Excuses

'Back in 2007 the Stern Report warned of the future costs of climate change. But it looks like its happening now. News reports of freak storms and forest fires in the USA, repeated floods in the UK, unseasonable fatal avalanches in the Alps, and yet the impact on subsistence farmers in other parts of the world has barely been reported, let alone counted..' .from a blog by Martin Stott, Sustainability Consultant for local government and beyond

"Martin, I promised myself that the vegetables on our table at Christmas would be from our allotment. They won't be."
"It's been a terrible year, Simon. My allotment was under water for weeks""
"You're kind. Onion fly, slugs, pigeons, rain rain rain - in June and July especially"

Martin's floating garden

"Lots of people have been abandoning their allotments"
"Because it's a lot harder than they realised"
"Also there's such demand. People are getting evicted"
"Yeah. It's all these gardening programmes making it look simple."

In the papers: ...They're to blame for thousands of allotment holders being evicted from unkempt plots....novice gardeners are becoming down-heartened...abandoning their plots to weeds and neglect...an estimated countrywide waiting list of 200,000 for plots, a record number of allotment holders...have been asked to vacate their land, for leaving their soil unworked...surge has been blamed on the popularity of gardening show...Steve Johnson, an allotment rep at Beverley town council, in East Yorkshire ~ “People see these gardening programmes that make it look easy. It’s not like that. They get very depressed when they see the weeds and they abandon it.”Reg Knowles, Allotments & Gardens Council “Unfortunately people watch the gardening presenters on TV and don’t really see how they have a paid team working seven days a week on their plot. When they realise they have to do all the work themselves, it’s a lot and you have to be able to put the time in. People think allotments are easy to maintain but it’s been a bad year weather-wise and people have got disheartened and not bothered doing their plots. You’ve got to be honest with people. The worst thing you can do is not tell them how much work it is.” In Brighton, 1070 notices to quit have been issued...more than a third of the council’s plots but a bite into a long waiting list. Merton Council...has issued 378 notices to quit...almost a third of its 1364 plots. Allotment holders with untended plots in Beverley have been warned to “use them or lose them"...

Martin and I were chatting on campus; a Christmas get-together of Inlogov staff on the 4th floor of the Muirhead Tower, planning ways to put the world of local government - in most distinctive crisis - to rights.

 Christmas lunch and seminar on the challenges facing local government

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As of October 2013, the Cambridge Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages will suspend the teaching of Modern Greek as a full Tripos language on financial grounds. If the proposed changes go ahead, no student will emerge from Cambridge with any more than a cursory knowledge of Modern Greek language and culture..... 
Since posting this petition in the first week of December, it's received 10,700 signatures
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I gave a talk at Sheldon Library about The Founding of Handsworth Park. Arose in the wet and set out  for New Street Station where I caught a train to Marston Green. I embrace these drizzling grey wet days, donning full wetwear, including my cosy waxed gloves, putting a waterproof cover over my pannier. From the station I pedalled along a wet path strewn with sodden leaves and paused at the end of the runway as a holiday plane full of passengers from a warmer drier place arrived in Birmingham.

I enjoy talking about Handsworth Park. My audience - about 15 people around my age, umbrellas and raincoats stacked in corners beneath bookshelves, my folded bicycle and dripping rainwear drying by a radiator. I strive to evoke a feel for those ancestors of ours who 120 years ago decided Handsworth should have a park

As the civic gospel of municipal improvement spread from Birmingham into the estates of Handsworth, its local government leaders saw a public park as a benefit for the district. Following the setting up of an education board and a free library, the adoption and proper kerbing of roads, street lighting, tramways and the construction of sewers,1 influential voices in the district began to speak of the need for a “lung” in the city. They did not pursue the idea simply out of expediency or to raise the value of their properties. Such self-interest was present - used unashamedly to strengthen their case among the practically minded citizens of Handsworth - but opposition to the Park from that quarter was at times so intense that calculative motives alone would not have carried the project through....

Sheldon Library

Back into town afterwards. Bought a tray of fish and chips with curry sauce and ate it on the train - relishing its sogginess. Still drizzling on the way home with £25 extra pocket money in my pocket. I treated myself to the ride under the Hockley flyover, through its messy underpasses, smelling of wet cannabis, surfacing by the bill boards at the foot of Soho Hill, a mile from home

Our front door's decorated. I'll put up the tree on Friday evening.Start to lay presents under it.

Mistletoe from the garden and our artificial wreath

Artificial Christmas ~ a bargain buy by Lin 20 years ago

Advent calendar - a present given us 25 years ago by my Greek half-sister

As soon as I was home Lin asked me to take Oscar for a walk, so I headed in the dark to the allotments unlocking the pedestrian gate and wandering through the deserted site to my shed, confirming to my relief that tho' my crop has been so disappointing the ground looks tended, my shed shipshape and dry inside despite the surrounding damp.

My shed on plot 14 on the Victoria Jubilee

Oscar and I strolled home in the continuing drizzle. Amy and Guy arrived with Oliver, followed by Richard and Emma. Tea, coffee, all round and a chance to dandle the babe, my wet clothes laid out in the boiler room.

Χριστούγεννα με τη Φιλαρμονική

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19.12.12

ΑΝΑΚΟΙΝΩΣΗ Σας γνωστοποιούμε ότι το ερχόμενο ΣΑΒΒΑΤΟ 22.12.2012 και ΩΡΑ 19:00 θα πραγματοποιηθεί στον Ιερό Ναό του Αγίου Αθανασίου  η καθιερωμένη κοινή Χριστουγεννιάτικη συναυλία της μπάντας και της χορωδίας της Φιλαρμονικής μας. Θα ακολουθήσει κέρασμα στο κελί. Επίσης οι μαθητές της Φιλαρμονικής μας θα παιανίσουν τα κάλαντα  στις γειτονιές του χωριού μας το πρωί της ημέρας των Χριστουγέννων μετά τη θεία λειτουργία. Τους μαθητές θα συνοδεύουν και τα μέλη του Δ.Σ. για την καθιερωμένη οικονομική ενίσχυση. Ο Πρόεδρος και τα μέλη του Δ.Σ. εύχονται ολόψυχα σε όλους τους κατοίκους του χωριού μας Χρόνια Πολλά, Καλές Γιορτές και Ευτυχισμένος ο Καινούργιος Χρόνος.                                                             NOTICE

We announce that the customary communal Christmas concert of the band and the choir of our Philharmonic will be held this Saturday 22/12/12 at 1900 at the Church of Saint Athanasius, followed by treats for all. Also the choir of the Philharmonic will go around the neighbourhoods of our village singing carols the morning after the Christmas liturgy. They will be accompanied students and members of the Board for the traditional collection in aid of the Philharmonic. The Chairman and Board wish a wholehearted Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.to all residents of our village.

Work

Draining rainwater off the bottom of Plot 14

I'm up to the ears in a variety of things against a background - ominous - of weather that would have a sensible man laying planks for an ark. It’s not as if we are not now used to prolonged and relentless rain as in Jan and Feb in beloved Corfu, but there lies - almost stationary - across our latitudes such a massive swathe of rain-bearing cloud as to make us forget the shape of the sun and the colour blue. I’m counting our blessings that no home of ours is on a floodplain. It’s also good that our allotment, though not shaded by it, sits in the lee of a large sycamore, as well as on a good slope, into which, with a few digs of the mattock, rain puddles can be ditched off the plot. By some oddity of ground some plots on the same site are waterlogged. My problems are minor compared to others trying to grow food with so little sun. I even get quite cheery about my progress as a gardener, despite the onion fly and the climate change elephant lurking diffidently in every exchange about weather. Droll. Pornographic books are leading the New York Times best seller list, while there's deep prudery and self-censorship on the subject of man-made limate change - journalists, broadcasters, politicians - people who ought to know better - fearful of stirring the merchants of doubt.

Relationships that make government

East of London, I left the film I've made in Thurrock compressing, and cycled from my hotel - Formule1 - to find the muddy Thames, downstream of the Dartford Tunnel, just above Tilbury. I could see the river on my map, but the seawall was elusive.

The cycle routes on my map were lock-gated or just not there. I probed various roads heading south. The long trucks passing to and fro, in and out of broad concrete parks inside security gates, might have been under the guidance of robots. The landscape full of human activity seemed unpeopled. Wildflowers, grass, shrubs and low trees  pressed against sturdy security fences watched by roving cameras, in a soundscape of distant trains, planes and automobiles and a panorama of pylons, radio masts, chimneys, warehouses, flaking hoppers, silos dominated by the venting upperworks of Proctor and Gamble's vapourous refinery under which I spied a church tower approached by a private road.

I parked my bicycle and wandered through its graveyard, peered through the clear leaded windows into the restored interior.

St Clement's Church

I waved to a cyclist with earphone exiting the works. Friendly, as fellow cyclists in Leadville tend to be, pointed me to a footpath between nettles and elder. It wound for a hundred yards past little piles of urban drinking trash and boulders covered in graffiti to the edge of the Thames, and a vista of ruffled brown water at half-tide; about three more hours of ebb; already fifty bare yards of gripping anaerobic mud; shopping trollies embedded at intervals like lobster traps. A concrete slab footpath edged the harbour wall with iron steps - over which I carried my Brompton - leading round corners at intervals.

The footpath along the river that goes by Proctor & Gamble

I followed it for a mile. It began to rain. The path might have continued eastward but I turned inland on a narrow weedless path between a wall and fence that threaded back between factory land towards Grays, ending up in the car park of Morrisons from where I cycled three miles back along the uneven London Road, edged by small shops and dolls house terrace homes and pinch points until I came to Shampaan, sat down with Leigh Fermor's Mani picked up from the free shelves at Sally's in Ipsos, (Vikram Seth was too heavy for my bike pannier carrying filming gear) and ordered a delcious sequence of poppadoms and spices, a Cobra to quench my thirst, King Prawn Sag and stuffed paratha.
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Church Vale - 3 years ago. New houses fill the lower space

Wednesday morning. I collected the Handsworth Helping Hands van from the park compound to help dig over and plant a flower bed near us. Last Tuesday - 26 June - a group of us, Mike Tye, John Rose, Denise Forsythe, Lurleen Salmon, Linda and I  swept and cleared litter from the small triangle called Church Vale where Robert Road and Hutton Road meet Church Vale. The City Council sent along a big refuse truck and crew to pick up discarded furniture and building waste. In the Googlesat image there's a bare space in the lower part of the area where a pub was demolished some years ago. I struggled to reacll its name. The Dovedale was there one day, rubble the next; anything but 'a local' it had ceased to be the haunt of regulars long ago and went as far as I know, unregretted, since mainly used for drug transactions, not even trying the standard methods of advertising wide screen sport, karioki nights or a 'beer garden'. In its place seemed to spring up about half-a-dozen redbrick terrace houses with plastic doors and windows, at their end, facing the Vale, a 'flowerbed' soon thick with well rooted nettles, dock and rose bay willow.

Cleaning up in Church Vale

This familiar urban puzzle - ambiguous space - probably owned by the builder. He died on site; a heart attack during construction said a neighbour over the way - Stephen Lee. His largely absent son has so far allowed the nettles to thrive - good for butterflies and cover for the beercans tossed among them. Was this bed's existence a condition of the original planning permission; part of a general intention to keep a sense of Church Vale as a place? It would have taken a while to trace let alone chase someone to do the right thing, so we agreed at our meeting on 28th June to dig over the bed, remove the weed roots, and plant flowers and shrubs. Lin phoned and emailed around seeking offers of plants, digging a few from out own garden. Allen Broad of Birmingham Parks and Nurseries at the Park compound asked where I was off to this time with van and when I told him gave us a hundred Pelargoniums, loading them himself in the back of the van. They were a batch surplus to requirements from an order of thousands for the park. Our Pelargoniums, unlike the same perennial flowers in Corfu, can't survive the UK winter outdoors and must be dug up and greenhoused or they're effectively annuals but it was still a most welcome gift.

The rain, ever present, stopped for a while on Wednesday and we assembled with plants, tools and van to do our good work. We all know the potential futility -
"it'll be full of rubbish in a few weeks"
"People will steal the flowers"
"They'll just knock'em down"
and even "what's was wrong with the nettles? Kept people off, didn't it?"
We bantered back about searching for buried gold and did passersby want to pick up a spade and have a share of it. These chance remarks and thoughts passed like ripples. Several others passed by and raised their hands in palpable delight
"Good work, good work!"
We're old hands when it comes to doing the local citizen thing. You never give up. It helped, we reckoned, to have plenty of photos posted on the social web and a few poses with our local councillors, especially on this occasion Hendrina who stayed all along planting and tidying and chatting, so that we got to know her much better.
"I'm really getting to like Hendrina" said Lin later.
Waseem dropped by and chatted with me about progress on the drive to complete the S106A on the Victoria Jubilee Playing fields. He has Ghaz Hussein in the City Planning Department striving to give the matter impetus after years of delay.
"Adrian Goldberg is giving me a minute's air time on BBC WM" I said "It was going to be today but that lovely bloke Eric Sykes died mid-morning, so it'll be tomorrow."
We all went on about the weather.
"Do you remember blue? That shiny thing that used to hang in the sky; what was it called?"

With Councillors Waseem Zaffar and Hendrina Quinnen

We enjoyed ourselves. Rajinder Rattu dropped by to give moral support, suffering at the moment and unable to do physical work,
"I don't believe in anti-biotics. I'm letting it clear itself"
John did much digging, then headed off to a meeting to do with his Credit Union responsibilities; Steve Lee came out of his house to help place the flowers and shrubs. Steadily the bed was filled. Hendrina was sweeping the pavement, Lin and Mike digging in a few more plants. I was piling up roots and rubbish and laying our tools and gloves back in the van...and for a moment or two the sun came out.

E-mail from Lin on 6th July to City Waste Services Manager at our local depot:

Dear Nick. As you know, our organisation, Handsworth Helping Hands, did a street clean-up in the Church Vale Triangle area last week and were very appreciative of the help you arranged for us. This week we planted a raised bed along one side of the Triangle. The Triangle is now starting to look a little better than before.
The actual 'Church Vale' road leading to the Triangle, however, is still a terrible mess, with rubbish in the gutters, fly tipping on the pavement and black bags and green bags uncollected, probably having been put out on the wrong day. This road is a constant rubbish blackspot. I regularly walk along there, and find it demoralising and depressing.
As you know, the more rubbish there is, the more will probably be dumped. Would it be possible to consistently target Church Vale for extra cleaning for a while, and try to break the cycle? Also regular attention around the Triangle gutters by the street sweeper would be much appreciated.
The waste bins around the Triangle are well-used (often for bags of household waste, I suspect), but are often full to overflowing, with more bags of rubbish dumped around them.
There are four waste bins in the Triangle area, but none of them is on the side of the Triangle where the row of shops, including two take-aways and two shops selling confectionary, is the source of a lot of the street litter. Would it be possible for another waste bin to be located on the shop frontages area, where the pavement is very wide and there's plenty of space for one - or maybe even two?
Yesterday I walked through Church Vale accompanied by a friend from another area of Birmingham, and I have to say that I felt ashamed of the state of our streets. We would welcome any advice you can give on how we can assist you in encouraging residents to dispose of litter, household waste, bulky items and building waste in a responsible and appropriate manner. Perhaps you might be able to attend a meeting of our Committee at some time in the near future, to discuss what can be done?
Handsworth was once a very up-market area of the City of Birmingham. I hope you will be able to help us in our attempts to make Handsworth an area to be proud of once again. Yours sincerely, Linda Baddeley, Treasurer, Handsworth Helping Hands

Church Vale flowerbed by Handsworth Helping Hands

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The excellent journalist, Nick Malkoutzis blogger at Inside Greece, op-ed writer and deputy editor of Kathimerini - Greece's only daily newspaper in English, and writes a balanced piece 'Mythmakers and problem solvers' on how far the Republic is and is not working to restructure its economy, deploring the derogatory half-truths about what's being achieved:

...Greece has given the world abundant reasons for criticism both in the run-up to this crisis and in trying to deal with its fallout. It has failed, among other things, to close down superfluous public organizations, slash waste in the state sector, implement the liberalization of closed professions, reduce bureaucracy, speed up its justice system and overhaul its tax code. This, however, does not justify those who regularly give the impression that nothing is being done.

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I don't want the Euro to go. I want Europe to work. I want a solution to the insane crisis that has revolved around so-called rich bailing out so-called poor Eurozone nations, when, as seems obvious all involved depend on one another. We do not speak of Michigan, Ohio, Washington or Pennsylvania 'bailing-out' Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississipi or Alabama - to juxtapose some rich and poor states in the US. They have the Federal Reserve's control over the exchange rate of the US dollar. So we should move towards an assiduous recognition of states-rights within a united Europe. These events - from confederacy to federacy - occurred in America, though not without a terrible civil war. In Australia six separate self-governing colonies of Britain became the Federation of Australia - a peaceful but contested process that lasted decades. This statement, referring to decisions to be made by 9 July 2012, was issued from the EU Summit on 28th-29th June.

EURO AREA SUMMIT STATEMENT - Brussels 29 June 2012

• We affirm that it is imperative to break the vicious circle between banks and sovereigns. The Commission will present Proposals on the basis of Article 127(6) for a single supervisory mechanism shortly. We ask the Council to consider these Proposals as a matter of urgency by the end of 2012. When an effective single supervisory mechanism is established, involving the ECB, for banks in the euro area the ESM could, following a regular decision, have the possibility to recapitalize banks directly. This would rely on appropriate conditionality, including compliance with state aid rules, which should be institution-specific, sector-specific or economy-wide and would be formalised in a Memorandum of Understanding. The Eurogroup will examine the situation of the Irish financial sector with the view of further improving the sustainability of the well-performing adjustment programme. Similar cases will be treated equally.
• We urge the rapid conclusion of the Memorandum of Understanding attached to the financial support to Spain for recapitalisation of its banking sector. We reaffirm that the financial assistance will be provided by the EFSF  (European Financial Stability Facility until the ESM becomes available, and that it will then be transferred to the ESM (European Stability Mechanism), without gaining seniority status.
• We affirm our strong commitment to do what is necessary to ensure the financial stability of the euro area, in particular by using the existing EFSF/ESM instruments in a flexible and efficient manner in order to stabilise markets for Member States respecting their Country Specific Recommendations and their other commitments including their respective timelines, under the European Semester, the Stability and Growth Pact and the Macroeconomic Imbalances Procedure. These conditions should be reflected in a Memorandum of Understanding. We welcome that the ECB has agreed to serve as an agent to EFSF/ESM in conducting market operations in an effective and efficient manner.
• We task the Eurogroup to implement these decisions by 9 July 2012.

