Author: dexta1962

July 2019

Shearing is over for another year. Because of inclement weather in early June we sheared inside one of the buildings and everything seemed to go much smoother. In retrospect, I think it was because the sheep could not see the fields and trees and the wide open spaces and, as a consequence of being confined to the walls and alleyways of the shed, their sense of freedom was restricted greatly. They could not see beyond the walls and in accepting their situation, they were therefore, easier to deal with. Restricting their vision made them easy to control.

Those who have read Gulag Archipelago by the Russian writer Solzhenitsyn will know that like sheep, when humans are confined and accept their situation, they too become easier to handle. This is how ruling elites have always tried to control the common man. Whether that elite comprises Dictators or Democrats, they all try to get what they want by restricting the vision of others.

I have a picture in my mind of Moses staggering down the mountain with a barrow full of stone tablets thinking he had got something really important, but blissfully unaware that from that day forward, leaders with a legalistic disposition would turn his tablets into zillions of reams of red tape. His guidance on the broad principles of behaviour were codified into proscriptive edicts legalising the minutia of everyday living.

Despite the evidence of history, I find it amazing that there are so many campaigning groups, academics, the broadcast media and political ideologues are all working hard to emulate the Scribes and Pharisees and restrict the vision of the ordinary person so as to compel us to see only that world which exists in their own minds. They even bully and ostracise  anyone who dares to use words and concepts that challenge the ‘woke’ view. Woe betide the man or woman who uses words that are not ‘woke’ in the lexicon of that class of people who view themselves as the liberal elite but who, in reality are intolerant of any view that challenges their own.

The New Testament makes it clear that the Ten Commandments are intended to show how to place limits on our own behaviour and that the notion of ‘Free Will is crucial to this understanding. However, it appears that some folk will not rest until they have replaced self-disciplined free-will as being the bedrock of society, by one in which folk are legalised out of bad behaviour.

The New Testament also shows us that humans are meant to have an unrestricted vision of the whole nature and process of creation. This vision is wider than any campaigning group, wider than any political ideology, and one which reaches beyond even this planet and the universe. And yet, as I |have touched on above, from Moses on-wards, people and organisations have narrowed that vision to become one of which they can themselves conceive. This perpetual narrowing of man’s vision was also noticed by the hymn writer George Rawson. Born in Leeds in 1807 and before he died in Bristol in 1889, he recognised this tendency to narrow the vision of the New Testament in the words in the hymn,

 “We limit not the truth of God to our poor reach of mind, to notions of our day and sect, crude partial and confined,” ……

Finally, talking about man’s narrow vision and rules of behaviour, brings to mind the French Philosopher Francois-Marie Rouet. Better known as Voltaire, he was born in 1694 during the time of the Enlightenment. (Age of Reason) He wrote entertainingly on history and philosophy and was, like many at the time, critical of Christianity as practiced by the established church. He was a keen advocate of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and the separation of the church and state.

He was scathing of a centralised church hierarchy which, like now had too narrow a vision and was resistant to change, but had sympathy for a local priest whose ideas for change in his parish had been rejected by canonical officials. His pithy reply to the disappointed incumbent echoes today, “Our wretched species”, he said, ‘is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road”.

His wit did not wane as he aged and, as he lay on his death-bed was approached by a haughty Cardinal who admonished him to renounce Satan. Voltaire shrugged and replied,

“Now is not the time to be making new enemies.”

June 2019

A Committee is usually formed to establish standards and ensure conformity once something is already up and running, and I have always known that I did not fit in with the kind of people who relish sitting on committees. These folk seem to get a sense of achievement when the Chairman says, “Right we’re all agreed. ‘Next Item.’ Such people seem  to regard verbal consensus as being the pinnacle of achievement and a virtuous outcome in its own right.

At the highest  level of an  organisation  committee is a useful aid to setting a direction for an organisation and a place where Politicians and bureaucrats come together as they both work in a world in which ideas on paper are ends in themselves.

However when actions are required, a Project team is best at organising resources to achieve a specific goal. Project Teams work in the real world where they have to acknowledge that different people have different capabilities and abilities and that what makes a good bureaucrat is not the same trait that makes a good project manager. For example, the project manager does not aim for agreement for its own sake. Instead, he or she will use disagreement about priorities to energise a reduction in time scales, or may use technical clashes to create innovative solutions.

A Project team is not necessarily trying to achieve consensus as such, but is seeking an effective and efficient means of achieving a measurable objective.Such a team has a dynamic mixture of reactive chemistry working to convert energy and resources towards a given end.  Individuals in the team may work together to assess situations and and take risks, whereas a committee, because of its drive to achieve consensus, standardise and ensure conformity, will try to eliminate risk. Of course, both mind-sets are necessary, but history teaches us that as soon as a committee thinks that it can do more than set a direction. and comes to believe it can also ‘steer the ship, things will go wrong big time.

On re-reading the above, I hope those readers who are trying to make sense out of what is going on at both national and benefice level, may be better able to understand why national politicians and benefice bureaucrats are having difficulty coming to terms with some ‘realities’ expressed by ordinary folk during recent months.

But enough of bureaucrats: A few weeks ago we dagged the sheep and were pleased that only one showed signs of maggots. We ‘Clik’d the lambs, and I rang the shearer to make sure he was willing to do the job again this year. The cost of shearing a small flock is very high and as the British Wool Marketing Board only pays us about £0.90pkg value, the cost of then taking the wool to the Board’s depot in Bromyard means lwe lose circa £5 per fleece. It is now better to dig a hole and let the wool rot. (How different things are from the time when peasant folk in Norfolk were driven off common land, (and some they owned) by powerful people because wool was so valuable that huge flocks of sheep were grazed in in order to meet the European demand for wool.

If there are no bright spots on the political front there is one on the  on the technological. Recently, a neighbour very kindly sold us a small piece of land to make it easier for us to manoeuvre vehicles around the back of our cottage, and then another neighbour cut overhead tree branches to obtain height clearance. He used a battery powered pole saw and chain saw. I watched in astonishment as he cut an eight inch diameter, twelve foot long beech branch, fourteen feet high off the ground, and then turned it into a barrow full of logs in under six minutes. He took the battery out of the pole-saw and put it in the chain-saw as the branch thumped to the ground.

Lithium batteries now give a chain saw over an hour of continuous use. But other implements such as the brush cutter, strimmer or hedge trimmer run a lot longer. At only a half hour, charge time one battery may be all you need. In my case however,  if I am chain-sawing cords into logs for a full hour then I too need to charge up my own batteries for half an hour. I am now convinced that batteries have come of age, and only just in time for the over-eighties to be able to carry on ‘Carrying On.’

Talking of carrying on however, reminds me of a true story from an old Canadian bagpipe player who was asked to play at a funeral for homeless man who had no family or friends. The service was to be at a pauper’s cemetery in the Nova Scotia back country, but because he got lost in the backwoods he was an hour late, and so on arrival, he could see no sign of a hearse but only the digger crew who were by now eating lunch. He apologised profusely and then went straight to the graveside to play. As the workers gathered round, he played from the heart as he thought of this poor solitary man who had no-one to love or mourn him.

He later recalled that during “Amazing Grace” the workers began to weep. So much so that he too found his eyes full of tears and his heart was full, but he carried on. At the end, when he was packing the bagpipes into his car, he heard one of the workers say,

“Well. I’ve never seen anything like that before, and I’ve been installing septic tanks for twenty years.”