Saturday 23 July 2011

Vision of question time and personal litter-picking...




The Herald Express is now a weekly rather than a daily. This is my occasional column for the first edition...

Thursday, July 21, 2011 Herald Express

A couple of months ago, just after the mayoral election, I wrote down a few thoughts about the new political dynasty. My concern was that when you suddenly get what you always wanted you might find that you didn't want it at all! But you've got it and now you have to do something meaningful with it.
I had the opportunity to test that thought process last Thursday when I bumped into Gordon Oliver on the stunningly beautiful main staircase at Oldway Mansion in Paignton. I reminded him of what I had written just after the mayoral election and asked whether he really had got what he wanted. His diplomatic wry smile will amuse me for years to come. As he said, these are early days.

Well, early days they might be, but we live in tumultuous times where, like the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, some things are just so hard to believe. It may well be these are simply days rather than early days. The one thing that we cannot afford is confused thinking because people too quickly become disorientated and worse still disillusioned. There is, more than ever, a need for very clear strategic thinking and a sweeping aside of the curmudgeons.

My reason for being at Oldway was to attend, in the public gallery, a meeting of the full council. My specific interest was the draconian cost increase for families being bussed to school and college. An amendment had been tabled by a couple of councillors to soften the blow, which will financially damage so many struggling families, by spreading the increase over five years. Well, what happened was that a vote was not taken, to the disappointment of a large number of parents and children who had attended the meeting, and the matter was referred back to our mayor, Mr Oliver.

I found that hugely interesting because it made me realise the shocking power an elected mayor has. But an elected mayor is what we all voted for when we went down that dubious dusty road. It seems to me therefore whatever a council may decide is ultimately at the mercy of the mayor!
These are hard times, as we all know. But even now we have the obvious winners who have managed to reach the security of the financial high ground, and good luck to them. But they are few when compared to the increasing numbers beaten down by rising prices, high utility bills, redundancy, reduced services and a myriad of other hardships. As some bright spark noted, never in the history of man has so much been taken from so many by so few!

Where am I going with this? For more years than I really care to remember I have worked with the Duke of Edinburgh's Award as participant and then as a volunteer. I have always seen the DofE as an agent of social cohesion. The gap between those who have and those who have not is getting wider by the day, which will inevitably lead to a lack of social cohesion. We need to look out for each other, help neighbours and do our best to ensure our legacy is not one of selfish greed.

In a whimsical moment I had suggested to our new mayor that we might start perhaps with monthly public gatherings at the Riviera International Conference Centre where ordinary folk can air their views to the mayor in a pleasant and productive way. The questions could be written, for those who don't want to speak in public, but still allow for energetic rhetoric. This must not be a ranting session because I am sure we can find an upturned milk crate on Torre Abbey corner for that pent-up energy of those who simply want to unleash angry venomous rhetoric.

My other little tongue-in-check suggestion was that after the meeting we all pick up a paper bag to do a little litter collection on the way home as a gesture toward community cleanliness! That really is a serious suggestion since we shouldn't wait for others to make Torbay blossom.

How's that for a new vision?

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Dreamscape..............


When I was a young man I had a very vivid dream; a dream that has haunted me for so many years and now latterly has an echo of reality. Perhaps that is the nature of dreams that in darkness of sleep we somehow connect with eternity where the past and the future become part of the one. I don’t know and therefore the search for truth continues!


Anyway let me get back to the dream. I knew then as I know now that it was a time in the future. It was a warm day with a stunning clear blue sky and I was travelling on a sort of flatbed vehicle on a road that I knew well with people that I didn’t because I had obviously found myself, somehow, in the future. As we travelled it occurred to me that there were no churches which I questioned a companion about. He smiled at me and said that they had all been demolished a while ago. Where the churches once stood, for I remember them being there, was grassland!


A few days ago I was leaving an increasingly traffic gridlocked Plymouth down one of my numerous rat runs and happened to be in Mutley. There was until recently a beautiful old church on a crossroads that had been the core of the local community. Now it’s rough ground with the occasional pile of bricks poking out over the numerous weeds.


That prompted a church search over the next few days. Some that I once knew have been flattened others have become snooker halls, antique shops, private clubs and designer homes. For me it prompted the thought of the generations who worshiped, were hatched, matched and despatched in these once spiritually vibrant buildings.


Sunday those years ago was a time for families to gather and often attend a church service together. There is still that gathering today but not in the churches. Now families gather in the supermarkets which have become the new cathedrals of consumerism where a false feeling of equality is established through the aisles of plenty and the advent of a credit card.


In this apparently Post-Christian era I make no call for a return to the churches but I do make a call for the spiritual energy that we all hold to be liberated in the hope of building more socially cohesive communities in these increasingly troubled times where the neighbourhood gap between those that have and those that have not widens by the day.

Thursday 7 July 2011

Feeling a little blue......


I’ve been messing around at Harbour Sports for over thirty years and yet things still creep up and bring tears to me eyes. Silly old thing really when I think about it and I guess that in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter. But it does, perhaps sadly, matter to me.

I little over a year ago we picked up a new brand which I thought quite special. Rather than simply stick it on the rails we made it a central feature on our large stand at the Riviera Conference Centre Great Outdoors Exhibition in Torquay last summer.

The brand sold because it is unusual, well priced and fun. The exhibition was hard work but it was exciting to do. The outcome was that we worked at building the brand and nice folk shared in that journey. After all is said and done our Harbour Sports strap line, for want of a better term, is that we don’t just walk the walk and talk the talk we also live the life. This new brand was part of that life force.

We live in curious times and things too often are not as they seem. It saddened me this year when the distributor suddenly started opening new accounts without bothering to consider the hard promotional work that we had put in. Sign of these times perhaps?

Anyway I happened to be walking past a shop not too far away today and found the window full of the clothing brand that we stupidly thought (well not that stupidly since we have a pointless email saying that we had territorial rights) was exclusive to us.

I seem to spend too much time these days placing plasters over metaphorical knife wounds between my shoulder blades. There was a time when a handshake meant something and it makes me sad when people act in the way that the brand supplier has.

But hey, we get up dust off and get on with life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Keep the Faith, or faith if you like...............