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Business as Usual?

Politics No Responses »
May 092010

On Thursday I wrote a post discussing my thoughts about the election. Now two days later we have had the results, and at a national level are still going through the machinations caused by the results.

I have heard it said often that whatever people tell pollsters, when they get into the polling booth they can do something totally different. The 1992 General Election is a good example of this effect where the polls were predicting a Labour victory, but the country returned the sitting, and apparently deeply unpopular Conservative government for another term. For decades the government of the UK has been flip-flopping from Labour to Conservative and back to Labour again, usually with a large pool of floating voters who are voting to get rid of something they don’t like, rather than voting for something they do.

This time around according to the polls Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats had made a big impression during the campaign, and according to the pollsters had historically high poll ratings, at times pushing Labour into third place. But on the day all these poll gains evaporated – across the country people were desperate to get rid of an unpopular government and saw voting for the Conservatives as a way to do it.

It was against this backdrop that we must look at the results for Wokingham. John Redwood our sitting Conservative MP was returned with a significant increase in majority. In the press this has been reported as a swing from the Liberal Democrats to the Conservatives, but when you look at the votes this is misleading. There was a significant increase in turnout over 2005 – in actual fact of the three main parties only Labour had less votes – the Liberal Democrat candidate received more votes. However most of the additional turnout went to the sitting Conservative candidate. Mark Ashwell the independent candidate polled a couple of thousand votes, noticeable, but not enough to really impact the vote.

Locally, there was a big jump in turnout – the last time this ward was elected it wasn’t on the day of a General Election. Occurring on the same day it is rare for people to vote differently in the two elections, so again the local councillor was returned with a sizeable majority. Indeed across the whole of the borough only one ward changed hands, passing from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats. In the run up to the vote I had been swapping e-mails with our local councillor who had been defeatist right from the off, saying that our Resident Action Group website was going to lose him the election, that he knew his time was up, and during the course of the campaign we had more than double the number of flyers through from him. In my e-mails I’d repeatedly said that I wouldn’t be surprised if he was still the village councillor on May 7th, and I’m not – this is a staunchly Conservative area, and whilst there is a good deal of anger amongst some of the residents it is a big step for many from being angry about what is going on to actively voting for someone else. The big disappointment is that his insecurity in his electorate led him to produce election literature with some truly ludicrous and unfounded claims that do nothing for the reputation of politicians. I have much more respect for someone who has run a clean and honest campaign and lost than someone who has run a dishonest campaign and won.

Reflecting on the local situation, we now have a very interesting situation developing nationally, as the two parties who on a local level here seem to truly loathe one another find themselves thrust together as the Cameron led Conservatives find themselves with no option but to ask the Clegg led Liberal Democrats to support them to allow them to form a government. Thanks to the British constitution the incumbent Prime Minister stays in the job if nobody gets an overall majority. The Conservatives need the Liberal Democrats. More ironically any decision to support them needs a positive vote from 75% of the parliamentary party and 75% of the Liberal Democrat Federal Executive, and if they can’t agree it needs a ballot of the members. Suddenly in order to have any chance of forming a government the Conservatives need the support of the self same people who in our area they have been making ludicrous accusations about just days before.

The situation is also causing people to reflect on the absurdity and perverse nature of our venerable first-past-the-post voting system. The whole system favours parties with dominant pockets of support, as a result of the system country wide it took the vote of 35,021 Conservative supporters to elect one MP, and 33,338 Labour supporters to elect one MP for them. However it took the vote of 119,397 to elect on Liberal Democrat MP – the final seats in the Commons fail to reflect the votes cast nationally. Other perverse results include the City of Oxford, which is split into two constituencies. Across the whole city 41,087 people voted Liberal Democrat, 33,633 voted Conservative and 27,937 voted Labour, however because of the distribution of the voters the city is now represented by one Conservative and one Labour MP. Similarly in Wokingham Borough across ward after ward the Liberal Democrats come a strong second, but they have vastly fewer seats on council because the same unfair voting system operates in local council elections.

However thanks to the failure of the Conservatives to win a majority they now need the help of the Liberal Democrats to govern, and whilst elements of the press seem to think that they should quietly trot along and just prop up a minority Conservative government who only gained the support of 36% of the electorate, there are other groups who see this as a golden opportunity to properly reform our voting system. Today a fair votes demonstration that was going on largely unnoticed in Trafalgar Square, decided to go and visit the building where Nick Clegg was discussing the offer made by the Conservatives to try and get Liberal Democrat support – an offer that doesn’t include the promise of a change in voting system, this was the result:

Could this be the dawn of a new age in terms of British democracy – or will it just go back to business as usual?

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Posted by Richard at 12:03 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

Now We Wait

Politics No Responses »
May 062010

This morning on the way to work I did my civic duty and cast my vote in both the General Election, and also for our local councillor in Arborfield, as thanks to our unitary authority this is the one year in four when the people of Arborfield actually get to vote on local issues.

In Arborfield the vote is pretty well a straight rerun of the vote four years ago with the incumbent Tory, Gary Cowan, running against a Liberal Democrat, Steve Bacon, who was the local councillor beaten by Cowan thirteen years ago. As last time the only other candidate is from UKIP, Labour don’t even bother to field a candidate.

Sadly the campaign is also a rerun of the previous efforts with the sitting Tory producing leaflets spouting the most ludicrous claims about Liberal Democrat policy locally – this years gem being that the Liberal Democrats want to put 12,000 houses into the Garrison SDL. Bear in mind that taking the average household size of 2.36 that would be a population almost as big as Wokingham itself crammed into the Garrison SDL, at a density equivalent to some of our major inner city areas. The reality is that the Liberal Democrats have much the same policy towards Arborfield as the Tories – as one of the biggest potential brownfield areas in the borough it is a much more attractive location for houses than the other much more greenfield SDL’s, so even if a new government drops housing targets it’s more than likely that Arborfield would still be a prime site – and a careful reading of our Tories flyers show that he doesn’t say that housing won’t come to the Garrison site even if the numbers are scaled back across the borough. Sadly our one and only local councillor is also executive member for local and regional planning, so whilst his campaign leaflets bang on about him putting Arborfield first, second and third, he has a Wokingham wide view through his executive role, hence on occasions he can’t answer questions from his voters because they might compromise his executive position, and repeatedly he turns up in the press highlighting the next stage of the plan, only to object to the same plan in his role as local councillor.

