"Unrecognisable"

Royal navy postcard - written on the back 'Smyrna in Flames Sept 1922'

 I got the train the other night, it was rush hour, from Charing Cross, it was the stopper going out. We stopped at London Bridge, New Cross, Hither Green. It wasn't until after we got past Grove Park that I could actually hear English being audibly spoken in the carriage. Does that make me feel slightly awkward? Yes.                                                Nigel Farage, London Evening Standard 28 Feb'14

Nigel Farage isn’t a nasty man. He's popular in sections. Married to a German, parent of two children, cricketer, no thug, not racist, born in a Kent village near Canterbury with a metropolitan career, before politics, in banking, he speaks of his idea of how England, perhaps ‘Britain’, its cities and market towns, have become....What did he say in Torquay last week?

“...this country in a short space of time has frankly become unrecognisable” (18.40-18.43 on video)

He might have described something similarly 'foreign' in the, once, rich cosmopolitan cities of Constantinople, Cairo, Alexandria, Smyrna, Thessaloniki; spoken - "frankly" - in worried ways about their messy hybridity; their polyglot incomprehensibility, a slight vexation that that they too had become “unrecognisable”. Over the twentieth century similar apprehensions, even hopes, in the minds of others, have laundered the diversity of those great cities; the population exchange of 1922 under the Treaty of Lausanne removed Greeks from Istanbul, victims of the 'Great Idea Μεγάλη Ιδέα' and popularly nurtured fears of irredentism, parallel dynamics to those Farage described to UKIP's Spring Conference. In 1922 the bloody catastrophe of Smyrna cleansed that city of its Greeks; renamed it Izmir. Nazi’s murdered the Jews of the great trading port of Thessaloniki. A new kind of Islamisation has dispersed those an Arab empire once harboured. Sephardic refugees found haven under in Istanbul from Christian persecution in Spain;  so the high politics of the Middle East, drives Jews from Cairo; Coptic Christians too. Modern Alexandria and Cairo may be teeming with people, but for their tourists, their diversity is blighted. The remaining Orthodox Christians of Istanbul cluster defensively in Karaköy - once Galata.
“It’s so depressing to see these great cosmopolitan places spoiled by contemporary yearning for homogeneity” I muttered to Wesley a few weeks ago, at lunch in his and Stefie's home in Ano Korakiana.
He replied “Hold on, Simon! You enjoy diversity, things cosmopolitan?”
“Of course”
“Yes Istanbul and Cairo may have changed in ways you regret, but look at London, most of the cities of Northern Europe, and your Birmingham, and Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool. What about New York, Seattle, Melbourne, Sydney? Things change. They shift.”
I perked up thinking of my own streets in Handsworth. What Farage calls ‘unrecognisable’ is where I’m at home. I once wrote of this - about the internal heterogeneity that enjoys it in the world - internal polity...

International Supermarket recognises Kosovo despite Serbian residents' refusal to recognise its 2008 Independence Declaration 

Soho Road, Handsworth, Birmingham - one of my homes

The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,...

Moldovans meet Oscar in New Street

Some links that aid my thinking...more about mocking of the poor, fear of the other, rejection of multiplicity...

The Spirit of Haida Gwaii

The Spirit of Haida Gwaii, creation, in 1986, of Bill Reid, comes as near as any piece of art to describing my world. I embrace this work. enjoy the idea of a boat, but the much used image of the 'Ship of Fools' projects our private ugliness - looks and behaviour - as images of shared foolishness, but in the process enjoins mockery of the ugly, the poor, the maimed, the underclasses....

...the present model of a highly centralised state “will not see us through for very much longer”...'

...and this recent piece from the Inlogov blog Migration, citizenship and diversity: questioning the boundaries, in particular research described by Sarah Neal Living Multiculture...

the new geographies of ethnicity and the changing formations of multiculture in England is a two-year research project that explores the changing social and geographic dimensions of contemporary multiculture in urban England....With a focus on the ordinary encounters of increasingly diverse populations in everyday locations the project asks two key questions: how do people live cultural difference, and what role does place play in this process? It is examines the way in which ethnically complex populations routinely interact in convivial and competent ways. Exploring the dynamics and limits of this competency - and its relationship to places that have long and short histories of multiculture - is at the heart of the research

*** *** *** ***
 "What can I put into soil as wet as this?"
"Rice?"
"I can't plant potatoes can I?"
"Best thing is to put them in the fridge until May"
At Hirons where I've bought a selection of chatting potatoes and two kilos of variegated onion sets.

