Ertblog

My friend the deacon: Anthony's special day

I've known my friend Anthony Beer for over 35 years. It's a friendship that flourishes even though we now live 150 miles apart, and meet only once a year. It also got off to an inauspicious start - the first time we met, in 1972, I ruined Anthony's toy snooker table!

We really become close friends in the years leading up to our A levels. We played football and put the world to rights during the hours we weren't revising during our A level month, June 1982. Later that summer, we went camping near Porthcawl and distinguished ourselves by thinking turps a suitable substitute for meths to fuel our camping stove! We also tramped across the coastline for a glimpse of the Gwely'r Misgl mussel beds - only to find them deep under water at high tide.

So I was thrilled to join the celebrations yesterday when Anthony was ordained as a deacon in the Church in Wales. I couldn't be there for the service in Llandaff Cathedral - just a stone's throw from my old house in the city within a city - but went to Anthony's celebration lunch in Canolfan Beulah in Rhiwbina. Anthony gave a lovely speech, describing how everyone present had left "fingerprints on my life".

Anthony will make a wonderful deacon. He's a deeply caring person, who has found his true vocation. I'm privileged to have known him all these years.

PS: by coincidence, I remember explaining to Anthony in the early 1980s that the Anglican body in Wales was called the Church in Wales, not the Church of Wales, because it had been disestablished in 1920!

The joy of Wessex: an unforgettable holiday in Thomas Hardy country

Above: Thomas Hardy's cottage, Lower Bockhampton, Dorset

When Owen arrived last year, we quickly decided we'd spend our holidays in Britain in his early years. The thought of struggling with airports and aircraft with a baby was too much. Over the past fortnight, we discovered just how rewarding holidaying at home can be.

We stayed at Greenwood Grange holiday cottages in the Dorset hamlet of Lower Bockhampton, just outside Dorchester, following an inspired recommendation by Karen's brother. The name of the village rang a bell, and I remembered that the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was born there. It was quite a thrill to discover that Hardy's birthplace cottage (above) was just up the lane from our cottage. (Hardy was born here in 1840 and wrote several of his novels in the modest house.)

This was no literary pilgrimage, but I was fascinated to compare today's Dorchester with Hardy's Casterbridge. (I grew to love Hardy's work after studying The Mayor of Casterbridge for my A levels.) Dorchester has changed far less than most British towns since Hardy's day. A traveller entering the town from Bockhampton is in the heart of the town almost immediately - no urban sprawl here. Ironically, the biggest expansion has come to the west, where Prince Charles's new village of Poundbury is growing rapidly. Poundbury is a curious mix: in parts, it's an appealing out of the box old-style village, but the frankly bizarre new Poundbury fire station is utterly out of place. We were also rather unsettled to see almost no evidence of human life in Poundbury: the streets were deserted. It was nice to discover the headquarters of Dorset Cereals, though!

 

The great discovery of the holiday was Weymouth. We had three wonderful days on the beach there. I knew a little about Weymouth's history, as one of Britain's original seaside resorts. But we found it a great place to spend a sunny day, with shops and cafes within a pebble's throw of the sandy beach. I took the photo above just before we took a day trip from Weymouth to Guernsey.

 

Finally, a glimpse of the wonderful swannery at Abbotsbury on the lagoon at Chesil Beach. It's extraordinary to think the swannery has been owned by the same family for 500 years. But we'll remember the kindness of the man who drove the tractor that pulled the trailer taking less mobile visitors from the car park to the Swannery. Knowing how much small boys love tractors, he let 11 month old Owen take the wheel of the tractor (below)!

Magical mystery trips

I loved the story last week about the travel company charging holidaymakers £2,000 for a vacation at a mystery destination. Travellers would only find out where they were going when they arrived at the airport on Saturday.

I can't say I'd sign up for such a deal. But the story brought back memories of the old 'mystery trips' run by British Railways. When I was ten, we went on a mystery trip from Cardiff and had a very pleasant day in Cambridge. I remember making an Airfix kit on the way home. My parents recounted a marvellous story about neighbours in Caerphilly in the 1950s. They were on holiday on England's south coast and decided to go on a mystery trip, which took them back to ... Caerphilly. They popped home for a cuppa.

Digital Britain: the massacre that showed the failure of BBC regional news

The Government's proposals for a digital Britain hit the headlines this week. Supporters of the BBC were appalled by plans to share television licence funds with other broadcasters as well as the BBC, which has been the exclusive beneficiary of the fee for 80 years.

