It's been an interesting few months of late in which I haven't related my activities, opinions or thoughts. Over the summer I decided to stay in London and focus on my determination to get the career I wanted by 1st September.
Having foregone the pleasures of flying to Arizona to see Josh and from there to Melbourne to catch up with Kerri and see her folks I kept committed to my goal of being an open, passionate and enriching person in my daily work. Supporting various Soka Gakkai activities including the boys Future Group and booking to attend and support the Young Men's Summer Course on deadline day helped keep the vision alive, as did my dogged attendance of Landmark Seminar in Action courses every Monday evening without fail.
With all this in mind I begin work for Monday as a public sector sales manager for an employee benefits company and am really looking forward to being totally open, passionate and enriching in what will be a brilliant and stretching work environment.
Meanwhile, spurred on by an excellent Young Men's meeting at Masaru's, greatly enlivened by the presence of Joe Dempsey I took myself to the Burmese Embassy at noon today in support of peace and democracy in Burma.
The quiet corner behind Curzon street's yawning arc was filled with Burmese people, Amnesty International banners and odds and sods like me out to show solidarity for the cause of peace against the face of selfishness and hatred. Having avoided most forms of political protest in my life, I soon got the gist of standing and listening and clapping when permitted. By the time we all knelt in unison for a minute's prayer for all those in Burma I was still feeling a bit of a spectator, glowering into the TV cameras scanning our faces. But during those moments of reflection, as I accustomed myself to kneel and hold the palms of my hands together as if before the gohonzon the feeling of presence and peaceful commitment to change won over my own doubts and fears.
When I chanted yesterday I felt great compassion for the military leadership for the poverty and life denying hopelessness within their own hearts and sought in my prayer to reach out and transform their own poison into medicine. Today, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon in Charles Street, Mayfair my prayer truly did reach out to all in Burma, that all may be free from their prisons to live lives of joy.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Thursday, July 5, 2007
It's worse, he does it with girls as well
So farewell George Melly,
Trad jazz man, surrealist and raconteur;
Keith's mum thought you louche
and Keith enjoyed your Profanisaurus
Was saddened to hear that George Melly is no longer with us. My dad remembered seeing him do his trad jazz thing whilst on national service and took a strong dislike to what he perceived to be a stream of ungallantly gynecological ribaldry directed at the waitresses and serving girls.
As a regular of Shepherds Bush's top restaurant the wonderfully chintzy Polish palace 'The Patio' it was always a delight when a deathless hush descended on the bigos and borscht as George entered, his sheer presence reaching out in time and space in advance of his rugged physical form, eyepatch in place, a boozy boho Pirate on shore leave.
On one occasion whilst dining with bear friends George was accompanied by a most astoundingly good looking , tall black man. We immediately thought dark thoughts about how embarrassingly obvious this was, how does George hold court and get to sleep with men way above his league at his age and with his reputation until sober reflection suggested maybe this was just a jazz encounter.
At another time whilst dining with my brother, George came in with a good looking Aussie blonde number on the right side of her thirties, both pissed to the gills, smoking and arguing continuously. Well less arguing than drinking and eating through a miasmatic fog of cultural confusion and anecdotage.
As Haliwell's Companion to Film would have it: 'Sample dialogue'
"And then I went to meet Princess Margaret Accompanied with Robin Day"
"Did you say Robin's gay?"
"Robin Day!
"Robin's gay??" Repeat ad nauseam.
On a club toilet door in deepest darkest 50s soho was written the grafitti "George Melly does it with men" to which some scribe had appended "it's even worse, he does it with girls as well".
Seeing Melly naked was a sight not confined to a few. One of his party tricks was to take his clothes off, get down on all fours, and rearrange his genitalia to impersonate a man, a woman, and then a bulldog.
