Monday, 13 December 2021
Monday, 6 December 2021
St. Marys Court
Constitutions Existing (E) and Proposed (P)
Existing
5.d. The Association meets quarterly with representatives of Aldwyck in accordance with clause 4 of agreement 23.4 1996 in order to consider:
i) the quarterly accounts of St. Mary’s Court, including matters arising;
ii) budget and service charges.
Proposed
3. the Group is a community group, apparently working for the benefit of supposedly the village and even a wider area;
4. its activities appear to centre around running community events, improving the environment, raising money, etc.;
5. membership is open to anyone who supports the Objects.
7. notice of meetings need to be advertised to people living in the area.
Comment
There is no requirement in P to meet with representatives of Aldwyck/Catalyst to consider the accounts, budget and service charges or to permit matters arising.
P places the Group as an entity of Catalyst, as is evident from the heading of the notepaper: “CATALYST”.
E stands apart and though its purposes relate entirely to Catalyst it has its own identity.
It is not clear what TRA stands for. If it is “Tenants and Residents Association”, that speaks for itself. What is good for Tenants is good for Freeholders. All tenants may be residents but not all residents are tenants.
Observations
Under P there is no right for residents to question and challenge Catalyst’s conduct. It could be ruled simply out of order.
To grant the Group powers to raise money for community events is irrelevant and patronising. Residents don’t need Catalyst’s permission to engage in charitable and community activity; they can do it when and how they choose.
Why are Catalyst offering financial inducements to adopt its constitution? Tenants, leaseholders and freeholders do not readily recognise Catalyst for its altruism.
1) The move brings a residents’ organisation more tightly under its control;
2) while at the same time distancing it from any effective influence;
3) It puts Catalyst in the position of being able to advertise its charitable aims and achievements through the good works performed by its community “groups”, while it is they who bear the cost in terms of time and energy.
Catalyst offered financial inducement in order to sell no. 17. What was the result? Entire loss of the facility. It was a sleight of hand stratagem. While one hand attracts attention, the other makes a grab.
“I fear the Greeks even when they are bearing gifts.” This is not a racist comment on our contemporaries. It was put into the mouth of a Trojan leader as he surveyed the Wooden Horse from his beleaguered city. It came to mind as I looked over the constitutions and helped me believe that if we adopt P, we sell our birth-right.
Peter Liddell
2/12/21
Saturday, 4 December 2021
Letter to Family
Ramanujan, Fiona Hill and Trump Impeachment
Hello, dear Everybody,
Sunday evening, I began watching The Man Who Knew Infinity. After 40 mins. I knew that I could not bear to reach the denouement. Monday evening, Mum and I watched it together. No doubt all of you maths and physics graduates know the theme and so rather than me elaborate, it's better recounted here: https://inference-review.com/article/touched-by-the-goddess
I first "met" Ramanujan in 1961 when C.P. Snow was installed as University Rector at St. Andrews. The four ancient Scottish universities, St. Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh, have the unique privilege of a Rector, who is elected by the students to represent their interests on the University Court, of which he is Chair. Previous Rectors include John Stuart Mill, J.M. Barrie, Haig, Carnegie, Kipling, Nansen, Grenfell and Smuts, and more recently Katharine Whitehorn, Nicolas Parsons, John Cleese and Andrew Neil. Currently it is Leyla Hussein. Snow was elected on his platform of the Two Cultures and his recently published book The Masters, of which the current three year dispute at Christ Church between the Dean and the Governing Body is but a real-life replication. Snow's Rectorial Address was On Magnanimity, which took its title from John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Snow modelled his theme on the unparalleled originality of the co-operation between G.H. Hardy, J. Littlewood and S. Ramanujan at Cambridge in the early years of the 20th century. In it I caught the snippet of brilliance in Ramanujan's response to Hardy who found the number 1729 of the taxi in which he arrived dull. "Not at all, Hardy. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways." Hardy's final tribute to Ramanujan is moving. "When I find myself forced to listen to tiresome and pompous people, I say to myself, 'Well, I have done something you could never have done. I have collaborated with Littlewood and Ramanujan on almost equal terms.'"
