they saw and heard the diggers at work. There was no consultation with them. The authorities communicated with everyone they wanted to communicate with – they were all in it together (except for the residents).

A compromise could so easily been reached right at the start simply through dialogue. It was not as if the residents even wanted to fight.

Things got worse when the residents complained. They asserted their right to film a parish council meeting but the Councillors weren't used to it and called an abrupt end to the meeting. You can see the explosive and worrying video above.

Once again there was a communication breakdown. And it was always the residents who had to take the initiative. When the issue began to get wider attention their MP Gavin Williamson issued a press release saying he really did sympathize with the residents’ concerns about night-time noise pollution and other disruption. In the release he more or less blamed the district council.

He said: “I am very concerned about the process that has been followed in relation to this application, as it seems a total nonsense that people who live adjacent to the development site have not been consulted in this application. Even if the proper process has been followed, I don’t believe good practice has been.”

And as usual each council department blamed the other for the lack of public consultation. More communication breakdown.

So what’s next? The residents are meeting the massive, wealthy Wolverhampton based construction company Carillion simply to ask for nuisance mitigation guarantees. Carillion have a very cosy relationship with Government and are often contracted to build projects, for example the new Birmingham Library, work with the MOD and contracts in the Middle East. They build hospitals and schools as well. Although some people think some of their extra-curricular activities are a bit dubious.

Will they be able to come to some kind of mutual compromise? Only if Carillion fulfill their much-trumpeted values of openness and collaboration.

The residents have always been willing to talk. 

Destiny and Dynasty (the working title of my novel)

The novel is coming on slowly but surely.

But there is a problem.

At the moment my main antagonists could come across as stereotypes. The trouble is that I've specifically written them as caricatures (in the tradition of Dickens (and the trouble is that Dickens is accused of writing stereotypes).

But my trouble is that I know I can do this well. I've discovered from some of my short stories that I have the power to create characters which can make people angry. I'm good at that. It is a strength. And my novel's antagonists are enough to make anyone angry. But I'm losing the plot because I need to evoke other more positive emotions. More to the point, I aim to put beauty into the novel and at the moment these characters are just so ugly.

In 1984 Orwell writes in a way which causes anger in the reader. At least it is an emotion. But I need to break through into something more and grow as a writer. If I can only evoke anger and can't encourage more positive emotions, what is the point?

I've come up with the genre it is at least: it's a neo-gothic supernatural love story.

I'm drawing on some of the more romantic writers and a lot of the literary ghost story tradition. This means influences from Poe and M.R. James and a number of others. I'm blocking out Plath and Orwell.

It is also a very modern British story with the influence of the digital revolution contained within it. It also draws on my spiritual roots. I'm not necessarily aiming for gritty realism, or magic realism even. What I'm aiming at is a writing for the soul.

So unless I break through and make my protagonists more memorable than the antagonists then I'm in trouble should it ever be published.

The story draws on angels, ghosts, miracles, dreams, a megachurch, a castle and a love like an intense fire. If the caricature antagonists are seen as stereotypes then so be it!

I have to write it.

The seven secrets to happiness?

This week I went to the annual ‘Happiness Lecture’ which took place in the University of Birmingham’s Great Hall.

The Great Hall itself is enough to make even the grumpiest person feel a sense of wonder – it holds around 2000 people and is littered with portraits of important people and huge lanterns which dangle from the high ceiling like something from Harry Potter.

The lecture this year was given by Gyles Brandreth. As I grumpily said to my wife on the way there: “Come on. Let’s go and listen to a rich man lecture us on how to be happy.” He is a former European 'Monopoly' champion after all.

To be fair on Brandreth, he didn’t skirt around the topic and said he would give us his seven secrets of happiness by the end of the hour long lecture.

“Money in itself is not a road to happiness,” he said. Who would even think otherwise?