Whilst there is a good deal of anger across the village, especially after the meeting earlier in the year where Gary refused to answer questions, Arborfield is one of the safer parts of one of the safest Tory councils in the country (Tories hold over 75% of the council, and even if they lost every ward today they would still be in control) I’m doubtful whether even that level of anger could swing the ward. Ironically though from e-mails I’ve swapped with our local councillor he seems a lot more pessimistic – indeed when his fifth flyer of the campaign popped through the door, following on from Redwood himself going door to door earlier in the week, he does seem increasingly desperate and unsure of his core vote. The count starts at 2pm tomorrow, so we’ll have to wait until then to find out if he was right.

By far the more interesting campaign though is for the constituency.

The Wokingham area was one of only thirty in the whole country that have been continuously represented by one party since the 1850’s. Our current MP is the well known John Redwood. Considering how safe the local council is people often assume that the constituency would be equally safe but it isn’t. The fact is that Redwood isn’t nearly as popular locally as he should be given the area, indeed his share has been steadily falling, and at the last election he could have been beaten had that Labour and Liberal Democrat vote combined. Into this mix comes Mark Ashwell, a local businessman standing as an independent. Traditionally independents don’t do well, but being well known locally, on the ground at least he seems to be making headway. Travelling around Wokingham you see vastly more Vote Ashwell boards than for any other party. He has also managed to grab a lot of good headlines in the local paper, and the various polls the local paper has run give him surprisingly high totals. Indeed the online bookmakers have cut his odds over the course of the campaign indicating that a good few people think he might win.

Considering the comparatively low majority that Redwood has, even a modest showing from Ashwell could cause a major upset, especially if a goodly number of disgruntled Labour voters swap to the Liberal Democrats. Whilst realistically the most likely outcome is still for Redwood to take the seat, albeit with a reduced majority, Ashwell has the possibility to either cause a major upset by taking enough of the Tory vote to let Prue Bray, the second placed Liberal Democrat candidate last time, and Liberal Democrat PPC this time in, or even more spectacularly by taking the seat himself.

There is the potential for things looking rather different tomorrow morning. Could Wokingham become a lone Liberal Democrat seat in Berkshire? Or might we be one of the few constituencies in the country to return a true independent? Now we wait to find out…

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Posted by Richard at 2:13 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

Gambling on Arborfield

Politics 1 Response »
Mar 132010

Today I received what will be the first I’m sure of many notices shoved through my door asking for my support at the upcoming election. Whilst there are many national issues to be dealt with in the general election, on a local scale there are big decisions to be made. And what a decision, there has never been so much need for a “none of the above” option.

I’m sure I don’t need to highlight the massive housing plans that are currently being touted by our council, with the sitting Conservative administration having voted to buldoze swathes of the land around Three Mile Cross and Shinfield, both north and south of Wokingham, and development primarily in outlying areas of Finchampstead and Barkham around Arborfield Garrison. What is interesting from the point of view of a resident of Arborfield such as myself is that the last time our elected representative, Gary Cowan stood for re-election three years ago, he did so promising to try to minimise the housing that would be built – now he is standing for re-election again with his name on the planning documents that bring over ten thousand homes across the district, and three thousand five hundred on his own doorstep – although his election materials repeatedly highlight that the majority of the houses are to be built in Finchampstead and Barkham, not Arborfield.

It doesn’t take much digging around to find the flaws in the current housing proposals. Going through all the glossy pictures and grand plans, and talk of build dates, you’d think that there was a definite departure date for REME and the Arborfield Garrison. If you thought that you’d be wrong.

REME have been “about to move” for years, and the move keeps being pushed back. The original defence training review was over a decade ago and it still hasn’t been implemented. There are local protests against the scale of the new training site in Wales, and recently the government yet again has pushed back a definite decision on the move, now waiting on making the controversial decision until the summer, after the General Election. With tightening defence budgets concern is continuing to be expressed about the £13 billion price tag for the project, with some politicians already highlighting the plan as an ideal candidate to be cut. David Cameron has spoken out about the uncertainty for the people of Wales, but has noticeably refused to commit a possible incoming Conservative administration to the move, instead mentioning just the kind of defence review that could cut an expensive plan such as this. With the need to save billions from national budgets, why waste so much money on a move like this?

Whilst all of this is going on, the Arborfield SDL is still being pushed as a brownfield development by our unitary authority. However in order to make a “viable community” many homes need to be built on greenfield sites – sites that would still be available if the Garrison moves or not. If the plan goes ahead and is adopted but the Garrison fails to move, without the brownfield areas the developers will only have the greenfield sites – the adopted plan is tantamount to outline planning permission. Even building on all the planned greenfield areas there will be so many fewer houses such that key trigger levels for the desperately needed infrastructure improvements such as additional schools, the district centre and a bypass for Arborfield will not be met – the whole reason for focusing on strategic development locations in the first place.

But then what of the extra houses that then could not be put on the site at Arborfield? The council is committed to build over twelve thousand over the next fifteen years, and as many people may know, the SDL’s do not meet the total housing allocation for Wokingham anyway. Several thousand are going to be in unspecified small scale developments scattered across the borough – if the Garrison fails to move that will be several thousand more that will end up as infill and backyard development, just the kind of thing that is regularly rejected when the residents of the area are consulted on what development they would like because it doesn’t give the significant funds needed for the infrastructure we as a borough desperately need.