For a full life lived with no regard to outward propriety or petifogging moralising, as a staunch humanist, Surrealist, fly fisherman and contributor to the joy and gaiety in all senses of the nation, and for leaving the universe in a better place than as he found it, I for one will be knocking one back for George.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Food Pornography as London Takes It
Had the good fortune whilst returning from a prospective job interview to choose to return on the circle line via High Street Kensington for a varied walk home (the stop and search down of anyone suspected of looking Asian opposite the copshop on Shepherd's Bush Road is also worth avoiding), to stumble in finally to Whole Foods Market
Set in the old Barkers store along the road from the Daily Mail/Evening Standard offices on Derry Street the three floor food emporium invites shoppers to indulge a foodie shopping nirvana beyond compare. Or if we agree that comparisons are odorous, it makes the Waitrose at the opposite end of the High Street seem like Somerfield.
The range of cheeses alone would force Sarkozy, let alone Barosso to lower head in hands and despair over how to govern a country, let alone continent with such diversity of dead milk in unusual smells and textures. Ditto the opening bakery, deli counter let alone meat, chocolate, and fruit and veg hall downstairs. I felt like Yeltsin or Gorbachev in the late 80s, dumbstruck by the world of choice represented by an everyday US supermarket compared to the GUM stores of Soviet Russia.
I didn't have time or incliation to head upstairs for the restaurants and Bramley pub but I did leave with head a spinning at the sheer quality, range, freshness and immensity of all on offer, rigorously maintained by staff working to the orders of a cadre of Whole Food drill sergeants/commissars.
So in short it's like being inside the Chocolate Factory - a world of wonderment, fantasy and sustainable, feelgood excess on the edge of Kensington Church Street. I'll have to come back to the store and ruminate between times on what this means in a world of haves and have nots. On first impressions this seems a happy concept that is well run and has the potential to improve our understanding of how food should be presented, marketed and sold.
But it was still back to Brook Green's Tesco to pick up humble supplies for a ready steady cook £5 dinner (Black Farmer sausages with new potatoes, green beans, broccoli, carrots and onion gravy for those desperate to know).
Set in the old Barkers store along the road from the Daily Mail/Evening Standard offices on Derry Street the three floor food emporium invites shoppers to indulge a foodie shopping nirvana beyond compare. Or if we agree that comparisons are odorous, it makes the Waitrose at the opposite end of the High Street seem like Somerfield.
The range of cheeses alone would force Sarkozy, let alone Barosso to lower head in hands and despair over how to govern a country, let alone continent with such diversity of dead milk in unusual smells and textures. Ditto the opening bakery, deli counter let alone meat, chocolate, and fruit and veg hall downstairs. I felt like Yeltsin or Gorbachev in the late 80s, dumbstruck by the world of choice represented by an everyday US supermarket compared to the GUM stores of Soviet Russia.
I didn't have time or incliation to head upstairs for the restaurants and Bramley pub but I did leave with head a spinning at the sheer quality, range, freshness and immensity of all on offer, rigorously maintained by staff working to the orders of a cadre of Whole Food drill sergeants/commissars.
So in short it's like being inside the Chocolate Factory - a world of wonderment, fantasy and sustainable, feelgood excess on the edge of Kensington Church Street. I'll have to come back to the store and ruminate between times on what this means in a world of haves and have nots. On first impressions this seems a happy concept that is well run and has the potential to improve our understanding of how food should be presented, marketed and sold.
But it was still back to Brook Green's Tesco to pick up humble supplies for a ready steady cook £5 dinner (Black Farmer sausages with new potatoes, green beans, broccoli, carrots and onion gravy for those desperate to know).
Monday, July 2, 2007
Apols if Corn (Law)
Trawling for research on public sector information I came across the Better Regulation Executive's report 'Informing the Public in a multi media age'
The report suggests that all statutory notices local authorities and central government bodis (DVLA/DEFRA) are obliged to produce cost some £15 million in local government alone at an average of £35k. Some London boroughs spend some £110,000 in their local rags to let the readers of the Kilburn Gazette know which pubs are pushing for longer opening hours and why Mr Jones round the corner wants his kitchen extended in his Grade II listed maisonette.
Not good news for local newspaper ad revenues, but on the bright side you can see now departed Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden stream in high resolution
So far, so e-gov, so good. But what did appeal to the old was the following guff about Legislative Reform Orders.
