Foreigners?: God & Immigration

Originally published June 2008

In our dining room we have a false fireplace and chimneybreast. Blocking the top of the fireplace (to prevent curious rabbits getting behind the false wall and necessitating knocking it down) is a readers digest atlas of the British Isles from the early 1960s. I spent many hours skimming through the pages of the book when I acquired it as a teenager, and it wasn't just putting off doing my homework. I found the book interesting for two main reasons, firstly because all the maps in it pre-date the building of the motorway network, and secondly because the atlas gives the meanings and origins of the names of all the towns and villages in the country. For example Manchester is Brittonic for 'Place on the breast shaped hills' and Harrogate (where I'm originally from) is Anglo-Saxon or Norse for 'grey hill pasture'.
What the atlas reveals is the many linguistic origins for place names in this country, and what that means is that this country has been subject to many influxes of alien communities coming here to settle and bringing their cultures and customs. We have - amongst others - Romans, Angles & Saxons, Vikings, Celts and Normans colouring our history as well as the Britons who were here originally. Although these cultures immigrated by way of invasion over time they became fully integrated with the Britons and the combined resources of all these cultures has made Britain what it is today.

And Britain isn't the only country to be founded on a base of immigration. The US and Australia among other countries have – at their modern historical root – European settlers moving to these 'new worlds' because they were unhappy or unwelcome in their homelands. These countries, more than ours, were founded on a basis of economic, political and religious migration. Exactly the reasons many people want to come into the UK today.

Maybe the underlying memory of what happened in these countries contributes to our suspicion of immigrants today. We suspect that immigrant communities want to take over our island and annex it to whichever country they originate from. Maybe we fear the loss of our national identity and our cultures will disappear out of memory and we will be assimilated into an inter-national, amalgamated bland conglomerate of ideas that lacks any definition or spark of individuality. But that's nothing we need to fear from immigrants, they don't come here in sufficient numbers to have that kind of effect. Rather if we wish to defend our Britishness we should defend our culture from the growing inevitability of Americanisation. It is American culture that is dissolving our own; more and more this country models itself – politically and sociologically – on what crosses the Atlantic. It's more likely that we'd start celebrating Independence Day on 4th July rather than 26th January – which is when India celebrates it. Western culture has done far more damage to other heritages than they are currently threatening to do to ours. Across the globe the traditional skills of indigenous tribes are facing a creeping death by Western lifestyles. They have a lot more to lose than we can even imagine, and we moan about this vague idea we have that immigration will somehow make us 'un-British,'

On the whole the people who have immigrated to the UK are from countries that were formally part of the British Empire. It makes sense that if you were going to emigrate you'd go to a country you know something about, and across Europe you find that immigrant communities are largely made up of former colonies of those respective countries. The way we used our Empire was to our gain; we used it for cheap labour, cheap resources and forced a British way of live onto the native populations. Given that we have used these countries, does allowing them to live and work here go some small way to making reparations for the way we treated them? Could it be a sort of informal apology for our past wrongs?

But is it our culture we're trying to defend? Britain – and England in particular - has never really valued its heritage. History is a peripheral subject at school and most people don't see it as important. Shakespeare, Morris dancing and swan upping are English culture. Everyone knows the Scots wear kilts, but can anyone tell me what the English national dress is? Not only have we allowed our own customs to perish, but we tried our best to suppress Scottish, Irish and Welsh culture as we dominated them. We are fairly unique in this country in having no traditional mythology. The legends we have of King Arthur, Robin Hood and King Alfred the Great are based on real people and real events – albeit twisted by the art of the storyteller – and what stories we do have about faeries and trolls mostly come from the Celtic tradition. JRR Tolkein once said that one of the reasons he wrote Lord of the Rings was to try to give Britain it's own mythology. Well, if it's not our culture we're trying to defend what is it? I've been looking at a few different online forums whilst preparing this blog, and the most tangible thing people are defending is this block of land and all its wealth. Here there are some valid arguments about limiting the amount of immigration we allow to take place. The UK is a small island and it is already densely populated, in practical terms we can only allow a certain amount of people here before we start running out of space. There already is a housing crisis, the health and education systems are struggling, the roads are overcrowded and there are many other difficult issues facing this country. But we need to be careful, immigration is only one small part of the cause of these problems. Reading some of the forum posts – and some of the more sensationalist newspapers – you could get the impression that we've previously lived in some kind of utopia. Some of the posts are borderline xenophobic, and some are out and out, straight down the line, no beating about the bush wide open for all to see racist. Whatever reason we may have for supporting or opposing immigration we must make sure it doesn't get bogged down in racist arguments. This is a point I can't stress enough. The kind of un-informed erroneous finger-pointing comments that professes to be fact plays right into the hands of those on the right wing of politics. It allows them a foothold in the minds of normally reasonable people and gives them a credibility they do not deserve.