What was needed from the council were clear and realistic plans as to where new development was able to go, what we’ve got is our unitary authority taking a massive gamble on Arborfield Garrison moving to Wales and the brownfield site being able to take the largest proportion of the new housing in the borough. If that doesn’t happen – and concerns were being expressed in the national press in 2008 that it wouldn’t – all we’ll get is more piecemeal development, more lack of investment in infrastructure and more unsustainable communities.

So where was the opposition on our council when this was going ahead, plans that are obviously gambling on the future of our communities across the whole borough by picking a site that is increasingly unlikely to be available? Were they calling the governing body to account for potentially dooming Wokingham Borough to many more backyard developments? No. It seems the Liberal Democrat group abstained en-masse from the key vote.

Never has there been so much need for a “none of the above” option.

Whilst I’m sure what I’ve written above will be seen as NIMBYism, it is worth saying that as any resident of the Garrison area, we moved here in the full knowledge that the future of the Garrison was uncertain, whatever was said at elections, a look at proposals going back years always finds Arborfield touted as a potential development site. However what we have always been promised is a sustainable community, one that can accommodate the extra people the redevelopment of the base will bring. Sadly with the ongoing unrealistic attitude to the floundering plans for the move from our council, and with the planned locations of two of the three schools and the district centre sitting squarely on the Army owned land, that in such a scenario would not be released, it seems we will instead be left with hundreds of extra houses and none of the infrastructure such a new development would need, and a consequential impact that will be felt across the whole of the rest of the borough.

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Posted by Richard at 1:24 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dreaming of a White Christmas?

Politics, Transport No Responses »
Dec 302009

This year was the first white christmas I have ever experienced. Looking around the area things all looked pretty much like your average greetings card picture (or the atypical English winter depicted in The Holiday), so we got some nice pictures of the church thanks to Richard Owen who brought his camera along with his shovel. By the 24th it was just about possible to get around, but back on the 21st December, most people around here were wishing for anything other than a white christmas, indeed for many of them getting home would have been a bonus.

I was somewhat lucky in that I can see the main road from my office, so as the snow fell and the traffic grid-locked, I stayed put. In fact along with about twenty other stranded staff I was shouted dinner by our chief executive and a couple of other directors who were also stuck in the office. By about 8:30pm, in Camberley at least, the roads were clear and I could head for home. Whilst the snow levels increased as I headed into Berkshire, the roads were passable enough for me to make it home in about an hour.

Others were less lucky. The wife of my cousin who works in Reading and lives in Amersham had a hellish eight hour journey through the areas with the biggest snowfalls. Similarly several friend who work up near Oxford had five hour journeys as again the motorways ground to a halt. Locally there were several accidents on major routes leading to traffic slowing to a halt, and trapping the gritting trucks in the jam. The situation in Basingstoke actually made the national news.

Needless to say, this has produced the other staple of a winter event in Southern England, moaning about the local councils failing to keep the roads clear, and numerous comparisons with other countries like Germany and Canada, that don’t grind to a halt in the snow.

First off, it is worth comparing what happens in a country like Canada with here. Yes the local authorities are better set up for dealing with snow, and indeed they have more equipment on standby ready to keep the roads clear, but the important thing to note is that the local drivers are properly equipped as well. It is common practice to fit special winter tyres to the cars, whereas it is unheard of in the UK – pretty well everybody was sliding around on all season or summer tyres – check out this YouTube video for the effect that winter tyres can have. Also once you get stuck, most British drivers are ill equipped. In Canada many drivers will have an emergency kit in the car, certainly Beth when she lived in rural Canada would travel in winter with a warm change of clothes in the car, a shovel to dig the car out in an emergency and a bag of grit to improve traction if needed. If you told most Brits that they needed that, they’d think it laughable, because you don’t get weather like that in England. Needless to say that is exactly the same reason the local councils don’t spend vast amounts of money on equipment that could sit largely idle in between major snow events like we had this Christmas.

It is also worth mentioning, that even in Canada they get disruptive snow fall from time to time, and they can’t deal with everything. What happened around our area last week was after an initial fairly light fall of snow on 21st the forecast was for sleet, which fell initially as rain, and then turned to snow. The problem with rain is that it washes away the grit that is put on the road, if that then freezes, and then snow falls on top you get what we got on 21st – a layer of ice with snow on top – treacherous even with good tyres and experienced drivers, let alone with most UK cars.

But I’ve been in Canada in similar conditions.

One winter trip over to Alberta it rained on the Tuesday, froze overnight and then snowed on top, leading to precisely the same sorts of conditions as we had – a layer of ice covered by snow. It was chaos. The local news swapped between pictures of chaos across Calgary, with removal trucks stranded by sheet ice, multiple accidents on the major roads, and hauled up the council staff responsible for maintaining the roads who tried to explain how they’d done their best, but there was nothing they could do. Even several days later when we headed for the airport many roads weren’t clear of ice despite the road crews working around the clock to clear it. A trip that would normally have taken us three hours took over six.

The moral of the story is that snow and ice causes chaos, even to those most experienced at dealing with it. Sure the UK could invest much more money in snow clearance, and they could mandate that all drivers fit winter tyres for the winter, but when it comes down to it, most people I’m sure would consider it not worth the money, whether out of their own pockets directly in buying a second set of tyres for their cars, or indirectly through the increased taxes to pay for the equipment. And even having spent all that money, there will still be the occasional times like this last week where however much grit you use, and however much the councils try to clear the roads, things will still grind to a halt.

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Posted by Richard at 10:29 pm Tagged with: , , , , ,

Lucy's Baptism Service

Church No Responses »
Apr 112009

This afternoon we had Lucy’s Baptism Service at St James’, whilst we had a good many friends and family who made it along to the service and the party afterwards, we know there were some who weren’t able to come.

It’s not quite the same, but here is a copy of the service we used, which hopefully will give a bit of a flavour of what went on.