Strewth, haven't they repealed the Corn Laws yet? What do these announcements have to say? Was it all a dream - will Sir Robert Peel awake in a shower in the style of Robert Duff from Dallas? As the popbitch board would have it - apols if corn...
The report suggests that all statutory notices local authorities and central government bodis (DVLA/DEFRA) are obliged to produce cost some £15 million in local government alone at an average of £35k. Some London boroughs spend some £110,000 in their local rags to let the readers of the Kilburn Gazette know which pubs are pushing for longer opening hours and why Mr Jones round the corner wants his kitchen extended in his Grade II listed maisonette.
Not good news for local newspaper ad revenues, but on the bright side you can see now departed Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden stream in high resolution
So far, so e-gov, so good. But what did appeal to the old was the following guff about Legislative Reform Orders.
Ministers can now make a Legislative Reform Order (LRO) to remove burdens arising from legislation (Section 1 of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, LRRA) and make orders to ensure that regulatory functions are exercised in compliance with the Better Regulations Commission’s Five Principles of Good Regulation (Section 2 of the LRRA). The LRO must meet the preconditions set out in section 3 of the Legislative Regulatory Reform Act and cannot deliver highly controversial reforms.
LROs may be highly effective in streamlining recent legislation removing burdensome publication requirements such as, constitutional announcements e.g. the appointment of deputy lieutenants, Corn Law announcements, ecclesiastical announcements and similar less used elements of statute law, which no longer serve a beneficial purpose. Removing administrative burdens in this way will enable
departments that do not have a bill slot available to implement better regulation principles efficiently. Further work is required to identify more specifically those laws suitable for the application of an LRO.
Strewth, haven't they repealed the Corn Laws yet? What do these announcements have to say? Was it all a dream - will Sir Robert Peel awake in a shower in the style of Robert Duff from Dallas? As the popbitch board would have it - apols if corn...
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Health and Wealth
As a sanctimonious recent ex smoker, having puffed my last Marlboro light during the occasion of Sara and Trevyn's wedding in St Mawr at the fag end of last July(during which occasion I also abandoned my digital camera I believe in the car of the game young driver who took the curvy road back around the estuary to Falmouth with an aplomb that plainly denied his inexperience) it still pains me looking into pub windows to think that those who want to light up are denied such a simple pleasure.
This happened twice yesterday alone, at the William Morris Wetherspoon in King Street where a game old bloke was rolling them up whilst holding court by the open window and taking the 220 down the Fulham Palace Road where a group of Aussies were having a relaxed drink accompanied by the ubiquitous white and gold packaged Marlboro lights.
Cigarettes and alcohol are such natural bedfellows as to be hendiadyic in their unity. Sitting around the pub with a pint and a cigarillo may not be the most productive or value creating way to pass an evening or a lifetime, but it's a judgment we as individuals should be free to make.
The weekend that I smoked my last was spent at my parents in Launceston. I heard on the Radio 4 midnight news that the guru of quitting Allen Carr had been diagnosed with cancer but was keen to have this fact serve as a springboard to further promote his life's work in combating nicotine addiction.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5229048.stm
Mr Carr says he sees his illness as a way to encourage more people to quit.
And although life's pressures got Nick back on the smokes after a few months cigarette free, I think by taking that action I learned to lose my dependency on cigarettes. Finally I had a choice in the matter in that I, Jonathan Werran choose not to light this cancer stick which is in my mouth, because I Jonathan Werran CHOOSE not to light this cancer stick which has irresistibly lodged itself between my lips.
So it's been nearly a year on the wagon and I feel better for not having the compulsion to do something i don't really want to do. And yes, the ban in pubs is welcome in that the temptation to do something I really don't want to do that I know is harmful to me and my life is thereby lessened. And I won't come home reeking of smoke and piously throwing a smelly jumper into the laundry ruminating 'and to think I inflicted this to everybody in my environment once'.
