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July 19, 2005

The problem with statistics

Inexplicably, the bombings in London – committed by four British guys – have reawakened the frenzied debate about asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.

A lot of the papers today have covered the story about the government’s failure to meet their asylum targets – that is, they wanted to be deporting more people than were coming in.

The problem with this is that it gets people thinking about numbers and net gain to the population and about those who are categorised as illegal or legal, as economic migrants (is that what anyone who moves to live nearer to their work is?) or terrorist wannabes, instead of focusing on lives.

So it’s apt that the guardian news blog today re-high-lighted the story of Verah Kachepa, and her four children – whose case made front page news during the last election because some odious lying tory scumbag (that narrows it down to, er, all of them then) doctored a picture of Anne Widdecombe protesting on behalf of the family so that it then displayed some crap about controlled immigration, like so –

So this week, Ms Widdecombe, George Galloway and other are calling for this family to be allowed to stay, once again.

We know their story, we’ve seen them in the press, we’ve heard her interviews. The trouble is, there are thousands of stories like this, and crass government targets gloss over the personal stories of threat and tragedy and torture and persecution and good ole fashioned wanting a better life for your family, in favour of quotas and soundbites and the fear of driving the country to the right by being soft on immigration.

This weekend, I had a long conversation with a whole load of 60+ essex residents, all of whom typified the muddled racist rhetoric of middle england. Lots of talk about the colour of their neighbours, mixed in with the problem with muslims but still acknowledging when challenged that none of the problems were anything to do with race or religion and that just as many people have trouble with antisocial neighbours who are white and british born as those who have trouble with immigrant neighbours. When given the language to unpack their situation, race became far less of a feature in the complaints, but the governments statistical chat is lost on a middle england populus who only tell stories about troublesome neighbours when they are definable as ‘them’.

I really hope the Kachepa family are allowed to stay – to deport them would be inhuman, as inhuman as many of the other deportations that go on to try and keep the quotas met. Quotas are bad enough when we’re talking about traffic wardens dishing out enough tickets. When it comes to whether or not to send someone back to a situation where they face persecution or even death, let’s drop the stats and hear the story. If it means we miss the targets, so what?

July 19, 2005

What's your 'real' age?

TSP just sent me this test to determine your ‘real’ age –

“How old do you feel?
Your birth certificate may give your calendar age but have you ever wondered what’s your ‘real age’? Take the test to find out if you’re making the right lifestyle choices.”

here’s my results –

Your ‘real age’ is: 31.8, but you could be younger!
Your age is: 32.6
Difference: -0.8

I’m a little surprised by that, but I guess being a non-smoking vegetarian who hardly ever drinks goes heavily in my favour. I definitely need more exercise though!

July 19, 2005

What women still have to put up with.

Until reading This story about the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, I had no idea that there had never been a woman conductor resident with any of the ‘major’ orchestras.

And now Baltimore are faffing over whether to employ Marin Alsop – currently chief conductor at the Bournemouth Symphony (one of the best orchestras in the UK). And it’s the musicians that are stifling the process…

Now, it’s altogether possible that Marin just isn’t up to the job – as with any discrimination situation, you have to weigh up whether the gender/race/sexuality/disability of the applicant is the problem, or if they just aren’t up to much – but Marin has an impeccable track record, has guest conducted most of the major orchestras in the US, has recorded a lot of stuff, and given that the orchestra is $10 million in debt, they could surely do with something a little different to start bringing the punters in.

Instead of looking like a bunch of reactionary old duffers, on par with the dissenters in the General Synod, complaining about the C of E’s recent fab decision to finally allow women bishops, they could have welcomed Marin with open arms, announced it as a new dawn for orchestras, and sought some much needed positive publicity from it.

It’s almost inconceiveable that women are still facing this crap across most areas of life – work, faith, music… it’s such bollocks, and hopefully will be looked back on in 10/20/30 years as an anachronism on a par with segregation.

July 19, 2005

Ooh, look, America's own terrorists…

Eric Rudolph was given two life sentences yesterday in the US for Blowing up an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama. Totally unrepentant, he carried on saying in court that the Abortionists were murderers and ‘needed to be fought with deadly force’.

Great, the American religious right has their own terrorists! They’ve been around for a while – attacks on Abortion clinics have been happening for decades – and the American people are generally fairly good at discerning between the beliefs of those on the right wing of the church who are anti-abortion but would never condone bombing a clinic, and those psychos with murderous intent. \

So, here’s the easy bit people, why not apply some of that logic to the situation with terrorists inspired by a violent murderous misinterpretation of their faith? Maybe what needs to happen is we need to get a couple of right-wing-but-not-bomb-expert American whackos – say, Pat Robertson and Oral Roberts, or Tim LaHaye – and get them to discuss the abortion clinic bombings, and then go through it and replace all the references to christianity with references to Islam, the justification of not agreeing with abortion with information about the bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then publish it as a statement to America’s religious right on how the actions of a murderer can be understood as separate from a) the actions of a wider faith community and b) the veracity of the politcal case they espouse.