I suppose you don’t get to be one of the most in-demand speakers by not being topical and funny. And Brandreth was both of these things. But could he deliver when it came to helping us to be happier? It’s good to be entertaining, but was the man actually going to be any help!?

He started by telling us that the pursuit of happiness is a relatively modern notion.

“In the past happiness was to be for the next world. Life was a vale of tears and happiness was not for this world but for the next world.”

That was as deep as he got. Perhaps the superficiality in his tone was a blessing in disguise? Some truths are simple after all. He blamed America for the apparent change in attitude of people towards happiness in this life and then concluded that happiness itself is not a transient feeling so much as a lasting ‘rightness of being’.

Of course when you are as successful as Brandreth, with an ongoing commission on the BBC, you are probably going to experience a certain ‘rightness of being’. You really are going to feel as if God and the universe are affirming you for your hard work. Perhaps the successful always feel this ‘rightness of being’. And in the end you can get to lecture grumpy cynics like me on what happiness really is.

Then he told us what he believed were the seven secrets of happiness. Although he could be lying of course (in order to keep up with the Joneses in the ‘happiness competition’).

1. Cultivate a passion.
2. Be a leaf on a tree (attached to some greater organism).
3. Avoid introspection. "Introspection is death," says Brandreth, "No-one is interested in you!"
4. Be open to change
5. Audit your happiness. Do something about it.
6. Live in the moment.
7. If you want to be happy - act happy.

“And does it work?” asked Brandreth, momentarily looking introspective, “I’m not sure.”

I wasn't quite sure either. And I’m not even sure if he said anything remotely useful. Because it was the Great Hall itself which really stopped me from feeling so grumpy that night.

Comment on the latest spiritual phenomenon

Richard Taylor

Hallelujah, it’s revival season once again! Revival season is a bit like silly season but a little more of a minefield for the unwary commentator.

Let me hand the blog over to the following quote from the website of Victory Church, Wales to fill you in on the latest phenomenon in the UK Christian community.

“At almost precisely 7.35pm on April 10, 2013 the heavens opened over Wales, in the town of Cwmbran…a man who had been wheelchair-bound for ten years was healed; he picked up his chair and ran around the church with his chair held over his head like a trophy, while his wife jumped and span in grateful awe.”

We are now past day 50 of what has been called: ‘The Welsh Outpouring’.

For those of you who don’t know anything about Christian revival then I can only envy you. Basically it’s a historic phenomenon which debatably results in reduced crime rates, miracles, mass conversions and a kind of spiritual awakening in a particular area.

It is also a minefield. Half of the Christian community adamantly opposes it and say that the whole thing is disturbingly fraudulent. The other half will not hear a bad word spoken about it. And the two groups will go at it like the dysfunctional family we can sometimes be. People get polarised one way or the other and it is not a very beautiful sight.

I sense a little cynicism out there. Don’t worry, you are not alone. But I’m qualified and trained to comment. What I cannot do is perform the miracle of validating a healing which no editor seems interested in commissioning a struggling freelancer like me to write about.

Here are the basic facts.

1.      Victory Church is Elim Pentecostal in denomination.

2.      There are blog reports of 400 people attending the church and queuing outside it.

3.      The leader of the church is named Richard Taylor.

4.      Since April 10 there have been meetings almost every night with more unverified reports of healings.

5.      On Saturday 11^th May the church claims that over 60 people were baptised. They intend to baptise more people.

6.      Richard Taylor is an ex-drug user turned pastor who now spends his time trying to help drug users and offenders. He seems genuine and has written a book called ‘To Catch a Thief’. He collaborated with the BBC some years ago to produce a programme designed to help people protect their properties from thieves

.

So is he stealing money from people in a whole new way? Not really. From all accounts any offerings taken are voluntarily placed into buckets. There are no calls for donations in the meetings.

Someone on Mumsnet lamented that the whole thing hadn’t received any news coverage (on a discussion thread called: ’Welsh outpouring not in the news?’).

