Selection from 'Democracy Street' <Οδός Δημοκρατίας>

On Democracy Street, Ano Korakiana, Corfu

Democracy Street Οδός Δημοκρατίας Odos Dimokratias is the street that runs through the centre of Ano Korakiana, a village in the centre of Corfu, part of the Hellenic Republic of Greece - Άνω Κορακιάνα, Κέρκυρα, Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, Ἑλλάς. On Google maps the street is (2012) still called Επαρχιακή Οδός Αγίου Βασιλείου or St.Basil's Provincial Road - 39° 42.438', 19° 47.679', even though a name change occurred during the Regime of the Colonels - a tale that will be told in another place. I started this blog on 1 April 2007 with a reference to our home in Handsworth, Birmingham...and in the years since Linda and I have gone to and fro - πέρα δόθε - between two places of matching importance and on the blog indulged in the happy technology of hyperlinks - something not so possible in the written diaries I've kept since 1975.

My Birmingham - no mean city

I also use Democracy Street to explore my enduring interest in the working relationship of politicans and managers in local government - relationships that make democracy.

I also use it to record my interest in preserving, keeping on record, the television work of my stepfather, Jack Hargreaves...

...who among many other things was the inventor of an entertainment broadcast by Southern Television between 1959-1981 called Out of Town, commenting without sentiment or nostalgia on a growing disconnect between men and the land (see also Facebook) - On Parsonage Down. He also invented the children's programme 'How' - about which Richard Dawkins, years later, wrote:

I use the blog to speak of Greece, my feelings about the 'wondrous land', of memories of the Marble Emperor, and of Corfu Κέρκυρα and 'our' village - now and in history - especially the British Protectorate of the Ionian Islands between 1815-1864
I also speak of my allotment, Plot 14, on the Victoria Jubilee Allotments, subject of a ten year local campaign - 'small island in which I rejoice', 'worth a few onions and a turnip' - which continues.
I also write, have written papers on local government, on political skill - Owl, Fox, Donkey, Sheep...

Baddeley, S & James, K (1987) 'Owl, Fox, Donkey, Sheep: Political Skills for Managers', Management Education & Development, 18 (1) Spring, pp. 3-19

- and on Political-management Leadership and my preoccupation with agency - Internal Polity and information technology, the governance of cyberspace - Governmentality. Taught in different lands, most recently in Australia and New Zealand.
I dreamed of sailing on the sea. I think my mum and dad had taken the train from York to Scarborough in 1944 where perhaps they bought the toy boat. It's tin keel cut me. How? I remember the cut and I still have the small white scar on the inside of my right knee.

I remember days and months I've spent at sea in small boats, my first steps mentored by Denys Rayner who wrote:

In any reasonable weather it is the diminutive size of the yacht which makes long passages under sail such thrilling affairs, and one of the reasons why I, for one, find the smallest possible craft the most rewarding - as well as costing less.

- once crossing an ocean, other times voyaging in the Mediterranean, sailing to Athens from England and back, borrowing old photos from drawers and boxes.

Of course I write about cycling, about my Brompton folding bicycle. It's an indulgence I can enjoy parading - moral mobility - since I and my car conducted an amicable divorce.

I've explored family history - especially the more or less invisible one that took in my Dad and my maternal grandfather, grandpa Henry - both spies. Also his grandfather, Sir Henry and Mill End Dairy Farm in Clavering, Essex, where I was born in 1942.

I do voluntary work as lots do, because I get annoyed and excited about things - green spaces in cities including playing fields, allotments and parks, especially Handsworth Park - about whose early history I wrote an essay -  and Black Patch Park and now Lin and I and friends are running Handsworth Helping Hands (ditto Facebook), and all through runs the lovely catalogue of friends and neighbours, some fleeting, others lifelong, my family - odd and as we all admit semi-dysfunctional, therefore I suppose close to the norm, as if that mattered much. There's cat Flea and dog Oscar, who comes with me to Scotland, travels in my cycle pannier and stays with friends when we're away....

...and then there are parties and parties and parties - especially Easter, meetings, Carnival, encounters.... Lefteris, Natasha, Foti, Jim, Maria, Dimitra, Effie, Adoni, Aleko, Pavla and Andrea, Niko our Greek tutor, Nico and Sophia, Sebastiano, Katya and Thanassis, Mark and Sally, Paul and Cinta, Richard P, Paul again and Lula, John R, Rajinder, Ziggi, Denise, Robin, Tony and Helen, Karen, Emma, Phoebe, Liz and Matt, Danica, Kim, Tanya, Leslie and my cousins, my sister, my half-sisters and half-brother - Maria my late stepmother on the Greek side

Maria Roussen by Yiannis Moralis, her first husband

 - my mother Barbara Theodora in the Highlands which I've known as a visiting place since I first took the night sleeper from Euston to Inverness when I was 9 years old.