It’d still make pretty horrible reading for the rest of us – I can’t imagine, Robertson, LaHaye or Roberts ever saying anything that I remotely agreed with, foul blight that they are – but might help those American Christian Jihadists in the PNAC-lovin’ south understand the less-than black ‘n’ white way that we need to engage with these kinds of event.

As it is, blowing up an abortion clinic to end murder is just about on par with sending hundreds of thousands of troops armed with depleted uranium shells into a country to bring about democracy…

July 18, 2005

Paul Vallely on Iraq

I’ve just read the most thorough and razor-sharp critique of The War on Iraq from a Christian perpective that I’ve ever seen. I always find it really odd that the vast majority of the Christians I know in the UK are adamantly against the war (the anti-war movement always has a very strong church presence – it’s fantastic to see vicars marching with muslim leaders in solidarity against the war) in contrast to the situation in the US where the war is seen as some sort of righteous crusade. It all adds up to one confusing portrait of belief in the 21st century.

Well, now Paul Vallely (Associate Editor of The Independent and
principal author of The Commision For Africa’s report) has written a stunning article entitled ‘The Fifth Crusade: George Bush and the Christianisation of the War in Iraq’, critiqing the crusade mentality of the US invasion of Iraq and the kinds of human rights abuses and gross misjudgements that such a mentality has inspired.

It’s in a downloadable journal called Borderlands (1.8Meg PDF file), which also features a marvellous article by Tom Wright – the bishop of Durham – critiquing the Da Vinci Code. The journal is published by St John’s College Durham – and beyond that, I know very little about it, but they have some world class writers.

And all thanks to it being emailed to me by the marvellous David Dark.

Soundtrack – Jughead, ‘Jughead’ (Matt and Gregg Bisonette, with Ty Tabor from King’s X and Derek Sherinian from Dream Theatre – a genius album, that owes more to the Foo Fighers and The Beatles than it does to any of the band members better known projects)

July 18, 2005

Update on the fairly aged felines

Yesterday, the original aged feline would have been 20. We had high hopes of him reaching that most prestigious of cat-landmarks at this time last year. His ongoing chronic renal condition got rapidly worse through August, and he died in September, a couple of months after his 19th Birthday. Which is not to be sneezed at. It makes him a bit of a Yoda amongst felines.

But we now have charge of the fairly aged felines, who are getting along just fine. The new challenge we face is trying to prevent the long-haired-ginger-one from resembling a moving shrubbery by combing him about five times a day to remove the myriad leaves, twigs and sticky seed-pods that he picks up whilst squirrelling through the ragged forest that is the extensive grounds here at Stevie Towers.

Both the boys have increased in bravery and friendliness, greeting new people in the house with curiosity and a request for cuddles rather than hiding under the sofa, which was their prefered reaction for the first few months.

They love their food, love cuddles, but are complaining a little about the heat of the summer. Well you try wearing a fur coat in this weather (I have tried it, it doesn’t work. Even for gigs.)

So raise a glass to the memory of The Aged Feline, and all the lessons he taught me.

July 18, 2005

Telling us what anyone with half a brain already knew

A report today by Chatham House and the Economic and Social Research Council has reported that Britains involvement in Iraq has put us more at risk from terrorist attacks. It’s what those of us in the anti-war camp have been saying since before the war happened, and it’s been proved time and time again by the terror alerts, and now by the terrible bombing in London on July 7th.

But do the government come clean? Are you kidding? This is the new Labour spin machine at work here. So here’s John Reid to peddle the moronic party line,

“And the idea that somehow by running away from the school bully, then the bully will not come after you is a thesis that is known to be completely untrue by every kid in the playground and it is also refuted by every piece of historical evidence that we have.”

OK, what are the similarities between acts of terror and bullying. Are we talking about big kids attacking small kids for no reason? Er, no. Are we talking about people who want to take the equivalent of our dinner money, or assert their place in some kind of playground heirarchy? Er, no. So the bully analogy means nothing.

You can’t describe a group of people retaliating for a war waged on Arabs as bullies. Their methods are horrific – this isn’t any justification of bombings, suicidal or otherwise – but their motivation is not to grab the UK’s dinner money. It’s the actions of the voiceless. Those who feel for whatever reason, their point is not being heard. Mix that in with a load of crazy exteme fundementalist ranting that gives moral credence to the attacks, and you’ve got a potent cocktail. The answer is not to wage war, but to remove the reasons for war. Bully metaphors are just bollocks.