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Jan Bowman came round on her electric bicycle to try to finish a portrait of Richard. Jan did one of me in return for a bicycle about a year ago - complicated exchange after Dhiaa had left me his bike on joining the government of Iraq. Richard's likeness has been eluding her. She thought having him in our kitchen amid the clutter might help.

Jan and Richard

Amy, Oliver and Guy came round for lunch. We left Jan and Richard indoors so's we could enjoy an interval of sun in the garden.

*** ***
In the afternoon I was on the allotment with Oscar, trimming grass verges, weeding and sowing some more onions. I sowed some beetroot, some carrot. Nearly everyone's onions have fallen to an insect that bores into the onion's heart. Mine cannot be unaffected.
A plot holder this afternoon told me
"I've thrown away all my onions. They look OK on the outside, but the onion fly goes right inside"
He told me the fly was also on the Victoria Jubilee last year. I'm wondering what can be done. Danny who helped me with sowing other plants a few weeks ago is suggesting nematodes. It may also be necessary to grow onions under fine mesh.
Aftab has sent me a circular for the event we're planning on the allotments...

‘Cultivation to Consumption’ 5 to 7pm - 19th July 2012 Come and enjoy freshly grown food by Victoria Jubilee Allotment members and get involved in preparing the food with ‘Aftab Rahman’ Director of Legacy and Chef (director) at Bay Leaf (www.bayleaf-restaurant.co.uk)

Weather

I flew back from Inverness. The jet went up and up and never quite broke out of the clouds. It's like having an animated conversation. Something in the background that's gone unnoticed distracts me momentarily is easily ignored but - continuing - begins to become irritating, until I'm forced to break off conversation and notice - the weather in June. There was a mild blue day or two in between relentless wind, rain, deep cloud that has run through the month. We need rain of course to fill aquifers and reservoirs across England. At the same time there are floods up and down the land, rained celebrations - the Diamond Jubilee weeks. Its the size and scale of these swings that suggest imbalance and the more our species in its fecklessness causes the climate to warm, the more uncertainty there is about how much warming there will be - a gift to those who'd rather believe there's no problem, that these variations are normal, that it's only the wettest June for a century. What an impossible task for a young science to send out warnings - like writing history on the basis of half a morning's conversation.
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The morning ferry to Igoumenitsa on the Sea of Corfu

Jim Potts on the blog Corfu Blues provides links to blogs by foreigners promoting Greece, including Democracy Street:

'From Corfu, Democracy Street, Simon Baddeley's blog (and its rich archives) is a treasure trove of  balanced Philhellenism, analysis and intelligent comment.

This pleasing flattery might be misleading since loving a place doesn't always promote it. Greece is infinitely more important to me than I could ever be to her yet I row with her as I do with my wife, and isn't it always her who starts the argument. The cartoonist Pont (1908-1940) would understand my views on tourists...

Love of Travelling Alone by Pont (p.88 in my collected edition)

...and tourism - which Greece needs. This is a nice account of a short summer holiday on Corfu from the Buxton Advertiser - 'The Greeks are working hard to make your Euros work for you':

...Corfu may no longer be the completely undisturbed paradise which turned the young Gerald Durrell into a leading naturalist, but it is still one of the most beautiful places in the Mediterranean....

...where the sea is so still and clear that sometimes the water looks golden

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Lin, Denise and I went, as reps of our voluntary group, to a rather daunting event in town...later i wrote to the MP Chris White who has successfully and against odds brought in legislation that may help us.

'Meet the Buyer' - Lin and Denise at Midland Heart, 20 Bath Row, Birmingham

Chris White MP

Dear Mr White
Handsworth Helping Hands is a small voluntary group based in central Birmingham which runs a transit van and holds a rich variety of power and manual tools and a lot of enthusiasm and a healthy control of transparent accounts.
We offer a free of charge, or reduced rate, small garden and maintenance service for vulnerable or limited means residents, moving furniture, cutting grass or branches, installing door chains and other security devices in homes and site clearances. We get referrals directly or from Councillors, Neighbourhood Forums, resident groups and local Police, and are known by word-of-mouth. We do street clean-ups and green space litter picks, having a refuse disposal concession at our local tip. We check eligibility for a free service but funding from grants or larger contractors like Housing Associations are required to help with costs incurred such as fuel, wear and tear and labour charges.
On Friday three of our group, attended a 'Meet the Buyer’ session organised by Midland Heart. An impressive programme of presentations led up to an overview of the EU Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PPQ) and the Invitation to Trade* (ITT) procedures by the Housing Association’s Procurement Manager, John Crisp. We were ready to leave the event at this stage as it was worrying clear that there was absolutely no way we could meet the starting criteria to do paid work for Midland Heart and I suspect other agencies of this kind. We lack the capital, the equipment and the documentation required to go through a 6-9 month process. 

