The stand for nothing leader

Mark Latham's venting of spleen against the Australian Labor Party and in particular Kim Beazley as a "stand for nothing" type of leader is unfortunately true. And, even more unfortunately, the disease of the modern body politic.
It is not just Beazley but the whole notion of modern politics. Discern, the spin doctors seem to suggest,what the electorate wants and pursue that. This is not visionary leadership it is poll-driven paranoia!
While the Coalition, and our beloved PM in particular, are superbly skilled at this "art" the Labor Party is rightly criticised for being too frightened to stand against this. Why Latham should feel he is in a position to call the kettle back, I don't know. A case easily could be made to suggest he was just as timid and unimaginative.
I am actually more drawn at this time in history to the Liberal wets: Petro Georgiou, Bruce Baird, Judi Moylan et al who have stuck by their guns now that they have had enough of the inhumanity of the immigration policy of this hard-hearted government. The Labor Party, under both Latham and Beazley, were ever too afeared of public opinion to risk distinguishing themselves by saying enough is enough. I must admit that Beazley has disappointed me in this regard, I thought he was more visionary. But he looks more and more insipid..
Is it the end of the Labor Party? I fear so, unless someone can be found (and it will not be one of the roosters) who can bring back some sense of the visionary.
Whether you are a Coalition supporter or not, we should all be alarmed in our two party democracy when we look like becoming a one party parliament.

No it shouldn't! -The ongoing saga of Big Brother

I arrived home from a meeeting last evening and sat down to complete the work I needed to do before going to bed. In the background the tweetling of television. I became more annoyed as the program impinged on my serenity, and realised after I had heard the word a**e for the sixth time in two minutes that obviously the TV was tuned to Big Brother Uncut!
On investigation I discovered the TV was on and no one was watching it...so turned it off!
We read today that last night's episode was considerably cleaned up.
Ms Killeen, our erstwhile host, says "On a more serious note" (it is difficult to believe that the extraordinarily cynical Gretel could ever be serious about anything), Killeen also told viewers "we don't condone the behaviour of these housemates but we do believe it should be out in the open."
No it shouldn't! The 'behaviour' she is talking about is people in the shower and their pre-bed conversations. Private moments of affection and so on.......
The BB audience may want to watch this but this doesn't mean it should be out in the open.
I am pleased to say that in a house of BB devotees...none of us could be bothered watching Uncut .
Ah well next week they will have to double the number of Anglo Saxon crudities. Thank goodness we will be overseas!
In startling contrast Andrew Denton's "Enough Rope" featured an interview with Anthony LaPaglia in which he and his wife Gia Carides appropriately shared a lot about their personal life, and also some of his careful reflecting on the current state of acting. The two things were worlds apart! The transcript is not yet on the website but will be worth a read if you missed it. My admiration for LaPaglia multiplied a thousand times, and of course Denton...well he is just superb...a far cry from the loony days of his youth. Though they were fun too!@!

Confidentiality v. Secrecy (ii)

It seems to me that confidentiality is something that we all should be able to expect, although in organisations and the wider community we should understand that processes are open even when details are confidential. It is when processes are hidden that we enter into the sinister world of the secret. We are rightly critical of processes called "commercial confidentiality", which are often little more than a way of keeping secret big payouts to corporate fat cats
Two examples in church life would seem to highlight where we have confused confidentiality and secrecy...and bear in mind that there seems little reason for the church to be practising "commercial confidentiality" so we should largely expect processes to be open.
In the recent ongoing horror of the Brandenberg saga as reported in the Adelaide Advertiser on 21 June we read the headline "Victims outraged as church cancels mediation". I was intrigued that I had a number of comments from people who thought I maybe could explain what was going on.....there questions were not about the details but about the process. "What is going on?"...I had to admit that in general I didn't know, as I, like them, learn about this process through the media.
I have been present in various gatherings when similar sorts of questions have been answered, and the answers have ususally been..."Well, all is going along. We are not going to tell you what's happening." Indeed, there is never any detail about the process. The answers always rather patronising.
Now, I DON'T want or need to know who the victims are, what the size of payouts are, what the details of the offences are...but I would like to know what the process is and how it is progressing.
There is no need to keep process secret.

