The Abolition of Freedom Act 2009

I was amused to be made aware of a very interesting report known as 'The Abolition of Freedom Act 2009'. The cleverly-titled document has been produced by UCL Student Human Rights Programme, in collaboration with the Modern Liberty Convention, meeting this weekend. The more official title of the report is 'What we've lost'. The document highlights fifty liberties that have been removed from Britain in the last ten years. Here are numbers 6 & 7 as a taster:

6.Immigration officers were given the power of arrest without a warrant. Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants) Act 2004

7.Police were given powers in two different acts to stop and search people and cars without suspicion at airports and within designated areas. Currently 180,000 people are being stopped and searched every year. Terrorism Act 2000 and Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001

The whole report, which can be read here, is a very worrying list. Here's why I'm so grateful for it now. I'm currently reading 'Liberal Fascism' by Jonah Goldberg. I heard him on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week and immediately ordered his book on Amazon.

His argument is this: The political left successfully demonise the political right as Fascists. In in public perception, fascist means Nazi, racist and evil. And therefore one doesn't have to take them seriously, or even listen to them. Goldberg rightly points out that is an erroneous, lazy and ignorant thing to do. He very carefully works out what Fascism is and does - and how that is distinct from Nazism, Hitlerism and other political philosophies advocated by the likes of Mussolini. (And he reminds his readers that Mussolini was a much heralded darling of American liberals and progressives. The American left.)

Goldberg's managed to put his finger on something that bothered me for a long time - something that I, and probably you, noticed at the age of about 14. The Nazis are fascists. On the far right, apparently. Because they're rascist, imprison without trial blah blah blah Yes? Then why are they the National Socialist Party? I thought socialists were on the political left. Socialists have, conveniently, ignored this.

It was interesting, then, when Goldberg points out that Fascism itself isn't necessarily racist - and that Mussolini found Hitler's anti-semitism rather bizarre, unnecessary and distateful. (Italians record of protecting Jews from Nazi liquidation is far more impressive than almost any occupied nation.) Fascism is often nationalistic. As Mussolini was. But that is not the same as racism. Do I approve of Mussolini? No. Not all. There is no 'but' either. Because Mussolini, like all Fascists, used the strong arm of the state to compel social reform. That's what fascists do. That's what the left does. I think the left are wrong for that very reason.

The political right, then, advocates the opposite of a strong-arm state. Laissez-faire politics. (People like Franklin D Roosevelt hated Laissez-faire politics. He, Goldberg successfully argues, sat firmly on the left. And Obama's now doing the same as him with his own New Deal). The political right advocates a small state that most people need have little contact with. People on the right do not wish to force people to do thinks they don't want to do. This is a separate issue from nationalism. And rascism. People on the right are often patriotic. And this can spill over into nationalism. And rascism. But it is not part of the small-state, right-wing package.

I propose to blog much more on the subject in the near future, but for now, my point is this. It is the political right that should be defending civil liberties; who should be espousing that fewer laws be written, not more; who should curb the powers of the police, immigration officers, tax-men, school-teachers, doctors and technocrats. Those on the right should be appalled by the erosion of these civil liberties.

It is the political left who actively want the state to interfere and intervene in peoples' lives; who want to make certain political and religious views 'unacceptable' (hence the Religious Hatred Bill that mercifully failed); who want to give state powers to teachers and doctors (hence the billions taken from the taxpayer and showered on State run schools and hopsitals); who want to use law, taxation and technocrats to 'progress' society (hence the continual pestering by the government to eat less salt, take exercise, get online, go back to work even I'm a mother with a one-year-old etc etc). Those on the left should assume that the erosion of civil liberties is the cost of statism and the progressive march to utopia.

It seems odd, then, that the last ten years have seen these record-breaking erosion - under New Labour, a left-leaning government. And I was amused that I was alerted to this report by Ekklesia, a left-leaning Christian thinktank. And the Conference is partly sponsored by the left-leaning Guardian newspaper. And also supported by the hilariously paranoid-sounding 'Liberal Conspiracy', an online publication that aims to 'bring together and re-invigorate the liberal-left in Britain through discussion and campaigning'. Just how will the pro-state Left go about its state-enforced vision of utopia without eroding freedoms. But a brief readingo of the website show how they love to demonise the right with the usual terms of abuse. It's all very baffling.

