http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/falklandislands/9611250/Britains-ambassador-to-Chile-angers-Argentina-after-Falkland-Islands-cowards-tweet.html
Sent from my mobile phone
Mike Newman
4 Cuthbert Road
SK8 2DT
0161 428 3983
07590 525217
Tuesday 16 October 2012
Wednesday 30 May 2012
Andrew Roberts: How the Queen Saved and Soothed Britain - WSJ.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203711104577201482209961006.html
Sent from my mobile phone
Mike Newman
4 Cuthbert Road
SK8 2DT
0161 428 3983
07590 525217
Sent from my mobile phone
Mike Newman
4 Cuthbert Road
SK8 2DT
0161 428 3983
07590 525217
Tuesday 29 May 2012
Captain Stephen James Healey killed in Afghanistan - British Army Website
http://www.army.mod.uk/news/24133.aspx
Sent from my mobile phone
Mike Newman
4 Cuthbert Road
SK8 2DT
0161 428 3983
07590 525217
Sent from my mobile phone
Mike Newman
4 Cuthbert Road
SK8 2DT
0161 428 3983
07590 525217
Wednesday 2 May 2012
For England manager read Parish Priest... from an excellent article by Matthew Syed...
But why? Why do we cling to the cult of the England manager despite all the evidence to the contrary? It is at this point that we must turn to anthropology, for, as my colleague Simon Barnes has wonderfully pointed out, the whole phenomenon is explained in TheGolden Bough by Sir James George Frazer.
Frazer tells us about the temporary king, a ruler who has ubiquitous rule, and the liberty to command the winds, the rain, and the crops. But his real function is “not to rule, but to die”. When the crops fail, as they inevitably do, the temporary king is sacrificed so a new king can be anointed. And so the ritual of cleansing, hope and expectation can begin all over again.
That the king has no power to command the crops is neither here nor there. It is as immaterial as the impotence of the manager over the results he is held accountable for. The purpose of the temporary king is deeper and more primal. He is merely the receptacle for our hopes, and the scapegoat upon which we purge our despair. In his immolation we find redemption, and can start the search for his successor, while sowing for next harvest.
In that sense, the England manager is pre-eminently the temporary king of the modern age. When we lavish praise upon him; when we discern his almost magical powers to take our players to the uplands of World Cup glory (despite him seeing them only once in a blue moon); when we vilify and immolate him (just look at the back pages when any England manager is ushered out of the door), we are re-enacting an ancient ritual, albeit in a thoroughly modern guise.
Monday 23 April 2012
New dog
Saturday 21 January 2012
water into wine
Great sermon....
http://richardbauckham.co.uk/uploads/Sermons/Water%20into%20Wine.pdf
Greater miracle
Enjoy
http://richardbauckham.co.uk/uploads/Sermons/Water%20into%20Wine.pdf
Greater miracle
Enjoy
Board Meeting 15.01.2012
Board Meeting 15 January 2012 Thankfulness
This week – leaving aside the tragedy of the four badly burnt children – has been the week of the dog. And so I start with a story about a dog which has been with me from my earliest years.
Although I didn’t take possession of the certificate until after his death in 1985, I well remember my dad, Jim, relating the events of the day in 1946 as a consequence of which he was awarded the RSPCA Silver Medallion. At the time he was a policeman in small town called Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire. News came to him that a dog was trapped on rocks high above the town. Unlike me, he was no lover of dogs and, more to the point, unlike me, neither was he a rock climber. In spite of this, he made his way up to the animal – the certificate says 460 feet – took hold of it, secured it to his person using, if I recall correctly, a belt and carried it down to safety. Hence the award, which now takes pride of place on my dining room wall.
What always sticks in my mind, however, is what the certificate does not say, which is what the dog did after he had placed it on the ground. That’s right. It bit him! An object lesson in ingratitude if ever there was one! My thought day, then, concerns gratitude or thankfulness.
From where does thankfulness originate? Right perception. A particular way of looking at the world. Circumstances change and so too our moods, but there is always a different angle from which things must be viewed. I suppose that the Christian ‘angle’ would be called faith.
Although doggerel, I have always liked this little piece
The difference between
an optimist and a pessimist is droll.
One sees the donut
the other sees the whole
And so, instead of thinking that the world owes us a living, let’s take the time to receive all that we have as a gift. This idea undergirds the word grace, one use of which, is to describe the prayer said before a meal, which for generations acted as a thrice daily reminder of point I am trying to make. ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ as the Lord’s Prayer puts it, says pretty much the same thing, from the other end as it were.
