Another pointless list

London has a plethora of free magazines and papers, most of which have no merit other than that they are free. Thursday's magazine is Shortlist, which takes approximately 2 minutes to read, but does have a lot of lists.

I like lists, but they do have a habit of revealing my increasing distance from contemporary life. I was struck by the list at the back of this week's edition which listed out Moby's top ten tracks to exercise to. Here they are:

Led Zeppelin, Immigrant Song
Rolling Stones, Gimmie Shelter
Public Enemy, Fight the power
Pantera, War nerve
The Clash , White Riot
Black Flag, Thirsty and Miserable
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Mercy Seat
New York Dolls, Trash
Thelma Houston, Don't leave me this way
X, Sugarlight

Obviously, I haven't actually heard of about half of these, but I don't even understand the logic for the ones I have. What pace do you jog along to the Mercy Seat? Regardless, here are my current favourites, though I spent my Monday session in the gym exercising to Noel Cowerd, which isn't normal, even for me.

Fairport Convention, Cajun Woman
Waylon Jennings, Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way
Creedance Clearwater Revival, Born on the Bayou
S Club 7, Don't stop movin'
Kylie, Your Disco needs you
Rolling Stones, Carol
Sparks, This Town ain't big enough for both of us
Rolling Stones, Happy
Chicory Tip, Son of my father
Bruce Springsteen, Born in the USA

Only the first four to six are truly key; the others fluctuate in and out. There are some vaguely (only vaguely mind) fashionable modern tracks bubbling below my top ten, but they're just not as good.

All for Jesus

Sometimes, no matter how much time we spend on things, we tend to forget the emotional reason why we do them. They tend to be things that require constant work, where you find that getting the immediate tasks out of the way takes over from remembering the point of what you were trying to do.


And while this gap is sometimes hypocrisy (think of eco-tossers banfing on about saving the planet in between flights to far flung destinations), often it's just a result of day to day life. For me, I find God a bit like that. Inevitably the early fire of conversion fades (quite rightly) and by now sucked into the detail of actually helping run a church, I often find myself worrying more about the church finances than about, well, Jesus.


I was reminded of this on Sunday. I went to Holy Trinity to see Marcus gave his maiden sermon. Although clearly biased, to my mind it was excellent. It was technically well done: focusing on a short section of one reading, but using the full range of the two texts in the sermon. Too often, one gets the preacher's thoughts on one line and a general exposition of the theology that links to it. Sometimes that's appropriate, but it's overdone (this has long been a problem - Alan Bennett's parody is as good now as it was then). Marcus avoided this problem and resisted the temptation to preach on the papal supremacy (and why it's bad), but most importantly he delivered a sermon that spoke about something much deeper than the bits of text he had to play with and one that helped remind me why I do this.


Now, it helps that in many ways, Marcus and I agree on the essentials here, but then, they are, well, essential. Rooting ethics and actions in Christ and the incarnation is critical to Christianity. In explaining away the miracles of Christ, we risk losing a Christian conception of the world and the miracle of the resurrection, which the point. I was given a further forcible jolt on this later in the service, when the priest returned to the theme to comfort a family over a death and declaimed very movingly on the promise of the glory of eternal life. At the heart of this is Christ who through life, death and resurrection makes this promise of redemption real.

But its the manner of his doing so that is important. Marcus put it well in this sermon. "Because God has been in the world ... that makes him a God capable of redeeming the world." This is familiar, though important, and one is reminded of the immortal words of Gregory of Nazianzus: "that which He has not assumed He has not healed," though the points are slightly different (fabulously, you can find that letter here). However, I was struck by Marcus' counterpoint, where he argued that because Christ has rejoiced in the world, "he doesn't just love his creation, but he has lived his creation as well." And it is that joyful, living and generous Christ whom I hold dear, as well as the sufferer on the cross. Because I think that a religion without that joy at its heart could not offer the final reward and mean it.

But Christ does, and it was good to be reminded.