John Fellowes is Twittering

The title of this post may make no sense or only half sense to many readers of this post. Most of you, by now, know what Twitter is. It's a social medium that's starting to paralyse Britain's workforce as everyone 'tweets', ie. says what they're doing at that time. It's like a Status-only version of Facebook. And if you have never worked out Facebook, frankly I'm surprised you even read this blog, or any blog.

The other question is - who is John Fellowes? John Fellowes is the hero of my novel, Crossword Ends in Violence (5). Well, one of the heroes. Rather than twitter as me, I thought it would be more fun to twitter as Fellowes - exclusively twittering in cryptic crossword clues. It's indication of the sad life that I lead, and the lengths I'll go to in order to avoid useful work. Anyway, if you twitter, tweet, warble or whatever, you can find John Fellowes chirping here.

Dumbing Us Down - Part Two

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged on the subject of a book I'd read called Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto - a broadside attack on American state education.

The author is not a Christian, but he has spotted some things that should alarm Christians greatly. Now, here's the caveat. Every generation thinks the following generation is awash with layabouts and feckless thugs. So, anything I say about teenagers or twenty-somethings can be ignored. But I am aware I am a product of this system - as are my parents. The system is an education system that distorts inter-generationalism.

What do I mean by that? The main institutions found authorised by a Biblical Christian faith are: Family, Church and State. The two of those three institutions that, practically, should have the most impact on you and your life are the first two. Especially if you're a Christian. (Naturally, because we have a state that is vastly over-sized, self-aggrandising and interfering, we have much more contact with the state than we should. We should only come into contact with the state when we meet a magistrate, when we have committed a crime which, if we has properly written laws, we probably wouldn't do.) But my point is this: The main institutions in our lives should be Family and Church.

What is the nature of these institutions? They are inter-generational. Children live alongside children of different ages, alongside parents of very different ages - who in turn spend time with their own parents, siblings and so on. A child of 10 would, then, spend hours and hours with siblings, 8 and 13; parents, 39 and 41; aunts and uncles, 35, 38, 43, 49 and 54; cousins - ages 1-21; an grandparents, aged 65-80; and maybe a great grandparent or two. This 10-year-old would also spend Sundays, and other times in the week, with other children, teenagers, young adults, and older adults and the elderly - who are their church family.

Does that sound normal? Well, it isn't. Although all of those relationships are real on paper, the reality is very different. One obvious difference is that my parents and parents-in-law leave 45 minutes apart from each other - but a two-hour drive from me. Modern families scatter. (Mainly for economic reasons. It seems so sensible at the time, but it's surely madness).

School
Here's another problem: School. Children are spending hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, with children their own age. Not roughly their own age. Exactly precisely their own age. A teacher is dropped into the equation, but in a class of 30+, how much of a relationship does any child really have with a paid state-employee? (Or privately paid for 'schoolmaster'?) What John Taylor Gatto points out is that the children he teaches is his school are remarkable for their utter disregard for anyone outside their peer group. Anyone. This is because they are spending 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, 40 weeks a year - with their peers. Maybe it's great fun for them - but what harm is it doing to them and society?

John Taylor Gatto also says this isolation with peers is completed by television, which they watch when they get home - television expressly made for people of their age - because their parents are both working. So let's ask ourselves, how much time does today's ten-year-old spend in an intergenerational context? In comparison to time spend with their peers? During term time, they're spending 8 hours a day at school, an hour on home work, an hour getting up, changing and washing etc. Add three hours watching television and eight hours asleep. That's 21 hours accounted for. And how many 10-year-olds spend 3 hours a day playing with siblings, cousins and parents? Is it really any wonder our parents have no interest an anyone outside their peer group?

Not only are these children not spending time learning from those of different ages and stages, they are spending all their time learning from their peers. An argument often advanced for homeschooling is that if you don't raise your children yourself, the secular state will. The reality is that the state won't. Their secular peers will. For the ages of 5-18, and beyond, your child will learn almost everything from children their own age. Thanks for our bizarre affection for this desire to teach children everything with their peers. It's utter madness.

