The Bishop's Pulpit

Kindle for PC

2012-01-13T08:36:00.000Z

For those of you who already love your Kindle here's a nice little application from Amazon. 'PC to Kindle' does what it says; install the prpgram and you'll get a right-click option in Explorer that will let you dispatch one or more documents to you kindle with the minimum of fuss. Even easier than emailing to your Kindle email address.
http://www.kindlepost.com/2012/01/send-to-kindle-for-pc.html
Can life get any better than this?

Undemocratic Democracy

2011-11-03T10:29:00.001Z

Well, here we go again.
The Greek Prime Minister may not have been making too many wise choices recently with regard to his country's finances but just the other day he distinguished himself. His call to give the Greek people a referendum on the latest Brussels-imposed series of swingeing austerity measures was like a breath of fresh air, and for two reasons. Firstly, because the Greeks ought to be given a voice. Their whole society is undergoing rapid and far-reaching change and it's only fair they should be consulted. But also secondly, and I feel far more importantly, because of the outcry it's provoked. Across Europe leaders of every flavour have been queueing up to denounce the Greek decision and say what a terrible idea it is that the people should be given a say in what their politicians are doing. One Radio 4 interviewee this morning expressed his fuming outrage at this "total lack of Greek support for the European project".
Interesting comment, that. The truth is that the European leaders do have a project and it's most inconvenient for them when democracy gets in the way. The Euro is a prime example. The Greek economic crisis is not a new thing, their economy has been in a mess for a good fifty years; they are vastly indebted, hardly anybody pays their taxes and their highly-paid public sector is vast and flabby. Anybody with half a brain could have seen the problems coming and that according to the figures Greece should never have been allowed into the Euro in the first place. But the figures were an inconvenience to the great European agenda so they were fudged, and here we are today. And it wasn't just Greece - several other nations were borderline cases for Euro membership too but were nonetheless triumphantly welcomed with much European flag-waving and booming recitals of Beethoven's Ode to Joy.
Most European governments do everything they can to avoid consulting their people on anything concerning Europe, our own included. They always have, but in recent years their fancy footwork to sidestep referenda on Europe or the Euro makes Strictly Come Dancing look like the painful hobblings of an old man with a stick. And what about the referenda we do get? Think back a little and you may remember that the Irish voted 'no' to the Lisbon treaty in 2009, and what happened? They re-ran the vote! Imagine if our next General Election didn't elect the government those in charge thought best for us. What would we say if they discounted our choice and told us to keep trying until we see it their way? Over my dead body - but that's what Europe did in 2009 and the Irish government let them.
An isolated occurrence? I'm afraid not. The Danes voted 'no' to the Maasticht treaty in 1992 and that one was circumvented as well. No wonder then that the Danes were denied a referendum by their own government on the Lisbon treaty in 2007. Wouldn't want the Danes throwing a spanner in the works a second time, would we?
Europe, when it was formed out of the ashes of the second-world war, was a good idea with noble aims but where are those aims today? The current crisis is exposing just how undemocratic Europe has become and how far it has strayed from its original purpose, and it is also exposing some senior Eurpoean politicians for the duplicitous and self-advancing scum they are. Which ones? Well, why don't you listen to their own voices on the radio and the TV and decide for yourself?

Why Getting it Right so often Goes Wrong

2011-09-22T12:46:00.000+01:00

It may disturb you to learn this, but almost nothing ever gets done properly.
Take the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan for example. I read a report today that told me what I suspected almost from the moment it happened. In their report in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Johannis Nöggerath, Robert J. Geller and Viacheslav K. Gusiakov said:
"The tsunami countermeasures taken when Fukushima Daiichi was designed in the 1960s were, arguably, marginally acceptable considering the scientific data then available. But, between the 1970s and the 2011 disaster, new scientific knowledge emerged about the likelihood of a large earthquake and resulting tsunami; however, this was ignored by both the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, and government regulators. The regulatory authorities failed to properly review the tsunami countermeasures in accordance with IAEA guidelines and continued to allow the Fukushima plant to operate without sufficient countermeasures, despite having received clear warnings from at least one member of a government advisory committee..."
As an engineer this comes as no surprise. Almost everywhere I've ever worked makes the mistake of failing to consult the people at the sharp end, the ones who really know what the job entails and what it will take to do it right. Engineers know how to design things that won't go wrong, doctors know how to treat patients and sales assistants know how to keep customers happy but most of the time they don't get a say in how their organisation is structured and how their jobs are done. Instead these decisions are taken by managers, finance boards and steering committes that have no idea what really goes on at the shop floor. This causes a number of issues such as poor staff morale, inefficiency and wasted resources but the real problem is more subtle. And more worrying.
Let's suppose you're hiring a photographer for a family event. You'd explain to them exactly what you want them to achieve, and then you'd ask them what they would need to deliver that - what the cost would be, how much time they will need at the venue and what approach they recommend. A project like that has a good chance of success - you started off on the right foot by asking a professional to do a professional job and giving them the resources they need to achieve a professional result.
Unfortunately, though, most projects are anything but. What usually happens is that you tell the photographer they can only have half the money, must be in and out in fifteen minutes and you've already decided the shooting order - take it or leave it. Well, business is business so many photographers would just shrug and take the job anyway. They know the customer is not going to get a great result, they know corners will be cut and risks might be taken, but after all they are working within the constraints imposed on them so they will do the best they can under the circumstances, take your money and leave the consequences with you. And anyway, what's the problem? Less-than-perfect photographs wouldn't be the end of the world.
True - but a nuclear power plant like that just might be.
So often in today's world the driving principles are politics, vested interests and short-sighted economics instead of the quality of the outcome, and the result is Fukushima - a sub-standard bodge job that was never really fit for purpose and which almost blew up in everyone's face.
The same underlying mistake is repeated everywhere, over and over again, both throughout our public services and in many private companies. Decision-makers lose sight of the fact that without the product, their organisation would not exist. The product - be that a nuclear reactor, a satisfied customer or a healed patient - is everything. And their organisation is filled with people who have dedicated their working lives to providing that product in the best way possible but who rarely get listened to. Instead of making decisions for excellence they make them for expedience, and instead of creating products to meet a specification they make them fit a budget. And worst of all, they so often ignore the sage advice of Proverbs 11:14 - "In the multitude of counsellors there is safety".

The Kindle for Preachers

2011-05-21T14:02:00.000+01:00

I got blessed with an Amazon Kindle recently and thought I'd share my impressions for the benefit of anyone else considering this remarkable device.
First, it's not a smartphone. If what you want is a touch-sensitive colour screen on which you can watch mindless You-Tube clips, make stupid noises, pour virtual pints of beer and play angry birds then don't get a Kindle - get a life. If, however, you want a device that lets you carry an entire library of electronic books and other documents around with you, and lets you read them almost instantly, any time and anywhere, then you want one of these.
Oh, and did I mention it's also about a quarter of the price?
It's about the size of a paperback book but half the thickess and weight. And if you don't count the experimental features (it has a basic web browser, it can read your books aloud to you and it can also play MP3s) then the controls are so simple you can master it in minutes.
The screen is unique. Firstly, it's big. And secondly, it's black-and-white. That, however, is one of it's great strengths because the printed word is generally black ink on white paper and because of that the Kindle is the easiest electronic display to read that I've ever seen.
Rather than being a multi-megapixel LCD the screen is actually e-paper. This means that the background is white, and stays white, but not the kind of white that's generated by some lamp glowing behind it. It's a surface and it doesn't glow from within. Rather, it reflects light just like the page of a book does, which means you can read it just as well in full direct sunlight as you can indoors.
Try that with an I-Pad or a laptop.
The text appears as black e-ink on this white e-paper and you can vary the size, font and layout to suit your eyesight and preference at the touch of a button. This makes it great for both personal reading and as a real-time source for preaching, teaching or public speaking of any kind. All you have to do is upload your notes to it (more on this later) and press the 'forward' and 'back' keys to navigate. It's so well designed for this that you can hold it in one hand and turn the pages with your thumb.
Also, because this kind of display takes very little power, a fully charged battery lasts an entire month. Yes, you heard me - four whole weeks. No remembering to lug some stupid charger around with you when you travel. No plugging it in every single night. No plaintive cries of "Me battery's runnin' out!" when you need it to work at a critical moment. Just like a book, the Kindle will always be there for you whenever you need it.
Capacity-wise it can store hundreds of books and documents which you can group into collections for ease of access. Brilliantly, though, you can re-think your collections as often as you want, and deleting a collection doesn't delete the documents you've stored in it. You can also store a document in multiple collections if you like, or in none of them; it's entirely up to you.
The Amazon site offers thousands of e-books, and a surprising number are free. For example, The Complete Works of John Bunyan, the King James Bible, The Works of Thomas Hardy, Shakespeare's Plays and many other classics are completely free. What isn't free you'll generally find for under a fiver, and very often for much less that that. You can either buy from the Amazon website or browse directly on your Kindle and, assuming you've got internet access, the book will be on your device in moments.
For preachers and teachers though the killer feature is the ability to put your own documents and notes on the Kindle, but before I deal with this I need to explain how it connects to the internet.
The basic Kindle comes with built-in WiFi, so whenever you're in range of a wireless hotspot you've got the 'net. For a bit more outlay you can also have 3G capability so your Kindle can be on-line no matter where you are. In both cases, downloading anything you've chosen from amazon is free - you just pay the price shown in-store, even if that is zero. However with 3G access the download of your own document (as opposed to a purchased one) will cost you a small fee, whereas over WiFi - even onto a 3G equipped Kindle - it costs you nothing. For that reason, for me, there's nothing to be gained by the 3G connectivity. If I'm at home or in church I'll always have WiFi so I can download my notes for free, and I have no need to do so while riding in a speeding car or sitting on a park bench.
So how does it work? When you buy and register a Kindle they give you an email address, and to put a document onto your device you just email it to your Kindle and on it goes. Simple as that. Text files, Word files and PDF files will all work though native PDFs don't make the most of the reader's capabilities. And if your internet's broke and you're really stuck you can still plug it into your computer via USB and do it the old-fashioned way.
Are there any drawbacks? Not really, but there are a few things worthy of mention.
First, the device will auto-power-off after five minutes of inactivity. While this might seem a drawback for preachers, let's face it - if you're still droning on out of the same twenty lines of your notes after five whole minutes then you're congregation might well die and decompose before the end of your sermon. And if it does go off, just flip the power switch and it will be back on - showing exactly the same place in the text as when you left it - in less than two seconds.
Secondly, when you 'turn the page' there is a momentary flick of the display. When I first saw this I thought "That's annoying; I'll never get used to that." But within five minutes of using the thing I'd stopped noticing and it's never bothered me since. Trust me, you will too.
And thirdly, If you're planning to get one I would strongly recommend you shell out the extra for the proper Amazon case. It opens like a book and protects the screen really well, it's also solid but light enough to sit nicely in your hand. You can get them in different colours and you can also get them with a little pull-out LED lamp in the corner that will let you read in darkness (it's e-paper, remember - there's no backlight).
So, what do you think of the Kindle? Do you have one? Are you thinking of getting one? If you've tried preaching from one, how did you find it? Got any tips?
Post a comment and let us know.

Oh. No...