Just to finish this rather long blog, I'll leave you with the words of St. Paul – "In that new creation there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free man, but Christ is everything and is in all of us." (Colossians 3:11)

Wasted: God & Rubbish

Originally published May 2008

I have a pet hate. It's chewing gum. I never eat chewing gum, I don't see the point of it. If you want a nice minty taste in your mouth eat a mint or clean your teeth. If I want to see someone mindlessly opening and closing their mouths in a vacant, sloppy fashion I'll watch EastEnders with the sound off. But as much as I don't chew gum that's not why I hate it. Take a look around the streets in town. Look at the pavements around bus stops, road ends near traffic lights and other places where people stop and see what's on the pavements. I'll bet you there's a concentration of discarded chewing gum squashed flat and un-movable. When people get rid of their gum and just spit it out onto the pavement or road they are being very inconsiderate. If that gum got stuck on someone's shoe it could very easily get trampled into a carpet. We have a big blob of gum in the front passenger side footwell of our car thanks to someone not disposing of their gum properly. But even if the gum doesn't travel the world on the bottom of a shoe, if it just stays put where it's discarded it joins the other globules and over time is squashed into the pavement or road. It looks unsightly. It's not easy to clean off, it's estimated that the cost of cleaning each piece of gum is 3 times the cost of the gum itself and every town council spends tens of thousands of pound annually cleaning gum off pavements. Several have launched special campaigns and crackdowns to try and alleviate the problem and some are fining people up to £75 if they're caught dropping gum.

The reason I hate chewing gum is because the way it's discarded shows a distinct lack of thought about the care of our local environment. Yes it looks messy and yes it's difficult and expensive to remove, but to me it demonstrates people's lack of concern for their surroundings. To leave your gum on the floor (or under your school desk!) is to ignore the possibility of it ruining someone's shoes or carpet, ignore the possibility of injuring a pet or wild animal that happens upon it, ignore the unsightly nature of the myriad blobs of grey discarded gum and ignore the time and cost of removing the constellations of gummy pearls from the streets.

If discarding chewing gum demonstrates a thoughtlessness about the consequences, there is another hate of mine that demonstrates a deliberate selfishness along with it's thoughtlessness – fly tipping. I enjoy a walk in the countryside. I love getting away from the urban sprawl and finding some space to see the world at it's best. I love observing the lifecycle of nature as season passes to season, as predator finds prey, as habitats change. So when I'm in the middle of an ancient woodland 20 miles away from the nearest town and I discover the remains of a sofa it leaves me baffled and cross. Why would you drive out to the middle of nowhere and carry a sofa about a mile from the nearest road in order to dump it? I know you need to pay to leave some items at the tip, but after paying for petrol and the inconvenience caused by taking items miles away to dump them, surely fly tipping becomes more expensive? Councils will even take large household items away for you for free. Even fly tipping in an urban location shows an incredible disrespect for the local environment, other people's property and the people who end up having to dispose of your waste properly.

So here's a question I've been pondering while we've been preparing this café sundae. Waste is a big issue at the moment. We're constantly being told that we can't continue to clutter up our small island with a growing mountain of rubbish. We're being discouraged from using carrier bags and the supermarkets are beginning to take ecological issues on board. The push to be green has elevated waste disposal from just being an important ecological issue to being a hot political issue - Central Government has set local councils targets for recycling and councils are doing all they can to meet targets and to be seen to be green. We're constantly being told about the importance of recycling and the consequences of not doing. We've been provided with black boxes for glass and tins, a blue bag for paper and a green bin for garden waste. It's been made as easy as possible for us to recycle as much of our waste as we can.
So what about those people who continue to throw away waste as they did previously, who refuse to recycle? What about those people who fill their bins to capacity every week and deny the need to change their habits? What is there to separate them from the fly-tippers? If they persist in damaging the environment simply for their own convenience how do they differ from those who dump waste illegally? If they're willing to thumb their noses at the next generations rather than make the very small effort to sort their waste, how does their lack of concern for other people differ from that shown by those willing to inconvenience other people by dumping rubbish on others' property?


Is the current media focus on the issues of waste going to make any difference to these people or is it just chasing pavements - pavements covered in discarded chewing gum?

