“This section does not make sense as drafted…”

I’m sorry so little is happening on this blog at the moment: but serious issues with my health mean that other things must take priority. However, if you’re interested in the progress (or otherwise) of the “Pre-consultation draft” of the Neighbourhood Development Plan, I’d like to point you to Stratford-on-Avon District Council’s gritty response – from 31 July 2017. It may not be quite as detailed as mine – but it certainly is pithy! Thanks to Duke Senior, as always, for the heads-up!

A tale of two societies…

It sometimes takes a long(ish – only ever “ish”, with my health…) walk to settle my thoughts (and maybe yours, too?): and it was only after pootling around Packwood House’s meandering meadows and tree-lined byways that my feelings crystallized – seeded during time away relearning Dorset and Wiltshire’s delightful wonderments – and I realized how much I missed the place where I once lived; but how little I missed (and how much it stressed me) being connected permanently to the Internet (that is, of course, until I returned to Tysoe and a seemingly infinite queue of unread emails…).

As my friend Duke Senior recently opined – and reported (by email!) – though, whilst I was away on my travels in the land of the hill-fort, barrow and henge:

Dorset. A delightful part of the country, where there are still some old style ways of living, and virtues, to be found among the Hardy-esque rural bliss. Like it or not, we here in the Midlands, albeit as rural oasis in the midst of urban and suburban existence, are not like that. The question is, critically, how to retain the oasis-like qualities, when the historical agricultural foundations are somewhat fragile; and there appears little inclination or potential to foster alternative cottage industries, such as prevalent in Dorset, Somerset, Cornwall, for example. But there are heartening signs of all sorts of activities in the village, including overwhelming support for the Post Office, that suggest there are grounds for hope that something can be fashioned, to avoid this becoming just a commuter village, with retirement homes.

And thus it was good to find myself, as the PO was just opening – a couple of days after I had returned to this “better place” – at the end of a sizeable snake of villagers, wending its way towards the counter, eager to make use of its manifold offerings. As always, familiar faces filled the shop; and both conversation and service were friendly and welcoming. So, as June’s edition of Oxhill News reinforces: “Use it or lose it” (and contact Nadhim whilst you’re at it…)! Oh, and please walk there, if you can….

I only make this request, because, whilst incomprehensible rumours circulate of a third draft of the itself‑confusing (in both process and content) Neighbourhood Plan – which I had believed was on hold, whilst the Parish Council wrestled with it, and perhaps wrested back some form of control (it’s amazing what can happen when you leave the village for a short while…) – as well as a proposed/supposed “Simple English” or “Plain English” version – which makes me wonder what language the ‘official’ rounceval is in…) – there continue to be mutterings of “the risk of urbanization” in quelling the seemingly permanent rush of traffic on our tiny roads; as well as the massive increase of ofttimes dangerous/illegal parking outside the concentration of our public facilities (churches, school, village hall, shop, pub, hairdresser, etc. – including, of course, our threatened Post Office) – and not just at peak times any more.

But I do wonder if, maybe, some form of such controls/constraints are exactly what we need? Do we, as a community, really prioritize appearance and the picturesque above safety and common sense? (Hard to believe, I know, considering the attempted mass-Poundburying – like Bunburying, only different – diktats of the NP.)

For example: why not install a pelican crossing – or, indeed, pelican, crossing – outside Tysoe Children’s Group – where, possibly, the sight of a large, non-native bird with a beak full of fish – accompanied by other exotic fauna, elsewhere – would finally tame our speeding idiots/motorists…? Or even an Ettington-style priority system on entering Middle Tysoe from the Banbury Road, just before you hit (hopefully not literally) Church Farm Court; and/or on the Oxhill Road, before Windmill Way and Sandpits Road?

And I only ask this, because – on my many meanderings, walking stick as essential prop – I all too-frequently espy familiar, local cars parked in the centre of the village, no more than fifteen minutes amble from their points of origin; or ignoring the now freshly-painted road markings. (In Warwickshire dialect, the word ‘slow’, now writ large in several places on our byways in gleaming, titanium white, obviously means the opposite of what my grammar school English teacher beat into me: in the same way that ‘sick’ – I am informed by my backwards-wearing-baseball-capped intimates of a certain youthful disposition – means something is rather what-I-at-a-similar-age-would-simply-have-referred-to-as ‘spiffing’. And we are obviously using some longer parochial measure than the mile for our speed limit signs – a maximum, remember; not a target to be accelerated past as soon as the laws of physics permit….)

