I closed last month’s View’ included a challenge to parish councils to prune ivy from any roadside tree where it was already in the crown of tree.’ I should have also asked every able person to do the same on their own land. The intention being to be a Steward in thwarting one plant from unknowingly killing another whilst pursuing its own cycle of life. This idea of Stewardship first comes in Genesis chapter one, and from which we understand it our role to tend what God had made.
Toward the end of last month’s ‘View’ I used the phrase “Cut to the chase.” This term was used by Hollywood studio executives when directors padded out a film with dialogue which bored audiences. The idea being to get to the bit where a posse of honest townsfolk chase a bunch of ne’er-do-well bank robbers. In my youth such films shown in the Lyric Cinema, demonstrated that the bad folk who lived on the fringes of society, could be defeated by the good guys who were the majority at the centre of town life.
Things have changed. The bad guys are now at the centre of society and the good guys on the fringe. Men and women such as self-employed, tradesmen, small businesses, farmers, and other rural folk who, with many of their urban cousins, are the ones now being robbed by the bad guys at the centre. Although stretching the point, recent events do show that powerful interests have been jailing postmasters whilst knowing they were innocent. The bad guys knew that the Post Office Technology ‘Horizon’ had deficiencies and covered up their deceit and facts for more than a decade.
Just as a saloon car can be adapted for rallying but not for formula one, ‘Horizon’ could be adapted but not be made into something it was not designed to be. As ever, the natural laws including physics cannot be stressed (stretched) too far.
Unlike the bank robbers of Hollywood who wore masks and different coloured hats, our robbers are not so easy to identify. The group, which some call the quangocracy, occupy roles across commerce, quangos, charities, media, and politics. Such groupings make it easy for its members to glide from board level jobs with favourable terms and contracts to suit. Within a shifting fluid landscape and short contracts, it then becomes easy for an individual to feel less responsible for their own actions and so able to say, “It wasn’t me Guv, it was the system.”
Sixty years ago, I read Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s book Crime and Punishment, and in it the characters faced various heavenly and earthly forms of punishment. When we begin to think of an earthly judgement appropriate for the baddies of Fujitsu and the Post Office, we might spare a thought on what the heavenly authorities might consider appropriate for us when, we too face, the truths we have avoided and lie unacknowledged within our own mind.
At the time of writing, my wife has just had her 29th birthday. At least that is the story she has resolutely stuck with for some years. The day brought back memories of previous celebratory gifts. A top-of-the-range wheelbarrow, and a hundred metres of electric netting come to mind, as does the impromptu meal of fish and chips in the shop opposite the old market on The Bye in Ledbury. This year however: the treat was popping into Newent for a loaf of bread and a coffee and bun in the Arc Café opposite the old police station.
But talking of the old Police Station (long gone) reminds me of how much Gloucester has changed since I first came to RAF Innsworth in 1959. Older readers will remember the old Quedgeley Roundabout and the coach depot at the end of Eastern Avenue. Both now replaced by about seventy traffic lights.
One evening, a couple of friends from Hucclecote spent far too long in the Little Thatch and. being midnight, thought it too far to walk back and so decided to ‘borrow’ a bus. Creeping into the darkened shed one soon re-emerged to say that he couldn’t find a No, 44. His friend however replied,
“Don’t worry I can see a 41. We’ll take that to the Walls Roundabout and walk home from there.”
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View from the Pew 