‘Til divorce us do part: God & marriage

Originally published February 2008

A few months ago I was watching telly and the results of a psychology experiment were being reported. In the experiment they'd set up a ring-toss game with 3 pegs one behind the other quite a distance apart and allotted different scores for each of the areas, the area around the closest one scoring 10 points and the small area around the one furthest away worth 100. The psychologists discovered that the people who aimed for the furthest ring were largely by profession entrepreneurs. They were the people who were willing to go for a big score despite the bigger risk of missing whilst other people played it safe by aiming for the closer targets.


Helen and I have been married for 71/2 years. We got married at the end of the summer that Helen finished university, which was 8 months after I finished my college course. We lived together for the 3 months between Helen finishing uni in Nottingham and our wedding and also the summer before that; so we didn't really co-habit as such, but we probably would have done if it hadn't been for that pesky university Helen insisted on attending. Planning a wedding is often quoted as being one of the most stressful things you can go through, and there was certainly a lot of different elements to juggle in trying to make the day something you want whilst satisfying various different family groups, trying to make sure you don't offend someone by leaving something or someone out can take major acts of diplomacy. We had our difficulties, but managed to negotiate them successfully enough to still want to get married. And so the day came. I won't bore you with the details of what we did & who came, I'll just say that all the hard work paid off. I won't say that it was the happiest day of my life because that's a horrible cliché, but we both still rank it high in the top 2.

I was thinking things over whilst preparing for writing this blog, and I was thinking, "Why get married? Why not just live together?" and then I remembered the big pile of presents that was waiting for us when we got back from honeymoon! Neither of us was well off when we got married and – as every couple has to – we struggled to afford to set up a home as we wanted it to be. We were renting a cold damp house in a very rough area of Salford as it was all we could afford and gifts we were given went a long way towards kitting us out as we wanted rather than simply with what we could afford. But it was more than that. The gifts we were given were given to us along with people's love and support. On the day itself I was overwhelmed by people's good wishes. At the end of the day my hand and my face were aching with smiling and shaking hands with people wishing us all the best for the future, and here was the material proof that they meant it. Knowing that all these people were looking out for Helen & me and that they care what happens to us was fantastic, worth much more than the value of all that they'd bought us, and something that those people who choose to co-habit surely miss out on.


But that's not enough reason, so why get married? Well why not? If you're in a relationship that you both consider to be permanent rather than just long term, why shouldn't you declare publicly that that's what you intend? If you're going to stick together until one of you dies, why not make it official? It's difficult to think that far ahead – I remember when I was considering marrying Helen and I tried to imagine us in our 80s sitting round the fire in rocking chairs, Helen knitting and me whittling sticks but I couldn't do it. It's too far off in the future. When we made our vows we were saying that this is what we aim for (I still have 45 years to learn to whittle). It's a promise to each other, our families & friends and – if we get married in Church – to God that we will do everything we can to make the relationship work. It is a risky thing to do; things do happen and people do change. Marriages do fail, sometimes for trivial reasons, but very often for very valid and difficult reasons, but if you don't risk you don't win. There is a trend in the world of celebrity to sign pre-nuptial agreements. This can be seen as a sensible arrangement when big money is involved, but I can't help thinking it taints the wedding with the idea that it may not work out. If that get-out clause were removed maybe their marriages would be more successful.

Anyway, back to the ring toss experiment I began with and then abandoned. I was trying to think of a way of illustrating the answer to the question 'why get married?' and I think that experiment does it well. The two ways to play the game are to play it safe by aiming at the closest peg and scoring quite low, or aiming at the furthest ring and trying to score higher: it's a riskier strategy but if it works out it pays a bigger reward. And I think that's marriage. It is a bigger risk and it is hard work but if you succeed you win big time.

And here's the million dollar question: if I had my time again, would I get married?
Answer: Yes absolutely I would, just not to Helen.

Working 9 to 5: God & Careers

Originally published in Jan 2008


One of the signs to look out for that you're getting older is that when you go to parties you start having really dull conversations. Many times I've realised too late that I've been having a conversation about car insurance or mortgages ("Fixed rate or tracker…Hmm it's a tricky one…) with total strangers. I kick myself when it happens, and promise myself to try harder to avoid it next time. But I have an ace up my sleeve: when the conversation turns to, "What do you do for a living?" You get the 'I'm in insurance' or 'I'm a teacher' and sometimes 'I'm a doctor,' and these can degenerate into another dull conversation about Government policies or haemorrhoids. But I get to say, "I'm a sound engineer," and that apparently is a very enviable job. I like it because people don't know how to have boring conversations about it, although most people would find 2 sound engineers talking about work as dull as listening to 2 accountants but that's because we get to use a secret language involving decibels, modulation techniques and psychoacoustic principles which most people don't even know exist. I know I was born to be a sound engineer and I thoroughly enjoy my profession, but it was a long time after leaving school that I found my job – indeed it was a long time before I even discovered what I wanted to do.

