Val leaves

Just as I enjoy arrivals, so I dislike departures. I get a small knot in my stomach. Wednesday evening we were at the bus station below the New Fort well in time to see Val onto the overnight coach from Corfu to Athens after her fortnight in Ano Korakiana. Her seat - €42 - is in a sleek coach with air conditioning and WC which will take her via the ferry to Igoumenitsa on to Athens where a local bus takes her to Venizelos to catch an Emirates flight for the long haul back to Sydney and on to home in New Zealand.
To me the distances still seem immense, the shrinking of journeys that once took months by ship are a sleight. I walk down a square corrider, enter a tube, sit watching films, reading, drinking and eating from a tiny lap tray, get up now and then to stretch or use the tiny loo, hope neighboring passengers aren’t fat, flatulent or verbose (though I’ve had good chats on long journeys) and now and then glimpse clouds, mountains, deserts and oceans across a mighty wing, so beautiful I wonder at my detachment. I stare at roseate light on a cloudscape tumbling into dawn above the darkened sea thousands of metres below – the face of the deep as God decreed light at creation. Why no ‘oh!’ or ‘ah’? Why no charge of awe and delight?
I should have figured that out by now. It’s not just a matter of staring into the abyss and the abyss staring back. I read that book; not a few have it on a T-shirt. Gaze on a panorama of stunning beauty, and like the lion behind the bars in the zoo, the stunning beauty gazes back. Stare into the coffee and the coffee stares back – though so long as it’s a skirto I may catch a glimpse of my face. Same thing. This is Lawrence Durrell’s much quoted comment on the wondrous land (as Byron called it)

Other countries may offer you discoveries in manners or lore or landscape; Greece offers you something harder—the discovery of yourself. (early lines from Prospero's Cell)

True and not true. If the muse of a creative talent like Lawrence Durrell's were, instead of on Corfu, tp find its first exposure beneath Birmingham’s Spaghetti junction (a place I like, but it’ll do for a bathetic jump from the sublime to its opposite) he would have found something of himself inside an atrium of concrete pillars amid the roar of heavy trucks bumping over expansion joints.
I exit the tube on the other side of the world, but the in-between of air-travel is more forgettable than – whatever else I’ve forgotten. “I don’t like flying at all” Val said as the coach revved and the large baggage including a lamb carcase and a sack of potatoes were loaded in the big hold stacked with every colour pull-along bags of possessions. Pensive is the closest we get to grief at departure, since nowadays most goodbyes are less attached to the possibility you’ll never meet again. Lin and I should be seeing Val again in Dunedin in South Island in about seven weeks.
***
The other day in Handsworth our Richard, at my request, went to check our allotment and said he saw no sign of potatoes sprouting. Disappointing. Robin, with a plot across the path, emailed – knowing how to give my cage a small rattle - about the meeting on 11 September to set up a plotholders' committee for the VJA:

There were about 20 people at the meeting. I explained that if there were any problems then  you were the person to blame. And that that was why you'd avoided coming that morning.  Anyway, meanwhile Clive Birch explained the case for forming an association. We agreed and approved constitution and appointed Chairman Phil Rose (pl 6), Treasurer Pete (pl 60), Secretary Scylla (pl 17 next to mine). Other Cttee: Me, Joy p44, Sonia, Ruby Ubhi, Ken Brown (maybe more). Will open bank acct with Cooperative B. Arranged to meet again next sat 11 am…People were reckoning the gates should be kept locked at all times. The skip is going today/tomorrow and there won't be another one.  I may try to get over to clear off the junk from my plot, or not.

***
Mark told me that when walking Teal, the big black dog, the other day he’d come on a walk across tortoises mating. Teal sniffed and left them be, whereas he’s wont to pick up a tortoise in his soft mouth and bring it unharmed to Mark, who remarked that “They seemed to be enjoying themselves” and gave a lovely imitation of the tortoise on top with tongue hanging gently from his open mouth. Splendour in the grass.
His and Sally’s wide porchway, more a shaded alley between two front doors off Democracy Street, where we sometimes use their WiFi, has just been filled almost from top to bottom with hard wood for winter. The season advances and we shall bring cardigans for a BBQ on their balcony this evening.
***
Richard Pine asked me for some thoughts on the impact of the Kallicrates plan for the reorganisation of Greek Local Government. I told him first about a waking dream I had the other morning:

Dear Richard. Good to hear from you.

I had the strangest dream. I was at a party full of actors chatting to Dame Judy Dench who mentioned being in 'dancing at Luna'. I, pompously, said I'm sure it's 'Lunasa' She said 'No it fucking isn't' I said "Brian Friel told me' She said 'Then he's a fucking liar...or you are". I said "Oops it was Richard Pine". She obviously hadn't heard of you and I, anticipating her slandering you on my account, started to explain your qualifications to know how to pronounce 'Lughnasa'. She said "Oh" but clearly hadn't heard a word of my mumblings, and launched into a wonderful soliloquy from the play which I recalled in the dream but not later, especially as it ended with her getting into a car and there were no cars in the play but I, enthralled by her performance, thought "Ah! Now I see how it should have been acted." Then I woke up.

At last account I understand that following Kallicrates, Corfu is to have two new councils - Corfu Town, and then the rest of the island from Erikoussa to Paxos. (A Corfiot informant has told me this isn’t the case and that there will be one council for all Corfu, a separate one for Paxos; that the electorates of every current demos will vote three members to the new large council in Corfu Town plus five people from the business community in each old demos, and there will be a regional governor for all the Ionian islands, and that present but smaller offices will remain staffed to receive water rates and deal with local queries – so I must check).