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Posted by Richard at 11:21 pm Tagged with: , , , , ,

Tonight Thank God It's Them...

Church, Movies & TV, Music 1 Response »
Dec 232008

This is a little tribute to any Youth Leader, who having been asked to contribute to some Church event, has found themselves on stage with a number of semi-unwilling members of their youth group, feeling like they’re doing a solo, and yet somehow managed to pull it together in the end.

As a background to this clip, this was filmed at our village concert, and the Youth Group decided to sing a song which they had done as part of a Christmas production they had put on in aid of the Congo appeal a few days before. Prior to this they’ve been having real problems with the backing track, and as our clip commences, the backstage guys have just about got it sorted.


Tonight Thank God It’s Them, Instead of You from Richard Peat on Vimeo.

All credit to Cathy, the youth leader here for keeping it going as it all starts to go horribly wrong…

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Posted by Richard at 7:00 pm Tagged with: , , , , ,

Wokingham Heritage Weekend

Church, Pictures No Responses »
Sep 142008

This weekend was the annual Heritage Open Days weekend when historic buildings across the country, sometimes buildings that rarely allow public access, open their doors to the public. Locally this was organised under the banner of the Wokingham Heritage Weekend, and as our contribution we opened the church to visitors and as we do in July, allowed people to climb the tower.

It has to be said that during the week, the weather wasn’t looking particularly promising, and whilst it didn’t rain yesterday, it was overcast for a lot of the day, however this afternoon was fantastic, not too hot, but a nice clear day, so people got great views from the top.

We were open between two o’clock and five o’clock and had a steady stream of people from opening, with it being busiest between three o’clock and four o’clock. Like all the events in the weekend we weren’t making any charge, however that didn’t mean that we didn’t have a prominent big sign asking for a donation to the conservation fund, and the majority of the visitors were happy to contribute, many gift aiding their contribution as well. We also laid on cream teas, which were also very popular – one husband who had hoped for a piece of the cake baked by his wife was sadly disappointed as by the end of the afternoon there was no food left at all! Hopefully we will have made a few hundred more towards the half a million pounds needed for our conservation work.

I took a few pictures of the afternoon, which can be seen in our photo galleries. The different time of year giving a lower sun allowed me to take some nice shots playing with sunlight – this shot of the inside of the building and this silhouette of the parapet being ones I thought came out well.

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Posted by Richard at 8:40 pm Tagged with: , , , , ,

Surprise Landings

MobLog, Pictures No Responses »
Aug 062008

So there we were, sitting watching the TV, when I hear a weird noise from outside. Stepping out into the garden, this is what we saw, a Virgin hot air balloon coming down rather quickly. These pictures show the view as it went over and came to rest on the garrison sports field, amazingly coming down in the relatively small space between the tree lined road and the rugby posts. Considering that a few metres short on the other side of the road he would have been coming down onto the Penrose Park housing estate, and the rest of the sports field has regularly spaced rugby posts along it’s length, it was a pretty impressive bit of piloting.


Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

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Posted by Richard at 11:30 pm Tagged with: , , , ,

Patronal Festival Weekend

Church, Music, Pictures No Responses »
Jul 272008

Along with our annual trip to see the Tappers, this weekend was also pretty busy as it was our patronal festival weekend at St James. As part of this on Saturday we had an evening from The Madding Crowd, a group of performers from Winchester, and then today we had the annual opening of the Church Tower, and a mini fete up at the Church.

The Madding Crowd primarily perform a selection of music originally written for the parish bands who in days gone by would have provided the musical accompaniment for church services in the days before the pipe organ. They augment the performance with readings and dances from the same period, drawing heavily on the work of Thomas Hardy, indeed drawing their name from his fourth novel. It was a great evening, and showed up some music that perhaps we could use in the Church choir – and some of the dramatic interludes showed up that very little has changed in the Church over the past hundred years – people still moan about the Rector, and choir practice hasn’t changed much at all, even if the instruments and the clothes have!

The main village fete alternates between being hosted by the Church and the school, so in years like this when it is the turn of the school, the Tower Opening and Mini-Fete are one of our major fund raising efforts for the year, especially important in a year like this when we have a big campaign in progress. Thanks to the vagaries of the British weather, even in July it can involve a lot of prayer for a nice day – and since all the way through this week there has been rain forecast for this afternoon, it was great to have such fantastic weather. As a result we got a lot of people through the doors and climbing the tower, and fingers crossed a goodly amount of money for the conservation appeal.

Needless to say I was around with my camera, so I’ve included a set of pictures below. As you might have noticed if you follow my Flickr stream, I’ve started to take a picture or two with the much maligned camera on the iPhone. Although some aren’t going to win any awards, especially in poor light, I have to say that some, in particular this one and this one are a lot better than I perhaps would expect based purely on the specs for the camera on paper.


Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

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Posted by Richard at 11:42 pm Tagged with: , , , , ,

Local Politics and the Church

Asides, Church No Responses »
Apr 282008

I’ve blogged from time to time about politics within the Church, but every so often, even at a local level, village politics and St James come into contact. In the past it’s been in relation to things like the villages memorial oaks being on church, rather than public land, and occasionally the Parish Council will use the church or our parish centre for services or events. The Parish Council also generously gives us an annual donation into church funds. However as part of our conservation appeal, alongside a number of other grant awarding bodies we applied to the Parish Council for a grant, and put in an application for what would be considered a significant amount – £15,000, backed up by Rev Richard personally attending the meeting to put his case for the benefits that the church building offered to the community and the village as a whole. In all honesty expected to be awarded a lot less than what we had asked for, therefore we were delighted to be awarded the full amount, but it caused a bit of a storm. The award was passed by majority of the councillors at the meeting, but one Parish Councillor who voted against the award was so upset that she has resigned her position in protest, stating that she believed the money would not be benefiting the whole community.