We fully respect the Housing Association’s need to set tough standards for those who work for it, and we believe that in our own way we have met good local standards on a mostly voluntary non-profit basis, using any funds received to pay for HHH’s running expenses - insurance, road tax, maintenance of tools and van etc.
John Crisp suggested we remain to hear from the next speaker Melanie Mills, CEO of Social Enterprise West Midlands. Melanie suggested that there was a tension between the requirements of the OJEU and the government’s wish to encourage organisations like ours. She then gave a brief explanation of your Social & Public Services Bill. We found this encouraging.

I am contacting you to try to get some idea of whether the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2010-12 offers offers modifications in current  procurement conditions that will allow an organisation like ours - with appropriate liability, appropriate H & S procedures and record of transparency (audited accounts etc)  will be able to bid for paid work with realistic opportunities of getting contracts that will help support our unpaid voluntary work? 

 

Your response and further briefing on the implications of the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2010-12 for Handsworth Helping Hands would be much appreciated.
Very best wishes, Simon Baddeley (Secretary)
Voluntary Advisory Group for
Handsworth Helping Hands. Members of the group: Simon & Linda Baddeley, Charles Bates, Denise Forsyth, Leslie Pinder, Rajinder Rattu, John Rose, Michael Tye, Nigel Smith MBE

*or Invitation to Tender 

*** *** ***
Dhiaa has communicated from Baghdad. My friend left Birmingham in December 2010 to serve for 8 months as a Minister of State in the Iraqi Cabinet. A devout Muslim he has never once questioned or challenged my lack of faith, and has often joined me in theological debates that matter within Christianity - especially the filioque schism between the Latin and Orthodox Churches. He managed - with gentle circumspection - to give me an explanation of the Christian conception of the Trinity. We looked at paintings in the Barber Institute and The Adoration of the Child Jesus by Rosselli which attempts to depict this enduring conundrum of three divine persons in one - ὑποστάσεις.

I have also begun- slowly - to understand the history of long differences between Shia and Sunni in Islam. From November last year Dhiaa's been Secretary General of the Al-­Ahrar political bloc - the biggest single political grouping in the Iraqi government. This account is from Niqash - a web newsheet covering all Iraq (Arabic). I doubt Dhiaa would use a word like 'oust'. His continuing doctoral dissertation, interrupted by the summons home - Shiísm, Politics and Development in post Saddam Iraq: A Study of the impact of Sadr’s socio-political ideas on the formation, roles and development of governance. I learned more in his first chapters than from anything else I've read on contemporary Iraq - and there's a lot. The complexity can be daunting, but his detailed draft left me breathless with the pleasure of at last beginning to see a way in which this might be understood, and more important, might offer opportunities for peace and stability...

(a tiny sample from a draft since revised)...Figures 1, 2 and 3 below show, the main faith groups possessing that possess power and resources in modern Iraq are religious Muslim Shiíte groups. These groups not only conflict with other non-religious, non-Muslim, or non-Shiíte groups, but themselves are subject for to various conflicts. These conflicts pose an insurmountable obstacle in the face of to the development and the rebuilding of the country. The main conflict is generated by, and around, different world views expressed though (?) by a diversity of discourses. These discourses have a common frame of reference and a common set of goals....

Dhiaa Najm Al-Asadi

...The head of the Ahrar bloc in Iraq’s Parliament, Dhiaa al-Asadi, spoke to NIQASH about why he and his fellow MPS are standing behind a move to withdraw confidence from current Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The Ahrar bloc has 40 seats in Iraq’s Parliament and is particularly important because it is basically the political wing of the Sadrist movement, a multi-million-member group that follows crusading Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
The Sadrist movement also incorporates the former Mahdi Army, a militia held responsible for much of the violence against American troops as well as the conflicts that nearly plunged Iraq into a sectarian, civil war following the 2003 US-led invasion of the country. Over the years, the Sadrist movement has disarmed and, as a political force in the form of the Ahrar bloc, has become a crucial part of al-Maliki’s current coalition government; it has also been engaged in community work and seems to be becoming popular with Iraqis that did not previously support it.
But now the Sadrists seem to be turning against the man who leads the coalition they are part of. In terms of current affairs, many have been interested to see the Ahrar bloc side with former political opponents to attempt to oust al-Maliki, a fellow Shiite Muslim. In doing so, the Ahrar bloc is on the same team as Iraqi Kurdish politicians and politicians from the Iraqiya bloc, a mostly Sunni Muslim bloc from the other side of the secular tracks...