Stratification
Like many forms of madness, we no longer see since it's been with us for so long, the effects are now entrenched in society and the alternatives are simply unthinkable. Look around at society and you'll find age-based segregation and demarcation everywhere. Our grandparents are the products of this system too, so they are happy to shut out other generations in order to spend time with their peers. Plenty of grandparents will eschew their grandchildren in order to travel the world and please themselves. There's nothing wrong with travelling but look at the size of the Saga-industry - which is a ring-fenced old-people's club that looks after its own. And then, when they can't look after themselves, we put them in homes for old people. So they can stay out of the way. Together. Ugh.

The Sitcom Friends
Look at the sit-com Friends. It was so successful not just because it was funny but because it highlighted a post-college, post-family, twenty-something peer-group that only talked to itself. The show accurately reflects that family life is just not a consideration to most young, urban workers - and when it is a consideration, it's mainly a joyless burden to be tolerated.

In the West, we live in a layer-cake society. As you move on in life, your stage is marked out by school year group or exams. Then 'student'. Then 'Graduate'. Then 'young family', and so on. We're obsessed with stages, identifying them, isolating then and gathering in them. It goes against the two key biblical institutions of family and church, because, you guessed it, the state wants to swallow them up.

You can read that much shorter original post here.

Good Work

I saw a commercial the other day, advertising Fedex's sponsorship of a golf tournament. It's just beautifully crafted and well-made. And it sounds crazy, but this is the sort of things Christians should be aspiring to - good work. The other day, I hosted a conference for Christians in the media, and many of us find it hard to know what to make, how to create and what to aim for. In fact, it's simple - good work. It's what God does in Genesis 1, and sets the template for our work.

This Saturday night, on BBC2, is the third and final part of Iran and the West, yet another stunning documentary about Iran and its tricky dealing with America, Europe and the UN. It's another sensational documentary from the lady who brought us the even more splendid Death of Yugoslavia. The documentaries are so good because they are fair, balanced, well-told, ambitious - and gather together all of the protagonists involved in the story. Iran and the West has Jimmy Carter in it - and all the guys that worked for him and the Ayatollah. It's awewsome. Again, it's good work. It's such a great witness to do a good job.

What is particularly appealing is the self-confidence of good work. It's great to watch a film or read a book which completely conveys the author's vision in a clear, concise way, that isn't gimmicky or laboured. There's no showing off, hype or spin in good work. The work speaks for itself. Something to aim for, perhaps.

Catch Iran and the West on the BBC iPlayer. And here's the joyous Fedex Advert.

It's for the Kids Part 2

When we deviate from a Biblical worldview, we enter a world of baffling and self-destructive folly. And on the subject of children, the secular world is thoroughly confused. This secular worldview buys into the survival of the fittest, wholesale - and yet wants to lay down its life for the sake of the planet.

The increasingly popular view is that having more than two children is not only expensive and inconvenient - but unecological. The argument goes that this world is already full of rampaging, destructive humans. No more are needed (and ultimately the world is better off without us). That is the view of our French pen friend, Corinne Maier. With typical gracelessness, she says this:

It’s not that there are too many people but too many rich people. No one needs our children, because we and they are the spoilt kids of a planet that is on a collision course. To have a child in Europe or America is immoral – more scarce resources wasted on a way of life that is ever more voracious, capricious, hungry for fuel and destructive of the environment.

You may think this view is very rare but it's increasingly common, especially when BBC Online give free publicity to group like the Optimum Population Trust - who seem fairly sure that they know exactly how many people are 'sustainable' in this world. I'd rather go with a book of timeless wisdom that's survived thousands of years of scrutiny, thanks.

In one sense, Maier and the Optimum trust lunatics have a point. The world doesn't need more selfish, capricious children. But children are a blessing in and of themselves, since they are in God's image. What the world really does need is Christian children who are taught godliness, grace, peace and truth - and will grow up to work hard and be a blessing to others.

M*A*S*H

On my Hut 33 blog, I've written some thoughts about an episode of M*A*S*H - that you can read here.

It's for the Kids

Recently, I preached on the stress caused by having a baby. During the preparation for this talk, and reading the Bible, I stumbled across a few nuggets that are easy to miss.

The first is this: If we look in Genesis 3, we read that the pain of pregnancy is a curse from God on the woman. The curse is not the child-birth itself, but the pain with which it will happen. Man will still be fruitful and increase in number, as commanded, but this will happen through pain. Likewise, Adam is cursed in his work – again, man will still subdue the earth and rule over it, but this will happen through painful. There is also a mismatch between men and women – a battle of the sexes, which means that times of pressure and stress are all the more pressured and stressful, as men and women approach problems in completely different. (We don’t need to read Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus to know that.)