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Posted by Richard at 11:45 pm Tagged with: , , , , ,

There Wasn't Anything About This in the Book!

Church No Responses »
Apr 252008

I’ve just had one of those evenings where nobody knows what to do, but people turn to me because I’m the Churchwarden!

When I turned up at choir practice the kids were still over in the Parish Centre on their break, so I went into the church, and there was a small creature in the middle of the floor of the north aisle. On closer examination it turned out to be a bat – and a rather inactive one at that.

Many people who have been to our church will know that we have regular visits from bats, but this one was a lot smaller – and they are usually flying around, not sat in the middle of the floor. Luckily Meg our Parish Administrator was around as well, having an additional practice with the Handbell Group. She has regular bat visits at her home, and also had a booklet of contact numbers in the office from previous problems with the bats in the church.

First off we phoned the local vets, who directed us towards the RSPCA. It is worth saying that tonight was one of the rare occasions when I didn’t have my mobile with me, as it was back at home on charge, as a result trying to speak to the person who knew about bats at the RSPCA proved to be a bit of a pain. When you phone the emergency number you get through to a regular call centre person, who then passes a message to the relevant part of the organisation. They then phone you back – the problem being that twice I didn’t manage to get to the call. No problem I thought, I’ll just dial 1471 and ring them back. That doesn’t work though as the number you dial redirects you to the same emergency number where you can only speak to the normal call centre.

Eventually I got to speak to the bat person who said unfortunately there was nobody available in our area tonight, but that they would try and come out in the morning. She then talked about some of the bat behaviour, and said that the bat would be unable to take off from a horizontal surface – they need a drop of about five feet at least to get airborne, and that if we could move the bat somewhere that had this, that would help matters. She then also suggested trapping the bat in a box and providing food and water.

So what we did was put the bat on a shelf by the 1590 door – a place that bats can get into the building – and close to the wall, and then I came home. I then went back up about twenty minutes later to find that the bat had vanished – so it didn’t seem to be too unwell – the kids took it’s inactivity as being that it was dead, I think it was just trying not to attract attention. Anyway, either it’s still flying around inside the building, or hopefully by putting it close to the door where it could squeeze through, it made it’s escape. Suffice to say there isn’t anything in the Churchwarden’s Handbook about how to deal with bats!

Update: Seems our resident bat hadn’t gone – he was back on the floor of the north aisle at a christening this afternoon. Our Director of Music who was playing for the service left the 1590 door open however and he managed to make his way outside, and climb up enough of the wall to fly away.

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Posted by Richard at 12:23 am Tagged with: , , , , ,

Two Weeks Later

Pictures 2 Responses »
Apr 062008

So after the brief snow we got for Easter, and the temperature reaching the dizzy heights of 18 ÌŠC this last week, on Sunday morning we awoke to this…


April Snow from Richard Peat on Vimeo.

By the time we had to head up to St James, the temperature had risen slightly and on the roads the snow had melted. However we still got a pretty view as we made our way. The video below is the view from the front of the car heading up the lower part of White Horse Lane, complete with a horse coming the other way, and an example of quite how little snow some people remove from their cars before setting off…


White Horse Lane from Richard Peat on Vimeo.

For more pictures see our photo galleries.

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Posted by Richard at 9:07 am Tagged with: , , , , ,

Easter at St James'

Church 2 Responses »
Mar 232008
The New Paschal Candle

So that’s Easter over for another year. Over the last twenty-four hours we’ve been to five services, and we’ve seen over five hundred people pass through the Church.

We kicked off late last night with the service that starts the Easter Vigil, which as in previous years the Youth Group took part in, and as with last year, we didn’t have to! As with last year we helped set up the vigil service, and then could head home to bed, rather than spending the night in the Parish Centre. This year there were about twenty-five of the young people who spent the night at the Church, and as is traditional, a lot of them looked decidedly rough come 6am on Easter morning.

The 6am service was our first appointment of the day, along with another sixty or so people who also got up early to see the sun rise at the church – although thanks to the cloud you couldn’t see much – and then after the service everybody went over to the Parish Centre to partake of the traditional bacon butties and/or croissants.

Dawn on Easter Morning

Since Beth was down to be sidesperson at the 9:30am Family service, there wasn’t much point in going home after breakfast, so we stayed for the 8am said Eucharist, which also had fifty people appear for it. That was quickly followed by the 9:30am Family service, where things started getting really crazy.

There has been a lot of grumbling about the fact that Easter this year doesn’t fall within the school holidays. That maybe a problem for some, but in terms of our numbers at Easter it seems to have made a massive difference. At 9:30am, even without a choir taking up a lot of pews, the building was absolutely full. We ran out of chairs, so had to go over to the Parish Centre to get some more, and ran out of hymn books too – a total of two-hundred and twenty-seven people squeezed into our little Church. Things were much the same come 11am – this time we had people seated in the vestry, and other people standing in the North Aisle – certainly it looks like another attendance in excess of two hundred for that service too.

The 11am was the big choir service of the day, and we had pretty well one hundred percent attendance – and we needed it as the anthem for the day was the Hallelujah Chorus, from Handel’s Messiah. It has to be said that we’ve been having problems with this over the past couple of weeks, and although it came together a lot better on the day, it still wasn’t quite right from where we were standing. Having said that, it went down really well – even inducing spontaneous applause from the congregation. As was said afterwards, it may not have been exactly right, but there aren’t many village church choir’s who would even attempt it!

Anyway, the weirdest aspect of the whole day was the weather. You can see a shot from dawn (there are more in our photo galleries) where it was dry but cold – but look at what it was doing a couple of hours later… to be followed by sunshine and blue skies a few hours after that! If you look at this picture, you can see that for a while the snow was actually settling too!


Easter Snow at St James from Richard Peat on Vimeo.