Perhaps (just for a change (ahem)) I am being cynical; but I do wonder (and not for the first time, of course) how many of these repeatedly-recognizable vehicles have crawled – or, in many cases, zoomed (watching the guys carefully laying down the new lines in Main Street made me realize how courageous you have to be as a Tysoe pedestrian: even in high-viz habiliments…) – half-a-mile or less, without the objective of travelling any further than the return journey home. And it is noticeable, coming back from the slightly behind-the-times-feeling south-west – although I’m not saying that motorists in Wessex villages are any better behaved (well, maybe slightly; and certainly more polite…) – how driving (and living) does feel considerably calmer away from motorways and major cities. No-one appears to be in the permanent rush that so characterizes the A3400, A422, A429 and the Fosse Way; and driving just at or below the legal limit is no longer punishable by Velcro-like tailgating or insane, risk-taking overtaking on blind bends and summits. Time (and traffic) seems to pass just a tad more slowly and sensibly….

I am sure that, if we really felt the need to install them, there are methods of managing vehicles and their speed which would not make the core of Tysoe resemble the centres of Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwick, Banbury, or Coventry. But I am equally certain that real improvements come from changes to behaviour, rather than systems.

As the World War II poster (and the motoring organizations, when there’s a light dusting of infrequent snow) asks: “Is your journey really necessary?” And, if it is, can you do it on foot (as I politely requested earlier); or by bicycle or bus – or even on the hoof…? And, finally, can you also do it calmly, and within the law? If not, perhaps you also need a vacation away from traffic both digital and mechanical…. I can highly recommend it….

Time to stop and think…

If voting changed anything they’d abolish it

– Ken Livingstone

Introduction (and an explanation)

I started writing this in the early hours of Tuesday, 14 April: a few hours after the last Parish Council meeting: and, like a few villagers I know, was intending to sit down and review the latest draft – particularly the proposed ‘policies’ – of the Neighbourhood Plan in detail (for reasons that will become apparent).

But it quickly became obvious that, as it stands, it is too large a document for one person to assimilate; too high a monument for one person to climb – and a Sisyphean one at that: because, if it carries on in its current form – straying from its original purpose; growing like Topsy – it will burst at its seams with increasing numbers of increasingly irrelevant appendices and decrees. Any final vote on its acceptance by Tysoe, therefore, will also be rendered as meaningless as the document itself: as all (or at least the great majority) of the parishioners eligible to approve or reject it will similarly not have been able to readily absorb its contents (much like some of the current political manifestos).

This is not because we are all stupid; neither that we are unwilling, and do not care about our village’s future, or our fellow villagers. It is obvious from many of the events of the last eighteen months that we are lucky to live in a place peopled with fiercely intelligent souls who love where they live; and, given the opportunity, will defend it with great spirit and great thought.

What it does mean, though – as I have suspected for many months (and as evidenced by this blog) – is that the production and implementation of the Plan has lost all the trappings, the raiments, as well as the substance, of democracy. It is not for the people, or of the people. It is merely an exercise in solipsistic bureaucracy: and, therefore, is not worthy – in my opinion – to bear the title it has been given. As I wrote recently to my friend, Duke Senior, discussing the “further consultation” that was described in correspondence at the end of that Parish Council meeting:

It will be intriguing to see… if these meetings create more than a momentary sense of resistance, rather than a joined-up revolution. That is not to say that I don’t think they are useful: they are; and are, of course, what the Neighbourhood Plan steering-wheel-with-a-very-loose-nut group should have done in the first place…. I am starting to feel, though, that the village doesn’t – as a living, breathing, just-getting-on-with-it entity – see the need for its course to be planned or prepared for: they will respond to the prevailing winds as they have always done, tacking silently and apparently passively; slightly resisting the change, but eventually accepting it, without trying to mix too many ruffled water metaphors; and the whole thing is just seen to be an exercise in keeping certain… factions busy whilst doing so.