I've been around to my allotment hoping to start planting, but even though well drained, sloping gently down to the park, the ground is spongy damp. I'd be putting the spuds in what's damn near a swamp. As for onions...
Perhaps we'll get a few more weeks of less wet weather. Meantime Taj has cleared a mound of couch grass and removed more of the many stones. If the soil dries out a little we might be good to go. There's no sign of work on my immediate neighbours' plots, nor indeed on too many others. It's not a good time for allotments. I circulated a caution #allotments...

Dear All. Because of the zeal to cut local government bureaucracy, Section 23 of the 1908 Smallholdings and Allotments Act, which requires councils to provide allotments to local residents where there is demand, is on a hit list of ‘burdensome’ regulations.
City Farmer NewsThe Independent
This move is not unexpected. Allotment land has high value - but is currently protected. But it is urban development land where there is intense demand for new housing, promoted by the building industry and the expectations of many citizens expecting easier access to the housing market. It only needs a succession of bad seasons, a few ill-managed allotment sites with many unworked or vacant plots. The temptation to begin a process of selling part, or all, of an allotment site will, if these ‘burdensome’ regulations are removed, become even more inviting, even more feasible. In Birmingham more and more green field sites are being located by satellite and earmarked for future building. Satellite pictures also include images of allotment sites, including the means of calculating their degree of cultivation. I predict that we will see a very strong reaction to these propositions from allotment holders, petitions will be signed, but the demand for development land is relentless.
One of the greatest problems is that many allotments are no longer a means for a working man to feed his family. They are more for the leisure and recreation of the middle classes.
A friend, Dr Richard Wiltshire, who has long advised government on urban allotments and city farms, began a chat with me on one of our periodic meetings
“Does your home have a garden, Simon?”
“Yes”
“So why do you bother with an allotment? if you really needed to grow vegetables you’d use your garden. It’d be closer and more convenient and you needn’t pay rent”
He went on to say that governments have noted many people are either concreting their gardens for parking, reducing the capacity of urban land to absorb rainwater, or using them as playgrounds for their children. It would be easy to start a green movement encouraging people through grants or council tax concessions to get people growing their own food in their gardens.
“If” he pointed out “there really was a need, as in wartime, for people to grow more food themselves...for a few in government it's insane that we subsidise the middle classes by letting them have very valuable urban land for leisure and recreation at rents that hardly pay for the cost of maintaining allotment sites”
I find these views uncomfortable but they exist. Richard Wiltshire is not against allotments, has visited them all over the world, but he’s also an economist. Best wishes, Simon

Clive Birch from the Birmingham and Districts Allotments Association, replies. I hear nothing from the VJA committee...

Simon. I've read this and similar viewpoints. We tried to involve NHS in agreeing allotment gardening was beneficial for patients with depression, stress and other related problems - they stated in writing that "allotment gardening was considered to be a middle class activity!" The quest for land suitable for development is ever with us [Victoria Jubilee!]. We are always vigilant and associations contact us immediately if they see strangers with theodolites or other surveying instruments. Regards Clive

Grayson Perry might regard our allotment as a penance. Richard and I went to see Perry's wonderfully woven tapestries in the Birmingham Art Gallery on Sunday. Last year, Lin and I had delighted in the sequence of TV films in which the artist visited the people and places that inspired his Rakewell's Progress from working class Sunderland via 'Eden Close' in Tunbridge Wells to new-rich Cotswolds via the anxious self-consciousness of the various gradations of middle class - All In The Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry. The tapestries are threaded through with another dimension of art reference - as well as Hogarth's progresses - Harlot's and Rake's - Perry draws on Mantegna, Bellini, Grünewald, Masaccio, Crivelli, Jan Van Eyck, the Master of Flémalle, Gainsborough, Van der Weyden, and many images of the Vision of St Hubert and I bet there are others. Talk about layering - literal and figurative.

