letter to my MP - third runway

Dear Angela Smith

I would like to express my anger about the proposed third runway at Heathrow airport. I am angry because this plan tells me that the government do not care about the UK’s contribution to climate change, and that any promises they make to do with the slowing of global warming are merely token.

The Government claim to have accepted that Global Warming is a real and terrible problem for us, and that we need to act. How can I see their agreement for a third runway as anything but hypocrisy or utter ignorance? We need to be reducing flights (and use of cars – here we see similarly ridiculous and hypocritical plans for widening the M1). How can any of us believe that it is worthwhile turning off our lights, turning appliances off standby, or cycling to work when these are rendered pointless in a country where 800,000 flights may take off every day from one airport (according to aviation Minister Gillian Merron) .

Aviation is apparently responsible for 13% of Britain’s global warming emissions (Government’s own figures – discussed, for example, by Airport Watch: http://www.aef.org.uk/downloads/CO2statementMay07.doc). I can recommend George Monbiot’s ‘Heat’ as the place to read about what the consequences might be for our world if we do not cut our emissions drastically and fast. Have you read it?

It seems that the argument that we need airport expansion for our economy is not sound (Government report: Transport and the Economy,1999). Moreover, the noise will be unbearable for thousands of people in the area (Attitudes to Noise from Aviation Sources in England, Department of Transport, October 2007).

Please can you answer the following questions:

Where do you stand on this issue? If you support the third runway, please can you explain why, and tell me how you feel this represents the needs/ opinions of the people who elected you? And how you reconcile this with the results of the government reports cited in this article (I am sure you have read them).

If you do not support the third runway, please tell me what action you have taken to prevent it.

Please tell me what you are doing personally to reduce your carbon footprint.

I feel I am trying hard to do my bit by not driving (I cycle to work), I use washable nappies for my son, I try to buy second hand clothes where I can, I travel by train rather than plane. This is not enough.

What do you do?

Thank you very much,


Harriet Cameron

which is right.

Except that, it isn't quite (too late)
and therefore it isn't sweet (time)
and so I do still follow them (hips, his)
into my imagination.

But everything else was right.

SWEET TIME - Leonard Cohen

SWEET TIME

How sweet time feels
when it's too late

and you don't have to follow
her swinging hips

all the way into
your dying imagination


Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing (2006), p.47

The Golden Compass

the film adaptation of Philip Pulman's first book in the Dark Material's trilogy was really disappointing. A few actors were great but Lyra was wooden and far to pretty pretty. They missed out a lot of detail and what they did get was lacking magic.

I wish they had left it alone.

moment

I have left oli with his cow to go to sleep and now I have my coffee ready to be plunged and a glorious half hour with just me in it.

I wonder what you are doing.

Climate - targets

It seems canada and the US have gone along with the 2020 targets for reduced emissions. This is wonderful. Hooray for collective action (and booing of US delegates by delegates of the world).

laughter and altruism

Evidence that laughter makes us more altruistic towards strangers (Uni of Kent and Liverpool, Vugt, Hardy, Stow and Dunbar).

This has big implications. I am wondering about the effects upon my interviewees in my investigation of lecturer perspectives of dyslexic students - will their responses be different if I begin with a joke? Will they be more generous? The way I approach the interview/ behave...etc must be so crucial to the conversation we have - how can I separate my input from the experiences I elicit? I probably can't. What does this say about the usefulness of interview data? I am not sure.

question

Why do I lose my hearing during a yawn?

Ahoy there - Leunig

The Dyslexia Controversy

This video focuses on the problems of assessment and financial provision for dyelxic students at university - The University of Sheffield is used as an example. I find a very broad range of need levels in the students I see and the worries raised in this video worry me too. Is dyslexia a middle class condition? What does a diagnosis of dyslexia actually mean now? - especially now the discrepancy with I.Q. criterion has been removed.

A new kind of library

If we didn't have to work as much, this might really take off.

Stop the Clash of Civilizations

This video from Avaaz is fantastic - absolutely spot on.

