Censored

Desert Snowstorm by Adam White

I wrote a blog entry for a particular faith publication a few weeks ago and it was promptly removed by the editor. Naming no names. Normally I wouldn't really complain - I was writing voluntarily and this kind of thing happens all the time. But I thought the blog entry was so anodyne and I just don't understand why it had to be removed. So just for fun and because the entry seems more relevant with the Syria crisis, here is the offending article for you to judge for yourself...

What is the point of writing? What is the point of journalism? Is it to work with the status quo? Is it to re-enforce the latest political agenda? Is it to write propaganda? Or is it to try to question, to criticize and interrogate those with power over our lives? What is the point of using a pen or keyboard? Is it to make things better or worse?

Whenever anyone says ‘It’s the principle of the thing’ they usually have my sympathy. A few years ago I was reading through the media jobs section of a national newspaper and I came across this job ad. It was headed ‘The Pen is Mightier than the Sword’. Reading the advert it became obvious that the job was to be a speechwriter for the Ministry of Defence.

The tagline was ‘A Force for Good’. I cut out the job advert and stuck it in my diary with a few choice words of what I thought of it. It wasn’t just that the Ministry of Defence were paying £66,389 to the successful applicant, it was that they had appropriated the phrase: ‘The Pen is Mightier than the Sword’without any sense of irony.

BBC and ITV news agendas today seem to take a reckless disregard to this principle. This is also true of many national newspapers. Sometimes they will always promote the option of a war. And politicians will seize the day, dismiss alternatives and use emotive language to call for war for a political agenda.

I got over it of course. In this life you tend to do that – sometimes we are powerless to do anything about it and the anger fades (and anyway, anger is such a bullying emotion).

The problem is, naive as I am (and believe me, I have my naive moments), I still can’t get my head around the way that the pen and the sword work together. It seems to me that they are diametrically opposed to each other. The pen should promote peace and healing. The whole point of having a principle like ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ is to fight for peace using the written word. Not to promote war.

 I keep reading articles in newspapers or hearing news reports on TV which are so uncritical and supportive of war that I find the old frustration coming back again. And what right have I? I’m naive – we live in a world where reports in newspapers about subjects like the arms trade or the latest war are often uncritical. We live in a world where wars are presented as the only option. That’s the way it is.

 I hope the person who eventually got the job has job satisfaction. But today there really are other options than war. It’s the principle of the thing.

What Rocks Your World

A lot of my time this summer has been spent in editing, proofing and formatting an ebook for publication. The book was written by my wife, Jen, and I'm biased (and wise) enough to say that it really is the best careers book I've ever read.

The book itself is written for young people to help them to discover their skills and talents. Being so close to my wife I know that she genuinely cares about young people and that she is passionate about helping them to succeed in whatever they do.

What I have learnt through it all is that everyone has different skills and talents. These are sometimes the talents which people don't get much credit for. Skills like caring for others, computing or a million other things.

What Jen does in the book is to show young people that they really do have these talents and that they can succeed. There is just so much practical encouragement and care in her words.

I can't recommend this book highly enough for any young person or parent who wants the best for their teenager.

The book is called What Rocks Your World and is available for £3 on Amazon for Kindles or Kindle for PC (soon to be available on iTunes and other online stores). Take a look at it or check out the website www.whatrocksyourworld.com.

This is the Amazon page link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Rocks-Your-World-ebook/dp/B00EBYKU88/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376990129&sr=8-1&keywords=what+rocks+your+world

David Cameron - Christian?

There isn't much which is more damaging to believers than a Prime Minister claiming to be a Christian. It simply reinforces people's perception that Christianity is about defending the status quo (or the rich). It also reinforces the false view that Christians are privileged in society.

Yesterday some brave soul asked Cameron: "What would your response to Jesus be on his instruction to us to sell all our possessions and give the proceeds to the poor?"

Reports suggest that the PM was thrown by the question and had a momentary mental block: "I have never had that question before." he muttered.

Then his political spiel kicked in and he said: "I’m a Christian and I’m an active member of the Church of England, and like all Christians I think I sometimes struggle with some of the sayings and some of the instructions.

But what I think is so good about Jesus’s teachings is there are lots of things that he said that you can still apply very directly to daily life and to bringing up your children.

Simple things like do to others as you would be done by; love your neighbour as yourself, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount.

To me they’re still pretty fresh and good instructions... but the particular one that you mention, I find a little bit more difficult."

You couldn't come out with an answer like that unless you had the devil whispering dark advice in your ear. 

Once again we have the old Government lie: 'God is with us' (and the implication of that: 'He approves of all that we do'). Because that is the subtext of the exchange.

And if David Cameron actually does have some kind of relationship with Christ (which I think is debatable) - then he is behaving like a sycophant to Christ.

It is the subtext of the exchange which is the danger. Once again the Government needs the legitimacy that is provided from faith groups. And once again, through both word and action they claim that God is with them and that God is in all that they do, every law that they make, every oppressive statement against the poor. When there are hospital cut backs - God is with them. When minorities are marginalized - God is with them. When things get worse in the country and not better - God is with them and these measures are necessary for future freedom. When arms are traded God is with them. When the poor are oppressed - God is with them. And even if they choose to deny this is the truth - God is with them in that too.

Take a message from another struggling Christian who finds it hard to sell all his possessions Mr Cameron (and I hope that is where the similarities cease):

God is not with the Government. God is with the people.

What the country needs is a Christian revival, not a nominal Christian Prime Minister who is making things worse for both the Christian community and for the poor.

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.