But secondly, we see that the promise of pain in birth and work is preceded by a promise. The serpent, who is clearly Satan in some way, is being cursed. He is made to crawl on his belly and eat dust – and the woman he deceived will have offspring who will crush the serpent’s head. A child, born of a woman, will destroy evil forever. Someone will come and put everything right. As we read the Bible, as the story unfolds, we discover that God will take the curse upon himself. In Galatians, 3:13, Paul, in the context of discussing the curse of the law, say that “Christ redeemed us… by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."

Have you ever wondered why died Jesus on a cross? Why did they kill him that way? Why did God allow him to die that way? It was the death of a common criminal. Because it was the most cursed way to die. Because it was the most painful way to die. So that Jesus could take the curse.

Children are a blessing from God
The third point is this: Children are a blessing from God. It’s hard to remember this in those first few weeks when this screaming seven pound creature is unleashed. No one puts the demands of parenthood more starkly – and unpleasantly - than a French writer called Corinne Maier. She wrote an honest book No Kid: 40 Reasons Not to Have Children. She says this:

If I hadn’t had children, I would be touring the world with the money I made with my books. Instead of that I am forced to stay at home, to serve meals, to get up at 7am every day, to go over idiotic lessons, and to put the washing machine on. All that for two children who treat me like their maidservant. Certain days I regret having had them – and I dare to say it.

Corinne Maier sounds like a petulant selfish child, but she is at least honest. And saying what others are too ashamed to admit. But we have to acknowledge that children affect every part of your life. During those early weeks, months and years, it’s very easy to forget that what you have, the baby in your arms, is a blessing. Now, our task is made a little easier at times God made babies cute. Or at least made your baby cute to you. But relying on cuteness might get you through a few hours of daylight. At 3am, when your screaming baby needs changing and feeding at the same time and you’ve not slept in days, you need more than ‘cute’. You need truth.

So we need to remember Psalm 127. v3-5 say this:

3 Sons are a heritage from the LORD,
children a reward from him.
4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one's youth.
5 Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their enemies in the gate.

So children are a reward from the Lord. They’re a sign of favour and blessing. Moreover (v4), it’s good to have children when you are young. Many of us make a grave error by going to the other extreme by waiting and waiting and waiting. We need to ask ourselves – what are we waiting for? And have we really understood that children are a gift? Speaking personally, I regret waiting as long as I did. And finally we see in v5 that a house full of kids is great blessing.

What stops us from having children earlier in our marriages? Our greatest worries are probably personal (I have so much to achieve!) and financial (How will we afford it?). But if children are a blessing, and numerous children a great blessing, do we think that God will frustrate our ambitions and make us starve as a family? Or are we listening to the serpent who’s trying to convince us that God isn’t as good or as kind or as generous as we would like to think and is holding something back from us? Remember, the serpent loses. The serpent is crushed.

Dealing with selfishness
So how can babies be a blessing? Because they help us become like Christ. They show us how selfish we are, how much we need a saviour and how much we need to change. Steve Farrar, in his book ‘Point Man’ writes this:

God begins dealing with your own selfishness by giving you someone to care for who is infinitely more selfish than you… someone to serve who has zero interest in serving [you]…. You’ll find yourself in the bathroom at two in the morning with the shower going full blast. You, however, won’t be in the shower. You’ll be sitting on the toilet seat holding your little girl who has the croup since the only thing that will break it up is plenty of hot steam… you sit there and love her and try to remember what it was like to sleep eight hours straight… those afflicted by great selfishness, like myself, will find that as the years go by, God will use your children to chip away at that selfishness clogging your life. Before long, you’ll find yourself doing things for other people you never thought possible. That’s what the Bible refers to as spiritual growth.

Birth hurts. And God caused it to hurt. But before he gave pain and punishment, he made a promise to take that curse on himself so that we can become like him. And one of that ways that happens is to receiving the blessing of children, so that we can become more like his Son, Jesus Christ.

Dumbing Us Down

I mentioned a little while ago that I've been reading Dumbing us Down by John Taylor Gatto - a broadside attack on American state education. It's an extraordinary piece of writing.