A new politics will eventually emerge around that shift of scale but I doubt anyone knows what form it'll take, and so much will depend on who are the new senior managers, especially the relevant CEOs, as these are the people Papandreou hopes to accord greater power over present local politicians.

I can only comment in a generic way on Kallicrates because I understand so little about the details of Greek politics - even now. That said I'll make a few enquiries including having a chat with X (a nice wise man) and someone else I have in mind….

Papandreou is pressing a managerialist reform of Greek local government comparable to our 1972 local government reorganisation. The reform claims to be decentralising, giving more authority to regions with budget raising powers in the hands of non-elected technocrats, outside of Athens. But at ground level it is anything but devolutionary for the obvious reason that enormous reductions are being made in the number of local demos'. A lot of locally elected mayors are losing their jobs along with other local politicians.

It's all supposed to be in place for the November elections in Greece. The rationale for our Redcliffe-Maud reforms of the 70s was that the smaller councils in smaller communities had become corrupted by alliances between local politicians and local interests, and in bigger cities there were powerbases that challenged central government. T.Dan Smith was both corrupt and a local hero - one of 'our friends in the North, playing on the English predilection for Robin Hood type rogues.

The UK by the late 60s had become a land of far greater mobility. Changes in demography and economic trends demanded - it was felt - a local government system more amenable to strategic planning and economic regeneration that would ease big infrastructure projects especially housing, transport and land use planning. It's no coincidence that as our Planning and Land Act followed soon after UK LG reorganisation, Kallicrates coincides with the Hellenic Cadastral and the drive to strengthen Hellenic planning law.

In UK 'locality' was dissolving. Social scientists spoke, not always negatively, of place losing its meaning. Newcomers in a more fluid population were fretting at the experience of local patronage, clique government in the hands of the British equivalent of 'good old boys' and variations in local government services arising not from local democratic choice but becoming as it still is, a post code lottery, arising from a mix of inefficiency and the choices of those in charge. In the early 1970s you got a council house by approaching a councillor. This wasn't corruption it was normal procedure and allocation procedures favoured those in the know, friends and neighbours.

The irony is that these negatives are now things we in the UK are, minus the whiff of nepotism, trying to restore - community, sense of place, organic society. In the 70s these were seen by received opinion as parochialism, resistance to new managerial methods, general competency, even racism -  local interests banding together against change and more efficient and equitable ways of conducting local government. Our reforms in the 70s were about centralising in the name of efficiency. Local politicians and local politics were to be squeezed out by a new breed of local government manager, new competencies and techniques that had little to do with elected members or local democracy. That said the underlying intention - the long game - was to cleanse the stables with a view to its future restoration.

It's strange to see Greece going down the same road 35 years later, but you can see why. Do you trust your local government here? In Ano Korakiana we do when it comes to waste collection and filling holes in the road, but not when it comes to enforcing planning laws against rogue bulldozing of the countryside to lay more concrete (the suburbanisation of the olives), preventing flytipping, enforcing building regulation or regulating motorised traffic in and around the city, or easing congestion by getting more people to use better public transport, or setting up a process of serious consultation to shift to harvesting renewable energy - solar farms, wind farms, hydrogen fuel - as well as justifying significant hikes in local government taxes to pay for the information technology, the newer offices and new managers that accompany internal modernisation of local government and for external reforms in education, housing and social services. It's a slow burn revolution. The funny thing is that Tsoukalas has listed many of these things but as you point out lacks the political credibility essential to the success of his ideas.

Just when in UK and other 'advanced' democracies research shows the need for intimate overlap between the political and the managerial in order to address 'wicked' problems that do not fit into the agenda of any one local government profession, Greece is seeking to create an elite of politically neutral professionals who will not bow to the local political class. Just as Kallicrates is effectively dealing with the need to dissolve the corruption that has continued and is intimately linked to outdated ideas of place (especially the lies - I call them landscape porn - that will continue to be nurtured in Greek Tourist brochures 'gnarled old men sitting around tables in a shaded platea, fishermen caulking their caiques and tending their nets, Durrell's Greece of the 1930s from which he knew he was forever 'amputated' by more than just the war.' He with many are rightly inconsolable about this loss of enchantment as we are about the same thing in UK and indeed Lughnasa. The British literary classes invented that paradise taken up with such consequential enthusiasm by the rest of the rich world after WW2. Of course there are notable exceptions (regularly referred to in my blog) but Greeks in Greece are on an almost entirely different trajectory - only just beginning to develop and share an aesthetic of place, care for their environment, think about how to incorporate that into new economic drivers and new forms of government that can realise those novel ideas, turn them into policies that can actually be implemented and win votes.

Now we in UK are obsessed - rightly so - with trying to nurture forms of government that respect place, locality, and stimulate citizen engagement in making and paying for their locally determined choices. We worry about democratic deficit and alienation. We are trying to make that fragile thing democracy actually mean what it's supposed to mean. That wasn't the democracy of classical Greece. It's something rather new. It puzzles me whether it can succeed. Perhaps totalitarianism will turn out to be what more prefer.