Richard reads about the tapestries

"I didn't see a single bicycle"
"One in the background by the canal in The Agony in the Car Park?"
"That's someone's who can't afford a car" I said

The Agony in the Car Park

Another driver of taste that I noticed amongst the upper middle class was the desire to show the world that one was an upright moral citizen. In the past, a good burgher might have regularly attended church or done voluntary work; today they buy organic, recycle, drive an electric car or deny their child television. This need to pay inconvenient penance to society seems to come partly from guilt. The liberal, educated middle class have done well, but they must pay with hard labour on their allotment, or by cycling to work...extract from the artist's introduction to the catalogue I don't recognise myself. Perhaps my motives are hidden from my self-consciousness. A penitent can rejoice in penance, be masochistic even. I enjoy cycling far too much. I haven't commuted since my first job in the 1960s. For me a truer self-punishment would be to have to drive a car everywhere. And my penitential plot? I don't enjoy it enough. Ha gotcha! Seriously though, I know my driving wish is to prove to myself I can get food from the ground in which I've planted its seeds. To do that under my own steam. To prove something to my stepfather perhaps? Not that he ever sought any proof from me. Not his way. But if I succeeded he'd be discreetly proud. 'The Vanity of Small Differences' by Grayson Perry - Freud's word 'narcissism'  *** *** *** *** Carnival 2014 in Ano Korakiana  - Sunday 2 March - we missed it again Democracy Street Luna D'Argento Εκεί, ανέκαθεν διαβάζεται η Διαθήκη του Βασιλέα προς τους υπηκόους του, που συμπυκνώνει αρκετά από τα προσωπικά και συλλογικά συμβάντα της χρονιάς. Παρότι η εκδήλωση αυτή είχε προγραμματιστεί να γίνει σε εσωτερικό χώρο, τελικά καιρού επιτρέποντος, πραγματοποιήθηκε από το μπαλκόνι παρακείμενου σπιτιού. Το Κορακιανίτικο Καρναβάλι για μια ακόμη χρονιά, έδωσε το παρόν, παρά τις «απειλές» του καιρού έως την τελευταία στιγμή και τη σύντομη περίοδο που μεσολαβεί μετά τις γιορτές. Έτσι, μέσα σε τρεις μόλις βδομάδες, ολοκληρώθηκαν οι προετοιμασίες όλων εκείνων των στοιχείων, που το έχουν καθιερώσει τα τελευταία χρόνια στην κορακιανίτικη και όχι μόνο, συνείδηση. Το πρωί ακόμη της Κυριακής, αρκετές λεπτομέρειες έμελε ακόμη να ρυθμιστούν και κυρίως να προβλεφθεί η εξέλιξη του καιρού, προκειμένου να προσαρμοστεί ανάλογα το πρόγραμμα.Τελικά, όλα κύλησαν ευνοϊκά και έτσι, νωρίς το απόγευμα, ξεκίνησε η καθιερωμένη πομπή από το κτίριο του Συνεταιρισμού. Δύο καλοφτιαγμένα άρματα (ένα των νεαρότερων καρναβαλιστών), το ομοίωμα του Καρνάβαλου, στο «δρόμο» τη φορά αυτή, μεταφερόμενο στα χέρια και ο κόσμος που ακολουθούσε μασκαρεμένος και μη.Η πομπή, με δυνατή μουσική ανηφόρισε και έφθασε έως την άλλη άκρη του χωριού στην πλατεία, όπου έλαβε χώρα το πρώτο μικρό δρώμενο, για να πάρει το δρόμο της επιστροφής έως την Πλάστιγγα. Όμως η βραδιά, τη φορά αυτή ήταν ιδιαίτερα μεγάλη, αφού ο αποκριάτικος χορός πραγματοποιήθηκε στο Luna d’Argento με τη συμμετοχή τετρακοσίων και πλέον ανθρώπων, που διασκέδασαν με τις…προχωρημένες πρωινές ώρες. Και λίγο πριν από τα μεσάνυχτα, παρουσιάστηκε το όμορφο σκετς που είχαν προετοιμάσει σε πολύ σύντομο διάστημα παλιοί και νέοι Καρναβαλιστές και η βραδιά κύλησε με κέφι, μουσική και προπάντων χορό!!!