George Monbiot on patriotism

George Monbiot writes:

I don’t hate Britain, and I am not ashamed of my nationality, but I have no idea why I should love this country more than any other. There are some things I like about it and some things I don’t, and the same goes for everywhere else I’ve visited. To become a patriot is to lie to yourself, to tell yourself that whatever good you might perceive abroad, your own country is, on balance, better than the others. It is impossible to reconcile this with either the evidence of your own eyes or a belief in the equality of humankind. Patriotism of the kind Orwell demanded in 1940 is necessary only to confront the patriotism of other people: the Second World War, which demanded that the British close ranks, could not have happened if Hitler hadn’t exploited the national allegiance of the Germans. The world will be a happier and safer place when we stop putting our own countries first.

www.monbiot.com

When I taught in Greece in the mountain villiage of Arachova, I often felt annoyed that all of the children insisted that Greece was the best and most beautiful country in the world. Best food, best people, best countryside, best everything. Most of them had never gone further than Athens (nearest big city). How did they know? I asked. They just knew. This is maybe more understandable in a relatively cut off, very trditional and orthadox villiage with very limited access to other ideas (noone there I knew then had the Internet); but I think it is less forgivable in Britain. We are clearly not best. I am proud of some things I think British people do well - but sad about things we don't - and definitely don't think we can rank a people overall in any kind of bestness heirarchy.

a story that I like

(the story so far)once upon a time there was a king called Marcus who loved his queen, Marlyn, more than all the world and the stars combinedIn the mornings he would bring her egg and toast, made by himself (he wouldn't let the servants help) and in the evening he would fluff her pillows before she lay downHe loved his queen so much that he couldn't listen to his generals during the council of war, and kept getting distracted while his royal treasurer was giving his accounts.He loved her so much that he commissioned the best sculptor in the land to make a statue of her out of pure white marbleThe scultptor was given a royal estate so he could work in complete concentration. Everyday the king's hunt would catch fine game for the scultptor to eat, and the king proclaimed that no one might bother or insult the scultptor in any wayAfter a year, the king asked the scultptor how it was going and the sculptor said that althought the work was progressing fast, the queen's beauty was such that the job was very difficult, very stressing, and he wasn't finished quite yetThe king worried even more, and took to going round to the scultptor's house to fluff his pillows, so that he would get a good night's rest before each day of work on the statue.After two years the statue was finished and the whole kingdom came to marvel at it. Indeed, it was a thing of complete wonder! The light fell on the statue, looking like it was kissing soft, white, skin. The eyes followed you around the room with a look of love and regal - almost divine - authority.When the queen herself saw the statue she was immediately flattered immensely and praised the sculptor and her husband the king to high heaven. But as the openning ceremony wore on, she stood further and further away from the statue, and finally, before it was even midnight said that she was overcome with tiredness and had to retire to her quarters.(second half)The king and his courtiers danced all night, admiring the statue, which seemed to grow more and more beautiful to them as the night wore on. In the morning the queen wasn't rested at all, but was pale and tired.At breakfast time the king decided to let her sleep and went, instead, to see how his statue looked in the morning light. Oh! It was more wonderous than ever! It's eyes seemed to shine with a luster, it's skin looked soft and inviting. The lips - oh the lips! - were full and round and seemed to whisper "Kiss Me" to the king.The king spent nearly the whole day with the statue, and by the evening his wife the queen had not recovered from her swoon, but instead had become even more frail.Th next day the king was to distracted by thoughts of his beautiful statue that he could not listen to his generals in the council of war, nor could he concentrate on the accounts when his royal treasurer laid them out for him. All he could think of was the beauty of the statueThe state of affairs went on for weeks, with the king obsessed by the beauty of the statue, and the queen growing more and more weak. One day, when the king was brought news that a neighbouring kingdom had raided his borders he did not visit the queen at all throughout the whole day.In the night she died and the news was brought to the king as he sat at the feet of the statue in the ballroom. He rushed at once to her bedside, but - too late! - her beauty had faded forever.The king was distraught beyond measure and tore at his hair and clothes and stomped around the palace wailing. Nothing seemed good or true or beautiful to him now - now he'd lost his queen he remembered how much he'd loved her.Because of what it brought to mind he could not stand the statue any more and ordered it moved to a corner. Now when he looked at it is seemed an ugly thing. And so it became, hanging with cobwebs and covered in dust.The king was so long in mourning that he did not have time to listen to his generals or his treasurer about the troubles in the kingdom. Soon the neighbouring kingdoms had taken all the land, and his generals had gone off to join their armies, and the treasurer took the money off to the city and all the servants left and the king wandered the palace in miserable isolation, his footfalls echoing now down the empty corridors - the loneliness man in the world, having lost everything.One evening, at dusk, he stopped in what had once been the great ballroom and he caught sight of the statue, which was now a disgusting thing, wilted in the corner. The shine was gone from its eyes and the softness from the skin. Eventually, from neglect, it had just crumbled and falled.At this point the king realised the point of his tale. The queen had faded when he ignored her for the statue, and the kingdom had faded when he'd ignored it as well. Finally, when he'd lost everything important he'd ignored the statue as well and that had faded to the ugly thing it was now. He realised that beauty wasn't a physical thing, something you could capture and fix in a statue, it wasn't intrinsic, but instead it arose when you loved someone or something and it grew the more and more the longer that your adored them.
THE END