Observing Kallicrates is like going back in time to when I first began working at the Institute of Local Government in Birmingham in the 70s and all our training focused on managerialism, professionalism and performance against measures set centrally and not locally. I'd like to know more about how Athens will determine the allocation of centrally collected tax to localities; what strings will be attached and how central allocations will be ring fenced to manipulate the priorities of the new local managers that Kallicrates requires. I made a career, with my colleagues, training managers for the modernised local government that was emerging in the 1970s in the UK. It's only in recent years I've become deeply engaged in the training of elected members able to bring back a political steer to what was, as I said, the rise of a new local government technocracy. Best, Simon

Briefing

The City in May

I've got mail - about the coalition:

Simon...Whatever else might be said about our sainted Coalition, it's certainly transformed the political landscape. Already, a coupla weeks down the line, New Labour are the oldest news. Scarcely a day (or a joint press conference) goes by without the ober-Tories going a deeper shade of scarlet. The Rage on the Right is a joy to behold and the smart money has to settle on the short-odds bet that Dave and Nick probably mean it...never thought I'd wake up to sniff a bonfire of Tory manifesto pledges - Inheritance Tax, Capital Gains Tax, and constitutional reform to name but three. Neither would I ever have associated St Vince with yet another assault on the Post Office* (sugared with a helping of shares for the workforce). These guys are serious and a full five years begins to sound less than fanciful.

Dave is clearly the King of Political Opportunity, out-ballsing even Blair in his C4 moment (parking his tanks on the 1922's turf was a delicious piece of Sudenten-kraft). So where do the ubers go now? And - much more importantly - WTF happens to the metropolitani of New Labour?

In the annals of Blind Robbery, Dave is an extremely gifted operator. In broad daylight, with Lib Dem connivance, he's stealing NuLab's clobber and leaving the poor bunnies to their fate. The only real direction to head is leftwards, towards (brace yourself) some kind of socialism... but a journey like that would tear the party apart. No wonder Cruddas, wise man, said no thank you.

And here's the best quote from this morning's press...an aside from a comparison with the giddy days of '97. These guys, says whomever, are moving at breakneck speed and bolting down promise after promise. Much of this stuff will necessarily have to wait a while, not least because - as smiler Liam confirmed - we're skint. But the sheer velocity of what's happening takes your breath away. And Blair's boys? Back in '97? They hit the ground reviewing.

Nice.G.

** ** **

Took the train to London, cycled through the city to the river, via Holborn and Fleet Street, King William Street; crossed the river on Waterloo Bridge, commuters coming the other way; east on to Tooley Street. When I ride at rush hour in the city I think lines in the heads of thousands since they were composed, since I heard them at school - recorded by Eliot in Mr Lushington's English class at Westminster. He encouraged listening, slipping in analysis when you weren't looking. Redemption and commuting elide unhindered by reasoning:

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought ... And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

... Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,

To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours...

But London wasn't like this. Nor I. Lushington also explained the objective-correlative in a way I could understand; which still makes sense. Unvoiced words - phrases - assemble in my head - the river glideth...mighty heart...all bright and glittering in the smokeless air...and with the heart of May doth every beast keep holiday - correlating artlessly with my surroundings connecting them timelessly to all I've known and been taught since birth - sublime and banal, agreeably jostling.

The crowd, like me, did feel sprightly, flowing indeed but more like a parade than a procession. Brown fogs gone.

I'm working with a new council executive next week. This morning I met with with a senior officer and the new council leader to talk through my draft:

GOVERNANCE IN XXX: GETTING THE BEST FROM OFFICERS

Seminar for a new Executive

AIMS

• To understand political and managerial roles, responsibilities and structures and how they are changing,

• To demonstrate ways in which member-officer collaboration gives direction and purpose to local government,

• To learn more about working effectively with and through officers.

This event for senior members aims to strengthen the purpose, creativity and direction of the Council in difficult times. It will focus on better understanding of how new policies emerge, about negotiating the respective roles of members and officers, about clarifying the role of cabinet in the decision-making, modernising corporate governance, reviewing individual skills and information needs, and enhancing organisational capacity.

STYLE: Simon Baddeley with xxxx will use short talks, films, and exercises to stimulate analysis, reflection and shared discussion of these issues.

PROGRAMME (As the programme is participative, timing of specific sessions between start at 1000 and finish at 1500 may vary. Short breaks to be agreed)

Welcome. Introductions. Purpose of the day - Leader and CEO

'The Improvement Journey': working with councillors and officers – invited elected Mayor from an exceptional council

BREAK

Briefing on Xxx Council’s organisational structure – xxxx

A performance framework for the new Cabinet? – Simon Baddeley/Cllr xxxx, Leader of the Council

LUNCH

Constructing trust between members and officers – short talk and discussion introduced and illustrated by SB

Summary: What we take from the day; implications for our work as a Cabinet – Leader of the Council

CLOSE

* * * My colleague Philip Whiteman has helpfully extracted local government relevant policies from ‘The Coalition: our programme for Government’ published by the Cabinet Office yesterday, putting in bold what will be of most interest to us at Inlogov: 4. COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT The Government believes that it is time for a fundamental shift of power from Westminster to people. We will promote decentralisation and democratic engagement, and we will end the era of top-down government by giving new powers to local councils, communities, neighbourhoods and individuals.

• We will promote the radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups. This will include a review of local government finance.

• We will rapidly abolish Regional Spatial Strategies and return decision-making powers on housing and planning to local councils, including giving councils new powers to stop ‘garden grabbing’.

• In the longer term, we will radically reform the planning system to give neighbourhoods far more ability to determine the shape of the places in which their inhabitants live, based on the principles set out in the Conservative Party publication Open Source Planning.

• We will abolish the unelected Infrastructure Planning Commission and replace it with an efficient and democratically accountable system that provides a fast-track process for major infrastructure projects.

•We will publish and present to Parliament a simple and consolidated national planning framework covering all forms of development and setting out national economic, environmental and social priorities.