Another example relates to appointment processes. We seem to almost launch into paranoia mode in this regard. We lose sight very easily of the fact that the process should be open whilst our dealings with people may need to be confidential. If we are not open in process, then concepts of fairness and equity may as well be tossed out of the window.

When the Archbishop offered me my present appointment I had to say to him six weeks after I had been interviewed for another position......well I don't know if I can apply as I am still waiting to be told if I have got the other job...can you tell me? No he couldn't, wouldn't and didn't!!!
I held my ground, and it was only as I waited and waited that he finally gave in and begrudgingly said..."Well I suppose on balance and without making any admission, and I'm not breaching confidentiality".....shades of Sir Humphrey Appleby......what was forgotten in all that was that I, my wife, and my family were profoundly disappointed. (and had spent six weeks not knowing what was going on...I was one of two candidates interviewed and I still have not been told I did not get the job!!)
Well maybe you should get over something that happened 10 years ago. I have! And I was glad to be able to acept my current appointment.
In the secular world such work practices would be quite rightly decried and denounced as lacking the transparency and accountability that we should expect. I have no reason to suspect that we are any better today than we were then and have a dozen similar stories to illustrate that thesis.

.....but one correspondent asks how does this bear on The Rev'd Don Owers resignation:

I say again that I have no intention of speaking on his behalf, but I do hear him say, and have heard him say on numerous occasions that we have a lack of accountability in dealing with these abuse issues which is scandalous. That there is confusion of process. And so I highlight here the very serious confusion between appropriate confidentiality and the sinister hand of secrecy as an example of that. I believe that the Olsson report makes the same point over and over again.

And we fail to hear that message at our peril

Appropriate viewing

The recent outcry about inappropriate language, images, innuendi..etc...on Big Brother, should at least give us some cause to pause and understand the nature of television.

1. If you can brave it, watch a small section of the eviction show on Sunday night at 7.30 (on 10). It will be apparent that the average age of the audience is less than 16. While it is true that there is a cross-section of people in the audience...and we all sit down and watch it on Sunday night in our house...nevertheless there is an over-representation of the young. It is probably true to say that young girls appear to be more represented than young boys.

2. This is the target audience, I would suggest. The offending segment Big Brother Uncut is scheduled to screen after 9.30 at night... last week it included offensive language, derogatory male sexual comment about women and homosexuals. I know this because I walked into a room where the TV was on and it took me 2 minutes to realise what it was and turn it off. In that two minutes I heard both of those things.
With the best will in the world some sections of the enthusiastic child audience are going to find ways of watching this, with or without parental consent. It is not simply realistic enough to say "If you don't like it turn it off"...it maybe should be but in most households the adults are not standing around waiting to turn off offensive material.

3. The most sinister aspect of Big Brother to me ...which is often not commented upon...is that the daily serves, including BBUncut are all highly edited.
We are not watching so much the casual meanderings of this rather pathetic group of people, some of which turn out to be offensive. No, we are watching what the editor has decided will be watched. (The housemates who are unaware of what choice sections of their behaviour are being shown in the "real world" can at best be accused of being rather naive ...at worst, well, they are just narcissistic fools unashamed of their inappropriate behaviour.)
It is the editor who inflicts the full frontal nudity, the offensive language. It is the editor who selects whether Housemate A will be shown in a good light or a bad light this week.

If there is going to be genuine accountability then do not blame the foolish housemates. It is the editors who have chosen what will be seen.
It is also we, the audience, who sit down and watch this rubbish.
It is not called Big Brother for nothing!

Is humour self-indulgent?

Having attended a Tripod concert the other night as part of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. I was left wondering...well I don't know what I was left wondering...it all seemed a little self-indulgent. And pretty undisciplined. The combination of the two..self-indulgence and lack of discipline ...was almost too much to bear.
I suppose humour is always fairly self-indulgent, we are inviting people to laugh at us, or self-disclosing in such a way that people can come in and let go. "Tripod"are sometimes like this, but not so the other night.
Already I can feel the cloud descending on this post...there is nothing less funny than people talking about what is funny!!! It's one of the reasons why those debates "Does God have a sense of humour?"don't usually work...also because God is by definition not self-indulgent, or alternatively so unknowable that you can't really laugh at something you don't understand.
You can laugh at church people though:

HOW MANY CHURCH PEOPLE DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB?