In one chapter, he advances the argument that, as a school teacher, he teaches confusion. Little bits of unrelated knowledge in small chunks, randomly assorted and of no obvious use. He says humans need meaning, not disconnected facts. Then on page 4, he ends that section with this:

I teach the unrelating of everything, an infinite fragmentation the opposite of cohesion; what I do is more related to television programming than to making a scheme of order. In a world where home is only a ghost because both parents work, or because of too many moves or too many job changes or too much ambition, or because something else has left everybody too confused to maintain a family relation, I teach students how to accept confusion as their destiny. That's the first lesson I teach.

He goes on to say that he teaches, by nature of his job, Class Position, Indifference, Emotional Dependency and Intellectual Dependency. During the latter point, he says this:

Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends upon this lesson being learned. Think of what might fall apart if children weren't trained to be dependent: the social services could hardly survive - they would vanish, I think, into the recent historical limbo out of which they arose. Counsellors and therapists would look in horror as the supply of psychic invalids vanished...

It's a great piece of work. Well worth getting a copy. And reading it.

Bletchley Appeal

I posted something on the subject of Bletchley Park here.

100 pages or fewer

I've just read a detective novel by Michael Innes called 'Death at the President's Lodging' - the detective is called Appleby, who's rather a pleasing character. The action takes place in an Oxbridge-type college called St Anthony's and we spend the novel wondering which academic did in the College Presidenl. It's all in the 1930s (when the book was written). The novel is quite good, but all the better for being short. It gets on with it. It's not written tersely, but it's not overwritten either.

I'm now reading two works of non-fiction - one is an extended essay by CS Lewis called An Experiment in Criticism. In it Lewis ponders how we can say any piece of art is any good or not. One powerful theme so far is that we can consider a piece of art is good because it reminds us of good things. Without the work itself being any good. It's a fascinating, well-argued piece of work. And it's short.

The other book, Dumbing us Down, is a broadside attack on state education - in particular America state education. The writer is not a Christian. He has been a teacher for thirty years. And he gives curriculum-based schooling both sawn-off barrels. It's a collection of essays and speeches, and it's a terrific read. And only a hundred pages. And about twenty of those are introductions by other people to pad it out. (More on the book another time. It's blistering).

There is a virtue in being concise. It is a craft worth honing - finding an idea, expressing clearly and then moving on. That is partly what I've been learning through bloggging. Saying something of interest in 500 words or so. One simpy doesn't want to read more than that on a screen. (When I encounter longer works online, I normally print them out.) My point is clearly this - to have a point, state it and stop.

How many times has one read a work - especially non-fiction - and felt that everything useful has been said in the first 100 pages? This was something I experienced with both 'Guns, Germans and Steel' by Jared Diamond and 'The Black Swan' by, er, that other bloke. The points were made clearly and well - and the rest of the books were just examples. Yes, one needs evidence to persuade your reader, but if they don't believe you after three examples, they won't believe you after seven.

I'd imagine that publishers have a problem charging £7.99+ for a hundred pages. It would appear, then, that they do have a conscience (they hide it well, clearly). In fact, the enjoy of a book would go up, not down, if books were more concise. When writing my novel, I knew that it had to be 80,000 words, regardless of whether that length is a good one for the story being told.

The same is true of television. Very rarely is a one hour documentary have an hour's worth of interest. It's normally 27 minutes, padded out to 50 minutes, and then broken up with commercials. The illusion is then given that the documentary has more content than it actually does. It's infuriating.

It's no coincidence that American drama and comedy works very well on CD. House, MD, which is a favourite at the moment, comes in at 42 minutes. My Name is Earl, another treat, is 21 minutes. They're very well written, with not a word wasted. Can we really say that of British-made programmes?

So keep it brief. That's my thought for this blog post. So I had better stop.

Wilson in London

Annoyingly, I can't make it to this but, boy, would I love to go:

Family Conference 13th-14th February 2009

Douglas Wilson
Saturday 14th February 2009
Venue: The Welsh Chapel, Freston Gardens, Cockfosters, London. EN4 9LX (Nearest tube is Cockfosters - 7 mins walk)

"The Future of Children and Children of the Future."
A conference on hope and the family. Four Lectures & Question Time.

With Nancy Wilson on The Christian Home, a special session for women.

Looks terrific. More here.

The Blank Page

On Saturday, I'm hosting a conference. It's the Co-Mission Media Forum - an event for artists, musicians, writers, film-makers and all kinds of media folk in Co-Mission Churches to come and hear teaching on how the Bible informs the work of creatives. Essentially, I have organised the type of event that I would like to attend but doesn't currently exist. But now it does - and it seems surprising that nothing like this has existed before, or at least recently, since there seems to some considerable demand for it. With zero advertising, word of mouth and some Facebooking, about 100 people will be attending, with perhaps over a half coming from outside the Co-Mission Church network.

At the start of the conference, I'll have to stand up and say hello, welcome everyone and give people their bearings. And then talk very briefly about the theme of the conference: Content. One may spot a pleasing double-meaning there. It's worth asking if we are content, or happy, in the creative business? But my main reason for choosing the theme is that it makes us think about what we're doing and why we're doing it? Does it make any difference what we paint? How cares what stories we tell? Are we just trying to earn a living - which is hard enough - or do something more? I might say something along these lines:

The Blank Page
"The legendary notebook of Hemingway, Picasso and Chatwin." Those are the words printed on every Moleskine notebook. Maybe you have one. Maybe you're a bit obsessive about it. (In which case, you probably also own a Macbook.) A blank Moleskine notebook is a thing of beauty. It almost seems a shame to write in it. But eventually you do. For a start, it's too expensive to not use. But also, we like to think of ourselves as following in the footsteps of Hemingway and Picasso, jotting down a thought, a note or a picture on a new blank page.

It seems that one of the things that unites us here today at this conference is how we approach the blank page. Later, Ally Gordon will be giving some of us a session on The Blank Canvas and will look at this in more detail. But it seems to me that most people are terrified of a blank page. They don't know what to write. They don't know where to start. But we are people who are happier with a blank page than most. Blank pages are exciting. They mean new projects. New ideas. New possibilities.

But even if we're faced with a blank page, we're starting out with more than that because we're going to that page with something. We're opening the book to start writing because we have an idea in mind. A sketch. A story. A design. We've noticed something that we want to record. We've made a connection and we want to remember it. We've thought of a play and we want to write down just the basic component parts. And then maybe elaborate on that as we do so.

Who guides us as we do that? Who do we listen to as we shape those ideas as we work them into something interesting, original or useful? Is it the spirit of Hemingway and Picasso? Do we have a romanticised view of them in our heads, and we're trying to think what the great creatives have done before us? Do we yearn for their fame and hope that maybe this is our Guernica? Or our own For Whom the Bell Tolls? Do we envy their talent and ability? Their style and the fact that they had one? In fact, they invented one.

If we're Christians, though, we have something more. Far more. Although we may have forgotten this. The truth is that we may be more inspired by the great creatives than The True Creator. The one who made all things, who made Picasso and Hemingway. Our notebooks. Our pens. Our hands. He put the thoughts in our heads and gave us the skills to do something with them. He put us here to work with his creation, to shape it and mould for his sake and the sake of others - to build them up and to challenge them; to surprise them and delight them. And Him.

The reality is that a blank page is not truly blank. Every authentic story we begin to write down fits somewhere into the big story, the story of the creation, redemption and renewal of this world. When we create works of art, we are, to some extent, recreating from the raw materials God has given us - not just physical things like clay and wood; but timeless truths like justice, forgiveness and mercy. And he's given us his Son, Jesus Christ. The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Are we just to tell that story? Or do we retell the stories that Jesus told? How do we go about taking the ideas from our notebooks and do something with them? And how do we provide content by saying something that hasn't been said before? Or at least say it in a way that is new, or interesting? And in a way that brings us artistic satisfaction or contentment? How can we draw on God's Spirit at work within us to do what Hemingway and Picasso did before us? I pray that today, through His Word and as we meet and encourage each other, we'll at least begin to find out.


Comments welcome.

Minister says 'Thank you'. Why?

This morning, I heard an interview on the radio with a government minister who was keen on spending lots of money we don't have on putting a place in every town that deals with dementia - especially for the elderly. I do not mean to make light of the problem of dementia, since living and caring for someone with that condition must be exhausting and thankless. But it interested me that, when asked what the minister had to say to those very tired from caring for people with dementia, he said that, speaking on behalf of the government, 'Thank you'.