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Poems for Holy Week

Church 1 Response »
Mar 202008
lance1.gif

As we have done in previous years, during Holy Week we do something a bit different from the rest of the series. Last year we had a cinema trip, this time around we had Lance Pierson – who describes himself as a performer – presenting a selection of Poems for Holy Week. Having said that, he actually covered the full season including selections of poems about both Lent and Easter. If you’re in the Oxford Diocese, you may have come across Lance previously as he was one of the guest speakers at the Diocesan Conference in High Wycombe.

The evening was very enjoyable as Lance doesn’t just deliver a dry reading of the poems. In some cases he has actions along with his reading, for others he had pictures projected onto a screen. (If you listen to some of his CD’s the poems are backed by suitable soundscapes mixing music and sound effects.) He also drew from a broad range of authors, covering a wide variety of time periods from poems written in old English through to poems from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. He is also very personable, and spent a lot of time before and after the show talking to members of the audience, and proved to be very aware of people in the audience in that he apologised immediately to one of the members of our congregation who relies on the hearing aid loop in the hall because he went out of range of the microphone on one of the poems.

Interestingly, at least half of the audience were people who weren’t part of our congregation – the evening had been advertised in the local St Andrew’s Bookshop, and Lance himself lists his upcoming events on his website. We had several people from Bracknell, and quite a few who came across from Caversham too. Certainly the evening seemed to go down well with them too.

After the success of the evening, I’m quite sure we’ll be seeing Lance making a return visit. Until then, we picked up a couple of his CD’s – Beth opting for a recording of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and me going for a recording of lesser known Sir John Betjeman poems (the BBC owns the exclusive recording rights to the well known ones) that includes one of my favourites, Blame the Vicar.

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"It's the Sibelius Violin Concerto, and one of the students is playing the solo."

Music No Responses »
Mar 172008

Maybe I’m just overly critical, and perhaps I’d be different if it were my child playing, but I tend to not overly look forward to the prospect of school students being, how shall we put it, adventurous in their choice of concert repertoire.

This particular opportunity to experience a school musician came up as part of the combined Wellington College/Crowthorne Choral Society concert held last night at the school. This was their biggest concert of the year where they team up with the choir from the school, and bring in a full orchestra – in this case the Chameleon Arts Orchestra. As a side note it also means that they use the large sports hall at the school, were unfortunately the heaters are so noisy they drown out the music – hence we were rather cold by the end of the performance!

Anyway, the reason we were there was because the Choral Society were performing Mozart’s Requiem, the same work that I and various other members of the choir at St James are going to be singing when we join the Really Big Chorus at the Albert Hall on May 10th. However, as it’s a shared concert with the school, other parts of the programme were put in by Wellington College, and it has to be said that when various people mentioned that one of the students was going to be playing the solo in the Sibelius Violin Concerto there were definite hints of apprehension as to what it might be like.

If at this point you’re thinking I’m being overly critical, it is worth highlighting that whilst Wellington College has an excellent and well deserved reputation for it’s music, even with that, the Sibelius Violin Concerto is regarded as being a particularly difficult and challenging piece to play, and not something you’d expect a student to attempt, let alone perform well.

However, I’m glad to say that all the doubts proved to be entirely unfounded.

The solo violin was played by Claire Sledd, a sixth former at the school who comes originally from Seattle in the US – indeed her grandmother flew in from across the pond especially to hear Claire play. She is at the school on a music scholarship, and has been accepted by the Royal Academy starting in September. Certainly if I didn’t know she was a student at the school, I would have said that she was a professional musician, certainly the performance was as good as both the professional orchestra, and the professional soloists who sang on the Mozart Requiem, if not better!

Needless to say when we talked to various of our friends in the Crowthorne Choral Society during the interval (the Mozart Requiem made up the second half of the concert) they were all wondering how they were going to follow the virtuoso performance we’d just seen.

It has to be said that the Crowthorne Choral Society stepped up to the challenge and delivered a great performance too, but certainly Claire was fantastic, and deserves to go far. I wouldn’t be surprised to find her playing solo in somewhat more illustrious halls than a rather draughty sports hall in Crowthorne in a few years!

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Life in Iraq: An Army Officer's View

Church, Current Affairs No Responses »
Mar 132008
Captain Abi Brown

The final lecture in our Lent series was given by Captain Abi Brown, a member of our congregation and serving army officer, who had recently returned from a six month posting in Iraq – her second, having been posted previously during the initial invasion back in 2003.

This again was a total change of subject area from the week before. A lot of the presentation was about practical things, explaining what the army is doing in Iraq, and the day to day life of our soldiers out there. She also covered the preparation that the troops are given to prepare them for their tour of duty, and how the army supports their personnel once they get back.

Perhaps the most interesting part of all the background is the realisation of quite how little we know about day to day life for our troops in Basra. Even with all the embedded journalists that have been placed with troops we still only get a snapshot of life – it is rather different hearing from an actual solider.

Abi is a Captain with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers known as REME, who are headquartered here at Arborfield, hence how she came to be part of our congregation. Her troops were responsible for the maintenance, servicing and inspection of much of the equipment that the army use in Iraq, in particular vehicles such as the Challenger 2 tank and the Warrior APC that are the mainstays of the British equipment.

However aside from listing the equipment, she really focused on day to day life.

She was, like the majority of the British force based at Basra Airport, where the force is under continuous bombardment from mortars and rockets. She showed some pictures of the damage that these attacks cause, and also the measures taken to protect the troops. For example she showed pictures of her sleeping accommodation – a mattress surrounded by breeze blocks and a ‘roof’ consisting of a steel plate covered by sandbags. Another real and present danger was the risk of kidnapping, so she was armed at all times, and was never allowed to move around on her own – that even extended to going to the toilet at night, people were always accompanied.

She made some interesting comparisons with how things were during her initial posting to Iraq during the invasion. Today the army is well equipped, and properly supplied – she said that this is a big difference from how things were back in 2003. Back then she refused to wear desert uniform until all her troops were similarly equipped – she never wore her desert uniform during the entire posting. The general impression she gave of the situation then was that the army were ill prepared for what they had to do.

