Pope Francis - being cuddly isn't enough

Pope Francis with admirers in Brazil

Journalists have been trumpeting what appears to be a "more conciliatory tone" in Pope Francis' pronouncements on gays.  But it's all style, rather than substance.  Being homosexual by orientation has never been seen by the Church as sinful - it's homosexual activity that was always condemned, and remains so.  Forget gay marriage: you still have to be celibate if you're gay and want to stay in the Catholic Church.  

No change, either, on women priests - "that door is closed", the media-friendly prelate said to journalists, adding statements about the importance of women in the Church.  Humbug, Your Holiness.  It's like saying that women need to be appreciated for their cooking, but aren't allowed in the boardroom.

Moving into a flat, using a small car instead of a limo, carrying your own bags: these are gimmicks that will endear the pontiff to the faithful.  But double standards within the Church seem set to continue.  On Saturday the Guardian wrote about a fresh scandal brewing in the Catholic Church in Scotland, where a priest who has complained of being abused by an older priest has been ostracised and sidelined.  The message is clear: toe the line or you're out of favour.  

The Pope himself looks as if he may be heading for trouble with his appointment of Monsignor Ricca to an important position overseeing the Vatican Bank.  The appointee was formerly stationed at the Vatican Embassy in Montevideo, where, it is alleged by Italian investigative journalists, he led an openly gay life, even being caught on one occasion with a rentboy in a lift.  In most countries a charge of this nature would lead to suspension of the person concerned from his duties while the allegations are investigated.  Not in the Catholic Church, it seems, where there's one rule for the prelates and another for their flock.

Antony Mair

The Nonsense of Prince George

The earlier Prince George, 2nd Duke of Cambridge

The feeding frenzy that greeted the arrival of the newest member of the royal family last week was peculiarly repellent.  I first encountered mass hysteria - excluding of course the howls of teeny-boppers at rock concerts - with the death of Princess Diana.  In the law-firm I was working in at the time, any suggestion that Diana was other than immaculate would have had you lynched by almost every member of the female staff.  Personally, I had always found her beautiful but at the same time manipulative - and, dare I say it, in some ways she contributed to her final, if undeniably tragic, departure.

I have no such ambivalence as regards the royal infant.  But the news on the easel outside Buckingham Palace, giving brief details of the birth, was enough information.  If the media had been given the chance, paparazzi would have been pointing their lenses at the Duchess's private parts during the whole process.  It was almost impossible to avoid detailed commentary - pages of newsprint and what seemed an eternity of broadcasting time.  Then, to add to it all, articles appeared in the Sunday broadsheets about how excessive the earlier coverage had been.  No better example could be found of the media feeding on themselves.

There does seem to be an increasing tide of trivia around.  Social media have not helped.  The Facebook postings of posturing wannabes have opened far too many windows on dreary lives, and the endless tweets of self-appointed role models don't help.  I've been following two eminent poets on Twitter, whose endless tweets have, I'm afraid, entirely degraded them as far as I'm concerned.  I'd like the odd uplifting comment, please, not a stream of self-conscious gibber.

I suppose that my concern, finally, is the collapse of underlying moral values that give context and dimension to social behaviour.  If you have no defined moral framework then any behaviour becomes permissible.  Put that together with a decline in education and a rise in yob culture and what do you get?  the relentless advance of the gutter press, with all its prurient fascination in the details of private life.  

God help Prince George and his parents!

Antony Mair     

Pirates' Day in Hastings

I have slightly mixed feelings about Pirates' Day.  One of our neighbours, Andy Hemsley, a reporter on the Rye Observer, said he would be clearing out for the weekend.  "It's phoney," he said.  I know what he means.  Not only is there no local tradition backing up the day, but pirates are not particularly nice people - think of the thugs operating off Somalia, for instance, or the cybernasties who are after your identity.

I suppose that pirates started getting a better reputation with Long John Silver and Captain Hook.  The late Victorians have a lot to answer for when it comes to sentimentalising.  Then of course there's Hollywood, which outdoes the nineteenth century when it comes to kitsch.  Johnny Depp is merely the icing on the cake.  So now we have infants prancing around on stage singing "Yo ho ho, a pirate's life for me" while their doting parents smile away at their offspring embarking on a life of crime.  I wondered whether I was the only onlooker who had misgivings. 