2011-05-08T19:02:00.002+01:00

In case you haven't noticed, the British people just gave a resounding 'No' vote to voting reform, and in particular the replacement of our first-past-the-post system with the Alternative Vote (AV). That's quite interesting in itself, but what was more interesting was to hear the whinings of the high-profile champions of the defeated 'Yes' campaign on the radio and TV, telling us how we've missed a great opportunity but they were still right all along and will keep on chipping away at us until they get the result they want.
Hang on a minute - I thought this was a democracy, and the people just spoke.
It was an overwhelming and decisive 'No' vote and that surely should settle the matter once and for all. Or are we still back in the bad old days of the European referendums where more than once they've simply rerun the vote because they didn't get the answer they wanted the first time? How inconsiderate of the people to cause problems for their politicians.
Not this time, though. That's it guys, game over. Nobody wanted it. Let it go - and let's get on with more important things.
Why do I say that? Because the outcome of this referendum reveals two things. First, that quite a number of our politicians are still hopelessly out of touch with the will and desires of the people they say they represent. But we already knew that.
Secondly however the referendum shows us something else.
It shows us that the people spoke. They didn't do what the politicans told them to do. They made their own minds up. They saw through the arguments of the experts and leaders who pushed them into a referendum they didn't want, and they confounded them.
If you look at the trends in our society I believe we're going to see this more and more. This isn't like the days of old. This is the internet generation, the day of wikileaks revelations, of bloggers saying what the establishment won't, and of rebels tweeting to the world things their governments desperately want to suppress. More and more people now are thinking for themselves, gathering their own information and coming to their own conclusions. The establishment don't like this very much but it's too late, the genie is out of the bottle and no amount of frenzied cork-pushing is going to set things back to the nice, safe, predictable way they were before.
What we've just seen in the UK is, I believe, a microcosm of this. For the last ten years successive governments have been wringing their hands at the loss of the British identity. "What is Britishness?" they cried. "Where did it go? When did we lose it? How can we bring it back?" Well guess what boys, it's been a long dark night but I think there's a glow on the horizon.
For the last two and a half generations we've lost our way. Blown by every wind of thought and political doctrine we've put up with every kind of social experimentation. We've seen liberalism fail. We've tried the science-will-solve-all-your-problems 'White Heat of Technology'. That was supposed to give us a three-day working week and the paperless office, remember? We've tried liberal parenting and that gave us drink-fuelled thuggery and the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe. We've tried secular humanism and it cost us our soul. We've tried immigration, importing others to do the lowly jobs Britons didn't want. They did them, and did them so well that we now bemoan their prosperity and success. We've tried both left-wing and right-wing economic and political dogma, both promising utopian success but leaving a twisted legacy of chaos. We've messed with the schools and the health service so many times we've forgotten what they are for. We've built tower blocks and torn them down again because they don't work. And most recently we've swallowed the line that if you live beyond your means and pile up the debt then the economy will keep growing forever and we'll all be fine. Instead, we got the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
But something is happening in Britain. People are waking up and asking their own questions. They are beginning to make up their own minds about who they are and what they want. Like glimpses of sun between the clouds, when I read between the lines I see Britishness coming back. That sense of honesty, justice and fair-play. That sense of compassion for the less fortunate. That sense of moral obligation to step in and help, to stand for what's right and to sacrifice if need be to see truth win out in the end. More than anywhere else I see this in the young, and that gives me hope.
Yes, we still have criminals and idiots (some on the streets and some in high office). We still have news reports of hideous crimes and acts of the grossest evil. But behind it all, if you have the eyes to see, things are changing for the better. We're rediscovering our spirituality. We're rediscovering our own inherent value and dignity. We're rediscovering who we are.
You might not be able to see it yet, but I do. Britain is changing. Revival is coming, people, and we need to get ready to embrace it.

What's the Alternative?

2011-03-31T22:49:00.000+01:00

In case you haven't heard (and apologies to my American readers), there is a referendum on 5th May to decide whether or not to change the UK voting system to the Alternative Vote (AV). I've been asking friends and acquaintances what they think and I'm surprised at how few understand what the vote is really about and what's at stake.
Which means, of course, that it's time for a post.
The first problem is that the referendum is happening at the same time as several other votes which seems to be confusing people. One person I spoke to thought the polling card they received was "only for the local council and I can't be bothered with that."
Not true - and when I explained there was also a referendum of national importance on the same day it was the first time they'd heard about it. Somehow this referendum hasn't captured public attention, and that's worrying because the issue at stake affects all of us. This is a crucial vote - if the outcome is 'Yes' then all future elections will use the Alternative Vote and our current system will be tossed into the dustbin of history. And if the result is 'No' then, to quote one commentator, "that will finish voting reform for a generation".
What difference will this make to us? What is the Alternative Vote? Who is promoting it, and why?
If you don't know, read on.
Our current system is 'first past the post' and the name describes it well. Every voter has one vote and can vote for just one candidate - the one they think most worthy of their support. All the votes get counted up and the candidate with the most votes wins.
As the eponymous Meerkat would say, "Simples!"
Critics of the system, however, say that if you vote for a minority candidate your vote is effectively wasted; since your candidate can never win, your voice never gets heard. And when you multipy that up across all the seats in the country, the party that 'wins' might do so without the support of the genuine majority of all those who voted. There was plenty of argument on those lines after the last election gave us the first hung parliament since 1974. (Some, of course, think parliament ought to be hung, particularly after the expenses crisis, but that's another story).
By contrast, under the Alternative Vote you don't select one candidate but rank all the candidates in order of preference, your favourite gets '1', your second choice '2' and so on. If the top candidate gets over 50% of the votes cast, they win and that's the end of it. If they don't, the funny business starts. Since the top candidate got less than 50%, the lowest-scoring candidate is eliminated (since they clearly can't win), and the votes of those who ranked that candidate first get re-examined. The second-place choices of all those people then get allocated to the remaining candidates to see if that puts any of them up to 50%. If it does, that candidate wins. If it doesn't, then the votes for the next lowest candidate get reallocated and so on until somebody wins.
The Yes campaign say that makes AV fairer and reduces the number of safe seats by forcing candidates to appeal to a wider cross-section of the voters than just their traditional core support. They also say the AV removes the need for tactical voting by freeing voters to honestly express their preferences in the knowledge their vote will never be wasted.
I have several problems with this.
Firstly, it's too complex. Anyone can put an 'X' beside the candidate of their choice, but having to number candidates in order of preference will be too off-putting for some. Must I number them all? Can't I just choose one? Can I pick my first, second and third and leave the others blank? Or should I just give up altogether and not bother? Actually, you can choose just one - but only if you mark the candidate with a '1'. If you put an 'X', your vote won't be counted.
What a mess.
Secondly, since I live in a 'safe' seat where the candidate of my choice never stands a chance, my vote under this new system is almost certain to help elect someone who is only my second, or even third, choice. How wonderful is that? At least under the current system my vote, although 'wasted', genuinely expresses my preference. Under AV it gets redirected to elect someone I rated only second best, and yet they have the gall to tell me that's better. I'm afraid I'm with David Cameron on this one: "When it comes to our democracy, Britain shouldn't have to settle for anyone's second choice." (Vote referendum: Clegg v Cameron, by Brian Wheeler, BBC News, 18 February 2011).
And thirdly, introducing AV will clearly benefit the smaller parties - which is why you'll find most of them in favour of it. The Liberal Democrats have never yet managed to win a majority under the current system or even come close, so from many elections across many years it's clear that their policies - voting reform included - simply haven't been attractive enough to the British people. Yet due to an accident of fate here they are, and their prize for getting a share in government is the chance to drink from their personal holy grail - to change the voting system to one that favours them more in the future. Now why, do you suppose, they might want to do that? Is it to reform democracy and make things fairer for the voter? Is it to usher in a nobler age of "new politics"? No, I fear it's actually old politics at it's cynically-motivated worst - politicians once again furthering their own interests and using the electorate to do it. Sorry, my Right Honourable friends, but in this case I strongly suspect the emperor has no clothes...
The key question, though, is what do you think? And will you turn out on May 5th to express that opinion? You ought to - it's your vote, after all, and that's what this referendum is all about.

Mind Your Language

2011-01-31T18:03:00.000Z

While leafing through a magazine the other week I came across a full-page advertisement for an upcoming film ('movie' to my American readers) which had a notice down in the bottom right-hand corner stating that the film contained "Strong Language".
This, of course, got me thinking. They were referring to swearing of course, the kind of language you might want to avoid in polite company, but why is such language described as "strong"? Strength normally suggests potency, effectiveness, the ability to influence, the posession of power being of renown. And presumably, therefore, if profanity is "strong" then other non-profane utterances are somehow by comparison weak, ineffective and of lesser use.
Strength also carries with it the idea of renown, and by extension honour, praise, respect, admiration and being considered of worth and value. (Think about it - have you recently praise or admired someone for their weakness? It's the strong that we talk about and respect.) Does this mean, then that "strong" language is somehow better, more praiseworthy and of innately greater value than other forms of speech? We certainly seem to be hearing more and more of it; our cinema and TV screens are awash with graphic expletives as producers and directors seek to grab the attention of a bored and fickle public by outdoing everything that went before. You can barely walk down the street now without encountering sewer-mouthed idiots F'ing and cursing away without any consideration or regard for the child by your side or the old lady two steps behind you.
Strong language may be everywhere, and so ingrained in our culture that it has almost become part of us, but universal popularity doesn't make something right and just because everyone's doing it doesn't mean it's healthy. If you doubt this, I offer you the following suggestion: eat excrement - after all, ten million flies can't be wrong.
No, rather than being "strong" this outpouring of verbal violence is weakening our language. Many people seem to have lost the ability to express themselves adequately using just normal words. They have become incapable of expressing strong emotion, deeply held conviction or even of simply arguing a point without swearing. And yet, at the same time, those "strong" words have now become so commonplace that they themselves have lost their meaning. I come across people on a daily basis who drop the F-word into almost every sentence without it adding anything to what they are saying. It's as if that word has become something they say just because they ought to, a verbal full-stop or comma perhaps.
It is, however, very possible to communicate both clearly and powerfully without resorting to strong language. When I was at school we had an English teacher named Mr Gould. An almost-bald giant of a man, he always came to school in a suit and he never, ever swore. Yet he told errant pupils in no uncertain terms exactly what he thought of them and every one of his classes was attentive and calm. I remember clearly one lesson in which some lad was whispering to his friend at the back. Mr Gould straightened himself up in his chair, placed his big hands palm-down on his desk, fixed the young man with one of his famous hard stares and thundered, "Silence, boy, or I will cleave your brains apart with an axe!" In today's misguided age Mr Gould would probably be suspended for such threats, but we all thought he was brilliant and he was by far the most popular teacher in the school.
And what about that other linguistic traversty, "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics"? Well excuse me, but aren't all lyrics meant to be explicit? What exactly would the point be of lyrics that did not explicitly convey the emotion or meaning of a song? Again, we have a generation falling into the trap of feeling they cannot adeqautely express themselves without filling their lyrics with F-rated profanities and thinking they are really cool for doing so. I beg to differ: if you want explicit lyrics try listening to the the old hymn Jerusalem by Willam Blake. Or if that's too old for you then perhaps the song Eleanor Rigby by Paul McCartney, Heavenly Homes by Bill Nelson or Money by Pink Floyd. You'll find there a far more eloquent and emotionally charged experience that you'll ever get from some foul-mouthed barely educated bling-toting wannabee rap star with his hat on backwards.
Friends, it is time for us to rise from this lazy cess-pit of linguistic filth and reclaim the language we once knew how to use. As Ephesians 4:29 says, "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers."
Let me know how you get on.

Happy New Year

2011-01-06T16:07:00.000Z

How are you getting along with your New Year's resolutions?
I'm still keeping one that I made back halfway through last year - to prioritise and to focus my time and effort on the things that are most important. That's why I havent been blogging much over the last few months; I simply haven't had the time...
Don't get me wrong - I like the internet. It's a great way to interact with people you might not otherwise be able to reach. When Paul or Jesus wanted an audience they went to the marketplace or the synagogue or the river - nowadays their first step might well be to open an account on Facebook.
Using social media, though, is quite different to being defined by them. If we're not careful we can get so caught up in the world of Twitter and Facebook that we replace the living of real life with the promoting of an airbrushed image of ourselves for the approval of others. We end up spending more time and effort documenting our lives than we do enjoying and experiencing them. That's why I've not been blogging so much - it would have been easy to cook up topics and simply keep on posting but that would have been self-defeating. The reason so many of you read this blog is to pick up the odd little nugget from my life - my real life - that might be of some value to you also. And if I'd spent more time writing than living it would have merely been writing for the sake of it, divorced from its subject, devoid of real value and to be honest not worth the effort of reading.
If you really want to know, I've been spending a few months just being with those I love, working very hard, serving God and puzzling through a few challenges. Several times I thought, "Hmm, I ought to do a post..." but didn't really have anything to say. Then finally I realised that not having anything to say was actually quite an important message in itself, and so I wrote this.
I'll give you some updates as the months go by, once the things I've been up to have soaked down into my soul and distilled into something worth communicating. Until then, I offer you the same challenge I've embraced - prioritise, spend your time and effort on the things that really matter to you, and don't waste your energies on mindless self-promotion. Wait a little while, and you'll find that in the silence both your message and your purpose will become clear.

