AUTUMN GLOOM

It was Remembrance Day on Sunday and as usual a large crowd gathered in the town centre for a minute's silence, a service and wreath laying.  I am always impressed at how people turn out for this, especially the young.  Actually I often wonder what young people make of this ceremony.  It must be the only time they see so many men in suits AND ties.  And hats!

But I am pleased too that the World Wars are now appearing in school history curricula; so much more relevant to who we are (and what we want to be) than studying the Elizabethans.

I am always emotional when the bugler sounds the Last Post.   Must be the plaintive notes, because it means nothing else to me.  I always though think how lucky I am.  I was born at the end of the War, which means that, unlike so many others, both my mother and father survived.  Without them, I wouldn't exist.  A bit obvious, but it's pure Fate that they both were engaged in potentially dangerous jobs during the War, yet both lived to tell the tale.  

Or not, actually - very few survivors speak of the War at all.  We are still finding out details now - Churchill's 'secret army' took part in the march-past yesterday for the first time, because we didn't know they existed until recently.   But I often wonder who I would have been if only one of my parents had survived.  I'd be quite different of course.  Maybe not so nice.  Or maybe I still wouldn't have existed.  Who would know?  I suppose I wouldn't.  What miserable thoughts this had all aroused.

To cheer myself up, on my way home, I popped into Tescos for some essentials - sausages, shortbread biscuits, Snickers bars, etc.  But they had their new seasonal bargains display up - snow shovels, anti-freeze, grit for the drive . . .  How depressing everything is!

Luckily the sun was shining and I was able to spend the rest of the day in the garden.  That shouls cheer me up.  Argh!  What's this in the middle of my lawn?

WE WILL REMEMBER

A month or so ago, I was in Staffordshire and visited the National Memorial Arboretum.  The memorial was founded in 1997, not as a war graves cemetery, but as a tribute to all those who died in public service (ie police, firemen, hospital workers, etc), a sanctuary for people to contemplate in silence (there is also a chapel on site), a place to plant a tree as a personal memorial, or a park just to wander and enjoy the plantings. 

There are already 50,000 trees on the site and some 200 separate memorials.  This is the main memorial to all those who have died since the War.  Startlingly, it already has nearly 20,000 names on it.

 The sculptures are rather splendid too.

 

And, movingly, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, a ray of sun shines through this gap in the wall onto the memorial wreath.

 As well as memorials to British dead, there are forgiveness and reconciliation areas.  This is one of the memorials to those who died under the blitz bombing of German cities.  They are built from stones recovered from the Frauenkirche at Dresden and provided by the people of Dresden for the memorial.

And this is the memorial in the Japanese cherry tree garden.

This is one of the non-military memorials.

And this is the Falklands campaign memorial - very much in our minds, as Mrs Thatcher, the then Prime Minister, had herself just passed away.

WHISTLES, TRUMPETS AND HORNS

There have been interesting developments lately involving secrecy.  I give some of my time to the local District Council, by chairing a committee which examines complaints against Councillors.  Of course, I start from the position that the Councillor is not guilty unless proven otherwise.  But it wouldn’t occur to me to look critically at the complainant for revealing sensitive information about the activities of the Council or the proceedings of the committee on which he sits.  In fact, when we wrote our Code of Conduct some while ago, we inserted a clause which says that we will respect and not punish whistleblowers, or something along those lines.

The situation in America seems to be becoming less tolerant than that.  Of course, terrorism has become the new neurosis.  But there have been a number of cases recently of investigation of citizens for espionage or inappropriate use of position or ‘exceeding authority’, etc, when what they have actually done is shed some light on the hidden activities of the administration.  This smacks a little of authoritarianism, if not guilt.  I do believe that there should be some limits on such revelations, but I also think we should know what our democratically elected representatives are actually doing.  This illiberal trend certainly won’t help the case of Bradley Manning.  I don’t expect him to be given the death sentence, but I don’t suppose the ‘no criminal intent’ defence will get him off either.

In this country, at another level, we had the fascinating period of the super-injunction, when celebs (mostly footballers it seemed) would obtain a court order preventing anyone (usually the press and a woman they’d shagged) from saying anything in public about their nefarious activities.  The justification was that disclosure would harm their family life, as though it was the whistleblower that caused the harm, rather than the shagger himself.  What was really interesting was that the press were not even permitted to reveal that a super-injunction had been granted.  That too was secret.  I think all that has stopped now.  But, who knows?  I haven’t been told.

One of these cases sort of came to court the other day, when the subject of a super-injunction had to apologise for words spoken about the object of a super-injunction.  We’re not allowed to know that there was a super-injunction of course.  Isn’t the law wonderful?!  So we’re not to know the name of the footballer (or it might have been a film star or a politician) who was granted the super-injunction, but because he said some disparaging words about the alleged object of the super-injunction, he was taken to court and had to apologise publicly, even though there might not have been a super-injunction.  Are you with me so far?  In court, the shaggee was known as ‘CTB’ to protect her identity and the shagger was known as ‘RJG’ to protect his family.  After the case, Imogen Thomas made a public statement outside the court saying that she was relieved (which was probably the point of the alleged incident in the first place) and vindicated, but of course couldn’t say who she was or what she was relieved about.  The press then reported the whole story with the real names of those involved (since there is no injunction on this subsequent case).  Well, at least secrecy was maintained, the super-injunction wasn’t broken and Ryan Giggs name didn’t come out as the shagger in the woodpile.

We have also seen the US military withdraw from Iraq.  No secrecy was involved here of course, but one interesting outcome of all the secrecy that had gone before was that the military had signally failed to win over hearts and minds, which, as we all know, is the second most important role of the military overseas.  The debate about whether we should have invaded Iraq or whether the cost was worthwhile I leave to history.  But, since they have been in Iraq, the US has improved electricity generation and transmission, improved irrigation and drainage and increased the amount of land under agriculture, created a new sewage collection and treatment system, increased civil aviation capacity and upgraded airports, repaired the fibre-optic network and built a new telephone exchange, increased oil production and reduced import dependence, built prisons, barracks, entry points, and equipped and trained the military, security forces and police, not to mention establishing local administrative committees and democratic elections.  It’s not perfect, but it’s not a bad state to leave the country in. 

But somehow this information has not permeated down to the Iraqi population.  If there’s one thing that needed not to be kept secret, surely it was this.  Now's the chance to get Wikileaks to leaflet the population.  Ask any Iraqi what they think about the US withdrawing and they will say ‘good riddance’, ‘they didn’t do anything for us, except maybe kill my brother’, ‘things were better under Saddam’, etc.  What a waste.  All that expense and cost and all that has been created is resentment and maybe hatred.  If ever there was a need for whistleblowers!  Or at least blowing one’s own trumpet.  Or is it tooting one’s own horn?