Our classical heritage

By the way, this is an Olympic post with a pretentious title. It may save time


Well, it's all been jolly exciting this time round. It's so much better when we're not rubbish. It does make me a little nervous though - there is a real risk 2012 will be a massive anticlimax. In fact, I am very worried about London. Here's my favourite stat:

• Number of post war British double gold medallists to 2004: 2
• Number of British double gold medallists 2008: 3

We may struggle to match this next time.

Quite frankly, I never really wanted them here. I rather hoped they would go to Paris, which would be near enough to get to easily, but not involve me paying for them or having hordes more people buggering up the transport. Anyway, the French also have a better track record than us in delivering public buildings, so it would have been best there (incidentally, I think everyone outside Africa has a better record than us).

Also, the our segement in the handover to us was truly awful. However, I was pleased to see Boris in full classical flow in his speech. It's about time a classical revival got a classicist to receive them.

Maybe it won't be so bad after all.

It's grim up north

I went to Manchester last weekend, for a stag weekend. Actually, we were staying in Ashton-under-Lyne, where elements of my family come from, though I didn't have time for getting in touch. It was quite fun, but I remain very glad I don't live there.

Specifically, I'm glad I don't have to travel there. Both trains (to & from) were delayed by a total of 2 hours. And Ashton taxis don't know their own bloody area. I came with address in hand and it took me 25 minutes and 9 cabs to find someone who knew where the house I was staying was. This would not happen in London and Ashton is a somewhat smaller town. And there was limited wine available in the bars that wasn't shit.

Other than that, it was OK - no-one fought (somehow disappointing) and I did manage to fall asleep in the house of ill-repute we ended up in. But I was glad to be home. It should be noted that I was a lot less philosophical about this on Sunday

At the time, I could certainly understand the sentiment behind the Policy Exchange recent report on the cities of the North. That said, in the cold light of day, I don't quite know why anyone commissioned such an obviously inflammatory report. However, what is more depressing is that no-one seems to have taken the trouble to read it.

For example, this statement is clearly true: 'We cannot guarantee to regenerate every town and every city in Britain that has fallen behind.' As is this one: 'Just as we can't buck the market, so we can't buck economic geography either.' They're the end of the exec summary - they are in fact the point of the paper.

On the other hand we get somewhat dodgy arguments. Here's Chris Grayling: 'Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds have successful financial services sectors.' Not that successful. Edinburgh does, Manchester might, but Liverpool?

The FT reports Peter Kilfoyle, known for his economic skill, with 'It doesn’t ring true economically, socially or politically.' But I'm not sure that's true. The polotical bit is obviously, but economically and socially. Have you read the report by the economic historian?

But the key point is not about the detail, but about the broad thrust of the critique. The report doesn't suggest that we close the north, but that the geographic and economic logic that propelled such large numbers of people to live in industrial cities no longer apply, while the economic logic that kept cities which had limited industry but large number of highly qualified staff small (e.g., Cambridge, Oxford etc) was also defunct. So we might want to reconsider the numbers rather than pour money into replacing the wealth.

It's still a politically stupid thing to say, but I'll end with some historical context is in order. These are new cities (though old towns) we're talking about in the main. And if we let them shrink a little we will be doing everyone a favour, including their inhabitants.

And their taxi drivers who might then know where they are supposed to be going.

Relative poverty

I've always hated the term 'relative poverty.' It's false language and disingenuous. I was reminded of it by this rather good post on it - my favourite line - 'if Warren Buffet moved to London poverty would increase' - I think nicely skewers the point.

Some technical notes: The definition of relative poverty is 60% of median average income. The details are here. For a single adult, it means an income below £5,200 per annum excluding income tax, council tax and housing costs, (rents, mortgage interest, buildings insurance, water charges).

Now, the level of relative poverty may have kept me as a student (no, that's a lie, but I had a rather extravagant student life, and it could have done), and it's clearly not a lot of money, but it's not poverty to have a house, insurance, and a decent amount of spending money.

What they actually mean is of course inequality. Inequality is important, we can all have opinions on it, but it's not necessarily linked to poverty, so can we defend policy on relative poverty on inequality grounds please? And not raise the totem of poverty, which is overly emotive and just not true.

Personally, I am not very interested in inequality, rather in outcomes for the genuinely poor, which is why most of my donations go abroad. Anyway, this isn't even one of the things that annoys me most about government use of statistics and maths: that's the tax system, but I'll post on that later.

All that Glitters...

I haven't done very well at keeping this ticking over recently, but I thought I would summon some words on the fall of Paul Gadd.


I have the now dubious distinction of having been to his 90s Christmas concerts on no less than two occasions, and they were great: gloriously silly and over top pantomime pop, with some great tracks. To this day, I remain very fond my Best of Gary Glitter (well about half of it, he wasn't that good) - and I defy anyone to listen to Rock 'n' Roll (Part 2) without a glimmer of a smile.*


But it's all over now. And it's sad. While he may not deserve any sympathy (and I'm not sure about that) we (certainly I) have lost something. When someone who occupied a rather splendid, frivolous and joyful part of our cultural life turns out to be something different, there is a sadness and a sense of innocence lost. And I want know how long this all went on. His first child pornography arrest was 1997. Was he clean up to then, or has this been a recurring activity? For obviously reasons, I know I would like the former to be true.

The whole think also highlights our approach to paedophilia in general, which is hysterical and unhelpful. The coverage hasn't been particularly edifying, which is surprising given how perfectly it was all parodied seven years ago by Chris Morris.

But in some senses, we shouldn't be surprised. We've always been rubbish at this. The term itself is difficult, partly because people don't understand the word, and partly because it confuses prepubescents with older teenagers into the same category, when clearly they are not. And the violent thuggish pronouncements of this kind of site only divert attention from the real issues. I found the account of Roger Took's activities provoked a far more visceral feeling of horror than any amount of Glitter-baiting or ranting.

And for something to find me on the side opposed to ranting means it must be serious indeed.

*As an aside, this puts me on the side of the 'Art independent of morals' camp - no surprises there I suspect. What might be is that some time you have been able to do courses in it. Why?

Aging

I met someone yesterday who I hadn’t seen for about nine years. Andrew was president of the Oxford Reform Club when I was social secretary in 1998. Inexplicably, no online record of that termcard exists, but one for the term before does. He’s just cropped up the BBC, working for us on partnership ideas for the sector as part of Ofcom's PSB Review

This has given me a jolt about aging. I'm pretty relaxed about aging itself. I have no real qualms about the approaching slew of 30th birthdays, nor all the weddings, though the babies are a little terrifying. However, what struck me was how much has changed in the last nine years. Of course, I have been working for eight years, and with Anna for seven; I've even been doing my doctorate for two, though that's problematic on a number of levels.

But that isn't very interesting. What is is the change in interests. I like to think that I've been pretty static in terms of fundamentals since 1999/2000, but, and this is the advantage of having databases for everything, it turns out that's nonsense.

I could prove this in terms of politics (because I am so much more left wing now) or friends (over half of my friendships date from post-2000), but it's more striking to think about what I hadn't got or read in 2000. Then, my library had:

- Not a single work on the early church - I read Chadwick' History of the Early Church in 2001, which I have blogged about before. I'm doing my doctorate on it now
- No travel literature, Dalrymple's From the Holy Mountain was the first thing I read (also 2001). I have about 60 of them now.
- Obviously a smattering of history, but no memoir until James Lees-Milne's Ancient as the Hills (2002)
- No formal theology. the first one I bought was Moltmann's The Crucified God (2003)
- An astonishingly limited selection of fiction. Over three quarters of my books were science fiction, fantasy or children's (this last, mostly the complete Chalet School series). I had no Fitzgerald, no Greene (though I had read a couple of my parents'), no Pamuk, Solzhenitsyn, Steinbeck, Trollope or Waugh. And this is just a partial list.
- They're not all positive developmentst: then, thankfully, I had no books on Buddhism

Sometimes I think I have dissipated my talents and failed to build a career effectively over the last eight years. Writing this, I am convinced that it was time well spent.