Going Potty

2010-05-02T18:06:00.004+01:00

Enough of all this election stuff! I have a challenge for you - the Garden Organic One-Pot Pledge to be precise.
Now I know the word 'garden' puts off some of my readers. I know at least one otherwise sane and reasonable individual who actually pays someone else to tend his garden for him! But there are good reasons why the One-Pot Pledge should interest even so misguided a soul.
Firstly, you don't have to do any gardening. All you need is just one pot, a square foot of earth or concrete to stand it on and just a couple of minutes per day. Anyone can do that.
Secondly, the whole idea of the One-Pot Pledge is that you use your pot to grow something of your own choosing which you then pick and eat.
Food! Now we're talking! But how many of us know where our food really comes from? How disconnected are we from the realities of how things grow, the soil, the seasons and the weather? We drive to our supermarkets and expect every fruit and vegetable that takes our fancy to be permanently in season and waiting for us on the shelf with no concept whatever of what it took to place it there. And we're the poorer for it.
How far did that sad vegetable travel to reach you? How many hours and days has it sat in cold storage or rumbled around in the back of a truck? When you pick something you've grown it goes straight from pot to plate, and you can't get fresher than that. Try it - I guarantee you'll taste the difference.
And finally there's the educational value. If you have children, what better project could there be? It will get them outdoors during the summer months and teach them the value of perseverance. As they see their chosen crop starting to sprout and grow they will learn that effort produces results and the unalterable rule that life involves seed-times and harvests. You can get them to do all the work and you never know, you might learn something too.
So what could you grow? Pretty much anything, but there are a few I'd reccommend. If you like salads then there are a variety of cut-and-come-again salad leaves that are very easy. And as long as you don't crop every leaf in one go they will keep on producing. Also for salad lovers I'd suggest radishes and/or spring onions. They're quick to mature and take little space, and once you taste these home-grown you'll realise what you've been missing. One tip with these: pick and eat them as soon as they're ready while they're young and tender. If you try to grow them big the texture and flavour will suffer. And my final suggestion - strawberries. Grab a cheap strawberry plant from your local garden centre or DIY shed and bung it in. It will reward you with delicious, sun-warmed fruits that will make you realise you never really knew what a strawberry was.
Success, of course, is all-important so let me give you some tips.
First, the pot. Choose a decent sized one; a pot any less than eight inches in diameter can dry out surprisingly fast on a hot day and wreck your plants. Choose one that holds a good quantity of compost and you'll only have to water once a day. I'd also recommend a plastic pot for the same reason; terracotta looks great but dries out quicker. And if we really are in for a barbecue summer then steer clear of black plastic unless you want your plants cooked before they even reach the kitchen.
Chuck a one-inch layer of small stones, broken bits of crockery or even crushed-up polystyrene into the bottom then fill the rest with general-purpose potting compost. Don't go right to the top though; leave a rim around the pot to make watering easier.
Finally, stand your pot on a couple of spaced bricks to make drainage easier. And here's another tip: if you have problems with slugs and other crop-munching sons of belial then pop the bricks into a tray that's kept constantly filled with water - most of them can't swim.
So there you have it. For a very modest outlay and a minimum of effort you could enjoy fresh, chemical-free home-grown healthy produce and now is the perfect time to start. And if you live in Bishop territory and ask nicely I might even give you a pot, some soil and strawberry plant free of charge. But wherever you live, post a comment if you're going to have a go. Tell us what you're trying and how it turns out, and if you need any help or advice feel free to ask and I'll do my best.
Off you go, then; - get growing!
(For more on Garden Organic and the One-Pot Pledge check out http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/).

A Matter of Policy

2010-04-25T18:56:00.001+01:00

Have you been following the televised leader's debates?
After the first debate the opinion polls showed a surge of support for the Liberal Democrats following a better-than-expected performance from Nick Clegg, and some of the viewers and listeners comments were remarkable.
"I thought Nick Clegg was wonderful", one lady enthused, "and I've decided I'm going to vote for him now".
In other words, she was going to vote not for the Liberal Democrats but for Nick Clegg; for the personality not the policies, for the man and not for the manifesto.
I'm not bashing Mr Clegg or the Lib Dem's but I am saying that it's a mistake to be beguiled by the way a politician presents himself in the media and let that sway your allegiance. What matters, surely, is not the cut of their suit, the earnestness of their face or the quality of their smile but the policies they espouse and will pursue if they get voted in.
Another interesting bit of coverage has been the Election Call on Radio four, where listeners could phone in and put their question direct to party leaders on-air. I've listened to a few of these and noticed a recurring trend - many of the callers were unashamedly shallow, shortsighted and selfish.
One man I heard bashed David Cameron over his proposal to give a tax rebate to married couples. "That's unfair!" he raged. "My partner and I have been together thirteen years; why won't you give me a tax break? How come we can have money if we get married but won't get it if we're not?" Mr Cameron's answer, that marriage deserved to be recognised and supported, fell on deaf ears. All the man was concerned about was whether he could get a few quid or not, and he couldn't see further than that.
This is a critical election, and we need to take the long view. Of course we will be concerned for the immediate wellbeing of ourselves and our family, but we should also consider the impact of our chosen party's policies on our wider society. We slammed the bankers for placing short-term self-interest over the world's wider good - we need to be careful not to do the same.
My plea to you, then, is to make the effort to consider the policies of the parties. What will they do on Europe? Would they take us into the Euro or out of the union altogether? What about defence? What about ID Cards? What about the economy and repaying our immense deficit? Where do they stand on issues of morality? Would they clean up politics or 'reform' the system for their own benefit? What is their attitude to the environment? What about freedom of thought, speech and religion? These are important questions.
It might also be instructive to check not what the candidates say they will do, but what they and their colleagues have actually done. If you're thinking of re-electing a serving MP, try entering "name-of-MP voting record" into your favourite search engine. Or if you're thinking of voting for the other side, check out the record of some of the MPs they already have. Actions, after all, speak louder than words - a fact worth remembering in the light of the recent expenses scandal, perhaps?
So let's choose our next government not on a whim, or on the basis of a televised debate, but with as much care as we'd take if were about to buy a costly TV or a car. We'd check the specifications, read the reviews, compare the options and make sure that when we finally handed over our cash we were getting value for money. Anyone who didn't do that we'd consider a fool, yet how many of us will sign away the next five years of our future without a second thought, or maybe not even bother to vote at all?
I believe May 6th will be a defining moment. We all, together, need to take it seriously and make sure we get it right.

Vote!

2010-04-06T23:01:00.001+01:00

A few people have complained that I haven't posted in a while. They're right, of course, but I have a good excuse. There's been a huge project on at work so I've been working almost every weekend on top of all the other things I do, and on the occasions I did manage to carve out a little time for myself I spent it recovering instead of blogging.
However there are some things important enough to bring even the most reluctant out of retirement, and one of them has just occurred. Gordon Brown has announced a general election to be held on May 6th.
Now this isn't a political blog and I won't presume to tell you how you should vote, but I am very concerned that you do.
You see, I've been hearing a worrying number of people recently saying they "don't think they will bother", and though I'm a mild-mannered man I'm afraid that sort of sentiment makes me indignant to the point of shouting.
Our vote, the privilege we have to influence the way our country is run and by whom, is one of the most precious things we posess. Yes, they might be all as bad as eachother. And no, your vote might not change the outcome, particularly if your allegiance is to a minority party, but you should thank God with all your heart that you have the freedom to cast it.
Thank God you live in a democracy, and not a dictatorship or a one-party state with an all-seeing secret police and a nice network of labour camps for those who don't agree. Some people don't have the opportunity you view as such a light thing. What would they say to your apathy?
'Use it, or lose it' springs to mind.
Think I'm being extreme? Do you not feel a debt to the dead of two world wars who fell amid unthinkable, inhuman carnage so you could have the privilege you now treat with such indifference? If you are a woman, do the heroic struggles of the suffragettes mean nothing to you? Or the sacrifices of so many who have fought and died to buy your freedom down through the ages?
Shame on us if we have become so self-absorbed as a society and individuals that we "can't be bothered" any more. Shame on us if these things no longer move us. Shame on us if through our apathy and indifference we allow an unsavoury candidate or government to take office and then go whining about the consequences. If we can't be bothered to vote, we get the leaders we deserve.
Make the effort, then. Turn off the TV, log off Facebook for half an hour, leave Twitter for the birds, let the grass grow and the carpet stay dirty. Don't even read my blog. Take your children with you to the polling station and explain to them what you're doing and just how important it is. Get out there on May 6th and, when you hold that ballot in your hand, reflect for a moment and give thanks.
Then cast your vote with gratitude and pride, but don't - whatever you do - tell me that you "can't be bothered".

Pancake Day

2010-02-13T21:55:00.000Z

This coming Tuesday, the 16th February, is Pancake Day here in the UK.
Officially this day is Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday which is the first day of the season of Lent. The word shrove comes from the old English word shrive, which means to obtain forgiveness of sins by confession and penance. On a lighter note, Shrove Tuesday was also the last opportunity for a feast involving things like sugar, flour and eggs which were often given up for lent and therefore needed using up. If you put those ingredients together and add a bit of righteous haste, you get pancakes!
We celebrate this edible family tradition every year without fail, and if you'd like to partake too but are 'culinarily challenged', here's all you need:

100g plain flour
2 eggs
300ml milk
1 tablespoon vegetable or sunflower oil
pinch of salt

Put the flour and pinch of salt into a large bowl and mix well. Crack the eggs into the middle and add about 50ml milk and the spoon of oil. Start whisking from the centre, gradually drawing the flour into the soggy bits until you have a smooth, thick paste. Now, while still whisking steadily, pour in the rest of the milk until you have a batter just thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
Add a little vegetable oil to a fying pan and heat until hot. This is a key; for good pancakes the oil needs to be so hot it is just beginning to smoke. So open a window then pour some batter into the pan, tilting the pan around so it gets filled by a thin, even layer. Cook this for about 30 seconds or until the bottom is golden brown, then flip and cook the other side. Take the pancake out onto a warmed plate (keep it flat, don't fold) and cover to keep warm. Repeat with the rest of the batter, occasionally adding a little more oil to the pan as required.

Great! Now you've got your pancakes the next question, of course, is how to eat them. Basically you need to coat the pancake with a dollop of something nice then fold it or roll it up. Here are some variants:

Tate & Lyle's Golden Syrup - Sorry if you can't buy this overseas; it's a British thing. Its a thick, thick, golden liquid that sticks to your spoon and is sweeter than anything could ever be.
Honey - Not bad; give it a try. The runny sort is easier to work with.
Maple Syrup - A sweet American import. Just pour it on.
Mincemeat and squirty cream - Another British thing; this is not minced meat; it's the heavy concoction of preserved fruits you get in minced pies and Christmas puddings. Use a spoonful straight from the jar and let the kids enjoy adding their own aerosol cream.
Pie fillings - The fruit kind you get in tins. Just drop in a spoonful and maybe add some squirty cream or sugar.
Chocolate spread - Personally I think this is going too far, but each to his own.
Fresh fruit - Thinly sliced strawberries, with a sprinkling of sugar or a hint of cream, are very good.
Ice cream - Use a soft type, don't add too much and eat quickly.