What exactly was he doing there? Was he assuming that it is the government's duty to care, and that, where they can't do it (which is in most places), they have to rely on volunteers. So they need thanking? This is a very worrying sign, reinforced by the feedback loop of government and mass-media. The cradle-to-grave utopia of total government care is the assumption. I, as an British taxpayer, should not have to care for anyone. Because it's not my job or duty. I earn, the money is taken from me in the form of taxation and then spent by government agencies on what appears to be 'care'. It isn't care. It's targetted spending.

So when I do decide to care, I expect some gratitude. Who from? The government? Please can we stop this sensless attribution of god-like powers to extremely limited, flawed and ordinary politicians. It will not end well. The government cannot love you. And love is what we need. Not targetted government spending.

The Process of Writing Sitcom

You may be curious about how one goes about writing episodes of situation comedy. Today is the day I start writing the first episode of Series 3 of Hut 33 for BBC Radio 4 (to be recorded sometime over the summer). If so, I've written about it on the Hut 33 blog here.

If this is of no interest to you, why not have a go at today's Daily Telegraph cryptic crossword. I've put up some hints and tips on today's here.

Alternative, try out Ros's splendid blog here.

Now, I really ought to get on with some paid work.

Team America: World Police

Nearly five years after its release, I finally managed to get round to seeing Team America: World Police.

The film was not easy to watch. It goes out of its way to offend and push everything to its limit. But that is also the strength of the film - it packs a powerful satirical punch.

The overall message of the film seems to be 'A plague on both your houses'. The notion that America can clumsy and tactlessly police the world with a jingoistic fervour is attacked without mercy. The film opens with the Team attempting to avert a terrorist threat in Paris - and in the process the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre are completely destroyed (and Team America still give each other high-fives). What is interesting about this angle is also the fact that George W Bush and the Whitehouse are not mentioned. Team America seem to operate on their own, in secret and unchecked. In one sense, the film earns some respect by avoiding such an obvious and easy political target - to imply that the jingoistic, destrutive policy is all from one man, George W Bush. Such an assertion is utterly absurd, but one that it regularly trotted out by the press, comedians and people in the pub.

But having avoided easy anti-Bush jokes, the film makes dozens of unnecessary and frequently vile sex jokes which are, at best, childish - and at worst thoroughly unpleasant. The baseness of the film made it very hard to watch, because it's relentless in its vulgarity, designed to appeal to the 15-year-old in all of us. For many, these jokes will make the film unpalatable - which is a shame given its satirical strength.

Earlier I said that this film was an invocation of a plague on both houses. One house is the 'Team America/Cultural imperialists'. The other house is the Hollywood politicals, like Baldwin, Robbins and co. Here, the writers are equally vicious about the liberal preaching that movie stars like to do - and how often they end up speaking out on the side of vile, oppressive dictators like Kim Jong Il. Using fame gained from pretending to be someone else on screen for millions of dollars doth not a politician make. So I was very pleased to see this group satirised as heavily as the jinogists.

But again, the writers couldn't resist a petty joke, giving them the acronym 'F.A.G.' (Film Actors Guild). Ha. It's like calling them gay? In one sense, the film does this kind of thing in order to undermine itself - so that no-one can accuse them taking themselves too seriously. This must be intentional, since they also do this self-deprecation with the puppetry (did I mention they were all puppets?). Sometimes, they highlight the limitations of the puppetry by showing how badly and unconvincingly the puppets walks, even though sometimes, the puppetry is very skillful and clever.

The puppetry element has one upside - the highly charged sexual content is, to some extent, offset. There is very little visual titillation which, given how graphic it can be, is a great relief.

So, would I recommend this film to a Christian? Well, it depends which Christian you're talking about, and why I'd be recommending it. To some, yes. To others, no. Should it be shown in a church context for group discussion? Probably not. Could I recommend it to a Christian friend or colleague who would be interested in the satirical angles and unimpressed by the swearing and sex - quite possibly. Should Christians be watching this sort of film? Yes. Some should. But it's not for all. Is this the sort of film that Christians should be making? If you take out the unnecessary parts, definitely yes. It's original, well-put together, entertaining - and makes it's point with savage force, alongside creativity, comedy and craft. This is no bad thing, even if, in this case, it's a mixed bag.