Guest Blogs's Blog – August 2011 Archive (21)

Holiday over. Back in the office. Back on my laptop where I can embed links in my posts. It’s also back to viewing the world from home (as opposed to ‘away’).

As the Libya endgame continues, there is a good deal…

It looks like Gaddafi is on the run with his sons – who must be feeling awfully cheated out of their inheritance. It has been clear for years that their father is – how can we put it politely?- delusional. Those journalists who have met him say that he is lucid one minute and ramblingly…

While checking in at Philadelphia Airport for the flight back to the UK I picked up a freebie copy of last Sunday’s Financial Times. The colour magazine is usually a good read. This time it was.

Twenty years ago (18 August 1991 to be precise) Mikhail Gorbachev was on holiday on the Black…

The massive storm we have witnessed here in Philadelphia on the last day of our holiday is nothing compared to the storm of violence now raining down on Tripoli as the battle for freedom from Gaddafi’s rule enters it’s endgame. As with other similar struggles in the Middle East in the last six…

On a day trip with friends yesterday we pitched up on the edge of a massive thunderstorm in a place called Lewes, Delaware. In one shop we saw a range of the sorts of twee or…

Reading the September copy of The Atlantic, an American magazine I hadn’t previously attended to, I am struck by the common challenges of Britain, the USA and Germany. If, as we frequently read, emerging democratic countries mark their progress economically and politically by a growing middle…

While I was the Bishop of Croydon in the Diocese of Southwark I was heavily engaged with the Anglican Church in Zimbabwe, particularly with the Diocese of Central Zimbabwe. I have posted frequently on Zimbabwe and what is happening there. (However, I cannot embed links on this iPad, so type…

I have just visited a small town in Pennsylvania called Intercourse. Its tourist blurb encourages us to ‘Slow down the hurry’. Er… OK…

Intercourse is in the heart of Amish country and that’s why we went there. Apart from the fact that the drive over there was beautiful, what you meet is a…

I have only known Washington through the epic series The West Wing. We spent a year watching it from the first episode to the last. Having visited Washington DC for the first time…

So, Manchester United get another jammy win, Liverpool show flair and draw, Arsenal fall apart, and David Starkey insults someone on the telly. It looks like some things never change.

I feel out of the picture of post-riot English debate. But one thing that has somewhat surprised me is the…

A bloke came up to us in City Hall Gardens and asked for directions to somewhere we’d never heard of. He then ambled round asking other people. His t-shirt said: “Not everyone who wanders is lost.” Americans clearly do ‘do’ irony after all…

Anyway, there’s nothing quite like going round a…

There’s a bit in the book of the prophet Jeremiah where the king, Hezekiah, asks Jeremiah: “Does the Lord have a word for us today?” the answer is ‘yes’, but the king doesn’t like it when he hears it. It doesn’t press the right political buttons. It is inconvenient to the dominant ideology. So,…

From what I have heard (which, admittedly, isn’t much), Ministers blame the police for handling the riots badly. And the Archbishop of Canterbury has come under fire for not having made any statement about the riots before his response in the House of Lords yesterday. Then, the first thing he did…

It is interesting reading from the distance of the USA the analysis of the riots in England. There is a clear tension in which only ‘either-or’ judgements are allowed – particularly by government politicians. I’ll explain in a minute.

In Fulbert Steffensky’s book Schöne Aussichten, he…

Or enduring the living nightmare?

The phrase ‘living the dream’ belongs to the United States – the land of opportunity and optimism. Philadelphia is where it all began: the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the first Congress, the birth of American democracy. Those who signed…

It’s uncomfortable reading about (and watching) the riots in England from a distance. It feels wrong to be away when such violation is going on – especially when the violence of a relative few is damaging the lives of the many for a generation.

It’s also unsurprising to hear the riots…

Typical. Nothing happens for weeks (apart from phone hacking, Met Police corruption (alleged), financial crisis in Europe and the USA, Steven Gerrard’s groin strain infection, etc.) and then, the day I leave the country to go on a much-needed holiday, riots break out in London.

I realise…

The prophets of doom and gloom are those who are surprised by the repeats of history – reality intruding into the fantasy of permanence – and whose hopes are limited to the recovery of what got them into the anxiety in the first place. Security is not to be found in such fantasy, but in living…

When I worked as a professional linguist for the British government in the first half of the 1980s the colours on the map looked deep and fixed. The mighty Soviet Empire joined in proxy wars with the American Giant and the Berlin Wall looked pretty impregnable. The West was best and the East was…

A friend sent me this and I just thought it was funny. That’s all.

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