Who wrote Chapter 133?

I was all set to reject Dan Brown's latest novel "The Lost Symbol" before I'd read through even a quarter of the book. The central character, Robert Langdon, had been through more than the full "Indiana Jones" experience in previous escapades yet remained "a realist, and a skeptic (sic)" with no sign of any awakening to the mysteries that seem to unfold about him on an hourly basis. What a closed-minded and recalcitrant figure he cuts through much of the tale, and seems to become more annoyingly dogmatic in his refusal to open his eyes and his mind as the story progresses.

Add to this the extracts of mysticism and metaphysical science that seem to have been cut-and-pasted into the narrative. You sense that Brown has grazed superficially through a limited research list to come up with Wikipedia-like sound-bites to pad out the storyline. I almost laughed out loud when, later in the book, a student actually reads out a Wikipedia entry on the Masons during a Langdon lecture. Nice one -- that filled up a few more paragraphs, I thought.

Catholics can breathe a huge sigh of relief as they are, for once, not baddies in this tale. However much of the plotline mimics "The Da Vinci Code", albeit that we are not taken on a tour of the world, but of the Washington, DC. Which is why in my mind's eye, I was not seeing Tom Hanks running about the nation's capital as I read this but Nicholas Cage in the "National Treasure" movies that have already touched on similar subject matter.

Oh dear, I thought, here we go again. "Code" seemed to be a mish-mash of conspiracy theories, myths, tenuous connections and distillations from earlier books like "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail". So was "Symbol" going to be just another link from the Dan Brown sausage-machine?

Well, no as it turns out. Because suddenly out of the grab-a-clue-and-run sequence of events we enter a zone of serenity. A period of reflection, re-evaluation, revelation even. Chapter 133 (a significant number in itself once you have read the story) is no unfulfilled conclusion; no anticlimax of a mystery that remains just out of reach, never to be unearthed. It is the capstone on the pyramid.

Up until now the reader has been presented with lots of ancient mysticism and scientific discovery that would tend to suggest that "miracles" can and do happen. This is wrapped inside the quest for a mystery that lies hidden but will confer great power upon its finder. The wrapping keeps the sceptic enthused while his/her cynicism is chipped away at by a regular presentation of the "evidence". Chapter 132 ends, and you are tempted to close the book as Dan Brown seems to have done enough but no....

Then the bombshells hit. Science in The Bible. The study of human thought processes bringing science and ancient wisdom (and, dare I say, the foundations of religions) together. The power of the mind to transform -- the stuff of pure magic -- and this being quantifiable through scientific experiment. That all the mystery we ever looked for in the outside world, was inside us all along. We are left looking in the mirror, and seeing the Holy Grail in reflection.

A very profound ending. Did Brown really write this? I can't help feeling that older, wiser hands were at work weaving a message of great hope and the promise of transformation into this chapter. Pure alchemy. Perhaps the time really is coming (2012?) when the minds of all will be opened to effectively share in a universal consciousness. If so then Brown (and any helpers) will have helped to kick-start the process by injecting deep meaning into this sure-fire bestseller.

Anarchy in the UK

There is some very odd and outdated ideology at work behind the scenes in the management of Britain.

We may have thought that the ban on foxhunting was the last gasp of those still fighting a class war that has long since moved on to new territory. But no, the undercurrents of old-fashioned socialism are now coupled with the political spin machine. Facts are blatantly disregarded in order to construct a media perception of injustice, against which the government can be seen to act. This is no more apparent than in the two fields in which I am involved: education and finance.

A recent report by the Sutton Trust educational charity confirmed what many of us already knew -- that clever state school pupils are being held back from applying to top universities by their teachers' "inverse snobbery". Yet for years it has been the universities that took the brunt of the attack for not admitting more state school pupils. In effect the government has been endorsing the view that these institutions are elitist, and has consistently applied pressure on them to agree to taking quotas of students from the state system.

At the same time the government has forced universities to take a proportion of students from overseas, by dint of making it a necessary financial requirement -- overseas students pay at least 3 times more in tuition fees than UK/EU students. This has become so farcical that now UK students are being turned away from courses where places are still open for overseas students. Oh, and if that is not paradoxical enough...strict new visa guidelines brought in earlier in the year are now making it far more difficult for overseas students to come to Britain compared with other university destinations.

The confusion in government policy lies in not knowing the difference between elitism and meritocracy. The difference is about half a century. Access to the best education is now based on academic qualifications, not on birthright. You are privileged because you are intelligent and worked hard for the study place, and not because daddy gave the rector a funny handshake! Private schools and universities are often very selective...in choosing students that are not only clever, but willing and able to contribute something to the institution they are joining. These days Billy Elliot probably has far more chance of acceptance than Billy Bunter.

