marramgrass

Mick Fealty highlights on Slugger the “poll” Lisburn City Council is running on their website.

The question concerns the fairly contentious proposal to open a John Lewis store at Sprucefield, just outside Lisburn.

Go and have a read.

I presume that no really deep analysis is required, but there are a few points that are worthwhile/fun to consider.

I’m undecided about the council being so publicly and enthusiastically supportive of such a controversial commercial development. It’s obviously their job to promote the commercial well-being of the city, but this one feels a little too cosy. It’ll probably have a negative effect on businesses in the centre of Lisburn: the existing developments at Sprucefield have done their damage, but as most of them are specialist outlets there has still been space for smaller retail in the city itself. A general department store like John Lewis could be much more damaging to small businesses.

The most serious bit:

This development will potentially create over 2000 jobs and an investment of £200 million.

However, if the planning application is unsuccessful, it will mean a loss of over 2000 jobs which the Lisburn City Economy, and indeed the Northern Ireland Economy cannot afford.

Read it carefully — this is just wrong. The development may bring 2000 new jobs (although this figure could be offset by possible job losses from smaller businesses), but not gaining those 2000 jobs is definitely not the same thing as losing them. I find this argument quite worrying, as it’s disingenuous and manipulative. Weaselly, you could say. (David Braziel tweets wittily to illustrate.)

And finally, my favourite: the single, supportive, option available in the “poll”. The council website refers to this as a poll, several times. It’s not a poll. To say “poll” implies some sense of consultation and representation, and may even lend a smidgen of credibility — credibility that would be lessened were this recognised for what it was, a campaign and petition to bring a big business to Lisburn.

That said, I doubt it’ll do their case any good. “Look, Minister, all these people clicked a button on our website!” How many people didn’t click the button? We’ll never know.

(I’m not necessarily against the development, by the way. I’m just not impressed with how our city council is presenting the question.)

Some reflections for you on Armistice Day:

Glenn talks poppies, twice. As do Jonny, Cheryl and David.

The poppy keeps coming up in conversation, along with the question of how to remember rightly. Brodie thinks carefully about the meeting of pacifism and Remembrance, leading up to what I’m sure will be a useful examination of solidarity and neighbourliness. It’s Brodie’s final point that rings most true for me:

Fourthly, remembering is not a glorification of war but a lament. Lament is a very scriptural practice and one that at times for the health of a nation needs a national expression.

Brother Maynard is also worth reading.

Every year I think about how I relate to our corporate Remembrance, and every year I seem to get further away from a conclusion. Perhaps our agonising at such length tells something about importance.

Stu recently posted in defence of the BBC, reminding me of I Believe in the BBC from a few years ago.

I’m not given to fervent nationalistic (with a small N :-) pride, but I have often thought that the BBC is one of the high points of life in the UK, and something to be proud of — kind of like that other great and maligned semi-public body, the NHS. (Yes. I said it.)

Both receive constant scrutiny and criticism, often inspired by their fairly direct reliance on money straight out of the pockets of people like you and me, but both do a generally good job and enrich the lives of countless people, including me. In the case of the BBC, its reach is global.

I took a moment to tally up all the different ways I consume BBC content: RSS feeds from its news website, the website itself, radio (Radio Ulster and Radio 4) in the car, television as it’s broadcast (BBC 1, 2, 3, 4, News), TV and radio via iPlayer, podcasts based on various radio shows. Not bad for my 140 quid.

Of course the content of the programming can vary in quality, but much of it is excellent and it provides a great range of different kinds of content. The licence fee is controversial, but it works, and I suppose that not having to rely on revenue from advertising frees the BBC in many ways.

I suppose what I’m saying is let’s not take it for granted; where else can you find the pure entertainment of Stephen Fry visiting every state in America?

There you go, then. Barack Obama has been named President-Elect of the United States of America. Of course we over here are removed from the whole thing, but there’s no escaping the significance of a change in the leadership of the States for the rest of the world. Just look around you at all the ways America influences life here.

There’s a definite sense of hope pervading the blogs and tweets today, with the occasional flash of cynicism recalling the rapid tarnishing of New Labour. It’s easy to be cynical, isn’t it? We tend not to admit to hope — it makes us feel naive — yet hope is also the riskier attitude, leaving us vulnerable to disappointment.

