Charles Flynn

There has been a discussion for a little while on how much money we should spend on Overseas Aid. We are well short of the 0.7% of GDP recommended by organisations such as Christian Aid, Oxfam. But whatever the right and wrongs of this, why should we send any money to those in the Third World? After all you may think charity begins at home and it should stop there! Haven't we got problems at home? Doesn't hospice and all the other charities deserve our first consideration? Where do you think our wealth came from in the first place? Look at British history - European history. We are rich because of the sweat of others - slaves from Africa, poor people from the Carribean, resources mined from other countries, heritage and art in our museums. We plundered it from the poor years ago. Shouldn't we give something back? Hopefully most of you will think we should. Some of it should be given by Government and our Government should not shirk any of its responsibilities in doing so. Also I believe our very wealthy citizens who reside here should look in the mirror once in a while and GIVE some of their wealth to the poor. It is commonly recognised that poor people give a higher percentage of their wealth to charity than do rich ones. Well this doesn't appear to be fair and equitable. We used to have an IOM policy of aspiring to be a caring, sharing society. It would be good for the rich to take a lead. Moreover, it may be that cash hand outs are not the right answer. But aid directed to appropriate projects such as education, farming, clean water would go a long way to redress the inbalance between our wealth and those in the Third World. Surely it would enhance our branding image as well!

George Monbiot, the journalist, says that we are all killers and we will continue to kill until we stop flying. The aviation industry takes the predominant blame for climate change as the fastest growing source of carbon dioxide emissions. The total effect of aircraft emissions is 2.7 times as great as the effect of carbon dioxide alone. The water vapour they produce forms ice crystals in the upper troposphere which trap the earth's heat. The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, if you add the two effects together, says aviation emissions alone will exceed the government's targets for the country's entire output of greenhouse gases in 2050 by approximately 134%. The Government ignores this by excluding international aircraft emissions from the target. It would appear that there is presently no means to sustain long-distance high speed travel. Even bio-fuels will not help as aircraft would need more arable land than is available on the planet. Anyone who comes up with an idea to continue the way we are now would undoubtedly be well rewarded. We would not like being told to stop going on long distance holdays or losing cheap air travel or perhaps changing instead to train and sea travel. But it may come to this.

According to Noam Chomsky - Hegemony or Survival, the great biologist, Ernst Mayr of Harvard reflected on the search for extra terrestial intelligence and whether there was any chance of it existing some years ago. He decided the chances were effectively zero. His view was based on the adaptive value of higher intelligence such as that which humans have and which is peculiar to our intellectual organisation as a species. Mayr estimated that there had been about 50 billion species since life began. Only one species had achieved the intelligence to establish civilisation. It did so, perhaps a hundred thousand years ago, in a small breeding group of which we are the survivors. He speculates that this form of intellectual organisation may not be favoured by natural selection. He believes in fact that life on earth refutes the claim that "its better to be smart than stupid" when you consider the success of species such as beetles and bacteria compared to higher organisms. He also rather sombrely makes the observation that the average species has a life expectancy of 100,000 years! It is clear that we may have a problem and that if collectively we don't work together to combat threats such as climate change, we are very likely to become extinct. What is your view?

We are now in the depths of the winter's weather. Snow, sleet, cold are biting into our bodies. But it is not only humans who feel the cold and have a bit of discomfort, cold weather is lethal for many small birds who need their daily bread to survive. It is one of our duties to feed them if we care for nature. Feeding and protecting them are necessities. Cats are a constant problem in our garden. We have a cat scan but it offers limited protection. Also we have thick evergreen shrubs with thorns to help early nesters such as blackbirds and robins. Holly is good with the berries providing free food. A male and female holly is necessary. Shrubs also help dunnocks. In our organic garden which makes us self sufficient for most of the year we also have nesting boxes for Blue Tits, great tits and house sparrows. The boxes are out of reach of the cats. We buy lots of feed from across as recommended by RSPB. It is important that birds have a constant supply of food as well as clean water. Lots of sunflower seed which can be bought locally provides the energy the birds require. A final point - cats can be seen as the enemy but of course they aren't. It is only necessary to keep the birds reasonably safe. Remember to put bird tables, ground feeding areas and bird baths in as open a space as you can.

It happened last Wednesday. The thing we all fear. I switched my laptop on to be informed there was a hitch. Windows xp could not be accessed. Please find your original CD firing up disc and reinstall the program said the message. Of course I have no original disc. If I ever did have it has long disappeared into some black hole. I took the computer off to PC Solutions and was told it wouldn't be ready till Monday at the earliest. This was the nightmare scenario as I had to complete various projects by the weekend. Luckily Peter relented and said he would do his best and I could come back on Thursday. I did so, took the machine home, switched on and was able to access my manuscripts. But then I tried to dial up the internet. No go. I tried everything, rang Manx Telecom on four separate occasions but nothing worked after trying all the possible options. On Friday the machine went back to PCS who found all sorts of thing wrong. Onspeed and Google Desktop they said had mucked the whole system up. I left the machine with them on Friday and now I have got it returned late Saturday when at last I am back in business. It seems we can no longer operate without these things and love them or hate them we have to put up with them. Usually they are a great blessing but when they go wrong life becomes rather terse.

Can knowledge be bad? Or does all knowledge have neutral value? What is your answer? Probably it will be the latter. This a question which is particularly relevant these days as scientists expand the frontier of what is known. They are increasingly likely to go into ethically questionable areas and discover things which could destroy us all. But is knowledge inherently bad or value-neutral? How to commit crime, murder , maim. Producing weapons of mass destruction, mutating virus's such as bird flu or HIV so that they become even more virulent might all appear to be bad but really are value-neutral. The knowledge itself is neutral even if human actions are bad. There is knowledge we would be better off not knowing. The invention of the car or of the plane has led to crashes which could not have happened before. This is a form of inherently bad knowledge. Incorrect knowledge is also bad. 2+2=5. A medical specialist not knowing his subject and making incorrect decisions is bad. Believing your car is in correct working order, when there is a screw loose which causes it to crash (not you, the car!) is bad in the context of knowledge. Another form of bad knowledge is bad memories - the painful loss of a loved one, the remembrance of war, or oppression, and other bad things which have happened is bad knowledge This sort of memory ruins lives for ever. As a society we pursue knowledge. There is so much around these days that not all of it is value-neutral, some of it must be bad. We must distinguish between them.

A major political event happened on Sunday. The Postive Action Group went public announcing its arrival on the Island's political scene. The aim is to restore trust in the workings of our Parliamentary democracy I believe. I know some of the individuals but I do not have any more information on how they formed and what their aims are other than that which has been sent out by them through the media. Open transparent Government, rigorous financial controls and a system which is fair to all the people are their three core aims. These would be the aims of most political groupings. This event may well herald the re-energising of other parties - such as Mec Vannin, the Celtic League, the Manx Labour Party, the Greens and others. I would like it to be so as it is important that we don't change our Government from being run by so called Independents which most of us regard as a one party system to another one but just of a different grouping of people. If we are to have party politics - there needs to be several to choose from. What is clear is that we want Government of the people, by the people and for the people. The Isle of Man is a free country but there is increasing awareness that we are in danger of becoming a two-tier society - if indeed this has not already happened. The danger is that one section of our community - those with influence because of wealth or position or both will exert undue influence on our policies. It could be that the money factor will choke our democracy to death. It is a truism that you can have wealth for a few, or democracy, but you can't have both. Big money is influencing our Government. This is because our policies are to go all out for expansion of our economy at almost any price. In my view our representatives should have exercised more prudence over the years. The people I believe are now demanding a change in direction. They are reclaiming their rights. They want Tynwald to be a true democratic parliament. They are prepared to fight to ensure it becomes just that.

50years ago only about 10%-15% of young people in the developed world went to university whereas now it is about 50% although both these figures were and are rather less in the UK. Most of this great expansion has been due to the needs of the economy and the need to compete in a world wide market. There are those who feel this expansion has been at the expense of standards and the pursuit of excellence. More means less goes their argument. Others reject this and point to better teaching and the undoubted increase in the quality of life for more people with education being a major contributory factor. However there is a suspicion that excellence can exclude others - it is elitist. But surely this is the way it has to be whether we like it or not? There is another side to the story of course. How do we pay for this expansion and how do we maintain standards and excellence within our universities? The Director of the London School of Economics, Howard Davies, is on record as stating that 25 years ago leading schools in the UK spent more per student than Yale and Harvard, this proportion has now fallen to just 25% of leading Ivy League spending per student. So we do have a problem. Now UK students have to pay fees - although they are well below the cost of providing undergraduate education. However it is obvious that there is a need to explore alternate funding. This could come from business although basic research should continue to be funded by Government. However to maintain and improve standards it is thought that additional funding could be provided from the commercial sector and individual researchers or a team of researchers would compete to receive it. By doing this it is felt that the best minds would remain or be attracted to research within our universities and these people would also be available to teach undergraduates so providing our undergraduates/graduates with an opportunity to see excellence. This appears to be the way forward.

These days the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is looked upon with suspicion. It is seen as elitist. How times have changed. Years ago ideas, culture were held up as something to strive for and academics were held in high esteem. Bertrand Russell, C.M.Joad, Julian Huxley, Freddie Ayer were regulars on programmes such as the Brains Trust which had high audience figures. Today such people are almost ignored. Unless the knowledge acquired has an obvious economic value to the community or a practical value in people's lives it is given little attention. Education for its own sake, knowledge for its own sake, art for its own sake, culture for its own sake are not what society wants. There has to be a social value or an economic value. I think this applies particularly on this Island. It is the same with Universities. Unless the work, perhaps research has a vital role to play in our economy, it is rejected or downplayed. Should it be like this? Should 'institutionalised philistinism' be the norm? Awkward questions - searching questions- need to be asked to ensure our society embraces matters which cannot be valued in simple economic terms but which nevertheless do have value in civilised society, if for no other reason but the health of individuals who want these things to be available to improve their quality of life.

Reading the Forums makes you realise that there is a fair amount of election campaigning going on. Anonymous Forum members are getting particularly shirty with each other. You can tell they are potential opponents as the ones who are fighting obviously live in the same area and have expressed an interest in the "Keys". They are enmeshed in "rape and pillage" politics because that is their style - destructive rather than constructive, negative rather than positive. You know the type only too well. Outlandish statements are made by usually someone who holds themselves up to be potentially the greatest Manx politician since King Orry was around. The facts often tell us otherwise. Well does all this nastiness work? Should they instead be nice to each other or at least civil? I am no expert in this field but in the interest of fair play, and to be genuinely helpful to those who need advice even though I suspect they won't take it, I am prepared to tell them there is evidence that nastiness works against the blighter who starts it. For instance in a recent poll it was found 31% of people responding sided with the person on the receiving end, only 2% sided with the candidate making the attack - and the rest of the voting public couldn't care less. Wouldn't it be more civilised and useful to us if the candidates for the "Keys" concentrated on the issues rather than making "snide" remarks and attacking their opponents at the personal level. This way we may get better results for the Island and our image wouldn't suffer so much. I know it is difficult with so much bad publicity over the last four years but perhaps some effort in this direction could be made. We can only hope!

I spent most of the day at a workshop organised by DOLGE on Climate Change - and how it will affect the IOM. Some 50 individuals representing a wide cross section of the Manx community were present including the Minister for the DOLGE, John Rimmington and also Mrs Clare Christian MLC from the Department. The meeting was organised by consultants, ACCLIMATISE. The website UKCIP will supply anyone who is interested with details of similar seminars in the UK and the DOLGE website has updates on the workshops in December and will soon have information about the work completed at the present workshops. It is encouraging to see the committment of so many people to this topic on the Island and I believe it will stand us in good stead in the years to come as businesses take climate change into account for their future gauging the effects flooding, storm damage, sea level rises etc have on biodiversity, property, health, transport, tourism, agriculture etc and adapting their plans accordingly. It is hoped the effects on Douglas Promenade, farming currently having to undergo radical changes because of the E.U. and derogation and the All Island Strategic Plan will be examined in some detail and the final report is expected during this Summer after which it will be presented to the Council of Ministers possibly in October.

I have had a little feed back from yesterday with people enquiring about the history and meaning of Lent so as it is Ash Wednesday I thought I would put a few thoughts down for those of you who want to know more. Lent is the fast of 40 days before Easter. The first mention of 40 days probably associated with Lent, occurs in the Canons of Nicaea (AD 325). It is thought the custom originated in the prescribed fast of baptismal candidates, and the number 40 was evidently suggested by the 40 days' fasts of Moses, Elijah, and especially Jesus. The number 40 was made up in the Latin Churches around about the 7th century with the period being set from Ash Wednesday to Maundy Thursday. During the first centuries AD fasting was very strict. Only one meal a day during evening was allowed with flesh-meat, fish, eggs off the menu. From the 9th century in the Western Church things were relaxed and the religious could eat at mid-day. Fish was allowed in the Middle Ages. The strict discipline however still applies in the Eastern churches. In the Western churches the penitential character of Lent is reflected in the liturgy, with purple vestments and the omission of the Alleluia and the Gloria in excelsis at Mass. Lent is a time of penance by abstaining from festivities, by almsgiving, and by devoting more time to religious activities such as reading a Lent book. Lent of course leads to Easter the greatest Festival of the Church.

As I am writing this it is about to be Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day. On Wednesday - Ash Wednesday - fasting during the 40 days of Lent begins. Shrove Tuesday comes from the Middle England word "shriven" meaning receiving absolution from sins. For Anglicans there is a three fold practice for Lent: give something up take something up and read a Lent book. This year's Lent book recommended by the Archbishop of Canterbury is "Free of Charge" by Miroslav Volf. Shrove Tuesday is 47 days before Easter Sunday. It is a day of penitence, to clean the soul, and a day of celebration as it is the last day to feast before Lent begins. Many of us will have pancakes with plenty of eggs, cream, milk and flour with salt and butter as well. Some will take part in Pancake races. I hope you enjoy your pancakes and share them with others - not like a little boy in my church on Sunday. When asked if he would share his pancake he replied "No way!"

There are many comments these days about the facts that students are taking "easy" subjects at University rather than physics, chemistry, mathematics. Now what is easy to one could be very difficult for someone else. But certainly the figures show a decline in the number of applicants for traditional academic subjects which I believe is serious. Science is exciting. There are great discoveries to be made. For instance it is expected that biotechnology will produce this century organisms that are half human and half machine. So no doubt there will be great debates not only on whether this is achievable but whether it is ethical. Science promises to be at the fore front and those who qualify in science should have very satisfactory and fulfilling careers ahead of them. Alan Lightman, Professor of Humanities at MIT suggests that interest in the sciences may well be stimulated by reading suitable books. He recommends three in particular for non-scientists who want to learn more about science: "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin. "The Character of Physical Law" by Richard Feynman. "A Mathematician's Apology" by G H Hardy. I was at a careers convention some weeks ago where students - all too few - were inquirying about science. Perhaps a reading of these might get them started. I hope so. It promises to be an century of discovery.

Are you aware: If you die tomorrow, the company that you are working for could easily replace you in a matter of days? But the family you have left behind will feel the loss for the rest of their lives. We give more of ourselves to work than to our family. An unwise investment indeed!

Since the Budget I have been giving a few thoughts to our apparent rush for economic success. There is no doubt we are at the mercy of economic forces. We appear to have got ourselves on to a tread mill where there is only one thought - we must have growth to finance the various schemes which this Island has become involved in over the last few years. We are more than before at the mercy of forces outside our control on the world stage. We have to increase our wealth to maintain living standards, to provide employment and to increase the revenue from tax. The question we should keep in mind is how this will affect our people - all our people not just the privileged few who will undoubtedly benefit. Housing provision will surely be at the expense of the poorer sections of our community. In my view too little will trickle down. It never does. So social problems will increase. These are major issues which Government must address otherwise many of our people will suffer because of the path set by a few influential individuals and companies now.

Silence is golden and offers a new dimension to those who take advantage of it in this busy world. James Carroll the writer says: "We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things... but there are times when we stop. We sit still. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper." When was the last time you simply stopped and sat still taking in the stillness and enjoying the silence? Or at least the silence that you are permitted with so many extraneous noises around. Believers know God is in the silence "Be still and know I am God" (Psalm 46:10. Listen to the silence. Listen to what you have to say to yourself. Listen also to what He has to say.

I have just attended a Fairtrade Initiative meeting. For any who are interested in buying Fairtrade products and getting major companies, Governments, schools etc to use Fairtrade products and in so doing helping Third World producers - giving them a fair price for their goods and a living wage, the IOM will have a principle one day event on Friday, March 10th - 10.00 a.m.-3.30 p.m.- during Fairtrade Fortnight at 44 Duke St., Douglas when a number of traders will be displaying their products. This empty shop was the "Ministry of Suits" and is next to KFC. Shakti Mann, Traidcraft, Oxfam and the Co-op will be present and others may join them. Tea and coffee will be provided for free tasting. I want this Island to encourage more people to learn about the problems which are everyday occurrences in other places and use more of our wealth to help them. By doing so I believe we will get far more in return than we can possibly imagine.

Today I read this about Billy Graham, the great Baptist preacher of our time. He is now over 85 years old and he has a message to us on faithfulness which I believe is relevant to all of us whether we are Christians or not. He said: "God I want to be faithful. I want to be faithful to You. I want to be faithful to my family. I want to be faithful to my future family. I want to be faithful to every friendship. I want to be faithful to the calling on my life. I want to be faithful and that means I can also be honest". May faithfulness and happiness be yours, today and always.

Probably waiting for a meeting sometime in the distant future. This is a very important matter for many island residents. Anyone who gets a degree through the OU deserves support. It was one of the best things Harold Wilson started. It is good for the Island to enable its residents the ability to improve themselves and in so doing to better the community. I can see those at the Education Dept. examining the economic benefits of particular courses before subsidising students. But when will the students and those wanting to start studies know?