In the north country

One of the reasons I've been absent from the blog of late is that I've taken on another voluntary role in helping to manage a local nature reserve. You'd think this is mostly a case of being out there doing physical stuff like planting trees, cutting back scrub and so on - and there is a good deal of that to do - but there's a surprising amount of background work to do as well in organising and publicising fund-raising events, staying in touch with the council and the Wildlife Trust, liaising with other organisations using the site for events, communicating with the wider community at meetings and through newsletters... it all adds up. But it's very satisfying and gives a genuine sense of belonging to the neighbourhood.

Dearie me, that was almost emetically worthy, wasn't it? Let me be honest and admit that the main reason I've been absent from the blog of late is sheer laziness.

All that said, it was great to spend the weekend in the far north, a part of the country Mrs QO and I have loved as long as we've been together, which is quite some time now. Many parts of Nottinghamshire are beautiful, many parts are peaceful and unspoiled, but we don't have any landscape like the Cumbrian fells.

















Photographs never do justice to the high northern skies, nor can they capture the tumbling music of the curlews crying overhead as I took this shot.

I love my home county, and my roots are here. But from time to time it's good to go to those less tamed places.

















What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Voting dust settles

I was very pleased that in the Rushcliffe Borough Council elections, the voters in my ward returned our two Green Party candidates. The People's Verdant Republic of Lady Bay is the only Green ward in the Borough - one very visible sign of what a delightfully individual place it is. The rest of the Borough is predominantly Conservative, of course, though I think it fair to say that Rushcliffe Borough Council (RBC) has never come across as so offensively 'Foaming Nutter Tory' as the Big County Council Brother across the way at County Hall. RBC has quietly got on with being a very well run local council with very little in the way of scandal or fuss over inefficiency. Not much to laugh at all, really.

Turning to the AV vote. Well, the blogosphere was fairly heated over this one, but the country has decisively rejected the offered change. I voted 'No' in the end, despite wavering until the day itself. In the end I came down to the position that change is needed, but this single option wasn't the right change. As David Pannick QC pointed out in The Times on the day of the referendum, a better approach would be to do as Australia did. First, have a referendum on whether we want change at all. If the electorate says 'yes, we do', then have a further referendum on a range of options. Constitutional reform is a serious business, and not one to be entered into via a bodged political compromise. Many of the LibDem supporters of AV were pushing it not because it was the solution they really wanted, but because it would have been a demonstration that they could get something out of the coalition. That's perfectly understandable, but just because something might have been politically advantageous for the LibDem party doesn't mean it's a good thing to do for the country in the long term.

I don't at all go along with the view that no electoral reform will now be possible for a generation. I think there's actually quite an appetite for it, but the electorate is more sophisticated than the political circus at Westminster seems to believe, and will be looking for a properly presented set of proposals - not a back of the envelope quick fix.

Great British Engineering

Whether or not you're a royalist, an ardent republican or a 'couldn't give a toss'-ist, surely you'd have to admit there were some good things about yesterday's marital malarkey.

There's something deeply appealing about a huge crowd of people just having fun, for example, even if part of your brain is a bit appalled that that's their definition of fun. The service itself was beautiful, I thought; lovely music and nice to see trees lining the nave. And I must admit I do get a kick from the precision and pomp with which the military can do their stuff on such ceremonial occasions.

But let's not lose sight of the real triumph of the day - British engineering. Three examples in particular left me breathless and emotional. I think the images will speak for themselves.

Alternatively...

OK, so I said 'sod politics' in the last post, but the forthcoming referendum for AV has been making me think. A painful and unusual sensation.

Nearly a year ago I was able to share with you a startling vision of how the prospect of electoral change formed part of the birth of the Conservative/LibDem coalition. Having moved on, the LibDems are getting the chance of a popular vote for electoral reform, one of their main demands before forming the coalition. They're getting the chance of a fairly minor reform, and one which Nick Clegg is reported to have described as a 'miserable little compromise. A bit like the coalition, yes. But a stepping-stone towards a more profound reform, they hope.

I haven't yet decided which way to vote. On the one hand, I believe that if someone's proposing any significant constitutional reform, it's down to them to make the case, and the default position if you're undecided, or find the case unconvincing, is that you vote that things should stay as they are. And I find the pro-AV case unconvincing. On the other hand, I believe that our current system is unfit for purpose, and perhaps any change is preferable to leaving things as they are, even if we have no clear idea of the consequences of the change.