Afterwards

On the television a parade of anodyne images on BabyTV now and then distracts Oliver as we work on mum's estate, cancelling accounts, checking on the continued needs of the house - energy, phone, maintenance, insurance and the continued completion of forms for the state - death and tax. Detailed, banal, tedious - with all the repetitive labour of proving identity through the computerised interrogations that accompany more or less all phone transactions, until, at last, a human voice emerges from the cyber-babble. Even when "hullo-I'm-Beth-how-can-I-help-you-today" can't help it feels like a  relief after waiting on "we-are receiving-a-high-volume-of-calls-all-our-lines-are-busy". We are always immaculately civil to whoever we finally get to talk to, lest we be thrown back into white noise; some of the people contacted really are helpful despite what must be the tedium of their work.

Over Greece there are arguments among the great and the good of Europe about allowing the republic another two years to clear its debts. But I see no bail-out assurance.

Christine Lagarde: "Austerity Doesn't Work, It is clear from history"

*** ***
Weeping is the expression of grief; keening too. It's less painful than the dull ache that takes residence - has taken residence - in the pit of my stomach, sitting there heavily like ill-digested food. I was driving Richard to the airport on Sunday, as unpleasant a ride as every remembered drive back to boarding school - when I first learned sadness, an apprenticed to the craft of easy chat amid despondency. I drove a familiar way that had changed forever - past Inverarnie Wood, two miles beside the Nairn to the dual carriageway then the right turn down the neat narrow road towards Croy on the edge of Drummosie Muir; a grey sky and gathering dusk with small houses and lighted windows, arriving at Culloden, joining the old high road between Nairn and Inverness until Clava Viaduct was in sight a little below us. I turned south on an even narrower road to the Clava Stones...

...where one winter solstice my mother had gone alone to see the setting sun aligned with the narrow path into the cairns. She'd studied them; read much conjecture, found these relics as fascinating as the Pyramids, almost their contemporary. The Clava Stones are chill in winter; too unassuming to be much visited even in summer. She enjoyed them and as I strolled there with Richard in the hour before his flight, I thought it typical that she should have come here on her own one frosty December; seen her shadow on the standing stone before one of the passage graves and found it irresistible to capture the moment. She'd mentioned this once, some years ago, and shared her photos. I don't remember being especially interested. I often visited the place with her - enjoying the journey, our conversation and successive generations of dogs dashing keenly to and fro between these ancient scattered stones, then going on somewhere else...

,,,as now I did with Richard, heading for the airport, driving on a mile to the Highland Foodstop at Gollanfield and ordering take-away fish and chips we ate parked at the edge of the airport.

Richard and the terriers at the Clava Cairns

I dropped Richard at Dalcross and drove back to Brin Croft the same way I'd come. Lin. Amy, Liz and Oliver were out. I had the house to myself a while. It's a comfy place to be and does not emanate the sadness I feel as I pass through its surroundings.
*** ***
What a pleasurable distraction to have come across a new Italian crime procedural about a private detective - Yuri Castagnetti who keeps bees, and is hired by a businessman to find out who set fire to his car....

*** *** ***
Tuesday morning we were with Robert at the Beaufort Hotel on the Culdulthel Road discussing food and drink after a Memorial Service for mum on the 8 December. I've sketchy thoughts as to how this will be organised.

In London my nephew's wife Alessandra sends news to the families...

...Indie Bay Hedda was born at 11.24 on the 11.11.12.
Like her brothers she loves her food and is already back to birth weight.
The chaos is really rather lovely! Love....

 *** *** ***

On Wednesday I flew to Birmingham to lecture on 'sensitivity at the political-management interface' for Philip Whiteman's Community Governance and Leadership Module; we've secured work with the London Borough of Hounslow on coaching scrutiny chairs against strong competition; the postponed in-house event on Political Sensitivity for Managers for South Gloucestershire has a new date just after Christmas. I feel busy.
I had a pleasant early supper at Café Soya with Richard and Emma, joined by her mum, Karen. Richard drove me home - my bicycle in the back. Awaiting in the house was a large parcel containing two complementary copies of the just issued DVD box-set of original Out of Town programmes published by Delta, along with a leaflet containing an article I contributed about Jack and an account by Simon Winters of how these films had only come to light near the end of 2011. I left a voice message for Charles Webster at Delta congratulating him and his colleagues for all the time and energy - and cash - they've put into bringing this project to fruition.