As an ex-smoker I'll always be part admiring, part yearning to be amongst the outcasts smirting outside the pubs and clubs. But what worked with Allen Carr was the fact that he didn't judge. As a reformed 5 pack a day man he knew what habits drive people to depend on the fags and he encouraged readers to continue smoking whilst reading and absorbing his book. To reform your life, it's necessary to develop a greater understanding of your life as part of the deal.
Which is why, although there isn't much I liked about departing Home Office Secretary of State John Reid or anything he had to say, I admired his standing up for single mums and others for whom a cigarette is a meaningful pleasure in a pressurised life at the bottom.
The Economist carries a timely piece on the law of diminishing effects of increasingly shrill, strident and bossy government health campaigns.
Teaching everybody that their lives, just as they are and without any need for 'change' are deserving of the utmost respect and reverence, as in fact are all other living beings, human and sentient, is the fundamental purpose of Mayahana Buddhism. In the Lotus Sutra, Boddhisattva Fukyo (Never Disparaging) would show constantly total respect to everybody he met, bowing and praising them even if they were to throw sticks and stones at him.
So if we could judge a little less, be less insistent on always being right, turn down the volume of the incessantly unheeded shrillness (as of today ex Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt's comments on the smoking abducted sailors in Iran being a case in point) and by our individual example show greater respect for ourselves, others and our environment, and it's a big if admittedly, then we might see society be enriched through happy, bodily healthy and spiritually wealthy people. Possibly worth giving it a try!
This happened twice yesterday alone, at the William Morris Wetherspoon in King Street where a game old bloke was rolling them up whilst holding court by the open window and taking the 220 down the Fulham Palace Road where a group of Aussies were having a relaxed drink accompanied by the ubiquitous white and gold packaged Marlboro lights.
Cigarettes and alcohol are such natural bedfellows as to be hendiadyic in their unity. Sitting around the pub with a pint and a cigarillo may not be the most productive or value creating way to pass an evening or a lifetime, but it's a judgment we as individuals should be free to make.
The weekend that I smoked my last was spent at my parents in Launceston. I heard on the Radio 4 midnight news that the guru of quitting Allen Carr had been diagnosed with cancer but was keen to have this fact serve as a springboard to further promote his life's work in combating nicotine addiction.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5229048.stm
Mr Carr says he sees his illness as a way to encourage more people to quit.
"Since I stopped smoking more than 23 years ago I have been the happiest man in the world. I still feel the same way," he added.
And although life's pressures got Nick back on the smokes after a few months cigarette free, I think by taking that action I learned to lose my dependency on cigarettes. Finally I had a choice in the matter in that I, Jonathan Werran choose not to light this cancer stick which is in my mouth, because I Jonathan Werran CHOOSE not to light this cancer stick which has irresistibly lodged itself between my lips.
So it's been nearly a year on the wagon and I feel better for not having the compulsion to do something i don't really want to do. And yes, the ban in pubs is welcome in that the temptation to do something I really don't want to do that I know is harmful to me and my life is thereby lessened. And I won't come home reeking of smoke and piously throwing a smelly jumper into the laundry ruminating 'and to think I inflicted this to everybody in my environment once'.
As an ex-smoker I'll always be part admiring, part yearning to be amongst the outcasts smirting outside the pubs and clubs. But what worked with Allen Carr was the fact that he didn't judge. As a reformed 5 pack a day man he knew what habits drive people to depend on the fags and he encouraged readers to continue smoking whilst reading and absorbing his book. To reform your life, it's necessary to develop a greater understanding of your life as part of the deal.
Which is why, although there isn't much I liked about departing Home Office Secretary of State John Reid or anything he had to say, I admired his standing up for single mums and others for whom a cigarette is a meaningful pleasure in a pressurised life at the bottom.
The Economist carries a timely piece on the law of diminishing effects of increasingly shrill, strident and bossy government health campaigns.
