"Dreams and memories"

'Until last autumn Arthur was still tending his garden'

We said goodbye to Arthur last Thursday. Linda arranged the time and place and with our approval decided on a wicker coffin. Richard and I, with the funeral people’s bearers, helped carry it into the chapel at Perry Barr. Two candles burned beside it. Lin asked me to pick a mix of bluebells from our garden; blue, gentle pink and white like those she'd picked with him on Cannock Chase. She laid them on her dad's coffin as we arrived for the funeral. Music was chosen by Lin - Tosselli's Serenade sung by Perry Como - a favourite of Dorothy’s; played as we'd sat down. I went to a small lectern:

Welcome - family, John, Leslie, Liz, Emma, Aunt Barbara, her daughter Janis and her daughter Michaela, Ann and John, Sylvia and Trevor.
“It’s a bit black over Bill’s mum’s” - and as Arthur would also say, if we asked him now, ‘Today’s Thursday – all day’. We knew Arthur would leave few instructions in the matter of his death. He said in his will he wanted to be cremated, so apart from that purpose here, we’re making this up as we go along.
I thank the staff here, Pam and Carl, and Melanie and Angela of Thomas Hadley for their professionalism in helping us with this quick farewell. And Richard, my son, for making the Service card.

This…is not Arthur, not husband, not Dad nor Grandpa or great Granpa.
These small fragile remains - on which we repose our care and grief – are not Arthur. He’s left us - in the twinkling of an eye. His last words to me “Sorry to be such a nuisance, Simon”.
And Amy said “Gramps, 3 weeks ago we were sat in the carvery listening to the story about you getting drunk and having to be collected from the police station. Last week I saw you in hospital but I don't think you really knew who I was...now you're gone. In some ways I'm thankful that your demise was as swift and unsuffering as it has been. Goodnight Gramps the most hard working, good sense of humoured and loving grandad a girl could have.”
And didn’t Oliver say, in his budding toddler’s knowledge, from which we half hope to protect him, say ‘great grandpa’s a skelington’?
We here may hold a coffin here for a little while, but our Arthur is not his remains.
Even Arthur – for all the precious care and love Dot, his wife of 70 years who cannot be with us, and Linda his beloved daughter, especially, have bestowed on him in these last years – had no time for what lies here.  He might even have said he felt "like a sack o muck tied up ugly".
So don’t remember this as dad, or grandpa or Arthur. What we now say farewell to is a symbol, a means – time-worn, traditional, and valued - for lament, for grief and tears (if Lin will allow those). All things that, in time, should not be any great part - for all our present feelings - of the treasured memories we’ll share, and his knowledge and the indelible codes which Linda, Amy, Richard, Hannah and Oliver carry in their DNA. That goes on.
Let’s say goodbye to him now. Let’s be as sturdy and stoic as Arthur would expect us to be. It’s not his death that matters in the end. It’s his good life we’ll take away from here.

Then I pressed a button I’d been shown by Pam at the Crem, keeping my finger on it as light green curtains closed and everyone stood and the song came again. Then Lin and I led people out
“Thank you Simon” she said ‘that was good”.
I couldn’t have asked for a sweeter compliment
We gathered and chatted a while in the car park then headed for a pub lunch on a long table at Toby’s Carvery. No photos were taken. That felt right.
“You left out my name” said Liz, not annoyed
“You’re family, Liz”
Several said how pleased they were that Arthur's funeral had been so simple.
“You said almost the same at Grandma’s funeral” said Richard
“True. It was what I thought then and what I think now”
“A good cut and paste job” he smiled.
"My life" I thought.
But Lin was child-minding outside the chapel when we said goodbye to my mum in Scotland nearly four years ago. She hadn't heard me speak then. I wanted her approval. It was a good arrangement.

Note: Lin was unsure where Arthur worked as a miner. Only recently we've learned that it was at West Cannock No 5 Colliery that Arthur was employed

Green kryptonite

What a difference a day makes. Over 24 little hours I stayed up late. Early Tuesday Lin drove me to Digbeth Coach station from where the 777 service got me from Birmingham to Luton Airport by 4.30. After being searched with everyone else, I wandered the familiar concourse, had a coffee and read David Thomas’ Ostland. In rain at dawn I board a plane that flies an almost straight course south-east for 1800 kilometres. In the last minutes of an unturbulent flight I slid from the aisle over two empty seats to peer down on the dark Albanian mountains above Saranda...

