A Once-sleeping Volcano
That Icelandic volcano with an unpronounceable name, situated hundreds of miles north-west of the British Isles and mainland Europe, achieved something that had proved well beyond the power of either Hitler’s Luftwaffe or the murderous fanatics of Al Quaida. It grounded the whole of Britain’s Royal Air Force and civil aircraft fleet and the equivalent air fleets of the greater part of the rest of Europe. It demonstrated conclusively how puny is all the might and all the technology of humankind in the face of forces that nature is capable of unleashing.
As recently as a century ago, that volcanic eruption would have caused no concern to anyone in the British Isles or on mainland Europe. It would have attracted little, if any, attention beyond its immediate vicinity in Iceland. Its devastating effects in 2010 result entirely from mankind’s reliance upon the technological advances made in the latter half of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first.
It has been the plight of the thousands of holidaymakers and would-be holidaymakers unable to get to their destinations that has caught the public’s attention. The effect on trade and commerce worldwide has been at least as important though. Rapid airborne travel and transport were among the greatest achievements of the late twentieth century. Now, we find that we simply can’t manage without them.
The crisis might perhaps have been expected to have instilled into us humans a certain degree of humility, possibly even a renewed realization that, ‘The fear (or awe) of the Lord, is the beginning of wisdom’.
But it hasn’t, has it? In our litigious society the first reaction is to look round for someone to blame, someone from whom we can claim compensation. General Election campaigns are in full swing. Party organisers immediately seek ways in which electoral advantage – a few thousand extra votes – can be squeezed from the situation.
Why isn’t the government taking immediate steps to help those stranded Brits to get home? asked the tabloids. When a warship was deployed to help, an armada of rescue boats was urged by the press. We were given visions of a new Dunkirk with stranded Britons being snatched from European beaches. Meanwhile a retired Colonel Blimp wrote to one of the papers to thunder that this wasn’t a proper use of the Royal Navy. I could imagine him pontificating in his club, ‘Dammit man, this could be just the time that the Ruskies decide to attack!’
Perhaps the scientific advisers were over-cautious. As an occasional air traveller (though I think that my flying days are now over) I am glad that they were. It is much better that they should be over-cautious than that they should not be cautious enough. The unnecessary grounding of aircraft is regrettable; but not half as regrettable as allowing them to fly prematurely……and having them crash! Imagine what the headlines would have been like then!
Let us be thankful that Europe has survived a major crisis without, as far as I know, the loss of a single life. That surely is a matter for congratulation and celebration. Compensation for the airlines for the millions of pounds they claim to have lost? Much more deserving are the stranded passengers who have had to spend the last few hundred pounds in their bank accounts trying to get home, and who in some cases were denied the support from their airline to which they were legally entitled.
Clacton’s Parliamentary Hopefuls
The final day for the receipt of candidatures for the Clacton-on-Sea Constituency revealed that there are two new contestants in the field, both standing as ‘Independent’. They’re not actually all that ‘new’. There’s Terry Allen of Frinton-on-Sea, a former leader of Tendring Council and founder-member of ‘Tendring First’, who lost his Council seat in the 2007 local elections. His policies, I quote the Clacton Gazette are ‘to bring health, fire and police services under more local control, boost vocational education, give better equipment to frontline troops, hold a referendum on Europe and introduce a quota system for immigration’.
Hardly, I would have thought, sufficiently different from the policies of our sitting Conservative MP (or even of the BNP candidate) to make it worth hazarding the £500 deposit. Still, it was his £500, not mine.
Then there’s Clactonian Chris Humphrey, whom I have known from a long time ago but who seems to have dropped out of my orbit (or perhaps it’s just that I’ve dropped out of his) in recent years. I knew him as a very earnest and well-meaning young man – well he was young when I first knew him – with very strong views on a number of subjects. I hope he’ll reveal his current election manifesto soon. There’s one thing of which I’m pretty certain. It won’t be a carbon copy of that of any other candidate!
I have little doubt that both these Independent candidates will lose their deposits. I wish them all success though – any votes that they may attract are likely to be at the expense of candidates whom I would not wish to see elected.
‘Get Nick Clegg!’
This was clearly the message that went out to the editors of most of the popular press when, last week, a surge of support for the Lib.Dems. became apparent from opinion poll after opinion poll. Needless to say, the party’s opponents didn’t imagine for one moment that this could be because an increasing number of people had become aware of the Liberal Democrat Party’s policies and decided that they much preferred them to those of New Labour and of the Tories.