A) Charismatic: Only one - hands are already in the air anyway.

B) Roman Catholic: None - they use candles.

C) Baptist: Change??!!??!!

D) Pentecostal: Ten - one to change, nine to pray against the spirit of darkness

E) Presbyterian: None - God has predestined when the lights will be on and off

F) Anglican: Ten - one to call the electrician, and nine to say how much they like they old one better

G) Mormons: Five. One man to change the bulb, and four wives to tell him how to do it.

H) Methodists: At least 15. One to change the lightbulb, and two or three committees to approve the change. Oh, and also a casserole.

I) Unitarians: We choose not to make a statement either in favour of or against the need for light bulbs. However, if in your own journey, you have found a light bulb that works for you, that is fine. You are invited to write a poem or compose a modern dance about your personal relationship with your light bulb, and present it next month at our annual Light Bulb Sunday Service, in which we will explore a number of light bulb traditions, including incandescent, flourescent, three-way, long-life and tinted, all of which are equally valid paths to luminescence.

Confidentiality vs secrecy

A correspondent asked yesterday (surely not in relation to the post on whaling!) " Do you have any comments on the Revd Owers resignation?"(see here and this important story on the current state of play here)
I can in no way speak for Don Owers who is a priest of my vintage, ordained around the time that I was. So I am interested, and more than a little perturbed when such a one resigns because of frustration and a tiring workload. We can all sympathise. One of the caricatures of the increase in pressure for the 21st century priest is being asked to make "Bricks" with less and less "straw" (see reference).
I am in no way surprised that Owers has done this, he is not the first and will not be the last. I have thought of it myself.
What compounds this whole sorry mess is not just that the church is in trouble, but also that there are certain internal cultures which contribute to the whole problem. One of these is a confusion between confidentiality and secrecy.
"Confidentiality" is a key mechanism in assuring confidence. Confidence that personal matters will not be disclosed beyond the bounds of appropriate relationship. It is an important mechanism in helping people to address deep matters of embarrassment and hurt with confidence that opening the matter up is safe and will not precipitate wilder (sic) consequences.
"Secrecy" ( a strategy much beloved by the Diocese of Adelaide) is a mechanism the powerful use to control and to prevent criticism.
We often implement secrecy in the name of confidentiality, but I don't think we are entirely honest in this regard.(......to be continued)

Whale of a time!

Who knows what the international whaling forum will decide to do in the next few days.
We do not understand the value that Japanese put on whales. We do not understand, I think, Japanese attitudes to cuisine. The rather extraordinary "Iron Chef" on SBS on Saturday evenings at 8.30 p.m. gives us something of an understanding that for the Japanese food is more than just nourishment. We, the English and the Australians, may never have appreciated this. Iron Chef is an exquisite campy show which nevertheless shows us that eating has real value. This is not a dollar phenomenon it is social experience. It speaks of what society regards as having high value. This is perhaps too sociological a way to look at things, but it is good to look at things in a way vastly different from the modi operandi that we normally adopt.
Into all this the whale fits. They are not just food, they are value. We might appreciate something of this if we were told we could no longer eat lamb or beef, because they were now protected. I in no way defend the Japanese position, but there is more to it than meats (sic) the eye!!

The many faces of Anglicanism

The news that Bishop John Sentamu, presently Bishop of Birmingham, is to become the next Archbishop of York reminds us of one of the greatnesses of Anglicanism. Unlike the empire which exploited Africa ruthlessly, the Church has been deeply rewarded by its African experience by a myriad of gifts from Africa to us.
Sentamu, born in Uganda and eminently qualified, is of course like many English people nowadays not pasty white but richly African. Would that the church in Australia could find a way to be more ethnically representative and diverse.

Mathematical sums

It seems I am older today than I have ever been! This may seem like a complicated sum but now that I am 53, my age is greater than there had been years in the 20th Century when I was born.(A prize if you can tell me what year I was born). How can it be?