But it is not up to me to say whether or not we need, or should have, a Neighbourhood Plan (however public my opinions – which is all they are: I do not seek to direct the village, as would some…). It was proposed to the Parish Council; and they accepted it. The Plan’s future is solely in their hands. Therefore, accepting that, at the moment, it exists; and we, as villagers, have been ‘invited’ to provide feedback; what follows are my original (and resulting), somewhat fragmentary, thoughts: prompted by my attempted review; occasionally interspersed with a little bit of context, now that I have failed to accomplish what – even with my past criticisms – I set out to do in good faith, for the sake of our village….

¶

If one meets a powerful person – Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, or Joe Stalin or Hitler – one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system.

– Tony Benn

14 April 2015

We were told – several times, in fact – at last night’s Parish Council meeting, that, despite the consultation period for the second draft (even though we’re not now supposed to use such numbering) of the Neighbourhood Plan now being closed (or, at least, that’s what I think was said), some members (past or present?) of the steering group currently responsible for it were perturbed (and I’m generalizing a little, here: i.e. my report is not verbatim – for reasons that will have become clear in an earlier post) by the lack of critical feedback on the actual ‘policies’ delineated in the Plan (and which I, for one, still feel have originated out of nowhere: as I cannot find a clear public audit trail leading me back to villagers’ suggestions of, or agreement with, the highly-detailed rules proposed).

Although this described “lack” is not actually true, of course – as I for one have questioned the, to me, ridiculous dependency on ironstone; and the inexcusable ban on windpower, etc.; and the Plan’s own appendices also prove this – I am always happy to try my best (as I always do, of course) to keep fellow residents happy with what I am told are my “lucid words”; and to do what I have been asked (although I have been told that quite a few other villagers also feel that they are being “bullied” into accepting the Plan in its current-bun form: which I empathize with…). So here are a selection of the responses of the Bardic jury. (I do not want to fall into the trap of producing a document that is as over-long and -convoluted as the current Plan draft: thus hiding my opinions in plain sight… – so, like its authors (see below), I am, of course, being highly selective in my choices.)

¶

“In architecture, originality is a crime,” consoled his wife and collaborator, Margaret Macdonald. “Especially to those who can themselves only be copyists.”

– Oliver Wainwright: The Guardian

6 May 2015

But I fell at the first hurdle, of course. I opened up the current draft (and, yes, I actually had a large tumbler of whisky in my hand, to numb the forthcoming pain), and started reading; and soon realized two things: firstly, this was not actually a neighbourhood plan – it was an unstructured compilation of often irrelevant exercises that the authors had felt capable of producing – and, secondly, a lot of it was either unintelligible (and I hope I have proved with my “lucid words” that my command of English is reasonably decent: even though I studied engineering at university…), or relied on a series of obfuscating references, tied up in stacked, serial appendices and ofttimes unfathomable, unfollowable, algorithms and tables – a veritable Gordian knot of confusion.

Withdrawing my metaphorical sword from its sheath, whichever way I sliced the resulting mess (and I tried to do so several times – with decreasing reward – over the intervening weeks), I was left with two overwhelming feelings: insofar as much as this is a plan, it is extremely authoritarian (seemingly wanting us all to live in identical ironstone boxes); and it requires keener steel than mine to both cut through the confusion and excise the unnecessary pap.

Great planning does not mean either “most restrictive” or “most laissez-faire”. It means creating the conditions for growth and change while maintaining a vision of the common good. It balances competing interests. It includes a grasp of the cumulative effect of individual decisions…. It can protect long-term benefits against damage from short-term profit. It has the ability to spot problems before they become crises and find a way to address them. It can review alternative approaches to an issue, such as population growth, and promote the best ones. It has clarity and consistency, so everyone knows where they stand. It has the ability to review the results of its own decisions, and learn from them. It is informed by knowledge, not guesswork. It is the result of genuine and transparent public debate.

– Rowan Moore: The Observer

¶

We want it to meet the needs of the whole community now and into the future.

– Percy Sewell

Foregone conclusions

Of course, if I had wielded the Bardic blade with more success, the results still wouldn’t explain where the Plan’s policies – good, bad, indifferent; prescriptive, proscriptive; intelligible or vague – originated from; or why a document that should be idea- and people-led is being wagged by the originality-threatening tail of process, and deadlines continually stacked like rickety pallets up into the south Warwickshire skies, Jenga-like and ultimately fragile, and increasingly divorced from the village. Wouldn’t it be nice if the Neighbourhood Plan authors made Percy’s statement (when discussing the Village Hall – a much-loved facility they seem keen on demolishing…) their mantra?

¶

From the pain come the dream

From the dream come the vision

From the vision come the people

From the people come the power

From this power come the change

– Peter Gabriel

We the People

However, as I mentioned above, it seems that change – however small – is afoot, thankfully, to remedy all this: and that the as-yet-unnamed small groups (I don’t want to use the ‘focus’ word – as that’s not what they are about; in fact they are about the exact opposite – talking about whatever comes to mind, and as widely as possible about the village) are being put together, semi-informally, to chat about any and all aspects of our beloved home. The hope is, that, in freeing people’s minds – after removing the shackles of time and obedience; and unleashing them from procedures, methodologies, algorithms and those foregone conclusions – we can (and will) all discover or even stumble upon the broad seams and nuggets of ideas that we know are out there. (There are probably some buzzing around your head, right now.)

These groups – it is hoped (the first of which was held just after the last Parish Council meeting) – will also unlock the passion for the parish and inspirations for its future development (and I don’t just mean land-based…) that is currently noticeably absent (apart from the odd angry middle-aged man disobeying Parish Council protocol); or even actively being steamrolled – letting that vision at last gush forth unimpeded; and from which all else should spring. (And not the other way around: as is currently the case.)

As even the Government’s own guidance states:

Neighbourhood planning can inspire local people and businesses to consider other ways to improve their neighbourhood than through the development and use of land. They may identify specific action or policies to deliver these improvements. Wider community aspirations than those relating to development and use of land can be included in a neighbourhood plan….

But, as any marketer will tell you: you don’t start big and then work small – so (as I discussed with Duke Senior), why is it only now that these groups are being convened: nearly a year after the first drafts of the village questionnaire were being put together (and which included questions, therefore, that did not stem from the village – but, yet again, from a self-selected, select few; and which, as I have written before, obviously reflected their innate biases)?

¶

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

– Marie Curie

If we, as residents, do not take and feel ownership; if the Parish Council does not maintain control of the Plan’s development with thorough and rigorous oversight, and a representative love for the place they govern; and if the group that produces it does not listen – and keep striving to listen (even to uncomfortable truths); as well as learning to follow, rather than leading us by our noses – then the resulting document will be a wasted opportunity; a waste of time and effort; and a waste of the paper it is printed on.

In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation… even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine.

– The constitution of the Iroquois nations (paraphrased)

We do not need a shopping list of fields for developers to target. What we need is a Tysoe which develops – as much as it can: as much as any “precious stone set in the silver sea” – in a way that we all recognize and wish for; and which does not lead our children and grandchildren continually to curse us for bequeathing them a village that is sterile through repetitious housing developments; even more isolated than now, because we did not grasp the chance to become subsistent in non-fossil-fuel-based power and motivation; or that has crumbled into a hollow, unrecognizable ghost and an uncomfortable locale to inhabit… because all we cared about was now, was instant gratification, was ourselves.

What we need is a Tysoe which belongs to us all; and where every resident has an important say and a strong hand in how it grows; and where everyone is happy listening to those voices; grateful for their words; and shakes those hands in friendship – joining them together in building a future that everyone believes in.

The power of the people and the power of reason are one.

– Georg Büchner

Keep on turning out and burning out…

And when you’re looking for your freedom

(Nobody seems to care)

And you can’t find the door

(Can’t find it anywhere)

When there’s nothing to believe in

Still you’re coming back, you’re running back

You’re coming back for more

So put me on a highway

And show me a sign

And take it to the limit one more time

– The Eagles: Take it to the limit

I am often told how well I look; or how relaxed I seem… “considering…” – and I take this, as intended, as a grateful compliment: as a willing collusion in the act… – especially considering that most mornings I struggle to wake up; fall out of bed; drag a comb across my head; find my way downstairs; or even drink a cup of consciously necessary espresso (mixed with my day’s first list of necessary potions); before collecting what I laughingly refer to as my brain from the floor, where I left it a few hours earlier, collecting dust; and looking in a mirror to discover that I am Snow White’s diametral antithesis.