...merging into Butrint and the gentler heights of mainland Greece, familiar contours, the blue below scratched by an island boat for Igoumenitsa.

Then a steep curve back on ourselves, for the run in to Kapodistria up the east coast of Corfu, a glimpse of the beautiful Manessi mansion and church, San Stephano...

... hidden by an outcrop of rock from sight of the multi-storied skeleton next door - an hotel offered to a friend years ago for a knock-down price. Meeting the hopeful vendor in different circumstances, my friend reminded him he’d offered to sell 'the unfinished' project at 'a bargain'.
“Not a bargain, my friend, I was trying to sell you a problem!”
In minutes I’m landed, luggage collected, in a hire car driving familiar roads north to the village. The humming seems continuous – coach, airport, plane, car. I stopped at Kaziani to shop for milk and butter and food for the next few days. Then the car’s parked on Democracy Street; my bags unloaded and carried down the 13 steps and into the house. The humming becomes the buzzing of innumerable bees; though I’m reassured the water’s turned on, as, too, the electricity. The fridge hums. Relaxing with the french windows open I read my book sipping a cup of tea. A pair of chattering swallows enter the room, perch for a minute on the chandelier above my head, noisily debating the definition of inside and outside before leaving for outside where two garden trees are weighted with lemons, our orange rich with blossom, and the landscape, olive groves over many gentle slopes, stippled with full blossoming Kokykias trees της κοκυκιάς, with a strip of the bluest sea between me and the hazy shores of mother Greece.

As ever I’m greeted in the street. I explain why I’m here on my own but the news of my father-in-law’s death on 5th April and why Lin has stayed in England is already known; or I hear it being explained to others.
“You must go. I’m looking forward to having the house to myself” said Lin “You’ve got to pay our property tax and submit our no-earnings return to the tax office.”
Next day I meet Eleni P. Parking by the old port I cycle through town to the office of our accountant, off Alexandros Street. Eleni does the paperwork on-line. I must come back to the office early on Thursday to sign at the Corfu Tax Office declaring she represents me.
I find a leather worker in the city centre who mends the metal catch on my Leatherman holster in 30 seconds for €1.50. I buy a needed button, needle, needle-threader and thread from a small shop off San Rocco Square.
In the meantime I’m getting news. Everyone’s getting older. Someone must have an operation; another is most unexpectedly in depression; another has dementia; the toddlers as it seemed when we first came to Ano Korakiana are growing into colts and fillies, quieter with all that’s going on inside, more serious. It's so good to have the Greek double kiss, with a pause between for a warm and unembarrassed hug.
Having ticked a good few ‘to do’ boxes by evening, I took my olive stick with the deer-foot handle, an early gift from Mark, and headed uphill through Venetia and on up the hairpin bends to St Isadoras, the small church on one bend of the zig-zag ascent to Sokraki, over the crags above Ano Korakiana.

I have the place to myself and am regretting I forgot to bring a candle for Dorothy, my mum-in-law, in the same Sandwell hospital where Arthur passed away and Lin and I arrived minutes after and saw his body and went to pass the news to Dot, a ward away, helped by a doctor called Jeremy.
It wasn’t until, instead of saying “Do you want to see him?' which we all did, I said, instead, ‘Would you like to see Arthur’s body?”
Then she wept. Arthur was 98. He and Dot have been married 70 years. St Isadoras is tiny. I can stand in there, in its dim cool interior but hardly turn in any of its three spaces. A wick burns in oil by a small window. The silence is palpable. It is a serene place, freighted with every kind of sweetness a building can hold; memories too of previous visits alone and with Lin and with the family. I went onto the broad terrace perched on the same rock as the church and gazed over the island’s centre towards the central mountains and the sea and the forts of the city and – a dot – the outline of Pontikonisi beyond Kanoni and the airport where I’d arrived six hours before. I thought I heard womens’ voices coming up the hill; Anna and Angeliki Metallinos – daughter-in-law and grand-daughter of the laic sculptor. I was so delighted to greet them and they me – and in this sacred place, still Tuesday.
I told my news and why I was here alone. Mother and daughter prayed a while and Anna, renewed the floating wick on the oil. So I didn’t need a candle. We walked back down to Ano Korakiana together, Anna collecting from the verges a plant with a light blue flower to make a tea that’s good for the stomach. Above Venetia their car was parked.
“Can we give you a lift?” asked `Angeliki who’d been translating our chat to her mum. She’d been asking me about Arthur and what I would say at his funeral on 5th May.
** **** **** **
On my second night in the house I awoke with a stomach ache and nausea. Going downstairs I was sick several times. I returned to bed and tried to sleep but after an hour I had to go downstairs again to be sick again. I have always been so healthy, it always surprises me to be weakened by a sudden illness. I suspect I ate too much of my own cooking the night before while watching Bridge of Spies. I’d promised to go into town to the tax office in the morning. Getting myself up, I thought of what happens to Superman when he comes into contact with that toxic mineral from his home planet. My folding bicycle suddenly weighed so much. Every step was draining. I was thirsty without wanting much to drink, just a sip to wet my lips and mouth. Dehydrated. Having parked and cycled into Alexandros I made the excuse to Eleni that I’d had too much to drink the night before. Her colleague Georgia walked me to the tax office, stopping now and then to make sure I was keeping up, as I would do, slightly frustrated with Arthur, in his last months. She found me a seat for the hour long wait in the grey beige corridor of Corfu bureaucracy, as like a vigorous West End comedy, people exited and entered left, right and centre, in and out and back and forth between different doors, some employees, some clients, with no sense of a queue or sequence, but all polite. Georgia chatted cheerfully to people she knew. I tried to snooze and over and over licked my lips; a fool, I’d not bought a small bottle of water to sip. At last the business was done, and I had a signed and stamped piece of paper. I coasted downhill on Theotoki stopping to enjoy a strawberry sorbet and sip more water.