Passports

It would only be fair to note (see the entries for 6,7 & 9 June) that all passports have now arrived. And they took a week or less. So hurrah for the Department of Foreign Affairs.

the nuclear debate

An anonymous respondent rightly questioned yesterday whether my knowledge about the nuclear debate is up-to-date. I guess I am no nuclear physicist!
Whether this also means I am not entitled to enter the debate....as that respondent suggests....is in itself debatable. Part of my contention would be that there should be debate, not merely assertion that because we are in crisis we should therefore allow nuclear energy.
There are in my mind (and in the minds of many others) sufficient unanswered questions about nuclear power, the disposal of waste, containment of the inevitable accidents, the effects on those who live close to power plants etc. etc. etc....these are scientific unanswered questions.

But there are also questions about public administration of nuclear energy. The Sellafield experience would suggest (and bear in mind that it has been there since the 1940's) a couple of questions about public administration. The other "big ones"--Three Mile Island, Chernobyl---point to similar questions:

• There are questions we would ask now, and conditions that we would impose in hindsight that simply were not envisioned when the program was first begun (I think my anecdotes highlight this)
• A culture of secrecy pervades nuclear power production which has done nothing to make this experience safer, and left a general public unsure about what it might have been exposed to.
• There is no doubt that there are important safety questions to be addressed. It would seem to me that the onus of proof of safety lies with the promoters of nuclear energy.

Frankly, I am open to being convinced. I am not open to being told I have no right to ask questions or that I am not allowed to enter a debate.

The least worst

What's with the seeming capitulation on all fronts toward nuclear energy?
It seems even greenies are now saying it is the "least worst" option. And a possible 'band-aid' solution to help us immediately deal with the Greenhouse Gases.

Having grown up not far from the first British nuclear reactor at Sellafield (explains a lot of things about him I hear you say), I am mindful that I am one of the few people who have actual experience....well one of 100000 maybe. But I do keep my ear to the ground.
The Sellafield experience has been a litany of accidents, some of which are known and some not. Only now are we bold enough to check them with prosecution (see here)

But there is a wealth of anecdotal evidence which is not fully appreciated:

• there is a belief in my family that the incidences of leukemia in Western Cumbria is higher than it should be (see for example this article and its equivocal conclusion:

• CONCLUSIONS--During 1963-83 and 1984-90 the incidence of malignant disease, particularly lymphoid leukaemia and non-Hodgkin lymphomas, in young people aged 0-24 in Seascale was higher than would be expected on the basis of either national rates or those for the surrounding areas. Although this increased risk is unlikely to be due to chance, the reasons for it are still unknown.

• I married a girl once whose father was dairy farmer in Moresby outside Whitehaven and he told me that on numerous occasions in the 50s and 60s massive quantities of milk were dumped because there had been contamination issues.
• for a long time in the 70s and 80s the West Cumbrian coastline was regarded as unsafe for swimmers because of waste pumped into the Irish Sea. (when we were children we used to find orange floating buoys which if you returned them to their owner you would get a pound for....we used to think all our Christmases had come....of course they were actually detecting the flow of radioactive waste...so they were telling us we were swimming in poison!)

What concerns me is that we are more cautious now because we know we need to be. The same will be true in 50 years time...we will realise we should have been more careful then...only it's too late.

Serves me right

This morning I had to send an email to one who over a decade has tried to make me read a weekly photocopied newsheet he writes. I have told him in the past that I didn't want to receive it.....and though it took some time he did stop sending it to me.
Today it arrived in my email!! So I suppose it does serve me right.
It does make me reflect that if you are reading this somehow under-sufferance, unsolicited and a thorough nuisance....or anything else I write for that matter. Please let me know and I will do what I can to stop it.
It adds a whole new electronic dimension to Matthew 5:11 and serves me right for being so opinionated.

Future planning

I am heartened to look at the Diocesan Mission Plan for the Gippsland Diocese: "Cross Purposes".
It looks immensely practical, well-balanced, and readily comprehnsible. More so, in my flawed estimation, than the so-called Strategic Plan of the Diocese of Adelaide. This latter document has never, I think, been genuinely owned by the Diocese at large. Although the Synod has formally discussed the document on a couple of occasions it has found little acceptance on the grass roots level. No one is "opposed" to it but its practical applications are difficult to find beyond the rhetoric of the hierarchy. I can believe that some will find that a little harsh.
Any way, be that all as it may. My point is that, hopefully, the practical, balanced and understandable nature of the Gippsland plan might be at least in part due to Bishop Jeff Driver (their current and our new Bishop). Or at least he may have learnt something of the necessity of practical goal setting.
We look forward to the challenge of a Bishop who is committed to working with the other members of the Church in this Diocese...in a meaningful cooperative way.

Rooly unberleevabble

Yep, it was the Passport. What's more the nice postie came back and delivered it to the door!!!

Unbelievable

Got a card this a.m. to pick up a registered envelope at the Post Office.
Can it be ....surely not...my passport after only 6 days!!!!

We'll see!

Nucelar Energee

Just as people so often seem to say "stastistics"in stead of statistics so they seem to say "nucelar"instead of nuclear. Laughable, if it wasn't for the fact that nuclear energy is no laughing matter.
Listening to a discussion yesterday betwen Lesley Kemeny, an apologist for the nuclear power industry; anti nuclear activist, Helen Caldicott, and an Amercian physicist specialising in wind energy. I was struck by the shallowness of Kemeny's apologia and his failure to take seriously the demonstrable threats of radiation. In fac it sounded to me not unlike the sort of self-justification that the tobacco industry indulges in.
My father used to point out that the coal mining industry had been responsible for enormous loss of life, far more than the nucear industry. I wonder if he would be so confident of that talking to the childen of Chernobyl.
So, it was interesting to hear Kemeny spouting off a similar line of argument.
It is a difficult dilemma

• fossil fuels=greenhouse gases
• nuclear energy=awful by-products
• wind farms=bird species threat

So what to do?

The second law

This morning both the second and the third law of passports were invoked

The second law states that it doesn't matter how good you passport photo is it will always be questionable

The third law states that once they've started finding mistakes they will go on finding them until you capitulate

And capitulate we did! New Photos, new witnesses, an hour longer than had been allowed and finally it was accepted.

At what point will the question be asked about whether this system actually works or not. It no doubt saves someone (the Department of Foreign Affairs?)time. But like all "time saving" the time that is saved is not saved but shifted. So where it might be reasonably expected we could have spent, say, an hour filling in and lodging forms I have probably spent about 4...and worse to say there is still one more to do.

The law of passport interviews

A propos of a former blog about a recent passport interview, I was standing this afternoon next to a lady who had just failed "Passport 101".....her crime she had used whietout on her form to correct an error. She had to go home and start again

The first law of passports: states that no one shall have a passport issued after only one interview. Passport officers shall endeavour to maximise the number of trips to the Post Office that an individual applicant has to make

D Day for Frank

My colleague Frank, in the neighbouring parish retires this week. He has been the parish priest there for 20 years.
It is interesting to note that people have very different takes on whether or not that is a good thing. Our new Bishop for example is one fo those who has had a number of short appintments. And people have different takes on that too.
Frank's ministry has been very steady and has allowed a stability to develop in that parish in a way that is not necessarily evident in most other parishes where the average incumbency is about 6 years. The extensive Church Growth research so popular in the 80s and early 90s tells us that the most "successful" churches in that movement have senior ministers in place for over 15 years.
It is rather sad that we have often seen long incumbencies as a problem rather than a goal. And while it is true that some parishes (one with which Frank and I were both associated in earlier days) have had incumbents who have stayed too long, the problem in our church is not that people stay too long but rather that they don't stay long enough.
We should give thanks for those who have been committed to long, stable service. We do not need to be uncritical of anyone's ministry...but we should not be irrational and assume that staying for a couple of decades in a parish, when the average priest is only in place for less than half that time is necessarily a bad thing.