That’s because people want verification of the healing which is often very hard to get.

Another mum commented: "...the journalist who reported the first genuine healing would be set up for life.”

Hallelujah!? But sadly for your intrepid correspondent, it seems that this scoop will be earned by another. Not even considering the spiritual aspect to the whole story (which anyone who has tried to report on these things will always encounter), there are still certain problems.

1.      Very few writers want to rubbish a genuine revival.

2.      Very few writers want to support a fake revival.

3.      The rest don’t even know what a revival is.

If you want to find out more then there is a Facebook page and a livestream of the church services linked to that. So those of us in need of some kind of healing can experience the dubious joy of watching other people get healed and not ourselves.

At this point I am neither for nor against it. All I know is that this blog entry will please neither side.

Isn't it ironic?

When I look back on my life I see a lot of ironies. For example, in my teenage years I was extremely proud of my intellect. I considered that my mind and thoughts were the one thing I could rely on in any situation. I remember sitting down, like King Nebuchadnezzar and believing that I was completely in control of my little kingdom.

What is ironic about that? The irony was that around about the age of 19 I found out that my mind was not as reliable as I thought. If conscience is a compass, then my compass well and truly broke.

At university I took a lot of recreational drugs. After a while using psychedelic and recreational drugs I began to realize that I wasn’t in control at all. I began to understand that I lived in a world in which I couldn’t win every argument. I began to understand that there was also a spiritual world. It reached such a point that one of my university friends called me ‘Mad Nick’.

My middle name is Christian. That’s a bit ironic considering I am a Christian (and then there is my surname White, (I am white) and my first name is Nicholas (I don’t wear knickers (usually)).

Despite my middle name, aged 19 I was prejudicially anti-Christian in practice. The drug use was largely hedonism and was a mistake I couldn’t see at the time. The further ironies came a few years after I stopped taking drugs. My conscience was still broken.

When I was baptised as an adult I was given this scripture as a kind of message from God:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…” (Proverbs 3:5).

What I didn’t know at that point was that the drugs had caused a few changes in my brain which were to result in subsequent mental health problems.

Sitting down, aged 24 on a hospital bed with my kingdom in ruins I realized that, like King Nebuchadnezzar I had lost my power. I had lost my individual sovereignty to mental illness, mostly because of pride. The choices I had made had resulted in an ironic humbling. My drug-use caused my mental health problems. And it was my fault.

I’m trying to make two points with this blog entry. The first is my personal conviction that drug use can cause mental health problems. That is something those involved in the drugs trade don’t want you to believe. They want you believe that those with mental illness have used drugs in the past to self-medicate. Because any other possibility is simply bad for business.

The second point is to ask you to consider whether the ironies in your own life might point to the existence of God and your inherent value as a human being.

Most ironies are negative. If they point to the existence of a God who orchestrates these ironies like a good Author then obviously that leads on to a debate about the character of this Author. And that question, like the question about whether drugs can cause mental illness, is still being debated. Ironic.

New Media Regulator Plan

(Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament)

Sick of decisions being made over your head? Distrustful of media and Government? Sick of media attitude, bias and intrusion? Worried that the new media regulator won't be independent?

If anybody wants to make a comment to the Department of Culture Media and Sport you have until 23 May to get your voice heard.

Anyone reading the new proposal will immediately realise that the language used in the plan is both archaic and inaccessible. Don't let this put you off, tell the authorities what you think about the whole issue.

You have a right to be heard. A new body will decide how all media complaints are handled. It will also draw up a new code of conduct for journalists and editors.

It would be a cruel irony if the process which is supposed to be instrumental in stopping people being misled is itself misleading and biased.

We are supposed to be equal. But, as Orwell said - 'some animals are more equal than others'. Don't let them bully you.

If you want to get your voice heard then go to the following page, read the document and email the link there.

http://privycouncil.independent.gov.uk/royal-charters/petitions-for-royal-charters/