By my friend the secret mayor of sheffield

The sun is shining right onto my face through the window. If I close my eyes everything is red behind them. I could be on the sea shore sitting on a rock with barnacles sticking into my feet. And so there I am. Looking at the beach and the sea, with my legs stretched out and a book by my side I consider whether I am happy here.

It's peaceful.

But I am not happy because I know that when I go back to my hut, you will not be there. There will be no letter from you, and I will not be having coffee with you again soon. I will not call you to tell you about the idea I had about time and space or about my worries about death that I had when I woke from my nap.

So the beauty of the beach and the sun and sky is mocking me. So I am going to open my eyes and come back to my office and not go there anymore.

No to IDcards

The No2ID website gives many reasons why ID cards are a bad idea. It argues that having a central data base containing 50 pieces of personal information on everyone of us that may be shared between different organisations is extremely worrying. It also points out that the reasons the government gives for collecting this biometric information and forcing us to carry cards have not been shown to be valid. There is a great summary of all of the problems here <http://www.no2id.net/IDSchemes/whyNot.php>
I think that even if these arguments did not hold, there would still be something terrible about forcing everyone into this - something fundamentally not right. Land - it doesn't belong to anyone - our species has been moving about for thousands of years. Who can demand that I must be labelled, checked, stamped, watched, monitored, measured, just to live on this bit of land when i have not committed a crime? All in this list already happens I know, but it doesn't all get put in the same place, and generally there is a specific good reson for giving the information (e.g. to get a passport, or to check that I am healthy, or to apply for a lisence for something). The info collected for the idea cards is for the purpose of control. It will attempt to stamp out difference - it will take away those few gaps where people who are extraordinary sit quietly and bring richness and liberty and alternative possibilities of living to us to show us we have a choice; people like Knulp - the character by Herman Hesse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hesse
in a book of the same name (1915) - whose free roaming life dipped into community to bring it poetry and a glimpse into another way. Not everyone can choose to live in this way - but that's ok because not everyone would choose that - but we need the possiblity of escape if we are to feel free. If I want to go and live in the woods, or if I want to simply be nomadic and live outside the majority social system, or join a self-sufficient commune, or if I want to busk everyday and move from city to city - no permanent address - perhaps just a first name - perhaps no documents - perhaps not knowing my age - - - I want these possibilities to exist. If it is illegal for me not to carry an ID card then these will not be possible.

A tutor of mine got angry with me once when I objected to his criticism of people who chose not to get a 'proper job' and instead played music in the streets, or juggled for a living, or something lie that. He said - why should he have to work this hard and feel this stressed and pay taxes that help to support people who are being 'lazy'. And the answer is - you chose to do this job - you have the benefits of being able to buy a house and heat it, to but the things you want, to go abroad on holiday.... why do you object to others exercising their choice and chosing to keep the time and not 'work' for the money. I think we need the variety - my tutor was a teacher and of course we need him - but I think we also need the people who live on the outside and they bring us something that we don't often consciously notice - they bring the possibility of difference. They also bring music, andcharacter, and escape.

flatland

Someone clever explained this to me before with the example of an orange landing on a 2D world. This is similar. Very good fun.

What could the other dimensions be?

Dr. Quantum

I need a physisist.

I think the quote below is so powerfully right. What truth is there behind the belief that one has led a good life when circumstances have presented little challenge to that path?

Am I not to blame then for the things that have tempted me away from being 'good'?

I do wish that was right right now. Then I could sink back to sleep and let the world happen to me and know there is nothing I can do to change it's path or mine.

Is there anything I can do? Is my deliberation of my yet unmade decisions pointless. Tomorrow they will be made. And tomorrow, looking back on today, my endless procrastinating and uncertainty would seem a waste of time because the outcome of the decision existed all along.

And how many there are who may
have led a long and blameless life,
who are only fortunate in having
escaped so many temptations.

- Kant, Metaphysical Elements of Ethics, in Dennett (1984) Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. Cambridge: The MIT Press. p.92.