Last evening was another evening of privilege. Ming Campbell was in conversation with Fiona Hill. He is the Chancellor of the University and each year there are two gatherings of the Chancellor's Circle, a group who have pledged a legacy. One takes place in the mediaeval Parliament Hall, St. Andrews, which dates back to before the Union and the other at the Caledonian Club in London. Recently they have been held by Zoom, as was this one. When we first attended there were perhaps 50, last night there were 800. Lord Campbell is the former local MP and leader of the LibDems. Fiona Hill has been the adviser to three US Presidents and she came to prominence when she gave courageous testimony at the first Donald Trump impeachment. She is a St. Andrews graduate and she came from Bishop Auckland, where Mum and I grew up. Her father was a miner, out of work at a time when heavy industry had closed down: coal-mines, ironworks, steel, railways and shipyards. He said to her, "There is no opportunity for you here, pet," which is the first part of the title of her new book, the second part being, "Opportunities in the 20th century." And so she went to St. Andrews in the 1980's. After reading Russian and Political History, she won a scholarship to Moscow University and from there to Harvard. She described how she created her opportunities and how they were created for her. Firstly, it was by securing the backing of the local M.P., Derek Forster. Making her field international security, she rose to become top Russian expert to three Presidents. It was her responsibility to prime Trump for his meeting with Putin in Helsinki. She said that he never read the papers she gave him. He expected to run the country in the way he ran the family business with no need for checks and balances. The account she gave of life in the White House under Trump was mind-blowing. The turn-over of staff was such that she hardly got to meet some of the members of the administration she was supposed to be working with. Conspiracy theories, powered by the press, set faction against faction. She made it clear that Russia had intervened in the 2016 election and that it was their ongoing purpose to use very opportunity to destabilise western democracies and for that we were as much to blame ourselves for the opportunities we give them. She spoke in the overtones of the soft Bishop Auckland accent. Every word was clear and straightforward and very sentence drew examples from current political life from China, Russia, the UK, the USA, the EU and elsewhere. At one point, Ming Campbell wanted to take charge of an issue and sign off. She was having none of it. She came back at him and he responded that he would have to read her book again. It was compelling. From asides, she said that she was "disappointed" that the UK Government had gone back on its promise to extend HS2 to the north east. "It's one thing for me, when I have a personal incentive visiting my mother in Bishop Auckland, but how much of an incentive is it for a business man to make it up to Hartlepool?" A photo showed her sitting next to John Bolton round the table with Putin and Trump. After the impeachment, she takes it as a badge of honour that Trump described her as a Deep State Stiff with a nice accent.
I've no doubt that the Development Director chairing the event saw it as a triumph, glowing from the news that St. Andrews was the first university to displace Oxford and Cambridge from top of the Sunday Times League Table. The recording is available on: Chancellor's Circle: The Chancellor Meets Fiona Hill - YouTube
Dad, Grandad, Peter
Tuesday, 10 March 2020
Water Has Never Feared The Fire
Dispute at Christ Church, Oxford
Mr. Mark Regev,
Israeli Ambassador,
Embassy of Israel,
2 Palace Green
London W8 4QB
8th January 2018
Will the Israeli Government compensate the school for damage?
Hon. Canon Emeritus, St. Albans Cathedral
Cc
Bishops of St. Albans, Hertford and Bedford
Dean of St. Albans
Lord Lieutenant for Hertfordshire
Lord Lieutenant for Bedfordshire
MP for Hitchin and Harpenden
Former Lord Lieutenant for Hertfordshire
Chief Rabbi
Former Chief Rabbi
President Board of Deputies
Bishop of Liverpool
Jews for Justice for Palestinians
Micah’s Paradigm Shift
Jewish Chronicle
and 30 others
Report to UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs
First They Came for us with Clubs
From Canon Peter Liddell
Sir, — The proposed annexation of the West Bank is as momentous an event as any in the long conflict between the Occupiers and the Occupied. As a nation, we have been preoccupied with the pandemic and the whole spectrum of its consequences. The issue for the churches, the media, and the public has been whether church buildings are to be open or shut. One hundred and forty parliamentarians signed a cross-party letter calling on the Government to raise sanctions against Israel if it proceeds with annexation. None of the bishops in the House of Lords signed it.
This may be one of those situations where external and unforeseen events conspire by happenchance against intention. Nevertheless, it has meaning, which may be used purposefully. I am grateful to Bishop Declan Lang, Chair of the Catholic Bishops’ Department of International Affairs, for his statement, “As the local Church leaders in Jerusalem have warned, annexation will destroy any hope of a peaceful two-state solution. The Catholic Church in England and Wales will continue to stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers in the Holy Land against such a move.”