•We will maintain the Green Belt, Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) and other environmental protections, and create a new designation – similar to SSSIs – to protect green areas of particular importance to local communities.

•We will abolish the Government Office for London and consider the case for abolishing the remaining Government Offices.

• We will provide more protection against aggressive bailiffs and unreasonable charging orders, ensure that courts have the power to insist that repossession is always a last resort, and ban orders for sale on unsecured debts of less than £25,000.

•We will explore a range of measures to bring empty homes into use.

• We will promote shared ownership schemes and help social tenants and others to own or part-own their home.

• We will promote ‘Home on the Farm’ schemes that encourage farmers to convert existing buildings into affordable housing.

•We will create new trusts that will make it simpler for communities to provide homes for local people.

• We will phase out the ring-fencing of grants to local government and review the unfair Housing Revenue Account.

•We will freeze Council Tax in England for at least one year, and seek to freeze it for a further year, in partnership with local authorities.

•We will create directly elected mayors in the 12 largest English cities, subject to confirmatory referendums and full scrutiny by elected councillors.

•We will give councils a general power of competence (SB note: what about 'general competence'?)

•We will ban the use of powers in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) by councils, unless they are signed off by a magistrate and required for stopping serious crime.

•We will allow councils to return to the committee system, should they wish to.

•We will abolish the Standards Board regime.

•We will stop the restructuring of councils in Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon, and stop plans to force the regionalisation of the fire service.

•We will impose tougher rules to stop unfair competition by local authority newspapers.

•We will introduce new powers to help communities save local facilities and services threatened with closure, and give communities the right to bid to take over local state-run services.

•We will implement the Sustainable Communities Act, so that citizens know how taxpayers’ money is spent in their area and have a greater say over how it is spent.

•We will cut local government inspection and abolish the Comprehensive Area Assessment.

•We will require continuous improvements to the energy efficiency of new housing.

•We will provide incentives for local authorities to deliver sustainable development, including for new homes and businesses.

•We will review the effectiveness of the raising of the stamp duty threshold for first-time buyers.

•We will give councillors the power to vote on large salary packages for unelected council officials.

Coming home on the London to Birmingham Pendolino

* * * And from the Ano Korakiana website a reminder, dated 19 May, that the current local council - Demos Faiakon (Δήμος Φαιάκων) - will very soon cease to exist under the Hellenic Government's Kallicrates Plan for reforming Greek local government, and hoping that attention will be given to the collapsing edges of the road just below Venetia by the ravine, and just below the bridge on the same ravine where rain is threatening more damage as well as the need to re-tender the work for the long uncompleted football ground below the village which I understand to be the property of the great Thessaloniki football club PAOK:

Όπως είναι γνωστό, σε μερικούς μήνες, Δήμος Φαιάκων και Νομαρχία Κέρκυρας δεν θα υπάρχουν, σύμφωνα με το σχέδιο «Καλλικράτης». Στη θέση τους θα δημιουργηθεί και θα λειτουργεί μάλλον ένας Δήμος…για όλη την Κέρκυρα. Όσο είναι λοιπόν ακόμη καιρός, η Δημοτική μας Αρχή ας φροντίσει να κλείσει κάποιες εκκρεμότητες και να προωθήσει κάποιες άλλες προς τη Νομαρχία. Ενδεικτικά αναφέρουμε: 1.Την αποκατάσταση από το Δήμο του δρόμου, που από την Επαρχιακή οδό οδηγεί στην είσοδο του χωριού στις Μουργάδες, μέσω Λαμπράδων. Κυρίως εξαιτίας του έργου της γεώτρησης, ο δρόμος έχει καταστραφεί από τη διέλευση βαρέων οχημάτων. Εδώ και μήνες έχει αναγγελθεί η αποκατάστασή του, ενώ έχουν γίνει και οι απαραίτητες τοπογραφικές μετρήσεις. Ενώ όμως το έργο ήταν να δημοπρατηθεί το περασμένο Φθινόπωρο, ακόμη δεν έχει γίνει κάτι και ο κόσμος που τον χρησιμοποιεί καθημερινά ανησυχεί… 2. Την ανάγκη αποκατάστασης από τη Νομαρχία δύο σημείων του επαρχιακού δικτύου εντός του οικισμού όπου το πλευρικό τοίχωμα του κεντρικού δρόμου έχει υποχωρήσει, από τις βροχοπτώσεις του Χειμώνα. Το ένα σημείο βρίσκεται στην είσοδο της Βενετιάς, όπου έχει υποχωρήσει το έδαφος στον τράφο μαζί με τα παρακείμενα δένδρα και το άλλο πριν από το γεφύρι στον μεσαίο δρόμο…όπου πέρα από το χωρίς οπλισμό τοιχίο που «έφυγε» με τις βροχές, έχει αρχίσει και ο δρόμος να «γέρνει». 3.Υπάρχει επίσης η σημαντική εκκρεμότητα του γηπέδου του ΠΑΟΚ, για το οποίο έχει δοθεί για άλλη μια φορά υπόσχεση στη Διοίκηση του Συλλόγου, ότι είναι προς υπογραφή νέα δημοπρασία για την ολοκλήρωση του έργου…Για να δούμε !