In Nichiren Buddhism we believe in the concept of 'esho funi' - the oneness of life and environment. The implication is that if you think your life is worthless, devoid of respect and meaning , then your immediate environment, how you live, where you live and what you do or don't do will reflect this as accurately as an untarnished mirror. If, however, you are enlightened to your own supreme worth as an ordinary human being and awaken to your mission to live an active life imbued with supreme meaning, fulfilment and purpose hey presto - your environment will, as if by magic, beging to reflect the meaning you are giving it.That stridency may be pointless, even counter-productive. There is no reason to believe that those who ignore measured voices will listen to shouting. It irritates the majority who are already behaving responsibly, and it may also undermine all government pronouncements on health by convincing people that they have an ultra-cautious margin of error built in.
Such hectoring may also be missing the root cause of the problem. According to Mr Marmot, who cites research on groups as diverse as baboons in captivity, British civil servants and Oscar nominees, the higher rates of ill health among those in more modest walks of life can be attributed to what he calls the “status syndrome”. People in privileged positions think they are worth the effort of behaving healthily, and find the will-power to do so. More directly, higher status itself protects people's health, he argues, not just by reducing their propensity to behave riskily, but also by changing their body chemistry in ways that protect them against disease.
The implication is that it is easier to improve a person's health by weakening the connection between social position and health than by targeting behaviour directly. Some public-health experts talk of changing an environment where the worst choices are the easiest to make, especially for those without the time and money to seek out better ones—supermarkets crammed with ready meals, happy hours in pubs, roads too dangerous for children to walk to school. Others speak of social cohesion, support for families and better education for all. These are bigger undertakings than a bossy ad campaign; but more effective, and quieter.
"If the minds of living beings are impure, their land is also impure, but if their minds are pure, so is their land. There are not two lands, pure or impure in themselves. The difference lies solely in the good or evil of our minds. It is the same with a Buddha and an ordinary being. When deluded, one is called an ordinary being, but when enlightened, one is called a Buddha. This is similar to a tarnished mirror that will shine like a jewel when polished. A mind now clouded by the illusions of the innate darkness of life is like a tarnished mirror, but when polished, it is sure to become like a clear mirror, reflecting the essential nature of phenomena and the true aspect of reality." [WND, Volume 1, page 4]
Teaching everybody that their lives, just as they are and without any need for 'change' are deserving of the utmost respect and reverence, as in fact are all other living beings, human and sentient, is the fundamental purpose of Mayahana Buddhism. In the Lotus Sutra, Boddhisattva Fukyo (Never Disparaging) would show constantly total respect to everybody he met, bowing and praising them even if they were to throw sticks and stones at him.
“The heart of the Buddha’s lifetime of teachings is the Lotus Sutra, and the heart of the practice of the Lotus Sutra is found in the ‘Never Disparaging’ chapter. What does Bodhisattva Never Disparaging’s profound respect for people signify? The purpose of the appearance in this world of Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, lies in his behavior as a human being” (“The Three Kinds of Treasure,” The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, Volume 1 pp. 851-52).
So if we could judge a little less, be less insistent on always being right, turn down the volume of the incessantly unheeded shrillness (as of today ex Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt's comments on the smoking abducted sailors in Iran being a case in point) and by our individual example show greater respect for ourselves, others and our environment, and it's a big if admittedly, then we might see society be enriched through happy, bodily healthy and spiritually wealthy people. Possibly worth giving it a try!
How To Prepare A Government
The wholescale change around the Cabinet table can only spell good news for permanent secretaries of the major Whitehall departments.
So bring us your tired, bring us your bewildered, bring us your confused recent appointees. Bring Kelly to Transport, Blears to CLG and Hain to DWP. Then have them encastled within their offices at the top with SpAds, PPS' and underlings. Have IT fix them up with usernames, passwords email accounts via GSIx and a departmental mousemat for good measure.
Give them a few weeks to settle down, wave them goodbye on their August hols to Cape Cod, Tuscany or the Dordogne. Keep things running in smooth order in their absence and on their return, ahead of the party conference season dust down all those great policy recipes that the departmental chef reaches for on such occasions. A national database, ID cards, return to the Gold Standard.
Wait a few years the mixed ingredients to rise. Look up from the gloopy messy mixture to the wider world to see if anybody out there in the general public has noticed or cared. Season to taste. Eat. Regurgitate. Repeat. Result.