Of course not! Political leaders and national newspaper proprietors don’t really believe that we electors are capable of that much rational thought. It must surely have been because we had all been bewitched by Nick Clegg’s performance in that first televised debate between the party leaders. He had skilfully learned all the ‘tricks of the trade’, the right body language, the most effective facial expressions, the telling phrase – and, of course he was young, handsome and clever. Goodness, was it imagined that David Cameron and Gordon Brown had not also had the very best and most experienced tutors to coach them in the best way to present themselves on tv? Wasn’t David Cameron at least equally young, handsome and clever? I don’t think that Gordon Brown would claim the first two of those attributes but he could surely claim to look more mature and experienced than his rivals.
So – Nick Clegg had to be smeared. The fruit of the muck-raking that ensued appeared on the front pages of most of the dailies last Thursday, 22nd April. ‘Four years ago Nick Clegg said this, or that ……and eight years ago wrote this, that and the other’. Then, of course, there had been money paid into his account. No need to mention that it had promptly been paid out again! I was reminded of a rather cruel little rhyme about my own former profession:
It’s true, you cannot bribe or twist,
Thank Heaven, the British journalist.
Considering what the chap will do
Unbribed, there’s no occasion to.
They were at it again after the second debate. I felt that there was little to choose between the performances of the three candidates on this occasion. At one stage I was quite impressed by Gordon Brown. Certainly Nick Clegg didn’t suffer the humiliation joyfully predicted by some of his opponents. I think that Sun’s headline celebrating David Cameron’s ‘triumph’ must have been written before the debate.
And why not? Few Sun readers will have watched the debate and few will read much more than the headlines before hastening on to the sports news, the celebrity gossip and the glamour photo-shots.
Once again – Andy changes the subject!
Many years ago, it must have been in the early 1980s, I drove to Chelmsford to gather material for an advertising feature on Ridley’s, the brewers, for one of the Essex County Newspaper’s publications.
I was welcomed by the Managing Director, a Mr Ridley (I don’t remember his first name) with whom I had made an appointment. I was shown over the brewery and given a brief account of the brewing processes. We then repaired to his office for a cup of tea and a chat. I soon had sufficient material from which to produce what I hoped would be an interesting, informative and readable 1,000 words about our county’s own brewery and own beer.
During our chat I commented that I had noticed that the label on all bottles of Ridley’s ale have a head-and-shoulders picture of a man wearing the ‘Tudor style’ cap that I had seen on many a tv documentary and costume drama. Could it possibly be a picture of Nicholas Ridley, the Bishop of London who, together with his fellow Bishop, Hugh Latimer, had been burnt at the stake during the reign of Queen Mary I, elder daughter of Henry VIII? It was indeed, said my host, adding that his family were the direct descendants of the martyred Bishop.
This distinguished historical connection certainly added a little colour and interest to my article. I have no idea whether or not it had any effect on the sales of Ridley’s ale.
My memories of this little incident in my writing career came flooding back when I received another emailed photograph from my younger son and daughter-in-law Andy and Marilyn. They had been visiting Oxford and sent me a picture of the Martyrs Memorial erected on the spot where, on 16th October 1555, Bishops Latimer and Ridley had been cruelly burnt to death. It was on the same spot that, five months later, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, and author of the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, suffered the same horrendous fate.
The Tudors – Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I were the best educated and most cultured rulers that England had ever seen. I am not sure that they don’t remain to this day our best-educated and most cultured monarchs. It was a religious age in which the Bible was translated into half a dozen European languages and was studied meticulously by both the royal rulers and their advisers. A biblical justification for Henry VIII’s annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon had been found in an obscure passage in the Old Testament Book of Leviticus!
Yet, despite the learning, despite the religious belief, acts of the most appalling cruelty took place – often in the name of religion - in their reigns.
What a pity those royal studies hadn’t concentrated on the New Testament, in particular on the Sermon on the Mount. In it, the founder of the faith in defence of which they claimed they were consigning their fellow men and women to the flames, had said: Treat other people exactly as you would like to be treated yourself. This summarises the whole of the Law of God. I don’t think that there is any possible interpretation of those words that would justify making a bonfire of a fellow human, whatever his or her offence.
How different the Tudor period could have been, and how different our own could be too, if only more people heeded that commandment!
Thanks very much Andy and Marilyn for a timely reminder that, great as our problems may be today, many of our forebears faced even bigger ones in the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment