Values - Problems & Pitfalls

We hear a lot about ‘values’ these days – societal, Christian, corporate, family, personal. It feels like everyone and everything has values that are worn with a badge of honour, as if that automatically makes us beyond reproach and worthy of sainthood.

A quick google reveals numerous instructive articles, mostly about corporate values, and they all say much the same thing – values should be well-defined, unique, adhered to, blah blah, but their knotty problems and pitfalls are rarely discussed.

I killed an ant and I liked it

Being a tad green around the edges, I respect Mother Nature’s development and defence strategy, that everything depends on everything else. The smallest microbe is essential for the survival of the elephant because of the food-chain, pollination, dependent life-cycles and so forth.

Sometimes this interdependency doesn’t appear to be a good thing – like the ‘butterfly effect’ and chaos theory, where a waft of a delicate wing can, under a series of the right conditions, lead to a hurricane. But I still wouldn’t kill a butterfly because a) they are pretty and harmless and b) they are an important component of a food chain, as predators and prey. And it has to be said that, while very destructive, hurricanes have a part to play in the greater scheme of things and are overall much less harmful than human beings.

Five Loaves, Two Fishes, and an Unintended Consequence

Growing-your-own is a good thing. Everyone knows that. But it’s more than about tastier food at (once you get going) a fraction of the over-priced, under-flavoured, not-the-freshest supermarket stuff.

The first tentative harvesting of the beetroot from our new-this-year vegetable beds proved the flavour thing. And as well as steaming the beets for dinner, I used the leaves in a salad for lunch – so fresh, so tasty, so nutritious, so waste-not-want-not. Grow more veg, eat more veg. Can only be a good thing, right? (Keep reading!)

Everyone should be so lucky, lucky lucky lucky

With apologies to Kylie, I don’t think she was singing about access to the Great British countryside. Maybe I could adapt the lyrics, because today I had the most glorious walk and it struck me that not everyone can do this. 

Friends - the one about the one who wasn't

Ouch! From Hero to Zero quicker than you can paint a toenail, TV Presenter Jessica Mulroney has reportedly been ditched by BFF Meghan Markle. If Ms Markle disposes of her best friend this brutally, what chance those less-favoured at her pseudo-royal court? 

I admit that, having read about it in a tabloid, I might not be in full possession of the truth, whole and nothing but, and it would be unfair to carry on castigating Meghan. I’ll therefore try and stick to general principles, using the tabloid report as a theoretical example. 

I’ve drawn up a table of the characteristics of friendship (as opposed to friendly acquaintances) as I see them (in no particular order): 

Environmental Justice - not everyone can avoid unhealthy trade-offs

One of the hashtags I follow on LinkedIn is #environmentaljustice. A friend asked me, in the light of the Black Lives Matter protests and pandemic hardships, why not #socialjustice? Good question.

One brief definition of environmental justice (EJ) (sometimes referred to as ‘environmental equality’) is “an equitable distribution of environmental benefits between all communities”; social justice (SJ) can be defined as “an equitable distribution of wealth (i.e. economic gains), opportunities and privileges within a society.”

EJ is therefore an integral part of SJ – without the former the latter is incomplete.

EJ is more than about the maintenance and improvement of urban and rural spaces; what truly defines the concept is how and why environmental benefits and harm are spread amongst different communities. Not surprisingly, lower income households are more likely to live in poor-quality environments, which are less expensive and more conducive to chronic lung conditions and disturbed sleep.

Probably The Best Teacher I Ever Had

When I was eight years old or thereabouts (so long ago I can’t remember exactly) I attended the local junior school in the heart of a West-Riding-of-Yorkshire mining-cum-farming village. The community was homogenously white, so when we were introduced to a new trainee teacher, who was Asian, our jaws dropped (that, I do remember). Up until then my sister and I had been the exotic ones, having moved from Cumberland, but this teacher was something else.

Whether he was Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or what mattered not to us. All we cared was that he was more heavily tanned than anyone we knew, spoke with a funny accent (funnier than West Cumbrian, according to my best friend), smelled funny (it must have been garlic) but dressed 'normally'.

Cummings' Reasonable Motives

Just got round to reading the local paper (Bucks Herald) to see the publication of my latest letter-to-the-editor. Also this week, the other local (Leighton Buzzard Observer) published my photo of a great tit leaving its nest in a ceramic deer head on our back wall, but that’s another story.

Back to the letter. I wouldn’t say I was unquestionably in agreement with Dominic Cummings’ dash to County Durham to secure necessary childcare for his son, rather I was pointing out the hypocrisy and nastiness of some of those railing against him.

My letter in full reads:

Technophobia

This is my first ever on-line Blog-post. It must be pretty obvious to all and sundry that I don't know what I'm doing. Give me pen and paper or an old-fashioned typewriter and I'm quick off the blocks for a marathon of words, coherent, erudite, confident, ream after ream. But sit me in front of a computer and I stare - transfixed by its potential and its dangers - at the screen, the keyboard, the on-off button, the ctrl-alt-del buttons. My technophobia kicks off my OCD; because I don't understand everything, I can't do anything. 

Is this Blog one techno-step too far? Through necessity since the Covid-19 lockdown, I've used WhatsApp (hijacking my husband's account as I was too scared to set up my own), skyped and face-timed with friends (with drink in hand so we call it skinking and finking), participated in three Zoom meetings, and have just registered for a Webinar with Teams. I have no idea what that last bit means by the way. I just know I've done it and, cometh the day cometh the hour, I'll see whether I've actually sold my soul to the Devil.