*** ***
I sent an email to Corfu about Summer Song:

Dear Dave. It’s coming towards the time when we’d hoped Summer Song might be lifted onto the shore next to Ipsos harbour and ready for work on her replacement engine. How are things? Can I help from here? Love to Trish. Best wishes

The reply:

Simon. I have sorted out the crane...it should be out next  week if everything goes to plan but we are in Corfu...things tend to go a little side ways here regards Dave

*** ***
In Ano Korakiana a 2013 fund-raising calendar to help in difficult times - τη δύσκολη περίοδο που διανύουμε - has been prepared by Elvira Metallinou showing off the village's athletic association and the musical association's dancers... with twelve photos by Andreas Pagiatakis.

Κοινό ημερολόγιο ετοίμασαν φέτος και κυκλοφορούν ήδη ο Μουσικός και ο Αθλητικός Σύλλογος του χωριού μας. Από την πλευρά του πρώτου, μέσω του ημερολογίου προβάλλεται το Χορευτικό τμήμα και από την πλευρά του δεύτερου, η «ομάδα», ο ΠΑΟΚ. Σε κάθε μήνα του νέου έτους αντιστοιχεί ένα ωραίο φωτογραφικό τρίπτυχο, που συνθέτει στοιχεία από τα δύο σωματεία και το χωριό. Το σχεδιασμό του ανέλαβε η Ελβίρα Μεταλληνού και τις φωτογραφίες διέθεσε ο Ανδρέας Παγιατάκης. Πρόκειται για μια προσπάθεια οικονομικής ενίσχυσης των δύο Συλλόγων τη δύσκολη περίοδο που διανύουμε...

**** ****
A research query about allotments:

Dear allotment holder. I am a keen allotment holder studying in my third year the University of York and in need of your help. I am studying Environmental Geography and currently researching what benefits working on an allotment can provide and
why we value the land on which we grow. I am interested in finding out what motivates people to keep allotments and what benefits they receive in return. What drives people in rain and shine to give up time, energy and funds and dig the soil? I am aiming to gather results to help better understand the value of allotments to society, which is important for their future protection. I want to discover the benefits that are enjoyed all year round by allotment holders and not just at harvest time. I would really like to know your opinion and if you have a few minutes spare would be very grateful if you could fill in a questionnaire.
Please click on the link or copy it into your browser if you are interested. If you could forward this message to anyone else who would be interested in filling it in, it would be much appreciated. my email is: ag737@york.ac.uk and my telephone number: 07824345355. Thank you for your help! Yours Sincerely, Anna-Louise Godleman

Dear Anna-Louise. I’ve just filled in your very professional on-line questionnaire. Good luck with your research.This is an intriguing subject - in both senses of that word. Allotments - as I am sure you know - were originally 'allotted' to working men forced into cities by changes in agriculture. They enjoy considerable legal protection, e.g. our 200m2 plot would be worth several £1000 a year in rent if it were built on, but I pay less than £20 a year (senior concession) to rent it. I’m to that extent subsidised and protected by an Act of Parliament dating back to 1908. This protection is trickier to guarantee at these rates as allotments become more and more a middle class hobby, with a few superb exceptions among people who really know how to work their land and to prepare, cook and eat what they grow on it.
I - from generations of urban professionals - have to somehow transform my class relationship with this urban space if I am truly to become capable of farming public land. Otherwise why not just use my private back garden as a place to grow food? It's about the same size as my plot on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments. It's tricky when you think about the realities of urban land economics to justify allotments as places for health and spiritual renewal. Allotments. whether we call them that or urban small holdings or city farms, should be places where we grow what we eat more efficiently than shooting off to buy our food at the crowded food-mile palaces that have spread across the greater part of the modern world as the retail arm of intensified food growing. The other less material benefits of allotments will follow on the pursuit of that central objective - one that at the moment will be seen by many as being as unrealistic - even bizarre - as once it seemed to talk about ending the slave trade or introducing female suffrage.
I haven’t even mentioned livestock - especially chickens and other fowl, although there is a beehive on my plot.
I do hope you have an opportunity to connect with Dr Richard WiltshireRichard has been a friend over a decade and knows as much as anyone in the country about the politics of urban land use and their implications for growing food. He was the main author of 'Growing in the Community' the report that helped shift the last government’s thinking on allotments - as being not just about recreation but about sustainable agriculture.
See my blog pages on this - here and here - if you have a moment. Best wishes, Simon, Handsworth Allotments Information Group (HAIG)