Before he was based in Mytholmroyd, my father had worked in the pit villages of the Wakefield area during the early 1930’s and witnessed the consequences of the Great Depression. Thus one of his stock sayings if you were quibbling about a particular item on the menu was, ‘You ought to go hungry’. He had see hunger and so knew what he was talking about. Jam or butter, but not both, was the order of the day in many of the homes he visited.
Before I veer off into Monty Python’s ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ Sketch, two stories which illustrate the new perspective that a spirit of thankfulness brings. The first features the 17C Chester divine, Matthew Henry. After being relieved of his possessions by a thief, his response was this:
“Let me be thankful. First, I was never robbed before. Second, although they took my purse, they didn’t take my life. Third, although they took my all, it was not much. Fourth, let me be thankful because it was I who was robbed and not I who did the robbing.”
The second features the German hymn writer, Martin Rinkhart,from around the same time. Rinkart was a Lutheran minister who came to Eilenburg, Saxony at the beginning of the Thirty years war. The walled city of Eilenberg became the refuge for political and military fugitives, but the result was overcrowding, and deadly pestilence and famine. Armies overran it three times. The Rinkart home was a refuge for the victims, even though he was often hard-pressed to provide for his own family. During the height of a severe plague in 1637, Rinkart was the only surviving pastor in Eilenberg, conducting as many as 50 funerals in a day. He performed more than 4000 funerals in that year, including that of his wife.
Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessèd peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!
This week – leaving aside the tragedy of the four badly burnt children – has been the week of the dog. And so I start with a story about a dog which has been with me from my earliest years.
Although I didn’t take possession of the certificate until after his death in 1985, I well remember my dad, Jim, relating the events of the day in 1946 as a consequence of which he was awarded the RSPCA Silver Medallion. At the time he was a policeman in small town called Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire. News came to him that a dog was trapped on rocks high above the town. Unlike me, he was no lover of dogs and, more to the point, unlike me, neither was he a rock climber. In spite of this, he made his way up to the animal – the certificate says 460 feet – took hold of it, secured it to his person using, if I recall correctly, a belt and carried it down to safety. Hence the award, which now takes pride of place on my dining room wall.
What always sticks in my mind, however, is what the certificate does not say, which is what the dog did after he had placed it on the ground. That’s right. It bit him! An object lesson in ingratitude if ever there was one! My thought day, then, concerns gratitude or thankfulness.
From where does thankfulness originate? Right perception. A particular way of looking at the world. Circumstances change and so too our moods, but there is always a different angle from which things must be viewed. I suppose that the Christian ‘angle’ would be called faith.
Although doggerel, I have always liked this little piece
The difference between
an optimist and a pessimist is droll.
One sees the donut
the other sees the whole
And so, instead of thinking that the world owes us a living, let’s take the time to receive all that we have as a gift. This idea undergirds the word grace, one use of which, is to describe the prayer said before a meal, which for generations acted as a thrice daily reminder of point I am trying to make. ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ as the Lord’s Prayer puts it, says pretty much the same thing, from the other end as it were.
Before he was based in Mytholmroyd, my father had worked in the pit villages of the Wakefield area during the early 1930’s and witnessed the consequences of the Great Depression. Thus one of his stock sayings if you were quibbling about a particular item on the menu was, ‘You ought to go hungry’. He had see hunger and so knew what he was talking about. Jam or butter, but not both, was the order of the day in many of the homes he visited.
Before I veer off into Monty Python’s ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ Sketch, two stories which illustrate the new perspective that a spirit of thankfulness brings. The first features the 17C Chester divine, Matthew Henry. After being relieved of his possessions by a thief, his response was this:
“Let me be thankful. First, I was never robbed before. Second, although they took my purse, they didn’t take my life. Third, although they took my all, it was not much. Fourth, let me be thankful because it was I who was robbed and not I who did the robbing.”
The second features the German hymn writer, Martin Rinkhart,from around the same time. Rinkart was a Lutheran minister who came to Eilenburg, Saxony at the beginning of the Thirty years war. The walled city of Eilenberg became the refuge for political and military fugitives, but the result was overcrowding, and deadly pestilence and famine. Armies overran it three times. The Rinkart home was a refuge for the victims, even though he was often hard-pressed to provide for his own family. During the height of a severe plague in 1637, Rinkart was the only surviving pastor in Eilenberg, conducting as many as 50 funerals in a day. He performed more than 4000 funerals in that year, including that of his wife.
Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
With ever joyful hearts and blessèd peace to cheer us;
And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;
And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!
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