This is not a plea for sympathy; nor for people to look further into my baggy, bloodshot eyes to see the continual tribulation that lies behind them; nor for impossible empathy: just to understand that even if my habitual “not bad” or “okay” in response to your habitual “how are you” appears convincing, it is only a performance – part of a repertoire we all have: presenting different faces, facets of ourselves – some true; some edited; some even false – to lubricate the cogs of social interaction. Once I have forced my way through the extended equivalent of the actor’s ‘half’, if I had to admit to myself just how rough I felt, how tough the ‘real’ me found things, then I would not appear on the boards of the outside world at all. It’s all pretence – and I believe that there are few (if any) people on this planet who could survive the death-by-a-thousand-cuts of being truly their raw selves in front of everyone.

For me, though – as I have only this singular perspective; and cannot place myself in others’ well-worn shoes – there are expectations driven by my fake normalcy that I cannot fulfil. And it is this acknowledgment – tacitly will do fine, thank you… – that I wish for.

¶

We all have our limits – of endurance; of tolerance; of independence… – but ascertaining them, and then breaking through them, can be a life’s work. Some people make this – seemingly – into a career: athletes, explorers, even some writers – people who are described frequently as ‘driven’ (and often ‘to succeed’ – but at what – being ‘the best’; or just continually breaking their own personal bests? Perhaps there is little difference…).

For many with disabilities – mental, as well as physical – this has to become their way of life, of living, though. Their minds and/or bodies have given them no option, if they are to survive (never mind bringing ‘meaning’ to their existence).

When the first Superman movie came out, I gave dozens of interviews to promote it. The most frequent question was: What is a hero? My answer was that a hero is someone who commits a courageous action without considering the consequences. Now my definition is completely different. I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. They are the real heroes, and so are the families and friends who have stood by them.

– Christopher Reeve: Still Me

This is why I so hate the ‘supercrip’ phenomenon – never mind the feasible technological creation of a race of Übermenschen (instead of using such inventions for equality; or to help improve a body, a life, with a disability) – which, to those who are disabled (and, yes, I include myself) can imply failure, if you don’t also ascend Everest in a wheelchair: a standard that you have to overcome, it feels, if you are to gain rightful access to the Government’s increasingly unattainable and impoverished disability ‘benefits’. But this is taking expugning limits to a ridonkulous – and externally imposed – level.

This is where, of course, in the middle eight, I usually riff on a parallel – as Tysoe’s unofficial genius loci – with the village’s struggle against the threatening world of rapacious development. And today is, of course, no different.

Seeking out a reference for the Sam Pig quote, above, I stumbled on something that appeared completely unrelated. (Proof, of course, that – as I was trying to stress – appearances are simply that: fascias that can be completely deceptive; and why dust-jacket design is such a difficult art.)

As I said to my friend Duke Senior:

To me, [this] sounds like a big capitalist whinge; but it (sort of) encapsulates, I think, the attitude of those we’re up against – and is, therefore, a mindset I struggle to either occupy (empathize) or sympathize with…. Of course, such people would never even deign to try and see our point of view…!

All industries have their associated costs – and limits – some caused (even) by legislation (even if it is incremental in nature). But instead of trying to work within these (or even with those who oppose them), and understand why they are there – or even why people may believe they are “rapacious” (a criticism which may seem rich (ahem) coming from another bastion of the right-wing establishment) – money is spent on lobbying (which sometimes, to my socialist mind, appears to be a disguising synonym of ‘bribing’ or ‘blackmailing’); or buying their way, not to surmount any such obstacles in their path, but to eradicate them. Perhaps an effigy of Eric Pickles should be their mascot?

¶

Surely, though, you ask, shouldn’t I congratulate “such people” on trying to break through the limitations that (they perceive) hold them back? Isn’t this what this post is about?

Aha! I reply (glibly). But there is a huge difference between one’s own body, and the body corporate. I could even digress onto the social aspects of disability; and why trying to derive the cost-benefit of a stair-replacing ramp is a self-defeating exercise. Trying to gain financially, at a cost to others – implying greed – has no parallels with overcoming what used to be (appositely) called a ‘handicap’: even if what you are trying to overcome seems to you to have been deliberately placed in your path (and maybe even out of spite). Most disabled people simply struggle to survive financially, in such a world – without making any gains. Their limits aren’t there for any justifiable reason.

The problem with always pushing, trying to extend your limits, reach beyond your bounds, of course, is that you permanently risk “burning out”: overdoing it one day, at the risk of not being able to do anything the next (or for several days following, in fact). The supposed ‘cure’ for such incorrigible behaviour is ‘pacing’: a way of moving along a median of the energy available to you; keeping everything on an even keel; defined by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as “energy management, with the aim of maximising cognitive and physical activity, while avoiding setbacks/relapses due to overexertion”.