As usual, Jyoti got there before me, with another fine blog on the same story.

Also a must-read is this week’s cover story in The New Statesman, about the islamic tradition that has spawned the extremists – it’s on the cover story page, but I’ll try and find a more permanent link.

and if you want to read the whole report here’s a link to a PDF of it.

Soundtrack – Edgar Meyer/Bela Fleck, ‘Music For Two’.

July 17, 2005

now I have to learn to play them…

The latest addition to the musical menagerie here –

Yup, congas – I’m a big fan of hand percussion – it’s quieter and generally more versatile than a drum kit (actually, drum kits have the potential to be hugely versatile, it’s just that most drummers play them in gruesomely unimaginative ways…) – so when The Shark offered to give me her Congas when moving to the US, I jumped at the change to get me some banging things! God knows where they are going to live, but I’m going to have to find out the proper way to hit them, and work them into some looped loveliness… And I’m sure Orphy will be more than happy to bash them when he comes round to play!

July 17, 2005

Gardening and Bass Practice – don't work in that order.

So, I had a list of things I needed to get done tonight. The usual Sunday jobs of putting the bins out, checking the smoke alarms, bit of washing up etc. But also had to do a lil’ bit of gardening.

Anyone who has seen the garden at Stevie Towers will know it’s like a jungle (sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under, uh huh huh), and the suckers growing out of our blackberry bushes and out of the wild roses had got well out of hand encroaching onto the lawn (or savannah as it’s more properly named). They were also cutting off access to the compost bin, so action needed to be taken against these needle sharp thorny triffids. So I attacked them, with secatures (how on earth do you spell that?) and a gardening glove, but still managed to shred my fingers in the process, making the last of tonight’s tasks – some bass practice – a little tricky.

For the gigs in Italy next weekend I really need to get practicing, given that I’m only taking my fretless with me, and so will have to play all the chordy tunes like Kindness Of Strangers and Despite My Worst Intentions on the fretless as well (and maybe even Shizzle). That’s going to take some practice, and it’s also going to require that my hands are in proper working order, not lacerated by evil garden monsters.

July 17, 2005

Some Sunday thoughts

It’s been an odd day today. Had two bits of news that are life-changing for the people involved. One good, one bad.

One v. good friend just had a baby – everyone concerned is well, and it’s probably the most powerful event ever in the lives of all concerned.

And at the other end of the scale, another v. good friend just found out that his mum probably has days to live. She’s been ill for a while, but it doesn’t really make the finality of such a prognosis any easier to swallow.

The two extremes of human experience – one ‘hello world’, one ‘goodbye world’.

Dave The Vicar was talking this morning about the 23rd Psalm – ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…’ etc. Focussing in on these first couple of lines, he unpacked what ‘I shall not want’ means – rather than it being a statement of overabundance, or some prosperity nonsense about having everything I might ever want, it’s a statement of completeness in God. Completeness in good times and in shit times. No promises of solutions, just the promise of presence.

For most people the absolutes in life – birth and death – are some of the most spiritual of times. Contemplating our own mortality in the light of the dimming candle of a loved one can beat the fundementalist out of the most ardent of hellfire-and-brimstone fundies and make the most hardcore athiest doubt their convictions. Death is too big for any of us to be certain about, but there’s something within the human experience that suggests there must be more. So certainty dies and we look for hope. The hope of life beyond death.

And birth kind of completes the circle – I think it was Billy Joel who sang that life is a series of hellos and goodbyes (shit, did I just quote Billy Joel on the blog? somebody shoot me), and I think the hellos can help make sense of the goodbyes. It doesn’t take the pain away, but the circle of life is complete. We’re all born, we all die, we all have a finite number of years to try and make sense of the world. If we know that a person has acheived something in their life, be it as personal as having a good relationship with their family or as huge as the Mother Theresas of this world, we can rest assured that they didn’t live in vain. They’ve done what we all seek to do – the search for meaning and significance. And as just about all funerals testify, everyone has had an impact on someone.

And at this point, the belief in a life beyond death makes the significant life and the death that follows seem just as significant for the person departing as for the ones left behind.

And it makes the process of bringing a new person into the world a little less scary – The Shepherd of the Psalm is on your side, at the begining and at the end. It doesn’t guarantee an easy ride – far from it – but it does help when drawing up the roadmap. Facing the potential for significance in a baby and knowing you’re responsible for where they go is the start of the journey. Looking back on a life well lived is the end of this part of the journey.

So I pray for both of them – giving thanks for the baby, and for wisdom for the new parents. And then for peace and consolation for the one saying goodbye.