* * * Today is of course a day of celebration in Corfu and the other Ionian Islands. 21 May 1864 is the date of the formal ending of the British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands and their union - enosis - with the Hellenic Kingdom. How could any Ionian, unless they were paid servants of the British profiting from the continuance of our military and administrative presence, oppose the lowering of the British flag and the raising of the Γαλανόλευκη over the Septinsular? There were those whose material interests were linked to the spending of the British. There's a fine house near us in the centre of Ano Korakiana that Kostas Apergis - village historian - told me was built from the profits of providing bread to the Protectorate garrison. But I do not mean these people. I refer to that faction within the rizospastai led by Ilias Zervos of Cephalonia

who bitterly resented the calculative way - as they saw it - the British seemed to have deferred to the populist arguments of Constantinos Lombardos of Zakinthos

for enosis, abandoning their Protectorate to the Greek Kingdom before it had been possible to negotiate Zervos' vision of an autonomous Septinsular Republic.

The remnants of this resentment seem to have faded now that Ano Korakiana's band no longer, as they did for many years, absent themselves from the celebration of the anniversary of union along with the band of Kinopiastes

*** ***

Alan and Honey, as promised yesterday, sent pictures of the double doors at the top of the new stairs and the support column at the end of the balcony.

Today Greece received the first tranche of the EU bail-out loan. My Greek Odyssey posts Elytis' prophecy from Axion Esti - a recording.

***

*It's going to anger many, especially Liberal Democrats, seeing Vince Cable pushing further privatisation of Royal Mail. I fact the LibDems raised this at an annual conference 5 years ago. It's about risk and who'll pay for it, given the demise of paper correspondence, even for legal documents, and growing consumer resistance to junk mail, one of the main items now carried by postal workers. I've scanned the response from businesses that use the post office - the Mail Users Association; also the Postal Services Commission's response to the Independent Review of the UK Postal Services Market. Believing instinctively in the contribution of village and 'corner shop' post offices to social cohesion, this is sad reading. Two years ago I imagined trying to explain to intrigued great grandchildren the process of writing and posting letters. It may be that my sense of place can no longer be confirmed by objects and actions to do with the post as we've known it for two centuries. Perhaps I have to brace myself and unpack, empty and refill a bundle of cherished things I associate with a sense of place and community; fill it with other objects and activities. It's chicken and egg. As conventional paper mail declines so the cost of providing it to those who still use it increases. People, as have we, turn to other ways of doing what was previously done by post. Post boxes are threatened with the same future as phone boxes, even though removing them has taken away traditional place markers - objects older people and their ancestors knew as part of the unnoticed noticed. For the young these things have less resonance. This isn't just a public-private issue, though that debate will dominate the politics of the matter. It's about human invention - socio-technical change. Where do I look for other ways to maintain and recreate what matters? Closer settlement patterns versus sprawl; villages instead of suburbs; access via proximity (walking, cycling, urban transit) replacing access by mobility (motoring, flying); carfree and car-lite rather than autodependent; local rather than global food chains - allotments, city farms and home produce versus big box food retailing. Further invention. Smart growth. Sustainability. In Ano Korakiana we don't have much to do with post, collecting electric and water plus rate bills from the last shop in the village.

Flânerie in Birmingham

Amy drops in with stuff for her talk

Having transferred some filmed interviews with NHS CEOs - offshoot of work with Andrew Wall - to CDs, I needed to post them in a padded envelope to Ziggi for a talk. "I might be able to use them." The main post office in town is the only one I trust for slightly odd shaped packages, so I'd an excuse to cycle into town instead of doing something that would feel like work.

Meantime Amy dropped by to get ready for her meeting with children and parents at the library - about road safety, stranger dangers, and risk around railways and dark alleys. As well as a talk, they get a 'keeping safe' booklet, a hi-vis wristband, a road safety alphabet plus crayons to fill it in, with a UV marker pen for the parents and book on safety in the home and leaflets on various risks and community policing, and a child identity wristband when shopping. I've reservations about this sort of thing, making people fearful about 'outside'. The worst dangers to many children are 'inside', but Amy knows that. I'm proud of her taking the initiative to do things like this. I gathered from Lin who helped out that there was a good turnout - 16 children, 14 parents. "Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The librarian was really impressed!"

I rode my big bicycle into town. At the main post office at the top of steep Pinfold Street they have a system that involves getting a number from a machine and waiting for it to be announced. The numbers are displayed on a screen so customers can see how long they may have to wait. "Number 124 go to counter F...number 125 go to counter B" says a computer. It saves queue juggling. You can try to guess which counter you'll end up at and wander off to look about and do other errands. It's quite disappointing for people who enjoy a good queue. My package was swiftly processed and sent for £1.50 with 'proof of postage'. I headed for Boots and bought some Anbesol for a mouth ulcer. I like that stuff. Dabbing an ulcer with this astringent liquid from a small bottle - "ow ow ow" - punishes it for intruding in my mouth.

Then to New Street Station to collect 'tickets ordered beforehand' to London, Winchester and Dumfries, over the next few weeks. I've succumbed to yield-management after all, getting tickets, even when I'm on expenses, much cheaper than on day of travel. All I do is touch the screen after slipping in the card quoted on the net when buying tickets at home. A virtual QUERTY keyboard appears. I touch in the code for the purchase. The tickets, receipts and reservations drop into a collection hopper. I reach down, squeeze my hand through a swinging plastic cover and feel around to make sure I've collected everything delivered.

Then out through the main concourse to the rag market to enjoy a baked potato from Dinky Donuts; best in the city, slightly off-white, sloshy with butter - £1.50 - in a polystyrene box with a plastic fork. Take it outside, gaze at the passing crowds and wheel gently towards St.Martins, stopping to gather a savouring taste of hot potato before eating the scorched skin.