My personal favourite though, and the one I always go back to, is also the simplest. Just drizzle the pancake with lemon juice, sprinkle on a good helping of sugar, roll, and enjoy.
Have a great pancake day! And let me know how you ate yours.

A Snowball's Chance

2010-02-09T16:47:00.029Z

Ah, I do love quantum physics. It's the strange scientific realm where everything is possible - and I do mean everything.
In the 'real world', if a ball bounces off a solid object or another ball, even if both of them are moving, we can say with certainty what will happen. Observe this same collision ten thousand times and every time the result will be the same - which is just as well if you're trying to learn how to play squash or pocket the eight-ball in pool.
Scale things down to the quantum level, however, and strange things start to happen. If we watch two particles colliding, for example, the outcome according to quantum physics becomes anything but certain and the predictability of conventional Newtonian science lets us down. Not only do things happen that we would expect to see happening, but things we wouldn't expect also happen, and occasionally things take place that seem completely impossible. In real-world terms, it would be like throwing a snowball at someone but having it turn aside in mid-air and miss the target. Or, even more bizarrely, flying straight back to smack you in the face.
Sounds insane, doesn't it? But these aren't the deranged ramblings of a mad theorist who ate too much cheese before settling down for the night; these are real, measurable effects.
At the quantum level of matter every outcome is possible, even the impossible ones, and if you watch for long enough you will see them actually happen. Thus it becomes impossible for us to say that in a given situation a particular outcome will occur; all we can do is quote the probability, or chance, of each concievable (and inconcievable) result.
This kind of thinking is weird and uncomfortable, so weird that even Einstein didn't like it and made his now famous assertion that "God does not play dice". Developments since then have shown, however, that God really does play dice - and He's very good at it.
One of the 'shouldn't-ever-happen-but-sometimes-does' effects that occur at the quantum level is really strange. To use a real-world example again, if we saw a car being driven at speed toward a solid wall what we'd expect would be a loud bang followed by the tinkle of falling glass and the quiet hiss of escaping steam. What we definitely wouldn't expect is for the car to pass through the wall as if it simply wasn't there and continue on it's way totally unaffected. Quantum particles do this sometimes; it's called tunneling. If moving particles hit a barrier, most of them get stopped but some pass straight through it, like the girl in the X-Men films who can walk through solid walls. It sounds quite insane, but it's an observable effect and it's coming to a smartphone near you.
This wierdness is harnessed in a material called QTC (Quantum Tunelling Composite) recently invented by a Yorkshire-based company and already licensed by two Japanese corporations that make components, particularly touch screens, for mobile phones and other portable devices. Embedded within the material are conductive nanoparticles which, if they were in contact, would allow the material to conduct electricity. It doesn't, however, because the particles are slightly separated - except for the tiny current that flows anyway because some of the electrons quantum-tunnel through the insulation that surrounds them. Compressing the material forces the conductive particles closer together, this increases the probability that tunneling will occur and so the current rises.
What does this give us? Pressure sensitive material!
Think of a touch screen that responds not only to the speed of the finger swiped across it but also to how hard the finger presses and how that pressure varies throughout the stroke. It would make the best of today's touch-screen devices seem as clumsy as a mechanical keyboard. Imagine also placing that material on the surface of a mechanical hand and giving it what we humans take for granted - touch sensitive skin. A robot with a hand like that would be able to sense how much pressure it was applying with it's fingers and adjust accordingly - enter the gentle robot surgeon, the kitchen helper that can hold an egg without crushing it, or the prosthetic that allows the wearer not just to move but also to feel. That's a massive improvement over a simple motorised claw, and it's all thanks to quantum physics.
Regular readers will be wondering if there's a spiritual angle to all this. Well, sometimes we humans gain a little knowledge and then become arrogant, strutting intellectually around God's universe like we own the place and telling him how He should behave. That's when God lets us discover something like quantum physics to show us that there's far more to Him and to the hidden mysteries He's created than we're ever likely to understand. As the book of Ecclesiastes so neatly puts it, "God is in Heaven and you are on the earth. Therefore let your words be few."
The Bible states, and quantum physics confirms, that "With God, nothing is impossible." So be careful next time you decide to throw a snowball, because if there's one thing that quantum physics shows us above all else, it's that God has a really mischievous sense of humour.

The Foam Strikes Back

2010-02-08T15:56:00.005Z

A while ago I promised you an update on my experiences with the memory foam pillow. I know it's been a while, but I wanted to make very sure I was happy before I came back with an endorsement.
I'm still sleeping better and glad to find I'm not permanently tired like I used to be. Sleep is certainly an under-rated activity and something we probably all should be doing more of. But in my case it wasn't so much the quantity of sleep as the quality of it; I could sleep for ten hours and still wake up shattered, which was no good at all. The new pillow is helping, though.
I'm also glad to report that so far the pillow hasn't developed a head-shaped cavity. It has, though, become a little softer and more willing to mould - perhaps an indication that memory foam gets better with age and that you have to persevere to get the best from it.
All in all, then, the foam pillow has got to be the best forty quid I've ever spent, and if it ever becomes unserviceable I'll be getting another to replace it.
Hmm. I wonder what memory foam matresses are like?

Have Your Say?

2010-02-03T09:20:00.002Z

So, Gordon Brown is suddenly anxious to make sure that we, the great British people, have the chance of a referendum on his proposed changes to the voting system.
That's nice.
Pity about all the other critical referenda that he and his Government carefully avoided giving us. There's the Lisbon Treaty (in violation of a manifesto promise), the war in Iraq, the identity card proposals and the question of whether expense-fiddling MPs should be thrown into the town stocks and pelted with rotting fruit to name just a few.
Let's face it - none of the current crop of politicians want to risk a possible public veto. They'd rather hide behind their election mandate and implement their ideology for five years regardless of what anybody thinks.
Yes, our political system does need to change. But not by tinkering with it so a bunch of ploiticians who know they're doomed can climb back onto the gravy train that much sooner. The change we really need is for politicians of all colours to realise their high office is a position of accountability and trust and that they are there not to build a career or make money but to serve those that elected them.

On Shaky Ground

2010-01-17T18:26:00.050Z

The recent earthquake in Haiti was a terrible disaster which caused a lot of damage, and regrettably some of the recent comment about it on BBC Radio 4 has been rather similar.
It all Started on Wednesday's Today programme when John Humphries decided to interview a notable Anglican Archbishop about the tragedy. I was at work with the radio playing quietly in the background when Humphries threw the Archbishop the 'old chestnut' question; If there really is an all-powerful and loving God, why did he allow such death and destruction to happen? I pricked up my ears at this, turned up the volume and waited for the Archbishop to answer.
He didn't.
He waffled, manoeuvred and came out with such rarified theological vagueness that I had no idea what he was talking about.
"I'm sorry, Archbishop," Humphries said, "But I don't think I understood that, and you didn't answer the question. How could a loving God permit such a tragedy?"
Again he evaded the issue, and as the interview ended I was left shaking my head and thinking, 'If I was a non-believer, I'd walk away from that thinking that he didn't answer because he had no answer; that in the face of such suffering faith comes up empty and those who profess it are left with nothing to say.
That was bad enough, but in true 'unbiased' BBC fashion two days later Humphries replayed a clip of the Archbishop's flounderings and then wheeled out a humanist.
"Simple logic," he declared dismissively. "If God really existed, and was all-powerful and all-loving then there is no way he would have allowed this to happen. No earthly father who loved his children would build a home for them knowing it was dangerous; knowing the roof might fall in and crush them, knowing they were likely to suffer injury or death. No earthly parent would do that."
Ah, there it is. The mistake these people so often make is that they insist on building their tower of logic on a false foundation using only the bricks that happen to come in their favourite colour. And the Archbishop didn't help, because although the Bible offers clear and authoritative answers to these questions he didn't seem to know what they were. So the poor listeners were left to sift through the mess left by an expert who didn't know his subject and a fool who delicately left out the one thing that would otherwise have blown his argument to shreds.
No wonder our nation is in such spiritual darkness.
The flaw in the humanist's argument is this: God did not build a dangerous house for his children. In Genesis 1:31 we clearly see that after creating the heavens and the earth, the sea, the dry land, mankind and all of the animal kingdom, 'God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.' So when God created the world, it was perfect. The earth was a paradise, and life was a paradise. That's the way God always intended the human experience to be.
The reason the world is in the mess that it is today is because man broke it. After Adam and Eve rejected God in Genesis chapter 3 and chose to do their own thing (the Bible calls this 'sin'), God says in Genesis 3:17 "Cursed is the ground because of you..."
God begins to run down the consequences of their choice, but he does it with tears in his eyes. He's not saying 'You insignificant worms, since you've dared to disobey me I will now smite you with all these punishments'. Rather he cries, 'Children, don't you realise what you've done? Don't you know what you've brought upon yourselves?'
The Bible is very clear on this. Natural disasters, planetary distress, sickness, disease and death, accidents, misery, pain, injustice, hatred and every example of man's inhumanity to man is an inevitable outworking of man's original decision to turn his back on God.
John Humphries was asking the wrong question. If you really want to know what happened in Haiti then don't blame God. Blame the shopworker dipping into the till. Blame the feral youth assaulting the pensioner in the dark alley. Blame the businessman cheating on his wife. Blame the politician who misleads the people. Blame the persuasive speakers who use national prime-time radio to lead us ever further into spiritual darkness. Blame all who have ever lied, cheated, lusted, cursed, hated or hurt. Blame every one of us. Blame yourself.
Ouch.
Instead of admitting this, though, we rail at God. We shake our fists and accuse Him, we hurl our indignation into His face when all God has ever done is weep for this fallen world and the pain that fills it; pain that is a direct result of the fall of man.
But hang on, if God originally built the house safe and good but now it's dangerous, would a loving God leave His children there to suffer the consequences? Wouldn't an all-powerful God be able to step in somehow and fix it?
God did. He did the only thing that could be done to address such a grave problem. He intervened personally in the form of Jesus Christ to deal with the root cause - mankind's sin. The whole point of Christ's birth, life and death was not to start a religion but to rescue mankind from a mess that they could never fix by themselves. Just as the problem flows from a decision, God approaches every member of mankind individually (sensible if you think about it, since suffering is individual) and invites them to be a part of the answer. Yes it will take time, but when God's plan comes to fruition it will have been worth the wait. The book of Revelation tells us that on that day "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away". On that day, Isaiah tells us, "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the cub lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them." Romans 8 tells us that right now "the whole creation groans and suffers together" but when that day comes "the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage of decay into the glorious freedom of God's children".
Free-thinkers like our logical friend run screaming from such an answer, but if we apply the logic they're so fond of we see that in reality there is only one other option. Since the problem is sin, God must either save us from our sin or remove our ability to sin. He could do the latter by taking away our free will, by not having given us the capacity to think and choose in the first place. This would prevent us from bringing evil upon ourselves but only by reducing us from glorious creatures of judgement, intellect and appreciation made in the very image of God to little clockwork automatons mindlessly shuffling along our predestined courses in a perfect but nightmarish world.
When I was a boy I had a model railway which was very realistic. The trains ran through forests and fields beside a river that actually flowed, and they were always on time. Lights burned in the houses when darkness fell and even the windmill turned, but the people on those trains were nothing but ornaments. They never got on or off because they loved someone, cherished a great work of art, dreamed great dreams or wanted a day at the seaside. I, the omnipotent railway god, sat at my controls and everything moved at my design, but for all that activity there was no life. I don't think any self-respecting humanist would prefer such a solution. And quite frankly, neither would God.
So, having sorted that mess out, let's get to the real question that all the contributors on Radio 4 should have been asking. How should we respond to something as terrible as the earthquake in Haiti? Quite simply, our response should be the same as God's - compassion should move us to intervene and do all that we can to help. I've already visited the DEC website (http://www.dec.org.uk/). I pray you'll find it in your heart to do the same.