I think I’m happy that Obama is on his way in. For balance I’ll mention that John McCain has generally struck me as good spud (an assessment reinforced by the graciousness of his concession speech this morning), although elements of his campaign and campaign team certainly gave me pause.

Barack Obama seems to bring the inspirational back to politics. At some point over the last decades we became very suspicious of politicians and rhetoric, but I hope the new President-Elect can overcome that suspicion. I actually think he might be able to.

Each morning, driving into Belfast (not so bad when the schools are on holiday), we listen to BBC Radio Ulster. It’s the only time in the day when I receive the news via a human voice rather than through the blue-on-white of Google Reader, but I’m getting fed up with it.

Take this morning as an example of why. Yesterday the Air Traffic Control radar at Dublin Airport fell over causing delays, diversions and cancellations to mess with the plans of many a holiday-maker. This morning a representative of one of the airlines was being interviewed on the radio. The first question he was asked: “Who is to blame?”

The was no acknowledgement that sometimes these things happen, and only a passing reference to the fact that the decision to take the system down was intended primarily to ensure the safety of flights in and out of the airport. The interviewer’s main concern seemed to be who would be held accountable for this terrible, awful, atrocious turn of events where no-one at all was injured.

I’m coming to despise that phrase, “held accountable”, and all the other variations that express the same idea: this was someone’s fault, and they shall pay.

It shows in the journalism, where interviewers seem to believe that their job is primarily to make their interviewee, whoever they may be, squirm as much as possible. Sometimes the desire to ask a tough and hard-nosed question is necessary, often it’s just silly and irrelevant. It shows in the phone calls, emails and text-messages from listeners, as the new, interactive BBC lets everyone throw in their two pen’orth. And you can see plenty of it — more, even! — online where the communication is oh-so-easy.

Of course society needs to ensure that everyone from government to grocer deals fairly, honestly and safely with each other, but I wish we could recover the shrug of the shoulder that recognises that sometimes stuff just happens, you know?

Again I think about something I’ve seen or heard, and I wonder about grace. When I encounter a mistake or an inconvenience, I do my best to remember to acknowledge no harm and let it go, but it’s tough when everything I listen to in the morning is focussed on assigning blame.

Do you think we could manage, as a society — especially in this little corner of the world where so much real harm and hurt still casts it shadow — to try for that grace?

T o follow up on my previous post, today I paid 116p a litre for unleaded, and then I read about the end of the Hummer!

Yesterday afternoon I paid £1.14 a litre to fill the petrol tank of my car. On a 55-litre fuel tank that takes me well past the sixty pound mark for a fill.

I’m not complaining about this because for now I know that we can afford it, but I also know that it’s a heavier problem for some.

I’ve been operating on the assumption that at least part of the reason for the hefty duty on fuel in the UK was an effort to discourage car use for environmental reasons. I may be wrong — the duty has been substantial for longer than the environment has really been on the radar, I think.

When we moved back to Northern Ireland (almost two years ago, now) we took what was for us a difficult decision. We bought a second car. This was a result of the nature of the work we both do: I move around a lot during the day, and not having to rely on public transport makes for less time spent traveling, plus I often am out and about in the evenings; my wife works on calls ‘from home’ and needs quick transport to the hospital to be immediately available; it’s impossible to co-ordinate these two factors.

That was our thinking, and most of the time I manage to convince myself that it’s not just an excuse. On occasion, though, I wonder if we’ve been seduced by a little taste of decadence, even if the second car only leaves the drive when we really need it to.

Sometime in the next few months, we’ll need to fill the oil tank for our central heating, too. That one I am a little concerned about. When it comes to it, though, we’ll rein in for a while and we’ll be able to pay the bill I fully expect to be in the region of £5-600. Again, we’re lucky (which is to say, privileged) — we’ll be able to do that. Others won’t.

What to do?

This is where I start to get a little uncomfortable, because ultimately I think it’s a cultural thing that is as much to do with me as anyone else, consuming everything.

I have convinced myself that we need two cars in our family, however uncomfortable I claim to be with that arrangement. We, a couple with no children yet, need a whole car each?

Maybe, for now, it’s true that we do. I still hope, though, that I’ll never stop asking myself that every time I look out at our drive and see them sitting there. When I stop, then I’ll need to worry.