Outside the church I came upon a row of sturdy wooden folding chairs and a group of people offering to pray for healing. I watched for a while and then, on a centurion impulse, braced myself to pray with three strangers for the recovery of a dear friend. "Are you a believer?" I was asked after they'd quietly spoken prayers, kneeling and standing beside me. "Well...not really...but I'm perhaps a vessel for you and someone who is." "Right yes OK".

After this kind exchange, I cycled to the lift that rose from Edgbaston Street to Smallbrook Queensway, on up to the New Bullring, down New Street, across Corporation Street, up Needless Alley to St.Philip's Square where I saw lots of young people muddying up the green, chatting animatedly in small groups, running, hugging and kissing, watched over by a couple of amiable police by the cathedral walls. I saw three Goths with litter picking gadgets and black plastic bags working their way over the square. I reminded me of Barry Fantoni's Scenes you seldom see in Private Eye. Delightful result of prompts from Urban Alternatives.

Goths collecting litter in St Philip's Square, Birmingham city centre

There was a piece on Handsworth Park by Graham Young in the Birmingham Mail on Friday, about Mark Bent and family who run the Boat House Café at the head of the lake by the slipway for the summer boats.

Although the park always has regular, highly-visible ranger patrols, Mark says everyone agrees that the park is even safer when the café is open. “Sometimes we give away food that we’d have to throw away. But I say to any young lads who’ve been out all day, if you want to eat, pick up a brush and start sweeping. It’s always the toughest one who cracks first. The next day they’re back saying ‘Anything we can do for you?' Similarly, I say to the police: ‘Don’t come here as if you expect to find trouble, come as if you want a bacon butty’."

From the square I cycled west down Colmore Row to Chamberlain Square, through Paradise Circus, passing via Centenary Square towards the canal towpath I could follow to Soho. I nearly missed a familiar figure in uniform, looked back and saw my daughter again, chatting to a Chinese man who, she told me later, had been robbed. "Did you want anything Dad, 'cos I'm working?" I stayed a moment then went on my way.

Amy with an old man who has been robbed

** ** **

In a piece for Corfu Press quoted on the village website on 1 March, Ioannis Bravis commented on the application in Corfu of the Greek government's Kallicrates plan for local government reorganisation:

Η δημιουργία ενός μητροπολιτικού δήμου ο οποίος θα συμπεριλαμβάνει όλους τους δήμους της μέσης Κέρκυρας είναι επιτακτικός όχι μόνο για να επιτευχθεί η ορθή οργάνωση και λειτουργία του παραπάνω ενιαίου χώρου, όπως χωροταξία και αστικές συγκοινωνίες, αλλά και για να προσδοθεί η αρμόζουσα πληθυσμιακή βαρύτητα στην πόλη της Κέρκυρας. Δεν πρέπει να ξεχνιέται ότι κατά την κατανομή πόρων από την πολιτεία, όπως στο ΕΣΠΑ, ο σημαντικότερος παράγοντας που λαμβάνεται υπ'όψιν για επί πλέον ενισχύσεις των δήμων και χαρακτηρισμό τους σαν πόλους ανάπτυξης είναι ο πληθυσμός τους. Για να μπορέσει λοιπόν η Κέρκυρα να οργανωθεί και να λειτουργήσει αποτελεσματικά, αλλά και για να μπορέσει να παίξει τον ρόλο που της αρμόζει στον ευρύτερο χώρο του Ιονίου και της Αδριατικής πρέπει να συμπεριλάβει ολόκληρο τον χώρο της μέσης Κέρκυρας και να ενισχυθεί πληθυσμιακά…." Γιάννης Βραδής (corfupress) EXTRACT

The drift of this comment is that previous geographic criteria for deciding the boundaries and numbers of councils should be abandoned in favour of an arrangement that will increase Corfu's chances of getting a fairer share of central government funding - based on Athens' assessment of growth and composition of population in an area. The proposed reorganization needs to take all Corfu into account, looking at population patterns and trends that apply across the island. Rather than applying the Kallikrates plan on an assessment of the geographically defined needs of any particular part of the island - one area against the others - Corfiots would do better to lobby for a reorganisation that takes the whole island into account, creating a tier of local government able to focus on island-wide issues like transport, land-use, health and the ideal settlement of Corfu town.

Municipalities of Corfu right now: Corfu has its own county council. This county is subdivided into 13 municipalities, run by an elected body headed by a mayor. The map of Corfu (shown below - but click on the link), including the three Diapontian islands to the north and Paxos and Antipaxos to the south, is on the web. Each municipality reveals its names when mouse-clicked.

Recall that the main element of Papandreou's Kallikratis Plan for re-organising Greek local government is to do away with the 76 prefectures that currently span the country and replace them with 13 larger regions, while 1034 municipalities will be reduced to 370. If I've understood Ioannis Bravis, he argues that the municipalities of Kassiopeon, Faiakon, Parelion and Achilion - or parts of them - along with Kerkyreon contain the core activities and population of the island and should form a single council to make sense of the case he makes about influence and capacity to manage current challenges in a coherent way. This leaves two remaining new local authorities - one in the north-west that would contain the municipalities of Thinalion, Esperion, Ag.Georgiou and Paleokastriton, and and one in the south containing Meletieon, Korrisson, Lefkimeon and Paxon.

Η μέση Κέρκυρα είναι αναμφισβήτητο ότι αποτελεί μία ενότητα με τους δήμους Φαιάκων, Αχιλλείων, Παρελίων και Παλαιοκαστριτών να αποτελούν προάστια της πόλης της Κέρκυρας η οποία ουσιαστικά διαχέεται μέσα στον χώρο των παραπάνω δήμων...