She largely steered clear of political comment, although she did say that about eighty percent of her troops probably disagree with the reasons that they went to war, but on a professional level want to do a good job. Interestingly she says that their biggest worry now is that due to political pressures the troops will be pulled out too early, and not get a chance to do their jobs properly, the job being to bring the Iraqi army up to a standard whereby they can look after their own country without aid.

Her husband Adam was posted to Iraq at the same time as her, but was in a different part of the country. She did say that the only British soldiers not posted to Basra were some admin staff based in Baghdad, and the special forces. Adam was posted to Baghdad, and all she would say about what he did was that it was a lot more dangerous than what she did, and that for her own sanity she never spoke to him at all about the kind of things he did.

She also talked about what it was like as a woman in a largely male organisation, and in particular being in command of men. She has some support in this respect as she is assisted by the first female ASM in REME. She commented that as a woman, the relationship with the men is different – she actually said that perhaps the least successful women in the army are those that try to be like the men – she sees handling things differently as an advantage. The most interesting comment she made was that many of the men seem to regard her as a mother figure – indeed one of her men commented after a telling off that it was by far the hardest he had had because he felt like he did when his mother was telling him off. She also said that because she is a woman many of the men open up to her a lot more than they would to a male officer, which sometimes gives her more of a broad view than a male officer would get, when perhaps the men would not mention some issues. Having said that, there are still soldiers who have a problem with being commanded by a woman – she has one in particular with which she has had issues. As part of her training though, she was required to spend some time working in industry, and she said she had a much harder time being a woman in the engineering company to which she was seconded than she has ever had in the army. Although it is still dominated by men, women are in many roles all across the army.

The final part of the talk, she discussed how she and her troops deal with the loss of fellow soldiers, she lost her first within twenty-four hours of arriving in Iraq. She also here talked about her faith, and how the weekly Church services she attended were about the only escape she had from the continual worries of attacks on the base – the Church was the safest building on the base. Key events are Remembrance Sunday – the base has a memorial with a brass plaque for each soldier that has been killed – and whenever a fallen soldier is repatriated as many troops as possible attend the ceremony. Amongst all of this, she says that many soldiers do find religion – “more than you would thinkâ€? she said – however that still doesn’t stop many of them having times when they find themselves asking why it is that situations like Iraq can happen, and why it is that certain people are killed and others survive.

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Under the Skin of South Africa

Church No Responses »
Mar 072008
Brynn Bayman

Last night we had the next of our Lent Lecture series at St James.

After the more theological subject matter last week, this week we had a bit of a change of focus, and also our first home grown speaker in the form of Brynn Bayman, a member of the congregation who teaches at a local school.

As you may know, a couple of years ago, St James was twinned with a parish in South Africa. Whilst Rev Richard has been out there, and has brought back pictures and stories of his experiences, for many the parish out there is almost totally alien – Brynn’s lecture was an attempt to try and broaden peoples understanding of both the country as a whole, and our twin parish in particular. Brynn was asked to do the lecture, as he was brought up in South Africa.

During his lecture Brynn gave us an overview of the post war history of South Africa, looking at the effects of apartheid, and how in particular the Churches responded. He also mixed in with that his own experiences – as a student he protested against apartheid, regularly facing armed police in doing so, who at times opened fire on the protests – and also taking a closer look at how the apartheid laws totally changed in particular our twin parish.

One interesting point that Brynn highlighted was that whilst the authorities moved entire communities, and bulldozed houses to do so, they were never allowed to move church buildings. In some places this has left orphaned churches, in others the church is now either in a different community, or miles from where the church members actually live. This is the situation in our twin parish. The community who originally attended the church was moved to another part of the town, leaving the church building, and a different racial group was moved into the area around the church. However the bulk of the congregation are still drawn from the original community, so travel many miles to get to their church, whilst the community in which the church is located, very few actually attend.

Following on as he did from a couple of big names, Brynn was almost apologetic when he started his session. Certainly we thought he didn’t need to be. He delivered a great talk, and it was very interesting to hear what he had to say. Whilst you can always watch documentaries on TV about the history of a place like South Africa, it is massively different hearing someone who was involved and lived through the history actually talk about what went on.

Posted by Richard at 1:21 am Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Finchampstead Barn Dance

Church No Responses »
Feb 242008
The Band Warm Up

It’s years since I’ve been to a Barn Dance – in fact thinking about it, the last one was probably my cousins wedding about a decade ago. Certainly Beth had never been to one. I’d been to several at our Church when I was a child, and apparently they used to have them quite regularly in Finchampstead, but they had somewhat gone out of fashion.

As part of our current fund raising efforts, the social committee took the decision to organise a Barn Dance once again, being held down in the Memorial Hall in the village, in part because it is a larger space and more suitable for a dance than our own parish centre. If ticket sales are anything to go by the event was the kind of thing people were interested in as it pretty well sold out within a couple of weeks!

There definitely seemed to be some disagreement over the correct dress code when we arrived. Some people turned up dressed for a party, others very much in a western style, with even a couple of cowboy hats in evidence. The music also was a definite mix – although dance wise we were mainly doing English Country Dancing, there were musical influences from all over with Irish and American tunes coming up.

Much as I remembered, a Barn Dance is not something to be taken overly seriously – as Beth has once remarked with regards to line dancing back in Canada, the best way to enjoy it is with a healthy dose of mickey taking. Of course once everybody has had a couple of drinks, remembering the correct sequence of steps – which of course most people have only learnt for the first time a few minutes before – is generally a bit difficult, so a large does of chaos ensues. Having said, even amongst the serial Barn Dancers remembering the moves is a problem. The caller at one point remarked that one of their regulars was on the dance floor, and that he never remembered this particular dance – he didn’t last night either!