If the political left were ever suspicious of the workings of our top private schools and universities, then they have positively seethed at the abundance created in the City over the years.

London is one of the most important financial capitals in the world -- a position it has achieved through being the centre of Greenwich Mean Time and a hub of global trade for many centuries. But its maturation came in the final decades of the last century when benign taxation and a commonsense attitude to regulation attracted huge investment from first the United States and Japan, and then the newly emerging countries of Asia and Europe. A great success story for the UK economy, and a pillar of support in an environment of weakening manufacturing industry and North Sea oil revenues.

A well-fuelled train that is gathering momentum will run away if there is no-one in charge to apply the brakes. So it was with the financial industry in that rising property values and currencies should have alerted governments in the UK and US to the risk of "doing a Japan"-- of a bubble-burst causing great harm to the economy. But all chose to ride the train with the taps open. The Bank of England couldn't see any inflation so didn't raise interest rates early enough to quell the runaway growth (even though property price inflation was rampant). The government was happy to ride the crest of the wave, and Gordon Brown took the crown for his "prudent" management of the economy.

It therefore seems utterly ludicrous to blame the train for the crash when the drivers were happy to sip champagne as they raced towards the buffers!

While we can understand that in politics it is necessary to blame someone other than yourself in order to remain in power, it becomes extremely worrying when supposedly impartial civil servants espouse the same ideology.

Lord Turner has today done just that with his suggestion for special taxes on banks to discourage the awarding of large bonuses for "socially useless activities". Notwithstanding that his organisation -- the FSA -- was supposed to govern the banks in the first place, and found itself totally asleep at the switch when everything went pear-shaped. (I would like to know his definition of a "socially useless activity"!) The hand of Lord Mandelson never seems to be far from these outbursts but it should ring very loud alarm bells throughout London. At a time when the 2012 Olympic games require huge investment, and the banks are still getting back on their feet again, the last thing London's economic engine needs is for water to be poured in the fuel tank. The government coffers may be empty, but they will not fill them in the long term if they meddle in an industry that only thrives through being free to operate.

That does not mean stepping back and letting them get on with it. But like tackling global issues such as the effect of climatic change, or resource depletion, a new code of ethics is necessary worldwide to ensure that the more deplorable aspects of financial dealings never rise in prominence again. There are interesting dicsussions already on the status of tax havens, for instance. Tighten up the moral framework, put in effective regulation -- not underfunded or under-resourced as at the FSA -- and then let the City do what it does best, but within parameters that everyone can live with. More tax revenues will be generated by a hands-off approach than by "punishing" bankers with politically-expedient punitive taxes and regulations.

Long-term planning is now vital to pull the UK out of its near bankrupt state. It is essential that in rebuilding Britain, our centres of global excellence such as education and finance are nurtured.

Sadly this may now be too much to ask from a government still wedded to anachronistic views of social inequality and elitism, and to delivering bite-sized, short-term policy actions.

Defining white collar crime and the Extradition Act 2003

I am not being too facetious, honestly, but isn't it somewhat ironic that RBS is still trying to extract the USD6.1 million owed to them under terms of sentence by the "NatWest 3"?

Guardian article, 26th July 2009

This being the bank that through its managers' own deliberate actions was almost ruined, and had to be bailed out by taxpayers?

An example of "do as I say, not do as I do" if ever I have seen one.

But this case also reminds us of that ugly period of Blairite sycophancy to the Bush administration, and its amoral actions couched in a form of self-righteousness. A time when we joked with fear in our eyes about becoming the next State in the USA. And one of the events that seemed to confirm this was the bizarre Extradition Act of 2003, which seemed to hand the keys of our police cells to US courts. Claiming to be an important piece of anti-terrorist legislation, it was already faulty from the start in that the US had not intention of extraditing suspects to the UK. Notwithstanding this, the UK government has bent over backwards to honour its one-sided obligation to this treaty. And in at least two well known cases, it has done so willingly when terrorism was never the charge behind calls for extradition.

The Natwest 3 were one of those cases, and they changed their pleas to guilty while in the US, but then have been allowed to serve a reduced sentence in Ford open prison in the UK. A deal was clearly done; perhaps in order that Enron dirty linen wasn't aired again in public and the three could return quickly to a prison in the UK rather than languish in a US jail awaiting the end of a trial to prove their innocence.

But what about Mr McKinnon, the hacker who broke into a number of secure US websites?

BBC article 30/7/09

Surely as he is alleged to have committed the crime on UK soil, he should be tried here under UK law? Moreover, as there is no evidence that he belongs to any form of terrorist organisation, but was working alone, the Extradition Act should in no way be enforceable. It is not enough to call for Extradition because your government departments have been embarrassed by their poor online security.