Big Brother

2010-01-04T08:51:00.002Z

Have you seen the Big Brother house? Walls wreathed in flame, skulls, and a kitchen based around a mortuary slab with paintwork described as 'autopsy green', all to express that 'hell lies in others'.
And they call this reality television.
Pardon me, but exactly whose reality is this supposed to be representing? The zero point zero one percent of the population who regularly eat live babies for breakfast and have an unhealthy interest in the works of Aleister Crowley? Since the promoters of this vacuous tripe cannot by any means claim to be representing reality, the more worrying possibility is that in their quest to make money they end up influencing it.
What sort of society have we degenerated into when the most interesting thing we can think of is to watch a bunch of wannabee minor celebrities plunged into a contrived situation under carefully designed psychological pressure just so we can see who gropes who? When we laugh like horses as they posture and scheme to avoid eviction? Have we really toiled through the long night of five thousand years of social, intellectual and moral progress just for this?
As far as I'm concerned, the sooner this sort of stuff disappears from our screens the better.

Happy New Year

2010-01-02T21:09:00.003Z

It's the time of year again for New Year's resolutions. You know the sort of thing; lose weight, exercise more, spend less - a thousand and one good intentions prompted by the purchase of a new calendar. Problem is though, the calendar usually lasts much longer than our resolve.
It's strange how we think that the new year provides special potential, that somehow we're much more able to change when the year does than at any other time. Truth is, though, that there's no difference between the minute before midnight on the 31st December and the one that comes after it. They're only man-made divisions of time and both provide the same sixty second's worth of opportunity.
When we make New Year's resolutions but fail to see them through we can fall into despair and think everything is lost, but in reality we can make a new start at any time. This is a great truth we often miss, and one that's worth remembering. Every day is a new day, and every morning brings new possibilities. So does every minute and every hour. You can't change the past, but you can shape the future, and every second that passes is a chance to strike out in a new direction.
This year, resolve not to be held back by negative thinking, small faith and past failures. Let go of old grudges, clinging resentments and the "I Can't" mentality. If you make up your mind to change on the inside, things will change on the outside. "With God, " the Bible says, "all things are possible," so even the giants you can't manage are possible with His help.
Be encouraged, my struggling friend, and press forward constantly for all God intends you to be, whether it's the first of January or the twenty-sixth of November. Refuse to give up, don't stop believing and never quit. That's the way to have a Happy New Year.

A Good Night's Sleep

2009-12-30T10:07:00.002Z

Stella and I went out for a shopping-date yesterday, and after some superb Thai food we ended up in Dunelm Mill, a cornucopia of discount fabrics, homewares and soft furnishings at reasonable prices. There were loads of reductions in the Sale, so we went on a bargain hunt.
I headed straight for the bedding - strange behaviour, you might think, for a tools-and-gadget-loving male. Perhaps I should explain...
I have a problem with pillows. I've tried many in the past, looking for the one that will give me a consistently good night's sleep. They never deliver. The last one I bought was a 'rebound pillow', which was meant to return to its former shape time and again. After a few weeks, however, it ended up like all the others; supportive at the edges but with a void in the middle that no amount of tugging, pummeling or shaking could remedy.
Maybe I have a heavy head? Stella's head is about the same size and weight as mine but her pillows remain annoyingly serviceable. I've even tried stealing them, but once they get under my head they're doomed and the same cavity soon develops. Maybe I roll around or kneel up and repeatedly head-butt the pillow in my sleep? It's possible, but since I'm asleep I've no idea. What I do know, though, is that I've been waking up tired and with headaches and neck pain for months.
I'd heard of memory foam before. Apparently developed by NASA, it responds to your body and moulds itself to your shape before returning to normal when you get up. And it's usually quite expensive, so I was intrigued to find memory foam pillows in Dunelm Mill at discount prices. One pillow from their most expensive range was on display with an invitation to "touch me". So I did. I can't say I was impresssed.
My hand sank into it, and when I let go it popped back out, but it looked and felt and even smelled pretty much like a block of bog-standard foam I could have bought on the market for a couple of quid. Undecided, I stood there pushing and squashing it for a while, walked away then came back again and squished it some more. Surely there must be something to this memory foam thing?
Eventually, lured by a 50% discount and sheer nocturnal desperation, I bought it.
That same evening I put it on my bed and when night came I lowered my head, waiting for paradise.
It felt like a block of foam. My head sank in a bit and then stopped, so I lay there for a while, determined to give it a chance.
"Feels a lot firmer than my old pillow," I grumbled. Then I fell asleep.
My first thought when I woke up, though, was how comfortable I felt. I felt like I'd slept, too; there was no dull, slow awakening, no residual headache and my neck didn't hurt. Even now, six hours later as I sit typing, my neck feels better than it has in a long time.
Have I discovered the perfect pillow? Only time will tell, but if I have then it will have been money well spent, every penny of it. I'll report back in a few weeks, but in the meantime,
have you tried memory foam? If so, what did you think?

A Letter From The President

2009-12-16T14:55:00.005Z

Recently, in the bicentennial year of Abraham Lincoln's birth, a letter sent by the famous president was sold for £36,000.
Big deal, you might say. What's so special about that? Well, what's special about this letter is not so much who sent it but who it was sent to.
You see, this letter, delivered nearly 150 years ago, was sent to an eight-year-old schoolboy.
The story is an interesting one. As a young boy, George Patten was with his journalist father when they both met the commander-in-chief. When he went back to school George excitedly reported the encounter to his classmates and teacher - but nobody took him seriously.
Mocked by his disbelieving classmates George stuck to his story to such an extent that his exasperated teacher wrote to the president. And back, by return, came a hand-written, signed letter.
It read: "Whom it may concern, I did see and talk with master George Evans Patten, last May, at Springfield, Illinois. Respectfully, A Lincoln."
What's so precious about this letter is that it was sent just two weeks after the president's inauguration. At such a time, having just become the most powerful man in the nation at a critical moment in its history, I'm sure Lincoln had many worthy things he could have devoted his energies to. I'm sure there were many important documents waiting to be read and signed, people to meet and places to go, but it says something about the man that he recognised the importance of this simple plea for help and responded, settling all doubt. Now, nobody could ever say again that George Patten had not met with Lincoln.
The parallel for us is simple yet profound. No matter how unimportant we may feel, our prayers before God carry the same weight as those uttered by the great and powerful. No matter how personal our request may seem, God never writes it off as unimportant or not worth considering. God, like Lincoln, resists the modern tendency to lump people into categories and instead sees the value of each individual. And, like Lincoln, each individual gets his undivided attention and a personal response.
So next time you get down to pray, remember Lincoln's letter and realise that the author of all time and space just put down his pen for a moment to listen to you.

Procrastination

2009-11-16T16:10:00.006Z

I've always been prone to procrastination. Once an item gets onto my to-do list it becomes a little indicator light winking away in the dark part of my brain, a constant ticking metronome that says "do me; do me; you know you've got to do me..." If I ignore it begins to flash faster and the voice protests "Hey! I'm still here! Do me now!" You can imagine how bad it gets if I put something off until it becomes embarrasing or critical (or both), and given my busy schedule it's small wonder that my head sometimes feels like a Christmas tree in imminent danger of meltdown.
The problem is, just because I put something off doesn't make it go away. It sits there with its other unfulfilled brethren, draining my time, resolve and energy with their incessant demands. I have to look at each one of them, sort them into priority order and then make a plan. Once I've promised myself "I'll do this next Thursday," the flashing stops and I can find the mental space to do what I'm supposed to be doing right now.
It's a problem that affects us all, particularly in today's world. The urgent can so easily overshadow the important until the urgent is all we ever do. We become driven by the tyranny of the moment, so busy putting out fires that we never get to what needs doing later - until it becomes too hot to handle. Then we have to deal with that, which means we never get round to what needs doing later, and so the cycle goes on - a mad runaway ferris wheel of doom sweeping us around so fast that we can never get off.
When we live like this the spiritual always gets neglected. That's because it never becomes urgent - until the day we die or have a nervous breakdown of course. But spiritual well-being is crucial. Where else can we find the inner resources to deal with life's demands? How else can we put our lives into context and so dedicate our time and talents to the things that really matter? No tall tower can ever be stable without a good foundation, and the higher you build the better your foundation needs to be. How much time are you investing into yours?

Wanted - Energetic Men

2009-11-09T08:02:00.003Z

"We love upright, energetic men. Pull them this way, and then that way, and the other, and they only bend, but never break. Trip them down, and in a trice they are on their feet. Bury them in the mud, and in an hour they will be out and bright. They are not ever yawning away existence, or walking about the world as if they had come into it with only half their soul; you cannot keep them down; you cannot destroy them. But for these the world would soon degenerate. They are the salt of the earth. Who but they start any noble project? They build our cities and rear our manufactories; they whiten the ocean with their sails, and they blacken the heavens with the smoke of their steam-vessels and furnace fires; they draw treasures from the deep mine; they plow the rich earth. Blessings on them! Look to them, young men, and take courage; imitate their example; catch the spirit of their energy and enterprise, and you will deserve, and no doubt command, success."
Readings for Young Men, Merchants, and Men of Business, 1866 - from www.artofmanliness.com

The Bladeless Fan

2009-10-13T09:53:00.002+01:00

I don't know if you've seen any articles about the new 'bladeless fan' (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5ba62a00-b755-11de-9812-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1 for example), but I was challenged earlier today by a good friend to to explain how it works.
Certainly.
There are two key passages in the article:
First: "As a result, Dyson claims the bladeless fan, which works by forcing a jet of air out of a narrow circular slit and then over an aerofoil-shaped blade, is at least as efficient as its bladed counterpart, more comfortable and much safer"
Forcing air out of a narrow slit is going to speed the air up considerably, and then this faster air is going to be passed over an aerofoil shape. This is classic stuff for Bernoulli's principle which is what makes aeroplanes fly. Basically if you have a current of moving air flowing over an aerofoil (wing) shape, the air going over the curved top has further to go than the air going under the flat bottom so it has to speed up to make it to the far side in the same time.
When any moving fluid (air in this case) speeds up, Bernoulli's principle states that it's pressure goes down and vice versa. So above the wing the air is moving faster than it is below the wing, which means the pressure above the wing is lower than the pressure below it. Thus the wing experiences an upward force and voila - make the air go over the wing fast enough by whatever means and we have lift off.
Okay, so that's the background. How does this apply to the bladeless fan?
Consider the second passage: "The new fan works by drawing air into the base of the machine. The air is forced up into the loop amplifier and accelerated through the 1.3mm annular aperture, creating a jet of air that hugs the airfoil-shaped ramp. While exiting the loop amplifier, the jet pulls air from behind the fan into the airflow (inducement). At the same time, the surrounding air from the front and sides of the machine are forced into the air stream (entrainment), amplifying it 15 times. The result is a constant uninterrupted flow of cooling air."
Okay, so they got an "annular apeture". Annular means ring and for apeture read slit, so there's a slit all the way round the ring that's blowing a ring of high-speed air across the surface of the shaped ring and out the other side. We're told the air "hugs the airfoil-shaped ramp" so we know we're on the right track.
This moving air crossing the aerofoil is going to cause low pressure at that point, so there's going to be a ring of low pressure created on the rear side of the ring. This will suck air behind the fan forward and cause it to go through the ring and into the airstream - a process they call 'inducement'.
They've also got some 'entrainment' going on, and basically what they're saying here is that once this thing gets going there is a current of moving air pouring quickly out the front. Moving air equals higher speed equals lower pressure, so the quiet air surrounding this low-pressure airstream is going to be drawn into it as well, amplifying the effect.
They quote an amplification factor of fifteen times, meaning that the little blower in the handle can be fifteen times smaller than would be required to generate that amount of air movement by conventional means.
What an amazing little device!