** ** ** Then last night Kiz told me and Lin she'd had a wrong number text from someone asking after her "Hey my babby am you still alive?". She'd texted "??" and got this reply:

We pondered the best thing to do (see thoughts on the BNP and here)

Damp and grey

Thursday was damp and grey and stayed so most of the day. I rather like such weather. With my folding bicycle, cleaned and oiled, I walked it a hundred yards down the narrow path below our house to the bus stop on the lower road. Just after 9 the bus arrived. Someone at the bus stop had already counted out the €1.70 from small change in my palm. Another reminded the driver to load my bicycle in the hold.

After these typical small kindnesses I just sat back and read up the Kallicrates Plan for Hellenic local government reorganisation in Athens News and in 20 minutes we were in town from where I cycled to the Liston, after getting a few good photographs of the magnificent Kapodistrias statue. Jim Potts had kindly agreed to let me run by him, my chat about the Lord High Commissioners next week. We met at Zisimos on the Liston, a delectable bar of old wood, mirrors and glass with a high ceiling that had looked a bit too exclusive. Just before 11-o-clock I entered hesitantly, parking my Brompton by the umbrella stand, then chose a table amid conversation among older people and no piped music. Jim arrived within minutes.

We enjoyed coffee, chocolate, mezes and a long and fascinating chat about his new book – the first recent well sourced popular history of the Ionian Islands and Epirus that I’ve come across, and due out in a few weeks. Jim had copied me a chapter on ‘The Lord High Commissioners’ (pp.201-209) from a 1969 book by Arthur Foss on the Ionian islands – very encouraging and helpful.

We had ouzos, met other regulars and were then, to my delight joined by Jim’s wife, Maria Strani whose writing includes the apocalyptic story of The Pimping of Panorea. When I praised her for it, she remarked gently that it made no difference, reminding, even as I mentioned many recent concerns about the environment in Greece, of the saying that “Knocking at the door of someone dead brings no response.”

Thoroughly content with further introductions to English and Greek customers, one of whom – Dr Spyros Giourgas – gave me his card and promises to gain me access to the old Ionian Parliament building, I left for the Green Bus station, caught the smaller 2-o-clock bus to Sokraki, since the one to Ano Korakiana didn’t leave until until four. Again my bicycle was loaded and unloaded for me. In just under 40 minutes - my fare €3.40 - we were past Ipsos and Pirgi, heading up 30 hairpin bends below Pantocrator and in the mists beyond Spartillas at the left hand turn down to Zygos where another bus awaited us. Everyone but me and the driver got off in Zygos and, with me as a lone passenger, the bus headed slowly up into deeper mist, dropping me by stretch of road in Sokraki just above the twenty nine hairpin bends that led down to Ano Korakiana.

In the quiet an eagle mewed. Muffled by mist, I could hear children playing somewhere in Sokraki. I freewheeled contentedly down the finely constructed serpentine route to Ano Korakiana, bend by bend by bend, until abruptly dropping below cloud cover above little Agios Isadoras, I saw sunlight on a patch of green far below. I could even make out the city I’d left an hour earlier. I was home for tea in Ano Korakiana a few minutes later.

** ** **

Ionian radicalism during the British Protectorate 1815-1864

Inequality unexpressed is accepted as the way of things. Good masters can even make good servants. Oppression, until it is perceived and named, is endured, sometimes evident in madness. Thus it seems to have been on the Ionian islands - dull unrecorded animosity until the emergence of the rizospastai gave voice to a philosophy of criticism and eventually direct resistance, through armed action, futile and easily dealt with by the soldiery, and then effective political activity - overt opposition in rhetoric and text, satire, cartoon, and more covert acts of subversive impoliteness – refusing to observe public rituals to celebrate the status quo, absenting from ceremonies of government, mutterings and murmurings.

The soil for radicalism in the Ionian Islands was fertilised by the socio-economic structures of the Venetian era, beginning to dissolve with the decline of Venice, then abruptly disrupted at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries by the occupying forces of French revolutionary republicanism under Napoleon, but partly recovered under the British, whose Protectorate extended first to protecting the pre-revolutionary status quo, though the British disappointed those prominent families who hoped this included preserving their exclusive powers.

The British, in Corfu and London were concerned about maintaining control of one of their possessions in the face of the jealous interests of co-signatories – Russia, Prussia and Austria – of the Treaty of Paris which had agreed Britain’s accession to the Ionian Protectorate. They did this in what was then the normal way, through conferring patronage on different groups within the Ionian polity, at the same giving sometimes more, sometimes less, support for the emergence of a gradual form of liberal parliamentary franchise to replace what had decayed into an archaically exclusive aristocracy of Venetian landowners in a caste society where the upper classes spoke Italian and lived off a peasant majority who did not.

On Corfu, the Grand Assembly of the cittadini had once been open to all prosperous members of island society. Eleni Calligas’ 1994 thesis reports how this body gradually lost its ‘demotic element’:

Increasingly specific qualifications were required for membership. Each island Assembly elected a smaller Council to conduct the business of government and appoint officials, it was composed of 150 members in Corfu and, eventually, Zante which, although a smaller community, was very prosperous, and limited to thirty in Cerigo. To protect the power that such exclusive franchise conferred, the Corfiot cittadini began closing their ranks, constituting themselves into a separate social class of signorini [nobles], limiting the families allowed to participate in the Assembly and, to avoid confusion, introducing the Libro d'oro in 1572.