In town - errands on my trusty Brompton

Back at Democracy Street where, like a lizard, instead of shifting clothes, I shuffled carefully between places to relax that were neither too cool nor too hot; the balcony under an umbrella, the sitting room near a window, our bedroom, getting into to bed at dusk, waking up and shifting to night clothes around midnight, and, no longer thirsty, sleeping through to five in the morning when I felt up to a mug of tea and two slices of buttered toast, sensing strength recovering. By morning proper I was having a shower, doing a load of washing that would dry swiftly in a warm breeze from the east, starting to tidy the garden, clipping back the bougainvillea and other spreading greenery, hanging a tarp beneath the balcony to protect the veranda from rain; phoning Dave to get Summersong craned from her berth so she can be scrubbed and anti-fouled and put back in the water for when the family come in a week – but without Lin I fear.  She’s caring for Dorothy, her bereaved mum.

Arthur Reynolds, miner, - Dorothy Bentley, munitions worker: their wedding at St James' Church, Norton Canes, 8th Sept 1945

A greenhouse

Every morning. Rain. Grey clouds and rain and gusting wind. This grisly weather has been going on since we came back to England seven weeks ago. Our plane took us away from daily blue skies, blue seas, gentle breezes; warmth that had lasted longer than usual, even in Greece.

November dawn in Corfu

A few nights before we left we'd walked down to Sally's stables below Ano Korakiana to stand around a fierce fire, sparks spiralling into the dark.

We sat with friends around a large grilling rack  - 5 feet across - on which we'd brought meat to cook - chicken, village sausages, liver, pork, souvlaki; beside the grill, trestle tables of bread, salads and drink. Well fed, we gathered round the fire. When its first fierce heat dispersed. Some of us gathered more wood from a loose heap some yards away, braving the heat to push large palm logs to smoulder further into the fire. Lin and I walked home along the Ano-Kato road, climbing steeper alleyways and steps to home on Democracy Street.
*** *** ***
To stop having to grow seedlings from retailers and to extend the growing season and perhaps grow what will not survive wholly out of doors I'd like a greenhouse - a good one, wood not plastic or metal.

Preloved ~ Details 

Description: one eight foot x eight foot Canadian western red cedarwood green house, with one eight foot shelf and one eight foot staging, having concrete plinths.
in reasonable condition one roof panel needs repairing. all dismantled awaiting collection.
I have the original erection details and parts list. buyer to collect and pay cash price of two hundred and seventy five pounds, to buy new approx. twenty eight hundred pounds.

Before I can put up a greenhouse on Plot 14 I need four tanalised rail sleepers on which it can sit. My after-Christmas sally to a vast builder's yard in Wolverhampton, Carvers, using Lin's sat-nav I ended up in a cul-de-sac - a fragment of narrow Littler Street severed by city centre redevelopment - gazing through the drizzle at my destination beyond a dual carriageway that took 15 minutes to get across, via successive traffic lights and roundabouts. Through check-points, two lads in yellow wet suits lifted a 3 metre x 120mm X 240mm beam onto the roof of the HHH* van after struggling to get more than three inside. The rain sweeps across the yard - still part cobbled, old Littler Street. I pay at the timber office and head back by wet windy motorway to Birmingham...