But, if you have the energy/ability to do the things you desire one day, you want it every day. And, to be honest, the word “pacing” brings back memories of tigers in zoos striding eternally backwards and forwards: wearing a path just behind the fence, bored, captive, desolate. All I wanted to do as a child was let them out. As an adult, all I want to do is break free (God knows I want to break free): and feel as normal, as healthy, as whole, as energetic, as I appear.

You know I’ve always been a dreamer

(Spent my life running ’round)

And it’s so hard to change

(Can’t seem to settle down)

But the dreams I’ve seen lately

Keep on turning out and burning out

And turning out the same

So put me on a highway

And show me a sign

And take it to the limit one more time

Politics, politicians, and political service…

A bad politician disappoints his constituents; a good politician disappoints himself.

I’m sure this has been said before – and in many different (and possibly cleverer) ways – but, after an (ongoing) discussion with my wise friend, Duke Senior, about what we should expect from those that we – a decreasing minority, it seems – elect (supposedly) to serve us, it seemed a pithy way of encapsulating everything I feel about the ‘service’ I have received – compared to the service I have idealized, expected, wanted, needed – from various professional politicians over the course of my mid-length life.

Had I not a condition that makes everyday existence a challenge, I would seriously have considered (local) politics as an option in my enforced retirement: as I have more than enough causes to propel me (from disability, to housing design and distribution, and the meaning of modern democracy). I would, though, have been more in the mould of Tony Benn or Jack Ashley than Tony Blair and Jack Straw – i.e. motivated by sincere and heartfelt principles; and of a conviction that would serve others, rather than any attempted scurry up the ladder of power and infamy. (Cue Kenneth Williams.) In summary: either completely unelectable; or, once elected, in a completely powerless minority of one.

I want my questions answered by an alert and experienced politician, prepared to be grilled and quoted - not my hand held by an old smoothie.

– William Safire

What I’m trying to get at – always naïvely hoping that others will try and live up to the expectations I have of them: because I would expect nothing less of myself (i.e. the curse of the idealistic perfectionist) – is that those curiosities (or nonpareils) who are voted in because they really do want to deliver what their constituents want and need, will always feel that – whatever public and private good they actually deliver – they are not doing enough; and what they are doing is not to a high-enough standard. Whereas, with those who are in it for fame, glory, money, power – and with the passing of Tony Benn (possibly the last great conviction MP), I fear this is now both the majority and the accepted fashion; and that we are suffering a pandemic of only thinking of (and paying lip-service to) the hoi polloi when an election approaches (and where there isn’t an insurmountable majority); leading to the making empty, populist promises: often with a vicious undercurrent of hidden agendas (that fail ever to be fulfilled…) – it is the electorate which feels that insufficiency.

It is no wonder, therefore, that, currently, so many people feel so disenfranchised – especially when such is the level of engagement shown by the elected with the electorate.

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in the desert.

– Khalil Gibran

In The Guardian, on 20 March 2014, Esther Addley described how Hilary Benn paid loving tribute, in parliament, to his late father:

[He] had loved parliament, but not idealised it, said Benn, taking his inspiration from the words of a Salvation Army hymn his own father had sung to him as a child: “Dare to be a Daniel, dare to stand alone, dare to have a purpose firm, dare to make it known.”

“If we are not here to do that,” asked Benn, “what are we here for?”

In the past, when I was having to fight for my disability benefits, I was fortunate that the two MPs in question didn’t just take an interest in my plight; but took action – either directly, or through delegation to well-trained and expert staff. Although, initially, I was surprised at both the amount of involvement and the amount of contact, I know that this is what I should have expected – and not just in an idealized world, but in the pragmatic, real one… – as it is in their job descriptions. I know, from talking to others, though, that I was extremely “fortunate”. Many people – and in need of much more help, more support, than I – have been fobbed off, or simply ignored.

If politicians – at all levels: from parish councillors to prime ministers – want (and they should…) to be held accountable, then they should not either need – or mind – being reminded of this, from time to time. They also should not act as if any contract they have with their voters ends the moment they gain power.

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.