Seasons

2009-09-16T22:35:00.005+01:00

It's that time of year again here in the UK. I realised this week when I changed back onto the early shift and woke to find it dark outside my window. The nights are drawing in, the heat has gone out of the sun and it won't be long until the dreaded season of winter has us once again in its icy grip.
I hate winter. I hate getting up in the dark, driving to work in the dark, watching the dawn from my desk and seeing night fall again all too soon from the same spot. Then I drive home in the dark and try not to feel as if every second of my 'real' day has been stolen by my employer. I hate standing in the cold and dark driveway, trying to scrape impenetrable ice from the car windscreen with a plastic scraper that always breaks, then finding as I try to drive away that I still can't see because my breath has frozen on the inside of the glass. There are some days I'm only warm when I'm in bed, and being of slim build the cold grips me to the core of my bones.
For years I used to say there were only three good things about winter: Bonfire night, Christmas and my birthday. But I was wrong. There's a fourth - winter ends!
No matter how much I hate it, the thing that keeps me going is that spring is just around the corner; that sooner or later the cold will break, the trees will bud, the garden will flower and I'll be able to throw my thermals back into the cupboard for another year.
The seasons are God's way of reminding us that dark times don't last forever and better days will come. This is true of life itself and not just the weather. If things are hard for you right now then hold on to the thought that life won't always be this way. Look ahead to good things down the road, and let their prospect cheer your soul as, like me, you ride out the winter storms

It's Just Not Cricket!

2009-08-18T08:57:00.016+01:00

Something has happened to sport these days.
While it was always the preserve of the gentleman, the Victorian era saw an expansion of this most British of activities. Driven by moral and social purpose, churchmen and visionaries of all persuasions launched movements to bring sport to the masses. Not just sport for its own sake, though, but for the changes it brought. Physical health apart, sport was seen as a way to benefit society and the wider world by improving the character of those who played. Virtues like discipline and self-reliance, co-operation and teamwork, a sense of justice and fair play and respect for the rules became the hallmarks of 'sportsmalike behaviour' and were upheld as readily by the coal miner and street urchin as the rich country gent. Wherever the British went they sought to instil the sporting ethos, and even today in many corners of the globe underhand conduct will still provoke outraged cries of "It's just not Cricket!"
How things have changed.
Today we have athletes cheating to improve their performance, financial corruption in governing bodies, the famous rants of John McEnroe against the umpire, spoiled and pouting superstars brawling outside nightclubs and so-called supporters whose main contribution is to violently hate and verbally abuse the opposition. Small wonder, then, that Rugby player Tom Williams staggered from the field with blood pouring from his mouth in the Heineken Cup on 12 April this year. Shocking, you may say; but what's more shocking is that Williams, in collusion with his coach and the team physiotherapist had faked the injury using theatrical blood so that specialist kicker Nick Evans could return to the field in the dying seconds of the game to take a crucial shot. We truly seem to have lost the essence of sportsmanship, but this incident along with many others shows there's something deeper we've lost sight of as well.
We've forgotten how to lose.
Think about it; last time you took your son or daughter to a sporting event and your team lost, how did you respond? Did you say "Well son, they played an excellent game today. We did our best but they deserved to win; let's go have a burger." Or did you rail against the stupid decisions of the 'blind' and 'biased' referee, berate the unfairness of the opposition's 'luck' while your team made all the play and blame that crucial goal on a freak gust of wind or a misplaced clod of earth? Did you even, perish the thought, accuse the other team of cheating or unsportsmanlike behaviour?
What sort of mindset will a child develop when he hears that kind of thing, game after game, from one of the most influential people in his life? What sort of adult will he grow up to be? He'll think that winning is all that matters, that the end justifies the means, and when the wheels do come off the train he won't have a clue how to deal with it.
Our example shapes the next generation. So let's teach our children to honour the achievements of others, to keep on trying and not fall prey to bitterness or cancerous self-pity. It may seem a paradox, but if we truly want our children to win in life then we desperately need to teach them how to lose.

U-Turns

2009-08-07T13:40:00.006+01:00

Those of us in the UK are familiar with U-turns. Our government seems to be making them with ever increasing frequency (consider Joanna Lumley's recent victory over Gurkha's rights for example) and in these troubled times the climbdown seems set to become a national institution. We might even declare a new public holiday, "National U-Turn Day", when politicians could release all their embarrasing news safe in the knowledge that everybody else is away scoffing burgers at the beach.
A U-turn, by definition, is a fundamental change of direction. You are travelling in one direction but abandon it and select another diametrically opposed to the course you originally followed. You abandon your original goal and redirect your efforts to reach another.
We must conclude, therefore, that you realised that your original course was somehow inappropriate and your original destination unworthy of further pursuit. Even though you thought it right, you now see it was wrong and you've abandoned it to seek a better way. However you look at it, that's a fairly profound change of outlook, perception and opinion.
Imagine my shock, then, to discover such a U-turn right under my very nose. An abandoned government policy? No, I see those regularly but I would never have predicted this - the Philippic Pastor is now on Twitter!
Come on Tom, I think you owe us an explanation. You always said Twitter was for the birds but I've never known you make a decision lightly so there has to be more to this than simply following the crowd. Why the change of heart?

Spare a Thought for the Unicorns

2009-07-30T13:39:00.009+01:00

An atheist summer camp in Somerset is offering children aged seven to 17 a "godless alternative" to religious camps traditionally run by the scouts and church groups, the BBC reports. Camp Quest, according to its promoters, is "dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method… and the separation of religion and government".
That doesn't sound too bad - until, that is, you take a look at the centrepiece of the week's activities.
As the principal task of the week the camp asks its participants to search for two invisible unicorns. The unicorns cannot be seen or heard, tasted, smelt or touched, they cannot escape from the camp and they eat nothing. The only proof of their existence is contained in an ancient book handed down over "countless generations". A prize - a £10 note signed by Professor Richard Dawkins - is offered to any child who can disprove the existence of the unicorns.
That sounds really open-minded, doesn't it? Even if you look beyond the thinly-veiled and vaguely mocking allusions to the Bible and to God, the fact that the children are challenged to disprove the unicorns' existence suggests to me that their minds have already been seeded with the appropriate outcome. Sorry to rain on the parade, but that's not scientific. True science looks objectively at the whole body of evidence and seeks to draw meaning from it without making prior assumptions. If you decide something is or isn't true before you start you'll just end up gathering evidence that supports your theory.
Then, of course, there's the prize. The glorious reward for giving up the treasures of a life of faith, the security of unconditional love and comfort in the face of death is one miserable ten-quid note defaced by Richard Dawkins. That's not much of an exchange.
But look deeper - money is a man-made concept, it gives a false sense of security yet is inherently unreliable, it promotes arrogance, pride and amoral living, and ultimately it never satisfies. Maybe it's an appropriate reward after all.

The Eagle has Landed

2009-07-16T12:53:00.004+01:00

Today is the 40th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing, an amazing achievement for all mankind that still captures the imagination. Most people's thoughts will be on Neil Armstrong's historic descent of the ladder and that immortal phrase spoken from the last hesitant rung, "That's one small step for a man...".
But for me there's something about the moon landing that's even greater. To place that one individual at the foot of that ladder took over 400,000 men and women from every trade and discipline, all working together to achieve something that had never been done before and that many considered impossible.
But they did it anyway; from President Kennedy who set the challenge through Gene Kranz the mission controller, the flight surgeons, spacesuit designers, meterologists, communications engineers, rocket fuel chemists, machine shop workers, accountants, administrators, secretaries and the people who made the tea, every one of them contributed something vital to the mission's success. Despite the setbacks and the tragedies - like the launchpad fire that killed the three astronauts testing Apollo 1 - they pressed on and fought through until the dream was fulfilled. Though Armstrong stepped alone onto the moon in reality he was never alone - there were 400,000 others with him and he rode there on the shoulders of giants.
The Apollo programme shows that no matter how crazy the dream, nothing is impossible. If we truly work together to make it happen, becoming part of something greater than ourselves, then there's nothing we cannot do. And if it ever falls to us to stand upon the pinnacle of success, let us honour the labour, vision and sacrifice of those who paved the way before us and made it all possible

Only a little job...

2009-07-08T09:16:00.012+01:00

Many people who read my blog comment that The Bishop seems to have an answer for everything, and I know some people view me as some sort of spiritual swan, gliding calm and serene over the deep and muddy waters of daily living without any apparent effort.
I wish.
I've been spending all my time recently installing a new bathroom at home and it has been an absolute nightmare. Why is it that when you look at a job and judge the time, effort, cost and complexity involved that you always, always underestimate? That's one question The Bishop does not have an answer for, but I can offer you plenty of empirical evidence to prove that it's true.
The concept was simple enough. Break off all the old wall and ceiling tiles. Tidy up the surfaces. Rip out the old (and I mean old) bath, toilet and basin. Retile the room. Reinstall new bath, toilet and basin. Run hot water and enjoy.
In your dreams, mate!
The start of the job coincided with the best heatwave the UK has seen in years. So, wielding a club hammer and chisel in a hot, confined space the sweat was literally dripping off me. The tiles came off easily enough though, with nothing worse to show for it than a few shrapnel wounds and a massive bruise where I missed the chisel altogether and smashed the side of my hand with the hammer. I was pretty proud of my progress until my builder friend had a look and said the underlying plaster wasn't in good enough condition for retiling so it too had to come off - right down to the brick. Cue even more hammering, chiselling and sweating; and just when I thought I'd finished.
Then the toilet and basin came out and were dumped unceremoniously on the drive, the basin being whisked away shortly thereafter and without permission by a couple of scrounging itinerant scrap dealers in a clapped-out blue van. No problem though - we have a second toilet downstairs so I assured my family we would only be without our main facilites for a day or two; three at the most.
With hindsight, that was one of the most stupid things I've ever said. I forgot a key universal law; one which the Bible reveals in Job 5:7, "Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward." Modern thinkers restate this as the well-known maxim "If the most inconvenient thing can go wrong in the most inconvenient place at the most inconvenient time, in the most inconvenient way, with the most inconvenient consequences - it will!"
And, of course, it did.
I was at work the next day when my builder friend popped in to rip out the bath, and it wasn't long before I got the fateful phone call. "Are you at work? We've got a slight problem here..."
I could see what it was when I got home. Whoever had installed the bath had routed one of the main pipes for the heating system through the supporting brackets meaning the pipe would have to be taken out and re-routed before the bath could be removed. The water would have to go off, but it wouldn't be for long.
You know what's coming, don't you?
I turned the water off, drained everything, we cut the pipe and out came the bath. So far so good. Then we nipped off to the DIY store to buy all the fittings and accessories to restore the pipe and connect up the new bath. By now it was seven in the evening so we pressed on with the pipework. By eight thirty we'd finished so I went to turn on the water.
It leaked.
We decided we'd been unlucky and used a faulty fitting so we cut it all off and redid it.
It leaked.
We did it a third time. Do I have to tell you what happened, or are you getting the idea?
By now it was coming up to ten pm, I had neither hot nor cold water in the taps (though plenty on the floor and dripping down through the kitchen ceiling) and the bowl of water my wife had thoughtfully filled before I started my 'half-hour job' was now empty. We were out of fittings and all the shops were closed. In desperation we borrowed some pipe and another fitting from a neighbour but to no avail. By eleven thirty pm two things were clear. One, I was exhausted. And two, we were going to be without water overnight.
Somehow, next morning, myself and five females managed to wash and squeeze a cup of tea out of a second bowl of water I had to beg from my neighbour. I was outside the DIY store by seven am, waiting for it to open. This time, like a seasoned professional, I went for the push-fit plastic fittings. I hurried home, chopped off the leaking pipework (again), redid it and it worked!! Oh, transport of ineffable joy, we had cold running water again! All I had to do now was refill the heating system and we'd have hot water too.
So I did. And it leaked.
By now I was out of time again so I hurried off to work leaving my wife with no hot water for the day. I'd learned my lesson though, so I went back to the DIY store in my lunchbreak and made short work of the problem once I got home. Hot and cold restored - I was truly the man with the plan. Until, that is, I turned on the water to the new bath which by now had been placed in the corner of the empty room. It, of course, leaked.
This time though it was the flexible connector on the cold tap that was defective. I would have to get it replaced but again the shops were now closed and it would have to wait until tomorrow. But at least we had hot and cold running water, albeit not in the same room as the bath, so it felt like progress.
The next evening when I got home from work I stepped bravely into the valley once again to confront my Goliath. Unlike David, however, mine seemed to have the disconcerting habit of getting back up and having to be killed all over again on a daily basis. I was right that the tap connector was faulty. And so was the next one I was given. And the next. And the next. Four faulty ones in a row - each one wasting an hour and a half for the fitting, test, furious disassembly and trip for another replacement. I was out of time again, the water had been off for a second day, and I wasn't amused.
Next morning the fifth one worked and the pipework was complete - just in time for my friend to tell me a previous job was dragging on and he wouldn't be able to plasterboard my walls that day after all. I was now five days into the job, with the tiler due to start work tomorrow and a bathroom consisting of a bare brick box with a lightbulb dangling from the ceiling and a bath in one corner. However my friend knew a man who would board me the walls and plaster the ceiling for sixty quid. I was out of options so I told him to give him a call.
When I got home, the walls were boarded and ceiling plastered and he'd done a good job. However he'd had to remove the bathroom door so now taking a bath aquired a whole new racy element of courage. You can imagine how popular that was with the ladies in the house.
Next day the tiler arrived and duly set to work. However he too had underestimated the scale of the task and by Friday was only half done. My plans to install the toilet and basin over the weekend were fading, but he offered to stay late on Friday night and then come back to finish the job on Saturday.
On Saturday morning, however, he phoned to say his young son had been sick all night and he wouldn't now be able to come until Monday. So the bathroom stood, half-tiled and doorless, for the rest of the weekend.
The tiler returned on Monday and worked all day. On Monday evening he told me he'd forgotten to include the cost of tiling the floor in his original estimate and would I pay him some more? But the good news was, he would finish by Tuesday. I also needed to buy another box of my feature mosiac tiles as he'd used them all by putting a full-width strip above the bath despite my explicit instruction to the contrary and therefore now didn't have any left to run the strip above the basin. Cue another trip to the shops for a box of five mosaic tiles at £35 per box, only one of which would be required.
It is now Wednesday, two and a half weeks in. Last night I trimmed the bathroom door to the new size and hung it, plus the shower over the bath is now back in place and working. All I have to do now is seal round the bath, box in and tile the section at the end, fit the shower screen, install the toilet and basin and fix the downlighters into the ceiling.
Once all that is finished I already know what I'm going to do next.
Nothing!