...to unload the heavy wood on plot 14, beside to the greenhouse pieces Winnie and I had collected from a seller in Halesowen who'd advertised a 20 year old 8' x 8' Alton Amateur Greenhouse for £275 (including spare parts, concrete base, instructions, disassembled ready to collect) on Preloved. New it would have cost over £2000.

John Buckley, vendor, sees Winnie securing the largest greenhouse panel for transport to plot 14

Feeling the wind as it hurled itself across the allotments, having wrecked structures all over the site I changed my mind about siting the greenhouse at the top of the plot.

"Behind the fruit cage" I said to Winnie "It'll be protected from a lot of wind there"
"No. That'll get over shaded in summer. Why not where you've had the Jerusalem Artichoke forest front and right of the shed?"

Fixings

Now it's a matter of studying instructions, getting any extra spare parts needed, solving a complicated puzzle, laying firm level foundations; getting the greenhouse put together and used.

*used for personal work with HHH committee permission, fuel paid for.
*** *** ***
Notwithstanding Andrew's and Judy's Christmas card...

...my memory of this Christmas? Amy's best friend, Liz and her baby son, Henry and four generations of us at table on Boxing Day, the oldest, Arthur, saved from a 'pie' in the face - a game brought to the table by my son, Richard - followed by me, who gets a squirty cream splat, to the laughter of all - loudest from my three and a half year old grandson, Oliver. Dorothy, his great grandma, my mother-in-law, more interested in a photo album of her grand-daughter's wedding to Guy.

...and seeing this Alex, who lives with her family in France near the border with Spain, shared this with the message "Simon! Where you lead the dog world follows"

...and another memory of Christmas, just before Amy, Richard, Oliver, Hannah and I went to Lichfield - Richard and I by train from the new New Street Station embedded in the new Grand Central Development of Birmingham, which I like, not least for our new reflections...

Path from The Bull Ring to  Stephenson Street via the facade of  New Street Station under construction ~ 4th July 2015

... in the once pebble-dashed cliff that fronted the ugliest concrete warren of a rail station in Europe, which pleases Oliver gazing up at an big selfie in the stainless steel reflections of Alejandro Zaera-Polo's and Maider Llaguno's construction.

Lichfield offered us a small town with easy enough ways to get about and know where we were, but few finds when it came to buying Christmas presents - even from charity shops. Best places were pound shops filled from China.
I said to Richard "I wish we could have a drama series about life in Yiwu or any of the thousand and one Chinese factory estates producing all this stuff for every corner of the rest of the world!"
It was good to be in company with family, with Liz and her new son Henry James joining us for afternoon tea in the Tudor of Lichfield.

Richard, Hannah, Oliver and Amy in Bore Street, Lichfield

A lull in the weather ended. From mid-afternoon rain and wind advanced from the west.
"You take Oliver home?" asked Amy "Guy'll collect him tonight"
I knew she wanted time to chat with Liz.
"Gladly"
Richard and I walked back through wet streets to what must once have been an attractive railway station for the city. Despite the wet and the chill the waiting room was closed. I enquired at the ticket office.
"It's been urinated all over" grumbled the man behind the glass, almost resenting us for asking.
"Might have helped if the station toilets hadn't been closed" muttered Richard as we stood on the windy platform.
In 45 minutes we're back in Birmingham. During the journey Ollie had asked to go to the lavatory which was not only available but surprisingly clean. Thank goodness. Richard headed home on foot. I and Oliver walked to a bus stop on Station Street; the 16 bus pleasingly re-routed in only the last few months to a stop opposite the Old Repertory Theatre, a matter of hardly 50 yards from lifts into the new concourse. Oliver, holding tight, climbs to the top deck to sit at the very front where, as the bus stutters stop-start, through packed traffic moving below walking pace until at last we're past the St Chads Queensway lights heading out of the city centre down Old Snow Hill Street. He entertains himself and me drawing a mural in the condensation of the bus window...