The trouble is, though, that you can't stay curmudgeonly for very long on Pirates' Day in Hastings.  If there's one thing the locals like doing, it's dressing up.  When you combine dressing up with drinking they're in heaven.  So a large proportion of the population enters fully into the spirit of the occasion: not just with a cardboard three-cornered hat or a plastic sword, but in full fig with make-up to match - and what goes for the parents goes for the children.  Of course there're times when the result is a tad incongruous - I'm not sure that Long John Silver wore Raybans, for example, and one character enjoyed some rhyming slang with a carrot on his shoulder (carrot=parrot, geddit?).  But you have to admire people for taking part.  We were, I'm afraid, partypoopers on this occasion.  We learnt from our neighbour Polo Piatti and his wife Martina that the secret is to keep a selection of costumes in the attic to cover the different occasions in the year.  They were just strolling round as if in an urban fancy-dress party.  Which is I suppose what it's about.  Oh, and the drinking, of course.

Antony Mair

 Polo and Martina

It's sea shanty time again

Portsmouth Shanty Men on stage at the Stade

If you live anywhere by the sea, shanties are irresistible.  These folk songs associated with the sea and everything nautical - from sailing round Cape Horn to fishing in the Channel - with the refrains that everyone can sing along to, have a particular resonance when you're close to fishing boats and the beach.  

The enterprising Hastings Shanty Singers put on the first shanty festival last year, and repeated it this.  It started with a sing-along in the Stag Inn, in All Saints Street on Friday night.  The Stag's low ceilings and timbered walls are always atmospheric, and the shanty singers made the place their own that night - not only our own Hastings singers, but visitors from Portsmouth and Herne Bay, among others.  

I don't know much about folk songs, but to an impartial observer there does seem to be a no-nonsense let's- get-on-with-it approach, a distinct heartiness, that is very different from the wistful flutes of inland ballads.  Perhaps it's to do with the work association - the heaving of sails and the toiling at winches.  The singers themselves are pretty bluff characters, friendly and welcoming and quick with repartee.  As with all folk singers - am I treading on uncertain ground here? - there seems to be an abundance of facial hair among the men, and sartorial niceties don't figure.  

All of that is pretty irrelevant, though, once the singers get going.  What I found totally remarkable was their ability to keep in harmony without any instrumental accompaniment - true musicianship.  And the songs themselves, of course, take you back to an earlier age when people stayed at sea, in appalling conditions, for months at a time.  All power to the Hastings Shanty Singers for keeping the tradition going in such an enjoyable way.

Antony Mair   

More poetry

I've been greatly taken up recently with the task of compiling an anthology of poems by members of the Brighton Stanza Group, affiliated to the Poetry Society.  I attend their monthly workshops, which have been an invaluable source of encouragement for my fledgling efforts in the poetry field.  Jo Grigg, our group leader, asked me a while back if I'd be prepared to put an anthology together, and it seemed a good idea at the time.  

Like all projects, it's had its ups and downs: the initial problem was financial - since the market is awash with poetry books that nobody is buying, we were going to have to self-fund to a degree.  That problem was overcome by Andie Davidson, a member of the group, suggesting we use her Bramley Press and cover out-of-pocket expenses only.  So contributors make a fairly nominal contribution per poem published, and Andie keeps any profits from sales.  

Then the submissions started to come in, and I began to worry about the quality of the poems themselves.  We have some excellent poets in the group, a number of whom have won prizes and/or had collections published.  But the anthology needed to be inclusive, as a community effort, so we couldn't just put in the highfalutin literary stuff.  I did a preliminary cull, and then consulted two other members who had volunteered to go on the editorial committee, and finally we came up with a list of what should go in and what not.

I'm now at the stage of gathering in biographical details from contributors, and the project is taking shape as I put together a text that, over the next few weeks, can be sent over to Andie for the final steps in the process.  What is exciting - principally as a result of the inclusive approach that Jo insisted on from the start - is the wide diversity of people and poems.  We have a number of contributions that fall into the category of performance poetry - more for the mike than the page - but which we felt read well enough on the page as well.  But we also have variety of forms - from sestinas through free verse to "senryu", a form of haiku.  