'...there is a lot of politics going on in Iraq these days. Best regards, Dhiaa'  Sent from my iPad

Last day here

I fly out of Melbourne at 1855 Thursday evening arriving in Birmingham at 1140 Friday morning - chasing the sun this time. I've been working up three in-house projects in Jersey, Barnet and Staffordshire in spare moments, so should be in Jersey Sunday afternoon for seminars on Chairing Scrutiny on Monday.

Yesterday I went again to see the painting that had held me, as I dip into Blainey's Triumph of the Nomads, then from two to six in the afternoon I cycled on to the Yarra Trail below Federation Square, who's free WiFi I'd enjoyed, and on around the city for over 20 miles lunching at Collingwood Children’s Zoo, traversing the higher path to the north then descending back down past Melbourne Zoo – all on immaculately prepared and signed paths, mingling but separated from road and rail routes into Melbourne, treating myself to a Coopers from the bottle on Collins as commuters made their way to Southern Star station. Geoff’s Orbea made the few slopes easy. When I lost my way with a wrong turn at Dights Falls I was soon guided back by friendly strangers some as confused as I by my map but pointing me in the right general direction.

The Liberal opposition is in contention over the deal struck between their Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, to support an ETS Bill that Kevin Rudd can take to Copenhagen to show the world Australia’s serious about climate change. The Herald Sun (25/11/09) is full of the higher energy bills that householders will face and business will have to pay; vexing at the ‘insanity, infamy and inanity’ (Terry McCrann in the Business section of Herald Sun) of making sacrifices that other nations, especially China, will ignore; with a spread on the 'faked' J-curve showing how global warming is a hoax by scientists – following a leak of e-mail exchanges between Phil Jones, Head of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, Keith Griffa, Jones’ deputy and Michael Mann – inventor of the hockey stick graph (see below) used by Al Gore to present An Inconvenient Truth, and Kevin Trenberth, Head of the Climate Analysis Section at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, lead author of IPCC reports. Monbiot recognises a gift to the deniers. Thus a UK court judgement at the beginning of October suggests Gore's film may be disallowed from some schools as being 'political' rather than 'scientific' (see Dimmock vs Secretary of State). It takes me to the continued argument about heliocentric versus geocentric descriptions of earth's relationship to the sun. The last Pope, John Paul II, apologised for the church’s treatment of Galileo, but the latest seems to be placing on that apology, without denying heliocentrism, that the proviso that Galileo (unlike Copernicus) was an egoist who published his findings without the full range of data required to prove that the earth circled the sun, rather than the other way round, and without consideration of the social impact of his findings. Ratzinger has the support of reputable philosophers of science, Feyerabend in particular, for this seemingly bizarre intention. It surprises me little that urgency, and possibly egotism, has involved massaging complex data. We are trying to see a possible eventuality over a time scale of millennia using the samples of a few human lifetimes, plus ice core samples. It is a pinhole view of a vast panorama that until the 1850s most scientists thought was hardly broader than the few thousand years since Genesis. As Richard Feynmann said “Few outside the world of science know how hard it is to find out the truth of anything.” It’s always a working hypothesis, always contested, always turning on tiny details - in Galileo’s case on anomalies. Who was it said when pondering the likelihood of evolution amid the fractious turmoil of debates about the origins of species.

[Scientific opinion on climate change]

Three independent global temperature data series assembled by: • CRU and the Met Office Hadley Centre (HadCRUT3) in the UK. • The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Asheville, NC, USA. • The Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), part of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) in New York.

One of the things that stands out for me is how the arguments have shifted from there is versus there is not climate change, to widespread acceptance that there is climate change, thought hat gets mixed up with global warming, and that GW is not or is brought about by humans - the acronym being thrown around on forums being 'AGW'. Comparisons to the great debates about heliocentric vs geocentric understandings of the solar system and evolution vs. special creation become even more apparent. Such a race and how superbly these dramas are described by Thomas Kuhn's great book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) was originally printed as an article in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, published by the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. In this book, Kuhn argued that science does not progress via a linear accumulation of new knowledge, but undergoes periodic revolutions, also called "paradigm shifts" (although he did not coin the phrase), in which the nature of scientific inquiry within a particular field is abruptly transformed. In general, science is broken up into three distinct stages. Prescience, which lacks a central paradigm, comes first. This is followed by normal science, when scientists attempt to enlarge the central paradigm by "puzzle-solving". Thus, the failure of a result to conform to the paradigm is seen not as refuting the paradigm, but as the mistake of the researcher, contra Popper's refutability criterion. As anomalous results build up, science reaches a crisis, at which point a new paradigm, which subsumes the old results along with the anomalous results into one framework, is accepted. This is termed revolutionary science. In SSR, Kuhn also argues that rival paradigms are incommensurable—that is, it is not possible to understand one paradigm through the conceptual framework and terminology of another rival paradigm. He also points out that those who uphold the replaced paradigm never abandon it. They eventually die.

