Keith Hebden’s Seeking Justice (book review)

“You write a blog, don’t you?” It was an odd response to my suggestion that I needed to get cash out of a cashpoint before I could buy Keith’s new book. The deal: I could have a copy free in return for a review. I skipped a queue of books and got on with reading it straight away. I’m glad I did; of the various books on radical Christianity I’ve picked up in recent years, few have turned out to be both as radical and as reasonable as Seeking Justice.

My life 10 years on

I’m not the only person who has spent the last fortnight reflecting back over ten years of conflict in Iraq. A military conflict as controversial as Iraq is likely to continue to provide discussion fodder for the media for years to come, and more so when government files regarding the conflict are ‘unlocked’ in decades to come. But for myself, its also a very important personal anniversary to look back on.

Church Shopping

For myself, a sizeable aspect of settling in to new surroundings is finding a Church I can belong to. This probably shouldn’t come as a massive surprise – Church is an important concept in my life. Starting afresh in a new place offers a challenge and a moment of opportunity: it can take some serious energy to find a church that one can fit into, rather than simply attend as a peripheral pew-filler.

Moving on, Moving out

Its with great sadness that I have a major personal announcement of the kind I don’t usually like to do on this blog. My time in York is drawing to a close, as I prepare to take up a role at Church Action on Poverty in Manchester on 3rd September. Barring a sudden offer of employment in York, I’ll be saying sad farewells at the end of August.

What on Earth to do?

I like to think of myself as someone who will rush to stop bad things happening when I see or hear them. I will challenge people for making remarks that are at least overtly homophobic or sexist, for instance. I tend to think of myself as the sort of person to check if people are ok if they’re in the middle of a street and don’t look it. Just occasionally I’ll even cross a road in the process. But a few recent events have been worrying me. [Trigger warning: Domestic Violence]

A relaxed January

2011 was a year when just about everything imaginable happened. I was left worrying that this year would be no different, but actually, its been much quieter. Its not that bad stuff hasn’t happened, its just that many things haven’t been repeated. In fact, its hard to remember some of what was happening this time last year. So I had a look to see how January 2011 and January 2012 compare.

Happy New Year!

Its not just that the first 2/3rds of 2011 felt like a full year all by themselves, I genuinely wish we could move New Years day to September 1st. So many people’s lives restart at this point in time, it just makes sense.

Phone Hacking: a crisis of agency for the rest of us

The unearthing of a hacking scandal at NewsCorp and the massive media circus of Murdoch ‘on trial’ before the commons select committee provided a spectacle that held what felt like the whole population in some sort of trance. It felt as if the whole of the establishment was just about to cave in on itself. The problem, and the reason I found the whole episode so difficult to deal with, was the impossible task of finding a way to do anything.

Comments and Writer’s Block

In the 4 years I’ve been writing this blog, its largely been unnecessary to remove comments that weren’t spam. I’m pretty loathe to remove a comment that isn’t an attempt to market a product, as my inner-Liberal gets easily offended by such censorship. Unfortunately, and after almost a year of vaguely considering it, I’ve had to take the decision to bar someone from posting comments.

RIP Climate Camp

An announcement has now been made on the results of the Climate Camp retreat late last month. The gathering was designed to allow longer thinking times with less pressure. The decision: to formally end Climate Camp.