Via representations to Venice the Corfiot nobility refined its privileges. By 1641 those who did not own city homes were excluded from the Assembly. Although being an apothecary, goldsmith or mercier (σωποπωλης) was viewed as compatible with nobility in Venice, the land owning Corfiot signorini:

...looked upon any form of mercantile activity with unrestrained aristocratic contempt. Citizenship…involved furnishing proof that a particular individual, as well as his father and forefather, were the issue of a legitimate marriage, inhabitants of their own city residence and not contaminated by the practice of any menial occupation. [Eleni Calligas pp 9-10 whose rich references on this alone include G.Mavrogiannis, 1889, History of the lonian Islands 1797-1815, 2 Vols., Athens (Ιστορία των Ιονίων Νήσων αρχομένη η Ενωση της Επτανησου) and L. Zois 1955, History of Zakinthos (Ιστορία τως Ζακυθνου)]

It may have been expressed nationalistically as a British-Hellenic issue, but the strongest source of animosity towards the British, as a small number of High Commissioner’s, especially John Colborne Lord Seaton, but also Lord Nugent and Gladstone, recognised, lay in perceptions among the poor majority of the islands that the British were allies of the landed aristocracy, their successors and allies among the middle classes; that they worked through them and encouraged them through patronage. Such opinions were realistic. On those occasions when the poor reacted - sometimes violently - against those who effectively owned them, British were seen to apply justice in the interests of the propertied. Thus were the rizopastai, given further encouragement by the ideas of 1848 and the success on the mainland of the Hellenic Revolution against Turkey, able to turn class injustice into a philosophy part nationalistic, part revolutionary, against the British ‘occupiers’.

Over half a century, some British governors resisted this process vehemently, others sought to channel it into their own vision of a mature democracy, some pragmatically, some idealistically, until wider events focused their attention on achieving a dignified abandonment of the Protectorate.

** ** **

The Kallicrates Plan for the reform of local government ~ 2010

Greece is divided administratively into nomes, which are further separated into eparchies. Lefkas and Zante are nomes; the nome of Cephalonia includes Ithaca as an eparchy. Kithira is now attached to a non-Ionian nome, and the eparchy of Paxos is part of the nome of Corfu.

This is an extract from a short description of local government in our area of Greece. All this seems to be about to change. What will happen to Demos Faiakon and the other island municipalities including Demos Kerkyron and the Ionian Eparchies under PASOK’s recently proposed Kallikrates Plan for reforming Greek local government? These measures, are, like the local government reorganisations set in motion by our Redcliffe-Maud Report in 1974, based on a managerial philosophy, not so much antagonistic towards local democracy as distrustful of its claims to be democratic.

Kallikrates seems designed to address the suspicions of the already powerful in Greece that many of its smaller units of local government, far from being local democracies – efficient, transparent, representative and accountable to the local population - provide havens for self-interested factions habituated to dipping into the purses of that local population to feather the nests of those able to buy influence over local decisions. We see, as a consequence, contempt for government – as much among its corrupting beneficiaries as among those excluded. We see the resentment caused by local government officials who ignore complaints about a noisy neighbour who won’t control his dogs, a business that plays illegally loud music at anti-social hours, a householder who let’s rubbish accumulate and spread from his property, a developer who pours concrete, bulldozes trees and builds despite planning prohibitions.

This isn’t just a Greek problem, though Greece may have recognised it later than some other European countries. It’s a problem of modernity – where the definition of community is no longer self-evident and where the idea of local councils which can assess local needs in a professional way and formulate, through debate and participation, the voice of the communities they are meant to govern, is a novel idea, requiring new methods of measurement and new sets of values about the meaning of local democracy.

In our fragmented mobile world it isn’t easy to define ‘community’, measure ‘need’ and express a unique local ‘voice’ and so, as in the UK, it has proved easier to resort to rational centralised solutions that rely on market forces and privately provided services to a more individualised population of consumers rather than voters.

Across Europe there seems to be a slow retreat from representative democracy. Policy develops away from centres of elected political authority. Even the most senior politicians are constrained by decisions being made by shadowy figures whose relationship to democratic government has altered from being agents of government to being its principals - to steal a quote from my colleague Prof Chris Skelcher - an expert on the subject of democratic deficit.

Most of us have little idea how this works. We struggle to find ways to research the process - avoiding conspiracy theory for its one tenth accurate silliness. The Kallikrates Plan is presented for public consultation on the web with a view to creating blueprint that can be voted into law by MPs in May 2010, and implemented over six months, in time for municipal elections in November. It involves abolishing Greece’s 54 Prefectures and 22 other administrative units including eparchies. In their place will be 7 regional unelected agencies, their chiefs appointed by central government. These new regions will be responsible for policies on immigration, waste disposal (not collection), public works and highways as well as land use in town and country and the management of EU funding in each region - referred to as ESPA infrastructure development funds. The regional chiefs will appoint deputy regional chiefs with authority similar to current prefects. 1034 existing municipalities will be reduced by two thirds -1034 to 370 - responsible for civil protection, welfare, public health inspections and building permits. There will be something equivalent to our Audit Commission, checking regularly on local expenditure – the State Auditor’s Council - and something that looks like a scrutiny function based in Athens to maintain oversight of local policies – measures aimed at increasing public understanding of things are being done, what is often called ‘transparency’.

No names of specific councils are mentioned in the consultation document, - an obvious and sensible move to avoid contention during consultation - so I’m not sure just when the actual Kalliktrates plan will be presented for Parliament. What a tremendous test of the political will and weight of Papandreou’s still new government.

** ** **

Corfucius keeps me in touch with all I want to know of our previous PM and his encounter with the Chilcot and the Thomas Cook Corfu case.