So bring us your tired, bring us your bewildered, bring us your confused recent appointees. Bring Kelly to Transport, Blears to CLG and Hain to DWP. Then have them encastled within their offices at the top with SpAds, PPS' and underlings. Have IT fix them up with usernames, passwords email accounts via GSIx and a departmental mousemat for good measure.
Give them a few weeks to settle down, wave them goodbye on their August hols to Cape Cod, Tuscany or the Dordogne. Keep things running in smooth order in their absence and on their return, ahead of the party conference season dust down all those great policy recipes that the departmental chef reaches for on such occasions. A national database, ID cards, return to the Gold Standard.
Wait a few years the mixed ingredients to rise. Look up from the gloopy messy mixture to the wider world to see if anybody out there in the general public has noticed or cared. Season to taste. Eat. Regurgitate. Repeat. Result.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Pro Celebrity Political Appointments
Was reinvigorating atrophied limbs at the Hammersmith Virgin Active (they must give them silver ring things or sumfink) this morning and as is the case when you're disenchantedly pounding away to music, the TV screens assumed greater interest.
On Sky Sports ex Scummer midfield hero and sweat dodger Matt Le Tissier was leading the field on a Spanish fairway with legendary ex Spurs and Arsenal goalkeeper Pat Jennings and a horde of n'eer do wells including Perry Digweed and Carlton Palmer trailing behind.
With only MTV and Jeremy Kyle's Chav Academy (?) separating this lugubriously paced yawn fest Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger (whose arms probably do still resemble Clive James' vivid description of a condom stuffed with walnuts) was sharing a podium with a demob happy, gurning and churning Right Hon Tony Blair.
Not wanting to listen overly much to whatever was being said lest it put me out of stride after hearing the words 'middle east' I'd happily hazard a guess it was just the usual daily rigmarole of our charismatic, Weberian leader sincerely reaching out directly to the people without mediation of the TV, press and political community etc to announce a new non job in bringing peace to the Arabs, Persians and Jews.
Didn't we have the perfectly coiffured tennis mad Lord Levy for such purposes? Maybe the ominously sounding and ill defined 'Quartet', (as in a string quartet or Alexander Durrell's 'Alexandria Quartet. I had a friend who continually confused him with better known animal loving brother Laurence and he was perfectly civil with it) have a grander, more cinematic vision for how these complex and tenuously fragile dialogues should most decorously be conducted.
But this is not to discount that the Fatah party could benefit from the sort of tax loopholes that gave Alvin Stardust freedom to enjoy a life safe from fear of joining the panto circuit.
And better Quartet rather than the ghastly mishmash of Aliens Quadrilogy - it's Tetralogy don'cher know for that sort of thing, see Parades End in its original four volumes rather than the trilogy Graham Greene reduced it to.
But in all reality this is what it's come down to - Post Celebrity Peace Making to shore up George W Bush's position against a fractious Congress and Senate in the heat of an electoral campaign where support for the status quo in Iraq supported by hope for the success of the surge, as evinced by George McCain's travails, simply doesn't work.
Tony Blair's sincere desire for peace and reconciliation between the people of the three Abrahamic faiths must not be discounted. His track record in bring reconciliation and a semblance of normality to political life in Ireland is proof that he can do this sort of thing.
It's just his all too human inability to understand that who he is, somebody who appears to listen only when seeking to win over support but is bolstered by a sense of being always right and never wrong in any event, let alone what he has done or suffered to happen in actual middle East policy makes him wholly inappropriate for the task.
He'd be more profitably employed getting those first drafts of the autobiography 'I was right, they were wrong' typed up, pick up the Congressional Medal and hit the lecture circuit so that BAE don't have to resort to renting out the new pad behind Marble Arch.
This job is best left to the professionals. I saw at the same time as Blair and Arnie a man of total dignity and self-knowledge, who has forged a successful portfolio second career, who never cares or cared what the world thinks of him or of being right, a man who lives in the present to give the world a better future by giving it his all in a tumble of limbs and effort.
Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest as special envoy tasked with restoring peace to the middle east the one and only Carlton Palmer.
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