I'm 80% Scot. I relish the train labouring through Drumochter; I'm sad when going south it speeds up on passing the watershed between Dalwhinnie and Blair Atholl.

our children

and grandchild

Amy and Oliver

What else? The search for the 'letter' from Ano Korakiana prompted by Kostas Apergis,village historian and Thanassis Spingos, who runs Ano Korakiana's website. There are lots of entries on this subject. It revolves around the rather conditional relationship of Corfu with mother Greece, the story of the Ionian rizospasti, revealed by Eleni Calligas, and why for many years while celebrating the anniversary of  Greek Independence on 25 March neither Ano Korakiana nor Kinopiastes celebrate the anniversary of Corfu's 1864 enosis with the Republic in May.

Mother Greece over the Sea of Kerkyra

...and my enduring annoyance with bottled water and commodified philotemo, expressed in passionate anger by Maria Strani in The Pimping of Panorea

Το πούλημα της Πανωραίας 

Other pages:
A chance to talk about my stepfather Jack Hargreaves
On Bell Hill, Lydbrook
The realm of wonder
The banality of good - Η κοινοτοπια του καλου?
I entered the home of a women...German Occupation of Greece
Dimitra's 16th birthday party
What it means to be a Brummie
Carnival in Ano Korakiana, Corfu ~ Καρναβάλι, Άνω Κορακιάνα, Κέρκυρα
Phaedo
In the Highlands - "Love let us be true to one another"
Visit to Butrint
The best of all possible worlds
Written stuff
"'Like' is not strong enough"
Golden Dawn
Kevin Andrews - understanding blame for the Greek Civil War
What makes a village?
Ano Korakiana pastoral - friezes of Aristeidis, the village sculptor
Carnival Guignol and the King James Bible
Όλοι μαζί
Tour of Greece
Political-management leadership - negotiating the overlap
Managing in a political environment
Phew! Μολὼν λαβέ 
All of a sudden the fine weather's here
What the Greeks went through
Σκέπτομαι
The earth turns towards the sun - civil war
Beware the gentry when they get scared
Seeking Sir Henry in British Columbia
A ladybird on my specs
Bacon and eggs
Μόνο αν κερδίσουμε την κοινωνία
Nightmares of the contented
Η γεωγραφία της φοροδιαφυγής
Voyage to England
Learning Greek «Η ζωή είναι δύσκολη»
"The horror" ~ how corruption works
Third visit to Greece
My mother in Ano Korakiana
At Kernovel
Πλήρης ημερών ~ farewell to mum
Cycling to the top of Mount Pantokrator
Handsworth
"..while there's moonlight and music and love and romance"
A missing commentary
ΑΣΩΤΟΣ Β΄
Work and play ~ learning about the rizospasti
Independence
A bumblebee in the cockpit
Others
She got married
ΤσικνοΠέμπτη
"No, don't blush"
"Να μη γίνει η Κορακιάνα "μη-κοινότητα"..."
Albania
Another village - Distomo
Kanun and the public law of Europe
A richer dust concealed
"...Think of the effect of your work on other people's views"
Our shed and all it contains
A walk in the snow
Putting cycling on the map
Βρεκεκεκέξ κοάξ κοάξ
On such a day as this
Small island in which I rejoice - allotments
Power cuts in Ano Korakiana
Dreams and scorpions in the woodpile
Pontikonisi ~ being economic with the truth
The blue of the sea we've left behind
Golden Dawn
Sept 2017 - my allotment after 6 years
Jan 2018 Christmas in the Village

Australia
Albania
New Zealand
Japan
France
Jersey
Venice
Rome
Sophia
Athens

Dancing at Effie's and Adoni's

*** ***
The sun was out for several hours on Sunday and I had time to mend the re-roof our garden shed and extend the allotment shed veranda, and feel warm especially as more or less rain is forecast for the rest of the week and I have a 'to do' list.

*****
Pual McGovern in Ag.Ioannis has sent me a circular about a collaboration between his company OCAY - which started and runs Agiotfest - and the photo club (Photoleke Η Φωτογραφική Λέσχη Κέρκυρας ΦΩΤΟ.ΛΕ.ΚΕ.) and the Corfu Environmental Initiative NGO (EcoCorfu) - a non-profit organisation to help needy people and improve the environment. The photo club's Journey of Life exhibition opens 18th Jul-3rd Oct'12 at the Asian Art Museum at the Palace of St. Michael & St. George in Corfu Town (see also this facebook page - Επιτροπής Αισθητικής Δήμου Κέρκυρας Committee for the Beauty of the Municipality of Corfu with images and conversations - in Greek -relating to improving the environment)

Young Tiger - we sailed her across the Atlantic

Negotiating the overlap

Political-management trailer from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo

Working late at my hotel in Wellington I extracted from my archive of conversations between elected politicians and managers about twenty clips and edited them into a six minute medley - mostly mine from England, but two by John Martin made in Australia and one from the Channel 4 documentary Town Hall based on Lewisham.   The earliest of these extracts was filmed in the early 1980s, the most recent, a few months ago.  I may use these to kick-off the seminar here tomorrow, and perhaps also on the second one day event I'm invited to run in Rangitikei District Council on Wednesday.
[More films with transcripts are here and here along with handouts and papers here. Note: Some Council servers will not allow use of YouTube, Vimeo, or Google.docs on which this material is streamed.]
Andrew Coulson, whose idea it was, has just circulated a joint paper called New Options for Political Management in Local Government, to which I and colleagues have contributed - in my case on pages that focus on political and managerial overlap.

Our paper will be posted any moment on the Inlogov website, but until then I can email it as an attached file on request or enable access via my own file for it on Google.docs. In his introduction our director John Raine writes:

Following the general election in May 2010, the context in which local government must operate has changed markedly. The localist agenda is becoming firmly established and although the economic climate and financial stringency is presenting huge challenges for councils across the country, it is clear that local authorities will be able to enjoy new freedoms to choose how they organise themselves and how they respond. It is accountability at local level that now matters most. Local government performance will be judged on the basis of its success in engaging with local communities, in building public confidence and trust, in responding to and addressing local priorities, and in capacity-building for the Big Society....The new climate of freedom includes the option of returning to the old committee system and so, once again, engaging (all) councillors more fully in both policy making and oversight in relation to key service delivery functions. But this is only one possible reform. As our publication emphasises, there are other ways through which councils can become more open and inclusive, and more in touch with the issues of most importance to local communities, so strengthening locally accountability. Accordingly, this paper explores the strengths and weaknesses of different models of the committee system; it examines the range of possible options for political management now open to councils, and it considers how to ensure strong accountability for executive decision-making in local government. In so doing, it reflects on the varied experience of ‘overview and scrutiny’ over the past decade and draws out some key lessons to be considered carefully as local government looks forward and seeks to do its best in the much changed political and economic climate....

While writing my contribution to an earlier draft - p.13-15 - a comment by John Stewart pointed out that I'd substituted 'Maud' for 'Northcote' when referring to a pivotal contribution to the machinery of British Democracy, a House of Commons report written in November 1853 that led to the introduction of competitive exams for membership of the Civil Service, which was the basis for replacing a system of appointments based on the favour and influence of the aristocracy with one relying on a permanent body of competent politically neutral administrators - a principle extended to Britain's emerging local government. Here's a sample paragraph from page two of that succinct House of Commons Report on the Organisation of the Permanent Civil Service by Stafford H. Northcote and C.E Trevelyan:

** ** ** **

A day before I flew to North Island to run seminars there, Val drove Lin and me 70 kilometres up the coast from Dunedin to see the famous Moeraki Boulders - perfectly rounded, until weathered by the sea, formed in ancient mud like pearls round harder objects, and fifty million years later (give a few million more or less) exposed by sea and wind to tumble into the Pacific surf, so that for a geological instant, humans can gaze, touch, paint, film and tell stories about them.

The Maori legend, more electrifying than the scientific explanation, and the one I'd tell my children until I could make the geological account as exciting, says these boulders are the petrified cargo of a mighty double hulled canoe - a ndrua sailing from Polynesia, crewed by the chiefs Kirikirikatata, Aroarokaehe, Mangaatua, Aoraki, Kakeroa, Te Horokoatu, Ritua, Ngamautaurua, Pokohiwitahi, Puketapu, Te Marotiriaterehu, Hikuroroa, Pahatea, Te Waioteao, and Hapekituaraki. which, driven before a north east gale, was lifted by tempestuous seas and smashed against the Koekohe shore of Aoteroa spilling its freight of eel baskets, calabashes and sweet potatoes. Here they lie. And I've just realised the origin of the term Polynesia - πολλά νησιά - many islands. So it must have been magnificent Odysseus blown even further off course than I'd realised who came to the mighty Pacific and these stones are the ancestors of those pomegranates that grow in Ano Korakiana.

On the way south again we stopped for coffee and cake in Palmerston. In a second-hand shop in this small village I found a book called Captive Kiwi by R H Thompson. Made prisoner-of-war at honoured Sphakia (Σφακιά) after the loss of Crete to the Germans in June 1941 Thompson, a warrant officer, was taken to a prison camp at Thessaloniki , made two escape attempts and writes about his movements in the bitter winter of northern Greece trying to get back to allied forces in Egypt, following the Struma, passing through the countryside and villages of north eastern Greece, writing of the courage and kindness of those who gave him succour at the risk of their loves and, worse, of their families' and other villagers'.

Frontispiece: Captive Kiwi by R H Thomson