Ollie top deck front on the 16 bus

...giving commentary as he draws. A sweeping curve on the right with small dots is "Corfu - a beach" I take it "the dots are people?"
"Yes" he says
I'm unsure how much we are inventing in his tracing.
**** ****
In Ano Korakiana...Η Χριστουγεννιάτικη Συναυλία της Φιλαρμονικής μας πραγματοποιήθηκε την Τετάρτη 30 Δεκεμβρίου 2015 στην εκκλησία του Άη-Γιώργη.Πολύ καλή η εμφάνιση των μικρών «συνόλων», της μπαντίνας με τη συμμετοχή αρκετών μικρών μουσικών και φυσικά της μπάντας, υπό τη διεύθυνση του Κώστα Ζερβόπουλου, ο οποίος μαζί με τον Πρόεδρο της Φιλαρμονικής Γιώργο Μεταλληνό προλόγισαν την εκδήλωση με αναφορές στο μήνυμα των εορτών και την προσπάθεια των (ιδιαίτερα των μικρών) μουσικών.

The Philharmonia's Christmas Concert in St.George's Church, Ano Korakiana

Trouble in Newtown

We made up some sandwiches for Amy and I took them down to her on six hour cordon duty after a shooting in Newtown on Friday evening. Lin had put her some cola in a little wine bottle we'd got on a flight, "Dad! I can't be seen drinking from that." I went off to the local shops at Newtown and got her a coke.
It looks as if gun crime is on the increase again after a lull with a linked shooting in Bilston. Mark Cowan and Laura Corcoran wrote in the Birmingham Evening Mail last Wednesday - before this incident:

'that the police and the council had been hoping to rely on civil injunctions to ban so-called 'nominals' (people about whom information is kept on files shared between agencies) from city streets or hanging around with each other in a novel way of ending tit-for-tat gang violence.'

Police and the council were hoping initial interim orders were having an impact.

'But two months ago, the Birmingham Mail revealed the project had hit a snag after a High Court judge dismissed an application for the first full ground-breaking injunctions in January.
West Midlands Assistant Chief Constable Suzette Davenport told a commission on gun and knife crime (video) that firearms offences had started to climb since January. "Having been very successful at the end of last year where the number of gang-related shootings were reduced, since January those figures have gone back up," she said. The figures include gun-related incidents and street robberies. Mr (sic) Davenport later stressed the number of incidents had not reached the same levels as before the operation, codenamed Malva, was launched last summer.
The gun crime setback emerged as Mr Davenport gave evidence to the Channel 4 Street Weapons Commission, chaired by Cherie Booth QC, when it came to in Birmingham yesterday to hear evidence on what could be done to tackle the problem. While the use of injunctions under Section 222 of the Local Government Act 1972 to target gang members is a break from the traditional use of the legislation, which is normally used to target dodgy traders, the authorities are confident they are on firm ground. Birmingham City Council lawyers have lodged an appeal against the decision. Mr Davenport said it was ruled that so-called Section 222 injunctions could not be used they hoped to encourage Government to work on alternatives. She added: "I am hoping we can encourage the Government that if they do not feel Section 222s are appropriate, we can look at other things which can give us an element of control over these people so they are not shooting each other or innocent people in the community."'

E-mail: Simon. Thank you for your email and your kind comments on the story. Unfortunately, it would seem a production error resulted in a few key words being changed regarding the title of Suzette Davenport, who is obviously a woman. I shall raise the matter with the news editor later to try and find out what happened. Regards, Mark Cowan

Trigger points
On Tuesday morning we have a meeting arranged by Councillor Mahmood Hussain at the Parklands Housing office off Hamstead Road to try to hasten the promised playing fields and allotments on the site of the old Victoria Jubilee Allotments (VJA). In return for building on a good third of the site the developer contracted, on 13 May 2004, when planning permission was granted to build on the site, to use the remaining space to lay out 80 allotments which would be transferred to the City Council, to provide a toddlers' play area and associated open space, a play area for older children, to pay £150,800 towards open space improvements off-site, to lay out and transfer to the city council two playing pitches and a cricket square, a pavilion changing room facility and car parking, and 24 affordable housing units on the same site. The section 106 Agreement was completed on 23rd August 2004 and we've been assured by the Constituency Planning Officer, Alan Orr, that at the end of April 2008, 'no changes to the Agreement had been made.' (e-mail sent to Mark Jackson while we were in Greece, dated 30 April 08)

According to Alan Orr 'the required affordable houses have been provided. The developer (initially Westbury Homes, and now Charles Church) entered into a partnership with more than one Registered Social Landlord, to build affordable housing on the site, and there are now more than those required under the S106 Agreement.