Life Without Jack

2009-05-31T19:41:00.003+01:00

You might have noticed I've been absent from the blogosphere for a little while. That's because I've had a difficult few weeks culminating in the unfortunate loss of our little dog Jack.
He was a great guy, a loyal little terrier cross who lived life head-on and brough a lot of enjoyment into our lives in the short time he was with us. Unfortunately he became suddenly very ill last week and after a hasty consultation with the vet was whisked away for emergency surgery for a blocked small intestine. It seemed the vet had saved his bacon, but unfortunately the problem had taken its toll and despite everyone's best efforts we lost him yesterday.
The house seems very quiet. The postman visits unchallenged. There's nobody trying to climb onto my laptop as I type. No reason to go for a late night walk anymore before we turn in. It's shocking just how keenly his absence has impacted our lives in so many small but significant ways, and it's reminded me of a profound truth I so often forget.
You don't realise what you've got until it's gone.
I'm glad we had the time we did with our little dog, and if there's one thing he's taught me it's this: rejoice in every relationship you have. Enjoy them, commit yourself fully and make the most of every moment of sunshine. Because to love and be loved are the most important things in life, and so often we don't realise that until it's too late.
Is there a friendship you need to patch up? A relationship you've been neglecting? Have the important people in your life become merely obstacles to be stepped around as you struggle to meet your schedule? Slow down, savour each moment and get your priorities right.
Oh yes, and always face whatever life throws at you with a wagging tail.

An Expensive Business

2009-05-08T09:50:00.003+01:00

More revelations have emerged today about MP's expenses. The Daily Telegraph has published detailed accounts of the expenses claims of some of our top politicians with the promise of more to come, and what we already have makes interesting reading.
Several senior MPs are on record as having claimed twice for the same item or having claimed the full price for their Council Tax from which they then obtained a substantial rebate at the taxpayer's expense. Apparently these were 'mistakes' that were put right by the individuals concerned, but it makes me wonder how people we trust to manage billions of pounds of public money, our national security and our economic and social well-being can't handle such a simple matter as their own expenses claim.
It's also interesting that the mistakes were only corrected recently, which of course has nothing whatever to do with the current upsurge in public scrutiny. Other revelations include politicians switching homes so they could claim more in renovation expenses and furnishing grants. One well-known MP is said to have claimed on three different properties in one year and spent £5000 of public money on furnishings in just three months. And, of course, we can't fail to remember the outcry over the MP that claimed for two pornographic films and a new bath plug.
The most shocking thing is that when challenged over these excesses the MPs involved invariably respond "I have done nothing wrong; I haven't broken any of the rules". Perhaps not, but what about the rule of being seen to act with integrity and honesty while in a position of privilege and trust? It astounds me that our politicians are now wringing their hands over why the public has so little faith in them and wondering why they are "failing to get their message across."
Hmm. I can think of a couple of reasons.

Bigotry and Intolerance

2009-04-21T11:13:00.010+01:00

I was somewhat dismayed today by a BBC News article on Sunday's televised Miss USA competition. During the contest Carrie Prejean - Miss California - was asked for her views on same-sex marriage by one of the judges, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton. She replied, "We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offence to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."
Those aren't words I have a problem with. As the transcript clearly shows, Miss Prejean wasn't attacking anyone; she simply stated her personal opinion in a polite and respectful way in response to a direct question.
No, what bothers me is the reaction she got.
Hilton said he was "floored" by Ms Prejean's answer, which, he said, "alienated millions of gay and lesbian Americans, their families and their supporters". What!? I'm sorry Mr Hilton, but just because an individual differs from you doesn't give you grounds to say their identity alienates a whole section of society. I'm white, but I don't feel alienated because America chose a 'black' president. I'm heterosexual, but I don't feel alienated because someone else chooses to be gay. I'm a Christian, but I don't feel alienated when other people disagree with my views.
Mr Hilton, and those who hurried to agree with him, clearly have a problem here. Their rhetoric is far more reminiscent of a petulant, pouting child in a primary school playground than visionaries seeking to lead the ignorant from darkness into light. Campaigners for gay rights have spoken out passionately for many years against bigotry and intolerance, yet here we see them committing the very same sins they have condemned in others for so long. I'm afraid that rather undermines the credibility of your comment, Mr Hilton.
Needless to say, Miss California didn't become Miss USA, but in my view she still left the contest a winner. "It did cost me my crown," she said after the competition, "but I wouldn't have had it any other way. I said what I feel. I stated an opinion that was true to myself and that's all I can do."
What should she have said, Mr Hilton? Would you have given her more points if she'd prostituted herself for the crown and told you what you wanted to hear? What kind of a judge would that have made you? Integrity used to be prized, a precious diadem of virue crowning any young woman's character. But when people trample it underfoot to further their own agenda in the midst of a beauty pageant that's the ugliest thing you could ever hope to see.

Is Global Warming Just Hot Air?

2009-04-19T18:53:00.004+01:00

As someone with a scientific and engineering background one of the things that really gets my goat is when so-called experts publish just one side of a story as if it were the whole truth. Politicians and social activists love black-and-white statements because they can use them to motivate people. But ask any engineer who understands the topic and he'll usually shake his head and say, "I'm afraid it's not that simple..."
Global warming is a case in point. We the public are fed a regular diet of sea-level rise, irreversible climate change and man-made meterological catastrophe. "Global warming is a reality and it's all man-made," our leaders scream. "We must all fly less, pay more for our petrol, reduce our carbon footprint and use less plastic bags." Plastic bags? That's just one example of how a side issue gets tacked onto the main argument and whipped up into a campaign bandwagon for political ends. Yes, plastic bags pollute the environment and endanger wildlife. But they don't cause global warming any more than any other manufactured product does.
The truth is, the whole issue is not as simple as the green machine would have us believe. Yes, there is some evidence that things are changing, but there is also a host of evidence that this could well be just part of the natural cycle of things and far less man-made than we have been led to believe. For example, you might remember recent reports by 'experts' that the Antarctic ice sheet is melting on an unprecedented scale and that as a result we are likely to suffer catastrophic sea level rises of up to six metres by the year 2100. Only last week the Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett echoed this, insisting that global warming was causing ice losses throughout Antarctica. "I don't think there's any doubt it is contributing to what we've seen both on the Wilkins shelf and more generally in Antarctica," he said.
Unfortunately, he's a politican; and what you won't have heard about is the other information recently released by the Head of the Australian Antarctic Division's Glaciology Program, Ian Allinson. He reports that sea ice losses in west Antarctica over the past 30 years have been more than offset by ice increases in the Ross Sea region, just one sector of east Antarctica. "Sea ice conditions have remained stable in Antarctica generally," Dr Allison says. He also says there is no evidence of significant change in the mass of ice shelves in east Antarctica nor any indication that its ice cap was melting. "The only significant calvings [icebergs breaking away] in Antarctica have been in the west," he said. And he says that even those might not be unusual. "Ice shelves in general have episodic carvings and there can be large icebergs breaking off - I'm talking 100km or 200km long - every 10 or 20 or 50 years."
Interesting eh?
Ice core drilling off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis from the 1950s until now is 1.67m.
Want more? A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded. And let's not forget the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research's report, prepared for last week's Antarctic Treaty meeting in Washington, which noted the South Pole has experienced "significant cooling in recent decades". How come they never mentioned that bit on the news?
The reality is, the whole global warming question is not as simple as it's made out to be and there is a wealth of information that doesn't fit in with today's political and social agenda so it's simply not reported. We need to be careful not to blindly swallow everything the 'experts' tell us, because the facts show that sometimes what they're telling us isn't science - it's propaganda.

Little Things

2009-04-07T10:16:00.004+01:00

I've had a rotten cold for the last few days. It came out of nowhere; I went to bed feeling fine then woke in the night thinking, "My throat is on fire!" The rest, as they say, is history.
Everyone knows these things are caused by viruses, and a biochemist friend of mine told me a few things about them. Apparently a virus is a fragment of DNA that can infiltrate the resident DNA in a cell, effectively hijacking it to perform its own evil will. I often ask my friend if he's found a cure yet for the common cold but he replies that it's not that easy. Even though a virus is just a shred of DNA the part of that shred that causes us problems is smaller still and mutates constantly, making any classical drug obsolete the moment it is designed. The challenge is to find a way to target the stable 'carrier' part of the virus DNA - without killing everything else in the process.
It's sobering to think that a six-foot-one 13 stone alpha-male in superb physical condition (okay, that last part might be a slight exaggeration) can be brought low by a foe so small you'd need an electron microscope to see it, but I can assure you it's true. So often it's the smallest things that cause our biggest problems. Thoughtless words and actions can be the wedge that splinters a marriage. Just a little compromise with sin can explode to destroy your credibility and wreck your destiny. And how many times has spiritual laziness and indifference left me wondering what happened to the presence of God?
There is an old proverb in Yorkshire which says, "Take care of the pennies, and the pounds will take care of themselves". Success as a Christian does not come by mission statements, strategic plans or great visionary intentions. It is achieved daily, amid the cut-and-thrust of life by a series of seemingly insignificant decisions to do the right thing.