Gerald Butt (Comment, 29 May) unintentionally provides an escape clause for those looking for one. “The Palestinian leadership has failed its people by allowing their cause to be forgotten.” So that’s all right, then. In today’s political-speak, we can move on, blaming the victims for their plight.
The challenges are formidable: raising public awareness, accepting Britain’s historical responsibility, recognising the existential place of the Churches in the land of their birth, defining what is and what is not anti-Semitism, and, not least, granting to the Palestinian people full appreciation of their existence as a people with a history and a claim.
The letter sent to the Israeli Ambassador by 40-plus leading Jewish figures, opposing the proposal, is exceptionally timely and significant. It provides a spring-board. It is not surprising if, at times, the Palestinian people feel powerless and hopeless. What is surprising is their resilience and immense dignity in the face of oppression. They deserve more than our distracted attention.
For the past ten years, since I visited the West Bank, the Friends of Madama and Burin have been providing a protective presence to farmers in these two villages near Nablus at olive harvest time. The group's 2019 experience of being attacked was reported to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs and described in TIME magazine: https://time.com/5714146/olive-harvest-west-bank/
A short but complete video was made by one of our group: https://youtu.be/rwu5Nc6tvgo
Following the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, publication of the Kushner plan and the threatened annexation of the West Bank, the settlers have become so emboldened in their attacks that it is reasonable to question whether these villages will survive.
However, in June, unexpectedly and contrary to prevailing political policy, the Israeli Supreme Court struck down a proposed law aimed at legalising settlements:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-isr ael-palestinians-settlements/israels-supreme-court-strikes-down-law-legalising-settlements-on-private-palestinian-land-idUKKBN23G2MP
The Friends of Madama and Burin are now circulating a Call to Action. A petition has been raised calling on the Head of the IDF Central Command in the West Bank, Major General Tamir Yadai, to comply with the judgement of the Supreme Court to defend Palestinians from settler attack and land thefts and to ensure their rights:
https://secure.avaaz.org/community_petitions/en/major_general_tamir_yadai_palestine_is_burning/?tZaNFdb The Friends are in the process of bringing this to wide attention; I attach the information.
It gives me the opportunity to write to those bishops who responded to me so thoughtfully following my letter about the threatened annexation of the West Bank, those who joined the 1000 signatories of the EU letter, other bishops and leaders of other churches who, in addition to Archbishop Justin and Cardinal Nichols, responded to the plea of the Jerusalem church leaders.
I should be very glad if this information assists you in helping safeguard the lives of these and other villagers.
Address St. Paul's Walden
ITV recently repeated its award-winning docudrama “The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies.” Radio Times described the performance by Jason Watkins as utterly flawless. Christopher Jefferies was a retired schoolmaster in Bristol. In 2010, one of his tenants in the same building, 25 yr old Joanna Yeates, disappeared. There was a nation-wide appeal. On Christmas Day, her body was found in the snow. Christopher Jefferies was arrested. His appearance did him no favours, although he would have passed unnoticed in a colony of academics. His hair was long and straggly, he dressed in 1970’s mode, he was a lonely figure and, in classic schoolmasterish style, didn’t suffer fools gladly. The tabloid press had a field day, describing him as “weird”, plainly a pervert. The headmaster of the prestigious school where he had been Head of English for 34 years distanced himself and the School. However, Christopher Jefferies had been loved by his pupils. One of them had become a lawyer and he engaged a firm of top London solicitors. With their professional and personal support and his own razor-sharp rebuttals, the case against him was dropped; shortly afterwards another tenant was arrested. Jefferies was persuaded to sue the tabloids and won substantial damages. In court and and on their front pages, the defendants regaled their apologies. The lawyers persuaded him to become a major witness, along with the parents of Milly Dowler and the parents of Madeleine McCann, in the Leveson Inquiry.
In today’s Gospel, St. Matthew teaches us how to respond when someone wrongs us. Speak face to face and you have the chance of gaining a brother. It is very caring and wise advice. If it doesn’t work, treat him as an outcast. Matthew’s advice holds good at the beginning. But Christopher Jefferies was dealing with institutions, a multiplicity of them and highly influential at that.