From the biographical notes that are coming in, we have equal diversity among the poets - so far we have age differences from 72 to 17, and experience ranging from prizewinners and published poets to newbies in the field.

Needless to say, there's been more work in it than I bargained for at the start, and it's not over yet.  But it's a pleasure to be involved in a joint creative effort in our little corner of Sussex.

Antony Mair     

Summer at last

 Fishing boats hauled up on the beach

For the first time this year, we've had consistently warm weather through the week, with temperatures in the mid-20s during the day, and wonderful fresh nights, with a bit of a breeze.  We went up to London yesterday, to see friends and catch up a little - taking in the Summer Exhibition and the Mexican Exhibition at the Royal Academy plus the Treasures of the Royal Courts exhibition at the V & A, and seeing a friend in a one-woman show about Eleanor Roosevelt last night.  All pretty action-packed, and we came back on the train a little tired and sleepy, then picked the dogs up from their hotel just outside Battle.

We always say the same after returning from a trip: it was lovely to go away, and it's lovely to be back home.  Particularly when the weather is warm and sunny.  But what you notice immediately after London is the quality of the air.  Curiously, on going up to London I'm not so aware of it: but when you get out of the train on the return there's that blessed freshness in the air that you suddenly realise you've missed in the metropolis.  

My reactions to London have been the same for a number of years now: initial delight at the variety and stimulus on all sides, but then, after twenty-four hours, a wish to get away from the noise and dirt and bustle.  Curiously, I remember that in the run-up to our move to France I felt that I was if anything over-stimulated by everything on in London: there's such a richness of cultural delights that you can't absorb it all without risking indigestion.  Certainly some of the major exhibitions need time for reflection afterwards: today we were at the Treasures of the Royal Courts exhibition, which is a slightly odd ragbag of exhibits from the Tudor and early Stuart period, consisting of portraits, artefacts and costumes.  There was some of the most exquisite jewellery I have ever seen, which was a joy.  Astonishing craftsmanship and refinement.  I need time now to mull over the memory of it, let it settle in the mind - not just rush on to the next thing to see.

Antony Mair      

The result of austerity - a divided country

Café society in Lewes

Last Friday and Saturday we had a very enjoyable overnight stay with friends on the outskirts of Southampton.  We took advantage of the trip to have lunch in Lewes on the way over.  My only trips to Lewes in the past have been to take items over to Gorringes the auctioneers - and to ferry them back after they have failed to sell.  At the other end of town from the auctioneers, however, is the paved High Street, where, last Friday lunchtime, le tout Lewes seemed to be having a bite to eat.  Bill's is an attractive emporium with a decent range of salads and more substantial stuff, plus a grocery section dispensing such essentials as roasted artichoke hearts and fig jam.  Small blackboards pinned up on the beams display, in elegant italic script, handwritten hymns to the English dream of elderflower spilling over hedgerows in country lanes and into the bottles of elderflower cordial available on the premises.  

On the Saturday we had lunch with our friends in a waterside pub at Bursledon, on the Hamble River.  It was a beautifully sunny day, and you'd have expected the river to be a hive of activity, since it's packed with yachts.  But it was largely deserted.  The toys of the English middle and upper classes lay quietly moored, waiting for their owners to pay them one of their occasional visits.  

The impression gained from these two places was of comfort and prosperity.  However, on the Friday I had been reading a letter in the Hastings Observer from a worthy citizen who had been undertaking volunteer work in Hastings' food bank.  She was shocked by the people who had been coming to the bank: ordinary people, as she said, rather than the homeless we see on the streets - people who had, for one reason or another, found it impossible to feed themselves.  One family had been subsisting on porridge alone for three weeks.  The food bank distributes three tons of food a week, although it is only open on two afternoons.

This is the side of England you don't see on the television or hear about on the radio.  And there is no sign of it getting better.  East Sussex County Council is required to cut £27.8 million from its spending on adult social care: the impact will be felt by the elderly and vulnerable.   

I have no pat answer.  I am not a natural socialist.  But the divergence between the haves and the have-nots, café society and the hungry, the yacht-owners and the homeless, makes me feel increasingly uncomfortable.