The real trouble to my mind is that however we elect our politicians, the kind of people who are politicians, and the political system itself, aren't what we need. The main parties are so closely aligned along the middle ground that there isn't a great deal of clear water between them anymore. If you're old enough you can remember a youngish Maggie Thatcher facing off an elderly Michael Foot, with people like Norman Tebbitt and Arthur Scargill chipping in from the sidelines. Plenty of clear water there. Nowadays they're all Euro-Pols, from the same three or four bloody schools and the same two universities... professional politicians from their teens, doing it for a living rather than from conviction. They don't seem to argue about what they'd do so much as how quickly they'd do it. And in any case, it's increasingly clear to me that the politicians make very few decisions, and set very little policy. That stuff's all a bit confusing, so they leave it to the policy advisers in the Ministries. These advisers are of course not elected, and can do their planning of policy without having to worry about popular approval. For example, when Ken Clarke talks about prison versus community punishment, you can bet half a dollar that most of it has come via a nice lady called Julie Taylor, who is Director of Offender Management, Strategy Directorate, Ministry of Justice. I will apologise if wrong but as far as I can find out, she hasn't risen to her current extremely well paid level by being a lawyer, or a prison governor, or a probation worker. Apparently she's a former hospital administrator. I'm sure she's a very able woman. But I'm sure you'll take my point: who is actually in charge? How fitted to the task are they? And on whose authority do they act?

A plague on all their houses, then, say I. (Bet they're worried now, eh?)

The last word on the forthcoming referendum goes to one of my neighbours, overheard outside the pub earlier on:

"Tell you what I'm going to do... I'm going to put a tick in the box marked 'yes', then write underneath 'but alternatively, no'. That's an alternative vote, innit?"

I needed to get out more

It's been a very fallow spell here on the QO blog. My life is so very ordinary that I've never thought of the blog as an online diary: why disturb all those electrons for something so deeply, deeply tedious from the point of view of the rest of the online world? And often pretty tedious from my point of view, too.

And yet, maybe we can add value in some small way by the recounting of a weekend well spent. If it doesn't add value, well, I don't really mind, and you can always register your protest in the comments. So here we go: the sort of weekend the QO really enjoys.

Friday: finish working mid-afternoon and head into town to RV with Mrs QO at the Canalhouse. Move on with some reluctance to the Trip to Jerusalem to meet other friends. Drink at least one pint too many before returning home for pizza with way too much Tabasco on.

Saturday: spring nimbly out of bed... OK, crawl reluctantly out of bed... and prepare to go out with Father of QO into the urban fringe countryside. Walk some six miles in glorious sunshine, spotting a hare and hearing the first skylark of the year. Arrive with enormous thirst at a real gem of a pub. Connoisseurs of Nottinghamshire pubs may be able to ID the place from this pic. Hint: to the west of the city, and sadly no longer the brewery tap.



Consume excellent beer and steak & ale pie with chips. Return home for a little restorative period of inactivity, then head out onto the local nature reserve for an evening stroll, enjoying some fine dusk music from the song thrushes and blackbirds.

Sunday: up at 05.30, out on another local nature reserve by 06.15 to hear the dawn chorus at full chat. Magnificent. Spend some time stalking a lovely fluid singer and eventually put the binoculars on a blackcap. Home to thaw out with freshly brewed coffee. Brunch of scrambled eggs and crisp bacon. In the afternoon, two hours of volunteer work on the reserve, pulling Himalayan Balsam seedlings out before they can get started, the little buggers. Enjoy not-too-stressful work in the sunshine, then repair to local for well-earned beers.

So, some physical exercise, some nature conservation, enjoyment of the local wildlife, plenty of beer and time with friends and relations. And sunshine. Sod politics, I'm intellectually downsizing, me.

Simple or simplistic?