The Tomb that Speaks to the Living

2009-03-23T19:31:00.004Z

In the quiet of Westminster Abbey in London, tucked away among the final resting places of generals, kings and statesmen is the grave of a young woman named Mary Beaufoy. I found this memorial years ago while exploring the Abbey and the memory of it, along with the photographs I took on that day, have remained with me ever since.
The reason? This grave speaks to the living.
Mary Beaufoy was the only daughter and heiress of Sir Henry Beaufoy, of Guyscliffe, near Warwick, and the Hon. Charlotte Lane, eldest daughter of George Lord Viscount Lansborough. Standing there in the Abbey's stillness, looking at this tomb, it isn't too hard to imagine how the hopes and dreams of Sir Henry and Lady Charlotte were bound up in this one precious child. She would have been their laughter, their joy, and the quiet confidence that one day their title and lineage would pass to another. But Mary died on July 12, 1705, aged just 28, and their hopes died with her.
Such was the impact of this tragedy, and yet through her grief and loss Lady Charlotte resolved that her daughter's death would not be in vain. The tomb she commissioned at the hand of the famous woodcarver Grinling Gibbons bears a striking message, one which stopped me in my tracks all those years ago and one which I pray will speak to you too.
This is what it says:
"Reader! whoever thou art, let the sight of this tomb imprint on thy mind that young and old, without distinction, leave this world; and therefore fail not to secure the next."

What a Waste of Time

2009-03-22T19:22:00.004Z

Do you like wasting your time?
Hebrews 11:6 describes what is possibly the biggest lost cause of them all, and yet one into which otherwise intelligent people have poured huge amounts of time and effort down through the ages. The verse says "But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him."
Many seek to prove or disprove the existence of God by their intellect, by clever philosophical argument or logical reasoning. Some point to the natural world or the laws of science while others turn to history and comb ancient texts in dogged pusuit of a secret clue.
But all this is a complete waste of time. If we're going to "come to God" as the verse says, if we ever hope to approach that place where God can be found and seen, then there's only one way and that is to come by faith. The writer is very clear, "he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." Notice the word "must." Your arguments won't bring you to God and neither will they prove his non-existence. Science, nature, and all the intellect and philosophy of man will equally get you nowhere. Even religion is a waste of time. Unless you're willing to exercise faith your search will be in vain.
This upsets some and frustrates many more, but that's the way it is. You see, if God really is God then His position gives Him the right to make the rules. And He's decided that only those who are prepared to approach Him in humble faith are going to find Him. "Humility," as a wise friend of mine often says, "is what gains entrance." It's your ticket to the door, it places your name on heaven's guest list. The humble soul stops trying to evaluate God, to disprove God, to analyse God, and simply worships Him. It makes sense if you think about it - if we could understand God, categorise Him and explain Him then by that very act we've reduced Him to the level of our own intelligence and discovered that after all He's no wiser than us. But the glory of the true God is as far beyond the grasp of our feeble human understanding as quantum physics is beyond the reach of the average family dog. If God truly is God, then we can never figure Him out. But what a glorious truth it is that while we could never reach Him by our own efforts God has provided a way for us to find him, a way so simple that it can be mastered by the lowliest peasant or the youngest child.
Stop wasting your time. Approach God in simple, humble faith and you'll find that He's more than willing to make Himself known.

The Silent Minority

2009-03-12T17:08:00.014Z

One thing that seems to characterise today's society is the abundance of groups determined to impose their agenda on everyone else. Without really pausing for thought I could name several, all of which demand quite agressively that I accomodate their beliefs and uphold their practices and yet become strangely upset if I in turn ask that they respect mine.
One thing that particularly troubles me in all this is what I call the terrorist paradox. Here in the UK we're no stranger to terrorism having lived with the IRA for half a generation, and yet we have a settlement today in which former enemies have come together to form a power-sharing government. That's good, and I'm glad the peace finally came. It came because people on both sides put aside their guns and rhetoric to talk; both the government and the terrorists meeting on middle ground and moving forward together for peace. And what's interesting is the way in which these leaders have now risen up with one voice to condemn the recent murders by the 'Real IRA' - acts that some of them supported and even committed before they became politicians. Again, I'm glad they spoke out; but I worry that in the wider context of our society we're setting a pattern here.
It seems that in today's world if you live quietly as a reasonable, law-abiding citizen, respecting the rights of others and never forcing your agenda on your fellow man then your voice is ignored by a political system that has more pressing things to think about. But if you step over the line and make noise, if you break the law and throw bricks at Policemen, if you kill and maim innocent bystanders, damage property and commit that most British of crimes, "disturbing the peace", then after the outrage and condemnation have run their course someone will eventually decide to sit down and talk with you. Make yourself a thorn in society's side and sooner or later your demands will be heard. And not just heard; in the fulness of time you'll probably be brought in from the cold and given a leadership role.
We live in a world where only the loud are listened to; and there are many who understand this and are prepared to be as loud as it takes. It's a shame our governments and leaders can't find the time to equally engage the quiet. I don't see anyone offering to bring the young, carers, refugees, ordinary people of quiet and dignified faith, single parents, the elderly or the homeless into the political establishment; rather, I see them increasingly marginalised. We face big problems today, and there are many who have much to contribute but because they either have no voice or have a moral compass that prevents them from stamping on others, they are ignored.
There are rumours that Obama might be about to talk to the Taliban. If he does then it's further evidence, should more be needed, that in today's warped politics there are now two routes into public office: the ballot and the bomb.

Perspective

2009-03-10T16:08:00.005Z

People are more important than things.
Friends have more value than funds.
And eternity is more significant than this short, fleeting life.

Ten to one?

2009-03-08T15:54:00.003Z

Someone once said, "God gave us two ears and one mouth - to be used in that proportion".
Wise words. We would all do well to listen more than we speak.
Then I realised that God gave us ten fingers. Does that mean we should abandon conversation altogether and spend our time on Facebook? Perhaps not; but it does prove that we should be careful not to stretch our clever illustrations so far that they make fools of us.

Computer Tips

2009-03-01T17:52:00.007Z

Have you ever lost a valuable file while working on your computer? I often get asked to help in such situations but sadly sometimes there's nothing I can do. So, to save you from digital doom, here are The Bishop's top tips for safe and happy computing.
Firstly, always have more than one copy of any important file or document. Always. Here's how:
1) As soon as you open your document and before you do anything else, use the Save As function to save a second copy of your document under a slightly different name. For example, "Prizewinning Novel - Version 13". That way you'll always have Versions 1 through 12 to go back to should the worst happen.
2) Buy a USB memory stick and keep copies of your documents on that. Then, if your computer dies or gets stolen you've still got your precious files. A word of warning though: only keep copies of your files on the USB stick - never edit the files on the stick directly as this can cause corruption if your system crashes. I've seen two cases of this in the past twelve months and on both occasions the important document was lost forever. You have been warned.
Secondly, get into the habit of saving:
3) Find out what the shortcut key sequence is in your editor/word processor (check the Help) and use it. For example, in Microsoft Word Alt+F then S will do a quick save without you even needing to touch the mouse. Whenever you pause for thought in your typing, do a save. Whenever you stop to pick up a reference book, save. Whenever you lift your mug to sip tea, answer the phone or glance out of the window, save. Get into the habit of saving; then if your computer crashes or the power goes off you'll only have a few minutes work to redo.
4) If your editor/word processor has an auto-save feature (check the Help), turn it on. Again, if something goes wrong you'll only have lost whatever you wrote since the last save.
Thirdly, keep your computer in good order. Install anti-virus protection, turn on your firewall and make sure you install critical patches and service packs. Defragment occasionally, don't let your hard drive fill up and don't install dodgy programs from the internet. Look after your system and it will be far less likely to let you down.
That's it; I hope those tips were useful. If you agree, disagree, have something to add or would like to share your personal disaster story, feel free to post a comment.

Happy Birthday

2009-02-26T11:08:00.009Z

Today is my wife's birthday, so please forgive me the self-indulgence of giving her a mention.
Solomon, reputed to be the wisest man who ever lived, said, "Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour from the Lord". Notice he didn't say, 'he who findeth a girl prepared to sleep with him, or a one-night stand, or an illicit thrill, or an ornament to hang from his arm at parties or to drape over the passenger seat of his sports car'. No, he said 'he that findeth a wife'. These things are cheap; but a wife is a treasure with a value "far above rubies".
I'm still quietly amazed, even after all these years, that she said 'yes'; that such a remarkable woman would close off all other options and dedicate herself to someone like me for life. But that's what it's all about; the greatest gift she has ever given me in all our twenty six years together is the one she gave on that first day, when she stood and publicly professed a love so strong that she was prepared to seal it with a binding, lifetime commitment. I don't take that lightly, and I never will. That is a treasure beyond price, and that's why Marriage will forever stand head and shoulders above every other human relationship.
Happy Birthday, gorgeous. I love you. And thank you for everything.

Gail Trimble

2009-02-25T07:42:00.002Z

This year's University Challenge quiz has been won by Corpus Christi College in Oxford, who beat Manchester University by 275 points to 190 in the final. Amazingly, Corpus Christi has less than 400 students, but what's even more remarkable is that the team owes its success to its captain, 26-year-old Gail Trimble, who single-handedly scored two-thirds of her team's 1,200 points in a stunning performance described by the BBC as an "intellectual blitzkrieg". This achievement has thrust the bemused Miss Trimble, a Latin scholar, into the national media spotlight and seen her hailed as a sex-symbol. She's even had an offer from Nuts magazine for a "tasteful photo shoot". Yeah, right.
This, of course, got me thinking. Would the BBC be so fascinated by her if she was just a good student quietly getting on with her Latin? I doubt it. Would Nuts magazine be craving her body if she'd never been on University Challenge? Probably not. Gail's achievements haven't changed her innate worth or beauty as a person but they have changed the way people see her. Every day we evaluate people on the basis of their celebrity status, health, wealth or outward appearance and, without thinking beyond what we see, we label them. Jesus never made that mistake and neither should we; whether with Gail Trimble or anyone else.

In the Garden

2009-02-24T16:16:00.003Z

I finally got out into the garden the other day for the first time this year. Though I didn't do much or stay long it felt so good just to be out there; a mini-victory over the long grip of winter and a celebration of better things to come.
I love gardening. As therapy for the soul it has no equal; it slows me down and helps me reconnect with the realities of the human condition that get lost so often in our hectic digital lives. The garden reminds me that I'm dependent on nature and on God. I can't control them; I have to humble myself and work with them. Whenever I watch a seed grow I'm reminded that it is not me that performs the miracle, all I do is plant what God has given me and stand back in awe. The weather, the seasons, rain and frost and sunshine all show me my true place in the divine order of things and I'm glad that they do. It's a sense of humility and worship that is becoming increasingly lost in our atheistic generation, and the further we stray from things that show us who we really are the more soul-sick we become.
I thank God, literally, for my garden; though it's not much to look at and probably wouldn't impress you if you saw it. But for me, it's an encounter with the divine. Genesis records that one of the first things God did was to plant a garden, and it was there that "Adam walked with God in the cool of the day". If you're a gardener, open your heart to the lessons all around you and you too can walk with God. It might surprise you to find that He's been in your garden all along.

Jade Goody

2009-02-22T17:59:00.003Z

In case you didn't know (where have you been?) Jade Goody, a media celebrity here in the UK, got married today. Unfortunately though what should have been a happy occasion was tempered somewhat by the knowledge that she's been diagnosed with cancer and has only weeks to live. Do you have important things to do and to say? Let us attend to them now, while we have the opportunity.

Political Correctness

2009-02-21T21:37:00.002Z

This seems to have become a requirement for modern life. What you write, what you say and even the opinions you hold had better conform or you'll soon find yourself in trouble. Don't get me wrong, I strongly agree that we should respect and value others regardless of who they are, what they are like and how they choose to live. After all, every single human being on the planet is a unique creation of God with their own hopes and dreams and just as much right to a place in the sun as you and I. The problem comes when political correctness is stretched until you become afraid to speak the truth, express an opinion or call something by its real name because that may offend. This is just another way of saying "I forbid you to say anything about me I don't want to hear" hidden under the noble-sounding premise of "respect my feelings and don't offend me". What incredible self-centred pride! And what a sad place to live. The truth hurts sometimes, but faithful are the wounds of a friend. Jesus said that when we know the truth, the truth will set us free. Unless we allow others to tell us the truth about ourselves without crying foul, we will never see ourselves as other see us and we can never change to become better people.