Antony Mair  

Mist, murk and conspiracy theories

Cliffs to the east of Hastings, in the mist

This summer is decidedly strange.  We've had hardly any warm weather to speak of.  Hastings' much-vaunted record as the sunniest place in the UK, achieved against Eastbourne in 2011, has little chance of survival.  It's been made worse by repeated forecasts of sunshine elsewhere in the UK.  Meanwhile we seem to be trapped under overcast skies, with the odd flash of sunlight just to show us what we're missing.

There was a recent day that started in brilliant sunshine only to cloud over later.  We found ourselves in a local shop as the transition was happening.  When we commented on it to the shopkeeper she related how she had seen aircraft high in the sky in the early hours of the morning, spraying some sort of chemicals into the atmosphere.  She had noticed how, later, the weather had become overcast and murky.  It was, apparently, covert action on the part of government to combat climate change.

We displayed polite interest.  When we returned home, through the invading sea-mist, I couldn't resist going to the website she told us about, which is devoted to chemtrail activity.  The Wikipedia coverage doesn't seem to give it much credence, but then a conspiracy theorist would claim that the Wikipedia article is probably written by government agents anyway.  For a taste of the real thing you have to look at the Chemtrail Central site - a sort of Grand Central Station for chemtrail conspiracy theorists. 

The lunchtime news today spoke about France's equivalent to the US government's Prism operations.  In today's Guardian there was a story about bugging in the Ecuadorean embassy.  It's difficult not to be paranoid, these days.  But I find it difficult to believe that our governments would be spending a lot of secret money on chemtrails to combat climate change.  If they are, the present weather in Hastings appears to indicate that they are as incompetent in this area as in many others.

Antony Mair 

Edward Snowden - shame and hypocrisy

Demonstrators in Hong Kong express their views 

I find myself increasingly disgusted by the reactions of politicians and the media to the Snowden affair.  Those who have revealed what goes on inside the National Health Service, in spite of gagging clauses in their service contracts, have done so because of concerns about patient care.  Gagging clauses are now being abandoned, because of the perception that the public needs to know when abuse occurs.  However, when a member of the secret service discloses abuses of human rights the reactions are either muted or mealy-mouthed: "It's what everyone does" or "We're satisfied that there are extensive checks and balances to prevent abuse."

Statements of this kind don't cut much ice with Angela Merkel or François Hollande.  Nor should they.

It's curious that the European Union, so loathed by the Tory right, should be a more aggressive champion of human rights than our own national press.  With the exception of The Guardian, coverage has been woeful.    

The sheer extent of data interception by the Americans and British is staggering.  It's difficult to believe that the wholescale interception of email traffic between German citizens is necessary - or indeed that it is undertaken by other nations.  As far as the British are concerned, the conduct revealed may well be in accordance with English law.  But the relevant statute - the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000  - is far too permissive.  The intelligence services may apply for a warrant to intercept data (a) in the interests of national security; (b) for the purpose of preventing or detecting serious crime; (c) for the purpose of safeguarding the economic well-being of the United Kingdom or (d) to give effect to any international assistance agreement where there are circumstances involving the prevention or detection of serious crime.  Security and serious crime are understandable motivations for action.  But "economic well-being" is the vaguest of phrases that can cover a multitude of circumstances.  It is under this head, for example, that the UK has justified its bugging of the phones of foreign trade missions when negotiating trade agreements.  

As for the "checks and balances": application is made to the Secretary of State, not the courts.  In other words, a politician determines the outcome, not a lawyer.  The Secretary of State has to be convinced that the measures concerned are "proportionate and necessary".  These are weasel words: when the purpose is to safeguard the economic well-being of the UK almost anything can be justified.  

The likelihood of challenge is rendered virtually impossible by virtue of the fact that the existence of the warrant has to be kept secret.  

It is easy to be complacent about the State's intrusion into our private lives, comforted by the belief that government has our best interests at heart.  Alas, I am increasingly doubtful that the best interests of the British people as a whole are what motivate politicians: rather, it is their own survival in power, gauged by the extent to which they satisfy the requirements of relevant interest groups, such as the Press and the banking community - raising unpleasant comparisons with Presidents Mubarak and Assad.

I hope that the outrage of our European allies produces a little sense in the debate.  But I fear that weasel words are likely to win the day.  And the core values of a democatic society will be weaker as a result.

Antony Mair