Some viewers reported being in tears at the end of the programme. There was the police raid on his flat before he was awake, his speechless bewilderment that they were charging him with murder, a police dog sniffing amongst the ornaments on his floor for drugs, him taking a shower, watched over, at the police station and laughter in the corridor as his name was mentioned. When the ordeal was over, he returned to a ransacked flat to find fingerprint directions on the wall and a treasured book on the floor split open and broken backed. Mesmerising was his measured silence, his panorama of expression, his inner deliberation and his incisive articulation as he slowly found his renewed self. Slowly, ever so slowly, the case against him had ground him down but now he stood on a new vantage point.
Mt. says “There am I in the midst of them”. He is speaking of when “two or three are gathered together in my name.” I don’t know whether those around Christopher Jefferies were gathered together in the name of the Risen Christ. But I believe that the Risen Christ is wider than even St. Matthew’s perception of Him and that the Risen Christ is there, always beyond where we are.
As the credits came up, the real Christopher Jefferies makes his own comment. A simple statement says, “Christopher Jefferies remains a member of Hacked Off,” the movement which led to the Leveson Inquiry. I wish I had remembered all that when last autumn I complained to a quality newspaper. In a Sat. supplement it had produced a feature, written in sleight-of-hand style about a prominent church figure, using unattributed observations from self-proclaimed “insiders”. The “insiders” plainly had the intention of diverting attention away from the fact that he had been exonerated by a high court judge and that the report of his tribunal was being withheld by the governing body which had brought the case. A long list of professors, bishops and luminaries protested, as a result of which the Charity Commission has intervened. My lonely effort was inconsequential but Christopher Jefferies, with his signatory message, plays out Matthew’s intention, which is to show that there is a caring presence even when it is not yet visible. I learned from the promise and the risk. And I have since rather taken to letter-writing. I have discovered that it helps me feel part of the Resurrection.
In May, the Heads of Churches in the Holy Land issue an appeal, essentially for survival. They said that the threat they confronted was catastrophic. Emigration would accelerate and it could lead to the possible demise of the churches. Archbishop Justin and Cardinal Nichols spoke in their support as did the leaders of other churches. Amongst the 1000 EU parliamentarians who wrote a letter five were Church of England bishops. You will know that I have spoken on this issue before. In July my letter to the Church Times was published. I have now written to all the bishops and suffragans, describing how last year some of my friends were injured in a settler attack, one of them being an 80 yr. old rabbi from Rabbis for Human Rights. The event was written up in TIME magazine. I have said all this to the bishops and more. I have so far heard back from a dozen of them. Two examples: “Thank you for the deep concerns you have, which I share.” “Many thanks for this and especially for sending the link to the very informative and moving testimony video. Thank you for all that you are doing to campaign for justice and protection for the Palestinian people.” I feel I am receiving words from men and women of the highest integrity, who speak from within the Resurrection.
We each have our own lives to lead and fears to face. In ending, I wish to try and say something for us as individuals and in the face of the seemingly intractable threats amongst which we live. Thursday. Three nights ago. The Proms. The First Night of the Proms. The Double Violin Concerto. What Bach does is take into himself the multitudinous chaos of the world around us. And he re-orders it. At first, it looks like a piece of algebra. But the cries, the sighs, the screams of humanity are being re-interpreted into re-shaped phrases of music. When seen in detail and as a whole, they become rational and carefully worked, like a tapestry. Each tiny phrase is an echo of a human voice. Sentences grow into themes. They are played in sequence, they speak against and with each other, separate but in harmony. Like children, they play. They grow, whether in speed or slow; they become sublime and serene. They build and take flight and a completely invisible but utterly real structure is created. Along come a man and a woman, a pair of virtuoso violinists,who hear not just as the rest of us externally but they have first heard it internally and made it a part of their bodies. Spellbound we watch creation taking place. Together, they create a miracle, which is as close to us as it was to the disciples. It stays and long after the performance, it is still there. This is what the Evangelists are telling us.
In case I have lost you, here is a poem for you to take away.
Arthur Hugh Clough, “Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth.”
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hope were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light,
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
But westward, look, the land is bright.
So Luke Copied the Ascension?
“When he had said these things, he departed upwards” (Livy)
Dennis R. MacDonald points to the resemblance between Luke’s narrative and Livy’s description of the ascension of Romulus (‘Luke and Vergil: Imitations of Classical Greek Literature’, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).