Food wise, it was relatively straightforward for the social committee, as they bought in a fish and chip supper from a nearby chip shop – so no washing up either! We also had the usual raffle, and also a game of Roll the Pound in order to win a bottle of champagne. That actually got quite competitive, in the end making £50 for the appeal. Overall the night was a great success, adding another £1100 to our total.

I’ve uploaded a set of pictures of the evening to Flickr, and I do have the odd few videos that I’ll post to YouTube once it recovers from whatever is up with it tonight.

Update: YouTube seems to have recovered – so here you can enjoy a taste of the chaos…

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The Struggle Against AIDS in Africa

Church, Current Affairs No Responses »
Feb 142008
Rev Richard with Berdine van den Toren

I’ve just got back from the first of this years Lent Lectures, Berdine van den Toren speaking about The Struggle Against AIDS in Africa.

Berdine works for the Church Mission Society, and with her family spent over eight years living and working in the relatively unknown Central African Republic.

The basic facts about HIV and AIDS in the country are shocking. The average life expectancy, thanks to the pandemic is about forty, and effectively an entire generation has been wiped out, leaving quite often grandmothers looking after the children – many of whom are HIV positive themselves.

The country, like many in Africa is crippled by ongoing fighting, and suffers from corruption and many of the social and political issues that encourage the pandemic elsewhere on the continent. Berdine looked at some of these.

There is a great stigma attached to being HIV positive, as a result people will often not admit that they have the infection. The example Berdine gave was of the woman who they employed to help in their house. They paid her what they regarded as a fair wage, as a result the woman was supporting twenty other people on the wage.

However her husband was working in another part of the country. He came back, very ill, with many of the symptoms of AIDS, but as with so many deaths, his cause of death was listed as the disease that killed him, without mentioning AIDS. Berdine suggested to her that she should also take a test, but the woman they employed wouldn’t do it. She said that if she took a test, and Berdine knew the result, she wouldn’t be able to get another job, as Berdine would have to tell the next employer, and nobody would employ someone who was HIV positive.

Berdine then talked about some of the cultural issues, and more importantly the attitudes of the people in the west to these issues. As she highlighted, people in the west are usually quick to judge the people of Africa for not changing, and yet in the west we have similar widespread problems that relate to our cultural norms. Where Berdine currently lives in Oxford, like many places, there are major problems with young people getting drunk on the estates, drink related problems in the city centre, and so on. Taking the same attitude the west is taking over the African cultural norms, we should remove the problem by stopping alcohol from being available, but it is endemic to our culture. Equally with smoking, we know that it will prematurely kill thousands of people, and that our health service will have to spend massive amounts of money treating people for the effects, and yet it is such an accepted part of our culture, despite the obvious negative financial impact on our country we don’t really try to stop it. In much the same way, the AIDS pandemic spreads through culturally endemic behaviour, and trying to change that is much the same as trying to change culturally endemic behaviour in this country, or anywhere else.

Perhaps the most shocking part of the talk was when Berdine was talking about how AIDS is spreading through the instability in the African countries. Firstly, AIDS is being used as a weapon. Soldiers, knowing that they are HIV positive will rape women in areas that they have captured – the results being obvious. Secondly, with the large scale violence, and the daily possibility of getting shot, people tend to not be concerned about a disease that could kill them years later. As a result the pandemic spreads.

In the Central African Republic there is also a real problem with HIV in universities. Education is seen as a way out of poverty, however poorly paid lecturers at the universities will sometimes require bribes in order to give good marks to their students. If the students can’t pay in money, they pay in other ways…

Whilst she did finish with some more positive stories, of the work that is going on – a teacher who now feeds sixty AIDS orphan’s breakfast every morning before school for example – the sheer magnitude of the problems, and the complexity of the causes are hard to ignore, and even harder to solve.

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St James' Handbells - Take it From Here

Church, Music No Responses »
Jan 272008
Cheque Presentation

Yesterday night I was up at the Church for a musical event where for once I didn’t have to do anything at all!

The event was the launch of the St James’ Handbell Ringers “Take it From Hereâ€? initiative – where they are planning to take their music into a variety of the local care homes, doing various activities related to music therapy with the residents. The video below includes a demonstration of the kind of things they are planning to do by Sandra Winter, Secretary of the Handbell Ringers of Great Britain, who already does this kind of work.

This is quite an impressive level of progress as it is less than two years ago that the team were absolute beginners – as one of the representatives of the Handbell Ringers of Great Britain said during her presentation, when she first heard them, they were a group of people all ringing their bells individually, now they are a team.

Initially, the team had no bells of their own, and were borrowing a set. A full set costs over £7000, so they raised some money, and the PCC provided about £3000 to get the bells. From there they have now obtained grants from various local bodies, and grant of over £8000 from the National Lottery to enable them to launch their initiative, and this was a special concert, attended by the local mayor, to launch the initiative to the public, and officially receive the cheque from the lottery.

I have to say, that I’m not the greatest fan of handbells – although I suspect that is mainly having sat through a number of really bad handbell renditions where the timing goes off as the team struggle to keep in time – probably the hardest thing to get right with a group of handbell ringers I’m sure. However, with all their hard work, the St James team really don’t seem to have any of the timing issues that usually bug me about other groups that I’ve heard in the past. All in all it was a really enjoyable evening of great music.

I’ve uploaded a load of pictures to Flickr, which can also be found in our photo gallery.

I also tried out the video recording on the new camera, the results of which can be seen below – although I will say it’s slightly more fiddly to work with video off the new camera as it seems to be producing movie clips in a non-iMovie friendly format…

Update: A few related items that might be of interest:

Press release from the local Borough Council about the same event. Some nice quotes from both the mayor, and from Meg.

Wokingham’s Valuable Volunteers includes another mention of the group.

Handbell Ringers’ Ministry – short article from the Diocesan newspaper about the group.

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