My column in this week's Herald Express...........the restless pen...
"STANDING on the east quay of Paignton harbour as the sun lifts from the distant horizon against a clear blue sky is the most wonderful spiritual experience.
I'm not talking about religious spirituality here but about the essential essence of us all. That special part of you and of me that is so intensely personal and private.
It is the core of all our fears hopes and aspirations. The shards of cold salt spray touching your face is the stark reality of a winter dawn and of your own actuality.
I say not religiously spiritual, and yet long forgotten prayers on that golden dawn can provide a platform for quiet meditation.
Perhaps that is the nature of prayer in that it allows a moment of personal reflection and a mantra against the dark days which seem to be creeping around us.
I must admit that for me often when life becomes a little complicated that mantra can provide a barrier between you and the demons of the night. That moment of reflection is now lost from council meetings now that the courts have ruled against it.
The BBC news of that morning carried the Moody's credit rating agency warning about the possible downgrading of our AAA status, and it made me reflect on what that actually means to you and me.
The rhetoric is confusing but the outcome is, with this Government's economic policy, likely to have an impact on the streets of South Devon. The changes tend to be a little like toothache, in that the pain at the moment is random.
It is not until, as we are seeing in Greece, the pain gathers a momentum all of its own that you can see the worrying outcome, as families put their children in care because they can't afford to feed them.
The gap between those who have and those who have not is getting scarily wider by the day.
South Devon is without doubt an unemployment black spot, where wages in our predominantly service based industry tend to be minimum.
A recent change in government policy is very worrying. Many local people work on a part-time basis because the full-time jobs are simply not there.
By working a minimum of 16 hours tax credits kick in and allow a sustainable lifestyle. The threshold is about to change to 24 hours!
A small hotel locally may employ a number of folk working 16 hours, thereby allowing a flexible business model which is sustainable in these challenging times.
So for a business that is only just holding its head above water, where do the extra hours come from?
Talking of hours and wages, it was an eye opener the other day to see mayor Gordon Oliver is to donate half his annual salary to charity.
He, of course, is earning much less than many of the council officers he leads, and one has to wonder whether his example will catch on.
Probably not, and in truth there can't be that many of us who could survive having given away half of the annual household income.
But nevertheless it is very good news for the deserving causes who will doubtless benefit from his generosity.
This neatly leads me on to another curious blot on the Big Society landscape.
We were told that localism is important, and that communities could do much of what government, both national and local, had been doing more efficiently.
That may or may not have been true. But a consequence of funding cuts to local organisations has been catastrophic.
I worry about local services which have also been chopped, like youth services where we have brilliant developments like Parkfield without the infrastructure to support it.
The trouble is, like the loss of local shops, once this stuff has gone we will then start to understand what we have lost.
The words of Nikos Kazantzakis (Zorba the Greek) come to mind: "I was happy, I knew that. While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realise — sometimes with astonishment — how happy we had been."
I'm not talking about religious spirituality here but about the essential essence of us all. That special part of you and of me that is so intensely personal and private.
It is the core of all our fears hopes and aspirations. The shards of cold salt spray touching your face is the stark reality of a winter dawn and of your own actuality.
I say not religiously spiritual, and yet long forgotten prayers on that golden dawn can provide a platform for quiet meditation.
Perhaps that is the nature of prayer in that it allows a moment of personal reflection and a mantra against the dark days which seem to be creeping around us.
I must admit that for me often when life becomes a little complicated that mantra can provide a barrier between you and the demons of the night. That moment of reflection is now lost from council meetings now that the courts have ruled against it.
The BBC news of that morning carried the Moody's credit rating agency warning about the possible downgrading of our AAA status, and it made me reflect on what that actually means to you and me.
The rhetoric is confusing but the outcome is, with this Government's economic policy, likely to have an impact on the streets of South Devon. The changes tend to be a little like toothache, in that the pain at the moment is random.
It is not until, as we are seeing in Greece, the pain gathers a momentum all of its own that you can see the worrying outcome, as families put their children in care because they can't afford to feed them.
The gap between those who have and those who have not is getting scarily wider by the day.
South Devon is without doubt an unemployment black spot, where wages in our predominantly service based industry tend to be minimum.
A recent change in government policy is very worrying. Many local people work on a part-time basis because the full-time jobs are simply not there.
By working a minimum of 16 hours tax credits kick in and allow a sustainable lifestyle. The threshold is about to change to 24 hours!
A small hotel locally may employ a number of folk working 16 hours, thereby allowing a flexible business model which is sustainable in these challenging times.
So for a business that is only just holding its head above water, where do the extra hours come from?
Talking of hours and wages, it was an eye opener the other day to see mayor Gordon Oliver is to donate half his annual salary to charity.
He, of course, is earning much less than many of the council officers he leads, and one has to wonder whether his example will catch on.
Probably not, and in truth there can't be that many of us who could survive having given away half of the annual household income.
But nevertheless it is very good news for the deserving causes who will doubtless benefit from his generosity.
This neatly leads me on to another curious blot on the Big Society landscape.
We were told that localism is important, and that communities could do much of what government, both national and local, had been doing more efficiently.
That may or may not have been true. But a consequence of funding cuts to local organisations has been catastrophic.
I worry about local services which have also been chopped, like youth services where we have brilliant developments like Parkfield without the infrastructure to support it.
The trouble is, like the loss of local shops, once this stuff has gone we will then start to understand what we have lost.
The words of Nikos Kazantzakis (Zorba the Greek) come to mind: "I was happy, I knew that. While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realise — sometimes with astonishment — how happy we had been."