Livy Ab Urbe Condita 1.16.1-3 The Ascension of Romulus
Suddenly a storm kicked up with a loud crash and thundering; it covered the king with such a thick cloud that it prevented the crowd from seeing him. From that point on, Romulus was no longer on earth. Once their trembling had subsided, once a serene and sunny calm returned after such a chaotic period, the Roman throng saw the royal throne empty; ….they remained for some time despondent and silent, as though smothered with fear of abandonment. Then, at the initiative of a few, everyone hailed Romulus as a god born of a god, king and father of the Roman city, and implored him with prayers for peace to graciously protect their progeny for ever…………...Proculus Julius announced to the senate that he had seen the ascended Romulus. ‘Today, at dawn, Romulus, the father of the city, suddenly descended to me from the sky and met me. As I stood there reverent and overcome with trembling, I begged him with prayers that it may be possible to look on him without causing offence. He said, “Go and announce to the Romans that it is the will of heaven that my Rome be the capital of the world. …………...” When he had said these things, he departed upwards.’
Writing about 25 B.C., the historian of Rome’s Golden Age presents its official history from the city’s foundation to the accession of Augustus. Livy and Luke have the same purpose, although they understand it differently: all history points to its present fulfilment. Virgil, Livy’s contemporary, was read as a text-book in his own lifetime. It would be surprising if, a century later when Luke was writing, there was not complete familiarity across the Empire with the works of both these writers, especially by one who as a physician would have been educated in philosophy and the arts and given also his own mastery as a writer. On this supposition, Luke’s readers had Livy as background against which to set his narrative.
What does this do for the historicity of Luke’s account? This is a question for the modern mind, not for the writers of the period. For them, imitation was a compliment to the past and a compelling contribution to an author’s argument. ‘By emulating esteemed literature of the past…...(Luke sets out to) establish and vindicate a new social, cultural and political identity.’ (MacDonald p.203).
What Luke changes is as significant as what he accepts. Romulus was the first king of Rome and was celebrated by Livy as the author of its military prowess. His ascension takes place as he reviews his army on the Campus Martius, a fitting final scene for one whose father was the god of war, Mars. This is not a promising model for Luke. Nor would Livy’s own assessment of his sources have escaped him. ‘Traditions which belong to the time before Rome was founded are rather adorned with poetic legends…….It is the privilege of antiquity to mingle divine things with human…..’ (Preface 7).
From this unpromising context, Luke builds his canvas. He abandons the military context, which would not be lost on his Roman readers, some of whom might be willing to grant his courage for challenging the Empire’s historian. Luke’s Ascension, though monumental, is brief. Its understated significance is conveyed by the fact that it is narrated twice. Its shape and prominence is set within a slowly unfolding narrative of silence, wonder and disbelief; memory, grief and trauma; kinship, friendship and mother-son/Father-Son relationship; prophecy and apocalypse; calling, revelation and mission; political and social renewal; personal and global; human and divine; prayer and worship.
Luke and Livy converse. Luke follows Livy: ‘Ye shall be my witnesses….unto the uttermost parts of the earth.’ Livy anticipates and reinforces Luke: ‘From that moment Romulus was no more on earth,’ conveyed in Livy’s Latin with the force, simplicity and totality of a decree.‘nec deinde in terris Romulus fuit.’ (nor from thenceforth on earth Romulus was). The fuit is not narrative but existential. The usage anticipates John 1.1 in principio erat verbum just as the phrase deum deo natum anticipates the Creed. These usages illustrate the flow of ideas and understanding from which the beliefs we have inherited emerge.
Luke raises questions, the answers to which are to be found in his silence. How to account for the empty tomb? Luke’s answer is to offer two men in white apparel, linking the Empty Tomb and the Ascension. Livy’s answer: It is empty because ‘Romulus was no more on earth.’ Luke no more needs to provide further explanation than he does for how the Companions at Emmaus managed to return to Jerusalem when it was already evening and the day far spent. He is not interested in a ‘how’. The unfolding revelation of the Walk and the Supper are all that needs to be said. The Companions’ place is now back in Jerusalem.
Which is where Luke takes us and leaves us.
OooOOOooo
Peter Liddell’s paper ‘A Sabbath Day’s Walk with Two Companions, Luke and Rembrandt’ appeared in Modern Believing, Autumn 2019.
https://www.growkudos.com/publications/10.3828%25252Fmb.2019.25/reader
peterspapers (pe2526ter.blogspot.com) (under revision)