Supporters of the idea of sharing the licence fee argue it would avoid the BBC regaining the monopoly of public service news it enjoyed until ITV was created in 1955. ITV is now an almost entirely commercial broadcaster, while Channel 4's disastrous ventures in recent years have left it in a parlous financial state. Sharing the licence fee would subsidise competitive regional news services on ITV and Channel 4.

I'm sceptical about this. The licence fee, while unpopular with many, is easily understood. It's the way we fund the BBC, one of Britain's greatest cultural assets, and a world media leader. Who would decide how much of the fee should go to other media companies? What would be the criteria for deciding who gets what?

That said, the BBC is far from perfect, even in regional news. During our holiday in Dorset in early June, we watched the corporation's Spotlight south west news bulletins on BBC Breakfast. I was amazed that the same reports were played repeatedly during the programme. True, few will watch Breakfast from start to finish. But many will watch for an hour or so as they get the family ready for their day. And how could Spotlight on Breakfast have missed this terrific story: the discovery of the bodies of 50 iron age warriors on the site of Weymouth's controversial relief road? A road rushed through approvals so it could speed visitors to the 2012 Olympics sailing events at Portland. The warriors appear to have been massacred by the Romans as they seized Maiden Castle. Sky News covered it. But not, it appears, the public service BBC.   

Virgin's V Stuff: great idea, awful execution

I had an email from Richard Branson today. No, really. Well, not quite. It was a marketing email from Virgin Media telling me all about the company's new online storage and back up service, V Stuff.

I was impressed. It offers 5GB of storage and backup and a number of free photo prints. As I recently decided to get more organised in backing up our huge number of photos of Owen, V Stuff seemed ideal -and so much cheaper than Apple's MobileMe.

But I had a shock when I went to register. It insisted on an email address. Simple, I thought, I'll use my normal Virgin one. Oops: the website said that as I had already registered this email address with the photo service Snapfish, I couldn't use it for V Stuff, which uses Snapfish for its prints. How stupid is that?

A rubbish campaign: the Daily Mail rages against the humble wheelie bin

You can always rely on the Daily Mail to find something to rage against. Today, the paper's front page was devoted to condemning the humble wheelie bin. A large photo showed a street with a few bins on display. Hardly an outrage to prompt millions taking to the streets to protest in the fashion of the Iranian election.

I remember the days when pavements were strewn with black sacks on rubbish day, many of which had been torn open by the local cats. I can't help thinking the Daily Mail are going round stirring up apathy, in the immortal words of the Tory grandee Willie Whitelaw.

Time for change: the counterpoint to Labour’s euphoria of May Day 1997

Yesterday marked the counterpoint of Labour’s landslide euphoria of May 1997. The resignations of home secretary Jacqui Smith, along with other ministers and MPs, sealed the end of Gordon Brown’s hope to recover from the chaos of recent weeks. The prime minister’s authority, already dangerously low, was shot to pieces.

Almost everything about Gordon Brown underlines his unsuitability for his high office. We’re told that he persuaded Smith two months ago to delay her departure. Yet that delay has damaged his reputation as much as Smith’s.

You’d have expected a serious political thinker and son of the manse like Brown to have anticipated the public’s reaction to the long awaited publication of MPs’ expenses and planned a convincing response. Yet Brown has given every impression of being taken by surprise. Three weeks into the saga, the prime minister could only suggest a slow moving constitutional conference. (Shades of the old joke: do nothing, not even a royal commission.)

Brown has certainly been an unlucky leader. The credit crunch and MPs’ expenses scandal would have challenged a far more adept and persuasive prime minister. He inherited the running sore of the Iraq war from Tony Blair. But wait: he was Blair’s near equal, and could have stopped Britain’s participation in that disastrous operation had he wanted to. He has no alibi for what happened in the 10 years before he moved next door.

Above all, Brown shows the wisdom of the expression ‘be careful what you wish for’. He was convinced he had a  divine right to be Britain’s prime minister. He was crowned Labour’s leader – and PM – without a vote. That may be constitutionally correct, but it left the people resentful that Labour had foisted this deeply flawed leader on the country. As we debate a new politics, we should decide whether a general election should be called when a governing party changes leaders between elections.

Labour must ditch Brown now. It cannot allow another 12 months of lame duck government. It’s time to elect a new leader, and give him or her the chance to persuade Britain that Labour deserves another chance. My choice would be Alan Johnson, the popular cabinet minister who is surely the most authentic ‘self made man’ in British politics today. It would be good to see a former postman enter Britain’s most famous address. Let Johnson secure the top job, and declare his intention to hold a general election within three months, along with a comprehensive programme of constitutional reform. (Including the end of the PM’s ability to decide the timing of elections.) He may lose. But change is Labour’s only hope.