Alan went on to say in his e-mail to my friend - and fellow campaigner - Mark Jackson:

that in respect of the other provisions of the 106 Agreement, it is 'common practice' to work to a number of 'triggers' (my italics) depending on the stage of the overall development or the housing element of the development. Thus, the provision of the allotments and the sports pitches is related to the occupation of 40 open market dwellings on the new housing development (but, guess what? '40 dwellings' does not include the 24 affordable housing units. Currently, the sports pitches, according to Alan, have been laid out 'but their transfer to the City awaits the completion of the changing room pavilion and associated car park.'

Alan believes the trigger point for the allotment provision 'has been, or is soon to be reached' and claimed to be arranging a meeting with representatives of Charles Church to ascertain their detailed timescales for the delivery of the sports pitches and allotments to the City Council.

'The provision of the tertiary (older children's) play area and associated open space is required within 6 months of the completion of the final residential unit of the housing development, and the sum of £25,000 towards the provision of a secondary play area (off-site) is to be paid on commencement of the laying out of the open space. The sum of £150,800 (to be used towards open space improvements in Handsworth Park) is to be paid by the developer on approval by the City Council of the works carried out to provide the allotments and sports pitches. '

There's much room for fudge and further prolonged delay, especially if Charles Church are not marketing these properties with any enthusiasm - and housing sales have slowed. I ran a check on Parklands in Handsworth and came up with nothing - though Midland Heart, one of the area's prominent Registered Social Landlords, has property for sale on the Parklands site. The collateral impact of playing fields, allotments and play areas in this area of city can help fight crime as surely as greater contentment can help people's health. I'll say as much at the meeting on Tuesday morning with the developer's representatives, ward councillors, Alan Orr and the chairman of Handsworth Cricket Club, Basil Hylton. We can only perservere.

* * *

I have had a phone chart with Paul, my stepfather's biographer, about the VJA after he pointed me towards a website on which he's doing podcasts about allotments - the Allotment Channel. He also pointed me towards another interesting site which I've linked to Democracy Street - Home Farmer. Narrowcasting works so well for important interests that aren't as yet mainstream.

* * *
I've been enjoying a variety of journeys to work in the Midlands this week - negotiating the canal between home and campus and taking the bus and tram on the way to Dudley on Friday. I got change for a tenner from the conductor on the Centro tram. "Gosh that's nice" I said to a chap older than me even as he handed me my change. "Like the old days" he said with a smile. I have the conviction that were the cost savings of single staffed buses and the disappearance of park keepers balanced against the cost of the harm done to urban civility by these so-called savings, the wages of those who provide stewardship of public space would have been amply justified. But you can cost putting out a fire. It's far trickier to cost stopping it happening in the first place. How do you measure and justify the tax bill for prevention and maintenance. I conjecture that rather as the Titanic disaster and the recent Asian tsunami produced almost immediate responses in early warning measures, regardless of cost, so the slow burn growth of public squalor in the wake of the widespread withdrawal of stewardship of public places, has taught us that if people are to return in large numbers to public transport, to parks and urban streets, they must be confident such spaces are afforded protection. Our learning is the product of a long slow decline, lasting over 40 years. It will take as long to recover, and in the meantime we have trickier lessons to learn - about how to ensure our inclination to acquisitiveness, or in the case of most of the world the need to have reliable food and shelter, while protecting and sustaining the Earth's diverse yet mutually supporting system of living things. We are just learning 'to wake from a 300 year old dream' and challenge the tragedy of the commons.

* * *
An exchange with my friend Jan about my talk in Tokyo:

Dear Jan. Just getting acclimatised to England again. Hope you're well. I'd appreciate your views on the talk I need to give in Tokyo to Japanese civil servants in June on 'how to ensure standardisation of services across local governments'. Yes, they want me to talk about that - not how to nurture local choice. Best S

Hi Simon. Good to hear from you. I've kept in touch via your blog. Regarding 'how to ensure standardisation of services across local government', it seems to me that Britain is the perfect example. Despite verbal utterances to the contrary this is exactly what the Government has tried to impose and with some success through: targets, national indicators, inspection regimes, intervention (e.g. Hull & Lincolnshire), ring-fenced funding, capping, 'naming & shaming', to mention but a few. The postcode lottery has been used as an excuse. In the present political climate where Conservatives and Liberals are the dominant forces at local level I can not see any significant decentralisation take place. In fact I think there will be further neutering of local democracy under the banner of local democracy. Sorry to be so pessimistic but I simply cannot see any meaningful 'place shaping' taking place in the foreseeable future other than rhetorically and tokenistic. Hope I am wrong! Best Jan