– Charles de Gaulle

The good strife…

The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.

– Ezra Pound

I was talking to a good friend of mine, recently – Duke Senior to my Jaques; or Corin to my Touchstone…? – about the conflict or strife that we both believe is at the heart of artistry. Having written, drawn, composed, and designed things for most of my life, I have always been interested in what motivates or fuels the process of creating. [Interestingly, ‘motivated art’ is defined as that “produced under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs” – but I think imagination, or whatever spurs one to produce something (hopefully, original and interesting), is medication (and motivation) enough: often pushing you in directions you would never have dreamed of, if not under its influence. (Although I am still convinced that I play the piano much, much better after two pints of Guinness, of course.)]

A lot of creative people I know, or have met, talk about “striving” for their art – but modern-day usage seems to have disunited the word ‘strive’ and its sister ‘strife’ (implying that one is good, one bad): even though both appear to have joint thirteenth-century origins in the Old French ‘estriver’. Strife itself, as a noun, is usually defined as “angry or violent struggle; conflict”; whilst striving, the verb, is about making “a great and tenacious effort”. Yin and yang?

Going back even further, Hesiod – who lived towards the end of the eighth century BC; and who I suppose you could call a ‘farmer-philosopher’ (whose natural successor, therefore, is Tysoe’s legendary character, Tew…) – discusses these two types of strife in his seminal Works and Days: classifying them as good competition and bad conflict.

So, after all, there was not one kind of Strife [Eris] alone, but all over the earth there are two. As for the one, a man would praise her when he came to understand her; but the other is blameworthy: and they are wholly different in nature. For one fosters evil war and battle, being cruel: her no man loves; but perforce, through the will of the deathless gods, men pay harsh Strife her honour due.

But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night [Nyx], and the son of Cronos who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel.

– translated by Hugh G Evelyn-White

This isn’t to say that great works of art haven’t been inspired (if that’s the right word…) by great conflict – such as Pablo Picasso’s overwhelming Guernica; Benjamin Britten’s intense and moving War Requiem; and most of Wilfred Owen’s published œuvre (never to be surpassed…) – plus, of course, there have been official ‘war artists’: such as John Nash, Stanley Spencer, and Eric Ravilious. It could also be posited that this blog would not have existed were it not for the local war against unsuitable and unsustainable development….

I did write, though, in an earlier post, that my work “stems from antithesis, from conflict: whether flippancy and earnestness; art and science; good and bad; happiness and sadness”; and it is this inner friction, I suppose (combined with a wish always to improve, to learn) – rather than the external competition Hesiod describes – that often initiates inspiration, and then translates it into prolonged perspiration (usually interspersed with huge chunks of doubt…). As Blake put it: “Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.”

If I lost this urge, I would – having experienced it all my life – feel its loss as keenly as the removal of one of my senses. (And being hard of hearing – and currently completely anosmic: due to the ravages of some awful virus… – this isn’t just mere whimsy.) But do those who never (or infrequently) have such an impulse miss it too? I often hear people wish that they could play a musical instrument: but this is usually in comparison with someone who already does; and usually is mere whimsy.

The prompt for my discussion with ‘Duke Senior’ was the (apparent) lack of creativity of modern Denmark: apparently the happiest nation on earth – followed closely by Norway and Switzerland – and thus lacking “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower”. [I must admit that – as with the old challenge to list famous Belgians – I struggle to name any creative Dane since Carl Nielsen (whose Det Uudslukkelige symphony echoes the First World War…): apart from Arne Jacobsen – and he died in 1971!]

As Harry Lime says in The Third Man (an impromptu line, added during filming, by Orson Welles himself…):

You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Although historically inaccurate, it does have a convenient ring of truth to it!

Does creativity really, therefore, require strife or conflict – internal or external – to exist; or even to succeed?

I believe it at least matters. And I believe it is visible; made manifest. It seems that in many of the arts – if not all – the artist has grown to be more important than the actual art, though; the idea more important than its implementation. There is no strife (and it could be said that the only god is Mammon); and I believe its absence in many glib, calculated, knowing – mostly modern – supposed works of art is also, therefore, visible: which is why I believe it “will undoubtedly be seen as crass and talentless; and will fall into the Room 101 of already-discarded, faded-from-memory, trash.”

It may be crafty; but it lacks craftsmanship. It may be artful; but it ain’t art.