I suppose that’s a solid principle: don’t get comfortable.

The Archbishop of Canterbury seems to have have caused a bit of a stir yesterday. He certainly got the politicians jumping :-)

On the surface Dr Williams’ remark seems a pretty daft thing to say, but giving it some thought it leaves me with a couple of questions.

In civil matters (divorce, property disputes, etc.) it may make some sense, as long as all parties agree. Then it becomes mainly a contractual thing (beware, IANAL). Still, let me emphasise may and some. I’m not qualified to go any further, so I’ll leave it with a question mark: ?

The bigger question I find is that of what it means to be a ‘multicultural’, ‘diverse’ or ‘plural’ society?

Law is a different case, of course, but more generally if we want to be able to say we accept and value other cultures, are we kidding ourselves if we then go on and insist that cultural distinctives get left at the door (or the customs checkpoint)? How do we integrate and celebrate difference, rather than ending up with some sort of cultural lowest common denominator where differences are glossed over in case we find we disagree on something? (When did we forget that it’s okay to disagree?)

I had a chat with a friend recently who helps out with a youth group in a church of a mainstream Protestant denomination. One of the young people who comes along is Roman Catholic with a big wide Republican streak. This young person asked if they could do something to commemorate the events of Bloody Sunday, as you’ll surmise a controversial suggestion in that context. I don’t know how that conversation went, but consider this: with all this talk of A Shared Future, how can we acknowledge and accept a shared past and a shared present?

Love him or hate him — I’ve many friends who’ll be distressed when I say I have a soft spot for him — Rowan Williams has certainly got people talking.

Our street, last night. It was all still there this morning. I haven’t seen snow so deep in a long time.

Just like the rest of the UK, one of the more controversial social issues right now is the growing migrant community, in particular from Eastern Europe.

Me, I don’t subscribe to the “dirty foreigners taking our jobs” view, nor indeed the variations along the lines of “they should learn more English and be more like us” or “just send ‘em all home.” The more the merrier, I say. It’s not like we’re in a famine or a drought, here, and we stand to be greatly enriched as a society.

I’m slightly sad to detect the little hints of prejudice that do still manage to creep into my mind, though. Example one: behind a car with a Polish reg on the motorway, I find myself watching out for dodgy driving. But then, I do that when I’m behind an Irish reg, too, so maybe I’m just a driving snob. Example two: the window cleaner came to our house the other day, and he has a Polish guy working with him. Why did I have to fight down the little bit of unease I had? Totally unjustified.

It was that window cleaner who got me thinking about this, though. While his colleague, who didn’t appear to have much English going by the interactions I saw between the two of them, was doing most of the work – climbing the ladder, cleaning the windows, cleaning the small forest out of our guttering – the window cleaner stood in the front garden chatting to me while he watched. He talked plenty about his Polish colleague. None if it was too nasty, although some wasn’t 100% nice, either, but the tone and the flippancy – especially with the other guy maybe twenty feet away – left me wondering if he’d have spoken in quite the same manner if he thought the subject of his gossiping could understand what he was saying.

I felt very uncomfortable with this. Did I say anything? No, I just smiled and nodded. What’s that about? When they left, I did make a point of thanking the one who I’d seen do most of the work. He looked a little taken aback. Working round here (in the heart of almost-countryside middle-class land) I wasn’t terribly surprised.

How come I’m thinking so much about this? How come it’s such a big deal to so many people, whatever side of the line they’re coming from?

Moving to a new country isn’t an easy thing. I found it tough enough going to Scotland, and I knew people there and spoke the language. Actually, I’ve found it tough enough returning to Northern Ireland, and this is home.

The notion of community runs right through the Gospel, and it’s one of open and welcoming community – all the more challenging since human community by its nature tends towards being a bounded and exclusive thing. If we’re trying to discover a true expression of Gospel community, how do we respond to the incomer, the economic migrant, the guy here looking for a slightly better life for him and his family (I hope he finds what he’s after), the seeker of asylum, even the tourist.

In light of Jesus, I’m not sure how much emphasis needs placed on matters of nationality and geography, at least in the negative way we like to. Even if we go back and consider the Old Testament, there’s a lot in the Law about right treatment of the ‘alien’.

Of course, I don’t know the answers. I just ask the questions. But I wish more people would ask the questions.