I've written in previous blogs about how I didn't get on too well at school, so I won't go over that again, but when I left school after A-levels I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I didn't want to spend 3 years at university studying something I wasn't interested in and would never use, so I didn't go to university, I got a job and because I hadn't a clue what I wanted to do I took the first job that was offered to me which was in the kitchens of an old folks home. I worked there for 5 years during which time I did my Local Preachers training, played in a few bands, made my first tentative steps in recording friends bands on a 4 track analogue machine and tried to find some direction for my life.

As a Christian, one of the places I looked to try to find direction was my Faith. I believe it's vitally important to find out who God made us and how that fits into the wider world and from there we'll find big clues as to what our career may be. And so I examined my belief and knowledge of God to look for clues.
Now I'm not one of those Christians that looks for flashes and bangs and God revealing himself in supernatural ways, but there are 2 incidents which have lead me to my chosen career that I begrudgingly have to admit are probably too 'co-incidental' to be co-incidences. The first one is the smaller of the 2, but without it the second one couldn't have happened.

It was 1995, I'd been at the nursing home for 5 years and needed to do something else, but didn't know what. I'd figured I could do something full time for the Church and by a process of elimination I had settled on applying to be on one of Rob Frost's seed teams for a year. This would involve being placed in a small team for a year in a Church anywhere in the country and working part time with a local church on a project. I half filled in the application form one night and was going to do the rest when a letter plopped onto my doormat from a friend of mine. He said he was finishing university that June and was looking to set up a band in Leeds as a serious attempt to be professional musicians – pop stars if you will. I didn't really think it was a serious option, but considered it only because I wasn't entirely sold on the seed team. Guess where I ended up moving to. The timing of that letter was very important in my making the decision to try do music for a living, and for the next 3 years I lived in a house with the other band members and we all took bottom rung jobs with no responsibility to maximise the time we could spend on our music.

So to co-incidence number 2. Forward fast to 1998 and the band hadn't been the success we'd hoped for. The band split at Easter and we all had to then find proper jobs. I looked at the possibility of getting into sound engineering, as this had been a growing interest whilst the band had been operational and we'd made friends with a few engineers. I discovered that it's an incredibly difficult profession to get into. There are basically 3 ways into sound engineering; the first is to do lots of volunteering at a local studio when you're a teenager and gradually work up – if you're any good. The second is to do a course and then apply for jobs – a big risk as the best courses are at private colleges and cost thousands of pounds and there are very few jobs around and they rarely get advertised, and the third way is to buy or build your own studio – a massive financial outlay and again a huge risk. The second route was the only one open to me, so when I found a prize draw in a lads mag to win a course at Manchester's school of sound recording I entered it. I didn't win.
A month or 2 later again I'm filling in the application form to attend the college and wondering how I can raise the three and a half thousand pounds that the course cost to do when 'plop,' a letter on the doormat. This one was from the school of sound recording telling me that due to a mix up in the runners up prizes they could offer me a place on the course I was applying for, for a considerably discounted rate. I snapped up the offer and moved to Manchester to study sound engineering. Again the co-incidental timing of the arrival of the letter was a big factor in my doing the course, as I would have struggled to afford the full rate of the course I took. It proves to me that I am where God wants me to be. And without doing that course I wouldn't have got the job I now have.

Whilst writing this I've remembered another incident. The lowest point in my career was in 1998 just before I started my college course when I'd been working for minimum wage for 8 years, and it was at this point that I ran into a school friend I hadn't seen since sixth form. We talked and discussed jobs. He was working in finance and earning good money while I was struggling to get by on a tiny wage. He was really shocked about how badly I was doing and said to me that he couldn't believe it as I'd always been the most together person out of all of us at school. After I'd got over the shock that I'd been considered with such regard, I thought about what he'd said. He was earning good money, but hated his job. I was earning nothing and hated my job, but was about to go to college to train to do something I loved. He was envious of me for being able to go to college and totally change what I was because if he were to do that he's lose a lot of money. I had no money to lose, so it was easy for me to risk the change. And it was a risk that paid off, if only because it makes parties more interesting.