I'm often droning on to Mrs QO (the only person who has to stay in the house and listen) and anyone else within earshot that one of the biggest problems facing our society is that too few people keep on top of current events and think about them. Vast numbers of our citizens (here we go, sit back and share the rant) sit in hideous sloth every night in front of some braindead nonsense on TV, read only one newspaper, if they can read at all, with no regard to why its content will be slanted and exercising no critical analysis or independent judgement... they will turn out to vote (if they can get off their lardy arses) and painstakingly pencil in a cross against the party they've always voted for, having read neither that party's manifesto nor any other... given a choice between long-term planning and cheap goodies now, they'll always take and consume with no thought for the next generation...

Why do so many people not think? Why do they not read something that might challenge their prejudices? Why don't they ever ponder whether their old tribal allegiance might be out-dated and harmful? Why cannot they get over 'gut instinct' and use their heads, just for a change?

I think I know why. And I may be feeling a little ashamed of myself for the holier-than-thou diatribe. (Not very ashamed, you understand, just a healthy amount.)

The world is a big place, and lots goes on in it. (Yes, the QO brings you the big insights. You heard it here first.) Only a generation ago, it was a real effort to find out any significant amount about what was going on and what other people thought about it. Nowadays, if you're the sort of person that tries to keep abreast of events and informed thinking about them, there's so much input that you can't possibly process it.

Take, as an obvious example, what's going on in Libya. Part of me is right behind the rebels and therefore applauds the multinational action in supporting them. But equally there's a despondent feeling of 'here we go again... post-imperialism... it's all about the oil... nobody has thought about what happens next'.

Another example: the big march in London on Saturday. I'm torn all sorts of ways here. If I went, which group would I join? I believe the State has got way too big, intervenes far too much in the citizen's private life, has eroded our civil liberties to a truly dangerous extent over the last 20 years and has bought votes with borrowed money that our great-great-grandchildren will be struggling to pay off. Offered and forced dependence on the State has brought about a weakness of character in our people, an inability to stand on our own two feet, an inability to admit that sometimes life isn't fair, but nobody owes you a living, you just plain get on with it. So I'd be happy on one level to be with the Census Rebellion in Trafalgar Square.

Against that, I'm desperately sorry for those thousands upon thousands of public-sector workers who are being thrown out of employment with little prospect of alternative work, I think the economic sins of the past are being addressed too quickly and with too little thought for the consequences, and - to be blunt - the collection of pigs now in power don't seem much different from the bunch of pigs that were snouts-down in the troughs of Whitehall before last May.

Om.

Om.

Beer.

It's difficult, isn't it? Too many for me, as Huck Finn would say. What is far easier to process is the warmer, brighter weather, the birdsong, the changing of the year. Those things our evolution has prepared us for and we react instinctively. This is where we can trust gut-instinct, and don't have to worry about being rational. Of course these things are good.

Perhaps our society has got so complex that we can't make any useful choices any more and will always lurch from one crisis to another, driven by the tiny few who are sure they know better than we do how we should all live. I give up.

What I think I do know is that I love the sight of spring blossom. That's going to have to do for the time being.

Perspective

One of my recent resolutions was to spend less time on the computer and more time reading. You know, good old-fashioned books, preferably from the public library, so as to help establish the demand for keeping them open. And I have indeed been reading. Some of it has been the literary equivalent of a Pot Noodle (trashy but momentarily satisfying) but I have also read some very thought-provoking stuff about American and UK politics, English culture (or lack of), the assault of the Blair administration on civil liberties and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, an old friend I've shamefully neglected for many years.

The net result of all that was so many threads for blog posts that I haven't known where to start, even assuming I wasn't reading books rather than at the computer. I suppose a very brief summary would be that, frankly, we can't trust any of our politicians; the country is on a downward spiral of unemployment, social division, and reduced public services; George Bush and Tony Blair should be done for war crimes; our children will inherit a lack of opportunity, a lack of belief in the future, ecological and economic collapse and drastically reduced standards of living; and people sure spoke funny in Mississippi way back in the day.

All this could make even the sunniest Observer feel that things weren't entirely great.

And so it was good to have a quiet evening out in town after work with Mrs QO, doing nothing more extravagant than having a couple of pints then supper at Wagamamas, where we had the added bonus of sitting in the window and watching the peregrine falcons up on the Newton Building. And then walking through the Square on the way for some liquid afters before a bus home. The Town House clock, the big wheel and the moon were all helping illuminate our city centre, and all seemed pretty much OK for the time being.