The Conservatives will probably kick this legislation into the long grass when they come to power. Sadly, an opposition motion calling for a review of the Act was defeated by 54 votes earlier in the month -- maybe Labour MPs, embattled on so many fronts, cannot face opening up any more festering old wounds and so voted for stasis.

Change to the Act may come too late to save Mr McKinnon from being sent to the US. Yet maybe this is the time for our Law Lords, and not our politicians, to show some backbone. Time to take a stand for the fairness of British justice, and the right of British citizens to be tried in their own country

The Marine and Coastal Access Bill: protecting a resource that is of strategic national importance

After an excellent campaign against the mandatory introduction of biofuels (without due heed paid to the way in which biofuel crops are farmed), the RSPB is now tackling the marine environment. The Marine and Coastal Access Bill is due to be read and discussed in Parliament after the Summer Recess.

As it stands, it is already full of holes -- one would potentially allow conservation areas to be ravaged without the perpetrators facing prosecution.

The RSPB has a pre-formatted letter to send to your local MP which can be accessed at this page:

RSPB letter

You are able to add your own comments, so for what it is worth this is what I appended to mine:

As an adjunct to this RSPB letter, I would like to believe that a strong Bill would also re-impose our sovereignty over an area of our territory we seem to have turned a blind eye to as a nation. We have to put an end to wasteful and unfair fisheries policies, and while it is always going to be a hard battle at the EU level, we can win the fight in our own waters with a strong Bill.

We must see this as being of strategic national importance. Just as we prohibit the building of houses on prime agricultural land, because we know that it is a scarce resource on our island -- let alone globally -- we should see the marine environment as part of this equation. Just because it is out of sight beneath the waves, does not mean it should be out of mind.

Of course all this means nothing if the Bill is not enforceable, and so it is vital that adequate resources are made available to protect our coastline more adequately. But then if that joins up with a desire to bolster our Customs & Excise patrols against smuggling, then there could be a shared budget with an expanded remit to monitor fishing vessel movements and activities. And if all vessels carry transponders then there is no reason at all that this could not be easily monitored with a satellite and GPS.

No, it is down to having the will in the House to take a tough decision for long, rather than short term benefit. That may be too much to hope for in the current climate. But as primary resources become increasingly scarce on this planet, we will face more and more challenges. And adequately managing our marine environment will probably be one of the easiest for us to rise to, as the resource lies within our control.

Faith versus flu

Yesterday, the act of sharing the chalice of wine will have been absent from many Anglican Holy Communion services following instructions from the archbishops of Canterbury and York to withdraw it temporarily.

At face value this might seem a sensible precaution in light of fears that sharing the communal cup could engender the spread of swine flu. At worst it was a bit of an over-reaction, given that during the plague years there didn’t seem to be a need to alter the distribution.

Times article

But there are two aspects of this that rankle.

First of all, the decision on whether or not to participate in sharing the wine has been taken away from the individual. One institution, the Department of Health, has advised another, the Church of England, not to share "common vessels" for food or drink. No-one has thought to give the communicant the choice -- which would seem grossly unfair on at least two counts.

For a start, the same worshipper can step from church and into a tube train. Why is that not equally proscribed, given that there would seem to be at least as much opportunity to catch the disease this way, as from sharing a drink with strangers?

Beyond this issue of common sense, you then have to ask where the individual's ability to show, and act in, faith is.

Scale this up and it becomes the second aspect of the edict that annoys me. It seems that the central ritual of becoming one with Christ and the affirmation of a belief in God has been demoted. It is of lesser importance than the recommendations of government scientists and advisors. Once again in an echo of the Age of Enlightenment, reason has triumphed over faith.

What is upsetting is that the custodians of the faith do not seem to have understood how their actions now undermine their belief system. They were in a position to inform the congregation of the dangers, particularly to pregnant women and those with existing health issues, but then could have left it up to the people to decide if they wished to take the risk.

When Princess Diana shook hands with Aids victims in the eighties, it sent shock waves through the world. No matter that she was highly unlikely to contract the condition through such contact -- it was still an act of faith and a demonstration of compassion that was much needed to alleviate misinformation and prejudice at the time. John Gummer fed his daughter a beef-burger at the height of the mad cow disease scare. He was pilloried for doing so (well, he should have eaten it himself) but again the risks taken were minimal yet a message was needed to avert panic on the streets.

Where is the Church's act of faith now? Where is that photo of an archbishop sharing the communal cup with his flock, safe in the belief that his life is in the hands of God – and not the Department of Health?