The boundary between

[Back to the future - 1 December 2009: The opposition Liberal Party have voted out Malcolm Turnbull and elected a climate change sceptic. Australia's new opposition leader Tony Abbott said opposition senators will reject the government's carbon-trade laws if they are not deferred until early 2010.

The move could undermine the green bargaining power of Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, at the Copenhagen negotiations, which aim to agree a successor to the Kyoto protocol. It could also trigger a general election in Australia, which some observers say would be the world's first electoral crisis prompted by climate change. (Guardian 1/12/09)

My fifth Brompton folder ~ one less car

My fifth Brompton folder ~ one less car
Originally uploaded by Sibad.

Still the rain. News of three dying from heat in Corfu.

I've got 8000 words of this chapter done and now the hard part, getting it down to 5000. I'm cycling over to my friend and mentor Dr Lesley Prince this afternoon so that she can help me pull together a final version for a deadline on Tuesday.

I got this folding bicycle from Mike at Phoenix Cycles in Battersea Bridge Road, London in 2004. Walked in and bought it and he's looked after it since allowing me enjoyable visits across the Thames past the derelict grandeur of Battersea Power Station.

This valued artefact - a Brompton - is slightly longer than previous models, adding to its versatility - especially in allowing me to stand on the pedals which I found tricky on earlier versions. I've had several Bromptons over the eleven years since I bought my first. One was stolen in Lancieux in Brittany. One, through my negligence, fell under an intercity train in High Barnet and was broken into many pieces. One is in Ano Korakiana. One is in my mother's house in the Highlands - accompanying her recent move - and two, including this one, are in Handsworth. They are the design children of an inspired engineer who, with his team in London, works on them to this day and, within the small niche for folding bicycles, they are probably incomparable.

The bicycle in the picture is beside me as I wait for a train at New Street Station. It is ideal for what transport planners call multi-modal travel. Its low cross bar means walking is an easy choice, since it's so easy to hop on and off and stroll with it in places you might not be able to take a full size bicycle. It also carries lots of weight in a specially tailored pannier that slides on and off a sturdy bracket on the handlebar stem. I attached a large Dutch ding-dong bell for civility in announcing my presence. I carry an antique train whistle on a lanyard around my neck should I need to signal more urgently amid motorised traffic. Now get back to writing, Baddeley!

At Gas Street Basin      Photo: Dan Burwood for Rescue Geography. 

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Note from Bob McFetridge in Canada:
Simon. This article from today's Globe and Mail makes a bit more reference about the human impact on water patterns globally. I thought it might be of interest to you. "Human activity altering rainfall patterns": Sub-Saharan Africa is getting drier while more rain falls on North America in a global rainfall change that Environment Canada study shows is caused by humans. It has been quite extraordinary watching the news and hearing the interviews with those affected.
Today's study on Climate Change was released here in Canada (published in Nature). The potential impact will be a profound worsening of the human condition in the poorer regions and concomitant gains with more water in the wealthy regions of the world. Although I suspect the UK is not overjoyed about their new found wealth at the moment.
Our west coast has seen considerable rain this summer as well and records are breaking for temperature in the prairies - both consistent measures of CC modelling. Of course the challenge is to understand the difference between inclement weather patterns and actual climatalogical shift.
Some of what I am engaged in at the moment is trying to establish accessible data patterns in biodiversity that will allow monitoring of species changes in the ecosystem - particularly as they affect human health, food and economy.
There is a lot there in fact. The problem is that so much of it is in analog format and therefore hard to trap. Once again, however is the question of what we are actually seeing in a change. On the west coast, in my lifetime since I studied marine biology in the mid 60's, we have seen a number of species populations move as much as few hundred km north. Problem is they are mostly innocuous looking little invertebrates and so not particularly visible in the political landscape.
I watch all that water affecting urban and suburban populations and wonder how and when we will start to rethink our relationship with the landscape and how we plan our future development and protect that which we now have. All the best, Bob

Francis Zwiers is one of the lead authors of the complex study to which Bob has drawn my attention. Zwiers is based at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis. The article in Nature - the equivalent for climatologists and other scientists as The Lancet for medical researchers - is being mentioned in newspapers around the world at the moment.