Dear Simon, Thank you for your very interesting comments and the referral to Dr Richard Wiltshire. I am finding that the subject is producing some intriguing data and differing opinions. I am focusing most on the cultural ecosystem services provided by allotments, as you might have noticed in the questionnaire. The data I have collected so far is indicating that the majority of allotment users are growing principally for reasons other than sustenance. With increasing pressure on food sustainability and security though and rising prices it is easy to see that efficient urban farms will be an essential part of the future. One of the reasons I chose this project is a conversation I had when I used to volunteer at Kew Gardens. I was speaking to a Polish colleague who asked me why I was interested in horticulture and I told him it all started because I enjoyed spending time at the allotment. He told me about how this surprised him as in his neighbourhood it was essential to grow your own to survive, everyone had to whether they enjoyed it or not. Clearly he had a completely different relationship with his plot of land. It will be interesting to see whether those people who are growing in a self sustaining manner are experiencing the cultural services to the same extent as those growing for other reasons. I'm sure that the best of both worlds is something more like a community plot where you can rely on more hands to successfully work the land and enjoy the social aspects simultaneously. I will certainly refer to your blogs with interest. I am currently in a largely data collection phase of my project but once I have had a detailed look at the data I may have some more questions. Would you mind if I e-mailed you regarding this at a later date? Kind Regards Anna-Louise Godleman

I entered the home of a woman...

From: Iason Athanasiadis Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:58:27 +0330 To: Simon Baddeley Subject: The tragedy of Greek apathy Dear Simon. In the end, I gave the piece to Guardian Comment and, as you can see, it's attracting a fairly lively debate! Thanks so much for the fascinating insight and historical background I couldn't hope to be able to provide on my own. Looking forward to hearing your comments. Warmly, Iason Guardian.co.uk 18/12/08: Moving back to Athens in 2003, I found a society living in denial. Greeks were skimming the cream off the last rounds of EU subsidies oblivious to the tidal wave of globalisation looming over them. I had been living in Qatar, the very definition of a globalised city-state. The return home was a welcome respite from the Arab peninsula's identikit steel-and-glass cities, where city centres had been abolished in favour of income-appropriate super-malls and the pursuit of business was supreme. On my first night in Athens, I sat in a leafy square and watched young couples enjoy ouzo and mezze as children played under the lemon trees. Some of those same children may have been torching the municipality's Christmas tree last week or chucking petrol bombs at its parliament. Greece's student intifada erupted over the shooting by a policeman of a 15-year-old student, but the anger and lasting power of the riots imply a deeper malaise. The violence and nihilism with which banks, government buildings and private cars were burned down wrong-footed the older generation. But after the smoke cleared, there was a self-conscious pause as both sides waited for lucid demands to be made. "Who if anyone is emerging?" asked Simon Baddeley, an honorary lecturer at Birmingham University's School of Government and Society in the UK, who offers coverage of the crisis through his Democracy Street blog. "The ideological stuff I've heard so far seems juvenile. Any new ideas would have surely to come linked to a set of workable economic and social ideas that don't look like the ones I'm hearing,"....

Dear Iason. You quote me correctly. My thoughts were shared with a Greek citizen I admire, about a land that has furnished my life. Omit that and my interrogatives make me sound like yet another keyboard colonel aching for tanks on the streets - something that anyone but a dunce can see is not going to happen. Indeed your piece in the Toronto Star, on 16 December, quotes columnist Alexandros Papahellas writing that 'Our problem today is not whether tanks might roll in the streets, but that even if they did they would likely collide into each other.' I'm very grateful for your thoughts, for the comments it's encouraged, and especially for MilesSmiles' reflections on a 'Western condition' - reminding me that this crisis in Greece is only momentarily Greek:

We now have pretty good reason to think that neoliberal capitalist democracy is a failed ideology, incapable of dealing with the real problems societies face. Part of the problem is that neoliberalism is a bit like Ingsoc – an ideology that is paradoxically set up to destroy the possibility of ideology. Neoliberalism atomizes social discourse so that talk of a common good becomes almost incomprehensible, since nobody is supposed to criticize anyone else's values and all that rubbish.

I hope to be saying I was wrong to comment on lack of leadership in Greece, because I was unable to recognise original thought - because I'm locked, with the rest of us (including most of the rioters, with their multilingual posters), into looking at the present in the mirror of history. It's an old forgivable error. The future may be being worked on in a beer cellar; inhabiting some 'rough beast'; a sapling indistinguishable from surrounding annuals. What may be unfold may be good and bad and will have been developing in ways that are initially parasitic, sucking meaning and agency from familiar events and institutions. I'm more puzzled about what is happening than I ought to be. I am also rather excited and optimistic. I do not feel apathetic - a Greek invention describing stoic withdrawal from the affairs of the world - and I do not think what is happening will lead to the inevitable disaster that is the essence of that misused term tragedy. I wait on the moment, embracing conversation.

* * * * This situation posted to YouTube on 16 December has had nearly 57000 hits - the banner held up so awkwardly - well, a bit 'shuffly' after a while - invites viewers to stop watching television and go on the streets. The rather longer statement by the manager of the TV station deploring the invasion - not, he insists, a 'take-over' - has had less than a 1000 hits so far - not least I suspect because he's less aware that for those for and against a cause, situationism is, outside the psychotic obscenities of Mumbai, the only game in town. Even Dubya had the wit to make a point about the size of the shoe thrown at him by a Iraqi TV journalist last Sunday. I'm reading of Robert Shoemaker on The London Mob and George Rudé on The Crowd in History.[Ref: Adam Shatz in London Review] And this piece posted 17 December by Andrew Lamm plus the conversation/comments that follow illuminates changing perspectives in the hall of mirrors within which news is created

Editor’s Note: While nearly 500 journalists and media developers met in a five-star hotel in Athens to discuss the state of the media, the city smoldered from riots organized by young people using new forms of communication. [Reminder:"Karamanlis or tanks" - the choice that Konstantinos Karamanlis, uncle of the present PM, posed to Greeks in 1974]

* * * On Thursday I took the ferry from Portsmouth Harbour Station across the estuary to Gosport - about 8 minutes - to run a workshop on Questioning, passing through London via Waterloo Bridge, dropping off for an hour with Richard Wiltshire, co-author with Deborah Burn, of Growing in the Community, published by the Local Government Association with a foreward by Baroness Andrews - "Everyone benefits from allotments and we are conscious that there is rising demand..." This is the first time government has gone beyond saying allotments are good and acknowledged that more people want them. Richard gave me an overview of his current reading of the prospects for allotments and food growing in cities which I'll summarise shortly. I wasn't home until just after one on Friday morning but was immersed in reading Obama's memoir Dreams from my Father. I watch this man with such hope and interest as he assembles his cabinet. It was fascinating to follow his mind at work, parsing his growing up and emerging identity, as the offspring of black and white - the relief of encountering a mind that can struggle with and navigate dilemmas and contradictions is almost palpable. I see my face in the window of the train, hurrying through the dark, smiling at his prose. * * * *

A political-management disconnect

Councillor Margaret Eaton (video ~ October 2008), Chair of the Local Government Association and Paul Coen, its Chief Executive who, on 12 December, via the LGA website, wrote:

Since September it has become increasingly difficult to have confidence that the political leadership and the managerial leadership of the LGA are at one on both the direction of travel and the day-to-day leadership of the Association. On Wednesday I was asked to take leave, which I have done. The LGA and I will now seek to agree a way forward. We do not believe that this will be aided by further publicity and speculation. Therefore we shall be making no further comment or answering questions until it becomes necessary.

York - my first train

My mother says I was hardly two years old. How I could remember? This is a recent picture, I think, on sale in the shop at the National Railway Museum, but it's my first memory - from a pushchair on the platform in early 1944, gazing up at a great dark sloping shape, steam rising to the curving roof of York station. My dad was stationed at Helmsley with the Guards Armoured Division in training on the Yorkshire moors for the opening of a second front in June '44. This Tuesday, sixty four years later, I went to York for a meeting with Jan D, and dropped into the Museum next to the station. I'd never been there. The first engine I saw was this one. I roamed around it, touching its polished streamlined valances and massive drive shafts; climbed onto the footplate amid the copper brightwork, steam gauges and red painted valves, where with three others, all railway men, we chatted - about the Mallard, about Dr Beeching - "only obeying orders", about the railways and hope for their future. And so south again, via Doncaster, Sheffield and Derby, to Birmingham on a X-Country train. Is it possible that in some way my feeling for trains partakes of the phenomenon of imprinting - so that I treat them instinctively as though they were family, and tubby Richard Beeching, for the sundering axe he used in the early 60s on 5000 of Britain's 18000 miles of railways during a formative period of my growing up, is the object of irrational loathing far beyond my dislike for the policies of the government he served? [See overview of the Tornado - first new steam train in Britain to be working from 2009] * * * *
Back from York at 8.30pm I cycled down to the Warehouse at Digbeth for the Friends of the Earth Christmas party and had some mulled wine while I talked to Karen Leach and Ben Mabbett about how FoE might support our group over the delayed S106A on the VJA. Joe Holyoak spoke to me the other day about a piece he was preparing on the place of growing space in the urban land-use mix. On Tuesday I'm seeing Paul Peacock and Paul Aitken who are visiting us in Handsworth and on Wednesday I'm seeing Richard Wiltshire - at our back, concerns about food supplies in cities. * * * *

Questioning for Overview and Scrutiny

I have come near to refining, not perfecting, a training session on Questioning for Overview and Scrutiny that fits busy councillors' diaries. I tutor this, but it could, as easily, be included in a briefing for new councillors by a scrutiny support officer. People who cross-examine - barristers - or interrogate - police, can spend a career refining their skills. They get lengthy apprenticeships. Councillors appointed to overview and scrutiny committees have little time to learn what may be involved. Even if some local politicians have professional backgrounds that make them familiar with questioning, the powers of scrutiny and its resources are limited compared to those on which a court can rely. Parliamentary Select Committees, upon which scrutiny is partly modelled, have far more generous staff support than their local government equivalent. I've suggested four questions: closed, open, probing and reflective, to which I've added two more; rhetorical questions that get people settled in, "May I say how pleased we are that...May I introduce you to an expert witness who...." (Hansard omits a '?' on these); and second, comes silence, a non-verbal interrogative, possibly with raised eyebrows and pursed lips, supplementing a verbal - tricky because a group can find holding silence for more than a few seconds uncomfortable. The characteristic of each question is explained. Closed seeks 'yes' or 'no' answers. it is similar to a leading question, which is useful if it's to save time while getting to the point where evidence is needed (e.g. a judge may permit counsel to lead a witness to the point where their evidence needs to be brought out by open questions). A closed question also provides brief confirmation of the answer to an open that has drawn out the witness's understanding, but can also lead to drawing out more than needed, unless there's guidance on what's wanted by way of depth and range of answer. Probing is when, having worked gracefully through a preliminary mix of open and closed questions, you start pursuing detail. How well these probing questions are phrased depends on how well the ground has been prepared - especially how well members have refined and shared their terms of reference. From time to time, a reflective question summarises what has been understood so far, allowing a witness to agree or correct. It also helps clarify everyone else's understanding of where the questioning has taken things so far; "So what we've learned is....? You've described how, this, this and this happened...Have I got that right?" I take people through transcripts from Select Committees - asking them what seems to be happening in the exchanges transcribed and whether particular questions or combinations of questions have been effective in throwing light on areas of doubt, and where more probing is needed. I explain that scrutiny should avoid getting a reputation for wrong-footing witnesses; that whoever is chairing the scrutiny should give witnesses notice of lines of questioning and the committee's areas of interest. A follow-up letter asking if being a witness has been positive or not, and whether there were relevant matters the questioning had missed. I also share this assessment, by a group of members, in one council where I was working, of where they were falling short on questioning:

1. Members make comments rather than ask direct questions 2. Members will often ask an irrelevant question or one that is not directly connected with the issue under discussion 3. When members do ask questions the questioning does not get to the heart of the matter 4. Members don’t pursue a line of questioning with supplementary questions 5. The way that the Chair allows each member to ask a question makes supplementary questions difficult as the discussion becomes disjointed. 6.Members may pursue a line of questioning but abandon it if the officer appears defensive or gives vague answers – they get thrown off course easily 7. In the past we have had planning meetings for all members prior to the meeting taking place to agree lines of questioning but this is often ignored in the meeting itself.

We explore these, recalling examples from direct experience. Then we practise questioning that will make the best use of everyone's time, finding out things, avoiding ill-manners, balancing courtesy and inquisitiveness, being a 'critical friend'.