Fair trial

Does anyone ever get a fair trial? The Michael Jackson case has now gone to the jury, and we have had an earful of the Corby debacle. Lawyer Eugene McGee will be in the spotlight again next week when he has to testify before the Kapunda Road Royal Commission. Surfacing again are new aspects of the claims relating to abuse by Bob Brandenburg, an Anglican Church boy's group leader in Adelaide.
That these cases are sensational there is no doubt, does this mean there will be no fair trial? I guess it depends on what you think of the ability of ordinary people to be able to assess the facts. Because that is what juries are, and in a more professional sense that is what judges do for a living, and what Royal Commissioners are commissioned to do.
Clearly one of the things they have to do also is to make some assessment of the influence of the media.
It does seem to me that an argument could be made that it is not these cases that are the problem, but rather the ones that slip under the radar because the media does not actually cover them enough. In our media saturated world it is under-reporting that is abnormal not over-reporting.
I realise this argument is fraught with danger, but I think...on the whole .... we are blessed to have a legal system which is open rather than behind closed doors.

Marital status

We were a bit surprised to find yesterday that when we went to get new passports yet another bureaucratic hurdle is in place.
Don't get me wrong I think procedures should be tight but wait for this.....
My wife duly took along the only marriage certificate she has ever had to prove that once she was Miss Ingleton, even though now she is Mrs Clark (and has been for 23 years).
"Oh," said the well meaning passport officer, ""you do realise that now you have to have a certificiate from the Registrar...the copy you have is regarded as "the Bride's copy""
While this is in accord with new regulations about to come into force for celebrants(of which I am one) to issue numbered certificates the net reality is that it is another $30!
What concerns me a little is the little old lady who may have been married for 50 years and always known as Mrs Jones...and who goes to get her first passport and is told that her 50 year old marriage certificate is no longer good enough...stupid really.
There were lots of corroborating documents that could have left any passport officer in no doubt as to what the course of events had been...but no we had to pay another $30 I was amazed how calm I was. Sue was not!!

Priority! Priority! Priority!

Says it all really

Though they did forget to mention voting people out of the Big Brother house

Burning houses

As I drove our daughter to Science Club this morning it was one of those days when traffic was unbearable. (I have a theory to suggest about morning rush-hour traffic...more of that anon.) As it turns out the hold-up on our little section of the funnel was not caused by Clark's Theory of Traffic Flow but by the fact that the boom gates at the Glenalta crossing would not go up.
Despite that, listening to Matt and Dave, their traffic report suggested that traffic had slowed on Main Road to look at house that had burnt down during the night...and Oh incidentally the boom gates were down too....... I drove back wondering whether or not we would still be having a problem. Matt said Charming! We are amazing aren't we, slowing down to look at the burnt house.
All was well! But, I didn't see any burnt down house going or coming!

A very poor joke

Heard on the grapevine........Victa have released a new lawnmower. It's called the Corby; it holds 4.5 kilos of grass and guaranteed to last for 20 years.!!

Change and decay

. A few of us "diocesan leaders" had the opportunity last night to chat informally with Jeff Driver our new Bishop.
I had a couple of interesting thoughts, one was how few of the "diocesan leaders" I actually knew. I was there because as an Area Dean I represent one of the small pastoral groupings of clergy. There were remarkably few other parish priests there, and virtually no ordinary parishioners.
This perhaps represents a shift of interest and focus over the last fifteen years, one that I hope the good Bishop will redress. What ever else we might think Anglican life will continue to be focussed in the parishes. The schools, though important, are a particular sector of our church but represent only a narrow cross-section of our life. And one, it needs to be said, which is not particularly focussed on the advancement of the Gospel, but more on the promotion of educatonal interests. That is, I suggest, as it should be.
The fact that the schools with a couple of notable exceptions, are confined in a very narrow and privileged sector of society says much about what their priorities are. The Church must have a much broader focus than that.
The welfare arm, too, Anglicare, it needs to be said is so driven by its active agenda...and rightly so...that it is not exactly in the same place as where the bulk of Anglicans find themselves to be. The last episcopate was very schools and Anglicare focussed, and one might speculate why that was so. For my part I hope Bp Jeff will bring some sense of vigour back to parish ministry, the other two sectors are doing quite well for themselves.