Dear Jan. I think much can occur in the informal space between legislation and politics. Humans are ingenious. What I have found fascinating from preparing this talk - hardly more than 30 minutes (with translation) - is that in Japan which certainly contains distinctively different areas, the idea of standardised services across the country is a matter of pride and their absence regarded as a problem to be put right quickly. Local choice is not high on the agenda. So I am unclear what this man's work involves.
And what am I to make of this - the local decentralisation law. Thanks for your response. I'm delighted you are taking a look at my blog. Best Simon

Simon. This is fascinating stuff. I suppose national cultures play an important role in all this. I think he is the equivalent of a local government minister in the national government. I also get a strong sense of local ADMINISTRATION being the most important element of decentralisation rather than local GOVERNMENT. I do think developments here since 1997 are interesting in terms of what localism now has become and what the drivers are. The content of Local Area Agreements are almost identical in every locality. The same goes for Community Strategies. Variations, as they exist , tend to be linguistic and in terms of impact and emphasis rather than substance. Everywhere you will see safer & stronger communities, healthier communities, sustainable communities, economic development, wellbeing of the vulnerable, being the priorities. The reason for this is that these are the national priorities upon which LAs are judged through CPA and other inspection regimes and their star rating determined. Also LAs can only access additional funding though performing well on national priorities (e.g. stretched targets). Decentralisation can never be absolute but the absence of powers to raise revenue for local priorities based on popular demand is a major obstacle to local democracy. I think the profiles of local councillors and turn-out in local elections tell their own story. Best Jan

Yes indeed, Jan. The core fact is that only 4.71 pence of every one of my tax pounds is paid directly to local government (I dug that out from Chris Game this morning). I know more is clawed back through grant - but with many many conditions as we all know. In Japan far more of people's tax yen are raised locally. Thanks for your other thoughts. All grist to my mill on this complex subject. S

Simon. Although I remain sceptical, perhaps in a paradoxical and perverse way the present circumstances may just be conducive to more meaningful decentralisation. Given the government's unpopularity they may throw caution the wind and be more inclined to pass powers downwards (it helps with the blame!!) although their track record is not good and I don't think it is in Gordon's nature to give up any powers. There's a Scottish bean-counter for you! It is more likely this debate will ebb and flow with changes hard won and substance difficult to achieve. 'Place Shaping' can only ultimately happen with more powers (of the positive kind, not spying on people's bins or surveying people for school catchment areas) and more revenue being collected locally. It means fundamental questions about policing, health, transport, development, being given much higher local determinants. There are dangers in too much power at local level e.g. Southern states of USA in 50s & 60s re race is a sobering lesson. Only federal intervention turned it around. The dark forces of local determination must somehow be curtailed by national government or counterbalancing forces locally; a real conundrum. Some real challenges for officers and members - local collusion vs professional engagement, corruption - moral & financial. You can see the Japanese anxiety. Best Jan

This is great, Thanks Jan. Yes I know the horror stories. The village can be a source of companionship and care and the locus of a lynch mob. Simon

Good luck with your trips to Australia and Japan. Keep writing your blog so I can keep up with what you are doing. Let's get together when you're back. Best Jan

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From Kalamos Books: A law extending a smoking ban in Turkey to most enclosed areas - including taxis, ferries and shopping malls - came into effect Monday 19 May. Outdoor smoking was also banned in locations such as stadiums and playgrounds. A ban on lighting up in bars, restaurants and coffeehouses will be implemented next year. Smoking is already barred on buses, airplanes and in larger offices.

Petition to save forests in Greece. The Save our forests and give our planet a chance Petition to The Greek Parliament,The United Nations,The European Union was created by and written by Konstantina Stafylaki (ambelos_village@yahoo.com).

One of the best issues of Carfree Times is just out - edited by Joel Crawford, author of Carfree Cities. There's a fascinating conversation with the traffic scientist Professor Hermann Knoflacher of Austria in this issue.
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On 17 May it was Arthur's 90th birthday, enjoyed at home with Dorothy in Bevan Lee Road in Cannock. Lin decorated the cake.